AbstractsEconomics

This thesis investigates Polish economic and political elites through the implementation of their strategies and structures, and how it seems to have a negative impact on achieving ‘consensual elites’ and ‘institutional compromise’. The achievement of consensual elites and institutional compromise could arguably have a positive effect on the Polish democracy. Furthermore it will investigate the influence of legacy of past, on the elite structures and the political regime. This study will attempt to investigate the relation between Polish elites and Polish regime change, especially considering the official regime change and democratization of Poland in the beginning of the 1990s. The study will investigate this relation by the use of interrelated indicators such as: legacy of past, elite structure, distribution of resources, institutional design as well as the relative cost of particular strategies. The combination of these indicators will help investigate the involvement of political and economical elites in the Polish political system. The project will apply the theoretical considerations of Vladimir Gel’man and his approach toward; power, elites, political regime. This combined with the collected empirical data of the main political, economic and social national issues which are presented by a historical timeframe, will structure the analysis and indicate the mechanism of elite actions, which could prevent or misguide Poland from achieving a democracy which is based on consensual elites and institutional compromise.