How has the Law and Justice Party in Poland (PiS) been able to get significant labor support to introduce far-right policies that undermine pluralist democracy? We look at PiS in the context of the “left fascist” traditions of the past, when redistributionist policies won wide support among workers who were accepted as part of the favored “nation.” Labor support breaks down along three lines, with industrial labor most closely aligned with PiS, white-collar labor (in education and health) mostly opposed, and the marginalized small-city precariat being mobilized by PiS, but also finding a place in explicitly fascist parties further to the Right. Left alternatives, weakened due to the collapse of class discourse, are slowly reemerging, but the Right will likely command most labor support for the near future.

In the wake of the Revolutions of 1989, Hungary was long considered one of the “success stories” of post-communist transition to liberal democracy. Yet in recent years the Hungarian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has pioneered a new conception of “illiberal democracy.” In a July 2014 speech, Orban indeed declared that “the era of liberal democracies is over.” Similar declarations can be heard in other parts of post-communist Eastern Europe. The Hungarian Patient: Social Opposition to an Illiberal Democracy, is a collection of essays by Hungarian social scientists and intellectuals reflecting on both the sources of this emergent illiberalism and the sources of opposition to it. Because it is important for American political scientists to understand the way their colleagues in other parts of the world reflect on the challenges of democracy, and because the Hungarian situation is significant for the future of Europe and the EU, we have invited a wide range of scholars to comment on the book and on its topic—the significance of the emergence of “illiberal democracy” in Hungary and in Europe.

Trust and Democratic Transition in Post-Communist Europe. Edited by Ivana Markova. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 232p. $65.00.

This is a frustrating volume. That trust is important to democratic transition is its central assumption, but only the final chapter asks whether it is true or why it should be. Instead, most of the chapters discuss how the communist experience affected relations of trust. But some chapters make claims about communist society that generalize solely from the Stalinist period, while others concern the experiences of particular countries to a point where the precise relationship to communism is left unclear. In the end, the only unifying aspect of the book is each chapter's discussion of some aspect of trust in relation to some aspect of the former Soviet bloc.

In our collective fascination with contemporary Poland we have focused almost exclusively on the democratic or, more properly, anarchistic workers movement. But while Solidarity may be the soul of contemporary Poland, it is far from being its arm. A year after Gdansk it remains without institutionalized assurances of constructive input at the level of policy formation, having to rely on strike threats and other forms of “coercive” action. Moreover, its registration as a legal, independent organization has sparked the creation of numerous other groups, some of which appear intent on beating back the popular movement of which they themselves are a product.