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Source publication
Grzegorz Ekiert argues that the organisational trajectory of civil society in Poland has fundamental features directing it towards political polarization. According to the author, Polish civil society has evolved into an organisational form that can be described as a “pillarized civil society”. Despite the formulation of a strong thesis for “pillar...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... regard to the concept of network integration, it will also be useful to identify the specific role that political parties can play in integrating protest communities within pillars. I build upon an analytic strategy designed by Gould and Fernandez (1989) to identify five types of brokers in directed networks (see Figure 1). 3 The coordinator appears when an actor connects two other actors, and all three actors are members of the same group (community). ...
Citations
Recent scholarship on popular mobilisation and activism in Central and East Europe suggests a shift from institutionalised civil society organisations towards grassroots mobilisation. Whilst the emergence of such citizen-led activism across the region can be traced back to the anti-neoliberal urban movements that arose in the 2010s in the immediate post EU-accession period, the so-called ‘illiberal turn’ and the legal restrictions placed on formal civil society organisations by radical right and conservative politicians have arguably exacerbated the shift and momentum. In Poland, the reaction of political elites to air pollution activism and the apparent responsiveness of policy makers is particularly puzzling given the ‘green conservatism’ bordering on ‘environmental nativism’ of the Law and Justice government (2015-2023). Building on semi-structured interviews conducted with 30 policymakers and activists involved in the clean air campaign in Poland, we contend that their success in terms of increased public awareness and positive government response is a consequence of the concurrence of (i) a particular (health) framing of air pollution, (ii) the devolution of power and responsibility for managing air quality to regional government, (iii) the circulation of new information and data, and (iv) the emergence of new actors and activist strategies.
