UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines how states shape civil society. The past two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in associational life. Some researchers place liberal civil society at the heart of democratic transformation and consolidation. Others question such claims, citing examples of authoritarian states supported by dense but illiberal associational landscapes. Yet there is a lack of research on the development of associational life. Responding to this gap in the literature, I ask what forces shape civil society and in particular its liberal or illiberal character? Despite the paucity of scholarship focused on factors that mold civil society and its character, significant amounts of research have engaged questions of how the economy and political institutions shape liberal and illiberal political outcomes. Drawing on the implicit, and in a few instances explicit, claims found in disparate debates about the relationship of the state and market to civil society, I construct various state-centered and market-driven explanatory approaches of the development of liberal and illiberal civil societies. On the one hand, economic interest or market-driven approaches claim that capitalist development drives the emergence of classes, the self-organization of which promotes the development of liberal civil societies and the consolidation of democratic states. On the other hand, institutionalism and state-centered approaches argue that states, not markets, shape the character of civil society.

I examine these competing explanations of civil society and its character through an analysis of how economic development and state policies of cultural tolerance and political inclusion shaped civil society and its regional variation in pre-WWI regions of the former Lithuanian-Commonwealth (1795-1914) and of interwar Poland (1918-1939). Through a historical-comparative and narrative, mechanism-oriented, analysis, I propose a state-centered explanation of civil society that focuses on elites’ conflicts, interests and the strategies that elites can apply in pursuit of those interests. I agree with economic interest approaches that economic development, particularly the growth of capitalist markets, promotes conditions favorable to the emergence and growth of associational life. However, I argue that the state, specifically the degree of political inclusion or exclusion of local elites and of the ethno-cultural autonomy or repression of the masses, plays a central role in shaping the liberal or illiberal character of civil society.

The end of the 18th century marked the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia, Prussia (the German Empire after 1871) and the Habsburg Empire (Austria-Hungary after 1867). A historical-narrative analysis of the pre-WWI Warszawa Governorate in the Russian-ruled Kingdom of Poland, the independent and subsequently Austrian-ruled Duchy of Kraków in western Galicia and of the Austrian-ruled province of Lviv in eastern Galicia illuminates how state policies of cultural repression and political exclusion rather than economic development shaped the character of each region’s civil society. While the Russian-ruled Kingdom of Poland saw the political exclusion of local ethnic majority elites and cultural repression of the masses accompanied by an industrial revolution, Austrian-ruled eastern Galicia’s political exclusion of local majority elites and ethno-cultural repression and discrimination of the local Ukrainian masses was accompanied by economic underdevelopment. In comparison, the Duchy of Kraków not only experienced a long period of local autonomy, and thus the rule of local ethnic majority Polish elites, but when placed under Austrian rule, it saw the continuation of political inclusion of local elites and cultural autonomy of the local Polish masses. Political liberalism in western Galicia, however, was accompanied by the absence of an industrial revolution and general economic underdevelopment similar to that found in eastern Galicia.

Significant variation in economic development, political inclusion of local elites, and ethno-cultural discrimination aimed at the masses across the partitioned regions of the former Commonwealth facilitate a fruitful analysis of how state-backed cultural repression and political exclusion interacted with distinct paths of economic development and local ethno-cultural dynamics to shape the character of each region’s late 19th and early 20th century civil society. Significant political and economic transformations within each case further enable the examination of how political and economic changes affected the developmental trajectory of each associational landscape. Thus, such cross-regional and cross-time comparisons allow for both an assessment of implied existing theoretical approaches to understanding and predicting the development of civil society and its character, and the development of an alternative approach focused on the relationship between the state and non-state elites.

Building on state-centered, postcolonial and nationalism theories, I support claims that variation in state-backed ethnic discrimination deepens ethnic cleavage. However, I diverge from such theories in assessing the implications of political exclusion of elites for civil society. Instead of arguing that exclusion of elites necessarily undermines their power, I show that increasing political exclusion of local ethnic majority elites contributes to elite domination of associational life. For instance, the political exclusion and marginalization of local ethnic majority elites in Warszawa and Lviv contributed to elite domination of social life as elites sought to augment their social backing within and through civil society as a means of countering state power. At the same time, imperial and local, respectively, state-backed ethno-cultural discrimination invaded practices of daily life, turning culture into a tool of political repression and, thus, of political resistance. As such, cultural repression allowed local, excluded elites to politicize and dominate the public sphere by forging a common identity and interests with the ethno-culturally repressed masses. Through cultural, cross-class alliances, elites mounted support for their political struggles with exclusionary ruling elites. Conversely, after the Austro-Hungarian compromise, local majority Polish elites in Kraków received local relative political and cultural autonomy. As elites focused on negotiating power within political institutions associations developed more autonomously. Moreover, lacking cultural repression, Kraków developed a longer history of cross-ethnic cooperation.

Drawing on narrative and comparative analyses of pre-WWI regions of the former Commonwealth, I suggest that elites in states with inclusive politics should protect their positions and power through participation within formal state institutions. Thus, by focusing on negotiation and cooperation with other elites within political society, these elites should allow civil society to develop more autonomously from both state and non-state elite control. However, when excluded from formal political institutions, elites should seek to counter state power through social mobilization within and through civil society. The degree to which their mobilization is successful, however, depends on the excluded and marginalized elites’ ability and potential to muster significant alliances and support in civil society. In other words, the degree to which elites are successful in dominating associational life is rooted in their ability to draw on common identities or interests with broader masses. Economic and social transformations can significantly alter the identities and interests of elites, thus altering the strategies that they may be willing to enact. Yet the strategies that elites can successfully implement to forge broad-based alliances are largely shaped by the state. In particular, through policies of ethno-racial discrimination, states can provide excluded elites with the necessary mutual identities and interests to successfully dominate and mobilize large sectors of associational life, thus promoting the development of an illiberal—elite-dominated and ethno-racially fragmented—civil society.

In 1918, Poland re-emerged as an autonomous state. Its first years were marked by increased political marginalization and then temporary inclusion of minorities after Piłsudski’s 1926 military coup. In 1930, Piłsudski’s regime overtly increased its marginalization of left-wing and right-wing political actors. Once more, excluded elites fostered close, top-down ties to civil society as a means to challenge the state. The Second Polish Republic’s significant political transformations allow for an auxiliary examination of competing explanatory approaches of the development of civil society’s liberal or illiberal character, including the elite-centered argument proposed by this dissertation and developed through a historical-comparative analysis of the pre-WWI regions of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of civil society in two regions of interwar Poland illuminates the extent to which legacies of a century of imperial policies persevered, and the political and economic pressures under which they began to wane. Civil society that emerged in Kraków under pre-WWI policies of political inclusion and cultural toleration was more resistant to interwar political domination and ethnic fragmentation than that which emerged in Vilnius under pre-WWI policies of political exclusion and cultural repression. On the one hand, the analysis of interwar Polish civil society supports claims of institutional stickiness in the face of external pressures. Moreover, it demonstrates specific internal mechanism of institutional reproduction, ones rooted in the ideals, habits and goals of members and others in associations’ rules, which allowed pre-WWI civil legacies to persist throughout the interwar period. On the other hand, though significant, the interwar cross-regional variation in the political domination of civil society was waning. Thus, I show that though historical legacies embedded in civil society are persistent even in the face of significant external transformations, they are not impervious to externally-driven change.