The Europeanization of Polish Democracy

This article is about the discussion which has been going on in Western Europe concerning interpretation of the Europeanization concept and the resulting theoretical instruments for the analysis of the effects of European integration on the political transformation in Poland after the fall of communism. It presents selected mechanisms and channels of Europeanization of EU member states with reference to the “new democracies” and the anticipative modernization of Central-Eastern Europe. This perspective is used to discuss the specific nature of Europeanization of the post-communist countries and the posttransformation crisis of democracy in some countries in the region following accession to the European Union in 2004. This crisis, according to the author, was also caused to a certain extent by the contingencies and conditions of EU accession. In Poland these contingencies and conditions triggered fears of perpetuation of the country’s peripheral position vis-à-vis the “old” European countries. These fears are related to various interpretations of modernization, dependency theory, the world system theory and globalization.