Civic Dialogue in Poland Compared to Other European Union Member States

In the invitation to the 'Europe-Poland-Dialogue' conference the organisers ask: Are we witnessing the end of a certain development stage and opening of the way to subsequent stages of dialogue advancement, its functioning and development in social realities? In this paper, the attempt to answer this question entails a description of three problems addressed by the sections below. The first section presents the differences between social and civic dialogue against the background of discussions taking place in the European Union and in Poland. The second section focuses on the evaluation of the condition of Polish civic dialogue past 1989. The third section considers social dialogue in Poland from the comparative perspective of political participation and political culture indicators of the Democracy Index. The paper ends with final remarks.