David Ost
Biographic Data
| ID | 280922 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Ost |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Ost |
| SIGNATURE | OST D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hobart and William Smith Colleges |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2643-9882 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 289 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
REN Pill Politics in Poland
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party has drawn international attention with its hard-line right-wing rhetoric and policies on a range of issues, from immigration to LGBT rights to attempts to gain control over formerly independent institutions such as the judiciary and the media. Some critical voices in Poland and elsewhere have drawn comparisons with fascism. The party denounces such parallels, pointing out that Poland suffered Nazi occupation,…
Re-enchanting Modernity in the East and West: Comparative Perspectives on the Legacy of 1968. An Author Meets Her Reviewers: A Symposium
This symposium offers EEPS audience insights to the process of peer review to which manuscripts submitted to the journal are subjected. It is composed of the original paper (titled “Re-enchanting Modernity in the East and West: Comparative Perspectives on the Legacy of 1968”), reviews and additional comments by the three reviewers, and the author’s response. It illustrates the variety of criteria typically used by reviewers – and editors – in the…
Down with 1989!”: The Peculiar Right-Wing Backlash against 1968 in Poland
This article is part of the special cluster titled Generation ’68 in Poland (with a Czechoslovak Comparative Perspective). Whereas much of the European right greeted the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 with a critique of its legacy, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party was largely silent, both because 1968 did not usher in a counterculture and because the protests were directed against the communist party. And yet the Law and Justice party detests …
The Sham, and the Damage, of “Living in Truth”
This essay criticizes Havel’s famous “living in truth” paradigm and parable of the greengrocer as morally wrong, politically false, and complicit in the later emergence of a backlash against liberal intellectuals and democracy. By vilifying the weak, Havel disregards the role resources play in enabling opposition. By insisting that the opposite of living in truth is “obedience,” he disregards the particular weapons of the weak. Havel’s approach i…
Workers and the Radical Right in Poland
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, w…
A Discussion of Péter Krasztev and Jon Van Til’s The Hungarian Patient: Social Opposition to an Illiberal Democracy
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 po…
The surprising right‐wing relevance of the Russian Revolution
Class after Communism: Introduction to the Special Issue
After 1989, class appeared to be everywhere and nowhere. The messy consequences of the emergence of new classes and new types of economic inequalities were plain for all to see, but no one uttered the term “class.” The concept appeared illegitimate because of associations with the old regime, even though it always had more success explaining developments in the capitalist world east Europe was entering than the state socialist world it was leavin…
Stuck in the Past and the Future: Class Analysis in Postcommunist Poland
Class became virtually a taboo topic in Poland after the fall of the communist system, and a discourse of “normality” took hold. Social scientists and journalists considered new market institutions natural and inescapable and urged people to adapt. Sociologists were more interested in the identity of the new elites than the social consequences of the new capitalism, and a cult of a not-yet-existing “middle class” quickly grew. Inequality and pove…
Does Neoliberalism Marginalize Labor or Reincorporate It—And Is There a Difference
Reflections on 1989
Perhaps the most surprising part of my recollection of 1989 is to recall the large part of it that was not surprising at all. Because nothing had gotten back to "normal" in Poland in the 1980s, the political events of that decade always happened with Solidarity as the "other." Because the political situation never seemed resolved, it was always in flux. What happened in 1989 was thus treated initially as part of that flux, by me and by Polish pol…
The Invisibility and Centrality of Class After Communism
The Consequences of Postcommunism: Trade Unions in Eastern Europe's Future
Following a long period in which labor in Eastern Europe had been marginalized, often with unionists' complicity, five conditions now favor revival: survival imperatives of the union bureaucracy, incorporation into the European Union, emerging international solidarity, a new generation of workers, and the end of postcommunism in the firm, or the dismissal of unessential workers. This article focuses on subjective factors: union officials' own mis…
L'après-communisme et le déclin du syndicalisme à l'Est: Leçons de Pologne et d'ailleurs
Depuis 1989, les syndicats ont connu en Europe de l’Est, sur presque tous les plans, un net recul. Ce déclin tient non seulement aux réformes économiques mais aussi à des facteurs plus subjectifs : les réactions suscitées par l’héritage de la période communiste et l’animosité des travailleurs qualifiés vis-à-vis des travailleurs non qualifiés, qui ont nourri auprès des syndicalistes eux-mêmes un certain scepticisme quant à la valeur du syndicalis…
A Response: For East Central Europe Symposium on My Book
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe
How did the fall of communism and the subsequent transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe affect the people who experienced it? And how did their anger affect the quality of the democratic systems that have emerged? Poland offers a particularly provocative case, for it was here where workers most famously seemed to have won, thanks to the role of the Solidarity trade union. And yet, within a few short years, they had clearly lost. An oppressive…
Trust and Democratic Transition in Post-Communist 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 comm…
Workers after Workers' States: Labour and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe
Politics as the Mobilization of Anger: Emotions in Movements and in Power
In most academic research on politics, emotions are deemed important only to the realm of subjects or citizens, not to power. Emotions are presented as a problem power has to deal with, not something with which power is itself intimately involved. This article discusses recent attempts to reintroduce emotions into political analysis and argue that they are incomplete insofar as they look only at opposition social movements, not at mainstream part…
Workers after Workers' States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe
The Weakness of Strong Social Movements: Models of Unionism in the East European Context
Despite recent arguments that political and social movement unionism is the key to labour revitalization, this article shows that such strategies have been detrimental to labour in Eastern Europe, and that only a recent turn towards economic unionism has helped turn the tide. Through an analysis of East European labour strategies since 1989, particularly in Poland, the article argues that much recent theory is based on capitalist experiences that…
Workers after workers' states: Labor and politics in postcommunist Eastern Europe
Why, given political freedom coupled with adverse economic change, has labour been so quiescent since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe? Through the use of case studies, this text explores the extent of these weaknesses and the relationship between labour and politcs in these countries.
Political Parties and Interest Groups: Shaping Democratic Governance
This benchmark study of the political party–interest group relationship—crucial in shaping the characteristics of democratic political systems—provides an in-depth analysis of the connection between special interests and political parties across thirteen democracies: Argentina, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.
Illusory Corporatism in Eastern Europe: Neoliberal Tripartism and Postcommunist Class Identities
The plethora of tripartite bodies in postcommunist countries seems to suggest the emergence of an East European corporatism. Analysis of arrangements in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland indicates instead the prevalence of illusory corporatism. Token negotiations, nonbinding agreements, and exclusion of the private sector demonstrate that tripartite procedures are deployed to introduce neoliberal, not social democratic, outc…
Unionists against Unions: Toward Hierarchical Management in Post-communist Poland
Politics as the Mobilization of Anger: Emotions in Movements and in Power
In most academic research on politics, emotions are deemed important only to the realm of subjects or citizens, not to power. Emotions are presented as a problem power has to deal with, not something with which power is itself intimately involved. This article discusses recent attempts to reintroduce emotions into political analysis and argue that they are incomplete insofar as they look only at opposition social movements, not at mainstream part…
The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe
How did the fall of communism and the subsequent transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe affect the people who experienced it? And how did their anger affect the quality of the democratic systems that have emerged? Poland offers a particularly provocative case, for it was here where workers most famously seemed to have won, thanks to the role of the Solidarity trade union. And yet, within a few short years, they had clearly lost. An oppressive…
Illusory Corporatism in Eastern Europe: Neoliberal Tripartism and Postcommunist Class Identities
The plethora of tripartite bodies in postcommunist countries seems to suggest the emergence of an East European corporatism. Analysis of arrangements in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland indicates instead the prevalence of illusory corporatism. Token negotiations, nonbinding agreements, and exclusion of the private sector demonstrate that tripartite procedures are deployed to introduce neoliberal, not social democratic, outc…
The politics of interest in post-communist East Europe
Class after Communism: Introduction to the Special Issue
After 1989, class appeared to be everywhere and nowhere. The messy consequences of the emergence of new classes and new types of economic inequalities were plain for all to see, but no one uttered the term “class.” The concept appeared illegitimate because of associations with the old regime, even though it always had more success explaining developments in the capitalist world east Europe was entering than the state socialist world it was leavin…
The Consequences of Postcommunism: Trade Unions in Eastern Europe's Future
Following a long period in which labor in Eastern Europe had been marginalized, often with unionists' complicity, five conditions now favor revival: survival imperatives of the union bureaucracy, incorporation into the European Union, emerging international solidarity, a new generation of workers, and the end of postcommunism in the firm, or the dismissal of unessential workers. This article focuses on subjective factors: union officials' own mis…
Workers and the Radical Right in Poland
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, w…
Workers after Workers' States: Labour and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe
Unionists against Unions: Toward Hierarchical Management in Post-communist Poland
Towards a Corporatist Solution in Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland
The Reemergence of Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Down with 1989!”: The Peculiar Right-Wing Backlash against 1968 in Poland
This article is part of the special cluster titled Generation ’68 in Poland (with a Czechoslovak Comparative Perspective). Whereas much of the European right greeted the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 with a critique of its legacy, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party was largely silent, both because 1968 did not usher in a counterculture and because the protests were directed against the communist party. And yet the Law and Justice party detests …
Stuck in the Past and the Future: Class Analysis in Postcommunist Poland
Class became virtually a taboo topic in Poland after the fall of the communist system, and a discourse of “normality” took hold. Social scientists and journalists considered new market institutions natural and inescapable and urged people to adapt. Sociologists were more interested in the identity of the new elites than the social consequences of the new capitalism, and a cult of a not-yet-existing “middle class” quickly grew. Inequality and pove…
The Sham, and the Damage, of “Living in Truth”
This essay criticizes Havel’s famous “living in truth” paradigm and parable of the greengrocer as morally wrong, politically false, and complicit in the later emergence of a backlash against liberal intellectuals and democracy. By vilifying the weak, Havel disregards the role resources play in enabling opposition. By insisting that the opposite of living in truth is “obedience,” he disregards the particular weapons of the weak. Havel’s approach i…
The surprising right‐wing relevance of the Russian Revolution
Trust and Democratic Transition in Post-Communist 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 comm…
Does Neoliberalism Marginalize Labor or Reincorporate It—And Is There a Difference
The Invisibility and Centrality of Class After Communism
L'après-communisme et le déclin du syndicalisme à l'Est: Leçons de Pologne et d'ailleurs
Depuis 1989, les syndicats ont connu en Europe de l’Est, sur presque tous les plans, un net recul. Ce déclin tient non seulement aux réformes économiques mais aussi à des facteurs plus subjectifs : les réactions suscitées par l’héritage de la période communiste et l’animosité des travailleurs qualifiés vis-à-vis des travailleurs non qualifiés, qui ont nourri auprès des syndicalistes eux-mêmes un certain scepticisme quant à la valeur du syndicalis…
Polish Labor before and after solidarity
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Introduction: Shock Therapy and Its Discontents
Finally, real information about Poland is becoming available. The first years following the collapse of communism found scholars as confused as what they were studying. Nice-sounding slogans of “democratization,” “marketization,” “privatization,” “civil society,” and “cutting back the state” substituted for empirical studies. Political analysis meant little more than reporting the statements of the various new political figures and parties dancin…
Poland 1981: Towards Social Renewal.Peter Raina
Towards a Corporatist Solution in Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland
The Transformation of Solidarity and the Future of Central Europe
Evolution in the Soviet bloc was never expected to be like this. Free elections to a Senate and guaranteed seats for the opposition in the Sejm, the relegalization of Solidarity and the legalization of much of the underground press, guaranteed access to radio and TV and permission for the opposition to start its own daily newspaper, equal treatment of public and private sectors and a commitment to marketization of the economy — the changes that h…
The Crisis of Liberalism in Poland
Recent parliamentary elections in Poland have confirmed what had long been obvious: that the veteran liberal opposition, the intellectual ideologues of the “independent civil society” — Michnik, Kuron, and the old KOR milieu, presently grouped around the Democratic Union and the newspaper Gazeta Wyboreza (but not the small, recently-formed, liberal Democratic Party, the pro-Walesa Gdansk party of former prime minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki) — ha…
Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and the Reform in Poland Since 1968 (Labor and Social Change Series)
The Poverty of 'Anti-Politics
NEAR THE END of this book David Ost remarks mat, AD those who talk about the 'death of communism' miss the essential point: as reform proceeds apace, the slogans of Marxism will come into vogue once again. (213) Such has not come to pass — at least no yet The reforms have certainly proceeded apace. Since coming to power the Solidarity government, in alliance with the International Monetary Fund, has implemented monetarism, fought to outlaw aborti…
Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968
Introduction: Shock Therapy and Its Discontents
Finally, real information about Poland is becoming available. The first years following the collapse of communism found scholars as confused as what they were studying. Nice-sounding slogans of “democratization,” “marketization,” “privatization,” “civil society,” and “cutting back the state” substituted for empirical studies. Political analysis meant little more than reporting the statements of the various new political figures and parties dancin…
Award Recipients
The legacy
The politics of interest in post-communist East Europe
The Roots of Solidarity: A Political Sociology of Poland's Working-Class Democratization
Search for Balance
In the 20th anniversary issue in 1988, Telos editors continually returned to one theme: Telos' marginality. The journal was never part of any movement, political or otherwise, and proud of it. “What united us,” writes Frank Adler, was “the experience of pursuing [our] project alone.” Paul Breines says Telos sought marginality and achieved it twice over: a “dual marginality,” he calls it, from the Left and from academia. While this kept Telos from…
The Reemergence of Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
The Church and the Left
Journal Article The Church and the Left, by Adam Michnik. Translated by David Ost. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, xvii + 301 pp. $24.95 Get access Gary Mann Gary Mann Augustana College, Illinois Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 55, Issue 2, Summer 1994, Pages 218–219, https://doi.org/10.2307/3711866 Published: 01 July 1994
Polish Labor before and after solidarity
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Race and Bad Social Science: Reply to Murray
The first part of a rebuttal to Hugh Murray must be ad hominem, since Murray himself argues ad hominem whenever he can. Murray is a very angry man. He feels he has been discriminated against because he is white. It seems to be the key factor shaping his ideas, informing all his writings. “My mother graduated from eighth grade,” writes Murray, “my father quit school after the third. I was the first in the family to attend the university. And while…
Unionists against Unions: Toward Hierarchical Management in Post-communist Poland
Illusory Corporatism in Eastern Europe: Neoliberal Tripartism and Postcommunist Class Identities
The plethora of tripartite bodies in postcommunist countries seems to suggest the emergence of an East European corporatism. Analysis of arrangements in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland indicates instead the prevalence of illusory corporatism. Token negotiations, nonbinding agreements, and exclusion of the private sector demonstrate that tripartite procedures are deployed to introduce neoliberal, not social democratic, outc…
Workers after workers' states: Labor and politics in postcommunist Eastern Europe
Why, given political freedom coupled with adverse economic change, has labour been so quiescent since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe? Through the use of case studies, this text explores the extent of these weaknesses and the relationship between labour and politcs in these countries.
Political Parties and Interest Groups: Shaping Democratic Governance
This benchmark study of the political party–interest group relationship—crucial in shaping the characteristics of democratic political systems—provides an in-depth analysis of the connection between special interests and political parties across thirteen democracies: Argentina, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.
The Weakness of Strong Social Movements: Models of Unionism in the East European Context
Despite recent arguments that political and social movement unionism is the key to labour revitalization, this article shows that such strategies have been detrimental to labour in Eastern Europe, and that only a recent turn towards economic unionism has helped turn the tide. Through an analysis of East European labour strategies since 1989, particularly in Poland, the article argues that much recent theory is based on capitalist experiences that…
Workers after Workers' States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe
Workers after Workers' States: Labour and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe
Politics as the Mobilization of Anger: Emotions in Movements and in Power
In most academic research on politics, emotions are deemed important only to the realm of subjects or citizens, not to power. Emotions are presented as a problem power has to deal with, not something with which power is itself intimately involved. This article discusses recent attempts to reintroduce emotions into political analysis and argue that they are incomplete insofar as they look only at opposition social movements, not at mainstream part…
Trust and Democratic Transition in Post-Communist 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 comm…
Political science (36 works) · Law (32 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Politics (27 works) · Law (25 works) · Political economy (21 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (12 works) · Communism (11 works) · History (9 works) · Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition (9 works)