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Data on the social backgrounds of 33 leading activists of the Polish Solidarity movement are examined in the context of the character of the movement, its social basis, and historical background of mass dissent in Poland. In the light of a typology suggested by the author, the recruitment and composition of the leadership could be seen as reflecting the anti-partocratic and crisis-triggered character of the movement The top Solidarity activists were leaders and organizers of the 1980 strikes. They were predominantly young and skilled industrial workers, manual and non-manual, employed in the large factories in traditional centres of workers' unrest. They represented this section of the `generation of People's Poland' whose upward mobility in a climate of political optimism generated high expectations and aspirations. These aspirations, frustrated by political exclusion and the economic crisis, led to the rebellion against the partocratic institutions. Although most of the Solidarity leaders were not involved in dissident activities before summer 1980, their backgrounds show a clear link with the political history of Poland and testify to the dramatic failure of the mechanisms of political participation and cooptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High expectations of prompt establishment of stable parliamentary democracy in central eastern Europe (CEE) have been dashed by outbursts of populism Such expectations were unrealistic This paper argues that the key aspect of change in CFE involved first the mobilisation of mass protest movements and subsequently the 'normalisation' of these movements into new regimes These processes are unlikely to lead directly to stable parliamentary democracies Rather as Max Weber s analyses suggest the normalisation of mass movements leads in the direction of 'plebiscitary democracy The development of stable parliamentary democracy in post communist CEE is hindered by the residues of the very mass mobilisations which initiated the process of democratic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following some terminological clarifications, this article assesses the utility of the concept of class, and the Marxist class theory, for the analysis of stratification and conflict in advanced societies, The conclusions support the arguments of Clark and Lipset (1991). What is 'dying' (in Clark and Lipset's parlance) are mainly the old industrial classes: the old socio-economic divisions, the old institutional actors representing these divisions, and the old forms of identification cum consciousness that reflected them. This reflects fragmentation of stratification due to proliferation of property ownership, credentialisation and professionalisation, state regulation, consumption orientation, proliferation of 'imagined communities', and formation of new political actors. With these processes, and the revolutionary transformations in the ex-Soviet bloc, the theoretical and analytical edifice of Marxism loses much of its ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically reviews the major class interpretations of contemporary mass movements, including the fascist movements, Polish Solidarity and Western Green (eco-pax) movements, and argues that these accounts are deficient. A paradigmatic shift from the class interpretation of movements to `post-Marxist' and `post-modernist' accounts has been occurring in movement literature. This shift follows the processes of social change and broadening of research horizons. Contemporary conflicts, and the mass movements that articulate them. seem to be more diverse, more detached from structural- economic divisions, and less linked to class identities than the nineteenth- century conflicts analysed by Marx. This limits the heuristic value and theoretical utility of class theories in analyses of mass social movements and brings to the fore alternative accounts in terms of generation, status politics and civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to re-examine the relationship between ideology and political domination, three aspects of ideology are discerned: dominant social values, political formulas (socio-political doctrines), and the legitimacy claims made by political leaders. These "partial" notions of ideology serve as convenient bases for critical examinations of three theoretical debates—the dominant values debate, the "end of ideology" debate, and the "legitimation crisis" debate—in the light of findings from studies conducted in the advanced capitalist and state socialist societies. The paper ends with the conclusion that the role of the ideological factors in the maintenance of political domination has been distorted and exag gerated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]