Protest and participation in post-transformation Poland: The case of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD)

The paper explores the recent political participation in Poland focusing on the KOD movement. Given that very limited data is available on the impact of citizen participation in political process in Poland, the paper attempts a preliminary assessment of the participation “between elections”. The paper tries to take a snapshot of the KOD movement and to examine it in the context of civil society concept. The paper argues that the KOD movement is located between civil and political society on the one hand. On the other hand, it draws strongly on the symbolism of the civil resistance during the last two decades of communism. The dichotomy of post-communism and the former anti-communist opposition (including former Solidarity and KOR activists) was relevant for the political participation in Poland in the 1990s and 2000s and, as I argue now, has been replaced by new identity conflict between the symbolic politics of nationhood and the liberal Europeanized vision of politics.