Conclusions from Research into Farmers' Protests in Poland

Foryś, Grzegorz

doi:doi:10.53098/wir.2008.4.141/01

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Title: Conclusions from Research into Farmers' Protests in Poland

Abstract:

The author of this article tries to define a proper theoretical context for the creation of an analytical model serving to describe and explain the phenomenon of farmers’ protests and he simultaneously presents selected characteristics of such protests staged in 1989–1993 and in 1997–2001. The main conclusions formulated on the basis of the used material suggest that: (1) farmers’ protests were evoked by the worsening economic situation of this social group and the related sense of deprivation, (2) farmers’ protests were characterised by a different dynamics than the protests of other social groups, (3) the main participants of farmers’ protest were owners of large farms undergoing modernisation, (4) farmers’ protests were subject to the processes of institutionalisation as evidenced by the diminishing number of spontaneously stage actions, intensifying co-operation between farmers’ associations during the organisation of protest actions, growing number of serially staged protests and protest campaigns, and a well prepared repertoire of various forms of protest (road blockades, sit-ins organised in government buildings, mass demonstrations), (5) the scope of the protesting farmers’ demands and efforts to address them to the state’s central institutions revealed a tendency towards the presentation of demands of economic nature, towards politicisation and radicalisation of protests in the discussed period.

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