Elite Social Networks and Political Culture in 18th Century Poland

The comparative historical sociological literature on European state formation which received a big boost in the 1970s has consistently been fascinated with the case of Poland, either as a case of failed state-building (Tilly, Downing, Davies, Ertman) or as the consummate example of dependent development (Wallerstein).  But in examining the interior dynamics of the Polish polity, it struck me that seemingly elegant resource mobilization and world systems theory explanations of the case failed to explain three key puzzles: 1) the cohesion of the nation, despite the lack of administrative centralization; 2) the absence of institutional mechanisms for restricting political participation to overwhelmingly resource-rich elites; 3) the shift from factional politics to party politics in the late eighteenth century and the emergence and substance of the impressive 1791 Constitution.  Above all, the case seemed to me well suited to an examination of the importance of, and interaction between,  elite social network dynamics on the one hand, and political culture (understood in terms of factional mobilization and commitment signaling) on the other, rather than obsessive attention to the ‘state’. An article of mine that quantitatively assesses the changing structure of the Polish elite over three hundred years appeared recently in Theory and Society (March 2004). My current focus is chiefly on the second half of the eighteenth century, examining connections between office-holding, marriage networks, and patterns of political affiliations.

Rembrandt's portrait of a Polish Rider