How Communism Could Have Been Saved: Formal Analysis of Electoral Bargaining in Poland in 1989

Marek M Kaminski

Public Choice, 1999, vol. 98, issue 1-2, 83-109

Abstract: During the 1989 Roundtable Talks, Solidarity and PUWP (the Communist Party) were bargaining over the electoral law for the 1989 parliamentary elections in Poland--the first semifree elections held in the Soviet Bloc. The author shows that PUWP's consent to the elections was founded on an overly optimistic estimate of its popular support. A surprising Solidarity victory led to the subsequent collapse of the communist regime in Poland and initiated the fall of communism in other countries. An alternative electoral law, a single transferable vote, would have been mutually acceptable to both parties while producing an outcome that would have been critically better for the communists. Copyright 1999 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1999
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