Etatism versus liberalism: Economic attitudes in Poland after the world crisis

Abstract

Purpose: The paper analyses etatist and liberal economic attitudes in Poland, their changes after the last economic crisis, and the differences in this respect between socio-occupational groups with a particular focus on managers, professionals, and business owners, on the one hand, and other working and non-working groups, on the other hand.

Methodology: Individual-level data from three representative surveys conducted in 2012,2 2016, and 2017 on stratifed random samples of the whole adult Polish population are analyzed. Findings: Despite public legitimization of economy based on private ownership and the free market, Polish public opinion still shows strong preference for public ownership and state interventionism. This preference slowly diminishes. It differs between various socio-occupational groups: managers, professionals, and business owners are more liberal than others, especially non-working people and farmers.

Research implications: Since strengthening the regulatory and controlling functions of the government in economic life is the recent tendency in Poland and other countries, the slowly growing liberal attitudes may counteract this direction. So far, however, the Polish public opinion strongly supports governmental intervention in the economy.

Originality: So far, no one wrote a similar analysis of changes in etatist and liberal economic attitudes in the post-crisis Poland.