Abstract

At the beginning of Poland's post-socialist economic and political transformation, the then President of Poland and icon of Poland's struggle for democracy, Lech Wałęsa, declared, referring to Poland's economy, that we should build "a second Japan". The statement has since been ridiculed on a number of occasions, as Japan represented a great economic success, but nevertheless achieved in an entirely different historical, systemic and, most importantly, cultural environment. The Poles looked West at a narrow range of systemic arrangements and policies as the solutions to their post-socialist underdevelopment and never really considered other options.