Seminar series Local elites and regime stability Lessons from anti-communist resistance in post-World War II Poland Add to calendar 2025-04-10 17:00 2025-04-10 18:30 Europe/Rome Local elites and regime stability Sala del Capitolo Badia Fiesolana YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Apr 10 2025 17:00 - 18:30 CEST Sala del Capitolo, Badia Fiesolana Organised by Department of Political and Social Sciences In the context of the Comparative Politics Seminar Series, this session features a presentation by Kristof Krakowski (King's College London). Regime changes are common around the world. How do newly-established regimes interact with old regime elites? While pre-existing elites can directly challenge the new regime, their human and social capital may also bolster governance, indirectly reducing resistance against new authorities. We study foreign-imposed regime change in post-WWII Poland, tracing the impact of local Polish elites, including nobility, intellectuals, and army officers, on opposition to the Soviet-backed communist regime. We exploit plausibly random variation in Polish officers’ wartime deployment and imprisonment for causal identification. While most officers in Nazi captivity survived, those in Soviet captivity largely perished. Leveraging differences in officers’ wartime experiences, we find that municipalities with more surviving local elites experienced fewer Solidarno´s protests in the 1980s. Historical evidence suggests that surviving elites enhanced local economic development and public services, easing grievances against the communist regime. The economically beneficial effects of elite survival can be traced to this day. Related events