W&L Sociology Professor Publishes New Book Krzysztof Jasiewicz authored “Roads to and from Democracy” from a collection of papers written over the course of 40 years.

By Brian Laubscher
October 19, 2023

Krzysztof Jasiewicz, William P. Ames Jr. Professor of Sociology at Washington and Lee University, recently published a book titled “Roads to and from Democracy: Studies in Polish Politics, 1980-2020.”

The volume is a collection of papers written over the course of 40 years that examine political attitudes, political behavior and the institutional framework for a transition to democracy in Jasiewicz’s native Poland. The book features the liberation movement in 1980-81, the protests against the communist regime in the 1980s, the road to democracy in the 1990s and the problems encountered adapting to European liberal values in the 21st century. The publication is described as a “must-read for students of post-communist politics, voting behavior in new democracies and regime change.”

“Throughout my long professional career, I have been engaged in dozens of research projects and most of them generated outcomes suitable for presentation in the form of a journal article or a chapter in multi-author volumes of collected essays,” said Jasiewicz. “For years, I had toyed with the idea of publishing my selected works in a single volume but rarely had time due to a variety of current projects. The Covid lockdown finally afforded me the opportunity to reflect on this project, and then launch a selection of articles and editorial work. The outcome was two books, one in my native Polish, composed of pieces originally written or translated to Polish, and this volume, in which most chapters were originally written in English.”

Jasiewicz’s Polish version titled “On the Streets and at the Polls” was published in 2022 and studied the political behavior of Poles during the same time period.

A leading expert on voting behavior and political change in Poland, Jasiewicz joined the W&L faculty as a full professor in 1994 after having previously served as a visiting professor on two separate occasions. He received a master’s degree from Warsaw University and a doctorate from the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Jasiewicz was the founder and first director of Electoral Studies at the Institute for Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and he currently serves as the editor of the East European Politics and Societies and Cultures (EEPS) Journal.

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