Charles Lemos at MYDD has me reconsidering my position on the role of Poland’s odd political institutions in its disappearance as a state at the end of the 18th century. Lemos’ point is that while the fix may have been in for geographic and strategic reasons by the time of the Partitions of Poland, the Liberum Veto played a big role in Poland’s decline in the mid-17th Century, the series of events that set the stage for the later extinguishment of the state:

It is true that Poland’s geography, not just its location but the fact that the country is a flat hard to defend plain, made it ripe for invasion. Nonetheless, Poland had historically been able to fend off successive foreign invaders including the Mongols (three times), the Teutonic Knights, and the Russians without much difficulty before 1650. The country, however, had a harder time throwing off the Swedes. This was due to the introduction of the Liberum Veto in 1652 just three years before the start of the seven decade on and off war with Sweden. [...]

Based on the assumption that all members of the Polish nobility were absolutely equal politically, the Liberum Veto meant, in practice, that every bill introduced into the Sejm had to be passed unanimously. The political system found itself in a prolonged crisis that prevented Poland from developing a fiscal-military state, the model that allowed other European countries to wage war and defend themselves. The paralysis that enveloped the Polish state made it easy prey for rising powers who had developed centralized fiscal-militarty states to take advantage of Poland’s weakness.

Obviously, I’m not really well-versed in these events but that seems cogent enough to me. The story of Sweden’s 17th century moment in the sun as a great power is pretty interesting. I’ve read C.V. Wedgewood’s old book on The Thirty Years War but don’t know of much else on the subject that’s accessible.

As predicted by neoconservatives, Poland continues to seethe with resentment at Barack Obama’s betrayal of their country:

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has declared his country ready to take part in a revised US missile defence plan. Mr Tusk told visiting US Vice-President Joe Biden that Poland was “ready to participate”. [...]

After meeting the Polish prime minister Mr Biden said: “We appreciate Poland has stepped up and agreed to host an element of the previous missile defence plan, and we now appreciate that Poland’s government agrees with us that there is now a better way… with new technology and new information, to defend against emerging ballistic missile threats.”

That was sarcasm, of course. Contra neocon bleating on the subject, Poland’s participation in the Bush-era scheme was always unpopular in Poland and the Czech Republic so finding an alternate approach is fine with everyone.

One point Charles Kenny makes in The Success of Development that I’ve also seen argued convincingly in other contexts is that public policy choices seem to matter less than people would lead you to believe. This is a particularly striking fact:

Looking more broadly at the experience of the communist bloc under communism, over the period 1950-1988, no East European country grew as slowly as the UK, Mexico, Switzerland, Colombia, the US, Australia, India, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Argentina or Venezuela.

People right sometimes about the poor policy choices that led to Argentina’s poor growth performance in the 20th century. But it’s hard to make the case that Argentina was following worse policies during this period than Poland. Also: “Between 1928 and 1937, at the same time as farms were brutally collectivized, famine killed as many as 10 million people in the Ukraine, and Stalin‘s great terror was unleashed, the Soviet Union was the fastest growing country in the world.”

NB: I am not advocating Stalin-style economic policies.