[PAPER PUBLICATION] Digitalisation and the Varieties of Capitalismin Central and Eastern Europe. The Case of Poland. 

22 May 2025 By

Adam Mrozowicki and Szymon Pilch, INCA researchers from the University of Wrocław, have recently published a paper entitled “Digitalisation and the Varieties of Capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe. The Case of Poland” in the journal Górnośląskie Studia Socjologiczne. Seria Nowa.

The work examines the relationship between the emerging variety of capitalism in Poland and the advances of digitalisation, accompanied by the expansion of global Internet-based platforms, over 40 years (1989-2023).

It finds that despite policies aimed at technological upgrading and regaining national economic sovereignty, the country’s dependence on large, foreign-owned infrastructural platforms appears to be increasing over time, regardless of political forces in power. This leads the researchers to conclude that the growing dependence of the state on big tech transnational companies, which provide critical infrastructure for key public services, might present a danger to the digital sovereignty of the country.

Another interesting idea raised in the paper is that Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries could be considered a laboratory of socio-economic and political reforms that, over time, greatly increased dependence on global, private, high-tech infrastructure and know-how.

The study argues that the key role played by global infrastructural platforms in the Polish way to a digital society, might be interpreted as the consequence of the dependent market economy model that emerged in the country in the 1990s and 2000s. At that time, know-how and innovation were transferred from the core countries to semi-peripheries, which functioned as regional “assembly plants”. And according to the authors, the metaphor of an “assembly plant” is still applicable, but in a slightly nuanced way. The work suggests that Poland would now be living a new incarnation of dependent market economy, in which access to data and critical infrastructure is mediated by big tech giants. A trend that, as the publication highlights, is not local, but is beginning to affect the most technologically advanced countries in Western Europe.

So although the study analyses the specific situation in Poland, the results are interesting to understand what is happening globally.