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One of the chief architects of Poland's plan to spread democratic practice is Polish-born geographer Dr. Joanna Regulska of Rutgers University. Regulska emigrated to the United States in 1977. Since 1989, however, she has worked closely with the Polish parliament to develop the framework for political and economic reform in her former homeland.

Regulska is building on several decades of research that indicates people's receptivity to new ideas varies between and within communities. Understanding the spatial variation of diffusion is crucial to the success of Poland's reforms. As a geographer, Regulska knows that the diffusion of democracy will depend on both barriers and carriers.

Read more from Joanna Regulska's interview on democratic diffusion in Poland.

I think it's obviously very difficult to quantify the effects of the diffusion and in particular this kind of the diffusion when we're talking about the democratic practices. We could take a lot of indicators. For example, do people go and vote at regulated elections? But it's a tricky indicator because, again, given the context, we need to remember about the historical context. Not going to vote, it also is exercising here new freedoms -- you have chosen not to go and vote, so that is a democratic practice. So what do you measure?
Do you measure the fact that people did go to vote or do you measure the fact that people didn't go to vote?

And the context matters, the historical context matters. But there are other things which I think may be a little bit more clear in terms of indicating to us what is happening. The number of new non-government organizations, the number of new citizens, the fact that local government would put in their budgets a line item allocation to fund citizens' initiatives and provide the funding on the regular annual basis for different work done by the citizens or groups. But that's meaning that something has changed, right? Because that means that the elected officials and the council begin to recognize the importance of citizens' input to the point that they are allocating money. We know that a lot of times when the things are measured -- obviously if there is money available, that's another indicator for us to see that something has changed.

The fact that these non-governmental organizations are surviving, that means that they have learned some skills: how to manage, how to get funding, how to work with the volunteers, how to work with the local government, how to work with the business community, or how to apply for the foreign funding, whichever of these sources they're using, they allow to -- these funding sources allow them to function.

Many of these leaders who participate in our programs have run for offices, have engaged in the political leadership in their communities, they won elections in their local government, they won elections at the regional level, they won elections to the Parliament. So, it shows that the training and the work that has been done, initially done, translate into the commitment of the civic engagement and political work.

One thing we were very much aware from the beginning was the context of the place. And that's why, when we are choosing the 25 communities, we went from the different regions in the north and northeast and northwest and the south and central Poland. Because we know that the historical context does make a difference. They have different behavior patterns; they have different histories. Poland was divided into -- by empires -- into the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Prussian. And that cultural dynamic is still there even a few centuries later. So the context makes difference. It's nothing new for geographers but, on the other hand, we need to remember that the local context does make a difference and we need to understand how the localities work when we begin to work.