For Grzegorz Ekiert, Poland represents two very different things. On the one hand, it is his homeland, the place where he grew up and received his education, a place of fond memories and emotional ties.

But on the other hand, it is a laboratory, a place that offers a unique opportunity to study certain key issues in political science.

Grzegorz Ekiert, professor of government at the Kennedy school.

"At this moment, Eastern Europe is one of the most exciting parts of the world for social science. Since the fall of communism, these have become societies in the making. You can see the emergence of electoral patterns, the struggle for justice, the origins of capitalism. It's all happening right now. You don't have to go back 200 or 300 years."

Ekiert was promoted to a tenured position in the Government Department in July 1998. His colleagues say that he brings a unique perspective to the study of government.

"Eastern Europe has been under-studied at Harvard, and Professor Ekiert addresses that area in a very exciting way," said Timothy Colton, the Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies. Colton has co-taught a course with Ekiert in the Government Department.

"He's the leading figure in the new wave of comparative, post-Soviet scholars, yet his work also straddles the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. He has a terrific local knowledge of the area, but he's also thoroughly conversant with Western methods of social science. And he reaches beyond Eastern Europe to scholars who are interested in general questions of comparative politics and in transitions away from authoritarian regimes."

Ekiert has been at Harvard since 1984 when he came as a graduate student, eager to gain new insights into his own society through the intellectual freedom to be found in the West. He earned a master's degree here in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1991, both from the Department of Sociology.

"Living under communism, I was very early aware that it was not the best political and economic system, and that led me to think a lot about political issues. I studied sociology in college because it was the most open of the social sciences, the one that allowed the greatest variety of views."

Ekiert was a student at Jagiellonian University in Krakow when Poland's Solidarity Movement was born, a development that was to have a profound effect on his career.

"These were unbelievably exciting political events, and they moved my interest in a quite specific direction. When I came to the United States, there was no question that this was a great opportunity to study Eastern Europe in an unconstrained and free intellectual environment."

Ekiert has made the most of the intellectual freedom he has found here. An associate of three of Harvard's area studies centers -- the Center for European Studies, the Davis Center for Russian Research, and the Center for International Affairs -- he has continued to focus on the subject that originally inspired him: the role of political protest in the development of Eastern European societies.

In his first book, The State Against Society: Political Crises and their Aftermath in East Central Europe (Princeton University Press, 1996), Ekiert examined uprisings in three former Soviet bloc nations -- Hungary (1956-63), Czechoslovakia (1968-76), and Poland (1980-89), comparing the effect each of them had on the subsequent development of the society.

For the past four years, Ekiert has been directing another project that focuses on much the same geographic area but concentrates on events that have taken place in the post-Soviet era. Massive in scope, involving as many as 20 researchers, the project will result in two books scheduled to be published in the near future.

Ekiert describes the project's subject as the "consolidation of democracy in East Central Europe and the role of collective protest in shaping that consolidation." The project compares political protests in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the former East Germany between 1989 and 1994.

Most of what has been written about political protest in these countries has been anecdotal and largely inaccurate, Ekiert said. This study, however, begins with a systematically compiled database of protest events that includes not only the protesters' demands and whom their activities were directed against, but the flags and posters they carried and the songs they sang.

The study produced some surprises. One was that the amount of protest in these four countries was considerably less than expected.

"Considering that these societies were undergoing fundamental social, political, and economic transformation, we expected there to be more resistance to change than there actually was," Ekiert said.

Another surprise was that most of the protest activity was aimed at specific, local issues, not the system as a whole. Researchers did not find the fundamental resistance to change, the protests against market reforms, and the nostalgia for communism that characterized Russian protest activities during the same period.

"They might be described as highly institutionalized protest activities," Ekiert said. "They have not been dangerous for the new democracies. In fact, they have been a mechanism which has increased accountability by helping the governments to redesign their policies."

The relatively "friendly" nature of Eastern European protest activity has been of a piece with the area's generally successful political and economic transformation. The four countries in the study have not been plagued by serious ethnic or nationalist conflicts. Even the split between Slovakia and the Czech Republic was carried out peacefully. Their economies are in good shape and so are their developing democratic institutions.

"There are no major contenders in the political arena that do not accept democracy as a fundamental premise," Ekiert said.

Why have these countries been so successful? Although the reasons are difficult to pin down, Ekiert suggests several factors that may be responsible for the region's smooth transitions.

Some of these nations initiated significant economic and social reforms even before the fall of communism, allowing them to fare better as changes accelerated. Also important were strong opposition movements, often headed by influential leaders like Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic or Lech Walesa of Poland, that were able to effectively fill the power vacuum after 1989. There is also evidence that societies with particular kinds of institutions weathered the transition more effectively, parliamentary systems of government and independent central banks being two of the most significant.

Another important factor was the amount of foreign money flowing into the economy. Because these countries have been relatively stable, they have attracted more foreign investment than their more turbulent neighbors. The result has been what Ekiert calls a "virtuous circle -- success at the early stages produces more success at the later stages."

Ekiert plans to publish one book focusing on comparisons among the four countries and another concentrating on Poland, which he sees as the forerunner in the process of reform.

"Ten years ago I would never have predicted that Poland would emerge as a success story. This is the country I'm from, so naturally I'm delighted. And I hope the reforms will stay on track."