The institutional changes, social capital and old expropriation consequences in Poland

The institutional environment of the Polish real property market is certainly developing. There have been changes in the legal system, economic environment and the social attitude. However, one important problem still remains: a lack of the general restitution law. In this paper, the term "Restitution" is used to describe the situation when property owners were deprived of their property rights by virtue of the socialist state power, and now they or their heirs want to either regain the property or receive some compensation. The property rights were broken during the socialist time because very often property owners did not receive any kind of compensation in the expropriation or nationalization processes. Now there are problems with defining the form of restitution and the potential limits of the claims. This produces the questions about justice, state continuity and social capital. The aim of this paper is to look at the possible restitution solutions with regard to institutional changes of the Polish real estate market and the building of social capital. There are questions about looking for the balance - should the state compensate? How high the compensation should be? How does society react and evaluate when a group of former owners or their heirs is going to derive some benefits? And finally, are these really benefits or is it just compensation