Political Use of the Term Solidarity Across Time

The chapter focuses on the longitudinal analysis and presents the development of the concept of solidarity over time. It identifies the main events and phenomena influencing the changes and expansion of the political ideas of solidarity. Results of both quantitative and qualitative assessments are presented—the popularity of the concept over time is assessed and presented in absolute terms, in relation to the documents’ length, and in comparison to the frequencies of two other popular concepts, i.e. freedom and justice. Furthermore, six main time periods with distinctive meanings and applications of solidarity are identified, and a periodization of solidarity meanings is proposed.