Last month, after eight years in power, the Polish government party ‘Law and Justice’ (PiS) lost the election, promising the end of one of the world’s most prominent populist democracies. “Promising?” You may wonder: why would the author wish anything bad to a democracy. Isn’t it good if the rulers do what the people want? Isn’t that what democracy is all about?
The adjective ‘populist’ requires our attention.
The issue lies in its assumption of a singular legitimate expression of the people’s will. This has two important consequences. First, it questions the need for checks and balances, especially when the party claiming to represent the “will of the people” is in power. Equally, the press and opposition are seen merely diverging from the ‘real’ popular will. Second, it questions the legitimacy of minority interests of equity-seeking groups, such as the queer community.
After its election in 2015, the Law and Justice party swiftly set about reshaping Poland in its populist mold. While the country did not transform into a textbook dictatorship akin to Putin’s Russia, certain freedoms were curtailed for minorities, and the lines between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches became increasingly blurred. The Polish government undertook 13 modifications to the judicial system over two years. These changes targeted the composition of the Supreme Court, primarily through mandatory retirement ages that could only be circumvented with government consent. The party also assumed direct control over public media, resulting in a conspicuous convergence between the ruling party’s messages and government information campaigns during the 2023 national parliamentary election campaign. Like in Hungary earlier, referenda were used to target the opposition through leading questions. In the land governed by Law and Justice, the concepts of ‘law’ and ‘justice’ appeared to lose their significance.
From a liberal democratic perspective, a glaring issue arises when the democratic opposition finds itself at a disadvantage. It becomes nearly impossible to vote PiS out of power when the government party enjoys, for instance, significantly more airtime than the opposition and the judiciary lacks the independence to oversee the electoral process. However, the outcome of last Sunday’s election in Poland provides a glimmer of hope, demonstrating that it is possible to reverse trends toward authoritarianism, potentially even in other populist democracies, such as Hungary, Serbia and Türkiye, to name only a few.
On October 15, the democratic opposition in Poland, consisting of a broad alliance of three lists—left, center, and center-right—secured a majority in both houses of parliament. While this is just one instance, and countries like Hungary have delved deeper into authoritarianism than Poland had at the time of PiS’s defeat, it instills hope that other nations can halt their democratic decline through the electoral process. Future research should look into the dynamics that allowed for winning over the governing party in a populist context.
Simultaneously, it must be acknowledged that the systematic damage has been done. The centrist opposition has yet to prove that law and justice can return to Poland.
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
