The End of Law & Justice

How did Poland’s liberal-democratic opposition beat the country’s authoritarian-populist ruling party? Ivan Krastev on polarization, liberalization, and a new political mood in Europe. Morning in the Old Bloc How did Poland’s liberal-democratic opposition beat the country’s authoritarian-populist ruling party? Ivan Krastev on polarization, liberalization, and a new political mood in Europe. Jacek Dylag After eight years of authoritarian-populist rule in Poland—the biggest country by population and biggest economy in Eastern Europe—the political opposition defeated the governing Law and Justice party in general elections on October 15. A coalition of three liberal parties, led by the former prime minister and European Council president Donald Tusk, won almost 54 percent of the vote—with a record 74 percent of the Polish electorate turning out. Led by the outgoing prime minister, Jarosław Kaczyński, Law and Justice has been subverting the rule of law in Poland for years—violating constitutional and parliamentary rules to pack the courts with party loyalists, seizing control of public media, and restricting freedom of speech and assembly. The European Court of Justice even ruled that certain anti-democratic laws from Kaczyński’s government should be suspended—but Warsaw ignored that, leading the EU to freeze billions of euros in funding for the country. The reign of Law and Justice belongs to a wave of authoritarian-populist governments that came to power this century in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world. And Kaczyński said he wanted to emulate Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orbán, declaring that “a day will come when we will have a Budapest in Warsaw.” So what will the defeat of Law and Justice mean for democracy in Poland and globally? Ivan Krastev is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, and a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. As Krastev sees it, the victory of Poland’s opposition has already changed the political mood in Europe. Across the continent, illiberal, anti-democratic parties have been gaining ground for decades, but Tusk’s resounding win has shown how an engaged public can win ground back for liberal democracy—or even overthrow an established authoritarian government. Krastev thinks the ouster of Law and Justice will also help push back authoritarian Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine, with the new Polish cabinet likely to work much harder for Ukraine’s success in the conflict—and to keep Europe’s attention focused on the needs of the war. Meanwhile, the renewal of democracy in Poland is a threat to Orbán’s authoritarian regime in Hungary, as Orbán can no longer count on Warsaw to stop the EU from cracking down on Budapest. Still, Krastev says, the dynamics in Poland are highly distinctive to Poland, so the fate of authoritarian populism in Europe and beyond remains highly uncertain. Michael Bluhm : Why did such a clear majority of Polish voters back the opposition here? Advertisement Ivan Krastev : It was quite an unexpected result. Opinion polls had forecast a hung Parliament—the Law and Justice Party would get the most votes, but polling indicated that neither they nor the opposition would have a majority or be able to form a government. The main explanation for the surprising outcome is a record-high voter turnout—about 74 percent of the electorate. Which was unexpected too. In 1989, when Poles had their first real chance to kick out the communists, only 62 percent showed up. In a way, Law and Justice became a victim of its own approach to politics. Polarizing voters had been the party’s central strategy for the last eight years. They did it as much as possible—and then finally, it cost them their majority. Bluhm : Poland’s opposition succeeded, but the opposition in Hungary, for example, failed to oust Viktor Orbán in elections last year. And in Slovakia, a liberal governing coalition just lost elections to the populist Robert Fico’s party in September. What did the Polish opposition do this time that was more successful than in previous elections—and more successful than other groups in the region opposing authoritarian populists? Krastev : It’s a good question. What’s happening refutes the idea that all of Europe or even just Eastern Europe is always moving in the same direction. In Slovakia’s recent elections, the trend among voters was very different. There, a euro-skeptical, nationalist party won, and liberals were defeated. Most electoral trends are national. I see three reasons why the opposition won in Poland and lost elsewhere. First, unlike Hungary or Slovakia, Poland has a competitive media environment. The state-run television network there was awful—a mouthpiece for the government, attacking Donald Tusk, the opposition leader, as an agent of Germany and Russia. But the American-owned Discovery Channel, for example, presented a different view. The second reason was very important, but very few people noticed it: Law and Justice pushed illiberal, populist policies for eight years, a time of major liberalization in Polish society. Traditionally, Poland has been quite conservative. After the fall of communism, there was a soft-conservative consensus endorsed by nationalists and most liberals. In 1993, for instance, Poland enacted one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in Europe. Law and Justice decided to weaponize this soft-conservative consensus into a hard electoral majority. They won two elections, but during their eight years in power, Poland saw a dramatic decline in church attendance—and a rise in anti-Catholic and anti-church sentiment to previously unknown in levels. Similarly to how Putin’s war in Ukraine created the anti-Russia Poland of today, the invasiveness of Law and Justice policies, telling Poles how to live and what to believe, has created an increasingly anti-conservative Poland. Unwittingly, Kaczyński created a liberal Poland that had never existed before. This liberal Poland was the core of the opposition—about half a million people attended the last opposition rally before the election. The third reason why Poland is so different from Slovakia and Hungary is that Poland had a strong opposition leader in play. Political analysts can be fascinated with structural trends or cultural differences, but sometimes it just comes down to an individual leader. And in Poland, Tusk played a remarkable role. He’s a very divisive figure—like Kaczyński himself—but he managed to mobilize the opposition, convince them they were going to win, and negotiate a coalition with the two other major opposition parties. And now they’re the new majority. This was a historic election for Poland in more than one way. It was probably the last in which the two major blocs—nationalist and liberal—were led by people who came from the Solidarity movement that toppled communism. Kaczyński is 74, and Tusk is 66; both were in the anti-communist Solidarity movement before 1989. So the election wasn’t only about the future, into the next four years; it was about who owns the legacy of Solidarity. The movement’s nationalist and liberal wings are both integral to that legacy, and Tusk’s victory allows him to claim that the liberal wing has prevailed. Victor Malyushev More from Ivan Krastev at The Signal: “In some ways, this election was won by a protest vote. The message was that the country needed a change—a dynamic representing a major weakness of authoritarian governments operating in a competitive, democratic context. People want to have a choice. And four more years of Law and Justice would have meant a consolidation of power that would be very difficult to undo. If Law and Justice had won, they’d have placed their partisans in every public institution in Poland. Of course, that consolidation process was already underway—and even now, the new majority is going to face a huge challenge in governing, because all these critical institutions in Poland—the regulators, the Constitutional Court, the Central Bank—are staffed by Law and Justice loyalists. The protest vote was also one against polarization. It was about changing not just policies but the style of politics. Every elected authoritarian leader who stays in power for long faces this problem.” “The election significantly alters the dynamics of European politics. At a moment when Europe on the whole has been moving to the right, the success of liberal forces in Poland has changed the political mood of the continent. There’d been a certain sense of irreversibility in this rightward shift, especially with the strength of the far right in places like Germany. And a lot of European politicians and people generally expected this election to be Poland’s Orbán moment—but it wasn’t; it was Poland’s Donald Tusk moment.” “With the new government coming in Poland, Orbán is more vulnerable than ever within the European Union. Previously, Poland and Hungary could vote to protect each other from the most drastic EU reprisals for their behavior, whether freezing their memberships or expelling them from the union. Now, Orbán is in a very different position. Even if Robert Fico, Slovakia’s newly elected populist prime minister, decides to stand with Orbán, Slovakia can’t play the role that Poland played. I expect Hungary will become even more radical in its anti-EU rhetoric. Ultimately, Orbán is betting on one thing: Donald Trump’s victory in next year’s U.S. presidential election. And if Trump doesn’t win, Orbán’s position is going to be even more vulnerable than it is now.” [Continue reading]( … and become a member—for access to full articles, our full archive, and to support The Signal as we build a new approach to current affairs. [Join here]( The Signal | 1717 N St. NW, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by newsletters@thesgnl.email