From polarizing strategy to “polarized democracy” – explaining the enduring democracy crisis in Poland since 2023

Magdalena Solska

Paper abstract:
Why have Poland’s democratic standards not improved despite the opposition’s ascent to power in December 2023? This article argues that the continual use of polarizing strategy by new incumbents has become a primary obstacle to the highly expected “re-democratization process” after populist rule. While existing accounts emphasize structural constraints (e.g., institutional packing), I show that continued polarization by the current governing coalition (especially the main ruling party Civic Coalition, KO), mobilizes its core voters but undermines the elite consensus and cross‑camp informal bargaining that the rule of law (and broader – democracy) requires in constitutional practice. The result is a cycle in which rhetorical delegitimization of rivals and confrontational institutional tactics sustain political and affective polarization and yield legally questionable measures, even after alternation in power.

Empirically, the study examines discourse and initiatives of the main ruling party KO since December 2023 and explains why they have not yet advanced any substantial democratic reforms. Methodologically, it employs a qualitative single‑case design that combines (1) thematic discourse analysis to identify how judicial reform and related initiatives are framed in political discourse, and (2) process tracing (in the sense of George & Bennett 2005) to reconstruct the causal sequences linking rhetorical choices of incumbents, their institutional tactics to their political consequences. The article integrates insights from research on pernicious polarization to theorize polarizing strategy as an explanatory factor in Poland’s ongoing democracy crisis. The findings highlight a core dilemma: strategies that may be electorally effective, turn out to be counterproductive for rebuilding the rule of law and democracy, whose restoration inevitably rests on compromise between legal and political elites on the one hand, as well as opposition and ruling elites, on the other.