Poland’s Abnormal Elections, and Ours

P oland held its national elections this weekend. Although it won the plurality of votes, the ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), has certainly lost its ability to command a parliamentary majority, which it had achieved in the last two elections.

Polls predicted a result like this. Electoral turnout was high, and voting patterns reflected deep historic, geographic, and generational divisions in the country.

What’s striking about the election, other than the high turnout, is that it looks on the surface like such a normal and explicable result. PiS has been in power eight years. Like the trajectories of many elected governments, it has slowly disappointed some of its coalition of voters, outlasted its welcome, and collected a few political scandals along the way.

For example, PiS rode to power by promising to defy Brussels on questions of mass migration, which began roiling European politics in 2015 and which benefited both the right-populists in Poland and Fidesz under Viktor Orbán in Hungary. But, under PiS, Poland shifted from a country that suffered from outmigration into one that was taking in millions of Ukrainians as temporary workers, or refugees, and even accepting immigration from the Pacific and Middle East. Young voters on the political right increasingly opted for the further-right party Konfederacja, which is arguably more socially conservative than PiS but economically more oriented to free-market ideas. PiS officials were recently caught in a pay-for-visas scandal that further undermined them on issues of immigration. The party also, as a matter of electoral spoils, took over and reshaped Poland’s massive public-broadcasting units. The slavishly pro-PiS tilt of TVP (imagine Fox, but funded by House Republicans) probably alienated more voters than it could possibly attract.

That is the story of normal politics in the West. And it was the story of the previous ruling coalition in Poland, too, which alienated some of its supporters over time and was caught in the infamous secret-tapes scandal, in which recordings of Civic Platform party officials revealed that they tried to suborn the politically independent central bank for electoral purposes. The government even raided the offices of the national magazine that led the reporting on the scandal. Again, that sounds like the downfall of a party in a high-functioning democracy.

But none of the rhetoric about Poland’s elections is normal anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while. When his party was careening from scandal in 2015, then–prime minister Donald Tusk would call the tapes affair “an attempt at a coup d’état.” He has hinted darkly that if the current election returns him to power, he will begin prosecuting PiS.

The international press has greeted Tusk’s potential return to power as the “return of democracy” to Poland. Like many supporters of Donald Trump in the United States, opponents of PiS charged that elections might be free but they were still unfair. The elections were biased by the PiS capture of the media and other institutions and the chicanery of state offices that worked with the media to effectively promote the incumbent party at the expense of its challengers. PiS has been portrayed as an anti-democratic, authoritarian populist government that would do anything to stay in power.

While it’s true that PiS plays a form of political hardball, the rhetoric is completely mismatched to the reality. Are we really to believe that such an anti-democratic authoritarian regime held a regular, free election in which it lost by just a handful of points? The idea is ridiculous on its face.

But maybe that’s the point. The opposition is not opposed to taking advantage of extra-democratic means to power. This year, the EU withheld from Poland the transfer funds that come as a matter of course to Europe’s poorer countries, saying that Poland was in violation of the “rule of law.” The amount was equivalent to 15 percent of Poland’s GDP. What prompted the EU’s move was a reform instituted by PiS five years ago in fulfillment of a campaign promise. The reform would allow elected politicians to select judges rather than having a judiciary select its own members. In other words, the judiciary would no longer be the preserve of a self-perpetuating professional class but indirectly subject to democratic rule, as is the case in the United States and many other free countries. There is nothing in the treaties governing the European Union that defines what having “the rule of law” means. In fact, the “rule of law” is just listed in the 2007 Lisbon Treaty article 1 as one of Europe’s “values” like “human dignity” and “equality.” These same treaties that govern the European Union are quite explicit that composition and powers of a judicial system belong to those of member states.

Well, they did, until they didn’t. Now that Tusk’s side has won, expect those billions to shake loose from Brussels.

As the opposition now comes into power, members’ rhetoric and tactics strongly suggest they are obliging themselves to do what they accused PiS of doing: treating opposition as criminal or treasonous, and using whatever means necessary to prevent their opposition from ever taking power again. After all, democracy is at stake. Once the rhetoric gets to this level, it’s hard to come back.

As in Hungary, and in Israel recently, the people who claim they are defending democracy are really trying to defend liberal hegemony over the sense-making and power-holding institutions in national life that act as a powerful check on normal conservative governance in a democracy.

Rebuilding this monopoly has been a major political motivator in America, too. It informs the extraordinary legal theories being used to try Donald Trump. It explains the coordination of the intelligence agencies with social media to suppress “misinformation” — which just so happens to be anything that would be embarrassing to progressive technocrats.

From one perspective, Joe Biden should just be a normal failing president. The timing of inflation and the international breakdowns that give voters anxiety would normally take out the incumbent holding the White House. But here, as in Poland, the well is already poisoned.