Poland’s Democratic Restoration Dilemma: Tusk Faces Post-Illiberal “Trilemma”

Poland’s attempt to restore democ­ra­cy after illib­er­al rule has revealed a fun­da­men­tal “post-illib­er­al trilem­ma” con­fronting Don­ald Tusk’s gov­ern­ment, which must choose between reforms that are effec­tive, legal, or swift—but can­not achieve all three simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. On July 2025, the Jour­nal of Democ­ra­cy pub­lished an analy­sis by Stan­ley Bill and Ben Stan­ley show­ing how gov­ern­ments seek­ing to reverse eight years of Law and Jus­tice (PiS) par­ty rule encounter struc­tur­al con­straints that force them to resort to the same deci­sion­ist meth­ods they aim to coun­ter­act, cre­at­ing insti­tu­tion­al traps dif­fi­cult to escape. that force them to choose only two of three desired out­comes, often resort­ing to the same deci­sion­ist meth­ods they aim to coun­ter­act. The arti­cle begins:

This arti­cle exam­ines the chal­lenges fac­ing gov­ern­ments aim­ing to restore lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions after illib­er­al rule. It uses the case study of Poland under Don­ald Tusk’s cur­rent government—which defeat­ed pop­ulist Law and Jus­tice (PiS) in 2023—to con­struct a wider con­cep­tu­al frame­work for under­stand­ing dilem­mas of post-illib­er­al reform that may also con­front oth­er democ­ra­cies. A key lega­cy of demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing is a series of insti­tu­tion­al traps that are dif­fi­cult to coun­ter­act with­out resort­ing to the same deci­sion­ist meth­ods that made them. Pro­ce­du­ral­ist approach­es risk leav­ing the dam­age unre­paired and demo­bi­liz­ing sup­port­ers, while more deci­sive action may require capit­u­la­tion to the illib­er­al playbook.

          Read more: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/964585

Key Points

• Tusk’s gov­ern­ment has deliv­ered on only twelve of its one-hun­dred cam­paign promis­es, with neg­a­tive approval rat­ings out­weigh­ing pos­i­tive ones since July 2024
• The gov­ern­ment faced imme­di­ate pres­sure to purge PiS loy­al­ists from pub­lic media and judi­cial insti­tu­tions, often using legal­ly dubi­ous meth­ods sim­i­lar to those employed by the pre­vi­ous administration
• Poland now expe­ri­ences “legal dual­ism” where com­pet­ing insti­tu­tions issue con­tra­dic­to­ry rul­ings, with PiS-con­trolled bod­ies con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate par­al­lel to gov­ern­ment-rec­og­nized authorities
• The May-June 2025 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion saw PiS can­di­date Karol Nawroc­ki defeat Tusk’s can­di­date Rafał Trza­skows­ki 50.9% to 49.1%, despite ear­ly polling advan­tages for the gov­ern­ment coalition.

Poland and the Global National Conservative Alliance

Poland’s Law and Jus­tice (PiS) par­ty is a cen­tral actor in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) seek­ing to reshape the inter­na­tion­al order. This ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion, which includes Hungary’s Fidesz, is uni­fied by a skep­ti­cism of glob­al insti­tu­tions but frac­tured by diver­gent poli­cies on Rus­sia, with Poland main­tain­ing a hard­line stance against Krem­lin aggression.

The alliance’s domes­tic pow­er was recent­ly rein­forced by the 2025 elec­tion of Karol Nawroc­ki, a PiS-backed pres­i­dent, a result that chal­lenges the coun­try’s pro-EU gov­ern­ment and was cel­e­brat­ed by sov­er­eign­tist move­ments world­wide. These inter­nal polit­i­cal con­tests are often tar­get­ed by Krem­lin-backed elec­tion inter­fer­ence cam­paigns, while the broad­er nation­al-con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da is ampli­fied by auto­crat­ic states manip­u­lat­ing West­ern polit­i­cal dis­course, illus­trat­ing how domes­tic ide­o­log­i­cal goals can align with for­eign strate­gic interests.

Exter­nal References:

1. The game is not over: Fidesz, Law and Jus­tice, and far-right coop­er­a­tion in the EU

2. Poland’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion – the end of re-democratisation?

3. Experts react: Con­ser­v­a­tive Karol Nawroc­ki is Poland’s next president

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.