Poland’s turn toward
authoritarian rule has set off alarm bells across the European Union and
within NATO.
Since coming to power in October, Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law
and Justice party (PiS) has attacked the country’s Constitutional
Court, politicized the judiciary and the civil service, and launched an
assault on media pluralism.
Critics of the PiS
government, which is led by Prime Minister Beata Szydło (with Kaczyński,
ruling from behind the scenes as he holds no official post), have
described its actions as a blitz to install “illiberal democracy,” similar
to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has done in his country
over the past six years.
But to call what is being constructed in Poland
illiberal democracy is deeply misleading – and in a way that undermines
efforts to rein in would-be autocrats like Kaczyński and Orbán. After
all, it is not just liberalism that is under attack, but democracy
itself.
The concept of “illiberal democracy,” attributable to a 1997 essay by
the American foreign-policy thinker Fareed Zakaria, was an effort to
describe regimes that held elections, but did not observe the rule of
law and regularly overrode their political systems’ constitutional
checks and balances.
It was an idea born of disillusion. In the heady
days after the fall of communism, a kind of democratic ecstasy prevailed
(at least in the West). The “end of history” had been achieved, and
elections, representative institutions, and the rule of law would, it
seemed, always go neatly together.
Read more: The Problem With 'Illiberal Democracy' - by Jan-Werner Müller
No comments:
Post a Comment