It Turns Out That Uprooting Populists is Hard
A right-wing candidate winning in Poland shows that it takes a lot to reverse illiberalism
Since a centrist coalition in Poland won parliamentary elections in October 2023 against the incumbent right-wing populist government, many international commentators had looked to the country as an example of how to democratically defeat an authoritarian-leaning ruling party. While the centrist coalition selected Donald Tusk as Poland's prime minister, this turnabout was incomplete as the presidency remained in the hands of Andrzej Duda, a member of the right-wing Law and Justice Party. While Tusk enjoyed a parliamentary majority as prime minister, as president, Duda wielded a veto which Tusk did not have the votes to override. As such, Tusk's attempts to undo the previous government's judicial manipulation were blocked by Duda.
That is why Tusk had been looking so keenly to this year's presidential elections to undo the most powerful vestige of the previous government; Tusk wanted to make good on his promise to sweep out populists with an "iron broom." However, in presidential elections on June 1 to replace the term-limited Duda, PiS narrowly held on to the presidency. Its candidate, the right-wing historian Karol Nawrocki, defeated liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski by a margin of 50.89 percent to 49.11 percent.
The election result illustrated how difficult it is to undo illiberal populism after it has taken hold: the unwinding is often incomplete and messy. I have been interested in the question of how possible it is to reverse illiberalism; I traveled to Warsaw for Columbia Journalism Review last year to report on controversial media reforms made by Tusk at the country's state broadcaster, TVP. TVP had turned into a Fox News-style propaganda mouthpiece under the previous government. Tusk had wrested control of the state-owned media outlets and put them into liquidation; right-wing politicians subsequently staged a sit-in at the station. TVP's newly-hired journalists were simultaneously excited by the opportunity to produce objective news, but also worried about the heavy-handed process in which new management took power. As I wrote, "Poland’s fight over public broadcasting offers a window into the question of whether institutions commandeered by populists can ever go back to normal," adding that the country "offers a lesson in how tall the task of deprogramming from populism is."
With Nawrocki's election, Poland showed that it has not deprogrammed from populism. Any judicial reforms will continue to be vetoed. Social initiatives from Tusk like legalizing abortion in the first trimester and enacting same-sex civil partnerships were controversial within his coalition and are now off the table. Trzaskowski tacked right on social issues anyway: the Polish sociologist Karolina Wigura wrote that Trzaskowski’s hiding a rainbow flag given to him at a debate and endorsement abolishing child benefits for Ukrainian refugees probably cost him votes. At the same time, while Nawrocki is an ally of European populists like Hungary's Viktor Orban, unlike Orban, he doesn't have any power to enact a domestic agenda of his own.
Still, Nawrocki's win is a boon to European populists who had looked on the ropes with Orban's fading polling numbers and the recent election of Nicușor Dan in Romania. The Trump Administration had endorsed Nawrocki, which was a break from previous U.S. policy not to interfere in the democratic elections of allies. Tusk now looks like a lame duck with his candidate losing the presidential election and facing no election until 2027. As Poland has learned, pulling the roots out of populist governments is exceedingly tricky; it's much easier to preserve democratic institutions if they don't win in the first place.
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