On October 21, Poland will hold local elections, which will be followed by the European Parliament elections in May 2019, national parliamentary elections next fall, and a presidential election in May 2020. Taken together, these four elections may be the country’s most important votes since 1989. As the European Union’s largest former communist state, Poland […]
Will Defunding Hungary And Poland Backfire?
Discussions surrounding the European Union’s 2021-2027 budget are intensifying, owing to many European policymakers’ insistence that regional development funds be disbursed only to member states that are in compliance with EU rules. Under the Copenhagen Criteria, all member states are required to uphold the institutions of liberal democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights, […]
Germany’s Populist Temptation
Because populism is not an ideology in itself, it can easily appeal to mainstream political parties seeking to shore up flagging electoral support. There are always politicians willing to mimic populist slogans and methods to win over voters, even if doing so divides their own party. This has been proven by Republicans in the United […]
Understanding Populism In Eastern Europe
Eastern European populism differs from that in the West in important ways, owing to the region’s weak liberal tradition, which translates into ineffective checks and balances on government and shallow support for institutions such as freedom of expression and independent courts. Sławomir Sierakowski, the founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, explains. Republication forbidden. Copyright: Project […]
Jarosław Kaczyński’s Jewish Question
The Polish government has provoked yet another international crisis, this time by adopting a law that is ostensibly meant to combat the phrase “Polish death camps.” The law targets a geographical shorthand, sometimes used abroad, for the extermination camps that the Nazis established on Polish territory during World War II. But there is more to […]
How Eastern European Populism Is Different
In 2016, the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency created an impression that Eastern European-style populism was engulfing the West. In reality, the situation in Western Europe and the United States is starkly different. As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Goultchin of the Tony Blair Institute […]
Mourning Poland’s Burning Man
Late in the afternoon on October 19, a 54-year-old man outside the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw distributed several dozen copies of a letter addressed to the Polish people. Then he set himself on fire – a protest and sacrifice that called to mind the protests of Buddhist monks against the Vietnam War […]
Poland After Trump
Donald Trump came, he saw, he conned. The US president’s trip to Poland, a stop on his way to the G20 summit in Hamburg, was arranged at the last minute: Trump’s administration, fearing the reception he would receive in the United Kingdom, decided that Europe’s most pro-American country was a much safer destination. And, indeed, […]
The Female Resistance
Antagonism is mounting between today’s right-wing populists and a somewhat unexpected but formidable opponent: women. In the United States, much like in Poland, women’s rights have been among the first targets of attack by populist leaders. Women are not taking it lying down. Traditional conservatism in the West has largely come to terms with the […]
What Trump’s Win Means For Eastern Europe
The rule of economic liberalism in the West is leading to the demise of political liberalism. A growing number of key countries are experiencing not elections, but plebiscites on liberal democracy – plebiscites decided by the votes of those who have lost out from liberal democracy. In the United States, Donald Trump’s election as president […]
The Populist War on Women
Jarosław Kaczyński and Donald Trump, two politicians who have shocked the world this past year, have mostly gotten away with their outrages. But not anymore. When Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power last year, it immediately seized control over key Polish institutions, including the Constitutional Tribunal, the state prosecutor’s office, public media […]
The Illiberal International
Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he was creating “illiberalism in one […]
