Poland after 2023: The Limits of Democratic Restoration
Iga Maria Sliwska
July 6, 2026

In Poland, October 2023 was widely read as a democratic vindication. Turnout reached 74.38 percent, a record for a parliamentary election in post-1989 Poland, according to the State Electoral Commission (PKW). The Law and Justice party (PiS), after eight years in power, emerged as the largest single party but lost its governing majority. A broad opposition coalition assembled around Donald Tusk secured the parliamentary majority needed to form a government. Images of crowded polling stations became symbols of democratic resilience. Across Europe commentators pointed to Poland as evidence that democratic backsliding could be reversed through democratic means. During its years in office, PiS transformed key state institutions, brought public media under partisan control and clashed repeatedly with the European Union over judicial independence. The election appeared to offer a rare counterexample to a broader European pattern of democratic backsliding. A government accused of eroding liberal democratic norms had lost power through elections rather than through crisis or external pressure. Tusk's return as prime minister in December 2023 seemed to close a political circle stretching back to Poland's earlier period of European integration and institutional consolidation.

Yet the question raised by the election was always larger than the election itself. A change of government is one thing. Reversing the institutional consequences of its rule is another. Now, two and a half years later, the answer looks considerably more complicated than the initial celebration suggested. Poland has demonstrated that democratic restoration is possible. It has also demonstrated how difficult restoration becomes once democratic backsliding has been embedded within institutions. Electoral change and international rehabilitation happened relatively quickly. Institutional restoration has proven slower, more contested and more politically costly. The Polish case cannot be categorized as a simple success story nor a cautionary tale of democratic reversal. It is an illustration of the achievements and constraints of democratic restoration under conditions of deep political polarization and geopolitical pressure from the war in Ukraine.

The most obvious success was the peaceful transfer of power itself. For all the concerns surrounding Polish democracy during the PiS years, the government ultimately lost an election and left office. Democratic systems under strain often survive or fail on precisely this point. The 2023 election reaffirmed both the vitality of electoral competition and, more broadly, the civic health of Polish democracy, something many observers had begun to doubt. The new government's relations with Brussels improved dramatically after years of confrontation. Previously disputes with EU institutions had frozen access to substantial European funds through mechanisms linking payments to rule-of-law requirements. Although many legal disputes remained unresolved, the relationship changed. Funds that had been blocked began to flow and Poland returned to the center rather than the margins of European policymaking and diplomacy. Under PiS, the country often appeared isolated from key European discussions despite its growing economic and strategic importance. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Poland's geopolitical weight increased substantially, but relations with major European partners remained strained. The return of Tusk made Warsaw once again a predictable participant in European negotiations and coalition-building.

The restoration effort also produced meaningful changes within parts of the state apparatus that fell under the government's more immediate control. Within public media new management was installed, editorial practices changed substantially and state television ceased functioning as a straightforward instrument of government propaganda. Similar changes occurred across state-owned companies, where leadership positions associated with the previous administration were replaced. These moves were some of the clearest successes of the restoration project and demonstrated that electoral change could still alter important centres of state power. At the same time, they revealed an important asymmetry. Reform proved relatively straightforward in institutions dependent on executive authority, but far more difficult in bodies protected by constitutional guarantees or staffed by officials whose mandates extended beyond the electoral cycle. The contrast between these early successes and the resistance encountered elsewhere would become one of the defining features of Poland's post-2023 experience.

The Constitutional Tribunal became the clearest example. Long before 2023, the Tribunal had ceased to function as an independent body capable of impartial constitutional review. The legitimacy crisis had roots in 2015, when both the outgoing PO-controlled Sejm and the incoming PiS majority manipulated the judicial appointments process. Over the following years, PiS reshaped the Tribunal's composition and procedures through successive legislative interventions, until its bench consisted entirely of PiS-era appointees. When Tusk's government entered office, it therefore faced an institution whose authority it regarded as compromised, but whose formal constitutional position remained intact. The Tribunal continued issuing decisions, while the government increasingly refused to recognize some of them. One example came in November 2025, when the Tribunal struck down a government bill reforming the National Council of the Judiciary, a measure proposed in response to EU rule-of-law requirements. This exposed a central dilemma of democratic restoration. If an institution has been captured, reformers cannot easily treat it as an independent constitutional adjudicator. Yet disregarding judicial decisions, even those issued by a compromised body, risks normalizing selective obedience to the law. The paradox was especially stark because the Tribunal whose legitimacy was under challenge remained constitutionally responsible for adjudicating attempts to reform it. In effect, the captured institution had become the judge of attempts to undo its own capture.

The constitutional structure of the Polish state created an additional obstacle. Poland has a semi-presidential system. The president possesses meaningful powers, including the ability to veto legislation. Throughout Tusk's second premiership, President Andrzej Duda used those powers to constrain reform efforts. Legislative initiatives aimed at reforming the judiciary or reversing earlier changes repeatedly encountered presidential resistance. Electoral victory therefore did not automatically translate into governing capacity. Although the government possessed a parliamentary majority, it lacked the supermajorities necessary to override presidential vetoes. Everything was supposed to change in 2025 with the presidential election. Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw and the government's preferred candidate, was seen as the figure who could align the presidency with the parliamentary majority. Instead, he lost to Karol Nawrocki, the PiS-backed candidate, after a bitter campaign. Nawrocki won with 50.89% of all the votes. He openly campaigned against Tusk's government, framing the election as a chance to stop its agenda. Since taking office, he has used the veto aggressively at unprecedented pace and signaled no interest in cooperating with the government's legislative program. By mid-December 2025 Nawrocki had vetoed 20 bills. Within four and a half months he surpassed the 19 vetoes issued by Andrzej Duda across his entire ten-year presidency. While doing so he openly presented himself as a political counterweight to Tusk's government rather than a neutral head of state.

Time, meanwhile, has its own political effects. Governments attempting democratic restoration must compete within an evolving political environment. By 2025 and 2026, the political conversation in Poland had already begun to shift. Problems such as migration, economic pressures and security concerns related to the war in Ukraine returned to the center of political debate. The rule of law remained important, but it no longer possessed the same mobilizing force that it had during the campaign that brought Tusk back to power. Restoration requires sustained political attention, something the Polish government has struggled to maintain. Institutions are rebuilt slowly, because legal reforms often produce benefits that take time and are difficult to communicate to voters. The political rewards are uncertain and long-term while the political costs are immediate. Opponents can frame restoration efforts as elite preoccupations disconnected from everyday concerns. Over time, even citizens who strongly supported democratic repair may become less invested in the technical details of judicial appointments, constitutional rulings or media governance. The coalition that won in 2023 drew support from voters united by opposition to continued PiS rule. Maintaining that coalition around the slower work of institutional reconstruction has proven harder. Expectations were extraordinarily high. Many supporters anticipated rapid change, which was unachievable. Restoration instead became entangled in reality.

Poland has neither demonstrated the triumphant reversal of democratic backsliding nor confirmed its irreversibility. What it has demonstrated is something more uncomfortable: once backsliding has been embedded in institutions, democratic restoration may require actions that sit uneasily with conventional rule-of-law expectations. The deeper problem is that governments committed to democratic restoration may have to choose between respecting inherited institutional procedures and repairing institutions that those same procedures now protect. The constitutional order Tusk's government inherited had been reshaped over eight years in ways that made its reform agenda difficult to pursue through normal legislative means. Poland remains unfinished. The question it poses has no clean answer yet. What it has already shown is that the answer will be messier than anyone who celebrated October 2023 expected.