In 2023, Polish voters did something that many political scientists thought was almost impossible. They defeated a strong populist government that had been changing the rules in its own favor. For eight years, the ruling party slowly weakened democratic institutions. Many experts thought the system was too damaged to be fixed through a normal election. However, in October 2023, Polish voters strongly rejected the government. A record number of people voted, and democratic groups worked together to remove the government from power. This election gives us an important example of how a democracy can recover. In this post, I will explain how Poland’s democracy rose, fell, and came back, and why this is important for other countries.

The Rise: Breaking Free from Communism in 1989

To understand Poland’s political history, we first need to look at the data. According to the V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index, Poland had a high democracy score of more than 0.8 after its democratic change in 1989. This was the year Poland ended communist rule and held its first free elections. During this period of growth, Poland built new democratic institutions. Its leaders created an independent court system and strongly protected people’s basic freedoms. In 2004, Poland also joined the European Union. For more than twenty years, political scientists saw Poland as a good example of a stable democracy. The political system was stable, people had political rights, and the election rules were fair to everyone.

The Fall: Changing the Rules (2015–2023)

However, democracy is not always safe. The V-Dem graph shows a large and sudden drop starting in 2015. The score fell below 0.5. This decline started when the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party won the national election. How did this happen? Professor Michael Bernhard explains that we have entered an “age of democratic backsliding.” Populist parties like PiS won by acting as memory warriors. They told voters that the 1989 democratic change was a bad deal made by corrupt elites. Also, rapid social changes and the 2015 refugee crisis made people very anxious. PiS used this fear to win.

After coming to power, PiS slowly weakened the democratic system from inside the government. As researcher Shinkyu Kim notes, they destroyed democratic rules “through legal means.” This fits what law professor Ozan Varol calls stealth authoritarianism. In the past, dictators openly jailed critics and rigged votes. Today, open repression costs too much, because it makes people angry at home and abroad. So modern leaders use the legal tools that every democracy already has, and bend them to their own goals. The law becomes a mask, and it becomes hard to tell normal government from abuse. Varol says the main goal is to stop what he calls partisan alternation — the cycling of power among more than one party. Leaders do not need to cancel elections. They only need to make it more expensive to vote them out.

According to Freedom House reports, the new government quickly weakened the constitutional courts. They made older judges retire early and put government-friendly judges in their places. Varol warns that when a government controls who sits on the bench, judicial review can become a tool for keeping power instead of a check on it. The government also took control of the state media, TVP. Instead of giving people neutral news, the public broadcasting stations became a 24-hour government propaganda machine that constantly attacked opposition parties. When citizens cannot get honest information about their leaders, it becomes much harder for them to hold leaders accountable. Scholars call this the principal-agent problem: citizens are the principals, and politicians are the agents. But when the agent controls the information flow, the principal loses the ability to reward or punish effectively.

In comparative politics, scholars such as Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way use the term “uneven playing field” to describe this kind of situation. The PiS government did not cancel elections or use the military. Instead, it used state money, state media, and friendly judges to make it harder for the opposition to win. When a government controls the referees (the courts) and the commentators (the media), democracy can quickly become weaker. Still, Poland shows the limits of stealth. Packing courts and controlling state media are among the more visible authoritarian tools — and PiS used both. Its moves were legal on paper, but they were hard to miss. That matters, because a power grab that people can see is one that people can resist.

But here is something important that is easy to miss: average Polish citizens were not just passive victims of this process. Many ordinary voters — especially older, rural Poles — genuinely believed in what PiS was saying. They watched TVP every night and trusted what they heard. In doing so, they actively supported a government that was quietly eroding their own democratic voice. This is one of the most troubling features of stealth authoritarianism: ordinary people can become participants in their own democratic erosion without even realizing it.

The Rebound: Achieving the Impossible in 2023

Even under these very unfair conditions, the end of the V-Dem graph shows a sharp rise toward 2024 and 2025. This rise represents the historic national election in October 2023. So, how did Polish voters defeat a powerful government that controlled so much of the system? There were two main reasons: political leaders worked together, and civil society became active.

First, democratic political leaders worked together. When opposition parties are divided, authoritarian leaders usually have an easier time winning. However, different opposition parties in Poland, led by Donald Tusk, decided to put their political differences aside. They formed a strategic alliance with one main goal: protecting democracy. Center-right, center-left, and left-wing parties worked together and won enough seats to form a majority in parliament.

Second, average citizens became active in very large numbers — and this is where ordinary people played a decisive role in the bounce-back. An important turning point came in 2020, when the PiS government pushed for a near-total ban on abortion. This strict policy made millions of people very angry. Young people and women, who had often stayed away from politics in the past, came out into the streets and joined large protests. They were not professional politicians or party activists. They were average citizens who had reached a breaking point.

In 2023, they took this anger from the streets to the voting booths. The election had a record-breaking voter turnout of 74.3 percent, the highest since 1989. By voting in such large numbers, Polish people overcame the unfair system and brought about a peaceful change of government.

A Blueprint for Democracy

Poland’s story gives us an important lesson about modern political systems. Democratic backsliding is very dangerous, and an uneven playing field can make elections very unfair. However, this does not mean that democracy cannot recover. When political leaders work together and citizens actively take part in politics, even a strong populist government can lose power. Today, Poland’s new government is working to restore independent courts and free media. Rebuilding democratic institutions takes time. Still, Poland shows that democratic recovery is possible — and that average citizens are not just witnesses to history. They are the ones who make it.