| Abstract [eng] |
In recent years, there has been much discussion about democratic backsliding in Europe and around world. Indexes like Freedom House have declared a global trend of democracy being in decline, and in Europe many researchers look at the rise of illiberal parties as proof of the erosion of democracy. Within Eastern Europe, Poland has received much attention when discussing democratic quality. This attention has culminated in EU actions against Poland for undemocratic behavior. However, there is a need for further research into this topic as it much of the research that has been done is often highly focused on specific issues rather than discussing the broad changes in democratic quality throughout a number of years. While key issues can become highly influential towards democratic quality it is not valid to dismiss a state’s democratic system as functional or non-functional based on a single issue. Rather, it is much more ethical and responsible to focus on the cumulative effect that such laws have brought about. As such it is important to reexamine laws passed by the PiS party to determine how controversial laws changed the democratic quality in Poland within a broad spectrum rather than sing issue laws. For this analysis this paper utilizes the inter-disciplinary approach of doctrinal legal studies. Doctrinal legal research methodology focuses on how the law is written rather than how it is applied. Using this method, a researcher composes a descriptive and detailed analysis of legal rules found in primary sources. The primary sources in this paper shall be the laws passed during the 8th term of the Sejm (2015 – 2019), during this period most of the controversial laws were passed and the Polish Law and Justice party still had a strong opposition in the judicial system. By focusing on primary sources rather than secondary sources there can be clear evidence towards how the PiS reforms changed the polish political system, rather than rely on a well know point like “rule of law crisis in Poland”. The result of this analysis shows that it is correct to state that democratic quality has deteriorated in Poland. In 2015 – 2016 the main loss of democratic quality occurred due to the PiS party attempting to leverage legislative power in order to defeat the opposition in constitutional tribunal, but ultimately choosing to back down and cooperate with the judiciary. A further loss of democratic quality was followed by the Minister of Justice, in 2016 – 2018, gaining large amounts of power over the common courts and polish prosecutorial system. However, the polish supreme court and constitutional tribunal have remained largely independent, but not to the same degree as before PiS. Overall democratic quality in Poland had dropped due two main reasons: legislative government attempts to govern judiciary through simple legislation (non-constitutional amendments) and the expansion of the Minister of Justice’s power beyond any previous legal tradition in Poland (as claimed by PiS). The conclusion of this work emphasizes that while there was a drop in democratic quality in Poland due to the reduction in judicial independence; the results may not have been deliberate but rather a reaction to both the polish opposition and EU actions. |
