Dr. Michael Richter is a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer at the University of Surrey within the Horizon Europe REDEMOS project on European Union democracy promotion.
The story around the Polish parliamentary elections earlier this month is one of a country at a crossroads. It was said that these were the most important elections since 1989, as a further Law and Justice (PiS) government would have cemented an increasingly illiberal system. In Western media outlets, the opposition’s victory was therefore celebrated as a triumph of a new liberal democratic trajectory.
Warsaw’s two potential trajectories cover not only domestic politics but also the question of