Democratic Front-Sliding in Action: Procedural Violation, Strategic Marginalisation, and Principled Legalism in Poland

Abstract

This article contributes to the study of ‘democratic front-sliding’ by proposing an empirically informed typology of strategies a reformist government may adopt towards state institutions after a period of democratic backsliding. Drawing on a single-jurisdiction case study from Poland of a post-backsliding government’s immediate approach to the public service media, the Constitutional Tribunal, and the judiciary we inductively develop a non-exhaustive typology comprising of ‘procedural violation’, ‘strategic marginalisation’, and ‘principled legalism’. We also propose a framework for evaluating these strategies from a liberal constitutional perspective, focusing on: the specificity of the government’s diagnosis of post-backsliding damage; the transparency of its reform plan; the legality and proportionality of its actions; the legitimacy of the measures, understood as acting in good faith and pursuing broader reforms aimed at increasing institutional independence, pluralism, and proper functioning; and, finally, the social reception of these measures and their implications for the perceived legitimacy of democratic front-sliding. Our observations are framed in the period from a reformist government taking office in December 2023 to the presidential election in June 2025.