Between civic and legal constitutionalism: Dynamics of Poland’s constitution-making projects of the 1990s

Abstract

This study explores the way in which the notion of competing constitutionalisms illustrates and explains the evolution of Poland’s institutional landscape during and following the transition from communist rule. The paper considers the impact of variants of constitutionalism on constitution-making processes. While recent threats to the rule of law in Poland illustrate challenges to the consolidation of democratic constitutionalism several decades after political transformation, this paper traces processes by which citizens and political elites accept or reject the legitimacy of proposed constitutional frameworks, institutions and norms. The constitution-drafting project supported by the Solidarność trade union facilitates an original and comparative examination of these topics. Applying the concept of competing constitutionalisms to the analysis of previously unstudied archival, text, narrative interview and survey data, the study exposes the tension between the politics of constitution making on the one hand, and the symbolic, substantive and axiological aspects of constitutionalism on the other.