In this episode of International Horizons, RBI’s Director John Torpey interviews Grzegorz Ekiert, Chair of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, a propós of the recent election in Poland that installed a centrist government led by former prime minister and president of the European Council Donald Tusk. Ekiert starts by discussing the paradoxes behind the support of Putin and the antiliberalism in Eastern Europe given the imperialism these countries faced from the Russians historically. 

In addition, Ekiert addressed Poland’s leading role in the democratization and economic development in the region after the end of the Soviet Union and how many of these initiatives were reversed by an authoritarian regime associated with the Catholic church. The interview concludes with a discussion of the challenges that the new government is going to face after the PiS (Law and Justice Party) seriously eroded the institutions of the state; the challenges are illuminated by a comparison of the institutional constraints extremism will face in Europe with those that exist in the US.

Please find a slightly edited transcript of the interview below

John Torpey 

Poland emerged from behind the Iron Curtain in the 1990s as one of the bright spots in the transformation from communism to capitalism. After early years of promise, however, the country swerved, along with other East European countries, toward the right. The Law and Justice Party sought to strengthen the religious (Catholic) aspects of Polish life. After leading the way to the post-communist future, the country took a sharp turn to the right under the Kaczinski brothers. Yet it has just elected a government headed by centrist Donald Tusk, former prime minister of Poland during 2007-2014, after which he left Polish politics to become president of the European Council from 2014-2019. What’s happening in Poland?   My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues.   We are fortunate to have with us today Grzegorz Ekiert, who is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government at Harvard University, Director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES), and Senior Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. At CES, he co-chairs the Seminar on Democracy – Past, Present, Future. His books include Ruling by Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements, co-edited with Elizabeth J. Perry and Yan Xiaojun, (Cambridge University Press, 2020); Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule, co-editor Stephen Hanson, (Cambridge University Press 2003); Rebellious Civil Society. Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, co-authored with Jan Kubik, (University of Michigan Press 1999); and The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe, (Princeton University Press 1996). Thanks for joining us today, Grzegorz Ekiert. here.

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

Yeah, thank you, John, thank you for this generous introduction. Thank you.

John Torpey 

Sure. Great to have you. Great to see you after so many years. So perhaps you could begin by reminding some of us of Poland’s early post communist path I described it. As you know, a kind of promising one that certainly my recollection, my understanding, but was regarded as a real bright spot, at least economically speaking after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is that an accurate recollection?

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

Yeah, I think it was definitely accurate. And I think Poland, in those years of the ending of Cold War, played a very important role in the region. You know, I think an argument could be made that, that the transformations which brought about the fall of communist regimes were really started in Poland, in the  late 1970s, with the emergence of solidarity movement, with the struggles under martial law, Poland had a massive opposition movement, which, which sort of membership counted in millions. So it play a very important role in bringing down the communist regimes, It was the first country which entered the negotiations with with the communists about the transition, it was the first country which had a semi free election in 1989. And it was the first country in the in the region, which elected the first non-communist government since 1944. So I think, in all respects, Poland, played a pivotal role in in changes in Eastern Europe. And to surprise of many, I think it had a incredibly successful transition to democracy and market economy. I think it was surprising because of the fact as I mentioned a moment ago, Poland, had a very strong trade unions very strong political movements, which sort of experts are telling us are not exactly the best condition for a democratic transition, Polish economy was in terrible shape in the 1980s, and around 1989, with hyperinflation and, and really serious issues on all economic force. So, Poland was a very unlikely candidate for swift and successful transition, but that’s what happened, actually. Right.  So, Polish economic reforms were very decisive and very successful. Polish democracy consolidated in quite remarkable way. And that first 10 years of transition, or maybe the first 20 years of transition were very successful, they ended up with Poland being admitted to the NATO, and then to becoming a member of the, of the European Union. You know, from the economic point of view, I think Poland is quite an amazing success story. It has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world over the last three decades. Some economists argue that the last 30 year was the most successful period in economically in Polish history over the last several centuries. And the numbers support that view. So, you know, the Polish GDP went up 300%, during that period. The same applies to leading standards and all the other economic, economic indicators. And Poland was the first country in many years, which made the transition from developing to developed economies. So several years ago, it was finally ranked as a developed market economy. So,  in this context of a very successful transition and very dynamic economic growth, I have to mention that inequality was initially relatively high by European standards,  declined quite dramatically. So, when Kaczyński government took power, in 2015, Polish inequalities were at the level of Germany and some other welfare states in Western Europe. Most of the population were incredibly happy with, with their living situation. I mean, there are public opinion polls, which show that dramatically so. So I think, it was a big surprise to many that, at that moment, polls decided to elect a government, which promised to reverse many of those changes over the previous 20 years, was very suspicious of the European Union. And decided to, really sort of lounge, the nationalist revolution in Poland. I think the following eight years were incredibly, incredibly difficult and frustrating, both for the majority of polls, but also for for international partners of Poland, and the European Union, in particular. And I think…

John Torpey 

Let me interrupt for just a second hand say that appreciate that sort of account of the early part of the transition period, but 2015 certainly introduces a kind of rupture in that in that trajectory, I would say. And I wonder, you mentioned the importance of trade unions, and, of course, solidarity was the leading force really, starting in the late 1970s. But, a certain amount of the Polish transition also had to do with the country’s traditional embrace of Catholicism. And I sort of wonder, how did that play a role in the rise of the Kaczynski which you described as surprising, unexpected, etc. So there were always these two forces. I mean, not only trade unions but trade, civil society on the one hand, and also the Catholic church, the pope at the time, were major players in that. So where does Catholicism fit into the story of the Polish transition?

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

Thinking about the Polish civil society, how we developed after 89, I think we had this explosion of civil society, the beginning of the transformations, with hundreds of thousands of new NGOs being formed, this was the extent of the liberal civil society. But in the meantime, those building blocks of the old civil society, the trade unions, the solidarity, started decline quite dramatically. And in In fact, the Solidarity Movement moved in a nationalist right wing directions,  so it was an ally of Law and Justice Party, and one of the most important supporters of, of low injustice policies.  Now, the church story is here slightly a different dimension of transformation. So, the Polish church was suspicious of movement to democracy and market capitalism, to say the least, and tried to play a political role in this being, sort of placing itself as the arbiter of, of changes. So not really becoming a site of transformation, but really is an institution which overlooks political change. Poland never had a Catholic, Christian Democratic Party, after 89, which suggests the church was not really interested in becoming part of, of politics in a sort of normal, democratic way, supporting one of the political parties in the political landscape, but really wanted to be something much more important.  And I think, that we see the effort of the church over the first 20 years of transition to reap significant economic benefits from transformation, the property of church was return in ways which sort of are not exactly transparent, the church was supported by consecutive governments in quite significant way and social agenda of the church, including abortion and others, were really becoming a kind of political set of issues very important for the country. So, the church was taking lots of benefits from transformation, but at the same time, we see quite significant secularization of Polish society, so people are moving away from from church. And I think, especially when you when you look at the attendance of the masses, Sunday masses and other,  church holidays, fewer and fewer people participate, and fewer and fewer young people participate in this.  So, church was very much alarmed by those developments and was trying to fortify its position by really making a very strong alliance to Kaczyński’s political party and the nationalist bloc in the Polish parliament. The church also supported what I call the “Pillar” civil society. The Polish civil society is deeply divided almost the same way the Polish political parties are divided; you have a significant liberal bloc within civil society with some professional organizations with lots of NGOs of various kinds, lots of foundations supporting, supporting liberal values and policies, but on the other hand, you have very conservative pillar of civil society, which is mostly organized by by Catholic Church and and based on parishes with completely different agenda, this pillar sort of cooperates with the radical nationalist movements and with some really unpleasant, Neo fascist, small groups, which fortunately are not highly visible and influential, but nevertheless, they’re there–you probably caught this latest scandal in the British Parliament when one of the really deranged radical movements of a very strange party jumped at the lightning menorah event– so I think that’s the story.  The question now in Poland is whether the coalition of right wing nationalist groups, and the church has enough power to really control the Polish politics. And the good news, of course, coming from the last election, is that that alliance, while still very powerful, does not get the majority. So I think the Polish election, the last Polish election, was the rare good news those days, with all the terrible things happening all over the world. And I think we are very lucky to see the new Liberal government, headed by Donald Tusk in power–he was just accepted by the by the President of the country,  and they had the oath of office two days ago. Poland is back on democratic trajectory, I think it’s important because one more term of PiS would mean the end of Polish democracy. So, it was the last moment when things cannot can be reversed. And the rule of law race and establish and relations with Europe rebuild, so that’s, that’s indeed a very lucky moment.

John Torpey 

Right. Well, it was an unexpected turn of events, I think, that Tusk took over and good sign, as you say. And insofar as the right in contemporary Europe is exercised about its opposition to Brussels, it seems to me that Tusk is a particularly kind of representative figure for the orientation towards Europe. So, I wonder what you would say about that, and what you expect from him once he now that he’s in office?

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

Well, I mean, it was a big sigh of relief in Europe, because Poland under Kaczyński and Hungary and under Orban posed a really, quite significant threat to the European Union. Although, over the last several years, the EU developed strategies of trying to deal with this kind of anti-liberal, anti-European threats, but because of the construction of the European Union, I think it was very difficult to deal with countries which are sort of violating all the fundamental values of the Union. When founding fathers were sort of designing the EU, no one really believed for a moment that a member of the European Union could go authoritarian. So, they did not construct the mechanisms of what to do when something like that happens. And it did happen with Hungary and and to some extent with, with Poland. So, I think the fact that Poland is back in the liberal and pro-European camp is a very good news for the EU. Now, Hungary as the best friend of putting in Europe can be really isolated and controlled,  hopefully better than then in the past. You saw yesterday of course, that the Congress voted against financial aid from EU to Ukraine. And that exactly is the kind of policies supporting Putin’s aggression, which Hungary has been pursuing for a number of years. Now, we are talking about Poland,  but let me say this: it is really surprising that the country which suffered so much from, the Soviet Union, now is so firmly supporting Russian imperial ambitions. Hungary was the ally of Nazi Germany, of course, it was then invaded by by the Soviet Union at the end of the war. A very brutal communist regime was imposed on it, and then, the Hungarian Revolution in 56, was crushed by the Soviet military invasion. So, given that history, I think it’s really difficult  to understand why the Hungarian government does you think it does.

John Torpey 

Presumably the answer to that is Orban thinks it’s good for him.

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

Well, right. I mean, you can have a lot of potential ideas about why he is so firmly supporting Putin. He has a lot of very close economic relations with Russia and many of the economic relations with Russia involve significant amount of corruption, as we know. So, there can be a lot of potential explanation for for his behavior. But I think Hungary is firmly an authoritarian society now, and it poses a serious kind of challenge to the European Union and to NATO as a matter of fact, because being a democracy has been one of the fundamental conditions for EU membership. So I think that it’s going to be a very important several years, in which you have to develop a set of mechanisms to deal with that situation. But I think,from that point of view, Polish change is a very important one. Although, t’s not going to be an easy one. So, first of all, Poland, as a big country with with significant economic and political interest is not going to sort of  completely enthusiastically embracing everything the European Union wants to do. So,  I think Poland is very much concerned about the voting system. And even with people like Radosław Sikorski at the helm, they will be trying to reconcile some interest of the mid sized countries with the proposed changes in the voting system in the EU and so on and so on. So, that’s one issue that perhaps those who have hopes that Poland will be absolutely in line with all the ideas on the table, maybe can get a bit disappointed. But this government a firm suporter of the EU and European integration, the disagreement is about details and the way to deal with this and so on and so on.  And then, the domestic situation is going to be difficult one. So, this is actually an intellectually fascinating issue, right. How do you clean up after the populist rule? It is a different situation when you have the collapse of authoritarian regime and transition to democracy and when and the way to deal with the old regime is one of the most significant issues in those processes of democratization. And over the years, lots of various strategies have been developed how to do this. So, all the transitional justice, ideas about truth Commission’s about illustration, and so on are there and were used in different countries. But, the government, which was in Poland, was not the authoritarian one. And they didn’t do horrible things. Many of the authoritarian regimes routinely do. So we didn’t jail the political opponents, we didn’t kill opposition activists, and so on. So, the things centered on breaking the rule of law, breaking the Constitution and so on corruption scandals of various kinds, and so, they’re very important, but not in the same league, as what communists did, or what some other authoritarian regimes did. So, the big question is, “Okay, so how do you clean after the regime? How do you restore the rule of law”. And of course, peace was very clever in taking advantage of economic of political institutions and, and rules of the game, and fortified its position in many different ways as to prevent the new government from doing many things. So, the President is still the card carrying member of PiS (Law and Justice Party). PiS has really massive representation in the parliament, with, you know,

John Torpey 

Just to be clear PiS is Law and justice, right?

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

Right, the Polish acronym, of the Law and Justice, right. And, and there are many institutions, which are still controlled by PiS. The most important of which is the Constitutional Tribunal. And I think the discussion on the Polish liberal side is now how can we clean after peace? And can we break some of the rules to be able to restore the rule of law? So, some of the Polish legal scholars are saying, “well, if you want to restore the rule of law, the wrong way is to do it by breaking the law.” Right. But some others argue that this is an unusual question and requires action, which sometimes, you need to break the rule of law and the Constitution in order to make sure that the Constitution is firmly in place and really, not really able to structure the political system. So, it’s a very difficult situation. And PiS, as we already know, after the election is going to fight and to subvert changes in all possible ways. The fact that the government is in place almost two months after after the election has been a part of the game. So President of the country using the procedures gave PiS almost two months to do many things. So, first of all, to clean the offices, there is a lot of there was a lot of shredding, going on to destroy all kinds of evidence of wrongdoing by PiS government and officials and so on. It gave the party time to come up with a program of how to defend what they gain over the years, and it gave the party a possibility to change the laws to prevent the government from cleaning up, right.

John Torpey 

Interesting. So, I mean, it sounds in a way, not unlike our own situation, even stemming back to the Obama period, when there were calls for trying or otherwise coming to terms, so to speak with the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, for example. Now, of course, and that went nowhere because Obama thought that this is going to divide the country in ways that simply the country can’t withstand. And, of course, we’ve now been through this with Donald Trump, and he tried to put him through constitutionally mandated procedures for wrongdoing in high office, and that sort of thing. And, he faces all these trials, but the problem with this is that it seems–if you look at what’s going on in the Republican Congress–that it may create a kind of cycle of retribution, every time a new party comes into power. They say, “Well, the previous guys did something bad and we have to go after them about. And then you start having policies we associated with Central America and things like that. So, anyway, it is a fascinating problem I agree with, you

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

I mean, this is exactly why this issue is so important, right? Do you want to establish that pattern that every time the new party takes over this massive  firing going on and so on. But the one point which needs to be stressed in comparing,  us and, and, and European countries is that the key difference is that the European governments have much more control over the economy, over the very structures of local administration, and so on. So, the cleaning after a Trump, involves his own his closest associates; you know, actions, breaking the law and so on. Trump did not take over American television and turn it into a propaganda machine. Trump did not expel all the directors of theaters and museums and so on and put his own people there. So I think, it’s on the one hand, given the proportional representation and multi party systems in Europe, is more difficult for extremists to take over power. Right,  parties of that kind usually have, like 20%, 25%, at best votes in, in European countries. So it’s much more difficult to form the majority government by the parties of radical right. But then when, for whatever reason, they are able to get power, they have much more opportunities to damage the institutional system. So, another example, Poland has a relatively large state sector. So, the PiS government, Kaczynski, government staffed the boards and management of those companies with thousands of thousands of its own supporters and party members. Now, you have to clean it up because those people are usually people who have no skills and and preparation to run this kind of enterprises. So we so imagine that Polish energy company, one of the biggest in Europe is run by a person who finished the high school for agriculture technique technicians, and his only accomplishment is that he was the mayor of a tiny city, like a big a village in Poland. Now he’s made a manager of something, which is like Shell or BP, huge companies with assets and operations in many countries and so on. And that happened to many places in the Polish institutional landscape. They, you know, PiS, absolutely rejected meritocratic criteria, scrapped, all the exams and other requirements for, for officials, like in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Under liberal government’s you needed to know to languages and have education at certain level to become an ambassador in the country. Now, PiS scrubbed that right; so you could become an ambassador without knowing any foreign language. And that kind of affected everything, from industries to local administration and so on. So, now, restoring the meritocratic criteria in filling up positions in industry, and government is one of the most important challenges, which that government faces.

John Torpey 

Right. Well, I wasn’t really aware of the extent of putting loyalists in positions of whatever authority. But, you know, I’ve mentioned Trump, I’m sorry, I couldn’t avoid it, I guess. But, you know, I mean, this is exactly what people seem to think is what he’s going to do. If he gets in to office the second time around, he’s precisely going to clean house, put it, install his loyalists get rid of the so-called Deep State. And, I mean, there was this striking confluence of media coverage of this, as you probably saw, articles in the New York Times, Robert Kagan’s lengthy article about what Trump was going to do if he gets into power, and especially issue of the Atlantic all addressing this problem. And, I mean, that strikes me as an enormous, high level of alarm, at least among, liberal media elites in the United States. And so I wonder from the perspective of a place that’s gone through this what would you say about our situation? And,  there’s of course, a corollary concern that if Trump gets into power, his enthusiasm for NATO is distinctly limited and what might he do on the foreign policy front?

Grzegorz Ekiert. 

Well, I think there are very important lessons for for the US from the situation like the one in Poland, but also in some other countries like Turkey for example, where you have the leader with authoritarian ambitions, and of course, as we know, from a wonderful book by my friends, Daniel Ziblatt and Steve Levitsky, most of the ways in which democracy operate are based on informal norms which actors are not very forced to obey. So, if someone rejects those informal norms and rules, situation changes in very in a very dramatic way. So, I think what happened in Poland, the one important dimension of it was that for the first 25 years of transition, Poland was trying to build a public service. Basically, the professional bureaucracy, which is built on meritocratic criteria, which is not removable by a change of the of the ruling party, except for the top positions. So,  this is what has been going on in the US as well right?  We have those professional bureaucracies highly competent, and when the presidency is changing hands, you kind of  have new secretaries and assistant secretaries in those bureaucracies, but not really professionals who are there now. We know that it’s easy to change the rules of the guide right. So so I think in preparation for possible take over of state bureaucracies, some things have to be fortified. I mean, yesterday, you had the best example. With this new defense appropriation, we have a law now, on the books that the president cannot take us out of NATO alone. And that’s kind of a good example of how you into introduce the legal barriers for someone who wants to rule in an unconstrained way. So now,  Trump, if he gets the second term, will not be able to come to Europe and say, “Okay, I decided that US is going to leave the NATO.” And I think, that sort of legal preparation for potential authoritarian predilections of the of the president should be really seriously considered. Because  it’s the moment you start taking over. I mean, the big advantage, of course in the US is that we have we have free press in private hands. I mean, you cannot change the heads of newspapers the way PiS did it in Poland.. So, that’s the big advantage. And, of course, the private sector, I mean, the industry, the economy is in private hands. So it’s not easy to put your people in charge of big companies and so on. So, you know, US has much more leverage in dealing with someone with authoritarian ambition than many of the European countries  where the governments have much more power. So I think now we we really need to consider seriously the fact that democracy is not safe in any place, including the US, including big continental European countries, and so on. So, knowing that that’s the case, we have to think really seriously, how to build fortifications which sort of will slow down or prevent political parties, or presidents or prime ministers with authoritariane ambitions to be able to implement those ambitions?

John Torpey 

Well, I think we’re going to end it there. Thank you for that fascinating and illuminating overview of the developments in Polish politics, since 1989, but also ending with a kind of warning for us as well, and a very worrisome kind of proposal for where we stand and where much of the world in fact stands. There are parts of the world that we in some ways have taken for granted would never be authoritarian sorts of countries. But it’s happening in Hungary and may happen elsewhere. But I just want to say thanks to Grzegorz Ekiert for his insights about Polish and East European and our politics. I also want to thank Oswaldo Mena Aguilar for his technical assistance and to acknowledge Duncan Mackay for letting us use his song International Horizons as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey, saying, thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us again for the next episode of International Horizons.