Constitutional Consciousness in a Society on the Verge of Democratic Collapse: The Case of Poland
Constitutional Consciousness in a Society on the Verge of Democratic Collapse: The Case of Poland

Summary/Abstract: What are the characteristic features of constitutional consciousness in a society whose history over the past 250 years with the brief exceptions of the interwar period and the years since 1989 epitomises the discontinuity of statehood and sovereignty? What features develop in a society that for roughly quarter of a century after the overturn of soviet communism and subsequent membership in the European Union began installing the rule of law and a market economy, and (above all) proclaimed its new, liberal-democratic constitution in 1997? And finally, what features emerge in a society whose young constitution has been constantly abused since 2015, while legislation itself is produced in such large quantities and is altered so rapidly that knowledge of it is precluded? Considering the incessant debasing of the constitution by the government itself, is this society still on the verge of democratic collapse, or has it already crossed that river, finding itself on the other, authoritarian bank? Are there forces that can reclaim liberal-democratic constitutionalism and the rule of law? These are the burning questions in Poland today that this article strives to address. And the answers sketched herein stem from the results of a nationwide survey conducted in Poland in 2020, further supported by other quantitative data as well as qualitative in-depth interviews with lawyers and social activists conducted in 2021-2022.

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