Today, Explained - So I unelected an authoritarian

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

The outcome of Poland’s election surprised the world. Vox's Jen Kirby explains what happened, and Anna Grzymała-Busse of Stanford University looks at what this hopeful turn means for all of Europe. Today’s show was produced by Isabel Angell and Avishay Artsy, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Tien Nguyen, mixed by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For all of the bad news in the world right now, and there's a lot of it, the results of Poland's parliamentary elections over the weekend were really good news for democracy. Poland won. Democracy has won. We have removed them from power. Donald Tusk is the head of the opposition, which got enough votes to prevent the ruling Law and Justice Party from continuing to rule. This is one of the most beautiful days of Poland's democracy, and I have no doubt that this day will go down in our history as a day that opens a new era and the rebirth of our republic. Law and Justice is a nationalist, populist party with authoritarian tendencies, and it's undermined Poland's democratic institutions since coming to power in 2015. Many people expected it to keep doing that.

But these election results indicate that Polish voters have had enough. Coming up on Today Explained, what this all means for Poland and for the rest of Europe. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level

this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns

about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Vox's senior foreign correspondent, Jen Kirby, traveled to Warsaw for the Polish elections. Now, these were elections that many people in Poland and outside of Poland said were the most important in a generation. The line that I heard over and over again was that this was the most important election since 1989, when Poland had its first partly free election in the aftermath of communism. The current ruling party, which is a conservative right-wing populist party called the Law and Justice Party, or PIS, that's the acronym, PIS. They have been in power for eight

years and in that time they have overseen the undermining of the rule of law and democratic institutions in Poland. Since last eight years what's happened was destroying the democracy and nowadays democracies are dying silently. So we don't need tanks on the street to see it. And that's why it's very dangerous. They've entrenched themselves most notably in the judiciary, putting in, you know, judges who would be favorable to their perspectives and point of views. They've also taken control of public media and really made it a mouthpiece of the state. And they've done other things in terms of capturing state institutions that have really consolidated their power. And so Poland has been on this pathway to having a liberal democracy. And a lot of people felt if

the Law and Justice Party won another term, that that would be the end, that there would be no going back, that the next time the opposition wouldn't even have a shot because the party in power would skew the field so heavily that that would be the end. You went around Warsaw talking to people. In addition to some of them saying, we are concerned about the fate of our democracy, what were the issues? Yeah, so it was really interesting. The economy was definitely a big one on people's mind and also healthcare, which was sort of something I wasn't necessarily expecting. You know, in Poland right now,

the cost of living is a really, really big issue. It has some of the highest inflation in all of Europe and it sort of creates a lot of pressure on, especially working class people. And we heard a lot of that in some of the neighborhoods of Warsaw. I dream about Poland that they will take care of young people for sure. They will take care of the workers.

They will take care of the housing crisis. You know, I will say the thing that was most interesting to me was in Poland, as we know, they took in over a million Ukrainian refugees. After the war began, Poland welcomed Ukrainians fleeing the war and treated them as guests. So pretty much everywhere you go, you run into somebody who is from Ukraine. And a lot of the Ukrainian refugees were probably the most supportive of the current government because they were really grateful for what they had done in terms of welcoming Ukrainians and standing up for Ukraine in the very start of the war.

And of course they couldn't vote, but it was interesting because the ruling party itself was kind of picking a fight with Ukraine. Poland has suggested that it will no longer provide weapons to Ukraine. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki made the comments after days of antagonistic statements between the two countries. And I would say the other interesting thing was that a lot of people were voting for fringe parties. And so we saw a lot of people voting for folks who were not necessarily the top two

big parties. They were looking for kind of a change. And I think when you've had a party in power for eight years, but also the opposition, which is led by Donald Tusk, who was the former prime minister before the Law and Justice Party took over, people were eager to have a new face. So you're hearing from voters what they care about. Was there anything that you thought voters might care about, anything that you thought you'd hear a great deal about that you just didn't? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big things that we thought we would hear about was migration because, you know, the Law and Justice Party is a super nationalistic party. If we're accepting someone from outside at the cost of our basis, cultural basis, this is disaster. They often pick fights with the European Union on the issue of migration. And one of the things they did to try to motivate their

voters in this poll was to kind of create this referendum where they were asking really leading questions. And one of them was essentially... The question asks, do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy. An extraordinarily loaded question that was designed to sort of gin up xenophobia within the Law and Justice Party's base. This is going to put Prime Minister Morawiecki on a huge collision course with the European Union. I don't know if you've seen the video, but it's quite spicy. The video shows scenes of streets burning. This is put out by the Polish prime minister pushing towards this referendum.

And we didn't hear anyone on the street really talk about that. We heard one person criticize European bureaucrats in part because Donald Tusk himself is. The other thing I thought I might hear about was Catholic family values. The ruling party, the Law and Justice Party, they kind of have a populist economic agenda, but they're very socially conservative and they've waged the kind of culture wars against LGBTQ groups, you know, the woke culture wars, so to speak. Under Law and Justice's mandate, Poland had restricted abortion and LGBTQ rights, as well as distancing itself from the European Union. Going into this election, what did many

analysts and many Polish people think was going to happen? Everybody knew that the election was going to be pretty close. Ahead of a heavily contested election, the country has seen its most aggressive campaign since it became a democracy 32 years ago. A country long seen as an example of democracy after decades of communism is now deeply divided. And of course, you know, as many people said to me that I spoke to in Warsaw, you know, this election is going to be free and that, you know, people will be able to vote and that vote will count. But it's not going to be fair. The Law and Justice Party in their time in power has really kind of skewed the playing field. For example, they put more polling stations in rural areas where they have a lot more of their own base. And so they're trying to cater to them and get more of their voters out to the polls.

Meanwhile, there was a record number of polls abroad who've registered to vote, some 600,000. And all those votes, which tend to favor the opposition, had to be counted in 24 hours or they were disqualified. So you see these little tweaks to the system that is designed to give the Law and Justice Party a little bit of an edge. What ended up happening? Yeah, so the opposition won, basically. There was record turnout in Poland, about 73%. And essentially, the opposition coalitions won. And they didn't quite have enough votes to form a government on their own. But if you take in all these other smaller opposition coalitions

from the center, from the left, they do have enough votes potentially to form a government. Opposition leader and former EU Council President Donald Tusk hailed it as a victory. I want to thank thousands of Polish men and women who are now sitting in polling stations and making sure that no one tries anything. This result speaks for itself. No one will cheat this. No one will take this away from us. We want democracy. We want freedom. We want our beloved Poland again. The problem is the Law and Justice Party has won singularly the most votes, but not enough to form a government on their own. So the question is,

could they maybe find a partner? That doesn't seem likely based on the math. And so the normal course of things would really just have the opposition form a government. However, it is possible because the Law and Justice Party has, again, presided over in a liberal democracy, that they may try to do something to make it very, very difficult for the opposition to form a government, to take power. We don't know what that might be, and we don't know where things are going. But that is a fear that you're starting to hear from some democratic activists, even as they're celebrating what is a really huge and amazing victory for them and their cause. For those Poles who want to see their country returning to the center ground and repair relationships with close allies across Europe and the EU, this is a good night. How did they pull it off? How did the opposition actually get this win or this close

to a win? I think it was a combination of factors. They were very united and they really tried to lean into the idea that this was as existential. This is the last chance elections to keep democracy in Poland. And then I think there were some other factors that maybe they didn't necessarily do that helped them out. One, again, is the economy is not great. And so you have just support for a law and justice party flagging. You have a party in power for eight years. You get a little sick of them. And then I would say the third factor

was the rise of this very radical, kind of chaotic party called the Confederation, which is far right, but is much more kind of weird. It includes, you know, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. And they were attracting especially young voters who were really disillusioned with the political system. I think the big takeaway is that it is possible in an even backsliding democracy for the opposition, for the, you know, defenders of democracy to win an election. And that even when an election is not necessarily fair, but it is free,

it is possible for democracy to win. That was Jen Kirby. She's a senior foreign correspondent at Vox. Coming up, Poland is not the only country in Europe that took an authoritarian turn in the last several years. You might remember our adventures in Hungary last year. But now that Poland has taken a step back, what about the other European nations. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.

And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained. R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. It's Today Explained. We're back with Anna Grzymowa-Busa. Anna's a professor at Stanford,

and she directs the Europe Center there. She's an analyst of both Poland and Europe more broadly. And I asked her a question. A generation from now, when you're teaching students about this election in Poland, what do you think the story will be? I think it'll be seen as the election that turned the tide. I think it's remarkable that we have a denunciation of the peace policies of the last eight years. We also saw remarkable turnout, 74%, including close to 70% of young people,

the 18 to 29 cohorts, coming out to vote. And that turnout was decisive. The results are higher than any of the most optimistic polls. We also are very surprised positively with the turnout. That's 10% higher than in 1989. It was basically a clear renunciation of these kind of autocratic, xenophobic, conservative policies of the Peace Party. Now, you know, the tide may turn back again, but at least for now, this is a massive sort of speaking out by society against this party and

its policies. The youth turnout really surprised me. That is an electorate that everywhere, whether United States or in Poland, is very hard to get to vote. But I think for them, the issues in these elections, whether abortion or climate change or marriage equality, just became so pressing that they all turned out en masse. And that to me, I think, is both the biggest surprise and the biggest reason for hope for the future. People often say that Poland is representative of wider shifts in Europe. What are those shifts? What has Poland represented for the past couple of years? You know, I'm not sure that Poland is all that representative, but I think there is a sort of

broader shift in Europe where a lot of the mainstream parties, the sort of classic parties of governance, were increasingly seen as unaccountable, unresponsive, you know, totally failing to live up to the expectations of the electorate. And so a lot of voters turned to these illiberal populist parties instead. They tried them out. And in some cases, you know, these parties remain a minority. In other cases, as in Poland or Czechia or Slovakia or Hungary, they gained power. And the problem with these parties is that once they gain power, they want to entrench themselves. And so I think that's the kind of shift that we're seeing.

And where these parties entrench themselves, as in Hungary, democracy dies. Yeah, I was in Hungary last year and we interviewed a lot of people about the backsliding, the democratic backsliding that was happening under Viktor Orban. And one of the things that was really interesting was how compelling Orban is to many Hungarians. He stands up for the interests of the Hungarians all the time. He does everything so that we can stay out of the war and we can live peacefully, because peace is the most important thing.

Where else in Europe has this democratic backsliding been happening? Just give me a look at the map, if you would, and tell me what's going on and where. So we're seeing sort of these kinds of illiberal populist parties supported across Europe. In Italy, Giorgia Maloney won the elections last year, and she is very much in this vein. Maloney's party has ideological roots in Italy's neo-fascist movement, a movement that gained traction after dictator Benito Mussolini. In France, Marine Le Pen tends to do very well in the presidential elections. Its progress compared to 2017, Marine Le Pen did better in the second round. In Germany,

the Alternative for Germany party is also increasing in its vote. Germany's far-right AFD has won its first district election. It's a further boost to the anti-immigration party as it surges to record highs in opinion polls. I think the big difference is that with the exception of Italy, these parties haven't come to power in Western Europe, whereas in Eastern Europe they have, because people expect a lot of democracy. And so what happened in the countries that became democracies after the fall of communism in 1989, is that there were several political options and voters tried out the center left.

They tried out the center right. They tried some other parties out. And none of them could really sort of address, you know, the fundamental difficulties that are associated with making the transition to a market economy, with becoming fully integrated in Europe and so on. And so eventually, I think people turned to populists, these illiberal populists. And in the case of Hungary, that party was extremely successful, and has now basically locked itself into power. What are the challenges that populism promises to address that have made it so compelling?

You know, it's not that populism offers solutions, but it speaks a language that a lot of people want articulated. It is a criticism of the elites, of the fact that there's this cartel of, you know, highfalutin elites that all just basically create institutions and succeed in the market and economy and do very well for themselves, but do very little for the people. It's a critique of not protecting sovereignty enough. So one of the criticisms that populist parties articulate is that the European Union is demanding too much from these countries, and it's not doing enough to protect these countries from the big threat of immigration as they see it.

Viktor Orban held a hard line against immigration. Immigration increases crime, especially criminal acts against women. The Polish parliament has voted that migrants can be pushed back over the border, a tactic illegal under international law. Among her flagship policies, a naval blockade to stop the arrival of immigrants and refugees, who she says are bringing crime and poverty to Italy. Unlike the United States, many of these societies are culturally homogeneous. And so an influx of immigrants from foreign countries, speaking different languages, with brown skin and very different sort of attitudes,

is seen as a cultural threat. And there's the fear that with more immigrants, you know, the health care system, schools, housing all get stretched to the breaking point. All right. So populists whip people up into a frenzy about immigration. They do it successfully enough that they get elected. And then what we see are the populists get into office and we start seeing something that is less populist or partly populist, but also autocratic. What have we been seeing broadly in these countries in Europe where we see populism on the rise and then we bring autocracy in?

We say, OK, now we're seeing autocratic governments. What does that actually look like? It's basically a gradual erosion of democracy. We don't see military coups. We don't see revolutions, nothing like that. Instead, precisely because these parties criticize the establishment elites as self-serving and not responsive to popular needs, the first thing that populists do is to assert the need to bring democratic institutions under democratic control. But what they really mean by that is to first and foremost go after the courts.

The ruling party in Poland has reduced both the powers and the independence of judges there, citing the need to make its judiciary more efficient and stamp out communist influence. Which basically means that these political parties then don't have any constraint, and they can do what they want. And once they've taken over the courts, they go after the media. The state media are basically government propaganda mouthpieces.

They try to eliminate free media. And then, as time goes on, they go after civil society, they go after universities. And in the Hungarian case, where the party had the votes to do so, they even changed the constitution permanently. Protesters say the ruling Fidesz party is getting rid of democratic institutions and tightening its grip on power. And of course, on the edge, there are also all kinds of electoral shenanigans.

There is buying off voters, there's incentivizing their own constituencies, and so on in ways that sort of violate free and fair elections. That was the trend that everyone feared was happening in Poland, and yet Poland has just had an election. And what you've told us is, wait, it seems the Polish people decided they don't want that. How typical is that? How typical is it that a country begins sliding into autocracy, and then the people have an election and say, no, this is actually not what we want? It's happened in other cases. In Slovenia, the sort of populist would-be Trump got voted out of power.

In Czechia, the latest presidential elections saw basically a rejection of exactly this kind of populism. So voters can and do speak up. The problem is that the longer that populists stay in power, the harder it is for that voice to be heard. In the Hungarian case, it is now virtually impossible for the opposition to win the elections the way it just did in Poland. Because in Hungary, these changes went much, much further and much more deeper into the institutions. And everything from electoral districts to voting rules in parliament have been changed to keep that party in power. Okay, so Poland had not slid too far, is what you're telling me. It was able to come back with a vote, with a democratic vote.

Where else are we seeing this around the world, this push and pull between populism, authoritarianism, and democracy? Well, you know, the obvious scenario is the United States. The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. Remember that. It's the only way we're going to lose this election. Yeah. We also saw in the 2020 elections a massive turnout, 66 percent, a lot of young people coming out and, again, voting out what they thought was a populist who was bent on eroding democracy. That's the clearest case. In other places, you know, like India, Venezuela, Turkey, we see more and more, for now at least, of an autocratic populist entrenchment. Poland seems to be a canary in a coal mine in some sense.

Is it now that we need to be concerned less about populism and authoritarianism? How much of a bend have we rounded here, really? I would still be concerned. And I'm concerned because, you know, it took an enormous amount of effort. This was a really closely fought election. It could have easily gone the wrong way. And had it not been for the missteps of the populist party, especially regarding abortion and education and climate change, they would have won again. So this was, I think, a story

as much of an opposition upsurge as it was of populist incompetence. That's Ana Grishmawa-Busa. She teaches political science at Stanford and directs their Europe Center. Today's show was produced by Isabel Angel and Avishai Artsy. We were edited by Miranda Kennedy and fact-checked by Tien Nguyen. The show is mixed by Patrick Boyd. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.