Illiberal Challenge to Liberal Democracy: The Case of Poland

The essay offers three sets of ideas. First, I define illiberal challenge and identify its three components (populism, organizational antipluralism, and ideological monism). Second, I discuss three causes of this challenge: economic, political, and cultural. Third, using this framework, I analyze the Polish case, concluding that the illiberal challenge in this country is considerable, but too weak to threaten liberal democracy. Important argument is that, in order to explain the staying power of illiberalism (or any other ideology), we need a theory that accounts for both the demand and supply sides of politics, particularly cultural politics.