What happened in Poland?
According to the American media, not much.
After the October 15, 2023, parliamentary election, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which had been ruling since 2015, lost the majority in Sejm, the Polish parliament. On December 13, a new coalition took over. Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council, became the new prime minister.
Changes like that always happen in democratic countries. From far away, it might look like nothing unusual. I was in Poland during those critical days in December for unrelated reasons and saw that, for Poles, it was an event of historical dimensions.
As an Americanized Pole, I got drawn into the emotions of the day but also saw the broader perspective. In recent years, we have observed the re-emergence of right-wing populism. It is Trump in the U.S. and Orban in Hungary. In Poland, it was the Law and Justice party. And it lost to people standing firmly for a reason. The story of Tusk winning is worth telling.
Is Poland’s change special?
Not much, but lengthy democratic traditions might play a role. In medieval times, Poles translated the Latin res publica, which means a state as a common good in Latin, as rzeczpospolita, making the term republic sound more familiar. Before its collapse in 1795, Poland and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, for about…
