1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:04,440 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this year's national Tarkovsky lecture. 2 00:00:04,440 --> 00:00:11,040 It's a tribute to our speaker that we have an absolutely packed house, our speaker who were delighted to welcome for the budget. 3 00:00:11,040 --> 00:00:23,160 Sadoski is probably the most distinguished academic expert on comparative constitutional law, particularly in the post-communist world. 4 00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:32,070 He holds the chair of jurisprudence of Sydney Law School, as well as many positions at European universities. 5 00:00:32,070 --> 00:00:41,880 His books include Rights Before Courts, a study of Constitutional Court in post-Communist Countries, Constitutionalism and the enlargement of Europe, 6 00:00:41,880 --> 00:00:51,000 and most recently and relevantly, Poland's constitutional breakdown, just published by U.P, 7 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:57,940 copies of which can be bought for a knockdown prise at a table in the hall outside. 8 00:00:57,940 --> 00:01:08,520 Don't miss it! Beside his many academic honours and distinctions, he has one, in my view, a particularly high honour, 9 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:14,280 which is that he is currently facing no less than three court cases brought against him, 10 00:01:14,280 --> 00:01:30,410 two by two far paved over the public television and one by the Law and Justice Party in Poland, which I have to say counts very high. 11 00:01:30,410 --> 00:01:36,060 Well, also delighted to have our own Professor, Yang Zelenka, as Discussant Yang Geelong, 12 00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:42,590 who started his studies actually studying law as well as politics in his native Poland. 13 00:01:42,590 --> 00:01:54,650 He is a professor of European politics here and a fellow of the centre, and his two last books are particularly relevant to the subject today. 14 00:01:54,650 --> 00:02:00,230 His penultimate book was called Is the EU Doomed Question Mark? 15 00:02:00,230 --> 00:02:06,440 And his last book was called Counterrevolution Liberal Europe in Retreat. 16 00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:19,380 So without more do please join me in welcoming this year's Kukowski lecture in. 17 00:02:19,380 --> 00:02:26,580 Thank you very much, Tim. Thank you all for coming. Thank you to St Antony's College for hosting me. 18 00:02:26,580 --> 00:02:38,920 Thank you. My is St. Anthony's friends, calypso yarn and this wonderful team that works and that has helped to organise this meeting. 19 00:02:38,920 --> 00:02:48,600 And of course, thank you very much for coming on a Friday afternoon when I suppose most of you have much better things than that. 20 00:02:48,600 --> 00:02:50,850 It's a great pleasure and honour. 21 00:02:50,850 --> 00:03:01,920 And in particular, it's of course, a great honour to speak in honour of or to celebrate the memory of Alicia Kukowski. 22 00:03:01,920 --> 00:03:10,170 So I would like to begin this lecture with a quote from one of the most famous essays by Kukowski, 23 00:03:10,170 --> 00:03:19,380 written quite entertainingly, but at the same time with great seriousness called Politics and the Devil, 24 00:03:19,380 --> 00:03:23,730 and it suddenly point by the end of his essay, 25 00:03:23,730 --> 00:03:34,650 Kukowski says about about the devil and about various sort of invidious things that the devil does in in politics. 26 00:03:34,650 --> 00:03:44,310 The following. He takes up the principle of majority rule and distorted by suggesting the attractive 27 00:03:44,310 --> 00:03:51,870 idea that the majority as such is right and is therefore entitled to do anything, 28 00:03:51,870 --> 00:04:01,170 including abolish the very principle of the majority entitled to do anything, including abolish the very principle of majority. 29 00:04:01,170 --> 00:04:10,230 And that, I think is a good motto for an account of what has happened in Poland over the over the last five years or so. 30 00:04:10,230 --> 00:04:24,360 When a party which came to power with impeccable majority legitimacy during the first term in office has dismantled old institutions, 31 00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:35,430 processes and practises which render the principle of majority rule both meaningful and attractive. 32 00:04:35,430 --> 00:04:40,110 As you know, a month ago, after a month and a week ago, 33 00:04:40,110 --> 00:04:49,260 the Polish sovereign Polish electorate massively decided to renew the democratic mandate to peace, 34 00:04:49,260 --> 00:04:54,780 as I will be calling Law and Justice Party by its Polish acronym. 35 00:04:54,780 --> 00:05:00,640 And this victory was absolutely decisive and unquestionable. 36 00:05:00,640 --> 00:05:11,070 Peace has got over two million votes more than it had in 2015, 37 00:05:11,070 --> 00:05:17,610 so it was almost unique in Polish post-communist history that a party in power 38 00:05:17,610 --> 00:05:23,370 the incumbent has actually increased its vote in takes rather than decrease. 39 00:05:23,370 --> 00:05:26,460 It got over three million votes, 40 00:05:26,460 --> 00:05:35,820 more eight million to five million than the next party or actually coalition so-called civic coalition and in the elections, 41 00:05:35,820 --> 00:05:43,410 and it has maintained its absolute majority in the lower house of Parliament to 165 votes. 42 00:05:43,410 --> 00:05:57,420 Seats out of 460 are and all that within a very high by Polish standards, electoral turnout of sixty one point seven percent. 43 00:05:57,420 --> 00:06:07,290 So of course, and and it has achieved this victory despite the following fact that over the last four years, 44 00:06:07,290 --> 00:06:15,480 it has first paralysed the Constitutional Tribunal and convert it into an active and enthusiast. 45 00:06:15,480 --> 00:06:18,330 The helper of the government, too, 46 00:06:18,330 --> 00:06:28,950 has subjected regular courts starting from the Supreme Court and ending with the lowest court to increased political pressure and control, 47 00:06:28,950 --> 00:06:39,810 including the so-called disciplinary system basically of harassing and persecuting independent judges. 48 00:06:39,810 --> 00:06:53,970 Three are turning Electoral Commission's into the all instruments subjected to the Minister of Internal Affairs for making a joke of the law 49 00:06:53,970 --> 00:07:03,450 making process by basically passing all of the most important pieces of legislation through some sort of fast track without any consultation, 50 00:07:03,450 --> 00:07:14,310 etc. Five. Establishing a widespread system of supposed and patronage in the state owned industries. 51 00:07:14,310 --> 00:07:23,440 Six. Converting the public media. Really vulgar propaganda device or instruments for the ruling party. 52 00:07:23,440 --> 00:07:32,470 Seven. From a position of relatively impotent, even though not in the euro area, 53 00:07:32,470 --> 00:07:38,710 actor or player within the EU, it has reduced Poland to the very far fringes of the EU, 54 00:07:38,710 --> 00:07:43,900 with Poland having this doubtful distinction of being the first member state 55 00:07:43,900 --> 00:07:51,010 against whom the Article seven sanctioning procedure has been established, 56 00:07:51,010 --> 00:07:52,030 etc., etc., 57 00:07:52,030 --> 00:08:03,400 etc. So I could go on and on and and continue this litany of various political and constitutional mythical acts of misconduct of the ruling party. 58 00:08:03,400 --> 00:08:12,370 But I hope you'll excuse me from leaving. Thank me for not continuing, because that would take the more the whole evening. 59 00:08:12,370 --> 00:08:19,690 The question, of course, is why has it happened? But before I try to address this question, 60 00:08:19,690 --> 00:08:29,740 let me say that I have deliberately used a certain very distorting shortcut 61 00:08:29,740 --> 00:08:35,260 articulation by saying that the electorate indeed of the sovereign did this, 62 00:08:35,260 --> 00:08:46,910 etc. In fact, Poland now is divided and polarised in an totally unprecedented way. 63 00:08:46,910 --> 00:09:00,280 And while eight point eight million voters voted for peace, eight point eight million voted for entirely peace parties, 64 00:09:00,280 --> 00:09:06,730 with seven percent of voters voting for so-called anti systemic party confederations. 65 00:09:06,730 --> 00:09:14,350 So depending on how you consider it, you may added two entities in which case we will have a clear plurality at least, 66 00:09:14,350 --> 00:09:20,410 or even a majority of votes against base or even counted on the side of any democracy. 67 00:09:20,410 --> 00:09:26,230 You have more or less 50 50 division political divisions in Polish society, 68 00:09:26,230 --> 00:09:36,800 with the small number of undecided voters with a declining number of voters sort of who transfer their loyalty from party to party. 69 00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:43,450 So the this more or less 50 50 party political division became consolidated. 70 00:09:43,450 --> 00:09:53,920 Further, this political division is correlated with social stratification to an increased degree, 71 00:09:53,920 --> 00:10:04,780 so it is the sort of polarisation that similar Martin Lipsett called segmental rather than overlapping. 72 00:10:04,780 --> 00:10:13,690 This is a division which is also highly memorialised in the sense that we consider them people. 73 00:10:13,690 --> 00:10:24,100 On the other side of this piece, anti-peace divide not only wrong, but who are deeply mistaken, but also fundamentally evil. 74 00:10:24,100 --> 00:10:31,570 And also it's largely negative in the sense that the intensity of hatred for the others is 75 00:10:31,570 --> 00:10:40,930 higher than the intensity of our loyalty and allegiance to people who think alike locally. 76 00:10:40,930 --> 00:10:50,350 And while this polarisation perhaps doesn't fully explain the causes for the popularity of this authoritarian populism, 77 00:10:50,350 --> 00:10:57,550 that war that governs Poland now sort of is an important part of any count because I think there is a 78 00:10:57,550 --> 00:11:05,920 degree of consensus in political science in this sort of burgeoning industry of studying populism. 79 00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:18,400 That polarisation is very favourable to populism, which sort of makes sense when you think of it is, I mean, after all, 80 00:11:18,400 --> 00:11:27,610 populists use this language of us versus them of having to strengthen inside loyalty 81 00:11:27,610 --> 00:11:32,820 against the outsiders as an important engine in their rhetoric and ideology. 82 00:11:32,820 --> 00:11:40,900 And there has been recently published a very interesting book by Greek scholar Takis Pappas called Populism and Liberal Democracy, 83 00:11:40,900 --> 00:11:48,710 where he makes this point very well that the higher degree of populism, the higher likelihood of victory of topics, 84 00:11:48,710 --> 00:11:56,380 so higher degree of polarisation, the higher likelihood for populists to it. 85 00:11:56,380 --> 00:12:04,910 But as I said, it may be an important aspect of the background account of circumstances in Poland and actually 86 00:12:04,910 --> 00:12:16,270 doesn't explain fully why Kaczynski and his party have enjoyed such spectacular growth and success. 87 00:12:16,270 --> 00:12:18,170 So what are the. 88 00:12:18,170 --> 00:12:33,620 Because of that, in political science, there is a distinction between two types of explanations of support and contestation of democracy. 89 00:12:33,620 --> 00:12:38,060 And they point on the one hand at structural causes. 90 00:12:38,060 --> 00:12:46,640 On the other hand, on what is what gets this ugly word agent or agent causes, right? 91 00:12:46,640 --> 00:12:50,390 So. So the structure explanations seem to be much more rational. 92 00:12:50,390 --> 00:13:01,410 They point at long term factors that factors related to the voters and the factors which only indirectly affect politics. 93 00:13:01,410 --> 00:13:13,360 If. And structural explanations have this great attractiveness to them that they do not ask us to assume that voters are irrational, 94 00:13:13,360 --> 00:13:19,210 ignorant or plain stupid, which sort of doesn't sound good. 95 00:13:19,210 --> 00:13:28,130 The problem is that those structural explanations do not actually do the proper work. 96 00:13:28,130 --> 00:13:37,060 The the structural factors greatly under determine the growth of populism in countries such as Poland or Hungary. 97 00:13:37,060 --> 00:13:40,810 Now, in the beginning of 2015, in journal Democracy, 98 00:13:40,810 --> 00:13:51,070 there was a great piece by two American natural and American and Canadian political scientists, Steven Levitsky and and look on way. 99 00:13:51,070 --> 00:14:01,810 Where are they sort of summarised their findings about what countries are not hospitable for democratisation? 100 00:14:01,810 --> 00:14:11,470 In other words, in what structural environment democracy is unlikely to persist and to become consolidated. 101 00:14:11,470 --> 00:14:16,090 So it was the beginning of 2015. They must have submitted this article in 2014. 102 00:14:16,090 --> 00:14:24,970 So on the eve of Polish debacle, but already halfway through the developments in Hungary, 103 00:14:24,970 --> 00:14:34,210 and they put together the following structural cases where just don't expect democracy to win. 104 00:14:34,210 --> 00:14:45,220 First, they side are very weak, very weak states with low economic growth, great blight sub-Saharan Africa or, 105 00:14:45,220 --> 00:14:58,030 in contrast, very high growth, very high economic growth states with single party system China, Singapore, Malaysia. 106 00:14:58,030 --> 00:15:04,420 Then, they said, dynastic monarchies with oil Persian Gulf. 107 00:15:04,420 --> 00:15:11,740 Then they said, countries with very low linkage to the West Central Central Asia. 108 00:15:11,740 --> 00:15:24,000 And finally, uh, and finally, they said and I have forgotten the first one, but it may it may come to me. 109 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:36,040 It may come to me in that moment in any event. None of these structural characteristics in any way resembles the situation of Poland and Hungary. 110 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:45,550 Strong linkages. Linkages? Oh yeah. The first one was the state born out of violent revolution like Cuba, the opium. 111 00:15:45,550 --> 00:15:52,330 None of this applies to Poland and Hungary. Not not even oil, unfortunately. 112 00:15:52,330 --> 00:16:02,200 So I remember having had that discussion with one of the greatest political scholars in the study of 113 00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:10,300 of democratisation who also happens to be of Polish background Adam Silver and why you and I ask him, 114 00:16:10,300 --> 00:16:14,320 how do you understand why these things are happening now in Poland? 115 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:22,150 I asked him about a year ago, remember in the avalanche, in a cafe in Greenwich Village, and he said, I don't know. 116 00:16:22,150 --> 00:16:28,420 I simply can't understand and feel so many people that in his interview with Yeltsin Schakowsky political. 117 00:16:28,420 --> 00:16:33,760 Now, if it's of course, he doesn't understand that no one, no one understands. 118 00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:39,940 So I think that you have to start from another angle and to for the time being, 119 00:16:39,940 --> 00:16:51,400 abandon those structural attempts at explanation and look at what is called a gigantic side of the thing that is, 120 00:16:51,400 --> 00:16:55,510 rather than demand supply side and politics. 121 00:16:55,510 --> 00:17:05,470 Look at the behaviour of the political leaders rather than voters at short term 122 00:17:05,470 --> 00:17:11,290 factors rather than long terms and the factors which directly affect politics. 123 00:17:11,290 --> 00:17:19,450 And here, I think that one way of understanding the success of peace is to enquire into the sort of narrative, 124 00:17:19,450 --> 00:17:31,340 the sort of discourse that the Yaroslav Kaczynski presented to Polish society as its own special brand of populism. 125 00:17:31,340 --> 00:17:41,950 Now, one word about populism. There is this temptation to believe that since we are using the same word of populism related to 126 00:17:41,950 --> 00:17:50,230 Brexit and Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump and Erdogan and Putin and Kaczynski and and and so on, 127 00:17:50,230 --> 00:17:54,280 then there must be the same phenomenon behind it. Mistake. 128 00:17:54,280 --> 00:18:01,970 You know, there is not a single populism. There are populism in plural, because populism is a sort of. 129 00:18:01,970 --> 00:18:07,700 Response, although it's Aberrational and and in my view, false response to real problems, 130 00:18:07,700 --> 00:18:17,030 real problems are different in different countries because they respond to sort of country specific circumstances. 131 00:18:17,030 --> 00:18:27,350 It's a little bit like, you know, to to paraphrase this too often quoted first sentence from Anna Karenina, 132 00:18:27,350 --> 00:18:32,810 you know that, you know, every happy family is the same. All unhappy families are unhappy in their different ways. 133 00:18:32,810 --> 00:18:38,780 One may say that probably all happy or established democracies are sort of similar, 134 00:18:38,780 --> 00:18:47,180 but all on successful and consolidated democracies are unsuccessful and on consolidating their own different ways. 135 00:18:47,180 --> 00:18:51,680 And that applies to populism. So, for instance, 136 00:18:51,680 --> 00:18:57,170 there is a sort of near consensus amongst American scholars about the sources 137 00:18:57,170 --> 00:19:04,160 of Trump's and before Tea Party success that it basically responds to anxiety, 138 00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:07,760 economic anxieties of middle and lower middle class, 139 00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:20,690 especially of male white middle Americans, plus their fear and concern about globalisation, like exporting their jobs elsewhere, 140 00:19:20,690 --> 00:19:32,360 where the labour costs are lower and importing cheap stuff to the states mainly, of course, from China, India, Indonesia, etc. 141 00:19:32,360 --> 00:19:43,880 So I think that in the case of Europe, of Central European populism, the conditions or the factors which trigger local populism are quite different. 142 00:19:43,880 --> 00:19:51,440 But what is common is that a successful populist leader manages to put together a package response, 143 00:19:51,440 --> 00:19:57,290 which responds to more than one types of concerns and anxieties. 144 00:19:57,290 --> 00:20:02,780 So my simple theory for a success of populism, Alla Kuczynski, 145 00:20:02,780 --> 00:20:11,930 is that he was successful in putting together three themes which do not necessarily logically sort of go together. 146 00:20:11,930 --> 00:20:22,940 But he was very smart in 2015 and then repeating it in 2019 to present to the people a package huge response to three types of concerns. 147 00:20:22,940 --> 00:20:30,200 First, anti-establishment, second anti modernism, third and others. 148 00:20:30,200 --> 00:20:34,850 That is, xenophobic. Anti establishment in 2015 was obvious. 149 00:20:34,850 --> 00:20:40,100 It was against the incumbent. It was about against this sort of civic platform. 150 00:20:40,100 --> 00:20:48,290 And its allies, who had ruled for more than one term were arrogant and insensitive to real people 151 00:20:48,290 --> 00:20:54,290 and plenty so it prefigure the anti establishment discourse of 2019 and 2019. 152 00:20:54,290 --> 00:21:00,200 Of course, it couldn't have been repeated because these guys, I mean, Kaczynski and his guys have been in power for the last four years, 153 00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:11,510 but they meant still to present themselves as sort of dissidents and to the big their enemies as being the mainstream of the elite. 154 00:21:11,510 --> 00:21:19,880 And of course, the worst. The most hated part of this elite were judges or. 155 00:21:19,880 --> 00:21:27,020 Liberal media love to fall in or Polish representatives in Europe. 156 00:21:27,020 --> 00:21:32,180 So with with Donald Tusk in particular, etc. So they still managed. 157 00:21:32,180 --> 00:21:41,510 I mean, the anti-establishment rhetoric of 2015 prefigured anti-elite, a narrative of of 2019. 158 00:21:41,510 --> 00:21:54,320 The second one was anti modernism was mainly in pernicious conditions, anti secularism, slogans against feminism, against equality, of of of genders, 159 00:21:54,320 --> 00:22:13,620 against all the sort of secularist enlightenment themes which they managed to present as some sort of contaminated fruits of West European decadence. 160 00:22:13,620 --> 00:22:21,710 And the third one was anti-EU are those that are xenophobic. In 2015, it was clear it was mainly into refugees and the Muslim, 161 00:22:21,710 --> 00:22:29,450 anti-Islam and Thai terrorists, etc. They they are not going only to endanger our security. 162 00:22:29,450 --> 00:22:36,200 They are also going to undermine our identity, our cohesion, our community. 163 00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:46,340 In 2019, it was difficult to persist in this because the refugee crisis or so-called refugee crisis in Europe has greatly declined. 164 00:22:46,340 --> 00:22:51,950 So they found another in this some internal, others LGBT. 165 00:22:51,950 --> 00:23:00,050 Gender ideas. It's important to have an enemy whom you can to mobilise the people, the people against. 166 00:23:00,050 --> 00:23:07,940 And I think that these three films have been the winning proposition, both in 2015 and 2019. 167 00:23:07,940 --> 00:23:13,370 They were greatly infused with paranoia and I'm using kill the concept of paranoia. 168 00:23:13,370 --> 00:23:18,530 Not in a clinical sense, of course, but in a purely political sense, 169 00:23:18,530 --> 00:23:27,950 as a Richard Hofstadter did in his famous classical 1964 essay on the paranoid state in American politics. 170 00:23:27,950 --> 00:23:38,990 And he saw all that in Poland. That is this idea that politics is a stage of this Manichaean struggle between the good and the evil, 171 00:23:38,990 --> 00:23:46,040 and our leader is the only thing which stands between us and the total disaster and the enemy. 172 00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:52,460 So on the one hand, they are pathetically weak because, of course, real society that doesn't support them. 173 00:23:52,460 --> 00:23:56,300 On the other hand, they are incredibly dangerous because they are so desperate. 174 00:23:56,300 --> 00:24:07,770 You know, you can hear the echoes of Stalin's idea that class struggle actually intensifies with the weakening of the bourgeoisie, etc. 175 00:24:07,770 --> 00:24:21,480 And to this, Liberal Democrats were unable to present an equally attractive counter-narrative to the counter-narrative 176 00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:29,460 to counter discourse of civic platform and other Liberal Democrats was at the same time meek and arrogant, 177 00:24:29,460 --> 00:24:34,440 which come to think of it as the is the horrible combination. 178 00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:38,580 It wasn't me because it was playing on the ground. 179 00:24:38,580 --> 00:24:48,390 Determined by piece, Kuczynski drew an agenda within which we kept responding. 180 00:24:48,390 --> 00:24:50,010 But we were always on the defensive. 181 00:24:50,010 --> 00:25:00,940 We always response civic platform that prided itself on being a centrist party was only centrist, not in a positive ideological way, 182 00:25:00,940 --> 00:25:12,690 but in the sense that it was sort of encircled by piece from the left, by its social welfare rhetoric, from the right, by its identity politics sense. 183 00:25:12,690 --> 00:25:24,450 In a sense, peace and policy platform was caught in this ambush sort of some sort of blackmail in which it could 184 00:25:24,450 --> 00:25:36,820 only respond with an increasingly narrow ground fully determined and and controlled by critics. 185 00:25:36,820 --> 00:25:44,950 And so that's about this supply side, about the supply of winning rhetoric by Polish populace. 186 00:25:44,950 --> 00:25:55,450 But of course, it's only one half of the story because the true source of success to populists is to what extent there is a 187 00:25:55,450 --> 00:26:04,480 good congruence between the supply and the demand between what political leaders say and what people expect. 188 00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:12,940 And of course, Kaczynski kept telling people exactly what they wanted to hear. 189 00:26:12,940 --> 00:26:19,810 We Liberal Democrats, we seem to be arrogant because we seem to sort of raise the bar too high. 190 00:26:19,810 --> 00:26:25,420 He kept saying, Well, maybe you are, you know, maybe you are not educated enough. 191 00:26:25,420 --> 00:26:29,380 Maybe you're not enlightened enough. Maybe you are ignorant of something. 192 00:26:29,380 --> 00:26:34,780 Maybe maybe you express some prejudice and stereotypes. 193 00:26:34,780 --> 00:26:44,230 Well, I do know it's not a good thing to say to your voters why Kaczynski kept saying, Do not be ashamed of who you are. 194 00:26:44,230 --> 00:26:48,580 You should be proud of it. You hate LGBT fine. 195 00:26:48,580 --> 00:26:51,980 You know that's who you are. Don't apologise for it. Be proud of it. 196 00:26:51,980 --> 00:26:56,390 You know, we don't do these sort of things here, you know, around here in Poland. 197 00:26:56,390 --> 00:27:02,260 So, so here there's always this edge that he was telling people what they wanted to 198 00:27:02,260 --> 00:27:12,100 hear without somehow raising the bar of the test for their intelligence knowledge. 199 00:27:12,100 --> 00:27:20,110 And if you like morality, you hate would be refugees from Syria or wherever. 200 00:27:20,110 --> 00:27:24,510 You don't have to be embarrassed about it. It is your identity. 201 00:27:24,510 --> 00:27:35,990 Absolutely be proud. But the main conference between the supply and demand came, of course, at the level of social welfare. 202 00:27:35,990 --> 00:27:45,040 This is absolutely true that are different groups in post-communist Poland, 203 00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:57,310 but never benefited from the fruits of economic post 1999 transition to a different degree and all while probably there were very few. 204 00:27:57,310 --> 00:28:01,990 And I'm here on a rather thin ice because I'm not an economist. 205 00:28:01,990 --> 00:28:08,230 There were very few absolute losers. There were many relative losers in terms of relative deprivation. 206 00:28:08,230 --> 00:28:19,900 We all know, as we all know, relative deprivation is probably the most important factor in the sense of social injustice. 207 00:28:19,900 --> 00:28:28,750 You know it from Runciman, from the old grandma grandpa around, Runciman wrote above it about the force of relative deprivation, 208 00:28:28,750 --> 00:28:41,110 and the many people indeed felt fairly that the advantages from the transition do not benefit them to the same degree as they can see, 209 00:28:41,110 --> 00:28:49,810 especially with the rise of all the new, sometimes illegitimate, sometimes illegitimate fortunes. 210 00:28:49,810 --> 00:28:55,780 So here he's provided an ingenious response. 211 00:28:55,780 --> 00:29:03,820 Rather than having a real welfare state type of social policy, 212 00:29:03,820 --> 00:29:10,510 it decided to print and give away cash, which you know, which of course, is a horrible solution. 213 00:29:10,510 --> 00:29:11,890 From point of view. 214 00:29:11,890 --> 00:29:20,560 Both of social justice and economic rationale and point of economic rationality is because it's totally unsustainable in the long term. 215 00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:22,570 It costs about 10 billion euro per year. 216 00:29:22,570 --> 00:29:33,310 You know, the only DeFi, so hold 500 plus system of of support for children are it's my work now, maybe next year, maybe in two years time. 217 00:29:33,310 --> 00:29:38,650 Who can who can assure that when the downturn comes, the budget can support. 218 00:29:38,650 --> 00:29:47,980 And of course, inflation will be much part of it. But it's also very unjust because it basically means privatisation of social services 219 00:29:47,980 --> 00:29:55,120 means that people are given cash without any public goods being additionally produced, 220 00:29:55,120 --> 00:30:01,750 so there's no increase in supply. There's an increase in demand in cash based demand. 221 00:30:01,750 --> 00:30:06,970 Not a single new school. Not a single new hospital bed. 222 00:30:06,970 --> 00:30:14,860 Not a single new centre for care over seniors has been produced over the four years of his government, 223 00:30:14,860 --> 00:30:20,500 but people got lots of money and that makes them happy. They they can see it in the wallet. 224 00:30:20,500 --> 00:30:24,270 This is like an instant gratification. 225 00:30:24,270 --> 00:30:37,830 Without consideration of the long term consequences of that and that instant gratification produced this instant gratitude to the government and. 226 00:30:37,830 --> 00:30:51,720 And in addition, it came in a package of the dignitary type of rhetoric in the recent great piece by Tim in New York, review of books, 227 00:30:51,720 --> 00:31:04,950 team reports, his conversations and also and one one one of the students with whom team talk says they gave people their dignity. 228 00:31:04,950 --> 00:31:11,120 And indeed, that was the dominant rhetoric. Money is dignity there. 229 00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:22,530 Their wallet is higher dignity. And how can we win with our arguments about technicalities on how you elect National 230 00:31:22,530 --> 00:31:27,870 Council of Judiciary against a grandiose things such as giving people dignity? 231 00:31:27,870 --> 00:31:36,540 We could. But now there is now that I've mentioned this council of Jurisprudence, there's also the question. 232 00:31:36,540 --> 00:31:44,820 But OK, so we have that type of, you know, social welfare, uh, supply. 233 00:31:44,820 --> 00:31:53,940 But what about this sense of anxiety or concern about all the dismantlement of this system, 234 00:31:53,940 --> 00:32:02,130 of the rule of law and courts and democracy that I had mentioned right at the beginning of this lecture? 235 00:32:02,130 --> 00:32:15,900 How come people became so effectively desensitised to it that the voters in the end or at least those 44 percent of voters of peace? 236 00:32:15,900 --> 00:32:27,570 For them, it didn't count very heavily on their calculus, and they were prepared to look the other way when voting for peace. 237 00:32:27,570 --> 00:32:37,380 And it and now I'm putting on my hat as a constitutional lawyer and I may say, Well, that's because that's how the contemporary. 238 00:32:37,380 --> 00:32:43,590 Authoritarianism works, it works in an incremental way, 239 00:32:43,590 --> 00:32:54,480 rather than having this sort of points turning point in which the rule of law is abolished overnight. 240 00:32:54,480 --> 00:33:10,470 It works through the. Not by individual actions taken separately, but by the invidious connexions made between different acts and different laws. 241 00:33:10,470 --> 00:33:16,230 So it's not always so easy for non-lawyers, not technicians, to see. 242 00:33:16,230 --> 00:33:23,550 It's sort of obscure. It's almost invisible. But how does the new law about prosecutor general connect with the new Law of 243 00:33:23,550 --> 00:33:26,980 National Council of Jurisprudence and the way the new Law of Supreme Court? 244 00:33:26,980 --> 00:33:37,920 I mean, it really takes a lot of technical knowledge, and also because contemporary authoritarians such as urban Kaczynski, 245 00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:49,920 to some extent their ground, do not formally speaking abolish the institutions so they don't declare it Constitutional Court non-existent. 246 00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:57,140 They hollow them out of their original meaning, so they turn them. 247 00:33:57,140 --> 00:34:04,390 Into the instruments. Serving the goal totally opposite than their original raison d'etre. 248 00:34:04,390 --> 00:34:08,620 So take Constitutional Court in Poland. I mean, like everywhere in the world. 249 00:34:08,620 --> 00:34:14,080 If there's one thing that any Constitutional Court does, it is being counter majoritarian. 250 00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:25,330 It is being to provide a check upon the exercise of power by the majority in the legislation and the executive. 251 00:34:25,330 --> 00:34:29,890 It might do many other things unless it does that. That's not really a crime. 252 00:34:29,890 --> 00:34:34,930 It might say under the Constitution, certain things are illegitimate, even if the majority wants it. 253 00:34:34,930 --> 00:34:41,460 But in Poland? Well, Constitutional Court on 2015 in a very imperfect way. 254 00:34:41,460 --> 00:34:50,400 It been sort of by and large and you see, I'm extremely, extremely tentative about it, played that role in Poland. 255 00:34:50,400 --> 00:35:01,830 The Constitutional Court has been the first effectively disabled for the entire year, the year of 2016 and run by late by December 2016. 256 00:35:01,830 --> 00:35:08,940 Piece got majority of judges and quasi judges on Constitutional Tribunal. 257 00:35:08,940 --> 00:35:15,450 It started playing the opposite role that of a helper of an assistant to the government 258 00:35:15,450 --> 00:35:20,610 or not to reduce political costs of bringing about lots of anti-constitutional, 259 00:35:20,610 --> 00:35:25,650 such as on the elections of the National Council of Judiciary, 260 00:35:25,650 --> 00:35:34,710 including its judicial segment by the Parliament, i.e. by the ruling party, i.e. by the leader. 261 00:35:34,710 --> 00:35:40,020 OK, so so that's that's the way it works. But but the institution is still there. 262 00:35:40,020 --> 00:35:46,020 There is a building. There is the name. There are people who wear their judicial robes. 263 00:35:46,020 --> 00:35:52,980 They behave as if they wear constitutional judges and too many people maybe somehow obscure. 264 00:35:52,980 --> 00:36:03,570 But what they are doing actually is the opposite to what they were supposed to do under constitutional, under constitutional rules. 265 00:36:03,570 --> 00:36:06,540 So part of the move and occasionally, well, 266 00:36:06,540 --> 00:36:15,150 occasionally quite often piece has been blatantly violating and breaching explicit texts of the Constitution. 267 00:36:15,150 --> 00:36:25,290 But they not always had to do it because what they basically did is to violate the unwritten norms behind the Constitution. 268 00:36:25,290 --> 00:36:28,590 Unwritten rules, the rules, the constitutional provisions, 269 00:36:28,590 --> 00:36:38,060 which you can read between the lines and we all constitutional lawyers know that you cannot read the Constitution only with the text you have there. 270 00:36:38,060 --> 00:36:48,780 You have to read it in the context of various conventions and norms and unwritten rules which give sense and meaning to those reading words. 271 00:36:48,780 --> 00:36:54,360 Why people behave, whether something is unwritten, then that's not not part of the package. 272 00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:59,760 OK, I'm coming slowly to an end of this lecture. So let me raise the question. 273 00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:06,870 Well, what are what sort of general lessons can we draw from the Polish case? 274 00:37:06,870 --> 00:37:15,630 Because I can understand that for some of us, at least, Poland is not like the epicentre of the world. 275 00:37:15,630 --> 00:37:27,150 This is not the most important country in the world. So to people who are not like young Salonika or me or Professor Norman Davis, you know, 276 00:37:27,150 --> 00:37:35,390 Poland may be just one of the case studies which are as interesting or uninteresting as any other country. 277 00:37:35,390 --> 00:37:42,080 So if Poland as a case study, what is it a case study of? 278 00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:57,870 And I would offer three possible or interesting lessons which can be drawn, which are more general and universal than just about Poland itself. 279 00:37:57,870 --> 00:38:04,340 So the first one is about. 280 00:38:04,340 --> 00:38:13,070 Populist, and that is that a relationship between populism and democracy. 281 00:38:13,070 --> 00:38:20,990 There is this rather popular and influential theory that populism is perhaps even a welcome, 282 00:38:20,990 --> 00:38:27,800 perhaps even a beneficial democratic corrective to excessively liberal democracy. 283 00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:39,380 Or, as Cass mother put it, it's an illiberal democratic response to non-democratic liberals illiberal democratic 284 00:38:39,380 --> 00:38:49,880 response to non-democratic liberals so that it enhances this forgotten or ignored, 285 00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:59,860 ignored by US liberals. Democratic participant representative ingredient of democracy. 286 00:38:59,860 --> 00:39:06,010 In my view, the Polish and Hungarian cases show it's a total and utter nonsense. 287 00:39:06,010 --> 00:39:13,090 There's absolutely nothing democratic about what Kuczynski has been doing over the last year. 288 00:39:13,090 --> 00:39:17,470 Whatever theory or conception of democracy, you have deliberative, 289 00:39:17,470 --> 00:39:25,180 participatory or direct or indirect or whatever the rule of Kaczynski was anti pluralist. 290 00:39:25,180 --> 00:39:31,120 So that is purely and squarely majoritarian of the winner takes all type, 291 00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:37,300 totally non deliberative, rejecting any parliamentary mechanisms of deliberation. 292 00:39:37,300 --> 00:39:43,150 Certainly against direct democracy. The only proposal for a referendum, 293 00:39:43,150 --> 00:39:57,580 a grotesque proposal but still raised by the president was shared or rejected by by peace against freedom of expression, at least pluralism in media. 294 00:39:57,580 --> 00:40:08,830 So whatever one can say about Kaczynski, there is nothing democratic in any conventional understandings of democracy that we that we may have. 295 00:40:08,830 --> 00:40:19,420 So there may be some other populism which bring in a welcome democratic correction to the liberal democracy, 296 00:40:19,420 --> 00:40:27,880 to democracy by non representative bodies. But you know, things such as non-elected agencies, tribunals, central banks, et cetera. 297 00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:35,440 But sadly, the East European brand of populists is not that kind of democratic correction. 298 00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:43,060 The second general lesson is about what I would call the end of the transitional paradigm, 299 00:40:43,060 --> 00:40:49,000 and that is that in 1999 and later, and I'm now not talking only about the fall of communism, 300 00:40:49,000 --> 00:41:02,320 but about the whole third wave for apartheid full of authoritarian regimes in East Asia, full of military regimes in Latin America, et cetera. 301 00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:11,290 There was a certain sense of feeling that we have entered on a certain trajectory which begins with electoral democracy, 302 00:41:11,290 --> 00:41:18,820 with installing elections in a particular state. And sooner or later, the state will become fickle and robustly democratic. 303 00:41:18,820 --> 00:41:29,390 Now, in his article, which I referred to in a New York review of books as well, it really wasn't the case in countries like many of us didn't share. 304 00:41:29,390 --> 00:41:35,500 They're the sort of liberal optimists, actually. We are very worried and afraid. 305 00:41:35,500 --> 00:41:38,950 And there was this sense of anxiety, and it's absolutely true. True. 306 00:41:38,950 --> 00:41:45,550 But from the outside, when one looks, for example, at my scholarly discipline, this is a comparative constitutional law. 307 00:41:45,550 --> 00:41:54,010 There was this type of optimistic. Now we see naive idealism that we are on the right path, 308 00:41:54,010 --> 00:42:05,140 and things may only get better even if there are occasionally in our times and and short periods of declining of a backsliding in the long term. 309 00:42:05,140 --> 00:42:14,890 The transition from A to B means from all sorts of non-democratic states to be which is liberal democracy as we know it, wherever it is Canada, 310 00:42:14,890 --> 00:42:26,410 in Australia and Sweden, for whatever is your favourite exemplar of a well-functioning democracy, now we see it actually hasn't happened. 311 00:42:26,410 --> 00:42:31,360 There are studies which show that the majority have be preferred of the cases of democratic 312 00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:40,600 deconsolidation in the recent years are brought about by and by elected by freely elected leaders. 313 00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:47,020 So the setting up of electoral democracy doesn't guarantee that you end up with anything like a liberal democracy that is democracy, 314 00:42:47,020 --> 00:42:53,170 which respects also separation of powers, the rule of law and civil and political rights. 315 00:42:53,170 --> 00:43:02,860 You may have a very dramatic backsliding like in Poland and Hungary or Romania, and at some sort of uneasy pothole as Russia and Ukraine, 316 00:43:02,860 --> 00:43:10,090 which is neither the conventional oppressive authoritarianism nor a fake democracy. 317 00:43:10,090 --> 00:43:25,210 And there is no sense, no trap, no sense of evidence that we are moving in this direction in which transitional paradigm seemed to promise we would. 318 00:43:25,210 --> 00:43:31,690 And the third point is, the third lesson will be about if I may say so us. 319 00:43:31,690 --> 00:43:38,080 So let me use this first person, plural, to try to embrace. 320 00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:42,490 Alas, only metaphorically, most of us in this room. 321 00:43:42,490 --> 00:43:44,870 And that is what it is. 322 00:43:44,870 --> 00:43:56,870 What sort of lessons should we draw from the current debacle from this phenomenon of entrenched populist populism, which in turn to the second term? 323 00:43:56,870 --> 00:44:05,910 Of their rule, like in Poland, Hungary before in Venezuela, and so. 324 00:44:05,910 --> 00:44:17,220 And I would say that for us, the main challenge is to resist the double temptation on the one hand of self-flagellation, 325 00:44:17,220 --> 00:44:22,620 on the other hand of complacency or self self self-satisfaction. 326 00:44:22,620 --> 00:44:28,330 Both are equally bad. We should reject the self-flagellation, the sort of we were stupid. 327 00:44:28,330 --> 00:44:34,880 You know, we made some horrible mistakes. We paved the way to pop, you know, maybe not. 328 00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:44,450 Maybe there was very little that could be done in the face of those very committed, energetic, dynamic authoritarians. 329 00:44:44,450 --> 00:44:49,940 But we also should reject the other extreme of this complacency. 330 00:44:49,940 --> 00:44:52,790 And I think there is a space between both temptations, 331 00:44:52,790 --> 00:45:05,840 and this space is the space for a rational self-reflection about how we failed to fulfil the promise of liberal democracy. 332 00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:18,710 However, liberal democracy wasn't faithful to its own promises in all its richness, including egalitarian or secular secularist richness. 333 00:45:18,710 --> 00:45:23,480 So we should aim at a positive vision, but positive vision, 334 00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:36,170 which will not be just the shadow of their populist exclusionary policy of somehow celebrating the majority against various minorities. 335 00:45:36,170 --> 00:45:50,810 We should try to reach out to the voters for populists, always understanding the various moral and electoral defects of their leaders, 336 00:45:50,810 --> 00:46:00,650 of the triumphs or their parents or bonds of this world do not necessarily cannot be extrapolated to their voters. 337 00:46:00,650 --> 00:46:10,460 But at the same time, without sacrificing without sacrificing what is most important and most valuable for us now, 338 00:46:10,460 --> 00:46:20,540 that is respect for minorities, compassion, supremacy of the Constitution and the importance of civil and political rights. 339 00:46:20,540 --> 00:46:30,200 Look, I have begun with the quotation from Kuwait Kosky sort of me and this lecture with Richard Gorkov. 340 00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:36,410 But by the end of the year, so from which I quote to the beginning, he says, 341 00:46:36,410 --> 00:46:45,080 the struggle between the devil and God in history is not a merry spectacle. 342 00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:56,360 The only comfort we have comes from the simple fact that we are not passive observers or victims of this contest, but participants as well. 343 00:46:56,360 --> 00:47:02,210 And therefore our destiny is this decided on the field on which we lost. 344 00:47:02,210 --> 00:47:11,510 And there are two takeaways for me from this message. One is when he mentions this grandiose word of destiny because it highlights for 345 00:47:11,510 --> 00:47:19,130 me how great the stakes of today's struggle against populists of the returns are. 346 00:47:19,130 --> 00:47:30,560 In fact, those stakes couldn't be higher because they, they and their ideologues assault our liberty and its very core. 347 00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:44,690 And so it evokes, for me, Kafka's Process or Huxley's New Brave World on Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. 348 00:47:44,690 --> 00:47:56,270 These are these are the stakes, and that's how we are being assaulted, and we should be aware of that. 349 00:47:56,270 --> 00:48:04,130 But then he also says at the end of the sentence that our destiny is decided on the field on which we run. 350 00:48:04,130 --> 00:48:07,460 So, you know, as of today, as of this lecture, 351 00:48:07,460 --> 00:48:18,370 no social movement in the world came with some sort of inevitability or invent invincibility built into it. 352 00:48:18,370 --> 00:48:25,400 You want to look around. Perhaps you can already see paradoxically today after this second very, 353 00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:35,440 very disconcerting victory of Kaczynski in Poland, sort of the seeds of their own defeat. 354 00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:51,230 We can see the new mayor of Istanbul, Iran and my God, we can see a of China in Budapest. 355 00:48:51,230 --> 00:49:01,190 Can this is unacceptable in Slovakia. You can see Alexander +210 just go skiing in Warsaw. 356 00:49:01,190 --> 00:49:10,160 So these are there may be the signs that the populists are past their moment. 357 00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:19,040 We can all also see this very uneasy but still under the control of the Democratic opposition over the Senate in power. 358 00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:30,230 So no Justice Caucus said nothing is decided on the field on which will Iran do Iran and Iran and Iran. 359 00:49:30,230 --> 00:49:46,180 And I don't know. We'll keep running. Thank you very much. 360 00:49:46,180 --> 00:49:51,640 Thank you very much, like a real firecracker of a lecture before I hand over to young. 361 00:49:51,640 --> 00:49:59,950 There is one seat here, so if someone sitting uncomfortably on the floor is brave enough to come forward, you could have a great. 362 00:49:59,950 --> 00:50:04,270 I got enough. Secondly, I'm Columbia. 363 00:50:04,270 --> 00:50:09,340 Do you think we could just have the door open for a baby just to give a bit of draught? 364 00:50:09,340 --> 00:50:14,290 Just give us a map. Thanks so much. Young thank you. 365 00:50:14,290 --> 00:50:26,260 Thank you. Thank you. OK, I'm delighted to be part of this discussion because my friendship with the speaker goes many years back. 366 00:50:26,260 --> 00:50:32,200 It was the 1970s and he was at such a moment when I was a graduate student. 367 00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:36,700 He was my ghost supervisor and always ghost supervisor. 368 00:50:36,700 --> 00:50:42,190 So it's not somebody he's not. Ghost Writer doesn't mix it up it, but there. 369 00:50:42,190 --> 00:50:46,990 But it was something close, though, because he writes draughts of my, my, 370 00:50:46,990 --> 00:51:04,340 my thesis and before I handed it over to my supervisors who after and his comments and and critique hardly ever had anything to add. 371 00:51:04,340 --> 00:51:14,500 So of course I own him. But but also because it is in a sense, also a kind of promotion of his book, 372 00:51:14,500 --> 00:51:22,990 which I highly recommend you to read it, which is basically focussed slightly on different topic. 373 00:51:22,990 --> 00:51:32,380 It's more there's more jurisprudence rather than politics there, but but it rates it in a very fascinating way. 374 00:51:32,380 --> 00:51:41,980 You know, one of the trials he has now is because he called police a criminal organisation. 375 00:51:41,980 --> 00:51:47,890 I don't know what the judge was saying. The N probably depends for would be a judge. 376 00:51:47,890 --> 00:51:53,390 But I can tell you that his book reads like a criminal novel. 377 00:51:53,390 --> 00:52:04,330 It is. It is jurisprudence you want really to read and and don't read it before you go to bed because you can just keep going back. 378 00:52:04,330 --> 00:52:14,110 So it is really something I do you recommend, and I frankly think that Shokalskiy will be proud of what you listening to here today and so on. 379 00:52:14,110 --> 00:52:21,280 The attitude that he's not no longer with us. OK, I I will not questions anything what he said. 380 00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:33,170 I just. Maybe you should try to ask him to to make some of his position even sharper that he did. 381 00:52:33,170 --> 00:52:42,620 Let's start with his basic thesis that this is basically about agency and structure agency. 382 00:52:42,620 --> 00:52:49,490 So if this is about agency Voytek, there are two possible scenarios. 383 00:52:49,490 --> 00:52:54,680 A piece is the Genesis organisation. 384 00:52:54,680 --> 00:53:10,970 They really understand how what people want, how to get goes to the voters who always voted for us liberals and how to kind of get them on the side. 385 00:53:10,970 --> 00:53:17,150 And that was by actually three times, right? 386 00:53:17,150 --> 00:53:23,000 And the other explanation for those successes is that they are not so genius. 387 00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:37,400 But but liberals are doing so badly that maybe peace didn't have anybody to lose the last series of elections for various reasons. 388 00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:41,720 So which which is, is this for you more credible? 389 00:53:41,720 --> 00:53:47,420 I know that I've put it in a sharp way, but you know you cannot always say on the one hand. 390 00:53:47,420 --> 00:53:53,060 On the other hand, because this of course, changes the focus of discussion. 391 00:53:53,060 --> 00:54:02,980 If you want to get out of this. You know you. You know, you have to to focus on on on the explanation. 392 00:54:02,980 --> 00:54:10,090 Now you say that this was larger about the winning narrative. 393 00:54:10,090 --> 00:54:20,390 Well, but do you really think that narrative, if it is not credible, can bring you very far? 394 00:54:20,390 --> 00:54:33,470 For instance, if if you claim as a liberal, that actually we are in favour of social policy, we are even in favour of 500 plus. 395 00:54:33,470 --> 00:54:48,910 Yeah, but when we wave power, although the country grew 25 percent, you know, over a decade, we always thought we cannot afford any social policy. 396 00:54:48,910 --> 00:54:59,830 And and to that end, we basically denied inequalities we today there are studies of Piketty Group, 397 00:54:59,830 --> 00:55:14,200 which actually showed that Poland is the most unequal country in Europe, and precariat was presented as the best way to generate growth in Poland. 398 00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:23,140 And if, of course, if your economy like in Greece shrinks 25 percent rather than growth 35 percent. 399 00:55:23,140 --> 00:55:31,060 And if you are on the constraint of the fiscal compact, then these discussions are the truth. 400 00:55:31,060 --> 00:55:38,170 But in this particular case, I look at my, especially its social policy. 401 00:55:38,170 --> 00:55:40,030 Well, there is something to discuss. 402 00:55:40,030 --> 00:55:53,830 How can you have a narrative on social policy fit with the record like this, but we can go to other fields, you know, like environmental concerns. 403 00:55:53,830 --> 00:56:03,850 I remember Premier Coach CAPAC going to EU Summit on the Environment, saying that we will veto everything which will stop Poland be, 404 00:56:03,850 --> 00:56:13,910 you know, producing CEO by our terrific mining companies or human rights. 405 00:56:13,910 --> 00:56:26,960 You know, how come that we took eagerly park, you know, in the war, which was not only unique outback, but which brought terrible civilian death. 406 00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:31,290 And then we even welcome. 407 00:56:31,290 --> 00:56:49,230 CIA, a secret comes and when the European Court of Justice requested to pay compensation to the victims of torture, we had only some excuses. 408 00:56:49,230 --> 00:56:57,630 Yes, yes, we're against torture. But but you know, you're part of our violence. 409 00:56:57,630 --> 00:57:06,840 And I can go for a long time. But you see if you want to have a narrative, you have to be credible. 410 00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:14,490 No, I'm not going to say that the narrative of peace is credible. 411 00:57:14,490 --> 00:57:24,800 I fully agree with what you said. But if you have nobody to know storm situations is somewhat tricky. 412 00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:35,020 Then, you know. One of these issues, maybe, and here I should finish. 413 00:57:35,020 --> 00:57:38,540 But, you know. 414 00:57:38,540 --> 00:57:53,660 This issue of majority and democracy, look, this quote of Lashkar Kosky refer to the to the Leninist principle false power in the hands of Soviet. 415 00:57:53,660 --> 00:58:01,790 This is what I have in mind. And liberal democracy was not about all power to the Soviets. 416 00:58:01,790 --> 00:58:14,820 It was about constitutional order, which guaranteed minorities the rights division of power independence, of course in particular. 417 00:58:14,820 --> 00:58:20,900 And you use your beautiful spell it out. 418 00:58:20,900 --> 00:58:30,140 And there were good reasons why we delegated powers from majoritarian institutions to two courts, 419 00:58:30,140 --> 00:58:42,590 but also even two central banks of the European Commission. I mean, look at the autumn and Nordic Greek colleagues who who you know who, 420 00:58:42,590 --> 00:58:54,980 where the discussions about fiscal compact and the and the troika policy following the Greek referendum was very contested. 421 00:58:54,980 --> 00:59:01,400 But at the same time, you know, if you sign up to certain arrangements, you will not necessarily. 422 00:59:01,400 --> 00:59:08,900 Why should Greek voter meet the positions to tear to Dutch or German voter what to do with their money? 423 00:59:08,900 --> 00:59:13,580 So you can argue. So we know why we have done it equally. 424 00:59:13,580 --> 00:59:17,930 You know, on central banks week, we gave power to central banks, 425 00:59:17,930 --> 00:59:26,660 so the government doesn't just spend money it doesn't have before elections to to buy certain groups of electorate. 426 00:59:26,660 --> 00:59:39,620 But this is all true. But the danger is always that you and you wrote all your life about these dilemmas, 427 00:59:39,620 --> 00:59:51,830 particularly when it happened in Hungary for the first time in the 1990s that you know that you cannot ignore parliament altogether to. 428 00:59:51,830 --> 00:59:59,120 That, you know, that said that because otherwise you come to the situations, 429 00:59:59,120 --> 01:00:08,690 as we saw in in Podemos demonstrations in Spain, when when people who argued will have a vote, but we don't have a voice. 430 01:00:08,690 --> 01:00:12,410 We can elect government, but we cannot change policies. 431 01:00:12,410 --> 01:00:24,410 This usually has to do not with institutional arrangements, but but but the power of the markets which slipped under outside democratic control. 432 01:00:24,410 --> 01:00:32,330 Right. I think this is the major problem here, but it has something to do with also, you know, 433 01:00:32,330 --> 01:00:43,220 experts taking decisions on behalf of so-called directly elected representatives. 434 01:00:43,220 --> 01:00:58,280 And here, I want to ask you where that balance is because I fully agree with you that you cannot that democracy is not just about elections. 435 01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:05,100 But can we have democracy without elections? 436 01:01:05,100 --> 01:01:16,620 Of course, this doesn't justify a piece, and it's rhetoric, I'm fully convinced that if tomorrow the opposition takes over parliament, 437 01:01:16,620 --> 01:01:27,330 they will argue the other way around, saying, well, Constitutional Court has powers to stop all laws adopted by by liberals, 438 01:01:27,330 --> 01:01:31,710 so they would go the other way around because it shows the argument they will control Constitutional Court, 439 01:01:31,710 --> 01:01:37,590 which they start with their people now and they lose maybe parliamentary majority. 440 01:01:37,590 --> 01:01:39,690 But the same applies the other way around. 441 01:01:39,690 --> 01:01:54,030 Because if I hear or read arguments now criticising a piece for its effort to change to the retirement arrangements, 442 01:01:54,030 --> 01:02:05,340 saying had we had Constitutional Court, which is independent, it would never allow the change of pension system to be introduced. 443 01:02:05,340 --> 01:02:11,040 Then I ask myself, Is it the best way to approach the topic, right? 444 01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:21,120 So this is a serious dilemma. And I wonder where you stand on this because this defines what we call Democrats to some extent. 445 01:02:21,120 --> 01:02:28,770 And this isn't, you know, and this this also concerned this other external factors about which you write in in the 446 01:02:28,770 --> 01:02:36,240 last part of your book a lot is the strategy to argue in Brussels on this strategy, 447 01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:42,930 to argue in villages where where you lost your loyal voters. 448 01:02:42,930 --> 01:02:55,650 We know how it was in Hungary, where for number of years our liberal friends were more present in capital cities than in villages in Hungary, 449 01:02:55,650 --> 01:03:00,490 and we know how we then did only now when they really started grassroots work in Budapest. 450 01:03:00,490 --> 01:03:06,960 It has changed. So I think these are two small questions which you hopefully will address, 451 01:03:06,960 --> 01:03:16,630 and I leave everything else to the public, which I can show you in this room is more than eager to debate. 452 01:03:16,630 --> 01:03:30,000 The chair will simply stop the international crisis and the opportunity to respond very briefly to Young's points. 453 01:03:30,000 --> 01:03:38,100 And then we'll go for the public. Well, my my answer is very simple because I agree with both main points that you made. 454 01:03:38,100 --> 01:03:42,630 I agree with the fact that the Liberals have done very, 455 01:03:42,630 --> 01:03:54,540 very bad job both on the ground and in the narrative that is that the government of civic platform and its earlier iterations, 456 01:03:54,540 --> 01:04:01,680 etc. hasn't produced any good, robust social policy in Poland. 457 01:04:01,680 --> 01:04:12,960 And that probably was the main source of the anxiety. It hasn't produced good, free quality education, health care, social services, 458 01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:22,200 etc. The point is that peace hasn't produced anything as an alternative. 459 01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:33,540 It produced a cruel lie by privatising social policies, by giving people money at the level of the narrative. 460 01:04:33,540 --> 01:04:39,390 Yes, of course. So that's at the level on the ground of the level of narrative. 461 01:04:39,390 --> 01:04:52,080 It is true that the civic platform was extremely defensive and hasn't produced any positive, 462 01:04:52,080 --> 01:04:56,220 exciting vision other than countering piece about a certain point. 463 01:04:56,220 --> 01:05:00,660 It was basically like fighting tooth proportions. 464 01:05:00,660 --> 01:05:04,700 Are the fascist fascist assault on democracy in, you know? 465 01:05:04,700 --> 01:05:14,790 What else can you concentrate, concentrate and focus on when it comes to relations and between majoritarian democracy, 466 01:05:14,790 --> 01:05:21,450 and there is no major Italian checks built into it? 467 01:05:21,450 --> 01:05:24,450 Again, I very much sympathise with what he said. 468 01:05:24,450 --> 01:05:35,160 And in fact, before 2015, I was sort of a critic of Polish Constitutional Tribunal began believing that Poland and other post-communist democracies. 469 01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:37,620 But prior to all this backsliding, 470 01:05:37,620 --> 01:05:49,870 with much too far in disabling the parliaments and truly democratic institutions by establishing those counter majoritarian elitist institutions. 471 01:05:49,870 --> 01:05:59,490 But there's a good argument when the tension between the courts and the parliamentary is a relatively low level when there is an all out assault, 472 01:05:59,490 --> 01:06:03,750 as was the case of Yeltsin against Russia, the Constitutional Court in 1990s. 473 01:06:03,750 --> 01:06:12,750 Or by urban or by by Kaczynski and earlier with less success, by by virtue of clouds in Czech Republic. 474 01:06:12,750 --> 01:06:17,010 I mean, it's a bit of a luxury to think, but you know what should be really? 475 01:06:17,010 --> 01:06:25,590 The balance between the counter majoritarian majoritarian institutions, counter majority citizens are basically dismantled. 476 01:06:25,590 --> 01:06:28,800 So in this case, we need to defend them. 477 01:06:28,800 --> 01:06:39,180 And in a sense, going into the fine detail about, you know, how to fine tune this relationship to leave it for better times. 478 01:06:39,180 --> 01:06:40,334 Thanks very much for.