Poland and Georgia show how democratic backsliding works today: not by cancelling elections but by staffing, steering, and starving checks while keeping democratic ritual intact. The playbook travels through legal design: appointments, disciplinary rules, prosecutors, media governance, and competition law. Other drivers exist, including societal resilience and citizen mobilization in defense of institutions, but for reasons of scope, this piece focuses on the legal instruments of capture, where the patterns are clearest and remedies most concrete.
Both projects began with palatable promises. In Poland after 2015, Law and Justice (PiS) framed reforms as “de-communisation” and efficiency; in Georgia since 2012, Georgian Dream (GD) invoked “Europeanisation” and a return to “order”. These narratives led to technical reforms – who appoints judges, who disciplines them, who runs public media, whose veto counts – felt like neutral housekeeping rather than deliberate transfers of power.
Capturing the referees
Poland hollowed out constitutional review by electing Tribunal judges in breach of rulings and refusing to publish judgments – turning a ministerial duty into a political veto. It repoliticised the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), giving parliament control over judicial seats and generating “neo-judges.” Georgia built an analogue via a tight “judge clan” in the High Council of Justice (HCoJ), monopolising careers and discipline. Amendments in 2025 expanded the number of judge-members, abolished the inspector’s office, concentrated disciplinary power in the secretary, strengthened court chairs, restricted recordings, delayed publication of rulings, and sharply raised salaries tied to the state budget. In both states, constitutional review and judicial careers were placed on political rails while formal structures endured.
Discipline and prosecution
Poland’s Supreme Court Disciplinary Chamber chilled judges, while combining the Justice Minister and Prosecutor General roles concentrated investigative power. Georgia broadened disciplinary offenses like “improper performance,” raised penalties, and imposed isolation rules that cut judges’ professional contact. The shared message: conform quietly or risk your career.
Media and information
PiS reshaped public broadcasters and attempted “Lex TVN” to curb private ownership. GD paired ownership pressure with politicised rulings (notably Rustavi 2) and stigma laws: a 2024 “foreign agents” label for NGOs and media and, in 2025, punitive cases including the jailing of an independent outlet’s co-founder, the first female journalist in Georgia recognised as a prisoner of conscience. Neither model imposed blanket censorship; both sought agenda control and deterrence, shrinking pluralism without abolishing it.
Civil society and surveillance
Poland deployed Pegasus spyware against opposition figures, lawyers, and activists. Georgia’s civic sector, long a watchdog for transparency and rights, now faces severe pressure: in August 2025, the government, for the first time in independent Georgia’s history, froze accounts of 7 leading NGOs – under false claims of aiding protests, building on broader harassment via the Foreign Agent Law. Such steps silence dissent, cut oversight, and deprive citizens of trusted information.
Elections remain; the level field does not
Neither government banned competition; both tilted it. In Poland, weak campaign-finance oversight, public-media dominance, and covert surveillance undercut fairness. In Georgia, parliament bypassed checks, rushed polarising bills, neutralised presidential vetoes, and altered electoral rules to entrench GD. Competition remained in form; equality receded in substance.
The EU factor
EU membership both enabled and constrained Poland. PiS used European resources and legitimacy, but EU law and conditional funding later created costs for capture and tools for rollback. After the 2023 alternation, rule-of-law “super-milestones” reopened funds and supported reversals of disciplinary and media capture, though with contested legality. Georgia’s constitution (Art 78) obliges institutions to pursue EU integration, but being outside the club left only soft leverage: candidate status froze while visa-free travel is at risk, with penalties arriving late and consolidation biting deeper.
Outcomes
Poland lives with dualism: a contested tribunal, “neo-judges,” and public-media resets via debatable tools. Funds flow again, but a single, accepted legal order still requires statute-anchored settlements. Georgia shows consolidation: opaque courts, authoritarianism on the rise, shrinking civic space, and a stalled EU track. Citizens pay first – fewer remedies, poorer information, and deeper distrust in authority.
What repair requires
Repair must be institutional, not charismatic. It means depoliticised judicial appointments; narrow, reviewable grounds for discipline; separation of prosecutorial and ministerial chains; transparent and merit-based court leadership; safeguards for independent media financing and ownership; and civic-space rules that protect NGOs. Externally, conditionality must apply early and predictably. Internally, reversal must rest on statute, inclusivity, and procedural precision, or it risks a new cycle of contestation.
Core lesson: backsliding today is legalist. It advances through councils, chambers, budgets, and licences. Defending rule of law means hardening those circuits against capture, before the next majority learns the same playbook.
Resilience has to be both institutional and civic. Poland’s 2023 election showed that citizens can still push back against an entrenched ruling party when information flows remain plural and coordination is possible. But it also exposed how difficult it is to reverse capture once it sets in: dual legal orders, disputed judicial appointments, and politicized media do not disappear the day after an election, especially when a strong PiS electorate and even harder-line actors remain in play. The 2024 Parliamentary Elections in Georgia offer a darker mirror. Loyalty-based appointments, punitive disciplinary rules, and stigma laws against NGOs and media have steadily narrowed the space for mobilization, allowing the ruling party to hold on despite waves of protest. The lesson is that defenses have to be built in two places at once: 1. through robust, depoliticized appointment and disciplinary systems, and 2. by sustaining investments in civic capacity: independent media, watchdog NGOs, legal aid, and public trust.
Oscar Luigi Guccione
Program Assistant
Transatlantic Security Program
German Marshall Fund of the United States
Warsaw
Poland
Elene Kintsurashvili
Senior Program Coordinator
Transatlantic Security Program
German Marshall Fund of the United States
Warsaw
Poland
