A book as topic-specific and detailed about a particular case study as this one is, and as far-reaching and theoretically complex, is usually a rare event. Tackling an arguably over-debated and over-researched topic like populism may appear redundant. But what Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley, the two politics authors, one of whom is based in Cambridge and the other in Warsaw, have achieved is delivering an idiosyncratic interpretation of a Polish leader whose reputation is not associated with liberalism. Jarosław Kaczyński, de facto head for many years of the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS) party, has commanded a Polish society that has regularly given him electoral support. The authors introduce their research topic by asserting that “PiS is in a vanguard of wider changes to democracy as political cleavages in different counties shift towards new divides” (3).
Put another way, a long-lasting, hegemonic European order consisting of democratic liberalism, which by the mid-2020s had fallen into a muddle, had been successfully challenged for nearly a decade by a contrarian PiS revolt that endorsed “statist redistributionism, conservative values, majority rule over institutional proceduralism, ‘common good’ collectivism over individualism, and national sovereignty over transnationalism” (5). For Kaczyński, PiS had established a positive counter-elite framework that represented the interests of the nation over a negative liberal formation whose origins in post-communism after 1989 had hit a brick wall. In turn, a post-Solidarność rebound had captured the political, religious, and social values of ordinary Polish people. Unusually, this movement took over from the post-communist practices that had been savored by cosmopolitan elites.
A starting point in this book is the authors’ comparison of a so-called “Plan B”: Poles living in small towns, poorly educated, less affluent, devoutly religious, communally minded, dependent on the resources of the state, fearful of any change; with “Plan A”: young, financially secure, modernizing, individualistic, outward-looking citizens living in or near large cities (52). This framework corresponds to Polish people suffering low socioeconomic status, expressing communitarian solidarity, requiring pro-state interventionism—generally citizens regarding themselves as left behind—versus high status Polish citizens expressing sociocultural progressivism and engaged in free-market economic activity. The regional distribution of the two categories across Poland has been explained in multiple research studies and the series of diagrams found in Ch. 2; detailing their conditions only confirms a recognized pattern.
Subsequent chapters take on less familiar phenomena. The supposed assault on liberal democratic institutions explores the unique ways that PiS was able to erode such liberal institutions in Poland and abroad. The institutions targeted were numerous in the early years, beginning in 2015 when Kaczyński assumed power: capturing the existing judiciary, that is, the Constitutional Tribunal; its prosecutorial service; the civil service and bureaucracy; parliament itself; state-owned companies; social media; civil society. What is more, liberal organizations reliant on international sources of funding were portrayed as destabilizing Polish society by providing wealth to foreigners, not Poles. The long-accepted rule of law became secondary to the rule of the PiS majority.
The crucial chapter in the book focuses on PiS’s “nativist economics,” which replaced the neoliberal economic agenda of previous governments: they comprised widespread policies of income redistribution along with the pivotal role played by the national state. Often reported by other scholars but arguably minimizing its full impact was a 500+ złoty child benefit program that funneled government spending to less well-off families, only becoming more generous before subsequent elections. This was precisely what left-wing parties should be doing. Indeed, the opposition Civic Forum (Platforma Obywatelska or PO) party eventually caught on and followed PiS’s social spending program; PiS had boasted this was really a revolution of dignity. Adopting this policy allowed PO to defeat PiS by a small margin in the 2023 election. In matters of social spending and function of the state, then, PiS became the most radical of all leftist policies in Europe; it was even further on the left than the previous Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej or SLD) that governed the country from 1993 to 1997, then again from 2001 to 2005 (112).
The authors stress PiS’s singular achievement in their claim that “The party and its allies consistently emphasize the Polish and national dimensions of their version of the welfare state, avoiding the traditionally leftist vocabulary of class” (119). A further unexpected accomplishment was how PiS over two terms raised tax-free thresholds by doubling the initial amount. Minimum wages were raised from 1,750 PLN in 2015 to 3,600 in 2023 (122). As Bill and Stanley suggested, “while the former liberal elites had enriched themselves and their foreign friends, PiS was helping ordinary Poles” (123). Summing up, they contend that “PiS’s electorate as a whole is characterized by both the most traditionally left-wing views on redistribution of all parties in Poland and the most right-wing views on cultural questions like abortion and gay marriage” (131).
The authors are less supportive, then, of its cultural policies including immigration policy, LGBT and gender issues, and women’s rights. European Union requirements had insisted on increased migration to Poland and other member states. But opinion polls indicated different attitudes to this decree: coinciding with the elections, a national referendum in September 2023 one-sidedly specified that 97 percent of Poles opposed admitting illegal immigrants (156). (However turnout was only 41 percent, below the required fifty percent.)
Several million Ukrainian refugees had been arriving in the country after Russia had attacked Poland’s eastern neighbor in February 2022. According to the authors, Poles may have shown more generosity towards them than those who were branded as ethnically-exclusivist migrants. It was not simply nativist slogans that were hurled against cultural “others.” The authors’ conclusion was that culturally similar arrivals were assimilable whereas “supposedly economic migrants from culturally, and racially, different countries” were not (155). To be sure, a counterargument that Polish labor markets had to fulfill their labor needs does not inquire whether labor markets pay lower wages to foreigners. In many states such markets can produce a “race to the bottom.”
In Poland after the communist era, women’s rights have become precarious. The PiS-controlled Constitutional Court, influenced by the Catholic Church, ruled in 2020 making abortion more illegal than ever: “the already very restricted range of cases in which abortion was legal … thus effectively ended abortion rights in Poland in all but the rarest cases” (168). Massive women’s strikes were to follow underscoring that civil society was alive and well.
Polish citizens have consistently supported the EU, but several central European states have become suspicious of its recent leadership. Thus, the authors note: “With decisions in such crucial areas as taxation, borders, foreign policy, defense, climate and environment, energy, education, health, and industry being taken ‘in Brussels,’ Poland would effectively lose its sovereignty, agency, and democratic prerogatives as an independent state…. The subtler threat coming from these softer, creeping processes within the European Union might even be greater than the more obvious security threat posed by Russian military power” (184). Kaczyński’s reply is simple: sovereignty means “the right not to be exploited” (134).
In their last chapter the authors concede that PiS’s postcolonial theory of foreign exploitation and threats to sovereignty have gained traction thanks to the existence of a comprador elite. In a May 2023 survey, EU membership “excessively limited sovereignty and independence,” if only by a slight margin of 45 percent in agreement, 44 percent unconcerned. But it marked a significant shift from the 33-to-55 percent in favor margin a year earlier (207). It was too late for the authors to discuss the surprise election result of PiS-supported Karol Nawrocki, who won the June 2025 presidential election by the slimmest of margins over a liberal candidate. They did emphasize, however, that “Poland’s Good Change is far from over” (268).
The authors’ prescient conclusion suggests how Polish politics in recent years have entailed a skirmish between liberal democracy and democratic illiberalism. In explaining the part played by liberal politics they ask: “Was it possible to repair the damage done to public institutions by illiberal actors without resorting to similarly illiberal, decisionist means?” (235). They accept that most central and east European (CEE) states do not fit the democratic backsliding paradigm associated with the west. Readers who find the democratic backsliding paradigm worrisome are reassured that the CEE may differ from western states; as they maintain, “Poland’s Good Change is far from over” (268). As for the book’s title, dobra zmiana, the phrase may or may not be an oxymoron, but it ought to be rendered as A Good Change—preferably with a question mark added.
