Is it possible to restore trampled democratic norms? The cases of Donalds Tusk and Trump are illustrative in the difficulties such a project faces.
With Donald Trump winning the South Carolina Republican primary it becomes increasingly unlikely that he will not end up being one of the candidates for the 2024 US presidential election. Thus, it gets more and more difficult to pursue legal action against him, for his personal conduct, his business conduct, and his role in January 6th, and he is able to get away with more and more. The US is stuck with bad options on how to deal with Trump and the promised restoration of normality Biden ran on in 2020 is looking like a failure more with every passing day. The situation is reminiscent of Donald Tusk's ongoing struggle to restore democratic institutions in Poland. Is democratic restoration possible?
One of the reasons this has been on my mind lately is the results of the Polish elections where Donald Tusk won on a Biden-esque restoration platform. Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party ran roughshod over Polish democratic institutions in the eight years it ran the country and it turns out that the promised restoration is easier said than done. One of Law and Justice’s most controversial and impactful reform during its time in government was stacking the supreme court by lowering the forced retirement age in order to appoint new judges. The changes were eventually reversed and the sacked judges reinstated but the violation of judicial independence was not reversed, instead politics intervened twice. Later the Law and Justice doubled down on their meddling and passed a law which allows a disciplinary group the power to remove supreme court judges who engage in political activity, again impinging the independence of the judiciary.
The irony is that any ‘restoration’ has to use the tactics of their enemies to carry through the restoration. And when the solution to political meddling in judicial matters is to have politician changing the rules of how the supreme court works it is easy to see both sides as equally bad for norms of jurisprudence. The same is true in the US. To undo the damage Donald Trump made to the norms and customs of the US state Biden has to use the same methods as Trump did. Sure, the levers are pulled in the opposite direction, but he is still messing with the same levers as Trump did.
All of this is not to say that the goal of a democratic restoration is not laudable, or that achieving that restoration is impossible; only that it is a slow process fraught with danger.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover photo by Kaboompics.com from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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