Thursday, 29 October 2026, 5:30pm
William Mong Hall, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
We warmly invite you to an event introducing The Oxford Handbook of Polish Politics (Oxford University Press), a comprehensive volume published in December 2025. The event will feature a discussion with the three editors of the book: Katarzyna Walecka (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw), Simona Guerra (University of Surrey), and Fernando Casal Bértoa (Nottingham University). The discussion will be chaired by Stanley Bill (University of Cambridge).
All are welcome to attend; no registration is required.
As the EU’s fifth-largest member and sixth-biggest economy, Poland provides critical insights into democratic transition, consolidation, and contemporary backsliding challenges. The Handbook examines this trajectory from Solidarity’s success over communism through NATO and EU accession, to recent threats to judicial independence and media freedom, and the mobilisation efforts that restored pro-democratic parties to power. These developments illustrate broader theoretical questions about institutions, party system evolution, and the relationship between economic prosperity and democratic stability. Despite achieving the region’s highest GDP growth from 1989-2015, economic success failed to prevent populist mobilisation. Polish judicial reforms, media capture, and civil society restrictions provide comparative lessons for democracies confronting similar pressures. The book’s editors present findings that question conventional assumptions about democratic consolidation, focusing on Poland’s distinctive features: its weakly institutionalised party system, semi-presidential regime, and the mismatch between Eurosceptic elites and a largely Euroenthusiastic public opinion.
