The chapter answers the question ‘Why has the rule of law become so fragile?’ as set up by the 2023 Nine Dots Prize competition. It shows how the liberal narrative of the rule of law is built on repressing the political elements of the legal system. Using Jungian psychoanalysis to analyse the crises of the rule of law, the author shows that the more we repress democratic politics from the legal system, the more the politics will strike back as ‘shadow’ in a distorted, anti-democratic form. The chapter also deepens the analysis of how DWE works politically with anger, preventing it from turning into ‘free-floating rage’ that can be exploited by authoritarian populism. It introduces the notion of ‘critical feeling’ to complement ‘critical thinking’ in contemporary academia.

De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union deepened the crisis within the international Communist movement. The exposure of Stalin's crimes led to widespread disillusionment in Communist parties in the West, while the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 highlighted the moral bankruptcy of the Communist project. This chapter offers a broad overview of this difficult year, discussing why Khrushchev refrained from invading Poland and why he ordered the invasion of Hungary. It also provides new details on the joint Sino-Soviet effort to pressure North Korea's Kim Il Sung to ease brutal repressions. Lastly, the chapter argues that Mao Zedong's efforts to define Stalin's legacy contributed to his emergence as the self-proclaimed strategist for the socialist camp, bolstering China's influence.

The concluding chapter starts by very briefly summarizing key patterns in the litigation over judicial selection and then returns to the de Tocqueville quote and the issue of American exceptionalism. To assess the exceptionalism question, the chapter includes a discussion of litigation over judicial selection outside the United States, finding that it occurs in very few countries and where it does occur, is generally very limited. One exception is the recent burst of litigation in international courts over judicial selection in Poland. Another possible exception is Israel where there has been litigation concerning several judicial selection issues. Overall, the chapter concludes that American exceptionalism in litigation over judicial selection does not lie in the existence of such litigation but in the frequency of that litigation.

Increasingly, illiberal and authoritarian governments are seizing upon the concept of constitutional identity in order to justify and vindicate their political projects in the face of external criticism. This contribution raises questions about what these invocations tell us about the normative value of constitutional identity. The authors argue that, in the European context of supranational legal integration, constitutional identity should not be seen as an unconditional source of value. Invocations of constitutional identity only deserve recognition to the extent that they serve the ideals of constitutionalism. Where constitutional identity is invoked as a normative argument, the normative expectation of constitutionalism is implied – claims from constitutional identity that stand at odds with the ideals of constitutionalism, in fact, invoke the former ironically and frivolously. Exemplary cases in which constitutional identity is invoked to justify forms of ‘illiberal’ constitutionalism – notably the Polish and Hungarian cases – should be considered abuses of the concept as they do not live up to the normative expectations which they evoke.

This chapter offers a comparative analysis of the territories along the southern Baltic littoral, namely Poland, Pomerania and Mecklenburg, with a primary focus on identifying the overarching patterns in the development of the Reformation in the region. The emergence and dissemination of the Reformation in the Baltic region can be traced back to Martin Luther’s prominent public appearance in Worms in 1521. Subsequently, the reform movement rapidly transcended the political and ecclesiastical boundaries in this area. Drawing upon pre-existing institutional frameworks, this article delves into the mechanisms behind the propagation of the new religious message, the establishment of reform networks and the responses of secular authorities. By shedding light on the content of Evangelical preaching and the phenomenon of Baltic iconoclasm, this study aims to discern the identity of the earliest proponents of the burgeoning reform movement. The chapter argues, however, that the subsequent monolithic Lutheran character of the region was a result of the collective decision of princes and secular authorities to adopt the Reformation according to the Wittenberg model.

This chapter introduces the research design and comparative case studies in Part II of the book. In this part of the book, I present historical case studies of Poland and East Germany. This is the qualitative component of the integrated, multimethod difference-in-difference research design with which I test the theoretical propositions laid out in Chapter 2. The first case experienced a post-Stalinist transition, while the second did not. By carefully tracing developments in elite cohesion and coercive capacity across the two otherwise very similar cases, I demonstrate that post-Stalinist transitions caused reductions in coercive capacity. I do so by showing that trends in capacity were similar across the Polish and East German regimes before 1953; that post-Stalinist transitions occurred randomly and were not themselves a function of coercive capacity; and by tracing the causal mechanisms that linked transitions to declines in capacity.

In this chapter, I demonstrate how the shock of Stalin’s death in 1953 caused a collapse in the cohesion of the Polish communist ruling coalition. This breakdown caused a persistent decline in the regime’s coercive capacity. The transition to a post-Stalinist ruling coalition in Warsaw removed the institutional basis for cooperation among PZPR elites. The highest echelons of the communist regime could no longer agree on an appropriate repressive policy or effectively monitor and control their coercive agents. The reformed and reduced post-Stalinist secret police simply did not employ enough agents and secret informants to effectively monitor and repress opponents. Opposition to the communist government among industrial workers and university students crystallized in the 1960s, persisted for decades, and became organized in durable social movements. By the late 1970s, the Polish regime faced a large, well-organized opposition movement in the trade union, Solidarity. The imposition of martial law and reconstruction of the security apparatus after the militarization of the regime in 1980 were too little, too late for the PZPR regime.

This chapter covers the long story of migration and settlement in the borderlands of Germany and Poland. It explores the difference between migration and settlement, along with modern German history and Polish space, 1772–1871, and Flottwell. The argument for Poland as German colonial space is explored, alongside Max Sering’s early life. It also explores Alsace as borderland, Gustav Schmoller, and the Historical School. It covers Sering’s six month journey throughout North America and his subsequent analysis of homesteading and the settlement of the frontier. Sering’s discovery of the concept of inner colonization, Indigenous, Métis, and Removal vs Assimilation are all discussed.

The book is bought to a close by the invasion and occupation of Poland, the radical inner colonization of the Warthegau, ethnic cleansing of Poles, the simultaneous ghettoization of Jews, Lebensraum and the conquest of Eastern Europe, Christaller and his organizational plans for the conquered East, Zamosc, the Holocaust, and the post-war legacy. Posen and West Prussia were cleared of Germans and Poland successfully inner colonized this space. The Junker estates of East Germany were broken up. West Germany accepted 8 million expellees from Eastern Europe and, in their final act, the inner colonizers helped settle many of them on farms.

Polish labour law is mainly statutory law, while collective labour agreements play only a secondary role. The basic concepts are regulated by the Labour Code (LC). Under Article 2 LC, an employee is a person employed on the basis of an employment contract, an appointment, an election, a nomination, or a cooperative employment contract, while, according to Article 3 LC, an employer is an organizational unit, even if it has no legal personality, or an individual, provided it employs employees. Moreover, Article 22 § 1 LC provides that by establishing an employment relationship, an employee undertakes to perform specific work for the benefit and under the guidance of an employer, and an employer undertakes to employ an employee in return for remuneration. This definition is quite short and does not indicate all the features of an employment relationship. Those are – as determined by the jurisprudence and the legal literature – voluntary character, personal work performance on a continuous basis, subordination, and work performance for the benefit of an employer who carries the risk related to the employment. The legal nature of a contract cannot be determined on the basis of a single factor, only on a comprehensive assessment of the factual situation. There are three types of employment contract: a contract for a trial period, a fixed-term contract, and a contract for an indefinite period of time.

Hungary is a prime example of how to create an uneven playing field. The opinion polls for the 2022 elections were close - the opposition had no chance to win.

The euro crisis has brought about remarkable changes in the economic governance of the European Union (EU) and consequently in the ways the executives can be held to account. By focusing on the interactions between national parliament and government in Poland, the fifth-largest EU member state by population, this chapter discusses debates concerning the EU annual cycle of fiscal and economic surveillance - the European Semester, related in particular to its most important element – the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs). The goal of this paper is to assess how parliamentary scrutiny affects the level of implementation of CSRs. The positions of Members of Parliament (MPs) towards CSRs and connected arguments expressed in parliamentary discussions are explained by applying an analytical framework of justification and contestation as two basic forms of accountability. On accountability dimension, most questions, which were asked by both majority and opposition MPs, fall within the justification category in which the demands for explanation or information from the representatives from two ministries responsible for finance and development were made. On the efficiency dimension, one can hardly see any link at all as the scrutiny of the CSRs has a limited impact on their implementation.