De-democratisation at the times of COVID-19

The Covid-19 crisis raised concerns of organisations monitoring the quality of democracy (Freedom House, V-dem Institute, EIU or Idea) that the pandemic could be used in a long term to justify the permanent strengthening of incumbents’ power leading to the weakening of democracy. The report is aimed at investigating potential threats to liberal democracy in connection with the adopted mechanisms to combat the coronavirus pandemic, basing on two cases of EU members – Italy and Poland in the period 2020-summer 2021. The qualitative research on implemented laws (“Covid-19 legislation”) in both countries and focus interviews with lawyers have been conducted to assess the impact of the regulations and the governments’ practices on the state of democracy. The report consists of two main parts – the theoretical framework and empirical study. The former section presents the notion of democratic backsliding and autocratisation, the issue of connection of democratic backsliding/autocratisation processes with states of emergency and possible scenarios of impact of Covid-19 on democracy. The empirical part – on Italy and Poland – includes a review of major features of political systems of the analysed states and the state of democracy before the Covid-19 pandemic, an outline of the basic data on Covid-19 and analysis of legal instruments adopted at the time of coronavirus in terms of their impact on democracy, basing the relevant section on three dimensions in which democratic backsliding and autocratisation can take place: public contestation, political participation and executive limitation. As far as the main finding is concerned, the analysed cases of Italy and Poland prove that the Covid-19 pandemic can, but does not always have to, negatively affect the state of democracy. Much depends on the question whether the democratic backsliding occurred already before the pandemic. If it did, the Covid-19 crisis can strengthen the previous de-democratisation processes. It is possible even without the formal introduction of a state of emergency (which often has a potential to generate undemocratic tendencies), as it was indicated in the case of Poland.