Institutional Reforms and the Quality of Democracy: The Case of Poland

This paper examines the impact of institutional reforms on the quality of democracy in Poland. The analysis of the quality of democracy shows the extent to which in theory and practice citizens are provided with a full range of rights and opportunities. Drawing from Dahl’s (1971) procedural definition of democracy, this paper proposes to evaluate four dimensions of democracy: representation, participation, competition and accountability. This paper argues that institutional design and reforms are vital for understanding the performance of democracies. This paper is an important contribution to studies on democracies. First, it assesses the functioning of a new democracy. Second, the study of democracy is more pertinent than ever before in the context of democratic crisis in Western Europe (e.g. Dalton 2004; Norris 1999) and ‘democratic fatigue’ in the new democracies (Rupnik and Zielonka 2013).