Direct participation of citizens in the law-making process in the Polish parliament - institutional improvement or façade?

Paper aims to analyze the normative assumptions and the practice of direct citizens’ participation in the lawmaking process in the Polish Parliament (i.e. petitions, public hearing and citizens’ legislative initiative). Our research focuses on public hearing as a consultative and informative mechanism. This tool was introduced in Polish Lower Chamber (Sejm) in 2006 resulting from NGO’s initiative to improve involvement of citizens in the law-making process. Respectively, the Senate adopted a similar arrangement into the inner regulation in 2013, as a facultative stage of procedure relating legislative proceeding. The device using fluctuated over the time: from 2006 to 2017 have been proceeded 30 public hearings, while after 2018 none have been implemented, due to consequent rejection by majority. In contrast, in Senate a prior modest practice has showed increasing progresses (as a counterbalance mechanism to the governing majority). Moreover, the NGO’s have initiated to organize hearings concerning the most important to public opinion issues independently from MPs and beside of the parliament buildings. The use of this particular tool of participatory democracy in Poland manifested its potential of shaping the institutional arrangements, but also showed the weaknesses of normative constructions and high fragility to the contextual factors.