Local government resilience to democratic dismantling? Some evidence from Polish case

Democratic backsliding tendencies are topical issues in the agenda of political science research. While most research on this subject has so far focused on the national level, it is also necessary to consider a multi-level perspective. The paper aims to examine direction of changes taking place in local structures in Poland and respond to the question: whether (and if so, to that extend) local government (with well implemented and developped decentralization) may be perceived as resilience factor or facilitator to the democratic dismantling. In particular, the goal of the analysis is to highlight the correlation of the processes observed at the national, territorial and local level. The case study of Poland seems important and promising to shed new light on the findings in this regard. Note that, the analyzed period is determined on one hand by internal factors as: the political alternations at the national level in 2015 and 2023 (in circumstances of deep political polarization), and on the other hand by the external factors as: the challenges of the pandemic to the democratic process from 2019-2022, and of the crisis trigged by war in Ukraine from 2022. In the research project, I focused on case study of selected large and medium-size cities (in Lubelskie Voievodship, in the eastern part of Poland) include three full legislative terms of local authorities (years 2010-2024).