Corruption by Design? Democratic Backsliding and Corruption Practices Under Law and Justice in Poland

This article examines how corruption operates within democratic backsliding by analyzing the underexplored case of Poland under the Law and Justice (PiS) government (2015–2023). Unlike Hungary, where the EU pursued corruption procedures and applied the Rule of Law Conditionality mechanism, Poland avoided comparable scrutiny. To explain this divergence, we propose a framework that identifies four roles of corruption in backsliding regimes in the EU: as an outcome of institutional weakening, as state capture, as a mechanism of democratic backsliding in the form of systemic corruption and as a reinforcing condition of regime durability in form of EU funding. Our analysis shows that in Poland corruption primarily took the first three forms. Institutional weakening dismantled formal anti-corruption safeguards, state capture allowed to reward loyalists with positions, which produced systemic corruption involving national funds. Large-scale misuse of EU resources, however, was limited - a result of the governing parties’ strategic restraint under strict EU oversight. These findings advance debates on corruption’s role in democratic backsliding in the EU.