With the victory of Polish pro-democratic parties in 2023-parliamentary elections the scientific community has acquired a unique opportunity to examine which domestic factors catalyse and which inhibit the restoration of the Rule of Law (RoL) in a member state of the European Union. In that context, the paper studies Polish political actors’ strategies towards the Constitutional Tribunal (CT). While there is an abundant literature studying courts’ curbing strategies by autocratizing actors, we hardly know anything about the other side of the coin. Against that background, this paper examines the reestablishment of the RoL in the context of the Polish CT by posing the following research questions: which strategies have been employed by political actors seeking to facilitate the restoration of the RoL and actors inhibiting the process? Which factors explain domestic actors’ strategies towards the CT?
The empirical analysis of this article draws on content and discourse analysis of national parliamentary debates devoted to the legislative project reforming the CT in Poland: one resolution (Druk nr. 226) and two legislative projects (Druk nr. 253 as well as Druk 254). Results indicate that autocratizing parties are likely to change their strategies towards courts depending on their position in the government. Preliminary result therefore suggest that in case of autocratizing parties their strategy towards courts seems to be mostly driven by partisan interests rather than deep ideology.