Borderline democracy? How Polish voters tolerated restrictions of civil liberties to address immigration crisis

In the face of a growing migration crisis in 2021, the Polish government declared a state of emergency along its border with Belarus, suspending basic civil liberties for citizens in the affected areas. A new study forthcoming in The Journal of Politics investigates whether these restrictions sparked a political backlash at the ballot box — and finds surprisingly little evidence that they did.

Researchers Anil Menon (University of California, Merced) and Paweł Charasz (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen) examined voting behavior before and after the emergency in areas impacted by the restrictions compared to nearby unaffected areas. They focused on Poland’s 2019 and 2023 parliamentary elections, using a statistical method known as difference-in-discontinuities to isolate the effect of the policy.

Their findings: Despite the suspension of rights such as freedom of assembly and movement, voters living under the state of emergency did not significantly punish the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) at the polls. The estimated drop in vote share was modest —between 0.8 and 1.7 percentage points — and statistically insignificant. The researchers also did not find an effect on turnout or on support for opposition parties.

The results suggest voters may be willing to tolerate restrictions on democratic freedoms if they perceive the government will in turn take decisive action on related issues — in this case, illegal immigration.

"These findings provide one explanation for the global rise of strongman politics and the strategic use of emergency powers by democratic governments," the authors note.

The 2021 emergency followed Belarus’s deliberate funneling of migrants into the European Union, which Poland countered by enforcing a three-month emergency zone with strict movement controls and limited media access. Some restrictions remained for another seven months. Despite public debate and legal challenges, local electoral consequences were minimal.

Charasz and Menon stress that their findings do not imply voters approved of the restrictions, but rather that such measures did not substantially affect support for the incumbents. They call for future research to better understand how voters weigh policy outcomes against democratic costs.