Keywords
rule of law
Democratic backsliding
Judicial independence
Poland
United Kingdom
European Social Survey (ESS)
European commission
Submitted : 2026-06-27
Accepted : 2026-07-12
Published : 2026-07-27
Abstract
In early 2022, British politics gave us the first great scandal of the year, ‘Partygate’ [1]. At the time, a survey across 6 countries in Europe showed that 62% of UK respondents to the survey feel that their government ‘ignores rules and procedures’, the highest of all countries. Other things that were happening at the time. The European Commission’s litigation initiation against Warsaw over the Polish ruling party’s ‘democratic decapitation’ of the judiciary [2]. How bad is the state of democracy when citizens no longer trust that our government institutions play by the rules? This paper employs data from the 9th European Social Survey Round (2018-2019) and compares government trust in the UK (N = 2204) and Poland (N = 1500). This was a pivotal time for the UK, given its Brexit negotiations, and for Poland in their court reform battles with the EU [3].
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