Responding to a twofold crisis: Young Poles, democratic backsliding and Covid-19

Restricting public life to contain Covid-19, the Polish government used the opportunity to consolidate power and limit pluralism. However, the specter of further democratic backsliding induced a new kind of political activism notably among young people, sometimes cutting across political and ideological orientations. But we know little about the opinions of citizens in post-communist countries regarding their political participation during the democratic erosion and the pandemic. We analyze a representative survey conducted in Poland (N=1000) in 2021, to examine views on protests and the extent to which protest participation linked with specific views on salient issues such as democracy, rule of law, and LGBT rights. Focus groups organized among 120 young people complement the quantitative data. We find that the pandemic created new opportunities for political participation and accelerated the development of political agency among those young people who felt they needed to compensate for a government increasingly failing them.