A quick, depressing 🧵 on what to expect in next steps toward autocracy in Poland. I hope @fromTGA is right and Poles will defend their democracy. However, I think things will get much worse and Poland will become an autocracy like Hungary 1/n
So far Kaczyński’s PiS government has been following the standard elected autocrat’s playbook very closely, following Orbán’s example of how to get away with building an autocracy inside the EU. Here are the steps: 2/n 
As @fromTGA said, so far PiS focused on capturing the courts, turning state media into propaganda arm, & demonizing opposition. Next key steps will be to suppress vestiges of independence in lower ranks of judiciary & to establish PiS control over private media 3/n
Then PiS will focus on guaranteeing reelection by rigging system. Though this election & last parliamentary one were decidedly unfair (due to PiS abuse of state resources and state media), they were free & far too close for comfort for PiS. 4/n
So I expect PiS will consolidate control over electoral commission & change election rules in ways that will advantage them and disadvantage opposition. Also expect electoral commission to start attacking opposition parties on trumped up charges, fining them etc. 5/n
Also, since opposition had so much support in cities expect PiS to follow Orbán technique and start finding ways of starving opposition controlled cities of revenue & punishing them in other ways 6/n
Also since Polish emigrants voted so overwhelmingly for opposition expect PiS to find ways to make it harder for emigrant Poles to vote in future elections. 7/n
Finally, huge flood of EU subsidies coming in with next #MFF, EU Green Deal, & #NextGenerationEU - with at most very weak/unenforceable rule of law conditionality- so expect PiS gov to use that money for graft / consolidation of patronage network 8/n
Don’t expect the EU to help save Polish democracy. @EUCourtPress & some in @Europarl_EN are trying, but @EU_Commission & @EUCouncil won’t take serious action. To read more, see my work on the EU’s #AuthoritarianEquilibrium 9/n tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
Or this summary in @monkeycageblog. Bottom line: EU won’t help save Poland’s democracy from autocratic consolidation by PiS. Polish society will have to mobilize to save their democracy. I wish my Polish friends the best of luck. 10/10 washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/…
