Donald Tusk tries to restore Poland’s rule of law

When populist parties win power they often try to capture institutions. They appoint their supporters to run the courts, bureaucracy, state-owned firms and public media. The goal is partly to make it easier to ram through decisions and win more elections. But it is also to ensure that if the populists lose power, loyalists lodged within the state can still pursue their agenda. With populism and state capture on the rise, working out how to unwind such control is becoming ever more important. An early test case, Poland, shows how hard it is to get right.