Bracketing Democracy: A Comparison of Frames Used to Demarcate Democracy and Its Application to Developments in Poland

This paper proposes a framework to analyze the varying understanding of democratic developments. Based on the theory of frame-analysis, it distinguishes six brackets within which democratic developments can be interpreted. This framework is applied to identify the nature of international rankings of domestic democracy and to compare the framing of developments in Polish democracy in reports on democratic developments from international organizations. The conclusion is that sense-making of democratic developments in general varies enormously, and that this is also visible in the international rankings of democracy. Democratic developments in Poland are also assessed in different ways, resulting in varying claims about the nature of the developments in Poland.