Polarisation is tearing democracies apart and few European countries illustrate this more starkly than Poland. In the book Let’s Agree on Poland (Oxford University Press, 2025) a group of leading Polish thinkers, from the left to the hard right, argues that as political preferences increasingly follow geographical patterns, the only viable response is decentralization – stabilising democracy by distributing power and lowering the stakes of national conflict.

For Austrians, who often see their own federal system as cumbersome or inefficient, this may sound counter‑intuitive. Can decentralisation really reduce conflict, or does it simply multiply veto players and deepen gridlock?

By bringing Polish reform ideas into dialogue with Austria’s federal experience, the discussion explores whether decentralisation can help safeguard democracy and what Poland and Austria might learn from one another.