This policy brief by Andrea Guidotti offers a research-based assessment of the conditions under which democratic actors can push back against populism. Synthesizing recent scholarship on populist emergence, incumbency, accountability, and democratic defense, the brief shows that populism thrives amid economic insecurity, cultural backlash, crises of representation, and weak party systems. Yet it also emphasizes that populist power is not immune to constraint: organizational weaknesses, governing responsibilities, institutional resistance, and crisis mismanagement can undermine populist appeal. The analysis cautions that neither confrontation nor accommodation provides a universal solution; both may backfire under specific conditions. Instead, effective democratic defense requires context-sensitive strategies combining institutional robustness, coordinated opposition, citizen engagement, and careful management of polarization. Ultimately, democratic erosion remains reversible, but not automatically so.
By Andrea Guidotti
Introduction
The literature on the study of populism has flourished, building on studies investigating the causes and roots of populism, from the West to Latin America, Southeast Asia, and beyond. On the one hand, scholars have defined different ways to conceptualize populism, notably the ideational (Mudde, 2004; Hawkins & Kaltwasser, 2018), political-strategic (Weyland, 2001 & 2021), discursive (Laclau, 2005a & 2005b), performative (Moffitt, 2015), and socio-cultural approaches (Ostiguy, 2017). On the other hand, there has been a development of historically informed reconstructions of how populism rises in certain contexts, especially after crises (Pappas, 2019; Weyland, 1999; Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
The latter research agenda mirrors comparative and empirical studies reconstructing how mainstream political forces and elected leaders erode institutional norms by fueling polarization and twisting democratic mechanisms (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Valentim et al., 2025; Stokes, 2025; Bunce et al., 2025). A more neglected niche in the academic literature has focused on the possibilities for political actors and the structural constraints they face when fighting against the contemporary surge of populist platforms and rhetoric. Building on academic work focusing on the protection of democratic norms and institutions, this policy brief is dedicated to offering a concise reconstruction of the major findings within this emerging literature and outlining potential policy actions to counter such developments.
Conditions for Populist Success
One of the main drivers of populist emergence concerns economic factors. Periods characterised by economic shocks and recessions favour the rise of populist movements. In the European context, the financial crisis played a key role, increasing the electoral support for populist parties by about ten to fifteen percentage points (Guriev & Papaioannou, 2022). A systematic meta-analysis of the literature confirms that a significant portion of cases of populist emergence is causally associated with economic insecurity (Scheiring et al., 2024).
Cultural shifts and perceived cultural crises are another major driver of populism. Between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, modern societies with developed liberal democracies experienced unprecedented changes in social attitudes, mainly a shift from material and physical security concerns to post-materialist demands for greater individual liberties and room for self-expression. This triggered what Norris & Inglehart (2019) call a cultural and populist backlash.
Nonetheless, other authors argue that cultural theories should search for different causal explanations, either suggesting that data show how young cohorts, as well as older ones, hold (authoritarian) populist attitudes and electoral behaviours (Schäfer, 2022), or stressing the importance of unresolved issues and older cleavages in explaining support for populist movements (Baro & Todal Jenssen, 2025).
From an organizational and strategic point of view, plebiscitarian populist leaders have gained political power by leveraging three factors (Weyland, 1999). The first is the weakness of the party system. Strong internal disagreement and inconsistencies within mainstream parties constitute a permissive cause for populist movements. The second is the adoption of an adversarial strategy towards political opponents, whereby populist leaders strengthen their position by undermining the credibility of other political actors. The third element is the promotion of a confrontational approach towards structured trade unions and lobbying organizations.
While theories of populist emergence based on economic crises tend to treat political processes as exogenous, this view builds on the idea that the most appropriate indicator to gauge the rise of populism is political crises of representation, mainly endogenous to politics (Pappas, 2012). Such crises are necessary but not sufficient conditions for populism to flourish, and they are sufficient as long as there is adequate political leadership ready to mediate between emergency scenarios and citizens’ demands (Pappas, 2019).
The traction acquired by plebiscitary populist leaders is something not to be underestimated. In Latin America, populist incumbents have often exploited crisis situations so severely as to hamper the space and agency for advancing legitimate political opposition, thus pushing the democratic system towards a competitive authoritarian setting (Levitsky & Loxton, 2013).
Crises of democratic representation are the other side of the coin of populist emergence. While populist leaders capitalize on structural developments and favorable political conjunctures, citizens find ways to express their dissatisfaction with the current state of democracy. Employing longitudinal individual-level data from the European Social Survey (2012–2020), researchers have found that the rise of populism is deeply rooted in democratic dissatisfaction. Populists and non-voters are the most dissatisfied with democratic features, displaying a strong overall mismatch in expectations: European citizens hold very high expectations for democracy, but they perceive that the social and direct democracy dimensions are underperforming (Favaretto & Mariani, 2024).
Some interpretations of the rational voting model help explain why citizens may opt for radical (right-wing) populist parties. Where parties retain a centralized and stable structure and, in parallel, externally project policy effectiveness and competence in their core issue area, voters perceive their decision to electorally support populist outsiders as a strategic way to influence the political agenda when they disagree with the actions of established parties (Betz, 2002).
Populist Accountability in Government
On a general level, personalistic populist parties face three structural constraints while in government: (i) the failure to achieve conflict resolution among major personalities within the party leadership; (ii) the lack of a coherent political platform capable of delivering concrete results; and (iii) the absence of an experienced and skilled governing class. These conditions tend to favor mainstream and conservative parties over populist actors in power (Heinish, 2003).
Nonetheless, the crucial determinant of populist parties’ success during incumbency is their ability to adapt the party’s strategies and priorities to the new goal of office maximization rather than populist vote attraction (Luther et al., 2011). As the Latin American experience shows, another key moment of confrontation arises when populist incumbents face constraints from oppositional forces and the judicial apparatus.
This decisive moment determines whether populists choose to create power asymmetries vis-à-vis other branches of government, thereby becoming an unconstrained governing majority. Throughout this process, populist leaders may mobilize societal organizations or even manufacture state-sponsored confederations to establish hegemonic or authoritarian rule, respectively (Carrion, 2021).
Besides cases of populist governing majorities, there is empirical evidence regarding the cost of converging toward more mainstream political platforms after entering a coalition with other political parties post-elections. Van Spanje (2011) shows that anti-political establishment parties incur an additional cost of governing, in terms of future electoral support, after becoming part of a governing coalition.
Rather than becoming doubtful about the policy compromises made by their populist representatives, supporters are dissuaded by the perceived lack of genuineness in their anti-establishment leitmotifs. Similar findings are presented by other scholars. Katsanidou and Reinl (2020) disprove the correlation between ideological congruence on the left-right and European dimensions and voter support for populist parties in government. Instead, the main driver of populist vote defection is the perception that newly elected representatives are no longer fighting against elites and protecting the people’s interests, thereby breaking the populist link.
Policy accountability for ruling-party populist coalitions follows the same logic. A bank expansion and demonetization policy program implemented in India in 2005 provides an indicative example. Even though individuals from areas most affected by demonetization, due to the presence of fewer banks in the region, were 4.7 percentage points less likely to support the ruling coalition, stronghold areas presented a more nuanced pattern.
Citizens were found to be, on average, unresponsive to the negative externalities of demonetization policies when strongly aligned with the ruling populist party (Khanna & Mukherjee, 2023). The picture changes when populists are confronted with crises.
In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, populist governments were unable to “perform” the crisis, which consequently exposed their political incompetence. This reduced citizens’ support by 10 percentage points throughout the first year of the emergency (Foa et al., 2022), while in parallel decreasing the share of populist attitudes within the population (Daniele et al., 2020).
Opposing and Fighting (Illiberal) Populism
Countering Illiberal Threats
Empirical research reveals a new pattern of regime-type transformation. In this sense, U-turns can be characterized as episodes of autocratization followed by subsequent episodes of democratization. Specifically, Nord et al. (2025) demonstrate that nearly half of the 102 autocratization episodes taking place between 1900 and 2023 reversed course and eventually resulted in a restored or even improved level of democracy.
Data suggest that 85% of democratic regimes sliding into autocratization episodes U-turned into democracy. Accounting for a more recent period—the last three decades—democratic reactions represent 61% of all U-turns. It is thus clear that a window of opportunity for political action aimed at protecting democracy, its rules, and institutions has opened up in recent times.
As Capoccia (2001) puts it, defending democracy denotes “the elaboration and enactment of short-term political strategies, whether inclusive or repressive in nature, which are explicitly aimed at reacting against those political forces that exploit the rights and guarantees of democracy in order to undermine its fundamental bases.”
To properly deliver democratic defense against illiberal actors, some scholars have developed a series of tools and instruments. On a general level, one should be able to assess the level of threat depending on the nature of the organization—whether collective or individual—that is advancing the challenge. In addition, when confronted with a group, it is important to identify leaders and followers, as well as to understand its internal composition, with the aim of differentially targeting radical and moderate members. Finally, it is essential to establish the objective of one’s own actions: whether the goal of democratic defense is to (i) change illiberals’ attitudes and civic competence, (ii) change illiberals’ behavior, or (iii) mobilize democrats (Lurmhann et al., 2020).
On a more sophisticated level, this emerging literature has conceptualized the defense of democracy in different, but interconnected, ways. Merkel and Lührmann (2021) focus on a functionalist understanding of democratic resilience, clarifying how different responses to prevent or react to illiberal challenges—namely, withstanding major changes, adapting through internal reforms, and recovering after initial damage—are necessary but not sufficient conditions for successful democratic defense.
Two other constitutive dimensions to consider carefully are structural and actor-centered. The former examines the institutional relationships among governing bodies: the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. The latter scrutinizes the conditions under which political agents can nurture democratic resilience, distinguishing among political parties, civil society, and citizens as members of a polity.
Tomini et al. (2022) provide a typology of so-called resisters to autocratization—namely institutional, political, and social actors—while highlighting that the regime type critically influences both the actors involved and the degree of their democratic resistance. Gamboa et al. (2023) detail the scope and nature of specific measures implemented by oppositional forces in response to incumbent-led democratic backsliding along two dimensions: strategy type and desired goals.
Briefly, strategies can be either institutional or extra-institutional, and goals can be either moderate or radical. The combination of these key dimensions shapes the incentives and costs faced by democratic defenders.
From a procedural and normative standpoint, democratic defense can be addressed in three different ways (Malkopoulou & Norman, 2018). An elitist conception of democracy informs militant democratic defense, consequently violating the principle of non-domination. A procedural account of democratic defense adopts an inclusionary posture but underestimates the role of ordinary citizens and their agency. By contrast, a social model of democratic self-defense enhances the credibility of civil society actors and their participation in such a process as a baseline condition for the full realization of democracy.
In this context, actor-centered approaches to democratic recession appear to hold strong explanatory power. According to Van Lit et al. (2024), the strategic interaction between elites and citizens is the key element within the two-level game of democratic defense. Following this framework, elites’ decision to defend democracy is a function of their self-interest in maintaining the democratic status quo and the threat of repression by incumbents.
On the other side, citizens’ engagement and considerations result from a comparison between the ambiguity of the incumbent’s threat and the democratic credibility of elite defenders (Van Lit & Meijers, 2025).
Building on these insights, a research agenda and theoretical account have been put forward, offering a comprehensive model for countering illiberalism in liberal democracies. In his framework, Capoccia (2026) refines the understanding of viable countermeasures that can be adopted by a range of actors against illiberal threats and defines the related successful outcomes. His dynamic approach helps to explain how endogenous and exogenous information affect the temporal structure, as well as the sources of variation in institutional legacies across time and space, of pro-democratic interventions.
Countering Populism
Populism has become a defining characteristic of contemporary democracies and has developed in many Western countries. To avoid an even greater surge, liberal democratic actors should reduce the level of polarization, especially on matters related to identity politics. To do so, their objective should be to avoid paternalistic narratives and direct opposition to populist actors. Rather, they should concentrate on shaping norms by allowing populists to enter governing coalitions under certain premises.
In this way, populist actors can be held accountable based on the success of their promised actions within such coalitions (Kendall-Taylor & Nietsche, 2020). By welcoming populist ideas within governing coalitions, mainstream parties can not only broaden their electoral support by adopting some of their core policy positions, but also ostracize the more extremist and divisive elements present in populist political agendas. As empirically shown by Van Spanje and de Graaf (2018), analogous strategies can help increase support and the electoral gains of incumbent parties.
This strategy does not come without risks. The strategies of mainstream parties critically influence the chances of success of emerging niche and populist parties in electoral terms (Meguid, 2005). According to Berman (2021), we can summarize three distinct strategies that mainstream parties can adopt to address the emergence of new populist movements. The first is a dismissive strategy aimed at ignoring the key issues of interest to populist newcomers. The second is an adversarial strategy based on direct and explicit opposition to populist newcomers. The third is accommodative in nature, entailing policy convergence toward the political platforms of emerging populists.
Overall, strategies emphasizing either convergence or polarization can be detrimental to democracy under certain conditions. On the one hand, during periods of economic distress, an emphasis on polarizing cultural issues can push citizens toward populist parties that offer scapegoats and simplistic solutions. On the other hand, when votes tend to disperse toward the extremes of the Gaussian distribution, mainstream parties’ convergence toward populist positions may directly nudge citizens to shift their preferences closer to new populist actors (Berman & Kundnani, 2021).
Safeguards against populist illiberal actors can be found on historical and institutional grounds. Populists’ attempts at strangling liberal democracy may be hampered by high levels of institutional solidity and organizational strength, thereby safeguarding pluralism and even indirectly revitalizing democratic participation and resilience (Weyland, 2024a).
When populists are in power, institutional parameters are not the only drivers enabling a pushback. In such cases, the strategies of oppositional forces largely depend on the strength or weakness of the institutional framework and the initial degree of institutional solidity. Moreover, conjunctural opportunities also play a decisive role. Unexpected favorable economic conditions can boost support for populists and expand their scope of action, while significantly limiting the agency of oppositional forces. Acute crises can also enhance charismatic populist leaders’ popular appeal by obscuring the public standing of democratic opponents (Weyland, 2025b).
There seems to be only negative evidence concerning effective, actionable strategies to implement against populist forces. An experiment in Italian municipalities during a 2020 constitutional referendum proposing a reduction in the total number of Members of Parliament (MPs) from 945 to 600 in the two chambers of the Italian Parliament offers some indications (Galasso et al., 2024). Deploying a two-tier advertisement campaign, Stanig et al. (2022) tested the efficacy of two approaches to opposing populism: (i) a “win the argument” strategy aimed at persuading voters by deconstructing populist ideas; and (ii) a “use the same weapons” strategy attempting to reduce populist parties’ credibility, thereby lowering populist voters’ turnout.
Findings from a follow-up survey conducted in 2023 show that, while the campaign reduced attachment to established populist parties, attempts to counter populism by applying its own tactics increased voter disaffection and ultimately backfired. Notably, individuals targeted by the campaign were more likely to support newer and emerging populist parties (Galasso, 2024).
Conclusion
In sum, the literature suggests that democratic pushback against populism is neither automatic nor uniformly effective, but contingent on a complex interaction of structural conditions, institutional resilience, and strategic agency. While economic insecurity, cultural backlash, and crises of representation create fertile ground for populist mobilization, the durability of such movements in power remains constrained by organizational weaknesses, accountability pressures, and their capacity to adapt from opposition to governance.
At the same time, evidence on counter-strategies reveals no universally effective blueprint. Both confrontational and accommodative approaches by mainstream parties carry significant risks, potentially reinforcing polarization or legitimizing populist agendas. Similarly, attempts to counter populism through its own communicative logic may generate unintended consequences, including increased voter disaffection and the emergence of new populist actors.
Nevertheless, recent patterns of democratic “U-turns” indicate that democratic erosion is not irreversible. Institutional robustness, coordinated opposition, and favorable conjunctural conditions can reopen pathways to democratic recovery. As a result, effective democratic defense depends on context-sensitive strategies that balance institutional safeguards, political competition, and citizen engagement, rather than relying on singular or deterministic solutions.
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Policy Brief: The Conditions for a Democratic Pushback Against Populism
This policy brief by Andrea Guidotti offers a research-based assessment of the conditions under which democratic actors can push back against populism. Synthesizing recent scholarship on populist emergence, incumbency, accountability, and democratic defense, the brief shows that populism thrives amid economic insecurity, cultural backlash, crises of representation, and weak party systems. Yet it also emphasizes that populist power is not immune to constraint: organizational weaknesses, governing responsibilities, institutional resistance, and crisis mismanagement can undermine populist appeal. The analysis cautions that neither confrontation nor accommodation provides a universal solution; both may backfire under specific conditions. Instead, effective democratic defense requires context-sensitive strategies combining institutional robustness, coordinated opposition, citizen engagement, and careful management of polarization. Ultimately, democratic erosion remains reversible, but not automatically so.
By Andrea Guidotti
Introduction
The literature on the study of populism has flourished, building on studies investigating the causes and roots of populism, from the West to Latin America, Southeast Asia, and beyond. On the one hand, scholars have defined different ways to conceptualize populism, notably the ideational (Mudde, 2004; Hawkins & Kaltwasser, 2018), political-strategic (Weyland, 2001 & 2021), discursive (Laclau, 2005a & 2005b), performative (Moffitt, 2015), and socio-cultural approaches (Ostiguy, 2017). On the other hand, there has been a development of historically informed reconstructions of how populism rises in certain contexts, especially after crises (Pappas, 2019; Weyland, 1999; Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
The latter research agenda mirrors comparative and empirical studies reconstructing how mainstream political forces and elected leaders erode institutional norms by fueling polarization and twisting democratic mechanisms (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Valentim et al., 2025; Stokes, 2025; Bunce et al., 2025). A more neglected niche in the academic literature has focused on the possibilities for political actors and the structural constraints they face when fighting against the contemporary surge of populist platforms and rhetoric. Building on academic work focusing on the protection of democratic norms and institutions, this policy brief is dedicated to offering a concise reconstruction of the major findings within this emerging literature and outlining potential policy actions to counter such developments.
Conditions for Populist Success
One of the main drivers of populist emergence concerns economic factors. Periods characterised by economic shocks and recessions favour the rise of populist movements. In the European context, the financial crisis played a key role, increasing the electoral support for populist parties by about ten to fifteen percentage points (Guriev & Papaioannou, 2022). A systematic meta-analysis of the literature confirms that a significant portion of cases of populist emergence is causally associated with economic insecurity (Scheiring et al., 2024).
Cultural shifts and perceived cultural crises are another major driver of populism. Between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, modern societies with developed liberal democracies experienced unprecedented changes in social attitudes, mainly a shift from material and physical security concerns to post-materialist demands for greater individual liberties and room for self-expression. This triggered what Norris & Inglehart (2019) call a cultural and populist backlash.
Nonetheless, other authors argue that cultural theories should search for different causal explanations, either suggesting that data show how young cohorts, as well as older ones, hold (authoritarian) populist attitudes and electoral behaviours (Schäfer, 2022), or stressing the importance of unresolved issues and older cleavages in explaining support for populist movements (Baro & Todal Jenssen, 2025).
From an organizational and strategic point of view, plebiscitarian populist leaders have gained political power by leveraging three factors (Weyland, 1999). The first is the weakness of the party system. Strong internal disagreement and inconsistencies within mainstream parties constitute a permissive cause for populist movements. The second is the adoption of an adversarial strategy towards political opponents, whereby populist leaders strengthen their position by undermining the credibility of other political actors. The third element is the promotion of a confrontational approach towards structured trade unions and lobbying organizations.
While theories of populist emergence based on economic crises tend to treat political processes as exogenous, this view builds on the idea that the most appropriate indicator to gauge the rise of populism is political crises of representation, mainly endogenous to politics (Pappas, 2012). Such crises are necessary but not sufficient conditions for populism to flourish, and they are sufficient as long as there is adequate political leadership ready to mediate between emergency scenarios and citizens’ demands (Pappas, 2019).
The traction acquired by plebiscitary populist leaders is something not to be underestimated. In Latin America, populist incumbents have often exploited crisis situations so severely as to hamper the space and agency for advancing legitimate political opposition, thus pushing the democratic system towards a competitive authoritarian setting (Levitsky & Loxton, 2013).
Crises of democratic representation are the other side of the coin of populist emergence. While populist leaders capitalize on structural developments and favorable political conjunctures, citizens find ways to express their dissatisfaction with the current state of democracy. Employing longitudinal individual-level data from the European Social Survey (2012–2020), researchers have found that the rise of populism is deeply rooted in democratic dissatisfaction. Populists and non-voters are the most dissatisfied with democratic features, displaying a strong overall mismatch in expectations: European citizens hold very high expectations for democracy, but they perceive that the social and direct democracy dimensions are underperforming (Favaretto & Mariani, 2024).
Some interpretations of the rational voting model help explain why citizens may opt for radical (right-wing) populist parties. Where parties retain a centralized and stable structure and, in parallel, externally project policy effectiveness and competence in their core issue area, voters perceive their decision to electorally support populist outsiders as a strategic way to influence the political agenda when they disagree with the actions of established parties (Betz, 2002).
Populist Accountability in Government
On a general level, personalistic populist parties face three structural constraints while in government: (i) the failure to achieve conflict resolution among major personalities within the party leadership; (ii) the lack of a coherent political platform capable of delivering concrete results; and (iii) the absence of an experienced and skilled governing class. These conditions tend to favor mainstream and conservative parties over populist actors in power (Heinish, 2003).
Nonetheless, the crucial determinant of populist parties’ success during incumbency is their ability to adapt the party’s strategies and priorities to the new goal of office maximization rather than populist vote attraction (Luther et al., 2011). As the Latin American experience shows, another key moment of confrontation arises when populist incumbents face constraints from oppositional forces and the judicial apparatus.
This decisive moment determines whether populists choose to create power asymmetries vis-à-vis other branches of government, thereby becoming an unconstrained governing majority. Throughout this process, populist leaders may mobilize societal organizations or even manufacture state-sponsored confederations to establish hegemonic or authoritarian rule, respectively (Carrion, 2021).
Besides cases of populist governing majorities, there is empirical evidence regarding the cost of converging toward more mainstream political platforms after entering a coalition with other political parties post-elections. Van Spanje (2011) shows that anti-political establishment parties incur an additional cost of governing, in terms of future electoral support, after becoming part of a governing coalition.
Rather than becoming doubtful about the policy compromises made by their populist representatives, supporters are dissuaded by the perceived lack of genuineness in their anti-establishment leitmotifs. Similar findings are presented by other scholars. Katsanidou and Reinl (2020) disprove the correlation between ideological congruence on the left-right and European dimensions and voter support for populist parties in government. Instead, the main driver of populist vote defection is the perception that newly elected representatives are no longer fighting against elites and protecting the people’s interests, thereby breaking the populist link.
Policy accountability for ruling-party populist coalitions follows the same logic. A bank expansion and demonetization policy program implemented in India in 2005 provides an indicative example. Even though individuals from areas most affected by demonetization, due to the presence of fewer banks in the region, were 4.7 percentage points less likely to support the ruling coalition, stronghold areas presented a more nuanced pattern.
Citizens were found to be, on average, unresponsive to the negative externalities of demonetization policies when strongly aligned with the ruling populist party (Khanna & Mukherjee, 2023). The picture changes when populists are confronted with crises.
In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, populist governments were unable to “perform” the crisis, which consequently exposed their political incompetence. This reduced citizens’ support by 10 percentage points throughout the first year of the emergency (Foa et al., 2022), while in parallel decreasing the share of populist attitudes within the population (Daniele et al., 2020).
Opposing and Fighting (Illiberal) Populism
Countering Illiberal Threats
Empirical research reveals a new pattern of regime-type transformation. In this sense, U-turns can be characterized as episodes of autocratization followed by subsequent episodes of democratization. Specifically, Nord et al. (2025) demonstrate that nearly half of the 102 autocratization episodes taking place between 1900 and 2023 reversed course and eventually resulted in a restored or even improved level of democracy.
Data suggest that 85% of democratic regimes sliding into autocratization episodes U-turned into democracy. Accounting for a more recent period—the last three decades—democratic reactions represent 61% of all U-turns. It is thus clear that a window of opportunity for political action aimed at protecting democracy, its rules, and institutions has opened up in recent times.
As Capoccia (2001) puts it, defending democracy denotes “the elaboration and enactment of short-term political strategies, whether inclusive or repressive in nature, which are explicitly aimed at reacting against those political forces that exploit the rights and guarantees of democracy in order to undermine its fundamental bases.”
To properly deliver democratic defense against illiberal actors, some scholars have developed a series of tools and instruments. On a general level, one should be able to assess the level of threat depending on the nature of the organization—whether collective or individual—that is advancing the challenge. In addition, when confronted with a group, it is important to identify leaders and followers, as well as to understand its internal composition, with the aim of differentially targeting radical and moderate members. Finally, it is essential to establish the objective of one’s own actions: whether the goal of democratic defense is to (i) change illiberals’ attitudes and civic competence, (ii) change illiberals’ behavior, or (iii) mobilize democrats (Lurmhann et al., 2020).
On a more sophisticated level, this emerging literature has conceptualized the defense of democracy in different, but interconnected, ways. Merkel and Lührmann (2021) focus on a functionalist understanding of democratic resilience, clarifying how different responses to prevent or react to illiberal challenges—namely, withstanding major changes, adapting through internal reforms, and recovering after initial damage—are necessary but not sufficient conditions for successful democratic defense.
Two other constitutive dimensions to consider carefully are structural and actor-centered. The former examines the institutional relationships among governing bodies: the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. The latter scrutinizes the conditions under which political agents can nurture democratic resilience, distinguishing among political parties, civil society, and citizens as members of a polity.
Tomini et al. (2022) provide a typology of so-called resisters to autocratization—namely institutional, political, and social actors—while highlighting that the regime type critically influences both the actors involved and the degree of their democratic resistance. Gamboa et al. (2023) detail the scope and nature of specific measures implemented by oppositional forces in response to incumbent-led democratic backsliding along two dimensions: strategy type and desired goals.
Briefly, strategies can be either institutional or extra-institutional, and goals can be either moderate or radical. The combination of these key dimensions shapes the incentives and costs faced by democratic defenders.
From a procedural and normative standpoint, democratic defense can be addressed in three different ways (Malkopoulou & Norman, 2018). An elitist conception of democracy informs militant democratic defense, consequently violating the principle of non-domination. A procedural account of democratic defense adopts an inclusionary posture but underestimates the role of ordinary citizens and their agency. By contrast, a social model of democratic self-defense enhances the credibility of civil society actors and their participation in such a process as a baseline condition for the full realization of democracy.
In this context, actor-centered approaches to democratic recession appear to hold strong explanatory power. According to Van Lit et al. (2024), the strategic interaction between elites and citizens is the key element within the two-level game of democratic defense. Following this framework, elites’ decision to defend democracy is a function of their self-interest in maintaining the democratic status quo and the threat of repression by incumbents.
On the other side, citizens’ engagement and considerations result from a comparison between the ambiguity of the incumbent’s threat and the democratic credibility of elite defenders (Van Lit & Meijers, 2025).
Building on these insights, a research agenda and theoretical account have been put forward, offering a comprehensive model for countering illiberalism in liberal democracies. In his framework, Capoccia (2026) refines the understanding of viable countermeasures that can be adopted by a range of actors against illiberal threats and defines the related successful outcomes. His dynamic approach helps to explain how endogenous and exogenous information affect the temporal structure, as well as the sources of variation in institutional legacies across time and space, of pro-democratic interventions.
Countering Populism
Populism has become a defining characteristic of contemporary democracies and has developed in many Western countries. To avoid an even greater surge, liberal democratic actors should reduce the level of polarization, especially on matters related to identity politics. To do so, their objective should be to avoid paternalistic narratives and direct opposition to populist actors. Rather, they should concentrate on shaping norms by allowing populists to enter governing coalitions under certain premises.
In this way, populist actors can be held accountable based on the success of their promised actions within such coalitions (Kendall-Taylor & Nietsche, 2020). By welcoming populist ideas within governing coalitions, mainstream parties can not only broaden their electoral support by adopting some of their core policy positions, but also ostracize the more extremist and divisive elements present in populist political agendas. As empirically shown by Van Spanje and de Graaf (2018), analogous strategies can help increase support and the electoral gains of incumbent parties.
This strategy does not come without risks. The strategies of mainstream parties critically influence the chances of success of emerging niche and populist parties in electoral terms (Meguid, 2005). According to Berman (2021), we can summarize three distinct strategies that mainstream parties can adopt to address the emergence of new populist movements. The first is a dismissive strategy aimed at ignoring the key issues of interest to populist newcomers. The second is an adversarial strategy based on direct and explicit opposition to populist newcomers. The third is accommodative in nature, entailing policy convergence toward the political platforms of emerging populists.
Overall, strategies emphasizing either convergence or polarization can be detrimental to democracy under certain conditions. On the one hand, during periods of economic distress, an emphasis on polarizing cultural issues can push citizens toward populist parties that offer scapegoats and simplistic solutions. On the other hand, when votes tend to disperse toward the extremes of the Gaussian distribution, mainstream parties’ convergence toward populist positions may directly nudge citizens to shift their preferences closer to new populist actors (Berman & Kundnani, 2021).
Safeguards against populist illiberal actors can be found on historical and institutional grounds. Populists’ attempts at strangling liberal democracy may be hampered by high levels of institutional solidity and organizational strength, thereby safeguarding pluralism and even indirectly revitalizing democratic participation and resilience (Weyland, 2024a).
When populists are in power, institutional parameters are not the only drivers enabling a pushback. In such cases, the strategies of oppositional forces largely depend on the strength or weakness of the institutional framework and the initial degree of institutional solidity. Moreover, conjunctural opportunities also play a decisive role. Unexpected favorable economic conditions can boost support for populists and expand their scope of action, while significantly limiting the agency of oppositional forces. Acute crises can also enhance charismatic populist leaders’ popular appeal by obscuring the public standing of democratic opponents (Weyland, 2025b).
There seems to be only negative evidence concerning effective, actionable strategies to implement against populist forces. An experiment in Italian municipalities during a 2020 constitutional referendum proposing a reduction in the total number of Members of Parliament (MPs) from 945 to 600 in the two chambers of the Italian Parliament offers some indications (Galasso et al., 2024). Deploying a two-tier advertisement campaign, Stanig et al. (2022) tested the efficacy of two approaches to opposing populism: (i) a “win the argument” strategy aimed at persuading voters by deconstructing populist ideas; and (ii) a “use the same weapons” strategy attempting to reduce populist parties’ credibility, thereby lowering populist voters’ turnout.
Findings from a follow-up survey conducted in 2023 show that, while the campaign reduced attachment to established populist parties, attempts to counter populism by applying its own tactics increased voter disaffection and ultimately backfired. Notably, individuals targeted by the campaign were more likely to support newer and emerging populist parties (Galasso, 2024).
Conclusion
In sum, the literature suggests that democratic pushback against populism is neither automatic nor uniformly effective, but contingent on a complex interaction of structural conditions, institutional resilience, and strategic agency. While economic insecurity, cultural backlash, and crises of representation create fertile ground for populist mobilization, the durability of such movements in power remains constrained by organizational weaknesses, accountability pressures, and their capacity to adapt from opposition to governance.
At the same time, evidence on counter-strategies reveals no universally effective blueprint. Both confrontational and accommodative approaches by mainstream parties carry significant risks, potentially reinforcing polarization or legitimizing populist agendas. Similarly, attempts to counter populism through its own communicative logic may generate unintended consequences, including increased voter disaffection and the emergence of new populist actors.
Nevertheless, recent patterns of democratic “U-turns” indicate that democratic erosion is not irreversible. Institutional robustness, coordinated opposition, and favorable conjunctural conditions can reopen pathways to democratic recovery. As a result, effective democratic defense depends on context-sensitive strategies that balance institutional safeguards, political competition, and citizen engagement, rather than relying on singular or deterministic solutions.
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Policy Brief: The Conditions for a Democratic Pushback Against Populism
ECPS Roundtable in Washington Examines Populism’s Impact on Transatlantic Relations
Professor Przeworski: There Is No Worldwide Crisis of Democracy
ECPS Symposium 2026: Reforming and Safeguarding Liberal Democracy — Systemic Crises, Populism, and Democratic Resilience
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