The World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland—the only international organization responsible for setting and overseeing the rules governing trade between countries. Photo: Hector Christiaen.

Transatlantic Trade, the Trump Disruption and the World Trade Organization

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Please cite as:
Jones, Kent. (2026). “Transatlantic Trade, the Trump Disruption and the WTO.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00129

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Abstract
This chapter traces the evolution of transatlantic trade relations within the rules-based trading system established during the post-Second World War period by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which later became the World Trade Organization (WTO). United States-led hegemonic stability supported European recovery through the Marshall Plan and later through backing for European integration, linking trade liberalization with political stability and containment of Soviet influence. As European economies revived, commercial frictions emerged, but most disputes were managed – if not always resolved – through GATT/WTO negotiations and dispute settlement. Globalization created new opportunities but also regulatory tensions that multilateral rules struggled to accommodate. Efforts to craft deeper discipline through the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) ultimately failed amid divergent regulatory approaches. Over time, differences on core WTO principles have eroded the shared legitimacy of panel and Appellate Body rulings. The election of Donald Trump marked a rupture: his use of national security exceptions and abandonment of most-favoured nation (MFN) practices triggered a global trade conflict and challenged the WTO’s foundations. The European Union (EU) now confronts difficult choices on diversification, systemic WTO reform and future trade leadership.

Keywords: transatlantic trade; European Union; populism; World Trade Organization; Donald Trump

 

By Kent Jones*

Introduction

Transatlantic trade relations during the post-Second World War period coincided with the establishment of the global trading rules system, first under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), later transforming into the World Trade Organization (WTO), along with the development of European economic and political integration. While there were numerous transatlantic trade disputes, GATT/WTO dispute settlement provisions and a joint political commitment to peaceful trade relations contributed to joint economic growth and stability. As postwar recovery continued, however, disruptive elements began to appear. The growth in GATT/WTO membership among developing countries – including China – created trade pressures on both the United States and European Union (EU) member states as global trade competition increased. The informal GATT dispute settlement procedures gave way to the more legalistic approach of the WTO, making US–EU disputes lengthier and more contentious.

Meanwhile, the increasingly complex issues of regulatory and trade-adjacent issues prevented a successful conclusion of a formal bilateral US–EU trade agreement. Finally, the mercantilist tendencies of the Trump presidency escalated US–EU trade tensions and led to a significant erosion of WTO rules themselves. With the United States retreating from its former leadership role and institutional obligations in the WTO, the EU was forced to consider various strategies for dealing with the evolving institutional environment of global trade, including leadership or joint leadership in a reformed WTO-like global trading order, an enhanced set of new bilateral trade agreements, or ‘muddling through’ the current difficulties with hopes of bringing the United States and China back into a reconstituted WTO.

US-led Postwar Trade, Aid and Security for Europe

Postwar US trade policy focused on creating a framework for global trade liberalization and economic growth. The launch of the GATT in 1947 established US-centred hegemonic stability, based on common trade rules for all participants, a forum for negotiations and a process of dispute settlement. The most-favoured-nation clause required non-discrimination among trading partners in the system, along with tariff binding through trade liberalization treaties and the peaceful resolution of trade disputes to prevent trade wars. These institutional features also promoted growing transatlantic investment flows, which reinforced trade growth. All current EU member states joined the GATT (or later the WTO) either before or in conjunction with their EU accession.

Transatlantic trade relations were also linked with postwar recovery through the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) and US support for European economic integration. The US policy goal was to create regional political and economic stability as a bulwark against Soviet expansion, thereby supporting democratic governments in Europe (Gehler 2022). The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 cultivated a close military and security relationship among the United States, Canada and European countries explicitly designed to deter Soviet aggression. Its membership grew during the Cold War and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and many Eastern European countries formerly aligned with the Soviet Union also joined. Strong US leadership of NATO paralleled the expansion of transatlantic trade, as most European NATO members were also part of the EU. Between 1960 and 2024, transatlantic trade increased in real terms from roughly $100 billion to $8.7 trillion. This expansion corresponds to a compound annual growth rate of 7.3% – higher than the United States’ trade growth with all partners (6.3%) and the EU’s global trade growth (6.9%). 

Transatlantic Trade and the GATT/WTO System

Continued postwar economic growth and globalization created further transatlantic trade opportunities but also heightened tensions, driven by competing commercial interests and differing trade policies. These issues were largely contained, if not always resolved, through GATT/WTO dispute settlement and negotiation. In the early years of European integration, trade disputes under the GATT system primarily concerned agricultural issues and clashes over US trading partners’ access to the common market (Hudec 1988). As European economic integration expanded and deepened, later disputes became more complex, contentious, longer-lasting and often bitter. The GATT’s successor organization, the WTO, took over protracted disputes over allowable government subsidies for Boeing (from the United States) and Airbus (from the EU), the contested safety of beef hormones, banana trade preferences for former EU colonies and controversies over the use and limits of WTO safeguard measures. Yet throughout these years, the GATT/WTO dispute settlement served a valuable purpose by providing an institutional framework for compartmentalizing such disputes while allowing normal trade relations to continue. The United States and the EU shared an ethos of cooperation that favoured trade liberalization and the stability of trade relations.

However, globalization and the expansion of the WTO to include many developing countries created new pressures on the trading system. Adjustment problems mounted in advanced industrialized countries, reaching a peak after China joined the WTO in 2001. Evolving comparative advantage, combined with increasingly mobile capital in the global economy, culminated in the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, further dampening support for globalization (Hays 2009). The weight of rapid change also put pressure on the dispute settlement system, as many countries used WTO trade law measures and subsidies to protect their domestic industries, which their trading partners challenged. China posed a special problem, as its government support for state-owned enterprises did not neatly fall under WTO subsidy disciplines. Dispute settlement decisions in all these cases did not always satisfy the litigants, and the United States and EU grew increasingly frustrated with certain WTO dispute settlement outcomes, including several between them.

A particularly volatile flashpoint was the growing criticism of the WTO dispute settlement Appellate Body’s (AB) controversial decisions, sparking charges of judicial overreach and a violation of WTO members’ sovereignty (Miranda and Miranda 2023). President Obama subsequently vetoed the appointment of AB judges he deemed unfair to US interests, an action repeated later by President Trump. Other countries, including the EU, suspected that judicial nominations were becoming politicized (Shaffer et al. 2017). These conflicts culminated eventually in the suspension of Appellate Body activities in 2019. Since then, the WTO dispute settlement body has been unable to litigate cases to completion, a sign that the WTO system has been weakening under the weight of rigid judicialization of dispute settlement (Busch and Reinhardt 2003).

After the founding of the WTO in 1995, multilateral trade liberalization also weakened. Several rounds of earlier GATT/WTO negotiations had lowered global tariffs, but many non-tariff barriers remained. Existing GATT/WTO rules appeared inadequate to secure future gains from trade by removing non-tariff barriers specific to particular industries and governments, calling for new negotiations on trade-related government policies and more flexible dispute settlement rules and processes. Meanwhile, the WTO’s protracted Doha Round of negotiations (2001–2009) failed to achieve broad and comprehensive trade liberalization, suggesting that the WTO had become too large and divided to address the varied issues of its increasingly diverse membership.

With these WTO constraints and shortcomings in mind, many countries turned to regional trade agreements under GATT Article 24, which proliferated rapidly. The United States and the EU also set out to negotiate an ambitious bilateral agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Negotiations began formally in July 2013, creating 24 joint working groups that indicated the complexity and breadth of the negotiations. The most important issues focused on harmonizing regulations and reducing non-tariff barriers. Yet the negotiating bandwidth was not wide enough to accommodate cross-cutting trade and non-trade issues, including climate change, financial regulations, subsidies, labour standards and health and safety measures. Bargaining over trade-offs across so many sectors of public interest was especially difficult since their trade negotiators could not effectively represent adjacent environmental and social health interests in their home capitals in a coordinated manner.

Furthermore, limited public access to information on the negotiations sparked a backlash in both the United States and the EU, and a final agreement would have required contentious ratification in all EU countries and in the US Congress. The election of Donald Trump – no friend of trade cooperation – to the presidency in 2016 stalled the TTIP talks shortly afterwards, and the European Commission (EC) abandoned the negotiations in 2019. Since then, a US–EU agreement of deeper economic integration has remained out of reach.

The Trump Shock

The WTO, in its already weakened state, faced threats to its very foundations with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and transatlantic trade relations suffered as a result. Trump’s presidential campaigns combined anti-immigrant rhetoric with a protectionist platform linking imports with de-industrialization, which he described as ‘American carnage’. He placed blame for both issues at the feet of ‘global elites’, whom he accused of opening US borders to illegal immigrants and job-stealing trade agreements. Trump’s political strategy was typical of right-wing populism, instilling anger in his base of disaffected, culturally conservative ‘true Americans’ against liberal elitist internationalists.

Trump also had a long-standing fascination with tariffs as the key to a country’s prosperity, but unlike other populist leaders, he was uniquely positioned to attack the foundations of the global trading system. Not only was the United States the world’s largest import market, but it was also the country most responsible for founding and leading the GATT/WTO system. Trump adopted a zero-sum mercantilist approach to trade in which imports amounted to a loss of national wealth and exports served as the primary measure of economic strength. In this framework, tariffs became a form of retribution against countries Trump accused of dumping ‘unwanted’ imports into the US market. He also asserted that tariffs were always paid by foreigners, a key element of his false claim that tariffs do not raise prices.

In his first administration, Trump waged a trade war with China and imposed national security tariffs on steel and aluminium under Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (the so-called ‘Section 232 tariffs’). This move was his first significant anti-WTO action, a subversion of GATT Article 21. The rarely used provision had always been reserved for member countries facing demonstrably hostile foreign actions from other member countries, against which they could legitimately suspend GATT/WTO rules and restrict imports. Trump declared that the United States could self-declare a national security emergency for any reason, including unemployment and reduced output in ‘strategic’ industries. Other WTO members, he asserted, could not challenge the US decision or retaliate against it. This reinterpretation of the rules opened the door for any WTO member to unilaterally raise tariffs on any domestic industry for any self-declared national security reason. All foreign suppliers of steel imports to the US, not least the EU, were surprised to discover that their shipments suddenly represented a security threat to their largest trading partner and erstwhile trade ally. In his second term, Trump extended Section 232 tariffs to cover automobiles, auto parts, copper, pharmaceuticals, kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and heavy trucks, with more products planned (Covington and Burling LLP 2025).

However, Trump had even broader tariff plans, having devised a narrative of global foreign responsibility for US trade deficits. He announced a set of tariffs against nearly every country, while abandoning all negotiated WTO tariff commitments and the MFN clause completely. Denouncing what he considered an unfairly low, long-standing US effective tariff rate of approximately 2.1%, he devised a set of variable ‘reciprocal’ tariffs based on a flawed economic explanation of trade imbalances and applied them in a discriminatory manner, ranging from 10% to 49% (Doherty 2025). Each US trading partner would have to submit concessions to Trump individually to avoid his unilateral tariffs and gain any additional access to the US import market, usually in the form of greater and sometimes preferential market access for US exports, the elimination of what Trump deemed unfair non-tariff barriers, and commitments to make significant foreign investments in US-based manufacturing. Trump’s goal in his trade policy was to achieve total control over tariffs and trade negotiations. To this end, he chose to impose his global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which he interpreted as giving the president complete control over trade policy by executive order. Tariff rates and their duration would be at the president’s discretion and subject to change at any time, according to his preferences, without congressional ratification or mandatory review.

The Trump–EU Trade Framework

Trump’s abandonment of WTO rules became abundantly clear in his announcement on 2 April 2025 of unilateral tariff increases that discriminated among countries, followed by bilateral negotiations with the EU and other countries. These measures violated GATT articles 1 (MFN) and 2 (tariff binding). The primary basis for US ‘emergency’ tariffs was a long-standing US trade deficit, which appears inconsistent with GATT Article 21 (Kho et al., 2024). In bypassing WTO dispute settlement procedures, the United States also violated Article 3 of the Dispute Settlement Understanding, which was meant to prevent trade wars, a key underlying motivation in establishing the original GATT. The Trump negotiations were entirely bilateral and one-sided, with his demands for concessions in exchange for US import market access, violating the WTO norm of multilateralism and the provisions of GATT Article 24. US demands for preferential market access to the EU in certain products further violate GATT Article 1. In addition, final tariffs in the US–EU agreement were not bound, a further violation of GATT Article 2, leaving open the possibility that Trump could unilaterally raise those tariffs in the future (WTO 1999).

The initial US tariff assigned to the EU was an alarmingly high 30%, along with special Section 232 tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminium. From the perspective of the initial US tariffs, the Trump–EU ‘framework’ agreement was greeted with relief by many EU officials, even though the final 15% baseline tariff was more than twelve times the average US tariff rate of 1.2% on EU goods that prevailed at the end of 2024 (see U.S. Department of Commerce 2025). Young (chapter 7 in this report) provides details of its provisions. EU trade officials, like those from other countries, had faced a one-sided, coercive negotiation. Many observers complained that the EC had failed to fight hard enough for EU economic interests through retaliation (Stiglitz 2025). The final package, however, seemed to indicate that the United States softened its terms, perhaps to forestall possible EU retaliation, as shown by lower US tariffs and more exemptions than originally announced. Christine Lagarde (2025) insisted that EU tit-for-tat escalation would only have provoked the tariff-loving Trump, risking a much worse outcome for the EU (see also Baldwin 2025, 83–92). An economic perspective suggests that retaliation would be justified only if it forced the United States to back down from a multi-stage trade war, which typically amplifies economic damage to all parties. The EU did in fact prepare retaliatory measures that could have demonstrated its resolve, including limiting US tariffs on automobiles and pharmaceuticals, two of the EU’s most valuable export products (UN Comtrade 2025).

While the framework agreement contains specific tariff commitments, it lacks the structure and specificity of a WTO treaty. US negotiators were careful to make the US tariff rates contingent on European Parliament approval of its new US trade obligations, but there is no corresponding mention of required US congressional approval or ratification, presumably since Trump was basing the agreement on an executive order with no congressional input. The United States’ obligations therefore appear not to be treaty obligations. Another aspect of the deal is that EU commitments on natural gas and computer chip purchases, and on $600 billion of foreign investment in the United States, appear not to be legally enforceable, as they involve largely private, contingent commercial transactions and investment. If these or other targets are not met, the question arises as to what recourse the United States will have to redress the EU’s noncompliance. The answer appears to be that Trump, through the end of his term in 2028, would be able to raise US tariff rates on EU goods unilaterally in response.

Outlook for the European Union

Despite many trade disputes between the United States and European countries since the end of the Second World War, the GATT/WTO transatlantic trade rules enabled trade to expand. Dispute settlement procedures, while imperfect, tended to keep trade conflict separate from broader trade relations until Trump’s second term. The best strategy for the EU in response to Trump’s disruptions is therefore to seek, as much and as broadly as possible, to expand rules-based trade with its non-US trading partners. Trade with the United States will require an extended period of capricious tariff policies by Trump and possibly his successors, but the framework agreement with the United States suggests that the EU is likely at least to maintain access – albeit reduced – to this valuable import market in the meantime. ‘Muddling through’ the current US–EU trade framework will probably require the EU to adopt a transactional (rather than rules-based) approach to transatlantic trade, involving sector-by-sector or item-by-item bargaining, matching Trump’s mercantilist instincts. After Trump leaves office, it may be possible to establish more systematic and predictable trade relations, as US businesses are likely to push for a more open and predictable trade and investment environment.

Nonetheless, the EU should seek to apply WTO rules in expanding its export markets through new trade agreements (see Poletti, chapter 6 in this report), as growth in international trade is likely to occur outside the United States, especially in Southeast Asia (Altman and Bastian 2025). Inevitably, EU trade expansion under WTO rules could trigger threats and sanctions from the United States if it persists in forcing its trading partners to grant preferential treatment to US exporters, in violation of MFN rules. Managing this problem will be challenging in any EU efforts to ‘muddle through’ mercantilist US trade policies. Yet the EU and other countries have continued to apply WTO rules to their non-US trade, and the United States is likely to reach the limit of its ability to bully its trading partners into cheating on WTO rules they wish to maintain as long as the United States remains a WTO member. Successful WTO-based trade expansion by the EU and other countries could also provide an incentive for the United States to return to the same rules.

Planning trade policies for the future, however, is difficult because of uncertainties in the short- and medium-term. Trump’s tariffs are unpopular with the US electorate, but there will be no legislative check on his policies as long as Republican majorities in Congress remain beholden to him. However, Democrats will challenge these majorities in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. It remains unclear who will run for president in 2028. Vice President J.D. Vance appears to be Trump’s successor for the nomination, but it is not certain that he commands the loyal following that Trump has. The Democratic Party, for its part, has no clear leading presidential candidate at this writing, and no clear alternative trade policy platform to rally around. A more trade-friendly US president from either party could eventually move the United States back towards trade policies consistent with WTO rules, but this may also depend on reforms in contested WTO rules and dispute settlement procedures, especially as they pertain to China’s trade policies.

A more immediate issue, unresolved at this writing, is the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case challenging the constitutionality of Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. SCOTUS has agreed to expedite the decision, but is not bound by a timetable, and its verdict may not be definitive. A verdict vindicating Trump’s tariffs would allow them to stand indefinitely, or until Congress succeeds in challenging them. An unconditional overturning of Trump’s tariffs would cause them to revert to a pre-Trump effective level of 2.1%. Yet compromise verdicts might allow the tariffs to continue, subject to duration or level limits, or to additional congressional oversight or legislation (see Miller and Chevalier 2025). Even a complete reversal of the IEEPA tariffs is unlikely to deter Trump from imposing additional tariffs under other emergency trade laws, especially Section 232 (Werschkul 2025).

Beyond US domestic politics, geopolitical uncertainties abound. The vacuum left by Trump’s abandonment of US leadership in the WTO, if it continues, will require a large country or a coalition of countries to fill or coordinate new institutional leadership roles. The difficulty of resetting WTO rules-based trade is that no single country can replace the United States in terms of economic size, political influence, financial market depth and reserve currency status, elements that reinforced the United States’ previous leadership of the global trading system. The United States may eventually re-emerge from its Trumpian protectionism to reclaim leadership of the multilateral trading system. Still, a prolonged period of US tariffs and economic nationalism is likely to severely weaken the US economy. The more US economic and political attributes erode due to self-inflicted damage, the closer the United States comes to forfeiting its chance to return to its previous position of global hegemonic leadership.

In the meantime, the EU’s role in the future trading system faces a highly volatile global institutional environment marked by geopolitical divides, scepticism towards globalization, and a general lack of international trust and cooperation (Zelicovich 2022). The EU will first need political consensus among its own member countries to pursue a broader role in global trade governance and corresponding enthusiasm from its potential partners in leading any post-US trading system.

A crucial issue in this regard is devising a system that can accommodate, if not discipline, China and its state-managed trade policies. The United States missed the opportunity to rally other countries to common action regarding China’s opaque trade interventions through negotiation and reform of WTO rules. In the absence of US leadership, a revitalization of rules-based trade liberalization will require a strong coalition of countries to bargain together to address this problem. Only then might large regional trade alliances such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the EU and perhaps others merge, possibly eventually drawing in China and the United States as well, to provide the critical mass for a new global trade institution. The ability of the EU to take on a more prominent role in global trade leadership will depend on the strength of its internal economy, its internal political cohesion, its foreign policy engagement and its skill in trade diplomacy (see Smith 1999). If the EU is not capable of the sort of hegemonic leadership the United States once exercised, a different, more fragile institutional model of cooperative trade leadership will be necessary. Yet an EU committed to WTO principles will still be able to play a crucial role in achieving institutional change alongside other trading powers.

The Trump trade war, disruptive as it has been, may ironically provide an opportunity for the EU and other WTO members to correct, reform and strengthen WTO rules and processes of dispute settlement and trade liberalization for all countries. The EU should continue its efforts to bridge the gap in WTO dispute settlement through its Multiparty Interim Appeal (MPIA) initiative (Wouters and Hegde 2022). The scope of policy space in trade agreements, issues related to changing technologies, and the WTO consensus rule should all be on the table for reform. Differences in trade-related environmental, labour and human rights preferences, as well as dissimilar approaches to regulation, need to be made compatible with normal trade relations at the global level. One potentially important, but so far little-used, provision of the WTO is Annex IV, allowing sub-groups of WTO members to conclude plurilateral agreements on smaller agendas of specific issues, while being open to the accession of new members. Hoekman et al. (2025) suggest this approach for negotiating new agreements among like-minded countries on environmental and other trade-related issues. Negotiating such agreements could free the WTO from its consensus straitjacket, which has stymied progress on many trade liberalization proposals. The EU in particular would benefit from a ‘variable geometry’ of social interests in trade policy that are currently difficult to pursue within the existing WTO framework. Adapting to the realities of globalized, developmentally diverse, environmentally sensitive and geopolitically engaged world trade, perhaps on an incremental basis, is likely to be essential for its institutional survival.

 

(*) Kent Jones, Dr. ès sci. pol. (international economics), Graduate Institute of International Studies/University of Geneva, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Babson College, where he taught from 1982 until his retirement in 2023. He continues his academic interests in trade policy and trade institutions, having published several books and articles on these topics, including Populism and Trade (2021). His teaching also included visiting appointments at Brandeis University, the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and the University of Innsbruck, Austria.  In addition, he served as a visiting senior economist at the U.S. Department of State. Email: kjones@babson.edu

 

References

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Baldwin, Richard. 2025. The Great Trade Hack: How Trump’s Trade War Fails and the World Moves On. Paris and London: CEPR Press. https://cepr.org/publications/books-and-reports/great-trade-hack-how-trumps-trade-war-fails-and-world-moves

Busch, Marc L., and Eric Reinhardt. 2003. “Transatlantic Trade Conflicts and GATT/WTO Dispute Settlement.” In Transatlantic Economic Disputes: The EU, the US and the WTO, edited by Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann and Mark A. Pollack, 1–28. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Covington & Burling LLP. 2025. “Status of Section 232 Actions by the Trump Administration.” Alert, July 28. https://www.cov.com/en/news-and-insights/insights/2025/07/status-of-section-232-actions-by-the-trump-administration

Doherty, Emma. 2025. “Economists Take Issue with Trump’s Tariff Formula.” CNBC, April 5. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/05/economists-take-issue-with-trumps-tariff-formula-arguing-rate-is-inflated.html

Gehler, Michael. 2022. The Signing of the Rome Treaties 65 Years Ago: Origins, Provisions and Effects. Discussion Paper C270. Bonn: Center for European Integration Studies, University of Bonn.

Hays, Jude C. 2009. Globalization and the New Politics of Embedded Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hoekman, Bernard, Betül K. O. Taş, and Rohit Ticku. 2025. Plurilateral Approaches to Managing Cross-Border Industrial Policy-Related Spillovers. RSC Working Paper 2025/27. San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute. https://cadmus.eui.eu

Hudec, Robert E. 1988. “Legal Issues in US–EC Trade Policy: GATT Litigation 1960–1965.” In Issues in US–EC Trade Relations, edited by Robert E. Baldwin, Carl G. Hamilton, and André Sapir, 1–36. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kho, Sien S., Yvonne K. McNamara, Samantha B. W. Kirwin, and Ben Davies. 2024. “The Conundrum of the Essential Security Exception: Can the WTO Resolve the GATT Article XXI Crisis and Save the Dispute Settlement Mechanism?” American University International Law Review 40: 127–195.

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European Commission headquarters with waving EU flags in Brussels. Photo: Viorel Dudau.

International Institutions, Populism and Transatlantic Relations

by with No Comment ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceForeign PolicyHomeReports

Please cite as:
Smith, Michael. (2026). “Overview and Background: International Institutions, Populism and Transatlantic Relations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00130

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Abstract
Populist politicians and parties view international institutions as instruments of competing state interests and see global governance as empowering a detached globalist elite that must be challenged in the name of the people. This stance contrasts with perspectives that treat international institutions as semi-autonomous actors or as arenas that facilitate communication and responsiveness across societies. The two Trump administrations represent an extreme form of United States (US) unilateralism and ‘domesticism,’ prioritizing domestic needs as the foundation of international leadership. Although the European Union (EU)’s long-standing commitment to multilateral institutions has been modified in recent years—partly in response to US pressure and partly due to internal populist currents—it continues to support transatlantic and global governance. The progression from ‘Trump 1.0’ through the Biden administration to ‘Trump 2.0’ reflects both enduring trends in US foreign policy and a weakening of constraints on presidential action. Whereas ‘Trump 1.0’ faced domestic and international limits, and Biden only partially restored multilateralism, ‘Trump 2.0’ pursues a far more radical and unconstrained agenda. These policies reshape international institutions and the broader international order, posing both risks and limited opportunities for the EU. The chapter outlines three strategic responses for the EU: reflex, resistance and reconfiguration, applied across the volume’s three scenarios.

Keywords: United States; Trump administrations; European Union; international institutions; multilateralism

 

By Michael Smith*

Introduction: The Challenge

The current tensions between the United States (US), the European Union (EU) and other actors in transatlantic relations can be seen in part as a continuation of a number of trends. Since the growth of what might be termed the Euro–American system in the 1950s, there have been tensions centring on US leadership and how it is exercised, the emergence of the European integration project and its impact on transatlantic relations, and the changing domestic politics of the United States, European countries and what is now the European Union (Smith, Guay and Morgenstern-Pomorski 2025, chapter 1; Sloan 2016). Although the Euro–American system has become largely encompassed by the US–EU relationship, there are other important dimensions, particularly in security politics, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in the late 1940s and 1950s, retains a central role and has itself been a long-standing focus of transatlantic tensions over burden-sharing and the contributions of the allies. Such tensions, although at times severe, have largely been contained: partly as a reflection of common threat perceptions, partly as a reflection of shared values and a commitment to liberal democracy among the members of the system. This does not mean that everything has been plain sailing: almost every decade since the 1950s has seen transatlantic crises, some of which (for example, over the Iraq War in 2003) have been seen as presaging the ‘death of the west’ (Lieven 2003, Pond 2004).

Many of these crises and continuing tensions have centred on the role of international institutions. US leadership has on many occasions veered towards US unilateralism and towards ‘domesticism’ – the tendency to put US domestic politics and economics first, and to see international institutions as inconvenient interlocutors to be avoided or attacked if they cannot be manipulated. This inclination is evident both in the broadest terms – for example, the idea of a rules-based international order and the centrality of international law and diplomacy – and in respect of specific institutions, for example, those of the international financial order. At the same time, Europeans and particularly the evolving European Union, have placed their faith in multilateralism, the rules-based order and in the legitimacy of international institutions; this is hardly surprising given the genealogy of the European project, and the ways in which engagement with international institutions endows the EU with international legitimacy. Collective defence and NATO’s role as a European security organization have also fostered a form of multilateralism, qualified by the United States’ dominant role as the alliance’s key contributor.

Given this broad background, what are the specific characteristics of the current transatlantic challenge to international institutions? At one level, it is the challenge of populist approaches to international order. Both in Europe and in the United States, the current politics of populism imply a super-charged priority for domestic politics, the assertion of sovereignty and forms of nativism as the basis for foreign policy, and thus a version of international order based on the power and interests of competing states (Wainer, Destradi, and Zürn 2024; Pacciardi, Spandler, and Söderbaum 2024). As a result, the EU has been challenged from within by member states asserting their right to dissent from or obstruct policies, and externally by the actions of the United States under the two Trump administrations (2017–2021 and January 2025 to the present). In this version of international politics, the role of international institutions is fundamentally challenged: they can be seen as either instruments of the dominant states or as obstacles to the legitimate actions of national authorities. This set of views constitutes a challenge to principles of multilateralism, to ideas of global governance, and to the idea that international institutions can become either independent actors in specific fields or spaces for the development of ideas about a wide variety of activities in areas such as development, conflict resolution, human rights or the environment. Populism sees these activities as generating a cross-national elite, which in itself is a challenge to the will of the people and the needs of the national state.

In this context, the advent of ‘Trumpism’ as a form of populism and potential authoritarianism has major resonance. Such a stance by the United States is in itself not unprecedented; the predominance of isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s, and elements of Reaganism in the 1980s can be seen as precursors or sources of the Trump posture (in fact, ‘America First’ and ‘make America great again’ have been revived by Trump as slogans, not created by him). Here, the influence of domesticism is both explicit and wide-ranging, and is made more potent by the United States’ position as (still) the predominant economic and military power in the global arena. That arena is changing, and the emergence of new rivals to the United States is another key element in the current and continuing challenge; most notably, the rise of China and the revisionism of Russia has provided a stimulus to the projection of US domestic concerns and a determination to place American interests at the core of international action. No clearer illustration of the implications for international institutions can be found than in the US National Security Strategy published in December 2017, at the end of the first year of the first Trump administration: The United States will prioritize its efforts in those organizations that serve American interests, to ensure that they are strengthened and supportive of the United States, our allies, and our partners. Where existing institutions and rules need modernizing, the United States will lead to update them. At the same time, it should be clear that the United States will not cede sovereignty to those that claim authority over American citizens and are in conflict with our constitutional framework (The White House 2017, 40).

Such a statement is a clear departure from the principles of multilateralism: the idea that international institutions can add value and contribute to global public goods in a wide range of issue areas. No less is it a challenge to the established principles of EU external action, which embody a commitment to multilateral institutions as a core value, explicitly stated in the Global Strategy of 2016: Without global norms and the means to enforce them, peace and security, prosperity and democracy – our vital interests – are at risk. Guided by the values on which it is founded, the EU is committed to a global order based on international law, including the principles of the UN Charter, which ensure human rights, sustainable development and lasting access to the global commons…The EU will strive for a strong UN as the bedrock of the multilateral rules-based order, and develop globally coordinated processes with international and regional organisations, states and non-state actors (European Union 2016, 39).

For the EU, this general challenge from its most important international partner has, in part, been linked to challenges from within: the governments of Hungary, Slovakia and – until the elections of 2023 – Poland have challenged the legitimacy of EU actions and have professed their alignment with Trumpian populism. Although there have been some moves in EU external action away from strong multilateralism (partly as a result of pressure from the United States), the contrast remains stark (Youngs and Smith 2018; Smith 2018). Whilst Trumpian policies see international institutions as arenas for competition and as subordinate to national priorities, the EU still collectively prioritizes them as contributions to the global order and as arenas within which it can realize its role as a ‘power’ in the global arena.

From ‘Trump 1.0’ to ‘Trump 2.0’

There is no doubt that leaders in the EU saw the first Trump administration as a severe challenge, not only to specific EU interests but also to the norms of multilateralism and the rules-based international order on which the EU’s international legitimacy partly rested (Peterson 2018; Riddervold and Newsome 2018). In May 2018, the then president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, identified the US administration as a ‘capricious’ challenge, reinforcing the case for greater EU self-reliance (Tusk 2018). The four years of ‘Trump 1.0’ constituted a period of constant tension, not only relating to the EU and its policies (described by Trump as a ‘foe’) but also to the underpinnings of the EU’s international status. The Trump attack on international institutions, focused on the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a range of other agencies, called into question the status of international institutions in general, whilst the administration’s attacks on NATO threatened one of the key enabling pillars of the European project. On the whole, though, the worst did not happen: the administration was constrained domestically by its evident lack of preparation, and thus was unable to bend institutions such as the State Department to its will whilst experiencing internal conflicts that further weakened its capacity to act. At the same time, the residual effects of the Liberal International Order (LIO) and its rules-based system were able to moderate at least some of the Trump initiatives (Peterson 2018; Smith 2018, 2021; Schade 2023).

Part of the EU’s response to the Trump administration between 2017 and 2021 thus actually amounted to a policy of ‘wait and see’. European resistance to the erosion of the multilateral order was at least in part possible because of the limitations of ‘Trump 1.0’ and the Union’s capacity to muster collective resilience; in part, the Union’s leaders could hope that something better might emerge after the 2020 presidential election. The installation of Joe Biden as president in 2021 seemed to indicate that the period of contestation and disruption might be no more than a major blip or ‘bump in the road’ towards renewed EU–US cooperation and a reinvigoration of international institutions. European leaders, including the European Commission, certainly seemed to assume as much. In November 2020, immediately after the presidential election, the Union produced a paper aimed at setting a new agenda for transatlantic cooperation (Joint Communication 2020), whilst the nascent Biden administration was anxious to demonstrate its credentials in multilateral cooperation, global governance and transatlantic cooperation. To quote the new president in his first foreign policy address, ‘America is back’, and, to all intents and purposes, this presaged a new era of transatlantic convergence regarding the EU, NATO, and global institutions, including a number of those exited by ‘Trump 1.0’. The changed atmosphere of United States–European interactions was perceptible in a number of areas, with new agreements, new institutions such as the EU–US Trade and Technology Council and an absence of either verbal or more material attacks on the status and standing of the Union or NATO. The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to intense cooperation in terms of both economic and diplomatic sanctions and of the broader diplomacy of European order, whilst also re-energizing the role of NATO and of bilateral military cooperation at the transatlantic level. By the time of the 2024 EU–US Summit, the declaration could say without irony that ‘we are more united than ever.’

That statement appears strikingly irrelevant in light of developments since November 2024. The election of Donald Trump to a second term in November 2024 and his inauguration as president in January 2025 created an expectation of disruption and unpredictability not only in United States–European relations but also in world order more generally. It was clear from the outset that the new (returning) president had a much more well-defined agenda than in 2017, that he intended to implement it with urgency, and that there would be a much more thorough-going pursuit of the ‘America First’ agenda proclaimed at his first inauguration, underpinned by a more systematic approach to the purging of the federal government and in particular those elements dedicated to foreign policy and international relations (Chazan 2025; Chazan and Sevastopulo 2025). The evisceration of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the imposition of punitive ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on friend and foe alike, withdrawal (for the second time) from global climate institutions and from others such as the WHO and UNESCO, added up to a revolutionary attack on established international norms and processes. For NATO’s European members, the exercise of what might be termed ‘coercive alliance diplomacy’ in US efforts to increase contributions to the alliance led to a ‘deal’ that promised to reduce US commitments whilst yielding major returns for the US defence-industrial complex. For the EU, built on foundations of international cooperation and dedicated to ideas of multilateralism and global governance, Trump’s policies were an assault not only on its assumptions about partnership with the USA, but also on its claim to broader legitimacy as an actor within the multilateral system and a guardian of important norms and institutions. The conclusion of a strikingly one-sided EU–US trade agreement in the summer of 2025 only served to underline the apparent challenge to the EU’s status and expectations, whilst the agreement of NATO members to raise their defence spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade bore witness to the ‘coercive diplomacy’ exercised by Washington over its allies (Foy et al. 2025; Ganesh 2025). In September 2025, the address by President Trump to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he attacked not only the UN itself but also European countries, and provided a further onslaught on the efficacy of international institutions in general, provided a chastening confirmation of the new world that had taken hold in only a matter of months.

The Impact of ‘Trump 2.0’

What does the new world of ‘Trump 2.0’ imply for international institutions? At one level, US policies seem to imply the final dismantling of the liberal international order, with its assumptions about the role of international law and organizations and the benefits of international cooperation. As already noted, however, the pressures on the established order had been growing for many years even before the first Trump administration took office in 2017. But the second Trump administration has a much more developed idea of the uses of power and how the US position in the world can be exploited (Belin and Dworkin 2025; Kimmage 2025). In this context, the challenge posed by ‘Trump 2.0’ is not simply to specific institutions but also to key practices associated with the established international order. International law is to be seen as an instrument of state policy, and thus as capable of reinterpretation in line with the interests of leading states; diplomacy is redefined as a form of performative process, in which diplomatic events can be presented as ‘good television’ foregrounding the presence of President Trump; international organizations are seen as dispensable in light of the needs of the United States and other major ‘powers.’

One of the first executive orders issued by President Trump mandated not only withdrawal from the WHO and UNESCO, but also a comprehensive review of all international organizations and their ability to serve US interests (The White House 2025). At the same time, funding for a wide range of international bodies was cut, partly due to reduced USAID funding and partly as part of a broader strategy aimed at the US withdrawal from international cooperation. The United Nations system, according to one commentator, was at risk of being reduced to the status of the League of Nations during the interwar period from 1919 to 1939 (Patrick 2025), and the roles of individual organizations have been attacked across a very broad front. In addition to the familiar targets of the WHO and UNESCO, challenges to the WTO, the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the UN Relief and Works Agency in Palestine (UNRWA) as part of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East have been mounted (see chapter 10 of this report). Not only is the UN system at issue: as previously noted, continuing attacks on bodies such as the Group of 7 (G7) industrial economies and regional organizations such as NATO and the EU itself have proliferated.

The impact of these strategies is not limited to the activities of the specific organizations targeted; it also extends to the expectations and strategies of a wide range of states in the global arena. In particular, it extends to the other ‘great powers’ and ‘middle powers’ within the international system. Where the US withdraws or distances itself from organizations, this can open up space for the injection of new forms of multilateral cooperation, for example in the form of Chinese diplomacy surrounding the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) or the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping which has now extended to include a range of regional powers as well as its core members (Rachman 2025). As a result, the nature and extent of multilateralism in the world arena is in a state of flux – the old order has been undermined, but a new order is struggling to be born.

For the EU, part of the impact is felt in the well-established tension between the Union’s internal politics and the external challenges posed by US policies. One of the key features of Trumpian policies is that they expose vulnerabilities and tensions within the EU: most obviously in the form of differential economic pressures arising from the erosion of international order in areas such as trade (see section 2 of this report), but also in the tensions observable between member states more or less receptive to Trumpian ideas. In the field of international institutions, the EU has been challenged to maintain its solidarity with the UN system and other global governance bodies. It has been challenged more fundamentally to maintain its commitment to multilateralism and to defend its investment in the institutions of the liberal international order, from which it derives important measures of legitimacy and leverage. The potential for marginalizing the EU’s efforts, both in Europe and on the global stage, is real as relations among a number of potentially dominant powers come to define the new world order. In this context, the capacity of EU institutions to develop strategies and support effective diplomacy becomes crucial. This insight was central to Ursula von der Leyen’s 2025 State of the Union address to the European Parliament, which focused strongly on how the Union might respond to both the challenges and the opportunities in the current conjuncture (von der Leyen 2025).

Strategies and Possibilities

How might the EU frame its responses to the challenges set out in the previous sections, with particular reference to international institutions? In her State of the Union address, President von der Leyen was anxious to underline the extent to which the EU can – and should – assert its agency in a fluctuating and potentially threatening environment. This posture is reflected, at least in part, in the three potential strategies outlined here: reflex, resistance and reconfiguration.

  1. Reflex would primarily consist of adaptation to the new order, and in particular, the accommodation of US policy challenges. This strategy has risks attached to it – the most obvious being the danger of perceived dependency on the US, and the potential for forms of appeasement, as reflected in some of the accusations levelled at the EU–US trade agreement of July 2025. A corollary of this posture is that the EU’s agency and legitimacy in international institutions might be reduced or eliminated – a major blow to perceptions of the EU as a multilateralist and as a force for the consolidation or preservation of international institutions.
  2. Resistance would imply the use of the EU’s position in international institutions as a means of standing up to US policies, and actively promoting alternatives to the Trump administration’s initiatives through the exploitation of ‘competitive interdependence’ or ‘competitive strategic autonomy’ as outlined by Erik Jones in chapter 5 of this report. As with ‘reflex’ strategies, there are costs and risks attached to this course of action; most obviously, the costs and risks associated with the Trump administration’s well-known tendency to punish those who stand up to it. It is quite difficult to see how the EU could avoid considerable costs if it adopted a policy of active resistance to the Trump administration, and as noted earlier, those costs would likely be unevenly distributed among member states. One of the consequences of a policy of active resistance would thus be heightened pressures on the EU’s internal policy processes, and the risk of ‘de-Europeanization’ strategies being pursued by a number of member states.
  3. Reconfiguration is a third potential strategy for the EU in terms of its engagement with international institutions. In other words, in this strategy, the Union would develop new forms of multilateral bodies or press for the reform of existing bodies to make them more resilient in the face of pressures not only from US policies but also from the rise of new forms of multilateralism noted earlier. Such an incremental strategy would imply an emphasis on the EU’s agency within international institutions and an active attempt to shape their development in the face of challenges that are unlikely to disappear with the end of the current Trump administration. Such an ‘assertive’ or ‘creative’ multilateralism would by no means be cost-free, but it would have the virtue of coherence and consistency with the EU’s core values, as frequently stated.

Where does this leave us in respect of the three scenarios for the future of transatlantic relations outlined at the start of this volume? The disintegration of transatlantic relations has been prophesied on many occasions, and the current conjuncture suggests it is a possibility. There has undoubtedly been fragmentation during the past decade, and the danger is now more explicit than ever. But the sinews of transatlantic relations, both public and private, are robust and are likely to contain the damage at least in the medium term. It is not clear that there is scope in the near term for significant progress, as long as the challenges to international institutions reviewed here persist: quite simply, the US attack on multilateralism and the rise of multiple bilateralisms are not encouraging for the future of international institutions. Most likely, there will be at least a period of muddling through, but this should be qualified by the remarks above on strategy. Simply put, the EU has an opportunity to assert and maintain its multilateral credentials and to contribute to a creative period of muddling through, in which the resilience of international institutions is enhanced, and they are reconfigured to face a challenging new world order.

The following chapters reflect a number of these general arguments. In chapter 10, Edith Drieskens explores the enduring ambivalence of the United States towards international institutions, specifically the UN system, and assesses the EU’s capacity to replace or bypass the United States in the UN context. In chapter 11, Daniel Fiorino analyses the linkages between domestic and external policies in the USA, and the extent to which the EU might be able to promote incremental change in international environmental institutions in the absence of the United States. In chapter 12, Frode Veggeland provides a detailed analysis of the growth of turbulence around international institutions, and especially the WHO, which has been a major focus of US policies and thus a significant concern for the EU.

 

(*) Michael Smith is Honorary Professor in European Politics at the University of Warwick, UK, and Emeritus Professor of European Politics at Loughborough University, UK. He has published widely on transatlantic relations, American foreign policy and European Union external action; his most recent books are The European Union’s Strategic Partnerships: Global Diplomacy in a Contested World (edited with Laura Christina Ferreira-Pereira, Palgrave-Macmillan 2021), International Relations and the European Union (edited with Christopher Hill and Sophie Vanhoonacker, (4th edition, Oxford University Press 2023) and The European Union and the United States: Competition, Convergence and Crisis in the Global Arena (co-authored with Terrence R. Guay and Jost Morgenstern-Pomorski, 2nd edition, Bloomsbury 2025). Email: M.H.Smith@warwick.ac.uk

 

References

Belin, Constance, and Anthony Dworkin. 2025. Multilateralism with Less America: Trump’s Plan for International Organizations. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. https://ecfr.eu/article/multilateralism-with-less-america-trumps-plan-for-international-organisations/

Chazan, Guy. 2025. “Fellowship of Trump Loyalists Makes Big Inroads into Foreign Service Roles.” Financial Times, May 27, p. 6.

Chazan, Guy, and Demetri Sevastopulo. 2025. “Hundreds of US Foreign Service Staff to Lose Jobs.” Financial Times, June 14–15, p. 6.

European Union. 2016. Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe. A Global Strategy for the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Brussels, June.

Ganesh, Janan. 2025. “Europe Has No Choice but to Appease Trump.” Financial Times, September 25, 23.

European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. 2025. A New EU–U.S. Agenda for Global Change. JOIN (2020) 22 final.

Foy, Henry, Ben Hall, Leila Abboud, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, and Laura Pital. 2025. “What Happens to Nato if the US Steps Back?” Financial Times, June 22. https://www.ft.com/content/548af6fa-0c4c-40d0-8048-31675f4a6f31

Kimmage, Michael. 2025. “The World Trump Wants: American Power in the New Age of Nationalism.” Foreign Affairs104 (2) (March–April): 8–21.

Lieven, Anatol. 2003. “The End of the West?” Prospect, September 20–25.

Pacciardi, Aurelia, Katherine Spandler, and Fredrik Söderbaum. 2024. “Beyond Exit: How Populist Governments Disengage from International Institutions.” International Affairs 100 (5): 2025–45.

Patrick, Stewart. 2025. League of Nations Redux? Multilateralism in the Post-American World. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/multilateralism-post-american-world?lang=en

Peterson, John. 2018. “Present at the Destruction? The Liberal Order in the Trump Era.” The International Spectator 53 (1): 28–44.

Pond, Elizabeth. 2004. Friendly Fire: The Near-Death of the Transatlantic Alliance. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution for the European Union Studies Association.

Rachman, Gideon. 2025. “Plotting a Post-American World.” Financial Times, September 6–7, p. 9.

Riddervold, Marianne, and Alister Miskimmon Newsome. 2018. “Transatlantic Relations in Times of Uncertainty: Crises and EU–US Relations.” Journal of European Integration 40 (5): 505–21.

Schade, Daniel. 2023. “A Strained Partnership? A Typology of Tensions in the EU–US Transatlantic Relationship.” In Europe Under Strain? Current Crises Shaping European Union Politics, edited by Michael Roos and Daniel Schade, 191–209. The Hague: De Gruyter.

Sloan, Stanley R. 2016. Defense of the West: NATO, the European Union and the Transatlantic Bargain. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Smith, Michael. 2018. “The European Union, the United States and the Crisis of Contemporary Multilateralism.” Journal of European Integration 40 (5): 539–53.

Smith, Michael. 2021. “European Union Diplomacy and the Trump Administration: Multilateral Diplomacy in a Transactional World?” In The Making of European Security Policy, edited by R. Haar, T. Christiansen, B. Lange, and S. Vanhoonacker, 179–97. London: Routledge.

Smith, Michael, Terrence Guay, and Jost Morgenstern-Pomorski. 2025. The European Union and the United States: Competition, Convergence and Crisis in the Global Arena. London: Bloomsbury.

The White House. 2017. National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Washington, DC, December.

The White House. 2025. “Withdrawing the United States from and Ending Funding to Certain United Nations Organizations and Reviewing United States Support to All International Organizations.” Presidential Actions, February 4.

Tusk, Donald. 2018. “Remarks by President Tusk Ahead of the EU–Western Sahara Summit.” European Council, May 16.

Von der Leyen, Ursula. 2025. 2025 State of the Union Address by President von der Leyen. Strasbourg, September 10.

Wainer, Gabriel, Simone Destradi, and Michael Zürn. 2024. “The Effects of Global Populism: Assessing the Populist Impact on International Affairs.” International Affairs 100 (5): 1819–33.

Youngs, Richard, and Michael Smith. 2018. “The EU and the Global Order: Contingent Liberalism.” The International Spectator 53 (1): 45–56.

The headquarters of the United Nations in New York City. Photo: Dreamstime.

The United Nations in the Age of American Transactionalism

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Please cite as:
Drieskens, Edith. (2026). “The United Nations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00131

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Abstract
The United Nations’ (UN) eightieth anniversary in 2025 was expected to be a moment of reflection and renewal, but it has instead unfolded amid profound turbulence. This chapter analyses how a series of executive orders issued by the Trump administration have triggered an unprecedented reshaping of the United Nations’ finances, operations and presence. While some settings were directly targeted for funding cuts or reconsideration of membership, the most consequential decisions were broader reviews of US engagement with international organizations and foreign aid. These developments have generated ambiguity in United States–United Nations relations: the United States remains present in most settings, yet its actions have challenged core principles and practices, pushing the organization into a reactive stance that at times borders on survival mode. The chapter further examines the implications for United States–European Union relations, revealing a widening gap between Washington’s transactional approach and the European Union’s seemingly enduring unconditional commitment to multilateralism.

Keywords: multilateralism; United Nations; UN reform; US–EU relations; US–UN relations; Trump administration

 

By Edith Drieskens*

Introduction

Judging by the messages that fill the card shops in my hometown of Leuven, turning 80 is a remarkable achievement, one that symbolizes strength, resilience, wisdom and perspective. It is a time to celebrate accomplishments and share the stories behind them. But legacy also takes another form when reaching 80: it is an opportunity for renewal. With the illusion of permanence falling away, this age seems to reveal a rare kind of clarity. This lucidity makes turning 80 less about becoming someone new and more about acknowledging who one truly is beneath the layers of years. In this way, it marks a life shaped by constant change, as well as a final transformation before the very last chapter closes. Similarly, the United Nations’ (UN) eightieth year in 2025 has been marked by transformation, yet turbulence has overshadowed celebration, as a series of executive orders issued by the Trump administration has pushed the organization toward fundamental, even existential, reform.

This contribution analyses these decisions and their implications for both United States–United Nations (US–UN) and United States–European Union (US–EU) relations. It shows that, while the combined impact of speed and scope has created an unprecedented situation in the post-1945 international system, these decisions are less erratic than often considered. Yes, they have destabilized the UN’s functioning in recent months and will profoundly shape its functioning in the future. However, they are grounded in a blueprint originating with the first Trump administration and informed by the broader history of US–UN relations. It also shows that, like the UN, the EU has had little choice but to muddle through this milestone because of financial constraints and the absence of consensus beneath the seemingly unconditional rhetoric of support for multilateralism.

A Milestone in Crisis

As the UN marks its eightieth anniversary, reports suggest that the transformative meaning of legacy is particularly relevant for understanding current developments, with some observers even hinting that its final chapter is unfolding as we speak. A little over a year after major ambitions were outlined at the Summit of the Future, there appears to be little to celebrate, as budgetary cuts are expected to fundamentally reshape the organization (Byrnes 2025; Lynch 2025). For some, these cuts represent a long-overdue opportunity to reform the UN, potentially leading to a more effective and efficient organization. For others, however, they signal the end not only of the UN as we know it, but of the UN itself. A striking illustration of this view comes from UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Director Tom Fletcher, who notes that 79 million people are affected by these ‘brutal cuts’, leaving the organizations involved with equally ‘brutal choices’ and effectively reducing their work to ‘a triage of human survival’ (UN News 2025). Several other UN bodies, including the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP), have announced budget cuts of 10–20% or more, affecting thousands of staff (Lynch 2025).

Whether one thinks in terms of a turning point or a breaking point, of a challenge that can be tackled or a catastrophe that cannot, the fact remains that the depth and pace of the proposed reforms are without precedent. Once complete, the UN will be very different—in what it does, how it operates and even where it is based. The situation in Geneva appears particularly strained, as its role as host to numerous (specialized) agencies seems under threat (Jefford and Langrand 2025). Indeed, as part of the ongoing system-wide review, measures under consideration range from traditional cost-cutting, such as limiting travel and freezing new hires, to the more significant step of relocating entire units to lower-cost locations (Lynch 2025). Long-established UN cities seem to be losing ground, while others, like Nairobi, are set to gain, with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Women already planning to relocate their activities to the UN headquarters there. It is therefore not surprising that the mentioned reports discuss declining staff morale, strained working relations, and even demonstrations in Geneva – everything but the celebrations one might expect to mark eighty years (Blackburn 2015).

UN Reform by Force

Although the UN has faced decades of challenges, the current situation was primarily triggered by a series of ‘birthday cards’ – in the form of executive orders – signed by US President Trump in late January and early February. These decisions devote little attention to UN reform, but their combined effect has been extraordinary. Never before have so few words so profoundly reshaped this process. Some UN settings are directly targeted by these decisions. They have been explicitly targeted for reconsideration of membership and funding. All decisions in this category restore the previous status quo: they overturn those of the Biden administration, which itself had reversed decisions of the first Trump administration. More remarkable, and affecting all UN settings, have been the broader, horizontal decisions to review US support for international organizations and its approach to foreign aid.

Five settings fall within the first category, which involves naming, blaming and shaming: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The first three have been identified as entities allegedly drifting from their original missions, acting against US interests and undermining allies (The White House 2025b). UNESCO has been accused of failure to reform and address concerns over mounting arrears, as well as anti-Israel sentiment. In a similar vein, UNRWA has been accused of infiltration by foreign terrorist organizations, with some employees allegedly involved in the 7 October attack on Israel. The UNHRC has been criticized for protecting human rights abusers. And while it does not do so explicitly here, the United States has previously criticized this body for bias against Israel. The WHO has been condemned for mishandling the coronavirus pandemic, failing to adopt urgently needed reforms, lacking independence, and demanding unfair payments from the United States (The White House, 2025f). In a similar vein, the Paris Agreement has been denounced as failing to reflect US values or economic and environmental objectives, and therefore not benefiting the American people (The White House 2025e).

These effects are significant for the mentioned settings because the United States is often a key financial contributor (CFR Editors 2025). However, the greatest impact has resulted from decisions that do not target specific UN bodies, or even the UN as such. The first decision mandates a re-evaluation of the US engagement with international settings in the broadest sense, encompassing organizations, conventions, and treaties (The White House 2025b). To this end, the secretary of state was to conduct a review in consultation with the US ambassador to the UN, spanning an estimated six months. The second, and in practice even more significant, decision calls for a re-evaluation of US foreign aid to realign it with American values and interests (The White House 2025c). While a 90-day pause was ordered for evaluation, a stop-work order on foreign aid issued by the secretary of state on January 24 significantly accelerated this process, prompting various UN bodies to abruptly freeze spending and lay off workers (Lynch 2025). The reason is not only that many UN bodies are dependent on US funding, but also that these cuts have come on top of an ongoing liquidity crisis, driven by late payments – including from the United States – and declining contributions. This situation was further aggravated by the Trump administration’s challenge to existing commitments under the Rescissions Act of 24 July 2025, which retracted congressionally approved funding for 2024 and 2025.

Beyond revisiting membership and funding, the Trump administration’s retreat from the UN targets the core values and principles underpinning its work. This withdrawal has been particularly visible in relation to sustainability and diversity, equality and inclusivity, commonly referred to as DEI (Gowan 2025; Lynch 2025). While the already mentioned withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has been the most visible decision in relation to the former, there is a broader belief that the United States has entered international agreements and initiatives that do not align with the country’s values or recognize its role in advancing economic and environmental goals, redirecting public money to countries that neither need nor deserve assistance (The White House 2025e). This reassessment has led the US mission to the UN to state that the US government is no longer willing to invest in the Sustainable Development Goals, as they are inconsistent with both US interests and sovereignty. This appeal to sovereignty is quite intriguing, as the Trump administration’s territorial ambitions regarding Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal challenge the principle of sovereignty as enshrined in the UN Charter (Gowan 2025). Concerning DEI, the Trump administration seeks to reverse its predecessor’s decisions (The White House 2025g). It has made this especially clear by rejecting references to gender ideology in the Commission on the Status of Women of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), opting instead to frame discussions in terms of biological sex (The White House 2025d; United States Mission to the United Nations 2025). Further challenging the UN’s human rights framework, it refuses to take part in the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (Paccamiccio and McKernan 2025).

Implications for US–UN Relations

While the impact of the Trump administration’s decisions on the UN and its functioning is undeniably disruptive, observers find it difficult to determine what these developments mean for US–UN relations generally (Lombardo 2025). An important reason is that although these decisions suggest disengagement, the United States continues to participate actively in most UN settings. It even explicitly supports specialized (standard-setting) agencies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) (Lynch 2025). Ambiguity deepens when its president publicly challenges the UN’s relevance by mocking that it provides him only with a faulty escalator and a teleprompter, only to subsequently acknowledge the organization’s potential and confirm his full support. As such, the status quo of the relationship cannot be described, using the terminology of this report, as either moving forward or toward disintegration. The former is evident: the relationship has scarcely improved since the Trump administration took office in early 2025 and began to push back. But the latter is similarly clear. At present, disintegration, in the sense of total collapse, is more evident in the United States’ relationship with certain UN bodies than in its overall relationship with the organization. Of course, this broader relationship is challenged by the disintegration of these settings, which has served as a sobering reminder that US engagement in international organizations is conditional, and that reversal awaits if those conditions are not met.

While recognizing that things can change swiftly in the Trump administration, the status quo of US–UN relations appears to be one of muddling through, although in a somewhat different sense than the editors suggest, who refer to cooperation in policy areas where it is seen as mutually advantageous. Here, cooperation is approached transactionally by one of the partners and is sustained only when it benefits that partner’s interests (Zareba 2025). With others failing to step up quickly and decisively to fill the financial gaps created by the decisions outlined above, the UN seems to have little choice but to accept the terms of cooperation put forward by the Trump administration. These terms, which began as a blueprint during its first term, have materialized in the past few months with remarkable pace and scope, making it much more difficult to single them out, as was sometimes done in the first term in the hope of a return to business as usual after four years (Almqvist 2017; Lynch 2025). This has left the UN with only radical choices. The positive narratives of African empowerment or of UN reform for the twenty-first century through which these decisions have been presented do not alter this reality (Byrnes 2025; Khumalo 2025; Shiffman 2025).

Those surprised by the renewed focus on American interests in US–UN relations may benefit from revisiting the work of the late Edward Luck, who characterized the US approach toward the UN as one of ‘mixed messages’ (Luck 1999). His analysis reminds us that the United States has consistently played an ambiguous role in the world of international organization, alternating between supporter and critic, and that the UN particularly stands out in this regard. Reviewing this work for Political Science Quarterly, Michael Barnett even concluded that the US–UN relationship would make an ideal episode on the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show’ – one titled ‘great powers who love and abuse the UN’ – although with an important caveat (Barnett 2000, 448). It would showcase ‘a long history of hurt feelings, mistrust and grave misunderstandings’, but not the usual happy ending, as ‘the estranged pair is unlikely to reconcile’ (Barnett 2000, 448). Beyond offering historical background, Luck’s work identifies several factors that have fueled tensions in US–UN relations, many of which remain relevant today. He argues that the United States’ inconsistent stance toward international organizations stems from a deeply ingrained sense of exceptionalism, which drives domestic debates over whether national interests are advanced or undermined by engagement. As such, drivers of tension include concerns about safeguarding national sovereignty in an increasingly globalized world, suspicions that organizations may be exploited to advance agendas that conflict with US objectives, and frustration over minority positions. Yet equally significant are issues of funding, burden-sharing and oversight.

Implications for US–EU Relations

This contextualization also reminds us that even though common institutions and rules are often seen as foundational pillars of the Atlantic political order, as is the case in this report, the United States and the EU have never fully aligned in their stance toward the UN. The EU’s discourse, unlike that of the US, has always conveyed an unambiguous message regarding the UN. A commitment to multilateral cooperation, particularly within the UN framework, is deeply embedded in its identity as an international actor (Drieskens 2023). The EU’s internal structure explains why this is the case: it is the most formalized and institutionalized example of multilateral cooperation. Importantly, multilateralism remains central to its approach, even as the notion of the EU as a geopolitical actor has become more prominent in recent years. According to the EU, contemporary challenges demand more multilateralism, not less. The coronavirus pandemic prompted the EU to articulate its ambition to reinforce the multilateral system in early 2021. Likewise, in the context of its pursuit of ‘strategic autonomy’, the Versailles Declaration adopted in March 2022 reaffirms ‘its intention to intensify support for the global rules-based order, with the United Nations at its core’ (European Council 2022, 3). As such, few were surprised when, in the same meeting where the United States questioned the relevance of the UN, the EU reaffirmed its support for the rules-based international order that upholds the UN Charter in particular and multilateralism more broadly, thereby confirming its long-standing commitment to human rights and sustainability.

The EU’s continued adherence to these values led to a public rebuke by President Trump at the September 2025 General Assembly meeting in New York. The EU was called out, with even more words devoted to its failures than those of the UN (The White House 2025f). Responding rather than reacting, the EU opted to point out differences without naming the United States, stressing its own reliability and predictability (European Council 2025). In fact, it only mentioned the United States briefly in its address, without singling it out. Also, at other times in recent months, the EU’s public criticism has been mostly cautious or implicit, expressing regret and concern and reminding the United States that its decisions run counter to its own interests. As such, even if the EU has framed the situation internally as an opportunity to enhance its influence and has taken some financial decisions to address it, it has mostly acted as an observer (Sherriff 2025).

Insecurity and inability, rather than indifference, appear to have driven this public restraint, underscoring that the current EU–US relationship is not one of equals. Since the Trump administration assumed office, the EU has largely been walking on eggshells in its dealings with the US, devoting considerable effort to reducing existing tariffs and preventing new ones (Lehne 2025; Zerka 2025). This wider context of muddling through – largely rooted in fears of retaliation through tariffs or other ways, including the possible withdrawal from vital organizations such as NATO – has constrained the EU’s ability to publicly criticize the Trump administration’s dealings with the UN, leaving it with little alternative but to proceed with caution (Chadwick 2025b; Fox 2025). Financial constraints and a lack of consensus should also be mentioned here. Regarding the former, the EU has been urged to step up not only to alleviate humanitarian suffering, but also because the US decisions carry direct consequences for the EU given their close cooperation on the ground (Le Piouff 2025; Sherriff 2025). Yet stepping in to fully fill the gap left by the United States is not an option. Alternative priorities – several imposed by the Trump administration’s choices, such as the need for enhanced defence spending – mean there is little financial leeway (Chadwick 2025a; Vasquez 2025; Vinocur 2025).

Regarding the latter, it is important to recall that, given the distribution of competences within the EU on most UN matters, the ability to deliver a strong, unified response rests largely with the member states. Two challenges are important in this regard: they are not equally critical of the Trump administration, nor are they united in a maximalist commitment to the UN, with recent research confirming that engagement varies beneath the seemingly unconditional rhetoric discussed above (Blavoukos and Galariotis 2025).

Conclusion

In Charles Lindblom’s original conception, ‘muddling through’ refers to policy formulation through incrementalism, in which complex policy is developed through small, successive changes (Lindblom 1959). Grounding his argument in the context of US policy change, Lindblom contrasted this ‘branch method’ with the ‘root method’, which revisits the underlying fundamentals each time. This contribution has shown that, although the Trump administration appears to have shaken and even uprooted the foundations of the UN, the surprising element lies more in the speed and scale of its decisions than in their general direction, whether viewed in light of its first term or the broader historical context of UN–US relations. Time will tell in what form the UN will emerge from this storm. 

What is clear, however, is that these decisions have left the organization with little choice but to muddle through. The same applies to the EU, which lacks the means and the consensus to calm the crisis, let alone restore normalcy. However, returning to the birthday wishes that framed this contribution, the silver lining beyond the promise of UN reform may be the clarity this turbulent period provides: neither the US–UN nor the US–EU relationship is one of equals now, nor are they likely to become so in the years to come. With this timeline in mind, the EU should recognize that muddling through may be justified as an early crisis response, but it is unsustainable if multilateralism truly constitutes a cornerstone of its identity. While the plans for UN reform remain a work in progress at the time of writing, the parameters are quite clear. They encourage the EU to evolve from branching to rooting, engaging in a substantive discussion of its commitment to the UN system, including its reliance on others to realize its multilateral goals. Maintaining credibility as a dependable actor requires confronting these dependencies decisively, whether they involve the United States or other partners. In this context, the UN’s milestone may also offer a transformative opportunity for the EU, clarifying what its multilateral commitment means in practice and how to put it into practice.

 

(*) Edith Drieskens is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Leuven International and European Studies (LINES) institute, where she teaches courses on international organizations, international relations theories and academic writing. Her work explores the regional dimension of global governance from a conceptual, theoretical and empirical point of view, focusing on the EU’s functioning in multilateral settings (mainly, but not exclusively) post-Lisbon (UN Security Council, UN General Assembly, UNESCO, WADA). She is co-editor of The Sage Handbook of European Foreign Policy (Sage, 2015). She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Leuven University (December 2008), as well as master degrees in Political Sciences (Leuven University, 2000), European Studies (Leuven University, 2001) and American Studies (Universities of Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels, 2002). Before returning to Leuven on a full-time basis in September 2011, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague (2009–2011). Her ongoing research examines the EU as a heritage actor in international relations. Her research has appeared in a variety of international journals, including the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of European Integration, European Security, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies and Public Administration. Email: edith.drieskens@kuleuven.be

 

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World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, December 7, 2020. Photo: Elena Duvernay.

Turbulence in the World Health Organization: Implications for EU–US Cooperation in a Changing International Order

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Please cite as:
Veggeland, Frode. (2026). “Turbulence in the World Health Organization: Implications for EU-United States Cooperation during a Changing International Order.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00133

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Abstract
This paper examines the World Health Organization (WHO) within the broader context of the post-1945 liberal international order. It begins with a brief historical account of the establishment and development of WHO, emphasizing its role as a central institution for global health governance. Particular attention is given to the role of the European Union’s (EU) member states and the United States (US) in supporting the WHO through financial contributions, personnel secondments, crisis assistance and capacity-building measures. The paper then explores more recent developments, notably the US withdrawal from the WHO during the first and second Trump administrations and the termination of key US aid programs. Finally, the implications of this withdrawal are analysed, both for WHO’s operational capacity and for transatlantic relations, with consequences for challenges such as the global fight against HIV/AIDS, antimicrobial resistance, drug and vaccine development and emergency preparedness.

Keywords: World Health Organization; United States; European Union; COVID-19; public health emergency; International Health Regulations

 

By Frode Veggeland*

Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been the key coordinating authority in global health governance within the post-Second World War liberal international order. Both the United States and Europe have been important supporters and contributors to the WHO. However, the future of both the WHO and the transatlantic partnership is currently uncertain. This paper explores the WHO’s evolution and its recent crises, focusing specifically on the United States’ notification of withdrawal. It further analyses what these events mean for the future of transatlantic cooperation.

The Establishment and Development of the WHO

The WHO was established in 1948 as a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). The World Health Assembly, comprising all 194 member states (soon reduced to 193), is the supreme decision-making body and determines the organization’s policies and priorities. The assembly also appoints the director-general. The executive board facilitates the work of the assembly, provides advice and gives effect to its decisions and policies. It is composed of 34 members that are technically qualified in the field of health and represent the WHO’s regional offices: the Regional Office for Africa, the Regional Office for the Americas, the Regional Office for South-East Asia, the Regional Office for Europe, the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Regional Office for the Western Pacific. The WHO’s main objective is ‘the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health‘ (World Health Organization 1946, art. 1), which is to be achieved by, among other things, the core function of acting ‘as the directing and co-ordinating authority on international health work‘ (World Health Organization 1946, art. 2(a)).

The WHO was seen as a major achievement in the evolution of international health institutions, thanks to its expertise and willingness to address intractable health problems (Youde 2012, 29). However, early on, the WHO’s reputation began to decline, reaching a low point in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was heavily criticized by member states and in public discourse for being too bureaucratic, ineffective and corrupt. Nevertheless, at this point the WHO could also point to some very successful initiatives in its effort to improve global health – including the eradication of smallpox (Brown et al. 2006; Yamey and Titanji 2025).

The organization resumed much of its authority as a prominent and leading force in international health work under the leadership of former Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998–2003), resulting in more action, such as finalizing negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the rebuilding of capacities for addressing HIV/AIDS, and a more prominent and visible presence on the international stage. Thus, even though the WHO’s role was still contested, some of the organization’s reputation was rehabilitated, paving the way for its continued role in global health governance (Brown et al. 2006).

The United States played a central role in the development of the liberal international order after the Second World War, which included the establishment of a multilateral framework comprising numerous international agreements and organizations, including the United Nations (Hopewell 2021; Lake et al. 2021; Hylke et al. 2024). The United States also played a key role in the WHO, not least as the largest financial contributor for much of the organization’s history. The member states of the European Union (EU) have also been active supporters of and contributors to the WHO, through financial support, personnel secondments, crisis assistance and capacity-building measures. In 2020, when the United States withheld some of its funding, the member states were collectively the largest donors to the WHO. The EU itself is not a member of the WHO and did not engage actively with the organization for a long time, even though a framework for cooperation between the two organizations has been in place since 1972 (with subsequent revisions), based on a series of exchanges of letters.

Recently, and particularly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU has shown much more interest in the WHO (European Commission 2010, 2025; European Union 2022). There are several reasons for the delayed EU interest in the WHO. First, health policy has been (and still is) primarily the competence of the member states, which limits both the scope and form of health cooperation in the EU. Second, cooperation on health issues was not politicized and put high on the EU agenda until the 1990s onwards, when a series of health and security related crisis – such as the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, also known as ‘mad cow disease’), the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and swine flu emergencies, and the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland in 2010 – contributed to raise the attention towards the need for collective preparedness and action (Greer and Jarman 2021; Brooks et al. 2023). Third, it was not until the 1990s and 2000s that the EU treaties provided a legal basis for the EU to more actively supplement and assist member states in health policy. Prime among these are article 152 of the Amsterdam Treaty (the ‘public health’ article), renumbered as article 168 in the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, article 222 of the Lisbon Treaty (the ‘solidarity clause’) – which ‘requires the EU and Member States to collectively assist any Member State affected by a terrorist attack or a natural or man-made disaster’ – and the Charter of Fundamental Rights (including the right to life and the right to healthcare) which gained equal status to treaty law in 2009 (Ekengren et al. 2006; Brooks et al. 2023).

Partly because of this specification of the EU’s role in health, the European Commission issued a document in 2010 signalling a more active role for the EU on the international stage in health cooperation. Regarding the relationship with the WHO, the document stated: At global level, the EU should endeavour to defend a single position within the UN agencies. The EU should work to cut duplication and fragmentation and to increase coordination and effectiveness of the UN system. It should support stronger leadership by the WHO in its normative and guidance functions to improve global health. The EU should seek synergies with WHO to address global health challenges. It should decrease the fragmentation of funding to WHO and gradually shift to fund its general budget (European Commission 2010, 6).

In line with the intentions stated above, the EU delegation in Geneva (where the WHO headquarters are located) began coordinating common positions on WHO matters among the EU member states in 2010 (Bergner et al. 2020, 3).

Thus, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, health policy had already moved higher up the EU’s political agenda, as reflected in earlier initiatives to strengthen transatlantic health cooperation with the United States. The agreement on mutual recognition between the European Community and the United States of America was set up in 1999 (Official Journal of the European Communities 1999). The agreement lays down the conditions under which the EU and the United States will accept conformity assessment results (e.g., testing or certification) from the other party’s designated conformity assessment bodies. In this way they can show compliance with each other’s requirements, essentially by replacing double testing with mutual trust. The 1999 agreement covered (through sectoral annexes) pharmaceutical goods manufacturing practices (GMPs) and medical devices. Other technical health areas were later included, such as inspections of manufacturing sites for human medicines in their respective territories, which were fully implemented in 2019. The Global Health Security Initiative was set up in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Delegations from the United States and the European Commission (as well as from EU member states) were included in this initiative.

The WHO was allowed to meet as an observer in the Global Health Security Initiative. In 2009, the EU and the United States created the Transatlantic Taskforce on Antimicrobial Resistance to address the urgent, growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance. Negotiations between the United States and the EU on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) began in 2013 (Khan et al. 2015). These negotiations included extensive plans for transatlantic cooperation on health issues, including health services, pharmaceuticals, and other health-related regulatory matters (Jarman 2014).

However, these negotiations were abandoned when Trump became president in 2016 and in April 2019 the EU declared that TTIP was ‘obsolete and no longer relevant‘ (Council of the EU 2019). Following the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the EU and the United States issued a joint statement in the fall of 2022 urging the strengthening of transatlantic cooperation on health, particularly in the context of health emergencies. In 2023, the EU–US Health Task Force was set up to prioritise three avenues for cooperation: combating cancer, addressing global health threats, and strengthening the global health architecture. These initiatives were launched during the Biden administration. The election of Trump in 2024 for a second term has raised new questions about the future of global and transatlantic cooperation on health, in general, and the role of the WHO in these efforts, in particular.

Turbulence in the WHO: Funding, Crisis Management and US Withdrawal

Even though the WHO’s authority was partially restored in the early 2000s, the organization continued to experience turbulence. Ansell and Trondal (2017, 4) identify three aspects of turbulence that are relevant here. Turbulent organizations refers to factors embedded within organizations, such as factional conflicts, staff turnover, funding, conflicting rules and internal reforms. Turbulence of scale appears when actions at one level of authority or scale of activities affect actions at another level or scale. Thus, what appears to be a ‘good‘ solution at one level might be considered a ‘bad’ solution at another. Turbulent environments speaks to factors external to organizations, such as crisis, rapid technological change, protests and partisan conflict. Here, attention is directed towards three challenges creating turbulence: the fragmented funding of the WHO, the handling of the Ebola disease outbreak in West Africa in 2014–2016, the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent notification of the United States to withdraw from the organization, first in 2020 and then again in 2025.

WHO Funding

The WHO’s funding comes from two primary sources: assessed contributions (i.e., membership dues paid by member states) and voluntary contributions from member states and non-state actors. Assessed contributions enable the WHO to prioritize and allocate resources to measures and activities considered most effective in fulfilling the organization’s mandate. Voluntary contributions are typically earmarked for the donor’s preferred project, which does not guarantee that the resources will be channelled to where they are most needed. The more the WHO depends on voluntary contributions, the less freedom of manoeuvre it has to fulfil its mandate.

Over time the share of assessed contributions to the WHO has been reduced in favour of voluntary contributions. In the mid-1980s, the share of voluntary contributions had almost caught up with the regular budget, which consisted of assessed contributions (Brown et al. 2006, 68). In the 2014–2015 budget 77% came from voluntary donations – these were, moreover, heavily dependent on rich donors such as the Gates Foundation and the United States (Gostin 2015, 6). In the 2022–2023 budget, the share of assessed contributions was only 12.1% of the WHO’s total revenue, whereas the share of voluntary contributions was 87.5% (KFF 2025, 8).

This fragmentation of funding and shift towards earmarked voluntary contributions has created problems for the WHO’s ability to fulfil its mandate, as priorities and policies are set by the World Health Assembly. In contrast, the larger share of the budget has been controlled by the most powerful donors of voluntary contributions (Brown et al. 2006). The assembly – in recent times, numerically dominated by poor and developing countries – is only in a position to control the use of the regular budget, consisting of assessed contributions. This situation has created turbulence within the organization, raising concerns about the WHO’s independence from internal and external actors and its capacity to follow up on prioritized health areas and thus achieve its objectives. Moreover, the possible withdrawal of the United States means that the WHO loses its historically largest financial contributor. Therefore, other states can fill this void.

The Ebola Outbreak 2014–2016 and the Call for Reform of the WHO

The Ebola epidemic outbreak in West Africa in 2014–2016 was ‘one of the largest, most devastating, and most complex outbreaks in the history of infectious disease‘ (Park 2022, 1). The outbreak put the WHO’s designated role in the global health response system to a severe test – according to many observers, a role that the WHO failed to fulfil (Gostin 2014, 2015; Park 2022). The WHO headquarters was criticized for responding too late to the outbreak, for placing too much responsibility on the Regional Office for Africa, and for hesitating to respond amid political and religious pressures in the affected countries. According to the International Health Regulations (IHR) – a binding agreement administered by the WHO – the WHO director-general has the exclusive power to declare a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), a mechanism that triggers a coordinated international response. During the Ebola outbreak the director-general did not declare a PHEIC until five months after the Ebola virus began to spread internationally and a long time after receiving warnings about the urgency to act, from local experts as well as from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Doctors Without Borders (Park 2022).

The WHO’s handling of the Ebola outbreak drew heavy criticism and calls for reform. The reform proposals included: increasing the WHO budget and shifting the budget towards assessed contributions, empowering the director-general at the expense of the regional offices to ensure that the WHO speaks with one voice, and to exert the WHO’s constitutional authority as a normative organization by setting an ambitious agenda for negotiation of health treaties and voluntary codes (Gostin 2015). Some reforms were implemented, such as the creation of the Health Emergencies program, a Contingency Fund, and a dedicated global emergency workforce to be deployed rapidly to outbreak zones, the improvement of how the WHO assesses and communicates risks, strengthening of the implementation of the IHR and the enabling of rapid activation of research and development activities during epidemics to help fast-track effective tests, vaccines and treatments for subsequent outbreaks. Having established these initiatives, the WHO was assumed to be better prepared for the next international health emergency.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Subsequent Withdrawal of the United States from the WHO

The COVID-19 pandemic was a massive health and societal crisis, which showed how an infectious disease can spread around the globe in weeks, killing millions of people, as well as having devastating consequences economically and socially, and seriously setting back sustainable development (Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response 2021). The pandemic also underscored the importance of international cooperation in combating the virus, including the development and availability of vaccines and other essential medical countermeasures. The WHO played an important role in managing the pandemic – by declaring the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus a PHEIC, by assisting affected countries with knowledge, equipment and personnel, providing recommendations and advice on health measures, coordinating surveillance and control, and by its joint leadership of the multilateral efforts in the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative to develop and manufacture vaccines and to guarantee fair and equitable access to these vaccines all around the world.

However, the WHO’s role during the pandemic was met with mixed evaluations. Central to the negative assessments were that the director-general could have declared the PHEIC earlier (a PHEIC was declared 31 January 2020 – one month after the coronavirus was identified), that the WHO was too soft on China, that the COVID-19 outbreak should have been declared a pandemic earlier (it was declared a pandemic by the WHO on 11 March 2020), that the communication of public health measures as well as the risks related to the virus were inconsistent, and that the system for funding was insufficient. The WHO received positive evaluations, particularly for its efforts to develop and make vaccines available – an effort that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – as well as for its technical guidance and ability to deliver hands-on support to affected states.

One of the harshest critics of the WHO in recent times has been the United States (Chorev 2020; Yamey and Titanji 2025). On 14 April 2020, President Trump announced the suspension of United States contributions to the WHO pending an investigation into the organization’s alleged mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic (The White House 2020). In a letter to the WHO’s director-general dated 18 May 2020, Trump criticized the organization for sounding the alarm too late when the coronavirus was identified, for having a ‘China-centric’ bias and failing to hold China to account, and for providing inaccurate or misleading information (The White House 2020). He also cited the vast difference between the United States’ contributions to the WHO and China’s. Moreover, the WHO’s general advice against travel restrictions was heavily criticized – advice that basically reflects the IHR’s general discouragement against broad travel bans as well as the scope and purpose of IHR (article 2), which says that a public health response to international spread of disease should avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade. In the letter, Trump delivered an ultimatum: make necessary reforms, or the United States would redraw its funding permanently and reconsider its WHO membership: “It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China. My Administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste. That is why it is my duty, as President of the United States, to inform you that, if the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization. I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests,” (The White House 2020, 4).

On 6 July 2020, President Trump announced that the United States would formally withdraw from the WHO, effective 6 July 2021. The Biden administration suspended notification of a withdrawal in 2021. That same year, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response published its evaluation of pandemic management. The report included praise and criticism of the WHO and called for several reforms, including ’strengthen[ing] the independence, authority and financing of the WHO‘ (Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response 2021, 48). In line with the intentions of strengthening the global health framework, two sets of negotiations were initiated. In December 2021, talks on a new WHO Pandemic Agreement were launched. The goal was to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response globally. In May 2022, negotiations on revising the IHR were initiated. These were based on the same goal. Then, on January 20, 2025 – on the day of his inauguration – President Trump once again notified that the United States would withdraw from the WHO, effective one year later (The White House 2025). In this letter, he repeated the criticism he made in 2020. The withdrawal was met with intense criticism and warnings about the long-term health consequences, both globally and in the United States (Horton 2020; Yamey and Titanji 2025). The negotiations and revisions to the IHR were finalized and adopted on 1 June 2024. After finalizing negotiations in April 2025, the WHO adopted the new Pandemic Agreement on 14 May 2025. The United States will not be part of either.

We can summarize turbulence in the WHO in a few brief words. The WHO has experienced severe turbulence in the last decades. Some of the turbulence has been caused by internal factors, such as funding (turbulent organization) and questions about decisions at different administrative levels, including the director-general, the Head Office, and the regional offices (turbulence of scale). Even more serious turbulence, however, has been caused by external factors, where the political situation in the United States and its withdrawal from the WHO stand out as pivotal (turbulent environments).

Implications for EU–US Cooperation on Health

The United States has been central to the development and operation of the WHO for much of the organization’s history. The EU did not engage actively in the WHO until the early 2000s, and particularly after 2010 – reflecting the parallel strengthening of the EU’s general engagement in health policies. The EU’s increased support for international health cooperation can also be seen in connection with the EU’s role as a ‘soft superpower‘ (Meunier and Milada 2018). This role implies gaining influence internationally through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or military force, by means of ‘soft measures‘ such as humanitarian aid and health assistance in capacity-building and knowledge-building. Health cooperation can thus be used as both ‘soft’ and ‘smart’ power to advance foreign policies (McInnes and Lee 2012, 54–55).

In 2022, the EU published its new Global Health Strategy, signalling its intention to play a more active role on the international stage and to provide strong support for the WHO and other multilateral organizations (European Union 2022). The report states that global health is an ‘essential pillar of EU external policy, a critical sector geopolitically and central to the EU’s open strategic autonomy‘ and that ‘the EU intends to reassert its responsibility and deepen its leadership in the interest of the highest attainable standards of health based on fundamental values, such as solidarity and equity, and the respect of human rights‘ (European Union 2022, 4). The strategy also points to the need for ‘a new focus to maintain a strong and responsive multilateral system, with a World Health Organization (WHO) at its core which is as sustainably financed as it is accountable and effective‘ (European Union 2022, 7). Two of the strategy’s guiding principles emphasize the importance of international institutions. Guiding principle 14 states the support for ‘a stronger, effective and accountable WHO‘ and lists several prioritized actions the EU will take, such as seeking “formal EU observer status with full participation rights as a first step towards full WHO membership, contribut[ing] to making the financing of WHO more sustainable, advanc[ing] WHO reform to strengthen its governance, efficiency, accountability and enforcement of rules, and strengthen[ing] the WHO’s focus on its normative role in areas of global relevance,” (European Union 2022, 21).

Furthermore, guiding principle 16 states the general intention to ‘ensure a stronger EU role in international organisations and bodies’ (European Union 2022, 22). The EU also signals its intention to use a ‘Team Europe’ approach to follow up on the Global Health Strategy. Team Europe brings together a variety of relevant actors, such as EU institutions, member states and their diplomatic networks, financial institutions and other relevant organizations, to strengthen coordination, coherence and complementarity of actions and ensure the EU’s influence and impact.

Thus, in recent decades, there has been a paradoxical development in the positions of the EU and the United States towards global health governance in general and the WHO in particular. Whereas the EU has engaged more actively and stated strong support for the WHO and other multilateral organizations, the United States has retracted from international organizations and agreements, thus prioritizing attempts at using its power to gain influence through unitary action and bilateral agreements (Hopewell 2021; Lake et al. 2021; Hylke et al. 2024; Flint 2025). This retreat from the liberal international order implies abandoning the recognized relevance and authority of common values, ideas and norms, which have been incorporated into and are an essential part of this order since the Second World War.

The question of the consequences of the United States’ retreat for the transatlantic relationship thus arises. Is the relationship breaking down, or is it being renewed? Or is it ‘muddling through’ by adjusting cooperation based on issues seen as mutually advantageous? To make such assessments, it is necessary first to analyse the kinds of changes we are witnessing in the approaches of the EU and the United States to international health cooperation. In this context, two sets of concepts are relevant: bilateralism vs. multilateralism and transactionalism versus reciprocity (Keohane 1986; Bashirov and Yilmaz 2020; Flint 2025).

Table 12.1: Ideal types of approaches to international cooperation

  Bilateralism Multilateralism
Transactionalism Zero-sum games outside of international institutions (Approach 1) Zero-sum games within international institutions (Approach 2)
Reciprocity Plus-sum games outside of international institutions (Approach 3) Plus-sum games within international institutions (Approach 4)

Reciprocity here refers to the principle of mutual exchange and equal treatment, often involving shared values and long-term cooperation. At the same time, transactionalism is a pragmatic, short-term approach focused on immediate, tangible gains in a zero-sum ‘give and take’ scenario. Reciprocity implies a relationship built on mutual respect and consistent, predictable behaviour where cooperation is assumed to serve the interests of all (‘plus-sum game’). In contrast, transactionalism views relations as a series of discrete, one-off ‘deals‘ in which each party seeks to maximize its immediate benefit, often with no expectation of future cooperation beyond the current exchange. It is important to note that the approaches presented in Table 12.1 represent ideal types; in practice, states may use one or more approaches, or a combination of them, in different settings and at different times.

Approach 1 refers to a state`s emphasis on using its power to achieve (asymmetrical) bilateral agreements with short-term gains. The approach implies a lack of support for international institutions and unpredictable cooperative relationships, where common norms and values are downplayed in favour of relative gains. The Trump administration’s approach, particularly in its second term, shares many of these characteristics.

In Approach 2, international institutions are viewed as powerful tools for enforcing a state’s will on others. The approach is based on the precondition that powerful states can dominate and control the international institution at stake. The United States arguably used this approach in the early years of the global trade framework established in 1947 with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor institution, the World Trade Organization, established in 1995. Here, the United States used its powers to dominate the shaping of the rules and operation of the framework in favour of specific national economic interests.

Approach 3 refers to the idea of mutual gains through broad long-term cooperation outside of multilateral institutions. The close relationship between the EU and Norway and (until recently) between the United States and Canada can illustrate this approach. 

Approach 4 refers to the core idea of a liberal international order: that states should be governed by agreed-upon legal and political international institutions and norms, rather than solely by power or force, and that such international cooperation may serve the interests of all. Here, possible short-term losses from international commitments are assumed to be offset by long-term gains. This approach has received sufficient support in the post-Second World War period, including from the United States, so that a predominantly liberal international order has been maintained to date. This order has been characterized by a multitude of international organizations and agreements, as well as successive multilateral negotiations, which have provided binding national commitments across a wide range of issues – from trade and health to human rights and climate and environmental protection. However, as stated earlier, this order is now under severe pressure.

Based on the developments in global health cooperation described above, the EU and the United States have arguably moved in opposite directions regarding their approaches to international cooperation. Whereas the EU has become a more vigorous defender of multilateralism, seeking to play a more active role in international organizations, the United States has abandoned multilateralism in favour of bilateralism. The US withdrawal from the WHO, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Paris Agreement on climate change, as well as the Trump administration’s circumvention of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules through its trade policies, are just a few examples of this. Moreover, whereas the EU emphasizes reciprocity and shared norms and values, Trump has clearly moved the United States further towards transactionalism.

Returning to the consequences for the transatlantic relationship of the United States’ retreat from multilateralism, the question arises: How are transatlantic relations changing under the Trump administration? Three scenarios are possible, and I will describe each in turn below.

Scenario 1: A possible strengthening of the transatlantic relationship. One scenario suggests that the transatlantic relationship may move forward and be strengthened in the face of global uncertainty and common challenges, threats and needs. Clearly, there is currently little to support this scenario. When it comes to transatlantic cooperation within the framework of global health governance, we first and foremost see a decline. There were attempts to strengthen health cooperation from the late 1990s onwards. Some of these – such as the TTIP negotiations – while others succeeded, such as the global health security initiative and the EU–US task forces for health and for antimicrobial resistance (AMR). However, the US withdrawal from the WHO means that the United States has put itself outside the EU’s view of the core pillar of global health cooperation. This approach affects the WHO’s operations and also spills over into transatlantic cooperation, for example, by putting many projects relevant to this cooperation at risk, including humanitarian aid, the fight against HIV/AIDS, and the fight against AMR. The potential to strengthen transatlantic cooperation on health is also undermined by the Trump administration’s general bilateral and transactional approach to international cooperation, its withdrawal from multilateral agreements and organizations that the EU strongly supports, and its frequent shifts in positions and policies toward other countries. In addition, the harsh and distrustful rhetoric of President Trump against the EU does not help, as with his claims, for example, that the EU is a ‘foe on trade‘ (BBC 2018), that it ‘was set up to take advantage of the United States‘ (Politico 2018), that it ‘was formed to screw the United States‘ (France 24 2025), and that it ‘is, in many ways, nastier than China‘ (Axios 2025). Such rhetoric does not serve as a sound basis for a trustworthy, strengthened cooperative partnership.

Scenario 2: Maintain the transatlantic relationship by ‘muddling through’. This scenario suggests that the transatlantic partnership will ‘muddle through’ geopolitical and domestic challenges through functional adjustments, while maintaining cooperation in areas seen as mutually advantageous. Some minor developments could support such a scenario – for example, that cooperation has continued to progress in technical and less political areas of health, such as mutual recognition of conformity assessment. However, the overall transatlantic relationship has been seriously damaged by the Trump administration’s approach, which clearly limits the adjustments that can be made. First, the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO puts many WHO-initiated cooperative projects involving both the United States and the EU at risk. One example is the combat against AMR. Second, many cooperative health projects depend on long-term commitments from involved parties to have any effect. The short-term, unpredictable approach of the Trump administration thus creates significant risks for engaging bilaterally with the United States on such projects. Third, much of the transatlantic cooperation on health is based on mutual trust, including technical cooperation such as mutual recognition of conformity assessment. Such trust has clearly been reduced in recent times.

Scenario 3: The disintegration of the transatlantic relationship. Following the assessments of the two other scenarios, recent developments clearly show a decline and disintegration in the transatlantic relationship. Two developments are particularly important in this context. First, the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO – and from other multilateral arrangements – makes it a less relevant partner for the EU, which prioritizes cooperation through the WHO (and other multilateral institutions). Second, the Trump administration’s seemingly abandonment, or at least serious downplaying, of international law and common norms and values, such as human and democratic rights, clashes with the norms, values and principles emphasized by the EU. Third, the Trump administration’s performance on the international stage, including its stance against the EU, makes it a less reliable partner – thereby creating high political risk for entering long-term commitments with the United States.

Responding to the Turbulence: Four Recommendations for the EU

The United States’ withdrawal from the WHO creates a void in influence and authority that others can fill. The EU can contribute to filling this void by:

1. Continuing to support and prioritize the WHO and speed up contributions to strengthen the WHO’s independence and financial situation. This can be achieved by contributing to maintaining and strengthening the EU’s role as a ‘soft superpower’ using health to advance foreign policy aims.

2. Building ‘coalitions of the willing’ within the WHO to strengthen the organization, influence and develop the global health agenda. Experiences from major transboundary crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as the wear and tear on transatlantic cooperation under the Trump administration, have revealed vulnerabilities in Europe and the need to reduce the EU’s dependence on other countries.

To address these challenges, the EU needs to:

3. Strengthen its ability to ensure health security and continue to prioritize strategic autonomy in the health area.

4. Downplay transatlantic cooperation on short- and medium-term commitments and avoid long-term commitments.

This way, political risks related to (health) cooperation can be reduced. The strain on the transatlantic partnership and the question of whether the United States can be considered a reliable partner reflect an uncertain, high-risk situation for the EU. A pragmatic approach is thus needed, where the EU leverages mutually beneficial transatlantic ties while simultaneously developing supplementary and compensatory strategies.

The EU should therefore:

5. Strengthen bilateral health cooperation with like-minded partners, including Canada, non-EU countries in Europe and other trustworthy countries.

Implementing these recommendations would go a long way toward ensuring that the EU retains the ability to exercise independence in health policy and responses to global health emergencies in the long term.

 

(*) Frode Veggeland has a PhD in political science from the University of Oslo and has published extensively on the EU, international organizations, regulatory governance, public administration and food and health policies, including crisis preparedness and crisis management. In 2006, he was Head of the Secretariat of the Governmental Commission that investigated the E. coli O103 outbreak in Norway. In 2021–2022, he was part of the Secretariat of the Norwegian Corona Commission, which investigated the government’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022–2024 he was part of the Secretariat of the government-appointed committee that reviewed Norway’s experience of cooperation under the EEA Agreement and other agreements Norway has had with the EU over the past ten years, including cooperation on civil protection and health preparedness. Email: frode.veggeland@inn.no

 

 

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Photo: Dreamstime.

Democracy and Populism: The European Case

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Please cite as:
Holmes, Douglas R. (2026). “Overview and background: Democracy and Populism — The European Case.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén andJessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00134

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Abstract
This chapter examines the evolution of contemporary European populism from a collection of fringe insurgencies into a deeply embedded, institution-shaping force within the European Parliament and the broader European project. Drawing on three decades of ethnographic and institutional observation, it demonstrates how populist actors have mastered the procedural, rhetorical, and technocratic mechanisms of the European Union (EU), transforming them into instruments for advancing illiberal civilizational agendas centred on identity, personhood and sovereignty. Far from operating at the margins, these movements now occupy the political centre, generating viral configurations of thought and affect that shape public discourse and institutional practice across Europe. Their ‘gain of function’ has been amplified by transnational linkages – including increasing convergence with US populist strategies – and by exogenous cultural forces that escape standard policy analysis. The chapter argues that these dynamics pose a profound challenge to liberal democracy, requiring new analytical tools commensurate with the scale and complexity of the phenomenon.

Keywords: European populism; illiberalism; European Parliament; identity and sovereignty; populist insurgency; transatlantic politics

 

By Douglas R. Holmes*

Introduction

Policymakers, scholars, and analysts have long presented populism as anti-institutional, or outside mainstream sites of governance and policymaking. But what the new research shows is that this is a new (and thus more dangerous) moment in populist political evolution: Rather than working from the outside in, populist leaders have effectively organized and governed from the very centre of our rule of law and democratic institutions. Whatever the outcome of any future election, the structures of feeling, the configuration of ideas which animate populism are now commonplace. Their anticipatory nature and expectational dynamics confront us daily. Populism is no longer the agenda of unruly individuals and loathsome factions; we all occupy a political field increasingly defined by the exigencies of contemporary populism (Miller-Idriss 2018; Zerofsky 2024). And this fact, even from the perspective of a few years ago, would have been unthinkable.            

Populist movements – bracketed typically as extreme- or far right with national, subnational and regional variants – have defined an increasingly expansive, illiberal politics of Europe and as such challenge the sanctity of democratic norms and values as well as the primacy of the rule of law. For more than three decades a decisive confrontation has unfolded within an institution of the European Union, the European Parliament, revealing the dynamic interplay between populist insurgences and democratic institutional norms and conventions (see Tonne forthcoming). European integration provided a template for a populist insurgency within which the continuous generation of tactical positions was accomplished. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) representing these groups mastered the institutional procedures of the EU, allowing them to insinuate their disruptive, occasionally ludicrous, positions into parliamentary discourse and debate. They were alert to every policy indiscretion and every organizational failure – notably regarding the Euro and immigration crises – which they exploited with devastating effect. On a more fundamental level, the MEPs orchestrating this insurgency developed a series of pivotal civilizational priorities – spanning language, religion, race and gender – which they sought to endow with political legitimacy and currency. Rather than abstract economic or technocratic interests, these MEPs have sought to shape a discourse on Europe in which the nature and dynamics of sovereignty are aligned with the sublime aspiration of identity and personhood.

This brief text thus seeks to provide a primer of sorts for understanding the formidable historical and philosophical exigencies by which illiberal agendas are assuming a fully democratic guise, creating a vast field of political thought and action increasingly populated by young activists and their supporters. The European elections of 2024 and the subsequent election of Donald Trump as US president marked a decisive moment in this political history. A series of micro-insurgencies, which I have studied for more than three decades, underwent a ‘gain of function’, a term I have adapted and modified from virology. By that I mean, certain struggles – in many respects benign and prosaic struggles – can yield new and highly virulent and transmissible configurations of thought and action. Newly elected MEPs representing Patriots for Europe (PfE) and European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) are orchestrating this transformation, this gain of function. They no longer seek to disrupt, curtail or reverse the European project; they aspire to fully conquer it from within, achieving a new, totalizing politics.

How the European case discussed herein can inform a comparative analysis of US politics is very much an open question. There is, no doubt, a systematic and intensifying transatlantic sharing of tactics and strategies underway at many levels of politics and policy. Most obviously, tariffs proposed by the Trump administration are calibrated simultaneously as instruments of domestic US policy and as vehicles for transforming the entire global economic and political order. They ramify through populist politics on both sides of the Atlantic, hinting at a new global framework provisionally articulated in the Mar-a-Lago accord (Mar-a-Lago Accord, n.d.). Relatedly, institutional and regulatory capture in the United States and the EU are also striking tactical aspects of the populist insurgency, anchoring these insurgencies in the rent-seeking schemes of firms and corporations, as well as in the policy orientations of diverse (typically illiberal) special interest groups.

Far less accessible to standard policy analyses are exogenous forces animating contemporary populism: creative outlooks, sensibilities and practices that continually disrupt and recast conventional democratic norms and conventions. What follows is an investigation of these exigencies from the European side of the Atlantic. The degree to which they align with the other side constitutes the decisive question of our time. Indeed, the European case poses decisive questions regarding the nature and function of policy itself and its relations to the interests and outlooks of the public at large.

When I began in the late 1980s observing and analysing the form and content of emerging populist political formations, I was struck by their emphatically future-oriented agendas, predicated on ‘Europe’ as the political field, and European integration as the domain of dissonant thought and action. At the time, European integration was barely imaginable, and yet, I encountered activists plotting a low-key insurgency within this supranational project, a project which, for many Europeans, was at the time little more than an ill-defined dream or fantasy. During that period, I had conversations with eight founders and or leaders of these diverse populist groups (Holmes 2000). Over the ensuing three decades, these MEPs and their successors defined an increasingly expansive illiberal politics of Europe. European integration provided the template against which the continuous generation of positions was accomplished. The European Parliament’s institutional practices and democratic norms were mastered, allowing these MEPs to insinuate their disruptive positions into parliamentary discourse and debate. They learned the intricacies of the EU institutionally and sought to employ this knowledge opportunistically, as an increasingly defiant oppositional stance, which they were prepared to exploit and pillage.

Rather than treating populism merely as a species of politics, I have sought to investigate it as a much broader systemic phenomenon: a configuration of ideas that are continually generated, circulated, and contested, capable of colonising feelings, thoughts, intimacies, devotions, moods, and actions. Populist ideas shape perceptions of what is just or unjust, what is real or unreal, and, ultimately, what it means to be human. Populism thus emerges as an intricate communicative field spanning Europe, an entangled web of meaning that constitutes a dissonant realm we all inhabit. The challenge we face is how to engage the forces animating populist politics, particularly those rooted in powerful attachments to identity, belonging and personhood, forces which resist simple analytical abstraction and quantitative analysis (Shoshan 2022; Szombat 2021).

Populism Observed

Populist activists have cultivated a public, spanning left and right across Europe, eager for a message of withering discontent with the technocratic regime in Brussels. They proposed alternative science, political economy, and metaphysics of solidarity in which the dynamics of sovereignty are anchored to the sublime aspiration of identity and personhood. The policies governing immigration, the fate of refugees, various domains of cultural identity, as well as law and order, have become prominent as the issues the extreme right owns, no longer as a disruptive or marginal preoccupation, but as defining issues of and for Europe, issues which moved to the centre of fraught political contestation in the twenty-first century.

So, what is the nature or substance of this politics? How has a compendium of discontents, which have animated these insurgent groups for decades, been recast as a self-confident program aimed at recrafting virtually every institutional agenda of the EU from within? What follows are thirteen insights – affordances – designed to orient meaningful and sustained political engagement with a European-wide populist insurgency.

  1. Populism is alive, relentlessly and emphatically defining and redefining itself. And this fluidity, this fugitive character, this profoundly systemic and ambient nature creates confounding problems for those who seek to resist or oppose it, for those who seek to grapple with its all-too-human fears and desires. At the core of contemporary populism lies illiberal aspirations that seek to colonize every expression of identity and attachment, encompassing all aspects of truth, beauty, piety, resentment, and depravity (Eco 1995). At the dissonant cultural frontiers of populist insurgencies, protagonists continually seek to establish boundaries of affinity and difference, particularly along lines of race, gender, ethnicity and religion.
  2. Populism is manifested through a far-reaching division of labour and a thoroughly distributed organizational structure, in which numerous micro-insurgencies continuously intersect. European populism exhibits countless permutations; each aligned with and contingent upon the diverse expressions of cultural identity and social distinction articulated in various dialects and vernaculars. What may seem like isolated beliefs and practices carried out by small groups of local activists are, in fact, interconnected through social media and face-to-face interactions with other groups that are formulating parallel or complementary agendas (Pasieka 2024). These agendas can be swiftly appropriated and refined. What may seem like a tight-knit group of activists engaged in a local insurgency on the outskirts of Gothenburg, Porto, Kraków or Belgrade can be interconnected via social media platforms to countless enthusiasts across the continent and beyond. This connectivity creates a widely distributed political configuration characterized by a diverse array of outlooks that reflect agile articulations of the contentious social, cultural and personal struggles of our time.
  3.  What is perhaps most appalling and perplexing about populism is not its alien nature, but rather its proximity to our values, values that can be aligned with fundamental elements of familiar philosophical and cultural tradition. Populism must be understood as integral to the intellectual, sociological, aesthetic and religious traditions of Europe, specifically the enormously complex lineages of the European Romantic traditions, an alternative modernity, informed by virtually every aspect of what we term, all too simplistically, ‘humanism’ (Berlin 1976, 1979).
  4. From the motifs and metaphors found in diverse folkloric traditions to the myriad genres of popular culture, populism operates as ‘a style of life’, assimilating new meanings and affective predispositions. This functioning highlights populism’s capacity to merge, fuse, and synthesize elements that would typically be considered incompatible (Holmes 2019; Shoshan 2016; Teitelbaum 2019). The unsettling premise is that populism functions as a creative force – one that can shape not only our politics but also our feelings, thoughts, intimacies, moods and actions; our perceptions of justice and injustice; our understanding of reality; and ultimately, what we take to be human (Pasieka 2024).
  5. Populism is compelling because it resonates with deeply held convictions about the nature of human collectivities, intertwined with specific understandings of individuals’ capacities to think, feel, experience and act. While brutality and cruelty are undeniable aspects of our humanity, so too are compassion, sympathy, devotion, rage and indifference. These elements comingle with coercion, repression, opportunism and even humour. Discourses surrounding ‘solidarity’ and ‘care’ have become fully integrated into the populist social imaginary. These civic activists insist on the future-oriented trajectory of their politics, foregrounding the moral and ethical nature of their aspirations. They have shrewdly linked their populism with something that can be termed ‘progress’, revolutionary progress, despite its cloying invocations of the past (Berezin 1997; Buzalka 2020, 2021). Feelings, styles, moods, devotions and desires abound, but they typically do not align with something that can be called populist ‘doctrine’ or ‘ideology’ (see Bickerton and Accetti 2021). Populism is not a static ideology; it is in motion and improvised (Gusterson 2021; Loperfido 2018a).
  6. Populists seek to define what it means to be human in opposition to that which can annul our humanity. The disenchantments, alienations, estrangements enlivened by liberal democracy, cosmopolitan society, pervasive materialism, unrelenting consumerism and bourgeois individualism are the foils – the enemies – the counter-models of and for contemporary populism (Herzfeld 1987; Kallius and Adriaans 2022; Mazzarella 2019). Young activists decry the bloodless cliches underwriting the secular world and the necrotizing logics impelling global capitalism. They harbour virulent appraisals of capitalist modernity; they embrace wide-ranging and devastating insights – ‘critiques’ – on the dynamics of unrelenting ‘cultural disenchantments’, specifically, ‘its steel-iron casting’, its ’iron cage’ (Herzfeld 1993; Holmes 1989; Weber 1946).
  7. Populist insurgents have brutally exploited the predicaments of immigrants, refugees, and displaced persons to fuel their militancy (Kallius and Adriaans 2020). Issues of gender, transgender identities and reproductive rights and obligations have increasingly taken centre stage in nearly all expressions of populist activism, activism prone to aggressive outbursts and violent confrontations. Equally significant is the intense scrutiny faced by the legal and regulatory frameworks designed to address past injustices, alongside the erosion of basic codes of civility and norms of sympathy and compassion. Human dignity and decency that language affords are under threat, exposing every cosmopolitan role and lifestyle to scrutiny. Professional statuses are challenged, and bastions of elite privilege associated with them are being devalued. In this context, ‘traditional hierarchies’ are being embraced as all-encompassing alternatives, serving as bases for prestige, power, exploitation and treachery. Oppression and repression increasingly encroach as pronatalist agendas predicated on the sanctity of ‘traditional family values’ gain currency.
  8. Adherents themselves engage in refining and repurposing every aspect of collective experience, every marker of social distinction, as well as every practice of belonging (Fassin 2013; Holmes 2009). They ask astute and canny questions about the social and economic order. Various strata and segments of the public – an ‘agentive public’ – are thus designing populism on their own terms out of the diverse materials, old and new, circulating in their midst (Buzalka 2015, 2020; Eriksen 2016; Holmes 2023; Loperfido 2018a, 2018b; Shoshan 2022; Stacul 2011, 2014).
  9. From the last quarter of the twentieth century, the architects of contemporary populism took the European project seriously, and, again, they have systematically mastered its institutional and, more specifically, its technocratic contradictions and its blatant (and not-so-blatant) hypocrisies (McDonald 1996; Shore 2000; Tonne forthcoming). For them a looming multiracial and multicultural Europe – which they believe is the ultimate purpose of cosmopolitan agendas of integration – is an anathema, foundational to their racialized politics, their circumscription of solidarity and their fraught appraisals of social justice and injustice.
  10. The European Parliament, as suggested above, served as a decisive institutional setting in which political movements and parties could, because of different electoral thresholds, attain representation which had typically been denied them on the national level (Holmes 2000; Tonne forthcoming). They coordinated their participation in parliamentary affairs, they formed political groups, they refined a variety of programs, they crafted a rhetorical style, they often disagreed with each other, and yet they found something like a common ground, albeit a shifting one, from which to formulate their scathing attacks on just about every aspect of the EU itself. Under the guise of ‘Euroscepticism’, they formulated rhetorical positions opposed to every aspect of a cosmopolitan Europe. ‘Scepticism’ served as a thin cover for their fulminating hatred of virtually the entire supranational agendas of the EU.
  11. Rather than abstract economic or technocratic interests, contemporary populists have sought to shape a discourse on Europe in which the nature and dynamics of sovereignty are aligned with the sublime aspiration of identity and personhood (Balibar 1991; Le Pen 1989). And yet, at the same time, they have sought to recast every initiative of the EU for their own material advantage. By so doing they have become skilled at reconfiguring liberal EU projects and programs for the furtherance of illiberal ends. What began in the last two decades as a systematic challenge to the EU’s commitment to the ‘rule of law’ by Polish and Hungarian leaders has given way to an alternative design of Europe, under- and over-written with repressive values (Geva 2021; Orbán 2024; Schmitt 2005; Tonne forthcoming). Leaders have sought to design an illiberal political order by means of the institutional and judicial apparatus of member states – in overt defiance of the EU treaties – to address what they contend are profound civilizational struggles (Orbán 2024). And they have done this largely through democratic means. Populism has been incubated within the institutional project of European integration; its dynamics mirror perversely the historical exigencies of the European project cast against the entrenched powers of its member states (Adenauer 1966; Duchêne 1991; Holmes 2000; McDonald 1996; Shore 1993a; Shore 1993b; Shore 2000). Illiberal, antidemocratic values have licensed, as it were, wide-ranging corruption and incompetence in the service of stark kleptocracy.
  12. Members of the populist public are all activists; their agency is decisive in impelling a self-radicalizing mindset (Eriksen 2016). For them, rather than a towering historical formation, populism is manifest in the predicaments of everyday life, in the intimacies and antagonisms of interpersonal relations, in the crosscurrents of community and livelihood. And they, these activists, have demonstrated how populism can be relentlessly insinuated into virtually every register of taste, perception, faith and ardour. They have designed a vitalist (and virulent) politics for their own grounded purposes and pragmatic ends (Buzalka 2020, 2021; Kotwas and Kubik 2019; Loperfido 2018a, 2018b).
  13. Virtually all the characteristics of populism described herein are manifest as a function of social media – the ‘digital real’ – most importantly, its self-radicalizing propensities (Boellstorff 2016). Gaming, and the vast, overwhelmingly male culture of gaming, is perhaps paradigmatic of this self-radicalizing potential. Navigating between virtual and face-to-face encounters is now a pivotal, and perhaps overriding, challenge for contemporary analysis on these and related matters (Kallius and Adriaans 2022).

Each of the intersecting observations outlined above requires elaboration and refinement: some are over- or understated, others may prove to be patently wrong. Plainly, more refined analyses, notably addressing the likelihood of violence on issues of race and gender, are needed, as are far broader appraisals of the decisive role of social media. The continuing or enhanced relevance of the post-socialist transition and the enduring divisions it has left across Europe require continual appraisal and reappraisal. The war in Ukraine looms as an excruciating reminder that the violent enthusiasms described herein can be aligned with militarism and terror as a potential, if not resolute, adjunctive of and for contemporary populism.

Conclusions

In this short text I have sought to emphasize the stark challenges operating at the cultural frontier of populist insurgencies, insurgencies that are posing manifold challenges to an enduring liberal-democratic order in Europe. I have further emphasized the emphatic cultural fears and aspirations animating contemporary populism, sensibilities which resist those stylized abstractions and modelling techniques which inform conventional political analyses. Thus, to fully engage the world-historical challenges we face requires a new empirical toolkit, new analytical assumptions, new understandings of the nature and purposes of democratic politics and the efficacy of policy intervention.

 

(*) Douglas Holmes is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University. His work addresses how and why the most discredited ideas and sensibilities of the modern era—ideas that yielded the indelible horrors of the twentieth century—have become persuasive, compelling even, in the new century. More recently, he has turned his attention to the operations of central banks and the design of a distinctive monetary policy regime. In Stockholm, London, Wellington, and two venues in Frankfurt, he has spoken to bank personnel and to policy makers examining how they model the economy and the financial system with language, establishing a radically communicative and relational dynamic at the center of monetary affairs. Holmes is the author of an ethnographic trilogy: Cultural Disenchantments: Worker Peasantries in Northeast Italy (Princeton 1989), Integral Europe: Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism (Princeton 2000) and Economy of Words: Communicative Imperatives in Central Banks (Chicago 2014). He has also authored with George E. Marcus a series of texts exploring experiments in ethnographic collaboration particularly as they are achieved within cultures of expertise. Email: dholmes@binghamton.edu

 

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Illiberalism and Democracy: The Populist Challenge to Transatlantic Relations

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Please cite as:
Newman, Saul. (2026). “Illiberalism and Democracy: The Populist Challenge to Transatlantic Relations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén andJessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00135

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Abstract
The election of the paradigmatic populist Donald Trump to his second term as president of the United States raises serious questions, not only for transatlantic relations but also for the democratic values supposedly shared by the United States and much of Europe. The new Trump administration has not only upended normal diplomatic relations with many European countries and the European Union (EU) – particularly over trade tariffs, its commitment to NATO and its support for Ukraine – but has sought to interfere in internal political debates, and even to call into question democratic procedures, as we saw in the case of Romania. This chapter will seek to understand these developments by exploring the central tension between populism and democracy. While populists claim to speak directly on behalf of the ‘people’ and against the ‘elites’, their understanding of the people is a homogeneous one that excludes not only the elites but also minorities. Moreover, populism proposes an authoritarian model of politics that endangers pluralism, the rule of law, judicial independence and the intermediary procedures and institutions of liberal democracy. Recent and ongoing tensions in transatlantic relations must be seen in the context of a global right-wing populist assault on liberal democratic norms and values.

Keywords: democracy; illiberalism; populism; security; transatlantic relations; Trumpism

 

By Saul Newman*

Introduction

Relations between the United States and much of Europe have soured under the first, and, particularly, the second Trump administration. The ‘golden age’ of transatlantic relations that emerged after the end of the Second World War and with the establishment of a rules-based international legal and trading order now seems a distant memory. The United States’ imposition of trade tariffs on the European Union (EU) and uncertainties about Washington’s commitment to NATO and its support for Ukraine have caused a major rupture in relations with Europe. The Trump administration has shown an open hostility and contempt for Europe, referring to European countries as ‘freeloaders’ and admonishing European leaders for their abandonment of the principles of ‘free speech’. Trump himself has at times seemed more sympathetic to Putin than to Zelenskyy, and his style of governing is more akin to Viktor Orbán (a self-described ‘illiberal democrat’) than to the leader of the ‘free world.’

These developments – previously unthinkable – have upended normal relations between the United States and Europe, leaving many European leaders questioning the reliability of their once close ally and strategic partner. The post-Cold War international order is fragmenting, and a new global (dis)order is emerging, comprised of competing power blocs – the United States, China and Russia – in which the EU is regarded by the US administration as an irrelevance, or even as a potential enemy. However, this state of affairs is more than simply the consequence of a transactional president with an America First agenda. The fraught state of US–European relations represents a new ‘clash of civilizations’ – to invoke Samuel Huntington’s famous term – between competing visions of democracy. In other words, the recent fracturing of transatlantic partnerships must be understood in the broader context of the global rise of right-wing populism and the particular challenge it presents to the once-hegemonic liberal democratic model.

This chapter will explore the contemporary phenomenon of populism, which has become a defining (and perhaps permanent) feature of political life globally, and the extent to which it opposes liberal democratic institutions, norms and values. Populism proposes an alternative and, as I shall argue, an authoritarian model of democracy, one based on the unmediated ‘will of the people’ and largely hostile to political pluralism, the rule of law and the rights of minorities. My focus here will be on right-wing populism – that is, a populist model of politics allied to far-right ideologies. Right-wing populism might be seen as a form of radical conservatism, combining economic libertarianism, political authoritarianism, nativism and xenophobia, strong religious identity and socially and culturally conservative values; essentially an antiliberalism, which accounts for its hostility to supranational projects like the EU, as well as to what is perceived as the secular permissiveness of many European societies and their tolerance of multiculturalism, open borders and mass immigration. 

Of course, populism is a dominant presence on the European political landscape, with right-wing populist and Eurosceptic parties either in government (e.g., in Italy and Hungary) or knocking on its doors (e.g., France, Germany and the United Kingdom). Moreover, there is a growing ideological alignment between these European populist forces and those in other parts of the world, particularly the United States. My chapter seeks to understand the spread of right-wing populist ideology beyond national borders and to see it as part of a global political realignment that has succeeded in disrupting the liberal status quo. This realignment represents a significant shift in transatlantic relations, affecting its basic pillars of security, trade, international institutions, and, especially, democratic values, which will be the focus of my chapter. It is too early to predict whether the ascendancy of nationalist populism – which is opposed to the idea of a liberal global order as the previously shared normative commitment of the United States and Europe – constitutes a permanent break in relations or a temporary moment of instability. But the rise of populist currents on both sides of the Atlantic is already causing major stresses and fractures in the transatlantic framework.

What Is Populism?

Populism is a notoriously slippery concept, and the vast and ever-growing literature on the topic testifies both to its importance and impact on politics, as well as to its conceptual vagueness. Populism has been studied as an ideology (albeit a ‘thin-centred’ one; see Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017); a discourse (see Laclau 2005); a performative style of politics (see Moffit 2017, 2020); an antisystem mobilization (see Canovan 1999); and as a political strategy (Weyland 2017). Some studies have focused on populism as an anti-establishment protest (see Albertazzi, McDonnell and Aslanidis 2024), while others have focused on populism in government (see Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015; Venizelos 2023). Populism can be defined by so many, or so few, characteristics as to render it often either too specific or too general a concept to be useful (see Arato and Cohen 2022, 7). Yet, my aim here is not to present a survey of different theoretical approaches to populism, but to identify some of its core elements.

I take an ‘ideational’ approach to populism, seeing it as a certain way of imaging social relations as being based on a central opposition between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’ (see Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). This is a moral opposition, where ‘the people’ are seen as morally pure, authentic, honest, hardworking, etc and as being deceived and exploited by duplicitous elites, who have betrayed their economic interests to a liberal, globalizing agenda. Populists claim to be on the side of the people against these nefarious and corrupt elites and to want to restore sovereignty and self-determination to the people. In this sense, populists claim to affirm a more genuine democracy – based on the unmediated will of the people – in opposition to the elites who provide only the fig leaf of democracy, behind which they pursue their own economic and political interests. The elites, it is claimed, have nothing in common with the people and do not share their values and interests. When Trump complains about the ‘Washington establishment’ whose policies have led to American decline – through ‘unfair’ free trade agreements and mass immigration – and when he promises to restore manufacturing and industry and to bring jobs back to the rustbelt; when he promises to ‘Make America Great Again’ through protectionist policies and trade tariffs, he is essentially playing the populist card. This basic narrative of the people vs the elites is shared by all populisms, from Trump in the United States, Erdoğan in Türkiye, Le Pen in France, to Morales in Bolivia and Lula in Brazil. Indeed, left-wing populism – as typified by the last two examples – also sees the people pitted against financial oligarchies and the political class that serves their interests.

How Does Populism Endanger Democracy?

Why, then, is populism a potential threat to democracy? After all, democracy is all about popular sovereignty and the ‘will of the people’. Populists work within democratic systems, run in elections and even support referendums and popular plebiscites. Populist leaders claim to espouse a more genuine form of democracy by giving the people ‘what they really want’ and expressing their desires in a direct and unmediated fashion, bypassing the usual channels of parliamentary procedure and the mainstream media. However, it is precisely this emphasis on the ‘will of the people’ that makes populism dangerously ambivalent towards democracy. However, the problem with this sort of direct relationship with the people – characteristic of populism – is that it undermines and weakens the mediating functions and procedures central to liberal representative democracy. In a liberal democracy, institutions like parliaments, the independent judiciary, and the media act as intermediary bodies between the people and power; their function is to mediate the popular will into a form of governance that can take into account a diversity of views, opinions, and interests. The will of the people – as articulated by the populist leader – cannot, and should not, be absolute; popular opinion must be limited by the rule of law and filtered through the representative function of political parties. The weakening of these norms – which usually happens under a populist-led government – leads to the ‘disfigurement’ of democracy (see Urbinati 2014).

In populist discourse, ‘the people’ are defined in absolute terms, as a homogeneous identity that necessarily excludes other identities that are seen as not genuinely part of ‘the people’. Such exclusion refers not only to the nefarious elites, who are in any case often vaguely defined – financial and political elites, but also various cultural elites who support a ‘woke agenda’ and who do not share the same values as the ‘real’ people – but also to minorities, with whom the elites are seen to be complicit. These minorities tend to be immigrants, who are seen to weaken national identity, come from different cultures with incompatible values, steal jobs from locals, pose a security threat or become a drain on resources. Indeed, mass immigration and ‘illegal’ border crossing is emerging as the central political issue in the United Kingdom, much of Europe and, under Trump, in the United States. The immigration issue gives rise to populist currents on both sides of the Atlantic. However, in populist discourse, other minorities – such as cultural, sexual and gender minorities – can also be positioned as ‘enemies of the people’. Indeed, there is seen to be a kind of conspiracy between the establishment and the minorities they enable. When right-wing populists condemn the ‘woke agenda’ supposedly pushed by ‘out of touch’ cultural, intellectual and political elites (the mainstream media, academics, Hollywood celebrities, liberal politicians, the judiciary, human rights advocacy groups, ‘leftist’ lawyers, etc) it is in the belief that they unfairly support the interests and rights of minorities over those of the majority. – For populists, the people – usually defined as the natives – necessarilypresupposes homogeneity, as well as supremacy concerning other ‘outsider’ groups. Now, if one’s view of democracy is that the interests and rights of majorities should always be placed above those of minorities, then the populist understanding of the people makes sense and is consistent. However, the liberal democratic tradition – centred around the problematic of the ‘tyranny of the majority’ – believes that democracy involves more than just the popular will, but also a respect for the pluralism of values, interests and identities and that it must defend the rights of minorities as equal to those of majorities.

Not only is populism, in its homogenizing notion of the people, largely hostile to pluralism and minority rights (see Müller 2017), but it is also dominated by the figure of the leader, who is seen to directly embody and channel the will of the people. The populist leader sees him- or herself as the ‘people’s tribune’, who shares their values, understands their suffering and gives them what they really want. Populist parties are not like normal political ‘catch-all’ parties that represent a diversity of interests, views and factions, but rather are entirely leader-centric; the party is the leader and the leader is the party. Think of the one-man political party of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands (the Party for Freedom) and think of the hold that Trump has over the Republican Party, which has essentially become the official arm of his MAGA movement. Indeed, Trump is a perfect example of the populist leader who claims to speak directly for and to the people – which is why he tends to bypass the normal channels of political communication, preferring mass rallies and social media to galvanize his supporters. This close relationship that populism seeks to establish between the people and the leader is what political theorists like Nadia Urbinati have referred to as ‘direct representation’ (see Urbinati 2019). The MAGA–Republican movement is more like a religious cult than a political party, and to his supporters, Trump can do no wrong. Trump once boasted that he could shoot someone in broad daylight and people would still vote for him, and there is no reason to believe he was wrong. The faith invested in the figure of the leader allows him to attack the ‘deep state’ and to promise to cut through the mire of bureaucratic inertia and complexity that obstructs the sovereign will of the people. The populist leader thus presents him- or herself as the ‘strong man’ type who is unafraid to violate the norms and procedures of politics, to say what everyone is really thinking, and to play fast and loose with the democratic rules of the game in order to ‘get the job done.’

There have been many studies over recent years of populism in power. Populism has gone from being an oppositional politics challenging the establishment, to becoming the new establishment. So what do populists do when they get into power? How do they govern? And how do they sustain an anti-establishment position when they effectively become part of the establishment? This tension, between populism as an anti-establishment mobilization and populism as a form of government, partly accounts for the chaos of the first months of the Trump administration, with incoherent announcements over tariffs and foreign policy, the mass sacking (and then rehiring) of federal government employees, and hundreds of executive orders that have been overturned by federal court judges. The tendency of populists in power is to still play the part of the outsider, continue their attacks on the ‘deep state’, the media, the judiciary, and entrenched interests, and to blame their policy failures on ‘the establishment’. Yet, behind the scenes, populist governments meddle with the constitution, undermine the independence of the judiciary, attack journalists and universities, restrict the rights of minorities and seek to establish a form of strong executive rule that is largely unhinged from the rule of law. Populist governments form ‘hybrid regimes’, or ‘democratorships’ (see Rosanvallon 2021; see also Keane 2020): they retain the semblance of democracy in the form of parliaments, elections and an independent media, but behind this veneer, political opponents are harassed, the judiciary and media are intimidated, and power becomes centralized in the executive.

Populism is thus a challenge to the idea of constitutional democracy (see Arato and Cohen 2022). The paradigm cases would be Hungary under Viktor Orbán and Türkiye under Erdoğan. But increasingly the United States is coming to resemble a democratorship, or at least an increasingly contested and ambiguous democracy. Illegal and unconstitutional executive orders, arbitrary arrests and mass deportations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, attacks on universities – all these are signs that the United States is descending into authoritarianism, and there is real concern about whether the institutions of American democracy will survive this onslaught.

The Global Far Right

Looking at Project 2025 – the ideological manifesto of Trumpism – it is clear that strong executive rule, draconian border control, isolationism, and the return to conservative and patriarchal values all form part of the agenda of the new US administration, constituting a right-wing assault on liberal secularism and pluralism. However, my point is that this ideological agenda is not unique to the United States: ‘illiberalism’ – driven by the forces of populism – is part of a political realignment whose effects are being felt around the world, and particularly in Europe. Orbán’s version of democracy is looked upon as a model to emulate by Trump supporters: Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, and other figures of the US far right regularly address rallies in Europe and find favour with populist parties like Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD); populist parties in Europe form right-wing alliances in the European Parliament; populist views on immigration – driven by fears of the ‘great replacement’ – become part of the political mainstream and gain legitimacy in the eyes of many voters; journalists and media organizations are condemned as ‘fake news’; climate science, net zero policies, and, indeed, scientific expertise generally, are attacked; and far-right populist politicians, political entrepreneurs and influencers – with powerful social media platforms at their disposal – continue to foment political polarization and sow distrust in the establishment.

Such factors do not bode well for transatlantic relations; nor do they bode well for the future of liberal democracy. We need to see these developments as part of a far-right ideological project which – while it is opposed to globalization – nevertheless has global dimensions and projects an alternative, socially conservative vision of the world that is very different from the liberal, rules-based order that we once knew and to which the transatlantic relationship, based on shared liberal values, was central. It may be that a new transatlantic relationship will emerge on the ashes of the old, formed of power blocs led by nationalist-populist governments. Whatever the case, the populist groundswell on both sides of the Atlantic is testing the former liberal democratic settlement to breaking point.

Conclusion and Policy Implications

In a recent book, Anne Applebaum (2024) has argued that autocratic regimes around the world have formed an ideological bloc united against a common enemy: the ‘liberal democratic West’ and its institutions, such as NATO and the EU. My claim would be that the United States’ place within this schema is now, under Trump, highly ambiguous; is it still part of the ‘liberal West’ or is it part of the new ‘illiberal’ authoritarian alliance that targets it? Moreover, I do not propose a clear-cut division between autocracy and liberal democracy. It is more useful to see all regimes on a kind of sliding scale in which the difference between liberalism and authoritarianism is now a matter of degree rather than an absolute conceptual distinction. Many well-established liberal democracies have implemented security, law-and-order and border-control measures that would not be out of place in recognizably authoritarian regimes. In a sense, democracy is an increasingly contested space. Populism is largely a symptom of this democratic dysfunction. While it endangers liberal democracy – for the reasons I have outlined above – it also has an important message for us: that democracy is not (and perhaps never can be) perfect, and that while there is mass citizen dissatisfaction with politics as usual, while many continue to feel under-represented by their elected officials, and while huge inequalities in power and wealth continue to exist (and indeed are becoming worse) populism will always be a feature of the political landscape. The populist challenge to liberal democracy is therefore also an invitation to rethink and reform it.

My work is part of the Horizon-funded ‘Reclaiming Liberal Democracy in the Post-Factual Age’ project, which has explored the central role ‘post-truth’ narratives and disinformation campaigns play in populist politics. This dynamic is regarded as a serious challenge to the resilience of European liberal democracies, and the EU has responded with a series of policy and regulatory frameworks designed to bolster democratic institutions. These have included the European Democracy Action Plan or EDAP (2020) which is committed to the protection of open political debate from malign interference; the creation of a transparent and accountable digital ecosystem; the promotion of an enabling civic space that ensures inclusive and effective engagement between public authorities, civil society organizations, and citizens; and the defence of the EU’s democratic sphere from covert external influence (see García-Guitián and Bouza – forthcoming 2026). Whether regulatory frameworks such as these will themselves be enough to head off the threat from authoritarian populism is doubtful – but they are examples of the kinds of policy innovation needed to bolster liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

(*) Saul Newman is Full Professor of Politics at Goldsmiths University of London. His research is in the area of contemporary political and democratic theory, including topics such radical politics and anarchism, human rights, political theology, populism and post-truth politics. He is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Order, Crisis and Redemption: Political Theology after Schmitt (with Peter Langford) (SUNY Press 2022), The Anarchist Before the Law: Law without Authority (with Massimo La Torre) (Edinburgh University Press 2024) and Post-Truth Populism: a New Political Paradigm (with Maximilian Conrad eds.) (Palgrave Springer 2024).

 

References

Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonnell. 2015. Populists in Power. 1st ed. Routledge.

Albertazzi, Daniele, Duncan McDonnell, and Paris Aslanidis. 2024. Populist Mobilization. Oxford University Press.

Applebaum, Anne. 2024. Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Allen Lane.

Arato, Andrew, and Jean L. Cohen. 2022. Populism and Civil Society: The Challenge to Constitutional Democracy. Oxford University Press.

Canovan, Margaret. 1999. “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy.” Political Studies 47(1): 2–16.

García-Guitián, Elena, and Luis Bouza. 2026. “The European Union Strategy to Fight Disinformation: Democratic Justification, Policies and Regulation.” In Reclaiming Liberal Democracy in the Postfactual Age, edited by Maximilian Conrad and Saul Newman. De Gruyter. (Forthcoming).

Keane, John. 2020. The New Despotism. Harvard University Press.

Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. Verso.

Moffitt, Benjamin. 2017. The Global Rise of Populism. Stanford University Press.

Moffitt, Benjamin. 2020. Populism: Key Concepts in Political Theory. John Wiley & Sons.

Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2017. Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Müller, Jan-Werner. 2017. What Is Populism? Penguin.

Rosanvallon, Pierre. 2021. The Populist Century: History, Theory, Critique. Translated by C. Porter. Polity.

Urbinati, Nadia. 2014. Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People. Harvard University Press.

Urbinati, Nadia. 2019. Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy. Harvard University Press.

Venizelos, Georgios. 2023. Populism in Power: Discourse and Performativity in SYRIZA and Donald Trump. Routledge.

Weyland, Kurt. 2017. “Populism: A Political-Strategic Approach.” In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy, 48–72. Oxford University Press.

Refugees arriving by inflatable dinghy boats remain in camps on the island of Lesvos, Greece, on October 5, 2015. Photo: Anjo Kan.

The Illiberal Bargain on Migration

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Please cite as:
Andersson, Ruben. (2026). “The Illiberal Bargain on Migration.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00136

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Abstract
Since the 1990s, Western states have pursued a dual migration strategy: economically liberal policies to secure labour supply and hardline measures against ‘unwanted’ migration. The Trump administration has amplified these long-standing tendencies. Across Europe, governments as different as the UK Labour Party and Italy’s Brothers of Italy are cracking down on asylum and maritime arrivals while muddling through on labour migration. Economic and demographic pressures ensure persistent demand for migrant workers, even as short-term politics reward spectacular enforcement campaigns with damaging consequences. What has shifted is the growing centrality of migration as a security domain. Fears of ‘weaponized’ migration in Europe and Trump’s confrontations with origin states show how trade and aid are being deployed to pressure poorer countries into cooperation on control and deportation. Despite hostile rhetoric, the European Union (EU) and the United States are increasingly converging on coercive, illiberal bargains. Whether labour market needs, practical limits or political resistance can soften this trajectory remains uncertain.

Keywords: migration; borders; liberalism; refugees; security; transatlantic relations

 

By Ruben Andersson*

Introduction

After the Cold War, it seemed briefly as if a new ‘borderless’ world was emerging. Yet as the Iron Curtain came down, new barriers appeared at the United States–Mexico border – continuing the ‘securitisation’ of especially Latin American migration pushed by Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s. In the European Union, securitization accompanied the establishment of a shared external border. In both cases, a security approach to migration emerged as the liberal vision of free trade and openness ran into deep contradictions. Yet this ‘security model’ has failed. This failure, in turn, has contributed to rising political fervour – fuelling, in the process, even more demand for border security.

Notably, the ‘security model’ short-circuited ordinary political procedure. Measures were frequently pushed through from the top with little democratic scrutiny. Externally, it involved strengthening the repressive apparatus of ‘partner states’. Rather than bolstering democratic values, ‘border security first’ increasingly eroded their importance – as seen most starkly in the European Union’s (EU) collaboration with repressive regimes.

Domestically, ‘border security first’ hindered a robust democratic debate over the realities of migration. In the United States, border enforcement was a stopgap measure to address a central contradiction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): capital and goods moved frictionlessly while workers did not. In the EU, border security similarly rose as a simple ‘fix’ when member states failed to enact a functioning common migration or asylum policy to accompany their new borderless area of free movement and trade.

In the process, a two-faced migration regime was consolidating on both sides of the Atlantic. The promotion of a globalized economy – including for large-scale labour migration – was accompanied by an increased, if selective, securitization of poorer overland migrants and asylum seekers from the south. The two sides of the transatlantic relationship, insofar as migration was concerned, seemed to move as much in lockstep as in other domains such as trade, finance and international security.

These recent historical patterns reveal some remarkable continuities in the politics of migration across the Atlantic. However, in recent years the ‘security model’ against unwanted migration has gained increasing salience despite solid evidence that it has tended to fuel border chaos and stronger smuggling networks while eroding fundamental rights and liberties. The crisis footing over migration has been central to rising ‘populist’ or authoritarian sentiment, to the point where its framing and ‘solutions’ are increasingly mainstream. While this tendency has become especially stark under the second Donald J. Trump presidency, the EU and many of its member states are equally wedded to the security model. Meanwhile, the failure to adequately account for the structural determinants of migration – the supply and demand of labour, deep demographic and economic imbalances, and drivers of forced displacement – will continue to haunt politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The risk is that, on current trends, this ‘unresolved business’ will keep fuelling demand for authoritarian ‘solutions’. Here governments may not simply keep ‘muddling through’ but actively shift towards a renewal of transatlantic relations through hard securitization – including, besides vast investments in rearmament and surveillance, the securitization of mobility on a much wider scale.

The chapter will compare migration politics in the United States and at the EU’s southern external border since the 1990s. We will examine one emblematic case, Spain, which became an important immigration destination around this time. As elsewhere in Europe, both conservative and socialist governments responded to this shift in part by securitizing numerically small movements of African migrants and asylum seekers towards Spanish land and sea borders – a pattern replicated on a much larger scale at the US–Mexico border. The security model has fed further border crises in both cases, while overall migration has continued to fluctuate in response to structural factors, with border security itself providing further impetus for undocumented migration. Next, we shift focus to the present Trump administration and to the increasingly nationalist politics of Europe, showing how the security approach has fed on its own failures while opening a window for radical offerings from the ‘new right’. Throughout, we must understand US and European migration regimes as intertwined: rhetoric, expertise and technology have travelled across the Atlantic while buttressing an increasingly shared political outlook, with one partial exception: Spain itself, which in recent years has opted for a more liberal approach.

Europe’s Two-faced Migration Regime Since the 1990s

A small Spanish enclave at the tip of North Africa is emblematic of the challenges in managing the EU’s external border. At the ‘autonomous city’ of Ceuta, one of the EU’s only two land borders in Africa, Europe erected its first border barriers against migration in the 1990s. Since this time, each new measure at the border has fuelled more dangerous entry methods, as the guards themselves point out. The fences were soon being breached en masse, similarly to the ‘kamikaze runs’ taking place at the San Diego–Tijuana border. When Madrid announced it would reinforce the barrier in 2005, migrants took their chance. The result was one of Europe’s earliest ‘border crises’: an event in which at least fourteen migrants were killed in gunfire, with many more expelled deep into the Sahara desert.

Since that time, crises have periodically recurred. However, this has not stopped Ceuta’s barrier from becoming a prototype for fences that today stretch from Greece to Finland. Spain also provided Europe with a model for ‘externalizing’ controls to African states, first in Morocco and later, when routes shifted due to post-2005 crackdowns, to West Africa.

Meanwhile, Spain pursued diplomatic efforts that fed into the Europeanization of border management. The Frontex agency conducted its first notable operations off the Canary Islands, where the next ‘migration crisis’ occurred in 2006, itself a knock-on effect of the 2005 crackdowns. EU initiatives on border security, development, and even ‘mobility partnerships’ multiplied – a process driven partly by member states such as Spain, keen to offer aid and diplomatic relations in exchange for African states agreeing to patrol migration routes and accept deportees. The carrots-and-sticks approach – articulated by European governments at a 2002 summit in Seville – seemed to offer a ‘solution’ that paired border security with opportunities for cross-regional collaboration.

In the intervening period, the Spanish economy continued to grow at a febrile pace. Amid demographic imbalances and strong labour demand, migrant workers were desperately needed. Madrid ensured a steady supply of workers, especially from Latin America, Eastern Europe and even Morocco. In this context, the spectacle of border enforcement allowed politicians to show a ‘tough’ line on migration while simultaneously encouraging large-scale labour immigration. This disproportionate concern over the external border was a Europe-wide phenomenon: indeed, already in the 1990s, northern European states had been leaning on their southern counterparts to enforce strict measures. Spain also remained emblematic of the wider European ‘muddling through’ on migration as it launched regularization campaigns and released boat arrivals from detention with a deportation order, free to join the informal economy. The two-faced migration regime kept the economy thrumming and the borders ‘secure’ – sending a mixed message picked up in origin states and among European voters.

To critics in politics, advocacy and academia, a small minority of migrants and asylum seekers were seeing their basic rights sacrificed as they faced dangerous expulsions into desert areas by partner forces or extremely risky sea crossings in attempts to evade patrols and radar systems. The heightened salience of a small – and clearly racialized – minority of migrants was, at the same time, channelling right-wing ‘populist’ sentiment towards the borders, fuelling demand for further crackdowns. Meanwhile, deaths owing to ‘Fortress Europe’ policies since 1993 have been estimated at more than 66,000 – a staggering figure (United Against Refugee Deaths 2025).

The United States: A Model of Mismanagement?

A similar trend could be observed in the United States. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, similar to Spanish efforts, offered an amnesty to undocumented migrants while paving the way for further crackdowns. President Ronald Reagan hardened rhetoric as he called undocumented migration ‘a threat to national security’ with ‘terrorists and subversives… just two days’ driving time’ from the Texas border – echoing Trump’s later pronouncements (Massey 2015, 288). By the 1990s, army surplus landing mats were stood on their ends outside San Diego to form the first rudimentary border barrier (Harding 2012, 91). Border security operations started multiplying while collaboration deepened with Mexico and Central American states – replicating the ‘externalization’ pattern of Euro–African relations.

Unlike those in Europe, migration flows across the southern US border were of a different magnitude. Very much like in Europe, however, Washington was ‘muddling through’ as it tried at once to satisfy labour needs and project selective toughness. The resulting ‘border game’ (Andreas 2000) offered a stark contrast with the post-Second World War approach. The bracero program – a bilateral agreement between the United States and Mexico that began in 1942 to address wartime US labour shortages and allowed millions of Mexicans to work legally in the United States as seasonal agricultural labourers – had once provided legal pathways for labour migration. Once it ended in the 1960s, irregular migration rose correspondingly as legal routes were replaced by illegal ones (Massey et al. 2015). As border enforcement saw vast sums of investment from the 1980s onwards, migrants still kept arriving – only now, they were easier to exploit.

As in Europe, border security was deployed as a solution to an eminently political problem: it papered over the cracks and contradictions of a ‘free’ transnational market – a market that, through NAFTA, was leading to a ‘migration hump’ as many Mexicans left amid shifting economic opportunities. After 9/11, securitization escalated under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. However, the tremendous efforts did not halt deaths or irregular migration. In 1986, there were some two million undocumented migrants in the United States; after years of heavy border security investment, in 2008, there were twelve million (Massey et al. 2015). Many of these were migrants who no longer felt it safe to return to Mexico after the agricultural season, owing to the fences and patrols. Each new border crisis kept feeding demand for more border security, opening further avenues for authoritarian and right-wing forces to propose ways for breaking the stalemate.

Post-2008: Securitization Gains Momentum

After the financial crisis, the path dependency of the security model was strengthened on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, immigration reform became increasingly contingent on ploughing even more funding into border security. While the political battles played out along broadly familiar lines, the underlying security model remained bipartisan, as revealed by Senate wranglings over draconian immigration bills or indeed the record three million people removed under the Obama administration (Foley 2013).

Yet in the early 2010s, Mexican immigration was in fact falling due primarily to demographic and economic factors. Migrant apprehensions were at their lowest numbers in about forty years (WOLA 2025). The security model was taking on a momentum of its own, irrespective of actual migration figures or its actual results.

In Europe, the security model received great impetus from the 2015 border crisis, when record numbers crossed the Mediterranean via Türkiye and Libya. Frontex began operations with a modest budget of €19 million in 2006: by 2022, it had reached €750 million. The allocation to Frontex was but a small part of the expenditure on the national level, or the cost of externalizing controls. The security model was building further momentum via attempts by both ‘partner states’ and hostile actors to use irregular migration as a bargaining chip with Brussels and EU capitals. Favours included financial disbursements – such as €1 billion in aid for Niger, the exact sum it had asked for in 2016 ‘to fight clandestine migration’, or the much larger aid deal struck with Türkiye (Financial Times 2016). It also included political favours, such as Spain’s acquiescence to Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara as quid pro quo for Rabat playing its on-again-off-again role as Europe’s ‘gendarme.’

In sum, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic converged around a two-faced migration regime: feeding migrants into their labour-hungry economies on the one hand, including illegalized workers who could be readily exploited, and launching tough-seeming crackdowns at physical borders and in third countries, on the other. The result was a growing enforcement industry and a self-sustaining spiral of securitization. In this spiral, there was eventually one clear winner: the challengers on the hard or new right, which actively played the two sides of the border regime against one another – using overall immigration figures as an argument for more crackdowns at external land and sea borders, for instance, or using the frequent crises at those borders as a justification for saying the whole migration system (and by implication, its mainstream political architects) was compromised.

2020s: Total Security

Even as political challengers started becoming more vocal – including in the United Kingdom’s Brexit campaign, in the first Trump presidency, or in the rise of right-wing authoritarian forces across continental Europe – one could still see much transatlantic ‘muddling through’ on migration. However, the two-faced migration regime is tilting further towards securitization. The impetus is not only coming from the Trump administration or from Europe’s authoritarian right. Centrist European governments are also adopting similar rhetoric and objectives, while increasingly following the new right’s lead. Instead of sating popular demand for more border control, however, they contribute to an uncontrollable appetite for more security and for more hard-right solutions.

In the EU, policymakers are increasingly painting migration as a security problem. Measures include crackdowns on ‘instrumentalized’ migration – the tactic of using migrants as a bargaining chip, which developed in direct response to Europe’s migration-induced panic. Even so, governments still adhere to the two-faced migration regime in important respects – including Italy’s ‘populist’ right-wing government, which has opened legal migration pathways into sectors with labour shortages paired with harder crackdowns in the Mediterranean.

In the United States, Trump has shifted focus inland. Raids on homes and workplaces have targeted green card holders and blue-chip technology companies (Financial Times 2025). European visitors have been caught up in crackdowns, adding potential transatlantic friction. Overall, the securitization of US cities and workers shows how the security model increasingly ‘trumps’ the economy. In the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ of 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) alone received an estimated $37.5 billion a year while its watchdog was gutted, citizenship-stripping came up for discussion, and the courts and Congress let checks and balances melt away – creating, as one commentator put it, a ‘security state within a state’ (Luce 2025).

On both sides of the Atlantic, there are again some clear winners. First, the hard or far right, which always offers more convincing ‘security theatre’. Second, the defence, security and detention–deportation industries, which are seeing a staggering surge in demand. And third, the human smugglers, who have found themselves with a captive market – a lesson that has consistently been ignored despite clear evidence that criminal syndicates have grown stronger and more predatory on the back of enforcement efforts (Andersson 2024).

Where Next?

The two-faced migration regime has proven remarkably long-lived, as even the most hardline governments struggle to square the circle of economic realities and security politics. However, we may also discern not just a quantitative but a qualitative shift in the security model. Migration is becoming central to how ‘security’ is envisioned, and this is occurring in transatlantic dialogue. We see this, for instance, in the geopolitics of bargaining with migrants played by the Trump administration with origin and ‘dumping’ countries, or in the very similar deals being crafted by the EU and its member states. We see it, notably, in how the earlier emphasis on development and human security, especially in the EU case, has melted away. Even a classical ‘security crisis’ – Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – has increasingly been framed in terms of ‘instrumentalized’ movements of desperate people.

The Trump administration likes to lecture ‘liberal’ Europe on sleepwalking into an ‘invasion’ – deploying rhetoric not dissimilar to that of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi when he once used racist language to threaten Europe over engineered migration flows. Yet the rhetorical smoke hides the reality of increasing convergence around treating migration as a security domain. The security model is now hitting legal migrants, permanent residents and sometimes even citizens with invasive surveillance and control. Meanwhile, both the United States and European actors engage in lopsided bargaining with poorer states over responsibility for migration and asylum, ‘instrumentalising’ migrants for domestic and geopolitical ends.

Some dampers exist, especially in the EU, where some aspects of the Union and some member states (Spain being one) hold out for a more liberal approach. In fact, one main risk of a breakdown in transatlantic relations comes from the Trump administration’s putting its thumb on the scale in favour of far-right challengers while undermining checks and balances. Yet for now, the transatlantic bargain is developing, much as in the military domain, with Europe enthusiastically following through on further securitization. While we continue to see much ‘muddling through’ domestically, we are also seeing signs of a ‘renewal’ of transatlantic relations around an illiberal bargain that construes migration as a threat and refugees and migrants as bargaining chips in the international arena.

The Path Forward

For those who wish to reverse this trend, a few things should take priority:

1. Establish a civil liberties compact in the interest of citizens and foreigners alike.

As we can start to discern both in the ICE raids in the United States and in various European initiatives of control and surveillance, efforts to securitize migration eventually start hitting the wider social fabric and affecting citizens’ liberties as well, while frequently fuelling an anxiety that benefits the far right. A compact on liberties can ensure that the EU’s ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ becomes concrete and meaningful for all residents. Baking in privacy and civil liberties safeguards into new control proposals is a start, as even some of the architects of the US homeland security state are now acknowledging. Enshrining such safeguards would show that the EU is still keeping some faith in small-l liberal values – a project that may surprisingly appeal to many of the voters flocking to the new right, who, on the whole, are worried about state surveillance and overreach.

2. Rework relationships with ‘partner states.’

The European externalization of controls has led to a ceding of control to neighbouring states, who have consistently used migration fears to extract political or economic concessions (Chebel d’Appollonia 2012). As border guards themselves recognize, it is a game the Europeans are increasingly losing. Here is an opportunity to shift to a more positive, pragmatic footing. It is in the gift of Brussels and member states to shift the equation back towards economic cooperation, humanitarian and peacebuilding support and reaffirmed democratic rights – but this will require some heavy lifting, including a revival of refugee resettlement programmes offering an alternative to displaced people and some goodwill to the world’s largest refugee hosts in Africa and Asia.

3. Foster positive foreign policy coherence.

The EU and its member states can gear foreign policy towards less distress-inducing migration, not more, as is so frequently the case. The 2015 spike in arrivals was in no small part a knock-on effect of NATO’s disastrous Libya intervention. While the chaos spurred large-scale departures from the country, Russia saw the risk of regime change elsewhere and scaled up involvement in Syria’s civil war. Geopolitical bargaining with Syrian refugees followed. Today, EU support for Israeli war crimes in Gaza may not be adding pressure to Europe’s borders – given the particularities of that context, and the lock-in of its bombarded inhabitants – yet the pattern remains: of foreign policy choices fuelling forced displacement rather than addressing it.

4. Strengthen the social model. 

The EU could be bold and see migration as an opportunity and a source of enrichment. Instead, it has frequently been handled terribly poorly through the two-faced migration regime – as a security problem on the one hand, and as a source of use-and-discard labour on the other. The security model, in other words, distracts from the need to strengthen labour protections. A smart policy would be to turn this around. In fact, a de-securitization of migration can occur in tandem with a strengthening of social security. 

This strengthening would entail adequate labour standards and fair pay for citizens and migrants alike; fortifying the welfare state and so creating attractive jobs; cracking down on unscrupulous employers, not employees; and providing genuine rights for people fleeing persecution through safe routes rather than via the heavily policed borderlands that feed the smuggling economy and partner-state brinkmanship. Such controls would provide pathways to genuine ‘integration’ rather than generating just-in-time labour pools. Paired with targeted funds for local areas where migrants concentrate – as well as sensible policies for ensuring everyone does not end up in the same place – this will reduce costs and increase benefits for citizens. It may well put a damper on international movement as people respond to reduced labour demand. Incidentally, however, this may also help origin countries struggling with large outflows of their working population through unsafe routes. It will also offer migrants a genuine and safe alternative.

It is notable that border guards themselves are alive to the unsustainability of the two-faced border regime and its increasingly illiberal tilt. At Ceuta, the Civil Guard chief presiding over Europe’s first border fences told the author in 2023 that migration had to be returned to the political fold. However, in his view, there was a ‘political cost’ that no government wanted to assume in creating regular labour migration. The EU, he suggested, could recruit workers into seasonal agricultural programmes or develop other pathways that could compete with ‘irregular migration’. At the moment, he noted, there was no competition. Unfortunately, in the political sphere as well, there is increasingly no competing perspective against the disastrous security model, even as it extends its reach ever further into everyday life and into international relations. So far, the only real political winner in the securitization arena is the authoritarian right. For the EU project, and certainly for progressive and liberal actors within it, this should be the time to find a better, more rational, and more humane model that competes with the vision offered by right-wing authoritarian forces and their backers across the Atlantic.

 

(*) Ruben Andersson is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. His research has focused on migration, borders and security, with specific reference to the Sahel and southern Europe. He is the author of Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe (California 2014), No Go World: How Fear is Redrawing Our Maps and Infecting Our Politics (California 2019) and, together with David Keen, Wreckonomics: Why it’s Time to End the War on Everything (Oxford 2023). He is currently Principal Investigator on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, which will result in the book Age of Security, forthcoming in 2026 with HarperCollins.

 

References

Andersson, Ruben. 2014. Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe. Oakland: University of California Press.

Andersson, Ruben. 2024. “Starmer’s Counter-Terror Plan for Migration Woefully Misses the Mark.” OpenDemocracy, November 8. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/starmers-counter-terror-plan-for-migration-woefully-misses-the-mark-labour-small-boats/

Andreas, Peter. 2009. Border Games: Policing the U.S.–Mexico Divide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Chavez, Leo R. 2025. The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Chebel d’Appollonia, Ariane. 2012. Frontiers of Fear: Immigration and Insecurity in the United States and Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Financial Times. 2016. “Niger Asks EU for €1 Billion to Stem Migrant Flow.” May 4.

Financial Times. 2025. “America’s Draconian Immigration Raids.” September 9.

Foley, Elise. 2013. “Deportations Drop to Under 370,000 in 2013.” HuffPost, December 19, 2013. Updated January 23, 2014. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-deportations_n_4475496

Government Technology and Services Coalition. 2025. “Strengthening Homeland Security: Evolving the Role of DHS.” Online event, September 11.

Harding, Jeremy. 2012. Border Vigils. London: Verso.

Heyman, Josiah. 1995. “Putting Power in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy: The Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Mexico–United States Border.” Current Anthropology 36 (2): 261–87.

Luce, Edward. 2025. “Trump’s Ominous ICE Security State.” Financial Times, July 7.

Martin, Philip L., and J. Edward Taylor. 1996. “The Anatomy of a Migration Hump.” In Development Strategy, Employment, and Migration: Insights from Models, edited by J. E. Taylor, 43–62. Paris: OECD Development Centre.

Massey, Douglas S. 2015. “A Missing Element in Migration Theories.” Migration Letters 12 (3): 279–99. https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v12i3.280

Massey, Douglas S., Karen A. Pren, and Jorge Durand. 2016. “Why Border Security Backfired.” American Journal of Sociology 121 (5). https://doi.org/10.1086/684200

Nevins, Joseph. 2010. Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.–Mexico Boundary. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.

United Against Refugee Deaths. 2025. “The Fatal Policies of Fortress Europe.” United Against Refugee Deaths. https://unitedagainstrefugeedeaths.eu/

Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). 2025. “Some Graphics About the Border and Migration.  https://borderoversight.org/files/wola_migration_charts.pdf

This editorial image, captured in Belgrade, Serbia, showcases an array of novelty socks featuring the likenesses of Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump in Belgrade, Serbia on December 12, 2024. Photo: Jerome Cid.

Illiberal International: The Transatlantic Right’s Challenge to Democracy

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Please cite as:
Benson, Robert. (2026). “Illiberal international: The Transatlantic Right’s Challenge to Democracy.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00137

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the transatlantic dimensions of far-right political mobilization, tracing the networks linking populist and authoritarian actors across Europe and the United States. It argues that the far right has become increasingly skilled at building cross-border alliances that exchange strategies, legal models, ideological frames and digital tactics to weaken democratic norms. Moving beyond nation-centred analyses, the chapter highlights growing coordination in anti-immigration rhetoric, attacks on ‘gender ideology’, and efforts to delegitimize multilateral institutions. It examines organizational links among US think tanks, European party foundations and online platforms that amplify common messaging, finance convenings and train activists, with particular attention to the language of ‘sovereignty’, ‘tradition’, and ‘civilizational threat’ as a shared rhetorical toolkit. The chapter also analyses the diffusion of legal hardball tactics – such as assaults on judicial independence, academic freedom, media and civil society – and assesses the implications of these transatlantic linkages for democratic resilience and effective counterstrategies.

Keywords: democracy; transnational; populism; far right

 

By Robert Benson*

Introduction

For decades, the transatlantic relationship rested on a shared moral and institutional foundation. The United States and Europe defined their partnership through liberal-democratic values – human rights, pluralism and the rule of law. Those principles gave coherence to the Western alliance and legitimacy to its global leadership. Yet that consensus now faces a coordinated and ideologically confident challenge. A network of far-right political actors across the Atlantic has learned to cooperate across borders, fusing rhetoric, strategy and institutional power to erode liberal norms from within.

This chapter investigates the connective tissue of those transatlantic illiberal networks. It argues that the far right’s rise no longer unfolds through isolated national movements but through mutually reinforcing exchanges between American and European actors. These networks trade narratives about ‘sovereignty’, ‘tradition’, and ‘civilizational threat’, and share tactical repertoires – legal activism, institutional capture and digital disinformation – that hollow out democratic checks while preserving a facade of procedural legitimacy in the name of a Western vox populi (Mudde 2004).

The chapter situates this development within the broader trajectory of transatlantic relations. It contends that the liberal consensus has weakened since 2016, replaced by a new normative alignment organized around nationalism and identity. Far-right cooperation no longer merely contests the postwar order; it offers a rival model of democracy based on majoritarian rule, cultural homogeneity and suspicion of technocratic authority. The chapter concludes with concrete policy recommendations to counter these dynamics and rebuild a transatlantic foundation grounded in democratic resilience rather than complacent liberalism.

At a scholarly level, this analysis contributes to an emerging field that examines the internationalization of authoritarian populism – a phenomenon analysed by scholars (Mudde 2020; Müller 2016; and Zürn 2019). The diffusion of illiberal tactics across borders suggests that backsliding no longer unfolds as a domestic pathology but as a transnational process. As authoritarian populists coordinate their respective narratives, liberal democracies face a globalized form of contestation that transcends national institutions and elections. This chapter joins that debate by mapping how transatlantic linkages – once engines of the liberal order – now facilitate its undoing.

The Liberal Consensus and Its Erosion

The transatlantic liberal consensus crystallized after World War II and reached its institutional maturity in the 1990s. NATO’s security guarantees, the European Union’s expansion, and the Helsinki process all reinforced a shared commitment to democracy, free markets and multilateral governance. Washington and Brussels viewed their partnership as the normative core of a rules-based international order. Transatlantic summits revolved around values as much as interests: open societies, free elections, and universal rights served as the moral language of Western cooperation (Ikenberry 2011).

During the post–Cold War moment, this consensus evolved into a doctrine of liberal triumphalism (Fukuyama 1992). The fall of the Soviet Union convinced policymakers that democracy and markets would inevitably spread outwards. The United States expanded democracy promotion programs through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, while the EU embedded democratic conditionality in its enlargement policy. ‘Transition assistance’ and civil society funding became instruments of global liberalization. Yet this expansion bred complacency. Liberal universalism hardened into orthodoxy, and many citizens began to see democracy promotion not as solidarity but as ideological export (Chandler 2006). From the Western Balkans to South Asia and beyond, resentment toward externally imposed models began to percolate. In Serbia and Bosnia, local elites portrayed Western conditionality as paternalism, exploiting fatigue with endless reform checklists (Ignatieff 2003). In Türkiye, EU accession delays fed nationalist narratives about cultural intrusion. Across parts of Africa and Latin America, US-backed democracy programs came to symbolize Western hypocrisy (Carothers 2004).

Cracks in that consensus appeared in earnest after 9/11. The United States’ invasion of Iraq divided the alliance and exposed European doubts about American exceptionalism. By the late 2000s, economic crises and migration pressures fuelled domestic disillusionment with globalization. The ‘liberal script’, once a source of pride, became a lightning rod for grievances about lost sovereignty and cultural change (Börzel et al. 2024). Across Europe, populist leaders framed Brussels as an unaccountable bureaucracy and the EU’s rights agenda as an assault on tradition.

Donald Trump’s presidency marked its rupture. His ‘America First’ foreign policy rejected multilateralism and treated alliances as transactional. Trump’s public praise for authoritarian leaders and his attacks on NATO, the EU and the mainstream media emboldened Europe’s far right. Orbán, Le Pen and Salvini hailed him as proof that nationalist populism could capture the world’s most powerful democracy. In turn, American conservatives drew inspiration from European ‘illiberal democrats’, celebrating Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland as models of Christian governance that thoroughly rejected the post-1968 liberal emphasis on secular multiculturalism (Judt 2005; Krastev and Holmes 2019).

The effect was cumulative. By 2020, Trump administration officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described Hungary as a model of sovereignty, while European populists echoed Trump’s increasingly conspiratorial rhetoric about the ‘deep state’ (Bowman 2019; Le Monde 2025). When President Biden took office, he sought to restore traditional transatlantic language, organizing a ‘Summit for Democracy’. Yet by then, the intellectual current had shifted. The transatlantic right had institutionalized its own moral vocabulary, positioning nationalism as the authentic heir to Western civilization. By the 2024 election and Trump’s triumph at the ballot box, it became clear that Biden – not Trump – had been the aberration.

The postwar ideal of the transatlantic alliance as a moral community gave way to ideological fragmentation. Shared democratic values no longer defined the relationship; instead, competing visions of sovereignty and identity began to dominate. While the Biden administration restored rhetorical commitment to democracy, the structural erosion of shared norms persisted. The far right now operates as a transnational movement that adapts to electoral setbacks and translates domestic victories into global influence.

Mapping the Networks: Actors, Institutions and Mechanisms

The far right’s transatlantic infrastructure spans think tanks, media platforms, political parties and increasingly influential advocacy networks. These actors collaborate through conferences, digital ecosystems and funding flows that sustain a common ideological front.

In the United States, institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, the Leadership Institute, and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) serve as anchor points. They train conservative activists, produce model legislation, and coordinate messaging on issues from religious liberty to ‘gender ideology’. Their international branches, especially ADF International, operate across Europe, supporting legal interventions and advocacy seeking to restrict abortion rights, challenge LGBTQ+ protections, and expand claims of religious freedom. In Italy, for example, ADF International filed legal briefs opposing same-sex marriage legislation, aligning with Catholic organizations to block broader recognition (Savage 2020; See also Alliance Defending Freedom International 2015).

Across Europe, a parallel network mirrors this architecture. Hungary’s Danube Institute in Budapest functions as a regional hub linking Central European intellectuals, US conservatives and right-wing British Brexiteers. Funded through government-aligned channels, it hosts American speakers and frames national conservatism as the moral defence of Christian Europe. Regular attendees include Nigel Farage, Santiago Abascal, and US commentators from Fox News and Newsmax, who broadcast the message to sympathetic audiences at home (Applebaum 2020; See also Danube Institute 2025). What began as a network of think tanks and training institutes has now evolved into a stage-managed political spectacle designed to project moral legitimacy and global reach. CPAC Hungary operates as the movement’s global showcase. In recent years, it has featured keynote addresses from Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Eduardo Bolsonaro, presenting Budapest as the centre of a global ‘anti-woke’ awakening (CEU CEFAS 2025).

Russian-linked media outlets, although not formally integrated into the network, often amplify the event’s messaging, exploiting its resonance with Kremlin narratives about Western decadence, cultural decay and moral weakness. This convergence is not accidental: both camps share an interest in discrediting liberal democracy and promoting an image of the ‘real West’ as spiritually conservative and geopolitically sovereign. The porous boundary between these movements illustrates how transatlantic illiberalism increasingly overlaps with a broader ecosystem of authoritarian influence that stretches from Moscow to Budapest and beyond (Applebaum 2024).

Digital coordination then extends this ecosystem online, giving it reach and velocity. Platforms such as Rebel News, Epoch Times and Breitbart Europe circulate narratives that fuse European and American grievances – migration, ‘wokeness’, and elite betrayal – into a single story of civilization under siege. Influencers move seamlessly across audiences, translating slogans for local contexts while reinforcing a shared moral panic. This transnational publicity turns regional political experiments into global templates, demonstrating how authoritarian and illiberal actors now learn from, legitimize and amplify one another.

Financial flows and personnel exchanges further institutionalize these ties. US donors such as the Koch network and Christian legal foundations fund European conferences, while European governments sponsor sympathetic American commentators. Researchers tracing nonprofit disclosures have documented patterns of mutual support that blur the line between domestic advocacy and international influence operations (Archer 2020; Datta 2021; Laruelle 2022). Together, these linkages sustain what might be called an illiberal epistemic community – a transatlantic network that produces knowledge, training and legitimacy for antiliberal politics.

Ideological and Rhetorical Alignment

Although Europe’s far right remains nationally diverse, its leaders increasingly speak a common language. That lexicon centres on three core narratives: sovereignty, tradition, and civilizational threat.

The rhetoric of sovereignty casts technocratic governance as a usurpation of the popular will. American conservatives frame Washington bureaucrats, the ‘deep state’, and the federal judiciary as rogue agents. European populists substitute Brussels and Strasbourg for the same role. The parallel is no coincidence; strategists exchange slogans and framing devices through joint forums. The idea of ‘taking back control’, born in Britain’s Brexit campaign, migrated into American Republican discourse, while ‘America First’ became a template for nationalist rebranding in Europe.

The appeal to tradition provides moral ballast. Movements describe themselves as guardians of Christian civilization, opposing secular pluralism and feminism as existential threats. ‘Gender ideology’, once a fringe Vatican term, has become a unifying transatlantic rallying cry (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024; Cupać and Ebetürk 2020; Korolczuk and Graff 2022). From Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws to Hungary’s ‘child protection’ amendment, conservatives share the same rhetorical script. They depict liberal tolerance not as virtue but as decay – a sign of civilizational weakness that invites chaos and migration. Conservative Catholic institutions in Spain and Poland now distribute translated versions of US legal briefs and training materials from ADF, illustrating how moral discourse travels with ease (Corporate Europe Observatory 2024).

Finally, the notion of a civilizational threat binds the narrative together. Far-right discourse positions the West in a cultural war against both internal subversion and external invasion. Migrants, Muslims, and ‘globalists’ occupy interchangeable roles in this story. Leaders like Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump portray themselves as defenders of an embattled civilization that must reclaim its purity through moral renewal. The effect is to redefine democracy not as pluralism but as cultural self-assertion.

This ideological alignment does not erase local differences; it creates a shared emotional grammar. Phrases such as ‘real people’, ‘common sense’, and ‘nation first’ resonate on both sides of the Atlantic (Moffitt 2016; Wodak 2021). Conferences like National Conservatism (NatCon) codify this worldview, offering a theological and historical narrative that connects Jerusalem, Rome, and Washington in one ‘civilizational’ arc.

These narratives increasingly infiltrate mainstream conservative parties. The United States’ Republican Party has absorbed much of Trump’s illiberal vocabulary, framing political opposition as betrayal and portraying federal institutions as corrupt elites. In Europe, centre-right parties from Spain’s Partido Popular to Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) have echoed sovereigntist language to win back voters (Mudde 2019a; Mudde 2019b). This normalization effect blurs distinctions between democratic conservatives and authoritarian populists, allowing illiberal rhetoric to migrate from the margins into governing discourse.

Strategic Diffusion and Legal Hardball

The collaboration between US and European conservatives extends beyond rhetoric to institutional tactics. What unites these actors is their ability to learn from each other’s experiments in bending democratic rules while maintaining formal legality.

American conservatives pioneered the technique of judicial capture through a process of constitutional hardball, using the letter of the law to violate its intent. The Federalist Society’s vetting of Supreme Court nominees provided a model of long-term institutional strategy. European populists adapted that logic to parliamentary systems. In Poland, the Law and Justice Party restructured the judiciary through legislative manoeuvring and disciplinary chambers that undermined judicial independence while preserving constitutional form. Hungarian authorities replicated the approach by packing the Constitutional Court and taking over judicial administration (Benson 2025). Lawyers in Poland connected to the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture – a conservative–religious legal organization – openly cite American legal precedents in their briefs, translating US culture-war litigation into European constitutional idioms (Coakley 2021).

Conversely, European examples now inspire American actors. Hungary’s media consolidation – centralizing ownership under pro-government foundations – has attracted the attention of US right-wing strategists who call for a patriotic media ecosystem. Hungary’s regulation of foreign-funded NGOs and universities informed US debates about restricting ‘foreign influence’ and targeting liberal foundations. The flow of ideas thus moves in both directions: elite learning across borders produces a repertoire of ‘legal hardball’ tactics that exploit institutional loopholes to entrench power (Barry 2025; Benson et al. 2025).

Conferences serve as accelerators for this diffusion. CPAC Hungary and the Danube Institute’s seminars invite US jurists and politicians to exchange strategies with European counterparts. The presence of figures such as Tucker Carlson, Mike Pence and members of the Heritage Foundation lends these events a sense of legitimacy and global reach. Speeches often emphasize that the ‘fight for Western civilization’ requires coordination, not isolation. The audience learns that illiberal reform is not parochial but visionary – a model for reclaiming democracy from cosmopolitan elites.

Digital mobilization reinforces these lessons. Online influencers and media outlets document each success story, turning national policies into templates. When Poland’s constitutional tribunal restricted abortion rights, American platforms celebrated it as proof that cultural pushback was possible. When Florida curtailed diversity programs in universities, Hungarian state media showcased it as evidence of global ideological realignment. Each side validates the other, creating a feedback loop of right-wing legitimacy (Dougherty 2021; Knefel 2023).

Implications for the Transatlantic Democratic Order

The rise of transatlantic illiberal networks reshapes the meaning of the West itself. For most of the postwar period, Western identity signified liberalism – rule of law, minority protection and multilateral cooperation. Today, those concepts coexist with their opposites. Leaders who undermine judicial independence or vilify minorities still claim to defend Western civilization. This rhetorical inversion erodes the clarity of the transatlantic project.

The consequences for policy cooperation are profound. Divergent value systems weaken the alliance’s ability to respond to authoritarian threats (Benson 2023a; Benson 2023b). When Washington or Brussels condemns democratic backsliding, illiberal governments frame the criticism as ideological imperialism. Shared values once enabled coordinated responses to global challenges; now they produce internal dispute. This fracture carries direct geopolitical costs. The Kremlin exploits these divisions to erode Western unity on sanctions, aid and military assistance to Ukraine. Russian propaganda outlets actively echo the rhetoric of Western populists, portraying the war as a clash between traditional sovereignty and decadent liberalism. In turn, segments of the European and American right adopt that framing to justify fatigue with Ukraine’s defence or scepticism toward NATO. The result is a feedback loop in which Moscow’s narratives and transatlantic illiberal discourse reinforce one another, blurring the line between domestic dissent and foreign influence.

The result is a transnational ecosystem of distrust that corrodes confidence in electoral integrity, journalism and scientific expertise. In the United States, European talking points about ‘cultural Marxism’ and ‘globalists’ circulate daily on cable news and social media, reframed through American populist idioms. In Europe, US-style conspiracy theories – from QAnon to vaccine disinformation – find new life in far-right Telegram channels and street protests (Schulze 2022). Each side validates the other, portraying democratic institutions as captured by unseen powers. This cross-pollination normalizes cynicism and fuels the perception that politics itself is rigged. The contagion spreads not through formal alliances but through shared emotional affect – anger, humiliation and nostalgia – creating a digital transatlantic common of resentment. As this sentiment seeps into mainstream debate, it weakens the civic trust that underpins democratic governance and ultimately, transatlantic solidarity.

At a structural level, the erosion of shared norms transforms the transatlantic relationship from a moral alliance into a transactional partnership. Security and trade cooperation continue, but the normative glue has dissolved. Instead of universal values, the relationship revolves around selective interests.

The question is no longer whether shared values are weakening – they clearly are – but whether democratic actors can forge a new consensus around defending institutional pluralism itself. The challenge lies not in restoring the Cold War’s moral clarity but in constructing a forward-looking democratic solidarity that acknowledges ideological diversity while safeguarding liberal principles.

Policy Takeaways and Recommendations

Countering transnational illiberalism demands a transnational democratic strategy. Policymakers must recognize that far-right cooperation operates across borders; national responses alone cannot contain it. The following recommendations outline potential interventions. They are necessarily aspirational, given current political realities and would require – at a minimum – a new administration in Washington willing to prioritize democracy promotion and transatlantic coordination.

Increase transparency and accountability.

Governments and the EU should strengthen disclosure requirements for political foundations, advocacy organizations and media outlets that receive cross-border funding. Transparency does not suppress free speech; it clarifies the origins of influence. The United States and the EU could establish a joint registry for political nonprofits engaged in transatlantic advocacy.

Build democratic resilience networks.

Civil society cooperation should mirror that of the far right. Universities, local governments and NGOs need transatlantic partnerships that share best practices in civic education, digital literacy and counter disinformation. Programs like the U.S.–EU Democracy Dialogue, now dormant, could expand into a permanent platform for democratic innovation.

Coordinate digital governance.

The EU’s Digital Services Act offers a model for regulating online platforms that amplify extremist content. US policymakers could align transparency standards and algorithmic accountability with European frameworks. Joint initiatives between the Federal Trade Commission and European regulators would prevent regulatory arbitrage.

Reinvest in public diplomacy and narrative competition.

Illiberal actors win not only through policy but through storytelling. Democratic governments must promote narratives of inclusion and dignity that resonate emotionally. Cultural diplomacy, youth exchanges, and support for independent media should form part of a long-term strategy to restore trust in democratic ideals.

Engage the democratic periphery.

Cities, universities and civil society networks can act as laboratories for democratic renewal. Transatlantic cooperation at the subnational level – mayor-to-mayor partnerships, university consortia – builds social capital that resists illiberal capture. Democracy flourishes through participation; it decays through isolation.

Conclusion

The transatlantic relationship stands at a crossroads. The liberal order that once unified Washington and Brussels no longer commands universal allegiance, even within the West. Illiberal networks have learned to cooperate across borders, translating national grievances into a shared civilizational narrative. Their success lies in coordination: they exchange ideas, tactics and legitimacy faster than liberal institutions adapt.

This chapter has traced how far-right actors transformed the transatlantic space from a community of shared values into a contested ideological arena. It showed how think tanks, conferences, and digital platforms weave an alternative network of power that undermines democratic norms while claiming to defend the West. The result is neither the collapse nor the strengthening of shared democratic values but a strategic weakening – a shift from liberal universalism to national conservative pluralism.

Reversing that trend demands proactive engagement. The defence of democracy cannot rest on nostalgia for a bygone consensus; it must evolve into a deliberate partnership that treats democracy itself as a shared security interest. If liberal actors can match the far right’s strategic clarity and cross-border coordination, the transatlantic relationship may yet renew its moral purpose. 

 

(*) Robert Benson, DPhil., is the associate director for National Security and International Policy at American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, Benson worked as a global relations consultant at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and as a research fellow at the Social Science Center Berlin. He holds a Master of Science in global politics from the London School of Economics and a doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. 

 

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Two elderly men sit on the street in front of a café in Oslo, Norway, asking for alms on August 1, 2013. This image symbolizes the indifference of society and the state toward poverty. Photo: Medvedeva Oxana.

Vulnerable Groups, Protections and Precarity

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Please cite as:
Azmanova, Albena. (2026). “Vulnerable Groups, Protections and Precarity.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00138

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Abstract
This chapter examines how impoverishment, inequality and precarity have become defining features of contemporary societies in Europe and the United States, reshaping domestic politics and altering the foundations of the transatlantic relationship. Poverty persists despite overall affluence, with COVID-19 reversing earlier gains in Europe and entrenched racialized and generational disparities characterizing the United States. Inequality follows divergent patterns: Europe experiences wide variation shaped by austerity and structural barriers facing migrants, while the United States is marked by extreme wealth concentration and systemic racial gaps. Yet inequality alone does not fully explain public discontent. Instead, precarity – politically produced vulnerability across class, gender, age and status – emerges as the central grievance. Expanding temporary and platform work, weakened labour protections and strained welfare systems expose women, youth, migrants and racial minorities to compounding risks. The chapter argues that rising precarity undermines trust in governance and shifts transatlantic cooperation toward transactionalism, requiring renewed social investment and stronger labour and environmental standards.

Keywords: poverty; precarity; inequality; employment; insecurity; populism

 

By Albena Azmanova*

Introduction

Over the past decade, Europe and the United States have faced intensifying social vulnerabilities stemming from economic shocks, political realignments and labour market transformations. Transatlantic EU–US relations are increasingly shaped by internal socioeconomic pressures, especially the precarization of labour and the rise of populist politics responding to widespread physical, economic, social and cultural insecurity. These forces are subtly but significantly reshaping cooperation across trade, security and global governance. The domestic pressures driving change have especially to do with deteriorating employment conditions – marked by low wages, gig work, weakened unions and eroded social protections. This trend is evident in both the United States and the EU, although with different institutional buffers. Economic insecurity – especially post-2008 and post-COVID-19 – has fuelled resentment toward globalization, trade liberalization and perceived elite consensus, which have historically underpinned transatlantic cooperation. To this adds cultural and physical insecurity – including migration anxieties, demographic shifts and perceived threats to national identity – which have intensified populist narratives that challenge liberal internationalism. In what follows, we review three interlinked trajectories in domestic developments – poverty, inequality and precarity – to highlight structural patterns, policy responses and emerging fault lines that are likely to affect domestic political attitudes and, consequently, transatlantic relations.

Poverty: Persistent Risks and Shifting Demographics

Europe: The fragmented landscape of poverty amidst wealth

After the 2008 financial crisis, poverty rates in Europe slowly declined. However, COVID-19 disrupted this trajectory, leading to a renewed increase in poverty risk across many EU countries. The ‘Europe 2020’ strategy aimed to lift 20 million people out of poverty by 2020 – a goal that went unmet, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating vulnerabilities and deepening the scarring effects of poverty across the continent (Mussida and Sciulli 2022). The pandemic increased the risk of poverty, particularly for already vulnerable groups and widened disparities between countries due to differences in policy responses. Southern European countries (e.g., Italy, Spain, Greece) experienced sharper increases in poverty risk due to weaker welfare systems and higher reliance on tourism and service sectors. Northern and Western European countries, with stronger social safety nets, were better able to cushion the impact.

In 2024, 21% of the EU population – approximately 93.3 million people – were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, according to Eurostat’s AROPE indicator, which combines income poverty, severe material deprivation, and low work intensity (Eurostat 2025a). Rates remain highest in Bulgaria (30.3%), Romania (27.9%), and Greece (26.9%). Notably, in-work poverty is rising: 10.9% of employed individuals are still at risk of poverty.

Gender disparities persist: overall, women face a higher risk of poverty (21.9%) than men (20.0%), largely due to wage gaps and disproportionate caregiving responsibilities.

The United States: Structural poverty and policy gaps

According to the OECD, the United States has one of the highest relative poverty rates among member countries, with income inequality and poverty deeply entrenched (OECD 2024). The bottom quintile earns less than 3% of national income, while the top quintile earns over 50%.

Racialized poverty remains a defining feature: Black, Hispanic and Indigenous populations face disproportionately high poverty rates, compounded by housing segregation and educational disparities. Child poverty is particularly acute, with 16.1% of children living below the federal poverty line in 2023 (Guzman and Kollar 2023). Elder poverty is rising due to healthcare costs and insufficient retirement savings (Scott 2024).

Despite solid economic growth, real income gains have been uneven, and intergenerational mobility remains low (Kochhar and Sechopoulos 2023; Kochhar 2024). Impoverishment – both absolute deprivation (inability to meet basic needs) and relative poverty (living below a certain percentage of median income in a given society) – has been on the rise in Europe and the United States. This rising poverty has fuelled grievances about affordability, as households struggle to cover essential costs such as housing, food, utilities and debt repayments. Affordability grievances have been prominent in anti-establishment mobilizations, which have placed cost-of-living issues at the centre of national elections. In Europe, this has led to challenging EU integration, migration policy and austerity legacies – which are perceived as causes of impoverishment. In the United States, public anxiety over purchasing power and declining real incomes have driven support for populist candidates who frame globalization and liberal elites as threats to national sovereignty and working-class dignity.

Inequality: Structural Divides and Policy Responses

Europe: Between convergence and divergence

Income inequality in Europe varies widely. The Gini coefficient ranges from 23.8 in the Slovak Republic to 39.5 in Bulgaria (World Bank Group 2023). Post-2008 austerity widened inequality in Southern and Eastern Europe, with long-term effects on youth and low-income workers (Oxfam 2013).

The protective role of higher education has diminished, while employment stability and childcare provision have become more important in mitigating poverty and inequality (Mussida and Sciulli 2022). Migrant populations often face structural barriers to income parity, with limited access to housing, education, and labour protections (ETUC 2024).

The United States: Polarization and policy stagnation

The United States has seen a dramatic rise in income and wealth inequality. Households in the top 10% of the wealth distribution own 79% in the United States (OECD 2024, 86). Tax expenditures disproportionately benefit high earners, exacerbating inequality and reducing fiscal space for redistribution. Coastal urban centres show high income levels but also high living costs, while rural and post-industrial regions face stagnation. Racial disparities in educational attainment, access to capital, and exposure to environmental hazards deepen inequality (Beard et al. 2024). While impoverishment in absolute terms (i.e., reduced purchasing power) has often been expressed in social discontent, inequality (relative impoverishment) has not been reliably traced to social discontent, even as it has been at the centre of academic research and public debate.

Precarity: Labour Market Insecurity and Social Dislocation

Precarity – politically produced vulnerability caused by social threats to lives, livelihoods, and lifeworlds (Azmanova 2020; 2023) – has recently been identified as a critical condition afflicting contemporary democracies, cutting across class, gender, age, educational attainment, professional attainment and even income levels.

Europe: The rise of precarious work

Precarity has intensified through non-standard employment. Eurostat data show that young workers aged 30 or younger are disproportionately represented in temporary and low-paid jobs (Eurostat 2025b). Women are more likely to be in part-time or informal work, often linked to caregiving responsibilities.

Sectors such as hospitality, retail and care show high levels of precarity, with limited union coverage and weak protections. Platform work has expanded, but regulatory frameworks lag behind. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has called for the full implementation of the EU’s directive on platform work and for universal social protections (ETUC 2023).

The pandemic disproportionately affected workers in precarious employment, temporary contracts, and low‑income service sectors. This disproportionate impact has reinforced the link between insecure labour markets and the persistence of poverty (Mussida and Sciulli 2022).

The United States: Fragmentation and Flexibilization

The US labour market is characterized by high flexibility but low security. Gig economy workers often lack health insurance, paid leave, or retirement benefits (Human Rights Watch 2025). Union membership has fallen to historic lows, around 10% (BLS 2023). Frequent job changes, layoffs and contract work contribute to income volatility and psychological stress. Employer-based health insurance ties security to employment, making job loss a significant risk factor for medical debt and coverage gaps. Policy debates over universal basic income, portable benefits and labour classification have gained traction but remain politically contentious.

COVID‑19 intensified poverty in Europe and the United States by exposing the precariousness of households and labour markets, undoing part of the progress made since the Great Recession. It significantly worsened mental health globally, with sharp rises in anxiety, depression, and stress (WHO 2022), while lockdowns and social isolation also triggered a surge in gender‑based violence, often described as a ‘shadow pandemic’ (UN Women 2020).

Overall, even as societies on the two sides of the Atlantic have returned to economic growth, economic and social precarization has persisted. Labour market insecurity and cost-of-living concerns are diminishing public trust in existing systems of governance and driving an upsurge in anti-establishment, populist mobilizations.

Vulnerable Groups: Intersectional Risks and Policy Blind Spots

Across both regions, certain groups face compounded vulnerabilities, resulting from impoverishment and precarization:

  • Women: Gender pay gaps, caregiving burdens, and exposure to part-time work increase risks (UN Women 2023).
  • Migrants and refugees: Legal status, language barriers, and discrimination limit access to services and stable employment (ETUC 2023)
  • Youth: Entry-level job insecurity, student debt and housing unaffordability create long-term precarity.
  • The elderly: Fixed incomes, rising healthcare costs, and social isolation contribute to poverty (Tornton and Bowers 2024).
  • Racial and ethnic minorities: Structural racism, residential segregation, and unequal access to education and healthcare deepen inequality (Bailey et al. 2017; Mirza and Warwick 2024; Clark et al. 2022; Yearby et al. 2022; Kisa and Kisa 2025).

Thus, while precarity is becoming the overarching grievance in Western democracies, it is strongly stratified and is most acutely felt among the poor and socially marginalized. However, as economic and social insecurity are becoming ubiquitous across income levels and educational attainment, precarity is increasingly being identified as the key factor driving social discontent and fuelling anti-establishment, populist mobilizations (Azmanova 2004, 2020, 2023; Apostolidis 2020; Zhirnov et al 2024; Scheiring et al 2024; Rodríguez-Pose 2020).

Protections: Welfare States, Labour Rights and Emerging Models

Europe: Welfare retrenchment and innovation

European welfare states offer a range of protections, but austerity and demographic pressures have strained their capacity. Some of the key developments include:

  • Minimum income schemes: These vary widely across countries, with some offering robust support (e.g., France’s Revenu de solidarité active (RSA)) and others providing minimal assistance.
  • Universal healthcare: This remains a cornerstone of European social protection, although access and quality vary.
  • Labour market policies: Active labour market programs (ALMPs), vocational training and unemployment insurance help mitigate precarity.
  • EU-level initiatives: The European Pillar of Social Rights and the Recovery and Resilience Facility aim to strengthen social cohesion post-COVID-19.

However, gaps remain in coverage, adequacy and enforcement, especially for non-standard workers and migrants.

The United States: Fragmented safety nets and policy innovation

The United States lacks a comprehensive welfare state, relying instead on a patchwork of federal, state and local programs. Key features include:

  • Means-tested programs: SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) provide targeted support but face eligibility barriers and stigma.
  • Tax-based transfers: The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit offer income support, although coverage is uneven.
  • Healthcare reforms: The Affordable Care Act expanded coverage but left millions uninsured or underinsured.
  • Local innovations: Cities like New York and San Francisco have piloted guaranteed-income schemes, tenant protections and worker cooperatives.

Despite these efforts, systemic gaps persist and political polarization hampers federal reform.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that poverty is not only cyclical but also deeply tied to structural vulnerabilities in employment and welfare systems. It revealed how poverty dynamics are shaped not only by economic shocks but also by institutional resilience. Emergency measures (short‑time work schemes, income support, moratoria on evictions) mitigated some effects, but structural weaknesses in welfare systems left many households exposed. Recent policy shifts in the EU that have placed a higher priority on competitiveness and defence spending risk weakening social investment and deepening employment insecurity.

Comparative Reflections and Policy Implications

Since the turn of the century, the combined effects of labour market liberalization, automation and the radical opening of national economies have generated widespread employment insecurity and wage depression, fuelling fears of real, perceived and anticipated losses of livelihood. More broadly, political attitudes have been shaped by anxieties linked to physical insecurity, political disorder, cultural estrangement and economic precarity driven by flexible labour markets, outsourcing and competition with immigrant workers. Together, these four sources of anxiety constitute the core of a new antiprecarity public agenda centred on demands for order and security. This agenda of public concerns cuts across the left–right divide and tends to replace the left–right vectors of electoral competition with a new risk–opportunity divide shaped by the social impact of the new economy of open borders and information technologies (Azmanova 2020, 68–69, 140; See also Azmanova 2004, 2011).

Although these developments are tangible in both the United States and Europe, the transatlantic comparison reveals that Europe’s welfare states offer more robust protections but face demographic and fiscal pressures. The United States exhibits higher inequality and precarity, with fragmented safety nets and racialized vulnerabilities. Both regions struggle to adapt protections to non-standard work and intersectional risks. Policy innovation is emerging at subnational levels, but national coherence is lacking.

Social exasperation resulting from ubiquitous precarity is fuelling both economic and cultural xenophobia and undermining solidarities within countries and between the EU and the United States. This is expressed in adversarial foreign economic policy and in the undermining of the traditional EU–US political and economic partnership. Populist movements in Europe (e.g. the AfD in Germany, the Rassemblement national in France) and the United States (especially under Donald Trump) often frame transatlantic institutions as out of touch with ‘ordinary people’. These actors tend to be sceptical of multilateralism, critical of NATO and hostile to EU regulatory frameworks, which complicates traditional alliance structures.

Populist governments or pressures can lead to policy volatility, weakening long-term commitments to shared goals such as climate action, digital regulation and democratic norms. Indeed, trade tensions have resurfaced, especially around subsidies, digital taxation and industrial policy. The EU’s Green Deal and the United States’s Inflation Reduction Act have created friction over protectionism and competitiveness. While security cooperation remains strong on Ukraine and NATO, it diverges on China, Middle East policy and defence spending expectations.

Fundamentally, institutional trust is eroding. The EU increasingly hedges against US unpredictability by deepening internal defence and tech strategies, while the United States questions European burden-sharing. Under populist demands for short-term stabilization measures, a shift is underway from normative alliance-building to interest-based transactionalism. This shift means cooperation is increasingly contingent on short-term domestic political gains rather than shared values. The EU is recalibrating its strategic autonomy, while the United States – especially under populist leadership – prioritizes sovereignty and unilateralism.

Countering precarization as the root driver of reactionary populism would require a systematic effort for building a ‘political economy of trust’ (Azmanova 2020) that provides economic and social stability along two trajectories: domestic and global. In terms of domestic policies, this means replacing the current focus on competitiveness in the global economy (which is prompting governments to cut job security and social investment) with an industrial policy that generates good jobs, as well as increased investment in the commons (public services and social insurance). In terms of global market integration, the logic of pursuing competitiveness, which is prompting governments to weaken labour and environmental standards, should be replaced by a more rigorous implementation of labour and environmental standards of production, trade and consumption.

 

(*) Albena Azmanova is Professor of Political and Social Science at City St George’s, University of London. She has held academic positions at the New School for Social Research, Sciences Po Paris, Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies. Her research spans critical social theory, political economy, democratic transitions, populism, and the rule of law, with a focus on how precarity has become the defining social harm of contemporary capitalism. Her book Capitalism on Edge (2020) is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the American Political Science Association’s Michael Harrington Award for scholarship advancing social justice. Beyond academia, she has served as a policy advisor to institutions including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the European Parliament.

 

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