This commentary examines the tension between authoritarian populism and innovation-driven growth, drawing on the insights of Nobel laureates Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt. Their research highlights that sustainable prosperity relies on creative destruction, institutional openness, and freedom of inquiry. In contrast, authoritarian populism undermines these conditions by eroding pluralism, legal stability, and academic autonomy. Using comparative cases such as China, Turkey, Hungary, and Poland, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk shows how populist regimes politicize innovation systems, stifling long-term productivity. The essay concludes that innovation is not merely economic—it is institutional, cultural, and democratic. Without inclusive institutions and free knowledge systems, technological progress becomes extractive rather than transformative.
This commentary explores the fundamental tension between authoritarian populism and innovation-driven economic growth, drawing on the work of Nobel laureates Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt. These scholars emphasize the critical role of knowledge, institutions, and creative destruction in fostering sustainable growth. In contrast, authoritarian populism undermines these pillars by eroding institutional openness, pluralism, and policy stability. Combining their contributions with insights from economists like Acemoglu and North, this commentary underlines that technological progress without institutional freedom becomes extractive rather than transformative. Innovation, therefore, is not solely an economic process—it is profoundly institutional, cultural, and democratic.
Innovation Ecosystems and the Foundations of Long-Term Growth
The awarding of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics to Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt comes at a pivotal moment, as authoritarian populism gains ground globally, including in liberal democracies like the United States and across Europe. This recognition is more than an academic endorsement; it serves as a warning against the populist trajectory—and as a call to reaffirm the institutional foundations necessary for long-term, inclusive prosperity. Together, these laureates have transformed our understanding of how innovation drives growth and why it depends critically on inclusive, resilient institutions.
Joel Mokyr provides a historical and cultural framework, arguing that technological advancement arises not simply from material conditions, but from epistemic institutions—universities, protections for dissent, and a culture of inquiry that supports the creation and diffusion of knowledge. Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, meanwhile, formalized the process of innovation-led growth through their endogenous growth model, rooted in creative destruction. Their work illustrates how growth is generated when new technologies and firms continuously disrupt the old, enabled by competition, R&D investment, and enabling public policy. Their combined message is clear: Sustainable innovation cannot thrive without freedom of inquiry, legal stability, institutional independence, and competitive markets. When these are eroded, growth not only slows—it may become directionally regressive, channeling resources toward control rather than creativity.
Authoritarian Populism and the Threat to Innovation Institutions
While the Nobel laureates underscore the importance of institutional infrastructure for innovation, the global rise of authoritarian populism presents a sharp countercurrent. Populism’s consolidation of executive power, erosion of checks and balances, and hostility toward expertise and dissent undermine the very systems that make innovation possible. This raises two fundamental questions: i) What can we learn from the intellectual legacy behind the 2025 Nobel Prize in an era of resurgent populism? ii) If our primary concern is sustainable and inclusive economic prosperity, what paths do the populist versus institutionalist frameworks each offer?
The answers lie in the institutional costs of populism. Populist regimes, as Rodrik (2019) explains, often emerge from economic discontent and cultural anxiety—but they typically respond by concentrating authority and limiting contestation. This instinct directly conflicts with the unpredictability and disruption inherent in innovation.
How Populism Damages the Mechanisms of Creative Destruction
Creative destruction, the engine of Aghion and Howitt’s growth model, is inherently destabilizing. It disrupts incumbents, transforms labor markets, and threatens established power structures—dynamics that populist regimes seek to resist. Though some argue that authoritarian populists could theoretically design innovation-friendly policies, empirical reality suggests otherwise. Populist leaders prioritize short-term visibility and control over long-term, uncertain processes like R&D. Consequently, megaprojects and state-industrial policies replace long-term innovation strategies. As Portuese (2021) notes, populists may even weaponize antitrust policy, using it to punish disloyal firms and protect politically connected monopolies—thereby cultivating a climate of fear and rent-seeking, not innovation. The erosion of judicial independence, university autonomy, and press freedom disables the feedback mechanisms essential for adaptive learning. As institutions hollow out, clientelist redistribution replaces competitive funding. Brezis and Young (2023) demonstrate how innovation systems under populist rule become politicized and inefficient, redirecting resources away from discovery and toward loyalty.
Empirical Evidence: Populism’s Innovation Deficit
Numerous case studies support this idea: China, despite its strong state capacity, faces innovation stagnation at the frontier due to censorship, limited peer review, and politically driven science (To, 2022). While China has made significant advances in frontier technologies—ranging from electric vehicles and green energy to artificial intelligence and quantum computing—this progress exists alongside growing structural barriers. Recent reports by the Financial Times (2024) and the World Bank (2023) highlight a widening gap between technological investment and productivity results, indicating that innovation has become increasingly state-led but not more efficient.
The politicization of science limited academic independence, and the expanding influence of party committees within universities and tech companies has hindered the creativity and openness necessary for frontier innovation. Although China has surpassed the United States and the EU in patent volume and some industrial technologies, its overall total factor productivity growth has slowed sharply since the late 2010s, meaning that technological accumulation is not leading to widespread productivity gains. As Foreign Policy (2025) analysis points out, China’s innovation model now risks “technological involution,” where large R&D spending only reproduces existing ideas rather than creating breakthroughs; in short, centralized control can mobilize resources on a large scale but also limits the institutional diversity and critical inquiry that are essential for true creative disruption.
The situation in Turkey, Poland, and Hungary, which exhibits highly strong populist authoritarian hybrid governance mechanisms, shows a similar trend. Turkey’s shift toward authoritarianism after 2011 reversed earlier gains in R&D and scientific output as scientific governance became politicized (Apaydin, 2025). In Hungary and Poland, Ágh (2019) finds that populist leaders systematically undermined institutional independence, leading to stagnation in innovation indices despite EU integration.
While Turkey’s R&D investment and publication output grew rapidly during the 2000s, the post-2011 erosion of academic autonomy—and particularly the post-2016 state-of-emergency decrees—triggered a systemic collapse in institutional freedom and international collaboration. Studies by the Freedom House (2023) and V-Dem Institute (2024) show Turkey’s academic freedom score falling to the bottom decile globally, coinciding with an 18–25% drop in publication activity and widespread self-censorship across universities. The World Bank (2023) further notes that this institutional degradation has curtailed the country’s innovation potential, as politicization redirected R&D spending from independent inquiry toward regime-aligned projects.
In Hungary, the Orbán government’s transformation of public universities into quasi-private “foundations” after 2020—where board members are appointed by the ruling Fidesz party—has drawn strong criticism from the European Commission (2022) and led to suspension of EU research funds under the Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe programs. According to the European Innovation Scoreboard (2024), Hungary remains a “Moderate Innovator,” showing stagnation or decline in scientific co-publications and R&D intensity.
Poland exhibits a similar trajectory: rule-of-law backsliding and politicization of the judiciary under the Law and Justice (PiS) government have weakened legal predictability and university independence. The Freedom House (2023) report documents a marked decline in judicial independence and civil liberties, while the European Innovation Scoreboard categorizes Poland as an “Emerging Innovator,” lagging behind EU averages in R&D expenditure and innovation outputs.
Collectively, these cases demonstrate that while state-led development under populist or illiberal regimes may yield short-term industrial gains, it ultimately erodes the very institutional foundations—autonomy, rule of law, and international openness—upon which decentralized, pluralistic, and experimental innovation systems depend.
Institutional Resilience and the Direction of Innovation
As Acemoglu and Johnson (2023) argue, innovation is not inherently progressive or welfare-enhancing. Its social impact depends on who funds it, controls it, and decides where it is applied. Under authoritarian populism, technological advancement often serves repression—surveillance, military tools, propaganda—rather than social welfare. By contrast, democratic and pluralistic systems encourage innovation aligned with public interest. Independent media, civil society, and open debate create a feedback-rich environment that improves allocative efficiency and mitigates risks.
Importantly, innovation ecosystems are not simply clusters of firms and labs—they are institutional configurations that support curiosity, tolerate failure, and reward experimentation. Where expression is free, laws are predictable, and academia is autonomous, breakthrough innovation thrives. Conversely, populist regimes undermine all three. Furthermore, their nationalist isolationism curtails international collaboration, peer review, and talent mobility—all of which are essential for frontier innovation, especially in an era of global challenges like climate change and pandemics.
Conclusion: Innovation Requires Democracy, Market, and Competition
The message from the 2025 Nobel Prize is unambiguous: Innovation is not merely an economic outcome—it is a political and institutional achievement. Prosperity does not arise from investment alone, but from the freedom to thought, challenge, and experiment. Where institutions collapse, innovation recedes. Where pluralism flourishes, discovery thrives.
Authoritarian populism, by closing civic space and concentrating power, not only compromises democratic legitimacy—it dismantles the very foundations of long-term economic growth. As Acemoglu and Johnson warn, without inclusive institutions, innovation becomes a tool of control—not of emancipation. Thus, the future of progress lies not only in laboratories or startups, but also in constitutions, courts, and universities. Any society that seeks prosperity through innovation must first protect these spaces.
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Ágh, A. (2019). Declining democracy in East-Central Europe: The divergence of Poland and Hungary. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788972157
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Populist actors often present themselves as defenders of “the people” while strategically boosting state capacity for select groups and undermining it overall, argues Edward L. Knudsen, a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and Affiliate Policy Fellow at the Jacques Delors Centre. In an interview with ECPS, Knudsen explains how modern populists “selectively increase governance measures for specific populations while often undermining them in the aggregate,” creating new forms of exclusion and weakening accountability. He highlights fiscal control as the central battleground for populist movements and warns that if democratic actors fail to adapt to the rise of state capitalism, authoritarian forces may fill the void with illiberal governance models.
In recent years, the resurgence of populist and authoritarian politics has profoundly reshaped the relationship between state capacity, democratic accountability, and public goods provision. To unpack these dynamics, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) spoke with Edward Lawrence Knudsen, a doctoral researcher in international relations at the University of Oxford and an Affiliate Policy Fellow in European political economy at the Jacques Delors Centre in Berlin. Knudsen’s research, particularly through his work on the Berggruen Governance Index (BGI), offers a nuanced framework for understanding how governance quality interacts with populist and illiberal strategies in both established and emerging democracies.
Knudsen argues that modern populist and authoritarian actors are not merely dismantling governance structures but “selectively increase governance measures for specific populations while often undermining them in the aggregate.”Rather than speaking for the entire nation, these actors redefine “the people” as a narrower in-group, targeting state capacity and democratic accountability to benefit this constituency. “They argue that democratic accountability should serve this group, that state capacity should be strengthened in certain areas, and that public goods provision should focus on those regions or communities,” Knudsen explains. This selective strategy challenges national-level governance indices and highlights the need for more disaggregated analytical tools.
Drawing on his article “A Falling Star,” Knudsen underscores the mutually reinforcing decline of state capacity and democratic accountability in advanced democracies, particularly the United States. He identifies a “downward spiral” in which decades of underinvestment erode state capacity, fueling dissatisfaction and boosting the appeal of populist leaders. These leaders “capitalize on pre-existing governance weaknesses by offering simple answers,” but once in power, they “rarely improve state capacity and often end up pillaging or plundering the state, further weakening it and deepening the negative spiral.”
A central thread in the interview is Knudsen’s emphasis on the fiscal dimension as the primary target of populist capture. “There’s a reason that in every democratic revolution in history, going back to the French Revolution, the first thing you try to do is seize the treasury from the monarch,” he notes. Fiscal control—both taxation and expenditure—remains the core battleground for insurgent populist movements seeking to consolidate power.
Looking ahead, Knudsen identifies the rise of state capitalism as the defining political-economic trend of the coming decade. He warns that if democratic actors cling to outdated ideas of non-intervention, they risk leaving the field open to authoritarian forces willing to use state power for illiberal ends. “If the center is not willing to counter that with a form of democratic state capitalism, then that’s the real risk for the future in terms of a rising tide of authoritarianism globally.”
This wide-ranging conversation traces how governance weaknesses enable populist exploitation, how technocratic language can mask illiberal intentions, and how democracies might strategically adapt to an era of intensified state intervention.
Professor Vlastimil Havlík warns that the incoming Babiš government “is not good news for the quality of Czech democracy.” Although constitutional majorities are “very unlikely,” he predicts “a slower, incremental decrease in the quality of democracy” through politicization of public service media, weakening of liberal civil society, and the conflation of private business and state power. He describes ANO’s victory as “a consolidation of the illiberal space” and emphasizes that probable coalition partners like the Motorists and SPD share “hostile rhetoric toward NGOs” and key democratic institutions. Strategically, ANO now pursues “a soft version of Euroscepticism,” aligning with median voter preferences while maintaining a pragmatic, catch-all profile.
On October 4, 2025, billionaire populist Andrej Babiš’s ANO party won the Czech parliamentary elections with just under 35% of the vote, securing 80 of 200 seats—an increase from the previous election. Although short of a majority, Babiš is expected to lead coalition talks. His most likely allies are two small right-wing, Eurosceptic parties: the anti-Green Deal Motorists for Themselves and Tomio Okamura’s anti-immigrant Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD). While ANO shares the Motorists’ opposition to EU emissions targets, relations with the SPD may prove more complicated due to internal divisions and radical demands. A new Babiš government would likely shift Czech foreign policy, notably by scrapping the Czech ammunition initiative supporting Ukraine.
In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Vlastimil Havlík, a leading expert on Czech party politics and populism at Masaryk University and the SYRI National Institute, analyses the electoral outcome and its implications for Czech democracy. He argues that ANO’s 2025 victory represents “a consolidation of the illiberal space,”with the party securing record electoral support and aligning with far-right forces, but without the constitutional majorities that enabled Hungary’s Fidesz to overhaul the political system. Despite this, Professor Havlík warns that the incoming government “is not good news for the quality of Czech democracy.”
According to Professor Havlík, Babiš’s coalition arithmetic now depends on “Eurosceptic and far-right actors such as the Motorists and SPD,” making stable governance uncertain but also potentially dangerous. He cautions that their shared hostility toward public service media and liberal civil society could translate into concrete measures to weaken democratic institutions: “We may see attempts to limit the role and funding of public service media, or even to take it over,” he says. “There has also been very hostile rhetoric from the three parties toward NGOs… essentially liberal, left-leaning civil society organizations.”
Professor Havlík also highlights structural constraints that differentiate the Czech case from Hungary and Poland. A majoritarian Senate system and the presidency of Petr Pavel make constitutional majorities for populists “very unlikely.” Yet he foresees a “slower, incremental decrease in the quality of democracy” through piecemeal institutional changes, politicization of media oversight, and the blurring of boundaries between Babiš’s private business empire and the state.
Economically, Professor Havlík emphasizes continuity. ANO’s electoral base resembles that of the former Social Democrats, with strong support in peripheral regions suffering from economic stagnation. Strategically, the party has embraced “a soft version of Euroscepticism” and aligned itself with the “Patriots for Europe” group, adapting its discourse to a skeptical public while avoiding the radical Czexit positions of SPD.
In sum, Professor Havlík sees both continuity and transformation: ANO has evolved from centrist populism into a dominant illiberal force, constrained by institutions but poised to erode liberal democratic checks incrementally.
Populist actors often present themselves as defenders of “the people” while strategically boosting state capacity for select groups and undermining it overall, argues Edward L. Knudsen, a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and Affiliate Policy Fellow at the Jacques Delors Centre. In an interview with ECPS, Knudsen explains how modern populists “selectively increase governance measures for specific populations while often undermining them in the aggregate,” creating new forms of exclusion and weakening accountability. He highlights fiscal control as the central battleground for populist movements and warns that if democratic actors fail to adapt to the rise of state capitalism, authoritarian forces may fill the void with illiberal governance models.
In recent years, the resurgence of populist and authoritarian politics has profoundly reshaped the relationship between state capacity, democratic accountability, and public goods provision. To unpack these dynamics, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) spoke with Edward Lawrence Knudsen, a doctoral researcher in international relations at the University of Oxford and an Affiliate Policy Fellow in European political economy at the Jacques Delors Centre in Berlin. Knudsen’s research, particularly through his work on the Berggruen Governance Index (BGI), offers a nuanced framework for understanding how governance quality interacts with populist and illiberal strategies in both established and emerging democracies.
Knudsen argues that modern populist and authoritarian actors are not merely dismantling governance structures but “selectively increase governance measures for specific populations while often undermining them in the aggregate.”Rather than speaking for the entire nation, these actors redefine “the people” as a narrower in-group, targeting state capacity and democratic accountability to benefit this constituency. “They argue that democratic accountability should serve this group, that state capacity should be strengthened in certain areas, and that public goods provision should focus on those regions or communities,” Knudsen explains. This selective strategy challenges national-level governance indices and highlights the need for more disaggregated analytical tools.
Drawing on his article “A Falling Star,” Knudsen underscores the mutually reinforcing decline of state capacity and democratic accountability in advanced democracies, particularly the United States. He identifies a “downward spiral” in which decades of underinvestment erode state capacity, fueling dissatisfaction and boosting the appeal of populist leaders. These leaders “capitalize on pre-existing governance weaknesses by offering simple answers,” but once in power, they “rarely improve state capacity and often end up pillaging or plundering the state, further weakening it and deepening the negative spiral.”
A central thread in the interview is Knudsen’s emphasis on the fiscal dimension as the primary target of populist capture. “There’s a reason that in every democratic revolution in history, going back to the French Revolution, the first thing you try to do is seize the treasury from the monarch,” he notes. Fiscal control—both taxation and expenditure—remains the core battleground for insurgent populist movements seeking to consolidate power.
Looking ahead, Knudsen identifies the rise of state capitalism as the defining political-economic trend of the coming decade. He warns that if democratic actors cling to outdated ideas of non-intervention, they risk leaving the field open to authoritarian forces willing to use state power for illiberal ends. “If the center is not willing to counter that with a form of democratic state capitalism, then that’s the real risk for the future in terms of a rising tide of authoritarianism globally.”
This wide-ranging conversation traces how governance weaknesses enable populist exploitation, how technocratic language can mask illiberal intentions, and how democracies might strategically adapt to an era of intensified state intervention.
Edward Lawrence Knudsen is a doctoral researcher in international relations at the University of Oxford and an Affiliate Policy Fellow in European political economy at the Jacques Delors Centre in Berlin.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Edward Lawrence Knudsen, revised for clarity and flow.
Populism Feeds on Governance Decay
Edward Knudsen, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your article “A Falling Star,” you trace the origins of declining state capacity and democratic accountability. How do you conceptualize the causal interplay between these two dimensions, particularly in contexts where populist leaders actively erode horizontal accountability mechanisms while claiming to strengthen state capacity?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: What’s important to note is that, as we conceptualize governance through what we call the governance triangle, all the different elements are deeply interlinked, and there isn’t a clear causal relationship where one always causes the other, or vice versa. In the article “Falling Star,” about the US, we observed that both state capacity and democratic accountability have declined substantially across different political administrations. This article was published before Trump’s re-election, so this isn’t a post-2020 development; rather, both dimensions have been deteriorating for years.
This connects to populism in an interesting way because we can see a kind of downward spiral. Much of this stems from a lack of investment going back decades, which erodes state capacity. That, in turn, fuels disaffection, dissatisfaction, and frustration, increasing the political appeal of populist leaders. They capitalize on pre-existing governance weaknesses by offering simple answers, as is typical of populist rhetoric. However, once in power, they rarely improve state capacity and often end up pillaging or plundering the state, further weakening it and deepening the negative spiral.
In short, some degree of prior erosion opens the door to populist—especially right-wing populist—governments that claim they will fix state capacity but don’t, while often being more willing to erode democratic accountability even further.
Selective Strengthening, Aggregate Erosion
The Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) emphasizes the triangular relationship between public goods provision, democratic accountability, and state capacity. How does this framework help us understand the governance strategies of contemporary populist or authoritarian actors, who often deliver selective public goods while undermining accountability?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: What’s important to mention when we talk about modern populist styles of government and political appeal in relation to our quantitative index of governance indicators is that we designed this system to cover almost the entire world and across different time periods. The measures we use are geared toward capturing as wide a range of political and regime types as possible.
There’s a way in which a particular type of political appeal that emerges in one part of the world or another over specific periods of time doesn’t necessarily challenge quantitative indices outright, but it does make us look at them differently. By that, I mean that these indicators measure governance at the aggregate national level.
What’s so interesting about populism—particularly the more clientelist, right-wing populism surging globally today—is that it explicitly doesn’t try to speak for the entire country. This is where we need to disaggregate from national-level frameworks. Instead of treating “the people” as the whole electorate and assessing democratic accountability and public goods provision for the entire population, these actors explicitly claim, “These are the true people.”
They argue that democratic accountability should serve this group, that state capacity should be strengthened in certain areas, and that public goods provision should focus on those regions or communities. In this sense, populist or authoritarian strategies selectively increase governance measures for specific populations while often undermining them in the aggregate.
Eroded State Capacity Fuels Populist Appeal
Your work identifies long-term stagnation in core state capacities in several advanced democracies. To what extent do such governance weaknesses create structural openings for populist or authoritarian movements, and are there historical cases where strong state capacity has insulated democracies against such pressures?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: This ties back to my first point about the US case, but you also see it across the world, where there’s widespread dissatisfaction with the existing order, leading people to complain about the state of things and become more open to populist appeals. You see this both anecdotally and in a lot of polling, where voters for right-wing, populist, and authoritarian parties often have complaints that dovetail quite closely with a more left critique. They say things like, “The public services are all eroded, there’s not enough opportunity, my kids can’t afford a house.” Those kinds of statements—thinking of the UK context, for example, where people interviewed recently who support the UK Reform Party—sound almost like a Corbynite, left-populist argument. But instead, they’re drawn to the right.
People’s dissatisfaction with elements of state capacity, infrastructure, or the ability of the state to deliver both public goods and services increases the potential appeal of populism. And it’s very difficult to combat these sorts of populist and authoritarian political movements in the short term because, as we know, it takes a long time to build up these capacities. By the time you notice that your eroded state capacity is allowing an opening for a populist or authoritarian party to move in, it’s not necessarily too late, but there’s a lot of ground to cover.
We saw this in the US again, where many in the Biden administration shared the diagnosis of Trump’s appeal in his first term. They scrambled to implement big infrastructure projects—both increasing public goods like infrastructure investment and strengthening state capacity by trying to improve the US bureaucracy and deliver more effectively for people. But it’s very hard to get any of that off the ground in time for the next election, and that can contribute to more dissatisfaction. People say, “There’s all this rhetoric about rebuilding America, build back better, this and that, but I’m not seeing it. Okay, let’s go for the more radical, tear-it-all-down, simple solutions.”
In the short run, it’s hard to think of examples where there’s suddenly a big push into new state capacity that keeps populists away. But as we find in countries with stronger state capacities, there tends to be less appeal. Populist governments have still emerged across even very wealthy, developed countries. That said, the countries—especially in Europe—where the populist right has perhaps peaked or is advancing more slowly are those with more substantial state capacity that haven’t fully embraced the neoliberal reforms of the past several decades and haven’t eroded their state to the same extent as others.
Authoritarian Capture Begins with the Treasury
Photo: Dreamstime.
You emphasize fiscal, coordination, and delivery capacity as key subdimensions of state capacity. Which of these dimensions do populist governments tend to exploit most effectively to consolidate power, and which dimensions are most vulnerable to authoritarian capture?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: The main target of any insurgent power seeking to take control is, of course, the fiscal apparatus. We see this notably and dramatically in the US case, both in terms of taking in state revenues and giving out expenditures. The Trump administration really tried to instrumentalize both sides of that—whether by going after political opponents for alleged tax noncompliance or by trying to keep money from going out the door to perceived political opponents, using that as a kind of threat. There’s a reason that in every democratic revolution in history, going back to the French Revolution, the first thing you try to do is seize the treasury from the monarch. That’s a key measure of democracy: does the parliament have control over the purse strings of the country? If you really boil it down, in many ways that is the core of democracy—who has sovereignty over spending and taxation. This is probably the central element of contestation for many populist and authoritarian governments.
When it comes to delivery capacity, this ties into the idea of favored groups, political allies, and opponents—you want to deliver for one group or another. The story there is somewhat similar to fiscal capacity, but it’s a little more complex to instrumentalize directly. Often, insurgent parties lack the bureaucratic expertise to seize those control levers effectively. This is what’s different with the second Trump administration—it learned on the job and was able to come in more effectively this time around.
However, the ability to coordinate across different agencies and levels of government is often the Achilles’ heel of many populist governments, because they lack experience working within bureaucratic systems. In many cases, from a democratic perspective, this is quite alarming: governments come into power but aren’t able to fully consolidate their rule because of difficulties in seizing coordination capacity. So, fiscal capacity is the main target and one of the most obvious areas they can use to seize power, but this can be undermined by their failure to fully grasp the complexity of coordination capacity in a modern governance context.
Global North Nostalgia vs. Global South Frustration
In your comparative work on Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, you describe how governance challenges can lead to “lost decades.” To what extent can the populist-authoritarian trajectories of leaders such as Bolsonaro or Kirchnerism be read through the lens of state capacity decay, and are similar dynamics visible in parts of Europe and North America?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: It’s always important to distinguish right from left populism. The Argentinian case is quite complex with Peronism and then Kirchnerism, but there are elements of left-wing politics there that have, over the decades, tried to build up the Argentinian state. By contrast, the more right-populist Bolsonaro side of things has much stronger sympathies with libertarianism and is, in that way, more aligned with a Milei-type figure in Argentina. Of course, Milei may share some authoritarian commonalities with Kirchnerism, but they are major political rivals and have emerged from very different political trajectories.
It is therefore always important—especially for an institute that studies populism more broadly—to separate left and right populism. While there are some commonalities, there are also clear differences in their goals and approaches. As you say, the lens of state capacity decay is crucial here. Bolsonaro falls more in line with the Trump approach of seizing on dissatisfaction without necessarily offering meaningful ways to improve it.
His political base also differs significantly from those in many European and North American contexts. Although figures like Trump and Bolsonaro are often compared in a global context, their political bases are actually very different. In Latin America, right-wing populists tend to draw on a more traditional right-wing social base—upper and middle classes—while the working class still largely votes for the left. This pattern is almost inverted in much of Europe and especially North America, where the so-called “Brahmin left” votes for the Democratic Party and much of the working class supports Trump.
So, while there are similarities in their governance approaches, their political bases differ markedly. This reflects different types of dissatisfaction. In the Global North, it’s often a feeling of lost promise—that strong state capacity once existed but has since eroded. In much of the Global South and middle-income countries, it’s more anger that the state has never been effectively built; it’s a desire to accelerate state-building, not nostalgia for a lost golden age. So, while there are parallels, all related to state capacity, the class bases of their support and their historical expectations differ significantly.
Technocratic Inertia and Populist Frustration
In “Stable or Stagnant,” you examine the political economy of governance in the UK, France, and Italy. How has the interaction between technocratic inertia and populist mobilization shaped governance outcomes in these countries, and do they offer lessons for newer democracies confronting similar tensions?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: The word you used there—inertia—is very important. It keeps coming back to an answer I’ve given a few times already, and that’s frustration. In the European context, these appeals have even more power because there’s this perception of Brussels as a kind of bureaucratic monster, which, of course, is not really true. There aren’t that many people who actually work for the European Commission. But there’s this idea of a supranational political body that is stagnating innovation and growth.
That perception contributes to frustration, which relates closely to populist appeals—the notion that there’s something simple and easy to do, the Trump’s “only I can fix it” logic, or “just leave the European Union and everything will get better.” As we’re finding out, these issues are far more complex than that. The mere perception of bureaucratic inertia can be enough—or at least a significant driving force—in the success of populist appeals.
That said, perception alone wouldn’t be enough if people’s lives were genuinely improving. In Europe especially, while the political appeal might focus on the idea of an overweening state, much of the dissatisfaction people feel in their daily lives actually stems from state cutbacks and a lack of investment. We saw this particularly after the 2008 crisis and the subsequent Eurozone crises, when severe austerity was imposed across Europe. That’s when state capacity began to decline significantly, and the rise of many populist parties followed.
These parties often say things like “Brussels is controlling us” or refer to the “EUSSR”—the kinds of simplistic slogans that circulate—but in reality, much of the dissatisfaction politicians harness comes from the state not being active enough.
Endogenous Weaknesses, Exogenous Shocks
How do you interpret the recent surge of sovereigntist populism and illiberalism in Central and Eastern Europe through the lens of the BGI framework? Do these developments reflect endogenous weaknesses in state capacity that populist leaders exploit, or are they primarily authoritarian reactions to exogenous shocks such as migration, EU conditionality, war?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: There are some previous endogenous weaknesses in these cases, such as weaker traditions of an independent judiciary and less entrenched media pluralism. In a way, we could say these are not as consolidated democracies. There is also a kind of civilizational legacy at play, visible in competing understandings of the idea of Europe. Towards the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, you see this rhetoric in much of Eastern Europe with the impending fall of the communist system—this idea of a “return to Europe” and a civilizational understanding of Europe. In Western Europe, especially among people on the left, there was a sense of transcending these older views of civilization and nationalism, whereas in Eastern Europe, they felt like they never quite got to enjoy that.
It’s hard to capture this in terms of governance, but there are competing understandings of what it means to be a modern European state and how much ethnic homogeneity that implies, which triggers very different reactions to migration. This is something you have to be honest about when doing quantitative indicator work—there are historical factors you’re simply not going to capture, which is why we write reports with more qualitative background as well.
That being said, there are many things we do capture in our work. Even something as simple as GDP per capita shows a lot of catch-up growth in Central and Eastern Europe—Poland being one of the best examples. From a Western perspective, it’s easy to say, “Here’s our GDP line, and here’s the Polish one catching up.” It looks striking visually on a graph. But people there ask, “Why aren’t we richer than Germany? When are we going to get there?” Structurally, the way things are set up in the European Union—in terms of supply chains and where value is really added—makes it difficult for them to fully overtake Germany.
This contributes to some of the dissatisfaction. Along with lower GDP per capita, there are lower levels of public goods provision. So, the story is not so much one of decline as of insufficient growth. Combined with less entrenched democratic norms, this allows populist forces to exploit both frustration with the lack of catch-up speed and incomplete democratic consolidation. These two factors together can create a potent and toxic mix.
The Politics of Misplaced Trust
Protests against the government’s economic policy in Syntagma Square, Athens, Greece on October 20, 2011. Photo: Dreamstime.
In “The 21st Century Trust and Leadership Problem,” you argue that declining institutional trust undermines governance. How do populist actors strategically exploit trust deficits to delegitimize institutions, and what tools can democratic leaders use to rebuild trust in polarized societies?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: In politics, trust is a somewhat fuzzy concept. This comes from an article that’s not part of the Berggruen Governance Index, which I co-authored with Professor Helmut K. Anheier, who also leads the INDEX project. Trust is something we’re actually thinking about incorporating into the index more directly because it’s so important. What’s vital to understand is that politics requires some degree of trust—people want to place their trust in something. So, when institutional trust erodes, which is what we’re seeing, this is essentially another way of talking about the decline in state capacity. People see that the state isn’t delivering, and they end up trusting it less.
But their instinct and desire to trust don’t disappear; they get redirected. Often, in the context of populism and authoritarianism, that trust, rather than being placed in institutions that are no longer deemed trustworthy, is transferred to a singular person or party. This is where the “trust me, only I can fix it” narrative or promises of “simple solutions” come in. In many ways, populist appeals can be seen as a form of misplaced or transferred trust that has moved away from more appropriate targets—like independent media or local government services. People want to be able to rely on institutions at different levels. When they no longer can—when they think, “They’re never going to pick up the trash,” or “The media’s always lying to me”—those instincts are redirected toward a more demagogic figure who promises, “I’ll fix everything, and I’m the only one telling you the truth.”
Yes, populists exploit trust deficits, but they also capture people’s desire to trust something. And in many cases, they ultimately betray that trust and fail to deliver, which deepens the problem. They also encourage people to distrust other institutions, even those that are still functioning at a high level—such as research universities. While there may be issues within these institutions, the claim that they’re systematically producing fake science, for example, shows how justified distrust in some areas can be transferred to others where it’s not justified, ultimately undermining the entire system.
Leadership in Times of Governance Crisis
You highlight leadership as a critical factor in reversing governance crises. What institutional safeguards or leadership selection mechanisms might help prevent the rise of authoritarian-populist figures who exploit weak accountability structures for personalist rule?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: The issue of leadership here is really difficult because it’s one of those things that, if you prefer a more structural or material account of the world, feels somewhat unsatisfying and fuzzy to talk about—the importance of leadership. How do you select for that? How do you account for one individual having integrity? It feels very risky from a democratic perspective to say, “We’re going to stake our future on just hoping we get a good guy or a good woman in power.”
That being said, there are important factors to consider. There are actual institutional selection mechanisms, such as greater meritocratic promotion in bureaucracies. That’s an element of state capacity that we capture, and it’s the kind of building block of a modern state that you would, of course, want to have.
On the fuzzier side, there are issues of norms—saying, for example, “No, we’re not going to tolerate more demagogical or corrupt figures.” This ties back to feelings of dissatisfaction, where those norms can break down if people feel they no longer deliver the goods, or if they’re being told to live by a set of norms that elites themselves do not follow. When you see a decline in opportunity, state capacity, and public goods provision, people feel like these rules and norms aren’t delivering anymore. Then they’re more open to a type of appeal that says, “Yeah, it’s all a scam, and I’m a scammer too, but I’ll scam on your behalf.”
So, you can’t necessarily draw a one-to-one connection between a specific level of state capacity decline and the selection of a particular type of leader. However, there are clear patterns where a broader lack of integrity and fairness in society makes the appeal of someone who openly flouts ideas of fairness more likely.
Strong Managers or Strategic Demagogues?
Many populist leaders claim to be “strong managers” while simultaneously undermining institutions—blending technocratic rhetoric with authoritarian tendencies. How can we analytically distinguish between genuine technocratic competence and populist instrumentalization of technocratic language to justify illiberal measures?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: There’s this book that came out a few years ago, which maybe you’re alluding to, Techno-Populism by Carlo Invernizzi Accetti and Christopher J. Bickerton. They speak to this idea of two concepts that seem like they’re at odds with each other. Populism is a sort of mass of people resisting the technocrats, and technocracy is this sort of cloistered room of Davos elites tweaking the economy—those are the stereotypes. But what they point out is that there’s actually a way in which the two can go together, that’s not always obvious, and that’s the populist appeal to technocratic instincts: “We’re just going to get the best and the smartest people in there, and they’ll fix all of this.”
Understanding that there are linkages between those two is very important. There is a tension, though, often in the notion of “strong managers.” The phrasing itself almost seems contradictory because you think of strong leaders and then you think of competent managers, and so “strong managers” has a kind of built-in tension as a phrase and as a concept. The two are often at odds. There are ways in which you might need to rouse a population for a great struggle, but the day-to-day business of government is a lot more bland than that. You don’t need a Winston Churchill “we will fight them on the beaches” kind of speech to figure out how to successfully devolve council taxes to local governments in Britain, for example. They’re very different things, and oftentimes the two don’t really go together.
The struggle for populists is actually creating that linkage between a more nationalist appeal, which can generate large-scale political mobilization, and then implementing that on the ground. Again, to stay with the UK example, there was a Financial Times article recently about UK Reform’s struggles in local councils. They have all this lofty nationalist rhetoric, but when it actually comes to the things people care about, it’s very hard to deliver. For people who are more democratically inclined, that is in some ways a blessing—there’s an opening to discredit some of these more nationalist and populist movements.
Things will become a lot more dangerous if there’s a form of populist authoritarian governance that figures out how to move beyond just the technocratic language you described to actual technocratic competence. That’s when you’ll see a more enduring political form. As it stands now, if people see it’s not working, they’ll throw them out again after a few years. The more politically successful forms of authoritarianism actually are technocratically competent, or at least strive to be for their preferred groups.
Governing in the Age of State Capitalism
Shanghai Aerial View. Photo: Sean Pavone.
And finally, situating your work within the broader global context, how do you see the interplay between governance quality, populism, and authoritarianism evolving over the next decade? Do you anticipate cyclical populist waves, or a more entrenched structural realignment toward illiberal governance models in both established and emerging democracies?
Edward Lawrence Knudsen: It’s hard to say at the global level whether we’ll see a clear wave or not because there are so many local specifics. What we can say on a larger level is that we’re witnessing the rise of state capitalism as a form of political economy. There is a lot more direct intervention of the state in the economy—not in a socialist or communist way, but rather using it for desired political ends in domestic politics, international politics, geopolitics, and geoeconomics, as it’s increasingly called. That’s the main trend.
Of course, populism will come in different forms. It’s a contested term. But I would say that the overall rising tide of liberal democracy is no longer moving in that direction. I wouldn’t say it’s definitely shifting toward complete authoritarianism, either. The challenge will be that, given the likely irresistible rise of state intervention in the economy for the foreseeable future, it will be incumbent on democratic forces to wield that intervention in a way that delivers for people and neutralizes some of the appeals of more authoritarian parties.
One of the main risks would be if more established democratic parties cling to ideas of non-intervention in the economy, rather than recognizing this as the new reality and using it to deliver for people and promote greater equality. If they keep their heads in the sand and cling to these 1980s or 1990s norms of relative non-intervention, it opens the door for more simplistic approaches. You see that in the US case, where many market-liberal types say, “We’re not going to nationalize US Steel,” or “We’re not going to ban AI truck drivers,” while more populist-inclined actors—who often have no real democratic commitments—say, “Of course we’ll do that. Of course we’ll protect the truck drivers. Of course we’ll protect the steel workers.”
When there are changing economic times and increasing uncertainty, people will naturally gravitate toward those kinds of simple appeals. If the center is not willing to counter that with a form of democratic state capitalism, then that’s the real risk for the future in terms of a rising tide of authoritarianism globally.
Professor Vlastimil Havlík warns that the incoming Babiš government “is not good news for the quality of Czech democracy.” Although constitutional majorities are “very unlikely,” he predicts “a slower, incremental decrease in the quality of democracy” through politicization of public service media, weakening of liberal civil society, and the conflation of private business and state power. He describes ANO’s victory as “a consolidation of the illiberal space” and emphasizes that probable coalition partners like the Motorists and SPD share “hostile rhetoric toward NGOs” and key democratic institutions. Strategically, ANO now pursues “a soft version of Euroscepticism,” aligning with median voter preferences while maintaining a pragmatic, catch-all profile.
On October 4, 2025, billionaire populist Andrej Babiš’s ANO party won the Czech parliamentary elections with just under 35% of the vote, securing 80 of 200 seats—an increase from the previous election. Although short of a majority, Babiš is expected to lead coalition talks. His most likely allies are two small right-wing, Eurosceptic parties: the anti-Green Deal Motorists for Themselves and Tomio Okamura’s anti-immigrant Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD). While ANO shares the Motorists’ opposition to EU emissions targets, relations with the SPD may prove more complicated due to internal divisions and radical demands. A new Babiš government would likely shift Czech foreign policy, notably by scrapping the Czech ammunition initiative supporting Ukraine.
In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Vlastimil Havlík, a leading expert on Czech party politics and populism at Masaryk University and the SYRI National Institute, analyses the electoral outcome and its implications for Czech democracy. He argues that ANO’s 2025 victory represents “a consolidation of the illiberal space,”with the party securing record electoral support and aligning with far-right forces, but without the constitutional majorities that enabled Hungary’s Fidesz to overhaul the political system. Despite this, Professor Havlík warns that the incoming government “is not good news for the quality of Czech democracy.”
According to Professor Havlík, Babiš’s coalition arithmetic now depends on “Eurosceptic and far-right actors such as the Motorists and SPD,” making stable governance uncertain but also potentially dangerous. He cautions that their shared hostility toward public service media and liberal civil society could translate into concrete measures to weaken democratic institutions: “We may see attempts to limit the role and funding of public service media, or even to take it over,” he says. “There has also been very hostile rhetoric from the three parties toward NGOs… essentially liberal, left-leaning civil society organizations.”
Professor Havlík also highlights structural constraints that differentiate the Czech case from Hungary and Poland. A majoritarian Senate system and the presidency of Petr Pavel make constitutional majorities for populists “very unlikely.” Yet he foresees a “slower, incremental decrease in the quality of democracy” through piecemeal institutional changes, politicization of media oversight, and the blurring of boundaries between Babiš’s private business empire and the state.
Economically, Professor Havlík emphasizes continuity. ANO’s electoral base resembles that of the former Social Democrats, with strong support in peripheral regions suffering from economic stagnation. Strategically, the party has embraced “a soft version of Euroscepticism” and aligned itself with the “Patriots for Europe” group, adapting its discourse to a skeptical public while avoiding the radical Czexit positions of SPD.
In sum, Professor Havlík sees both continuity and transformation: ANO has evolved from centrist populism into a dominant illiberal force, constrained by institutions but poised to erode liberal democratic checks incrementally.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Vlastimil Havlík, revised for clarity and flow.
ANO’s Victory Reflects Continuity Within a Changing Political Context
Andrej Babiš, leader of the ANO party and one of the richest businessmen in the Czech Republic, during a press conference in Prague on March 2, 2013. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Vlastimil Havlík, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Andrej Babiš’s ANO achieved a clear parliamentary plurality in recent parliamentary elections, consolidating its role as the hegemon of the illiberal camp. How do you interpret this outcome in light of your work on the rise of centrist populism and the persistence of cleavage structures in Czech politics? Does this election signify continuity or a critical juncture in party competition?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: Thank you very much for this excellent question. What is clear is that ANO decisively won the election, as you mentioned. It was a kind of landslide victory, with more than 30% of the votes. In fact, in terms of the number of votes, it was the best result in the history of Czech electoral politics.
You asked me to interpret this outcome in the context of centrist populism. I would say I’m not entirely sure whether the party is still centrist populist in the way it was when it was established 12 or 13 years ago. At that time, the party relied on populism, anti-corruption narratives, and anti-establishment arguments, while simultaneously promoting technocracy and its competence to run the state as the solution, deliberately avoiding clear ideological stances. It declared, “We are not on the left, we are not on the right. That is not important anymore. What is important is to get rid of the current politicians.”
Over time, as a consequence of the party’s participation in government and the immigration crises, ANO had to take positions on many political issues. Today, it still employs populism and technocratic narratives. Babiš remains the central figure, continuing to present himself as a skillful manager capable of running the state effectively. The party, however, is highly pragmatic. It follows public opinion and has adopted relatively clear stances on several issues, combining left-leaning positions—such as targeted social policies for pensioners and protectionist measures—with a culturally conservative, even radical-right orientation.
So, when I return to your question about the persistence of cleavage structures, I would say both yes and no. The shift in the party’s ideology and political discourse reminds me of what we saw in the Social Democratic Party 10 or 15 years ago, when it was a major political force. Electorally, ANO’s base is quite similar to that of past social democratic voters. However, the environment is different now, with the rising salience of cultural issues. So, while it is not really a social democratic party, ANO has adopted a position very similar to what the Social Democratic Party once held. It has also placed a strong emphasis on economic issues, which is another sign of continuity. I don’t view this election as a major rupture; rather, I see clear signs of continuity, albeit within a changing political context.
Czech Party Politics Has Become Two-Dimensional: Culture Now Rivals the Economy
The 2025 elections revealed ANO’s shift toward left-leaning conservatism, especially on socio-economic and cultural issues. How significant is this realignment for reshaping the Czech political space, and how does it affect the interaction between populist actors and traditional party families?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: Actually, I can follow what I said a couple of seconds ago. What we have seen in the party landscape of the party system over the last decade is a major increase in the salience of cultural and post-materialist issues, such as immigration, as a clear result of the so-called immigration crisis. There is also much more discussion about minority rights, such as the position of LGBTQ+ groups, the position of women, and environmental protection vis-à-vis global warming.
In general, the party system in the Czech Republic is no longer unidimensional as it used to be, when Czech party politics was defined for at least two decades by conflicts over economic issues, redistribution, taxes, and social policies. Now, clearly, it has become two-dimensional. The economic dimension is still there, but the cultural dimension has become similarly important.
When it comes to ANO and its position toward traditional party families, this is to some extent determined by the party’s populist profile. It is highly polarizing and somewhat hostile toward mainstream political parties. So, in addition to the two dimensions I mentioned, I would add a kind of populist sentiment—perhaps not an entirely independent dimension, but a significant factor nonetheless. There is quite a high level of polarization between ANO and other populist political parties on the one hand and the rest of the party space on the other. As a result, there are not many positive interactions between populist actors and traditional party families, which are often depicted by populist sectors as the “enemy of the people.”
Babiš’s Coalition with Far-Right Parties Poses Risks to Czech Democracy
The Statue of Justice by Marius Kotrba, a modern sculpture located at the Supreme Court building in Brno, Czech Republic, on March 10, 2022. Photo: Evgeniy Fesenko.
Babiš’s coalition arithmetic now depends on Euroskeptic and far-right actors such as the Motorists and SPD. Drawing on your research on populism–anti-populism divides, how feasible is stable governance under such a constellation, and what risks might this pose for the quality of Czech democracy?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: It’s a really good question. I will start with the effects of populist or anti-populist divides. What I meant by that when we wrote about it, it was before the 2021 election, two major electoral coalitions were formed with the aim of defeating ANO, Babiš’s party. They changed their communication strategy and based it on anti-populist arguments. They depicted populism and Babiš, as well as other populist parties and the communists, as a major threat to Czech democracy and as a force that would take the Czech Republic back to the East in foreign policy. This was highly polarizing rhetoric. On the other hand, we saw similarly polarizing rhetoric on the side of populist actors.
Why do I mention that? It seems that there are not many options to form a government after the election as a result of this polarization. So now it really seems that there will be some sort of government collaboration between ANO and Motorists, a far-right or radical-right populist political party.
As for its stability, it’s difficult to predict. There are some shared policy attitudes between ANO and the other parties, but there are also differences, for example, in their attitudes toward the EU and NATO. Economic policies differ as well, and this may be one of the main sources of conflict after the coalition is formed because, on one hand, you have ANO, which is quite good at spending, and on the other, Motorists, who want conservative fiscal policies.
Another issue concerns SPD, which actually involves four political parties, as members of four parties were elected on the SPD list. This creates more space for tensions. Moreover, both SPD and Motorists lack experience in government participation and high politics. They have been in opposition, and Motorists are a new party. So, it’s difficult to say, but there are not many other options, which may push the parties to maintain the coalition and overcome possible conflicts and disagreements.
When it comes to risks for democracy, I can see several. These stem from similar stances of these parties on, for example, public service media. We may see attempts to limit the role and funding of public service media, or even to take it over. There has also been very hostile rhetoric from the three parties toward NGOs, which they call “political NGOs.” This essentially refers to liberal, left-leaning civil society organizations, so we can expect cuts to state funding for them.
Finally, there is Babiš himself. As the owner of large businesses, his main motivation for entering politics is to profit from the state through subsidies. This creates a major threat to democracy: the blurring of lines between Babiš’s private business and the state. Such a conflation of big private business and the state represents a serious risk to the quality of Czech democracy. Therefore, this government is not good news for the quality of Czech democracy.
Illiberal Consolidation Is Clear, But Institutional Limits Remain
The collapse of traditional left-wing parties and SPD’s decline suggest consolidation of the illiberal space rather than its expansion. Do you see this as a Pyrrhic victory—given the fragility of potential coalitions—or as the institutionalisation of ANO’s dominance akin to Hungary’s Fidesz?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: I would call it more of a consolidation of the illiberal space, although it depends. In a way, the electoral support for illiberal or populist forces remained more or less the same compared to the last election. But there is one difference. In the 2021 election, some illiberal forces did not cross the electoral threshold. Now, Motorists were able to cross it, so we have almost 50% of votes translated into parliamentary seats for illiberal parties. In this sense, we can see an expansion of the illiberal space.
At the same time, some SPD voters shifted, so we may say that more voters opted for a slightly more moderate version of illiberalism. If you compare ANO and SPD, ANO is more moderate.
You asked about a comparison between Fidesz and ANO. One difference is that ANO does not hold a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, so its position is weaker compared to Fidesz. On the other hand, its electoral support is higher—indeed, a record level for ANO. Another difference lies in the institutional structure of the Czech political system. There is also an upper chamber of parliament, where ANO is far weaker, partly because of the electoral system, and it is very far from a majority of populist parties in that chamber. So, the position of illiberal forces is weaker compared to Hungary and Fidesz.
Economic Cleavages Remain Central Despite Populist Surge
A demonstration against the Czech government, high energy prices, the Green Deal, and the EU took place in Prague on September 3, 2022. Protesters demanded a change of government amidst the crises. Photo: Helena Zezulkova.
Your recent co-authored work on “Revolution or Evolution” shows remarkable persistence of socio-economic and cultural cleavages despite electoral volatility. How do the 2025 results reflect the resilience or reconfiguration of these cleavages, and what new issue dimensions (e.g. climate policy, migration) are becoming decisive for party competition?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: Thank you very much for mentioning the article we wrote with Lubomír Kopeček and Martin Vérteši for Prominence of Post-Communism. We looked at party manifestos and found that the economy still plays a significant role in party competition, at least in party manifestos, even after the rise of populist political parties. This remains true, but I would also add that the economy may now be framed differently. The rise of populism does not mean it is framed in exactly the same way as before; it has been presented more in a populist and less in an establishment-oriented way since Babiš’s party entered the system.
Regarding the 2025 elections, I would highlight two points. First, cultural or post-materialist issues became more important in campaigning and in debates between party leaders. Second, and more importantly in my view, the economy remains the key explanatory factor—particularly economic difficulties in peripheral areas. One of the most important aspects of the recent election was the notably high turnout, driven by increased mobilization in economically disadvantaged peripheral regions that voted mostly for Babiš’s party. So, the economy continues to be a major issue, and I wouldn’t say there has been a reconfiguration of the cleavages.
Populism vs. Anti-Populism Becomes Key Communication Axis
In your studies of the 2021 election, you identified a populism vs. anti-populism cleavage that temporarily overshadowed left–right competition. To what extent has this divide become entrenched as the primary axis of contestation, and how does this shape the prospects for liberal democratic parties?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: I would be a little bit careful to call the populism–anti-populism divide a cleavage in the sense that it is well structured in society. I would describe it more as a political divide or perhaps a communication strategy. On one hand, you have populist communication or populist actors, and on the other hand, the communication of democratic or pro-liberal democratic parties, which used anti-populist arguments. As I mentioned, they depicted ANO, SPD, and, at that time, in the 2021 election, the communists as a major threat to democracy. They essentially copy-pasted this strategy in the last election, perhaps stressing more the claim that the populist parties in the Czech Republic are clearly pro-Russian forces, turning Czechia back to the East.
You asked whether this was the primary axis of contestation. I would say it was a very important part of the communication of these democratic or pro-liberal democratic parties. On the other hand, ANO’s communication was clearly focused on the economy. They blamed the government for poor economic performance because, if you look at some indicators, the Czech Republic was not doing particularly well during the last four years.
As for the prospects for liberal democratic parties, I see two important points. This anti-populist communication was a highly polarizing strategy, using emotional arguments and depicting populist parties as a real enemy—not just a rival—and a threat to democracy. This limits the space for possible government collaboration across this divide. Not that ANO and Babiš are interested in such cooperation, but the possibilities are limited also because of this type of communication.
As for the future of this divide or communication, it’s not very clear. After the election, there was much discussion about whether the electoral coalitions—I mentioned the coalitions of the pro-democratic camp, in this case, right-wing political parties—would continue, and now it seems that will not be the case. So, we may again see the three parties that formed the coalition together, “Spolu” in Czech, running in the election independently. But this is still uncertain. There will be party congresses and possibly new leadership of the parties, and they will evaluate this strategy.
Babiš’s Model Is Shifting Closer to Radical Right Discourses
In your 2019 article, you argue that ANO’s technocratic populism constitutes a regime alternative by rejecting pluralism and constitutionalism. How do you foresee this model evolving under Babiš’s renewed electoral dominance—toward a more overt illiberalism or continued reliance on managerial, depoliticised discourse?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: That’s a really good question. I think it’s not very clear. To some extent, it’s difficult to say because the party has changed a bit in its communication. It is now closer to radical right discourses, but what has not changed is Babiš’s view of liberal democracy, checks and balances, separation of powers, public service media, and NGOs. He doesn’t care much about these. He actually sees them as annoying, unnecessary obstacles that limit the ability to govern effectively and slow down the process of government.
If a coalition with other populist or radicalized parties is formed, there will be even more radical elements. What we can expect is a number of attacks on liberal democratic institutions, or institutions that guarantee the liberal part of democracy, such as public service media and some NGOs. We may also see attempts to change parliamentary procedures, although this would be difficult.
You mentioned Fidesz and Hungary several times. I think there is a difference because the government will not have enough votes to change the constitution or the majority needed to change electoral laws, since that requires a majority in both parliamentary chambers. So, I don’t expect major structural changes to the political system, but what we can see is liberal democracy being cut into small pieces. Not because there is a complex plan to do this, but because none of the possibly future government parties cares much about liberal democracy, and the rhetoric we have heard from them, including ANO, is close to Fidesz.
Incremental Democratic Backsliding Likely in Czechia
Unlike Orbán’s Fidesz, ANO operates within a fragmented party system checked by the Senate and President Pavel. Based on your research on illiberal tendencies in Central Europe, what forms of democratic backsliding might occur in a Czech context where constitutional majorities are unlikely?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: You’re absolutely right. A constitutional majority for populist parties is not very likely in the Czech context. The reason lies in how the Senate, the upper chamber, is elected. It’s based on a majoritarian, two-round electoral system, and only one-third of senators is elected every two years. So it’s not very likely—actually very unlikely—that there will be a constitutional majority for populist parties. This means no major changes when it comes to altering the constitution or electoral laws, as I mentioned.
However, there will be many opportunities for the future government coalition to limit Czech liberal democracy. For example, regarding public service media, they can change the leadership or the board—the council of Czech TV or Czech Radio—to increase control. There’s also significant discussion about the funding of public service media. Currently, it’s funded by everyone paying a small monthly fee, which is the main source of funding. They want to abolish this or replace it with state funding, which would again increase government control.
A similar logic applies to civil society organizations. There will be several elections of different state institutions and their leadership, which the government can influence. And, of course, there is the conflict of interest between Babiš’s economic interests and the state. So, we will not see revolutionary changes but rather a slower, incremental decrease in the quality of democracy.
Populist Elite Cues Could Undermine Trust in Democratic Institutions
Chamber of Deputies of Parliament of Czech Republic during constituent meeting in Prague on November 25, 2013. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your work highlights the role of anti-establishment attitudes, political distrust, and low efficacy in fueling populist support. How might these underlying attitudes evolve under another Babiš government, and what implications does this have for the long-term resilience of liberal democratic institutions?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: A really good question. It’s a very complex one. There are many sources of public trust in different institutions. I would choose two points to discuss.
The first is the role of the economy. It’s not directly related to the nature of Babiš’s party, or SPD, or Motorists, but what we have seen in the Czech Republic is that when the economy is doing well—and especially when people feel that they are doing better economically—their satisfaction with politics and trust in political institutions is higher. We saw that even during the first Babiš government between 2017 and 2021: satisfaction with politics went up because macroeconomic conditions were much better, inflation was low, unemployment was quite low, and average salaries rose. Dissatisfaction with politics and institutions increased during the COVID crisis, when trust declined because the government mismanaged the situation and insecurity grew.
So, it will first depend on economic performance, which is partly linked to government policies. As I said, Babiš’s victory was fueled by increased turnout in peripheral regions, where people suffered from worsening economic conditions. If I were in Babiš’s place, I would invest in these regions. This would, of course, increase personal support, but it would also, as a side effect, boost satisfaction with politics and political institutions.
The second point is that, as political science and political sociology research shows, elite cues actually work. Over the next few years, we will hear attacks on liberal democracy, checks and balances, and the separation of powers. This can feed people, especially voters of populist parties, with cues that, despite possibly increased satisfaction with politics, can go hand in hand with lower trust in liberal democratic institutions. These are the two points that seem to me important when it comes to Babiš’s government and satisfaction with institutions.
ANO’s Euroscepticism Is Pragmatic, Not Ideological
ANO’s leadership of the “Patriots for Europe” group and its stance on EU climate policy reflect a new Eurosceptic axis. In light of your research on populism and Europeanisation, how should we understand this development? Is ANO’s Euroscepticism primarily strategic—targeting specific policies—or part of a deeper ideological realignment, particularly compared to SPD’s Czexit discourse?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: It’s definitely strategy. It’s very pragmatic—a calculated approach. ANO has tried to catch as many voters as possible. They use the notion of a catch-all party in a somewhat distorted way, but they actively employ it. They want to be a catch-all party to increase their electoral support. When you look at EU-related public opinion in the Czech Republic, you see quite a lot of skepticism. Many people are not very satisfied with EU membership, and general trust in the EU is not very high. There are also clear indications of skepticism toward joining the Eurozone.
So, ANO has adapted its discourse to align closely with the views of the majority of the population. This is interesting because, when the party was established, it was pro-European and quite positive about the Euro and the Eurozone. Now it represents a soft version of Euroscepticism, using populist anti-elite discourse—for example, criticizing “Brussels elites” and specific EU policies such as migration. Migration has become a salient issue, and most of the population holds negative attitudes toward immigration, so ANO has adopted anti-immigration positions as well. The same can be said about the Green Deal. Essentially, the party tries to position itself close to the median voter on these issues. It’s a very pragmatic strategy.
Czech Populism Shares Traits with Hungary and Poland but Remains Distinct
Lastly, Professor Havlík, when viewed comparatively, how does the Czech populist trajectory under Babiš resemble or diverge from developments in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia? Are we witnessing a distinct “Czech model” of illiberal populism?
Professor Vlastimil Havlík: Czech model of populism — I don’t know in what sense. I would say that compared to Fidesz, Law and Justice (PiS), and SMER, we can see some discursive differences. In a way, ANO is more moderate and not as clearly pro-Russian compared to Robert Fico. The discourse of Fico, for example, or Orbán is very different from Babiš. He’s quite careful when it comes to commenting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As I mentioned, ANO does not have a constitutional majority, which is different from Hungary. It also differs in the nature of the threats to liberal democracy, which stem largely from Babiš’s private business interests. In this sense, it is similar to Fidesz but in a slightly different way: there’s a much more direct conflation of economic interests and the state, whereas in the case of Fidesz it’s a bit more indirect.
As for similarities, the populist discourses—anti-elitism, moralizing narratives, and anti-liberal rhetoric—are similar. All of the populist parties and discourses strongly resist checks and balances and the separation of powers—those elements that limit their power. So, I don’t know if we can really speak of a distinct “Czech model.” I don’t like to generalize from a single case. But there are both similarities and some differences.
In an in-depth interview with the ECPS, Bruce E. Cain—Professor of Political Science at Stanford University—analyzes how Donald Trump has reshaped the Republican Party and advanced classical authoritarian strategies. “There’s no question that, whether by instinct or by deliberate strategy, Trump is playing the classical authoritarian game,” Professor Cain asserts. He situates Trumpism within long-term demographic, institutional, and ideological shifts while underscoring Trump’s unique use of crisis narratives, bullying tactics, and federal coercion. Professor Cain also warns that Trumpism has exploited structural weaknesses in party regulation, executive power, and campaign finance, stressing the urgency of reinforcing democratic guardrails to prevent lasting authoritarian consolidation.
In a wide-ranging and incisive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Bruce E. Cain—Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West—offers a penetrating analysis of how Donald Trump’s leadership has reshaped the Republican Party and pushed American politics toward classical authoritarian strategies. “There’s no question that, whether by instinct or by deliberate strategy, Trump is playing the classical authoritarian game,” Professor Cain observes. “There’s no doubt that’s what he’s trying to do. It suits the way he has run his companies, and it suits the kinds of leaders he admires in other countries. He’s essentially following in their footsteps.”
Professor Cain situates Trumpism within broader structural transformations of American politics, emphasizing long-term demographic, geographic, and institutional shifts that made Trump’s rise possible. He points to “social sorting” and “party sorting” since the 1960s, along with growing racial diversity and economic inequality, as crucial background conditions. These shifts, he argues, preceded Trump and “made his rise possible,” even as his “adroit use of social media” and personal brand amplified their impact.
Central to Professor Cain’s analysis is Trump’s deliberate exploitation of crisis narratives and authoritarian tactics. Reflecting on Trump’s response to crises such as the Charlie Kirk assassination, Professor Cain notes that “Trump is playing the classical authoritarian game” and has escalated his reliance on bullying tactics compared to his first term. He highlights Trump’s willingness to deploy federal forces in Democratic-run cities, calling it “very disturbing and very unusual,” and likens it to the EU sending troops into member states to enforce policy—an action that violates deeply held American principles of state sovereignty.
Professor Cain also examines the evolving coalition underpinning the contemporary Republican Party. He underscores the critical role of the MAGA base, describing it as “maybe, at best, 40%, but more likely 30% of the Republican Party’s support,” driven in part by cultural grievance politics and white nationalist narratives. Yet, he stresses the uneasy alliance between this base and more traditional Republicans, warning of internal tensions that could shape future elections.
Institutionally, Professor Cain warns that Trumpism has both exploited and accelerated structural weaknesses in the American political system—from the weakening of party authority and campaign finance regulation to the expansion of executive power. He cautions that if the Supreme Court legitimizes Trump’s expansive claims of emergency powers and unilateral action, “it’ll be monkey see, monkey do,” with Democrats following suit—leading to instability and democratic erosion.
Professor Cain concludes by emphasizing the urgency of shoring up democratic guardrails, particularly regarding executive power, emergency provisions, and the role of the courts. His analysis offers a sobering reminder that while Trump may be unique, the authoritarian strategies he has deployed are embedded within deeper institutional vulnerabilities that will persist beyond his presidency.
Please cite as: ECPS Staff. (2025). “Virtual Workshop Series — Session 4: Performing the People: Populism, Nativism, and the Politics of Belonging.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). October 16, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00116
On October 16, 2025, the ECPS held the fourth session of its Virtual Workshop Series “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches.” The session examined how political actors construct and mobilize “the people” to legitimize both inclusive and exclusionary political projects. Chaired by Professor Oscar Mazzoleni, the session featured presentations by Samuel Ngozi Agu, Shiveshwar Kundu, and Mouli Bentman & Michael Dahan, each exploring different regional and theoretical perspectives. Abdelaaziz El Bakkali and Azize Sargın provided incisive discussant feedback, followed by a lively Q&A. Concluding reflections by Prof. Mazzoleni emphasized populism’s dual nature as both a political strategy and a symptom of structural democratic crises, setting the stage for future interdisciplinary debate.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On October 16, 2025, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), in collaboration with Oxford University, convened the fourth session of its ongoing Virtual Workshop Series, titled “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches. This series (September 2025 – April 2026) provides a structured forum for interdisciplinary dialogue on the contemporary challenges of democratic backsliding, populism, and the future of liberal democracy across different regions.
The fourth session, titled “Performing the People: Populism, Nativism, and the Politics of Belonging,” focused on how political actors construct and mobilize the idea of “the people” to reshape democratic imaginaries, often in ways that blur the line between inclusion and exclusion. Against a backdrop in which one-fifth of the world’s democracies disappeared between 2012 and 2024, the session explored the dual role of “the people” as both a democratic resource and a political instrument used to legitimize exclusionary, often authoritarian projects. The event brought together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners from India, Nigeria, Israel, Morocco, Switzerland, and beyond, reflecting the comparative and interdisciplinary scope of the series.
The session was chaired by Professor Oscar Mazzoleni (University of Lausanne). Following a welcome by Reka Koletzer on behalf of ECPS, Prof. Mazzoleni opened with a conceptual framing that situated the panel within broader debates on populism and democratic legitimacy. He emphasized that there is “no populism without the people,” tracing the notion’s roots to ancient Greece and its evolution as a key source of political legitimation.
Historically, he noted, when “the people” were not central, politics drew on divine authority. Today, however, democratic politics is increasingly intertwined with religion and sacralized notions of a homogeneous people—developments that pose serious challenges to the rule of law and democratic sustainability. Prof. Mazzoleni highlighted how populist leaders exploit these dynamics to consolidate power and reshape belonging, stressing the importance of contextual, cross-regional reflection—linking contributions from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to global debates.
Three scholarly presentations followed, each addressing the theme from a distinct geographical and theoretical perspective: Dr. Samuel Ngozi Agu (Abia State University, Nigeria) presented “We, the People: Rethinking Governance Through Bottom-Up Approaches,” arguing for decentralization and participatory governance as democratic correctives to elite-dominated political systems. Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu (Jangipur College, University of Kalyani, India) delivered “The Idea of ‘People’ Within the Domain of Authoritarian Populism in India,” offering a psychoanalytic and structuralist interpretation of the rise of Hindu nationalist populism. Dr. Mouli Bentman and Dr.Mike Dahan (Sapir College, Israel) presented “We, the People: The Populist Subversion of a Universal Ideal,” examining how populist movements appropriate the universalist language of liberal democracy to undermine its institutions from within.
The presentations were followed by discussant feedback from Associate Professor Abdelaaziz Elbakkali (SMBA University, Morocco; Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar, Arizona State University) and Dr. Azize Sargın (Director for External Affairs, ECPS). Their interventions offered comparative perspectives, theoretical reflections, and methodological suggestions, deepening the debate and encouraging the presenters to refine their arguments. A Q&A session allowed for interactive exchanges between the speakers and participants, further probing the conceptual, empirical, and normative implications of the presentations. Finally, Prof. Mazzoleni provided a general assessment, synthesizing the key insights of the session.
This report documents the presentations, discussants’ feedback, Q&A exchanges, and concluding reflections, offering a comprehensive overview of a rich and interdisciplinary scholarly discussion on how “the people” is performed, politicized, and contested in contemporary democratic politics.
Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu: The Idea of ‘People’ within the Domain of Authoritarian Populism in India
A man chanting songs with a dummy cow in the background during the Golden Jubilee celebration of VHP – a Hindu nationalist organization on December 20, 2014 in Kolkata, India. Photo: Arindam Banerjee.
In his presentation titled “The Idea of ‘People’ within the Domain of Authoritarian Populism in India,” Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu explored the philosophical and structural underpinnings of contemporary populism, focusing particularly on the Indian case. His talk was anchored around two central questions: (1) how to understand the rise of populism in India and its philosophical justification, and (2) what kind of alternative conception of “the people” can offer a revolutionary counterpoint to right-wing populism. Through this dual lens, Dr. Kundu aimed to bridge political theory—especially psychoanalytic and structuralist perspectives—with empirical developments in Indian democratic politics.
Dr. Kundu began by noting that, historically, critiques of democracy tended to originate from outside liberal democratic systems—for example, from traditional societies or cultural contexts resistant to liberal political models. However, the current wave of populism represents a distinctive internal critique of liberal democracy, emerging from within its own institutional and ideological frameworks. This shift marks populism as a transformative force, challenging not external impositions but the internal logic and practices of liberal democratic governance.
Focusing on India, Dr. Kundu traced the philosophical roots of populism’s rise to its opposition to Enlightenment-derived ideas of consciousness, rationality, and elite liberal politics. Liberalism and Marxism, he argued, have historically relied on “conscious” language and scientific outlooks to address complex social problems. In the Indian context, this was vividly visible in the 1970s and 1980s when many liberal elites—especially from prestigious institutions such as Jawaharlal Nehru University, St. Stephen’s College, Jadavpur University, and Presidency College—engaged in social outreach projects in rural areas. Their efforts, however, often failed because they approached communities with pre-formulated “scientific” solutions rather than through genuine dialogue. This failure, according to Dr. Kundu, reflected a broader disconnect between liberal political discourse and the emotional, affective, and unconscious dimensions of popular life.
Similarly, in the period leading up to 2014, the language and policies of India’s dominant liberal-progressive forces, notably the Congress Party, were insufficient to prevent the rise of right-wing populism. Dr. Kundu emphasized that Hindu nationalist forces were able to mobilize repressed emotional energies linked to long-standing issues such as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the abrogation of Article 370 concerning Kashmir, and debates over the Uniform Civil Code. These issues, though latent in the public consciousness, had been inadequately addressed by previous governments. Right-wing populists successfully activated these emotional reservoirs, enabling their rapid rise to power in 2014.
To make sense of this phenomenon, Dr. Kundu proposed a theoretical hypothesis grounded in Althusserian psychoanalysis. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, particularly the concepts of the unconscious elaborated by Freud (id, ego, and superego), he argued that populist leaders can be understood as symptomatic expressions of the id—the primal, instinctual component of the human psyche. Liberal and Marxist political traditions have largely ignored or repressed the role of unconscious elements such as desire, fantasy, sexuality, and instinct in the public domain. Populism, by contrast, taps into these unconscious forces, channeling them into political mobilization.
For Dr. Kundu, this psychoanalytic perspective allows for a more structural understanding of emotion in politics. Rather than treating emotions as irrational residues to be overcome through reason, he urged scholars to analyze how unconscious drives are structured and mobilized within political contexts. Authoritarian populism, in this view, thrives where liberalism fails to address or incorporate these unconscious dimensions into its political discourse.
Dr. Kundu also linked the rise of populism to structural inequalities in both economic and political domains. Liberalism’s inability to offer credible redistributive solutions has created fertile ground for right-wing mobilizations. He noted that discussions of redistribution in contemporary democracies have become narrowly focused on land reform, neglecting broader possibilities for income and resource redistribution suited to modern contexts. A renewed focus on redistribution, he suggested, is essential to constructing a progressive alternative to populism.
The second major component of Dr. Kundu’s presentation addressed the question of alternatives: what kind of “people” could function as a revolutionary subject capable of countering right-wing populism? Here he engaged with debates among left theorists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, who emphasized the political construction of “the people” as a central task of progressive politics. Dr. Kundu argued that in India—and indeed in many democracies—progressive forces have struggled to construct such a people. Their presence is often vibrant in student politics, gender activism, and issue-based mobilizations, but they have been unable to translate these energies into sustained electoral strength.
Dr. Kundu illustrated this point by referencing the case of Bernie Sanders in the United States. Sanders’ radical redistributive platform failed to secure the Democratic Party nomination twice, revealing a structural incompatibility between progressive redistribution and prevailing democratic politics. A similar gap exists in India, where progressive movements have not succeeded in transforming localized activism into a broad-based political subject capable of challenging Hindu nationalist hegemony.
Despite these challenges, Dr. Kundu identified signs of potential realignment in the 2024 Indian general election. He presented data from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) showing that the Congress Party increased its share of Dalit and Adivasi votes in 2024, reversing some of the gains made by the BJP in 2014 and 2019. Specifically, the BJP won 29 Scheduled Caste-reserved seats in 2024, down from 46 in 2019, while the Congress rose from 6 to 20 seats in the same category. The Congress also increased its national vote share from 16.7% in 2019 to 20.8% in 2024. Dr. Kundu interpreted these shifts as evidence that appeals to redistribution and social justice can resonate with marginalized groups, forming the basis for a counter-populist political alliance.
In his concluding reflections, Dr. Kundu reiterated that challenging authoritarian populism requires constructing alliances among marginalized and dispossessed groups—economically, culturally, and politically. The brief resurgence of center-left discourse in 2024 offers some grounds for cautious optimism. However, he emphasized that a durable alternative must address both structural inequalities and the unconscious dimensions of political subjectivity. Authoritarian populism has reshaped the notion of the political subject beyond universal, rationalist language; understanding and engaging with unconscious drives may be essential to forging new forms of democratic politics.
Overall, Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu’s presentation offered a theoretically rich and contextually grounded analysis of populism’s rise in India. By integrating psychoanalytic theory, structural political economy, and empirical electoral data, he illuminated both the sources of right-wing populism’s appeal and the formidable challenges facing progressive alternatives.
Dr. Samuel Ngozi Agu: ‘We, the People’: Rethinking Governance Through Bottom-Up Approaches
Street life and transportation in bustling, tropical Lagos, Nigeria. Photo: Dreamstime.
Due to unforeseen internet connectivity problems during the virtual panel, Dr. Samuel Ngozi Agu’s presentation could not be delivered live. Instead, this report provides a structured summary of his draft article titled “We, the People: Rethinking Governance through Bottom-Up Approaches,” capturing its key arguments, theoretical foundations, and policy recommendations.
The Crisis of Centralized Governance
Dr. Agu begins by interrogating the disjuncture between the ideals and practice of democracy. While democracy is often celebrated as governance “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” in practice, many democratic systems concentrate power at the center. This over-centralization alienates citizens from meaningful decision-making, erodes trust in institutions, and fuels social unrest.
Nigeria, his primary case study, exemplifies this paradox. After more than two decades of democratic rule, the country continues to struggle with corruption, inequality, and exclusionary governance structures. Mass movements such as #EndSARS, #OccupyNigeria, and #EndHardship reflect widespread frustration with a political system that privileges elite interests while sidelining the grassroots. These protests, Dr. Agu argues, are not isolated events but symptoms of a deeper crisis of representation.
To address this gap between citizens and the state, Dr. Agu proposes a shift toward bottom-up governance—an approach that places citizens and communities at the center of governance processes. By devolving decision-making authority, enhancing civic education, promoting community-based development, embracing digital democracy, and enacting inclusive legislative reforms, bottom-up governance can strengthen accountability, improve development outcomes, and restore democratic legitimacy.
Dr. Agu anchors his analysis in a combination of Participatory Governance Theory and Sustainable Development Theory, integrating insights from deliberative democracy and Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach. i) Participatory Governance Theory emphasizes that democracy requires more than periodic elections. Active citizen engagement in decision-making enhances legitimacy, trust, and policy effectiveness. Participation is not merely instrumental; it is constitutive of democracy itself, transforming citizens from passive recipients into co-producers of governance. ii) Sustainable Development Theory stresses that development is most durable when it is inclusive and participatory. Decisions that emerge from the grassroots better reflect local needs and ensure long-term stewardship of resources.
From this synthesis, Dr. Agu develops the Participation–Accountability–Development (PAD) Nexus, which posits that: Decentralization + Civic Engagement → Increased Participation → Strengthened Accountability → Improved Governance Outcomes → Sustainable Development.
This model links governance reforms directly to human flourishing, suggesting that bottom-up governance expands people’s capabilities to lead lives they value.
Bottom-Up Governance: Concept and Rationale
Dr. Agu defines bottom-up governance as a participatory system of administration in which power and authority originate from the grassroots rather than being imposed from above. In this model, citizens directly influence policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. Unlike the top-down model, which treats citizens as passive recipients of elite decisions, bottom-up governance positions them as active co-creators of development outcomes.
This approach reclaims the moral foundation of democracy by restoring to citizens both agency and authorship. It turns governance from “government for the people” into “government with the people,” fostering trust, curbing corruption, and ensuring that policies reflect real needs.
In the Nigerian context, persistent problems such as declining voter turnout, the rise of separatist agitations (e.g., IPOB, Niger Delta movements), and youth-led mobilizations highlight the urgent need for participatory governance rooted in local realities.
Linking Participatory Governance to Sustainable Development
Empirical evidence, Dr. Agu notes, shows a direct relationship between grassroots participation and improved governance outcomes. Nigeria’s Community Social Development Project (CSDP) provides a compelling example. Under this initiative, communities identify their priorities, plan projects, and oversee their implementation. The result has been more inclusive, transparent, and effective local development.
Globally, similar successes abound:
Brazil’s participatory budgeting has improved resource allocation and citizen trust.
Rwanda’s Vision 2020 leveraged community participation (via Umuganda and Imihigo) to drive development.
Uganda’s Local Government Act (1997) empowered rural councils to deliver essential services more efficiently.
These cases demonstrate that bottom-up governance enhances transparency, curbs corruption, and produces more sustainable development outcomes than centralized models.
Nigeria’s Governance Challenges and Social Movements
Dr. Agu situates Nigeria’s governance crisis within this framework. Despite democratic institutions, the country has failed to translate formal democracy into inclusive development. Voter turnout has plummeted from over 69% in 2003 to just 26.7% in 2023, reflecting widespread disillusionment with political elites.
Social movements have increasingly filled this participatory vacuum. #OccupyNigeria (2012) emerged in response to fuel subsidy removal; #EndSARS (2020) evolved from police brutality protests to broader demands for accountability; more recent protests highlight worsening economic hardship. Alongside these movements, separatist agitations and insurgencies reflect deep grievances over political exclusion and resource distribution.
For Dr. Agu, these developments underscore a structural failure of top-down governance. Without meaningful channels for citizen engagement, protests and unrest become the primary means of political expression.
Strategies for Implementing Bottom-Up Governance
Dr. Agu identifies five interlinked strategies to institutionalize participatory governance in Nigeria:
Decentralization: Strengthen local governance through constitutional reforms that devolve fiscal, administrative, and political powers to local authorities. Empower local governments with independent revenue sources and decision-making authority.
Civic Education: Integrate civic learning into educational curricula to cultivate active citizenship. Promote civil society–led public debates, town halls, and participatory forums to bridge citizen–state gaps.
Community-Based Development (CBD): Institutionalize CDD frameworks that prioritize local ownership, inclusivity, and accountability. Target marginalized groups (youth, women, people with disabilities) to ensure equitable participation.
Digital Democracy: Leverage technology for transparency and citizen engagement through participatory budgeting platforms, budget tracking tools, and open data initiatives. Invest in digital inclusion to ensure rural populations are not excluded.
Legislative Reforms: Enact laws mandating community representation in decision-making bodies. Strengthen anti-corruption frameworks and consider electoral reforms (e.g., proportional representation) to enhance inclusivity.
Reclaiming Democracy from Below
Dr. Agu concludes that achieving inclusive democracy and sustainable development in Nigeria requires a fundamental shift from elite-centered, top-down governance toward citizen-centered, bottom-up approaches.
Grassroots participation, underpinned by decentralization, civic education, community engagement, and digital innovation, can bridge the widening gap between state and society. This shift is not merely a policy alternative but a democratic imperative. By empowering citizens as co-authors of governance, Nigeria can foster political stability, social cohesion, and sustainable growth. Ultimately, as Dr. Agu emphasizes, the future of democracy depends on restoring the agency of “We, the People” and making governance a shared enterprise.
Dr. Mouli Bentman & Dr. Michael Dahan: ‘We, the People’: The Populist Subversion of a Universal Ideal
Israelis protest in Tel Aviv, Israel on July 18, 2023, against Netanyahu’s anti-democratic coup as a bill to erase judicial ‘reasonableness clause’ is expected to pass despite 27,676 reservations. Photo: Avivi Aharon.
Dr. Mouli Bentman and Dr. Michael Dahan delivered a jointly structured and intellectually rich presentation that explored how populist movements have appropriated the core language of democracy—particularly the notion of “the people”—to undermine liberal democratic institutions from within. Their central claim was both clear and unsettling: the rise of right-wing populism is not simply a matter of rhetorical manipulation but stems from deep-seated contradictions within liberal democracy itself. By tracing the intellectual genealogy of concepts like legitimacy and universality, and examining contemporary political developments in Israel, the speakers demonstrated how populists have weaponized democratic language to hollow out liberal democracy.
Dr. Bentman opened the presentation by focusing on the paradox at the heart of modern democracy. The phrase “We the People,” once celebrated as the most universal and inclusive expression of collective self-rule, has been turned upside down by populists. Rather than binding citizens across differences, it is now mobilized to divide society between an “authentic” people and its perceived enemies: corrupt elites, minorities, ideological adversaries, and liberal institutions. This shift, he argued, is not merely tactical—it reflects unresolved tensions within the liberal democratic project itself, particularly around questions of legitimacy, universality, and belonging.
To illustrate these tensions, Dr. Bentman offered a concise intellectual history. In the 17th and 18th centuries, debates over political legitimacy revolved around the source of authority. Conservatives grounded legitimacy in divine will, tradition, and natural hierarchy. Liberals, by contrast, rooted legitimacy in the individual—his rights, autonomy, and consent. Thinkers like John Locke argued that governments exist to protect natural rights—life, liberty, and property—while Jean-Jacques Rousseau located legitimacy in la volonté générale, the collective self-rule of the people. Out of this intellectual revolution emerged the liberal democratic order, promising universal rights and collective self-government.
Yet, as Dr. Bentman reminded the audience, critical thinkers from Karl Marx to Simone de Beauvoir exposed the limits of this liberal promise. Marx demonstrated how formal liberty meant little for the working class within a society structured by property and capital. Critical theorists such as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno highlighted the dominance of instrumental reason. Postcolonial and feminist thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Beauvoir revealed how liberalism often coexisted with colonialism, patriarchy, and structural violence. By the mid-20th century, figures like Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Judith Butler deepened the critique, showing how power was embedded not only in the state or capital but in knowledge systems, discourses, and identities themselves.
According to Dr. Bentman, these critiques were not intended to destroy liberal democracy but to deepen it—to expose hidden exclusions and move toward a more just and pluralistic order. However, they inadvertently opened a new political space. If universality had always been partial and exclusionary, could it ever truly include everyone? This unresolved question created an opening for the populist right. Traditionally defenders of hierarchy, the populist right seized upon liberalism’s self-critique, not to expand democracy but to hollow it out. By appropriating the language of postcolonialism, identity politics, and suspicion of elites, they reframed democratic institutions as tools of domination and presented themselves as the authentic voice of “the people.”
Dr. Bentman gave the example of American right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, who appropriated the language of decolonization to depict Christian Americans as the “colonized,” oppressed by secular liberal elites. Similarly, concepts like diversity are inverted to portray universities as discriminatory against conservatives, and the white middle class is recast as a marginalized group. This rhetorical reversal is emblematic of a broader global trend in which the tools of democratic critique are redeployed to legitimize exclusionary majoritarianism.
Dr. Michael Dahan then shifted the focus to Israel as a case study illustrating these dynamics with striking clarity. Ten years ago, Dr. Dahan noted, Israeli politics lacked clear populist parties. This has changed dramatically, particularly over the past two years. Today, two parties embody populist politics: Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) Party, led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, which espouses Jewish supremacism. Over two decades, the Israeli right has reframed liberal universalism as a mask for elite domination, elevating instead a narrow ethno-national identity of “the Jewish people” as the sole legitimate sovereign. Palestinians, Arab citizens, left-wing Israelis, and anyone not fully aligned with this project are cast outside the political community.
The events of October 7, 2023—when the state catastrophically failed to protect its citizens—might have been expected to trigger a profound legitimacy crisis. State security apparatuses, emergency services, and welfare systems all collapsed. Civil society—volunteers, NGOs, local authorities—filled the void, rescuing survivors and supporting displaced communities. Rather than acknowledging this, the government turned against these actors, accusing them of betrayal or complicity. Dr. Dahan interpreted this as a deliberate strategy: by delegitimizing alternative sources of solidarity, the state seeks to monopolize the definition of “the people.” This strategy demonstrates how populism not only survives institutional failure but actively feeds on it, having already replaced a universal civic “we” with an exclusionary ethno-national fiction.
Dr. Dahan then tied these developments to broader theoretical trends. Liberalism’s hold on universality has weakened. Critical theories that once sought to liberate have been hijacked. Foucault’s critique of power is misused to undermine expertise; Butler’s performativity is invoked to question democratic norms; postcolonial critiques justify nationalist withdrawal. Pluralism devolves into fragmentation, and fragmentation is weaponized to justify majoritarianism. Democracy is redefined not as a system of rights, deliberation, and checks, but as the unchecked rule of a self-defined majority.
In concluding, Dr. Bentman and Dr. Dahan argued that reclaiming universality is essential to countering these trends. Drawing on thinkers like John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and Hannah Arendt, they underscored that universality is not sameness, but the institutionalization of diversity under shared rules of fairness. “We the people” must mean all of us—not because we are identical, but because we commit to living together under a shared civic framework. Achieving this requires three strategies: (1) building deliberative infrastructures—citizen assemblies and participatory forums—to integrate diverse voices; (2) protecting civil society organizations from delegitimization; and (3) reinforcing constitutional and judicial safeguards to prevent majoritarian overreach.
Their presentation offered a powerful synthesis of political theory and contemporary politics, revealing how liberal democracy’s own internal critiques have become tools for its destabilization—and suggesting pathways to reclaim democratic universality in an era of resurgent populism.
Discussant’s Feedback:Associate Professor Abdelaaziz El Bakkali
Volunteers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Vijyadashmi festival, a large gathering or annual meeting during Ramanavami a Hindu festival in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh on October 19, 2018. Photo: Pradeep Gaurs.
In his role as discussant, Associate Professor Abdelaaziz El Bakkali offered an incisive and comprehensive reflection on the three presentations delivered during the panel. His intervention combined an overall thematic synthesis with targeted commentary on each presentation, situating the papers within broader scholarly debates on populism, democracy, and political participation.
Dr. El Bakkali highlighted that, taken together, the papers moved beyond superficial analyses of populist rhetoric to probe the philosophical, institutional, and psychological foundations that make the performance of “the people” both possible and potent. He noted a common thread: the mobilization of “the people” not as a pre-given democratic sovereign, but as a politically constructed entity, often instrumentalized by leaders who claim to act in the name of democracy while redefining its substance.
Turning to individual presentations, Dr. El Bakkali commended Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu’s examination of Hindu nationalism as a form of authoritarian populism in India. He observed that Dr. Kundu’s analysis effectively linked the rise of Hindutva populism to disillusionment with liberal democratic institutions, emphasizing the role of emotions and psychological factors in shaping populist subjectivities. Dr. Kundu’s argument that Hindutva is rooted less in formal political strategy than in emotional mobilization and cultural identity was, in Dr. El Bakkali’s view, compelling. However, he suggested several ways to sharpen the analysis:
First, the paper could focus more explicitly on emotion as a political technology—examining how populist leaders strategically use fear, pride, and resentment to define belonging and mobilize support. Second, incorporating empirical data, such as social media discourse or electoral mobilization, would ground the theoretical reflections more robustly. Third, linking the Indian case to global debates on post-truth politics and the psychology of populism could situate it within broader comparative frameworks, rather than treating it as a unique exception.
Despite these suggestions, Dr. El Bakkali described the presentation as “very interesting and rich,” highlighting its contribution to understanding the emotional and psychological underpinnings of contemporary populism.
Dr. El Bakkali then turned to Dr. Samuel Agu’s presentation, which he found both timely and significant, especially for the Global South. Dr. Agu’s argument centered on how top-down governance in Nigeria has produced alienation, corruption, and inequality, and how decentralization, civic education, community-based development, and digital democracy can offer participatory alternatives. While praising the clarity and relevance of the paper, Dr. El Bakkali cautioned against romanticizing grassroots governance as a moral corrective to elite domination. He noted that local participation can itself be entangled with control and clientelism, as local elites may capture power, reproduce inequalities, or create new patronage networks. He suggested that the paper address the risks of elite capture and local clientelism, drawing on evidence from Nigerian municipal politics to strengthen its critique.
He also posed two substantive questions: How can one distinguish between participatory democracy and populist mobilization, given that both claim to speak for “the people”? Why were Brazil and Uganda chosen as comparative cases, and how do their experiences differ from those of other Global South contexts?
Finally, Dr. El Bakkali discussed the paper by Dr. Mouli Bentman and Dr. Michael Dahan, which he found theoretically rich and thought-provoking. He agreed with their argument that populism’s redefinition of “We the People” reflects a deep crisis within liberal democracy, where inclusive universalist ideals have been weaponized to draw exclusionary boundaries between “true” citizens and outsiders. He noted that their paper reveals how populist discourse cannibalizes the Enlightenment’s universalist vocabulary, converting inclusion into exclusion through subtle linguistic strategies. He suggested that this point could be elaborated further. Additionally, he encouraged the authors to integrate non-Western perspectives to avoid reproducing Eurocentric narratives and to expand their discussion on the role of civic education and institutions in reconstructing inclusive forms of belonging beyond ideological polarization.
He concluded with two broad, thought-provoking questions: How can we reclaim the notion of “the people” without reproducing the exclusionary binaries on which populism thrives? Has the concept of “the people” outlived its democratic usefulness?
In conclusion, Dr. El Bakkali praised all three presenters for their illuminating and multifaceted contributions, noting that their work enriched the scholarly conversation on populism, belonging, and democratic governance. His feedback was both analytical and constructive, offering theoretical reflections, methodological suggestions, and comparative perspectives to deepen and sharpen each paper’s contribution.
Discussant’s Feedback: Dr. Azize Sargın
Discussant Dr. Azize Sargın delivered thoughtful and analytically sharp feedback on the three presentations, combining conceptual engagement with practical questions that encouraged further development of each paper. She began by expressing her gratitude to the panel organizers and commended all presenters, highlighting in particular the efforts of the African presenter for ensuring that his research was represented despite technical difficulties. She emphasized that all scholars should have equal opportunities to present their work, framing this as a broader academic responsibility to support inclusive scholarly participation.
Dr. Sargın first turned to Dr. Samuel Agu’s paper, acknowledging that although the presentation itself could not be delivered due to technical issues, the abstract offered a compelling entry point for discussion. She found the argument for bottom-up governance—emphasizing decentralization, civic education, and digital democracy—particularly persuasive.
However, she raised several important conceptual and practical questions for the author to consider in further developing the paper. First, she asked for a clearer definition of “bottom-up governance”: whether it refers primarily to institutional decentralization, or whether it encompasses a broader social process of civic empowerment. This conceptual clarification, she argued, is crucial for understanding how such governance might function in practice.
Second, she commended Agu’s linkage between participatory governance and sustainable development, calling it a “powerful claim” that bottom-up governance can foster inclusivity, stability, and growth. However, she encouraged the author to demonstrate more concretely how these dynamics would work in practice, ideally through specific mechanisms, policy examples, or empirical evidence drawn from Nigeria or other comparative cases.
Third, she suggested that the author consider the challenges to implementing bottom-up governance in Nigeria, asking whether these are primarily political, structural, or related to civic capacity. By addressing these challenges, the paper could offer a more nuanced and grounded account of how bottom-up approaches might be operationalized in real-world governance systems.
Turning to Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu’s presentation, Dr. Sargın praised the paper for its ambition and depth, especially in examining the conceptual and emotional dimensions of authoritarian populism within India’s contemporary political landscape. She highlighted the paper’s strength in linking the rise of Hindu nationalism to both the failures of liberal democratic institutions and the psychological and emotional undercurrents of Indian society, situating the discussion within the broader global crisis of liberal democracy.
She then offered several constructive reflections. First, she encouraged the author to clarify how these complex theoretical ideas would be operationalized—both methodologically and empirically. She suggested that clearly articulating how the politics of emotion is examined in the Indian context would strengthen the analytical coherence of the paper. Second, she raised an important comparative question: whether Hindu nationalist populism should be understood as a variant of global populism or as a distinct phenomenon rooted in India’s post-colonial and religious context. Finally, she expressed curiosity about the alternatives to populism that the paper hinted at. She asked whether these alternatives in the Indian context might involve a revival of liberal institutions, a grassroots democratic project, or a more radical reimagining of politics. These questions, she noted, could deepen the paper’s contribution to debates on authoritarian populism and democratic renewal.
Dr. Sargın concluded with reflections on Dr. Mouli Bentman and Dr. Michael Dahan’s paper, which she described as “very engaging and conceptually rich.” She highlighted the central argument that populism’s redefinition of “We the People” reflects not mere rhetorical manipulation but a deeper crisis within liberal democracy itself. This framing, she argued, is significant because it positions populism as a symptom rather than a distortion, prompting critical reflection on liberalism’s internal tensions.
She raised two key questions for the authors. First, does the crisis lie within liberalism’s theory of inclusion itself, or in how that theory has been institutionalized and practiced? Second, she asked whether their analysis is grounded in specific empirical contexts—such as particular populist movements in Western democracies—or whether it is meant as a globally applicable conceptual reflection. These questions, she suggested, could help clarify the scope and applicability of their arguments.
Dr. Sargın concluded by thanking all presenters for their contributions, noting that each paper tackled different dimensions of the panel’s central theme with intellectual rigor and originality. Her feedback was structured, probing, and constructive, encouraging the presenters to strengthen conceptual clarity, operationalize their claims empirically, and engage with broader theoretical debates.
Presenter’s Response: Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu
Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu delivered a thoughtful and philosophically grounded response to the comments and suggestions raised by the discussants. His reply offered both clarifications on theoretical positioning and elaborations on how his analysis engages with the emotional and structural dimensions of authoritarian populism in India, as well as reflections on alternative democratic imaginaries.
Dr. Kundu began by thanking Dr. El Bakkali for his constructive suggestions, emphasizing that they aligned closely with aspects he had already sought to highlight in his presentation. In particular, he welcomed the suggestion to further develop the analysis of emotion as a political technology—that is, the ways in which political leaders deploy pride, belonging, and resentment to shape collective identities and mobilize political support. This, he noted, was already a central thread of his argument, and he plans to strengthen this dimension further.
He also acknowledged the importance of incorporating empirical data, such as social media discourse and electoral mobilization strategies, to ground the theoretical reflections. In addition, he agreed that linking the Indian case more explicitly to global debates on post-truth politics and the psychology of populism would situate his work within broader comparative discussions, enhancing its analytical reach.
Responding to Dr. Sargın’s question on the operationalization of his theoretical framework, Dr. Kundu provided an extended explanation of how his work positions emotion within political theory. He observed that modern political philosophy has historically privileged reason over emotion, a hierarchy that can be traced back to Enlightenment thought and its liberal humanist legacy. Both liberalism and Marxism, he argued, have been shaped by this rationalist orientation—liberalism through its focus on institutional reason, and Marxism through its claim to be a “scientific” critique of capitalism.
Dr. Kundu explained that his project seeks to theorize emotion not as the opposite of reason but as an integral dimension of political subjectivity and mobilization. Drawing on Althusser’s post-Marxist intervention, he highlighted how Althusser linked ideology to the unconscious, thus opening a conceptual space where desire, fantasy, and affect become central to understanding political dynamics. By situating ideology within the unconscious, Althusser challenges the dominance of rationalist frameworks and reveals how structures of feeling shape political identification.
For Dr. Kundu, this perspective is essential for understanding the rise of Hindutva nationalism in India after 2014. Hindu nationalist movements, he argued, have strategically mobilized affective sentiments tied to religious identity, historical narratives, and collective grievances. Issues such as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the Uniform Civil Code, and the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir tapped into deep-seated emotional reservoirs and historical resentments. Progressive parties, including the Indian National Congress, largely failed to address or mobilize these sentiments substantively, allowing Hindu nationalist forces to harness and redirect these affective energies for electoral gain.
By bringing psychoanalytic and structural perspectives into the analysis, Dr. Kundu aims to provide a richer theoretical account of how populist movements shape political subjectivities and construct “the people” through emotional infrastructures, rather than merely through rational discourse or institutional politics.
Addressing Dr. Sargın’s question regarding alternative democratic imaginaries, Dr. Kundu clarified that his notion of an “alternative people” refers to social groups and communities marginalized by existing structural logics—political, cultural, and social. In the Indian context, this primarily includes lower-caste communities, whose experiences of marginalization parallel those of racial minorities in other societies. He argued that any democratic reimagining must begin with these dispossessed groups, whose historical exclusion provides the basis for a more inclusive conception of “the people.”
Central to this reimagining is the principle of redistribution. Dr. Kundu stressed that redistribution should not be understood narrowly as land reform but as encompassing the redistribution of income, resources, and welfare benefits. He pointed to the 2024 general elections in India, where the Congress Party and opposition forces effectively mobilized redistributive politics to gain support among marginalized communities. He argued that reviving redistribution as a central political principle is essential for countering the affective and cultural narratives mobilized by populist movements, thereby addressing both material inequalities and symbolic exclusions.
Dr. Kundu concluded by reaffirming his commitment to integrating the discussants’ feedback into his ongoing research. He intends to deepen the empirical base, clarify conceptual frameworks, and further elaborate the normative and strategic implications of his work. His response underscored the theoretical ambition of situating emotional dynamics at the center of political analysis, while also engaging with the practical stakes of democratic politics in contemporary India.
Presenters’ Response: Dr. Mouli Bentman and Dr. Michael Dahan
Protests against judicial reform and religious coercion in Israel. Photo: Dreamstime.
Dr. Mouli Bentman and Dr. Michael Dahan offered a thoughtful and layered response to the feedback raised by the discussants on their joint presentation examining the populist subversion of the universalist ideal encapsulated in the phrase “We the People.” Their response addressed theoretical, methodological, and contextual questions, while also extending the discussion to the role of technology and the current crises of liberalism.
Dr. Bentman began by addressing Dr. El Bakkali’s observation that their paper relied primarily on European political theory, without engaging with non-European perspectives. He candidly acknowledged this as both a limitation and an opportunity. He noted that, as a scholar raised in a context that “pretends to be part of Europe while geographically located in Western Asia,” he had not developed expertise in non-European political philosophies. However, he agreed that integrating non-Western intellectual traditions could enrich the analysis, offering alternative conceptual vocabularies and historical experiences that may shed new light on populist transformations. He expressed genuine interest in pursuing this line of inquiry in future research, acknowledging the validity and importance of the comment.
Dr. Bentman then turned to the core theoretical question raised by both Dr. El Bakkali and Dr. Sargın: whether liberalism can be reconstituted to meet contemporary challenges, or whether it is in a terminal phase. Drawing a provocative historical analogy, he compared the current crisis of liberalism to the crisis of monarchy in the 16th and 17th centuries. Just as monarchies lost their legitimacy when they could no longer command the consent of their subjects, Dr. Bentman argued that liberalism today faces a legitimacy deficit. It struggles to convince citizens that its institutions and principles still offer a viable framework for collective life.
From his perspective, populism represents not an endpoint but a transitional phase, a political and ideological interregnum between the decline of liberalism as the hegemonic model and the emergence of whatever may replace it—whether a renewed form of liberalism or new authoritarian formations. He expressed doubts about whether liberalism can fully recover but left open the possibility of a “Liberalism 2.0,” contingent on liberal thought and institutions recognizing their limitations, reopening themselves to pluralism, and reclaiming political strength without ceding ground to populist forces.
Dr. Bentman pointed to contemporary political dynamics in Europe as illustrative. For example, in France, the collapse of centrist parties has led to unstable coalitions between radical right and left forces. Similar patterns, he observed, are visible across Europe, the United States, Israel, and India. These developments signal the erosion of liberalism’s institutional backbone—a challenge that demands both theoretical innovation and political reorganization.
Methodologically, Dr. Bentman emphasized that their project seeks to bridge political theory with empirical analysis, especially data on trust and legitimacy in democratic institutions. This dual approach is designed to ensure that the philosophical arguments remain grounded in political realities.
Dr. Michael Dahan supplemented Dr. Bentman’s remarks by addressing Dr. El Bakkali’s point on technology. Drawing on his background in technology and internet studies, Dr. Dahan clarified that the role of digital media in their analysis is not deterministic but catalytic. He described technology as functioning like a “chemical catalyst” in political processes—amplifying and accelerating underlying social and political dynamics rather than creating them outright.
In particular, new media platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram play a critical role in disseminating populist rhetoric, often more so than visible public platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Their encrypted, closed-network nature makes them harder to monitor and analyze, but their role in embedding populist narratives in everyday communication is substantial. Dr. Dahan underscored that understanding these dynamics is crucial for any analysis of contemporary populist movements.
Dr. Dahan then turned to what he described as the “elephant in the room”: the mobilization of Jewish supremacist rhetoric and historical imaginaries in Israel. He argued that framing the October 7th attacks as a “second Holocaust” played a decisive role in enabling populist rhetoric to feed and justify acts of mass violence, including widespread participation in the war on Gaza. This, he suggested, illustrates how populist discourses can appropriate historical traumas and collective identities to mobilize support for exclusionary and violent political projects.
The presenters’ reply demonstrated an openness to critical feedback and a willingness to expand their analytical framework. They acknowledged gaps (particularly regarding non-European perspectives), clarified their theoretical stance on the crisis of liberalism, and highlighted the catalytic role of technology and identity narratives in contemporary populist politics. Their response situated their work at the intersection of political theory, empirical analysis, and contemporary political developments, reinforcing the paper’s relevance to ongoing debates about populism, democracy, and liberalism’s future.
Q&A Session
The Q&A session opened with a conceptually rich question from Dr. Bülent Keneş, directed to Dr. Mouli Bentman and Dr. Michael Dahan, which probed the historical and normative tension between pluralism, polarization, and national unity. Referring to the presentation’s guiding motto—“People — Once united, now divided”—Dr. Keneş observed that calls for a “united people” often carry nostalgic undertones, yet history reveals that such unity has frequently been mobilized by fascist and authoritarian movements to suppress pluralism in the name of a singular, homogenous “people.” His question centered on three key points: How should we interpret the contemporary tension between pluralism, which sustains democratic contestation, and polarization, which turns difference into entrenched enmity? To what extent does the longing for a “united people” risk reviving homogenizing impulses that undermine liberal democratic pluralism? What might constitute the optimal balance between pluralism, polarization, and unity in a healthy democracy?
Dr. Dahan began by reflecting on the constructed nature of “the people,” drawing on political theory and comparative examples. He emphasized that “the people” is always imagined—whether as an ethno-national entity or as a pluralist civic collective. Nations, from Czechs to Turks to Serbs, are imagined communities, and the content of this imagination determines whether “the people” is inclusive or exclusionary.
If this imagined construct is filled with pluralist values and a multifaceted vision, democratic contestation can thrive without descending into authoritarianism. However, if the construct is defined in ethno-nationalist terms, history shows that societies eventually devolve toward exclusionary or authoritarian structures. This, he cautioned, is a “very dangerous slope” that has been observed across historical and contemporary contexts.
Dr. Dahan illustrated this tension through American historical imaginaries of “We, the People.” While the ideal was articulated as multifaceted and inclusive, its realization has always been contingent on institutional arrangements. He underscored that the key to achieving pluralist unity lies in building and maintaining institutions that can embody this inclusive vision and in ensuring that public trust in these institutions remains strong.
He cited Canada’s constitutional framework as a partial example of this attempt. Through a multicultural constitutional vision, Canada sought to establish an institutional basis for inclusive belonging. While not perfect—racism and nationalist sentiments persist—Canada demonstrates that institutional design matters in mediating between pluralism and unity.
Importantly, Dr. Dahan noted that political culture and historical trajectories shape how these tensions play out. Countries in Eastern Europe, for example, followed different democratic transitions depending on their political histories, demonstrating that no universal template exists. Any attempt to balance pluralism and unity must therefore take local political cultures seriously.
He concluded by invoking his own hybrid identity as a Moroccan Jew with an American accent to illustrate how multifaceted identities complicate ethno-national definitions of “the people” and point toward the need for inclusive imaginaries in diverse societies.
Dr. Bentman expanded on these themes by examining the conceptual duality of “we” in political thought. He argued that both liberalism and fascism mobilize “we,” but in fundamentally different ways. In liberal thought, “we” refers to individuals choosing to live together, either literally or metaphorically, under shared civic rules. In fascist and authoritarian conceptions, “we” refers to an organic national or racial body, something that transcends voluntary association and instead invokes essentialized cultural or racial unity.
Dr. Bentman observed that the founding liberal “we”—as in the American constitutional moment—was itself exclusive, excluding Black people, women, and many minorities. Over time, liberalism expanded the circle of inclusion. However, he argued that inclusion alone proved insufficient. Inviting marginalized groups into a structure designed for a dominant cultural model revealed deeper structural limitations. As societies became more plural, structural and cultural incompatibilities surfaced, contributing to today’s democratic crises.
He noted that contemporary right-wing actors are not necessarily openly fascist, but they appropriate liberal language—individualism, democracy, rights—strategically, blending it with exclusionary identity politics. This hybrid rhetoric allows them to appeal to citizens without explicitly disavowing democratic norms, making their challenge more insidious.
Dr. Bentman drew historical analogies to moments of deep political transformation, such as the 17th-century crisis of monarchy, when political theory (Hobbes, Locke) and institutional innovation (constitutional monarchy) developed in tandem. By contrast, today, he argued, there is a disconnect between political theory and political practice: political scientists and philosophers have not yet articulated a compelling new framework to address the current crisis, while the radical right has developed a coherent and widely disseminated intellectual infrastructure—often outside traditional academia—that is effectively reshaping political imaginaries.
Dr. Bentman concluded by stressing that liberal democracies face a conceptual and political struggle to articulate a renewed vision of pluralist unity. Without such a vision, the political ground may increasingly be ceded to exclusionary movements.
Dr. Azize Sargın raised an incisive theoretical question regarding the concept of the “revolutionary subject” in Dr. Shiveshwar Kundu’s presentation on authoritarian populism in India. Specifically, she asked whether the meaning and role of the revolutionary subject differ across contexts, such as between India and Western Europe, and how this concept might be contextually adapted in different socio-political settings.
In his response, Dr. Kundu affirmed that the notion of the “revolutionary subject” is deeply contextual and contingent upon local socio-political cultures. Drawing on the Indian case, he argued that the revolutionary subject comprises the dispossessed and marginalized communities—including Dalits, Adivasis, minorities, women, and other groups excluded from the country’s dominant economic and political narratives. These groups, he explained, are structurally positioned outside the logic of capital and have been systematically marginalized from India’s celebrated “growth story.”
Dr. Kundu emphasized that progressive political forces must engage with these groups if they wish to effectively counter the rise of right-wing populism. He argued that while right-wing populist movements possess strong cultural and nationalist narratives, they lack a coherent economic theory. This absence makes them vulnerable when confronted with structural questions of inequality. For Dr. Kundu, “redistribution” represents the key political discourse capable of challenging the entrenched structures—whether they be economic systems, caste hierarchies, patriarchal relations, or racial discrimination—that sustain inequality.
By centering redistribution, progressive movements can articulate a vision of economic and social justice that mobilizes marginalized groups as active political agents. Dr. Kundu concluded by agreeing with Dr. Sargın’s premise: the definition and composition of the revolutionary subject will vary across different contexts—shaped by specific historical, social, and political circumstances in each society.
Concluding Remarks by Professor Oscar Mazzoleni
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni closed the session with a set of thoughtful reflections that synthesized the key themes of the day’s discussion. He identified two central issues that framed the debate: 1) The hijacking of “the people” by populist movements, particularly those on the right and of an authoritarian character, which often deploy a top-down vision to construct an exclusionary notion of belonging. 2) The democratic responses from below, emphasizing bottom-up strategies, the role of civil society, the defense of pluralism and individual rights, and the promotion of an inclusionary political vision.
Prof. Mazzoleni highlighted the dual nature of populism as both a strategic political project—seeking to mobilize identity and belonging—and a symptom of deeper structural crises within liberal democracies. To understand the global success of populist movements, he argued, it is crucial to analyze three interrelated dimensions:
Rule of Law: Populist movements exploit weaknesses and contradictions within democratic legal systems. While the rule of law embodies universal principles such as pluralism and respect for others, its local variations and inconsistent application create vulnerabilities that populists capitalize on.
Territory and Borders: Questions of belonging are inseparable from territorial and border politics. Defining “who belongs” involves not only political conflict but also emotional dynamics and, in some contexts, war. Borders shape identities and collective imaginaries, becoming a key arena for populist mobilization.
Globalization and Neoliberalism: The neoliberal transformation has not merely reduced the role of the state but has reshaped cultural attitudes, placing competition—both between individuals and between nations—at the core of social relations. This has produced new uncertainties and a heightened desire for belonging, which right-wing populists have adeptly exploited.
According to Prof. Mazzoleni, populist movements thrive by tapping into these tensions, positioning “the people” against democracy, the rule of law, and pluralistic communities. Polarization and hate have emerged as dominant political emotions, deepening democratic fractures. While acknowledging the gravity of these challenges, Prof. Mazzoleni concluded with a measured pessimism: understanding these dynamics clearly is a necessary starting point for rebuilding hope and formulating effective democratic responses in the future.
Overall Conclusion
The fourth session of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series offered a rich and multi-layered examination of how “the people” is constructed, mobilized, and contested across diverse political contexts. Bringing together perspectives from Nigeria, India and Israel, the session illuminated the dual role of “the people” as both a democratic resource and a political instrument leveraged to legitimize exclusionary projects. Throughout the discussions, three interrelated themes emerged.
First, the conceptual construction of “the people” remains central to both democratic renewal and authoritarian subversion. As shown in the presentations, populist actors strategically deploy affective, cultural, and institutional mechanisms to redefine “the people” in exclusionary ways, often by appropriating liberal democratic language itself.
Second, structural dynamics—legal, territorial, and economic—shape the political uses of “the people.” Populist movements thrive where the rule of law is inconsistently applied, where borders and belonging are contested, and where neoliberal globalization has generated competition, insecurity, and a search for identity. These structural tensions are not peripheral but fundamental to understanding contemporary populism.
Third, the responses to populist constructions of “the people” must engage both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. While populism often advances through centralized, leader-driven narratives, democratic resilience depends on revitalizing participatory governance, reinforcing pluralist institutions, and fostering inclusive imaginaries that bridge rather than deepen divisions.
The interplay of theoretical reflections, empirical insights, and comparative perspectives generated a vibrant interdisciplinary dialogue. Presenters offered innovative analyses of participatory governance, psychoanalytic approaches to populism, and the subversion of universalist ideals. Discussants sharpened these contributions through methodological and conceptual critiques, while the Q&A underscored the urgency of rethinking pluralism, polarization, and unity in fractured democracies.
As Professor Oscar Mazzoleni emphasized in his concluding remarks, understanding populism as both a strategic project and a symptom of structural crises is essential for formulating effective democratic responses. This session thus laid a strong foundation for continued interdisciplinary engagement on how “the people” is performed and politicized in the 21st century.
In an in-depth interview with the ECPS, Bruce E. Cain—Professor of Political Science at Stanford University—analyzes how Donald Trump has reshaped the Republican Party and advanced classical authoritarian strategies. “There’s no question that, whether by instinct or by deliberate strategy, Trump is playing the classical authoritarian game,” Professor Cain asserts. He situates Trumpism within long-term demographic, institutional, and ideological shifts while underscoring Trump’s unique use of crisis narratives, bullying tactics, and federal coercion. Professor Cain also warns that Trumpism has exploited structural weaknesses in party regulation, executive power, and campaign finance, stressing the urgency of reinforcing democratic guardrails to prevent lasting authoritarian consolidation.
In a wide-ranging and incisive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Bruce E. Cain—Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West—offers a penetrating analysis of how Donald Trump’s leadership has reshaped the Republican Party and pushed American politics toward classical authoritarian strategies. “There’s no question that, whether by instinct or by deliberate strategy, Trump is playing the classical authoritarian game,” Professor Cain observes. “There’s no doubt that’s what he’s trying to do. It suits the way he has run his companies, and it suits the kinds of leaders he admires in other countries. He’s essentially following in their footsteps.”
Professor Cain situates Trumpism within broader structural transformations of American politics, emphasizing long-term demographic, geographic, and institutional shifts that made Trump’s rise possible. He points to “social sorting” and “party sorting” since the 1960s, along with growing racial diversity and economic inequality, as crucial background conditions. These shifts, he argues, preceded Trump and “made his rise possible,” even as his “adroit use of social media” and personal brand amplified their impact.
Central to Professor Cain’s analysis is Trump’s deliberate exploitation of crisis narratives and authoritarian tactics. Reflecting on Trump’s response to crises such as the Charlie Kirk assassination, Professor Cain notes that “Trump is playing the classical authoritarian game” and has escalated his reliance on bullying tactics compared to his first term. He highlights Trump’s willingness to deploy federal forces in Democratic-run cities, calling it “very disturbing and very unusual,” and likens it to the EU sending troops into member states to enforce policy—an action that violates deeply held American principles of state sovereignty.
Professor Cain also examines the evolving coalition underpinning the contemporary Republican Party. He underscores the critical role of the MAGA base, describing it as “maybe, at best, 40%, but more likely 30% of the Republican Party’s support,” driven in part by cultural grievance politics and white nationalist narratives. Yet, he stresses the uneasy alliance between this base and more traditional Republicans, warning of internal tensions that could shape future elections.
Institutionally, Professor Cain warns that Trumpism has both exploited and accelerated structural weaknesses in the American political system—from the weakening of party authority and campaign finance regulation to the expansion of executive power. He cautions that if the Supreme Court legitimizes Trump’s expansive claims of emergency powers and unilateral action, “it’ll be monkey see, monkey do,” with Democrats following suit—leading to instability and democratic erosion.
Professor Cain concludes by emphasizing the urgency of shoring up democratic guardrails, particularly regarding executive power, emergency provisions, and the role of the courts. His analysis offers a sobering reminder that while Trump may be unique, the authoritarian strategies he has deployed are embedded within deeper institutional vulnerabilities that will persist beyond his presidency.
Bruce E. Cain is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Bruce Cain, revised for clarity and flow.
How Demography and Party Sorting Paved the Way for Trump
Professor Cain, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Many scholars locate the transformation of the American Right within long-term structural changes dating back to the 1970s—such as realignments in race, region, and party organization—while others highlight the Trump and MAGA era as a moment of acute disruption. How do you conceptually distinguish between these deeper ideological and institutional evolutions and the more contingent, charismatic, and stylistic ruptures introduced by Trump?
Professor Bruce Cain: This is a really important point that you’re making. Because Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the conversation, people tend to think that everything has to do with Trump himself—his personality and his adroit use of social media. But it’s crucial to emphasize that there were larger demographic and political trends behind Trumpism.
Because the list is very long, I’ll focus on a couple that are particularly important. One is what we call social sorting. America is a very mobile society, and because of this mobility, many states—as well as rural and urban areas—have come to reflect the partisan makeup of different parties. We now have heavily Democratic urban areas and heavily Republican rural areas. This is partly enabled by the fact that people tend to move into neighborhoods with others who are like themselves. As a result, you get social sorting that reinforces what happens online, where people similarly find their way into virtual communities that mirror their own demographics.
The second is party sorting, as we describe it in political science. Party coalitions underwent a sorting process beginning in the 1960s and 1970s with the signing of civil rights legislation. From that period forward, the Democratic Party—which had been a coalition of liberal elites in blue areas and, if you like, very conservative, racially conservative Southern Democrats—broke apart. Essentially, the social conservatives, and racial conservatives in particular, moved to the Republican Party, while liberal Republicans shifted to the Democratic Party.
As a result, the parties—rather than remaining more heterogeneous and containing internal breaks within their coalitional structures—became more ideologically consistent along lines of social and political liberalism versus conservatism.
Then there are factors outside the political process per se, though they are partly the result of policies we passed. One is the incredible rise in inequality, largely based on education, as the American economy became increasingly service-oriented and high-tech. Another is the change in immigration policies during the Civil Rights era, which opened the country to groups from all over the world and increased the racial diversity of the United States. That trend continues, partly because once immigrant groups arrive, they tend to have higher birth rates; even if immigration were to be curtailed, diversity would still grow.
Finally, there are the residual racial tensions from the earlier period, particularly around African Americans and, to some extent, Latinos. So yes, Trump made things worse—but crucially, there were demographic and political trends that preceded him and made his rise possible.
Grievance Politics and the New Republican Base
The contemporary Republican coalition increasingly rests on rural, white, non-college-educated constituencies mobilized through identity-based appeals rather than policy commitments. How has this demographic and geographic consolidation reshaped the movement’s ideological core, and to what extent has the strategic shift toward cultural grievance politics weakened traditional party mediation and fostered extra-institutional ecosystems like the alt-right and online mobilization networks?
Professor Bruce Cain: Yes, and again, this is another one of these underlying trends that really is so critical. I’m an old man, and when I was growing up, there was more of a working-class versus non-working-class managerial divide in American politics. Today, it’s much more college-educated versus not college-educated. The problem for the Democratic Party is that, while there are a large number of college-educated people in the United States, the percent of people who’ve graduated from college is about 37%, and those who do not have a college education make up about 60%.
What that means is that, as we moved away from manufacturing, particularly in the middle of the country, we were taking a whole bunch of jobs—union jobs and well-paying non-white-collar jobs—and giving them over to other countries. Our free trade policies were undermining not only the economic basis of the middle of the country but also that of blue-collar workers throughout the United States.
I believe one element of this is just the anger about downward social mobility on the part of people who do not have a university education. But you also mentioned, and I think it’s right to say, that there’s been a shift in terms of cultural grievance. Part of it is that, along with the economic downward mobility, comes social and political loss of power and loss of status, and that certainly contributes to the grievance that you’re talking about.
But there was also the fact that the court got way out ahead on abortion policy and took it away from the states, nationalizing a policy I tend to agree with, but nonetheless, many Catholics and many fundamentalist Protestant groups don’t agree with, which is the right to abortion. Abortion really played a major role, on top of the racial divisions, in creating a divide between the Democratic and Republican Party.
So, yes, absolutely, I think grievance politics is now a very important part of what we’re talking about here.
Typical cold winter scene in the Rust Belt city of Cleveland, Ohio, with a steel mill in the background. Photo: Dreamstime.
Harnessing Crises for Authoritarian Ends
Trump’s response to events such as the Charlie Kirk assassination reveals how crises can be harnessed to justify extraordinary measures. How would you situate Trump’s use of crisis narratives within classical authoritarian playbooks—such as “Reichstag fire” strategies—and do you see this as a deliberate authoritarian project or an improvisational charismatic populism that nonetheless has authoritarian consequences?
Professor Bruce Cain: That involves psychoanalyzing Mr. Trump, which unfortunately I can’t do. I think some of it is absolutely a deliberate strategy, but some of it is simply that this is not a man who controls his emotions very well. And perhaps, if he follows the path of his father into dementia, we may see more of this kind of emotional rollercoaster, because that’s one of the features of dementia. So, believe me, we’re worried about that in the United States.
There’s no question that, whether by instinct or by deliberate strategy, Trump is playing the classical authoritarian game. There’s no doubt that’s what he’s trying to do. It suits the way he has run his companies, and it suits the kinds of leaders he admires in other countries. He’s essentially following in their footsteps.
But I will say this: so far, he is tracking other presidents—the three presidential administrations, including Trump One—in terms of his popularity with the public. His numbers have been dropping; he’s now at about 41% favorability, which is where he was during Trump One, when he suffered a major setback in the by-election that followed his 2016 victory.
There are also many more courts now, particularly below the Supreme Court level, that are blocking his attempts to implement authoritarian measures, whether involving the use of troops or emergency clauses. Admittedly, we still have to wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in on these matters, but it seems the Court is waiting to hear from many of the district and appellate courts. If I were the Trump administration, I would suspect he’s going to lose a fair number of these cases.
Then, of course, the press corps are increasingly angry with him. Most recently, when the Defense Department tried to get journalists to sign pledges not to use leaked information, virtually the entire press—including the right-wing press—rejected the move.
So, yes, there’s no question that he wants to play the authoritarian playbook. The question is whether that’s actually possible in the United States, even in these very divided times.
Trump’s Legacy and the Institutionalization of MAGA
Do you view the MAGA movement as populism evolving toward a stable authoritarian formation, potentially institutionalized through mechanisms like Project 2025, or as a personalist phenomenon tied to Trump’s leadership that may dissipate with his exit? What institutional or cultural legacies do you expect to persist beyond his tenure?
Professor Bruce Cain: Again, it’s a mix. You can’t take Trump out of the equation. His ability to use social media, the fact that he is a self-financed candidate who was able to launch his campaign with his own money, and his status as a TV star on a show that portrayed him as a strong business leader—even if we think that image was fake—all of these factors mattered. It’s not clear that anyone else could have brought all those elements together, so there is a unique dimension to Trump in that regard.
But the reality is that there was a base composed of people who were unhappy about many of the social issues we’ve been discussing and people who were experiencing downward mobility. There was always the potential to mobilize this base, which we now call the Make America Great Again base, or MAGA base. That base is a critical part of the equation, and it likely won’t disappear, even if Trump decides not to contest the next presidential election because he believes he can run a third time. The Constitution says no. But the MAGA base will remain, no matter what happens to Trump.
Another issue we face is the extremely close contestation between the two parties. Many of our most stable periods have occurred when one party held clear dominance. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was the Democratic Party; during the Reagan years, it was the Republican Party. Today, neither party has a firm grip, which means we’re likely to see a lot of back-and-forth, closely contested elections. This dynamic creates opportunities for mischief, as both sides try to extract tactical and strategic advantages from the system.
So yes, much of this will endure even after Trump moves on. But Trump brings a unique element to the equation—one that I don’t see anyone else in the Republican Party being able to duplicate.
Militarizing Politics: A Break with American Norms
46th US Presidential Inauguration in Washington, D.C. — Held on January 20, 2021, under heightened security following the January 6 insurrection. Public access was restricted, and 25,000 National Guard troops were deployed around the US Capitol. Photo: Dreamstime.
Trump’s willingness to deploy more National Guard in major Democratic-run cities raises questions about federal coercion, politicization of armed forces, and the subversion of local democratic autonomy. How might such measures operate within an authoritarian power-consolidation strategy, particularly in delegitimizing urban, racially diverse political centers framed as “internal enemies”?
Professor Bruce Cain: We’re worried about that. There’s no question that what’s different about Trump is his attempt to incite division rather than suppress or mediate it, along with his use of extra-controversial methods—going around the rules in dubious ways—and waiting for the courts to slap his hand. The courts, of course, are very deliberate; they will examine these matters carefully before making decisions that will shape the future.
This is what’s troubling. Compared to Trump One, there is much more bullying. There was always a bullying element in Trump One, but he has really taken that a step further. He’s now extending it into the states, which is a major violation of American political norms. It would be the equivalent of the EU entering Spain, France, and other European countries and deploying military forces to enforce EU policies.
In the United States, we believe that states have sovereign powers over areas such as education, policing, fire services, and other local affairs. For Trump to coerce at that level is both disturbing and highly unusual. I believe it will ultimately be struck down by the courts, but it will take time before these issues are fully litigated.
DEI Backlash and the Toleration of Extremism
“White replacement” and “white genocide” conspiracies have become central to far-right mobilization. How integral are these narratives to sustaining the contemporary Republican coalition, and how do they interact with institutional party strategies versus grassroots extremist currents?
Professor Bruce Cain: For the MAGA base, these narratives are absolutely essential. The MAGA base constitutes, at best, around 40%, but more likely closer to 30% of the Republican Party’s support. I don’t believe that the white replacement and white genocide conspiracies are significantly influencing traditional Republicans. What may resonate with them, however, is concern over what they perceive as overly zealous efforts to implement Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But that doesn’t mean they’ve embraced white nationalism.
The Republican Party should be seen as a coalition between those who believe in the white nationalist agenda that Trump is promoting and traditional Republicans who supported him for tax cuts and regulatory relief. Many in the latter group were willing to tolerate the former, using perceived DEI overreach as a justification for accommodating the white nationalist wing of the party.
As a result, these groups exist in an uneasy coalition within the Republican Party. However, I don’t believe the party as a whole is fully aligned with the MAGA agenda on this issue.
The Secular Strongman of a Sacred Cause
A Trump flag waves at a pier on Coden Beach in Coden, Alabama, on June 9, 2024. The flag bears the slogan, “Jesus is my Savior. Trump is my President.” Photo: Carmen K. Sisson.
The intensified fusion of evangelical Christianity and Republican politics under Trump has transformed the political theology of the Right. How has this religious alignment shaped authoritarian tendencies, policy radicalization, and the sacralization of political conflict?
Professor Bruce Cain: The secular–religious divide in America has deepened over the lifetime of many of us. Those of us who were boomers and grew up in the 1960s and 1970s remember a time when the Democratic Party, under Carter, for example, had an evangelical wing. The abortion issue and subsequent legal decisions created a separation, and George Bush Jr. then brought more evangelicals over to the Republican side.
Trump is not a religious man. He pretends to be, but I don’t think anyone seriously believes he is a pious human being. It is striking that perhaps one of the most secular and morally compromised figures imaginable has become the leader of the religious right. But they view him much like someone views their divorce lawyer: they don’t care about the lawyer’s personal morality as long as they get the divorce.
Trump functions in the same way. They know he’s not a decent person, but they appreciate that he stands up for them, and they overlook the fact that he is anything but a religious man himself.
Strategic Ambiguity on White Nationalism
Republican elites have alternated between embracing and distancing themselves from alt-right and white supremacist movements. How should we interpret this oscillation—tactical ambiguity, strategic co-optation, or deeper ideological convergence?
Professor Bruce Cain: I don’t think it’s completely resolved how far they’re willing to go with this sort of white nationalism. I know too many educated Republicans who don’t share that perspective. For example, at Stanford, one of the most powerful people on campus is the head of the Hoover Institute, Condoleezza “Condi” Rice, an African-American woman who is widely respected. She certainly doesn’t tolerate white supremacist beliefs.
So, it’s an uneasy alliance, and as I mentioned before, it’s justified for the time being because there’s a belief that Democrats went a little too far in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, and that affirmative action went too far as well—leading some to feel that fairness has been denied in the present to redress past injustices.
There’s a clear distinction between Republican skepticism about DEI and outright supremacist thinking. It’s really a small part of the base that genuinely holds those extremist views. This makes for an uneasy coalition, which could become problematic at some point in the future—perhaps as soon as the next presidential election.
The Activist–Billionaire Nexus in GOP Politics
nti-Trump protest during the Labor Day Parade in New York City on September 6, 2025. Demonstrators gathered on Fifth Avenue across from Trump Tower during the annual parade in Midtown Manhattan. Photo: Dreamstime.
Drawing on your work on party autonomy, how has Trumpism altered the internal structure and strategic independence of the Republican Party? Has it hollowed out institutional authority or merely displaced it toward charismatic leadership and movement actors, especially within a nomination system that was reformed to democratize candidate selection but arguably enabled populist capture?
Professor Bruce Cain: There’s definitely, again, an element that is peculiar to Trump and his very strong bullying methods. That’s enabled him to capture the party. But if we step back, we see that there are longer-term trends that made it possible for him to do this. Right at the top of the list is social media. Social media, as we’ve seen, has become a powerful tool for bullying—everything from doxing to the ability to publicly shame people to mobilizing crowds instantaneously. All of these dynamics have made bullying and intimidation much stronger, not only in politics but also in the lives of our children and in our communities. Trump was definitely a beneficiary of that.
But there were also things we did through political reform that weakened parts of the party. In America, we think of the party as having three components: the party in office, namely the partisanship of the officeholders; the party in the bureaucracy, which consists of the people in the Republican National Committee (RNC), the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and the 50 state parties—those who run the machinery of the party; and finally, the activists.
To make a long, complicated story short, political reforms have strengthened the activists, who are by far the most ideological component of the electorate, while weakening the power of officeholders. Congress is now so afraid of party primaries because primaries do not attract all voters; they attract only the most partisan, activist ones. As a result, the control activists have over the primaries skews both parties to either the left or the right.
Another key factor is that the Supreme Court has allowed wealthy individuals to spend as much money as they want, creating almost limitless self-financing. This helped Trump significantly, as he was able to use his own money to catapult himself into the primaries. There is now far more independent spending, which essentially dwarfs the money given directly to candidates. We are awash in ideological and interest group money, and our inability to control campaign finance has unquestionably helped Trump and made the situation much worse.
Emergency Powers and Democratic Stability
The rise of executive-centered partisanship has weakened Congress and elevated the presidency as the primary partisan engine. Do you see this imbalance as reversible through institutional reform, or has it become structurally entrenched within the constitutional order?
Professor Bruce Cain: We’ll know a lot more about the answer to this question over the next year, as the Supreme Court will have to decide how far emergency powers can be used—the use of emergency powers to suspend normal processes, the use of impoundment activities (i.e., deciding upon entering office not to spend the money allocated by the previous Congress), and how much authority the president has to remove people in the bureaucracy who are nonpartisan rather than political appointees. In other words, how much of the Progressive Era reforms designed to create a nonpartisan bureaucracy can be undone.
If the Court condones these actions, it will be a case of monkey see, monkey do, because the Democrats will take whatever powers are given to the president to politicize everything, use emergency powers, and undo everything that Trump is doing. The Democrats will do the same thing, which means there will be far more instability in American positions vis-à-vis Europe, trade, and climate change. Essentially, the system will become much more schizophrenic and variable, and I believe this will ultimately undermine capitalism, investment, and infrastructure. Whether we are headed in that direction—and whether it becomes permanent—will be decided by the Supreme Court over the next year or two.
Money as Speech—and as a Tool of Power
Image of a pile of dollars currency and text of Trump Effect, symbolizing Trump Effect in American economy. Photo: Paulus Rusyanto.
In your work on “dependence corruption,” you highlighted how financial flows shape representation. How do emerging funding ecosystems—around MAGA media, Christian nationalist donors, tech billionaires, and PACs—challenge existing regulatory frameworks and deepen authoritarian tendencies within the movement?
Professor Bruce Cain: I do believe that America, because it has a very liberal interpretation of the First Amendment—i.e., because we believe that money is speech and that we can only restrict it under the narrowest purposes, namely to prevent quid pro quo corruption, meaning money that’s given directly to a candidate—has opened up the floodgates to a lot of money. That can still work if the money is balanced on both sides, and on many issues, that’s true. But what we’re seeing, for example, with digital currencies is that Trump has brought in lots of billionaires—tech billionaires—who want to create meme coins and invest in large server farms to generate value for digital currency.
All of these developments are tied not only to corruption stemming from campaign contributions but also to Trump himself cutting deals, investing in currency, and then making policy that favors those investments. We’re seeing in America now a level of corruption that we didn’t think was possible after the reforms of the 1970s. It’s approaching the levels of the 19th century, with people getting into office or power and then using it to make themselves richer. This is a major concern, and many of us in the legal and political science communities will be thinking seriously about how to strengthen the system against it.
Reinforcing Democratic Guardrails
Lastly, given these structural, ideological, and institutional transformations, what democratic guardrails or institutional reforms do you view as most urgent to counteract potential authoritarian consolidation on the American Right? Are there specific vulnerabilities—such as in party regulation, executive power, or information ecosystems—that should be prioritized?
Professor Bruce Cain: I would say that many people in my world of political reform are going to try to restore some of the institutions we once had, like the filibuster—i.e., supermajority votes that aim to create bipartisanship. They’re going to try to bring that back, but I think this runs up against the underlying political culture in America right now. Where the Court really needs to draw the line to save American democracy is on executive actions—specifically, the degree to which the President can act unilaterally by imaginatively reinterpreting existing legislation and issuing executive actions.
Secondly, emergency provisions. If everything is an emergency, then nothing is a democracy. That’s essentially where we’re headed if we’re not careful, because political parties can pretty much declare anything an emergency—whether it’s somebody being attacked in a city, an immigration issue, or economic downturns. If everything qualifies as an emergency, democratic norms erode. That is a major vulnerability that needs to be addressed.
Lastly, for both the United States and within the EU, there must be a clear understanding that states’ rights—the ability of states to check the federal government, to serve as laboratories of innovation, and to act differently from the federal government—are critically important. It’s essential that the Court continues to recognize the importance of state sovereignty as granted under the Constitution.
These are the most important steps to take right now, and Trump has made it very clear that we need to shore up both judicial interpretations and, potentially, some of the statutory and constitutional language associated with these issues.
On October 4, 2025, billionaire populist Andrej Babiš’s ANO party won the Czech parliamentary elections with just under 35% of the vote, setting the stage for coalition talks with two small right-wing, Eurosceptic parties. In this in-depth interview with ECPS, Professor Lenka Bustikova analyzes the implications of this outcome for Czech democracy and the broader Central European political landscape. Warning that “Babiš’s victory is a big win for illiberalism in Europe,” she explains how this election represents both a consolidation of illiberal forces and a strategic shift in Babiš’s populism—from managerialism to paternalism—raising concerns about democratic backsliding and Czechia’s future orientation within the EU.
On October 4, 2025, billionaire populist Andrej Babiš’s ANO party won the Czech parliamentary elections with just under 35% of the vote, securing 80 of 200 seats—an increase from the previous election. Although short of a majority, Babiš is expected to lead coalition talks. His most likely allies are two small right-wing, Eurosceptic parties: the anti-Green Deal Motorists for Themselves and Tomio Okamura’s anti-immigrant Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD). While ANO shares the Motorists’ opposition to EU emissions targets, relations with the SPD may prove more complicated due to internal divisions and radical demands. A new Babiš government would likely shift Czech foreign policy, notably by scrapping the Czech ammunition initiative supporting Ukraine.
Against this backdrop, Professor Lenka Bustikova, Director of the Center for European Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, provides a detailed analysis of the political transformations currently unfolding in Czechia. In an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), she warns: “I’m very concerned. Despite the relatively moderate appeal, I do think that Babiš’s victory is a significant win for illiberals in the region. I do not think this will be a bloodbath for Czech democracy, but I do think there’s going to be a lot of bleeding. The patient will survive, but there will be a strong shift.”
Professor Bustikova situates the election within a broader pattern of democratic contestation in Central Europe, describing it as both a consolidation of the illiberal camp and a reconsolidation of the liberal camp. Drawing on her scholarship on technocratic populism, she explains how Babiš has evolved from presenting himself as a competent manager to positioning himself as a paternal figure promising redistribution and state-led solutions to economic grievances. His emphasis on managerial competence now interacts with sovereigntist and anti-Green Deal rhetoric, reflecting a hybrid populist strategy.
Crucially, Professor Bustikova underlines the significance of the far right’s role in the coalition-building process. “If this coalition emerges, it will be the first time in Czech history that the far right is either in coalition or silently supporting the government. That’s a huge breakthrough, and it’s very concerning,” she notes. This development, she argues, marks a major illiberal breakthrough, with potential implications for Czechia’s position in the EU.
Although Czechia retains strong institutional guardrails—including the presidency, the Senate, the Constitutional Court, and a pluralistic media environment—Professor Bustikova expects democratic quality to decline during Babiš’s tenure. Situating these developments in a regional perspective, she warns that the illiberal camp is “numerically much stronger,” making future liberal victories increasingly difficult.
Please cite as: Shukri, Syaza & Hassan, Isyraf. (2025). “Anwar Ibrahim’s Civilisational Populism: The Gaza War and Malaysia.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). October 9, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000119
Abstract
This paper examines how Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s tenth prime minister, employs civilisational populism in shaping his foreign policy rhetoric, particularly during the Gaza War that started in 2023. Through the lens of civilisational populism defined by Yilmaz and Morieson as a political strategy that constructs “the people” as defenders of a superior but threatened civilisation, the paper argues that Anwar leverages the Gaza/Palestinian cause to project Islamic solidarity and deflect domestic criticisms of liberalism. In doing so, he seeks to consolidate support against the conservative Islamist opposition, PAS, while maintaining international legitimacy. Drawing on the framework of Foreign Policy Decision Making (FPDM), the study emphasizes the role of individual agency, cognitive calculations, and domestic political pressures in guiding Malaysia’s external stance. Anwar’s rhetorical and symbolic actions such as mass rallies, public condemnations of Israel, and economic restrictions on Israeli-linked entities are analysed not simply as moral positioning but as calculated decisions aimed at managing political survival within a fragmented coalition. The paper highlights contradictions in this approach, such as the BlackRock controversy and local backlash over prioritizing Palestinian aid over domestic needs, revealing the tension between foreign policy idealism and domestic political pragmatism. By integrating FPDM with civilisational populism, the paper provides an understanding of how Malaysia’s foreign policy is not purely reactive or interest-based but shaped by identity politics, leadership perception, and populist imperatives.
The pendulum of civilisationism has swung. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, humanity entered an era of globalisation where connectivity prevailed. However, it did not last, and now that we are in the third decade of the 21st century, we are referring back to Samuel Huntington’s most well-known work, which states that civilisation will be the basis for clashes. In the 1990s, the Washington Consensus fostered a wave of neoliberal globalization, making civilisational divisions seem unlikely. However, following the devastating events of 2001, these divisions have become more apparent, especially against Islamic civilisation. Instead of all-out war, the divisions we are seeing occurs within the framework of national elections. Politicians today are increasingly using civilisationism as part of their populist strategies to win votes.
According to Yilmaz and Morieson, civilisational populism is a political ideology that combines elements of populism with a civilisational framework. It involves a discourse that portrays a particular civilisation—often religious or cultural—as superior and under threat from outsiders or other civilisations. They argued, “populist uses of civilisational discourses differ from non-populist discourses insofar as they use civilisationism to construct internal divisions between an ingroup who they claim belong to ‘our’ civilisation (‘the people’), and outgroups (‘elites,’ ‘others’) who they claim have either betrayed the civilisation of the people or belong to a threatening foreign civilisation,” (Yilmaz & Morieson, 2022: 8).
This form of populism appeals to sentiments of cultural heritage, identity, and belonging by positioning “the people” as defenders of their civilisation against perceived existential threats.
For this paper, we are looking at civilisational populism and its impact beyond the nation-state. We argue that Anwar Ibrahim, the tenth prime minister of Malaysia, has been involved with civilisational rhetoric for the purpose of gaining support. Domestically, Anwar’s main political rival is the Islamist Malaysian Pan-Islamic Party (PAS). Shukri (2023) argued that PAS definitely participated in the civilisational narrative of Islam against non-Muslims, specifically non-Muslim Chinese of Malaysia. On the other hand, Anwar, as argued by Shukri (2024), is more of an inclusivist populist. There is heightened political tension in Malaysia between the Islamists that get support from the majority Malay population and Anwar’s own coalition that is usually labelled derogatorily as “liberal” and finds support among non-Muslims and urban Malays. Due to this pressure, Anwar needs to portray himself as a “defender” of Malays and Muslims but in a civilisational way beyond Muslims in Malaysia in order to maintain his inclusivist reputation. Specifically, this paper will look at Anwar’s rhetoric on the Israel-Gaza War that erupted in October 2023.
Anwar has established himself as an Islamist since his days as a youth leader, and he later transitioned to become a Muslim democrat (Malik & Shukri, 2018). However, we observe that his more assertive rhetoric since becoming prime minister is slightly different from his days as the deputy prime minister under Mahathir Mohamad’s first administration. As a result, it may have led to intra-civilisational discord with other Muslim countries, such as with Saudi Arabia, albeit before the start of the ongoing war, when he was unable to meet either the king or the crown prince during his first visit as prime minister.
The next section will look at Malaysian politics and Anwar Ibrahim’s background. Next, we will look at the literature on civilisational populism and foreign policy decision making in order to provide a framework to guide our understanding of Anwar’s rhetoric about Palestine, Gaza, and the Muslim world. Following that, we will delve deeper into Anwar’s civilisational populism and his relationship with other Muslim leaders. The penultimate section will discuss the impact of Anwar’s civilisational rhetoric in the broader Muslim world context.
