In an interview with ECPS, Dr. Lisa Zanotti—Assistant Professor at Diego Portales University and researcher at COES and Ultra-Lab—offers a sharply focused analysis of the far right’s accelerating rise in Latin America and its implications for Chile’s 2025 election. She underscores a crucial structural insight: “presidential systems ease populists’ rise to power in Latin America,” helping figures like José Antonio Kast gain rapid executive influence. While Chile’s rightward shift appears dramatic, Dr. Zanotti cautions that it is driven less by ideological conversion than by strong anti-elite and anti-incumbent sentiment. She also highlights the authoritarian core of the Latin American PRR, warning that “when the far right remains in power for an extended period, democratic backsliding occurs.”
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Lisa Zanotti—an Assistant Professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, an adjunct researcher at the Center for the Study of Social Conflict and Cohesion (COES), and a researcher at the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right (Ultra-Lab)—offers one of the most analytically rich and empirically grounded assessments of Chile’s rapidly shifting political landscape. Her comparative research on democratic backsliding, authoritarian value orientations, and the ideological evolution of the Latin American populist radical right (PRR) provides an indispensable framework for understanding the stakes of Chile’s 2025 presidential contest. As she succinctly puts it, “presidential systems ease populists’ rise to power in Latin America,” a structural insight that defines the broader context in which José Antonio Kast is poised to ascend.
In this interview, Dr. Zanotti situates Chile within the region’s accelerating rightward turn, connecting domestic dynamics to a fourth wave of radical-right expansion across Latin America. While acknowledging the ideological coherence of certain far-right constituencies, she emphasizes that Chile’s electoral realignment is driven less by ideological conversion than by powerful anti-elite and anti-incumbent sentiment. As she notes, “there is clearly a shift occurring, but I would not describe it primarily as an ideological one… Ideology plays a role, but it does not fully account for this transformation.”This perspective helps illuminate the surprising convergence of voters behind right-wing candidates in the first-round results, as well as the immediate endorsements Kast received from figures such as Johannes Kaiser and Evelyn Matthei.
A central theme in Dr. Zanotti’s scholarship—and in her interpretation of Kast’s rise—is the distinctively authoritarian character of the Latin American PRR. Chile, she argues, represents a partial exception due to Kast’s unusually explicit anti-immigrant discourse, yet his worldview still fits squarely within an authoritarian framework. “Those who disrupt that order must be punished severely,” she explains, underscoring Kast’s fusion of conservative moral hierarchies, punitive security policies, and anti-liberal social views.
Dr. Zanotti also challenges conventional assumptions about digital populism. While acknowledging the role of disinformation, she cautions: “I don’t think there is compelling evidence that far-right or populist radical-right leaders use digital media… significantly more than other parties.” Instead, disengaged voters gravitate toward whichever camp dominates the agenda—this year, Kast on crime and immigration, and Franco Parisi on anti-establishment appeals.
The conversation concludes with a sobering reflection on democratic erosion. Drawing on comparative cases such as Hungary and Poland, Dr. Zanotti warns: “when the far right remains in power for an extended period, democratic backsliding occurs.” Chile’s future therefore hinges on the durability of its institutions, the fragmentation of its party system, and the evolving attitudes of an electorate increasingly shaped by insecurity and disaffection.
In his interview with ECPS, Professor Richard Youngs (Carnegie Europe; University of Warwick) offers a sharp assessment of today’s democratic crisis. Highlighting a “qualitative shift” in autocratization, he points to two transformative forces: digital technologies and a rapidly changing international order. As he observes, “we are in an interregnum between the liberal global order and whatever comes next.” Professor Youngs warns that democratic erosion is driven not only by structural pressures but by the “incremental tactics” of illiberal leaders who steadily undermine checks and balances—often learning directly from one another. Looking ahead, he argues that mere institutional survival is insufficient: democracies must pursue renewal and resilience, noting that “it is much easier to undo democracy than to reassemble good-quality democratic norms.”
In a wide-ranging and analytically rich interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Richard Youngs—Senior Fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at Carnegie Europe and Professor of International Relations at the University of Warwick—offers a compelling diagnosis of the global democratic landscape at a moment of profound uncertainty. Reflecting on accelerating autocratization, shifts in global power, EU democratic dilemmas, and the prospects for democratic renewal, Professor Youngs provides both conceptual clarity and sobering realism. As he puts it, “we are in an interregnum between the liberal global order and whatever comes next”—a liminal period in which the rules, norms, and institutional anchors of the past three decades no longer hold firm, even as no coherent alternative has yet emerged.
Professor Youngs identifies two forces that make the current wave of democratic regression qualitatively distinct from earlier cycles: the disruptive role of digital technologies and far-reaching structural changes in the international order. Both realms, he argues, remain fluid, capable of generating either deeper democratic decay or future sources of resilience. Although digital platforms currently “carry very negative implications for democracy,” ProfessorYoungs reminds us that past expectations of their democratizing potential need not be abandoned entirely if regulation becomes more effective. Similarly, while rising non-democratic powers are reshaping global geopolitics, there remains “many democratic powers that might coordinate more effectively in the future” to safeguard liberal norms within a reconfigured global system.
This transitional moment is further complicated by the rise of radical-right populism, the diffusion of illiberal tactics across borders, and democratic backsliding in core Western states. Professor Youngs emphasizes that the potency of contemporary autocratization stems not from structural shifts alone but from the “very skillful way in which many leaders have deployed incremental tactics to undermine democratic equality.” Autocrats, he notes, actively learn from one another—sometimes “copying and pasting” repressive legal templates—creating a transnational ecosystem of illiberal innovation.
The interview also probes dilemmas within the European Union, from the risks of technocratic overreach in “defensive democracy” measures to the strategic tensions posed by engaging or isolating radical-right parties. Professor Youngs is clear-eyed about the difficulty of balancing pluralism with the defense of liberal norms, describing the EU’s predicament as a “catch-22.”
Looking ahead, Professor Youngs argues that scholarship and policy must shift from diagnosing democratic decline to theorizing and cultivating democratic resilience. Yet this resilience must go beyond “pure survival” and involve deeper processes of reform, renewal, and societal empowerment. As he cautions, “it is much easier to undo democracy than to reassemble good-quality democratic norms,” and the work of rebuilding will require sustained, coordinated effort at both national and international levels.
In an interview with ECPS, Dr. Lisa Zanotti—Assistant Professor at Diego Portales University and researcher at COES and Ultra-Lab—offers a sharply focused analysis of the far right’s accelerating rise in Latin America and its implications for Chile’s 2025 election. She underscores a crucial structural insight: “presidential systems ease populists’ rise to power in Latin America,” helping figures like José Antonio Kast gain rapid executive influence. While Chile’s rightward shift appears dramatic, Dr. Zanotti cautions that it is driven less by ideological conversion than by strong anti-elite and anti-incumbent sentiment. She also highlights the authoritarian core of the Latin American PRR, warning that “when the far right remains in power for an extended period, democratic backsliding occurs.”
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Lisa Zanotti—an Assistant Professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, an adjunct researcher at the Center for the Study of Social Conflict and Cohesion (COES), and a researcher at the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right (Ultra-Lab)—offers one of the most analytically rich and empirically grounded assessments of Chile’s rapidly shifting political landscape. Her comparative research on democratic backsliding, authoritarian value orientations, and the ideological evolution of the Latin American populist radical right (PRR) provides an indispensable framework for understanding the stakes of Chile’s 2025 presidential contest. As she succinctly puts it, “presidential systems ease populists’ rise to power in Latin America,” a structural insight that defines the broader context in which José Antonio Kast is poised to ascend.
In this interview, Dr. Zanotti situates Chile within the region’s accelerating rightward turn, connecting domestic dynamics to a fourth wave of radical-right expansion across Latin America. While acknowledging the ideological coherence of certain far-right constituencies, she emphasizes that Chile’s electoral realignment is driven less by ideological conversion than by powerful anti-elite and anti-incumbent sentiment. As she notes, “there is clearly a shift occurring, but I would not describe it primarily as an ideological one… Ideology plays a role, but it does not fully account for this transformation.”This perspective helps illuminate the surprising convergence of voters behind right-wing candidates in the first-round results, as well as the immediate endorsements Kast received from figures such as Johannes Kaiser and Evelyn Matthei.
A central theme in Dr. Zanotti’s scholarship—and in her interpretation of Kast’s rise—is the distinctively authoritarian character of the Latin American PRR. Chile, she argues, represents a partial exception due to Kast’s unusually explicit anti-immigrant discourse, yet his worldview still fits squarely within an authoritarian framework. “Those who disrupt that order must be punished severely,” she explains, underscoring Kast’s fusion of conservative moral hierarchies, punitive security policies, and anti-liberal social views.
Dr. Zanotti also challenges conventional assumptions about digital populism. While acknowledging the role of disinformation, she cautions: “I don’t think there is compelling evidence that far-right or populist radical-right leaders use digital media… significantly more than other parties.” Instead, disengaged voters gravitate toward whichever camp dominates the agenda—this year, Kast on crime and immigration, and Franco Parisi on anti-establishment appeals.
The conversation concludes with a sobering reflection on democratic erosion. Drawing on comparative cases such as Hungary and Poland, Dr. Zanotti warns: “when the far right remains in power for an extended period, democratic backsliding occurs.” Chile’s future therefore hinges on the durability of its institutions, the fragmentation of its party system, and the evolving attitudes of an electorate increasingly shaped by insecurity and disaffection.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Assisstant Professor Lisa Zanotti, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Programmatic Far Right Meets Anti-Establishment Discontent
Citizens of Valparaíso during a riot on October 27, 2016. Valparaíso is one of the most protest-active cities in Chile. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Lisa Zanotti, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: The first-round results of the Chilean presidential elections revealed a striking 70% combined vote for right-wing candidates, despite only 24% going directly to José Antonio Kast. From a supply- and demand–side perspective, how do you interpret this extraordinary consolidation behind the far right? Does this reflect programmatic proximity among right-wing actors, or an anti-incumbent “punishment vote,” as seen in previous Chilean cycles?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: I believe it’s both. There are certainly some far-right voters who are strongly programmatic—meaning they align closely with José Antonio Kast’s policy proposals.But there are probably more voters who are more of an— I wouldn’t exactly call it anti-establishment, but rather an anti-incumbent vote, which represents the majority of voters right now. We would make a mistake by interpreting, for example, all the votes for Evelyn Matthei as right-wing votes. A significant share of those who supported Matthei do not really identify with the right but were unhappy with the left-wing candidate from the Communist Party.So yes, I do think there is a mix of programmatic voters and dissatisfied voters.
Given that Johannes Kaiser and Evelyn Matthei endorsed Kast almost immediately, does the 2025 election signal the emergence of a more cohesive radical-right bloc, or does it instead reflect strategic coalitioning that may fracture once governing begins?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: As I was saying before, there’s a difference between the ones who voted for Kaiser, who I do think are very much in line with Kast’s proposals. Kast and Kaiser are quite similar candidates from an ideological point of view; the only difference between them is their style. Kast is much more of a traditional conservative candidate, closer to a Marine Le Pen–type style, while Kaiser is more of a Donald Trump–type candidate—also much more performative.
With respect to Evelyn Matthei’s voters, there is a percentage of them aligning with the center or the center-left who were dissatisfied with the Harač candidate. (Harač is a colloquial Chilean term used to criticize a proposed “tax on the wealthy” introduced by Daniel Jadue, the Communist Party (PC) candidate—a measure his opponents framed as excessive and punitive. S.G.)
And in the case of a José Antonio Kast government, Kaiser would align with him in backing all his policy proposals. It is difficult to say what the future of the center-right in Chile is because, yes, it’s true that Evelyn Matthei backed José Antonio Kast very quickly but it’s difficult to predict how the parliamentary bloc would behave.
Order, Punishment, and the Authoritarian Logic Behind Kast’s Rise
Crime and immigration became the dominant issues of the presidential election campaign, mirroring your findings that the Latin American Populist Radical Right (PRR) often substitutes authoritarianism for classical nativism. How does Kast’s fusion of transnational crime and undocumented migration fit within—or challenge—your framework of “authoritarian but not primarily nativist” radical-right parties in Latin America?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: When we wrote that article, a small caveat is that Chile was not in the sample, and Chile is something of a partial exception in the sense that Kast has a distinctly anti-immigrant discourse. Some studies have found that anti-immigration views are indeed determinants for voting for Kast. But in general, the authoritarian view—in the sense of conceiving society as structured in a certain normative way—also fits Kast’s framework. It’s enough to mention his anti-liberal positions, which essentially restrict the rights of certain civic minorities, such as sexual minorities or women. In his view, married women are positioned above, for example, feminist women, single women, or women who don’t have children.
I also see authoritarianism in Kast’s approach to security, where society is understood as needing to be ordered in a specific way, and those who disrupt that order must be punished severely. So in his extremely conservative positions, and in his views on crime, punishment, and the kinds of policies he wants to implement to stop violence on the streets, I would say that I do indeed see an authoritarian view.
To what extent does the PRR’s issue ownership on crime depend on perception gaps rather than objective crime rates, and how does this extend your research on authoritarian value orientations and their relationship to vote choice?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: I would say quite a lot—a short answer to your question. First of all, we know that, in comparative terms, Chile still has decent crime numbers compared to other countries in the region. But clearly, people don’t care about that. People care about the fact that the situation has worsened. And there is a strong perception that the country has become really unsafe. Kast and his sector did a pretty good job of putting this at the center of the agenda, and the left didn’t manage to put their issues—the issues they care about—at the center of the debate, such as housing, which is a big problem here, not just in Santiago but throughout Chile, and in other South American countries as well. They didn’t manage to make these issues central, and we ended up talking almost exclusively about immigration and crime.
Disengaged Voters and the New Foundations of Chile’s Rightward Shift
Chileans at a polling station in Las Condes, Santiago, on November 16, 2025, voting to elect the next president. Photo: Dreamstime.
Compulsory voting raised turnout to over 80%, activating a large pool of previously disengaged voters. Do your demand-side findings suggest that these “new” voters are especially susceptible to anti-elite, populist, or authoritarian appeals, and how might this reshape Chile’s longer-term political demography?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: I would say that these voters are clearly disengaged. I would also say that they are clearly anti-establishment and do not care much about politics. They tend to vote for the candidate they think “owns” the agenda, basically. So, as I was saying before, we ended up talking a lot about immigration and crime, and the right—and Kast specifically—is believed to be more competent and reliable on these kinds of issues. So people who are disengaged and don’t really care much about politics are drawn toward the more visible candidate, and in this case, it’s been Kast. But I would add that it’s not just Kast. The anti-establishment component of these voters also resulted in a large vote share for Franco Parisi, who was the third candidate in the election.
How should we understand Franco Parisi’s unexpected third-place performance—despite his anti-establishment, techno-populist profile—in relation to your comparative work on negative partisanship, identity cleavages, and dissatisfaction with democracy?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: As I was saying before, these people were drawn toward Franco Parisi’s candidacy because of his anti-establishment posture. He repeated constantly that he was neither a fascist nor a communist. So he didn’t play into this communism-versus-fascism cleavage. He deliberately avoided positioning himself in that political and cultural battle. His discourse was strongly anti-establishment, and he was able to attract the votes of many people who hadn’t voted before, as well as people who disengaged from other parties. So I think it wasn’t despite his anti-establishment discourse; it was because of it that he managed to attain third place in the competition.
Trading Liberty for Order: Understanding Support for Democratic Backsliding
Kast’s platform includes Bukele-inspired measures such as mass incarceration and military deployment. Based on your research on “Why Citizens Support Democratic Backsliding,” what psychological or affective mechanisms make such proposals attractive to voters in an otherwise democratic and institutionally robust polity like Chile?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: As always, it comes down to perceptions. People perceive the Bukele model as successful—which, in some respects, it is—but they clearly don’t see the other side of it, namely the human rights violations. In El Salvador’s case, there are many studies showing that people who consider themselves democratic are still willing to trade certain democratic principles for greater security, because they see being secure—being safe on the street—as part of the democratic promise. Kast did a very good job convincing people that this model is somehow exportable to Chile. But we know it is not the case: studies show that the criminal organizations operating in El Salvador are very specific and not comparable to those in Chile, and that the kinds of deals Bukele reached with the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13, an El Salvador–origin transnational criminal gang known for extreme violence, drug trafficking, and organized crime activities. S.G.), simply aren’t possible here. People don’t see that. What they see is the appeal—because from the outside, the model looks successful.
Do you see the 2025 election as strengthening or weakening Chile’s democratic “guardrails,” especially considering the constitutional memory of authoritarianism and the preventive strength of its party system?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: It’s hard to say, but we do know from comparative experience that the far right, when in government, erodes democratic principles and institutions from within. Just look at Hungary or Poland, for example: years of far-right governance have steadily weakened institutional safeguards. So it’s not that today we are in a democracy and tomorrow we suddenly find ourselves in an authoritarian regime. Rather, if the far right comes to power and remains there for a long period, comparative experience clearly shows that some degree of democratic erosion follows.
Pinochet’s Shadow in 2025 Elections
Poster of Augusto Pinochet on display at the La Moneda Cultural Center beneath Citizenry Square in Santiago, Chile. Photo: Dreamstime.
Kast has increasingly softened his explicit references to the Pinochet era while mobilizing nostalgia for “order” and “discipline.” Does this represent a strategic moderation, a normalization of authoritarian signifiers, or a deeper reframing of Pinochet’s legacy within contemporary right-wing identity politics?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: I would say the first one. Kast was very effective in not talking too much about Pinochet and his regime. I do think—and we know—that he endorsed it. And I also think Kast was helped a lot in being seen as more mainstream and moderate by Kaiser’s candidacy, which is much more visible and performative, and Kaiser sounds much more radical than Kast. Again, they’re ideologically very similar; it’s just a performative act that may lead voters to think that Kast is more moderate and help him attract more votes, basically.
In your work on classifying Latin American PRR parties, you note that the resonance of nativism varies regionally. Could Pinochet-era “order” nostalgia function as a functional substitute for stronger nativist frames in the Chilean radical right?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: Yes, there are some voters who are basically authoritarian, who believe that a strong candidate—as Kast is presenting himself—would restore the old order, as in the Pinochet era. But I also think there is a more pragmatic voter, especially in the middle class, who is not necessarily nostalgic but does want more order, less immigration, and better economic performance. We are underestimating the economic vote and the perception that the current government has performed very poorly in the economic realm. So, especially among the lower middle class, the economic vote is strong, and it is a pragmatic vote rather than a nostalgic one.
Conservatism Meets Neoliberalism: The PRR Formula in Chile
Kast’s discourse mixes populist anti-elite messages with strongly conservative moral rhetoric and market orthodoxy. Does this hybridization indicate an emerging Latin American variant of PRR populism, or does it remain closer to a European-style ideological triad (authoritarianism–populism–nativism)?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: The Latin American far right—or populist radical right—tends, in the economic realm, to be neoliberal. I wouldn’t say that every PRR leader in Latin America is neoliberal, but the right in the region has a clear trajectory where neoliberalism is a strong ideological pillar for the right in general.
I also wouldn’t say this is only a Latin American variant, because if we look at Vox in Spain, for example, it has pretty much the same ideological mix. They’re strong on conservative values and also heavily neoliberal. So, this is a sub-variant of the PRR: very strong conservative values combined with neoliberal economic positions. And we do see that some PRR parties in Europe don’t really care about social values in the same way.
Moreover, the PRR in Latin America is much less interested in immigration—Chile being an exception. But this is because the Great Replacement Theory doesn’t really work here, since the kind of immigration the region receives is pretty much homogeneous in a national sense. So you cannot say that they are “ruining our culture.” Even for Kast, the anti-immigration discourse is largely economic: the idea that “we don’t have enough jobs, and we don’t want outsiders coming here and stealing jobs from Chileans.” The exclusion is based more on civic values rather than ethnic ones. Venezuelans come here with a different way of life, and that is framed as the reason for exclusion. So, I wouldn’t say it’s completely a Latin American variant.
Why Presidential Systems Accelerate Far-Right Power in Latin America
How do you evaluate the movement-building capacity of Kast’s coalition, given the relatively weak institutionalization of right-wing parties in Chile compared to the long-lived PRR parties in Europe?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: But in Latin America, it all happened really quickly. The first Latin American far-right leader to get elected—Bolsonaro—was just seven years ago. So from 2018 up until now we have a lot of PRR or far-right leaders in power. We also have some countries in which the far right is strong electorally but not yet in power.
So, with the presidential system, it’s much quicker, and the far right can gain a lot more executive power. With respect to Europe, with parliamentary democracy, it takes more time to build a coalition for the far right, and if we look at Western European countries, in most cases the far right is the minority partner in government, except Italy. Italy is the main exception, where the far right is basically in power with two parties, and there is a small center-right mainstream party in government, but really the government is a far-right one.
So in Latin America, with the presidential system, it is much easier, at least in the executive branch, for these leaders to take power.
Kaiser, Franco Parisi, and Kast all relied heavily on digital mobilization, bypassing legacy media. How does this expansion of online efficacy relate to your findings on political participation and disaffection? Does digital populism systematically empower the radical right more than other actors?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: I don’t think there is compelling evidence that far-right or populist radical-right leaders use digital media for campaigning significantly more than other parties. What we do know is that they sometimes rely on misinformation and disinformation—spreading content that is factually false—which certainly plays a role in their communication strategies.
However, in the case of the Chilean election, particularly regarding Parisi, most of his support came from politically disengaged voters: people who were not active on social media, not following political news, and generally uninterested in politics, but who held strong anti-establishment sentiments. For this reason, I don’t believe digital media was a decisive factor for either Parisi or Kast.
Chile Joins Latin America’s Far-Right Surge
Chilean presidential runoff at Instituto Presidente Errázuriz in Santiago. Voters cast ballots in the December 19, 2021 election between José Antonio Kast and Gabriel Boric. Photo: Dreamstime.
The rightward turn in Chile parallels broader regional shifts—in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, and potentially Peru. How should we interpret Chile’s first-round election outcome within the “fourth wave” of radical-right diffusion you analyze? Does Chile confirm or challenge regional patterns of PRR emergence?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: Chile fits squarely within the broader trend we are observing in many countries toward the rise of far-right governments. At this point, Kast is poised to win the second round and would join the growing roster of far-right leaders already in power. Next year, Peru will also hold elections, and its far-right candidate is currently leading the polls. There is clearly a shift occurring, but I would not describe it primarily as an ideological one. Rather, it is driven by strong anti-elite sentiment and widespread rejection of incumbents—many of whom, in Latin America, have been left-leaning. Ideology plays a role, but it does not fully account for this transformation in the region.
And lastly, Professor Zanotti, if Kast wins the presidency, do you expect Chile to experience episodic, contained, or structural democratic backsliding? Which institutional, social, or attitudinal variables—based on your research—will be most decisive in shaping Chile’s trajectory over the next decade?
Asst. Prof. Lisa Zanotti: As I was saying before, I don’t think the erosion will happen in a short period of time. First, we need to see if the far right is going to come to power, which seems possible, and then for how many years it is likely to remain in power. Parliamentary support is also crucial; we already know that Congress is quite divided. We know that the center-left and the left performed better in the parliamentary elections than in the presidential election, so again, it would depend on different variables. But based on the comparative experience we have, when the far right remains in power for an extended period, democratic backsliding occurs.
In this sharp geopolitical analysis, Dr. Imdat Oner examines the far-reaching implications of Operation Southern Spear, the Trump administration’s unprecedented shift from counternarcotics interdiction to direct military attrition across Latin America. Dr.Oner argues that the new strategy—marked by lethal maritime strikes, FTO designations, and carrier-led patrols—reflects far more than drug policy. It fuses domestic political messaging, America First security rhetoric, and a renewed push to reclaim hemispheric dominance amid Chinese and Russian encroachment. As Washington mobilizes a coalition of regional partners and intensifies pressure on Venezuela, Dr. Oner warns that this emerging “neo-Monroe Doctrine” could redefine US–Latin America relations for years to come.
By Imdat Oner*
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced “Operation Southern Spear” earlier this month, the language was typically martial, but the implications were far more profound than the standard Pentagon briefing. Hegseth did not just promise more patrols; he declared a mission to “remove narco-terrorists from our hemisphere.”
If there was any doubt about what “remove” meant, the wreckage of smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific makes it clear. Since September, US forces have carried out more than 20 lethal strikes against suspected drug boats, killing over 80 people. This is no longer a law enforcement mission. It marks a shift in Washington’s approach to Latin America, one that combines domestic politics, great-power competition, and the reassertion of regional primacy into a single, forceful strategy.
The most significant change in Operation Southern Spear is the move from interdiction to outright attrition. For decades, the US approach relied on Coast Guard vessels chasing fast boats, arresting crews, and bringing cases to federal court. Now, US forces are authorized to neutralize targets on the spot.
The administration insists these groups can no longer be treated as ordinary criminal networks. By designating them as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs), Washington has reclassified them as armed adversaries. What was once a judicial process has now been militarized. Smugglers are no longer suspects entitled to due‑process rights; they are cast as enemy combatants, comparable to Middle Eastern terror groups, and subject to the laws of war.
The consequences are already visible. The deployment of carrier strike groups, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Caribbean signals a new operational posture. These assets bring the surveillance reach and strike precision of a full military campaign, enabling US forces to detect and destroy targets in real time. Some allies, notably the UK, have pulled back intelligence cooperation over legal concerns. Yet Washington presses forward, wagering that the American public cares more about stopping fentanyl and cocaine than parsing the fine points of international law.
Low-Cost Abroad, High Reward at Home
The expansion of US activity in Latin America is not just about drug interdiction, it is about domestic politics. For the Trump administration, counternarcotics operations deliver a message that resonates deeply with the MAGA base: toughness on crime, border security, and sovereignty. Unlike distant wars in the Middle East, which drained resources and eroded public support, operations in the Caribbean and Pacific are geographically closer, politically safer, and far less expensive.
Latin America provides a theater where Washington can project military strength without massive deployments, nation-building, or trillion-dollar costs like those seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Strikes against drug boats are framed as defending American communities from narcotics and illegal flows, tying directly into the administration’s America First agenda. For Trump’s supporters, this is not abstract geopolitics, it is a fight that connects directly to domestic concerns about drugs, immigration, and security.
Counternarcotics is therefore more than a foreign policy initiative. It is a domestic political tool, a way to demonstrate action on issues that matter most to the MAGA base while avoiding the political toxicity of “forever wars.” By shifting the line of defense from the border wall to the open seas, the administration has turned Latin America into the frontline of its domestic security narrative: low cost, high reward, and central to sustaining its political appeal.
But this approach is not cost‑free. Precision strikes and carrier deployments may be cheaper than ground wars, yet they still require billions in defense spending, expanded surveillance, and long‑term naval commitments. Legal challenges, strained alliances, and the risk of civilian casualties already sparked discussions at home. What looks like a low‑cost, high‑reward strategy abroad may prove politically and financially demanding at home.
The Neo-Monroe Doctrine in the Hemisphere
Operation Southern Spear should not be understood narrowly as a counternarcotics initiative or a maneuver in domestic politics. It represents Washington’s delayed response to a strategic vacuum in Latin America that persisted for two decades, a vacuum that China and Russia systematically exploited.
Between 2000 and 2020, Beijing and Moscow pursued complementary strategies that reshaped the geopolitics of the hemisphere. China adopted an economic statecraft approach, expanding trade with the region from $12 billion in 2000 to more than $315 billion by 2020. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing extended over $130 billion in state-backed loans, securing long-term stakes in critical infrastructure such as ports, energy grids, and mining concessions from Ecuador to Brazil. This economic entrenchment was not merely commercial; it was designed to translate into political leverage and strategic dependency.
Russia, by contrast, sought to erode US security primacy directly. Leveraging the “Pink Tide” of leftist governments, Moscow became the leading arms supplier in the region, providing Venezuela alone with more than $20 billion in advanced systems including Su‑30 fighter aircraft and S‑300 missile defenses. Russian Tu‑160 nuclear-capable bombers flying sorties over the Caribbean in 2008, 2013, and 2018 underscored Moscow’s intent to contest US dominance in its own near abroad.
For US policymakers, these developments constituted not a marginal nuisance but a sustained strategic encirclement. Operation Southern Spear must therefore be read as an effort to reassert hemispheric control. The recent designation of Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles, a network allegedly embedded within the Venezuelan military, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization is central to this recalibration. By reframing Venezuela from a diplomatic irritant into a national security threat, Washington lowers the threshold for coercive measures and broadens the toolkit available.
This designation opens the door to cyber operations, tougher financial sanctions, and possible military strikes. It marks a clear doctrinal shift: Washington now views Latin America as a strategic theater, not a peripheral concern. The United States is moving to reassert dominance in its own hemisphere, even if that means greater confrontation with China and Russia.
A New Neighborhood Watch
Operation Southern Spear comes at a moment when regional politics are shifting in Washington’s favor. Argentina is aligning more closely with US security frameworks. Ecuador is recalibrating in similar fashion. Bolivia is engaging more constructively with US initiatives. Several Caribbean states are also moving toward Washington. Together, these shifts give the United States the foundation for a coalition designed to isolate Venezuela.
Argentina under Javier Milei has embraced a pro‑Washington agenda. It has signed trade and investment frameworks that bind its economy to US markets while distancing itself from Beijing and Moscow.
Ecuador has recalibrated in similar fashion. It is reducing reliance on Chinese loans and deepening cooperation on counternarcotics and security.
Bolivia, once a stalwart of the “Pink Tide,” now engages more constructively with US initiatives. This shift signals the erosion of the leftist bloc.
The Caribbean adds strategic depth. Guyana, buoyed by its oil boom, has welcomed US energy firms and defense cooperation, positioning itself as a bulwark against Venezuelan claims. Trinidad and Tobago, a regional energy hub, has expanded counterterrorism and maritime security ties, anchoring Washington’s presence in the southern Caribbean.
Together, these moves give Washington real support. They build a coalition that isolates Venezuela both diplomatically and militarily. Operation Southern Spear is not a unilateral show of force. It is the core of a broader strategy of punitive containment, treating the Caribbean and northern South America as one theater of operations.
Yet, it’s also important to note that this is not an Iraq‑style invasion. President Trump has little interest in a ground war that could bog down his administration. The strategy instead points to a blockade enforced by precision strikes, supported by regional partners that give US action legitimacy.
Operation Southern Spear is more than a tactical campaign. It signals a new phase in which US influence must be defended with force, rival powers contained, and the region’s trajectory actively shaped. The question is not whether Washington will stay engaged in Latin America, but how far it will go to redefine the balance of power. Judging by the smoke rising over the Caribbean, the Trump administration’s answer is clear: as far as necessary.
(*) Dr. Imdat ONER is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University (FIU). He holds a Ph.D. from FIU, where he completed a dissertation titled “Great Power Competition in Latin America Through Strategic Narrative.” Prior to joining FIU, he served as a Turkish diplomat, most recently at the Turkish Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, where he was the Deputy Head of Mission and Political Officer. His expertise lies in International Relations, with a primary focus on Latin American politics. Dr. Oner has published extensively on Venezuelan politics and Turkish foreign policy, with articles appearing in War on the Rocks, The National Interest, Americas Quarterly, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, and the Miami Herald. He is also a frequent contributor to Global Americans. His analyses have been featured in international media outlets, including Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, Miami Herald, and Agencia EFE.
In this compelling VoY essay, Emmanouela Papapavlou confronts the uncomfortable truth behind society’s yearly cycle of remembrance on November 25th. Drawing attention to the gap between public displays of solidarity and the everyday normalization of gender-based violence, Papapavlou argues that symbolic outrage too often gives way to collective amnesia. She highlights how cultural attitudes, institutional responses, and pervasive biases continue to silence women long after the awareness campaigns fade. This powerful reflection challenges readers to rethink what it truly means to remember—and what it would take to break the cycle of forgetting that enables violence to persist.
By Emmanouela Papapavlou*
Every year, on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, we collectively remember. Or at least, we pretend to. We speak about statistics, about bruises that never made it to the news, about women whose names became hashtags only after their lives were taken from them. We speak about abuse as if it were an unexpected tragedy instead of a structural reality. And, on this day, we suddenly remember surveys and studies that have been sitting on desks and websites for months. They resurface not because something changed, but because today, the world feels obligated to look at them.
One of these reports, brought back into the spotlight once again, reminds us that one in three women over the age of fifteen has been subjected to domestic or sexual violence. A number repeated so often that it risks becoming meaningless, yet behind every “one” is a life permanently split into “before” and “after.” Tomorrow, not metaphorically, literally tomorrow, this report will be forgotten. We know this cycle. We’ve lived this cycle.We will slide right back into the comforting loop of what we call “normality.” And that is the most devastating truth: the empathy of today, no matter how intense, rarely survives beyond these twenty-four hours. We talk, we post, we condemn. We temporarily allow ourselves to feel. But the next morning the world resets. Outrage fades. Commitment dissolves. And we return to a daily life that quietly, steadily, and consistently tolerates violence against women as a background condition of society.
Politicians will step forward to insist that “progress has been made.” They will talk about panic buttons, shelters, hotlines, protocols, committees, and agencies. They will list every tool created over the past decades, as if the presence of infrastructure were equivalent to the presence of justice. But women know better. You know it. I know it. Every woman who has ever hesitated before speaking knows it. Reality does not change just because systems exist on paper. Reality does not change because a country has a handful of shelters while countless women remain too afraid to simply pick up the phone.
Because violence doesn’t hide in the absence of services. Violence hides in the culture that shapes how those services respond. Violence hides in the judgments whispered behind closed doors. Violence hides in the tone of the questions asked by police, by courts, by the media. Violence hides in our normality.
A normality that allows political representatives to make sexist, demeaning remarks publicly and return to their roles a few months later without consequence.
A normality that allows television panels to sneer at, interrupt, belittle, or humiliate women while the audience laughs or scrolls on. A normality that allows courtrooms to ask, “What were you wearing?” or “Why didn’t you leave sooner?” instead of asking the only question that matters: “What was done to you?” A normality that allows lawyers, people responsible for upholding justice, to be perpetrators of intimate partner violence while society digs for ways to blame the woman. A normality where a terrified woman can call for help and hear the phrase: “A police car is not a taxi.” A normality that teaches women every day, in every small way, that they must endure, justify, or hide what has happened to them.
And so, many women choose silence, not because they lack strength, but because they know exactly what comes next if they dare to speak. They know they will be interrogated, doubted, scrutinized. They know their character, their clothing, their tone, their past relationships, their mental health, their messages, their behavior, everything except the behavior of the perpetrator, will be put on trial. They know he will be offered excuses: stress, alcohol, jealousy, passion, misunderstanding. And they will be offered judgment.
We keep talking about panic buttons as if technology can solve what culture refuses to confront. But violence does not end because a button exists. Violence ends when a society refuses to tolerate the conditions that make that button necessary in the first place. And the truth is uncomfortable: We tolerate these conditions. We normalize them. We teach them, sometimes without noticing.
Every November 25th, we post, we share, we mourn, we “raise awareness.” And then, quietly, predictably, we forget. Reports will continue to be published. More women will become statistics before they become stories. More anniversaries will arrive to remind us of what we collectively failed to address.
The real question, the painful question, is not whether violence will continue. It is whether we will continue to look away. Whether we will continue to allow tomorrow to erase today’s conscience. Whether we will continue to slip back into a normality built on silence, excuses, and selective memory. So the question remains: Will we continue to forget? Or will we finally demand a world where remembering is not limited to a single day?
(*)Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com
In this ECPS Voices of Youth contribution, Kader Gueye examines how European populist movements are transforming genuine agrarian grievances into political capital. From Dutch nitrogen protests to French mobilizations against the EU–Mercosur deal, Gueye shows how populist actors amplify farmers’ discontent by framing it as a moral struggle between “ordinary people” and “distant elites.” While such narratives generate visibility and significant institutional leverage—as illustrated by the rise of the BBB in the Netherlands and the far right’s support for French blockades—they rarely address the structural drivers of rural hardship, such as volatile markets, supply-chain imbalances, and climate pressures. Gueye argues that without constructive long-term solutions, populist exploitation risks deepening divisions and leaving farmers’ core challenges unresolved.
By Kader Gueye*
Across Europe, images of tractors lining highways have become quite familiar. Farmers block roads, dump manure at ministry gates and brandish placards about survival and “fair competition.” Falling incomes, volatile markets, and increasingly demanding environmental and trade rules have defined their grievances. The political environment that has grown around these protests is not solely about farm policy, but how populist actors have turned agrarian discontent into leverage without offering credible plans to solve the underlying crisis.
Political farmer mobilization has become politically decisive not simply because of their scale, but because populist parties and their allies translate and diffuse their genuine grievances into a simplistic narrative of “the people” versus “distant rule-makers,” and convert that narrative into institutional power. Notably, the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging — BBB) and the French debate over the EU-Mercosur trade deal illustrate this translation and provide an example onto why farmers’ structural problems are often left unresolved.
Populism and Agrarian Discontent
Political scientists usually describe populism as a “thin” ideology that divides society into two camps: a virtuous people and a corrupt elite, and that insists politics should express the general will of those people (Mudde, 2004). Because it is “thin,” populism needs a host ideology or a concrete issue to attach to. Agrarian discontent has become one of those issues in Europe.
Farmers are often portrayed as the most authentic part of “the people,” especially in countries with a strong rural identity. When farm incomes stagnate, or when new rules arrive from, say, Amsterdam or Paris in the name of environmental protection, it becomes easy to cast farmers as victims of remote decision-makers who may not truly understand life outside the cities.
However, real agrarian grievances are complicated. Farmers face pressure ranging from large supermarket chains, extremely volatile export markets and rising input costs, all while they are being asked to cut emissions, protect biodiversity and adapt to extreme weather linked to climate change (Henley & Jones, 2024). Populist actors rarely talk about all of these drivers at once. They select the parts that fit their story about out-of-touch elites and elevate those parts into a moral conflict. That is the “translation” this article will focus on.
Agrarian Populism in the Netherlands
Dutch farmers protest against measures to reduce nitrogen emissions in the city centre of The Hague, the Netherlands, on June 28, 2022. Photo: Dreamstime.
The BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) was founded in 2019 by journalist Caroline van der Plas and agrarian advocates. The party initially presented itself as a voice for farmers and rural citizens who felt left behind by the urban political elites. Its platform opposed compulsory farm buyouts and demanded a slower transition on nitrogen regulations, with an increased emphasis on technological solutions and voluntary change (Hendrix, 2023).
During the nitrogen protests, BBB politicians regularly appeared at demonstrations, amplified farmers’ slogans and insisted that ministers and unelected EU bureaucrats did not understand rural life. The core message of the BBB was that the government was threatening food producers, while protecting abstract environmental goals. That narrative connected easily with populist language about “ordinary citizens” versus “climate elites.”
The crucial step came during the 2023 provincial elections. BBB transformed the visibility of road blockades into electoral support and won more seats than any other party across all provinces. Because provincial councils elect the Dutch Senate, the party also became the largest group in the upper house (Reuters, 2023).
In that position, BBB gained significant bargaining power. With its newfound power, it could support, amend or stall national laws, including those related to nitrogen emissions. Analysts at the Clingendael Institute describe this as a shift from street protest to “institutionalized leverage” that changed how the entire party system talked about rural concerns (van der Plas & Candel, 2023).
Yet the deeper policy problem remains. Court rulings still require substantial reductions in nitrogen emissions in sensitive nature areas, and new permits for construction are constrained as long as the problem is not resolved (Candel, 2023). BBB has pushed for looser targets and slower timelines but has not presented a comprehensive plan that both satisfies legal obligations and gives farmers a clear long-term horizon.
In practice, this means farmers continue to face uncertainty about land values, future production levels and investment decisions. Populist framing has helped them obtain more political attention, but it has not delivered a stable settlement that combines environmental goals with rural livelihoods.
Tractor Blockades and ‘Fair Competition’ in France
In early 2024, French farmers blocked key highways, encircled Paris with tractor convoys and targeted wholesale markets. where they protested low farm incomes as well as complex regulations. Many of the farmers believed they had to follow much stricter environmental and animal welfare guidelines than did many of their international competitors who exported products into the same markets that the French farmers sold into. (Al Jazeera, 2024)
“Fair competition” was the repeating mantra of these protests. French Farmer’s Associations argued that due to strict environmental and animal welfare laws paired with trade agreements signed by the European Union to allow increased imports from countries with looser regulations, French farmers were at a severe competitive disadvantage.
The main driver of this argument was the European Union-Mercosur Trade Agreement, a proposed deal between the European Union and the Mercosur block composed of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The agreement would lower tariffs and open markets for crucial goods like beef and various industrial products (European Parliament, 2023). French farmers speculated that the increase in imports of beef, poultry and sugar from South America would put pressure on European farmers to compete with unregulated foreign producers whom they viewed as operating under unfair conditions.
Here, far-right populist parties saw a chance to expand their rural base. Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National (RN) party, openly expressed her support of the farmers’ blockades and argued that the protesters were evidence of how the EU’s “green bureaucrats” and “globalists” were harming the interests of French farmers and ultimately threatening the native French way of life (Harlan, 2024). Le Pen and the RN leadership described themselves as champions of the “Real France,” defending its people against technocratic elites in Brussels and disconnected elite groups in Paris, a theme that is often repeated by populists.
What Are the Consequences?
Across these two examples, the populist translation of farmer grievances into policy leverage had a number of consequences, the first of which was the simplification of the intricate causes of farmers’ issues. Global market dynamics, domestic policy decisions, corporate concentration, and environmental constraints all contribute to agrarian hardship. Populist narratives, however, focus more on the role of Brussels or environmental regulations and less on the domestic supply chain power or the climate crisis itself (Henley & Jones, 2024; van der Ploeg, 2020). This selective focus makes it easier to mobilize anger, but it restricts the range of solutions that are politically thinkable.
This phenomenon also makes long-term transition planning more challenging. For instance, populists in the Netherlands claimed that any attempt to establish legally binding emission reduction pathways was evidence that the elites were attempting to “shut down” family farms and any trade agreements are viewed as betrayals of the rural populace in France. These populist portrayals leave little room for negotiated packages that can combine stricter rules with strong support for innovation and major diversification (Hendrix, 2023; van der Plas & Candel, 2023).
The last, and perhaps most apparent effect of this framing is the deepening of social divisions. Here, farmers are pitted against urban consumers and environmental activists, despite the fact that both groups may be interested in a more resilient and sustainable food system. The differences among farmers themselves get blurred as well. Large and intensive operations and small farms have very different capacities and interests, yet populist discourse typically frames them as a monolith, a single, unified “people of the land.”
Towards More Constructive Leverage
Cows grazing on a green pasture in rural Brittany, France. Photo: Elena Elisseeva.
None of this implies that populist parties never raise legitimate concerns or that farmer protests are illegitimate. The demonstrations show genuine worry about rural futures as well as genuine dissatisfaction with the way trade and environmental policies have been presented and organized. The question is how to turn this mobilization into leverage that produces lasting solutions rather than recurring crises. In the current policy discussions, a few options stand out.
Combining comprehensive rural transition contracts with environmental targets is one strategy. For instance, policy analysts in the Netherlands have proposed packages that combine investments in non-agricultural rural jobs, incentives for nature-inclusive farming, and targeted buyouts. The aim being to give farmers a predictable route as opposed to a string of brief shocks (Candel, 2023).
Another approach is to address power imbalances in the food chain. More transparency in pricing, support for producer organizations, and stricter regulations on supermarket purchasing practices could put some pressure on big retailers and processors, who currently hold a significant portion of value added, rather than individual farms (Henley & Jones, 2024).
Lastly, democratic actors require narratives that link rural justice with biodiversity and climate goals. This entails acknowledging that rural areas have historically been neglected, valuing farmers’ knowledge, and incorporating them early in the policy-making process. It becomes more difficult for populists to claim that the countryside can only be protected through complete resistance when transitions are co-designed rather than imposed (European Center for Populism Studies, n.d.; Van der Ploeg, 2020).
As European societies struggle with issues like food security, climate targets, and shifting trade patterns, farmer protests are likely to continue. The key issue is not whether or not farmers voice their dissatisfaction, but rather who uses it as political leverage and for what purposes. Currently, populist actors are adept at turning rage into visibility and temporary power. When it comes to providing reliable, widely accepted roadmaps for the future of European agriculture, they are far less persuasive.
(*) Kader Gueye is an IBDP student at Upper Canada College in Toronto and an aspiring diplomat. He has contributed to briefing work in a federal office and organized student programming on global child protection and civic engagement. His current work examines how institutions stay resilient when politics are under strain.
Chile’s November 16, 2025 presidential vote has produced an unprecedented runoff between José Antonio Kast and Jeannette Jara, crystallizing what Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure calls a historic ideological rupture. Speaking to ECPS, he warns that Chile’s shift must be understood within a broader continental realignment: “A new right-wing alliance is emerging in Latin America—and democracy will take a toll.” According to Larrabure, this bloc is not restoring old authoritarianism but “reinventing democracy—and it’s working.” Kast’s coalition embodies a regional “Bolsonaro–Milei playbook,” powered by what Larrabure terms “rule by chaos,” amplified by compulsory voting and disinformation ecosystems. Meanwhile, the Chilean left enters the run-off severely weakened—“the final nail in the coffin” of a long cycle of progressive contestation.
Chile’s first-round presidential election on November 16, 2025 has produced one of the most consequential political realignments in the country’s post-authoritarian history. For the first time since return to democracy, voters are confronted with a stark extreme-right–versus–Communist runoff between José Antonio Kast and Jeannette Jara—an outcome that crystallizes the profound fragmentation and ideological polarization reshaping Chilean politics. Against this backdrop, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) spoke with Associate Professor Manuel Larrabure, a scholar of Latin American Studies at Bucknell University, whose research on Latin American political transformations offers a critical vantage point on Chile’s current trajectory. As he notes, the 2025 election marks not merely a national turning point, but a regional one: “A new right-wing alliance is emerging in Latin America—and democracy will take a toll.”
Dr. Larrabure situates Chile’s sharp bifurcation within a wider continental pattern of right-wing recomposition, one increasingly linked across Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and beyond. This emergent bloc, he argues, is not driven by nostalgia for past authoritarianism but by a more adaptive and experimental form of illiberal governance. “They are not trying to destroy democracy,” he stresses. “They are trying to reinvent it—and it’s working.” Kast’s coalition, he suggests, fits squarely within this “Bolsonaro–Milei playbook,” but is tempered by Chile’s more conservative political culture. Still, the danger is clear: the right is forging a novel repertoire of power in an era defined by global monopolies, weakened party systems, and disoriented progressive forces.
One of Dr. Larrabure’s most striking insights concerns what he calls the right wing’s mastery of “rule by chaos.” Rather than relying solely on repression, the contemporary right activates social anxieties—around crime, immigration, and insecurity—to mobilize working-class discontent. This dynamic has been amplified, he argues, by Chile’s reintroduced system of compulsory voting, which “absolutely turned out working in favor of the right wing” during the failed constitutional plebiscite of 2022. Social media ecosystems have further strengthened the right’s influence by “creating an atmosphere of general misinformation and chaos, communicational chaos and informational chaos, in which they can operate with ease.”
By contrast, the Chilean left enters the 2025 runoff severely weakened. Dr. Larrabure describes the election as “the final nail in the coffin of a cycle of contestation” that began with the 2006 school protests, peaked in the 2011 student movement, and culminated in the aborted constitutional process of 2019–2022. Progressive forces, he contends, have struggled to translate grassroots innovation into institutional power, hampered in part by diminished capacities for popular education and an unresolved tension between participatory democratic ideals and party-led governance.
Looking ahead, Dr. Larrabure foresees intensified social conflict but also the latent possibility of democratic renewal. Chile’s constitutional debate, he argues, is effectively over; yet social movements will continue to respond. Ultimately, the question is whether they can forge a transformative project capable of “learning from the mistakes of the past” amid an increasingly securitized and polarized political landscape.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Associate ProfessorManuel Larrabure, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Not Pinochet Reborn—but Something New
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signs the bill creating the Ñuble Region on August 20, 2015. Photo: Marcelo Vildosola Garrigo.
Professor Manuel Larrabure, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Chile’s first round of presidential elections on November 16, 2025, produced an extreme-right-versus-Communist runoff unprecedented since the transition to democracy. How do you interpret this sharp ideological bifurcation in light of your work on the fragmentation of both left and right coalitions in Latin America?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: This is a very interesting question, and indeed, there is a bifurcation—a gap—between the Communist Party candidate, Jeannette Jara, and the right-wing candidate. But we need to unpack some assumptions here, because we can easily fall into narratives that are not quite accurate. So let me start with the Communist Party first, and then I’ll talk about the right wing.
The Communist Party has a very long tradition in Chile. It is, in fact, the oldest Communist Party in the entire region. It is very well established, very well institutionalized, and it has long-standing practices. However, it has undergone various changes throughout decades.
If we focus on the changes it experienced beginning with the run-up to the transition to democracy in 1989 and afterward, the Communist Party began to take a much more center-left position. It developed either direct or indirect alliances with what became the center-left governing coalition at the time, the Concertación. You might recall it was led by Michelle Bachelet and Eduardo Frei—some of the key leaders of that coalition. The Communist Party largely supported that center-left coalition, which brought us the kind of neoliberalism that has grown in Chile since those decades.
From that perspective, it would be difficult to call the current Communist Party a far-left party. It really is more of a center-left party. Indeed, if you look at some of the social contestation cycles that began in 2006 with the so-called Penguin Revolution—a social movement of high school students who were called penguins because they wore black-and-white, or dark-blue-and-white, uniforms—these young students were demanding better access to the educational system.
That movement started a cycle of contestation that lasted a few years and then transformed into something we will probably talk about a little later. But many of those early youth movements had a strong critique of the Communist Party precisely for being too timid, lacking imagination, and lacking democratic accountability. In many ways, the progressive cycle that began during that period had a strong critique of the Communist Party for not standing up strongly enough for various social rights.
So that’s the Communist Party; we shouldn’t think of it as a far-left party. Far from it. It can be very timid, and in some cases, even quite conservative in certain respects.
On the other hand, we have Kast and this coalition of right-wing groups and parties. And here, we can also fall into a problematic narrative, because when we say ultra-right-wing or hard right-wing, very quickly that evokes things like fascism or neo-fascism. But the right wing in Chile is actually quite forward-thinking, and has been so for a very long time. By this, I don’t mean progressive in any way, but forward-thinking in the sense that it has been able to successfully adapt to changing conditions on the ground, particularly given that Chile is one of the countries that has inserted itself into global cycles of capitalism, perhaps more so than many others in the region. So it is forward-thinking in that sense. It is willing to adapt, and it is quite pragmatic. It is willing to adjust to changing conditions that it cannot itself fully control.
Yes, they have a strong right-wing agenda on a number of topics that I’m sure we’ll talk about, and indeed many of the people who participate in this right-wing coalition probably have some ideas about Pinochet—nostalgia about Pinochet. In some cases, they even make public remarks supportive of people in the Pinochet regime. But in reality, pragmatism is their horizon—obviously with a right-wing tint to it.
You might recall that although Pinochet himself was a brute, a simpleton brute, the reality—and maybe precisely because he was that—is that he looked elsewhere for ideas. And where did he look for ideas? At the vanguard of American economic thinking at the time, which of course became Milton Friedman. And, this became the neoliberal project, which at the time was very marginal. So within the Pinochet story, there is also a story of looking outside and looking for new ideas to support a right-wing project.
I think this is the light in which we should see this right-wing coalition, rather than seeing it as nostalgic for some kind of European fascism or even Pinochet himself. That nostalgia is there, but it is counterposed with a strong sense of pragmatism.
The Rise of ‘Rule by Chaos’ in Chilean Politics
With José Antonio Kast receiving unified backing from libertarian, conservative, and ultra-right actors, do you see a consolidation of a “new right” coalition akin to the regional patterns you and Levy describe in the “Pink Tides, Right Turns” special issue?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: Yes, it is a consolidation of the right wing. The right wing will undoubtedly win the upcoming elections in December. The outcomes of the current elections were disastrous for the left, even though it maintained some control over the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. However, it’s truly a defeat for the left. If you think about the percentage of the vote that Jara received—approximately 24–25%, I think it was—and compare it to the number of people who voted to approve that progressive constitutional reform project, that was 38%. Only about 24% support Jara, and that’s a big decrease in that respect. It’s undoubted that this is a very difficult situation for the left, and that the right wing will be able to consolidate.
What is it consolidating? That’s the interesting question, and there are many concepts one can use to describe this new right wing. In fact, the very existence of so many of these different concepts—neoliberal authoritarianism, for example—shows that something is changing and has been changing for a long time. To throw yet another concept into the mix, one that I discuss in some of my work, there is the notion of an anti-bureaucratic authoritarian state. Many others could also be valid in terms of the discussions and debates.
But the key novelty in this right-wing coalition—and we’ve seen this with the case of Bolsonaro and Milei—is that it introduces, more than in other situations, the concept of rule by chaos. In the past, the right wing has been accustomed to ruling by pacifying subordinate classes and subordinate groups and repressing them. That will still happen under this new right wing, but it will now have a new dose of attempting to introduce chaos into the mix. That means actually activating the popular classes, activating subordinate sectors, manipulating them, and having them engage with politics, which is something different from what we have seen in the past.
Civil protest for a dignified life in Plaza Italia, as the government deploys military force to repress demonstrations in Santiago de Chile, October 23, 2019. Photo: Dreamstime.
How Mandatory Voting Backfired on Chile’s Left
How do compulsory voting rules—reintroduced in Chile—reshape the dynamics of right-wing populist mobilization, particularly among disaffected working-class male voters in the mining regions?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: Compulsory voting was introduced in 2022 for the final constitutional plebiscite. It turned out to be a big mistake. It surprised everybody, and most people attribute many of the reasons why the constitutional process was not successful to this compulsory voting. An interesting backstory here is that it’s hard to know who introduced it exactly. Some people will say it was actually Boric himself who introduced it, thinking they were in a strong position at the time and that introducing it would lead to a resounding success in the 2022 plebiscite. Others, depending on who you talk to, will tell you it was introduced by someone in the right wing as part of a negotiation with Boric, and that Boric went ahead with it naively, thinking it would work.
It absolutely turned out to work in favor of the right wing, because it forced people to vote on a document that had very little connection to the constitution process itself, about which they knew very little, and from which they were already quite alienated. Their instinct was to vote against it rather than in favor. And that dynamic will continue. Compulsory voting in the context of social media, and in the context of manipulation campaigns of all kinds, actually benefits the right wing in this case.
Crime, Migration, and the Limits of Progressive Narratives
Crime and immigration have eclipsed social rights and constitutional reform as the dominant electoral issues. What does this shift tell us about the vulnerabilities of post-neoliberal political projects in the face of moral panics and securitized narratives?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: It tells us about some of the challenges that progressive movements have had with these issues. If there’s a moral panic about immigration, the best the left has been able to do is cry xenophobia—which, of course, is right. But this kind of moralistic approach is not enough. There are other dimensions that need to be discussed and addressed by the left: psychological dimensions, emotional dimensions, and it’s not as easy as simply saying it’s just wrong. There has to be some other kind of response to that.
On the issue of crime, similarly, the typical answer to rising crime from the left has been to provide jobs, provide economic stability, provide support for citizens, and this will reduce crime. But in practice, this hasn’t necessarily panned out as one might expect. I looked at the case of Venezuela for a while—I still do—and at the height of some of the progressive tendencies in the Chavista project, you had the coincidence of lowering unemployment but higher crime. So you can have higher crime and lower unemployment at the same time, suggesting that there are other things going on beyond these simplistic narratives that the left sometimes uses. Not that that’s wrong—I strongly believe that if you provide a strong, supportive system that allows people to engage in work rather than criminal activity, that’s going to help. But, there are other things going on that the left must think about.
Why Kast’s Securitarian Agenda Isn’t a Return to Pinochet
Kast’s proposals—border walls, mass expulsions, militarization of public security—mirror global far-right repertoires. Do you interpret these as a populist securitarianism, or as an authoritarian neoliberalism in line with Pinochet-era legacies?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: Yes, there are legacies to Pinochet—undoubtedly, and we should be aware of them. But I think we would be mistaken to assume that the right wing is fundamentally nostalgic. Much of the new security-securitization proposals and projects they are advancing also contain an element of creating a new social terrain of chaos—injecting agitation into the population. Many of the things they propose will never actually be implemented, but simply articulating them, simply placing them in the public debate, generates an atmosphere of unrest. And that is precisely the atmosphere in which the right wing thrives.
What label to use—you can choose among several. But it is not a return to a classic authoritarian pattern. It is something different, and it’s important to understand the new terrain they are constructing. That terrain centers on how to concentrate power—how to exercise power—in a context of limited market competition at this particular moment in global capitalism, marked by the rise of extremely powerful monopolies at both global and national levels. They are trying to work out how to wield power under these conditions, and that is a novel context they are adapting to. They are shaping the conditions in which they can then operate with ease. That, I think, is their project.
Checks and Balances vs. Getting Mugged
How does Kast’s explicit admiration for Bukele’s carceral model fit into regional trends you have tracked regarding punitive or penal populism and the erosion of democratic checks and balances?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: At the popular level—and this is something I want to emphasize—the right wing is deeply attuned to everyday sentiments in a way the left simply isn’t. The right understands how people in poor and working-class communities are thinking. If you’re a working-class Chilean, or you have a precarious job, or you’re a low-income person, you’re already struggling to make a living, and you’re heavily indebted. That high level of indebtedness was actually introduced by the center-left, not the right; it was a center-left invention that expanded across broad sectors of the population.
So you’re in debt, you’re struggling to find stable work, your job is precarious, and on top of that, you’re getting mugged regularly in your own community. And what you hear from the center-left is: “we need democracy, checks and balances, human rights.” People think: “What good are checks and balances if I’m getting mugged? They feel, “I can do without all that if it means I’ll be safer.” The right wing is tapping directly into those feelings. Many people feel that under the center-left they didn’t gain much—and they’re still getting mugged. At least the right promises them they won’t.
There is a strong push by the right to activate and amplify those emotions. That’s the dynamic at play. Whether they will build prisons of the kind Bukele is constructing, I doubt it—but it’s possible. What matters far more is the growing resonance between right-wing discourse and popular sectors. That connection is very strong right now.
Democratic Backsliding Without Dictatorship: Chile’s New Risk
Poster of Augusto Pinochet on display at the La Moneda Cultural Center beneath Citizenry Square in Santiago, Chile. Photo: Dreamstime.
Given Kast’s Pinochetist lineage and the rehabilitation of authoritarian nostalgia among sections of the electorate, how serious is the risk of democratic backsliding if he wins the presidency?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: The issue of nostalgia—the right wing has elements of it, but it is actually far more forward-looking. It is the left that primarily lives in the space of nostalgia. As for democratic backsliding, I very much doubt that this will produce a classic authoritarian scenario. It is more likely to generate something novel—different—something that carries some of the flavors of past authoritarianism but operates on entirely different registers. And there are reasons for this. Chilean capital is among the most internationally and globally integrated in the region, and as a result, it has had to remain forward-looking. We need to understand the right wing in this light. The left is far more nostalgic—and unfortunately, that is a problem we still have not resolved.
After the Constitutional Defeat, the Left Has No Path to Hegemony
Jeannette Jara’s campaign reactivates a Communist Party tradition within Chilean democracy. From your research on grassroots movements and the limits of institutional leftism, do you see her as capable of reconstituting progressive hegemony—or is the left structurally weakened after the failed constitutional process?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: Unfortunately, there is no chance of her being able to reconstruct any kind of progressive hegemony. In fact, I see this election as the final nail—there have already been a few “final nails,” but this one truly feels definitive—in the coffin of a cycle of contestation that began in 2006. It continued in 2011 with the university student movements, out of which Gabriel Boric emerged, and eventually transformed into the creation of the Frente Amplio, a new coalition that for a brief period became a kind of hegemonic force. They then led a constitutional reform process that ultimately failed, for a number of interesting reasons we could discuss.
But the point is the opposite of what the question suggests: this moment does not mark the reconstitution of progressive hegemony—it marks the end of a long cycle that started many years ago. And if the best that progressive movements can offer at this point is a very mild center-left alternative to the right wing, then we are in serious trouble.
Why Chile’s Movements Struggle to Become Institutions
How does the collapse of the 2019–2022 constitutional movement resonate with your earlier work on the Chilean student movement (2011), particularly regarding the translation of contentious politics into institutional transformation?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: This is one of the great dilemmas of progressive movements: how to take the combative spirit and the innovations that emerge from social movements on the ground and translate them into effective political institutions capable of contesting government and leading change. This was the case in Chile during the student movement, and later as well. How to make that translation remains an open question. It has been a very difficult challenge in many contexts, and Chile is no exception. It points to the need to reimagine democracy in some way, and I think this is precisely where these movements struggle.
The right wing is very comfortable with the way it operates, with very strict hierarchies. Progressive movements are not. They try to reinvent how to engage with each other in democratic ways, but this is often messy, and many mistakes are made along the way. The Chilean student movements certainly experimented with different kinds of democracy. There were some really interesting experiences with public neighborhood meetings in the run-up to the 2019 movement—people coming together in public parks to discuss politics and engage in new democratic practices.
But moving from those experiments to establishing similar logics within larger parties is very difficult. It has proven extremely challenging. This is where the left needs to focus specifically. And there is some good news in the failure of this long cycle of contestation: it allows us to see more clearly than before that we need to focus on understanding the relationship between leaders and followers. Progressive movements have a strong discomfort with these questions. We like to imagine that everyone can be a leader, and sometimes that is simply not possible. Who should lead? What makes a good leader—and just as importantly, what makes a good follower—are questions we need to discuss more openly in the context of translating social movements into political institutions.
Chile’s Election Marks the End of the Pink Tide Illusion
In your view, does this election signify the exhaustion of the second-generation Pink Tide, or merely a recalibration within a longer regional cycle punctuated by commodity dependence, political volatility, and institutional fragility?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: It is true that there has been a kind of renaissance of different left political projects in the region that have come to power—Colombia for a moment, and also Peru. Many people began to see these developments as a sort of second coming of the Pink Tide. But we need to be careful with this. There have been some interesting experiments within some of these governments, but the context in which they emerged is completely different from that of the original Pink Tide, which began back in the late 1990s.
The circumstances now are entirely different: we are looking at economic volatility, economic crisis, and a highly fragmented left. This is simply not a context that allows any kind of strong, progressive wave—a Pink Tide 2.0—to sustain itself for very long. So that’s the first point. I really don’t see this second Pink Tide as being anywhere near as substantial as the first one. In that sense, what is happening in Chile right now feels like yet another final nail in the coffin of the idea that a second Pink Tide is emerging. We should not think of it as analogous to the first one.
Disinformation as a Tool of Chile’s New Right
Illustration: Shutterstock / Skorzewiak.
How do you assess the role of corporate media and disinformation ecosystems—topics raised in the Pink Tide literature—in shaping anti-progressive sentiment and facilitating the rightward shift in Chilean public opinion?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: Social media has been a very fertile terrain for the right wing, which has moved into that terrain very quickly and very enthusiastically. It has hired an army of trolls to influence public opinion, and they are very effective at it. They have done a really impressive job of targeting some of the weaknesses of left or progressive discourses and planting doubt in large swaths of the population about what it means to support the rights of citizens. Basic things are coming into question for the very first time precisely because of how effective they have been in the realm of social media.
In particular, they have been good at creating a narrative—the narrative of fascist versus communist—which really works in their favor. People on the left are too defensive about this topic, and people can see it. And when people see that kind of defensiveness, they sense that something is wrong. The right wing has been very effective at pushing those triggers within progressive sectors that reveal to the broader population that they are not fully comfortable with some of the things they are saying.
And this has been the job of the right wing: to seed doubt, to plant doubt, to create an atmosphere of general misinformation and chaos—communicational chaos and informational chaos—in which they can then operate with much ease.
Why Chile’s Left Can’t Bridge Streets and Institutions
Considering your argument that participatory and prefigurative movements often produce tensions with state-centric left governments, does the recent election reflect unresolved contradictions between movement-based radicalism and party-led governance?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: No doubt—and it clearly reflects deep contradictions. It’s striking to think about the movements born in 2006 and 2011, out of which emerged the demand for constitutional reform, and how difficult it was to translate that demand into practice—to convince large parts of the Chilean population that changing the Constitution was necessary. This is why it was such a shock that only about 38% of people voted in favor of the new draft.
This outcome reflects many of the tensions between formal politics and street politics, or extra-parliamentary politics. It is very difficult to bridge these spheres, and we haven’t really built the kinds of organizations capable of making that translation possible. This remains an ongoing task for progressive movements.
In particular, the process exposed lost capacities in the realm of popular education. It is one thing to demand or imagine a very different constitution—as was the case in Chile. Social movements carry what they call “horizons of change”: visions of an alternative society they hope to realize. Sometimes these horizons are explicit, sometimes implicit, but they are always there.
The challenge arises when these horizons of change drift too far from the movements’ capacity to engage in popular education and materially advance those visions. That gap inevitably creates problems. And from my perspective, the real motor of this entire process is the question: can progressive movements carry out effective popular education? This is especially difficult today, when people are tied to their phones and immersed in social media debates rather than substantive collective discussions in other forums.
So the major challenge for progressive movements now is how to engage in popular education in a way that narrows thisgap. In Chile, the gap grew so wide by 2022 that people simply stopped believing in the project of constitutional change.
A New Right-Wing Axis—and Its Democratic Costs
Kast’s openly pro-Trump positioning aligns Chile with an emergent right-wing axis in Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and potentially Colombia and Peru. How does this recomposition of hemispheric alliances affect prospects for democratic deepening and autonomous development in the region?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: This is definitely a new right-wing alliance—a regional alliance—that is emerging. Democracy will take a toll, without a doubt. What they are trying to do is not destroy democracy; they are trying to reinvent it—something the left should be doing but has struggled to do. And they are succeeding. They are actively reinventing democracy, and it’s working.
Of course, there are elements that recall past authoritarianism; those elements are there. But, as I mentioned earlier, there are also strong elements of novelty. This is a Bolsonaro–Milei political playbook, though not as intense in Chile. Chile has a much more conservative, even stoic political culture compared to those countries. So you won’t see the more outlandish shenanigans of figures like Milei or Bolsonaro, but you will see a small taste of that in Chile—perhaps for the first time.
Indeed, they are consolidating into what I think is an experiment in how to exercise power in a context marked by very strong global monopolies, limited market competition, and a totally fragmented left. For that, you don’t need a dictatorship. You need something different—and that is what they are trying to figure out. It’s not good, but it’s also not a return to the Pinochet era.
Democratic Resilience Beneath the Surface
Chilean presidential runoff at Instituto Presidente Errázuriz in Santiago. Voters cast ballots in the December 19, 2021 election between José Antonio Kast and Gabriel Boric. Photo: Dreamstime.
And finally, Professor Larrabure, what scenarios do you foresee for Chile’s medium-term political trajectory—particularly regarding (a) democratic resilience, (b) the future of the constitutional question, and (c) the ability of social movements to intervene in an increasingly securitized, polarized political field?
Assoc. Prof. Manuel Larrabure: The constitutional question is over. I don’t think that’s on the table anymore. The question of social movements intervening in the political terrain—yes, they’ll intervene. There’s no doubt there will be responses from social movements throughout this period of the new right that’s emerging in the country. That’s been the case in Latin America for a very long time; movements do respond to these kinds of attacks. The question is, how are they going to respond exactly? What new repertoires are they going to use? Are they going to learn some of the lessons of the previous cycle of contestation, or are they simply going to repeat what they did? And I think this is a very important question.
Is this going to lead to challenges to democracy as we know it? Yes, it will. But Latin America has a strong record of democratic resilience; democratic movements are always there, just beneath the surface. And I don’t doubt for a second that they will respond. I hope that through that process—and no doubt a new wave of contestation will begin at some point—they can articulate progressive politics, a political transformation, a social transformation that is more effective and able to learn from the mistakes of the past.
In his interview with ECPS, Professor Richard Youngs (Carnegie Europe; University of Warwick) offers a sharp assessment of today’s democratic crisis. Highlighting a “qualitative shift” in autocratization, he points to two transformative forces: digital technologies and a rapidly changing international order. As he observes, “we are in an interregnum between the liberal global order and whatever comes next.” Professor Youngs warns that democratic erosion is driven not only by structural pressures but by the “incremental tactics” of illiberal leaders who steadily undermine checks and balances—often learning directly from one another. Looking ahead, he argues that mere institutional survival is insufficient: democracies must pursue renewal and resilience, noting that “it is much easier to undo democracy than to reassemble good-quality democratic norms.”
In a wide-ranging and analytically rich interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Richard Youngs—Senior Fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at Carnegie Europe and Professor of International Relations at the University of Warwick—offers a compelling diagnosis of the global democratic landscape at a moment of profound uncertainty. Reflecting on accelerating autocratization, shifts in global power, EU democratic dilemmas, and the prospects for democratic renewal, Professor Youngs provides both conceptual clarity and sobering realism. As he puts it, “we are in an interregnum between the liberal global order and whatever comes next”—a liminal period in which the rules, norms, and institutional anchors of the past three decades no longer hold firm, even as no coherent alternative has yet emerged.
Professor Youngs identifies two forces that make the current wave of democratic regression qualitatively distinct from earlier cycles: the disruptive role of digital technologies and far-reaching structural changes in the international order. Both realms, he argues, remain fluid, capable of generating either deeper democratic decay or future sources of resilience. Although digital platforms currently “carry very negative implications for democracy,” ProfessorYoungs reminds us that past expectations of their democratizing potential need not be abandoned entirely if regulation becomes more effective. Similarly, while rising non-democratic powers are reshaping global geopolitics, there remains “many democratic powers that might coordinate more effectively in the future” to safeguard liberal norms within a reconfigured global system.
This transitional moment is further complicated by the rise of radical-right populism, the diffusion of illiberal tactics across borders, and democratic backsliding in core Western states. Professor Youngs emphasizes that the potency of contemporary autocratization stems not from structural shifts alone but from the “very skillful way in which many leaders have deployed incremental tactics to undermine democratic equality.” Autocrats, he notes, actively learn from one another—sometimes “copying and pasting” repressive legal templates—creating a transnational ecosystem of illiberal innovation.
The interview also probes dilemmas within the European Union, from the risks of technocratic overreach in “defensive democracy” measures to the strategic tensions posed by engaging or isolating radical-right parties. Professor Youngs is clear-eyed about the difficulty of balancing pluralism with the defense of liberal norms, describing the EU’s predicament as a “catch-22.”
Looking ahead, Professor Youngs argues that scholarship and policy must shift from diagnosing democratic decline to theorizing and cultivating democratic resilience. Yet this resilience must go beyond “pure survival” and involve deeper processes of reform, renewal, and societal empowerment. As he cautions, “it is much easier to undo democracy than to reassemble good-quality democratic norms,” and the work of rebuilding will require sustained, coordinated effort at both national and international levels.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Richard Youngs, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
The Global Order Is in a State of Uncertainty
Photo: Dzmitry Auramchik.
Professor Richard Youngs, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: How should we analytically distinguish the present cycle of democratic regression from previous waves of autocratization? Does this moment represent merely a quantitative intensification, or a qualitatively novel form of democratic decay tied to identity conflict, digital transformation, and transnational illiberalism?
Professor Richard Youngs: I think you answered your own question there with the last two factors, which are really the distinguishing features of the current phase of autocratization. Not every factor is new. These things move in political cycles, and many of the strains affecting democracy have been fairly constant across time. We shouldn’t overly idealize previous periods when democracy seemed to be on the rise. Many of these problems are long-standing, but the two factors you identify do seem to herald a qualitative shift: the role of digital technology and the structural changes in the global order, and how these developments impinge upon national-level politics. I would say that both factors—the digital sphere and the international order—remain quite fluid, and their impact may be complex over the medium term.
The digital sphere, as we know, currently carries very negative implications for democracy, and most attention is on those negative aspects. Yet if one looks back a few years, there was hope that digital technology might also have democratizing effects. If governments manage to adequately regulate the online information space, some focus may return to the more positive potential of digital technologies. The same applies to the international order. Most experts agree that we are in an interregnum between the liberal global order and whatever comes next, and it is not at all clear what form that future order will take.
Clearly, the emerging international order will give greater weight to non-democratic powers. But there are still many democratic states that may, in time, coordinate more effectively to ensure that democracy retains a meaningful place in the newly reshaped global order.
Leadership Strategy Matters More Than Structural Cleavages
To what extent is the rise of radical-right populism in Europe driven by structural cleavages—cultural, socio-economic, geopolitical—versus strategic agency on the part of populist entrepreneurs? How should we interpret this ascent within broader theories of party-system realignment?
Professor Richard Youngs: This is a long-standing debate, but again, the answer is implicit in your question. I would say that the strategic agency deployed by illiberal policy entrepreneurs is the most significant factor. The underlying structural issues—the technological shifts, changes in global politics, economic pressures, identity dynamics—are all clearly present. I don’t think there is a single factor that applies uniformly across all cases, and the balance between these drivers varies from state to state.
But if we recognize that no overarching structural explanation captures these developments in a uniform way, then the focus shifts, as you suggest, to strategic agency: the leadership tactics and the very skillful ways in which many leaders have used incremental measures to erode democratic equality. Even without moving politics fully into authoritarianism, they have steadily chipped away at the quality and robustness of democratic checks and balances.
So I would say it is a combination of underlying structural features and political agency—and, as you intimate, it is the interaction between these two levels that has made the current wave of autocratization so potent.
Illiberal Alliances Are Real but Highly Fluid
A banner depicts democracy as a leaf eaten by “caterpillars” named Putin, Kaczynski, Orban, Babis, Trump, and Fico on Labour Day, May 1, 2017 in Old Town Square, Prague. Photo: Jolanta Wojcicka.
You have written about an emerging “Illiberal International.” Are today’s authoritarian and illiberal leaders (Putin, Erdoğan, Orbán, Trump) converging around a coherent ideological project, or are we observing a more fluid assemblage of mutually reinforcing but heterogeneous illiberalisms?
Professor Richard Youngs: The alliances are more fluid, again, as you suggest. Many books and articles have examined this emerging coordination among authoritarian regimes, and there is a general consensus that these regimes are indeed coordinating more effectively. Part of that coordination involves their pushback against liberal or democratic norms in many parts of the world, but they do not share a uniform agenda. Many illiberal projects are quite distinctive—quite different in their ideological precepts and the kinds of policies they prioritize.
These differences do not, at the moment, preclude some degree of coordination, but there clearly isn’t a single, well-coordinated policy of autocracy promotion in the way that democracies have sought to coordinate in previous years. So it is clearly significant and an important emerging aspect of global politics. But I think we need to be careful not to overestimate how coherent a bloc non-democratic regimes have established, at least so far.
Trump Is an Intensification, Not a New Phenomenon
What does the partial autocratization of the United States under Trump imply for global democratic theory? Does it signal the end of the assumption that consolidated democracies are inherently resilient, or does it reflect deeper path dependencies in presidential, majoritarian systems?
Professor Richard Youngs: I don’t think Trump, in himself, shows that consolidated democracies are not inherently resilient. That fact has been emerging and becoming clear for quite some time over the last decade. His impact is another lurch in that direction—perhaps the most dramatic and worrying to date—but still an intensification of a trend we have already been witnessing rather than something qualitatively new.
What could represent a real game changer, however, is the United States’ shift internationally—from serving as an anchor of democratic order to, in some cases, supporting forms of authoritarian government. Not everywhere, of course, but as the US steps back in many places from defending democratic norms, this could change the balance in the global contest between democracy and autocracy and become a significant factor working against democratic reform in many countries.
We should not overestimate the influence of what is happening in the US. In many parts of the world, the fate of democracy will continue to depend on deeply rooted local factors, not on developments in Washington. But this shift is nonetheless significant and will have important implications, especially for the international dimensions of democratic theory.
Institutional and Cultural Illiberalism Reinforce Each Other
How do you assess the relative weight of institutional capture (courts, media regulators, security agencies) versus cultural-political radicalization in driving democratic deconsolidation? Is one a precursor to the other, or do they typically evolve in mutually reinforcing spirals?
Professor Richard Youngs: Again, you answer your own very good question. I think both the formal institutional level and the more social-cultural level are significant, and it is their increasing reinforcement of each other in recent years that has given so much momentum to the current illiberal wave. In some countries, it is the institutional side that comes first and drives changes at the social level. In other countries, it is the other way around, so there is no uniform pattern across cases. But it seems to me that the coexistence of these formal institutional dynamics and the simultaneous evolution of social and cultural dynamics is what is so interesting—and what represents such a powerful trend.
Flag of Finland and the European Union flag displayed in the European Council offices in Brussels, Belgium, on April 10, 2024. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.
Given the EU’s increasing reliance on counter-disinformation, surveillance resilience, and digital shields, do you see a danger that “defensive democracy” morphs into a form of technocratic securitization that paradoxically narrows democratic space?
Professor Richard Youngs: I think the danger is there. Of course, your question is very topical at the moment, because the EU has just agreed on its European Democracy Shield and, only last week, launched a European Center for Democratic Resilience. You are right that, for now, the priority focus appears to be on shielding European democracy in a very defensive way—from Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) operations, from foreign influence, and from manipulation by external actors. At the same time, European policymakers do, at least rhetorically, acknowledge that this is only one part of what is needed to reinforce democratic norms.
The remit of the shield has shifted somewhat, with a slightly stronger emphasis emerging on civic engagement and media pluralism than was initially evident. This shift reflects concerns, as you suggest, that the EU itself might drift toward a somewhat illiberal technocratic securitization in the name of defending liberal democracy. That warning is clearly on the EU’s agenda, and policymakers seem aware of the risk.
Hopefully, the Democracy Shield and the new center will evolve into a broader democracy strategy that balances, on the one hand, the regulations and laws genuinely needed to protect European democracy from harmful online and external influences, and, on the other, a more positive dynamic of civic empowerment, on which democratic quality depends over the medium to longer term.
Illiberal Regimes Learn Faster Than Democracies Respond
What evidence do we have that autocratizing incumbents actively learn from one another’s tactical repertoires—judicial interference, NGO restrictions, electoral manipulation—and how should the EU conceptualize this diffusion of illiberal techniques?
Professor Richard Youngs: There is a lot of evidence, as you know and as you have worked on in the center, that regimes are learning from one another on these tactics. In some cases, they are almost copying and pasting the same kinds of repressive laws taken from other countries into their own legislation. There is ample evidence of this. This is not a new issue; it has been going on for about 15 years. We are now almost in the second or third iteration of these repressive laws, and the international dynamics—the lessons that regimes are learning from each other—are clearly stronger than they were some years ago.
I think the lesson for actors like the EU is that this assault on democratic space around the world is no longer simply a matter of trying to protect individual civil society organizations in a select number of cases. It exists at a more systemic, international level, and it needs to be understood and addressed at that level. The EU has begun to move in that direction, but it still has quite a way to go to grasp the truly order-level significance of this kind of anti-democratic learning across borders.
Europe Faces a Genuine Democracy Catch-22
You have described a tension whereby insulating the EU from radical-right influence risks constraining pluralism, while integrating them risks legitimizing illiberalism. How should scholars and policymakers evaluate this “democracy catch-22” in light of the long-term risks to both the polity and the party system?
Professor Richard Youngs: I don’t have an answer to this. I conceptualized it as a catch-22 situation, as have many other people, because I just don’t think there’s a good, a perfect option for European policymakers. Engagement with far-right parties clearly risks normalizing such parties to an undue extent, but on the other hand, ostracizing them completely risks actually increasing their appeal for a significant part of the population.
We’re in a gray zone at the moment, where the fact that in many countries these parties have gained such a significant part of the vote makes it not so easy to ignore them completely anymore, but most mainstream parties are still reluctant to build them in formally into any working partnerships, and the far-right parties, the radical parties themselves, now have to juggle with a difficult strategic decision themselves, whether to engage in normalized politics or whether to hold themselves outside the system and retain their appeal as extra-institutional challenger parties, and we see some of these difficulties, for example, in the Netherlands over the last four or five months.
So, at the moment, I would conceptualize it as a rather uneasy, gray area of adjustment, somewhere between far-right parties being left out and ostracized completely and other parties wanting to deal with them as completely normal parties. It’s a very uneasy combination. It’s a kind of implicit attempt to get around this catch-22, but I’m not sure we can expect really dramatic results from this, and I think mainstream parties will continue to struggle with how to deal with this phenomenon at the moment.
Democracy Support Persists, Yet in a Weakened Form
Is Europe’s push for “strategic autonomy” compatible with maintaining a robust external democracy-support agenda, or does the logic of autonomy inevitably push the EU toward transactional geopolitics and away from normative liberalism?
Professor Richard Youngs: I don’t think it pushes the EU inevitably toward purely transactional geopolitics, but there are clearly significant signs at the moment that the EU is prioritizing other policy issues over democracy support. European democracy support is still there—it still exists, and it has not collapsed dramatically. Yet there are indications that many member states, or at least some, are cutting their democracy budgets and prioritizing more strategic alliances with non-democratic regimes.
So, once again, we find ourselves in a rather uneasy balance: some aspects of the democracy agenda are being strengthened in the name of the EU’s geopolitical interests, while many others are being weakened because of a shift toward more realpolitik-style geopolitics. It is an uneasy balance, and it is likely to persist. The EU will likely emerge from this period of adjustment with some degree of commitment to democracy support still intact, but the agenda will look quite different from what it was 5 or 10 years ago.
A New Global Coalition of Democracies Is Needed
Students from public universities in São Paulo protested against cuts in education budgets made by the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in São Paulo, Brasil on November 8, 2022. Photo: Isaac Fontana.
With US democracy assistance dramatically reduced, is the EU institutionally and ideationally equipped to serve as the central node of a reconfigured global democracy-support ecosystem—or does this require a paradigmatic rethinking beyond “funding substitution”?
Professor Richard Youngs: The latter. And we have just written about this with my Carnegie colleagues. The US cuts in democracy support—although some aid has since been partially reconstituted—remain very significant and severe, and they are acting as a catalyst for other democracies around the world to rethink their policies, including many European donors. There is growing recognition that a broader set of alliances needs to be built with democracies outside Europe. The EU is not going to step up on its own to fully compensate for the reductions in US democracy assistance. Many member states are also cutting development assistance for their own reasons, which is prompting them to explore alternative ways of supporting democratic reformers that are not so heavily dependent on standard project aid, as has traditionally been the case.
The democracy agenda will still exist, but it will have to do so in a significantly transformed way. For the EU, this means the debate cannot simply revolve around how far it can compensate for the cuts in US aid. What we are seeing in the United States presents a broader challenge: the democracy community as a whole needs to think afresh and recognize that the democracy agenda will need to become more selective and pursued through different means. It will not have the same kind of primacy in global politics that it once enjoyed, even if it does not disappear entirely.
Three Agendas, One Challenge: Europe Needs Integrated Policy
Your work on the “triple nexus” highlights interlocking vulnerabilities. Should democratic governance now be treated as a central security variable in EU climate and conflict policy, rather than a parallel track? What institutional reforms would this require?
Professor Richard Youngs: Exactly, and again, you have posed the policy imperative very well. We have the democracy agenda, the conflict agenda, and the climate agenda—all three growing in complexity. The challenges emerging from each are becoming more severe, yet they are still pursued largely as parallel tracks in European policy. These are very difficult, thorny issues to integrate, but it is essential to understand how conflict intersects with climate change, how climate intersects with governance challenges, and how governance dynamics intersect with conflict. The EU needs to pursue policies, initiatives, and projects on the ground that encompass all three dimensions together.
The EU rhetorically acknowledges that this integrated approach is necessary. It has introduced several strategy documents emphasizing its importance. But institutionally, the funding structures and foreign-policy and security structures are not yet configured in a way that enables governments and EU institutions to approach these different challenges as a single, coherent policy challenge.
Resilience Requires Renewal, Not Just Defense
In your recent work, you suggest moving from analyzing autocratization to theorizing democratic resilience. How should resilience be conceptualized so that it does not simply mean institutional survival but also normative renewal, adaptability, and democratic deepening?
Professor Richard Youngs: Again, that’s exactly the answer. Lots of people are now writing on democratic resilience. For more than a decade, the focus has mainly been on democratic backsliding and autocratization. More people are now trying to understand why some democracies have managed to survive in reasonably good shape despite all the challenges of the last decade; in a small number of cases, some countries have even made democratic improvements. That is why the concept of resilience has become more prominent. It means different things to different people. Part of it is about pure survival—fending off very overt authoritarian dynamics. But the second layer, as analysts increasingly recognize, is that to survive, democracy cannot simply fend off Chinese, Russian, or other external threats; democracy needs to reform itself. There are ongoing debates about what kinds of democratic reforms can provide the most resilience over the longer term. These debates are still quite embryonic, but they are beginning to filter into policy discussions.
The degree of resilience we see remains quite fragile and tentative, but I think that in future years we will need a much tighter learning process between these emerging analytical debates about democratic resilience, on the one hand, and the design of better resilience strategies by the EU and other actors, on the other. There is some overlap and some progress, but it is still quite limited. Even though much of the policy focus will continue to be on dealing with ongoing trends in authoritarianism, there will also need to be, in parallel, a more systematic focus on democratic resilience.
Rebuilding Democracy Is Far Harder Than Dismantling It
Israelis protest in Tel Aviv against Netanyahu’s Judicial Coup in Israel. Photo: Avivi Aharon.
Your research identifies patterns in democratic recoveries (Brazil, Poland, Zambia, Senegal). What distinguishes successful “recovery trajectories” from cases where post-authoritarian openings stagnate or relapse? Which factors—elite coalitions, civil society autonomy, constitutional design—matter most?
Professor Richard Youngs: So you refer to a big report that we’ve just done, presenting a number of cases that seemed to offer a particular moment—an opportunity for democratic recovery. The sobering reality is that when these moments of democratic opportunity opened up, relatively few countries then experienced a truly far-reaching, definitive process of re-democratization. Most struggled to implement full democratic reforms, and there was often pushback against attempts to re-democratize. The whole challenge of re-democratization is extremely difficult, because it requires newly empowered democratic regimes to regain control of state institutions that have been captured by anti-democratic forces.
I don’t think there’s any single factor—because there have been so few cases of absolutely resounding success, it’s hard to isolate variables and say that democratic recovery really depends on A, B, or C. But we have noticed that, in general, where there is strong societal mobilization and pressure linked with reformers within the political sphere—through competitive political parties—and supportive institutional conditions, momentum toward democratic reform after sustained autocratization does seem to be stronger.
But I would also say that these cases of potential positive turnaround show us something important: it is much easier to undo democracy than to reassemble good-quality democratic norms. Rebuilding democracy is a very hard enterprise, and even governments with the strongest will in the world to redemocratize—institutionally and socially—often find this extraordinarily difficult to do.
Not All Illiberal Agendas Are Inherently Anti-Democratic
And lastly, Professor Youngs, your proposal for a European Democracy Pact aims to separate political-system norms from policy disputes. What would constitute a sufficiently rigorous and enforceable set of democratic red lines to test parties’ commitment to liberal pluralism without collapsing into moralism or partisan exclusion?
Professor Richard Youngs: That’s what needs to be defined. It’s very complicated, but what is needed is to prise apart the rather illiberal policy agendas of far-right parties in Europe—policies one may profoundly disagree with but that might not, in themselves, be inherently anti-democratic—from what are genuine threats to the core institutional norms of democracy. At the moment, those two things tend to get conflated. At one extreme, some argue that these parties are inherently and unavoidably anti-democratic. At the other, some claim they simply hold views liberals may dislike but pose no danger to democracy. The truth is probably somewhere between those extremes.
What is needed is a clear agenda outlining what constitutes anti-democratic behavior at the institutional level, separating the issue of illiberal social values on the one hand from the core practices of democratic politics on the other. There will inevitably be some grey areas in making this distinction. But what I suggested with the proposal for a democracy pact is an attempt to prise away certain conservative areas of rising conservatism—whose policies may be illiberal and objectionable—while still encouraging them to join in a shared commitment to core democratic norms.
Murphey, Helen L. (2025). “Civilizational Populism and Migration Diplomacy: Tunisia, the European Union, and Italy.”Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). November 23, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000121
Abstract
Civilizational populists prioritize territorial sovereignty in their approach to migration. In instances of North-South inequality, however, transit countries may be incentivized to accede to ideologically unpalatable agreements. To understand how these compromises are legitimized, this paper analyses Tunisia’s negotiations with the European Union following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in July 2023 that laid the foundations for cooperation over irregular migration. The deal faced challenges on both the Tunisian and EU sides. Tunisian president Kais Saied, a civilizational populist, chafed at perceived EU paternalism and threats to Tunisia’s sovereignty. The deal was also controversial within the EU due to the Saied regime’s human rights violations, which led to further scrutiny of the Tunisian government’s migration management practices. This article finds that Italy’s mediation, spearheaded by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, was successful in addressing these tensions. By positioning Italy as separate from EU paternalism through a shared framework informed by civilizational populism, Saied could justify engaging in positive-sum diplomacy with the Meloni government and symbolically dispel perceptions of diplomatic asymmetry.
Keywords:migration, European Union, Tunisia, populist foreign policy, Italy
By Helen L. Murphey*
Introduction
In April 2024, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Tunisian President Kais Saied for the fourth time in a year. The visit was presented as a success: the two leaders vowed to deepen cooperation, notably over migration, based on the principle of mutual benefit (Gasteli & Kaval, 2024). This successful outcome followed a tumultuous negotiation period with the European Union over a joint approach to migration governance, as some European Union members drew attention to Tunisia’s human rights record, and Saied reiterated his refusal to act as Europe’s border patrol (Dahmani, 2024).
A closer examination of Italy’s role in facilitating EU-Tunisian cooperation over migration helps unpack how populists use foreign policy to preserve sovereignty and mount a symbolic defense of an embattled national identity. It is a truism that populists tend to pursue foreign policy programs that strengthen national sovereignty at the expense of greater long-term international cooperation. This pattern is particularly pronounced when authoritarian populists are driven by strong ethnonationalist concerns, resulting in a reticence to adopt policy positions that might benefit other nations or minority groups (Wajner et al., 2024: 1825). Many such ethnonationalist populist actors can be identified as civilizational populists (Morieson, 2023), a phenomenon referring to populists around the world who adopt a culturalized understanding of the ‘people’ as belonging to a civilizational heritage (Yilmaz & Morieson, 2022b). Such rhetoric allows for boundaries to be drawn between insiders and outsiders that imply a concern with race and demography while instead using the language of culture and civilizational continuity (Mandelc, 2025). This both draws on nationalist tropes while also transcending them through reference to a more grandiose imaginary (Brubaker, 2017: 1211).
For such actors, migration forms a particularly potent issue. Not only is it is seen to threaten the ‘purity’ of the nation or region’s people, but it also is typically associated with the priorities of elites and their neoliberal economic project (Stewart, 2020: 1210). Indeed, civilizational populists’ construction of the ‘elite’ presents them as “culturally deracinated” and antagonistic to cultural and national specificity, in Brubaker’s framing (Brubaker, 2017: 1192). Migration thus combines populism’s tendency to differentiate itself from both global elites and their ideology of cosmopolitanism, as well as the “dangerous” foreigners who are often linked to crime and disorder (Taguieff, 1997: 20). Meloni herself has referred to migration as part of a “globalist” project to render Italy more economically and culturally vulnerable by depriving its citizenry of their natural identities (Kington, 2022). Yet civilizational populism – and its connections to race, religion, and ethnicity – also helps illuminate the logic of why some migrants may be more accepted than others. For example, while the Meloni regime has been critical of policies allowing for the intake of Middle Eastern and African migrants and refugees, it has been more welcoming towards Ukrainians fleeing the conflict.
In Tunisia, the issue of migration has been particularly salient under the Saied regime. Tunisia has long been a country of departure for migrants seeking to reach Europe, a pattern which accelerated after the economic and political instability following the Arab Spring. Yet while in the past, most migrants transiting from Tunisia to Europe have been of Tunisian origin, since 2023 Tunisia has become the largest point of departure for sub-Saharan African migrants embarking for Europe (Abderrahim, 2024). This has introduced new dynamics, including growing racist and anti-sub-Saharan African sentiments, that have been intensified by European policy favoring the externalization of migration governance.
In referencing migration, Saied has used language typical of civilizational populism: he has presented mass sub-Saharan African migration as a demographic threat to Tunisian identity. Such rhetoric was civilizational rather than solely ethnonationalist: irregular migration, in his words, would transform Tunisia from a member of the Arab-Islamic community to “just another African country” (Al Jazeera, 2023). This statement drew on a long history of contestation within negotiations over Tunisia’s regional identity, as well as long-standing marginalization of the country’s Black population (Mzioudet, 2024). After Saied voiced these sentiments in an infamous and controversial speech, Tunisian police began escalating repression of migrants and punishing organizations that advocate on their behalf.
Yet in addressing this issue, the Saied regime has had to balance competing priorities, indicating the complex and shifting power dynamics constraining populists’ agency in the foreign policy arena. The EU has been willing to offer much-needed financial support in exchange for Tunisian cooperation over migration governance. This dependency makes it difficult for Saied to adopt a classic civilizational populist positioning, in which sovereignty is performed through pure oppositionality (Dudlak, 2025: 629). In effect, however, more interceptions of migrant crossings at sea have led to increasing numbers of sub-Saharan Africans stranded in Tunisia, unable to work or obtain housing due to stricter government policies and further inflaming tensions with Tunisian citizens.
This article analyses the tensions at work in EU-Tunisian migration negotiations and their resolution through Italian mediation. Through analyzing official statements, politicians’ interviews with the press, media coverage, and debates within the European Union from the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in 2023 to the development of European-Tunisian migration partnership throughout 2024-2025, it traces the narratives advanced by proponents and antagonists of the MoU about migration within Tunisia, Italy, and the European Union. This allows for populism to be analyzed as both a strategy and ideology, builds on studies that similarly approach populism – and its links to securitized imaginaries – using a qualitative narrative analytical method centering intertextuality (Löfflmann, 2024).
This study offers theoretical insights linking populist foreign policy to ontological security. Ontological security suggests that states – as well as international bodies – strive for continuity of identity, even at the cost of instability in their foreign relations (Mitzen, 2006). Through analyzing the EU-Italy-Tunisia relationship, this article argues that Meloni’s intercession, fueled in part by shared civilizational populist values between Meloni and Saied, helped the Saied regime cooperate with Europe whilst avoiding the appearance of subservience to the European Union. In so doing, it preserved both the ontological security of the Saied regime and its prioritization of sovereignty, as well as that of the European Union, who could distance themselves from the human rights abuses attending the deal.
This article suggests that unequal power dynamics between the European Union and Tunisia – and between member states within the European Union – are essential in understanding the Saied regime’s seeming erraticism during migration negotiations. Consequently, it advances that bilateral relations between populists can be improved through symbolically differentiating themselves from multilateral institutions – which, in turn, can further empower populists on the global stage.
(*) Helen L. Murphey is a Post Doctoral Scholar at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. She earned a PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews in 2023, where she was a Carnegie PhD Scholar. She has previously held an appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Whitman College. She is a Research Associate at the Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies at the University of St Andrews and an Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Religion at the Ohio State University. Her research interests include populism, conspiracy theories, religious social movements and migration. Email: murphey.27@osu.edu | ORCID: 0000-0002-1504-3818
In her sharp analysis of the COP30 summit, Dr. Heidi Hart,an environmental humanities researcher and guest instructor at Linnaeus University in Sweden, captures the surreal moment when an exhibition pavilion in Belém caught fire—an unsettling metaphor for a world already burning. Despite tense negotiations and an extra day of talks, petrostates secured a final text that completely omitted fossil fuels, leaving UN Secretary-General Guterres to warn of a widening gap between science and policy. Dr. Hart situates this failure within a shifting global landscape marked by illiberal regimes, climate denial, and powerful petro-interests. With geopolitical turmoil and corporate greenwashing shaping outcomes, her commentary underscores a stark truth: on a “spaceship” with finite resources, political paralysis is accelerating us toward irreversible tipping points.
The defining image of the COP30 climate summit flashed around the world: fire in an exhibition pavilion at the meeting site in Belém, Brazil, flames spreading up the tent’s walls and forcing evacuations. No one was injured beyond smoke inhalation, but the “world is on fire” adage took a literal turn as delegates wrestled to find consensus. The summit spilled over into an extra day, with a win for petrostates like Saudi Arabia, as the final agreement ceded more funding to at-risk countries but failed to include any language about fossil fuels.
On Saturday, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced a forthcoming “side-text” about fossil fuels and forest protections, also a hot topic among Indigenous protesters who had pressed into the secure COP “Blue Zone” on Friday evening. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ assessment after the summit was grim, despite acknowledging some progress on “adaptation” funds: “The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide … The reality of overshoot is a stark warning: we are approaching dangerous and irreversible tipping points.” The lack of even a mention of fossil fuels in the final agreement, let alone the “deep, rapid emission cuts” Guterres acknowledges are necessary to keep the planet below overshoot carbon levels, is not just the result of Saudi and Russian delegates’ bully tactics (Al Gore has referred to the agreement as an “Opec text”) but also a symptom of profoundly shifting political realities around the world.
The notable absence of US delegates, while the Trump administration slashed environmental protections at home, was the source of relief for some at the summit but also pointed to the normalization of climate denial amid illiberal regimes’ growing influence and far-right pressures in green-aspirational countries like Germany. Even Norway, known for its own sustainable, egalitarian culture, has no plans to sacrifice its oil wealth for the larger planetary good. Meanwhile, costly wars and deep political divisions in countries like the US and Brazil distract from efforts to forge coherent climate policy. Finally, the sheer scale of petrostates’ and billionaire technocrats’ influence cannot be overstated in watering down and even – in this case – completely avoiding action on carbon emissions cuts. Bill Gates’ recent essay diminishing the dangers of climate emergency has not helped; though “civilization” will likely not be wiped out in a sci-fi doomsday scenario, the suffering of millions and the loss of innumerable nonhuman species are hardly points to be glossed over in the name of “innovation.” Neoliberal optimism sounds increasingly tone-deaf in a time when the limits of human progress are becoming palpably clear around the world.
The idea of “Spaceship Earth,” popularized by Buckminster Fuller in the late 1970s, portrays the planet as a closed system with limited resources. Though this idea has informed many efforts toward more sustainable living, greenwashing for the sake of profit has become the norm among large corporations. The comforts of petrocultures, the material, cultural, and economic manifestations of decades of cheap oil, are so embedded in privileged countries, there are limits, too, to how much individuals can do to shrink their carbon footprints.
On the political level, Saudi and Russian influence is only one part of the picture; lack of concern or climate denialism (often cast as denial of the human cause) is growing in countries like Indonesia, Mexico, India, and Australia, places where the risks from global heating are high. In the formerly stable if systemically inequitable US, the lurch toward anti-science authoritarianism has been so swift as to induce a kind of vertigo. In his recent book Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress, Roy Scranton writes, “We can recognize the Earth as a closed system in which we all depend on each other, but the political reality within that system resembles gang warfare more than it does a unified crew,” (91). The deep lack of consensus at COP30, when the risks of climate collapse are clearer than ever, shows how much more difficult the problem is to address in today’s chaotic political landscape.
Nearly ten years ago, in her essay “What Is the Anthro-political?”, culture theorist Claire Colebrook engaged with the already contested Anthropocene term to argue that, in light of ecological destruction, “the political” as a norm can no longer be taken for granted. This provocative stance is worth revisiting today. Especially with the rise of populist tendencies that tap into human “affect and corporeality,” the political no longer appears as a regulating modality of human-being but rather as a contingent aspect of human culture that, once that culture destroys its own “milieu” or literal environment, will go down with it. In Colebrook’s more elegant terms, “What if what we know as politics … were possible only in a brief era of the taming of human history?” (115).
This geologic-scale perspective on last week’s pitting of the EU’s and other climate-sympathetic delegates against fossil-friendly regimes (with the absent US in the background noise) does not diminish the stakes at COP30 but shows how vast and planetary those stakes are. With our closed system threatening to burn beyond livable thresholds, the responsibility of one global gathering to stave off one local disaster after another becomes painfully clear.
