In this commentary, Dr. Lilliam Arrieta examines how Nayib Bukele’s rise in El Salvador illustrates the speed with which elected populist leadership can evolve into authoritarian consolidation. Focusing on the erosion of judicial independence, she traces how the removal of Supreme Court justices, forced judicial retirements, and the weakening of constitutional safeguards have concentrated power in the executive. Dr. Arrieta situates these developments within a broader Latin American pattern in which populist leaders undermine courts, militarize public security, and weaken checks and balances in the name of popular sovereignty and order. While Bukele’s security policies have attracted “international admiration,” the article highlights their deeper institutional costs for fundamental rights, judicial protection, democratic accountability, and the long-term resilience of constitutional democracy.
By Lilliam Arrieta
El Salvador is a clear example of how quickly and extensively populist rulers can consolidate power and move towards authoritarianism once democratically elected. In the last two decades, across Latin America, several populist presidents gained office through elections but rapidly took steps to undermine democracy, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, or Evo Morales in Bolivia. These types of leaders often present themselves as messianic figures—outsiders and saviors—claiming to be the only solution to the problems created by traditional political actors: corruption, nepotism, insecurity, inflation, to name a few, and often the more pressing issues for a concrete population. Aside from being or claiming to be outsiders, a second common trait that these strong individual politicians share is their communication skills. They do not merely communicate with the public; they claim to speak for the people, asserting that they embody the largely forgotten majorities themselves (Temelkuran, 2019). Finally, a third distinctive trait is the disregard for traditional checks and balances, especially for judicial review of the Executive’s policies.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele embodies these three elements. One of the most pressing examples is the quick measures taken after winning the majority of seats in congress during the 2021 elections. Having obtained a large majority of congressional seats (Martinez, 2021), Bukele’s party quickly enacted laws that undermined democracy and dismissed all opposition as his party claimed to do so in the name of “the people.” During the inaugural session of that legislature, Nueva Ideas (New Ideas) party members voted to remove five justices of the Supreme Court without due process of law or any attempt to conduct a proper impeachment procedure (Arauz, 2021). This unconstitutional removal gave Bukele control over the three branches of government. In the following 2024 congressional elections, after having passed legislation to reduce congressional seats from 84 to 60, the ruling party won 57 of them, consolidating total control over the three branches of Government.
This quick overview of the Salvadoran experience shows that Bukele seems to have followed the same patterns as other Latin American populist leaders. Experiences from Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela had already demonstrated that, to consolidate and maintain power, populist leaders seek control over two main institutions. In no particular order, first, controlling the Armed Forces—and the Police—allows presidents to suppress dissent and instill fear among the population (Bernal, 2021; Infodefensa, 2021; EFE, 2021). Second, reducing the autonomy of the Judiciary.
Authoritarian leaders often seek to dominate the courts, especially the Supreme Court, to bypass legal constraints on their power (Foa, 2021). Checks and balances are considered obstacles, making the dismantling of judicial independence a priority; for example, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 2008, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua in 2010, and Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2017 were able to extend their time in office beyond the constitutional limit thanks to Supreme Court rulings (Sala de lo Constitucional del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, 2008; Sala de lo Constitucional,sentencia No.06 Corte Suprema de Justicia, Managua, 2010; Sala Plena del Tribunal Constitucional Plurinacional de Bolivia, 2017). However, before obtaining control of the judiciary, authoritarian populists often target this branch and accuse it of corruption or ineptitude to prevent unelected public officers from obstructing the Executive’s policies.
The undermining of judicial independence in El Salvador occurred especially through two actions taken as soon as the president gained congressional majority. First, on May 1 of 2021, Nuevas Ideas’ representatives voted to remove five Supreme Court justices without due process of law (Arauz, 2021). Their terms were not set to expire until 2027, but they were arbitrarily removed because of a few previous rulings that were averse to some presidential measures (DW, 2020). It was a power-grab move that violated the Constitution and existing legislation. The ruling party justified it by claiming to have acted on the people’s behalf and accordingly to their will. That same day, congress appointed five new justices whose rulings have since consistently favored the President (BBC, 2021). One of those rulings was the landmark decision that removed a corner stone of Salvadoran constitutional democracy which for more than 35 years prevented presidents from seeking reelection creating a way for Bukele to seek his second term.
Second, early retirement and transfers of career judges. On August 3, 2021, Congress passed a law forcing over 150 judges into early retirement, violating article 182 of the Salvadoran Constitution, which grants the Supreme Court the exclusive authority to appoint and discipline members of the Judiciary. Following this legislation, the Supreme Court appointed a group of new judges (Cornejo, 2021), many of whom have already reversed rulings against political opponents of the President. A few independent judges that were not removed through the early retirement act resigned due to pressures or were transferred to less influential positions (Oliva, 2022; Calderón, 2021).
An assessment by the Latinobarómetro Corporation in 2021 noted that “Bukele has shown that democracy exists only as long as it serves his needs. When it fails to do so, he imposes his will by force. El Salvador is on the verge of becoming a populist autocracy, with significant public support, reminiscent of the early days of Hugo Chávez” (Latinobarómetro Corporation, 2021). The resulting control over the three branches of government has not only undermined democracy or judicial independence in an abstract or institutional manner, but it has also affected citizens’ rights in very concrete ways, as shown by the overwhelming number of people detained under the state of exception, some for over three years, without having had their day in court.
Almost 100,000 people have been detained in El Salvador during a four-year long state of exception, but practically no one has been sentenced, and according to human rights organizations, many of these arrests can be considered arbitrary detentions under international standards (WOLA, 2024). The Constitutional Chamber has failed to rule on over 3,000 habeas corpus petitions it has received since the declaration of the state of exception in March 2022 (El Salvador.com, 2024), effectively neglecting the one judicial protection citizens have against arbitrary detentions in El Salvador (DPLF, 2024).
In May 2025, two prominent lawyers, Ruth López and Enrique Anaya Barraza,—widely recognized for their outspoken criticism of government corruption, human rights violations, and systemic abuses—were detained on charges of embezzlement and money laundering. These charges appear to have been used as a means of silencing dissent and creating a climate of intimidation among other critics and independent voices. The lack of judicial independence has had a profoundly adverse impact on their situation (EDH, 2025). Bail was denied, and both lawyers were remanded in custody pending trial. Their legal representatives have reported serious obstacles to maintaining regular and confidential communication with them. At present, no effective judicial review exists to challenge these apparently politically motivated arrests, as no judge has thus far been willing to issue rulings contrary to what are widely understood to be measures directed by the President or the Executive Branch.
Many countries today appear eager to replicate President Nayib Bukele’s approach to reducing crime and violence, often citing El Salvador’s dramatic decline in homicide rates as evidence of the effectiveness of his policies. What is less frequently acknowledged, however, is the institutional and normative cost underlying these outcomes: the dismantling of checks and balances, the erosion of judicial independence, the weakening of safeguards against human rights violations, and the expansion of a heavily militarized security apparatus. The risks of these developments have been repeatedly illustrated in recent Latin American history.
Importantly, such concentrations of authoritarian power and sustained violations of fundamental rights cannot occur without the curtailment of judicial autonomy, as independent courts constitute a central mechanism for constraining executive authority and enforcing constitutional limits. At the same time, the broader societal significance of judicial independence often remains difficult to communicate to the public, owing to a range of historical, institutional, and sociopolitical factors that lie beyond the scope of this commentary but help explain the relative ease with which judicial erosion can proceed.
These are not abstract concerns; they are lived realities in El Salvador. While the model may appear effective in the short term, its long-term implications for freedom, independent justice, and democratic governance are profound and reverting its impact may take a long time and more than one generation
(*) Lilliam Arrieta is a Salvadoran lawyer and law professor at Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador. Her teaching and research focus on the rule of law and, more recently, gender studies. Dr. Arrieta holds a PhD in Law.
Latinobarómetro Corporation, Informe 2021: Adiós a Macondo, Santiago, Chile, October 2021, p. 23(Bukele ha demostrado que la democracia llega hasta donde le funciona para lo que él necesita. Ycuándo esta no hace lo que el necesita, se impone por la fuerza. El Salvador es un candidato serio atransformarse en una autocracia populista, con altos niveles de apoyo del pueblo. Algo parecido a lascaracterísticas iniciales de Hugo Chávez), at https://www.latinobarometro.org/lat.jsp
In this interview, Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, editors of the recently published volume ‘The Radical Right and Demographic Populism,’ examine how contemporary populist radical right politics increasingly connects immigration, fertility, gender, family, religion, and national identity through the politics of demographic survival. They conceptualize “demographic populism” as a framework linking cultural survival to biological reproduction and transforming demographic change into an existential political struggle. The discussion explores demographic weaponization, conspiracy narratives, Fratelli d’Italia’s calculated ambivalence, and generational adaptations within the Austrian Freedom Party’s youth organizations. Moving beyond Europe, Professor Mazzoleni and Dr. Koxha also address transnational diffusion, political sovereignty, aging, migration, labor shortages, and AI, highlighting how demographic transformations may create new opportunities for populist radical right mobilization while posing significant challenges to democratic resilience.
Contemporary populist radical right (PRR) politics increasingly organizes questions of immigration, fertility, gender, religion, family, and national identity around a common concern: the demographic reproduction of “the people.” In this ECPS interview, Professor Oscar Mazzoleni of the University of Lausanne and Dr. Klaudia Koxha (a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Lausanne), editors of the recently published volume The Radical Right and Demographic Populism, explain how this convergence can be understood through the concept of “demographic populism.” As Professor Mazzoleni puts it, issues conventionally treated as separate increasingly converge on a fundamental political question: “Who is entitled to reproduce the true people?” Demographic populism, he argues, reveals how anti-immigration, anti-gender, and pronatalist claims can share “a single Manichean logic of demographic survival versus extinction.” Dr. Koxha sharpens this argument, explaining that “cultural survival” becomes tied to “the biological reproduction of a specific people with specific characteristics.”
The interview begins by developing this conceptual intervention and distinguishing demographic realities from their political weaponization. Aging, declining fertility, and migration are genuine policy challenges, Dr. Koxha stresses; what distinguishes populist radical-right politicization is the question of whose reproduction constitutes the desirable demographic future. This is how demographic change becomes “existential and moralized.” Professor Mazzoleni similarly identifies “demographic weaponization” as central to understanding how statistical and social transformations are reframed as political struggles over collective survival. Their approach consequently bridges populism studies and critical demography, treating demography simultaneously “as a set of conditions and as a political frame.”
The discussion then turns to how demographic populism operates in concrete political settings. Professor Mazzoleni examines Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, arguing that governmental participation has encouraged not straightforward ideological moderation but “more sophisticated strategies.” Through calculated ambivalence, coded references to “demographic winter,” and a division of discursive labor, radical ideas can be maintained while communication is adapted to broader audiences. In this formulation, demographic populism shifts the perceived threat “from political and economic dispossession to biological and cultural survival,” while immigration becomes embedded within a wider master frame encompassing natality, family, welfare, and religion.
Dr. Koxha’s analysis of the Austrian Freedom Party’s (FPÖ) youth organizations then introduces a generational dimension. While youth branches reproduce core radical-right positions, they adapt them to young people’s concerns and can sometimes “radicalize it further.” Yet Dr. Koxha also identifies greater internal heterogeneity than might be expected, particularly regarding religion, abortion, and LGBTQ+ issues. Crucially, declining religiosity does not necessarily entail rejecting cultural Christianity, which can instead operate “as a marker of national or civilizational identity.”
Finally, the interview broadens comparatively to transnational diffusion, sovereignty, demographic decline, migration, labor shortages, and artificial intelligence. Professor Mazzoleni argues that these transformations “can create a structure of opportunities for radical-right populism,” while Dr. Koxha highlights the political contradiction whereby migration can simultaneously be a practical response to aging and be reframed as evidence of “demographic displacement.” The democratic challenge, she concludes, is to confront the material consequences of demographic transformation without accepting that demographic change necessarily entails “cultural extinction” or that “one group’s security requires another’s exclusion.”
In this commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias examines the migration crisis in Ceuta as a “total crisis” encompassing humanitarian obligations, political legitimacy, social cohesion, and the future of Europe’s liberal-multicultural order. Rejecting both an expansive humanitarianism that neglects the pressures experienced by receiving communities and far-right narratives that reduce migrants to a homogeneous civilizational threat, Dr. Dias argues for an approach combining compassion with effective migration governance. Drawing on research into migration, local exposure, and multicultural citizenship, he contends that diversity requires a shared civic framework grounded in democratic law, equality, rights, and obligations. For Dr. Dias, Europe’s challenge is therefore not to choose between humanitarian protection and border control, but to reconcile protection, effective borders, integration, and social stability if liberal multiculturalism is to remain politically sustainable.
The situation in Ceuta is what I would call a “total crisis”: social, political, and humanitarian at the same time. Looking at it in those terms is an attempt to escape the constraints of affective polarization (Iyengar et al., 2019), which increasingly turns political analysis into a moral exercise in deciding who deserves our sympathy.
Two dominant perspectives usually emerge in European debates on migration. One emphasizes humanitarian duties and often expands them into an almost unlimited moral obligation to receive those who reach European borders. The other responds through cultural anxiety, demographic fear and, at its extreme, the rhetoric of a “Great Replacement.” Both perspectives capture something real. Neither sees the whole picture.
Europe has unquestionable obligations towards refugees and asylum seekers. The right to seek asylum and the principle of non-refoulement are central elements of the international and European legal order. A liberal Europe cannot abandon those principles simply because applying them has become politically difficult. But neither international law nor European law establishes an unlimited right for every migrant to enter and remain permanently in Europe.
That distinction matters. States have duties towards those entitled to international protection. But governments also have duties towards the societies they govern. Migration policy cannot ignore reception capacity, housing, public services, integration, security and social stability. Humanitarianism does not operate outside politics. This is where part of the progressive discourse on migration becomes problematic. Its moral vocabulary is universal, while the social consequences of migration are unevenly distributed.
It is relatively easy to demand empathy from the inhabitants of border communities when one does not share their streets, their schools, their public services or their fears. The paradox is striking: those who correctly demand empathy towards migrants sometimes display surprisingly little empathy towards the communities expected to absorb the immediate consequences of large migratory movements.
Ceuta makes that contradiction difficult to ignore. Research also suggests that local exposure matters. Sudden demographic change can generate stronger opposition to immigration when it becomes politically salient (Hopkins, 2010). Hangartner et al. (2019), studying Greek islands exposed to the refugee crisis, found that direct exposure to large refugee arrivals produced more restrictive attitudes towards refugees, immigrants and Muslim minorities.
This does not mean that every fear expressed by local populations is justified. But it means that fear cannot simply be dismissed as ignorance or xenophobia. For the inhabitants of Ceuta, migration is not an abstract seminar on cosmopolitan ethics. It is the sudden presence of thousands of people in a geographically confined territory. It means pressure on public spaces and services, deteriorating sanitary conditions, disruption of everyday life and, inevitably, perceptions of insecurity. Some of those perceptions may be exaggerated. Others may not. But democratic politics cannot simply tell citizens that their fears are morally illegitimate.
At the same time, the opposite camp commits an equally serious mistake. Migrants are not a homogeneous civilizational bloc. Among those arriving in Europe are women escaping oppressive social environments, political dissidents, religious minorities, educated young people looking for opportunities, families seeking security and people whose values may be substantially closer to European liberalism than those of the societies they have left behind. Reducing all migrants to a demographic or cultural threat is therefore both empirically crude and morally indefensible. The crisis has two human faces: those who arrive and those who receive them. Any serious migration policy must be capable of seeing both.
Ceuta also reveals a deeper European problem: the crisis of what might be called liberal multiculturalism. The central intuition of liberal multiculturalism was both powerful and legitimate: people should not be required to erase their cultural, religious or linguistic identity in order to become equal citizens. Kymlicka’s defense of multicultural citizenship remains one of the strongest formulations of this position. But there is a difference between accepting diversity and assuming that social cohesion emerges automatically from it. It does not. A society cannot indefinitely become a patchwork of parallel cultural, ethnic and religious communities without also developing institutions capable of producing a common civic ground.
This does not mean assimilation. It means integration. Language matters. Constitutional principles matter. Equality between men and women matters. Religious freedom matters, including the freedom to abandon religion. Acceptance of democratic law matters. A shared understanding that citizenship involves both rights and obligations matters. European states themselves have increasingly recognized this. The gradual retreat from some versions of multiculturalism and the rise of civic integration policies documented by Joppke (2004, 2007) reflect precisely this concern.
Multiculturalism without integration creates islands. Diversity without a shared civic framework can produce coexistence without community. This is why migration control should not be understood as the opposite of liberal multiculturalism. It may actually be one of its conditions of survival.
Europe needs effective borders precisely because migration will continue. It needs credible asylum procedures because humanitarian protection remains part of the European liberal order. It must distinguish between those who have legitimate claims to international protection and those who do not. It must be capable of receiving and integrating those who are entitled to remain. And it must also be capable of repatriating, humanely and legally, those who have no right to stay. Otherwise, the distinction between legal and illegal migration becomes politically meaningless.
The way Spain responds to Ceuta therefore matters beyond Ceuta. If European governments are unable simultaneously to protect refugees, control borders, manage migration and sustain social integration, voters will increasingly conclude that the entire liberal-multicultural model has failed. That conclusion would have profound political consequences. A Europe that abandons humanitarian protection abandons part of its liberal identity. But a Europe that loses control over migration, fails to integrate newcomers and refuses to acknowledge the fears of receiving communities may eventually create the political conditions for the rejection of liberalism itself.
The real choice is therefore not between compassion and control. Europe needs both. Without compassion, it ceases to be liberal. Without control and integration, it may cease to be politically capable of remaining liberal.
References
Hangartner, D.; Dinas, E.; Marbach, M.; Matakos, K. & Xefteris, D. (2019). “Does exposure to the refugee crisis make natives more hostile?” American Political Science Review, 113(2), 442–455.
Hopkins, D. J. (2010). “Politicized places: Explaining where and when immigrants provoke local opposition.” American Political Science Review, 104(1), 40–60.
Iyengar, S.; Lelkes, Y.; Levendusky, M.; Malhotra, N. & Westwood, S. J. (2019). “The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States.” Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 129–146.
Joppke, C. (2004). “The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: Theory and policy.” The British Journal of Sociology, 55(2), 237–257.
Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural citizenship: A liberal theory of minority rights. Oxford University Press.
In this commentary, Dr. Kamil Jonski examines Poland’s protracted constitutional crisis through the prospect of what he calls “Schrödinger’s Tribunals”: parallel Constitutional Tribunals simultaneously regarded as legitimate and illegitimate by opposing political constituencies. Tracing the conflict from disputes surrounding the 1997 Constitution through the Law and Justice (PiS) government’s capture of the Constitutional Tribunal and the current center-left majority’s attempts at restoration, Dr. Jonski argues that the crisis reflects deeper, competing interpretations of Poland’s constitutional identity. As rival political camps contest judicial appointments, institutional legitimacy, and constitutional authority, efforts to restore the Tribunal may reproduce rather than resolve its politicization. Dr. Jonski ultimately raises a more fundamental question: whether effective constitutional review in Poland now requires institutional solutions beyond the existing Tribunal itself.
The consequences of illiberal assault on Polish Constitutional Tribunal in 2015-2016 – and contemplated attempts to restore it – risks producing singular outcome: two parallel tribunals recognized as “legitimate” and “illegitimate” at any given time by respective sides of the political divide.
It turned out that initial opposition to the Constitution, support for Tribunal packing, and approval of the captured CT were all concentrated largely among self-identified rightists who regularly participate in religious services. Intriguingly, the results of the 2025 presidential runoff, analyzed at the level of 370 NUTS 4 regions, correlate with the results of the 1997 constitutional referendum, corroborating the claim that the current conflict over (dis)obeying the Constitution is linked to the past conflict over its adoption.
These empirical findings correspond with the narrative provided by the late professor L. Morawski – constitutional scholar and 2015 CT packing participant. As he explained during 2017 Oxford symposium, right-wingers and their opponents disagree on “how the Polish Constitution should be interpreted” with the government favoring “republican” and opposition – a “liberal way.” For him, “the republican tradition does not reject all liberal values. [Sharing] a deep respect for democracy, human rights and freedoms. But apart from this, Polish republicanism strongly emphasizes the attachment to values such as patriotism, solidarity, a strong state as a guardian of human rights, the role of the Catholic Church and religion in public life. In political reality, it means that Polish republicans defend the traditional family model and strongly oppose abortion and so on.”
I argue that lacking the majority required to amend the Constitution, right-wingers seek control of the CT – the only institution in the legal system, that is capable to saturate it with rightist values and identity (or increase the level of this saturation). That allows them to replace “liberal” meaning of the constitution with “republican” one – without altering its text at all.
The history of Polish Constitutional Tribunal dates back to communist era “normalization” after 1981 martial law. By coincidence, half of the bench had been ought to be replaced shortly after the groundbreaking semi-free elections of June 4, 1989, offering CT unique opportunity to successfully reinvent itself to the new, democratic reality.
However, the right-wing quickly became to contest the Tribunal. The first draft of the law that would enable CT purge had been submitted in 1992 (Doc. no. 458, I Term) but it was rejected by the major political forces pursuing negotiated transition to the democracy and market economy.
The issue returned to the agenda when so called “post-communist cleavage” gave way to the current divide between Civic Coalition (Platform) of Donald Tusk and Law & Justice (PiS) of Kaczyński twins.
The double elections of 2005 delivered Lech Kaczyński’s presidency and a fragile coalition government under leadership of Jaroslav Kaczyński. Although the cabinet lasted only to 2007 snap elections, it embarked “political mobbing” against CT and undertook two failed attempts to force PiS appointee as a CT Chief Justice (for first see Doc. no. 765, for second Doc. no. 2030, V Term).
Ten years later, another double election paved the way to Polish constitutional crisis of 2015. PiS’s candidate Andrzej Duda unexpectedly won presidency, and PiS itself secured first single-party majority since 1989. Perhaps mindful of the 2005-2007 excesses, outgoing parliamentary majority led by Civic Platform embarked an attempt to pack CT, passing legislation that allowed appointment “in advance” of five – instead of scheduled three – justices.
The parliamentary election of 2023, leading to the formation of center-left cabinet of Donald Tusk, inspired hope of rule of law “restoration”. On March 6, 2024 the Lower Chamber of the Parliament (Sejm) adopted resolution proclaiming that irregularities in CT amassed to the point where it is unable to carry out constitutional review and protect human rights (M.P.2024.198). That same day two draft laws had been submitted to reshape CT (Doc. no. 253 and 254, X Term). Passed on September 13, 2024, they were referred to the right-captured CT by President Duda and declared unconstitutional in its judgment of July 29, 2025 (Kp 3/24). Given that failure, on December 18, 2024, the Cabinet adopted resolution on captured CT’s inability to perform its tasks and denying promulgation of its judgments (M.P. 2024.1068).
As right-wing Karol Nawrocki replaced President Duda in 2025, it became apparent that legislative “restoration” of the CT is out of reach in the foreseeable future. The B-plan, involving judicial appointments, was launched in March 2026.
According to the Constitution, CT is composed of 15 justices. As of August 31, 2026, they can be divided into four groups, illustrating what Jakub Jaraczewski and Laurent Pech called “dualist constitutional court.”
Justyn Piskorski and Jarosław Wyrembak, who replaced two late “doubles,” are recognized as legitimate justices by right-wingers (and Chief Justice Bogdan Święczkowski), but their status is contested by the current majority citing judgments of CT, ECHR and CJEU.
Stanisław Piotrowicz, Bartłomiej Sochański (deputy Chief Justice), Jakub Stelina, Wojciech Sych, Święczkowski (Chief Justice) and Rafał Wojciechowski remain uncontested PiS-appointed justices.
Magdalena Bentkowska, Sławomir Patyra and Dariusz Szostek are uncontested appointees of the current, center-left majority, properly sworn in by the President Karol Nawrocki.
Marcin Dziurda, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, Krystian Markiewicz and Maciej Taborowski are recognized by the current majority that appointed them, but contested by right-wingers (and Chief Justice Święczkowski), as President Nawrocki denied them opportunity to be sworn in.
Regardless the differences, both scholars agreed that some sort of CT restoration is both feasible and desirable. However, that is hardly the case if “dualist constitutional court” is indeed the consequence of parallel meanings, ascribed to the Constitution by polarized politicians, lawyers and large clusters of voters.
Leaving aside specific legal tactics, CT restoration is likely to involve the following sequence: the eight appointees of the current center-left majority (at least four of them contested by the right) would somehow assume the role of the CT’s General Assembly. Next, they will use the PiS-created institution of a justice chairing the CT to bypass Chief Justice Święczkowski (either on the grounds of “doubles” involvement in his appointment or by using disciplinary charges), paving the way for review (in five-justice panels) of the key PiS-enacted laws. Most likely, the so-called interpretative judgment technique will be used, in a way similar to the judgment of November 7, 2016 (K 44/16). These judgments will be promulgated in the Journal of Laws and enforced by the cabinet.
The reaction of the right-wingers seems equally predictable—they will deny the status of the CT’s General Assembly and frame the events as an illegal court capture. Święczkowski will carry the torch of “constitutional legitimacy” until February 2031, when his term in office expires. And once elections deliver a right-wing majority, it will unconstitutionally nullify the judicial appointments—just as in the case of the 2015 CT packing—to appoint another set of “doubles” contested by the liberals.
The two parallel interpretations of the Constitution will be crowned by two distinct benches of Tribunal justices, producing their respective jurisprudence. Just like Schrödinger’s cat—simultaneously dead and alive—the parallel Tribunals would be recognized as “legitimate” and “illegitimate” by their respective constituencies at any given time, with the current majority and cabinet determining whose case law should be followed and whose judgments ought to be promulgated and enforced.
It is widely acknowledged that, since 2016 (i.e., one-fourth of contemporary Polish democratic history), the CT has lacked the capacity to carry out effective constitutional review. In the longer run, Schrödinger’s Tribunals are unlikely to work any better. In an environment of clashing interpretations of the Polish Constitution, unorthodox solutions for improving rights protection—including abolishing the CT altogether and empowering ordinary and administrative courts—are badly needed. Unfortunately, it seems that old ideas have to be tested to destruction first.
In this commentary, Dr. Bulent Kenes examines the political transformation of Sweden through the rise of the Sweden Democrats (SD) and normalization of far-right. Drawing on his experience of seeking refuge in a country once widely regarded as a “moral superpower,” Kenes contrasts Sweden’s longstanding commitments to liberal democracy, pluralism, multicultural accommodation, gender equality, minority rights, and inclusive citizenship with the SD’s increasingly influential nativist and ethno-nationalist project. He argues that the breaking of the cordon sanitaire and the Tidö Agreement have helped move ideas once confined to the far right into mainstream politics. As Sweden approaches the September 13 election, Kenes asks whether the SD’s promise to “make Sweden Sweden again” ultimately risks dismantling the very values that historically made Sweden distinctive.
A Sweden Democrats (SD) campaign poster ahead of Sweden’s September 13, 2026 parliamentary elections, featuring the slogan “This is how we make Sweden Sweden again” and highlighting the party’s policies on immigration, crime, Islamism, citizenship, welfare, and the economy.
For as long as I can remember, I have worked for human rights, the rule of law, constitutional and liberal democracy, an egalitarian and just society, and global peace. During my years as a professional journalist and media executive, I likewise sought to defend and advance these values. I vocally opposed every step taken by Erdogan’s government after 2011 as Turkey moved increasingly toward one-man rule and authoritarianism, and I never withheld my criticism. As Erdogan rapidly advanced toward one-man rule and autocracy, as every aspiring dictator does, I became a target of his repression. Because of my criticism centered on democracy, the rule of law, and human rights etc., I was subjected to countless smear campaigns in pro-Erdogan media and on social media, faced dozens of investigations, was repeatedly detained, and was briefly imprisoned.
By 2016, as Erdogan was constructing his autocratic regime step by step and there was no longer room for me to breathe in Turkey, I decided to leave the country. But where should I go? By virtue of my profession, I had by then visited more than 70 countries, including Sweden, and had lived in the United States for several years. Yet the choice for me was not so difficult. I knew that the very values and standards whose absence I had felt in my own country and for which I had struggled—democracy, human rights, transparency, the rule of law, freedom of the press and expression, gender equality, environmental rights and justice, and similar principles—shone most brightly in Sweden, which at the time was widely regarded as a “moral superpower.”
As Turkey fell into the grip of autocracy and Islamofascism, my choice was clear. Sweden stood out as a country in which virtually everything we had struggled, unsuccessfully, to establish and consolidate in Turkey had already become largely institutionalized. If, despite all our efforts, pluralist and liberal democracy, a state governed by the rule of law according to universal standards, an almost exemplary environment for freedom of the press and expression, and similar values would simply not come to us, I believed that it was my most natural right to go to them. Having overcome all the technical obstacles placed in my way by the Erdogan regime, I eventually managed to reach Sweden.
Over the ten years since then, unfortunately, Sweden—like the rest of the world—has changed considerably. Alongside some genuine problems generated by the 2015 migration wave, far-right perceptions of threat were constructed on a scale vastly exceeding the actual magnitude of those problems. In the process, both the social sensibilities that made Sweden the Sweden we knew have been eroded and political actors increasingly influenced by the far right have gradually weakened the country’s once-proud status as a “moral superpower.” Sweden, which one might have hoped would serve as one of the moral barriers against the global drift toward the far right, has itself undergone a far-reaching political transformation in the same direction.
At the center of this transformation are the Sweden Democrats (SD), who increasingly challenge the liberal, pluralist, and inclusive political culture that long underpinned Sweden’s reputation as a “moral superpower.” The ideological core of the SD combines nativism, authoritarianism, and populism, while migration, Islam, national identity, and cultural homogeneity constitute central axes of its political discourse. The party advances a more homogeneous conception of the nation grounded in ethno-nationalism and frames immigrants, particularly Muslims, as potential threats to Sweden’s cultural integrity and welfare state. At this point, however, I should not fail to acknowledge the provocative and highly irresponsible activities of certain Muslim immigrant groups.
Given the SD’s historical roots in Swedish fascism, nazism, white nationalism, and far-right milieus, one of the most consequential changes under Jimmie Åkesson has been the effort to largely free the party from the burden of this past and give it a more legitimate and parliamentary appearance. Yet despite this “normalization” and transformation of its public image, opposition to immigration and Islamophobia have retained their central place in the party’s political discourse. As early as 2009, Åkesson described various phenomena associated with Islam as “the greatest foreign threat to Sweden since the Second World War” and placed Muslims at the center of this threat narrative—one of the most striking manifestations of this ideological continuity.
Although its historical roots extend much further back, in the populist far-right political imaginary represented today by the SD, multiculturalism is portrayed not as a form of pluralism that enriches Swedish society but as a source of social fragmentation and weakening national cohesion. In its place, folkhem—the “people’s home”—is being reasserted. Yet Åkesson’s vision of folkhem differs markedly from Per Albin Hansson’s: it is a tightly integrated society based largely on the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of the native Swedish majority, shared values, and solidarity. Within this understanding, “being Swedish” means more than merely holding Swedish citizenship; immigrants are expected to adapt culturally to “Swedish values” and to the “Christian, democratic world” to which Sweden is understood to belong. The boundary between integration and assimilation consequently becomes increasingly blurred.
Islam and Muslims occupy a distinctive place in this politics of boundary-making. In Åkesson’s discourse, Christianity and its moral values are defined as foundational pillars of folkhem, whereas Islam is frequently portrayed as being in conflict with Sweden’s cultural and social order. The rise of the SD therefore cannot be understood simply as the hardening of immigration policy or the electoral success of a populist radical right party. At a deeper level, it represents a broader political transformation in which Sweden’s “exceptionalism,” built upon consociational democracy, multiculturalism, inclusive citizenship, and pluralism, is increasingly displaced by the normalization of a more closed, assimilationist, and ethno-culturally homogeneous vision of Sweden.
Many racist and far-right positions that were once considered shameful, or even unacceptable, within mainstream politics when the SD was founded have today become substantially normalized. The breaking of the cordon sanitaire surrounding the SD in 2022 did more than open greater political space for the party’s far-right and ethno-populist positions. In exchange for its external support for the coalition government formed by the center-right parties, the extensive policy agenda it secured through the Tidö Agreement gave the SD extraordinary influence over government policy. Discourses once regarded as unacceptable and incompatible with the Sweden we knew have, through the Tidö Agreement, become part of government policy and mainstream political debate. Changes to migration and terrorism legislation over the past four years, measures that have generated debate over press and freedom of expression, and new political orientations concerning gender equality have made the question of whether Sweden is steadily moving away from the Sweden we knew all the more pressing.
It is precisely here that the central irony of the SD’s promise to “making Sweden Sweden again” lies. Sweden’s extraordinary international prestige was not built merely on prosperity and effective governance. It was also grounded in liberal democracy, openness, multicultural accommodation, gender equality, strong minority rights, and an inclusive conception of citizenship. Despite certain notable deteriorations in some international indicators amid initiatives moving in the opposite direction—initiatives spearheaded by the SD—international indices show that significant parts of this institutional architecture, thankfully, remain resilient today.
The Sweden Democrats, however, offer a different answer to the question of what Sweden should be. Their political project places more restrictive immigration policies, assimilation, cultural homogeneity, and the preservation of a particular Swedish national identity grounded in ethnicity at the center of political belonging. Particularly significant is the increasingly hard-line approach toward Islam and Muslims: legitimate debates that need to be conducted about radical Islamism and problems of integration can, at times, become intertwined with broader Islamophobic narratives that treat the very presence of Muslims as a cultural threat. Opposition to multiculturalism similarly imagines social cohesion not through pluralism but through a greater degree of cultural—and implicitly ethnic—homogeneity.
Sweden now heads back to the polls on September 13 after four years of the Tidö experiment and this broader transformation. The latest polling indicates a clear advantage for the opposition. Across the four most recent major surveys, the opposition’s lead over the Tidö bloc ranges from 3.7 to 10 percentage points, while the weighted polling average as of August 27 indicates an opposition advantage of approximately seven points. Together, S, V, MP, and C stand at roughly 52.6 percent, compared with approximately 45.7 percent for SD, M, KD, and L. Moreover, with the Liberals hovering around 2 percent—well below the 4 percent parliamentary threshold—the parliamentary arithmetic becomes even more difficult for the Tidö bloc.
The SD, once excluded behind a cordon sanitaire, is no longer content merely to pull the Tidö parties toward the far right from outside government. It now openly expresses its ambition to enter government directly, demanding key ministerial portfolios. With a Trumpian slogan, it tells voters how, over the past four years, it has “made Sweden Sweden again” from outside government and now seeks a mandate to push its nativist, ethno-nationalist, populist, anti-Islam, and anti-immigration etc. policies even further.
Yet what made the Sweden we knew distinctly Swedish was neither racism, the legacy of neo-Nazi politics, nor opposition to multiculturalism. If there is genuinely an ambition to “make Sweden Sweden again,” the Sweden worth remembering is the Sweden of Per Albin Hansson’s folkhem ideal, Tage Erlander’s democratic welfare state, and Olof Palme’s egalitarian, internationalist, and human-rights-centered political legacy. The question facing Swedish voters on September 13, therefore, is not simply who will form the next government. The more fundamental question is this: “Making Sweden Sweden Again”—but which Sweden? And what will the Sweden the world came to know as a “moral superpower” have to sacrifice for the Sweden that the SD is now seeking to create?
In this interview, Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, editors of the recently published volume ‘The Radical Right and Demographic Populism,’ examine how contemporary populist radical right politics increasingly connects immigration, fertility, gender, family, religion, and national identity through the politics of demographic survival. They conceptualize “demographic populism” as a framework linking cultural survival to biological reproduction and transforming demographic change into an existential political struggle. The discussion explores demographic weaponization, conspiracy narratives, Fratelli d’Italia’s calculated ambivalence, and generational adaptations within the Austrian Freedom Party’s youth organizations. Moving beyond Europe, Professor Mazzoleni and Dr. Koxha also address transnational diffusion, political sovereignty, aging, migration, labor shortages, and AI, highlighting how demographic transformations may create new opportunities for populist radical right mobilization while posing significant challenges to democratic resilience.
Contemporary populist radical right (PRR) politics increasingly organizes questions of immigration, fertility, gender, religion, family, and national identity around a common concern: the demographic reproduction of “the people.” In this ECPS interview, Professor Oscar Mazzoleni of the University of Lausanne and Dr. Klaudia Koxha (a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Lausanne), editors of the recently published volume The Radical Right and Demographic Populism, explain how this convergence can be understood through the concept of “demographic populism.” As Professor Mazzoleni puts it, issues conventionally treated as separate increasingly converge on a fundamental political question: “Who is entitled to reproduce the true people?” Demographic populism, he argues, reveals how anti-immigration, anti-gender, and pronatalist claims can share “a single Manichean logic of demographic survival versus extinction.” Dr. Koxha sharpens this argument, explaining that “cultural survival” becomes tied to “the biological reproduction of a specific people with specific characteristics.”
The interview begins by developing this conceptual intervention and distinguishing demographic realities from their political weaponization. Aging, declining fertility, and migration are genuine policy challenges, Dr. Koxha stresses; what distinguishes populist radical-right politicization is the question of whose reproduction constitutes the desirable demographic future. This is how demographic change becomes “existential and moralized.” Professor Mazzoleni similarly identifies “demographic weaponization” as central to understanding how statistical and social transformations are reframed as political struggles over collective survival. Their approach consequently bridges populism studies and critical demography, treating demography simultaneously “as a set of conditions and as a political frame.”
The discussion then turns to how demographic populism operates in concrete political settings. Professor Mazzoleni examines Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, arguing that governmental participation has encouraged not straightforward ideological moderation but “more sophisticated strategies.” Through calculated ambivalence, coded references to “demographic winter,” and a division of discursive labor, radical ideas can be maintained while communication is adapted to broader audiences. In this formulation, demographic populism shifts the perceived threat “from political and economic dispossession to biological and cultural survival,” while immigration becomes embedded within a wider master frame encompassing natality, family, welfare, and religion.
Dr. Koxha’s analysis of the Austrian Freedom Party’s (FPÖ) youth organizations then introduces a generational dimension. While youth branches reproduce core radical-right positions, they adapt them to young people’s concerns and can sometimes “radicalize it further.” Yet Dr. Koxha also identifies greater internal heterogeneity than might be expected, particularly regarding religion, abortion, and LGBTQ+ issues. Crucially, declining religiosity does not necessarily entail rejecting cultural Christianity, which can instead operate “as a marker of national or civilizational identity.”
Finally, the interview broadens comparatively to transnational diffusion, sovereignty, demographic decline, migration, labor shortages, and artificial intelligence. Professor Mazzoleni argues that these transformations “can create a structure of opportunities for radical-right populism,” while Dr. Koxha highlights the political contradiction whereby migration can simultaneously be a practical response to aging and be reframed as evidence of “demographic displacement.” The democratic challenge, she concludes, is to confront the material consequences of demographic transformation without accepting that demographic change necessarily entails “cultural extinction” or that “one group’s security requires another’s exclusion.”
Here is our interview with Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Who Is Entitled to Reproduce the True People?
Crowds gather along the quay to visit tall ships during Sail 2010 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on August 19, 2010. Photo: Jan Kranendonk.
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, welcome! Throughout the book, you argue that immigration, fertility, gender, religion, LGBTQ+ rights, and family politics should not be studied as separate cultural issues but as interconnected elements of what you call ‘demographic populism.’ What convinced you that existing theories of populism were no longer sufficient to explain these developments, and what analytical blind spots does your concept overcome?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Scholarship usually treated immigration, gender, religion, and family as separate cultural issues, also when we talk about populism, largely because of disciplinary divisions, and read them through the cultural backlash lens alone. What convinced us otherwise was recognizing that all these issues converge on one question: Who is entitled to reproduce the true people? Demographic populism overcomes the blind spot of separating nativism from reproduction, showing that anti-immigration, anti-gender, and pronatalist claims share a single Manichean logic of demographic survival versus extinction.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I would just briefly contextualize what this means in terms of the research that we know so far. Exactly as Oscar mentioned, research already tells us about how radical right populist parties engage with these topics separately. They started out with immigration, with these positions against non-native others, the cultural others. Then we learned how their agenda expanded and how gender equality, LGBTQ+ advocates, or advocates of diverse forms of family, of religious tolerance, etc., can become sources for fueling this typical Manichaean logic.
So, the proponents of such diversity become enemies to the people in the populist logic. However, these are not just different sources that fuel the Manichaean logic. If we put them together in one common framework, which is ‘demographic populism,’ they reveal exactly the demographic logic that Oscar just mentioned. In other words, the cultural survival, which is what these parties had been mostly politicizing, becomes tied to the biological reproduction of a specific people with specific characteristics.
Demographic Change Becomes Existential and Moralized
Your framework suggests that demographic change is not politically consequential by itself; rather, it becomes politically powerful once interpreted through narratives of existential threat. How should scholars distinguish between legitimate democratic debates about demographic trends and the populist politicization of demography?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: The book is really clear that demographic developments are real. So, when we talk about aging, fertility decline, migration, these are legitimate policy questions. We also know that welfare regimes or pension systems depend on such characteristics. Societies try to hold on to these systems by partly relying on migration, a younger population, which is usually the active labor force. Then some of these migrants eventually form families, and this can help to offset aging populations. At the same time, we also see discussions across societies about how to support young working couples to form families, women to reconcile work and family life, so that they can have the means to follow their careers, provide for themselves, for the children. So, we have these different discussions around demographic change, and this is the broader aspect.
But for the populist radical right, these alternatives are not considered as solutions in themselves, because the populist radical right specifically asks: Who are these people, this active labor force that we need to support our welfare regimes, our pension systems, etc.? Who are these prospective families that will support our systems and push back aging populations?
Here we see the continuity for the radical right is on the so-called native population. So, the disagreement isn’t whether aging or fertility decline exists, but we go back to what Oscar mentioned in the first question: Whose reproduction is imagined as the desirable solution? And this is how demographic change becomes existential and moralized.
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: It’s important to underline the point that demographic weaponization is the key point. So, demography is at the center, it becomes at the center of political battle, in which radical right populism is a clear and an important actor, shaping and reshaping demography as a political issue. Of course, demography is, for demographers, about fertility, about immigration, is about statistics of these dynamics, but this aspect can be demographically framed in a specific way. This is exactly what radical right populism tries to do.
Demography Is Both a Set of Conditions and a Political Frame
One of the book’s most important contributions is its attempt to bridge populism studies with critical demography. Do you see this as the beginning of a new interdisciplinary research agenda, and what questions should future scholars prioritize?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Yes, of course, we try to open an interdisciplinary agenda. Critical demography’s attention to power relations behind births, fertility, mortality, and migration allows us to treat demography simultaneously as a set of conditions and as a political frame. Future research should prioritize the supply-side link between populism and conspiracy, the appeal of demographic weaponization among specific groups—youth, women, rural voters—and its institutional and policy effects on democratic resilience.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I don’t have anything to add to that. I guess exactly the last point, particularly, is interesting on the demand side: When and why do citizens of different societal groups accept these otherwise separate issues as parts of one whole demographic thread?
Demographic Populism Is No Longer Confined to the Radical Right
You conclude that demographic populism increasingly connects conspiracy theories with mainstream party politics. Does this suggest that conspiracy thinking has evolved from a fringe phenomenon into a governing logic of parts of the contemporary radical right?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Yes, this is a key point: demographic populism is not just about the radical right. It could be mainstream; it’s part of the contemporary discussion about the demographic winter. It’s not just about the radical right. Conspiracy can be a mediation or a fuel for this kind of increasing interest and use of demographic populism. This is an important point that we try to underline in the conclusion.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I think it’s exactly that—the amplification, maybe we could put it. It’s a complementary amplification force for populism. Because what conspiracy does is it adds this intentionality. So it’s not just a populist anti-elite discourse that relies on some sort of elite that looks after its own interests, but the conspiracy also adds this dimension of the elite deliberately undermining the people. So it’s like a deliberate choice, and this is how, like Oscar mentioned, conspiracy becomes an amplifier, in some ways, for populism.
Calculated Ambivalence Allows Moderation and Radicalism to Come Together
A poster for the 2024 European elections featuring Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome, Italy on May 4, 2024. Photo: Stefano Chiacchiarini.
Dear Professor Mazzoleni, in your chapter on Fratelli d’Italia, you argue that the party has successfully reconciled governmental responsibility with radical-right ideology through ambivalent populist and conspiratorial discourse. Why has ambiguity become politically more effective than explicit radicalism?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Relevant parties in government face a trade-off between demarcation and accommodation, between the capacity to maintain radicalization and to integrate into the system. At the same time, they must retain radical support without losing moderate voters and coalition allies. So, it’s important to consider this trade-off, not just unethical or moral issues. It’s a question of electoral survival and electoral success. So, calculated ambivalence—this concept came from Ruth Wodak, the specialist in sociolinguistics—resolves this by producing, in the discourse, assumed associations between contradictory meanings.
This is not just anecdotal, but it’s based on a strategy, trying to cope with different audiences, decoding that there are different expectations. Because parties are not unitary actors, that’s also important. Intra-party, intra-leader ambivalence lets moderation and radicalism come together, normalizing controversial claims while avoiding public condemnation. Because we have this party needs to be in the system and they sometimes reproduce anti-establishment stances. With this kind of calculated ambivalence, and with many discursive tools, they try to do that. We show that Fratelli d’Italia is able, during the first part of the government coalition period, to achieve this kind of ambivalence strategy.
Fratelli d’Italia Adapts Its Communication While Maintaining Radicalization
Your analysis suggests that Fratelli d’Italia rarely invokes the Great Replacement theory directly, preferring coded demographic language instead. Does this represent ideological moderation, or simply a more sophisticated communication strategy aimed at broader electoral legitimacy?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Primarily, more sophisticated strategies, not ideological moderation. Meloni’s manifesto and speeches drop ethnic substitution in favor of demographic winter, so trying to have a kind of mainstream label, while ministers of Fratelli d’Italia inside the government led by Meloni, such as Lollobrigida, Roccella, and others, voice fuller conspiratorial versions of Great Replacement.
So, they resonate with Great Replacement theory, and it is important to underline this division of discursive labor + de-racialization. This question of Great Replacement theory is strongly connected with racial issues, but also denialism and euphemism allow the Great Replacement, for itself, to survive intact behind a government facade. That’s important in the sense that these discursive tools are able to adapt communication, maintaining radicalization by the party.
Demographic Populism Shifts the Threat to Biological and Cultural Survival
You have written extensively on populism for many years. Compared with earlier waves of European populism, what is genuinely new about demographic populism? Is it primarily an ideological transformation or an adaptation to new electoral realities?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: It’s important to say that populism is the defense of the true people, in terms of discursive claims—a true people under threat by different kinds of external powers. This deals with sovereignty, of course, political sovereignty, economic prosperity, and anti-establishment protests. Demographic populism shifts the threat from political and economic dispossession to biological and cultural survival.
In a sense, it’s both an ideological transformation and an adaptation to new electoral realities, trying to cope with new, emerging demands. It’s an ideological revival in which demography becomes the symbolic battlefield of the radical right’s long counter-revolution against LGBT rights, feminism, and so on. At the same time, it’s an adaptation to declining birth rates, aging, and migration, which are part of a broader demographic transformation in many countries, especially European ones, but not only.
In a sense, it’s both an ideological transformation and an adaptation to new electoral realities, trying to cope with new, emerging demands. In this sense, it’s an ideological revival in which demography becomes the symbolic battlefield of the radical right’s long counter-revolution against LGBT rights, feminism, and so on. At the same time, it is an adaptation to declining birth rates, aging, and migration, which are part of a broader demographic transformation in many countries, especially European ones, but not only.
It is interesting to say that, unlike interwar genetics in the past, today’s version is civilizational and culturally racist, rather than openly biological. It’s important to connect this aspect with biology and culture, and try to introduce this kind of demographic populism as able to frame the entire discourse nowadays by the radical right.
The Great Replacement Reframes Anti-Immigration Politics Demographically
A group of war refugees walks through a cornfield on the Serbia-Croatia border on November 3, 2015, as they seek passage to the EU. Many are Syrian refugees fleeing conflict. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.
Many populist radical-right (PRR) parties increasingly combine welfare protection, national sovereignty, and family policies into one political package. Is demographic populism gradually replacing immigration as the master frame through which these parties organize their broader ideological projects?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Immigration remains central, according to this book, but is increasingly subsumed, integrated within a demographic master frame that links natality, family, welfare, and religion. The Great Replacement is precisely the device through which anti-immigration stances are reframed demographically. So, rather than substitution, we observe absorption, integration. Immigration becomes one variable in a broader ideological project about who reproduces the nation and under what moral authority. The nation is the people, and these people and the nation are to be built under a specific moral authority—of course, the traditional family.
Youth Branches Adapt Radical-Right Politics to Generational Concerns
Dear Klaudia, your chapter examines how the youth organizations of the Austrian Freedom Party reinterpret demographic issues through specifically generational concerns. What surprised you most about the differences—and similarities—between youth activists and the senior party leadership?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: First of all, the similarities were actually quite strong, because the youth branches do reproduce the FPÖ’s anti-immigration, anti-gender diversity, climate-skeptic positions. The difference is specifically in the generational framing. So, if the senior party tends to emphasize security, sovereignty, civil liberties, economic stability, youth branches emphasize how these issues supposedly affect young Austrians, in particular, and their future.
But to be quite frank, it was not this alignment between the youth branches and the senior party regarding core ideological positions, or this generational framing, that surprised me about the findings. What really, really struck me instead was some intra-youth variation regarding topics such as LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, or the role of the church. Now, I wouldn’t overstate this variation based on the data set, because it’s quite subtle. But it did make me think that there’s probably much more heterogeneity within radical-right youth than we tend to assume.
Being Less Religious Does Not Mean Rejecting Cultural Christianity
Young people are statistically less religious and often more socially liberal than older generations. Yet your research suggests that radical-right youth organizations remain highly receptive to demographic narratives. What explains this apparent paradox?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: The question ties quite nicely to the point I made in the previous answer regarding this heterogeneity within youth branches. Religion, for instance, is also rather inconsistent across the youth branches. We see, for example, anti-abortion discourse as largely absent, except in Vienna. There are inconsistencies also when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues. Sometimes they’re silenced, sometimes they’re moderated. So, the youth branches don’t simply reproduce every conservative issue equally.
At the same time, they do remain strongly receptive to anti-immigration narratives and can instrumentalize gender equality against Muslim migrants. Regarding your point about the paradox, I think there’s a distinction that might help explain it. Being less religious does not necessarily mean that you reject cultural Christianity or nativist identity politics. Christianity here can also function as a marker of national or civilizational identity, rather than primarily as a religious practice.
Classical Nativism Is Underneath Demographic Populism
Your findings indicate that youth activists frame migration not only as a cultural issue but also as competition over education, employment, and future opportunities. Does demographic populism therefore represent a generational adaptation of classical nativism rather than a fundamentally new ideology?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: Clearly, classical nativism is underneath it, so I would not claim that demographic populism is this entirely new ideology. But its analytical value is precisely in showing how different issues become connected. As you mentioned, in my chapter, migration is linked to education, to employment, to gender, to family, to youth, and ultimately to demographic survival, by focusing on the so-called native youth as, basically, the agents of reproduction of a specific kind of people. Moreover, Great Replacement also, as a way of thinking, extends beyond migration into gender equality, diversity. In this regard, I would see the analytical value precisely in demonstrating how these different issues can be connected together in the framework of demographic survival.
Youth Branches Can Reproduce Party Ideology and Radicalize It Further
European Parliamentary election posters of the FPÖ in Vienna, Austria, on May 15, 2024. Photo: Shutterstock.
Youth organizations often function as ideological laboratories for future party elites. Based on your research, do you expect today’s demographic narratives to become even more central to tomorrow’s radical-right politics?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: The chapter in itself does not longitudinally establish that today’s youth discourse becomes tomorrow’s party discourse. That needs to be clear. But it does show that youth branches can and do reproduce party ideology. And what they also do quite well is contextualize it to their cohort and adapt it to generational concerns. Sometimes, even radicalize it further, as we’ve seen in the examples of Vienna or Tyrol, where we saw the most explicit articulations of Great Replacement narratives. For instance, while the central party actually continued to frame immigration more around security rather than these openly conspiratorial framings. This can suggest that youth branches may reproduce party ideology, but also, at times, radicalize it further. This might potentially have an impact on the main party’s discourse over time, but we would have to research that more systematically.
Your volume spans Europe as well as North and South America. Despite these different historical contexts, remarkably similar demographic narratives appear across countries. Are we witnessing policy diffusion between radical-right actors, or do these narratives emerge independently in response to similar social anxieties?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Both, and they reinforce each other. Similar anxieties related to structural transformation, declining fertility, aging, secularization, shrinking white or Christian majorities arise independently. However, they only become politically powerful once framed and mobilized by political actors. So, transnational infrastructures, such as the World Congress of Families, are relevant for the radical right across the world. US-Russia anti-abortion cooperation and social media circulation demonstrate deliberate diffusion, including astroturfing that manufactures the appearance of grassroots demand.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I would not have much to add. I think the transnational linkages that Oscar mentioned explain it very well, that these are not credential. Just very briefly on what the comparative question is, I would say it is basically how similar narratives are adapted to different national settings. This could be due to these transnational linkages; it could be due to diffusion through social media messaging. The mechanisms are different, but the core issue is how these similar narratives are indeed adapted across different national contexts.
Sovereignty Is Also Based on the Reproduction of the People Exercising It
One of the most striking themes of the book is that demographic populism links biological reproduction with political sovereignty. Does this represent a shift away from classic economic populism toward what might be called ‘biopolitical populism,’ where the central political question becomes who has the right to reproduce the nation?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Of course, the point here is not just to talk about sovereignty as a political dimension, but sovereignty is also based on the reproduction of the people exercising this sovereignty. The question is not just the capacity of the people to respond to the threat in terms of sovereignty, or political sovereignty, but other political dimensions, in terms of elections, in terms of decision-making, but also about the way by which we reproduce ourselves in terms of cultural belonging, national dimension, religious belonging etc. So, that’s important to frame this aspect, because all these dimensions—all diaspora, religion, cultural, national belonging—pass through biological reproduction and the family. The family is considered a pillar of this reproduction of the good and the true people. In this sense, we can we talk about biopolitical populism.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I would just add, regarding your question about which concept could work better, that I would still retain demographic populism because, in the end, demographic populism is broader than reproduction alone. It’s not just about who gets to be reproduced and who gets to reproduce the nation, but also about under what moral authority. So, fertility is not simply about fertility; it becomes about what kind of society should continue, and here there are other mechanisms that come into play, like religion, heteronormative views of family, and so on. Therefore, I still consider demographic populism conceptually better able to capture this dynamic.
AI Can Create New Opportunities for Radical-Right Populism
Photo: Dreamstime.
And lastly, looking ahead, demographic decline, population ageing, migration, artificial intelligence, and labor shortages are likely to reshape democratic politics simultaneously. Which of these developments do you believe will most profoundly transform the future of radical-right populism, and how should democracies respond without reinforcing the very narratives they seek to challenge?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: I think all these different aspects—aging, labor shortages, also pushed by artificial intelligence—can create a structure of opportunities for radical-right populism. They, of course, help these kinds of actors connect these developments to immigration and pro-natalist policies. In a sense, they can exploit this kind of structural transformation to propose their own demographic populist message. In this sense, I think the response is, of course, about defending gender and reproductive rights and all liberal democratic values, but at the same time, we have to be aware that this kind of defense should also address the structural transformation that I mentioned before.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: Again, the question ties back to one of the first questions in this interview. Aging societies do need an active labor force. So far, migration has been one way of responding to that. But as we can see, the radical right can simultaneously take the same migration that comes as a solution to aging societies, transform it, and present it as evidence of demographic displacement. This is how the policy response to one demographic challenge—aging populations—becomes framed as another demographic threat, while at the same time, there are policies that actually try to address it through counteraction by relying partly on migration. So, I think this tension is perhaps the most consequential—the interaction between aging, labor shortages, and migration—precisely because of the political contradiction it creates.
I think democracies need to address the real material consequences of demographic change, so this is something that needs to be talked about and addressed, without accepting the premise that demographic change necessarily means cultural extinction. Or that one group’s security requires another’s exclusion. So, those are points that must enter the public debate to have a constructive discussion around the demographic challenges that societies experience.
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Can I say something more about the book? Because you stress the point that the book covers different contexts—not just European, but also American and Russian contexts. I think it’s also important to mention the methodological and disciplinary approaches, because we are political scientists and sociologists, and we also have anthropologists. In the book, we also have supply-side and demand-side approaches to these issues.
It’s important to mention these multidisciplinary, multi-method approaches that converge in the book and also in this proposal about demographic populism. There is also intergenerational scholarship in the book, ranging from PhD students to senior scholars. In this project, we really try to bring together different perspectives and, at the same time, create a convergent and common project in order to explain what is happening today in the transformation of radical-right populism.
In this Voice of Youth (VoY) piece, Emaan Zahra examines the intertwined environmental and developmental costs of the rapid expansion of generative artificial intelligence. She argues that AI’s seemingly immaterial convenience rests on resource-intensive infrastructures whose growing demands for freshwater and electricity can intensify environmental pressures, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and affect communities surrounding data centers. At the same time, Zahra draws attention to the implications of habitual AI use for children, particularly when technological assistance substitutes for independent learning, critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. Connecting these concerns, she presents AI proliferation as a dual challenge for climate sustainability and the intellectual development of younger generations. Zahra calls for greater responsibility from parents, educators, technology companies, and policymakers to establish boundaries that enable technological progress while protecting environmental resources and children’s capacity for independent thought.
By Emaan Zahra
Today, the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is growing very fast. This growth creates many serious problems all over the world. To fix these problems, we must look at how AI works behind our screens. AI has quickly become a normal part of daily life for most people. This has created a habit of overusing technology. This constant use hurts the environment and changes how children grow up. While we enjoy the speed of AI, we ignore its real-world costs. In the end, the convenience of AI harms our planet and weakens the thinking skills of the next generation.
The Hidden Environmental Cost of AI
The computers that power AI search engines and chatbots require a massive physical setup. A decade ago, technology companies used simple liquid cooling systems to keep their computers from overheating. These older systems did not require too many resources. However, as millions of people started using AI, computers had to work much harder and faster. To stop their systems from crashing, big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta now use huge amounts of electricity and freshwater. These companies need perfectly clean water, so their expensive computers do not rust or break. Because AI is so popular today, the demand for these natural resources has skyrocketed.
How AI Drains Local Water Supplies
The huge amount of water used by AI data centers directly hurts local communities. These centers take water from nearby lakes, rivers, and underground supplies. This is the exact same water that families, neighborhoods, and schools rely on every day. Research shows that asking an AI chatbot just 20 to 50 simple questions can use up to one full liter of water. Over time, this adds up to a massive amount. AI cooling systems waste enough water to fill nine Olympic-sized swimming pools every single day. Even worse, 80% of this water turns into vapor and is completely lost to the air. This causes a real water crisis for the people living near these computer centers.
Energy Pollution and Climate Change
Along with wasting water, AI centers need an incredible amount of electricity to stay turned on. Experts estimate that by the year 2030, AI energy needs will increase by 400%. This is the same amount of electricity that the entire United Kingdom uses in a whole year. For example, Google reported that its push into AI caused its total greenhouse gas emissions to rise by 48% compared to 2019. Because most electricity still comes from burning coal, oil, and gas, power plants have released over 30 billion tons of pollution recently. This pollution traps heat, raises global temperatures, and causes worse hurricanes, floods, and climate change.
The Problems with Proposed AI Fixes
Scientists and tech companies have tried to think of ways to fix these problems, but most ideas are not practical yet. One popular idea is to build data centers underwater so the cold ocean can cool the computers naturally. However, salt water is highly corrosive. It can easily leak into the pods and destroy the delicate technology. Another idea is to launch AI data centers into outer space as satellites. While this would save Earth’s water, it is way too expensive and dangerous right now. Space debris and rocket pollution make this a very distant dream. Because these fixes do not work yet, our local environments continue to suffer.
How Environmental Damage Hurts Children’s Health
This damage to nature directly harms the health and safety of young children. To understand this problem, we have to look at a child’s everyday surroundings. The air pollution from burning fossil fuels for AI electricity has caused a rise in lung illnesses among children. Young bodies are still growing, and their lungs are small. This makes them highly vulnerable to bad asthma and permanent lung damage. In addition, climate change ruins crops and alters weather patterns, which causes food shortages and high grocery prices. The invisible power grids that run our apps are creating a physical health crisis for children.
How AI Weakens a Child’s Thinking Skills
At the same time, easy access to AI tools threatens the mental growth and independent thinking of children. When young students let machines do their schoolwork, their brains do not get the exercise they need to grow. Instead of figuring out hard problems, students use AI chatbots to write essays, read stories, and solve math homework. This habit weakens the brain just like a lack of exercise weakens a muscle. If you stop walking, your leg muscles will waste away. In the exact same way, the human brain gets weaker if it is shielded from challenges. Children who rely completely on AI may never learn how to analyze information deeply.
The Loss of Creativity and Memory
The long-term danger of relying on AI is that children lose the ability to spot lies, think of new ideas, and solve problems creatively. Learning these skills takes years of practice and making mistakes without help. Because AI gives perfect answers in a split second, children learn to accept whatever the computer tells them. They do not double-check facts or think critically. Because of this, their knowledge stays very shallow. They do not truly understand what they are learning. This instant gratification loop also shortens attention spans and makes it hard for children to remember things. Instead of learning to think for themselves, kids are trading their brainpower for fast answers.
A Path Forward
The rapid rise of AI creates a double crisis for our environment and our children’s minds. The hidden computer systems behind AI drain vital water supplies and cause heavy air pollution, hurting local families. At the same time, using chatbots as an academic shortcut stops children’s brains from developing properly. To fix this, parents, teachers, and tech companies must work together. We need to set strict limits on how much power AI uses and how children use it in school. Only by setting these boundaries can we protect our planet and keep the next generation smart and independent.
Emaan Zahra is a 16-year-old aspiring student who believes that that the over and unnecessary consumption of AI is very harmful for our minds and climate. She would like to note that she believes that AI should prosper in medical and industrial fields but in ones day to day tasks it should be used as little as possible or not at all. Email: emaanzahra212@gmail.com
Please cite as: Aslam, Muhammad Faizan. (2026). “Mandate Inflation: How Populists Claim Authority to Challenge Global Constraints.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). August 24, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000130
Abstract
Populist leaders often say they are restoring popular sovereignty against treaties, courts, trade rules, migration regimes, expert bodies, and international organizations. Yet their behavior toward international order varies. They may withdraw, renegotiate, obstruct, selectively comply, or perform public defiance while remaining inside institutions. This article explains that variation through mandate inflation: a process of turning a vote into a broader political claim in which an election or referendum is recast from a limited permission to govern into wider authority to challenge constraints in the name of the people. A structured comparison of Trump’s ‘America First’ politics, Brexit’s ‘take back control’ discourse, and Viktor Orbán’s conflict with EU constraints shows four recurrent moves: mandate condensation, construction of ‘the real people,’ reframing of constraints as anti-democratic obstruction, and assertion of special authority to act. The argument does not replace material, institutional, or nationalist explanations. It shows how leaders present these strategies as the will of the people; it does not assume that audiences accepted those claims or that rhetoric alone caused policy choices. The article contributes to recent debates on global populism by showing why exit is only one possible outcome of populist constraint politics.
Keywords: Populism, mandate, global governance, international institutions, sovereignty, Brexit, Trump, Viktor Orbán
By Muhammad Faizan Aslam*
Introduction
Populist leaders rarely challenge international order by saying only that a treaty, court or organization is inefficient. They often say something stronger. They argue that constraints on government action stand between the people and democratic control (Dijkstra & Ghassim, 2025). Trade agreements become “bad deals” made by globalist elites (Finbow, 2023). Courts become “foreign” or “unelected bodies.” Migration rules become “imposed commands.” Expert advice becomes “technocratic obstruction.” The point is not only policy disagreement. The point is authority (Wajner et al., 2024).
This creates a puzzle for international relations as populist leaders do not respond to global constraint in a single way. Some withdraw from agreements. Some seek better terms. Some stay inside institutions while blocking decisions. Some comply with parts of a regime while attacking other parts. Some use defiant language even when policy change is limited. Recent research on global populism has made this variation clear (Pacciardi et al., 2024; Wajner & Giurlando, 2024). It has also shown that populist foreign policy is now a serious research programme rather than a side question for domestic politics (Ozdamar & Yanik, 2024; Wajner & Giurlando, 2024). What remains underdeveloped is the democratic authorization mechanism that makes such varied strategies appear legitimate to supporters.
This article calls that process of turning a vote into a broader political claim “mandate inflation.” Mandate inflation is the process through which a populist leader recasts an election or referendum from a limited permission to govern into a wider claim of authority to challenge, override or rewrite constraints in the name of the people. The concept is deliberately narrow. It is not a synonym for nationalism, anti-globalism, sovereignty talk or ordinary treaty renegotiation. It is present when four claims appear together: a complex vote is condensed into one clear mandate; that mandate is attached to “the real people”; international or EU-level constraints are described as illegitimate barriers to that people; and the leader claims authority to act against those constraints. Mandate inflation is therefore observed in actors’ claims; whether those claims generate public acceptance or independently cause policy outcomes is a separate empirical question.
The argument matters because global constraints are not self-explanatory objects, and their political effects depend on observable factors such as legal form, institutional location, economic impact and domestic visibility. They can be legal commitments, institutional procedures, market pressures, treaty obligations, policy standards, rights regimes or expert rules. Many have been voluntarily accepted by elected governments. Some are popular because they provide security, market access, rights protection or credibility. Others are weakly accountable, socially unequal or politically remote. Populist leaders exploit this mixed character. They do not need to prove that a constraint is legally invalid. They need to make it look democratically suspect (Ecker-Ehrhardt et al., 2025; Tallberg & Zürn, 2019).
This is why the argument avoids a simple defense of global governance. It does not assume that international institutions are always democratically healthy or that popular control is a false problem. Many voters experience international commitments through job loss, austerity, migration pressure, border disputes, legal complexity or distant expert language (Bellodi et al., 2024; Scheiring et al., 2024a). The issue is not whether these concerns should be dismissed. The issue is how a leader turns them into an exclusive claim to speak for the people against constraints that may also have democratic authorization of their own.
This article compares three cases: Trump’s “America First” politics, Brexit’s “take back control” discourse and Viktor Orbán’s confrontation with EU constraints. The cases are not treated as identical. Trump shows presidential mandate inflation in a great power setting, with exit, renegotiation and symbolic defiance. Brexit shows how a referendum can be converted into a mandate to leave a regional legal order. Orbán shows that mandate inflation can also work from inside an institution through obstruction, selective compliance and public defiance. The cases vary by mandate source, institutional location and strategy toward constraint. This variation is useful because the argument does not predict one outcome. It explains how different strategies are justified through a similar claim about the people. The relevant actors are the Trump administration, the Leave-to-government coalition centered on the May government, and the Orbán government; campaign rhetoric, official government claims, legal acts and institutional responses are treated as distinct forms of evidence.
The article makes three contributions. First, it adds a mechanism to recent work on populism and international affairs. Existing scholarship shows that populist governments affect foreign policy, international institutions, trade, migration, security and world order visions in uneven ways (Brusenbauch Meislova & Chryssogelos, 2024; Destradi & Plagemann, 2024; Wajner & Giurlando, 2024). Mandate inflation explains how this unevenness can still share a common democratic grammar. Second, it connects populism research to work on international institutions and unilateral challenges. Institutions face not only legal non-compliance, but also domestic struggles over whether their constraints count as legitimate democratic commitments (Walter & Plotke-Scherly, 2025). Third, it separates voter-side causes from leader-side authorization. Economic insecurity, status grievance, territorial loss and backlash against globalization may help explain why populist appeals resonate(Carter & Pop-Eleches, 2025; Koenig & Mendelberg, 2026; Scheiring et al., 2024b). They do not by themselves explain how leaders turn a vote into authority to contest courts, treaties or international organizations.
The article proceeds in five steps. It first places the argument in recent literature on global populism, foreign policy and international institutions. It then defines “mandate inflation” and its boundary conditions. The empirical sections trace the mechanism in the United States, the United Kingdom and Hungary. The comparative discussion explains why the same authorizing logic supports different strategies toward constraint. The conclusion draws implications for scholars and policy practitioners who face populist challenges to global governance.
In this reflective Voice of Youth commentary marking Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day on August 25, PS Ayaas, a young Rohingya writer, activist, and community advocate, examines the enduring relationship between genocide, statelessness, exclusion, and political belonging. Drawing on the Rohingya experience, Ayaas argues that the 2017 violence cannot be separated from decades of citizenship restrictions, majoritarian nationalism, and narratives that constructed a minority population as an alien “other.” He connects this history to broader debates on populism, showing how exclusionary definitions of the “people” can normalize discrimination and undermine democratic protections. Moving beyond remembrance, Ayaas calls for accountability, equal rights, recognized education, sustainable livelihoods, meaningful Rohingya participation, and conditions for voluntary and dignified return. His central message is unequivocal: remembrance must become responsibility, and belonging must never be conditional.
Every August 25, I remember a day that did not end when the gunfire stopped. For Rohingya families, August 25 is not simply a date in history. It is carried in memory: in the stories of parents, in the names of villages, in photographs saved after flight, and in the silence that sometimes follows a question about home. I was still a child when I first understood that leaving home could mean never knowing when, or whether, you would see it again.
Rohingya communities mark August 25 as Genocide Remembrance Day to honor those who were killed, those who survived, and those who continue to live with displacement. But remembrance also asks a harder political question: how did an entire population come to be treated as if it did not belong?
From Violence to Exclusion
The violence of 2017 cannot be understood as an isolated eruption. It emerged from a much longer history of legal, political and social exclusion. Rohingya communities in Myanmar faced restrictions on citizenship, movement, education, marriage and livelihoods long before the mass displacement of 2017.
The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar documented the scale and systematic character of abuses committed during the 2017 military operations. It reported that more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh and documented killings, sexual violence and the burning of villages. UN human-rights investigators also recorded patterns of violence and deliberate actions that created fear and drove Rohingya civilians from their homes.
This history matters because genocide does not begin only when the world sees bodies or burning villages. It can be preceded by years of making a population politically disposable: denying people a secure legal identity, portraying them as outsiders, restricting their movement and normalising discrimination.
The 1982 Citizenship Law became a central part of this exclusionary structure. Rohingya were increasingly treated not as a recognised national community but as foreigners in the place many had always called home. The political message was devastatingly simple: you may live here, but you do not fully belong here.
The Politics of “Us” vs “Them”
This is where the Rohingya story becomes relevant to the study of populism. Populist politics often divides society into a morally pure “people” and an allegedly dangerous “other.” The boundaries of the “people” can be constructed through ethnicity, religion, race or nationality. Once a minority is portrayed as an existential demographic, cultural or security threat, exclusion can be presented not as discrimination but as protection.
Myanmar’s experience shows how dangerous this logic can become when it interacts with majoritarian nationalism, state power and organized violence. Anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya narratives did not remain confined to rhetoric. They helped create an environment in which discrimination could be normalized, and extraordinary violence could be justified. This does not mean that every aspect of the Rohingya crisis can be explained by populism. Military authoritarianism, ethnic nationalism, citizenship policy, colonial legacies, local conflicts and political economy all matter. But the construction of an “authentic” national community while defining a minority as alien offers an important lens.
The danger is not limited to Myanmar. Across the world, migrants, refugees and minorities can be turned into symbols of national decline or threats to social cohesion. When political actors persuade citizens that rights belong primarily to the “real people” and that minorities are outsiders who deserve fewer protections, democratic institutions become vulnerable. The Rohingya experience is therefore not only a humanitarian story; it is also a warning about what happens when belonging becomes conditional.
Remembering What Statistics Cannot Say
More than 700,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh following the 2017 violence. In 2026, UNHCR reported that around 1.2 million stateless Rohingya remained in Bangladesh. Numbers are essential for policy, but numbers cannot tell us what displacement feels like. A statistic cannot describe a mother deciding what to carry when a lifetime must fit into a few possessions. It cannot describe a child growing up knowing the name of a village he or she has never seen. It cannot capture the psychological weight of living in a place that is simultaneously a refuge and a reminder that the original home remains inaccessible.
Nine years after the mass displacement, displacement has become a childhood, an adolescence and, for many young Rohingya, almost an entire lifetime. Humanitarian assistance remains essential, but humanitarian assistance alone cannot constitute a political solution. UNHCR reported in 2026 that limited livelihood opportunities left Rohingya refugees heavily dependent on aid.
This creates a dangerous paradox. The international community says that the future should ultimately be sustainable, while policies surrounding displacement can leave young people with too few opportunities to acquire recognized education, build livelihoods or participate meaningfully in decisions affecting their lives.
Home Is More Than a Location
For many Rohingya, return to Myanmar remains the deepest expression of hope. But “return” cannot simply mean crossing a border. A return that leaves people stateless, unsafe, segregated or without freedom of movement would reproduce the conditions that made displacement possible. A sustainable return requires citizenship or an effective legal status guaranteeing equal rights, physical security, freedom of movement, access to education and healthcare, protection of property and meaningful participation in public life.
International law has already placed important obligations on Myanmar. In January 2020, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered provisional measures requiring Myanmar to take measures within its power to prevent acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention and to preserve evidence. In July 2022, the Court rejected Myanmar’s preliminary objections and confirmed that the case could proceed. The proceedings are not a substitute for political action, but they demonstrate that the Rohingya question is not simply a matter of humanitarian charity. It is also a matter of international law, accountability and rights. The Rohingya should therefore not be asked to choose between justice and return, or between hope and realism. A genuine pathway home must combine both.
A Future Cannot Be Built in a Waiting Room
The greatest danger of protracted displacement is that waiting becomes normal. A child who has spent nine years in a refugee settlement is not living through a temporary interruption. Those years are education, adolescence, friendships and formative memories. A generation can lose opportunities while governments continue to describe its situation as temporary. Durable solutions must therefore be broader than repatriation alone. First, Rohingya children and young people need meaningful, recognized and continuous education. Second, refugees need safe and lawful opportunities to develop skills and livelihoods rather than being treated as permanently dependent. Third, Rohingya representatives — especially women and young people — must have meaningful roles in discussions about return, protection, education, resettlement and reconstruction.
Third-country pathways should also be discussed honestly where appropriate, without turning resettlement into a substitute for the right to return. Different Rohingya families may have different futures. Some may return when conditions permit; some may pursue resettlement; others may build lives in Bangladesh or elsewhere. A rights-based approach must respect those choices rather than forcing one political solution upon an entire people.
Remembering As Resistance
On August 25, remembrance is more than mourning. It is a refusal to allow political violence to erase political responsibility. To remember is to say that the dead had names. The villages had names. The families had histories. The people who fled were not an anonymous mass. They were citizens, neighbors, students, farmers, teachers, parents and children whose lives were interrupted by violence and exclusion.
It is also to say that the story did not end at the Bangladesh border. The crisis continues in displacement, statelessness, insecurity in Rakhine State, shrinking humanitarian resources and the uncertainty of a generation growing up without a secure relationship to home. Remembrance is therefore a challenge to the international community. If the world recognizes atrocities but allows the political conditions that produced them to remain, remembrance becomes ritual without prevention.
The lesson of August 25 is not simply “never forget.” It is “never normalize.” Do not normalize statelessness. Do not normalize indefinite displacement. Do not normalize political narratives that define minorities as less deserving of rights. Do not normalize a humanitarian crisis that has lasted so long that an entire generation has grown up inside it.
A Future in Which Belonging Is Not Conditional
I still think about home. For my generation, home is sometimes a place we remember through our parents’ stories. It is a landscape inherited through memory. But home should not have to remain only a memory.
The future of the Rohingya should not be decided by the logic that excluded us in the first place. We should not be forced to prove that we deserve to belong. We should not have to choose between dignity and survival.
A meaningful future requires accountability for grave crimes, equal rights, political inclusion, education and livelihoods, and conditions that make return genuinely voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable. It also requires listening to Rohingya people themselves.
Every August 25, the world is invited to remember what happened. It must do more than remember. It must understand how exclusion was built, how an “other” was created, how violence became possible, and how those patterns can be prevented elsewhere.
Remembrance is the beginning of responsibility. And responsibility means building a future in which no child has to learn that belonging can be taken away.
PS Ayaasis a young Rohingya writer, activist and community advocate based in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. He is the founder of Refugee Wellness Mission, a youth-led initiative supporting community wellbeing, and currently pursuing a Bachelor of Health Science through the University of the People. His writing addresses displacement, statelessness, and the lived experience of the Rohingya community, drawing on volunteer work with organizations including BRAC and Save the Children, and participation in international fellowships focused on human rights, health, and youth empowerment. He speaks English, Bengali, Burmese, Hindi, and Rohingya. His work has previously appeared with the European Center for Populism Studies and Mixed Migration Center. Email: rohingyapubgsquad@gmail.com
Professor Justin Gest argues that democratic resilience depends not only on institutions but also on the citizens who remain to sustain them. In this ECPS interview, Professor Gest discusses his concept of “democratic drain”—the depletion of liberal democratic political capital through emigration—and explains how large-scale departures can weaken resistance to populist and authoritarian backsliding. He warns that democracies are “highly susceptible to demographic change” and that the phenomenon is spreading beyond its European “poster child” to countries including Turkey, Israel, India, and potentially the United States. Professor Gest also examines immigration politics, demographic ageing, and populist mobilization, arguing that migration should be framed in terms of the national interest and that “the way countries treat their most vulnerable” is indicative of the state of their democracy.
In an era when democratic backsliding is typically diagnosed through institutional erosion—the weakening of courts, legislatures, electoral safeguards, and checks on executive power—Professor Justin Gest directs attention to a less visible but potentially consequential force: the changing composition of the citizenry itself. Professor and Director of the Public Policy Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and the award-winning author of seven books, including Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Democracy, Professor Gest argues that understanding democratic resilience requires taking demographic change seriously. “What I think has been missing is the human dimension,” he tells the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), emphasizing that democracies “are also highly susceptible to demographic change.”
At the heart of Professor Gest’s argument is what he calls a “depletion effect”: when citizens with liberal democratic values leave in large numbers, their departure can diminish the political and civic resources available to resist authoritarianism. Migration remains, he stresses, “an expression of human freedom and human agency,” yet hundreds of thousands or millions of individual decisions to leave can produce “a very significant collective effect.” The result is a provocative reconsideration of emigration not simply as individual mobility, but as a process capable of reshaping the democratic prospects of countries of origin.
This dynamic may also strengthen populist and authoritarian governments. Professor Gest argues that the depletion of democratic human capital can allow “populist governments or authoritarian-leaning governments to get away with the backsliding” that might otherwise have been politically punished. Europe remains “the poster child for democratic drain,” particularly Central and Eastern Europe, but Professor Gest sees the phenomenon broadening to countries including Turkey, Israel, India, and potentially the United States. Indeed, he warns that “we are seeing the beginnings of a democratic drain in the United States,” even as American institutions, civic associations, and the judiciary continue to provide important sources of resilience.
The interview also situates democratic drain within the wider politics of migration, populism, and demographic transformation. Professor Gest argues that immigration politics is “principally driven by political entrepreneurs” and challenges narratives of invasion and chaos, while advocating immigration as a pursuit of the national interest. Most importantly, migration governance itself becomes a democratic test. “The way countries treat their most vulnerable,”Professor Gest argues, including foreigners and ethnic or religious minorities, “is indicative of the state of their democracy”—an observation he says may constitute an indictment of several countries, including the United States.
