In a period of deepening global democratic recession Zohran Mamdani’s ascent as mayor of New York City poses an important question: Can municipal socialism provide meaningful resistance to authoritarian and oligarchic drift? Mamdani’s redistributive agenda—rent freezes, universal childcare, fare-free transit, public groceries, and a $30 minimum wage—seeks to decommodify basic needs and challenge monopoly power. His platform echoes broader critiques of financialized capitalism and “techno-feudalism,” offering a localized experiment in restoring democratic control over markets. Yet structural constraints—capital mobility, state-level authority, and limited municipal capacity—risk reducing his project to a palliative rather than transformative intervention. Still, Mamdani’s rise signals renewed potential for democratic agency within advanced capitalism and highlights the symbolic power of left urban governance.
In an era marked by the ninth consecutive year of global democratic decline—with more autocracies than democracies worldwide—the question of whether municipal socialism can serve as a meaningful counterweight to authoritarian drift has acquired renewed urgency. In my earlier analysis, Trump and the New Capitalism: Old Wine in a New Bottle, I argued that the rise of populist-authoritarian tendencies represents not an aberration but an outcome of structural transformations within capitalism. The fusion of excessive neoliberal deregulation, financialization, and techno-feudal monopolies has produced a regime in which power is concentrated in networks of rent-seeking elites while democratic accountability erodes. Within this global configuration, figures such as Donald Trump exemplify a politics of reaction, harnessing social discontent to reinforce rather than transcend capitalist contradictions.
The newly elected mayor of the New York municipality in the US, Zohran Mamdani, represents another countermovement that is evolving. Having an Indian lineage, born in Kampala, Uganda, in 1991 and educated at the Bronx High School of Science and Bowdoin College in the US, Mamdani is a community organizer and politician representing a new generation of democratic socialists in New York City politics. His family background reflects a distinguished intellectual lineage: his father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a renowned Ugandan academic and political theorist at Columbia University, while his mother, Mira Nair, is an internationally acclaimed Indian filmmaker. This cosmopolitan and intellectually engaged upbringing informs his perspective on justice, diversity, and structural inequality. Before his mayoral campaign, he served as a state assembly member for Queens, gaining recognition for his advocacy on housing, transport, and labor rights.
The emergence of Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist and now mayor-elect of New York City, raises a critical question: Can left municipalism, operating within the framework of advanced capitalism, achieve more than temporary relief? Can it open pathways toward structural transformation, or does it risk serving merely as a palliative to capitalism’s crises? This commentary examines Mamdani’s project as a potential alternative within the confines of globalized urban capitalism and explores whether it constitutes a genuine rupture or a managed reform.
Mamdani’s Program and Its Socialist Premise
Mamdani’s platform centers on affordability—housing, transit, groceries, childcare—labor empowerment, anti-monopoly measures, and public-sector revival. His proposals include rent freezes, universal childcare, fare-free buses, city-owned grocery stores, and a minimum wage of $30 by 2030. The program is explicitly redistributive—funded through higher taxation on the wealthy, municipal bonds, and redirected public investment—and endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Reports from The Nation and The Guardian emphasize his focus on social affordability and economic justice.
Taken together, these policies articulate a coherent vision of municipal socialism that seeks to reconcile equity with feasibility. They represent not merely an electoral program but a normative statement about how value creation and distribution should be reorganized in an era of inequality and urban precarity.
Alignment with Structural Critiques of Capitalism
While Mamdani’s proposals emerge from the immediate material pressures of urban life—housing unaffordability, wage stagnation, and public disinvestment—they also speak to deeper theoretical concerns. His platform implicitly challenges the dominant accumulation regime that has shaped advanced capitalism since the 1980s.
Decommodification of social goods: By making housing, transport, and care public responsibilities, his program challenges financialized rent extraction.
Fiscal re-politicization: Expanding municipal investment and debt capacity revives the Keynesian principle of democratic capital allocation, countering the austerity logic.
Labor empowerment: Raising wages and curbing algorithmic exploitation of gig workers directly addresses the erosion of collective bargaining in the digital economy
In essence, Mamdani’s local socialism represents a municipal-scale experiment in reversing the disembedding process. It seeks to restore social control over markets without dismantling the capitalist framework entirely.
Structural Constraints and the Risk of Palliative Reform
Despite its radical rhetoric, Mamdani’s agenda faces formidable structural limits:
Jurisdictional dependency: Many proposals—such as rent control, wage laws, and tax reform—require state-level approval. Dependence on higher-tier institutions (Albany, Congress) restricts municipal sovereignty.
Financial constraints: Global capital mobility enables landlords and investors to circumvent local regulations through capital flight or pre-emptive rent inflation.
Administrative capacity: Rebuilding the state apparatus after decades of privatization demands resources, expertise, and political endurance. Global market discipline: As I noted elsewhere, cities embedded in global capital circuits cannot easily alter systemic rules of accumulation.
Thus, while progressive, Mamdani’s project risks acting as a palliative: It might ease inequality, precarity, and housing shortages without actually transforming the fundamental regime of accumulation. In this way, it resembles the New Deal paradox—reforms that saved capitalism from itself by institutionalizing social compromise.
Theoretical Implications: From Populism to Municipal Socialism
In contrast to populist movements such as Trumpism that weaponize social anger for authoritarian consolidation, Mamdani represents a left-populist or socialist response oriented toward redistribution and participation.
Drawing on thinkers such as Shoshana Zuboff, Yanis Varoufakis, and McKenzie Wark, genuine transformation would require dismantling the global rentier system based on data extraction, monopolistic control, and financial dominance. Mamdani’s measures operate largely at the level of urban welfare and infrastructure, not at the structural nexus of digital and financial capital.
This suggests that while municipal socialism can create breathing space for democracy, it cannot, alone, displace capitalist command over value creation. Nevertheless, its symbolic power is significant: It demonstrates that political agency still exists within capitalist democracies and that redistribution, social housing, and decommodification are viable public policies.
A Short Reminder from the Obama Experience
While Mamdani’s rise has generated enthusiasm among progressive circles, historical experience counsels caution regarding the transformative potential of reform within existing institutions. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 offers a revealing precedent. His campaign, built around the populist slogan “Yes We Can,” unleashed one of the most powerful waves of civic mobilization in modern US history.
A signature pledge—the creation of a single-payer healthcare system—was quickly abandoned amid intra-party resistance. Even with a unified government, centrist Democrats refused to support the plan. The resulting Affordable Care Act represented a policy milestone but fell short of structural transformation.
Simultaneously, the conservative backlash was immediate and fierce. The Tea Party movement– funded by corporate networks and amplified through right-wing media—redefined the Republican Party and laid the groundwork for Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) insurgency.
The political consequences were swift. In the 2010 midterms, Democrats lost both houses of Congress. Even vacancies in the Federal Reserve Board and the Supreme Court remained unfilled, enabling the next administration to reshape the judiciary decisively.
A Constraint Hope for the Future
Zohran Mamdani at the Dominican Heritage Parade on 6th Ave in Manhattan, New York City, August 10, 2025. Photo: Aleksandr Dyskin.
Mamdani’s rise signals a generational shift toward pragmatic socialism—a reassertion of collective goods amid a cost-of-living crisis. His program offers hope within limits: Hope that governance can be reoriented toward equality and sustainability; limits because the city remains bound to global circuits of capital and data.
If such movements scale upward—through cooperative federalism, trans-urban alliances, and progressive taxation—the Mamdani experiment could prefigure a new model of democratic socialism adapted to the 21st century. Otherwise, as warned in Trump and the New Capitalism, the system will continue oscillating between neoliberal authoritarianism and fragmented reform.
“Anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected; we see these floating narratives repeated across countries like Latvia, Poland, and Russia,” says Dr. Monika de Silva. She explains that populist actors strategically exploit linguistic ambiguity around concepts such as gender, transforming technical legal terms into polarizing political symbols. “Language is never neutral… this linguistic openness is used to argue that because gender replaces the word sex, we can no longer talk about men and women,” she notes. The Istanbul Convention—intended to prevent violence against women—has thus been reframed as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist project.” Yet Dr. de Silva stresses the importance of civic resistance: Latvia’s mass protests “undoubtedly shaped” the president’s decision to return the withdrawal bill to parliament.
In recent weeks, Latvia has become a focal point in Europe’s ongoing struggle over gender equality, human rights, and democratic resilience. On October 31, 2025, the Saeima (Latvian Parliament) voted 56–32 to withdraw from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention—only a year after ratifying the treaty designed to prevent and combat violence against women. The move relied heavily on claims that the Convention promotes “radical feminism” and “gender ideology,” echoing narratives with well-documented transnational origins. President Edgars Rinkēvičs soon returned the bill to parliament for reconsideration, warning that overturning ratification within a single legislative term would send “a contradictory message… to Latvian society and Latvia’s allies internationally.” He urged postponement until after upcoming elections, noting that Latvia risked becoming the first EU member state to renounce a human-rights treaty.
The backlash triggered the country’s largest civic protests since the 1990s. On November 6, 2025, more than 10,000 demonstrators gathered in Riga under the slogan “Let’s Protect Mother Latvia,” signaling a groundswell of civic resistance. At stake is not only the institutional integrity of gender-equality policy but also the credibility of Latvia’s constitutional and international commitments, especially given that the EU itself acceded to the Convention in 2023, making certain provisions binding regardless of national withdrawal.
It is against this turbulent backdrop that the European Center for the Study of Populism (ECPS) spoke with Dr. Monika de Silva, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg. Her research, situated at the intersection of international relations and EU studies, examines how contested normative frameworks travel across borders. Her 2025 doctoral dissertation, “‘Gender Wars’ in Europe: Diplomatic Practice under Polarized Conditions,” traces how bilateral diplomacy and Council of the EU negotiations have been reshaped by conflicts over gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. She is also affiliated with the Gender and Diplomacy project (GenDip) and the Centre for European Research (CERGU).
In the interview, Dr. de Silva argues that anti-gender discourse is best understood as a transnationally circulating narrative rather than merely a domestic reaction: “Anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected… we see manifestations of that as floating narratives that are very similar, whether we look at Latvia, Poland or Russia, etc.”
She identifies both supply and demand factors driving the spread of “gender ideology” rhetoric across Europe, noting that populist radical right actors strategically translate technical legal language into ideologically charged frames, exploiting linguistic ambiguity: “Language is never neutral… this linguistic openness is definitely used to advance such narratives.”
Dr. de Silva further highlights how withdrawal debates are reframing the Istanbul Convention away from its core purpose—preventing violence against women—toward narratives that depict it as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist project.” These interpretations, she warns, are not new; similar tropes have circulated across Europe for nearly a decade.
Yet her analysis also highlights agents of democratic resilience. Civil society mobilization, she observes, has already influenced decision-making: “The president… decided to return the law to parliament, and I am sure that seeing the largest protests in Latvia helped shape this decision.”
Finally, she issues a clear warning about governance consequences. Withdrawal would remove Latvia from GREVIO’s monitoring regime, generating critical transparency and implementation gaps: “A state not part of the Convention would not report to GREVIO… whatever it does is therefore less transparent, especially internationally.”
This interview thus offers rich insight into how legal, discursive, and geopolitical forces converge to shape contemporary anti-gender mobilization—and how democratic institutions and civil society may yet respond.
In an interview with the ECPS, Associate Professor Erica Frantz warns that the growing rise of personalist leaders worldwide is undermining democratic institutions and increasing the risk of international conflict. Personalist systems—where power is concentrated around a single dominant figure—erode checks and balances, distort party structures, and heighten foreign-policy miscalculation. Reflecting on the United States, she notes that Donald Trump has transformed the GOP into a “personal political vehicle,” enabling rapid consolidation of executive power. As domestic constraints weaken, Dr. Frantz cautions, “we are increasingly setting the stage for more volatile and unpredictable conflict behavior in the international arena.” She identifies leader-created parties and media-driven mobilization as critical warning signs of emerging personalist capture.
In a wide-ranging conversation with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Associate Professor Erica Frantz of Michigan State University offers a penetrating analysis of the global resurgence of personalist politics and its destabilizing implications for democracy and international security. A leading scholar of authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, and strongman rule, Dr. Frantz situates recent developments in the United States within broader cross-national trends, underscoring how personalist leaders erode institutions, centralize power, and elevate the risk of domestic and international conflict.
Reflecting on recent US electoral outcomes in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York, Dr. Frantz stresses that it is “too soon to tell whether this trend will last,” though she notes the results offer “at least a small glimmer of hope for the Democrats” after months of erosion under Trump. Yet she cautions that such gains do not signify a reversal of democratic decline. Personalist rule—defined by her as governance backed by leader-centered parties—has advanced markedly under Trump. His second administration, she argues, is marked by consolidated control over the executive and a legislative majority, patterns “consistent with what research would anticipate” in cases of democratic erosion.
Personalism, Dr. Frantz warns, not only weakens democratic institutions but also escalates international danger. She emphasizes that leaders who face minimal domestic constraints are more prone to foreign policy miscalculation, explaining that “the absence of domestic constraints makes it very difficult for the two sides to figure out what the real red lines are. That potential for miscalculation elevates the chance of conflict.” Drawing on international relations scholarship, she identifies audience-cost dynamics as critical to crisis stability—factors severely undermined under highly personalized regimes. As she concludes, “as we see personalism on the rise globally, we are increasingly setting the stage for more volatile and unpredictable conflict behavior in the international arena.”
Dr. Frantz underscores that Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party represents a paradigmatic shift toward personalist structure. Though he did not found the GOP, by 2024 the party had become “fully under his control,” with elites aligning themselves behind his false election narratives. Trumpism has thus reshaped partisan dynamics in ways that may outlast his tenure.
Looking to the future, Dr. Frantz identifies leader-created parties as a key early warning sign of personalist capture—now increasingly visible in democracies and autocracies alike. She argues that the changing media environment has dramatically lowered the cost of personalist mobilization, enabling wealthy outsiders to build movements rapidly and bypass organizational constraints.
Taken together, Associate Professor Frantz’s insights illuminate how personalism—far from a regional aberration—is now a global pattern, with the United States neither insulated nor exceptional.
“Anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected; we see these floating narratives repeated across countries like Latvia, Poland, and Russia,” says Dr. Monika de Silva. She explains that populist actors strategically exploit linguistic ambiguity around concepts such as gender, transforming technical legal terms into polarizing political symbols. “Language is never neutral… this linguistic openness is used to argue that because gender replaces the word sex, we can no longer talk about men and women,” she notes. The Istanbul Convention—intended to prevent violence against women—has thus been reframed as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist project.” Yet Dr. de Silva stresses the importance of civic resistance: Latvia’s mass protests “undoubtedly shaped” the president’s decision to return the withdrawal bill to parliament.
In recent weeks, Latvia has become a focal point in Europe’s ongoing struggle over gender equality, human rights, and democratic resilience. On October 31, 2025, the Saeima (Latvian Parliament) voted 56–32 to withdraw from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention—only a year after ratifying the treaty designed to prevent and combat violence against women. The move relied heavily on claims that the Convention promotes “radical feminism” and “gender ideology,” echoing narratives with well-documented transnational origins. President Edgars Rinkēvičs soon returned the bill to parliament for reconsideration, warning that overturning ratification within a single legislative term would send “a contradictory message… to Latvian society and Latvia’s allies internationally.” He urged postponement until after upcoming elections, noting that Latvia risked becoming the first EU member state to renounce a human-rights treaty.
The backlash triggered the country’s largest civic protests since the 1990s. On November 6, 2025, more than 10,000 demonstrators gathered in Riga under the slogan “Let’s Protect Mother Latvia,” signaling a groundswell of civic resistance. At stake is not only the institutional integrity of gender-equality policy but also the credibility of Latvia’s constitutional and international commitments, especially given that the EU itself acceded to the Convention in 2023, making certain provisions binding regardless of national withdrawal.
It is against this turbulent backdrop that the European Center for the Study of Populism (ECPS) spoke with Dr. Monika de Silva, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg. Her research, situated at the intersection of international relations and EU studies, examines how contested normative frameworks travel across borders. Her 2025 doctoral dissertation, “‘Gender Wars’ in Europe: Diplomatic Practice under Polarized Conditions,” traces how bilateral diplomacy and Council of the EU negotiations have been reshaped by conflicts over gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. She is also affiliated with the Gender and Diplomacy project (GenDip) and the Centre for European Research (CERGU).
In the interview, Dr. de Silva argues that anti-gender discourse is best understood as a transnationally circulating narrative rather than merely a domestic reaction: “Anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected… we see manifestations of that as floating narratives that are very similar, whether we look at Latvia, Poland or Russia, etc.”
She identifies both supply and demand factors driving the spread of “gender ideology” rhetoric across Europe, noting that populist radical right actors strategically translate technical legal language into ideologically charged frames, exploiting linguistic ambiguity: “Language is never neutral… this linguistic openness is definitely used to advance such narratives.”
Dr. de Silva further highlights how withdrawal debates are reframing the Istanbul Convention away from its core purpose—preventing violence against women—toward narratives that depict it as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist project.” These interpretations, she warns, are not new; similar tropes have circulated across Europe for nearly a decade.
Yet her analysis also highlights agents of democratic resilience. Civil society mobilization, she observes, has already influenced decision-making: “The president… decided to return the law to parliament, and I am sure that seeing the largest protests in Latvia helped shape this decision.”
Finally, she issues a clear warning about governance consequences. Withdrawal would remove Latvia from GREVIO’s monitoring regime, generating critical transparency and implementation gaps: “A state not part of the Convention would not report to GREVIO… whatever it does is therefore less transparent, especially internationally.”
This interview thus offers rich insight into how legal, discursive, and geopolitical forces converge to shape contemporary anti-gender mobilization—and how democratic institutions and civil society may yet respond.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Dr. Monika de Silva, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Latvia’s Withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention Signals Deep Democratic Trouble
Demonstrators in Riga on April 25, 2023, demand accountability after a woman’s murder, calling for political responsibility over Latvia’s years-long failure to ratify the Istanbul Convention. Photo: Gints Ivuskans.
Dr. Monica de Silva, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Latvia became the first EU state to vote to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention—just a year after ratifying it. The move, driven by the right-wing Latvia First party and backed by a governing coalition partner, relied on claims that the treaty promotes “gender ideology,” echoing Kremlin-style narratives. It triggered Latvia’s largest civic protests since the 1990s, despite the country having the highest femicide rate in Europe; President Edgars Rinkēvičs has since sent the bill back to parliament for review. How do you interpret this backlash—primarily as a cyclical conservative reaction, a structural anti-gender countermovement, or a strategic tool of PRR mobilization?
Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course, the fact that populist radical right parties like Latvia First mobilized around the Istanbul Convention and now seek to withdraw from it is not surprising; it is a continued strategy of populist radical right parties. What is different—and concerning—in this case is that a conservative party, the Union of Farmers and Greens, has joined these radical right actors in pursuing withdrawal from the Convention.
The Union has always had reservations about the Convention, which is typical not only of radical or far-right parties but also of more mainstream conservative parties. However, what distinguishes this situation is that the Union is part of the government, and, as such, agreed to a coalition deal in which the Latvian government committed to ratifying the Istanbul Convention. Now they are backing away from a commitment they made to the Latvian public and to their coalition partners, which is deeply troubling for the state of our democracy.
It has been a very long process from Latvia’s signing of the Istanbul Convention to its ratification just last year. During this period, we saw extensive democratic debate in parliament, as well as a case before the Constitutional Court, which confirmed that the Convention complies with the Latvian Constitution. Upon ratification, Latvia also adopted an interpretive declaration affirming that it would not replace the word “sex” with “gender” in national legislation, and so on. Many voices participated in this process, and concerns—for example, about the legal implications of the Convention—were duly assessed.
It is therefore very worrying that, at this stage, we still face efforts to retract this commitment. This raises questions not only about Latvia’s commitment to its own citizens—particularly women—but also to other states that are parties to the Convention.
The Supply and Demand of Anti-Gender Politics in Europe
In your view, what explains the political salience of “gender ideology” narratives in opposition to the Istanbul Convention across such varied contexts as Latvia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Hungary?
Dr. Monika de Silva: I like to think about the gender ideology narrative as having a supply side and a demand side. On the supply side, we have in all of these countries very strong populist radical right parties, but also other political movements that are very effective at mobilizing against the Convention and transnationalizing this issue. So this is the supply side of the narrative.
But what is even more interesting is the demand side. This strategy would not work without the resonance of this argument among a certain part of the population. What is similar in all of these countries—you mentioned Latvia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Hungary—is that they all participate in European integration but are not at the core of this project. They are not Western European countries; they are Central and Eastern European countries, or even countries on the boundary between Europe and other continents.
There are also many interlinkages between European identity and gender equality norms. We see that adopting certain norms or laws gives states a certain status within European integration. The case of Turkey is illustrative. The Istanbul Convention is named the Istanbul Convention for a reason. It was adopted in Turkey, and Turkey gained a lot of status points by hosting the conference; it was able to brand itself as European, liberal, etc.
But let’s remember that this was over 10-15 years ago, and now we live in a different moment. Today, Turkey’s accession to the European Union is much less likely. We also live in a moment where the European Union does not have as much power as it used to. So, this linkage between Europeanness and gender equality does not work as well as it once did, and it creates backlash.
Gender equality norms are very dear to people; they are part of people’s social identity, whether on the left or on the right. So, it is not something that can be easily changed. People also do not want to feel that something is being imposed on them, so it is very easy to mobilize against this narrative in these countries—arguing that this is Western Europe, or the EU, or the Council of Europe, etc., or the elites forcing them to change their core norms.
Women and LGBTQ+ activists in İzmir, Turkey, rally for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, highlighting femicide and the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. Photo: Idil Toffolo.
Populism, Geopolitics, and the Cross-Border Spread of Gender Backlash
To what extent is anti-gender discourse a domestic phenomenon, and to what extent is it borrowing transnational scripts, including Kremlin-linked rhetoric that frames the Convention as destroying “traditional family values”?
Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course, anti-gender discourses are very interlinked and interconnected, and we see manifestations of that as floating narratives that are very similar, whether we look at Latvia, Poland or Russia.
In the Latvian case, for example, I have not seen any new tropes in the anti-gender discourse, even though we have had this conversation since 2015–2016. So now, almost ten years on, there is nothing new. The Istanbul Convention is presented as a threat to the family, sneaking in certain gender-equality or feminist or LGBT norms that states did not initially think were in the Convention, or that it will make states allow for non-binarity in their legal systems, or make more lenient laws regarding transgender rights.
We see this over and over again, across time and space. What is the reason for that? To some extent, it is coordinated. We have coalitions of states that cooperate with each other in venues like the United Nations—traditional-values coalitions and so on—and they exchange and build their discourses together. We also have non-state, transnational organizations like the World Congress of Families that do this.
Regarding the link between these narratives and Russia or the Kremlin: we definitely see why there would be an incentive for Russia to stir up the conversation around the Istanbul Convention in Latvia and other Baltic states. This creates a lot of mistrust between countries like Latvia and other Western European countries and the EU, especially in a situation where we have this aggression on the eastern border of Europe. This is a problem that can steer the fate of this country one way or another.
We have elections in Latvia next year, and the Istanbul Convention will surely be a significant part of the campaigns. Hopefully, it will not steer the political scene in this country toward a pro-Russian direction. I hope we will see well-informed, democratic debate on the Istanbul Convention. But of course, since this is such a polarizing topic, there are certain risks involved.
Populist Actors Exploit Linguistic Ambiguity in EU Gender Debates
How do PRR actors transform technical legal language into ideologically charged rhetoric, especially around contested terms like “gender,” which your work has shown can be strategically mistranslated or emptied of meaning in EU negotiation spaces?
Dr. Monika de Silva: The discussion around the term “gender” shows us that language is never neutral. It is always politically charged, whether it is adopted as technical or legal. In the case I studied, several EU member states at some point decided that they did not want to use the word “gender” in EU-adopted documents. This, of course, stirred a lot of contestations around what gender even means for the EU, and so on. The fact is that what gender means, or what gender equality means for the EU, has never been a settled issue.
As you know, all EU languages have equal legal value. In different languages, gender equality is translated basically as equality between men and women. This had not been an issue for a long time because it did not spark as much discussion as it does now, with many states being very attached to the idea that gender should include more than men and women, and some countries being attached to the idea that it should not.
So, there is this discursive openness in what gender means for the EU. It existed before the so-called gender-language crisis. Populist parties, populist governments, are very skilled at using this discursive openness. Because if we do not know what the exact boundaries of a certain word are—and this is not atypical in political discourse—it is very easy to argue that this word means something essentially ridiculous. For example, because gender replaces the word sex, we can no longer talk about men and women. This is, of course, not what the word “gender” means, but this linguistic openness is definitely used to advance such narratives.
Why Some States Avoid Ratification: The Limits of EU Influence
European Union flags against European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
In your research, you explore “language bargaining” and diplomatic-legal talk. How have these dynamics influenced EU-level negotiations on the Istanbul Convention, and how did they enable states such as Hungary or Slovakia to avoid ratification?
Dr. Monika de Silva: Definitions and decisions in the EU are always outcomes of negotiations. There are diplomacy and negotiation involved in reaching a jointly acceptable outcome. That, of course, is a good, healthy thing if we have parties that are not always expecting to arrive at their maximalist outcome. This is not possible in an organization with 27 member states.
The ability to make these compromises and negotiate was something that enabled the European Union to accede to the Istanbul Convention, even though several member states decided that they themselves would not accede to the Convention. But they accepted the fact that, within a legitimate process and based on the rule of law—with also a case in the Court of Justice of the EU confirming that the EU can accede to the Istanbul Convention—yes, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
So, there is very little that the EU can do to make other member states ratify the Convention. This is their sovereign decision; they are not obliged to ratify the Convention under EU law. Even given the narratives that we talked about—the imposition from the EU and so on—this may actually have a reverse effect, a backlash against this sort of narrative of imposition.
So, I think the way to go is to maintain a culture of compromise, which assures these governments and their populations that this is the way we work in the EU, including in cases like the Istanbul Convention.
How a Women’s Protection Treaty Became a Culture-War Symbol
Could you reflect on how the Istanbul Convention became symbolically detached from its core purpose—preventing violence against women—and reframed instead as an LGBTQ+ threat or “radical feminist” project?
Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course, this is very unfortunate—what we see is that a convention intended to protect women from violence, gender-based violence, and protect domestic-violence victims, not only women, suddenly becomes a token in political discussions.
Even if some political movements would like the Istanbul Convention to stand for LGBT rights and feminist projects to a larger extent, it does not do so, as populist parties would like us to believe. That is why it is very important to counter misinformation around the Istanbul Convention and always go back to what it actually stands for and what it actually says. This is how movements across Europe will succeed in ensuring that the Convention is a successful tool—by returning to its true purpose, which is largely consensual. If we look at public opinion across Europe, most people agree that violence against women is not something they want to see in their societies.
We may have different ideas about the scope of the problem and how to tackle it, but returning to this core purpose is something that can mobilize support for the Convention. Bringing the Convention back to its purpose and localizing that purpose—not as something imposed or defined by other countries on Latvia, for example, but as something important within Latvian society itself—is very important.
We see civil society learning to do that—to focus on these two things. When we look at the protests in Latvia, I have seen a lot of Latvian flags; the protest itself has this motto of protecting Mother Latvia. So, it gives you the idea that this is about the citizens and population of Latvia. It is not about the EU; it is not about how we look in the eyes of EU bureaucrats. This is a local issue.
People Power Matters: Protest as a Deterrent to Anti-Gender Politics
Women protest in Warsaw, Poland, against the abortion ban and new laws restricting the right to contest fines or penalties. Photo: Eryk Losik.
What role does civil society mobilization play against gender backlash? Latvia has seen some of its largest protests since independence—can such mobilization create durable political resistance?
Dr. Monika de Silva: Of course it matters, and we have seen this in the case of Latvia. The president of Latvia decided to return the decision about the Istanbul Convention to parliament, and I am sure that seeing the mobilization of people and witnessing the largest protests in Latvia helped shape this decision.
We have other cases as well. Poland is a very good example of how civil society mobilization really works. Think about the Women’s Strike in Poland, and the fact that even though Poland had a populist government for over eight years, very much threatening gender equality, Poland has not withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention. This was, to a large extent, the success of civil society mobilization, acting as a deterrent to incumbents—showing that if you take a decision that is against our core values and beliefs, we will not continue supporting you.
At the end of the day, people want to stay in power, and civil society mobilization shows them that they can only do so if they take into account what civil society wants. This mobilization has to continue until the elections in Latvia next year, and hopefully in a way that mobilizes a large part of society rather than polarizing it.
Can EU-Level Binding Offset National Withdrawal?
How has EU legal accession to the Istanbul Convention (2023) shaped the political field? Does EU-level binding partially compensate for national withdrawals or refusals to ratify?
Dr. Monika de Silva: This is a complex legal issue—really an issue for legal nerds—but it is important for the public to understand it, too. Some parts of the Istanbul Convention are ratified by the EU, and the majority of the Convention can be ratified by EU member states, depending on who has competence in a given issue.
So, the EU—regardless of whether member states ratified the Convention or not—will have a certain part of the Convention apply, for example in the case of Latvia, just because the EU ratified it. But this is a very limited scope: it includes transnational cooperation between national court systems on violence against women and domestic violence.
A second area is asylum and refugee policy, because the EU has competence over this policy. And third, the EU has to implement the Convention within its own institutions.
So, this is a limited scope—this is one thing. Another issue is that although in theory it may sound all well and good, a division of competences, in practice this is a bit of a mess. Even though the EU is legally responsible for asylum policy, it is actually member states that implement it. It is states that run asylum-seeking centers, states that receive asylum requests, and so on. So, in practice, it may be difficult to differentiate who is responsible for what, and we have yet to see how this will work in practice.
The Real-World Costs of Leaving the Istanbul Convention
Women and LGBTQ+ activists in İzmir, Turkey, rally on November 25 for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, highlighting femicide and the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. Photo: Idil Toffolo.
And lastly, Dr. de Silva, from a governance-effects perspective, what are the tangible consequences of withdrawal or non-ratification for women’s lives, particularly in terms of monitoring gaps and legal reform trajectories?
Dr. Monika de Silva: In the case of Latvia specifically, the Istanbul Convention is still in force and will be so until the parliament votes otherwise. But this will likely not happen until the next parliamentary elections in Latvia next year. So, in the case of Latvia, we are so far safe.
But what would happen if Latvia withdrew from the Convention? Let’s think about this. Many provisions of the Convention are already implemented in this case, and then we would have to focus on keeping these provisions in place. This is also a strategy in countries where it is very clear that they will not ratify the Convention in any foreseeable future. Think about Hungary. This is where civil society should focus on national law on domestic violence and violence against women being as strong as possible and perhaps reflecting the provisions of the Convention to the largest extent possible.
Latvia has already reported to GREVIO, the expert body of the Convention that monitors its implementation, and from this report we know that there are still gaps. The government itself says, for example, that it does not yet have assistance centers for rape victims. Now the government is legally obliged to establish them in the foreseeable future. If Latvia were not a member of the Convention, it would not have a legal obligation to do so.
There are situations like that. But the biggest and most immediate difference we would see is that a state not part of the Convention would not report to GREVIO. Whatever it does is therefore less transparent, especially internationally. There is less scrutiny, because once a state reports to GREVIO, it is evaluated by this body of experts—experts on violence against women and domestic violence who know what the Convention requires and how it should be implemented. States outside the Convention would also not face scrutiny from other member states or from international civil society.
In an interview with the ECPS, Associate Professor Erica Frantz warns that the growing rise of personalist leaders worldwide is undermining democratic institutions and increasing the risk of international conflict. Personalist systems—where power is concentrated around a single dominant figure—erode checks and balances, distort party structures, and heighten foreign-policy miscalculation. Reflecting on the United States, she notes that Donald Trump has transformed the GOP into a “personal political vehicle,” enabling rapid consolidation of executive power. As domestic constraints weaken, Dr. Frantz cautions, “we are increasingly setting the stage for more volatile and unpredictable conflict behavior in the international arena.” She identifies leader-created parties and media-driven mobilization as critical warning signs of emerging personalist capture.
In a wide-ranging conversation with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Associate Professor Erica Frantz of Michigan State University offers a penetrating analysis of the global resurgence of personalist politics and its destabilizing implications for democracy and international security. A leading scholar of authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, and strongman rule, Dr. Frantz situates recent developments in the United States within broader cross-national trends, underscoring how personalist leaders erode institutions, centralize power, and elevate the risk of domestic and international conflict.
Reflecting on recent US electoral outcomes in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York, Dr. Frantz stresses that it is “too soon to tell whether this trend will last,” though she notes the results offer “at least a small glimmer of hope for the Democrats” after months of erosion under Trump. Yet she cautions that such gains do not signify a reversal of democratic decline. Personalist rule—defined by her as governance backed by leader-centered parties—has advanced markedly under Trump. His second administration, she argues, is marked by consolidated control over the executive and a legislative majority, patterns “consistent with what research would anticipate” in cases of democratic erosion.
Personalism, Dr. Frantz warns, not only weakens democratic institutions but also escalates international danger. She emphasizes that leaders who face minimal domestic constraints are more prone to foreign policy miscalculation, explaining that “the absence of domestic constraints makes it very difficult for the two sides to figure out what the real red lines are. That potential for miscalculation elevates the chance of conflict.” Drawing on international relations scholarship, she identifies audience-cost dynamics as critical to crisis stability—factors severely undermined under highly personalized regimes. As she concludes, “as we see personalism on the rise globally, we are increasingly setting the stage for more volatile and unpredictable conflict behavior in the international arena.”
Dr. Frantz underscores that Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party represents a paradigmatic shift toward personalist structure. Though he did not found the GOP, by 2024 the party had become “fully under his control,” with elites aligning themselves behind his false election narratives. Trumpism has thus reshaped partisan dynamics in ways that may outlast his tenure.
Looking to the future, Dr. Frantz identifies leader-created parties as a key early warning sign of personalist capture—now increasingly visible in democracies and autocracies alike. She argues that the changing media environment has dramatically lowered the cost of personalist mobilization, enabling wealthy outsiders to build movements rapidly and bypass organizational constraints.
Taken together, Associate Professor Frantz’s insights illuminate how personalism—far from a regional aberration—is now a global pattern, with the United States neither insulated nor exceptional.
Erica Frantz is an Associate Professor in Political Science at Michigan State University.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Associate Professor Erica Frantz, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Democratic Gains Offer Hope, But 2026 Remains the Real Test
Professor Erica Frantz, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In the wake of recent Democratic victories—such as in New Jersey, Virginia, and California, as well as Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York—do you interpret these outcomes as early signs of public pushback against personalist-populist politics in the US, or are they better understood as cyclical fluctuations within a still-fragmented party system?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: That is a great question, and one that I don’t think we have a solid answer for. On the one hand, it certainly should give room for optimism that the Democrats did fairly well last week, in the November 4th elections. But at the same time, it is very possible that this was just a blip and an outlier. The real big test will be in the 2026 midterm elections. From my perspective, this was an important outcome for the Democrats in that there had been very little good news for the party since the 2024 election. So, for the first time, there was some indication that the tide of public opinion may be shifting a little bit against Trump. So, it is too soon to tell whether this trend will last, but it certainly offered at least a small glimmer of hope for the Democrats.
Small Victories Amid Deep Democratic Vulnerability
Do these electoral results indicate that institutional resilience and civic counter-mobilization remain robust in the US, or do you see them as temporary and insufficient to counter deeper trajectories of democratic erosion?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: Again, it is a little bit too soon to know what the ultimate meaning of this election result will be. From my perspective, a really big test is going to be the 2026 midterm elections.
We know a couple of things about the factors that escalate the chance of democratic erosion, and my colleagues and I have written a lot about personalist parties: when leaders come to power backed by personalist parties and the party has a legislative majority, the chance of democratic erosion increases. That is precisely what we’ve been witnessing with the second Trump administration—he now governs amid this personalist party, and the party has legislative majorities. All of that set the stage for him to consolidate power in the executive fairly rapidly in the US. So, the patterns that we’ve seen in 2025 are consistent with what research would anticipate.
To be clear, there are opportunities for citizens to push back against these efforts and signal their displeasure. This election was certainly one such opportunity. Again, the big one will be the 2026 midterm elections. It is not always the case that these leaders are able to consolidate control and destroy democracy from within; in some instances, they’re voted out of power. A good recent example would be Bolsonaro in Brazil. He was elected, did things that were harmful for Brazilian democracy, but ultimately lost his re-election bid. Slovenia would be another example. So, there is an opportunity for citizens to vote these leaders out.
But at the same time, it is not guaranteed that the 2026 midterm elections will be free and fair. Historically, US elections have been free and fair, despite allegations of fraud. The widespread consensus among experts is that we have very solid democratic elections in the US. However, there have been subtle indications that the Trump administration might try to fiddle with things in ways that threaten the integrity of the process in 2026. That is something to keep an eye on as well. Whether through gerrymandering or the disenfranchisement of key sectors of the electorate, there are certain things they could do that might not sound the alarm bell among citizens but would still threaten the integrity of the process.
Is Personalism the New Global Normal?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan watching the August 30 Victory Day Parade in Ankara, Turkey on August 30, 2014. Photo by Mustafa Kirazli.
Given your comparative work on strongmen, how significant are these recent US elections at a global level—might they signal renewed democratic resistance, or are they isolated exceptions in a broader worldwide pattern of backsliding?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: We know that there is a broader pattern of backsliding happening, as you alluded to, and scholars debate to some degree how serious it is. But the reality is that regardless of the measure used to capture backsliding, we know that it’s occurring in places that have historically been robust to this sort of threat. Usually, wealthier democracies—democracies that have been in place for a really long time—tend to be protected from this kind of erosion.
What’s alarming about today’s backsliding wave is the ways in which countries like the United States, Poland, Hungary, and Turkey have been threatened by these sorts of incumbent takeovers. So, we know that there is a broader pattern underway, and from my own research perspective, we think that personalism is playing a very big role in fueling this dynamic.
That’s the broader global landscape. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, just because we see a leader elected by a personalist party with a legislative majority does not mean there are no windows of opportunity for the opposition to vote these leaders out before they win re-election. I mentioned the cases of Brazil and Slovenia as examples where leaders that fit the model of what you don’t want to see, in terms of risks of incumbent takeover, did not win re-election.
So, the fact that we have this positive result for the Democratic Party—not only in terms of Mamdani, who is further to the left, winning office, but also the governors in New Jersey and Virginia, who were centrist—signals that perhaps there is some pushback against Trump’s agenda. However, it’s unclear whether that pushback is because of Trump doing things that are harmful to democracy and people not liking it, or—more likely, in my opinion—because they don’t like the direction of his economic policies. So, it would be unlikely that this result reflects frustration with what Trump has done to democracy, and far more likely that it reflects disagreement with his economic policies and the direction he has taken the economy.
From Institutional GOP to Personalist Machine
Your recentNew York Timesarticle argues that Donald Trump has transformed the GOP into a personal political vehicle. What empirical markers—organizational, ideological, or behavioral—most clearly signal the evolution of the Republican Party from a programmatic institution into a personalist structure?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: That’s a great question as well. We do a lot of research on personalized parties, and we’ve gathered a lot of data on how to capture personalism in a political party. And usually, the best indicator that a party is going to be personalist is that the leader created the party themselves—so Bukele with Nueva Ideas in El Salvador, or in Hungary with Orbán and Fidesz. Trump is unusual in that he did not create the Republican Party. This party has been around for a long time. But one indicator that his tenure as president was going to be different vis-à-vis the Republican Party was that he did not rise up within the ranks of the party to get the 2016 nomination. Instead, what happened was he was somewhat of an outsider. He, at one point, had been a Democrat, so he was not the classic candidate that the Republican Party had tended to field in their presidential campaigns.
At the time, the Republican Party happened to be divided. There were a variety of other people who were potential frontrunners for the 2016 candidacy, and Trump surprised many by virtue of winning. A lot of people at the time thought it was somewhat of a joke that he would be running for president. It was the right place at the right time for him to take over the Republican Party.
During his first term, he did not have the same control over the Republican Party that he did since 2020. And a clear indicator that the party was becoming personalized was after the insurrection on January 6, 2021. We see this really blatant, horrific episode of violence—essentially political violence—where a mob is trying to keep a democratically elected leader from taking power. That should have been a moment where Trump was completely sidelined from the Republican Party.
In the early days, a lot of Republican elites were somewhat unsure of how to respond. Should they get in line behind Trump’s false narrative that the election was stolen, or should they speak out against what happened and how much of a departure it was from our democratic norms? Slowly over time, however, Trump was able to get all of these elites to get in line with his false narrative. And so, by the time he ran for office in 2024, the Republican Party was fully under his control.
He’d gotten all of the key players within the party to support his narrative that the election was stolen, and by this point, it was pretty clear that Trump became synonymous with the party. When he would have different Republican Party events, there would be a statue of Trump or an image of Trump. Rather than promoting the party’s ideas, it was more a situation where we were seeing Trump as a person dominate. Clearly, elites started to sense that they were unlikely to maintain their political careers if they did not get in line behind Trump. So, by the time he ran for president in 2024, the party was very much one that we would consider personalist, where most elites were fearful of speaking out against Trump, and instead, he basically governs the policy agenda.
Structural Conditions Behind Trump’s Party Takeover
Elephant symbol of the Republican Party with the American flag in the background. Photo: Chris Dorney.
Which structural conditions—party decay, institutional fragility, or shifts in public demand—have been most important in enabling Trump to centralize authority and weaken intra-party constraints?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: I don’t have a solid answer to that, because it would really be my best guess. My best guess in terms of what enabled Trump to personalize the party. I do think that the party was somewhat divided in 2016, and that was a real momentous occasion in terms of Trump being able to leverage this window of opportunity, as I mentioned. That said, the party was not fully behind Trump during his first term. Again, I can’t point to a specific cause of why he was able to fully take over the party in 2021. But we do know that slowly over time, key individuals in the party started to see themselves as not electorally viable unless they got in line behind Trump’s agenda.
In terms of the broader global landscape of why we’re able to see these sorts of things, there is some evidence that the changing media environment is enabling leaders to personalize their parties. Rather than having to build a party from the ground up, leaders can now build parties on social media. They don’t need the same organizational grassroots effort to construct a group that backs them. I mentioned earlier El Salvador with Nayib Bukele. He really is the new mold for how leaders can build movements that are personalized very rapidly and win office. He created his own political party and was very savvy in his use of social media to directly connect with voters, bypassing the need for a traditional party organization to launch his candidacy. These sorts of direct connections with citizens enable leaders to gain a following without having to rely on an established traditional party. There is some evidence that new media is facilitating the rise of personalism and personalist parties, enabling these leaders to bypass traditional institutions to gain political influence.
How Trump Hollowed Out Democratic Guardrails
Strongmen typically engage in institutional hollowing from within. Under Trump, which forms of institutional capture—of the courts, the DOJ, the Federal Reserve, or security agencies—pose the greatest long-term threat to liberal-democratic resilience in the US?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: Trump has been somewhat of an outlier in terms of the speed with which he has consolidated control. Typically, when we see these leaders come to power backed by these hollow organizations, personalist parties; it takes longer for them to get rid of executive constraints. Oftentimes, it’s strategic to do this slowly, because it’s more difficult for opponents to express alarm and mobilize against these fragmented takeovers. What has been surprising in the case of the US is the speed with which Trump has gone after multiple institutions of power and been able to do it without much pushback.
In terms of which institution is the most dangerous, in many cases we see the courts as particularly important in protecting democracy from an executive takeover. The fact that we have a Supreme Court that has seemed at least sympathetic, or willing to consider a new vision of the executive as very powerful, is particularly alarming, in that it’s possible the courts will open the door for Trump to do things like pursue a third term in office, because we have a conservative court that is not only conservative in terms of its agenda, but particularly pro-Trump. The current Supreme Court hearing over the case on tariffs and whether his tariffs are legal is going to be a very big case in terms of determining whether the courts will open the door for Trump to bypass traditional norms of behavior regarding executive power.
This is not to say that what Trump has done to gain control over other institutions is not also a problem. We ideally would like to see a bureaucracy that has people who are competent in major positions of power. Instead, what we’ve seen is that the bureaucracy has been both hollowed out—now very thin—but also staffed with his loyalists. This is going to have downstream consequences for all sorts of policy outcomes in the US. Even when we’re thinking about things like childhood vaccinations, we might see a public-health crisis on the horizon because of the ways in which Trump has appointed people in the health sector who do not have appropriate credentials for these positions.
The other domain that is also one to keep in mind is what’s going on with the military. Early on in Trump’s term, basically on a Friday night, when most people were not reading the news or maybe were asleep, he purged the top military brass of many officials. This is not the sort of thing that we are used to seeing. In a healthy democracy, the military is kept separate; it’s kept out of some of these civilian political debates. Trump seems very open-minded to trying to politicize the military. It’s been very unusual and alarming to see the ways he has deployed the National Guard to Democratic strongholds. This is not the sort of thing you’d like to see in a healthy democracy, because in theory the military is supposed to stay out of domestic political debates. The ways in which he’s used ICE to go after immigrants is also indicative of a shift where he is trying to use the security forces for political purposes in ways that are unprecedented.
Personalism and the Creation of Internal Enemies
Personalist rulers commonly manufacture “internal enemies” to justify extraordinary coercive measures. How does Trump’s rhetoric about the “deep state,” immigrants, and political opponents align with this broader strategy of threat construction?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: The ways in which Trump is fabricating a domestic enemy are very similar to what we see in dictatorships. The two cases that come to mind for me are Russia under Putin and Iran under its theocracy. In Iran, the regime very much benefits from promoting an image of the US as the enemy. It tries to get a rally-around-the-flag sort of boost in domestic support by saying that the regime is under attack from America, and that the United States is the cause of all of the country’s problems. In Russia, we’re seeing something similar with Putin’s rhetoric, saying that the United States is the cause of all of these challenges, and so forth.
Trump is not necessarily targeting a specific foreign enemy, but he likely would, at any given moment, blame a foreign country for some sort of problem that might be happening here. But he is stating that immigrants are a problem, and that immigrants are responsible for crime. He has made a number of statements completely absent any evidence about crime. In particular, he is saying false things about crime rates in Democratic cities. For people who live in these cities, this is somewhat surprising, because in many of them, they’ve actually seen their crime rates go down. So, the fact that he is deploying the National Guard to fight crime in Democratic strongholds is troubling.
It’s also his effort to rally his base. It was clear to him early on that his supporters were concerned about crime—that this was an issue he could get people to rally behind. If he paints a portrait of the United States as full of crime, as D.C. full of crime, then he can again create and craft a narrative that helps support him—an us-versus-them mentality, something that we’ve seen in many other political contexts, where leaders leverage these divides for their own political benefit.
Militarization as a Red Flag
District of Columbia National Guard soldiers patrol the National Mall after Trump activated the Guard and assumed control of the Metro Police to fight what he calls a crime epidemic, near Union Station, Washington, DC. Photo: Harper Drew.
Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and increasingly militarized immigration enforcement raises concerns about domestic coercion. Should we understand this as the early normalization of militarized rule within a democratic setting?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: In most cases of incumbent-led democratic backsliding, leaders usually first go after institutional constraints; they first go after the judiciary, or the bureaucracy, the media. Then they ultimately target elections. That’s the typical process that we see with incumbent-led backsliding. Trump’s ability to, or decision to, try to go after the security forces—and by that, I mean two things: promote loyalists, get rid of dissenting voices in the security forces, and then also politicize them by deploying them against his opponents—is not something that is typically part of the classic playbook. Usually, it’s something that we see after the democracy has transitioned to dictatorship.
The US is still a democracy by all accounts right now, because the 2024 presidential election was free and fair. That’s the most basic indicator of a democracy: the free and fairness of elections. We’re still a democracy. However, usually we don’t see these leaders militarize and politicize the security forces until after they’ve autocratized. It’s a very common tactic that they try to rely on multiple different security forces; we hear about coup-proofing and balancing the different security forces against one another. The fact that Trump is doing all of these things is both inconsistent with democratic norms in the United States and also a red flag in that healthy democracies require militaries that are not used for political purposes, particularly against domestic opponents.
Personalism and Economic Vulnerability
Photo: Shutterstock AI.
Your work suggests that personalist leaders politicize economic institutions and often embrace transactional economics. How might Trump’s pressure on the Federal Reserve, discretionary trade tactics, and patronage-based allocation threaten long-term economic stability?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: I keep mentioning personalist parties, but there’s a lot of research related to party personalism and its harmful consequences. We, my colleagues and I, just published a paper that shows that when leaders are backed by personal parties, they are more likely to attack central bank independence. This is not just something that is observed in the United States. There is a global pattern that these leaders, in their effort to ensure that no institutions can push back against them, go after the central bank as well. So, the fact that Trump has tried to interfere in the ways in which the Federal Reserve sets interest rate policies is consistent with global trends.
There is a huge body of research that shows that you want central bank independence, that this is something that political leaders should try to preserve because it’s in the country’s long-term best economic interests. So, when we have this sort of behavior, it signals that we’re likely to see disruptions in terms of inflationary policy. We are likely to have more unpredictable inflationary policy in the US. It is likely to lead to more inflation for ordinary people, and that’s already a concern among Americans. If you go to the grocery stores, prices are higher in everything. So, when I talk to my students, they can list a lot of different products that they no longer can afford because of inflation.
So, Trump’s eagerness to lower interest rates and fiddle with central bank independence is going to have long-term economic consequences. On top of this, these sorts of leaders are also likely to reward their loyalists with corruption. They’re likely to give them access to corruption and corrupt deal-making. That’s something very common, that these inner-circle elites are profiting from illicit deals. They send their money overseas to offshore bank accounts, try to hide things, and this is the way that these personalist leaders, like Trump, are able to maintain some inner-circle loyalty, by giving these sorts of kick-backs.
Corruption is not good for ordinary people. So that is another way in which these sorts of leaders, in their prioritization of their cronies and of staying in power, disrupt economic stability. So, the economic outlook for the United States does not look good. That’s not just because of the tariffs, which run counter to most economists’ advice, but because of these other layers of what’s happening with inflationary policy, interest rates, and corruption.
After Trump: Continuity or Collapse?
Former US President Donald Trump with a serious look as he delivers a speech at a campaign rally held at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, PA – August 2, 2018. Photo: Evan El-Amin.
Personalist systems are especially fragile at succession. If the US continues along a personalist trajectory, what are the most plausible succession scenarios—heightened autocratization under loyalists, elite fragmentation, or institutional pushback?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: We don’t have a lot of research that gets into succession in personalist democracies. It’s somewhat unknown territory, what might happen if Trump were to decide not to go for a third term. That’s a big if, because he is certainly trying to put out feelers about how people would react to him going for a third term. It’s possible that he will try to stay in office beyond his term limits.
That said, in autocratic settings, we know that personalism makes it more difficult for succession to run smoothly, as you mentioned, but still, most of the time—when we have research on when leaders die of natural causes in office, for example—even in personalist places, most of the time there is a smooth succession process, at least to observers, and the regime survives it.
With personalist leaders, they can often survive even when ordinary people are doing horribly economically, because so long as they have bought off the security services and their inner circle of elites with corruption, they can maintain power.
The case I often think of when people ask what might happen next—such as whether everything would fall apart if Trump were to leave power—is Venezuela under Maduro. You know, Hugo Chávez had governed that place, autocratized it, and transformed what was once a very healthy democracy into an authoritarian system. He dies; it was around 2011. Maduro takes over, isn’t very popular, people don’t think this is going to last very long, and even though he lacks the same popularity that Chávez had, he has been able to stay in power amid an economy that’s performing disastrously. So, it would be foolish to assume that should Trump leave power—whether he dies of natural causes or whether he retires voluntarily—it’d be foolish to anticipate that that means the end of the destruction that he’s done to democracy in the United States.
Will Trumpism Outlive Trump?
Your scholarship shows that personalist parties can destabilize political competition even after their founders depart. Could Trump’s reconfiguration of the GOP generate enduring structural disruption in the US party system beyond his tenure?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: There are two points to mention here. On the one hand, because Trump did not create the Republican Party—because he took it over and co-opted it—I’m somewhat optimistic that the party could rebound and return to its former self, where it was a traditional conservative party with a conservative agenda, and where elites rose up the ranks of the party to get those positions. I think that it’s possible that we could see a reversion to the Republican Party of the past.
However, it’s also important to note that we have a lot of evidence that when these leaders lose power—let’s say they lose power in democratic elections—democracy does not necessarily rebound very quickly. Two recent examples of this would be Poland with the Law and Justice Party (PiS) losing elections. There was a lot of optimism that the democratic backsliding there had come to an end, but it has still been difficult for Polish democracy to fully rebound. There are challenges that persist in the judiciary, for example, and its ability to be independent.
The same thing could be said of Brazil with Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro loses re-election, Lula takes over, but there are really long-lasting divisions in Brazilian society that have persisted. A lot of this is because of the ways in which these leaders use polarization as a political tactic. So, it’s not that they are just voted out of office and suddenly, the 50% or so supporters that they genuinely have go away.
From that perspective, on the one hand, I am more optimistic than I would be with other places that the Republican Party could rebound and return to a more programmatic party. But at the same time, there is lasting damage that has been done to the fabric of democracy here.
Unbound Executives, Unstable Worlds
Photo: Shutterstock.
Your NYT article notes that Trump and Xi of China operate with few domestic constraints, increasing unpredictability. Why does diminished institutional constraint heighten the risks of international miscalculation and conflict, particularly among major powers?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: There is a well-established body of research in international relations that underscores the importance of domestic constraints in preventing conflict. The idea is that if leaders face domestic constraints—meaning they would face some kind of consequence for not following through on their threats—their adversaries recognize this and can interpret those threats as credible. So, if I say there is a red line—if you don’t do X, Y, or Z, we’re going to invade—and I know I face constraints at home, my adversary knows that I mean what I say.
If, however, I face no domestic consequences for making empty promises or issuing vague or meaningless threats, then my adversary no longer knows what I really mean. The absence of domestic constraints therefore makes it very difficult for both sides to discern where the real red lines are. That uncertainty increases the likelihood of miscalculation and, in turn, the risk of conflict.
As I mentioned, there is a large literature on this—called audience-cost theory—and while it is somewhat complex, it helps explain why, when personalist leaders come to power, we tend to see more conflict. Research on authoritarian systems shows that personalist leaders are the most likely to start wars; they are the most likely to escalate conflicts with democracies in particular; and they are more prone to foreign policy miscalculation.
Taken together, this suggests that as we see personalism on the rise globally, we are increasingly setting the stage for more volatile and unpredictable conflict behavior in the international arena.
Why Leader-Made Parties Signal Democratic Peril
And lastly, Professor Frantz, given rising polarization, institutional distrust, and party hollowing globally, do you expect personalist leadership to become more common across both democracies and autocracies? What early warning indicators should scholars monitor to detect incipient personalist capture?
Assoc. Prof. Erica Frantz: I mentioned this earlier, but we do think the changing media environment has facilitated the rise of personalism in both autocratic and democratic contexts. This means that all signs point toward increasing top-heavy institutional emergence. Until there is some sort of concerted effort to return to party building and grassroots organization, we are likely to continue seeing more personalism globally.
A classic red flag is when a leader creates a party. Party creation is becoming increasingly common. Many of these leaders are billionaires, leveraging their personal wealth to fund these political vehicles. So, the biggest warning sign, I would say, is when the leader on the ballot has created their own party. That usually spells trouble for democracy—and for autocracy as well.
Populists rise to power by claiming outsider status against a corrupt elite. Yet many—from Erdogan and Modi to Trump—retain legitimacy long after becoming establishment actors. How? Yilmaz and Morieson argue that populist leaders occupy a dual identity they term “Schrödinger’s Elite”: simultaneously insiders and outsiders. They convert privilege into moral performance—projecting humility, purity, and sacrifice while governing as entrenched elites. This performance is not hypocrisy, but strategy. Whether through Trump’s theatrical diplomacy, Imran Khan’s pious nationalism, or judicial populism in Pakistan and the United States, authority is reframed as service to “the people.” The paradox reveals why populism persists despite policy failure: emotional authenticity eclipses institutional accountability, transforming power into virtue.
One problem populists face when they enter government is that, by definition, they become the very thing they claim to despise: elites. Populist legitimacy is always predicated on their status as outsiders intent on cleansing a corrupt system. However, once the populist outsider becomes part of the governing elite, then it naturally becomes very difficult for them to present themselves as outsiders. One should expect that, once populists begin governing, they should lose their legitimacy. Yet this does not always occur.
Indeed, this notion has been exploded by a generation of populist leaders who, despite making promises they could not keep and becoming insider elites, have retained their popularity and governed in some cases for more than a decade.
The long reigns of populists such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, and the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, demonstrate that populists can survive in power despite appearing to lose their outsider status. Moreover, many populist leaders are themselves part of the very elite they condemn. They are educated, wealthy, and deeply embedded within existing institutions. Some populist leaders have emerged from within state institutions, from the judiciary and the military, and cannot therefore be considered in any way outsiders.
However, if populists are supposed to be outsiders battling ‘elites’ on behalf of ‘the people’, why do we see so many populist leaders emerging from, and remaining inside, the most elite sectors of society, including from state institutions and from the super-wealthy?
We call this paradox Schrödinger’s Elite. Like the famous cat in Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment that exists in two states at once, populist elites are both insiders and outsiders. They inhabit positions of privilege while performing rebellion. They rule as establishment figures but speak as insurgents. They preserve elite power while transforming it into a moral drama of virtue, authenticity, and at times sacrifice.
Schrödinger’s Elite
Populism, as theorist Benjamin Moffitt notes, does not destroy elite rule. Instead, it dramatizes crisis, performs outrage, uses ‘bad manners’ to present itself as authentic and ‘of the people, and ultimately presents power as service. Leaders appear both powerful and humble, dominant yet close to “the people.” This emotional theatre renews legitimacy without real change.
The idea of Schrödinger’s Elite helps explain everything from Donald Trump’s rallies to former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s pious nationalism, and even the moral language of judges in Pakistan and the United States who claim to speak for “the people.” In each case, insiders perform as outsiders and power survives through spectacle.
Illustration of Schrödinger’s cat inside a cube surrounded by neon scientific symbols and formulas, representing quantum physics, superposition, and science education. Photo: Yana Lysenko.
The Paradox of Populist Elites
Populism pits “the pure people” against “the corrupt elite.” However, its champions are often wealthy, famous, or institutionally entrenched. For example, US President Donald Trump, a billionaire celebrity, plays the rebel in order to portray himself as an outsider in Washington and a man of the people. His crude humor and defiance convince supporters he is authentic and unfiltered. His wealth – whether real or not – is reframed as proof of independence from the effete Washington elite, which cannot buy him.
Imran Khan performs a similar balancing act. Oxford-educated and once adored as a cricket hero, he recast himself as a pious Muslim and moral crusader against corrupt, insufficiently religious elites. He promised a “New Pakistan” guided by Islamic values, blending humility with righteousness amid promises to save “the people” from corrupt rule.
This combination of purity and power is not hypocrisy but better described as a strategy. Within this strategy, populist leaders turn privilege into moral capital. Their appeal rests less on policy than on emotion, and contra Mudde, less on ideology than on the performance of sincerity.
When Bureaucrats and Judges Turn Populist
Populist performance is not limited to politicians. Bureaucrats and judges can play the same role, posing as the conscience of the nation. Pakistan’s judiciary offers a clear example. For decades, judges have justified coups and interventions under the “Doctrine of Necessity,” claiming to act for “the people.”
In 2007, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry became a folk hero after defying President Musharraf. The Lawyers’ Movement celebrated him as a defender of democracy, yet it expanded the judiciary’s political reach. Courts later used moral language to disqualify Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. One judgment compared him to a mafia “Godfather,” casting legal authority as moral and national purification.
The courts presented these rulings as virtue rather than law, appearing humble while exercising vast power. This can be described as a form of judicial populism, in which authority is framed as populist representation of the will of the ‘pure’ people.
The Supreme Court’s Populist Turn
The same pattern arguably surfaces in stronger democracies. For example, when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022), the majority framed the decision as restoring democracy, saying “the people” should decide. In doing so, the Court claimed moral authority even as it arguably concentrated power.
American justices are familiar public figures, and now speak publicly more than ever, often presenting themselves as moral figures rather than distant experts on law. As a result, the line between law and storytelling begins to blur, and in an already politicized court, procedure gives way to conviction. And like populist politicians, judges adopt the language of authenticity to build a direct connection between themselves and the public, increasing their own power.
Trump in Cairo
Trump’s October 2025 appearance in Cairo showed how populist performance travels. At a peace ceremony marking a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, he turned diplomacy into entertainment. He joked with Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni, calling Meloni “beautiful” and boasting that even if nobody liked Orbán, he did, and “I’m the only one that matters.”
To his followers, this vulgarity was truth-telling. His refusal to play by elite rules made him seem both powerful and free. He was the most influential man in the room and the only “outsider.” This was Schrödinger’s Elite in pure form: authority disguised as rebellion.
Imran Khan’s Moral Stage
Imran Khan’s career shows how this paradox works in a postcolonial setting. Khan embodies privilege and once was regarded as a playboy, yet he built his politics on piety. He invoked Riyasat-e-Medina, the ideal early Islamic state, and urged citizens to show moral discipline. His Oxford education became proof of competence and incorruptibility.
Each statement arguably turned politics into moral theatre. His suffering, including dismissal from power, arrests, court battles, and subsequent imprisonment only reinforced his image as a truth-teller persecuted by corrupt elites.
Emotion Over Structure
The figure of Schrödinger’s Elite shows that populism does not end hierarchy but rather reshapes it. Populist elites thrive by performing virtue, and in doing so, turn their dominance into service, their power into purity, and self-interest into sacrifice for “the people.”
This helps explain why populism persists even when it fails to deliver positive results. Accusations of hypocrisy become proof of authenticity. Challenges to legitimacy become attacks by corrupt elites. Through these reversals, leaders convert their own failings into legitimacy and authenticity.
Digital media amplifies the cycle. Outrage, alas, spreads faster than rational argument, while visibility online replaces accountability. Trump’s tweets, Khan’s livestreams, and activist judges’ speeches all use the same grammar of feeling. They create intimacy between elite and follower while bypassing institutions that might check power.
The Theatre of Power
Across regimes and ideologies, populism redefines what it means to be elite. It replaces expertise with emotion and legality with morality. The populist elite, in this way, claims to represent the people while keeping control.
In Pakistan, judges act as the nation’s conscience while consolidating power. In the US, the Supreme Court claims to restore democracy. In Cairo, Trump mocked his peers to show he was above them. Each act sustains authority through performance.
The danger of all this lies not in populism’s attacks on elites, but in its ability to moralize populist domination of politics and law. It turns power into a spectacle of virtue, and in doing so, keeps citizens powerless while making them feel morally included and thus represented.
A Paradox That Endures
Populism’s strength lies in its contradictions. Its leaders inhabit both rebellion and authority, humility and dominance. Across democracies and hybrid regimes alike, the populist governing powers claim to speak for “the people” while reinforcing control. And that is perhaps why populism endures. Its elites have learned not to abolish hierarchy but instead found ways to perform populism while entrenching themselves in power.
“We Need the GOP to Reclaim Its Role as a Check on Trump,” argues Associate Professor Rory Truex of Princeton University in a wide-ranging interview with ECPS. He warns that the United States is “in the middle stages of democratic backsliding,” driven by Trump’s effort to “capture the referees” through loyalist appointments across the DOJ, FBI, and Department of Defense. Dr. Truex cautions that framing opponents as “enemies from within” is a classic precursor to authoritarian repression, even as recent mass protests—“the largest in American history”—underscore civic resilience. While electoral results in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York signal public fatigue with Trumpism, Dr. Truex maintains that meaningful reversal hinges on Republican elites: “We need the Republican Party to come back to its senses.”
“We Need the GOP to Reclaim Its Role as a Check on Trump” — this stark warning from Associate Professor Rory Truex of Princeton University underscores the fragility of institutional constraints in the United States amid the continued rise of Trumpist politics. In an extended conversation with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Truex situates the contemporary US experience within a comparative framework, drawing on scholarship on democratic backsliding, authoritarian power consolidation, and the erosion of norms.
An expert on authoritarian governance—particularly in China— Dr. Truex argues that the United States is currently “in the middle stages of a process political scientists call democratic backsliding,” a trajectory in which formally democratic institutions are gradually transformed into mechanisms of asymmetric competition that systematically disadvantage opponents. While he stops short of declaring the US an autocracy, Dr. Truex emphasizes that Trump should be seen as “a proto-autocrat—someone with authoritarian ambitions whose ability to realize them remains uncertain.”
The most distinctive and dangerous dimension of the current moment, Dr. Truex suggests, is Trump’s systematic personalization of power—particularly his effort to sweep aside neutral bureaucratic oversight in favor of loyalists. Appointments at the DOJ, FBI, and Department of Defense reflect what Dr. Truex calls a classic strategy of “capturing the referees.” As he notes, “You really can’t have people around you who are going to stand up to you and check your power.” These dynamics have intensified under a second Trump administration.
The danger, however, is not limited to institutional subversion. Dr. Truex identifies a rhetorical shift that strikes at the heart of democratic culture: the demonization of political opposition. He warns that branding rivals “enemies from within” constitutes a foundational step toward authoritarian politics: “Anytime you see a phrase like ‘enemies from within’ or ‘enemy of the people,’ this is usually a precursor to some form of political violence or authoritarian crackdown.”While mass demonstrations in response—remarkably “the largest protest in American history”—have illustrated the resilience of civil society, the stakes remain high.
Against this backdrop, Dr. Truex underscores the critical role of Republican elites in determining the country’s democratic trajectory. The 2024 elections in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York (notably Zohran Mamdani’s victory) demonstrate, in his view, public “dissatisfaction with Trump and the Trump policy agenda.” These results also raise the possibility of a strategic recalibration within the GOP. As Dr. Truex puts it, the key question is “at what point [Republican members of Congress] will begin to try to distance themselves from Trump.” His appeal is unambiguous: “We need the Republican Party to come back to its senses. We need people to begin to check Trump.”
Whether such realignment will occur remains uncertain. But as Dr. Truex stresses, US democracy’s fate hinges not only on electoral outcomes but also on whether the institutional and normative guardrails that once constrained executive overreach can be rebuilt—and restored.
“We Need the GOP to Reclaim Its Role as a Check on Trump,” argues Associate Professor Rory Truex of Princeton University in a wide-ranging interview with ECPS. He warns that the United States is “in the middle stages of democratic backsliding,” driven by Trump’s effort to “capture the referees” through loyalist appointments across the DOJ, FBI, and Department of Defense. Dr. Truex cautions that framing opponents as “enemies from within” is a classic precursor to authoritarian repression, even as recent mass protests—“the largest in American history”—underscore civic resilience. While electoral results in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York signal public fatigue with Trumpism, Dr. Truex maintains that meaningful reversal hinges on Republican elites: “We need the Republican Party to come back to its senses.”
“We Need the GOP to Reclaim Its Role as a Check on Trump” — this stark warning from Associate Professor Rory Truex of Princeton University underscores the fragility of institutional constraints in the United States amid the continued rise of Trumpist politics. In an extended conversation with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Truex situates the contemporary US experience within a comparative framework, drawing on scholarship on democratic backsliding, authoritarian power consolidation, and the erosion of norms.
An expert on authoritarian governance—particularly in China— Dr. Truex argues that the United States is currently “in the middle stages of a process political scientists call democratic backsliding,” a trajectory in which formally democratic institutions are gradually transformed into mechanisms of asymmetric competition that systematically disadvantage opponents. While he stops short of declaring the US an autocracy, Dr. Truex emphasizes that Trump should be seen as “a proto-autocrat—someone with authoritarian ambitions whose ability to realize them remains uncertain.”
The most distinctive and dangerous dimension of the current moment, Dr. Truex suggests, is Trump’s systematic personalization of power—particularly his effort to sweep aside neutral bureaucratic oversight in favor of loyalists. Appointments at the DOJ, FBI, and Department of Defense reflect what Dr. Truex calls a classic strategy of “capturing the referees.” As he notes, “You really can’t have people around you who are going to stand up to you and check your power.” These dynamics have intensified under a second Trump administration.
The danger, however, is not limited to institutional subversion. Dr. Truex identifies a rhetorical shift that strikes at the heart of democratic culture: the demonization of political opposition. He warns that branding rivals “enemies from within” constitutes a foundational step toward authoritarian politics: “Anytime you see a phrase like ‘enemies from within’ or ‘enemy of the people,’ this is usually a precursor to some form of political violence or authoritarian crackdown.”While mass demonstrations in response—remarkably “the largest protest in American history”—have illustrated the resilience of civil society, the stakes remain high.
Against this backdrop, Dr. Truex underscores the critical role of Republican elites in determining the country’s democratic trajectory. The 2024 elections in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York (notably Zohran Mamdani’s victory) demonstrate, in his view, public “dissatisfaction with Trump and the Trump policy agenda.” These results also raise the possibility of a strategic recalibration within the GOP. As Dr. Truex puts it, the key question is “at what point [Republican members of Congress] will begin to try to distance themselves from Trump.” His appeal is unambiguous: “We need the Republican Party to come back to its senses. We need people to begin to check Trump.”
Whether such realignment will occur remains uncertain. But as Dr. Truex stresses, US democracy’s fate hinges not only on electoral outcomes but also on whether the institutional and normative guardrails that once constrained executive overreach can be rebuilt—and restored.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Associate Professor Rory Truex, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
A Proto-Autocrat in the White House?
Donald Trump delivers a victory speech after his big win in the Nevada caucus at Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, flanked by his sons Eric (right) and Donald Jr. (left) in Las Vegas, NV. Photo: oe Sohm.
Professor Rory Truex, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: How would you characterize the Trump administration’s current trajectory in comparative perspective—does it resemble a transition toward competitive authoritarianism, or does it constitute a novel form of “autocracy” adapted to US institutions?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: I would characterize the US right now as being in the middle stages of a process political scientists call democratic backsliding. This is when the level of democracy erodes in some meaningful direction toward autocracy. Typically, in a case like the United States—where you have a well-consolidated democracy—the backsliding would be toward what we would call competitive authoritarianism, competitive autocracy, or electoral autocracy. There are different labels, but it essentially refers to a non-democratic system that nevertheless maintains elections. The key issue is that the ruling party uses the tools of power to make those elections fundamentally not free and fair—tilting the electoral playing field and using other instruments of power to erode the opposition in fundamentally anti-democratic ways.
I think the Trump administration is moving in this direction, and there is debate in political science over how exactly we should label it. On the one hand, this is a leader who did try to overturn the results of a democratic election in 2020, so we know he has authoritarian impulses and ambitions. On the other hand, we continue to have vocal opposition in the United States. We had elections last week that went off without a hitch. We saw large-scale protests. So there is a substantial degree of pushback.
Thus, I would characterize him as a proto-autocrat—someone with authoritarian ambitions whose ability to realize them remains uncertain. As for whether this is novel, I would say this process unfolds differently in every case; there is no single path. We can look at analogs—Hungary is a common example—but many other countries, roughly 30 in the last 20 or 30 years, have gone through some version of this process. So while there are aspects unique to the United States, I don’t think the overall process is especially unusual.
Purging the Referees: A Classic Authoritarian Strategy
Recent actions targeting the DOJ, civil service, and military leadership suggest an attempt to dismantle institutional autonomy. To what extent do these moves reflect classic authoritarian strategies of purging neutral bureaucracies and creating personalist control?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: In general, what we observe in the authoritarian world is that checks and balances erode pretty darn fast, and these leaders’ style of governance does not really tolerate independent centers of power. That might manifest in the military, the judiciary, or the civil service. There just needs to be a tight relationship between the leader and all aspects of the bureaucracy. And we’ve observed that personalization of power under Trump. More so than any other president, you could argue that he’s really prioritized political loyalty, and the people he’s appointing to key positions—whether it’s in the DOJ, or Kash Patel in the FBI, or Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense—are individuals who have essentially pledged loyalty to him. This contrasts with the first Trump administration, where there were more independent centers of power around him.
So yes, I think this is a fairly well-defined, non-democratic strategy. It’s particularly important in institutions that would reasonably check his power and that are central to coercion. To be more precise, the judiciary is really important—the Department of Justice, anything associated with the legal apparatus—but also the military and police apparatus as well. This is a well-established authoritarian strategy that they’ve been quite successful at implementing over the last several months.
Managed Participation Without Democracy: Mobilizing Support, Marginalizing Dissent
Torn American flag with Democratic and Republican party symbols, representing political division in the United States. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your research on consultative authoritarianism shows how regimes create participation channels to consolidate legitimacy. How does Trumpism employ similar “managed participation”—e.g., rallies, online mobilization—to consolidate loyalty while delegitimizing dissent?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: That’s a great question. I’m a China scholar by trade, so most of my research is on the Chinese case, and one thing we’ve observed in China is that the CCP, over time, has created channels for public participation—things like mayor’s mailboxes, the petition system, the parliament—that fall well short of democracy and real, meaningful democratic channels, but nevertheless allow the CCP regime to learn something about the population and respond. That allows them to keep things stable and stay in power. This is an example of what we would call a closed authoritarian system with no elections, no opposition parties, creating some mechanisms to be just slightly more responsive. Now, in the US setting, I wouldn’t actually say that these are terribly comparable, because we have a robust democracy and civil society that is going through this authoritarian moment.
What’s happening is, unfortunately, the political system has become so bifurcated into two different communities that the overlap between them has really diminished. In political science, we talk about something called affective polarization, which is the difference between how someone feels about their own party versus the other party. Over the last three decades, people have increasingly loathed the other party and are now operating in different media ecosystems and increasingly different social ecosystems. They are living in different parts of the country; they’re not socializing across party lines. That’s how I view what’s happening. Obviously, the far right or the American right has its own media ecosystem centered around a lot of different platforms and podcasters, and there is a high degree of mobilization. Trump has a personal charisma for a lot of people in the United States, and he’s able to captivate audiences, and did that a lot on the campaign trail. So, that’s part of it, but I would say it’s quite different from what I would call consultative authoritarianism.
Labeling Rivals ‘Enemies’ as a Prelude to Crackdown
Trump and senior advisers have framed political opponents as “enemies from within.” How significant is this reframing in eroding the democratic norm of loyal opposition, and does it constitute a foundational step toward autocratic rule?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: This language—“enemies from within” is deeply troubling. Again, I’m a China scholar, so anytime you see a phrase like “enemies from within” or “enemy of the people,” this is usually a precursor to some form of political violence or authoritarian crackdown. So it’s really problematic language.
In a democracy, parties need to recognize each other as legitimate opposition and treat one another with a degree of respect, even if there is some underlying disdain. The minute you start talking about people as enemies of the American population, or link them to terrorist groups—using words like “terrorist” or “foreign government”—that’s a significant escalation in rhetoric. What we saw in the US was that this escalation occurred just prior—it’s been ongoing, but it really ramped up—in the lead-up to the No Kings protest of mid-October.
What was notable is that, in turn, those protests wound up being overwhelmingly peaceful—and the largest protest in American history. I don’t think people fully grasp that. The estimates are anywhere from 5 to 7 million people; whatever number you use, it’s the largest protest in American history. It wasn’t a bunch of violent Antifa people running around throwing Molotov cocktails. It was a bunch of normal people out with signs, wearing costumes, playing guitars, and it was quite beautiful. I was there with my family in Connecticut, and it was quite a striking moment.
So, one notable development is that the Trump administration is trying to paint the opposition as anti-American, disloyal, an enemy of the people—and trying to paint them as violent. The reality is quite different, and the protest event just a couple of weeks ago revealed the Trump narrative to be fundamentally off-base, and hopefully that was a turning point.
Emergency as Strategy: How Autocrats Exploit Chaos
Memorial for Charlie Kirk outside Turning Point USA Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, on September 13, 2025, following his fatal shooting while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Photo: Dreamstime.
The administration’s weaponization of crises—such as the assassination of Charlie Kirk—as pretexts for expanding executive power evokes comparisons to the Reichstag Fire. How does this align with historical and theoretical models of emergency-driven authoritarian consolidation?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: We know that instability is good for a would-be autocrat. This is a general historical pattern where a lot of these guys try to create, foment, or exploit some form of instability or threat to justify crackdowns. And crackdowns are usually done in the name of national security, peace and stability. Anytime violence emerges, or a foreign conflict emerges, it really plays into the hands of these leaders, because they appeal to a broader feeling among some of the population that you need a strong ruler to keep the peace and maintain law and order. That’s a very classic authoritarian trope. We’ve seen this play out, as you alluded to.
Nazi Germany—I don’t think that’s the best comparison for the United States—but we saw it this past year in South Korea, when there was a brief declaration of martial law on the grounds that the country had been infiltrated by communists and other groups. And in El Salvador, the drug war provided the pretext for Bukele’s consolidation of power. So it is a very common strategy.
I think the killing of Charlie Kirk was a national tragedy, not because I particularly agree with Charlie Kirk on many issues, but because once we start to see violence really emerge, violence tends to spiral. I was quite worried, in the aftermath of that event, that we would see retaliatory killings going back and forth, leading to greater violence and potentially consolidation of control through Trump. Surprisingly, to date, we have not seen that emerge. In fact, the protests—their overwhelmingly peaceful nature—and then the election result, which is also a bit of a rebuke to Trump, may have broken the cycle and poked a hole in this narrative, and that is noteworthy.
So anyway, it’s something to keep an eye on. I worry about Venezuela and the kind of emerging security narrative there. I worry about the use of the National Guard in our cities and how that’s being deployed. Then, of course, the big foreign threat they’ve been discussing is illegal immigration, which has been used to justify the augmentation of ICE and other measures. So there are plenty of threats to go around for this administration to use. I don’t think they’ve been 100% successful quite yet on this front.
Can Institutional Resistance Survive Political Militarization?
The politicization of the US military or militarization of US politics, including calls to deploy troops domestically against supposed internal enemies, signals erosion of military neutrality. Based on your work, how likely is institutional resistance to remain effective under escalating partisan pressure?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: This is really important, and what we know, again, about authoritarian governments is they need to have a tight relationship with the military to be able to control domestic opposition, especially when it spills out into the streets. The US military is a very highly respected organization in American society, and it has a long tradition of neutrality and staying out of politics. This is not a military that stages coups like we see in much of the world. This is a military that does its job and has extremely high standards of professionalism. We’ve seen pretty dramatic efforts to bring them to heel. We saw this meeting with Pete Hegseth and basically the top military brass from all over the world, which was unprecedented, bringing them all into one space. And he gave them a talking-to about fitness and DEI issues and many other things. So I think there is an effort to rein the military in. The fact that you have someone like Hegseth in charge, who’s a tried-and-true loyalist, is notable.
There’s a difference between that and the really dirty stuff of putting down a protest, potentially using violence against the people. You see these images in American streets where you have these National Guard people deployed in places like D.C. or other places. They’re normal people; they don’t really want to be there. They’re maybe away from their families, and then you see normal Americans interacting with them, telling jokes and stuff. So I don’t think there is that sense that this is an authoritarian military force that’s going to crack down on the American people. I don’t see that in the National Guard in particular.
ICE is slightly different, because ICE has been deliberately augmented under the Trump administration. There’s an ideological component to working for ICE. I don’t mean to disparage the integrity of the folks working for ICE—I’m sure it’s an extremely hard job, and there are many dedicated civil servants. But I also think there’s a deliberate effort to recruit folks into that organization right now who are loyal to Trump, and that is a little bit more concerning to me.
But in general, I don’t think we’re quite there yet, where the American military is going to do Trump’s bidding, especially if it does come to putting down mass mobilization like we’ve seen militaries do in other parts of the world.
Capturing the Referees: Purges as a Path to Power
To what extent do recent attempts to purge “disloyal” military officers, federal prosecutors, and civil servants reflect a broader effort to replace professional staff with patronage networks typical of personalist authoritarian regimes?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: We’ve already talked a little bit about this. I think there’s a well-established pattern—what Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in their book How Democracies Die, call “capturing the referees.” And again, if you’re going to be engaging in norm-violating behavior, potentially even illegal behavior, you really can’t have people around you who are going to stand up to you and check your power.
Trump has been very deliberate in firing large numbers of lawyers from the military. He fired a lot of JAGs from the military. He fired a lot of lawyers in the DOJ, and then has either not rehired those folks or put people into power like Kash Patel or Pam Bondi, or many of these other figures who are fully loyal to him. So I do think they’ve been successful on that front.
The other thing to note is, of course, with the advent of the Trump administration, we saw this massive effort to downsize the federal bureaucracy and spending in a very haphazard way. I know folks who work for the US government, and that type of capacity isn’t rebuilt overnight. I think part of the purpose of those moves was just to destroy.
So if you destroy the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), or if you destroy the Department of Education, and all these people who have been working there for decades leave, they’re not coming back in four years—or if they do, it’s going to take a while for them to come back online and rebuild. So I do think part of the underlying goal of Project 2025 and the broader conservative movement with respect to government is just to destroy. So, it didn’t matter, really, that it was so haphazard. That was, in some sense, part of the point.
A Two-Tier State: Punishing Blue America
How do you interpret the Trump administration’s systematic punitive strategies—such as withholding federal funds from Democratic states—as a mechanism to cultivate a two-tiered partisan state? Could this accelerate democratic fragmentation?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: I think it’s disgusting. I tend not to use hyperbole, but the fact that if a disaster occurs in your state and your state voted for Biden, that could affect whether you get relief from FEMA is disgusting, and it’s a completely inappropriate use of power.
I do think there’s an undercurrent in American society right now of, as I said, polarization, but the more extreme version of that would be: can the system hold together at all? And if you have blue states, which are feeding a lot of tax dollars into the federal government, and those funds are now being withheld and funneled elsewhere—and being withheld as a punishment—that’s not a sustainable equilibrium.
I personally think that quite a lot of what’s going on under the Trump administration is revealing fundamental issues within the American political system. It’s revealing the role of money in politics, the ease with which we can politicize the judiciary and other institutions, and how broken our two-party system really is.
So my hope, perhaps irrational, is that when this chapter is over—it might be over in three years, it might be over in 15 or 16; these spells often last longer than people think—there will be a period of rebuilding and reform. The practice you just referenced is obviously heinous and inappropriate, and the American people will see that and hopefully put better institutional guardrails in place to prevent this type of behavior moving forward.
Threats, Fear, and the Future of Free Expression
Members of the Writers Guild of America protest the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel outside ABC headquarters in New York City on September 19, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.
You have written on self-censorship under repressive systems. Do current patterns in the US—media intimidation, citizen fear, legal retribution—suggest the emergence of similar dynamics of preference falsification?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: “Preference falsification” is a very academic word, and it’s basically the situation where people don’t feel comfortable saying how they really feel about politics. For that reason, they would not speak out, or they might even affirm the regime or the government, even if they don’t really feel it in their heart of hearts. That disconnect between what you say in public and what you feel in private—that’s preference falsification or self-censorship.
We know that in authoritarian systems, this behavior can take hold. I often think of authoritarianism as a chill, where people learn that speaking up about politics and criticizing the leader of the government gets you in trouble. Once that chill takes hold, it can be hard to reverse, and it can spread quite quickly.
What I’ve noticed, though—and I find it very inspiring—is that this is America. We have a long tradition of democracy. We are an unruly people, and we don’t like to be told what to do or think. We’ve seen efforts by the administration to intimidate the American people. You could interpret the National Guard deployments as a form of intimidation.
We’ve seen prominent people—they’ve tried to silence people like Jimmy Kimmel, who’s a very prominent comedian here. It’s backfired. People rallied behind Jimmy Kimmel, they put pressure on Disney, he’s back on the air. I don’t see many comedians on late-night TV self-censoring about what they think about what’s going on. Then you saw the largest protest in American history—normal people out there, and they weren’t wearing masks. They were out there with their friends and family in full view, and I was really inspired by that. There has been an attempt at intimidation. Because we have such a vibrant democracy, our people don’t know that, and they reacted the other way, becoming more vocal and more critical. That’s not to say it will forever be that way.
The other thing I would keep an eye on is violence. There’s an undercurrent, as we talked about, of political violence in the US, where a lot of judges, congresspeople, prominent writers, thinkers are being threatened with violence on a regular basis. We don’t observe it because the violence doesn’t usually come to fruition. But the fact that if you speak out, if you oppose Trump, you might be subjected to violent threats—and your family might have to spend Thanksgiving in a hotel—that is noteworthy, and that is actually the more likely force that would create self-censorship.
But to date, I would say there’s pretty darn vibrant opposition, and that’s been really inspiring, frankly.
Trumpism Without Borders: The Making of a Far-Right Network
The global diffusion of authoritarianism often takes place through ideological and strategic alliances. How is Trumpism embedding itself within a transnational far-right ecosystem—collaborating with illiberal leaders in Europe, Russia, China, and elsewhere?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: This is a big story, and people like Anne Applebaum have written about this network of authoritarian leaders that are becoming more assertive on the global stage. It’s important to remember, Trump is a certain type of proto-autocrat, whatever we want to call him, and he naturally has affinity for people like Viktor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro, or Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Even Vladimir Putin—obviously, we know there has been an unusually close relationship between Putin and Trump over the years. That doesn’t extend all the way to Xi Jinping; their relationship is more fraught, for many reasons that I’m happy to talk about. What I’m trying to say is that there is a natural affinity here, and what is interesting is this diffusion of tactics across the backsliding world. We know that there was a close relationship between Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party and Project 2025. Orbán has spoken at CPAC in Hungary. It’s noteworthy that these illiberal leaders are operating out in the open with their friendship and affinity. We know that Trump has extended support to Bolsonaro while he faces his own criminal investigations.
These guys are learning from each other, and they’re providing moral support for each other. That’s the shortest way to say it. That matters and that leaves the democratic world—in much of Europe, and I spent time in Taiwan this summer, places like Japan, Korea, Australia—wondering what to do here. Who can we count on? Can we count on the United States in particular? What is the normative commitment of the Trump administration to helping the democratic world, helping traditional allies and partners? So there’s a bigger-picture foreign policy implication there.
Flooding the Zone: Trump’s Most Notable Innovation
Donald Trump appears on Eyewitness News at the ABC Times Square studio in Manhattan, NY, promising: “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for it.” Photo: Mira Agron.
In your view, does Trumpism export an actionable governance model—expanding beyond rhetoric to institutional templates—that could assist foreign autocrats in consolidating power?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: That’s a great question. I think he’s using the model of others. So it’s not the Trump model; it’s a model that your institute studies quite well, which is this sort of populist authoritarian model, where these leaders project masculinity, charisma, strength, talk in the language of “enemies of the people,” fight against some corrupt elite, and speak the language of nationalism and national rejuvenation. That’s a compelling pitch, and it tends to take hold in a lot of different places, in a lot of different historical moments. So, Trump could be understood as just one of many leaders in that mold.
But then there’s also the question of what he has innovated—what he has done differently that could be used elsewhere. So, for some would-be Trump in another country 10 or 15 years from now, what could they learn from him? We’ll see how the story unfolds, but I think one thing we’ve noticed in political science—I run a small podcast called The Civic Forum, and I had Steve Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, Sue Stokes, and Adam Sheingate on, who are some of the most significant scholars of authoritarianism and democracy—is the pace at which this is unfolding in the United States.
We are only 10 months into this thing, and the rapid, blitzkrieg nature of what the Trump administration has done is deliberate. This is not an accident. Steve Bannon, among others, has talked about “flooding the zone,” the idea that you overwhelm the opponent by doing so many different things at once that they don’t know how to respond. So, they’ve been quite brazen. If you had asked me a year ago, “Are we gonna see troops in the streets by November?” I’d have said we probably won’t. “Are we going to see them attempt to take prominent comedians off the air?” No, we’re not going to see that. But they’ve been quite brazen, going on all these different fronts at once.
I do think there’s a degree to which it has overwhelmed folks. The opposition and the institutional checks are starting to kick in. What Garry Kasparov has called the “democratic immune system” is starting to fire up, so we’ll see. But, if I were to point to one thing the Trump administration has really been innovative about, it’s just the pace and the boldness of what they’re doing. Maybe it’s because this is not his first time in office. He was in office for four years; he had four years to prepare for this. So, in some sense, it’s part of a longer arc.
Strongmen in Parallel: A Cooler US–China Rivalry?
How do you foresee a second Trump administration shaping US-China relations? Could intensified ideological confrontation—coupled with domestic authoritarian drift—produce a more unstable bilateral equilibrium, or might mutual illiberal tendencies paradoxically enable pragmatic coordination?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: This is actively unfolding. So whatever I say could be irrelevant in the next few days. But, there have been a few notable developments. The first is that the Trump administration hasn’t prioritized the China issue overall like it did in the first go-around. When the Trump administration first came in, there was a concerted effort to shift US-China relations in a very new direction. That direction has largely remained constant, even under the Biden administration, so there’s not the same need to break—or disrupt—US-China relations as there was the first time. Now, they view China as just another thing to be dealt with—another object of this trade war. So that’s one notable development.
The second notable development is that they haven’t really been effective in doing this, and China has pushed back in a much stronger way. The Chinese government learned from the first go-around and figured out how to target the Trump administration politically, whether through soybeans or the more extreme measure of rare earths. So I don’t think the trade war has gone well for Trump, and he’s trying to get out of it now—minimize damage to the economy but still claim a win.
On the other side, it’s not as if Xi Jinping is doing particularly well. He’s getting older; there are rumors about health issues; he’s got a party congress coming up; and the Chinese economy is fine, but it’s not doing particularly well. Reports say youth unemployment is upwards of 20%, and the Communist Party does not like large numbers of angry young people.
So, in some sense, both of these leaders have this nationalistic, strongman style, which means there’s an upper bound to how much they can cooperate—they have to represent their respective nations. But they’re also both in a pinch, and they probably both just want to be done with each other and focus on domestic issues. Both governments are very focused on domestic stability and power consolidation.
So I actually would expect, especially given the last couple of weeks, that US-China relations stabilize a little bit. I don’t think there’s going to be war; I don’t think there’s going to be an invasion of Taiwan. I know many people are worried about that—and I care a lot about Taiwan—but I’m more confident that general stability will hold and the relationship will just muddle through. I don’t think it’s going to be some grand friendship between Trump and Xi. There’s too much skepticism among both national security communities and the people around those leaders. But I’m more confident that things will stabilize and we won’t see that level of global conflict.
How Far Will Democratic Erosion Go?
National Guard troops on standby during a downtown protest against expanded ICE operations and in support of immigrant rights in Los Angeles, US on June 8, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.
Looking ahead, what scenarios do you see for US political institutions? Are we observing a temporary democratic recession, a stable competitive-authoritarian equilibrium, or a longer-term path toward democratic disintegration? What factors could reverse the current trajectory?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: The answer is we don’t know yet. We don’t know how this story will unfold. It’s clear that we’re in the middle stages of democratic backsliding or erosion, and the question is: how deep does that go, and how long does it last? That will depend on events; it will depend on the strength of the opposition. The Democrats had a good week. They got multiple electoral results they wanted, including governorships in New Jersey and Virginia.
So, it will depend, and a lot rides on the upcoming midterms—whether those go off without a hitch, and whether the Democrats are able to regain a bit of footing in Congress. And then, of course, there’s a presidential election two years later. So, we will see.
In general, it’s quite difficult to heal in this type of setting. Some people might think, if Trump leaves power, it’s all over. No, not really. You have a political party that has embraced a fundamentally authoritarian figure; you have large numbers of people who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election at the mass level and among Republican politicians. And they’ve learned a governance style and practice that’s going to be hard to unwind. We know that democracies rely on civility, forbearance, respecting the other side—how do we come back from this?
So, my hope—and maybe we can end on an optimistic note—is that this moment teaches us something about the issues with our system: the level of corruption, the influence of money in politics, the problems of polarization, the toxicity in our discourse. And that there’s a healing in American society, and by extension in our political system, that unfolds over the next decade. Maybe that will be what the next decade holds—this kind of rejuvenation—and that will require some political reform.
I will say, people are more engaged in politics than they’ve ever been right now, at least among the centrist and progressive side. It has re-energized our civil society. You could argue that that had been in decline, and people were becoming more and more atomized because of social media. But people care about politics again and are doing things. They’re protesting, they’re voting, they’re getting more involved—and that’s a good sign.
So, we have a long road back to being a fully functional, healthy democracy. I hope it’s a short road—but we don’t quite know yet.
Election Results Show Growing Backlash Against Trumpism
And one last question, Professor Rory Truex: what does the election of Mamdani, together with the election results in New Jersey, Virginia, and California, tell us about the trajectory of Trumpist policies?
Assoc. Prof. Rory Truex: It’s definitely a rebuke for Trump, and the margins of victory in all of these places—especially New Jersey and Virginia are much higher than people expected. And then, of course, Mamdani winning. New York politics are different than the rest of the country. But it’s definitely a sign that there’s real dissatisfaction with Trump and the Trump policy agenda.
Then the question is, among the Republican Party establishment—congresspeople running for re-election—at what point will they begin to try to distance themselves from Trump? Frankly, that’s what we need. We need the Republican Party to come back to its senses. We need people to begin to check Trump. Congress is not really checking Trump. The Republicans in Congress are not a meaningful check on his power, but if they realize that their electoral fates are getting worse and worse because Trump is so incompetent and corrupt and authoritarian, maybe they will turn.
People are already basically going to be campaigning in the next few months. The elections are coming up in a year, and so that means the electoral cycle is already starting to begin. So we’ll see. The last three weeks have been a shift in momentum back toward the opposition, and that’s been good. My guess is the pendulum will swing back; we’ll see more counter-moves from the Trump administration, but the economic costs are mounting. The pain that is being inflicted by this administration, and the cruelty being inflicted by this administration, is really front and center.
If you’re a Hispanic voter—these voters swung toward Trump in the last election—and then we’ve seen American citizens of Hispanic descent detained by ICE. We’ve seen communities destroyed by ICE. So that’s just one example, but the kind of cruelty inflicted by the Trump administration is becoming harder and harder to deny. And I do have confidence that the majority of the American people understand that and don’t want to live this way, and so hopefully we’ll see some swing back.
In an in-depth interview with the ECPS, Professor Sarah de Lange of Leiden University cautions that “D66’s victory in Dutch elections cannot be presented as a victory over populism.” While the liberal centrist D66 led by Rob Jetten revitalized the political center, Professor de Lange stresses that “the total size of the radical right-wing bloc has not diminished—it’s just more fragmented.” She argues that Dutch politics is shaped less by populism than by nativism, which has “seeped so much into the mainstream.” Despite the PVV’s exclusion from government, Professor de Lange warns that illiberalism remains a significant threat, while the defense of liberal democracy has only recently become “more salient for mainstream parties and more visible to citizens.”
In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Sarah de Lange, Professor of Dutch Politics at Leiden University’s Institute for Political Science, offers a sharp and nuanced interpretation of the 2024 Dutch elections, warning that “D66’s victory in Dutch elections cannot be presented as a victory over populism.” While the liberal centrist D66 emerged as the largest party, Professor de Lange argues that this outcome reflects both a revival of the political center and the continuing normalization of populist discourse within Dutch democracy.
According to Professor de Lange, the election results underscore a complex duality: “We can conclude that both things are happening at the same time.” Although centrist and Christian Democratic parties gained ground, the radical right bloc remains as strong as before—only more fragmented. This persistence, she notes, illustrates not the decline of populism but its adaptation: “The total size of the radical right-wing bloc has not diminished; it’s as strong as it was in the 2023 elections—it’s just more fragmented.”
Professor de Lange cautions against the view that the PVV’s losses signal a populist retreat. Instead, she interprets them through “traditional political science theories about governing and negative incumbency effects.” Geert Wilders’ participation in government, she explains, produced electoral backlash, but his influence on mainstream parties remains unmistakable—particularly regarding migration and national identity, now central themes even for the conservative-liberal VVD. “The VVD moved so close to the PVV in the campaign that it even supported some proposals by the radical right that had anti-constitutional implications,” she observes, underlining how populist narratives have reshaped the Dutch mainstream.
What truly defines this political transformation, Professor de Lange insists, is not merely populism but nativism. “It is this nativism that has seeped so much into the mainstream, rather than the populism,” she explains, pointing to the xenophobic nationalism that has become a structural feature of Dutch political discourse.
Reflecting on the broader European context, Professor de Lange rejects the notion that populism has been “domesticated.” Despite Wilders’ exclusion from coalition talks, she warns that illiberalism remains deeply entrenched. “There is still clearly a threat of illiberalism,” she notes, citing violent demonstrations and political intimidation during the campaign. Yet, she also detects a countermovement: “Defending liberal democracy and the rule of law has become more salient for mainstream parties… making citizens more aware of how vulnerable liberal democracy actually is.”
Ultimately, Professor de Lange’s analysis situates the Dutch case within the wider European struggle between liberal resilience and populist endurance, emphasizing that the current equilibrium represents neither populism’s decline nor liberalism’s triumph—but rather, a tense coexistence shaping the future of democratic politics in Europe.
ECPS Staff. (2025). “Virtual Workshop Series — Session 5: Constructing the People: Populist Narratives, National Identity, and Democratic Tensions.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). November 3, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00117
Session 5 of the ECPS–Oxford Virtual Workshop Series examined how populist movements across different regions construct “the people” as both an inclusive democratic ideal and an exclusionary political weapon. Moderated by Dr. Heidi Hart, the session featured presentations by Dr. Amir Ali, Dr. Yazdan Keikhosrou Doulatyari, and Andrei Gheorghe, who analyzed populism’s intersections with austerity politics, linguistic identity, and post-communist nationalism. Their comparative insights revealed that populism redefines belonging through economic moralization, linguistic appropriation, and historical myth-making, transforming pluralist notions of democracy into performative narratives of unity and control. The ensuing discussion emphasized populism’s adaptive power to manipulate emotion, memory, and discourse across diverse democratic contexts.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On October 30, 2025, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), in collaboration with Oxford University, convened Session 5 of its Virtual Workshop Series, titled“We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches. This ongoing series (September 2025–April 2026) explores the cultural, economic, and political dimensions of populism’s impact on democratic life across diverse global contexts.
Titled “Constructing the People: Populist Narratives, National Identity, and Democratic Tensions,” the fifth session brought together scholars from political science, sociology, and linguistics to interrogate how populist movements construct and mobilize “the people” as a moral, cultural, and emotional category. The discussion illuminated the multiple ways in which populist discourse reshapes collective identity, redefines sovereignty, and challenges democratic pluralism.
The session was moderated by Dr. Heidi Hart, an arts researcher and practitioner based in Utah and Scandinavia, whose expertise in cultural narratives and affective politics enriched the workshop’s interpretive lens. Three presentations followed, each approaching the notion of “the people” from a distinct analytical angle. Dr. Amir Ali (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) examined the paradox of austerity populism, arguing that fiscal conservatism has become a populist virtue masking economic dispossession. Dr. Yazdan Keikhosrou Doulatyari (Technische Universität Dresden) turned to the linguistic life of democracy in Germany, tracing how words like Volk, Leute, and Heimat encode competing visions of community, inclusion, and exclusion in the contemporary public sphere. Andrei Gheorghe (University of Bucharest and EHESS, Paris) presented a comparative analysis of Romanian and Hungarian populisms, exploring how leaders from Viktor Orbán to Traian Băsescu construct national identity through historical memory and moral dualism.
The session also featured two discussants whose critical reflections deepened the dialogue: Hannah Geddes (PhD Candidate, University of St Andrews) offered comments that emphasized conceptual clarity, methodological coherence, and the comparative breadth of the papers. Dr. Amedeo Varriale (PhD, University of East London) provided incisive observations connecting the economic, cultural, and linguistic dimensions of populism, situating the presenters’ work within wider debates on ideology, nationalism, and discourse.
Throughout the session, Dr. Hart guided the discussion and er moderation fostered an interdisciplinary dialogue among presenters and discussants, drawing attention to the intersections of economy, discourse, and collective memory. Ultimately, Session 5 revealed that the populist construction of “the people” is not merely a rhetorical act but a performative process—one that transforms democratic ideals of equality and representation into instruments of control and exclusion.
