The interactive case study session of the UNTOLD Europe Workshop (Brussels, 21 October 2025) translated critical discussions on colonial legacies, migration narratives, gender, and human rights into comparative policy analysis. Participants worked in four groups examining labour migration to Greece, the EU Migration Pact, the EU–Tunisia Memorandum, and Spain–Morocco circular migration schemes. Across cases, recurring patterns emerged: securitization over protection, racialized labour hierarchies, gendered recruitment structures, and externalisation practices rooted in asymmetrical power relations. By combining structural analysis with creative reframing, the session encouraged participants to challenge dominant narratives and articulate rights-based alternatives. The findings underscore how colonial continuities remain embedded in contemporary migration governance—and highlight the need for dignity-centred, inclusive policy approaches across the Euro-Mediterranean space.
Case Study Session Overview
The case study session, held during the UNTOLD Europe Workshop on Migration Narratives on 21 October 2025 in Brussels, constituted a central interactive component of the workshop and was designed to translate the workshop’s conceptual discussions on colonial legacies, migration narratives, gender, and human rights into concrete and comparative analysis.
Participants were divided into four small working groups of 5-person, each focusing on a distinct case reflecting contemporary forms of migration governance and externalisation in the Euro-Mediterranean context. The session combined collective analysis, critical reflection, and creative reframing, encouraging participants to interrogate how historical power asymmetries and colonial continuities remain embedded in current migration frameworks.
Objectives of the Case Study Session
The case study session pursued three interrelated objectives: – To analyse how colonial legacies, racialised hierarchies, and unequal power relations shape present-day migration policies and narratives; – To examine the implications of these frameworks for labour rights, gender equality, and human rights; – To encourage participants to reframe dominant migration narratives and develop alternative, rights-based perspectives.
Structure and Methodology
The session was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, groups familiarised themselves with their assigned case and identified key narrative frames, policy mechanisms, and governance logics. In the second stage, groups shifted from analysis to reflection and creative reframing. Each group concluded by formulating key observations and insights, which were later shared in the closing plenary.
Case Study Groups and Thematic Focus
Group 1: Labour Migration from Egypt and Bangladesh to Greece
This group examined labour migration pathways from Egypt and Bangladesh to Greece, focusing on temporary and irregular labour regimes in sectors such as agriculture and construction. Discussions highlighted how colonial and postcolonial labour hierarchies shape recruitment practices, legal precarity, and working conditions. Particular attention was paid to racialisation, the commodification of migrant labour, and limited access to rights and legal protection.
Group 2: The EU Migration Pact
This group analysed the EU Migration Pact as a framework reshaping migration governance across the European Union. Discussions focused on securitisation, border procedures, and differentiated treatment of migrants, as well as the broader narrative implications of managing migration primarily through control-oriented approaches.
Group 3: The EU–Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding
This group explored the EU–Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding as an example of migration externalisation. The analysis centred on asymmetrical power relations, the delegation of border management, and the implications for accountability and human rights protection.
Group 4: Spain–Morocco Circular Migration
This group focused on Spain–Morocco circular migration schemes, particularly in seasonal agricultural labour. Discussions examined how controlled mobility regimes reproduce colonial patterns of labour extraction, gendered recruitment, and structural dependency.
Conclusion
Across all four case studies, participants identified recurring themes, including the persistence of colonial and racialised hierarchies, the prioritisation of labour and security concerns over rights, and the gendered dimensions of migration governance. The session enabled participants to connect theoretical discussions with concrete cases and to reflect collectively on alternative narratives grounded in dignity and inclusion.
The case study session underscored the value of participatory and comparative analysis in understanding contemporary migration dynamics. By engaging with diverse cases, participants contributed to a shared reflection on how migration narratives can be critically examined and reimagined beyond colonial continuities.
This policy paper, developed from the Untold Europeworkshop (Brussels, 21 October 2025), examines structural imbalances in European migration governance across three domains: circular labour migration, external migration cooperation, and internal EU asylum systems. While each field operates within distinct legal frameworks, comparative analysis reveals a recurring tension between control-oriented management tools and the consistent safeguarding of rights. From employer-dependent seasonal labour schemes to accountability gaps in external partnerships and uneven asylum protection standards within the EU, the findings highlight the need for stronger monitoring, legal clarity, and enforceable safeguards. The paper argues that sustainable migration governance requires integrating mobility management with equal treatment, transparency, and human rights-based benchmarks—ensuring coherence, credibility, and long-term legitimacy across EU migration policies.
Executive Summary
This policy paper synthesises findings from three thematic case studies examined during the Untold Europe workshop in Brussels on 21 October 2025. Each case examined a different layer of European migration governance: circular labour migration, external migration cooperation, and internal asylum governance. Through comparative analysis, the workshop identified recurring structural patterns in how mobility is managed, how responsibilities are distributed, and how protection standards are implemented.
While each policy field has its own legal and institutional logic, the cases revealed common tensions between management objectives and rights safeguards. This paper consolidates those findings into a coherent policy analysis aimed at supporting more balanced, sustainable, and legally consistent migration governance within and beyond the European Union.
Case Study 1 – Circular Labour Migration and Agricultural Work
The first case study focused on circular migration schemes in the agricultural sector, discussed during the workshop as an example of labour mobility designed to address seasonal workforce shortages. Participants examined how such programmes operate in practice, particularly in Southern Europe, and how recruitment, residence status, and working conditions are structured. The discussion highlighted that while these schemes offer employment opportunities and address labour market needs, they frequently rely on highly temporary statuses and employer-dependent residence arrangements.
Workshop participants concluded that this structural design could limit workers’ bargaining power, restrict mobility between employers, and create differentiated access to social and labour rights. The case demonstrated how labour migration governance can unintentionally contribute to segmented labour markets if mobility, equal treatment, and access to remedies are not adequately safeguarded. These findings informed the broader policy recommendation that labour migration frameworks should integrate stronger rights protections alongside economic objectives.
Case Study 2 – External Migration Cooperation and Responsibility Distribution
The second case study addressed EU cooperation with third countries on migration management, examined through the lens of recent partnership frameworks discussed at the workshop. Participants analysed how operational responsibilities related to border control and containment are shared between the EU and partner countries. The discussion focused on governance capacity, accountability mechanisms, and the alignment between financial support and protection standards.
The workshop concluded that external cooperation could contribute to migration management objectives but also creates potential responsibility gaps where monitoring, legal safeguards, and access to remedies are limited. Participants emphasised that policy effectiveness depends not only on reducing movements but also on ensuring that protection outcomes are verifiable and consistent with international and EU legal standards. These conclusions shaped the recommendation that external partnerships should be systematically linked to transparency, independent monitoring, and rights-based benchmarks.
Case Study 3 – Internal EU Asylum Governance and Solidarity Mechanisms
The third case study examined recent developments in EU asylum governance, with particular attention to solidarity mechanisms, procedural harmonisation, and the treatment of vulnerable applicants. Workshop participants explored how reforms aim to improve system functionality and coordination among Member States while managing pressures on national systems.
Discussions highlighted that while solidarity tools are intended to distribute responsibilities more evenly, protection standards and reception conditions remain unevenly implemented across the Union. Participants noted that procedural obligations for asylum seekers are increasingly detailed, whereas enforcement of Member State compliance with protection standards can be inconsistent. The workshop, therefore, concluded that solidarity and system functionality must be closely linked to enforceable protection guarantees to ensure long-term system credibility and legal coherence.
Integrated Analysis
Across the three cases, the workshop identified a shared governance pattern: migration is frequently addressed through instruments designed to manage distribution, containment, and procedural compliance. By contrast, mechanisms ensuring participation, equal treatment, and consistent protection standards often develop more slowly or unevenly.
The comparative discussion showed that these dynamics are not confined to one policy field but arise across labour migration, external cooperation, and asylum governance. This insight underpins the paper’s central argument: strengthening accountability, legal clarity, and rights consistency across all migration governance domains is essential for effective and sustainable policy.
Policy Directions
Building on the workshop conclusions, the paper proposes policy directions aimed at better aligning management tools with protection standards. Strengthened monitoring and accountability mechanisms, clearer procedural standards, and improved access to remedies are key elements across all governance areas.
In labour migration, ensuring mobility rights and equal treatment would support fair labour market outcomes. In external cooperation, linking funding and partnerships to verifiable protection benchmarks would reduce legal and reputational risks. Within the EU, solidarity mechanisms should be directly tied to minimum protection standards to ensure that responsibility-sharing also guarantees rights consistency.
The workshop-based comparative approach demonstrates that structural imbalances between control-oriented measures and protection safeguards can emerge across different migration governance fields. Addressing these imbalances does not require abandoning management objectives but integrating them more closely with legal certainty, accountability, and protection standards.
A more coherent and rights-consistent migration governance framework would strengthen the EU’s capacity to manage migration sustainably and credibly while upholding its legal and normative commitments.
Please cite as: ECPS Staff (2026). “Virtual Workshop Series — Session 11: Inclusion or Illusion? Narratives of Belonging, Trust, and Democracy in a Polarized Era.” European Center forPopulismStudies (ECPS). February 6, 2026.https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00142
Session 11 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series examined the tension between democratic inclusion as a normative promise and inclusion as an everyday institutional practice. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, the panel explored how belonging is constructed, experienced, and contested across administrative, participatory, historical, and theoretical domains. Contributions highlighted how exclusion often operates through subtle mechanisms—bureaucratic encounters, identity-based narratives, digital mobilization, and post-revolutionary boundary drawing—rather than overt denial. Across cases from the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, and liberal democracies more broadly, the session underscored that democratic legitimacy today depends on both representation and effective, fair governance. Collectively, the discussions illuminated why gaps between democratic ideals and lived experiences continue to fuel distrust, polarization, and populist mobilization.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On Thursday, February 5, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened Session 11 of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches, under the theme “Inclusion or Illusion? Narratives of Belonging, Trust, and Democracy in a Polarized Era.” The session brought together scholars working across political theory, political sociology, comparative politics, and historical analysis to examine a central tension of contemporary democracy: the growing disjuncture between formal promises of inclusion and the everyday experiences and institutional practices through which belonging is granted, denied, or conditionally recognized.
The workshop opened with welcoming and framing remarks by ECPS intern Stella Schade, who situated the panel within the broader aims of the series: to scrutinize how invocations of “the people” can function both as a democratic claim-making device and as a mechanism of boundary drawing that facilitates exclusionary politics.
Associate Professor Andreea Zamfira (University of Bucharest) chaired and moderated the session, providing an interpretive frame that foregrounded the duality between the “defined” and the “definers.” Her introduction emphasized that inclusion operates simultaneously as an affective, lived experience of belonging and as a political-institutional process through which elites, parties, bureaucracies, and other authorities define legitimate membership in the demos. This perspective oriented the panel toward subtle mechanisms—discursive, administrative, legal, and historical—through which democratic inclusion may become performative, selective, or strategically narrowed.
The papers collectively illuminated how legitimacy and exclusion are produced at multiple levels of governance and across distinct contexts. PhD candidate Ariel Lam Chan (Stanford University) examined citizen engagement with the administrative state through a conjoint experimental design that tested how procedural and performance cues shape “approach intention” toward public-facing agencies.
Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga (Independent Researcher) brought a comparative Global South perspective to democratic resilience, analyzing how active citizenship and participatory governance can strengthen accountability while also risking polarization and instrumentalization—particularly in digitally mediated political environments.
Dr. Ali Ragheb (University of Tehran) offered a historically grounded account of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1906), arguing that democratic breakdown followed from the post-victory narrowing of “the people,” especially through the exclusion of women and minorities.
Complementing these empirical interventions, PhD candidate Saeid Yarmohammadi (University of Montreal) developed a theoretical argument about how identity politics and contested procedures of social justice can unintentionally intensify populist dynamics by deepening “us/them” boundaries within liberal democracies.
The session’s discussion was enriched by interventions from Professor Jennifer Fitzgerald (University of Colorado) and Dr. Russell Foster (King’s College London), whose feedback linked the presentations to wider debates on legitimacy, polarization, civic participation, and the variable meanings of “the people.”
Taken together, Session 11 offered a cohesive and analytically layered exploration of how contemporary democracies confront not only the challenge of governing effectively, but also the deeper question of who is recognized as belonging—and on what terms—in an increasingly polarized political age.
Assoc. Prof. Andreea Zamfira: The Defined and the Definers — Power, Inclusion, and Democratic Meaning
Andreea Zamfira is an Associate Professor with the Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest.
In her opening assessment of Session 11, Associate Professor Andreea Zamfira offered a conceptually rich and analytically nuanced framing of the panel’s central theme, “Inclusion or Illusion?”, situating it firmly within contemporary debates on democracy, populism, and representation. Drawing on insights developed during the ECPS hybrid conference “We, the People and the Future of Democracy,” she emphasized that the question of inclusion is not merely empirical but deeply political, normative, and discursive.
Dr. Zamfira structured her reflection around a key duality: the defined and the definers. On the one hand, inclusion and exclusion refer to citizens’ lived experiences of belonging within the political community—the demos. On the other, they point to the actors and institutions with the power to define “the people,” impose official narratives, and translate these narratives into policy. This distinction allowed her to foreground both bottom-up perceptions of political membership and top-down constructions of political identity.
She further argued that the panel’s contributions collectively interrogate subtle and often overlooked mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, moving beyond formal citizenship or electoral participation to examine discursive, symbolic, and institutional practices. In this sense, the session was positioned as an effort to bridge the gap between how political belonging is experienced socially and how it is strategically constructed by political elites.
Dr. Zamfira critically engaged with competing explanations for the contemporary “deplorable state of democracy.” While some scholarly accounts attribute democratic decline to citizens’ alienation, mistrust, and limited understanding of governance, others place responsibility on political parties and governing elites that increasingly fail to represent societal interests while demanding popular trust. She leaned toward the latter interpretation, highlighting a growing distance between political elites and citizens, marked by disregard for personal autonomy, popular sovereignty, and the general will.
Invoking the work of scholars such as Peter Mair and Colin Crouch, Dr. Zamfira framed this rupture as a symptom of post-democracy, generated by the convergence of state bureaucracies and dominant economic actors. This convergence, she argued, erodes democratic sovereignty and fuels populist mobilization. Importantly, she warned against reductive or dogmatic analyses of populism, emphasizing instead Mair’s proposition that populism should be understood first as a symptom of de-democratization, and only secondarily as its cause.
In closing, Dr. Zamfira turned to the contentious concept of militant democracy, noting its growing prominence in responses to democratic crises. While some view it as a necessary safeguard, she cautioned that its restrictive logic risks undermining pluralism and further narrowing the political community. Her concluding question—whether such models protect democracy or deepen exclusion—set a critical and reflective tone for the panel discussions that followed.
Ariel Lam Chan: “What Does the Public Want? A Multidimensional Analysis of Cues in the Administrative State”
Ariel Lam Chan is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University.
In her presentation, Ariel Lam Chan offered a theoretically grounded and methodologically innovative contribution to ongoing debates on democratic legitimacy, administrative governance, and citizen–state relations. Her study interrogates a central but underexplored question in the literature on public administration and democratic governance: what cues motivate citizens to engage with the administrative state, particularly in everyday encounters that shape perceptions of government legitimacy?
Chan situated her research within the administrative state as the primary and most tangible interface between citizens and government. Rather than abstract institutions such as legislatures or courts, she emphasized that citizens’ lived experiences of the state are mediated through street-level bureaucrats—police officers, teachers, welfare officials, and frontline administrators. These quotidian interactions, she argued, play a decisive role in shaping trust, avoidance, or engagement with public authority. The metaphor of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) served as an emblematic site where bureaucratic friction, frustration, and legitimacy are most acutely felt.
The presentation engaged critically with existing scholarship on administrative burden, which traditionally focuses on learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs that deter service take-up. Chan identified two limitations in this literature. First, service take-up captures only completed interactions and overlooks the prior decision of whether to approach the state at all. Second, attitudinal surveys often measure abstract preferences without embedding respondents in decision-making contexts that approximate real-world choices. To address these gaps, Chan introduced a conjoint experimental design that centers on approach intention—the subjective willingness of citizens to engage with a public service agency before interaction occurs.
Theoretically, the study bridges two influential but often competing frameworks of legitimacy. On one side is performance-based trust, which views legitimacy as a function of efficiency, speed, and outcome effectiveness. On the other is procedural justice theory, which emphasizes fair, respectful, and impartial treatment as the foundation of relational legitimacy. Chan’s intervention does not privilege one framework a priori; instead, it empirically tests how citizens respond to competing process and outcome cues when making hypothetical but realistic choices between public service offices.
Methodologically, the study employed a nationally representative survey experiment with 1,073 US respondents. Participants evaluated pairs of public service agencies across three decision tasks, yielding over 6,000 agency evaluations. Agencies spanned fourteen domains, including the DMV, Social Security Administration, and welfare offices. Cues were randomized along two dimensions: process cues (fairness and respectful treatment) and outcome cues (efficiency and performance). Importantly, cue statements were designed to mimic short online reviews, thereby approximating informational environments citizens commonly encounter.
Chan’s findings offer several important insights. First, all positive cues—both procedural and outcome-oriented—significantly increased citizens’ willingness to approach an agency, confirming that legitimacy signals matter at the point of engagement. However, the relative importance of these cues varied by measurement context. When respondents evaluated agencies on an ordinal confidence scale, considerations of fairness and efficiency carried comparable weight. Yet when forced into a binary choice between two offices, respondents prioritized outcome cues over process cues. This distinction suggests that while procedural justice remains normatively salient, instrumental performance becomes decisive when choices are constrained.
A particularly robust finding concerned fairness. Across both ordinal and binary models, fairness emerged as a stable predictor of approach intention, indicating that it functions as a foundational element of perceived legitimacy rather than a contingent preference. At the same time, the study found no evidence that process cues systematically outweighed outcome cues, challenging some expectations derived from procedural justice theory.
The analysis further revealed important interaction effects. High process cues amplified the impact of favorable outcome cues beyond their additive effects. Agencies perceived as both competent and respectful enjoyed a 5.2–6 percent boost in likelihood of selection, suggesting that relational capacity operates as a multiplier of performance rather than a substitute for it. This finding underscores the complementary, rather than competitive, relationship between efficiency and procedural justice.
Chan also examined subgroup differences, testing hypotheses related to racialized administrative burden, political ideology, and socioeconomic status. Contrary to expectations, marginalized groups and frequent welfare users did not exhibit stronger preferences for relational cues over outcomes. Similarly surprising was the ideological pattern: Democrats displayed a significantly stronger preference for outcome cues than Republicans, suggesting a potential shift toward demands for a high-capacity, high-performing state even among traditionally process-oriented constituencies. In contrast, higher-income and more highly educated respondents prioritized outcomes over relational ease, aligning with established literature.
In conclusion, Chan argued that public trust in the administrative state rests on a dual expectation of competence and fairness. While efficiency and results guide immediate engagement decisions, procedural justice remains the aspirational bedrock of institutional legitimacy, as reflected in respondents’ open-ended responses. Her presentation closed by advancing a normative implication: investments in relational capacity should not be treated as ancillary but as essential to rebuilding trust, reducing avoidance, and strengthening the democratic fabric linking citizens and the state.
Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga: “Active Citizenship, Democracy and Inclusive Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nexus, Challenges and Prospects for a Sustainable Development”
Dr Dieudonne Mbarga is an independent researcher.
In his presentation, Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga offered a comparative and empirically grounded analysis of the role of active citizenship in fostering inclusive governance and democratic resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa. Speaking from the perspective of a Global South scholar, Dr. Mbarga emphasized both the analytical relevance and normative urgency of situating debates on inclusion, participation, and populism within contexts marked by fragile democratic transitions, deep social pluralism, and uneven institutional capacity.
Dr. Mbarga framed his intervention around a central puzzle: how active citizenship can strengthen democratic governance in polarized environments without reinforcing exclusionary or populist narratives of “the people.” He noted that Sub-Saharan Africa presents a particularly complex terrain for addressing this question, given the coexistence of declining institutional trust, intensifying political polarization, and rising mobilization of youth and women—dynamics increasingly mediated by digital platforms.
Conceptually, Dr. Mbarga defined active citizenship as the sustained commitment of individuals to participate meaningfully in public governance, drawing on established definitions from governance and citizenship studies. His theoretical framework combined insights from deliberative democracy, participatory governance, and contributivist approaches to populism. While participation is often normatively associated with accountability, legitimacy, and inclusion, Dr. Mbarga cautioned that it can also generate division when political actors instrumentalize popular mobilization through exclusionary definitions of “the people.”
Methodologically, the study adopted a qualitative and comparative approach, combining interviews, participant observation, policy analysis, and secondary literature across five country cases: Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Cameroon. This design allowed Dr. Mbarga to trace both common patterns and context-specific dynamics of civic engagement across diverse political and institutional settings.
The findings revealed a dual and ambivalent role of active citizenship in the region. On the one hand, civic engagement has demonstrably strengthened accountability and policy performance. In Kenya, youth and women’s mobilization has shaped climate governance and inclusion agendas. In Ghana, participatory budgeting initiatives have enhanced transparency and local accountability. Ethiopia’s community-based participation mechanisms have contributed to improved social protection outcomes. These cases underscore the democratic potential of active citizenship when embedded in participatory institutions.
On the other hand, Dr. Mbarga highlighted the risks of politicized and instrumentalized mobilization. In Senegal, digitally mediated youth participation has energized political engagement but also intensified polarization. In Cameroon, civic engagement persists despite restrictive institutional environments, yet often takes fragmented and informal forms. Across cases, Dr. Mbarga observed that digital platforms simultaneously expand opportunities for inclusion and amplify fragmentation, enabling political elites to mobilize citizens—particularly youth—without fostering sustained civic understanding or democratic learning.
A recurring theme in Dr. Mbarga’s analysis was the salience of ethnic and tribal identities in shaping political participation. Unlike racialized dynamics more common in Western democracies, Sub-Saharan African contexts are often structured around multi-ethnic and multi-tribal cleavages. These identities, he argued, can be readily activated by populist leaders, transforming civic participation into a vehicle for exclusion rather than inclusion and undermining institutional trust.
In terms of policy implications, Dr. Mbarga emphasized the need to institutionalize participatory governance mechanisms, strengthen civic education, support youth and women’s leadership, protect civic space, and promote inclusive digital participation in line with SDG 16. His concluding assessment stressed that active citizenship could enhance democratic resilience only when anchored in inclusive institutions, structured participation, and protected civic freedoms.
Overall, Dr. Mbarga’s presentation contributed a nuanced Global South perspective to the session’s broader inquiry into inclusion and illusion, highlighting both the democratic promise and the political risks of active citizenship in polarized and plural societies.
Dr. Ali Ragheb: “Silenced Voices in a Democratic Dawn: How the Iranian Constitutional Revolutionaries (1905–1906) Weaponized ‘the People’ Against Minorities”
Dr. Ali Ragheb is from University of Tehran.
Dr. Ali Ragheb’s contribution to Session 11 was delivered in the form of a pre-recorded presentation, necessitated by repeated and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to join the session live due to enforced internet restrictions in Iran. This constraint, which Dr. Ragheb explicitly framed as an instrument of political control during a moment of acute national crisis, served not merely as a logistical obstacle but as a poignant extension of the substantive themes of his paper. His intervention thus unfolded at the intersection of historical inquiry, political theory, and lived authoritarian experience.
Dr. Ragheb’s presentation addressed the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of the early twentieth century as a critical historical case for understanding the paradoxes of popular mobilization, inclusion, and democratic failure. He began by situating the phrase “We, the People” not as a constitutional abstraction for Iranians, but as a lived and contested condition—one shaped by resistance, repression, and repeated cycles of hope and betrayal. This framing connected Iran’s contemporary crisis, marked by violent repression of popular protests and renewed exposure to war, to a longer genealogy of failed democratic aspirations.
The core research question guiding Dr. Ragheb’s study was deceptively simple yet theoretically ambitious: why did a revolution that succeeded through mass participation fail to defend itself once it achieved institutional power? While existing historiography has emphasized external imperial intervention and internal structural weaknesses—such as low literacy rates or institutional fragility—Dr. Ragheb argued that these explanations overlook a crucial dynamic: the deliberate narrowing of the political meaning of “the people” by revolutionary elites after victory.
Theoretically, Dr. Ragheb approached “the people” as a political construction rather than a fixed sociological entity. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s notion of the people as an “empty signifier,” he conceptualized revolutionary mobilization as a moment in which heterogeneous social demands were temporarily unified under an ambiguous political banner. Jacques Rancière’s work informed his analysis of political visibility, helping to explain how marginalized groups briefly entered the political stage before being rendered invisible once again. Partha Chatterjee’s distinction between civil society and political society further clarified how revolutionary elites selectively recognized some actors as legitimate citizens while governing others through exclusion and control.
Methodologically, the study was grounded in extensive qualitative analysis of parliamentary debates, constitutional drafts, electoral laws, petitions, underground pamphlets, intelligence reports, newspapers, memoirs, and visual materials. This rich archive allowed Dr. Ragheb to trace the transition from inclusive mobilization to exclusionary consolidation with empirical precision.
The findings highlighted the internal heterogeneity and fragility of the revolutionary coalition. Intellectuals sought legal-rational representation, merchants prioritized property and trade security, clerics were divided between constitutionalist and conservative camps, and the urban poor mobilized largely in response to economic precarity. During the revolutionary phase, these divergent interests were held together through strategic ambiguity. After victory, however, revolutionary leaders increasingly prioritized stability, elite consensus, and property rights, reframing mass participation as disorderly and dangerous.
This shift had far-reaching consequences. The urban poor, whose economic grievances were largely ignored by parliament, became disillusioned and politically volatile, making them susceptible to counter-revolutionary mobilization. Women, despite their active participation through demonstrations, boycotts, armed resistance, and petitions, were systematically excluded from political recognition; electoral laws explicitly denied them suffrage, transforming revolutionary visibility into post-revolutionary invisibility. Religious minorities—Armenians, Jews, and Zoroastrians—faced similarly entrenched exclusion. Although early constitutional debates promised equality, political belonging was ultimately defined in Islamic terms, rendering minorities conditionally visible and politically expendable.
Dr. Ragheb emphasized that this exclusion was not accidental but the result of strategic compromises between secular constitutionalists and conservative clerics, in which minority rights were sacrificed to preserve elite unity. Exclusion was further institutionalized through restrictive suffrage laws, class-based representation, and the overrepresentation of Tehran at the expense of provinces, tribes, peasants, and ethnic minorities.
At the discursive level, revolutionary elites increasingly portrayed the masses as ignorant and irrational, legitimizing demobilization and repression. When counter-revolutionary forces regrouped, parliament stood isolated—not because of popular apathy, but because the social base that had enabled revolutionary victory had been systematically excluded and betrayed.
Dr. Ragheb concluded by situating the Iranian case within a broader comparative frame, noting parallels with the French Revolution and the Young Turks Revolution. His central lesson was universal: revolutions that rely on broad coalitions cannot survive if they consolidate power by narrowing the definition of the people. Without institutionalized pluralism across class, gender, religion, and region, revolutionary victories remain fragile. His closing remarks, honoring those silenced in Iran’s current crisis, powerfully underscored the enduring relevance of this historical insight.
Saeid Yarmohammadi: “When Identity Politics and Social Justice Procedures Contribute to Populism”
Saeid Yarmohammadi is a PhD candidate in religious studies at the Institute of Religious Studies, University of Montreal, Canada.
In his presentation, PhD candidate Saeid Yarmohammadi offered a theoretically oriented and normatively reflective analysis of the relationship between identity politics, social justice procedures, and the expansion of populist discourse in liberal democracies. Despite joining the session with technical difficulties and presenting in a condensed format, Yarmohammadi articulated a coherent argument that linked sociological theories of otherness with political-philosophical debates on democracy and justice.
Yarmohammadi framed his intervention around a central concern: how contemporary identity politics and the politicization of social justice principles can unintentionally reinforce populist dynamics rather than counter them. His point of departure was the concept of “otherness,” which he traced to ethnographic traditions historically rooted in colonial modes of knowledge production. Although ethnography has increasingly turned its analytical lens toward Western societies, he argued that the conceptualization of outsiders—particularly immigrants and marginalized groups—often continues to reproduce a dichotomous logic of “us” versus “them.” This persistent distinction, he suggested, provides fertile ground for populist narratives that claim to represent a homogenous “people” against constructed outsiders.
Building on this foundation, Yarmohammadi examined identity politics as a central mechanism through which the “We, the People” discourse is articulated. Identity politics, in his account, seeks to define a unified in-group by emphasizing selected cultural, social, or political characteristics while marginalizing or essentializing others as an out-group. This process intensifies polarization by shifting political disagreement away from contestation over shared problems and policy solutions toward the assertion of incompatible group interests. As a result, the political community becomes fragmented into competing “we’s,” a condition that populist actors can readily exploit.
To deepen this analysis, Yarmohammadi drew on social identity theory, highlighting four key components relevant to populist mobilization: categorization, identification, social comparison, and psychological distinctiveness. Together, these mechanisms help explain how individuals derive political meaning and emotional attachment from group membership, reinforcing in-group solidarity while sharpening out-group exclusion. In politicized contexts, this dynamic transforms identity from a social marker into a political weapon.
The second major strand of the presentation focused on the formation of social justice principles. Yarmohammadi argued that debates over justice, when conducted under conditions of polarized identity politics, tend to exacerbate rather than mitigate populist tendencies. He contrasted populist conceptions of democracy—where “the people” are treated as a singular collective agent—with alternative democratic models grounded in liberal egalitarian and republican traditions. Drawing on John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, he emphasized that democratic legitimacy in liberal democracies depends on public reason, overlapping consensus, and the recognition of citizens as free and equal participants in a shared political enterprise.
In this framework, justice emerges not from the dominance of particular groups but from inclusive deliberative processes embedded in democratic institutions. However, Yarmohammadi argued that when identity politics reshapes democratic participation, agreement on social justice principles shifts from individual reasoning to group-based priority setting. This transformation undermines the possibility of shared consensus and instead deepens polarization, creating conditions conducive to populist democracy.
A key implication of this argument concerned the failure of bottom-up democratic efforts to formulate social justice principles within civil society. Yarmohammadi suggested that such efforts are increasingly overridden by top-down identity-based mobilization, resulting in the erosion of liberal democratic norms, rising inequality, and heightened social anger and anomie. These conditions, in turn, further enable populist movements to thrive.
In conclusion, Yarmohammadi maintained that the relationship between social justice and populism is contingent on the underlying model of democracy. Where justice is grounded in inclusive, deliberative, and institutionally mediated processes, populism can be constrained. Where justice becomes politicized through polarized conceptions of “the people,” populist discourse finds fertile ground. His presentation thus contributed a critical theoretical lens to the session’s broader exploration of inclusion, exclusion, and the fragility of democratic norms.
Discussants’ Feedback
Dr. Russell Foster
Dr. Russell Foster is a Senior Lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London, School of Politics & Economics, Department of European & International Studies.
In his role as discussant, Dr. Russell Foster offered an intellectually generous, theoretically informed, and methodologically attentive commentary on the panel as a whole and on each of the individual papers presented. His intervention did not merely evaluate the technical merits of the papers but situated them within a broader diagnosis of the contemporary democratic condition, thereby reinforcing the session’s overarching theme of the growing gap between political institutions and the demos.
Dr. Foster opened by explicitly engaging with Assoc. Prof. Zamfira’s framing of the session, noting that all papers directly addressed what she identified as the widening “void” between political elites and popular constituencies across different contexts. He highlighted the relevance of her discussion of militant democracy, connecting it to Karl Popper’s paradox of intolerance. In particular, Dr. Foster underscored the normative tension inherent in militant democratic strategies: while potentially necessary in moments of democratic crisis, such approaches risk excluding precisely those segments of the demos that democracy claims to represent. This conceptual tension, he suggested, resonated strongly with the empirical findings of the papers under discussion.
Turning first to the presentation by Ariel Lam Chan, Dr. Foster praised the paper as a “rich” and “refreshing” contribution to the study of the administrative state, particularly for its focus on street-level bureaucracy rather than elite institutions. He commended the paper’s attention to the psychological and somatic dimensions of administrative burden, noting that these factors are often overlooked in studies of legitimacy and governance. By foregrounding everyday encounters with public institutions—such as interactions with the DMV—the paper illuminated how legitimacy is constructed or eroded through mundane, routine experiences rather than grand constitutional moments.
At the same time, Dr. Foster offered several constructive critiques and suggestions for refinement. He questioned the applicability of the phrase “voting with one’s feet” in the context of what he described as “captive bureaucracies,” where citizens lack meaningful alternatives to state-provided services. This raised an important conceptual issue about agency and choice within administrative systems. Dr. Foster also engaged critically with the paper’s discussion of instrumental versus relational legitimacy, suggesting that the empirical failure of initiatives such as the US “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) might call into question the coherence or sustainability of purely instrumental legitimacy models. He encouraged the author to further explore alternative institutional cases that might better illustrate instrumental legitimacy in practice.
Methodologically, Dr. Foster expressed appreciation for the paper’s extensive dataset and sophisticated experimental design, while recommending greater clarity regarding case selection. He suggested that the paper would benefit from explicitly identifying the public agencies included in the study and clarifying whether they operated at federal, state, or local levels. This distinction, he argued, could significantly shape citizens’ perceptions of competence and fairness. Dr. Foster also proposed expanding the analysis of age-based differences in perceptions of administrative legitimacy, particularly given the growing salience of generational divides in populist politics. Finally, he encouraged greater transparency regarding the use of AI tools, such as ChatGPT, for coding qualitative data, including clearer justification and documentation of prompts and procedures.
In his discussion of Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga’s paper on active citizenship in sub-Saharan Africa, Dr. Foster emphasized the importance of hearing Global South perspectives articulated by scholars embedded in the contexts they study. He praised the paper’s nuanced account of polarization, uneven democratic consolidation, declining institutional trust, and expanding youth civic engagement. Dr. Foster noted that the paper offered valuable insights into how active citizenship can simultaneously strengthen accountability and intensify populist dynamics.
Here too, Dr. Foster suggested avenues for further development. He encouraged greater temporal specificity, asking whether the patterns identified were recent phenomena, post-pandemic developments, or part of longer historical trajectories. He also proposed deeper comparative reflection across the selected case studies, including attention to linguistic differences between Anglophone and Francophone contexts and their implications for populist communication. A particularly salient contribution of Dr. Foster’s feedback was his emphasis on blame attribution in populist discourse. He invited the author to more explicitly analyze who populist actors in sub-Saharan Africa identify as internal and external enemies, noting emerging narratives that simultaneously reject Western powers while embracing alternative global actors such as Russia. Dr. Foster also highlighted the paper’s compelling comparison between racism in the Global North and tribalism in the Global South, suggesting that this analytical parallel could be further elaborated.
In his final set of remarks, Dr. Foster addressed Dr. Ali Ragheb’s pre-recorded presentation on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. He expressed solidarity with the author’s situation and praised the paper as both theoretically sophisticated and historically illuminating. Dr. Foster emphasized the originality of the argument, particularly its challenge to conventional explanations for revolutionary failure that focus on foreign intervention or elite factionalism. Instead, he highlighted the paper’s central claim that revolutionary leaders narrowed the definition of “the people” after achieving power, thereby undermining the very coalition that had enabled success.
Dr. Foster commended the paper’s creative integration of Western political theory—particularly Laclau’s concept of empty signifiers and Chatterjee’s distinction between civil and political society—into the Iranian historical context. He also welcomed the shift away from elite-centered narratives toward everyday political experiences, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s notion of Alltagsgeschichte. At the same time, he suggested that the paper could be strengthened by greater methodological transparency regarding archival sources, translation challenges, and criteria of selection. He also encouraged further exploration of intra-urban dynamics, asking whether the revolutionary experience differed across Iranian cities beyond the Tehran–province divide.
In closing, Dr. Foster characterized all three papers as theoretically rich, empirically grounded, and highly relevant to understanding what he described as “the great crisis of our time.” His feedback not only affirmed the scholarly quality of the contributions but also demonstrated how they collectively advance critical debates on populism, legitimacy, and democratic fragility across diverse global contexts.
Professor Jennifer Fitzgerald
Jennifer Fitzgerald is Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado.
Professor Jennifer Fitzgerald’s intervention as discussant offered a reflective, conceptually rich, and methodologically attentive assessment of the papers presented. Her remarks were unified by a strong concern with how foundational democratic concepts—legitimacy, accountability, transparency, inclusion, and exclusion—are not merely institutional abstractions but are actively produced and contested through everyday political experiences. Across her discussion, Professor Fitzgerald consistently emphasized the importance of connecting macro-level democratic theory to micro-level encounters between citizens and the state.
At the panel level, Professor Fitzgerald highlighted the shared strength of the presentations in foregrounding lived experience. She praised the “street-level” orientation running through the papers, noting that citizens’ daily interactions with bureaucracies, civic institutions, and political movements profoundly shape how democracy is perceived, trusted, or rejected. These encounters, she argued, inform whether individuals feel that rules apply fairly to them, whether they belong to the political community, and whether they are seen as politically consequential. In this sense, the panel collectively illuminated how democratic legitimacy is built—or eroded—not only through formal institutions but through routine practices and symbolic recognition.
Turning to Ariel Lam Chan’s presentation, Professor Fitzgerald described the project as innovative and intellectually exciting. She singled out the concept of “approach intention” as a particularly original contribution, interpreting it as a promising analytical bridge between individual political behavior and the administrative state. In her view, this concept captures how citizens anticipate and navigate interactions with public services, thereby expanding political analysis beyond elections and party competition.
Professor Fitzgerald encouraged deeper theoretical engagement with political science debates that seek to broaden the definition of politics to include service delivery as a core democratic outcome. She suggested that integrating this literature could substantially widen the paper’s audience and underscore its relevance to scholars concerned with how governance is experienced at the ground level. She also proposed several potential extensions, including closer attention to gender and generational dynamics. Drawing on existing research, she noted that women and men often engage differently with public services and possess distinct forms of political knowledge, while age cohorts may vary in their expectations of state responsiveness—patterns that could further enrich the analysis.
Additionally, Professor Fitzgerald raised the possibility that citizens’ experiences of legitimacy may be shaped by the perceived identity of bureaucratic actors themselves. Inspired by work on interviewer effects, she suggested that factors such as gender, age, language, or cultural similarity between citizens and street-level officials could influence how fairness and competence are evaluated. While framed explicitly as future research directions rather than critiques, these reflections reinforced her broader emphasis on relational dynamics in democratic governance.
In discussing Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga’s presentation, Professor Fitzgerald characterized the work as ambitious, timely, and normatively significant. She expressed particular interest in the paper’s focus on digital polarization, emphasizing that scholars still lack a sufficient understanding of how digital environments reshape political participation, trust, and fragmentation. The notion of inclusive digital governance, in her view, represented a particularly fertile conceptual space with strong potential for theoretical and policy-relevant contributions.
Professor Fitzgerald also situated Dr. Mbarga’s analysis within a broader comparative framework, suggesting connections to research on local governance and gendered leadership in contexts such as India, as well as to historical analyses of democratic fragility, including work on interwar Europe. These linkages, she argued, could help position the paper within wider debates on institutional design, democratic resilience, and participation in polarized societies.
Her engagement with Dr. Ali Ragheb’s presentation was marked by both scholarly admiration and personal reflection. Professor Fitzgerald openly acknowledged the privilege of conducting academic work in secure environments and expressed humility in light of Dr. Ragheb’s circumstances and subject matter. She praised the paper’s theoretical clarity and framing, describing it as exemplary in its ability to demonstrate how revisiting neglected dimensions of a historical event can fundamentally reshape understanding.
A central theme she drew from Dr. Ragheb’s work was the fluidity and political malleability of “the people.” Professor Fitzgerald emphasized the analytical power of treating “the people” not as a fixed category but as a rhetorical construct that can be strategically expanded or narrowed. She underscored how such shifts carry profound consequences for inclusion, exclusion, and political violence, making the paper highly relevant to contemporary debates on populism and authoritarianism.
Importantly, Professor Fitzgerald noted that Dr. Ragheb’s analysis demonstrated how redefining the boundaries of the people is never merely symbolic; it has concrete implications for political participation, rights, and historical trajectories. She viewed this insight as one of the paper’s most enduring contributions, with clear pedagogical value for graduate training and broader comparative research.
Finally, Professor Fitzgerald offered reflections on Saeid Yarmohammadi’s presentation, which examined the intersection of identity politics and social justice procedures. She described this thematic space as critically important, particularly in polarized liberal democracies where democratic participation can paradoxically reinforce populist dynamics. Professor Fitzgerald highlighted the paper’s core insight that when social justice principles are formulated within fragmented and politicized conceptions of “we, the people,” democratic deliberation risks being displaced by group-based prioritization and zero-sum logic.
Drawing from political science and anthropology, she suggested that Yarmohammadi’s work could be fruitfully connected to the concept of “culture as points of concern,” which posits that what defines a political culture is not consensus, but the issues over which disagreement is most intense. From this perspective, the paper sheds light on how contested understandings of justice and identity become focal points for populist mobilization. Fitzgerald also recommended engagement with scholarship on emotions in politics—such as resentment and envy—as complementary lenses for understanding how identity-based narratives gain traction among mass publics.
In concluding her remarks, Fitzgerald expressed strong appreciation for all the projects discussed, describing them as theoretically rich, empirically grounded, and deeply relevant to the central democratic challenges of the present moment. Her feedback underscored a unifying message: democratic backsliding and populism cannot be understood solely through institutional decay or elite maneuvering, but must also be analyzed through the everyday practices, identities, and expectations that shape how citizens experience—and contest—democracy itself.
Responses to Discussants’ Feedback
Ariel Lam Chan
In her response to the discussants’ feedback, Ariel Lam Chan offered a reflective and methodologically transparent engagement with the comments raised, situating her project within both its intellectual genealogy and its future research trajectory. She began by acknowledging Professor Jennifer Fitzgerald’s remarks as highly resonant, emphasizing that the project itself originated in a political science classroom environment. Chan credited the formative influence of Michael Tomz and Paul Sniderman, particularly Sniderman’s encouragement to examine how citizens respond to institutional cues at the administrative level rather than focusing solely on elite or electoral politics. This framing reinforced the project’s grounding in behavioral political science while underscoring its interdisciplinary ambitions.
Chan directly addressed the discussants’ suggestion regarding the social characteristics of public service offices and bureaucratic actors. She noted that the project’s original design was indeed motivated by social identity theory and an interest in how intergroup affiliations might shape citizens’ responses to administrative institutions. However, she explained that a key methodological constraint emerged in the conjoint experimental design: operationalizing social identity cues in a realistic manner without exposing participants to psychological discomfort or ethical risk proved challenging. This tension, she suggested, reflects a broader trade-off between experimental rigor and ethical sensitivity, and she expressed openness to continuing this discussion beyond the workshop setting.
Responding to questions about gender, Chan clarified that while the analysis did not yield statistically significant gender differences in overall cue responsiveness, there were indicative patterns suggesting that women tend to prioritize relational cues more strongly. She interpreted this as a potentially meaningful finding that warrants deeper qualitative and contextual exploration, particularly in relation to women’s prior experiences navigating public services and their practical knowledge of institutional pathways.
Chan also welcomed encouragement to further elaborate the concept of “approach intention,” acknowledging her initial caution in advancing a framework not yet well established in the literature. The discussants’ validation, she noted, strengthened her confidence in developing this concept more explicitly as a theoretical contribution. Finally, she expressed enthusiasm for comparative extensions of the project, signaling openness to cross-national applications and collaborative dialogue as the research evolves.
Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga
Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga’s response was marked by a reflective and collegial tone, emphasizing openness to critique and scholarly learning. He expressed sincere appreciation for the discussants’ feedback and situated his intervention within an early stage of academic development. Framing the comments as constructive guidance, he underscored his intention to integrate them into the revision of his paper and signaled willingness to continue the dialogue, exemplifying an iterative and collaborative approach to knowledge production.
Closing Assessment by Assoc. Prof. Andreea Zamfira
In her closing assessment, Assoc. Prof. Andreea Zamfira offered a concise yet conceptually rich synthesis of the panel’s contributions, situating them within broader debates on democratic legitimacy, representation, and exclusion in contemporary political systems. Her remarks foregrounded the analytical coherence of the session, emphasizing how diverse empirical cases converged around shared structural tensions affecting democracies across regions and historical contexts.
Reflecting on Ariel Lam Chan’s presentation, Dr. Zamfira highlighted the dual democratic deficit facing modern states: declining representation and declining governance effectiveness. She underscored that citizens’ expectations toward democratic systems increasingly encompass both procedural representation and administrative efficiency. Failures on either front, she noted, can generate political disillusionment, disengagement, and radicalization—dynamics that feed into broader patterns of democratic erosion. This observation positioned administrative performance not as a technocratic concern, but as a core component of democratic legitimacy.
Turning to Dr. Mbarga’s contribution, Dr. Zamfira emphasized the corrosive effects of exclusion from meaningful political participation. She framed his findings within a wider comparative trajectory, noting that political parties and representative institutions across contexts are struggling to mediate effectively between citizens and the state. This growing disconnect, she argued, fuels skepticism, erodes trust, and contributes to increasingly critical attitudes toward democratic regimes—not only in Europe or the United States, but globally.
Dr. Zamfira’s engagement with Dr. Ragheb’s historical analysis of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution further reinforced this theme. She underscored that the revolution’s failure stemmed not from societal backwardness or external interference, but from the deliberate narrowing of the definition of “the people” by revolutionary elites. The systematic exclusion of key social groups—along class, gender, religious, and ethno-national lines—undermined pluralism and prevented durable democratic consolidation. Dr. Zamfira stressed the contemporary relevance of this case, drawing parallels with modern forms of exclusion driven by identity politics.
In integrating Saeid Yarmohammadi’s analysis, she highlighted how identity-based exclusions help explain why significant segments of society gravitate toward anti-system or populist movements. Across the panel, exclusion emerged as a recurring mechanism linking democratic disenchantment with populist mobilization.
Dr. Zamfira concluded by urging scholars to critically interrogate competing democratic models—pluralist, elitist, technocratic, or epistemocratic—and their implications for inclusion, representation, and effective governance. In an era marked by polarization and post-democratic challenges, she emphasized that many foundational questions remain unresolved, underscoring the need for continued research and collective scholarly engagement.
Conclusion
Session 11 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series provided a conceptually integrated and empirically rich examination of the tension between democratic inclusion as promise and inclusion as practice. Across diverse methodologies, regions, and theoretical traditions, the contributions converged on a central insight: contemporary democratic fragility is deeply rooted in the gap between formal claims of belonging and the lived, institutionalized, and discursively mediated experiences through which political membership is enacted or denied.
The papers collectively demonstrated that exclusion rarely operates through overt denial alone. Instead, it emerges through subtle yet consequential mechanisms—administrative encounters that discourage engagement, participatory processes vulnerable to instrumentalization, identity-based narratives that harden boundaries, and historical moments in which revolutionary coalitions are narrowed after victory. Whether in the everyday interactions of citizens with the administrative state, the dynamics of digitally mediated participation in Sub-Saharan Africa, the post-revolutionary consolidation of power in Iran, or the politicization of social justice in liberal democracies, exclusion repeatedly appeared as a driver of democratic disillusionment and populist mobilization.
Equally important, the session highlighted that democratic legitimacy today rests on a dual expectation. Citizens demand not only representation and voice, but also competence, fairness, and effectiveness. Failures on either dimension—procedural or performance-based—risk eroding trust and fostering disengagement. As several interventions underscored, technocratic efficiency without inclusion, or participation without institutional grounding, can both generate democratic backlash.
Rather than offering definitive resolutions, Session 11 productively foregrounded unresolved questions about how democracies can reconcile pluralism, participation, and governance capacity under conditions of polarization and post-democracy. In doing so, it reaffirmed the importance of interdisciplinary, historically informed, and globally attentive scholarship for understanding—and potentially reimagining—the future of democratic belonging.
Please cite as: ECPS Staff. (2026). “Virtual Workshop Series — Session 10: Resisting the Decline: Democratic Resilience in Authoritarian Times.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 26, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00141
ECPS convened Session 10 of its Virtual Workshop Series, bringing together scholars to examine how democracies endure, adapt, and contest authoritarian pressures amid the normalization of populist discourse and the weakening of liberal-constitutional safeguards. Chaired by Dr. Amedeo Varriale, the session framed resilience as an active democratic project—defending rule of law, pluralism, and civic participation against gradual forms of authoritarian hollowing-out. Presentations by Dr. Peter Rogers, Dr. Pierre Camus, Dr. Soheila Shahriari, and Ecem Nazlı Üçok explored resilience across market democracies, local governance, feminist self-administration in Rojava, and diaspora activism confronting anti-gender politics. Discussants Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois and Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano connected these contributions through probing questions on the ambivalence, burdens, and transformative potential of resilience.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On Thursday, January 22, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened Session 10 of its Virtual Workshop Series, titled “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Held under the theme “Resisting the Decline: Democratic Resilience in Authoritarian Times,” the session brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine how democratic systems, institutions, and civic actors seek to withstand—and, at times, transform—the pressures generated by authoritarian resurgence, the normalization of populist discourse, and the erosion of liberal-constitutional guarantees across diverse political contexts.
The workshop opened with welcoming remarks by ECPS’s Reka Koleszar, who introduced the session’s theme, outlined the format, and presented the contributing scholars and discussants. Her opening situated Session 10 within ECPS’s broader intellectual agenda: advancing comparative, theory-informed, and empirically grounded research on populism and its implications for democratic governance, civic space, and rights-based politics.
The session was chaired by Dr. Amedeo Varriale (PhD, University of East London), whose framing remarks offered a synthetic lens for the panel. Drawing attention to the contemporary “populist zeitgeist,” Dr. Varriale underscored how authoritarianism increasingly advances not merely through abrupt ruptures, but through gradual practices that hollow out democratic norms while preserving formal institutional shells. Against this backdrop, he proposed democratic resilience as an active project: the defense of rule of law, pluralism, and rights through institutions and civic participation, as well as the re-engagement of citizens whose disillusionment can become a resource for anti-democratic entrepreneurs.
Four presentations explored resilience across distinct but connected domains. Dr. Peter Rogers (Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Macquarie University) delivered “Resilience in Market Democracy,” interrogating resilience as a traveling concept shaped by market logics, welfare-state capacities, and shifting moral expectations of citizenship. Dr. Pierre Camus (Postdoctoral Fellow, Nantes University) presented “The Contradictory Challenges of Training Local Elected Officials for the Future of Democracy,” analyzing how professionalization and training—often justified as democratizing—can also reproduce inequalities and widen the distance between representatives and citizens. Turning to conflict and non-state governance, Dr. Soheila Shahriari (EHESS) offered “The Rise of Women-Led Radical Democracy in Rojava,”examining feminist self-administration as civil-society resilience amid regional authoritarianism and geopolitical exclusion. Finally, Ecem Nazlı Üçok (PhD Candidate, Charles University) presented “Feminist Diaspora Activism from Poland and Turkey,” conceptualizing exile-based feminist organizing as a site of transnational resistance to anti-gender politics and authoritarian repression.
Discussion was enriched by two discussants: Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois (University of Helsinki) and Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano (Rey Juan Carlos University), whose interventions connected the papers through shared questions about the ambivalence of resilience, the distribution of democratic burdens, and the conditions under which resilience becomes transformative rather than merely adaptive.
Moderator Dr. Amedeo Varriale: From Populist Zeitgeist to Democratic Resistance
Dr. Amedeo Varriale earned his Ph.D. from the University of East London in March 2024. His research interests focus on contemporary populism and nationalism.
In his opening remarks as chair of the session, Dr. Amedeo Varriale framed the panel within a broader moment of profound geopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural transformation. He emphasized that contemporary politics is increasingly shaped by what Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has described as a “populist zeitgeist”—a diffuse mood or historical moment in which populist ideas have become normalized across political systems.
Dr. Varriale argued that the current rise of authoritarianism cannot be separated from this populist moment, particularly within an emerging multipolar global order. While authoritarian regimes continue to consolidate power in contexts where liberal democracy has historically lacked deep institutional roots—such as China and Russia—he noted with concern that authoritarian tendencies have also re-emerged within long-standing democracies, most notably the United States. In these cases, authoritarianism does not typically appear as outright regime change but rather manifests through populist discourse, attitudes, and political practices that challenge the liberal-constitutional foundations of democracy.
He highlighted how the rule of law, as well as individual and minority rights, are increasingly threatened by actors once confined to the political fringes but now progressively mainstreamed. Against this backdrop, Dr. Varriale stressed that resisting authoritarianism requires the active strengthening of democratic resilience. This entails defending institutions, constitutional norms, and civic participation, while re-engaging disillusioned and passive citizens.
Democracy, he concluded, can survive authoritarian pressure only when citizens, leaders, and state systems actively uphold accountability, pluralism, freedom of expression and association, human rights, and the rule of law. Previewing the session’s contributions, Dr. Varriale noted that the papers would address these challenges through analyses of civil society, activism, democratic resilience, and contemporary feminism, before inviting the first presenter to begin.
Dr. Peter Rogers: “Resilience in Market Democracy”
Dr. Peter Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Macquarie University.
In his presentation at the 10th Session of the ECPS Virtual Workshop series, Dr. Peter Rogers offered a wide-ranging and conceptually rich reflection on the notion of resilience in contemporary market societies. Drawing on material from his forthcoming book, he approached resilience not as a fixed or neutral concept, but as a “traveling” one—whose meaning, moral coding, and political implications shift depending on whether it is encountered through the lens of market society, welfare-state governance, or democratic resilience.
Dr. Rogers began by laying out a set of foundational assumptions to frame his argument. First, he proposed that contemporary societies should be understood as market societies, in which market mechanisms—competition, supply and demand, profit, and efficiency—have expanded far beyond the exchange of goods and services to become the dominant organizing principles of social life. These mechanisms, he argued, increasingly shape cultural norms, moral values, and the boundaries of what is perceived as wise, legitimate, or even lawful action. Whether embraced or resisted, market logic has become the pragmatic reference point through which social and political possibilities are assessed.
Second, Dr. Rogers suggested that market society has grown more extreme than the market economy from which it emerged. Whereas earlier market arrangements were embedded within broader ethical and social frameworks, contemporary market society increasingly extends its logic into domains once governed by moral, communal, or political considerations. Individual freedom is framed primarily as freedom of choice within markets, while minimal government and entrepreneurial self-reliance are prioritized. This model, he noted, was historically shaped by postwar efforts to protect liberty from authoritarian state power. Yet because markets are not inherently moral, unregulated market systems tend toward exploitation, inequality, and the concentration of wealth among elites.
To mitigate these outcomes, Dr. Rogers introduced his third assumption: that the excesses of market society are, in principle, balanced by the welfare state. Welfare institutions intervene where markets are blind to collective interests, providing social protections such as healthcare, pensions, and employment benefits. Through redistribution mechanisms and regulatory frameworks, welfare states seek to correct market failures and protect citizens from the risks generated by individual self-interest. In this sense, modern governance rests on a fragile balance between market-driven individual liberty and state-supported social equity.
Against this backdrop, Dr. Rogers positioned resilience as a concept that operates across these competing systems. In market society, resilience resonates strongly with ideals of individual autonomy and responsibility. It is framed as a personal trait or capacity—the ability to endure shocks, adapt to disruption, and persevere in the face of adversity. The resilient individual is expected to anticipate risks, respond proactively to crises, and reorganize personal resources to maintain financial, physical, and psychological well-being amid economic instability, precarious employment, or systemic disruption. This understanding aligns with influential global development narratives, such as those advanced by the World Bank, which emphasize individual recovery and functional improvement following negative shocks.
In contrast, resilience takes on a very different meaning within welfare-state contexts. Here, the focus shifts away from individual capacities toward the resilience of institutions, legal frameworks, ethical norms, and governance practices. Building resilience in this sense requires investment in social infrastructure, public services, and decommodified essential goods. Rather than emphasizing self-reliance, welfare-based resilience aims to foster stability, trust, and collective protection through state intervention and social solidarity.
Dr. Rogers emphasized that these differing models of resilience generate distinct expectations of citizenship. Market-based resilience places responsibility primarily on individuals, with the state acting largely as a facilitator of market processes. Welfare-based resilience, by contrast, relies on the state as a central provider of security and social protection. Both models depend on collective investments in social capital and networks of solidarity, yet they distribute moral responsibility and political obligation in markedly different ways.
These tensions, he argued, become especially visible in policy domains such as disaster management, climate adaptation, civil defense, and even democratic governance. As resilience becomes institutionalized through technical practices, guidelines, and risk-management frameworks, it increasingly shapes the rules of governance themselves. This gives rise to what Dr. Rogers described as a broader “politics of resilience,” in which choices about how resilience is defined also determine who bears the burden of coping with crisis.
While acknowledging the appeal of resilience as a positive and empowering concept, Dr. Rogers also addressed critical perspectives. He noted that resilience can function as a tool of neoliberal governance, shifting responsibility for managing systemic crises—from financial instability to climate change—from the state onto individuals. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Peter Bloom, he raised concerns that contemporary narratives of individualized resilience may reinforce a moral framework in which citizens are held personally responsible for adapting to the failures of systems they neither designed nor control.
At the same time, Dr. Rogers cautioned against dismissing resilience outright. Psychological and behavioral approaches to resilience, he argued, can foster agency, learning, and growth, enabling individuals and communities to recover from setbacks and engage in collective action. The challenge lies in balancing personal responsibility with social connectivity, altruism, and institutional support. Notably, he observed that market societies often struggle to fund and sustain initiatives that build social cohesion, as such projects rarely align with profit-driven investment models.
Concluding his presentation, Dr. Rogers returned to the central theme of balance. Resilience, he argued, can be a force for both empowerment and depoliticization, depending on how it is framed and enacted. The task for scholars and policymakers is not simply to promote resilience, but to ask what kind of resilience is being built—for whom, by whom, and at what cost. As a traveling concept, resilience demands continual critical reflection, particularly in democratic contexts where the relationship between citizens, markets, and the state remains deeply contested.
Dr. Pierre Camus: “The Contradictory Challenges of Training Local Elected Officials for the Future of Democracy”
Dr. Pierre Camus is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Nantes University.
In his presentation, Dr. Pierre Camus offered a sociologically grounded examination of an often-overlooked dimension of democratic governance: the training of local elected officials. Drawing on his doctoral research and ongoing work on political training in France, Europe, and parts of North America, Dr. Camus argued that what appears at first glance to be a technical or administrative issue in fact raises fundamental questions about democracy, political equality, and populism.
Focusing on the French case, which he described as particularly instructive, Dr. Camus advanced the central claim that training for local elected officials constitutes a “democratic paradox.” While officially justified in the name of accessibility, equality, and democratic inclusion, training programs often produce empirical effects that contradict these stated objectives. His analysis rested on two main arguments: first, that training does not reduce inequalities of access to political office and may even widen the gap between elected officials and citizens; and second, that training reproduces inequalities among elected officials themselves, particularly along territorial and gender lines.
Dr. Camus grounded his argument in a mixed-methods research design. Quantitatively, he drew on data from the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations covering more than 30,000 local elected officials who participated in training programs between January 2022 and December 2025. Qualitatively, his analysis was informed by several dozen interviews with elected officials conducted over an extended period. Together, these sources allowed him to assess both formal institutional arrangements and their concrete social effects.
He began by outlining the French legal framework governing the training of local elected officials. In France, training is legally recognized as a right directly linked to the exercise of political mandate. It is publicly funded and explicitly justified on democratic grounds, with the stated aim of ensuring that political office is accessible to all citizens regardless of education, profession, or prior political experience. Training is intended to compensate for inequalities in knowledge and skills and to enable any citizen, once elected, to govern effectively.
This framework is structured around two main mechanisms: local authorities are required to allocate part of their budget to the training of elected officials, and each elected official has access to an individual annual training entitlement. From a formal perspective, Dr. Camus noted, this arrangement appears inclusive and egalitarian, premised on the idea that political competence can be acquired institutionally rather than inherited through social background. Yet it is precisely here that the first paradox emerges.
Training, Dr. Camus argued, intervenes only after electoral selection has already taken place. It does not help citizens gain access to political office; rather, it supports those who have already been elected. As a result, the social inequalities that structure electoral access—such as education, profession, gender, social capital, and political networks—remain largely unchanged. More critically, training may reinforce the distance between elected officials and citizens by concentrating key forms of democratic knowledge within closed institutional settings accessible only to representatives.
Legal rules, public finance, administrative procedures, and other forms of governing expertise are transmitted in spaces from which ordinary citizens are excluded. In this way, democratic knowledge becomes a specialized resource reserved for elected officials, reinforcing the notion that governing requires expertise available only to a professional political class. Dr. Camus suggested that this dynamic challenges a core element of the French republican tradition: the idea of the elected official as an ordinary citizen temporarily entrusted with political responsibility. Paradoxically, a device designed to strengthen democracy may instead deepen the symbolic and practical separation between representatives and the represented.
The second paradox concerns inequalities within the group of elected officials themselves. Although training rights are formally equal, access to training is highly unequal in practice. Dr. Camus showed that elected officials in large municipalities, metropolitan areas, or higher levels of local government are significantly more likely to participate in training. They benefit from larger budgets, higher allowances, stronger administrative support, and closer ties to political parties that actively encourage professional development.
By contrast, elected officials in small and rural municipalities face structural constraints, including limited financial resources, time scarcity, fewer training opportunities nearby, and weaker institutional support. Drawing on longitudinal data from his doctoral research, Dr. Camus demonstrated that training participation rates are relatively high among regional and departmental officials but approach zero in municipalities with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants. Training thus accelerates political professionalization for some while leaving others on the margins of institutional competence.
Gender inequalities further complicate this picture. While men and women participate in training at similar overall rates, they tend to enroll in different types of programs. Male elected officials are overrepresented in training related to strategically valued policy areas such as public finance, urban planning, and infrastructure. Female elected officials, by contrast, are more likely to receive training in social policy, education, childcare, and cultural affairs—domains that, while essential, carry less political prestige and are less associated with executive power. Rather than correcting gender inequalities, training may therefore stabilize existing divisions in political roles.
In conclusion, Dr. Camus emphasized that the French case reveals a broader structural tension in contemporary democracies. How can political systems respond to the growing complexity of governance without transforming representation into a professional monopoly? And how can competence be promoted without reinforcing new forms of exclusion—especially at a time when populist discourses increasingly challenge expertise and political elites? These questions, he argued, extend far beyond France and invite comparative reflection on the future of democracy, political equality, and populism.
Dr. Soheila Shahriari: “The Rise of Women-Led Radical Democracy in Rojava: Global Democratic Decline and Civil Society Resilience Amidst Middle Eastern Authoritarianism”
Dr. Soheila Shahriari holds a doctorate in political science, awarded by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in 2024.
In her presentation, Dr. Soheila Shahriari examined the emergence of women-led radical democracy in Rojava as a rare and fragile counter-hegemonic experiment in an era marked by global democratic decline and entrenched Middle Eastern authoritarianism. Situating her analysis within the broader context of democratic recession, civil war, and geopolitical realpolitik, Dr. Shahriari argued that Rojava represents not merely a local anomaly, but a diagnostic case that exposes the structural limits of contemporary democracy at both regional and global levels.
Dr. Shahriari’s research focused on the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), commonly known as Rojava, which emerged amid the Syrian Civil War and consolidated itself after 2012. Her analysis was framed by three intersecting developments: the global democratic recession since the mid-2000s, the consolidation of authoritarianism in the Middle East, and the persistence of Rojava’s experiment in democratic confederalism despite sustained violence and political marginalization. She emphasized that Rojava’s significance lies not only in its survival under extreme conditions, but in its substantive challenge to dominant models of governance rooted in the nation-state, patriarchy, and centralized sovereignty.
To contextualize Rojava, Dr. Shahriari situated it within what scholars such as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have described as a global democratic recession characterized by institutional decay, executive centralization, and declining public trust. While this recession has taken the form of democratic backsliding in many parts of the Global North, she stressed that the Middle Eastern trajectory is distinct. In the region, the dominant pattern is not democratic erosion but the consolidation of authoritarianism. Drawing on Hamid Bozarslan’s work, she described regional authoritarianism as an anti-democratic system that actively dismantles democratic aspirations while maintaining a façade of legality through elections, constitutions, and populist narratives. In countries such as Turkey, Iran, and Syria, civic space has been systematically constricted and pluralism delegitimized.
Against this backdrop, Rojava emerged as a feminist and pluralist project grounded in the ideology of democratic confederalism developed by Abdullah Öcalan. This model explicitly rejects the nation-state and draws heavily on Murray Bookchin’s theory of social ecology. It emphasizes decentralized self-administration, grassroots participation, ecological sustainability, and radical pluralism across ethnic and religious lines. Dr. Shahriari stressed that Rojava should not be understood as an improvised response to state collapse, but as a deliberate counter-model rooted in a coherent ideological and political project. Scholars such as Dilar Dirik, Janet Biehl, and David Graeber have described Rojava as a rupture in regional history, challenging both ethno-nationalism and patriarchal political orders.
A central pillar of Dr. Shahriari’s analysis was women’s leadership as a structural driver of democratic resilience in Rojava. She highlighted the institutionalization of gender equality through mechanisms such as the co-chair system, which mandates joint male–female leadership across political bodies. As scholars like Joost Jongerden have argued, this arrangement transforms gender equality from a symbolic commitment into a foundational principle of governance. Women’s institutions, including autonomous councils and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), disrupt the masculinized logic of militarized resistance and reframe security through care, solidarity, and collective responsibility. Drawing on recent feminist scholarship, Dr. Shahriari suggested that women-led civil society functions as a form of “symbolic infrastructure” that sustains resilience under conditions of chronic insecurity.
However, Dr. Shahriari emphasized that Rojava’s survival has been increasingly constrained by both regional authoritarianism and global geopolitical recalibration. Although Rojava gained international visibility during the Battle of Kobane and the defeat of ISIS, it has remained politically marginalized. The collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024 and the emergence of a transitional government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa did not alter this trajectory. Instead, she argued, exclusionary state logics have persisted. The new authorities continue to frame Kurdish self-determination as a separatist threat to national unity, reproducing earlier statist narratives that prioritize elite-driven transition over negotiated autonomy and pluralism. Rojava representatives remain excluded from constitutional negotiations, reflecting a broader regional consensus against non-state democratic models.
Dr. Shahriari also examined the role of global realpolitik in reinforcing this marginalization. She pointed to Western selective engagement and recalibration, particularly the European Union’s decision to provide substantial financial support to Syria’s transitional authorities despite ongoing concerns about their origins and human rights practices. Such policies, she argued, reflect a hollowing out of democratic commitments in favor of geopolitical stability, state-centric sovereignty, and security governance. In this context, Rojava’s exclusion should be read not as a local failure, but as a symptom of the global democratic recession.
In concluding, Dr. Shahriari framed Rojava as a critical test case for the future of democracy. Its endurance demonstrates that popular sovereignty can be institutionalized through feminist, horizontal, and non-statist forms of governance, even under conditions of extreme repression. At the same time, its marginalization exposes the narrowing boundaries of what is considered “acceptable” democracy in the contemporary international order. Rojava, she argued, not only challenges authoritarianism in the Middle East, but compels a deeper rethinking of democracy itself—beyond the nation-state, beyond patriarchy, and beyond the limits imposed by global realpolitik.
Ecem Nazlı Üçok: “Feminist Diaspora Activism from Poland and Turkey: Resisting Authoritarianism, Anti-Gender Politics, and Reimagining Transnational Solidarity in Exile”
Ecem Nazlı Üçok is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University in Prague.
PhD candidate Ecem Nazlı Üçok presented a theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis of feminist diasporic activism emerging from Poland and Turkey in response to authoritarianism and transnational anti-gender politics. Drawing on her ongoing doctoral research, Üçok framed her presentation around the concept of “feminist diaspora activism” and explored how feminist activists in exile resist authoritarian regimes, challenge anti-gender ideologies, and reimagine transnational solidarity beyond the confines of the nation-state.
Üçok began by outlining the conceptual and methodological foundations of her research. Inspired by Zapatista thought and decolonial feminist theory, she positioned her work within a broader inquiry into how marginalized groups generate new political imaginaries when existing political systems no longer serve them. Rather than treating exile and migration solely as experiences of loss or displacement, her research conceptualizes feminist diasporic spaces as generative sites where new forms of political subjectivity, solidarity, and democratic practice are actively produced.
The research adopts a comparative framework, focusing on Poland and Turkey—two countries that, despite significant differences in historical trajectories, religious contexts, and institutional settings, share striking similarities in the rise of right-wing populism and state-led anti-gender politics. Üçok argued that existing scholarship has tended to examine anti-gender movements within nationally bounded frameworks, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, while parallel developments in regions such as Turkey are often analyzed in isolation. Her research seeks to bridge this gap by bringing Poland and Turkey into conversation, demonstrating that anti-gender politics operate transnationally through shared narratives, strategies, and moral panics.
A central argument of the presentation was that local political actors in both Poland and Turkey are not passive recipients of transnational anti-gender discourses imported from elsewhere. Instead, they actively produce, adapt, and circulate these narratives, positioning “gender ideology” as an existential threat to the nation, family, and children. In Poland, Üçok noted, gender has been framed by right-wing elites as a force more dangerous than communism, while homosexuality has been depicted as a civilizational threat. Similarly, in Turkey, anti-gender rhetoric has been articulated through a fusion of nationalist and Islamic discourses, portraying feminism and LGBTQ+ rights as Western impositions incompatible with Turkish and religious values.
Üçok emphasized the symbolic power of family-oriented policies in both contexts. Despite Poland’s Catholic identity and Turkey’s secular–Islamic framework, governing elites in both countries have mobilized the family as a moral anchor to legitimize authoritarian governance and suppress dissent. She highlighted key moments such as Poland’s tightening of abortion laws and both countries’ withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, arguing that these developments illustrate how moral panic travels across borders and reinforces populist authoritarian agendas. The temporal overlap of elections in Poland and Turkey further underscored the uneven but persistent nature of right-wing populism, even when electoral outcomes diverge.
Methodologically, Üçok’s research is rooted in feminist qualitative approaches. She conducted in-depth life-history interviews with feminist activists who migrated from Poland and Turkey to various European countries due to political repression and anti-gender policies. These interviews explored activists’ pre-migration political identities, experiences of repression, and post-migration transformations. In a second research phase, Üçok organized visual focus groups that brought together Polish and Turkish feminist diaspora activists, enabling a comparative analysis of post-migrant activism and transnational solidarity practices.
A key analytical lens employed in the research is the concept of “prefigurative politics.” Üçok used this framework to examine how feminist diaspora activists do not merely resist authoritarian regimes from afar, but actively embody the social and political values they wish to see realized in the future through their everyday organizing. In exile, activism becomes not only oppositional but also constructive—centered on care, mutual support, horizontal decision-making, and inclusive community-building.
Üçok’s findings highlighted the emotional and political dislocation experienced by activists following migration. Many participants described a sense of losing their political voice or feeling distanced from the political life of their host societies. However, this rupture did not result in passivity. Instead, it prompted the creation of new activist collectives and feminist diaspora networks across countries such as Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the Czech Republic. These spaces allowed activists to reconstruct political belonging outside national frameworks and to develop what Üçok described as a “politics of space”—a form of activism that prioritizes embodied presence, visibility, and affective connection over formal institutional engagement.
Visual protest practices played a particularly important role in these diasporic spaces. Üçok presented examples of performative demonstrations, symbolic imagery, and creative interventions staged in front of embassies and public institutions. These acts served multiple purposes: drawing attention to gender-based violence and authoritarian repression in home countries, confronting European audiences with the transnational nature of anti-gender politics, and fostering collective healing and solidarity among activists themselves. While emotionally demanding, these practices enabled feminist diasporas to transform vulnerability into political agency.
Üçok also underscored the intersectional challenges faced by feminist activists in exile. Gendered political identities were compounded by migrant status, producing layered experiences of marginalization and emotional strain. Yet, these intersecting identities also facilitated new alliances and solidarities across national and cultural boundaries. Drawing on Edward Said’s reflections on exile, Üçok framed diasporic activism not only as oppositional but as deeply generative—capable of producing new forms of belonging, care, and political imagination.
In concluding, Üçok argued that feminist diasporic activism from Poland and Turkey illustrates a broader politics of possibility in authoritarian times. Migration, while often forced and traumatic, can enable the reconfiguration of democratic practice beyond the nation-state and normative citizenship frameworks. Rather than viewing activism solely as resistance, her research emphasizes everyday practices of solidarity, mutual care, and community-building as essential components of democratic resilience. Through these transnational feminist networks, exile becomes not an endpoint, but a space for reimagining democracy, plurality, and collective life under conditions of global authoritarian resurgence.
Discussants’ Feedback Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois
Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois is a sociologist based at the University of Helsinki.
Serving as discussant for the session, Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois offered a wide-ranging and incisive set of reflections that situated the four presentations within the broader global moment of democratic fragility. She opened by emphasizing the particular timeliness of the session, noting that democratic resilience is no longer a question confined to protecting democracy “elsewhere,” but one that increasingly concerns established and powerful democracies themselves. In this context, resilience must be understood not simply as a defensive response to external authoritarian threats, but as a concept deeply entangled with how democracy is reshaped, strained, and hollowed out from within.
Across the panel’s diverse empirical settings—market democracies, local institutions, revolutionary experiments, and diasporic activism—Dr. Bauvois observed that resilience was consistently presented not as a straightforward remedy to democratic decline, but as an ambivalent and politically charged concept. While resilience can protect democratic practices, it can also normalize crisis, reproduce inequality, and shift the burdens of democratic maintenance onto specific groups. She identified this critical treatment of resilience, rather than its celebration, as one of the session’s central intellectual contributions.
Turning first to Dr. Peter Rogers’s presentation, Dr. Bauvois praised his conceptualization of resilience as a polysemic and “travelling” concept. Rather than attempting to impose a fixed definition, the paper illuminated how resilience derives its political power precisely from its multiplicity of meanings. This, she suggested, raised an important methodological challenge: how to operationalize resilience analytically without flattening its conceptual richness. She was particularly struck by the idea of resilience as an emergent institution of contemporary democracy—an insight that moves beyond seeing resilience as merely reactive and instead positions it as something that actively structures democratic expectations, behaviors, and norms.
At the same time, Dr. Bauvois raised a series of critical questions about the institutionalization of resilience. If resilience becomes an expectation rather than a choice, she warned, it risks functioning as a mechanism through which citizens are asked to endlessly adapt to crisis rather than challenge its structural causes. She asked who ultimately bears responsibility for maintaining democratic resilience—the citizenry, the state, or political elites—and whether the discourse of resilience could be appropriated to claim democratic robustness even as rights, participation, and accountability quietly erode.
Engaging with Dr. Pierre Camus’s paper on the training of local elected officials in France, Dr. Bauvois highlighted its strength in translating abstract debates about resilience into a concrete, empirically grounded paradox. Training programs, she noted, are officially framed as tools to democratize access to political office and “re-enchant” local democracy. Yet, as Dr. Camus demonstrated, they simultaneously reinforce the idea that politics requires specialized expertise accessible only to certain actors endowed with specific forms of capital. In this sense, training functions as a form of institutional resilience that stabilizes local governance, but potentially at the cost of representativeness. While narrowing gaps in technical competence, it widens the symbolic distance between elected officials and ordinary citizens.
Dr. Bauvois posed a provocative question arising from this paradox: what would local democracy look like without such training regimes? Would it become more chaotic, or might it be more inclusive? She also invited reflection on whether alternative, more collective or open forms of political learning could strengthen democratic resilience without reinforcing political elitism—both in France and in other democratic contexts.
Dr. Bauvois then turned to Dr. Soheila Shahriari’s analysis of Rojava, which she described as productively unsettling many conventional assumptions about democracy and resilience. She emphasized how the Rojava case reframed resilience not as institutional continuity, but as collective survival and feminist transformation under conditions of extreme precarity. Democracy, in this account, is not safeguarded by stable state structures but lived through everyday practices of care, participation, and horizontal governance. Dr. Bauvois underscored the importance of Dr. Shahriari’s critique of Western “selective solidarity,” whereby democratic values are rhetorically endorsed but abandoned when supporting non-state or radical democratic actors becomes geopolitically inconvenient.
This led her to pose challenging theoretical questions: What are the minimum conditions for democracy? Can democratic resilience persist without state sovereignty, security guarantees, or international recognition? And how should democratic theory account for forms of resilience that are inseparable from permanent geopolitical threat?
Finally, commenting on the presentation by Ecem Nazlı Üçok, Dr. Bauvois highlighted the paper’s contribution in shifting attention to transnational and diasporic spaces of democratic practice. She commended its framing of exile not only as loss, but as a site of political possibility where agency is recomposed through care, solidarity, and prefigurative politics. At the same time, she suggested that the analytical clarity of the paper could be sharpened by harmonizing its use of overlapping terms such as “far-right,” “neo-fascist,” “conservative,” and “right-wing populist.” She also raised questions about the relationship between feminist diasporic activism and other struggles in exile, including labor rights, anti-racist mobilization, and migrant justice, asking whether feminist frameworks offer a transferable model of resilience for broader political movements.
In closing, Dr. Bauvois posed three overarching questions that cut across all four papers: Is resilience always democratic, or can it merely enable system survival without renewal? Who bears the costs of resilience, particularly given its reliance on the labor of women and grassroots actors? And finally, is resilience ultimately conservative—helping democracies endure as they are—or transformative, opening pathways toward fundamentally different democratic futures? These questions, she concluded, provided a powerful agenda for further discussion and comparative inquiry.
Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano
Gabriel Bayarri Toscano is an Assistant Professor, Department of Audiovisual Communication, Rey Juan Carlos University.
In his role as discussant, Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano offered a conceptually rich and politically attuned commentary that framed the four papers within what he described as the current “populist moment”—a period marked by crisis-driven politics, accelerated decision-making, and what he evocatively termed a form of global political “carnivalism.” Referring to contemporary manifestations of Trumpism and its symbolic excesses, Dr. Bayarri Toscano suggested that this broader context makes the question of democratic resilience not only urgent but analytically indispensable.
He opened by noting that, despite their diverse empirical settings, all four papers converged on a shared concern: how democratic practices, institutions, and movements endure, adapt, and are reinvented under sustained authoritarian pressure. Rather than treating resilience as simple endurance, he proposed a broader interpretive frame in which resilience is intimately tied to democracy’s relationship with time, legitimacy, and hope.
Dr. Bayarri Toscano argued that authoritarian and populist politics thrive on speed and simplification. They promise rapid solutions, depict procedures as weaknesses, and frame checks and balances as obstacles. Democracy, by contrast, operates through slower rhythms—deliberation, accountability, and incremental change. This temporal gap, he suggested, has profound political consequences. Leaders often fear the “charisma cost” of admitting that democratic reform takes time. Instead, they sustain political momentum through permanent crisis, keeping publics emotionally engaged while postponing tangible improvements. In this sense, the news cycle becomes a sequence of shocks, not merely reporting events but actively producing urgency and distraction.
Within this framework, resilience becomes deeply future-oriented. Dr. Bayarri Toscano observed that many citizens, especially those facing precarious work, high rents, and weakened public services, attach hope to technoutopian promises—innovation, artificial intelligence, growth, and prosperity perpetually “just around the corner.” When democratic projects fail to translate such future-oriented narratives into material improvements, authoritarian shortcuts can begin to appear effective. Resilience, he suggested, thus operates at the intersection of hope deferred and legitimacy strained.
He also emphasized that resilience is shaped by global power asymmetries and what he termed “colonial conditions of meaning.” In fragmented institutional settings—drawing in particular on examples from Latin America—governance often becomes more vertical and hierarchical. Citizens experience policy as something done to them rather than built with them. In such contexts, resilience risks becoming a language that masks domination rather than enabling participation.
Turning to Dr. Peter Rogers’s paper, Dr. Bayarri Toscano praised its treatment of resilience as a polysemic concept and as an emerging institutional norm within contemporary democracies. He found this move analytically powerful, as it revealed how resilience shifts from description to expectation, and ultimately to moral obligation. In market democracies, resilience can become a demand placed on citizens: adapt, cope, remain flexible. The danger, he warned, is that this discourse hides structural insecurity and reframes endurance in the face of precarity as personal strength rather than systemic failure. In crisis-driven political environments, resilience may slide into a form of “managed survival,” normalizing insecurity rather than transforming it. His guiding question to Dr. Rogers asked how one might distinguish analytically between resilience that is genuinely transformative and resilience that merely institutionalizes lowered expectations.
Engaging with Dr. Pierre Camus’s presentation, Dr. Bayarri Toscano highlighted the paradox at the heart of training local elected officials. While designed to open politics and renew local democracy, training can unintentionally reinforce specialization and widen the distance between representatives and citizens. He linked this to a broader Bonapartist tendency in contemporary politics, where legitimacy increasingly derives from competence, executive know-how, and administrative mastery. Training risks signaling that politics is a technical profession requiring certification, thereby narrowing democratic imagination. His question to Camus focused on whether alternative training designs might simultaneously build competence and democratic closeness, rather than reinforcing vertical authority.
Dr. Bayarri Toscano then turned to Dr. Soheila Shahriari’s paper on Rojava, which he described as a crucial shift in perspective. Here, resilience is not about preserving stable liberal institutions but about the everyday production of democratic life under conditions of war, embargo, and geopolitical abandonment. He emphasized the international dimension of democratic decline, noting how Western states may rhetorically support democratic experiments like Rojava while abandoning them when strategic costs rise. His question centered on what concrete forms of international support and responsibility are necessary for such projects to sustain democratic life over time.
Finally, commenting on Ecem Nazlı Üçok’s work, Dr. Bayarri Toscano underscored its contribution in conceptualizing resilience through transnational feminist activism in exile. He highlighted the importance of care infrastructures, solidarity networks, and political practices formed in host societies. At the same time, he raised concerns about the digital infrastructures on which diaspora activism often relies, pointing to trade-offs between visibility and safety amid risks of surveillance and transnational repression. His guiding question asked which practices—formal organizations, informal networks, or care-based relations—most effectively sustain solidarity over time in exile.
In closing, Dr. Bayarri Toscano posed a unifying question for the panel: where is the line between resilience as democratic persistence and resilience as accommodation that quietly reshapes democracy itself? Identifying the first signs of this slide, he suggested, is essential for understanding not only how democracies survive authoritarian pressure, but whether they emerge transformed—or diminished—in the process.
Questions by Participants
The questions raised by participants extended the panel’s discussion by probing the conceptual boundaries of democracy and the political–economic alternatives emerging amid global democratic decline.
Fatima Zahra Ouhmaida, drawing on her background in gender studies, reflected on Dr. Soheila Shahriari’s analysis of Rojava as a feminist and horizontal democratic experiment operating beyond the nation-state. She observed that in contexts such as Morocco, debates on democratic reform and women’s rights remain largely confined within state-centered and institutional frameworks. Rojava, by contrast, revealed how democracy could be imagined as a practice rooted in collective decision-making rather than state authority or international recognition. Her question asked whether projects like Rojava are marginalized primarily because they confront authoritarian power or because they challenge the dominant, state-centric model of democracy itself. She further questioned whether similar feminist and participatory models could emerge within relatively stable states without being framed as existential threats to political order.
Dr. Bülent Keneş addressed Dr. Peter Rogers with a broader political–economic concern, focusing on the global “market” of political systems. He noted that inequalities and distributive failures within liberal market economies are increasingly exploited by far-right and populist actors, and occasionally by left-populist movements as well. In this context, Keneş questioned the growing appeal of “state capitalism” as a purported remedy to democratic deficits and backsliding, particularly following the perceived effectiveness of China’s model during the COVID-19 period. While expressing skepticism toward state capitalism, he asked what critical arguments scholars should advance against it and what democratic dangers might arise from promoting such a model as an alternative to liberal democracy.
Responses by Presenters
Dr. Soheila Shahriari
In her response to the comments and questions raised by discussants and participants, Dr. Soheila Shahriari offered a sobering and deeply critical reflection on the structural conditions that marginalize Rojava’s experiment in feminist radical democracy. She reiterated that Rojava should not be understood as an improvised outcome of Syria’s state collapse, but as the institutional realization of democratic confederalism—an ideology theorized by Abdullah Öcalan over several decades and practiced in various forms long before 2012. As such, Rojava represents a sustained, bottom-up model of governance grounded in pluralism, gender equality, ecological principles, and collective self-administration.
Dr. Shahriari emphasized that what ultimately renders Rojava illegible—and expendable—within the international system is precisely this radical departure from the nation-state model. In international relations, she noted, the nation-state remains the dominant unit of analysis, leaving little conceptual or political space for non-state democratic actors. Rojava’s existence as a feminist, non-state democratic entity challenges this foundational assumption, making it structurally incompatible with prevailing geopolitical logics.
She traced this contradiction through Western engagement with Rojava during the battle against ISIS. At the height of the Kobani resistance, Kurdish women fighters were widely celebrated in international media as symbols of freedom and emancipation. Yet, once the immediate strategic threat of ISIS receded, this rhetorical support evaporated. Dr. Shahriari argued that the subsequent Turkish invasions of Rojava in 2018 and 2019—and the ongoing pressure following the post-2024 Syrian transition under Ahmad al-Shara—have unfolded amid striking Western indifference. The same actors once framed as allies were effectively abandoned once they ceased to serve short-term strategic interests.
Responding directly to questions about democratic resilience, Dr. Shahriari identified civil society—particularly women and feminist actors—as those who shoulder the burden of resilience in Rojava. This resilience, she argued, is transformative in intent but tragically constrained by the absence of any meaningful balance of power, whether militarily or institutionally. Under such conditions, resilience becomes an act of survival rather than a pathway to sustainable democratic consolidation.
Addressing calls for concrete forms of international support, Dr. Shahriari expressed deep skepticism about the adequacy of existing measures such as petitions or symbolic political pressure. While not dismissing these actions entirely, she questioned whether they are remotely sufficient to halt ongoing violence, rising death tolls, and the systematic marginalization of Kurdish-led democratic forces. She concluded by leaving the audience with an unresolved but pressing question: in the face of persistent war and geopolitical abandonment, what forms of solidarity and intervention can genuinely protect radical democratic experiments like Rojava from extinction?
Dr. Peter Rogers
In his response to the discussants’ interventions and participants’ questions, Dr. Peter Rogers framed the debate on resilience within what he described as an emerging era of political realism and pragmatic recalibration. Acknowledging the breadth of the comments, he focused particularly on the question raised about state capitalism and the shifting responsibilities between markets, states, and citizens.
Dr. Rogers argued that the relocation of resilience from the state to the individual has already produced new and often troubling market formations, including what he termed “disaster capitalism.” In this context, market forces increasingly step into domains once associated with public protection, not to safeguard collective welfare, but to extract profit from crisis. This trend, he suggested, reflects a broader and ongoing retreat of the welfare state, as public investment is redirected toward security while resilience-building is increasingly outsourced to private actors, philanthropic foundations, and think tanks.
Rather than framing this shift in purely pessimistic terms, Dr. Rogers urged attention to the evolving metrics through which resilience is evaluated. Drawing on examples from global policy forums, he emphasized the growing importance of redefining “return on investment” beyond narrow fiscal calculations. For resilience to be democratically meaningful, he argued, its success must be measured not only in economic terms but also through moral and social outcomes—particularly the strengthening of social connectivity and collective capacity.
Central to his response was the concept of social capital as a bridge between market logic and democratic resilience. Social capital, he noted, has become an increasingly influential indicator precisely because it translates communal bonds and trust into measurable outcomes legible to policymakers. Investments in social cohesion and networks of solidarity thus offer a language through which collective resilience can be defended within pragmatic governance frameworks.
Dr. Rogers also addressed concerns that resilience discourse risks becoming a moral injunction that normalizes precarity. While acknowledging this danger, he posed a provocative counterpoint: in societies marked by declining welfare provision and weakened collective institutions, citizens may need to reclaim a more active role in shaping democratic life. Individual responsibility, in this sense, should not replace structural accountability but serve as a catalyst for renewed collective engagement against authoritarian and populist pressures.
Finally, Dr. Rogers returned to his core argument that resilience is an inherently polysemic concept. Its meaning, he stressed, shifts across institutional and professional contexts—from emergency responders to security planners to democratic activists. Recognizing these divergent interpretations is not a weakness but a prerequisite for meaningful dialogue. Only by understanding which form of resilience is at stake, he concluded, can scholars and practitioners remain relevant to the political and ethical challenges of democratic survival today.
Dr. Pierre Camus
In his response to the discussants’ comments and participants’ questions, Dr. Pierre Camus addressed the democratic tensions underlying the training of local elected officials, situating the French case within a broader historical and institutional perspective. He began by recalling that, historically, political training in France was largely embedded within political parties—particularly socialist and revolutionary socialist organizations—which played a central role in socializing activists and future officeholders into political skills, ideological frameworks, and the practical workings of government.
In contrast, Dr. Camus noted that contemporary training rights are now framed as individual entitlements rather than collective political processes. In practice, access to training depends heavily on personal resources, time availability, employer cooperation, and institutional position. As a result, training programs often reproduce existing social and political inequalities instead of mitigating them. This dynamic reflects a deeper democratic tension between competence and citizenship: while citizenship is formally treated as sufficient for political participation, competence increasingly operates as an informal prerequisite.
Dr. Camus emphasized that local authorities tend to remain largely passive in overseeing how training rights are implemented and who effectively benefits from them. This regulatory gap allows inequalities to persist, particularly disadvantaging elected officials from working-class backgrounds, small municipalities, or those whose employers restrict time off for political duties. Although he stressed that the current framework is preferable to the absence of training altogether, he argued that its symbolic character limits its democratizing potential.
Responding to questions about alternative models, Dr. Camus highlighted the example of the Australian state of Victoria, where political training is structured in three stages: mandatory pre-nomination training for candidates, compulsory induction for newly elected officials, and ongoing training during the mandate. This model, he argued, “de-enclaves” political competence by circulating basic democratic knowledge before electoral selection, thereby reducing the divide between representatives and citizens.
However, he concluded that such a model remains politically difficult to implement in France, where mandatory training is widely perceived as an illegitimate barrier to candidacy and a threat to the republican ideal that citizenship alone should suffice for political participation.
Ecem Nazlı Üçok
In her response to the comments and questions raised by the discussants and participants, PhD candidate Ecem Nazlı Üçok offered a reflective clarification of her conceptual approach to democratic resilience, transnational solidarity, and feminist diasporic activism. She began by expressing appreciation for the feedback and emphasized her intention to briefly synthesize the main issues rather than extend the discussion.
Üçok directly engaged with questions concerning the limits and sustainability of coalitions and solidarities, particularly those raised by the discussants. She challenged linear and teleological understandings of resistance and resilience that assume a steady progression toward long-term salvation or political resolution. Instead, she highlighted how the activists she studies are acutely aware of the temporality of solidarity. Many of the solidaristic formations she observed are intentionally short-lived, event-based, or situational rather than permanent structures.
For Üçok, the political significance of these formations lies not in their durability but in their capacity to create ruptures within dominant systems. These moments of collective action—however fleeting—allow participants to recognize shared moral frameworks, alternative ways of thinking, and the existence of parallel political imaginaries. In this sense, solidarity functions as a space of recognition and affirmation, even when it does not crystallize into lasting institutions.
Responding to questions about tactics and intersections with other struggles, Üçok emphasized the diversity and creativity of activist practices. She described how feminist diasporic groups intersect with labor rights, migrant rights, and broader political struggles through informal, grassroots initiatives. Examples included the creation of listening spaces centered on protest music, community-based support networks for migrant women from different countries, and hands-on solidarity practices embedded in everyday life.
She also underscored the importance of digital spaces as key infrastructures for sustaining transnational connections, visibility, and care. Üçok concluded by reiterating that resilience, in her research, is not solely about endurance but about creating alternative political spaces—however temporary—that enable new forms of belonging, care, and collective imagination.
Conclusion
Session 10 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series offered a nuanced and theoretically rich examination of democratic resilience at a moment when authoritarian pressures increasingly operate through gradual, normalized, and often legally sanctioned practices. Across diverse empirical contexts—from market democracies and local governance structures to revolutionary self-administration and diasporic feminist activism—the session underscored that resilience is neither a neutral concept nor an unambiguously democratic good. Rather, it is a contested political terrain shaped by power relations, institutional design, and the uneven distribution of social and moral burdens.
A key takeaway from the session was the ambivalence of resilience. As several contributions demonstrated, resilience can function as a mode of democratic defense and innovation, but it can also legitimize adaptation to structural injustice, shift responsibility from institutions to individuals, and normalize permanent crisis. Whether resilience becomes transformative or merely adaptive depends on who defines it, who enacts it, and who bears its costs. The presentations collectively challenged celebratory narratives by insisting on the need to interrogate resilience as an emerging norm of governance, citizenship, and political expectation.
At the same time, the session highlighted sites of democratic possibility. Feminist self-administration in Rojava and transnational diaspora activism illustrated how resilience can be grounded in care, solidarity, and prefigurative practice, expanding democratic imagination beyond state-centric and procedural models. These cases also exposed the limits of international democratic commitment, particularly when radical or non-state forms of democracy clash with prevailing geopolitical logics.
Taken together, Session 10 reaffirmed ECPS’s commitment to critical, comparative inquiry into populism and democratic decline. It concluded not with a singular prescription, but with an agenda of questions—about responsibility, transformation, and democratic futures—that remain essential for scholars, decisionmakers, practitioners, and citizens confronting authoritarian times.
Please cite as: Riddervold, Marianne; Rosén, Guri & Greenberg, Jessica R. (2026). “Introduction.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00121
This report examines how the resurgence of right-wing populism—most visibly under Donald Trump’s second presidency—reshapes the foundations of transatlantic relations. Moving beyond short-term diplomatic disputes, the authors argue that domestic polarization and illiberal democratic trends now pose the most serious long-term threat to EU–US cooperation. Anchored in the four liberal pillars of the Atlantic order—security, trade, international institutions, and democratic values—the analysis shows how populist governance undermines shared norms, weakens multilateralism, and destabilizes trust. The report concludes with policy options for the EU, emphasizing strategic adaptation without abandoning the liberal principles that have long sustained the transatlantic alliance.
Several years ago, John Peterson (2018, 647) wrote that
the future of US–European relations and the liberal international order depend less than we might expect on what the US or Europe do to invest in their alliance or in foreign policy more generally. What really matters is domestic democratic politics in Europe and America.
Donald Trump’s return to the presidency in January 2025, together with the consequential shifts in United States (US) foreign policy, makes Peterson’s claim appear well-founded. We are now witnessing nothing short of a deep and potentially durable rift between the European Union (EU) and the US.
With weakening transatlantic relations, broader geopolitical uncertainties and war on the European continent, the EU must navigate simultaneous internal strains and external pressure. The increasing support for radical right parties across Europe and their influence on EU institutions and domestic agendas make it more challenging for the EU to unify and present a cohesive front in response to Trump’s attempt to destabilize the transatlantic alliance. The EU faces new challenges that are the consequence of Trump’s policies in defence, trade and his undermining of international institutions, democratic norms and the rule of law. At the international level, the EU’s goal to be a global leader in promoting democracy, human rights and international law both in its immediate vicinity and globally requires proactive and strategic actions to defend and enhance the current liberal order. With Trump’s return to the presidency, EU leaders must reevaluate transatlantic relations and recalibrate EU policy to mitigate risks from shifts in US foreign policy.
This report assesses how changes in US foreign policy under a right-wing populist president affect the EU–US relationship and offers concrete policy recommendations on pressing issues. Focusing on the links between foreign-policy shifts, domestic polarization and antiliberal democratic trends, the report examines how domestic dynamics may constitute the most severe long-term challenge to transatlantic cooperation. It also evaluates specific policy challenges and opportunities for strengthening that cooperation in the years ahead.
‘Transatlantic relations’ is a broad concept that refers to the historic, economic, strategic, cultural, political and social relations that exist between countries in North America and Europe. A key feature of international relations since the end of the Second World War, we here define it as the overall set of relations between the EU and the United States, ‘within the broader framework of the institutional and other connections maintained via NATO and other institutions’ (Smith 2018, 539). After several decades of close cooperation, no other regions in the world have such strong ties as North America and Europe. Transatlantic cooperation is a cornerstone of the United States-originated post-war liberal order, which originated from the liberal idea that democracy, human rights, liberalized trade and active participation in international institutions produce economic gains and advance stability, peace and human dignity. The transatlantic relationship emerged as a security alliance under American leadership, established to protect Europe from the Soviet Union. Its continuing relevance after the Cold War has been driven primarily by the shared values, identities and strategic outlooks that have united its members (Schimmelfennig 2012). Despite differences in specific policy issues, a core set of shared liberal values was always at the heart of this relationship. Risse (2016), for instance, describes the transatlantic relationship as a security community – one grounded not only in common strategic and economic interests, but also in shared liberal ideas. Ikenberry (2008; 2018) similarly frames the transatlantic relationship as the ‘Atlantic Political Order’, a security community that moved beyond its defence origins to rest on liberal tenets, free trade and cooperation through multilateral institutions within and outside the United Nations (UN) system (Riddervold and Newsome 2018, 2022; Risse 2012; Smith et al. 2024).
For West, and later most European nations, the Atlantic order provided a framework within which liberal democracies could secure greater protection and influence, and a framework within which the European integration project could evolve. Being part of this liberal hegemonic system meant integration into a comprehensive network of economic, political, and security institutions (Tocci and Alcaro 2012; Riddervold and Bolstad 2026; Smith et al. 2024). The relationship with the United States has thus been central to European states’ foreign policies, just as ties with Europe have long been a core element of US international strategy.
While there have always been disagreements both over values and interests in the transatlantic relationship, we seem to have reached a point where this contestation does not just affect domestic developments, but also the very basis of the transatlantic relationship itself (Riddervold and Bolstad 2026). There is no longer a clear consensus that European and US markets and political institutions are bound together by common goals and interests. Trump is withdrawing from international cooperation in the UN. In the realm of security, he has cast doubt on American security guarantees in NATO and its commitment to come to the aid of its European allies in the event of an external attack. In trade, the administration’s focus has been more on tariffs and trade restrictions than on the need to uphold global and transatlantic free trade and strong relations. And not least, as the US National Security Strategy of December 2025 clearly illustrates, the deepening transatlantic divide is fundamentally rooted in a clash of values between Trump’s America and the EU. This illustrates the growing value divide between the two partners and risks undermining the liberal basis of the different pillars on which transatlantic relations have rested and thus the transatlantic relationship writ large (Riddervold and Bolstad 2026). Viewed together, these developments mean the transatlantic relationship is at a critical crossroads, where substantive shifts are more probable now than continued adherence to long-standing institutional collaboration and norms (Jones 2025).
By exploring developments in US foreign policies and how these are linked to domestic polarization and antiliberal democratic ideas, chapters in this report shed light on how this domestic factor poses a severe challenge to the transatlantic relationship. Authors focus on how the rise of right-wing populism – with an increasing portion of the population resisting globalization, international institutions, free trade and even democratic values on both sides of the Atlantic (e.g., de Vries et al., 2021; Mansfield et al., 2021; Rogowski et al., 2021; Walter, 2021) – affects the transatlantic relationship. After all, ‘the futures of the liberal order, transatlantic alliance and western democratic politics are inextricably bound together’ (Peterson 2018, 638).
To gain a comprehensive understanding of how US policies under Trump affect EU–US relations, we draw on Ikenberry (2008, 2018) to distinguish between four liberal pillars on which the transatlantic relationship has rested: security, trade, international institutions and democratic values. The report is organized accordingly and is composed of four main parts that each start with a chapter giving a broader historical overview of developments in the domain, followed by three case studies of how US policies now affect the transatlantic relationship. To systematize the changes we observe, we distinguish between three possible scenarios that are discussed in the different chapters: that transatlantic relations are breaking apart due to domestic polarization and/or structural geopolitical changes, that they will muddle through due to ongoing changes based on functional cooperation, networks and interdependencies; or that we in fact over time, despite current challenges, may be witnessing a change towards a different and redefined but stronger relationship (Tocci and Alcaro 2012); Riddervold, Trondal and Newsome 2021).
Framework: The Four Pillars of Transatlantic Relations
Drawing on Ikenberry (2008, 2018), the ‘Atlantic Political Order’ has been built on four foundational, interlinked pillars established under US liberal hegemony: security alliances, trade and finance, common institutions and rules, as well as shared democratic, liberal norms.
Ikenberry identifies two mutually beneficial bargains that have underpinned the transatlantic relationship. The ‘realist bargain’ involved the United States using its military strength to support its European (and other) allies, with Europe agreeing to subsume a US-led system. This bargain was institutionalized through NATO and numerous bilateral security agreements between the United States and its Western allies. The ‘liberal bargain’ involved Europe accepting US leadership in exchange for security protection, access to US markets, technology and resources within an open world economy, amongst other things, resulting in a strong trade and financial relationship.
While security and trade form the first two pillars, the transatlantic relationship has also formed the core of what is often called the multilateral system, meaning international cooperation within the UN and other international organizations built under US leadership after the Second World War. Ruggie (1982) referred to key parts of this system as ‘embedded liberalism’, where economic liberalism was integrated into a managed global economy, giving governments greater control over trade and economic openness. Institutions designed to support this framework aimed to reinforce cooperation, while strengthening US ties with its post-war partners and reducing concerns about domination and abandonment. Over time, this rules-based order expanded beyond monetary and trade cooperation to cover security, development, health and, more recently, global challenges such as climate change, with states increasingly relying on multilateral frameworks for coordinated action (Zürn 2018). Multilateral cooperation and institutions have also been so central to the EU that it is described as part of the ‘EU’s DNA’ (Smith 2011).
Lastly, while focused on security and trade, the transatlantic relationship has, as discussed above, had a liberal value-based core, extending beyond economic and strategic cooperation and institutional rules and institutions to also include broader commitments to democracy and human rights. While the order’s principles, like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ and post-war multilateralism, were framed as universal, its structure was shaped by Cold War realities and centred on the United States and its democratic allies. Initially focused on Western Europe and Japan, the community of democracies expanded after the Cold War to include a larger and more diverse group of nations. While often being accused of double standards and with much variation in their foreign policies, from Wilson to Biden, US presidents before Trump have operated on the belief that democracies possess a unique ability to cooperate due to shared interests and values (Riddervold and Bolstad 2026). This belief reinforced the idea that the ‘free world’ was not merely a temporary alliance against the Soviet Union, but a growing political community united by a common liberal democratic vision. For Europe, the Atlantic order ‘provided a ‘container’ within which liberal democracies could gain greater measures of security, protection and economic prosperity as well. To be inside this liberal hegemonic order was to be positioned inside a set of economic, political and security institutions. It was both a Gesellschaft – a ‘society’ defined by formal rules, institutions and governmental ties – and a Gemeinschaft, a ‘community’ defined by shared values, beliefs and expectations (Ikenberry 2018, 17).
Changes under Trump: Three Possible Scenarios
Across the post-war era, US presidents – despite partisan differences – have consistently prioritized and maintained the transatlantic partnership. Successive administrations from both parties regarded robust NATO alliances, international cooperation and extensive trade links with Europe and other partners as vital to American security and economic prosperity.
With the re-election of Trump in 2024, all four pillars of the relationship are now being challenged. Domestic policies directly and indirectly disturb the shared interests, interdependence, institutions and values that have served to uphold a strong transatlantic relationship (Risse 2016; Riddervold and Newsome 2022; Smith et al 2024). Regarding security interests, Trump is questioning the United States’ commitments to NATO, forcing the EU to step up the game in security and defence. This change, however, also reflects longer-term structural and domestic trends. Indeed, the need to counter China’s global expansionism is one of the few issues where the US political elite, across both parties, agree. American voters also consider China one of the main threats to the United States (Smeltz 2022; Bolstad and Riddervold 2023). Domestically, the view on transatlantic relations is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, Congress continues to be less polarized on foreign policy than on domestic issues, and there are different perspectives on foreign policy within the Republican Party (see Alcaro, this volume). Polls also show a continued, although declining, commitment to NATO and European allies (Smeltz 2022). On the other hand, however, studies suggest that Democrats and Republicans are increasingly divided on whether the United States should focus on domestic problems or continue to support international engagement (Smeltz 2022). The United States’ changing security policies under Trump are also evident in the president’s more aggressive foreign policies and his apparent willingness to use the United States’ might to enforce American interests, also vis-à-vis its traditional allies.
Weak informal ties also make the transatlantic relationship vulnerable to changing US administrations. Despite close cooperation for decades, the transatlantic relationship rests on rather few formal institutional ties. There is for example no trade agreement between the EU and the United States. As Elsuwege and Szép (2023) note, many networks, in epistemic communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations are essentially informal and political rather than based on formal legal or institutional structures. Hence, although many of these expert communities and diplomatic and other networks may persist under Trump (see Smith, this volume), and as such help stabilize the relationship somewhat, the lack of formal institutions makes the transatlantic relationship more vulnerable to changes introduced by the policy decisions of different administrations. Formal institutions are harder to break and are more consistent and stable over time compared to informal networks, which depend more on the people they consist of. Moreover, Trump and his team have extended the number of administrative positions referred to as political and thus subject to change substantially (Wendling 2024). Over time, this is likely to affect informal transatlantic diplomatic and expert networks.
At the same time, observers argue that the current challenges should not be exaggerated (Tocci and Alcaro 2012). The transatlantic relationship has withstood crises before, such as disagreements following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which at the time was described as the biggest crisis ever facing the transatlantic relationship (Abelson and Brooks 2022). Tocci and Alcaro (2012) even found that the transatlantic relationship has changed and reemerged through periods of stability and crisis, with structural changes, crises and disagreements leading to a renewed relationship between the United States and Europe, rather than to a breakdown or a weakening.
To discuss if and how transatlantic relations are changing under Trump, all our chapters engage with the following three scenarios:
A first scenario suggests that transatlantic relations disintegrate in one or more policy areas, owing to diverging interests and responses to structural geopolitical changes, or to domestic political changes linked to antiglobalization, America First or isolationist sentiments.
A second scenario suggests that the EU–US relationship will be able to muddle through contemporary geopolitical and domestic challenges by undergoing a functional adjustment where cooperation is maintained in policy areas where this is seen as mutually advantageous (Tocci and Alcaro 2012, 15). This adjustment is made possible by factors such as pre-existing interdependencies, networks and institutionalized relations or overlapping interests in issue-specific areas. If these types of agreements are found in many areas, the overall relationship will be stronger than if they are only found in some domains.
A third scenario posits that the transatlantic relationship might even move forward in the face of global uncertainty and common challenges. This scenario could, for example, arise in the face of external shocks, as part of a broader balancing game, and/or because changing global structures and shared challenges reinforce and strengthen existing networks and interdependencies. These new forms of cooperation will be more resilient if they are formally institutionalized. However, it is also possible that convergence in a new and redefined relationship follows populist or right-wing trends, for example, securitization of borders or a shared set of policy approaches intended to weaken liberal values like pluralism, civic freedoms and human rights.
Structure of the Report
Within each section of the report, a background chapter introduces the overarching debate, followed by three case studies focusing on observed changes, policy implications and recommendations for EU responses.
Section 1: Security (Alcaro, Pomorska and Morgenstern-Pomorski, Sus, Wong)
In security, NATO has traditionally served as the alliance’s institutional backbone, but the EU has also increasingly taken on a bigger role, especially after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine (Fiott 2023; Grand 2024; Rieker and Giske 2023). Originally established to deter and, if necessary, defend against Soviet expansionism, NATO’s survival beyond the Cold War was largely due to the common values, identities, and worldviews on which it was founded (Schimmelfennig, 2012). NATO is a trust-based pact whose deterrent power rests on the expectation that Article 5 will be honoured rather than on legal enforcement. Recent US conduct, however, has strained that normative foundation: proposals for a transactional, ‘two-tier’ NATO tied to defence spending and rhetoric about Greenland contribute to undermining the alliance’s values-based solidarity and the liberal principles of sovereignty and self-determination (Riddervold and Bolstad 2026). The clearest manifestation of an eroding liberal consensus and increasing strategic divide is visible in responses to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine: under Biden, the United States acted with Europe to condemn a breach of core international norms and lead a coordinated response grounded in multilateral and human rights arguments (Bosse 2022; Riddervold and Newsome 2022). Three years later, the Trump administration’s posture – advocating neutrality and even entertaining recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and other territorial areas – diverges sharply from the liberal principles that have sustained the transatlantic order since the Second World War.
Section 2: Trade (E. Jones, K. Jones, Poletti, Young)
A second foundational pillar of the transatlantic relationship has been a shared commitment to liberal trade principles, which holds that regulated free trade through rules-based institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), produces mutual economic gains and stabilizing interdependence (Ikenberry 2018; Keohane and Nye 2012). Both the United States and the EU have at times fallen short of these ideals: the EU has long sheltered its agricultural sector, and no comprehensive EU–US trade agreement has materialized despite deep commercial ties (Risse 2016), while public concerns about consumer protection and other values helped derail the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP (de Ville and Siles-Brügge 2016). Rising populism has amplified scepticism toward multilateral bodies such as the WTO and weakened domestic support for trade liberalization (Kerremans 2022). Under Trump’s second administration, protectionist policies, tariff measures and abrupt renegotiations have strained transatlantic trade and regulatory cooperation, undermined trust, and contravened core WTO principles such as the most favoured nation (MFN) principle, whereas the EU continues to champion the WTO and rules-based trade – summed up in the claim that ‘with Europe, what you see is what you get’ (von der Leyen 2025) – producing a widening divergence over economic liberalism and deepening the transatlantic divide.
Section 3: International institutions (Drieskens, Fiorino, Smith, Veggeland)
Right-wing populist, antiglobalization currents on both sides of the Atlantic have increasingly challenged multilateral cooperation and liberal institutions, with the Trump administration providing the clearest political expression of this transatlantic divergence. Under his second term, Trump has initiated a rolling back of American engagement with international bodies – reaffirming withdrawals from the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) and the Paris Agreement, slashing foreign aid as ‘wasteful spending’, and framing multilateral institutions as inefficient, elite-driven constraints on national sovereignty. These moves reflect a broader ideological shift from liberal internationalism toward a sovereignty-first, ‘America First’ posture that casts multilateral commitments as threats to identity and autonomy. At the same time, the EU has become a focal point of populist ire in the US narrative – portrayed as an external extension of domestic liberal opponents (Belin 2024) – so that withdrawals and unilateralism both signal and deepen a growing rupture between US populist politics and the EU’s commitment to global governance.
At the heart of the widening transatlantic divide is a core value conflict between the Trump administration and the EU, where rising illiberal social trends erode the liberal democratic norms that long anchored transatlantic ties. Far-right populists on both sides of the Atlantic are actively critical of democratic and rule of law institutions that were so central to deepening US–European cooperation following the end of the Cold War (Carothers 2007). The US administration’s support has likewise emboldened self-proclaimed ‘illiberal’ leaders in Europe. This approach was starkly visible at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, where Vice President JD Vance echoed populist rhetoric and signalled support for Germany’s ostracized far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), while figures within the administration (and allied private actors) openly backed illiberal parties and attacked democratic institutions and higher education. The administration’s challenges to election legitimacy (e.g., claims about Romania’s 2025 vote), its cuts to federally funded research, its elimination of long-standing programs to support democracy, rule of law and humanitarian assistance, both in and in collaboration with European partners, and its differing approach to regulating misinformation further widened the values gap with Europe. Attacks on US higher education, and cuts to funding for programs that enhance European–US scholarly exchange, undermine scientific collaboration, threaten transatlantic opportunities for innovation and undercut long-standing commitments to citizen diplomacy. Although far-right movements in the United States and Europe vary in context, they share a populist, nativist orientation – what Mudde (2007, 19) describes as an exclusionary ideology hostile to nonnative elements – that reframes democracy as majoritarian rule and rejects liberal protections for minority rights and the rule of law.
Our conclusion sums up key findings and provides recommendations for how the EU should respond to changing transatlantic relations.
(*) Marianne Riddervold is a research professor at Arena, Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo and at the Norwegian Institute of international affairs (NUPI). She is also a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Institute of European studies. Email: mariarid@arena.uio.no
(**) Guri Rosén is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is also a senior researcher at Arena, Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. Email: guri.rosen@stv.uio.no
(***) Jessica Greenberg is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is a political and legal anthropologist, with expertise in the anthropology of Europe, postsocialism, human rights, social movements, revolution, democracy and law. Her most recent book is Justice in the Balance: Democracy, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights (Stanford University Press, 2025). Email: jrgreenb@illinois.edu
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Please cite as: Alcaro, Riccardo. (2026). “Overview and Background: Right-wing Nationalism, Trump and the Future of US-European Relations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00122
Abstract The rise of right-wing populism in Europe and the United States is often seen as a threat to the transatlantic relationship. This movement challenges the internationalist, institutional and liberal principles that have long underpinned US–European ties and sustained American leadership. In the United States, Donald Trump has pushed conservatism toward nationalism and nativism. His administration’s multiple – often conflicting – approaches make both transformation and rupture of the transatlantic bond plausible outcomes. Traditional Republicans still see alliances as tools to contain rivals; MAGA conservatives advocate isolationism and protectionism, and the nativist right envisions a ‘civilizational alliance’ of Christian nation-states in the West opposing liberal internationalism. Trump himself treats alliances as client relationships, rewarding loyalty and punishing defiance. Understanding this interplay of forces is essential to interpreting the volatility of Trump-era policies toward Europe and evaluating their implications for the European Union (EU) and the continent’s security.
Keywords: transatlantic relations; national conservatism; New Right; Trump foreign policy; European strategic autonomy
There is a growing sense amongst experts and policymakers that the transatlantic relationship, as we have come to know it in the 80 years since the Second World War, has run its course (Fahey 2023). In part, transatlantic change reflects broader systemic change, as the United States adapts irregularly but inexorably to a global context in which the centre of geopolitical gravity has shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Equally important, however, is the questioning of the ideational and strategic foundations of the transatlantic relationship in the domestic landscapes of the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe. Hence, while the transatlantic relationship will evolve in light of global structural shifts, the interplay between domestic political dynamics across the ocean will determine its quality and direction (Laderman 2024–25). For Europeans, the stakes are high indeed, given the United States’ role in the defence of Europe and the amplification of European clout in an international system built over decades around the Euro–Atlantic order.
Were political elites in the United States and Europe to forge a new alliance infused with ideational commonalities and grounded in strategic convergence, the relationship could be revived in a different form. Alternatively, ideological affinities may enhance a sense of common belonging across like-minded parties but may be insufficient to provide a platform for structured foreign policy coordination. The transatlantic relationship would thus become a series of arrangements based on the contingent interests of either side. Finally, absent any form of strong transnational ties, the relationship may drift apart, potentially giving way to systemic competition. Intermediate forms of these scenarios of partnership, functional relationship (a way of muddling through where cooperation is issue-contingent) and breaking apart are equally plausible (Alcaro and Tocci 2014). One such form that does not neatly fit into any of these three scenarios is a relationship in which the United States’ hierarchical centrality is reasserted through the weakening and fragmentation of the European side.
The manner in which the relationship adapts to systemic changes is thus being forged in domestic political struggles about the value and relevance of the transatlantic bond, especially in the United States. The main – although not the only – drivers of such political fights are forces that in the 2010s were grouped under the heading of right-wing populism, but which today should be described as distinct instances of national (or nationalist) conservatism. On the rise in a number of European Union (EU) member states, national conservatism has scored massive political victories in the United States, where President Donald Trump has served as its standard-bearer (The Economist 2024).
This introductory chapter briefly explains Trump’s Europe policy in light of the different strands of thought within his administration and his personalistic understanding of power. Next, it recaps how European countries have adjusted. Finally, it draws preliminary conclusions about how national conservatism and Trump’s personalistic hold on power can affect Europe’s domestic debate and choices regarding the transatlantic relationship.
Multifaceted American Conservatism and Europe
In the Trump administration, the Republican Party and the US conservative world at large coexist with different visions of America’s role in the world and the corresponding foreign policy priorities – including with regard to Europe (Dueck 2019). At the risk of oversimplifying, the conservative foreign policy debate breaks down into three broad categories – primacists, conservative realists and civilizational warriors – that define schools of thought conceptually distinct from one another, even if they are not always mutually exclusive in terms of policy options.
The primacists comprise what is left of traditional Republican internationalism (Ruge and Shapiro 2022). The liberal and universalist impetus that once positioned the United States as the leader of the free world and guarantor of the international system – a proposition extended to economic relations through the promotion of unrestrained movement of goods and capital and the globalization of efficiency-based supply chains – has faded. Yet the conviction endures that America’s hegemonic position should be preserved through deep involvement in global affairs (Schake 2024).
From this perspective, alliances and partnerships are essential to augment the United States’ capacity to push back against a coalition of adversaries whose strategic alignment is assumed to be strong and long-term due to their authoritarian regimes and anti-Western orientation: the ‘axis of four’ of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran (as well as their minions like Venezuela) (Kendall-Taylor and Fontaine 2024). Although of lesser importance, international organizations and treaties retain utility insofar as they can be used to promote narratives and policy recipes in line with US interests and thus isolate rivals.
Europe occupies a significant position in this vision because NATO guarantees the continental hegemony of the United States, and the European countries act as a first line of defence against Russia and as a check on Moscow’s ambitions. While important, Europe’s capacity to strengthen its military is not an absolute priority for primacists, as it may, after all, affect the United States’ ability to influence European countries’ foreign policy. It follows that continuous investment of political and military resources in NATO and the defence of Ukraine remains critical to weakening Russia and ensuring European followership (Michta 2024).
Although it no longer enjoys the same degree of public support as it once did, this school of thought retains significant influence within the US foreign policy establishment — particularly among Washington think tanks, conservative media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, senior members of Congress (with Senator Lindsey Graham leading the group of Republican foreign policy hawks), and within the administration itself, where it is represented primarily by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Conservative realists encompass a range of diverse voices united by a common desire to see the United States act upon narrowly defined national interests (Borg 2024). A segment of the public opinion sees US exceptionalism as a national peculiarity that does not need to be exported abroad and favours a limited international role for the United States, largely free of any binding commitments arising from alliances or membership in international institutions. Among foreign policy experts, this strand of thought has its roots in the realist school of International Relations, which appreciates alliances and multilateral regimes insofar as they can help limit the United States’ military exposure.
Those grouped under the conservative realism label tend to agree on certain foreign policy priorities, most notably the need to prevent or contain the emergence of China as a threat to geopolitical balances in East Asia and, potentially, globally too. Still, conservative realism is open to the construction of a multipolar system in which US military might (which remains of paramount importance) works primarily for deterrence and offshore balancing, and the defence of US interests is made more sustainable through the pursuit of stability-oriented arrangements with rival powers (Mearsheimer and Walt 2016).
From this perspective, the notion that allies and partners of the United States may acquire greater autonomy is acceptable inasmuch as they can better guarantee the stability of the geopolitical theatres that have absorbed a disproportionate share of US political and military resources – namely the Middle East and Europe – so that Washington can concentrate more extensively on the Asian front. A more integrated and potentially autonomous EU is less a threat to America’s primacy (to which conservative realists do not have an obsessive attachment) than it is an opportunity to share the burden for continental stability and the containment of Russia (Williams 2025). It is also the best option to reduce the security risks that a downgrading of the United States’ strategic commitment to Europe and its military presence across NATO countries would carry with it (Chivvis 2025).
While still in the minority, this strand of thought has moved beyond academia. It resonates with the inward-looking instincts of the MAGA crowd, but also with the section of the left-wing electorate that has grown weary of what it perceives as American militarism abroad. It has also entered the foreign policy debates inside the Beltway as a regular voice in favour of restraint. However, conservative realism has made little inroads into the administration, even if ‘China prioritizers’ like Undersecretary of Defence Elbridge Colby may be loosely associated with it.
The third category, the civilizational warriors, has its ideological roots in the national conservatism espoused by much of the US new right (Hazony 2022). This strand of thought holds together the forceful reassertion of American absolute sovereignty against any form of long-term international commitment with the conviction that America is the core, engine and apex of Western civilization. Civilizational warriors do not construct the West as an alliance of states bound by shared strategic interests and a common commitment to universalistic values such as human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Rather, they conceive of it as a community of nations from Europe and of European descent linked to one another by history, Christianity (or the Judeo-Christian tradition) and, to some at least, race.
Civilizational warriors see this community as threatened not so much by the authoritarianism and militaristic expansionism of rival powers like Russia. Instead, it is migrants with an alien ethnic, linguistic and religious background and globalist elites promoting open trade, globalized supply chains and the supposedly intolerant and degenerate ‘woke’ ideology that risk subverting Western freedoms, welfare and cultural traditions. This vision is shared, in whole or in part, by sections of the MAGA movement, as well as by tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and has its most prominent reference point in Vice President JD Vance (Lopez 2025).
Europe is both the object of nostalgia and the source of hatred for those holding this view. On the one hand, the EU is deeply resented not just because of its potential to empower its member states, but also because it embodies the set of values that this movement despises most: supranationalism, inclusivity, diversity, and cosmopolitanism (Franke 2025). On the other hand, the European nations are the natural candidates to join the United States in a ‘civilizational alliance’ against migrants and the enemies from within (Samson 2025).
US foreign policy under the second Trump administration comprises elements of these various strands of conservatism, which explains the at times wild oscillations in rhetoric and policy actions on display regarding the Ukraine war and the approach to NATO and Europe’s security in general. While this multiple origin makes US foreign policy look incoherent, another element gives it greater intelligibility – namely, Trump’s understanding of power (Moynihan 2025). The US president sees power as a never-ending exercise in renegotiating relations, in which the stronger side, the United States, uses its vast array of assets – from tariffs to military assistance to investment – to extract ever more concessions (Bertoldi and Buti 2025). He views US alliances and partnerships as a client system in which the US’s burden is diminished, and its advantage is aggressively pursued. Similarly, rival powers are less systemic enemies to be defeated than potential interlocutors for deals in which influence is shared according to each party’s relative power and interests (Feaver 2024).
What makes this combination of extreme transactionalism and penchant for unrestrained sovereignty unique is the construction of the US national interest as inexorably linked to Trump’s personal power, and the ensuing blurring of the line between public and private interests. The elevation of personal ties with Trump, his family and his closest entourage, above formal relations between state institutions, creates incentives for allies, partners and rivals alike to contribute to his political and private fortunes. Governments that do not have to worry excessively about domestic opposition, such as the Arab Gulf dynasties, which have struck multi-billion-dollar deals with the Trump administration (and generously contributed to the financial and crypto ventures of the president’s family), have adapted with relative ease. For European governments, which are often supported by multi-party parliamentary coalitions and are subject to greater scrutiny from the press and public opinion, the process is more complicated.
Europe’s Adjustments: The Benefits and Costs of Appeasement
European adjustment to US foreign policy under Trump has taken on different forms. There has been an extensive use of flattery to win the US president’s favour, with European leaders echoing his rhetoric or developing new language consistent with it (Shapiro 2025; Brands 2025). More significantly, European governments have made efforts to meet US expectations beforehand. They have raised military and security-related spending to address the US’s longstanding concern about NATO’s uneven burden-sharing, agreed to buy US weapons on behalf of Ukraine, maintained economic pressure on Russia, and shown readiness to support a post-war settlement through deployed military assets (Scazzieri 2025; Ondrych 2025). Some have signalled their value to the pursuit of strategic goals that the Trump administration deems priorities, as when Finland agreed to build icebreakers to strengthen the United States’ hold on the Arctic (Foroohar 2025).
In return, the Europeans have often resorted to damage limitation. The latter has involved absorbing the effects of Trump’s most disruptive policies – such as tariffs, the phasing out of military transfers to Ukraine, and threats to take Greenland from Denmark – through coordinated diplomatic engagement, notably at the level of leaders. The objective of these efforts has been to prevent unwelcome outcomes such as a deal with Russia to the detriment of Ukraine and Europe’s security, further tariff escalation or the opening of new disputes (for instance over climate or digital regulations) (Momtaz et al. 2025).
These tactics have yielded some results. Trump’s recurrent outbursts against NATO have ceased, and the administration’s rhetoric on Europe has improved. Most importantly, support for Ukraine has not been interrupted, and sanctions on Russia have been maintained, even if Moscow’s stubborn rejection of any US opening and Kyiv’s deft management of Trump’s expectations have arguably been more consequential than European entreaties (Mikhelidze 2025). Even so, Europe’s reactive approach has limits and carries risks and costs. As mentioned above, support for maintaining a significant military presence in Europe is fading in the US public and even among elites. Thus, the most the European governments can hope for is to coordinate the downgrading of US assets within NATO with Washington so that it does not leave them overly exposed, and cultivate bilateral military relations to keep as many of those assets as possible on their national soil.
In addition, Trump’s volatile nature and transactional approach force European governments into continuous efforts to appease him, which in turn feeds his tendency to renegotiate the terms of their arrangements and add new demands. An example is Trump’s initial insistence that US sanctions on Russia could happen if the EU first adopted impossibly high tariffs on China and India as retribution for purchasing Russian oil (he later cast aside this condition, but not because of European opposition) (Hoskins 2025). Even when no demand is explicitly uttered, the Europeans may opt for alignment to avoid injecting an irritant into the transatlantic relationship, as their endorsement of the US bombing of Iran (an eventuality they had long opposed) attests (Azizi and Van Veen 2025).
This highly reactive and largely accommodating attitude means EU and national policymakers end up sharpening the tension between the urgent need to keep the United States engaged, on the one hand, and the long-term goal of reducing European vulnerability to external pressure through more integrated EU institutions and capacities, on the other. The domestic incentives to invest diplomatic resources and political capital in greater EU integration, by nature a slow and cumbersome process, diminish if bilateral action can more easily secure gains from a US administration that is short on sympathy for the supranational EU.
The commitment to investing in a systematic and extensive upgrade of EU governance and capabilities is also affected by the fact that Trump’s power-based, sovereignty-driven foreign policy approach, which has been given an aura of legitimacy by European appeasement, has emboldened Eurosceptic forces that share ideological affinities with US national conservatism.
Trump and Europe’s Right: So Far, So Close?
There is much in common within the transatlantic right-wing galaxy, spanning a nationalist attachment to sovereignty, visceral opposition to immigration, revulsion at the ‘degenerate’ woke values of liberal progressivism, resentment against regulations in the digital and climate sectors, as well as impatience with political and constitutional checks and balances. Ideological affinities underpin growing ties between US and European right-wing movements, with institutions from Poland and Hungary (a central reference point for the US new right) quite active in promoting a transatlantic community of right-wing intellectuals and activists.
However, replicating the American right’s success in Europe is not as straightforward. The European right remains fractious and its relationship with its US counterpart anything but linear (Balfour et al.2025). On a number of issues, European right-wing parties follow national preferences that are not easily reconcilable – the Hungarians and Poles, for instance, oppose greater burden-sharing in migration management and stronger fiscal capacity in Brussels, both of which the Italians would support. Marked divisions also exist regarding Russia. Some, notably the Polish and Scandinavian right as well as parts of the Italian right, view Russia as a threat and favour support for Ukraine. The bulk of the European right continues to nurture some sympathy towards Moscow, although this has become much more muted in the wake of the Ukraine war. They see Russian nationalist and authoritarian conservatism as a natural interlocutor for the preservation of Europe’s cultural and religious heritage as well as its stability and energy security. Adding to these policy divergences are party and leadership rivalries, with three distinct right-wing groups in the European Parliament.
In short, the electoral strength of right-wing parties does not translate into an equally strong capacity to shape policies at the EU level, let alone create a coherent foreign policy platform on which to engage the United States. Right-wing parties, like anyone else, must also contend with the harm inflicted by US tariffs on EU exports and wavering security commitments, as well as with Trump’s scarce popularity in most of Europe (O’Brien 2025). Even internally, the US president’s average approval rating has been stuck in the mid-to-low 40s (RealClearPolitics 2025).
The reality is that the deliberately confrontational approach to politics of right-wing nationalism and Trump’s personality tends to generate counterbalancing dynamics of aggregation. Moreover, Trump’s power-based foreign policy, even when one shares its nationalist premises, fuels a demand in Europe for security and welfare that cannot be met in full through a critically unbalanced relationship with the United States, which is constantly open to review. Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine and Trump’s nationalistic and unilateralist re-orientation of US foreign policy are tangible manifestations of a geopolitical reality that is not just debated in foreign policy circles but felt across populations in Europe. It follows that the pragmatic logic underlying European appeasement of Trump can also be applied to the EU. Whether regarded as an alternative, a complement or merely an accessory to the relationship with the United States, the EU’s potential to improve member states’ military, energy, technological and industrial assets, as well as protect their regulatory sovereignty and trade – including to contain the costs of renewed US–China tensions – is easier to appreciate for elites and general public alike. The weakness of pro-EU political forces, which may be more a problem of leadership than policy, obscures but cannot erase these structural realities.
Political forces that remain committed to the transatlantic bond, or that regard the relationship with Washington primarily through a pragmatic lens, should recognize that the advantages of accommodation diminish over time. The current US administration, in all its iterations of conservative views of US foreign policy and with Trump’s power-infused understanding of foreign relations, is largely insensitive to European objections, not least because it perceives little or no cost in adopting positions that openly contradict European preferences. Persisting in appeasement not only reinforces this dynamic but also undermines collective efforts to enhance the EU’s capacity to withstand external pressure and adapt to a gradual recalibration of American commitments to the continent. By the same token, European nationalist movements that oppose deeper integration should reflect on the tangible costs of failing to forge a common stance in response to US measures (be they on trade, technology or other strategic issues) that harm the very constituencies these movements claim to defend.
An Uncertain Future
There can be little doubt that the political struggles on the future of the transatlantic relationship across Europe are being fought on a favourable terrain for the right-wing forces and President Trump himself. Nevertheless, those struggles are not settled yet, and the future is open to different scenarios.
In one possible scenario – consistent with the worldview of US primacists – the United States would maintain its commitment to Europe’s defence in exchange for a greater European contribution to continental security and, more broadly, Washington’s pursuit of global hegemony. This approach would not only entail participation in the containment of Russia but also complete alignment in pushing back against China’s influence and isolating other adversarial powers, such as Iran. Such an arrangement would loosely represent a continuation of the post-war transatlantic relationship, albeit one in which normative and institutional dimensions are downgraded since the development of European military capabilities becomes instrumental to the consolidation of a rigidly hierarchical Euro–Atlantic structure. The relationship would thereby assume the form of a hub-and-spoke system, characterized by a stronger bilateralization of US security and defence ties with individual European states, the relative marginalization of NATO as a locus of transatlantic consensus-building, and indifference or mild hostility towards the EU. Although not entirely compatible with President Trump’s aversion to long-term commitments, this configuration of US–European relations would nonetheless chime with his conception of America’s alliances and partnerships as a clientelist network reaffirming US centrality.
In another scenario, the development of integrated European capacities for resource generation and defence and security provision would endow EU member states with greater bargaining power in dealings with Washington across domains ranging from trade and relations with China to the security governance of Europe itself. This dynamic would clash with Trump’s anti-EU instincts and his ambition to reassert American primacy. Yet, it would resonate with his transactional understanding of international relations and with his preference, shared by conservative realists, for a substantial US retrenchment from Europe.
Both scenarios rest on the assumption that transatlantic political elites would frame their domestic political interests in terms of the strategic advantages of preserving a strong Euro–Atlantic coalition, although in the second case, the relationship would be more prone to engendering largely contingent, functional forms of cooperation. However, another scenario envisions the inverse dynamic, whereby strategic security concerns are subordinated to short-term political expediency, particularly on the European side.
In such a context, the containment of Russia, the management of tensions with China or the pursuit of stability in the Middle East would rank lower on the hierarchy of priorities than the quest for control over domestic centres of power through the continuous mobilization against internal political adversaries and, increasingly, against the supranational governance system of the EU. In this scenario, which reflects the ideological convictions of the civilization warriors, the transatlantic relationship would become ‘de-strategized’. It would in effect assume a partisan function, operating as a shared ideological framework through which right-wing parties mutually legitimize their respective domestic political struggles, with strategic coordination being relegated to either contingent arrangements or, again, European followership.
As mentioned at the start of this introduction, the evolution of the transatlantic relationship will be shaped as much by the capacity of political elites to reconcile strategic imperatives with domestic political pressures as by shifts in material power or institutional design. Whether this reconciliation yields a renewed yet asymmetrical alliance, a more equal but functional partnership or devolves into a fragmented, ideologically charged alignment will determine the degree to which the Euro–Atlantic area continues to constitute a coherent pole of order in a contested international system.
(*) Riccardo Alcaro is Research Coordinator and Head of the Global Actors Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI). His main area of expertise is transatlantic relations, with a particular focus on US and European policies towards Europe’s surrounding regions. He has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a fellow of the EU-wide programme European Foreign and Security Policy Studies (EFSPS). He has coordinated the EU-funded TRANSWORLD project on transatlantic relations and global governance (7th Framework Programme) and the JOINT project on EU foreign and security policy (Horizon 2020). Riccardo is the author of Europe and Iran’s Nuclear Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and co-author of Conflict Management and the Future of EU Foreign and Security Policy: Relational Power Europe (Routledge, 2025). He also edited The Liberal Order and its Contestations (Routledge, 2018). He holds a summa cum laude PhD from the University of Tübingen. Email: r.alcaro@iai.it
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Abstract This chapter examines how Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 has transformed the EU–NATO–US triangle and Europe’s security architecture. Trump’s open questioning of Article 5, his transactional approach to allies, the US pivot to the Indo–Pacific, and renewed scepticism toward multilateral institutions have triggered a crisis of confidence in Washington’s security guarantees. In response, European states have increased defence spending; the EU has assumed a more assertive role in defence industrial and fiscal policy; and flexible coalitions, such as the ‘coalition of the willing’ for Ukraine, have proliferated. Taken together, these developments point not to transatlantic breakdown or full renewal, but to a ‘muddling through’ scenario of adaptive equilibrium, in which mutual dependence, institutional resilience and emerging European capabilities sustain the partnership despite deep mistrust. The chapter closes by outlining key policy priorities for managing this uneasy but durable settlement.
Keywords: NATO; European Union; security; defence; multilateralism; populism
The return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025 caused anxiety in Europe about the United States’ reliability as a trustworthy NATO ally. The Trump administration’s frequent undermining of the essence of the transatlantic relationship – particularly Article 5 of the Washington Treaty on collective defence – alongside its unilateral actions aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine at all costs, shook many European capitals. Well aware of their dependence on the United States for securing peace on the continent for the past several decades, European leaders now face the possibility that Washington would not honour its defence commitments to its allies. This recognition is especially alarming for countries on NATO’s eastern and northern flanks, which are particularly exposed to Russia’s hybrid warfare.
At the same time, the doubt whether the United States would honour its defence commitments in the event of Russian aggression against a NATO country has been reinforced by two further factors – one structural, the other characteristic of the Trump administration’s worldview. The former is the shift of US strategic priorities toward the Indo–Pacific, while the latter reflects a deep mistrust of the Trump team towards multilateral commitments that have underpinned the liberal world order since the Second World War, such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Bergmann 2025; Dijkstra et al. 2025).
In response, European NATO allies, most of which are also members of the EU, have taken long-overdue decisions to increase their national defence spending. The mid- and long-term goal is to prepare for a gradual burden-shifting from the United States to European NATO members. At the same time, to facilitate the enhancement of defence capabilities on the continent, the European Union intensified its role in defence and security. It introduced targeted loans and funding mechanisms to support member states in developing critical defence infrastructure and advancing industrial projects (European Commission and European External Action Service 2025). Integrating defence industries, which have traditionally operated according to national reflexes due to the sector’s sensitivity, is a challenging, long-term task and the shadow of US unpredictability further complicates it.
The chapter examines how the EU–NATO–US triangle has evolved since Trump returned to the White House, becoming more complex and less predictable. It argues that the transatlantic relationship is now best captured by a ‘muddling through’ scenario, characteristic of an adaptive equilibrium. The complex network of policy practices among these three actors has so far provided the flexibility and resilience needed to adapt to the current circumstances, indicating that the transatlantic partnership, although evolving, will likely remain an essential element of Europe’s security order.
On the one hand, the still considerable overlap of shared interests between the United States and its European allies, despite hostile rhetoric (The White House 2025), discourages the American administration from fully disengaging from Europe and losing its historically most vital ally (Atlantic Council, 2024; Sloan, 2010). Europe, in turn, recognizes that tackling the geopolitical challenges on its doorstep without Washington’s support would be highly costly, especially in the short term due to the lack of critical defence capabilities (Aggestam and Hyde-Price 2019; Barry et al. 2025). Therefore, a ‘breakdown’ or ‘decoupling’ scenario seems rather unlikely. On the other hand, European mistrust of the Trump administration and anti-European sentiment within much of the US Republican Party make a ‘renewal’ scenario based on re-anchoring trust and joint leadership equally unlikely. Therefore, a pragmatic ‘muddling through’ scenario, driven by the persistence of mutual interests and institutional inertia, appears more likely. This analysis first briefly examines the background of the transatlantic relationship before exploring the current dynamics of adaptation observable in Europe. It concludes by reflecting on the policy implications of the ‘muddling through’ scenario for the EU.
Underpinnings and Evolution of the Transatlantic Relationship
The grand bargain, underpinning the transatlantic relationship, dates back to the end of the Second World War. In Europe, devastated by the war and facing the growing threat of Soviet expansion, the United States offered security guarantees through the creation of NATO in 1949. This arrangement anchored Western Europe within an American-led security framework, while Europe committed to contributing to institutional efforts towards collective stability. The Alliance was not only a military pact but also a political project to protect liberal democracy and embed US power within a liberal, rules-based order. Simultaneously, the deepening of European integration and post-war reconstruction created markets for American goods and investments, enabling the US economy to benefit from Europe’s recovery.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO’s role gradually evolved, adapting first to a broader understanding of security (Buzan et al. 1998) and, secondly, to the resulting transformation of the European security architecture. In addition to traditional military security challenges, other, more multifaceted and transnational security challenges have been identified, including migration, cybercrime, international terrorism, pandemics, climate change, energy security, disinformation campaigns and critical infrastructure vulnerabilities.
In response to these diverse security challenges and the new geopolitical landscape, the European security architecture has also evolved. The Alliance’s eastward enlargement brought in former Warsaw Pact countries, symbolizing both the end of Europe’s division and the continued relevance of US engagement on the continent. In parallel, the European Union, which also substantially expanded to the East in 2004 and 2007, began to develop its own defence dimension through the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and associated instruments, policies and institutions. Also, the overlap in membership between these two organizations became significant. In 1995, 11 of the then-15 EU member states were also NATO members. This changed as both organizations expanded eastward. By 2004, following the considerable eastern enlargement, 19 of 25 EU members were NATO allies, out of 26 NATO members. Subsequent enlargements further increased the membership overlap. By 2025, 23 of the 27 EU member states were NATO allies, out of 32 members of NATO.
Despite substantial membership overlap and confronting similar security challenges, the organizations have preserved their distinct identities, reflecting different roles. Over time, a functional division of labour emerged (Hofmann and Sus 2026). NATO retained its central role in collective territorial defence, while the EU played a supporting role, focusing on crisis management, civilian missions, and stabilization efforts in its neighbourhood (Sus & Jankowski, 2024). Subsequent American administrations, while praising the Europeans for taking greater responsibility for their security, have consistently emphasized that any European contributions must occur within the context of the Alliance, not outside it (Carpenter 2018). Madeleine Albright’s doctrine of ‘three D’s’ – no duplication, no decoupling and no discrimination – guided NATO–EU relations (Binnendijk et al. 2022; Fiott 2020). Yet both organizations remained closely linked, reflecting their mutual interest in maintaining security and tackling diverse threats and challenges. Decades of shared missions, overlapping membership and policy coordination had created a complex web of interdependencies among European capitals and Washington within NATO.
Still, occasional moments of tension challenged this transatlantic balance. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s exposed deep transatlantic divergences over strategy and the use of force, while the Iraq War in 2003 further demonstrated divisions over the legitimacy and purpose of military intervention (Daalder 2000). The Libyan campaign in 2011 revealed disagreements over leadership. In contrast, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 signified a return to NATO’s fundamental mission of deterrence and defence, fostering renewed unity and coordination among the United States, NATO and the EU. The scarcity of resources and repeated calls from military communities urging Europe to prepare for war, including those from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (Rutte 2024), have put organizational commitments and inter-organizational cooperation under scrutiny. During the Biden administration, cooperation between the EU, the United States and NATO was notably close, reflecting a strong commitment to transatlanticism. However, this dynamic shifted following Trump’s return to the White House.
‘Muddling Through’: A Crisis of Confidence
The first term of Donald Trump (January 2017 to January 2021) already complicated the transatlantic relationship by weakening US international commitments, such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Open Skies Treaty, and rhetorically undermining transatlantic cooperation by questioning the US defence guarantee to NATO allies (Stokes 2018; Aggestam and Hyde-Price 2019; Drezner 2019; Nielsen and Dimitrova 2021). And yet, its core, the transatlantic security commitments, despite discursive weakening, remained intact, partly due to NATO’s institutional resilience (Sperling and Webber 2019).
The situation is quite different in 2025. Within the first few weeks at the White House, President Trump has challenged two core principles underpinning NATO’s collective defence commitment: the shared perception of threats among member states and the indivisibility of their security. The former is exemplified by the United States’ decision to side with Moscow and oppose a UN resolution proposed by the EU countries and Ukraine condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, signalling a major shift in its position on the conflict (UN News 2025). The latter is evident in Trump’s repeated claims that the United States would not defend allies who, in his view, fail to contribute adequately to defence spending (Birnbaum and Allison 2025; Jacque 2025; Lunday, Traylor, and Kayali, 2025). Furthermore, as Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth highlighted, ‘strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe’ (U.S. Department of War 2025). Apart from the calls to the European allies to spend more on defence, assuming greater European ownership of NATO, an organization designed and sustained over decades to secure American leadership and control, remains a challenge (Habedank et al. 2025). The United States is not only the major military contributor to NATO but also has long required other members to integrate their defence capabilities into its command structure, giving Washington control over their use (Daalder 2025).
The confrontational US stance toward Europe in security issues was reinforced by the imposition of 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from the EU and the announcement of additional universal tariffs (De Lemos Peixoto et al. 2025). Altogether, it has led to a crisis of confidence among European allies. More than 70% of citizens in Germany, the United Kingdom and France viewed America in mid-2025 as an unreliable security guarantor, a sharp decline in confidence, given that in 2024, over 55% considered the United States to be a reliable or somewhat reliable ally (Guyer et al. 2025). The Eurobarometer reports similar findings. Whereas favourable and unfavourable views of the United States across Europe were evenly balanced in 2024 (47% each), by 2025, favourable opinions had declined to 29%, while negative perceptions had risen to 67% (Eurobarometer 2025). The United States is now rated on par with China (Debomy 2025). This deterioration is observable across nearly all EU member states, and is particularly pronounced in countries traditionally considered close partners of the United States, such as Poland. Between March 2023 and April 2025, positive evaluations of Polish–American relations dropped sharply, from 80% to just 31%, a decrease of nearly 50 percentage points (CBOS 2025).
Despite the crisis of confidence, several factors suggest that the most likely future relationship between the United States, the EU, and within NATO will involve functional adaptation and ‘muddling through’. These factors include Europe’s continued reliance on US security guarantees and the United States’ role as one of the major contributors to Ukraine’s defence, NATO’s institutional resilience, and the fact that 68% of Americans said in July 2025 that US security alliances with Europe benefit the United States (Smeltz and El Baz 2025) The ‘muddling through’ dynamic relies primarily on three elements. First, European countries have begun to increase defence spending and enhance their defence capabilities. The second, and closely connected, dynamic is the increasing role of the EU in defence issues, which contributes to a stronger European pillar of NATO. Third, the increasing importance of informal frameworks enhances the flexibility of security cooperation, enabling the circumvention of formal organizations such as the EU and NATO. The following paragraphs briefly discuss these three dynamics.
Money, Money, Money…
The Russian war in Ukraine, coupled with the rhetoric of the Trump administration, pushed the European countries to significantly increase defence spending and take steps towards greater defence preparedness. In 2024, total defence expenditure across the EU’s 27 member states reached €343 billion, marking a record 19% rise compared to the previous year. Defence spending grew from 1.6% of GDP in 2023 to 1.9% in 2024. Additionally, defence investment exceeded €100 billion in 2024, representing the highest share in the EU’s history – 31% of total expenditure. Projections for 2025 indicate that total defence expenditure will increase further to €381 billion, representing 2.1% of GDP and exceeding the 2% threshold for the first time (European Defence Agency, 2025). The rise in defence spending continues to reflect geographical proximity to perceived threats: the closer a country is to Russia, the higher its military expenditure, with Poland reaching 4.7% of GDP in 2025 (Evans et al. 2025; Sus 2025).
In June 2025, at the NATO summit, its members agreed on a new target of 5% of GDP by 2035, including at least 3.5% for core military capabilities and up to 1.5% for security-related investment (NATO 2025). To meet this goal, Europe’s largest economy, Germany, amended its constitutional debt brake, exempting defence spending above 1% of GDP from the borrowing cap and creating a €500 billion extras fund for infrastructure and security investment (Zettelmeyer 2025). Berlin estimates for 2025 show defence spending rising from about €95 billion in 2025 to €162 billion by 2029, reaching roughly 3.5% of GDP. If this is to be implemented, the German military would undergo a historic build-up, significantly enhancing its capabilities.
European leaders’ decisions to increase defence spending and enhance military capabilities can be viewed as a mechanism of functional adaptation to the weakening of the US security umbrella. Nevertheless, Europe has much to catch up on regarding its defence preparedness, and developing it will be a process that requires not only some level of American commitment to supply Europeans with the still-missing capabilities along the way but also strong societal support. And this will likely be the main challenge for European leaders, potentially complicating functional adaptation (Popescu and Buldioski 2025). Fiscal constraints and domestic political dynamics make the situation highly volatile, and European governments face difficult trade-offs between competing public spending needs and deficit limits, which complicates sustained increases in defence budgets (Dorn et al., 2024). Also, defence policy is increasingly subject to politicization. For example, left-wing parties in Spain oppose substantial budget increases, making it impossible for Prime Minister Pedro Sanches to accept the new 5% target (Landauro et al. 2025). In turn, right-wing and populist parties in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria also express resistance toward high defence expenditures (Greilinger 2025; Minder 2025; Silenska 2025). European societies, accustomed to living without immediate military threats and relying on US security guarantees, are struggling to adjust to the new security reality.
EU Stepping In
Another mechanism of functional adaptation to the new transatlantic reality is the newly found role of the EU, particularly the European Commission, in defence and security, which can help strengthen the European pillar of NATO. To support member states in meeting the financial targets and in spending money effectively, without further increasing the already high fragmentation of the European defence market (Mueller, 2025), the Commission decided to draw on its regulatory and fiscal instruments. Among the various proposals (European Commission, 2025a; European Commission and European External Action Service, 2025), two instruments stand out. The first is the SAFE mechanism – Security Action for Europe, included in the European Defence Industrial Strategy (European Commission, 2024), which shall provide up to €150 billion in loans to member states for investments in defence capabilities (European Commission, 2025b). It aims to facilitate joint procurement and strengthen the resilience of the European defence technological and industrial base. The second is the fiscal flexibility for defence investmentsintroduced under the revisedEconomic Governance Framework, allowing temporary deviations from budgetary targets for security-related expenditures. As of mid-2025, 15 member states have requested activation of this flexibility clause (Council of the European Union, 2025).
Also, until the end of 2025, member states are invited to form small groups or coalitions and propose flagship projects addressing key European security concerns. These initiatives are to be financed through a hybrid funding model combining EU-level instruments. The European Commission has provided suggestions, focusing primarily on drones and air defence. Yet, the selection of priority areas rests with the member states, reflecting their preference for a bottom-up, capability-driven approach rather than Commission-defined programmes (European Council 2025).
Together, these initiatives signal a shift in EU economic governance and defence industrial policy, recognizing that credible collective defence requires both coordination and fiscal space for sustained investment. In this sense, the EU’s initiatives complement national efforts by providing fiscal instruments and enhancing the overall effectiveness of measures to strengthen European defence capabilities. Importantly, EU action remains complementary to NATO, as the EU’s official documents consistently underline, describing the Alliance as ‘the foundation of collective defence for its members’ (European Council 2025). There are no indications, nor does the EU’s legal framework permit it, that the Union could take on this role or replace NATO (Clapp 2025).
Issue-Specific Cooperation Practices
The third dynamic in Europe’s evolving security landscape that speaks to the ‘muddling through’ scenario is the growing significance of informal cooperation frameworks that operate alongside, yet outside, the formal institutional structures of the EU and NATO (Amadio Viceré and Sus 2025). Like-minded European states initiate these formats and bring together countries, often including key non-EU NATO members. They are increasingly seen as flexible solutions for addressing regional- and issue-specific security concerns. While they complement the work of formal organizations, these informal frameworks also signal a broader trend toward flexible, coalition-based cooperation. They reflect the sense of urgency among Europeans caused by the Russian war in Ukraine, responses to which sometimes cannot be constrained by lengthy bureaucratic processes and veto rights inherent to procedures of formal organizations. These formats also serve as an additional adaptation mechanism for Europe’s strategic posture, where differing threat perceptions between the United States and other allies may hamper formal cooperation within NATO.
The most illustrative example of such informal grouping is the Coalition of the Willing for Ukraine, which was officially launched in March 2025 during a London summit hosted by the United Kingdom and France, following preparatory meetings in Paris in mid-February 2025. The initiative brings together 35 European states committed to providing long-term support and security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or peace settlement with Russia (van Rij 2025). As of October 2025, 26 participating countries had committed to contributing elements of a ‘reassurance force’ to Ukraine in the post-conflict phase, including air and naval components (Karlund and Reykers 2025). Despite the United States being informed and consulted on the plans, the coalition leaders explicitly emphasize that Europe must ‘do the heavy lifting’ itself (Tidey 2025). Nevertheless, if Washington were to seek involvement, the flexible participation mechanisms of such informal formats would enable it to do so.
This initiative illustrates that Europe is increasingly assuming leadership, rather than waiting for US direction or on NATO’s centralized command structures. Also, Canada’s involvement indicates that Europe is seeking ways to keep like-minded NATO countries on board. At the same time, such informal groups, despite their flexibility, cannot replace formal organizations because they are inherently short term and issue-specific, making them unsuitable for sustained cooperation or for addressing a broad range of security challenges.
Conclusion
Europe is now ‘staring at the beginning of a new post-American age’ (Bergmann 2025, 1) and must begin to provide for its own security. As the analysis shows, this process will most likely not constitute a rupture but rather a functional adaptation. Europe is gradually improving its capacity to project power, coordinate resources and combine defence capabilities across national and supranational levels, with leadership increasingly exercised through informal groups. While significant investment in defence, both in budgets and targeted industrial funding, is essential, these flexible coalitions enable like-minded states to take the initiative and respond to emerging threats without American leadership. Cooperation with the United States persists, particularly in areas of immediate military deterrence, including the nuclear dimension, but the unpredictability of the Trump administration, combined with its hostile rhetoric towards Europe and underlying divergences in threat perception, complicates the transatlantic balance.
Public opinion underscores this dynamic. The decline in trust toward the United States as a reliable security guarantor, coupled with strong support for a robust European role in defence – in April 2025, 81% of EU citizens supported a common defence and security policy among EU member states, illustrating the highest level of support since 2004 (Eurobarometer, 2025), signals that European populations increasingly expect their governments to enhance capabilities and ensure operational readiness independently of Washington. This process will not be easy and will likely unfold in an uneven pattern of ‘muddling through’, constrained by divergent national priorities, fiscal and political pressures and Europe’s continued reliance on US military enablers for the next decade and on nuclear deterrence.
In terms of policy implications, this analysis highlights three issues that the European Union should prioritize to manage the collective ‘muddling through’. First, it should continue to provide member states with fiscal and regulatory instruments to bolster their defence industries, thereby contributing to the development of the European Defence Industrial Base. By doing so, the EU should also tighten cooperation with like-minded partners such as Ukraine, the UK, Norway and Switzerland, without which a credible European defence ecosystem is not possible (Chappell et al. 2025).
Second, it should take decisive action on the frozen Russian assets to ensure consistent and swift support for Ukraine. Given the fiscal constraints many EU countries face, it may be the only long-term solution to provide Ukraine with the support it needs to counter Russian warfare.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the EU needs to develop a new narrative that demonstrates both its capacity to act and its willingness to defend its freedom and way of life. Despite internal divisions and populist threats, the Hungarian veto and differences in threat perception across the 27, the EU remains the most successful integration project in the world, providing its citizens with stability and economic security. And the way the EU has acted in reaction to the full-scale invasion – united and determined, surprised many. At the same time, the ongoing issue of poor communication fails to effectively convey to both its citizens and the outside world that the EU is resilient and capable. This narrative is a key success factor in managing the ‘muddling through’ scenario and ensuring that, even in the event of a ‘decoupling’ scenario, the EU remains prepared.
(*) Monika Sus is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is also a part-time professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, where she co-leads the EU Security Initiative, and an adjunct faculty member at the Hertie School in Berlin. Her research focuses on international relations, particularly the institutional dynamics of overlapping security regimes in Europe. She has published in leading journals including International Affairs, West European Politics, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, the Journal of European Integration, and The British Journal of Politics & International Relations. Email: monika.sus@eui.eu
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Please cite as: Wong, Reuben. (2026). “EU-US-China Security Relations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00124
Abstract This chapter examines the prospects for European Union (EU)–United States (US) security cooperation in relation to China. I argue that since the 2005 melee over European arms sales to China and amidst rising US–China rivalry, Washington’s ability to coordinate security cooperation with European capitals on China has been declining. China’s rising trade power, the decline of shared liberal norms/transatlantic trust, and key EU states’ preference for maintaining privileged relationships with China are key factors that militate against effective US–EU coordination on China. Russian aggression in Ukraine has complicated the picture. Beijing has not outrightly supported Moscow, but neither has it joined the Western-led sanctions nor condemned the Russian action as a violation of international law. The EU has begun to see China not only as a partner, but also as a competitor and ‘systemic rival’. But its long-term view of China and its approach to Beijing remain more sanguine than Washington’s.
Keywords: China; security; trade; climate change; transatlantic relations; United States
The need for better transatlantic dialogue and coordination on China has been recognized since at least 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). In that year, there were serious and escalating tensions in Sino–American as well as in United States–European relations, both before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
As participants in a year-long dialogue sponsored by two think tanks – the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin – observed in 2003: China’s ascendance on the world stage would signal a major shift in the global political, economic, and security environment. The project assumed further that the ability of the United States and Europe to deal effectively with the challenges associated with China’s rise could have far-reaching consequences both for transatlantic relations and for the effective management of China’s global emergence (Stimson Center 2003).
When that project first started, Washington’s China policy under the George W. Bush administration was deeply contested, and the future of Sino–American relations appeared highly uncertain – especially after incidents such as the April 2001 crash-landing of a US surveillance aircraft on Hainan Island. Only a few years later, tensions flared across the Atlantic when France, Germany, and the United Kingdom proposed lifting the European Union’s (EU) arms embargo on China, shortly after Brussels and Beijing declared a ‘strategic partnership’ in 2003 (Casarini 2007; Shambaugh 2006).
Fast forward to 2025, and the EU and the United States again find themselves challenged in coordinating China policy. Issues confounding these attempts include Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, US attempts to slow down China’s rise in the economic, military, financial and artificial intelligence fields, President Trump’s vacillations on supporting Ukraine and pressuring Russia when he assumed his second term in 2025 and the challenges faced by Europeans and Americans in switching from fossil fuels to sustainable energy.
This chapter shows how the EU and the United States have been ‘muddling through’ in terms of China policy and suggests how they could work together (and with China) more effectively in three major areas: security, trade and climate change.
Security Convergence under Strain
The war in Ukraine has fundamentally reshaped Europe’s threat perceptions and its approach to China. While the European Commission’s 2019 Strategic Outlook had already captured the growing ambivalence in Europe’s China policy – defining Beijing simultaneously as a cooperation partner, an economic competitor, and a systemic rival – China’s ambiguous stance towards Russia since February 2022 has deepened European mistrust. China has not condemned Russia for its military actions, although it has not recognized Russia’s annexations either (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China 2022). Moreover, Beijing has echoed Moscow’s attribution of the war to NATO expansion and Western provocations (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China 2023). The appointment in early 2025 of Lu Shaye, a former ‘wolf warrior’ diplomat portrayed by many Western sources as China’s special representative for European affairs, further fuelled perceptions of a more assertive Chinese posture and sent ripples of unease across European capitals (Foy and Leahy 2025).
Over time, European attitudes towards China have become increasingly aligned with Washington’s assessment: China is now viewed not merely as a systemic rival, but increasingly as a geopolitical actor whose support for Russia undermines European security. In certain respects, the EU’s criticism went further than Washington’s, labelling China ‘a key enabler of Russia’s war’ (EEAS 2025). The overwhelming rhetorical shift suggests that a return to the earlier accommodationist approach toward Beijing is unlikely (Czin et al. 2025).
The war has simultaneously revitalized the transatlantic security bond, bringing the EU and the United States closer on a range of security agendas, including regional stability in the Indo–Pacific. Key European security advocates such as France, the UK, and Poland have begun linking the development of European security to the credibility of deterrence in Asia, arguing that a Russian victory in Ukraine would embolden Chinese coercion against Taiwan (Matamis 2025). Meanwhile, Washington’s strategic reorientation toward the Indo–Pacific has encouraged Europe to assume a greater security role in the region. Europe’s growing engagement thus serves as both a gesture of solidarity and a means of easing US pressure on burden-sharing (Abbondanza 2025).
Despite shared threat perceptions, a central challenge to EU–US coordination is the divergent approaches to a peace settlement in the Ukraine conflict. The second Trump administration prioritizes immediate military containment of Russia and deterrence of further aggression, while European governments emphasize the need for a sustainable post-war security order in Europe. To bridge this divergence, Europe has sought to multitask – combining short-term endorsement of Washington’s goals of ceasefire and containment with a long-term vision of peace underpinned by robust guarantees for Kyiv (Sabbagh 2025).
This recalibration has produced a wave of European security initiatives aimed at complementing – if not hedging against – American dominance in Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction. Proposals include an expanded Franco–British Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (Lagneau 2025), a European Reassurance Force for Ukraine under EU auspices (Barry et al. 2025), and a ‘coalition of the willing’ designed to provide training, logistics, and defence support to Ukrainian forces (Atlantic Council 2025). Together, these efforts signal Europe’s intent to play a more autonomous yet compatible security role.
However, the credibility of these initiatives still hinges on US participation. Trump’s campaign pledge to ‘radically reorient’ America’s security commitments in Europe has injected deep uncertainty into European planning (Hirsh, 2024). France and the UK have sought formal US endorsement of their coalition frameworks, but Washington has so far limited itself to ad hoc assistance without long-term guarantees (Gatinois and Ricard 2025). European structural dependence on US defence systems has exacerbated the strategic dilemma. Despite the EU’s initiatives to strengthen its defence industrial base – through the European Defence Fund (EDF) and Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) – the reality of procurement remains deeply transatlantic. US-made platforms such as the F–35 fighter jet, HIMARS rocket launchers, and Patriot missile systems form the core of Europe’s military capability, with only France remaining a partial exception due to its robust domestic industry and nuclear deterrent (Clark 2025).
Ultimately, the coherence of the transatlantic partnership – and its alignment on China – will largely hinge on the resolution of the Ukraine question. The US ambiguity over Ukraine in transatlantic security cooperation will further limit Europe’s ability to turn its strategic ambition into tangible security capacity. By extension, a frozen Ukraine conflict would only limit Europe’s ability to act autonomously in shaping security relations and sustain a coherent approach with Washington toward Beijing.
Economic Security amid Geopolitical Tensions
As economic interdependence and sovereignty have become increasingly securitized amid heightened geopolitical tensions, the transatlantic cooperation on China has been complicated by oscillations between economic pragmatism and security anxiety. Shared concerns in Brussels and Washington over China’s industrial overcapacity, non-reciprocal subsidies, and strategic dependencies have fostered a growing consensus that the previous liberal approach to engagement with Beijing is no longer tenable. Yet the absence of meaningful de-escalatory gestures among the three powers has reinforced the perception that expectations of ‘reciprocal openness’ were illusory.
It is notable that both the EU–China and the US–China trade dialogues have largely stagnated. Despite high expectations, the 25th EU–China Summit in mid-2025 produced little beyond diplomatic courtesies and a joint statement on climate cooperation (European Council 2025). Flagship initiatives such as the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), frozen since 2021, remain stalled. While both sides publicly reaffirmed their willingness to re-engage, neither was prepared to make concessions on core issues – technology transfers, market access or export controls. A similar stalemate characterizes US–China negotiations: the 19 September 2025 phone call between President Trump and President Xi yielded only tentative progress on a possible TikTok divestment deal, without breakthroughs on tariffs or semiconductor restrictions (Froman 2025).
Europe’s unrelenting trade policy toward China contrasts with its tactical realignment with Washington’s strategic calculus. On 27 July 2025, the United States and the EU reached a long-awaited trade arrangement that removed tariffs on selected sectors – steel, aluminium, copper, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors (European Commission 2025b). A follow-up EU–US Joint Statement on 21 August 2025 further institutionalized this rapprochement, declaring that the accord reflected the parties’ ‘joint determination to resolve our trade imbalances and unleash the full potential of our combined economic power’ (European Commission 2025a).
The reconciliation between Brussels and Washington at least represented a symbolic re-assertion of the transatlantic partnership as an economic bloc in its own right, responding to the perceived expansion of Chinese economic influence. Nevertheless, the goodwill shown in managing trade conflicts was, to some extent, met with scepticism on the European side. Some European observers dismissed it as an attempt to ‘please Washington’ in exchange for US leniency in ongoing tariff negotiations (Zimmermann 2025), while others regarded it as an act of humiliation at the hands of the Americans (Liboreiro 2025).
Beijing, for its part, has not remained passive amid this realignment. In the wake of renewed US tariffs on Indo–Pacific economies, China launched an extensive diplomatic and economic outreach campaign in April 2025. President Xi’s state visits to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia resulted in 108 bilateral agreements covering infrastructure, energy, and digital connectivity (Xinhua 2025). This ‘charm offensive’ sought to consolidate China’s centrality in Asian supply chains, project an image of reliability, and strengthen the traditional ties of ‘comrades and brothers’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China 2025) amid Western protectionism.
The timing of President Xi’s visits was telling. As transatlantic coordination intensified, Beijing deepened ties in the Indo–Pacific to demonstrate that US and European containment efforts could be offset by diversifying trade partnerships. Moreover, China’s message to Europe was implicit but marked: as Washington weaponizes tariffs and reshapes global industrial networks, Beijing offers stability and continued market access. In this sense, China’s global outreach not only counterbalances US pressure but also exploits latent divisions within Europe. It also amplifies the perception in the region that excessive alignment with Washington might limit the EU’s self-image as an autonomous ‘regulatory superpower.’
However, the deeply intertwined trade relations between Europe and China continue to hinder the formation of an effective ‘economic front’ of the United States and Europe against China. China remains among the EU’s largest trading partners, accounting for over one-fifth of total EU imports (21.3%) and ranking as the third-largest export destination for EU goods exports (8.3%) in 2024 (Eurostat 2025). Conversely, Europe supplies China with advanced technology, investment and critical know-how that remains difficult to replicate domestically.
This dense network of supply-chain linkages creates a paradox. While Europe perceives China as a systemic rival, its prosperity still depends on a degree of mutual engagement that cannot easily be replaced. Hence, Brussels’ preference for ‘de-risking’ over Washington’s ‘decoupling’, a rhetorical distinction that signals strategic caution, economic pragmatism and fear of retaliatory Chinese measures against key European sectors.
A further obstacle to coherent transatlantic trade alignment is the volatility of US policy toward China under the Trump administration. Trump’s oscillation between confrontational and transactional stances has created confusion among allies and adversaries alike (Besch and Varma 2025). The unpredictability has greatly constrained the EU’s room for manoeuvre in terms of formulating a consistent tone on China. This ambivalence was evident in the shift in tone of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen between her stark warning at the June 2025 Summit of the Group of 7 (G7) nations about a new ‘China shock’ and her notably softer UN General Assembly speech three months later, urging Beijing to ‘use its influence to help bring an end to the killing’ in Ukraine (Bermingham 2025).
Inconsistencies also persist within the EU. The July 2025 trade deal was hailed in Washington as evidence of Western solidarity, but reactions in Europe were muted. France and Germany in particular voiced concern that tariff eliminations in sensitive sectors could disproportionately favour the United States at the expense of European producers (Atkinson and Gozzi 2025). This internal fragmentation may risk weakening the EU’s collective leverage, allowing both Beijing and Washington to question Europe’s autonomy to design its own industrial strategy.
Trade thus illustrates both the progress and the limits of the transatlantic rapprochement on China. The post-Ukraine geopolitical environment has encouraged unprecedented coordination between Brussels and Washington in confronting Chinese overcapacity and industrial distortions. Yet the underlying structure of global interdependence, Europe’s internal heterogeneity, and Beijing’s adept diplomatic counter-moves continue to prevent the formation of a fully unified economic front.
Climate Security As Fragmented Fronts
The climate and green transition agendas expose one of the most irreconcilable dimensions of transatlantic cooperation on China. Beyond the deep supply-chain interdependence, both the EU and China share a devoted commitment to multilateralism and global climate action. By contrast, the Trump administration’s return to office has brought renewed scepticism toward green energy transitions and multilateral environmental governance. Trump’s statements dismissing renewable energy as a ‘scam’ stand in sharp contrast to China’s increasing diplomatic and industrial commitment to green growth (Schonhardt 2025).
The revival of climate scepticism from the other side of the Atlantic has provoked unease within the transatlantic partnership. The tendency to compromise with the United States on the climate agenda has already sparked intense backlash across Europe. For instance, Brussels’ promise to purchase more US fossil fuels in exchange for a trade truce has been widely criticized in Europe as detrimental to the EU’s environmental leadership (Diab 2025). In contrast, Beijing has seized the opportunity to cast itself as a leader in global climate governance. Chinese officials have repeatedly emphasized the country’s adherence to the Paris goals and its massive investments in renewable energy and green infrastructure (Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China 2024). The diplomatic discourse is powerful in portraying China as a responsible stakeholder at a moment when multilateralism seems to be retreating.
Indeed, even as political frictions intensify in other domains, the EU and China – both claiming leadership in promoting global sustainable development – have deepened cooperation in green industries and technologies. After several years of decline following the pandemic and the tightening of investment screening mechanisms, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the EU and the United Kingdom rebounded strongly in 2024, reaching approximately €10 billion, the first significant recovery since 2016 (Kratz et al. 2025). This resurgence was driven primarily by greenfield investments in electric vehicles (EVs), battery technologies and related areas.
Beyond financial flows, the deepening green industrial integration between European and Chinese firms is reshaping the clean-tech value chain. EV manufacturing provides a prime example of a synergistic ‘European car tech + Chinese battery’ model of cooperation. When the Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company CATL established its first global EV battery plant in Thuringia, Germany, in 2019, BMW followed five years later with a new investment worth 20 billion yuan in its Shenyang production base in Northeast China’s Liaoning province (Yong et al. 2024). Other European brands – Citroën, MG Motors, Smart, Volvo and Volkswagen – are expanding assembly lines across China, from Shijiazhuang to Ningbo and Chengdu (Colaluce 2024). This investment reflects a pattern of complementarity rather than substitution. While China has developed comparative advantages in battery chemistry and smart software systems, Europe retains strengths in traditional vehicle design and power systems (Tagliapietra et al. 2025).
Hence, unlike the security and trade domains where transatlantic coordination has visibly strengthened, the climate sphere presents an area of divergence within the transatlantic alliance. In this evolving configuration, transatlantic unity on climate change mitigation remains elusive, leaving many European officials looking for constructive interlocutors in Beijing rather than in Washington. Europe and China share normative commitments to greener growth; these shared norms offer opportunities for both sides to work bilaterally and at multilateral fora to promote climate justice on a global level.
Recalibrating Europe’s Strategic Balance
Viewed through a security lens, Europe and the United States are largely muddling through their transatlantic relationship vis-à-vis China. The challenge extends beyond traditional military coordination to encompass economic and climate security. In practice, Europe finds itself caught between two competing imperatives: the transatlantic relationship remains existential, while the relationship with China is instrumental. Managing this asymmetry is now the fundamental test of European foreign policy.
To work more effectively with Washington, Brussels must rethink the transatlantic bargain and resist the temptation to appease the United States at the expense of its own interests – whether in security, trade or climate governance. A sustainable partnership must rest on reciprocity and mutual respect, rather than one-sided alignment. By investing in its defence capabilities and industrial base, Europe can emerge as a stronger and more credible partner within the alliance – capable of meeting US expectations on burden-sharing while retaining strategic autonomy in foreign policy. This strengthening would bolster Washington’s trust in Europe’s reliability, without locking Brussels into strategic dependency.
At the institutional level, the EU should also reinforce the mechanisms that underpin transatlantic coordination – through NATO, Strategic Compass, the EU–US Trade and Technology Council, G7 frameworks and joint working groups on export controls, energy transition and emerging technologies. Such instruments can help stabilize the partnership beyond leadership cycles and confine political volatility in institutionalized ties.
Concerning China, a stable and constructive EU–China relationship continues to hold significant strategic value in the long run. It offers not only opportunities for economic complementarity and shared leadership on global agendas, but also joint contributions to global growth and sustainable development. In this sense, both sides should avoid allowing the relationship to deteriorate into a purely ideological or zero-sum confrontation. Rather, they should pursue a pragmatic, interest-based engagement, addressing unfair economic practices where necessary while keeping diplomatic channels open to manage areas of mutual benefit.
Ultimately, the EU’s core challenge is to avoid becoming a passive object in great-power competition, whether it involves US–Russia or US–China relations. To navigate the US–China rivalry, Brussels should refrain from mechanically aligning with American containment logic and instead pursue a balanced, autonomous strategy, using diplomacy to de-escalate tensions and safeguard its own room for manoeuvre between Washington and Beijing. To that end, Europe must diversify its global partnerships, deepening relations with like-minded economies. This diversification would broaden Europe’s strategic options and reduce its exposure to external pressure from either superpower. At the same time, as a normative power, the EU should continue to anchor its external action in international law, multilateral institutions and global norms to constrain great-power behaviour and reinforce the rule-based order. This approach would not only reaffirm Europe’s identity as a civilian power but also grant it moral and political authority in managing the triangular relationship between the United States and China.
(*) Reuben Wong is Deputy Head of the Political Science Department at the National University of Singapore. Reuben held the first Jean Monnet Chair in Singapore (2013–2016) and was NUS’ Associate Vice-President, Global Relations (2021–2023). His publications have focused on EU foreign policy. They include The Europeanization of French Foreign Policy: France and the EU in East Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), National and European Foreign Policies (co-edited with Christopher Hill, Routledge, 2011), and journal articles in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Politique Européenne, the Asia Europe Journal, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, and the EU External Affairs Review. He has held visiting positions at Cambridge University, the LSE European Institute, the Stimson Center (Washington, D.C.), the East Asian Institute (Singapore), and Humboldt University. He consults and teaches summer school in Paris and Beijing. Reuben raises four children to help arrest Singapore’s declining total fertility rate. Email: polwongr@nus.edu.sg
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Morgenstern-Pomorski, Jost-Henrik and Pomorska, Karolina. (2026). “The Russia-Ukraine War and Transatlantic Relations.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00125
Abstract This chapter considers transatlantic relations from the perspective of allies’ cooperation in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2022. After providing a contextual background, we consider three scenarios for cooperation: transatlantic disintegration, muddling through and moving forward. Regardless of which of them comes true, however, policy implications point to very similar steps that the European Union (EU) needs to undertake.
Keywords: transatlantic relations; Russia; Ukraine; war; European Union; European security
As early as autumn 2021, in the year before the actual event, the Biden administration started publicly warning Europeans about the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, when US intelligence reports about extensive Russian military exercises became known. The transatlantic relationship was put to the test: to what extent were the Europeans ready to heed the American warnings? And how much unity would there be between the allies after the change of administration and the return of Trump to power as an example of a populist leader aiming to realign foreign and security policy?
Scholarship on populist foreign policy tells us that a standout feature of this type of politics is a shift in the practice of foreign policymaking rather than necessarily the policy content itself. Scholars have been writing about a phenomenon of ‘unpolitics’ and the destructive elements of populist foreign policy (Taggart 2018; Zaun and Ripoll Servent 2023; Juncos and Pomorska 2025). Destradi et al. (2021, 668) also showed that populists in power would often resort to foreign policy behaviours such as ‘the public use of undiplomatic language, the employment of social media for foreign policy communications, or the emphasis on personal bonds between world leaders’. Yet, there are some common threads, such as perceiving globalization as a threat and wanting to counter it with national preferences (Liang 2016, 8), which can be observed in MAGA’s ‘America First’ policies.
In this chapter we first look at the context of the transatlantic relations when it comes to policy towards Russia and the full-scale invasion of mainland Ukraine in 2022. We then specifically discuss what changed with the arrival of the second Trump administration. Consequently, we consider three scenarios for the future of transatlantic relations: transatlantic disintegration, muddling through and moving forward. Regardless of which of them comes true, however, policy implications point to very similar steps that the European Union (EU) needs to undertake.
From Build-up to U-turn? US Presidents and Their Response to the War
US policy towards Russia has undergone substantial shifts over the course of recent administrations’ terms in office. Obama’s reset towards Russia since 2009 aimed at increased cooperation with Putin, but suffered a fatal blow after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. In the aftermath, the transatlantic allies coordinated sanctions policies and increased overall military assistance to Ukraine. However, the Obama administration still refused to deliver lethal weapons to Ukraine. The reason cited at the time was to avoid a potential escalation of the war that might provoke Russia into a greater confrontation with Ukraine and potentially NATO. This cautious approach was not to be rewarded in the years to come. Meanwhile, the EU remained divided, largely unable to present a unified front against Putin due to differences in threat perception and economic interests. This hesitancy changed somewhat in 2014 and more noticeably, after the aggression in 2022.
The Biden Administration’s handling of Russia’s full-scale invasion
From October 2021, the Biden administration held monthly intelligence briefings related to Russia’s possible attack on Ukraine and in February 2022, the U.S. State Department warned American citizens to leave the country urgently. The same month, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held a widely-reported phone call with European leaders, warning about Russian troops amassing close to the Ukrainian border, which created a real and imminent threat of invasion (BBC 2022a). However, still not all European allies were ready to heed Washington’s warnings. The EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy, Josep Borrell, later stated that some things that happened were a surprise: ‘We did not believe that the war was coming. I have to recognise that here, in Brussels. The Americans were telling us “They will attack, they will attack” and we were quite reluctant to believe it’ (Borrell 2022). But even within the EU member states, there were divisions, with Eastern European states also issuing strong warnings ahead of the Americans.
Biden’s response to the war was rooted in strong support for Ukraine while imposing extensive sanctions on Russia. The United States cooperated closely with the European Commission and, later, with member states to harmonize sanctions. Biden also secured both financial aid for the military and weapons for Ukraine to help it defend against Russian incursions into its territory. From the start of the war, Biden and his officials also worked to unify NATO and build a global alliance in support of Ukraine. They publicly condemned Putin and labelled him a war criminal (BBC 2022b) and openly expressed support for Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ (Lopez 2024).
Trump’s return to the White House
The election of Donald Trump as the 47th US president in late 2024 triggered much anxiety and hand-wringing on the other side of the Atlantic. Several European leaders, such as French President Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, publicly expressed concerns about the continuity of American policy towards the war in light of the change in administration. These concerns were most closely linked to the perceived unpredictability of President Trump and his ambiguous commitment to NATO. Indeed, shortly after taking office, Trump called for an immediate ceasefire that would likely have entailed significant territorial concessions by Ukraine. He has also taken a much more critical, if not outright hostile, stance towards President Zelenskyy and even briefly suspended US intelligence and military aid in March, blaming the Ukrainian president for not being sufficiently committed to peace negotiations. This approach to Ukraine has highlighted a more transactionalist approach by the new administration, culminating in an orchestrated public attempt to humiliate President Zelenskyy at a meeting in the Oval Office on 18 August 2025 by Trump and his vice president, JD Vance. At the same time, Trump broke with the (Western) international isolation of Putin by inviting him to attend a summit in Alaska in August 2025. Another change in US discourse was the repeated assigning of blame for the war to the Ukrainian side. The Alaska summit, however, proved to be ineffective in jumpstarting a resolution to the war and was effectively cut short due to Putin’s intransigence and maximalist demands. The European allies, including the United Kingdom, responded with increased support for Zelenskyy and intensified consultations about the need for strategic autonomy for the EU (Ossa 2025; Desmaele 2025).
US policy took another turn towards the end of 2025 when Trump suddenly came out in support of greater military aid to Ukraine, including potential offers of Patriot missiles. He also introduced new sanctions against Russia. American policy also included a transatlantic dimension of populism, manifested in the increased salience of the relationship between Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán, whom the American president called a ‘great leader’ and who is liked and respected (Hutzler 2025). This relationship is significant considering that Hungary is often judged a ‘troublemaker’ in the EU when it comes to the relations with Ukraine and delivering aid. A significant challenge for Europeans is also Trump’s and his associates’ backing for radical-right parties that seek to weaken the EU (Lehne 2025).
Three Scenarios for Transatlantic Relations and the Russia–Ukraine War
In line with the framework of the report, we now move to discuss the different scenarios for the future of transatlantic relations in the context of the war. While we develop these three scenarios on an equal footing, this does not imply that all scenarios are equally likely to occur in our estimation. As part of our final discussion, we specifically address the perceived likelihood and discuss reasons for this assessment.
First scenario: Transatlantic disintegration
The first scenario is a breakdown of the transatlantic relationship. It is a realistic, but worst-case, scenario for transatlantic relations regarding the Russia–Ukraine war, one that is more likely to unfold than many Europeans would care to imagine. It is clear from domestic US politics that the majority of Republican officeholders and the public support Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression (Pew Research 2025). Nevertheless, key actors in the Trump administration and various strands of his domestic base of support disagree on whether to maintain or expand military aid to Ukraine, even as public opinion is shifting in favour of Ukraine. The most radical factions in the MAGA movement have frequently echoed Russian misinformation, turned responsibility for the war on its head (accusing Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy of being a warmonger), and demanded that US budgetary commitments be spent domestically. These signs were visible even before the administration took office, leading an influential European think-tank to issue a warning to ‘prepare for the worst’ (Tagarev 2024). Trump himself has become more contradictory, and in autumn 2025 even appeared willing to support Ukraine more forcefully, for example by expanding supplies of antimissile materiel, but not long-range missile exports. His administration has recently imposed sanctions on the main Russian oil businesses, suggesting a sudden shift that prompted some analysts to speak of ‘whiplash’ (Whitman and Wolff 2025).
Nevertheless, a scenario in which the radical faction pushing for peace on Russian terms gains domestic momentum could lead Trump to abandon Ukraine. If US military supplies to Ukraine were to cease, European supply chains would not be able to make up for the shortfall, at least in the short term. This shortfall would persist even if the limited willingness to provide additional capabilities of European partners were to suddenly be overcome (Helwig 2023). A complete withdrawal of US troops and support to Europe would, according to Cladi, be the strongest incentive for European ‘strategic autonomy’ (2025, 6), even if it would not immediately change the EU’s capability to exert hard power (Smith et al. 2025). It would likely require institutional changes that would push the EU further down the path towards acquiring state-like characteristics (Morgenstern-Pomorski 2024). The cessation of American assistance to Ukraine would result in a peace that would favour Putin’s Russia by solidifying Russian control of Ukrainian territory, allowing Russia to rebuild its military and continue its aggression in Ukraine or elsewhere with an even more strongly embedded authoritarian regime. Europe would have to engage considerable resources into containing Russia’s incursions into and sabotage in its airspace and territorial waters, and even in the mainland of the EU’s member states (Walker and Krupa 2025), Russian political manipulation on the domestic European level, as well as balancing international efforts at alliance building by the Russian Federation in other parts of the world. Future threats to the EU’s security were already raised by several politicians, including Danish Prime Minister Frederiksen (Parker and Kirby 2025) and European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius.
Second scenario: Muddling through
In this scenario, the United States muddles through, preserving an ambivalent posture toward the alliance. Its support for Europe and Ukraine is increasingly shaped by the rapid swings of the domestic political cycle: one week, the president appears to signal sympathy for Putin by meeting him in Alaska (Dunn 2025) or by publicly attacking Zelenskyy, and the next, he recommits to Ukraine by approving further military assistance or imposing new sanctions on Russia (Debusmann, Matza, and Aikman 2025). This pattern extends to halting arms shipments only to release them later, or floating the possibility of supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine without ultimately following through (Debusmann and Sudworth 2025). In such a volatile environment—marked by fluctuating political views and eroding institutional norms—muddling through requires European partners to adapt quickly to shifting US positions while pursuing long-term objectives with a constantly changing coalition of willing states. Divergent US views on European strategic autonomy (Ossa 2025) also create openings for European governments to manoeuvre.
Muddling through is, in some ways, the EU’s modus operandi (Missiroli and Rhinard 2007, Amato et al. 2013, Moravcsik 2016, Schumacher 2020), but quick and effective policy change is not a given. This is particularly true, given that the EU’s member states themselves alternate between liberal democratic and populist governance. This scenario will leave many pressing policy issues unresolved, contributing to future crisis points. Besch and Varma (2025) point out that transatlantic collaboration could also take the form of revisionist cooperation, even if that would, at this moment, require overcoming a dominant majority of pragmatic governments on the European side. In security policy, this scenario is characterized by mainly national responses to regional and global challenges that are coordinated at the margins, but do not fundamentally alter the dynamics of European security policy. Recent developments in European-level defence policy show that there is potential for integration, but that member states remain resistant to centralization, even in a crisis (Genschel 2022, Fiott 2024). This reluctance also means European security policy maintains and potentially strengthens the dependence of European governments on the United States, for example, through arms purchases despite their espoused objective of increased strategic autonomy. Lovato and Simón (2025) have shown the importance of coalition size and a degree of centralization for Europeans to resist external reproaches, highlighting the need to strengthen joint efforts, particularly in a muddling-through scenario. Any move towards centralization in European defence is likely going to be contested by European populist governments as well, as the cases of Hungary and Slovakia have illustrated.
Third scenario: Moving forward
The last scenario is the most optimistic of all and means a new chapter for a closer transatlantic relationship. The reluctant move by the Trump administration in autumn 2025 to impose additional sanctions on Russia has opened the way for the development of a new transatlantic bargain. The starting point for this latest bargain would be the fulfilment of the longstanding demand on the Europeans to be fully responsible for European security in the first instance, including shouldering the costs associated with this. At the same time, it would require the United States not to interfere with European efforts toward strategic autonomy and to provide, as a starting point, a closer and privileged collaboration on defence technology. Ossa’s study of American policymakers’ views showed that there is diversity of views that could allow for a bargain that increases European capabilities, even though this assumes that more minority views become mainstream in US discourse (2025, 503–7). Recent surveys do show a direction of travel of popular opinion, even among Republican supporters, towards support for Ukraine (Pew Research 2025).
However, it is noteworthy that the conservative position has so far been one of expressed opposition to European autonomous decision-making in security and defence, as it is seen as undermining NATO (Kochis 2020). From an academic balance of power perspective, Cladi argued that both sides still benefit from the transatlantic security arrangement (2025, 5). Allin and Chivvis (2025) similarly argue that there is significant scope for transatlantic cooperation, even if possibly only under future administrations. Smith et al. (2025) highlight the density of transatlantic relationships, both bilateral and involving the European Union’s various actors, as a cushion against abrupt changes. The Trump administration’s willingness to break with established practice, however, leaves it more vulnerable to disruption.
If this realization can be translated into a new type of transatlantic bargain, a third scenario emerges. This new, special relationship could encompass intelligence and technological cooperation with collective European entities and defence corporations, for example and reciprocal access to technological advancement, a kind of innovation sharing. It could mean stronger collaboration between the European Commission and its US counterparts to facilitate cooperation. This scenario would, of course, be more costly to the United States at the outset, but the new level of investment in Europe should yield some gains for the United States in the medium term as well. At the same time, it would require a turn away from politicizing international cooperation and a willingness to go beyond NATO’s established roles (Ewers-Peters 2025).
Policy Implications
The policy implications for transatlantic relations in the security domain are driven by uncertainty of US policy direction, as well as European Union political unity and willingness to cooperate in core areas of state powers, which remain largely outside of the EU’s competences. Member states’ cooperation is complicated by new divisions between populist governments that tend to view EU support for Ukraine more critically or oppose it, and the EU majority, which seeks to support Ukraine without taking major steps to escalate the war. But even when governments are not split along a populist– pragmatist divide, joining forces in security policy is not guaranteed (Anderson and Steinberg 2025). At the same time, when core member states are in agreement and there is a level of supranational support, the EU can act jointly to improve its security policy (Lovato and Simón 2025). Recent developments in defence show that Europeans know what needs to be done, but find it hard to get it done quickly (Brøgger 2024; Fiott 2024).
Another policy implication is the urgent need for greater solidarity among EU member states. If moves such as using Russian frozen assets to finance loans to Ukraine are to be successfully implemented, they will likely require assurances for those who are more affected by possible Russian retaliation, in this case, Belgium.
These implications make the scenarios interesting to entertain: the consequences for the EU are similar, independent of the scenario. What changes are, first, the time horizon and, second, the environment in which these decisions will need to be taken. The muddling-through scenario, which we deem most likely, in essence, only buys time and avoids the immediate need for collective action. The disintegration scenario would add immediacy to the issue at a level that the EU is not equipped to respond to. The moving forward scenario, which we would deem the least likely in the current situation, would require significant gains in capabilities at the EU level to facilitate a new grand bargain establishing a new kind of equilibrium of responsibilities in Europe.
Conclusions: The Way Forward for the EU
The policy implications of these three scenarios point in the same direction, but with different levels of urgency. The EU must expand its production and supply chains for weapons, emergency supplies and civilian reconstruction. As member states will be unlikely to hand over these matters to an EU-wide authority, this will mean investment in cooperation, joint in the sense of bilateral or multilateral projects and procurement. The initiatives related to strategic autonomy have already accelerated, partly due to Trump’s second term in office. These include increased military spending and initiatives such as the ReArm Europe Plan – Readiness 2030, but there will need to be greater efforts to build European military interoperability and genuinely European capabilities.
Specifically, regarding the war, if the United States does not rise to the challenge, Europeans will need to provide Ukraine with security guarantees (see also Biscop 2025). The EU needs to develop a strategic support to Ukraine beyond piecemeal decisions on what each member state is comfortable supplying. The expansion of European financing of joint development and R&D in defence projects can only be the beginning of what needs to become a more united effort at a European scale, including the UK and other partners, without prejudice to the EU’s internal requirements. Early signs of collaboration with Ukraine’s defence-industrial capabilities are encouraging and could be supported at the European level. Since we know integration in these sensitive government areas will not be achieved top down, it is equally important for the EU to facilitate, at a larger scale, the cooperation of European military staff through an expansion of the European Defence and Security College to other training and planning tools where European defence and security experts can better develop mutual understanding and esprit de corps.
(*) Jost-Henrik Morgenstern-Pomorski is Assistant Professor at the Taube Centre of Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Previously, he was Lecturer in European Politics and Deputy Director of the Institute of German and European Studies at the University of Birmingham. Jost works on the institutions of European foreign policy as well as the transatlantic relationship. Email: jost.morgenstern.pomorski@uj.edu.pl
(**) Karolina Pomorska is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, where she holds a Jean Monnet Chair’ Europe and the World’. She has previously worked at Maastricht University and the University of Cambridge. Karolina works on European foreign and security policy and on the EU’s policy towards the Eastern neighbours. Email: k.m.pomorska@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
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Please cite as: Jones, Erik. (2026). “Overview and background: Transatlantic Trade from Embedded Liberalism to Competitive Strategic Autonomy.” In: Populism and the Future of Transatlantic Relations: Challenges and Policy Options. (eds). Marianne Riddervold, Guri Rosén and Jessica R. Greenberg. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00126
Transatlantic trade relations developed after the Second World War through a compromise between embedded liberalism, which enabled an international division of labour, and domestic policy autonomy. This compromise depended on the capacity of the United States and Europe to regulate cross-border capital flows. As capital movements expanded and eventually overshadowed trade flows, the Atlantic partners shifted away from embedded liberalism to manage a more globalized economy. They sought to deepen the international division of labour through both finance and trade while avoiding a race to the bottom in welfare, labour and environmental standards. However, as globalization advanced, it became harder for the transatlantic partners to govern. Emerging economies challenged their influence over global economic institutions and their ability to set international standards. Losing control over globalization also generated domestic pressures, as interdependence produced dislocation and discontent. These dynamics fuelled a politics increasingly centred on domestic priorities rather than international engagement. Donald Trump reflects an extreme form of this trend, although it is visible on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, leaders are more inclined to pursue strategic autonomy even at the expense of cooperation. While the Atlantic economy is unlikely to break apart, it is more likely to muddle through than advance.
Introduction: Division of Labour and Policy Autonomy
The link between transatlantic trade and populism stems from the tension between an international division of labour and policy autonomy (Sonenscher 2022). An international division of labour requires trade-offs. Trade and investment influence income and employment on either side of any border they cross. Workers and firms that compete with imports tend to lose out, even if those that export to foreign markets tend to gain. Policy autonomy is necessary to mitigate the adjustment from producing everything at home and sharing that responsibility with the outside world. Policy autonomy is also necessary to ensure productive investment does not turn into disruptive speculation (Cooper 1968).
The tension arises from the fact that efforts to mitigate adjustment costs and control capital flows interfere with the functioning of markets within and between countries, thereby distorting the international division of labour (Myrdal 1956). Contributions necessary to finance worker retraining programmes, unemployment benefits or pension schemes add to labour costs and so reduce price competitiveness. Yet when governments embrace the logic of free markets, they face political backlash from those hurt by foreign competition or cross-border financial volatility (Polanyi 1957). Neither workers nor employers want to pay the costs of adjusting to foreign competition. That backlash is not necessarily ‘populist’, but it will emerge outside the existing political system if no party or group is willing and able to represent those adversely affected within it (Eichengreen 2018).
The challenge is to strike the right balance in each of the countries engaged in the international division of labour. This balancing requires some kind of coordination to prevent governments from using domestic policy instruments to shift their political problems onto one another. Importantly, the scope and scale of coordination required expand as the international division of labour deepens (Cooper 1968; Rodrik 2011). In turn, coordination in the use of economic policy instruments across countries becomes another constraint on policy autonomy and so another potential source of political backlash. Again, that backlash does not have to be ‘populist’, but it is available as an opportunity for populist political mobilization against mainstream politicians (Hooghe and Marks 2009; Mair 2013).
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have struggled to manage the tensions associated with adjustment to an ever-deepening division of labour and ever more intrusive attempts at policy coordination (Calleo 1982, 2001). They have also wrestled with the challenge of expanding their division of labour beyond the Atlantic partnership. The formulas they used have differed from one period to the next. In each case, politicians working outside the mainstream have found opportunities for populist political mobilization on both the right and the left (Jones 2019).
This chapter traces the evolution of transatlantic economic relations in five stages. The first describes the post-Second World War compromise in which politicians on both sides of the Atlantic sought to build a transatlantic economy while also prioritizing their domestic political constituencies. The second explains how the success of transatlantic economic integration created a need for greater policy coordination among national governments in Europe and the United States. The third explores how these early efforts at managing interdependence expanded to an increasingly global marketplace. The fourth shows how the impact of global market forces fostered a retreat toward greater domestic policy autonomy, even if at the expense of transatlantic economic integration. The fifth concludes with a preliminary assessment of what this retreat to competitive strategic autonomy entails for the transatlantic economic relationship.
The Compromise of Embedded Liberalism
The original post-war formula rested on four pillars. European governments would coordinate their reconstruction and integration through a mix of domestic economic planning and intergovernmental bargaining (Milward 1992; Segers 2024). The United States would provide support in the form of investment credits and balance-of-payments assistance. The dollar would form the backbone for international payments. And governments on both sides of the Atlantic would restrict capital flows to foster trade and investment (Ikenberry 1993). In many ways, these four pillars reflected the imperatives of the early Cold War period. The United States needed to foster European recovery and growth to consolidate the Western alliance against the threat of Soviet communism and to ensure European policymakers retained sufficient policy autonomy to push back against political groups that preferred to embrace Soviet-style communism rather than oppose it.
John Gerard Ruggie characterized this arrangement as a ‘compromise of embedded liberalism’ (Ruggie 1982). What he meant is that the system allowed national governments to build an international division of labour while at the same time prioritizing domestic policy autonomy. That prioritization reflected the need to stabilize domestic political systems against the threat that left-wing extremists would mobilize around economic grievances to install Soviet-style communism. Trade liberalization took place on a reciprocal basis, but only at the pace governments could manage the cost of adjustment. Meanwhile, policymakers used financial repression – both domestically and in the form of capital controls, including restrictions on currency convertibility – to prevent destabilizing speculation.
The system worked due to the relatively low level of integration both within Europe and across the Atlantic. As European economies became increasingly interconnected with each other and with the United States, coordination became more complicated, planning less effective and financial flows more volatile. These tensions were evident almost immediately after the reintroduction of full currency convertibility, and they increased through the 1960s as cross-border trade and investment became more prominent and cross-border finance began to leak through capital controls into an ever-deepening network of offshore banking (Helleiner 1994; Strange 1997).
The politics of this period developed in response to many influences, not all of which can be traced to deepening economic interdependence. Nevertheless, there are clear signs that at least some of the political mobilization is linked back to problems associated with adjustment and coordination. Employers and trade unions defected from national planning arrangements and sometimes even from collective bargaining. Policymakers who tried to strengthen arenas for international coordination faced increasing domestic opposition, particularly from groups – like farmers – who feared they would lose out to international competition. Ultimately, politicians faced a choice between satisfying their domestic constituents and living up to their international commitments – often through exchange rate pegs, but also through tariffs and trade (Gourevitch 1986). In the context of a much more integrated Atlantic and European economy, giving priority to domestic policy autonomy became increasingly harder to maintain. It was also increasingly unnecessary. Although Soviet communism remained a threat, the post-war economic system had succeeded in establishing Western prosperity, both through the international division of labour and through the establishment of domestic welfare states.
Jointly Managed Interdependence
The late 1960s and early 1970s were a period of transition from the ‘compromise of embedded liberalism’ to something more closely resembling a jointly managed form of interdependence. This transition was necessary because policymakers realized they could not meet their domestic policy objectives without considering how their counterparts in other countries would respond to any policy change (Cooper 1968). Efforts to expand government spending or increase monetary stimulus tended to leak across countries, often in counterproductive ways, if not openly destabilizing. They also discovered that many of the forces at work in the international economy could only be tackled through international collective action. And they realized that domestic political responses to policy failure – in the form of strikes, electoral volatility and popular protests – would make matters worse (Putnam and Bayne 1987).
This shift to jointly managed interdependence required national governments to reassert control over domestic politics while simultaneously building and strengthening institutions for international policy coordination. This two-fold challenge was difficult for governments on the centre-left, which faced competing pressures from more traditional constituents close to organized labour and from new political movements mobilizing around quality-of-life considerations associated with democratic responsiveness or the environment (Inglehart 1990). By contrast, centre-right governments had an easier time disciplining trade unions and shifting contentious policy issues to non-majoritarian institutions such as politically independent central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, or the European Commission (Mair 2013; Tucker 2018).
Ultimately, governments from both sides of the spectrum accepted the need to coordinate in the management of their interdependence. The alternative of unwinding the international division of labour was too unattractive. They also realized that such coordination would make it easier to address the threat of Soviet-style communism, both internationally and in terms of domestic politics. The centre-left governments under French president Francois Mitterrand during his first administration were emblematic of this choice. Although industry minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement was a staunch advocate of reasserting domestic policy autonomy, Mitterrand accepted the arguments of his finance minister, Jacques Delors, that accepting the policy requirements for international coordination within the European Community was the better option – even if that meant ending his coalition with the French Communist Party (McCarthy 1990).
Mitterrand’s choice came at the cost of alienating important parts of both sides of his coalition within the French Socialist Party and across the non-communist left. To limit the damage, Mitterrand changed the electoral system from first-past-the-post to proportional representation, thereby creating space for the far-right National Front to enter the national parliament in the 1986 elections. In turn, this opening strengthened National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen’s bid for the French presidency in 1988 (Mitra 1988). As in the 1960s, many factors influenced the politics of the 1980s. Nevertheless, it is still possible to connect the tension between policy autonomy and the international division of labour.
Other countries experienced this period of jointly managed interdependence differently, but those experiences have similar patterns – including in the United States and across the transatlantic economy more generally. France’s commitment to strengthen coordination within Europe was matched by efforts to stabilize the dollar and limit the impact of US domestic policy on European national economies. The Louvre and Plaza Accords represented a high-water mark in coordinated intervention at the level of the Group of 7 (G7) leading industrial nations (Funabashi 1989).
The results of those agreements were insufficient for the United States and its partners in Europe. They were able to achieve greater stability at the international level but only at the cost of policy autonomy in the domestic context. Given the weakening threat of Soviet communism, addressing political challenges from the left was less important than developing coherent strategies to underpin domestic prosperity. The US response was to move away from currency interventions and toward a commitment to more aggressive capital market liberalization coupled with greater domestic policy commitment to the requirements for participating in a global economy – the Washington Consensus (Williamson 1993). The European response was to liberalize capital markets alongside a commitment to irrevocably fix intra-European exchange rates – economic and monetary union (Jones 2002).
Extensive Globalization
The end of the Cold War eliminated the communist threat and so added weight to different strategies for ensuring domestic ‘competitiveness’. In turn, this shift changed the focus for the transatlantic partners from jointly managed interdependence to extensive globalization. That pivot did not end policymakers’ efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to coordinate the use of their policy instruments, but it did extend the international division of labour far beyond the Atlantic economy. It also rested ever increasingly on the flow of capital rather than the flow of goods and services. This change mattered insofar as the movement of productive factors – meaning labour as well as capital – could substitute for trade. It also mattered because liberalized capital markets quickly threatened to move beyond government control (Frieden 2006).
The implications for global governance were stark. As more activity moved beyond the Atlantic, the institutions that policymakers in the United States and Europe used to coordinate their policy interventions became less effective (Viola 2020). The transatlantic partners could negotiate a multilateral trade deal in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that included the creation of a World Trade Organization (WTO), but they could not complete the Doha Round of talks that followed (Jones 2006).
More importantly, the institutions for policy coordination became more controversial. This development was partly because those institutions addressed more issues of popular concern, creating the impression that they also raised them beyond democratic politics, and partly because they were unrepresentative of the countries being brought into the global economy. Left-wing activists initially mobilized around the new WTO but soon began targeting other institutions, such as the G7 and the European Union (EU) (Curran 2007). Mobilization occurred on the right as well, with increasing voices complaining about the loss of manufacturing jobs to foreign competition or the progressive influx of foreign migrants. This period marked the rise of many contemporary populist movements, with the consolidation of support for, among others, the French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party and a right-wing coalition in Italy that included Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, the Northern League, and the National Alliance (Mudde 2007).
This political mobilization progressively chipped away at support for multilateral institutions within Europe, across the Atlantic and at the global level. It also complicated the strategies being used by mainstream political parties to adapt to changing economic conditions. Centre-left parties that tacked to the centre in an effort to build a new pro-market coalition became less effective at holding together a coalition of left-wing and centre-left voters whose political agendas grew ever more divergent. The French left won more votes in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections than in 1997, but it split that vote across so many candidates that Jean-Marie Le Pen advanced to a second-round contest against Jacques Chirac, the centre-right candidate (Jones 2007). A similar splintering of the left could be found in a number of European countries. The US Democratic Party was also affected.
Centre-right parties were affected as well. Many of those parties had long traditions supporting free trade and global commerce. As right-wing extremist groups gained support through the mobilization of voters more sceptical of a global division of labour, however, those centre-right parties began to pivot to stave off the competition. This shift took place across Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic. The British case was emblematic (Norris and Inglehart 2019). British Conservatives were long divided over the virtues of European integration, even if they were largely united in support of Britain’s participation in the EU’s internal market. What they sought was both policy autonomy and an international division of labour at the same time. When they realized that would not be possible, they opted for policy autonomy against the wishes of the party’s own leadership (Oliver 2016).
Meanwhile, the rise of economic powers beyond the transatlantic economy created new sources of tension both within and among the transatlantic partners. China’s evolution from a source of low-skilled manufacturing labour to a competitor both at home and in other world markets was particularly destabilizing; so was Russia’s central role as a source of cheap oil and gas, particularly for countries in Europe. If the British sought greater autonomy from Europe, it was at least partly to find more effective policy responses to these new challenges.
Competitive Strategic Autonomy
The Brexit vote was not a rejection of an international division of labour; it was a protest against the implications of that kind of economic interdependence for democratic policymaking. In that sense, it marked a shift from extensive globalization to something more closely resembling a competition for strategic autonomy. The British government wanted to ‘take back control’ to gain a freer hand in charting the country’s course in the global economy. Moreover, Brexit was not an isolated incident. Voters in both the United States and Europe protested the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) despite the agreement’s promise to strengthen both economic performance and the transatlantic partnership’s global influence (Young 2017).
Popular support for Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign had similar motivations. Trump mobilized support for greater political autonomy and against binding trade agreements, even those like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that would strengthen US competitiveness. And Trump was not alone. His Democratic opponent, Hilary Rodham Clinton, facing a challenge from the more left-wing Bernie Sanders, also campaigned against the TPP, even though, as secretary of state, she played a role in negotiating the agreement (Gerstle 2022).
The global economic and financial crisis played an important role in sapping support for extensive globalization. So did the global pandemic and the supply chain disruption that followed (McDaniel 2023). Once again, many factors lie behind political developments. Nevertheless, it is still possible to trace the tension between policy autonomy and an international division of labour (Goodman 2024). That tension shows up in the exercise of power as well as the loss of power. The European trade negotiators who sought to include beyond-the-border regulatory provisions in the Doha Round of WTO talks wanted to shape policy in Europe’s trading partners. When those talks failed, they shifted their focus to beyond-the-border conditionality in bilateral trade agreements. They also controlled access to the EU’s internal market. This ‘Brussels Effect’ was widely celebrated in Europe (Bradford 2020). In other countries, it was viewed less favourably, including in the United States. The EU’s regulatory influence was a significant factor in American political mobilization against the TTIP, for example (Young 2017).
Successive US administrations have sought to exercise power in a different way, through their control over the dollar as the principal international currency and through the central role US corporations play in the market infrastructures that underpin global telecommunications and finance. US policymakers always used the country’s central role in the world economy as a source of political leverage (Calleo 1982). They expanded their toolkit in the early twenty-first century after the attacks on 9/11 and in an effort to track terrorist financing. By the early 2010s, no country in the world was unaffected, including traditional allies in Europe. When Barack Obama’s administration took the unprecedented step of demanding that the SWIFT financial telecommunications group disconnect Iranian banks, America’s European allies had little choice but to give their assent (Farrell and Newman 2019). The Obama administration counted this policy as a success, but here too other countries had a very different perspective, including in Europe (Demarais 2022; McDowell 2023).
The Brussels effect and the ‘weaponization of interdependence’ raised concerns about the trade-off between an international division of labour and domestic policy autonomy. Within that context, Donald Trump’s first administration underscored the importance of national sovereignty even as successive European Commissions – encouraged by French President Emmanuel Macron – began to stress the need for strategic autonomy and European sovereignty. These rhetorical turns could be characterized as ‘populist’ (Jones 2017). Certainly, they appealed to political forces – voters, interest groups, parties, governments – already wary of the international influences extending across the Atlantic.
A New Equilibrium?
Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential elections did little to assuage European concerns. Although the incoming Biden administration looked more appealing from the other side of the Atlantic, Biden’s efforts to bind economic policy to a ‘foreign policy for the middle class’ revealed a consistent desire to prioritize domestic policy autonomy. For its part, the EU had already embarked on an ambitious plan to facilitate the green and digital transition as part of efforts to recover from the pandemic and enhance European resilience. Both measures prioritized efforts to push back against domestic economic grievances, even if that made it harder to strengthen the transatlantic economy. When the Biden administration announced its ‘Inflation Reduction Act’, European policymakers denounced it as an attempt to lure away jobs, investment, and innovation (Anghel and Jones 2024).
The onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine did little to reverse that dynamic. Although the two sides of the Atlantic came together to push back against Russian aggression, economic tensions persisted. So did the desire for greater autonomy. The re-election of Donald Trump and his second administration’s aggressive trade policy only exacerbated the situation. Little if anything remains of the previous formulas for structuring the global economy. The compromise of embedded liberalism has faded from memory. The institutions for jointly managed interdependence barely function. And enthusiasm for extensive globalization has waned, if it has not evaporated.
What remains is the search for competitive strategic autonomy. That competition makes it unlikely we will see the restoration of an extensive international division of labour. Some kind of ‘muddling through’ is a more plausible result. But it is possible that this emphasis on strategic autonomy will create economic grievances that are paradoxically self-reinforcing. The more people are hurt by the unravelling of the global economy, the more they will call upon politicians to help alleviate the pain. Finding some way to strike a new balance that can work across as well as within democratic countries is the challenge mainstream politicians have to face.
(*) Erik Jones is Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and Non-resident Scholar at Carnegie Europe. He is author of of The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union (2002), Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in Small States (2008), Weary Policeman: American Power in an Age of Austerity (2012, with Dana H. Allin), and The Year the European Crisis Ended (2014). His latest book is a Cambridge ‘element’ called From Club to Commons: Enlargement, Reform and Sustainability in European Integration (2025, with Veronica Anghel). Professor Jones is editor or co-editor of more than thirty books and special issues of journals on topics related to European politics, political economy, and the transatlantic relationship, and he has been co-editor of the journal Government & Opposition since 2015. Email: erik.jones@eui.eu
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