Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois shows how a single legal case can reverberate far beyond its national context, becoming a transnational resource in contemporary culture wars. The conviction of Päivi Räsänen by the Finnish Supreme Court—carefully distinguishing between protected religious expression and punishable factual claims—has been rapidly reframed into a simplified narrative of “persecuted faith.” In this process, complex legal reasoning gives way to emotionally resonant claims about censorship and moral decline. Dr. Bauvois highlights how transatlantic conservative networks mobilize such cases to advance broader agendas, transforming local disputes into symbolic battlegrounds. The episode ultimately reveals how culture wars today are not merely domestic conflicts but globally circulated struggles over truth, authority, and the boundaries of legitimate speech.
On 26 March 2026, Finland’s Supreme Court convicted Päivi Räsänen, a long-serving Christian Democrat MP and former Minister of the Interior, of incitement against a minority group. The conviction concerned a 2004 pamphlet by Räsänen, whose title roughly translates to “Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Understanding of Humanity.” The Court noted that Räsänen described homosexuality as “a disorder of psychosexual development” and a “sexual abnormality.”
The pamphlet’s claims about homosexuality were found to be framed as factual generalizations, not religious expression, and therefore fell within hate speech law. By contrast, her 2019 social media post—which quoted a Bible verse to criticize the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland for sponsoring Helsinki Pride and added that homosexuality was “shameful and sinful”—was deemed protected religious expression.
The political reaction was swift. Riikka Purra, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance from the Finns Party, wrote on social media: “Freedom of speech took another serious hit today through the supreme court’s voting decision.” But the ripple effect extended beyond Finland. The US Embassy in Finland called the verdict “a troubling ruling for religious freedom and freedom of expression.” A Washington Post editorial sharply criticized the decision, opening with: “Finland is often ranked as the happiest country on Earth, but that’s only if you like cold winters and harsh limitations on freedom of expression.” The conviction also drew a response from the Trump administration. Riley Barnes, a top official in the US State Department, argued on X that the conviction is “baseless” and that “in a democracy, no one should face trial for peacefully sharing their beliefs.”
The Context: Struggles over Gender and Sexuality
The Räsänen case is not an isolated legal dispute. It exemplifies a broader shift in Western democracies: the growing centrality of culture wars to populist mobilization. Increasingly, conflicts are driven by cultural backlash—a reaction against progressive value change that fuels today’s culture wars (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Nowhere is this more evident than in the transnational struggles over gender and sexuality, which are the central front of contemporary culture wars (Ayoub & Stoeckl, 2024; Goetz & Mayer, 2023).
At stake in the Räsänen case is therefore not only a legal boundary but an epistemic conflict: a struggle over who has the authority to define truth, normality, and the limits of acceptable speech regarding gender and sexuality. On one side stand scientific and legal institutions that define homosexuality as a normal variation of human sexuality – a position codified by the WHO’s removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1990. On the other side are religiously grounded claims asserting moral truths, often framed as non-negotiable values.
The Finnish Supreme Court’s reasoning reflects this tension. By classifying Räsänen’s pamphlet statements as factually incorrect generalizations, the court affirms the authority of scientific and legal knowledge. At the same time, it draws a clear line: religious belief remains protected, but its translation into degrading claims about a minority group is not.
“Flagship” for Transatlantic Conservative Networks
The significance of the Räsänen case extends far beyond Finland. It has become a resource in transnational culture wars, especially around gender and sexuality. Contemporary conservative politics are indeed increasingly organized through cross-border networks that coordinate legal strategies, political messaging, and legislative agendas (Cooper, 2017; Du Mez, 2020).
For instance, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) —a US-based conservative Christian legal advocacy group classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group—has supported Räsänen throughout her trial, providing legal aid and raising funds. ADF has framed her case as prime evidence of a growing threat to free speech and religious liberty in Europe.
This framing has reached the highest levels of US politics. On 4 February 2026—over a month before the Finnish Supreme Court’s final conviction—Räsänen testified before the US House Judiciary Committee at a hearing titled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation.” She was invited by Republican lawmakers, including Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who has very strong ties with the conservative Christian think-tank The Heritage Foundation. During her visit, Räsänen also attended a Prayer and Repentance gathering alongside Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a prominent conservative Republican who has expressed alignment with Project 2025, the ideological and political programme laid out by the Heritage Foundation.
For transatlantic conservative and Christian-right networks, Räsänen functions as a “flagship” —a symbolic figure they can brandish to illustrate how bad things are in Europe. Her experience is a cautionary tale used to support claims that Europe is suppressing Christian expression, that European legal systems are hostile to traditional religious beliefs, and that free speech protections are under threat from European regulatory models. The fact that she was actually acquitted of the Bible-quoting charge is conveniently omitted. The narrative that she was prosecuted for “quoting the Bible” is politically useful, even if factually false.
The Politics of Simplification: From Legal Nuance to Moral Narratives
The Räsänen case illustrates how complex legal judgments are translated into simplified moral narratives. Nuanced legal distinctions—such as the Supreme Court’s careful separation of protected religious speech (the social media post) from punishable factual generalizations (the pamphlet)—are flattened into binary oppositions: freedom versus censorship, faith versus secularism, Christian truth versus gender ideology.
Media coverage sympathetic to Räsänen conveniently ignores the complexity of the ruling—which found that context, framing, and genre matter. Conservative and Christian media outlets such as The European Conservative, Christian Network Europe, and The Hungarian Conservative have covered the case with simplifying headlines like “Is It Hate Speech to Call Homosexuality a Sin?” These outlets frequently refer to hate speech laws as instruments of secular oppression, ignoring the court’s explicit reasoning that religious expression remains protected.
This simplification is not accidental but constitutive of populist politics. It enables actors to construct clear moral boundaries, mobilize emotions, and reinforce collective identities. The Räsänen case thus functions as a symbolic resource, anchoring abstract claims about moral decline in concrete, personalized narratives that can travel across borders.
The distinction between protected belief and punishable speech is replaced by a more resonant narrative: Räsänen is a respectable Christian politician, a grandmother and physician, sanctioned simply for expressing her faith. This narrative ignores the court’s explicit acquittal on the Bible charge and its careful reasoning. But in the logic of culture war mobilization, accuracy is secondary to affective resonance. A long, complex legal judgment does not rally supporters. A story of martyrdom does.
Conclusion
The Räsänen case is no longer about what she wrote or said, but about what others have made of her. A complex verdict has been simplified and redeployed, its original details mattering less than its political and ideological utility.
The involvement of The Heritage Foundation and the broader MAGA movement is not coincidental. In recent years, The Heritage Foundation has actively cultivated alliances with European conservative, right-wing and far-right actors—politicians, think tanks, and nationalist movements—across Hungary, Czechia, Spain, France, and Germany, and has reportedly engaged with parliamentary groups such as Patriots for Europe.
Räsänen did not become a flagship on her own. Within these conservative circles, some ideas from Project 2025 are seen as transferable to European debates on immigration, sexuality and regulation. Räsänen’s case, her hearing, and her symbolic elevation by US conservative networks are small but significant components of this larger agenda.
The Räsänen case illustrates a wider pattern: culture wars are increasingly produced transnationally, circulating through networks that reframe narratives across borders. A local case becomes a global resource, translated and repurposed for the aims of the culture war.
References
Ayoub, P. M. & Stoeckl, K. (2024). The global fight against LGBTI rights: How transnational conservative networks target sexual and gender minorities. NYU Press.
Du Mez, K. K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. Liveright.
Goetz, J. & Mayer, S. (2023). Global Perspectives on Anti-Feminism. Edinburgh University Press.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge University Press.
Dr. Arash Azizi of Yale University argues that the Iran Islamic Republic is likely to survive, but in a transformed form shaped less by ideology and more by pragmatism. In this ECPS interview, he suggests that Iran’s longstanding strategy of “sustained hostility toward the United States and enmity toward Israel… is not sustainable,” pushing the regime toward recalibration. Rather than collapse, Dr. Azizi foresees a shift: the decline of “Soleimaniism,” the rise of a securitized political order, and a growing emphasis on regional integration and diplomatic engagement. While power consolidates around military-security elites, Iran may simultaneously pursue normalization and reconstruction. The result, he argues, is not the end of the Islamic Republic, but its reconfiguration into a more technocratic, less ideological, and strategically adaptive state.
Amid an intensifying cycle of confrontation between Iran, Israel, and the United States, the Middle East is entering what can only be described as a structurally transformative moment. Long characterized by proxy conflict and calibrated ambiguity, regional dynamics have now shifted toward direct interstate confrontation, leadership rupture, and accelerating geopolitical fragmentation. The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, the subsequent consolidation of power within a narrower elite, and sustained US–Israeli military pressure have together transformed a protracted shadow war into an overt systemic crisis. These developments raise urgent questions about the durability of the Islamic Republic, the reconfiguration of its strategic doctrine, and the broader implications for regional order.
In this context, this ECPS interview with Dr. Arash Azizi, who is a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at Yale University, offers a timely and analytically rich intervention. As a scholar of Iranian politics and regional geopolitics, Dr. Azizi situates current developments within a longer trajectory of ideological evolution, institutional transformation, and strategic recalibration. His central argument—captured in the headline assertion that “the Islamic Republic will survive, but in a less ideological, more pragmatic form”—provides a unifying thread through the discussion.
At the heart of Dr. Azizi’s analysis lies the contention that the foundational logic of Iran’s revolutionary project is undergoing erosion. The model of regional power projection associated with Qassem Soleimani—what he describes as a “collection of militias that functioned very much as a unified multinational army”—has, in his view, reached the limits of its historical relevance. “That era is now largely over,” he notes, emphasizing that even prior to the latest war, “Soleimaniism was already under significant strain.” The cumulative effects of internal dissent in Iraq and Lebanon, combined with Israel’s military campaign and the collapse of allied structures in Syria, have rendered the “axis of resistance… even more out of vogue.”
Yet Azizi resists narratives of imminent regime collapse. Instead, he identifies a process of transformation rather than breakdown. The Islamic Republic, he argues, has come to recognize that its long-standing strategy of “sustained hostility toward the United States and enmity toward Israel… is not sustainable.” In its place, a more pragmatic orientation is emerging—one oriented toward “regional integration,” “a business-like relationship with the United States,” and eventual diplomatic normalization. This shift does not imply liberalization in a conventional sense, but rather a rebalancing of ideological ambition and strategic necessity.
Simultaneously, however, this transformation is unfolding alongside the consolidation of a more securitized political order. The post-Khamenei landscape, Dr. Azizi suggests, reflects “the rise of a security state, a militarized state… with important elements from the IRGC calling the shots.” This dual movement—toward external pragmatism and internal securitization—defines the paradox of Iran’s current trajectory.
Taken together, Dr. Azizi’s analysis points to a hybrid future: a state that sheds elements of its revolutionary identity while preserving—and in some respects intensifying—its coercive core. The result, as he suggests, is not the end of the Islamic Republic, but its reconstitution: less ideological, more technocratic, and increasingly embedded within a shifting regional order.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Dr. Arash Azizi, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Iran’s Axis Strategy Is Fading as a New Regional Logic Emerges
Palestinians celebrate Iran’s missile strikes on US bases in Iraq, burning US and Israeli flags during a rally in Khan Yunis, Gaza, honoring Qasem Soleimani. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Dreamstime.
Dr. Azizi, welcome. Let me begin with the broader picture: In “The Shadow Commander,” you show how Qassem Soleimani institutionalized a model of regional power projection that fused ideological militancy, informal diplomacy, and IRGC autonomy. After the killing of Ali Khamenei, the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei, and the direct US-Israeli war on Iran, how should we now think about the afterlife of “Soleimaniism” within a post-charismatic, wartime Islamic Republic?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Thank you—that’s a very good question. Soleimaniism, or the axis of resistance as it existed under Soleimani—namely, a collection of militias that functioned very much as a unified multinational army capable of operating across multiple battlefields simultaneously—had particular relevance at its height. That era is now largely over. The killing of Soleimani, of course, was significant.
But there were also important challenges in Iraq and Lebanon, the two heartlands of the axis of resistance. Within the Shia communities in both countries, the mass protests of 2019 posed a serious challenge to established parties. There is a clear and growing desire within Iraqi and Lebanese societies for more integrated, sovereign states, as well as for stronger connections with the Arab world—through the Arab League and a renewed emphasis on Arab identity. This, in turn, makes it problematic for large parts of their political systems to remain beholden to a non-Arab power like Iran.
For all these reasons, even if you had asked me this question in early 2023, I would have said that Soleimaniism was already under significant strain.
In the aftermath of October 7, with Israel’s decimation of several members of the axis, and the fall of the Syrian regime, the axis of resistance has become even more out of vogue. While there are now claims, in the context of the current war, that the axis has regained relevance, I remain skeptical. I do not think that “Soleimaniism,” as you call it, has a future in this sense.
This raises the question: if not, what will Iran’s relationship with these various militias look like going forward? I think the answer is that it will become more closely tied to Iran’s broader effort to act as a regional player, primarily through political support for these groups. That support is likely to become more political and less military in nature. As a result, power in Tehran will be transformed, and Iran’s relationship with these groups will also evolve. We are therefore likely to see greater integration of Iran into the region, and less reliance on the revolutionary militia model that operated under Soleimani.
Endless Hostility to the US and Israel Is No Longer Sustainable for Iran
To what extent do the recent US–Israeli strikes and aggression—explicitly coupled with regime-change rhetoric—redefine the Islamic Republic’s threat perception from chronic containment to acute existential insecurity, and how might this shift alter its long-term grand strategy?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The Islamic Republic has just withstood 40 days of fighting with the United States and Israel. In the long term, I think the Iranian state—whether it is the Islamic Republic or whatever might replace it, and there may well be internal transformations—has realized that this trajectory of hostility, this grand strategy, to use the words of some like Vali Nasr, of sustained hostility toward the United States and enmity toward Israel, is not sustainable. As a result, I think they will increasingly look toward regional integration, an end to the historic dispute with the United States, and the emergence of Iran as a regional power that may still have disputes—within the region and beyond—but does not incorporate them into its revolutionary identity.
Veiled woman walks past anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda mural outside the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Photo: Jack Malipan / Dreamstime.
Tehran Is Trying to Trade Brinkmanship for Regional Recognition
Recent cease-fire agreement suggests that Tehran is demanding not a temporary end of hostilities but binding guarantees against renewed attack, reparations, and recognition of its coercive leverage in the Strait of Hormuz. Do these demands indicate strategic weakness dressed up as defiance, or a regime conclusion that controlled brinkmanship has enhanced Iran’s bargaining position?
Dr. Arash Azizi: If you really look at these demands, they are an attempt to redefine Iran’s role in the region and a recognition that the status quo does not work. So, Iran’s thinking in terms of non-belligerence is significant, because it would mean that it also needs to end its belligerence toward the US.
Demands such as recognition of its control over Hormuz and recognition of its power make sense, not for a revolutionary revisionist actor, but for one that seeks to be part of—and recognized within—the status quo. So, while they still hold on to ambitions of expelling US forces from the region, they understand that the more likely outcome is Iran’s integration into the region and its recognition by its neighbors—Saudi Arabia and others.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan—these powers recognizing Iran—and a more business-like relationship with the United States. So, if the new leadership in Iran—and we should remind ourselves that this is a new leadership about whom we know relatively little; this is not about Mojtaba Khamenei, who is absent anyway, but about Bagher Ghalibaf and similar military figures who are now in charge—if they are able to press ahead and achieve some results in the talks in Islamabad or in future negotiations, they would have truly transformed the Islamic Republic and ushered Iran into a new era, one likely to be defined not by international isolation but by regional integration and global recognition by the US.
What We Are Seeing Is the Rise of a Militarized Security State
How has the death of Ali Khamenei and the contested authority of Mojtaba Khamenei changed the internal architecture of power? Are we witnessing a succession that strengthens clerical supremacy, or one that accelerates the long-term transfer of effective authority toward the IRGC and security institutions?
Dr. Arash Azizi: It is the latter. The death of Khamenei and the rise of Mojtaba, who is very much a stand-in for the security services of the regime, further the rise of security and militarized elements to power—those in the IRGC and beyond. Bagher Ghalibaf is very much an embodiment of the IRGC, and he is now the strongest man in Iran. In many ways, he is Iran’s de facto leader. The new National Security Advisor, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, is also an embodiment of IRGC insiders. So, this is very much the rise of a security state, a militarized state in Iran, with important elements from the IRGC calling the shots.
The question is what shape this order will take, and that is harder to answer. Will it be more like North Korea or more like Vietnam? That is one way of thinking about it. So far, we have seen many more signs pointing toward Vietnam than North Korea. The evidence for that can be seen, for example, in how Ghalibaf is operating. We should not forget that he has been a partner of reformists and centrists. He is now effectively praised by Rouhani and also by President Pezeshkian, who is a reformist. When he ran for president in 2024, he very much ran as a centrist. So, it looks like this militarized Iran will move toward a more centrist and more diplomatic direction, perhaps also a more technocratic and pragmatic one.
Iran May Survive, but It Will Not Resemble the Islamic Republic We Knew
Billboard depicting Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei and Imam Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini on a building wall in Tehran, Iran, April 2018. The portraits honor the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini (Supreme Leader 1979–1989), and his successor Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader 1989–2026), whose images frequently appear in public spaces as symbols of the regime’s ideological authority. Photo: Dreamstime.
In your recent writing, you argue that the Islamic Republic may survive, but in a different form. What, precisely, is that altered form likely to be under wartime conditions: a more naked military-security state, a narrower dynastic-clerical regime, or an unstable hybrid unable to restore prewar equilibrium?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The main differences would be that Iran would drop a couple of the core policies of the Islamic Republic. It would abandon its social puritan repression. It will be less obsessed with being an Islamist puritan society, where women have to cover up and so on, and will liberalize in this respect.
It would also replace its traditional, ideologically Islamist, anti-American, anti-Israeli foreign policy with one that is more realpolitik-oriented and based on regional integration, a business-like relationship with the United States, and the resumption of diplomatic ties with the United States.
So, it will appear more like a country such as Pakistan, or in some ways Turkey, in terms of foreign policy. Of course, Turkey is different, as it is a member of NATO and has a democratic structure, with important distinctions. But Iran will become more of a non-aligned player, part of a multipolar world order that centers its own interests, rather than one that seeks to position itself within an anti-American order.
As I said, this would mean resuming diplomatic ties with the United States, and the overall shape of the regime would change significantly. It would be a country open to business with the West, and it would no longer resemble the Islamic Republic we have seen over the past few decades.
Tehran Is Using Escalation to Redefine Its Place in the Region
Iran’s retaliation across Israeli territory, US assets, and Gulf-linked energy infrastructure suggests that regionalization is no longer a latent option but an active strategy. Should we read this as a coherent deterrence doctrine, or as evidence that Tehran’s escalation ladder is becoming more improvised and risk-acceptant under existential pressure?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Iran has long had a plan that, if attacked, it would regionalize the conflict and raise its costs for everyone. I see these chaotic attacks on major neighbors—Kuwait, Cyprus, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia—as an attempt to redefine its role in the region and, ultimately, to gain recognition as a regional power.
This is part of the current interregnum after Khamenei, during which the Islamic Republic—the Iranian state—is trying to redefine its place in the region. It is engaging in various forms of maneuvering in order to eventually reach some form of peace and secure recognition of its position.
At the same time, it is plausible that IRGC generals who have now experienced war with these countries will continue to pursue a policy of brinkmanship. They may become accustomed to using kinetic action whenever they fail to achieve their goals, which could, at some point, reignite a larger war—one that might involve a regional effort to defeat Iran and force it to submit.
The Regime Is Increasingly Ruling over Ruins
Israeli strikes on petrochemical facilities, transport infrastructure, and broader economic assets appear designed not only to degrade military capability but to impose systemic economic pain. How might this reshape the regime’s social base, especially among urban middle classes, workers, and peripheral populations already strained by sanctions and repression?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The regime already has a very small base. Should wartime conditions end now, it will face massive economic problems. Iran has been severely degraded not just in military terms, but in its civilian capabilities as well. To give just one example, Iran barely has any civilian aircraft left. It faces major problems: most of its airports are destroyed, and even where airports remain intact, civilian aircraft have been destroyed. It is, in many ways, a regime ruling over ruins.
All of this makes it very difficult for the regime to continue without facing further social alienation and, ultimately, renewed protests and insurrections. The only way out is a deal with the United States that would lift sanctions, improve its regional status, and provide some financial relief—something it is also trying to secure through its control over the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, it needs diplomatic pathways if it is to reach any kind of social equilibrium. Otherwise, it will face recurrent crises.
The War Mobilized the Regime’s Base, but It Did Not Legitimize the Regime
“Woman, life, freedom”: London protest draws thousands following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody on January 10, 2022. Photo: Vehbi Koca.
Comparative research often shows that war can produce either nationalist rally effects or heightened de-legitimation. In Iran’s case, do you think external attack is more likely to temporarily consolidate the regime, or to deepen the public’s sense that the state is both repressive and strategically ruinous?
Dr. Arash Azizi: It has mobilized the regime’s base; it has not expanded it, but it has mobilized it. One reason for this is that the opposition had created a facade—an illusion that the regime was easy to bring down and that external attacks would quickly lead to its collapse. This meant that the regime’s very survival could be framed as a major victory. In many ways, it was the opposition that made this equation possible. So, the effect has been a mobilized base and, in many ways, a demoralized opposition.
But the regime has not gained legitimacy. There remains a deep gap between it and much of Iranian society, and this war has not helped; if anything, it has made matters worse. It has once again revealed itself as a trigger-happy state, one willing to engage in conflict without prioritizing the economic well-being of its citizens. Unless it changes course, it will continue to face serious crises of legitimacy.
Iran’s Democratic Opposition Still Lacks a Credible Unified Front
You have recently stressed that Iran lacks a credible, organized democratic alternative ready to inherit power. In light of wartime devastation and elite fragmentation, what would have to happen for a domestically rooted democratic bloc to emerge with sufficient legitimacy, coordination, and national reach?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Different opposition groups, both inside and outside Iran, would need to put their differences aside, come together, and build a united front, offering a credible, coherent, and solid alternative. This remains a tall order, but that is what needs to happen. Efforts such as the Iran Freedom Congress, recently launched in London, are a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. There also needs to be serious coordination with elements inside Iran. Still, it remains a very tall order, and it is harder to achieve in wartime than it would be in peacetime.
The Opposition Needs Discipline, Cohesion, and a Credible Forward-Looking Platform
Iranian citizens living in Turkey protest the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini and the Iranian government in front of the Iranian Consulate General in Istanbul on October 4, 2022. Photo: Tolga Ildun.
For exiled opposition figures seeking relevance at this moment, what institutional commitments would be indispensable for credibility inside Iran: constitutional guarantees, transitional justice mechanisms, minority protections, civilian control of the military, or something more foundational?
Dr. Arash Azizi: First of all, they would need to build organizations abroad that demonstrate a degree of political discipline, unity, and flexibility. They would need to create actual membership-based organizations that bring together different elite figures and reflect a degree of political cohesion. They have not done that.
They would then need to offer a political platform that seeks both to unify the opposition and to remain flexible. This would require balancing transitional justice mechanisms with amnesty provisions, for example, to signal that there is a path open to former security forces or other figures of the regime—and perhaps even a possibility of negotiating with them. They would also need to demonstrate an ability to galvanize public opinion and mobilize constituencies abroad.
In short, they would need to present a credible, forward-looking political alternative that can also be taken seriously internationally. This is a very tall order, and the opposition has done little that resembles it so far. What exists instead is a highly fragmented landscape.
In what might be described as the Republican, center-left segment of the opposition, there is fragmentation, a lack of organization and cohesion, and no meaningful strategic unity. The Iran Freedom Congress represents an attempt to address this. On the right-wing side, among Reza Pahlavi and monarchist groups, one finds a revanchist, somewhat chauvinistic, and disorganized opposition, marked by hostility toward other opposition actors. Much of its strategy appears tied to the Israeli-American attack, which has already occurred and is no longer particularly popular among Iranians.
Under these conditions, both sides of the opposition find themselves in disarray. Other groups, such as the MEK (The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran), have long functioned as a cult-like organization with a limited base and continue to struggle for relevance. Moreover, if negotiations between Iran and the United States were to succeed—improving Iran’s international standing not only with the US but also with Europe and others—this would further undercut the opposition.
In your recent analysis, you warned about the dangers of a Kurdish incursion strategy encouraged from outside. How serious is the risk that attempts to weaponize Iran’s peripheries could simultaneously weaken the regime and undermine the prospects for a democratic, territorially coherent post-Islamic Republic order?
Dr. Arash Azizi: They are not even that likely to weaken the regime. Rather, they are likely to send Kurds, Baluch, and others—especially the Kurds—into a strategic dead end, where the Iranian regime would be able to amass significant forces and crush them in blood. Moreover, to the extent that such efforts succeed—if they manage to “liberate” any part of Iranian territory—they would risk triggering prolonged civil war and fragmentation and would be unlikely to improve the prospects for any kind of democratic transition in Iran.
Brute Repression Has Become the Regime’s Main Instrument of Rule
How should we understand the regime’s current repression strategy—including executions and intensified securitization—under wartime conditions? Does conflict give the state a renewed ideological cover for crushing dissent, or does it reveal the extent to which coercion has become the regime’s primary remaining instrument of governance?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The Islamic Republic is very much relying on brute repression, and it believes that it has beaten back the opposition to some extent. It has significantly mobilized its base, energizing it after the war, and is now using that opportunity to clean house and to display naked brutality toward its opponents. But this is not sustainable in the long term. You cannot bring thousands of people onto the streets every day, as it has been doing during the war, especially when economic problems arise—and they will. The economic problems already exist, but they will deepen into specific crises.
In that sense, the repressive apparatus will eventually encounter limits. At present, however, figures such as Mohseni Eje’i, the head of the judiciary, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the National Security Advisor, and the police chief are key political actors whose entire portfolios and profiles are rooted in judicial and security repression.
It may well be that those seeking to argue that Iran has changed and can offer a new social pact to its people would need to marginalize these figures—perhaps replace them, remove them from office, or constrain their power—in order to gain broader public support. At some point, the regime will need to expand its social base, and repression alone will not achieve that.
If Iran Overplays Hormuz, It Risks Alienating the Entire Region
Iranian coastline near the Strait of Hormuz, with a container ship passing near Bukha, Oman, May 28, 2021. Photo: Pavel Muravev / Dreamstime.
The Strait of Hormuz has reemerged as both a military lever and a diplomatic bargaining chip. From the standpoint of regime survival, is Hormuz best understood as Tehran’s strongest deterrent asset, or as a dangerously costly instrument that internationalizes the conflict and narrows Iran’s room for political recovery?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Iran is not drunk on the power of using Hormuz. For many decades, it had threatened to close it, and now it has. It has obviously worked in a way: it has helped disrupt global trade. You could say it is the single most important element in the eyes of President Trump, and it is very clear that it is going to emerge as an important part of the negotiations.
At the same time, Trump has shown some openness to dealing over this issue, including the idea of using crypto as payment, and this may even be linked to some crypto companies that would be seen as favorable by the US. This shows that there are unprecedented aspects to the situation. At the same time, the European Union has strongly objected to Iran’s posture of wanting to claim tolls over the Hormuz Strait.
So, this is a new area. If Iran handles it well, it could gain recognition of its importance and control here, and perhaps even derive some financial benefits from it as part of its attempt to integrate into the region and gain recognition. If not, and if it overplays its hand, it will further alienate the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the broader international community, and at some point, perhaps even China and others will not be pleased if it continues to disrupt trade. So far, that has not been the case. China has been somewhat shielded from the war. It has strategic oil reserves, and Iran does allow some ships to pass, which can benefit China. But if this continues in the long term, it will become a liability.
Washington Wants an Interlocutor in Tehran More Than a Total Collapse
From a comparative and historical perspective, do the policies pursued by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu reflect a coherent long-term strategy aimed at restructuring Iran’s regional role, or do they risk generating unintended consequences such as regime hardening, regional fragmentation, or the empowerment of more radical actors within Iran’s security apparatus? In this context, how viable is externally induced regime change in Iran today, and which outcomes appear most plausible?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Externally induced regime change has not quite worked yet. Of course, President Trump claims that there is regime change, and that there has been important change within the regime, but it is still very much the same regime. Whether the strategy of the United States was for Khamenei to be replaced by Ghalibaf, I doubt that. It appears that their strategy was based on the hope that there could be some sort of capitulation or collapse of the regime—something of that sort—which did not occur.
The Israelis have a more long-term view, and also a more contingent one. By this I mean they were satisfied with some of the military degradations. They would have welcomed a national uprising to bring down the regime, but they were not necessarily relying on it. They may also try to activate elements inside Iran in the future, hoping that the post-war period will provide an opportunity to facilitate the regime’s fall. So, they maintain a longer-term, and as I said, more contingent perspective.
Ultimately, the United States, under President Trump, wants to engage with Iran and incorporate it into its regional security architecture—as a partner, or at least as an interlocutor. If Ghalibaf is willing to cooperate in certain ways, they would likely consider that a satisfactory outcome. Israel would be more cautious about such a development. However, if a deal with the United States includes the degradation of Iran’s nuclear program and the shipment of its enriched uranium abroad, Israel may also, perhaps reluctantly, come to view it as the least bad outcome.
Most Regional Powers Want Iran Contained, Not Broken
Photo: Pavel Kusmartsev / Dreamstime.
Regional actors are recalibrating in real time as the war disrupts energy markets and threatens wider escalation. How do you see Gulf monarchies, Turkey, and Russia interpreting a weakened but still dangerous Iran: as a partner to contain, an adversary to exploit, or a collapsing center whose instability could spill across the region?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Indeed, the countries you named are very different. Each of them has a distinct view of Iran. But let’s start with the GCC and Saudi Arabia. I think they would want an Iran that is contained, but not broken, and not driven into civil war. Not too weakened either, but contained and defined within a clear framework, so that it becomes less of a revolutionary, disruptive actor, less of a revisionist force, and more confined within its place.
Turkey would even more sympathetically prefer such a contained Iran that is also a partner, and one that could maintain its historic relationship with Turkey.
Russia is re-evaluating the importance of the Middle East in its strategy. At the moment, it has to deal with the fall of the Syrian regime, and it has been able to maintain a relationship with the new Syrian leadership. But, it is reassessing its Middle East policy and would be content to sustain relations with different regional actors, from Iran to Israel and others. I am not sure, however, that the Middle East occupies a central place in its broader strategic priorities.
Of course, one would be eager to see the work of scholars specializing in Iran and Russia–Middle East relations, such as Dr. Nikolay Kozhanov and others, who are better placed to offer a more precise prognosis of Russia’s evolving role.
The Most Plausible Outcome Is Transformation, Not Total Collapse
And finally, Dr. Azizi, looking ahead, which trajectory do you regard as most plausible: negotiated de-escalation with mutual guarantees, prolonged regional war, hardline consolidation under a narrower security elite, or a messy transition in which the Islamic Republic survives institutionally but loses much of its ideological and social coherence?
Dr. Arash Azizi: A few of these—a combination of several of these trajectories. I think the Islamic Republic will transform. It will lose its ideological coherence. I think we will see negotiated de-escalation. In due time, we are also likely to see Iran’s integration into the region and the opening of diplomatic ties with the United States, but this will occur alongside the persistence of a securitized state at the top.
That is my general prognosis. This outcome is more likely than a permanently mobilized, revolutionary, revisionist, ideological, North Korea-like state in Iran. That scenario remains less probable.
It is much more likely that Iran—the new Iran—will be more cynical but also more pragmatic and technocratic, and that it will attempt to undergo post-war reconstruction. And by post-war, I do not mean only the recent conflict, but also the longer period shaped by sanctions and Iran’s shadow war with the United States and Israel. I therefore expect the next phase to be one of economic development and reconstruction for Iran.
This analysis by Yacine Boubia challenges the dominant economic explanations of populism by foregrounding the central role of cultural transformation. Drawing on Ronald Inglehart’s “silent revolution” and the cultural backlash thesis, it argues that immigration has become the most visible and politically charged symbol of broader shifts in identity, values, and social order. Populism, in this account, is not simply a reaction to material deprivation but a response to perceived cultural displacement and status loss. By linking economic disruption with identity-based anxieties, the article demonstrates how immigration functions as a focal point for wider conflicts over belonging, representation, and democratic legitimacy in contemporary Western societies.
The dominant narrative surrounding the rise of populism in Europe and the United States has long been grounded in economics. Globalization, automation, and trade shocks are often said to have produced a class of “left behind” voters who turned to populist leaders out of material deprivation. While this account captures an important dimension of structural change, it ultimately misdiagnoses the core political dynamics at work. Populism is not simply a reaction to economic hardship. It is, more fundamentally, a response to cultural transformation—one in which immigration has become the most visible and politically salient symbol of broader social change.
To understand this shift, it is necessary to return to the long arc of value change identified by Ronald Inglehart. Beginning in the postwar decades, advanced industrial societies underwent what he termed a “silent revolution,” as rising prosperity and educational expansion reshaped public priorities. Survival-oriented values gradually gave way to self-expression, autonomy, and cosmopolitan openness (Inglehart, 1977; Inglehart & Norris, 2019). Over time, these shifts became embedded in institutions, elite discourse, and policy frameworks, particularly within urban, highly educated populations.
Yet this transformation was never evenly distributed. Large segments of the population—often older, less formally educated, and more rooted in national or local traditions—did not merely lag behind this shift; they experienced it as a form of displacement. What appeared to some as progress appeared to others as erosion: of authority, of social cohesion, and of a familiar moral order. The political consequences of this divergence became increasingly visible after the late 1960s, when cultural liberalization accelerated across Western democracies and elite consensus around multiculturalism and individual autonomy solidified.
It is within this context that immigration assumes its central political role. Immigration is not merely one issue among many; it is the issue through which broader cultural transformations are rendered visible, tangible, and politically immediate. Debates over borders, asylum, and integration are simultaneously debates about national identity, social trust, and the pace of cultural change itself. The European migration crisis did not create these tensions, but it crystallized them, transforming diffuse anxieties into direct political conflict across the continent.
The differential reception of refugee populations further illustrates how cultural categorization shapes political responses. The Ukrainian refugee crisis, following Russia’s 2022 invasion, was widely framed in Europe as a conventional interstate war producing displaced populations that were more easily incorporated into existing asylum systems. By contrast, earlier inflows of refugees from Syria and parts of the Middle East were more frequently politicized through debates over long-term integration, welfare capacity, and security concerns. Material conditions alone cannot explain these differences. They reflect processes of perceived cultural proximity, geopolitical framing, and institutional response mechanisms within the European Union.
Scholars of migration and political psychology have long noted that public attitudes toward migration are structured not only by economic calculations but also by perceived cultural distance and social trust. Emmanuel Todd’s recent work, La Défaite de l’Occident (2024), contributes to this discussion by emphasizing that societies interpret geopolitical and demographic change through deeper assumptions about cultural cohesion and civilizational identity. From this perspective, differential refugee reception reflects not simply policy design but underlying social narratives about similarity, belonging, and national self-understanding.
The framework developed by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart captures these dynamics with particular clarity. Their “cultural backlash” thesis argues that support for populist parties is driven less by absolute economic deprivation than by perceived status loss among groups once embedded within dominant cultural hierarchies (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Immigration, in this context, functions not merely as a policy issue but as a symbolic focal point through which broader anxieties about identity and social change are expressed. It becomes the terrain on which struggles over cultural authority are fought.
The United States exhibits a parallel trajectory. The rise of Donald Trump cannot be fully understood through economic grievance alone. Empirical studies of the 2016 election have consistently shown that attitudes toward immigration, cultural change, and racial identity were among the strongest predictors of support for Trump (Sides et al., 2018). His appeal lay less in policy detail than in his ability to articulate a sense of loss—of border control, national coherence, and institutional trust. Immigration functioned as the central issue through which these concerns were politically mobilized.
This mobilization was amplified by changes in the digital information environment. Scholars of political communication have highlighted how social media platforms and data-driven campaigning enabled more granular targeting of affective and identity-based grievances. While the precise influence of firms such as Cambridge Analytica is debated in the academic literature, broader research on “computational propaganda” and social listening suggests that political actors increasingly adapt messaging to pre-existing online sentiment patterns rather than shaping them from above (Bennett & Livingston, 2018).
None of this implies that economic factors are irrelevant. On the contrary, the structural effects of globalization have played a crucial role in shaping the terrain on which cultural conflict unfolds. Trade exposure, deindustrialization, and regional inequality have increased perceptions of economic insecurity in many Western societies (Autor et al., 2013). However, these economic disruptions do not translate mechanically into political outcomes. Their salience is mediated through cultural interpretation. Economic decline becomes politically consequential when it is embedded within narratives of identity, recognition, and perceived neglect.
In this sense, globalization operates as a force multiplier rather than a primary cause of populism. Communities experiencing economic stagnation are more likely to interpret immigration through lenses of competition and cultural threat, and more likely to view political elites as detached from their lived realities. Populist movements succeed precisely because they fuse economic anxiety with cultural grievance into a single coherent narrative—one that pits “the people” against both external pressures and internal elites (Mudde, 2004).
Across Europe, parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the National Rally (RN) in France have institutionalized this synthesis. While differing in national context, these movements share a common structure: opposition to immigration, skepticism toward supranational governance, and a broader critique of liberal elite consensus. Their success underscores the extent to which cultural backlash has become embedded within contemporary political competition.
The policy implications are significant. If populism were driven primarily by economic inequality, then redistribution and growth-oriented policies might be sufficient to mitigate its rise. But if it is rooted in cultural backlash, such measures will prove insufficient on their own. Economic policy cannot resolve conflicts over identity, belonging, and social norms. Nor can these conflicts be dismissed as irrational without further deepening political polarization.
A more realistic approach begins by recognizing that populism emerges from genuine, if conflicting, experiences of social transformation. The “silent revolution” identified by Inglehart has reshaped Western societies in profound ways, but it has also produced new forms of cultural stratification. In the United States, this process was accelerated by the political economy of the 1980s and 1990s, where deregulation and neoliberal convergence under both Republican and Democratic administrations coincided with the rise of cosmopolitan urban centers and multicultural policy frameworks. These developments, reinforced during the Clinton and Obama eras, contributed to a perception among some voters that cultural and institutional change was occurring without adequate democratic mediation.
Immigration, as the most visible manifestation of these broader transformations, will therefore remain central to political conflict in advanced democracies. Understanding populism requires moving beyond the false dichotomy between economics and culture. It is the interaction between structural change and subjective perception that drives political behavior. Until this interplay is fully acknowledged, explanations will remain partial, and policy responses will continue to fall short.
References
Inglehart, R. (1977). The Silent Revolution – Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics, Princeton University Press.
Inglehart, R. & Norris, P. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, Cambridge University Press.
Autor, D., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. (2013). “The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade,” ANNUAL REVIEW OF ECONOMICS, Vol. 8:205-240 (Volume publication date October 2016) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080315-015041
Sides, J., Tesler, M., & Vavreck, L. (2018). Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, Princeton University Press.
Bennett, W. L. & Livingston, S. (2018). “The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions.” European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 122–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118760317
Todd, E. (2024). La Défaite de l’Occident, Gallimard.
In an interview with the ECPS, Sheri Berman challenges dominant crisis narratives by arguing that democratic backsliding is “neither unexpected nor, in many cases, recent in origin.” Situating current turbulence within long-term structural and historical trajectories, she emphasizes that democratic instability reflects the enduring difficulty of building and sustaining democratic institutions. Critiquing post–Cold War optimism, she characterizes today’s moment as “a kind of natural correction” to overly teleological expectations. Berman further conceptualizes populism as both symptom and driver of democratic dysfunction, rooted in representation gaps, economic insecurity, and institutional decay—dynamics that continue to reshape both domestic politics and the global liberal order.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University, argues that contemporary democratic erosion should not be understood as an abrupt rupture or an unprecedented crisis, but rather as the outcome of deeper structural, historical, and institutional processes long in the making.
At a time when democratic backsliding, populist mobilization, and institutional erosion are reshaping political landscapes across regions, Professor Berman’s intervention directly challenges prevailing interpretations that frame democracy’s troubles as sudden or exceptional. Instead, she insists that the current conjuncture must be situated within longer-term transformations affecting political representation, institutional trust, and the social foundations of democratic governance. As she puts it, these developments are “neither unexpected nor, in many cases, recent in origin.”
At the center of her argument lies a powerful critique of post–Cold War democratic optimism. The expansion of democracy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries fostered what she identifies as overly teleological assumptions about liberal democracy’s inevitability. Yet, drawing on historical patterns of democratic “waves” and their inevitable reversals, she emphasizes that “building stable, well-functioning democracies is extraordinarily difficult.” What many interpreted as linear progress was, in fact, always vulnerable to reversal. In this sense, today’s turbulence is best understood as “a kind of natural correction” to earlier expectations.
A central analytical contribution of Professor Berman’s framework is her insistence that populism should be understood simultaneously as symptom and driver. It reflects deep dissatisfaction with political institutions and representation—citizens do not support anti-establishment actors unless they believe existing systems are failing them. At the same time, once in power, populists can intensify polarization and further undermine democratic norms. As she notes, while populism begins as “a symptom of democratic dissatisfaction,” it can also “actively deepen the erosion of support for democracy” once it acquires political authority.
This dual perspective is closely tied to her emphasis on structural transformations, particularly the emergence of representation gaps and the long-term consequences of neoliberal economic change. Rising inequality, economic insecurity, and technological disruption—alongside cultural tensions around identity and migration—have combined to produce a multifaceted crisis of democratic legitimacy. Importantly, these forces do not operate in isolation but reinforce one another, generating a political environment marked by both widespread dissatisfaction and a striking absence of coherent ideological alternatives.
Extending her analysis to the global level, Professor Berman offers a sobering assessment of the liberal international order. In one of her most striking remarks, she observes that “the American-led international order, at least for now, is pretty much dead.” Yet even here, she resists simplistic explanations: the disruptive impact of Trumpism, she argues, reflects not only leadership choices but also preexisting structural vulnerabilities within both American democracy and the broader international system.
Taken together, Professor Berman’s reflections offer a historically grounded and analytically nuanced account of democratic decline. Rather than treating the present as an anomaly, her assessments invite a deeper reckoning with the long-term political, economic, and institutional dynamics that have made contemporary democratic backsliding both possible—and, in many respects, predictable.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Sheri Berman, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
From Democratic Waves to Undertows
Two rows of stones embedded in Berlin’s streets mark the former path of the wall dividing East and West Berlin. Photo: Ine Beerten / Dreamstime.
Professor Berman, welcome. In your recently published article “Democracy’s Troubles Should Be No Surprise,” you argue that current democratic backsliding reflects long-term structural and historical dynamics rather than a sudden rupture. In light of ongoing crises, how does this perspective challenge prevailing “crisis narratives” that frame democratic decline as unexpected or recent?
Professor Sheri Berman: I would say that the most obvious way is that these developments are neither unexpected nor, in many cases, recent in origin. Let me begin by differentiating between two types of cases. The first involves backsliding in recently transitioned countries. By this, I mean those that moved from authoritarianism to democracy during what we now refer to as the third wave—that is, the large set of countries that democratized during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. These are relatively recent transitions, meaning that democracy in these contexts is still comparatively young.
Then we have a second set of countries—those with long-standing democracies, including the country I am currently in, which is at the forefront of this not very auspicious group—where we have also seen significant democratic problems, even democratic backsliding.
It is important to distinguish between these two types of cases because the nature and causes of backsliding in recent versus more established democracies differ. However, in neither set of cases should these developments be considered surprising.
Let me explain why. With regard to recent cases, when we look back at history and examine previous democratic waves—such as those following the First and Second World Wars in the 20th century, as well as in Europe in 1848—we see that all of them were followed by undertows. This is precisely why we use the term “wave”: every wave has an undertow, referring to the failure or reversal of some of these new democratic experiments. Thus, the very concept of a wave should have reminded scholars and observers that such reversals are to be expected.
This is not simply a matter of history repeating itself; there is a causal logic at work. Building stable, well-functioning democracies is extraordinarily difficult. While it may seem that the hardest task is removing an authoritarian regime—and that is indeed difficult—it is, in fact, even harder to construct a stable democracy afterward.
We can observe this in the historical record: there are far more examples of democratic transitions than of successful democratic consolidations. Therefore, we should have anticipated that many countries undergoing transitions during the third wave would struggle or fail to consolidate democracy. This should not have come as a surprise.
What is more unusual—and what we were less theoretically and historically prepared for—is the extent of the problems now facing long-established democracies such as the United States. These countries were long considered “consolidated,” a term implying that they were stable and secure. That assumption has proven incorrect.
In my recent article in the Journal of Democracy, I outline some of the reasons for this. I argue that if we had paid closer attention to the social and economic foundations upon which scholars believed democracy rested, we would have seen that these foundations had been eroding for quite some time. As a result, the institutional weaknesses and political dissatisfaction currently affecting long-established democracies should not be regarded as particularly surprising.
Today’s Democratic Turbulence as a Correction, not a Collapse
Your work suggests that earlier waves of democratic optimism—especially after the Cold War—rested on overly teleological assumptions about liberal democracy’s inevitability. To what extent is today’s turbulence, including rising geopolitical conflict and democratic polarization, better understood as a correction of those expectations rather than a systemic breakdown?
Professor Sheri Berman: They are definitely a correction of those earlier, overly optimistic expectations. The advantage of being a scholar is that you get to study both history and contemporary events. Anyone familiar with the history of democracy would have understood, based on previous democratic waves, that the idea that all the countries transitioning in the late 20th and early 21st centuries would, within a generation or two, become something like Sweden was clearly unrealistic.
At the same time, the optimism is understandable. The late 20th century was, in many ways, a remarkable period. In some respects, I wish we were still living in it. It is better to be surrounded by optimism than by pessimism, which is now quite pervasive, particularly across the West. But while that optimism reflected genuine democratic progress and the expansion of freedom and liberty in formerly authoritarian societies, it was also bound to fade.
So, on one level, what we are experiencing today is a kind of natural correction. The specific trajectories—how newer democracies have backslid or how older democracies are encountering difficulties—are hard to predict in detail. But the broader shift away from the extraordinary optimism of the late 20th century—the belief that liberal democracy would not only succeed in the short term but also consolidate over the long term, bringing freedom and prosperity to all parts of the globe, even those not yet reached in that period—was always likely to be followed by significant disappointment. Anyone with a solid understanding of history, and of what it actually takes to make democracy work, should have recognized that.
Populism as Both Symptom and Accelerator of Democratic Decay
Labour Day celebrations at Old Town Square in Prague on May 1, 2017, featuring a banner depicting democracy as a leaf eaten by caterpillars labeled Putin, Kaczyński, Orbán, Babiš, Trump, and Fico. Photo: Jolanta Wojcicka.
You have famously argued that populism is a symptom rather than a cause of democratic dysfunction. In the current conjuncture—marked by inflation, migration pressures, and governance crises—how should scholars distinguish between populism as a reactive phenomenon and as an active driver of democratic erosion?
Professor Sheri Berman: I think populism is both of those things, as you suggest. It is definitely a symptom.At the same time, once populist parties or politicians gain a certain degree of power, they acquire the ability to intensify dissatisfaction, polarization, and related dynamics. Let me unpack that a bit. Populism is a symptom in the sense that people will not vote for anti-establishment parties if they believe the establishment—that is, existing mainstream parties and political institutions—is doing a good job. That is simply a truism.
So, when politicians and parties begin to gain support by criticizing existing parties, politicians, and institutions as corrupt, ineffective, or unrepresentative, they are doing so because a significant portion of the population believes this to be true. In that sense, such parties should be understood as a symptom of dissatisfaction among a not insignificant number of citizens with the establishment and the existing order. They are, as you noted, clear indicators of democratic dysfunction.
However, once these actors begin to gain power—once they have a voice within the system, participate regularly in the political process, and perhaps even enter government or coalitions—they can further deepen this dissatisfaction. The most obvious way they do so, though not the only one, is through rhetoric. By persistently portraying the system as corrupt, demonizing opponents, and framing both rival politicians and voters not merely as people with different policy preferences but as actors opposed to the common good—people who do not have your best interests at heart or who would threaten you if they gained power—they amplify polarization and democratic discontent.
This dynamic operates alongside the policies that populists implement when in power, which, as numerous studies show, are often counterproductive. Thus, while populism originates as a symptom of democratic dissatisfaction, it can also actively deepen the erosion of support for democracy and broaden dissatisfaction once it gains voice and power within the system.
When Mainstream Parties Drift, Populists Fill the Void
How does this “symptom” framework reshape our understanding of the rise of the populist radical right in Europe and Trumpism in the United States, particularly in relation to declining trust in institutions and widening representation gaps?
Professor Sheri Berman: This is another way of getting at the same issue. It is absolutely correct for both scholars and concerned citizens to view populist parties—on both the left and the right—and actors like Trump as drivers of polarization and potential undermining of democratic institutions. However, if we fail to recognize that they are also symptoms of widespread dissatisfaction, frustration, and discontent with existing parties and political institutions, then we will never be able to, so to speak, “solve” the problem of populism.
You mentioned representation gaps, which I and many other scholars have examined closely. If we look at Europe—since this is an ECPS interview—there is no doubt that establishment parties, both center-left and center-right, have developed significant representation gaps, even with their own voters, on key issues. Center-left parties, for instance, moved away from their traditional, broadly defined left-wing economic profile in the late 1990s, which alienated many of their former working-class and otherwise disadvantaged supporters.
At the same time, both center-left and center-right parties drifted away from voters more broadly on a range of social and cultural issues, most notably immigration in the European context. Studies of party positions in the early 21st century show that these parties were often quite distant from the preferences of the median voter on this issue.
As a result, they opened up political space not only for new or challenger parties to advance positions that mainstream parties had effectively abandoned, but also for the perception to take hold that these established parties had lost either the willingness or the capacity to represent voters’ preferences.
Beyond Monocausal Explanations: The Complex Roots of Populism
In your review of populism’s causes, you emphasize the limits of monocausal explanations. In today’s context of digital campaigning, algorithmic amplification, and economic insecurity, how should we conceptualize the interaction between demand-side grievances and supply-side political entrepreneurship?
Professor Sheri Berman: This is a difficult issue, sometimes more so for scholars than for concerned citizens. When people look around today, in what feels like a world of pervasive pessimism, they see a wide range of problems. If you were to ask the proverbial man or woman on the street why Trump has been so popular, or why he was able to get elected twice, they would likely point to broad economic grievances—a sense that the economy is not doing well, that people’s futures are uncertain, and that they are worried about their children’s prospects. They might also point to perceived breakdown and dysfunction in their communities, concerns about illegal immigration and uncontrolled borders, anxieties about tech companies being out of control, and social media “frying” their children’s brains while making everyone more polarized and angrier.
In other words, the average person intuitively understands that multiple factors are contributing to dissatisfaction with the existing order and, in turn, feeding into populism. Scholars, however, tend to look for a single explanatory variable—an independent variable that allows for a clear causal account. The difficulty is that the world we are dealing with is simply too complex for such simplification.
There are clearly many forces driving the current moment, including support for populism and, more broadly, the democratic dissatisfaction and dysfunction we see today. These include significant economic challenges; the serious consequences of rapid demographic change in American and European societies, often—though not exclusively—linked to unprecedented levels of immigration; and, as you noted, technological transformations such as automation, social media, and now AI.
All of these are substantial challenges, and it would be difficult for any party or government to address them effectively. While one can imagine more effective responses than those we have seen, these pressures are nonetheless real and complex. They are shaping the current conjuncture, particularly in the West.
Democratic Erosion as the Product of Both Agency and Structural Decay
Figure from the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026.
Given your skepticism toward rigid structure-versus-agency dichotomies, how can we better theorize elite responsibility in democratic backsliding—especially in cases where political leaders actively challenge electoral norms or judicial independence—without neglecting broader structural transformations?
Professor Sheri Berman: There is absolutely no doubt that we need, as both scholars and citizens, to focus closely on political actors who are playing fast and loose with the democratic rules of the game. If leaders pack or ignore the judiciary, sideline the legislative branch, or undermine the independence of civil society and the media, these are clear causes and drivers of democratic backsliding, and they deserve sustained attention.
Political actors who actively seek to undermine democracy are, therefore, a legitimate focus of scholarly analysis. We need to understand the processes of democratic erosion carried out by populist, illiberal, and anti-democratic politicians and parties. Citizens, too, should remain attentive to these developments, since democracy is what enables societies to function—at least potentially—in a peaceful way, to resolve conflicts, and to address collective challenges.
That said, this is the agency side of the story: the actors who are undermining norms and institutions. But we also need to recognize, as we have discussed, that widespread frustration with establishment parties, political elites, and democratic institutions is equally important. In other words, we need a kind of two-level analysis, recognizing that the actions of populist politicians and parties often represent the final step in a broader causal chain.
Donald Trump, for example, sought political office earlier, in the 2000s and again in 2012, but received virtually no support. He rose to power in 2016 when the broader context had deteriorated, and even then, the damage he caused was more limited compared to what we have seen more recently. The ability of politicians and parties to undermine democracy depends not only on their agency, but also on the strength of the institutions and norms they confront. When those institutions and norms have weakened, actors are able to exercise their agency far more effectively.
We therefore need to understand not only the multi-causal nature of democratic backsliding, but also the broader structure–agency dynamic that underpins political life in general and is especially visible in processes of democratic erosion.
Democratic Collapse Begins Long Before It Becomes Visible
Building on your engagement withHow Democracies Die, how do you assess the relative importance of formal institutional weakening versus the erosion of informal norms—such as mutual toleration—in highly polarized democracies like the United States?
Professor Sheri Berman: That is, in a way, a follow-on question to the previous one. How Democracies Die, the seminal book by Dan Ziblatt and Steve Levitsky, helped both political scientists and concerned citizens understand that we had reached a point where politicians like Donald Trump and others were beginning to undermine norms and institutions in ways that were pushing democracies toward backsliding, or even autocratization.
To my mind, what they were doing—tracing these developments historically and highlighting their dangers—was identifying the end stage of a broader process. We had reached a point where politicians and parties were coming to power and actively engaging in democratic erosion. At the same time, we are now at a stage where we understand much more about how this process unfolds. Scholars like Ziblatt, Levitsky, and many others have done an excellent job of tracing what is now often referred to as the authoritarian playbook: how democratic backsliding occurs. In the West, this typically does not happen through coups, as it often did in the past, but through a gradual process in which norms and institutions are weakened from within.
However, this should be understood as the endpoint of a longer causal process. It is a crucial stage—one at which intervention is still possible—but by the time a system reaches this point, its norms and institutions have already weakened to a degree that makes them vulnerable. In that sense, we are now moving beyond the dynamics highlighted in How Democracies Die toward a broader recognition that the processes described in that book are rooted in deeper structural conditions.
Gradual Backsliding Is Harder to Recognize—and Resist
Do you see today’s pattern of democratic erosion—often gradual, legalistic, and electorally legitimated—as fundamentally different from earlier authoritarian breakdowns, or as part of a longer historical continuum that includes past democratic crises?
Professor Sheri Berman: These questions are helpful because they build on one another. As I mentioned, and as many scholars have emphasized, coups and immediate ruptures—quick authoritarian takeovers—were quite common in the past. What we are experiencing in the West today, less so than in other parts of the world, is different. We still see coups and rapid democratic breakdowns elsewhere, but in the West, the kind of post–third wave decay we are discussing has largely occurred through what is often called the authoritarian playbook—through a much more gradual undermining and hollowing out of democracy from within.
This pattern is therefore more common today, particularly in the West, than what we have seen historically. In a way, this also makes it more difficult to respond effectively, because there is often debate about how serious the erosion really is. Are we truly facing democratic backsliding? Is any particular move decisive in either accelerating or stopping the process? This creates a kind of puzzle for both scholars and citizens.
Many people do not fully recognize what is happening until it is too late, and this dynamic also generates significant divisions within the small-d democratic camp. For example, in the United States, while most within the Democratic Party believe that Trump and the Republicans pose a threat to democracy, there are very different views about how to respond—what the appropriate strategy is and where the core problem lies.
By contrast, when there are troops in the streets, it is clear to everyone that the priority is to get them back into the barracks. In a situation like this, however, where erosion is gradual and incremental, it becomes much harder to generate consensus and to coalesce around an effective strategy for resisting democratic decline.
Why Economic Insecurity Amplifies Cultural Grievances
Dutch farmers protest against measures to reduce nitrogen emissions in the city centre of The Hague, the Netherlands, on June 28, 2022. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your work links democratic instability to the long-term consequences of neoliberal capitalism. In light of current cost-of-living crises and inequality debates, to what extent should contemporary populism be understood as a political economy crisis rather than a cultural backlash?
Professor Sheri Berman: I think it’s both. As we have discussed before, there are a number of causes. On the demand side, both economic challenges and the grievances they generate are absolutely crucial.But social and cultural grievances are also important, along with, as we noted earlier, technological changes that are increasing polarization and dissatisfaction in our societies. It is very difficult to understand the democratic dissatisfaction that is feeding populism—and, partially through populism, democratic decay—without looking at economic grievances. That is to say, without considering rising inequality, growing insecurity, and disruptions stemming from automation, trade, and, potentially in the not-too-distant future, AI.
These are all factors creating a great deal of dissatisfaction among citizens. In turn, we know from strong scholarship that in such contexts it becomes much easier to increase the salience of social and cultural grievances, which are also central to contemporary democratic dysfunction. It becomes easier to direct attention to the perceived downsides of immigration when people believe that immigrants may be taking their jobs or using scarce public resources. Why, they might ask, should their tax money go toward housing for immigrants when there is not enough public housing for them? Why should they support a welfare state that can barely respond to their own needs, rather than helping those who have come from outside? These dynamics are therefore very difficult to disentangle, and they feed off each other in deeply pernicious ways.
From Grand Ideologies to Fragmented Discontent
You describe ideological transformation as a two-stage process requiring both the de-legitimation of existing paradigms and the emergence of alternatives. Are we currently in an “interregnum” where dissatisfaction is high but coherent ideological replacements—whether on the left or right—remain underdeveloped?
Professor Sheri Berman: I would say that this is indeed true. Part of this is that, as a historically minded social scientist, when I look back at previous eras of ideological ferment—the 1930s, for instance, the interwar period, or even the post-war period—we had real ideological alternatives. In the interwar period, we had fascism, National Socialism, and communism. These were ideologies—entire Weltanschauungen, or worldviews. They were not only opposed to liberal democracy—both clearly were—but also aspired to remake society and the economy.
What we have today are rather grievance-based movements on both the right and the left that share some similarities with their predecessors. On the left, we see anti-capitalist, anti-elite rhetoric, often accompanied by a degree of illiberalism. On the right, we see strong elements of nativism, xenophobia, and racism, as part of a broader illiberal backlash, along with, in some sectors, a kind of idealization of the past—the idea that society can return to a more traditional, often implicitly Christian, social order.
But these currents are much more inchoate than their predecessors. They draw on bits and pieces of earlier ideologies without the same coherence or power. I would also say they are more negative than positive on both the left and the right. They consist largely of grievances that have been brought together: dissatisfaction with capitalism on the left, anger about geopolitical issues such as Israel and Gaza, and on the right, resentment toward social change and elites.
It is important to remember, however unattractive it may seem to us now, that communism, fascism, and National Socialism also offered what I would carefully call positive visions. They articulated a sense of what a new future would look like. They did not only seek to destroy the old order but to create something new. I do not see that today.
That does not mean that these contemporary movements are not dangerous—they are, in many ways, very dangerous—but we are not dealing with the same kind of ideological conflict that characterized what Eric Hobsbawm and others have called the ideological twentieth century.
Why Exclusion of Populists Becomes Impossible
How does your framework help explain the persistence and normalization of far-right actors within democratic systems, even in relatively stable economies, and their increasing presence in mainstream coalition politics?
Professor Sheri Berman: To some degree, this is simply a result of their electoral success. It is very hard to keep out parties in proportional representation systems, as in Europe, that are getting 20–25% of the vote. The parties that have come to power in Europe have done so simply because they have won elections—not majorities, but enough that it is not possible to keep them out of power.In that sense, it is fairly straightforward to understand why they have gained the power and influence that they have. And it creates a number of knock-on effects, returning to the idea we discussed earlier about symptom and cause. If we look at a situation like the one that currently exists in Germany, the AfD is polling so high that it is almost impossible in many German states—and may very well soon be impossible at the national level—to put together a coalition government that does not include them.
You are therefore facing a situation in which the alternatives are either incoherent or minority governments, both of which have difficulty putting together coherent policy packages capable of solving society’s problems, thereby driving dissatisfaction further, or including in your coalition—especially in the German case, because the AfD is among the more radical right-wing parties in Europe today—a party that is clearly illiberal and potentially even anti-democratic.
This is a very difficult situation, simply from a mathematical perspective, in many of these countries. In other European countries, we have seen right-wing populists come to power, and, honestly, they have not had that much impact on democracy. We have had right-wing populists in power in the Netherlands, in Finland, and now, obviously, in Italy, and there, I would say that while they may be problematic in some ways, we have not seen the kind of democratic erosion that some predicted would occur.
So, you really have to look at these developments on a case-by-case basis. The AfD in Germany is something most observers are watching closely, because it is a much more radical right-wing party than its counterparts in places like the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, or even Italy.
Trumpism as a Symptom of Deep Structural Divisions
Donald Trump’s supporters wearing “In God We Trump” shirts at a rally in Bojangles’ Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 2, 2020. Photo: Jeffrey Edwards.
In the case of Trumpism’s influence on US politics, should it be interpreted primarily as an expression of long-standing structural cleavages, or as the result of contingent elite strategies and institutional vulnerabilities?
Professor Sheri Berman: For me, Trump is very much a symptom. He has now caused a significant amount of democratic backsliding—an unprecedented amount, I would say—but there is simply no way to understand the Trump phenomenon without looking back, as I mentioned and as I discussed in the article you referenced at the beginning in the Journal of Democracy, at very deep structural problems in American society and the American economy.
There is no way to understand why people would, first, vote for him, and second, be so frustrated with the Democrats, without considering what are now decades of social decay and economic division. This is clearly a situation in which Trump was a symptom of underlying social, economic, and political problems and, once in power, has intensified all of the above—not only for the United States but for the rest of the world as well.
Trump and the Unraveling of a Fragile International System
Given your argument that democracy’s troubles are historically rooted, how should we interpret current claims about the “collapse” of the global liberal order—especially amid rising authoritarian powers and weakening multilateralism?
Professor Sheri Berman: That is downstream of many of the things we have been discussing here—most notably, but not exclusively, the rise of Donald Trump. Trump, as a key progenitor of democratic backsliding in the United States, has, since coming to power—particularly over the past year, but also since 2016—undermined democratic norms and institutions in a very significant way. He has also taken an axe to the liberal democratic order. But, again, that liberal democratic order was not particularly healthy beforehand.
I have used, in other writings—and I am sure others have as well—the idea of an immune system. If two people are standing in a train car and one has a compromised immune system, and someone coughs, that person might get sick, while the other simply leaves the train and continues with their life. The fact that Trump has been able to cause so much damage reflects the existence of significant structural weaknesses in the liberal democratic order to begin with.
This is a kind of iterative or cyclical process. At the same time, there is no doubt that the decay we have seen in the liberal democratic order over the past year, in particular, is very much the result of conscious choices made by the Trump administration—to increase divisions with allies, to attack institutions that had long been part of this order, and to form alliances with actors such as Russia that have been fundamentally opposed to it. All of these are clearly deliberate actions—agency, so to speak. But, again, his ability to come to power and to pursue this course reflects deeper structural weaknesses that he has been able to exploit.
Can Middle Powers Rebuild What US Leadership Abandoned?
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attends a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Ukraine’s Independence Day in Kyiv, Ukraine on August 24, 2025. Photo: Vladyslav Musiienko / Dreamstime.
As transatlantic divergence becomes an observable reality—particularly under Trump’s renewed leadership—how should we interpret the effective “de-coupling” of the United States and Europe and its effect on the legitimacy and authority of international institutions? Does this fragmentation mark a structural erosion of the liberal international order, or the emergence of a more pluralized and contested system of governance with competing centers of norm-setting?
Professor Sheri Berman: I think it would be very hard to maintain, or to return to, some version of that liberal international order without American commitment and, alongside that, some kind of renewed alliance between the United States and Europe.I do not see that happening, even if Trump leaves, simply because at this point there is so much water under the bridge. If I were a European, even if a Democrat came to power in the next election, I would be very wary about hitching my horse to the United States, knowing that right around the corner there could come another version of Trump—Vance, Rubio, or someone similar. So, I think it is going to be very hard to recreate that, although I do think that if a Democrat comes to power, we will see some attempts to do so.
The alternative, as you mentioned, and as several people have been discussing—including Macron and Mark Carney in Canada—is to replace this American-led liberal international order with something new, potentially better, constructed by middle powers. My response to that is: more power to you. I hope you can do that. I think it would be good for those countries and for the globe. Historically, however, it is very difficult to construct an international order without some kind of hegemon, both pushing that project forward and willing to absorb some of the collective costs.
So, this is where we are right now. The American-led international order, at least for now, is pretty much dead. Whether middle powers can step in to patch things up enough to prevent further fragmentation remains to be seen. I hope they can, for the good not only of their own citizens but of the globe, but it concerns me greatly.
Rebuilding Representation as the Key to Democratic Stability
Finally, looking ahead, what are the most critical variables shaping democracy’s future in this context of geopolitical rivalry and domestic polarization: the renewal of representation, economic restructuring, or the restoration of democratic norms—and how might these interact to stabilize or further strain democratic systems?
Professor Sheri Berman: That is a very large question to end on. Let me say something broad and perhaps not particularly profound, which is that I actually think the domestic level is the key driver here. That is to say, the central challenge is figuring out how to get mainstream political parties—it does not necessarily have to be the old ones; again, some people may be fed up with social democratic, Christian democratic, and conservative parties—but parties that are committed to democracy need to figure out how to address, as we have discussed, the economic challenges their societies are facing, the social and cultural challenges they are confronting, and the technological changes that are driving so much disruption.
Can they do that? If they can, then we will see support for these anti-establishment, disruptive populist parties decline, and these political systems stabilize. I firmly believe that more stable democracies—not only in the West but also in other parts of the globe—will be in a much better position to address international challenges, whether civil wars, interstate wars, or climate change. They will also be better positioned to deal with international challenges and to recreate, as we discussed in the previous question, some form of viable international cooperation, including international institutions and organizations.
If we can reconstruct some degree of democratic stability, not just in the West but also elsewhere, the benefits would be significant. Turkey, for example, is a major actor and a bridge between the West and the Middle East. A stable, well-functioning democratic regime there would be a major boon, most importantly for Turkey’s own citizens, but also an important contribution to addressing a wide range of global challenges. So, again, I am hopeful that parties committed to liberal democracy can somehow manage to get their act together and become more effective and responsive to their citizens.
Please cite as: ECPS Staff. (2026). “ECPS Virtual Workshop Series / Session 15 — From Populism to Global Power Plays: Leadership, Crisis, and Democracy.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). April 8, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00146
Session 15 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series offered a timely and theoretically rich interrogation of how populism, personalized leadership, and systemic crisis are reshaping the horizons of democratic politics. Bringing cybernetics, political sociology, and democratic theory into productive dialogue, the session illuminated the deep entanglement between emotional mobilization, institutional fragility, and global governance under conditions of accelerating complexity. Dr. Robert R. Traill’s systems-theoretical analysis of “populist panic” and Professor Lorenzo Viviani’s political-sociological account of “manipulated resonance” together revealed populism not as a peripheral disruption, but as a central mode through which legitimacy, leadership, and “the people” are being redefined today. Enriched by incisive discussant interventions and a conceptually fertile Q&A, the session underscored the need for new democratic vocabularies capable of confronting both exclusionary affect and global instability.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On Thursday, April 2, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened the fifteenth session of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches,” under the title “From Populism to Global Power Plays: Leadership, War, and Democracy.” Bringing together perspectives from political sociology, economics, and cybernetics, the session explored the evolving relationship between populist leadership, systemic crisis, and the changing architecture of democratic governance in an increasingly complex and unstable global order.
The participants of the session were introduced by ECPS intern Reka Koleszar. Chaired by Dr. Amir Ali (Jawaharlal Nehru University), the session was framed around a central question of contemporary political life: how can democratic systems sustain legitimacy and effectiveness amid intensifying global pressures, including geopolitical conflict, economic uncertainty, climate crisis, and the rise of populist movements that challenge institutional mediation and pluralist norms? As Dr. Ali underscored in his opening remarks, the current conjuncture is marked not only by a crisis of representation but also by deeper transformations in how “the people” are constructed, mobilized, and governed across diverse political contexts.
The panel featured two analytically distinct yet conceptually complementary presentations. Dr. Robert R. Traill (Brunel University) offered a cybernetic and systems-theoretical intervention on the limits of democratic decision-making in the face of global-scale challenges. His presentation examined how complex adaptive systems—from individual cognition to national governance and global coordination—struggle to maintain stability when confronted with phenomena such as climate change and limits to economic growth. By introducing the notion of “populist panic” as a systemic response to perceived breakdown, Dr. Traill’s contribution invited participants to reconsider populism not merely as a political ideology, but as a symptom of deeper failures in collective decision-making.
In contrast, Professor Lorenzo Viviani (University of Pisa) advanced a political-sociological framework centered on the concept of “manipulated resonance” to analyze personalized leadership in populism. His presentation interrogated how populist leaders construct direct, emotionally charged relationships with “the people,” reconfiguring political representation through processes of identification, embodiment, and symbolic power. By foregrounding the role of emotions—particularly resentment—and the strategic bypassing of institutional intermediaries, Professor Viviani illuminated the cultural and affective foundations of contemporary populist mobilization.
The session was further enriched by the critical interventions of its discussants, Dr. Azize Sargin (ECPS) and Professor Ibrahim Ozturk (University of Duisburg-Essen), whose comments deepened the theoretical stakes of both presentations. Their reflections engaged key issues such as the distinction between democratic responsiveness and manipulated resonance, the tensions between technocratic solutions and populist distrust, and the broader challenges of governing complexity in a rapidly changing world.
Together, the contributions of chair, speakers, and discussants generated a rich interdisciplinary dialogue that bridged micro-level analyses of leadership and emotion with macro-level concerns about global governance and systemic stability. Session 15 thus provided a compelling exploration of how populism, far from being a peripheral phenomenon, is deeply embedded in the contemporary reconfiguration of democratic life and global political order.
Dr. Robert R. Traill: “Can Democracy (or Anything Else) Rescue Civilization While the Rules Keep Changing?”
Dr. Robert R. Traill is a researcher in Cybernetics and Psychology at Brunel University.
Dr. Robert R. Traill delivered a conceptually ambitious presentation titled “Can Democracy (or Anything Else) Rescue Civilization While the Rules Keep Changing?” Drawing on cybernetics, cognitive psychology, and systems theory, Dr. Traill advanced a multi-level framework for understanding the limitations of contemporary governance systems in addressing global crises.
At the core of Dr. Traill’s argument lies a diagnosis of what he terms a “problem landscape” defined by systemic challenges—most notably inequality and climate change—that demand coordinated global responses but remain resistant to consensus-based solutions. These structural issues, he argues, exceed the decision-making capacities of existing political systems, particularly when public discourse is distorted by populist dynamics that prioritize proximate symptoms—such as migration—over underlying causes.
To conceptualize governance under such conditions, Dr. Traill employs W. Ross Ashby’s cybernetic model of adaptive systems, notably the metaphor of the “clever thermostat.” In this framework, intelligence is structured hierarchically across meta-levels (MnL), where base-level actions (M0L) are monitored and adjusted by successive layers of oversight (M1L, M2L, M3L, etc.). Crucially, higher levels enable reflexivity: the capacity not merely to act, but to revise the rules governing action. When such adaptive mechanisms fail—due to insufficient options or cognitive limitations—systems may either stagnate or resort to arbitrary “panic” decisions, a dynamic Dr. Traill associates with contemporary political volatility.
Extending this model to political organization, Dr. Traill draws on Stafford Beer’s Brain of the Firmto argue that governments function as collective intelligence systems. Effective governance requires a balance between directive action (M1L), normative frameworks (M2L), and rational, analytical reasoning (M3L). However, he contends that modern political discourse is frequently “dragged downward” by powerful actors who instrumentalize fear-based narratives, thereby suppressing higher-level reasoning and fostering conditions conducive to populist mobilization.
The presentation offers a comparative analysis of democratic and autocratic systems through this lens. Democracies, Dr. Traill suggests, rely on voters as meta-level selectors among competing policy frameworks. Yet, when mainstream options appear inadequate, electorates may “panic,” turning to untested alternatives that can generate either innovation or instability. Autocracies, by contrast, simplify decision-making hierarchies by collapsing advisory functions into command structures. While this may yield short-term stability, it renders such systems brittle, as reform becomes politically dangerous and often triggers repression or systemic breakdown.
A particularly innovative dimension of Dr. Traill’s framework is his integration of three parallel “intelligence hierarchies”: individual cognitive development (via Piaget), organizational governance (via Beer), and global systemic coordination (via Aslaksen). This triadic model highlights a critical mismatch between the complexity of global challenges and the cognitive-institutional capacities available to address them. Dr. Traill argues that effective solutions to transnational problems require decision-making at higher meta-levels (at least M3L), implying the need for enhanced educational, institutional, and analytical capacities across societies.
The presentation identifies two “elephants in the room”—climate change and limits to economic growth—as paradigmatic MtopL (highest-level) challenges. These systemic pressures cascade downward into observable socio-political symptoms, including economic precarity, migration, and political polarization. However, populist movements frequently misattribute causality, focusing on these symptoms rather than the structural dynamics driving them. This misrecognition, Dr. Traill argues, not only exacerbates instability but also undermines democratic problem-solving capacity.
Dr. Traill further underscores the growing influence of transnational “mega-companies,” whose economic power rivals that of nation-states. Existing regulatory frameworks, he suggests, are inadequate for addressing their systemic impact, particularly given their ability to exploit global tax and governance asymmetries. As a provocative institutional innovation, he proposes the creation of a UN-adjacent “House of Mega-Companies” to enhance transparency and facilitate coordination between corporate and political actors.
In concluding, Dr. Traill outlines a series of reform proposals aimed at mitigating what he terms “populist panic.” These include expanding higher-order education, regulating misinformation, leveraging artificial intelligence for complex problem-solving, and introducing institutional reforms such as ranked-choice and compulsory voting. Ultimately, he argues that the survival of democratic governance—and potentially civilization itself—depends on the capacity to develop higher-level collective intelligence capable of adapting to an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world.
Professor Lorenzo Viviani:“The Politics of Manipulated Resonance: Personalized Leadership in Populism”
Lorenzo Viviani is a Professor of Political Sociology at the Department of Political Science, University of Pisa, Italy.
Professor Lorenzo Viviani (University of Pisa) presented a theoretically rich and analytically nuanced paper. His contribution advances a political-sociological framework that moves beyond descriptive accounts of personalization to interrogate the structural, symbolic, and affective mechanisms underpinning populist leadership.
Professor Viviani’s intervention is guided by three interrelated research questions: first, what distinguishes populist personalization from other forms of leader-centered politics; second, how the direct relationship between leader and people reshapes political representation through what he terms “manipulated resonance”; and third, how populist leadership constructs a hegemonic project by signifying “the people” in emotionally charged and politically consequential ways.
A central premise of the presentation is that political personalization is not a uniform phenomenon. While contemporary politics across democratic systems has undoubtedly become more leader-centered, Professor Viviani insists on differentiating between leader democracy and populist leader democracy. In the former, personalization remains compatible with liberal-democratic norms: leaders may become more visible and central, yet they operate within institutional constraints, pluralistic competition, and electoral accountability. Figures such as Barack Obama, Tony Blair, or Gerhard Schröder exemplify this model, where leadership personalization does not fundamentally disrupt representative mechanisms.
By contrast, populist personalization entails a qualitative transformation of political representation. Here, the leader is no longer merely a representative actor but becomes the symbolic locus of political belonging. Drawing on insights from Pierre Bourdieu, Professor Viviani conceptualizes representation as a performative and relational process of claim-making, through which leaders actively constitute the very collective they claim to represent. In populist contexts, this symbolic power is intensified: leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, or Giorgia Meloni claim to embody the “authentic people,” often positioning themselves against liberal institutions, constitutional norms, and pluralist mediation.
This reconfiguration shifts the foundations of representation from delegation and authorization toward identification and embodiment. The leader does not simply “act for” or “stand for” a constituency but becomes the site through which “the people” are imagined, unified, and politically mobilized. As such, populist representation is not anti-representational; rather, it reconstructs representation as a morally charged, direct relationship between leader and people.
A key contribution of Professor Viviani’s framework lies in foregrounding the constitutive role of emotions in this process. Populist leadership, he argues, operates not primarily through programmatic coherence or rational persuasion but through the strategic mobilization of affect. Political emotions are not incidental but foundational to the construction of collective identities. In particular, Professor Viviani highlights resentment as the paradigmatic populist emotion—though he conceptualizes it not as a singular feeling but as a complex emotional cluster encompassing frustration, anger, humiliation, moral alienation, and perceived loss of agency.
This emotional structure is both retrospective and anticipatory. It reflects not only grievances rooted in past experiences of exclusion or injustice but also anxieties about future loss—of status, security, identity, or opportunity. Such dynamics help explain the broad resonance of populist mobilization across diverse contexts, from the American Midwest’s support for Trump’s “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” narrative to the backing of Brexit in deindustrialized regions or the electoral success of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in eastern Germany. In these cases, economic grievances are intertwined with deeper cultural and existential insecurities.
Professor Viviani further situates these dynamics within a broader cultural-sociological perspective, drawing implicitly on Jeffrey C. Alexander’s concept of cultural trauma. Populist leaders act as “entrepreneurs of emotion,” translating diffuse anxieties and fragmented experiences into coherent political narratives. These narratives not only articulate grievances but reorganize them into a shared interpretive framework that defines both collective identity and political antagonism.
It is within this context that Professor Viviani introduces his central concept of manipulated resonance. Resonance, in his formulation, refers to an affective mode of political connection that makes social reality appear responsive and meaningful to individuals’ lived experiences. However, in populist politics, this resonance is not spontaneous or organic; it is strategically constructed through media performance, symbolic codes, and carefully staged displays of proximity. Leaders present themselves as “one of us,” embodying ordinariness while simultaneously occupying positions of extraordinary power.
This performative proximity is often reinforced through the personification of victimhood. Populist leaders portray themselves as targets of elites, media, or judicial institutions, thereby aligning their personal struggles with those of “ordinary people.” In doing so, they transform individual or collective grievances into political capital. Shame, frustration, and perceived marginalization are rearticulated as sources of legitimacy and mobilization.
Professor Viviani emphasizes that this process operates across multiple registers—strategic, stylistic, and symbolic—but is ultimately anchored in the leader’s capacity to re-signify social reality. Drawing on Stuart Hall, he underscores that politics is fundamentally a struggle over meaning. Populist leadership intervenes at this level by detaching signifiers—such as “the people,” “sovereignty,” or “democracy”—from their established meanings and rearticulating them within new chains of equivalence. This re-signification process enables the construction of a hegemonic project that reorganizes political identities and boundaries.
Importantly, Professor Viviani argues that populism should not be understood as a coherent ideology but as an ongoing hegemonic project—a dynamic process of meaning-making, identity construction, and symbolic struggle. In this process, the leader’s role is pivotal: by naming and defining “the people,” the leader exercises symbolic power that reshapes the political field.
The implications of this framework are far-reaching. Populist resonance, Professor Viviani concludes, constitutes a profound transformation of political representation. The traditional distance between representatives and represented is compressed, replaced by a direct, affective, and symbolically mediated bond. This bond, however, is inherently exclusionary. By defining “the people” in morally homogeneous terms, populist leaders often exclude migrants, minorities, and other marginalized groups from the political community, advancing a form of differential nativism characteristic of contemporary sovereignist movements.
In sum, Professor Viviani’s presentation calls for a reorientation of analytical approaches to populism. Rather than focusing solely on institutional arrangements, party systems, or strategic behavior, he advocates for a political sociology that takes seriously the interplay of symbolic power, emotional dynamics, and performative representation. What is at stake, he suggests, is not merely who governs, but how “the people” are constructed, how political belonging is defined, and how legitimacy is produced in an era of increasingly personalized and affect-driven politics.
Discussants’ Feedback
Feedback by Dr. Azize Sargin
Dr. Azize Sargin is Director for External Affairs at ECPS.
Dr. Azize Sargın offered an analytically rich set of remarks, engaging critically with both presentations while highlighting their broader theoretical implications for the study of populism, political representation, and governance under conditions of complexity.
Focusing first on Professor Lorenzo Viviani’s paper on “manipulated resonance,” Dr. Sargin commended the presentation for moving beyond conventional leader-centric explanations of populism. Rather than treating leadership as an individual attribute or charismatic essence, she underscored the value of conceptualizing it as a relational and symbolic mechanismthrough which “the people” are actively constructed. In this respect, she emphasized that Professor Viviani’s framework departs from the assumption that leaders merely represent pre-existing constituencies, instead positing that populist leadership continuously produces and redefines the collective subject it claims to embody.
Dr. Sargin identified the concept of resonance as a particularly significant contribution. By framing populist leadership as a process that amplifies lived anxieties, cultural codes, and affective experiences into politically meaningful narratives, the paper captures the dynamic interplay between emotional identification and political mobilization. However, she suggested that the notion of manipulated resonance would benefit from further theoretical clarification. Specifically, she called for a more precise distinction between manipulative resonance and democratic responsiveness, noting that resonance inherently implies a two-way relational process. This raises an important question: to what extent are “the people” passive recipients of elite-driven narratives, and to what extent do they actively shape and co-constitute the leader’s discourse?
In this regard, Dr. Sargin encouraged a deeper exploration of the reciprocal nature of the leader–people relationship. Clarifying whether populist resonance operates primarily as a top-down mechanism or as a mutually constitutive process would, in her view, significantly strengthen the analytical framework. Relatedly, she highlighted the importance of the concept of disintermediation, which in the context of populism extends beyond the mere bypassing of parties and media to encompass a broader redefinition of political legitimacy. Disintermediation, she argued, rests on the normative assumption that institutional mediation is inherently corrupting, while direct, unmediated connection is equated with authenticity—an insight that resonates strongly with contemporary populist leadership practices.
Turning to Dr. Robert R. Traill’s presentation, Dr. Sargin praised its ambitious attempt to connect democracy, authoritarianism, and global governance challenges—particularly climate change and limits to growth—within a cybernetic framework of decision-making systems. She identified the notion of “decision-system breakdown” in a populist age as especially compelling, suggesting that the paper opens a productive line of inquiry into populism as not only a crisis of representation but also a crisis of cognitive governability.
At the same time, Dr. Sargin proposed several avenues for theoretical deepening. One key issue concerns the tension between complexity reduction and democratic legitimacy. While all political systems necessarily simplify complex realities to render them governable, she argued that not all forms of simplification are normatively equivalent. The critical question, therefore, is which modes of simplification remain democratically accountable, and which risk drifting toward authoritarian, technocratic, or populist distortions.
She also engaged critically with the reform proposals advanced in Dr. Traill’s paper, particularly the use of artificial intelligence and institutional innovations such as ranked-choice and compulsory voting. While recognizing their potential as responses to evolving decision environments, Dr. Sargin highlighted a fundamental tension: if populism is partly driven by distrust of mediation, the introduction of AI-assisted decision-making may exacerbate rather than alleviate public suspicion—unless embedded within robust frameworks of transparency, accountability, and contestability.
Finally, Dr. Sargin reflected on the paper’s broader theoretical ambition to extend models of individual cognition to collective and global decision-making. While acknowledging this as a bold and innovative move, she cautioned that collective actors cannot be treated simply as scaled-up cognitive systems. Instead, they are inherently asymmetrical and stratified, requiring more careful theorization of what is gained—and potentially lost—when translating cybernetic analogies into political theory.
Thus, Dr. Sargin underscored the shared contribution of both papers in advancing a more nuanced understanding of populism—not merely as rhetoric or ideology, but as a complex configuration of symbolic, emotional, and institutional processes. Her reflections and feedback thus highlighted the need for interdisciplinary approaches capable of grappling with the intertwined challenges of representation, legitimacy, and governance in an increasingly complex political landscape.
Feedback by Professor Ibrahim Ozturk
As discussant at the workshop, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk offered a concise yet incisive set of remarks, raising critical questions that probe the intersection of populism, technocratic governance, and institutional mediation. Framing his intervention as a preliminary engagement pending a full reading of the papers, Professor Ozturk focused on one key question for each presenter, thereby highlighting core tensions within both contributions.
Addressing Dr. Robert R. Traill’s presentation, Professor Ozturk expressed particular interest in the application of cybernetic models—especially the Ashby–Beer “collective brain” framework—to explain populist “panic” in response to structural crises such as climate change and limits to economic growth. From an economic perspective, he found the linkage between systemic instability and environmental constraints especially compelling. However, he raised a critical concern regarding the proposed institutional and technological remedies, including artificial intelligence and ranked-choice voting. Given that populism often emerges as a backlash against expert-led governance and technocracy, Professor Ozturk questioned whether such reforms might inadvertently intensify populist distrust. In a context marked by growing anxieties about “techno-feudalism” and the expanding influence of large digital corporations, he asked whether the integration of algorithmic decision-making risks deepening perceptions that democratic agency is being displaced. Crucially, he challenged Dr. Traill to account for the emotional and irrational resistance that may arise against ostensibly rational, technocratic solutions.
Turning to Professor Lorenzo Viviani’s presentation, Professor Ozturk engaged with the concept of disintermediation and the personalization of leadership in contemporary populism. While acknowledging the analytical strength of the argument that populist leaders construct direct, unmediated bonds with “the people,” he raised a fundamental question about the durability of institutional mediation. Specifically, he asked whether traditional intermediaries—such as the free press, independent judiciaries, and other liberal-democratic institutions—can regain their legitimacy once bypassed by populist leadership. Or, alternatively, whether the politics of proximity and performative identification has permanently reshaped citizens’ expectations toward a more direct, anti-institutional model of governance.
In sum, Professor Ozturk’s remarks foregrounded a shared concern across both papers: whether contemporary transformations in political representation and governance signal reversible disruptions or more enduring structural shifts in democratic life.
Response by Professor Lorenzo Viviani
In his response to the discussants, Professor Lorenzo Viviani offered a clarifying and theoretically grounded elaboration of his framework on populist personalization and “manipulated resonance.” Engaging directly with the comments of the discussants, Professor Viviani reaffirmed the relational and sociological foundations of his approach while addressing key concerns regarding agency, manipulation, and the role of institutions.
At the core of his response was a rejection of overly individualistic or essentialist interpretations of leadership. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, Professor Viviani emphasized that political representation and resonance necessarily emerge within a social field. Leadership, including charismatic leadership, cannot be understood as an intrinsic quality of the individual leader; rather, it depends on an interactive process of mutual recognition between leaders and followers. Even in populist contexts, resonance presupposes the existence of shared, albeit unstructured, social dispositions that leaders can activate and organize. Without such symbolic and cultural preconditions, the mechanisms of identification—whether authentic or manipulated—would fail.
Addressing the question of manipulation, Professor Viviani clarified that it does not primarily consist in offering concrete solutions to crises, but rather in framing and interpreting those crises in ways that resonate emotionally with individuals’ lived experiences. Populist leaders, he argued, construct narratives that position individuals as victims of systemic injustice, thereby fostering a sense of shared identity grounded in perceived grievance. In this context, “similarity” between leader and people functions as a substitute for traditional forms of representation. However, this similarity is largely performative rather than substantive, constituting what Professor Viviani described as a “functional equivalent” of representation.
Professor Viviani further acknowledged the discussants’ concerns regarding the reciprocal nature of resonance. While affirming that resonance involves mutual recognition, he noted that populist dynamics often weaken the demand for responsiveness. Unlike conventional representative systems, where social demands generate policy responses, populist resonance relies on emotional identification rather than programmatic accountability. This dynamic becomes particularly fragile during moments of acute crisis—such as the COVID-19 pandemic—when symbolic proximity alone proves insufficient, and the limits of disintermediated leadership are exposed.
Expanding on the concept of disintermediation, Professor Viviani situated it within broader processes of societal individualization and the erosion of traditional political cleavages, such as class and religion. In increasingly fragmented and competitive societies, the decline of collective identities creates a vacuum that populist leaders fill through emotionally charged, “catch-all” forms of representation. These bypass intermediary institutions and instead establish direct, affective bonds with individuals. Yet, Professor Viviani cautioned that such populist appeals are often defensive in nature, centered on identity and recognition rather than substantive socio-economic transformation.
Professor Viviani also distinguished populist leadership from classical Weberian notions of charisma. Whereas charismatic authority, in the Weberian sense, rests on the perceived superiority of the leader and their capacity to enact transformative change, populist leadership operates through a performative identification with “ordinary people.” It is, in his terms, a form of “servant leadership,” albeit a strategically constructed and manipulated one, in which the leader claims equality with followers while symbolically embodying them.
Moreover, Professor Viviani addressed the broader normative implications of his argument by contrasting populist resonance with what he termed democratic resonance. While populist resonance is often exclusionary—constructed “against” perceived enemies—democratic systems can also generate forms of resonance grounded in principles of freedom, equality, and pluralism. Institutions such as constitutional courts and the rule of law, he suggested, embody an alternative, “anti-populist” resonance that affirms equal rights and collective belonging within a pluralistic framework.
Thus, Professor Viviani’s response not only clarified the conceptual underpinnings of manipulated resonance but also opened a broader reflection on the possibility of reclaiming resonance as a democratic resource rather than a purely populist mechanism.
Q&A Session
The Q&A session evolved into a rich and multilayered discussion that brought into sharp focus the tensions between populist mobilization, constitutional democracy, and the evolving nature of political representation. Anchored by interventions from participants and responses by Professor Viviani, the exchange moved beyond clarification to engage foundational theoretical debates concerning ideology, emotional politics, mediation, and the future of democratic legitimacy.
The discussion was initiated by Dr. Amir Ali, who reflected on the applicability of constitutional patriotism—associated with Jürgen Habermas—in the context of contemporary populist governance, drawing on the case of India under Narendra Modi. Dr. Ali highlighted a striking contrast between the “sobriety” of constitutional patriotism and the emotionally charged, performative nationalism characteristic of populist politics. While constitutional patriotism relies on mediated institutional frameworks and normative commitments, populism thrives on what he described as a “raw,” unmediated construction of “the people,” often driven by urgency, anxiety, and affective intensity.
This contrast, Dr. Ali suggested, may help explain why constitutional patriotism has struggled to mobilize broad public support in contexts where populism has consolidated power. Invoking Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the alliance between elites and mass mobilization in The Origins of Totalitarianism, he further argued that populism often operates through a volatile fusion of elite strategy and popular sentiment, thereby destabilizing mediated forms of democratic representation.
Professor Viviani’s response acknowledged this asymmetry but sought to reframe constitutional patriotism as a potentially more dynamic and assertive project. Rather than viewing it as a purely procedural or technocratic model, he argued that constitutional patriotism embodies substantive cultural and normative values—freedom, equality, and pluralism—that can themselves generate forms of political resonance. In this sense, he suggested that constitutional democracy may evolve into a more “militant” form, capable of actively contesting populist narratives and reconstructing collective identities around inclusive principles.
Central to Professor Viviani’s intervention was a Gramscian understanding of politics as an ongoing struggle for hegemony, drawing on Antonio Gramsci. Populism, in this view, represents only one hegemonic project among others, rather than an inevitable or irreversible transformation. The contemporary populist moment, he argued, reflects not the end of democratic politics but the re-emergence of ideological contestation following decades marked by the assumption that liberal democracy constituted the “end of history.” The task, therefore, is not merely to defend existing institutions but to articulate alternative democratic projects capable of mobilizing both normative commitment and emotional identification.
The discussion then shifted toward the nature of populism itself, particularly in response to a comment by Dr. Amadeo Varriale regarding whether populism should be understood as an ideology. Drawing on the influential work of Cas Muddeand Michael Freeden, Dr. Varriale suggested that populism may be conceptualized as a “thin-centered ideology,” given its structured set of ideas about the primacy of “the people” and its normative critique of elites.
Professor Viviani, however, rejected this classification, offering a sociological reinterpretation. He argued that populism lacks the comprehensive normative and programmatic architecture characteristic of full-fledged ideologies such as liberalism or socialism. Rather than providing a structured vision of society, populism functions as a political logic or hegemonic project that simplifies social reality into antagonistic categories—“the people” versus “the elites.” While this simplification may resemble the mapping function of ideology, as described by Freeden, Professor Viviani maintained that it remains fundamentally limited: it organizes political perception without articulating a coherent model of social organization.
Importantly, he acknowledged that when populist movements enter government, they often incorporate elements from other ideological frameworks—such as nationalism, nativism, or sovereignism—thereby becoming more ideologically structured. In this sense, populism may serve as an entry point into broader ideological transformations rather than constituting an ideology in itself. His distinction between Donald Trump’s first and second presidencies illustrated this dynamic, suggesting a shift from a primarily populist mode of governance toward a more explicitly ideological, nationalist-authoritarian project.
A further line of discussion, raised by Dr. Azize Sargin, addressed the apparent paradox of populist leadership: namely, that many populist leaders emerge from elite backgrounds while claiming to represent “ordinary people.” Professor Viviani responded by emphasizing the centrality of emotional identification in populist politics. The bond between leader and followers is not grounded in objective socio-economic similarity but in the performative construction of shared victimhood. Leaders such as Trump or Silvio Berlusconi—despite their elite status—successfully position themselves as targets of cultural, political, or institutional elites, thereby aligning themselves symbolically with broader publics.
This dynamic, Professor Viviani argued, reveals a fundamental departure from rational models of political representation. Populist legitimacy is not derived from policy outcomes or material alignment but from affective resonance. Consequently, empirical contradictions—such as policies that disproportionately benefit economic elites—do not necessarily undermine populist support. The emotional bond between leader and followers operates independently of, and often in tension with, rational evaluation.
The discussion further explored alternative modes of political identification, particularly through Dr. Sargin’s suggestion that populist leaders may also be perceived as “heroes” rather than merely as “one of the people.” Professor Viviani acknowledged this possibility but introduced an important distinction between populist and authoritarian forms of personalization. While populist leadership emphasizes similarity and proximity, authoritarian leadership tends to elevate the leader into a superior, heroic figure. This transition, he argued, reflects a shift from populist to autocratic modes of governance.
Drawing on historical examples such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Professor Viviani noted that authoritarian regimes often combine politics of fear with what he termed “dark hope”—a forward-looking, albeit exclusionary and often destructive, vision of collective renewal. In contemporary contexts, he suggested that some leaders initially emerging from populist movements may evolve toward more authoritarian forms of personalization, as illustrated by the trajectory from Hugo Chávez to Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
A recurring theme throughout the Q&A was the role of emotion in structuring political allegiance. Professor Viviani contrasted the “politics of fear,” which underpins much populist mobilization, with the potential for a “politics of hope” capable of fostering inclusive forms of identification. Drawing on examples such as Barack Obama’s rhetoric of unity, he argued that democratic politics must also engage affective dimensions if it is to counter populist narratives effectively. Hope, as a positive and inclusive emotion, offers an alternative basis for political belonging that does not rely on the construction of enemies or exclusionary identities.
At the same time, the discussion highlighted the challenges inherent in such an endeavor. As Dr. Sargin observed, many supporters of populist leaders may perceive their alignment not as a choice but as a necessity, shaped by structural conditions and limited alternatives. This raises important questions about agency, constraint, and the socio-political contexts that sustain populist appeal.
Overall, the Q&A session underscored the need for a multidimensional approach to populism—one that integrates insights from political sociology, political theory, and cultural analysis. It revealed populism not merely as a set of political strategies or ideological claims, but as a complex process involving the construction of collective identities, the mobilization of emotions, and the reconfiguration of institutional relationships.
In doing so, the exchange also pointed toward a broader normative challenge: how democratic systems can reconstruct forms of political resonance that are both emotionally compelling and normatively inclusive. As the discussion suggested, the future of democracy may depend not only on institutional resilience but also on the capacity to articulate alternative narratives of belonging, identity, and political community in an increasingly fragmented and contested political landscape.
Conclusion
Session 15 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series demonstrated with particular clarity that contemporary populism must be understood not as an episodic disturbance of democratic normalcy, but as a revealing expression of deeper transformations in political representation, collective identity, and the governance of complexity. Across the two presentations, the discussant interventions, and the extended Q&A, the session illuminated how populism operates at the intersection of affect, symbolism, institutional erosion, and systemic instability.
Dr. Robert R. Traill’s contribution situated populism within a wider crisis of cognitive and political governability, showing how democratic systems struggle to respond adequately to global problems whose scale exceeds inherited frameworks of decision-making. Professor Lorenzo Viviani, by contrast, traced the micro-foundations of populist leadership, emphasizing how “manipulated resonance” reconfigures representation through emotional identification, symbolic power, and the performative construction of “the people.” Taken together, these perspectives offered a valuable synthesis: populism emerges both from failures of institutional adaptation and from the affective reorganization of political belonging.
The discussants’ critiques and the subsequent discussion further sharpened the normative and theoretical stakes of the session. Questions concerning the democratic limits of simplification, the ambivalent promise of technocratic remedies, the durability of institutional mediation, and the distinction between populist and democratic forms of resonance revealed the analytical richness of the session’s interdisciplinary approach. Particularly significant was the recurring recognition that democracy cannot be defended through procedure alone. If populism succeeds in mobilizing fear, resentment, and immediacy, democratic actors must also grapple with the emotional and cultural dimensions of legitimacy.
In this sense, the session pointed toward a broader conclusion: the future of democracy depends not only on preserving institutions, but on renewing the social, symbolic, and normative bonds that make democratic life meaningful. To confront populism effectively, democratic politics must offer more than resistance; it must articulate compelling alternatives capable of reconnecting freedom, equality, pluralism, and collective agency under conditions of global uncertainty. Session 15 thus made a significant contribution to ongoing debates on how democracy might still be reimagined—and sustained—in an age of crisis, personalization, and escalating power struggles.
As Hungary approaches the April 12 elections, Viktor Orbán’s long-standing rule faces a critical test shaped by both domestic discontent and geopolitical realignments. In this interview, Associate Professor Attila Antal characterizes the regime as a “constitutional dictatorship,” arguing that the election is not about democratic legitimacy but about securing “public support for its own dictatorial turn.” He highlights how authoritarian legality, sustained through a “dual state” and permanent emergency governance, has hollowed out democratic competition. At the same time, the rise of Péter Magyar and mounting generational and material grievances signal growing resistance. Situated within broader transnational authoritarian networks, Hungary’s election emerges as both a domestic referendum and a geopolitical fault line for European democracy.
As Hungary approaches its pivotal parliamentary elections on April 12, 2026, the country stands at a defining juncture in the trajectory of European populism. After more than a decade and a half of rule by Viktor Orbán, the electoral contest no longer centers merely on party competition, but on whether an entrenched authoritarian-populist regime—characterized by institutional asymmetries, constitutional engineering, and the continuous production of political enemies—can still be meaningfully challenged through democratic means. At the same time, the emergence of Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party has introduced new uncertainty into a system long sustained by what Attila Antal describes as a “hegemonic power bloc,” raising the stakes of what increasingly resembles a systemic referendum.
In this context, Attila Antal, Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, offers a sobering interpretation of the current moment. In his view, the Orbán regime has evolved beyond conventional electoral authoritarianism into what he terms a “constitutional dictatorship,” where formal legality coexists with substantive domination. Most strikingly, Assoc. Prof. Antal argues that “the Orbán regime is not seeking democratic legitimacy in the 2026 elections, but rather public support for its own dictatorial turn.” This diagnosis reframes the election not as a mechanism of accountability, but as a plebiscitary instrument designed to consolidate power under conditions of managed legality.
Crucially, Assoc. Prof. Antal situates Hungary’s electoral moment within a broader geopolitical reconfiguration. He underscores that Orbán has increasingly treated foreign and European policy “as a kind of geopolitical playing field,” cultivating alliances with both Eastern and Western authoritarian actors. The alignment with figures such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin reflects not only ideological affinity but also strategic positioning within an emerging transnational authoritarian network. As Assoc. Prof. Antal notes, Hungary has come to function as a “Trojan horse” for Putinist influence within the European Union, transforming the election into “a European and Western geopolitical issue and interest.” This external dimension is mirrored internally by a deepening social cleavage, as segments of Hungarian society remain firmly oriented toward the West while the regime consolidates a pro-Russian political base.
This external dimension intersects with internal tensions, including growing social discontent and a generational divide that reflects what Assoc. Prof. Antal describes as “a very strong generational revolt against Orbán’s authoritarian populism.”
At the core of Assoc. Prof. Antal’s analysis is the concept of authoritarian law and the “dual state,” where a formally normative legal order coexists with a politically driven prerogative structure. Under prolonged states of emergency and rule by decree, Hungary has become, in his words, “a contemporary example of dual state,” raising profound questions about whether elections can still function as instruments of democratic alternation. The opposition’s strategy of contesting the regime “by its own rules” thus reflects a deeper dilemma: whether authoritarian systems can be dismantled through participation in the very institutional frameworks they have reshaped.
Assoc. Prof. Antal’s assessment is stark. The durability of Orbánism, he suggests, lies in its capacity to adapt, radicalize, and survive through escalating authoritarianism. As he warns, the regime “can only survive by becoming increasingly dictatorial,” a trajectory that poses not only a domestic challenge but “a grave danger to both Hungarian and European societies as a whole.”
Here is the edited version of our interview with AssociateProfessor Attila Antal, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Geopolitics and Domestic Change Reshape Orbánism
From Left: Hungary PM Viktor Orban, Poland PM Beata Szydlo, Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka and Slovakia PM Robert Fico pose prior their meeting in Prague on February 15, 2016.
Professor Antal, in your work you describe Hungarian authoritarian populism as a system that fuses political identity construction, executive aggrandizement, and the legal-institutional reorganization of power. In the 2026 campaign, do you see Orbánism still functioning as a hegemonic political project, or has it entered a phase of ideological exhaustion in which its capacity to define “the people” and monopolize popular sovereignty is beginning to weaken?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is a key issue for understanding the Orbán regime as a whole and the current situation. Indeed, Orbán has built an authoritarian regime in which the ruling parties have reigned as a kind of hegemonic center—or, to use Antonio Gramsci’s terminology, as a hegemonic power bloc. However, the transformation of the opposition has changed the situation and shaken this hegemonic project. This is, however, a complex situation: in recent years, Orbán had become so confident that he increasingly focused on geopolitics; more precisely, he treated foreign policy and European policy as a kind of geopolitical playing field, where he built power and political alliances with both Eastern and Western authoritarian regimes. It is no coincidence that the two most significant imperialist powers, Trump and Putin, have both assured Orbán of their support. So, I see the collapse of Orbán’s hegemonic project as only partially attributable to domestic political factors: we are witnessing that Orbán’s downfall has become a European and Western geopolitical issue and interest, and this resonates with the anger of Hungarian society, which, for the most part, remains oriented toward the West.
Enemy Narratives Persist but Face Social Limits
You have argued that authoritarian populism in Hungary relies on permanent enemy-production. In the current election, where Kyiv, Brussels, liberal elites, and domestic opponents are again being woven into a single antagonistic narrative, how should we understand this strategy: as a sign of discursive resilience, or as evidence that the regime has become trapped in repetitive forms of mobilization?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: The enemy creation of the Orbán regime is a highly complex story. There is no doubt that the constant creation of enemy images is one of the most prominent components of the authoritarian populist toolkit. Since 2010, the Orbán regime has operated with the following main enemy images: migrants, George Soros, civil society, Brussels, the gender politics, and the domestic political opposition.
From this perspective, 2022 marks a turning point, as Putin’s aggression required the construction of a new enemy image – an incredibly difficult task, given that the attacked Ukraine must be transformed into the new enemy. All of this is connected to the “Putinization” that has taken place within the Orbán regime. The propaganda and discursive framework are thus in place, yet creating this new enemy image also means that Orbán and his allies face the reality that a significant portion of Hungarian society is quite averse to Russians due to Hungarian history. At the same time, Orbán and his allies have succeeded in turning their own camp into a pro-Russian faction, which has resulted in an incredibly deep social cleavage.
Anti-Orbánism Unites a Fragmented Opposition
Tisza leader Péter Magyar begins a symbolic “one million steps” march to Nagyvárad, Romania, addressing reporters with supporters in Budapest, Hungary on May 14, 2025. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
To what extent should the April 12 vote be interpreted not simply as a contest between Fidesz and Tisza, but as a referendum on whether a mature authoritarian-populist regime can still be electorally displaced despite media asymmetries, constitutional engineering, and patronage entrenchment?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: As I mentioned earlier, the Orbán regime itself and the new opposition forming against it can be understood within a geopolitical context. One could also say that, in many respects, the European Union has had enough of the Putinist influence that the Orbán regime represents as a “Trojan horse.” At the same time, this dissatisfaction is just as true of Hungarian society: at the moment, the opposition is held together by anti-Orbánism and the fact that the Orbán regime has seriously neglected governance and the basic needs of the Hungarian people. In this sense, the Hungarian election can indeed be interpreted as a referendum on the political system.
Dual State Logic Structures Political Competition
Your recent work on authoritarian law suggests that contemporary autocratic projects do not abolish legality so much as repurpose it. In the Hungarian case, how should we conceptualize the election itself: as a democratic mechanism still capable of producing alternation, or as a legally managed arena whose formal openness coexists with substantive authoritarian constraint?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: I think this is a very important question. When I analyzed the legal system of the Orbán regime, I drew on the “dual state” approach developed by Ernst Fraenkel, who studied the nature of National Socialist law in the interwar period. In this authoritarian state, there exists a legal system that is totally influenced by politics (which Fraenkel calls the Prerogative State), while at the same time there is the Normative State, which is less defined by political influence.
The Orbán regime has effectively been operating under a state of emergency since 2015, and since 2022, the prime minister has essentially been governing by decree. So, we are facing a contemporary example of dual state.
In my view, there is a very strong dilemma: can this system be overthrown by accepting its rules of the game and participating in the election, or can we overthrow the system as a result of a collective popular decision and establish new democratic electoral rules? It now appears that the opposition side of Hungarian society is choosing the former solution, that is, it wants to defeat the authoritarian system by its own rules. At the same time, it is certain that in the event of a possible change of government, we will have to face the problem posed by authoritarian law.
Enemy Logic Embedded in Governance Structures
Campaign poster of Viktor Orbán ahead of the April 12, 2026, parliamentary elections. Photo: Bettina Wagner / Dreamstime.
You have written about the “Constitutionalized Image of Enemy” embedded in the Hungarian Fundamental Law. How central is this constitutionalized enemy logic to the present campaign, especially in Orbán’s efforts to portray Tisza, Brussels, and Ukraine not as legitimate competitors, but as existential threats to the political community?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: The most recent amendment to the Fundamental Law took place in April 2025. The Hungarian Fundamental Law has indeed been used to create the prevailing political enemy images: certainly, with regard to migration and gender politics. I have termed this as the “Constitutionalized Image of the Enemy.” In this sense, therefore, the image of the enemy enshrined in the constitution did not play a role in the current campaign. At the same time, the 12th Amendment to the Fundamental Law established the Office for the Protection of National Sovereignty in December 2023, which played a very significant role in enabling the Orbán regime to essentially begin using state and bureaucratic tools against its political opponents and Hungarian society. In other words, the “dual state” mentioned earlier operates at the constitutional level as well.
Geopolitical Counterweight Shapes Opposition Rise
From the standpoint of your theory of authoritarian populism, is Péter Magyar best understood as a democratic challenger to Orbánism, or as a post-Fidesz corrective emerging from within the same political and ideological ecosystem?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is a very difficult question, and it would be too early to give any definitive answer at this stage. I would rather point out that the Hungarian election has a very strong geopolitical context. The Péter Magyar phenomenon and the European support structure behind it can also be understood as a geopolitical counterweight to Hungary’s shift toward Orbán and Putin. At the same time, there is no doubt that Orbán’s challenger was socialized within the Orbán regime and, in many respects, is attempting to correct the right-wing conservative politics that Orbán has betrayed. Here, however, it is worth noting once again that the vast camp behind the Tisza Party is far more complex and is currently held together by the constraints of the electoral system and anti-Orbánism.
Youth Revolt Meets Rural Entrenchment
Independent polling and current reporting suggest that younger voters are disproportionately aligning with Tisza, while Fidesz retains stronger support among older and more rural constituencies. Do you interpret this as a generational realignment against authoritarian populism, or merely as a contingent reaction to economic stagnation and elite scandal?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is also a key issue. There is no doubt that the authoritarian populism of the Orbán regime has, intentionally or not, created a generational and regional divide. A significant portion of rural and elderly Hungarian voters is far more susceptible to the enemy stereotypes and messages manufactured by the regime’s propaganda. Thus, there is a very strong generational revolt against Orbán’s authoritarian populism, particularly because Orbán is effectively blackmailing not only the EU but also Hungarian society: the former with constant vetoes, and the latter with constant threats of leaving the EU.
Middle-Class Erosion Fuels Political Backlash
Given your emphasis on the relationship between neoliberal restructuring and authoritarian populism, how important are material grievances—stagnant growth, inflation, deteriorating public services, and corruption fatigue—in weakening the regime’s capacity to maintain consent? Can economic deterioration disrupt a system whose legitimacy has long depended on symbolic conflict rather than policy performance?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: From a political-economic perspective, the Orbán regime was based on a class consensus in which the (upper) middle class and national big business formed an alliance. This was underpinned by pre-COVID-19 economic prosperity and massive amounts of EU funding. During this period of economic prosperity, however, a neoliberal state emerged that systematically dismantled public services, particularly in the healthcare and education sectors. When the polycrisis emerged (EU crises, pandemic, war), the dismantled Orbán state proved unable to handle the crisis: alongside the groups in the worst situations, the declining Hungarian middle class is the biggest loser of the Orbán regime. In other words, the rebellion against the Orbán regime is, in many respects, also of a material nature.
War Narrative Enables Democratic Suspension
How do you interpret Orbán’s continued “peace versus war” framing in light of your broader work on the politics of exception? Is this campaign discourse best seen as a contemporary form of emergency politics—one that converts geopolitical uncertainty into a justification for executive concentration and democratic suspension?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: As I mentioned, since 2022 the prime minister has essentially been governing by decree, encroaching even on areas of public policy where a state of emergency has no place. Meanwhile, political propaganda has constantly claimed that the Orbán regime is the only guarantee of peace. This has come to a head in the current campaign, with the Orbán machine conveying the message that the opposition is on the side of the Ukrainians and is dragging Hungary into the war. Governing through extraordinary measures is thus a political and communicative reframing: the Orbán regime has essentially suspended parliamentary democracy and portrayed the Ukrainian side (including the EU and the Hungarian opposition) as wanting war. I believe that this is not just some kind of fake news campaign, but the pure and frightening manifestation of an authoritarian state.
Sovereigntist Rhetoric Masks Strategic Dependence
Hungary’s pro-Russian posture has become a major campaign fault line. In your view, does Orbán’s Moscow-friendly stance still function as a coherent ideological expression of sovereigntist anti-liberalism, or is it increasingly becoming a liability as the war in Ukraine reshapes the moral and geopolitical boundaries of European politics?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: Orbán’s pro-Russian policy is a complex phenomenon. At least three aspects are worth highlighting. On the one hand, there is no doubt that, with regard to the international authoritarian right, there exists a kind of ideological coalition whose political-theoretical foundation is an anti-liberal conservative approach dating back to Carl Schmitt. Second, the Orbán regime has radically relinquished energy sovereignty in favor of Putinism. Third, there is also no doubt that Orbán and his regime are personally dependent on Putin’s system. Here, then, lies a radical contradiction: the Orbán regime, which is sovereignist at the level of propaganda, has deliberately renounced the sovereignty of the Hungarian state and is weakening European sovereignty in favor of Russia. The deeper implications of this can only be revealed after the election.
Militant Democracy as a Possible Path
You have shown how exceptional governance can become normalized. If Tisza were to win without a constitutional supermajority, would Hungary enter a phase of partial alternation without regime transformation—in other words, a situation in which a new government governs through institutions still structured by the old exception-centered order?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: I believe this is one of the main consequences of the dilemma I mentioned earlier: namely, how to dismantle an authoritarian system – either by adhering to its own rules or through more revolutionary means. If there is a change of government and a two-thirds majority is achieved, dismantling the authoritarian power of the Orbán regime will be a challenge. If, however, the change of government occurs with a simple majority, it may become inevitable to consider how the authoritarian system can be dismantled using the tools of militant democracy.
EU Influence and Domestic Revolt Intersect
Tisza Party volunteer collecting signatures in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary on June 5, 2024 during a nationwide campaign tour ahead of the European Parliament elections. Photo: Sarkadi Roland / Dreamstime.
What would a Tisza victory actually reveal about the Orbán system: that authoritarian-populist rule remains vulnerable to democratic challenge, or that only an insider-led revolt from within the regime’s broader political class can break such a system electorally?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: Based on what we’ve seen so far, I believe a potential victory for Tisza would have two implications. On the one hand, it would signal that the EU has had enough of Putinism directly influencing European politics. On the other hand, it would mean that authoritarian populism has become completely detached from social reality, and that Hungarian society has had enough of a political agenda built on constant hatemongering and the suspension of normality.
Authoritarian Consolidation Beyond Legitimacy
Conversely, if Fidesz were to retain power despite signs of economic strain, ideological repetition, corruption exposure, and opposition momentum, what would that tell us about the resilience of contemporary populist rule in Europe? Would it suggest that once authoritarian populism successfully constitutionalizes its power, elections alone become insufficient to dislodge it?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: I believe this is the most important issue of our time. Unfortunately, my grim assessment is that the Orbán regime is not seeking democratic legitimacy in the 2026 elections, but rather public support for its own dictatorial turn. I have long regarded the Orbán regime as a constitutional dictatorship, which means, on the one hand, that contemporary autocracies have a constitutional framework, and on the other hand, that certain segments of society have renounced democracy and accept the exercise of authoritarian power. Overall, therefore, the Orbán regime can only survive by becoming increasingly dictatorial, a trend that poses a grave danger to both Hungarian and European society as a whole.
Competing Visions of European Sovereignty
From the perspective of European integration, do you see this election as a struggle between two models of sovereignty: Orbán’s confrontational, anti-imperial, anti-Brussels sovereigntism and a more cooperative, rule-of-law-based claim to national interest that Tisza is trying to articulate? Or is that dichotomy too neat for the political realities of contemporary Hungary?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: First of all, the Orbán regime is indeed imperialist, and it pursues policies that serve Russian imperialist interests. The Hungarian election is crucial from the perspective of European integration, as the dilemma is whether there exists a European sovereignty that can be relied upon to stand up against authoritarian tendencies such as Trumpism and Putinism. I am committed to the idea, as Karl Loewenstein put it, that democracy must develop its own self-defense mechanisms and fight back – in our case, at both the member state and EU levels.
External Validation Meets Internal Resistance
Matryoshka dolls featuring images of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump displayed at a souvenir counter in Moscow on March 16, 2019. Photo: Shutterstock.
Hungary has become a reference point within transnational right-wing networks, and Orbán continues to attract symbolic support from US and European conservative actors. In analytical terms, how much does this external validation matter domestically? Does it strengthen the regime’s legitimacy, or does it mainly reinforce Orbán’s self-image as a global ideological entrepreneur?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: From the perspective of ideological and political networking, the Orbán regime truly acts as a mediator between Western and Eastern authoritarian tendencies. This is why organizing the European far right is of key importance to Orbán. All of this undoubtedly has an impact on his own camp. At the same time, Orbán’s status as a “global ideological entrepreneur” represents the very project against which the Hungarian opposition has been able to unite and become committed to a change of government.
De-capture vs. Persistence of Orbánism
Finally, through the lens of your work on authoritarian law and exceptional governance, what would be the most theoretically significant post-election question for scholars to watch: whether electoral alternation occurs, whether institutional de-capture proves possible, or whether the deeper legacy of Orbánism survives regardless of who forms the next government?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is also one of the most important dilemmas of our era from both a Hungarian and a European perspective, as the political and legal consequences of the Orbán regime are toxic to European integration as a whole. On the one hand, just as happened after World War II, we must once again grapple with the question of how to take democratic action against authoritarian legal and political systems. On the other hand, and even more importantly: we must finally prevent the distortion of liberal democracies toward authoritarianism not only through constitutional institutions but also through effective economic and cultural means. In my view, it is crucial to examine how global capitalism and neoliberalism have distorted liberal constitutionalism and how they have eroded the social foundations of democracies through austerity measures and the dismantling of welfare systems.
In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja introduces the notion of “survival populism” to capture how environmental crisis and material insecurity are reshaping democratic politics in the Global South. Moving beyond conventional ideational approaches, the article foregrounds lived experiences of hardship—linking fuel price shocks, flooding, energy insecurity, and inflation to moral claims about fairness, state responsibility, and distributive justice. Through the case of Nigeria, Dr. Solaja demonstrates how climate-related disruptions and policy reforms converge to erode institutional trust and reconfigure political contestation. Rather than rejecting climate policy per se, citizens contest its unequal burdens. The article thus reframes democratic distress as rooted in distributive conflict, offering a compelling framework for understanding how ecological crisis fuels new forms of populist mobilization and legitimacy crises.
In much of the Global South, the politics of survival and the politics of environmental crisis have become deeply intertwined. What were once distinct policy domains—the politics of fuel prices, flood mitigation, food inflation, waste accumulation, and energy insecurity—have converged into a single, lived experience of persistent hardship. For millions of citizens, the environmental crisis is not primarily defined by climate reports, international negotiations, or adaptation frameworks, but by submerged homes, rising transport costs, prolonged electricity outages, disrupted livelihoods, and escalating prices for basic goods.
Within such contexts of livelihood insecurity, ecological degradation takes on political meaning. Citizens come to see hardship not just as the result of misfortune or climatic fluctuation, but as an instance of unequal protection, institutional neglect and democratic distance. Under such conditions, public politics enters a new phase: a populism of survival emerges.
“Populism of survival” names a distinct mode of political interpretation that links environmental and economic distress to moral claims about state responsibility, fairness, and sacrifice. It departs from classical theories of populism by foregrounding the lived experience of hardship. Unlike the variants often associated with populist mobilizations in the Global North and East—typically structured around a binary opposition between “the people” and “the elite”—populism of survival is rooted in citizens’ experiences of material insecurity. Fuel becomes political when rising prices constrain mobility and limit access to basic goods; flooding becomes political when relief is inadequate or unevenly distributed; waste becomes political when its unequal management deepens social inequalities and disproportionately endangers already vulnerable populations.
In such contexts, public anger arises not only from opposition to environmental policy reforms but also from citizens’ everyday moral intuitions about who bears the costs of environmental disruption, who is required to pay, and who is protected. The relationship between climate policy and democratic legitimacy begins to erode when policies are perceived as non-distributive or unfair. Increasingly, the roots of climate populism lie in conflicts over how the costs and benefits of environmental transition are allocated. As Harrison (2025) observes, “across many settings, opposition to environmental reforms may stem not from a rejection of climate policies per se, but from opposition to the inequities of how their costs are distributed.”
An illustrative example of these dynamics can be found in Nigeria, where the government removed fuel subsidies in May 2023 and framed the resulting increase in fuel prices as a necessary macroeconomic adjustment. Public discourse surrounding the policy quickly became highly politicized, as rising fuel costs contributed to significant inflation and tightened household budgets. While state officials justified the reform in terms of fiscal discipline and economic rationalization, many citizens interpreted it through a moral lens: why should those at the bottom struggle to make ends meet while those with access to power remain insulated from such burdens? As Gbadebo (2025) argues, public responses to subsidy removal were shaped not only by the material consequences of economic hardship but also by concerns over governmental credibility and the plausibility of promised developmental outcomes.
These processes were intensified by other long-standing environmental and structural vulnerabilities and crises that now affected a wider portion of society than in past years. Following the floods that devastated numerous states—destroying livelihoods, homes, and arable lands—rising costs merged with food insecurity and frequent blackouts to form an inseparable social and ecological predicament. The state could no longer frame this predicament as exclusively “natural” or solely as the outcome of a natural disaster or poor market conditions. The experience was one of combined, cumulative crisis, and the credibility of the state in addressing such predicaments is tied to its performance on both fronts.
Flooding has, in particular, emerged as a major site of citizen dissatisfaction and a potent factor driving democratic distress. Displaced communities that have lost homes and productive capacity immediately feel cheated when the amount or distribution of government aid seems to reproduce and reinforce existing patterns of social inequality, and they begin to ask why state assistance appears uneven across communities and is not delivered to them preferentially. Climate policy has entered a phase in which state legitimacy is judged not solely in terms of its objectives or rationale, but also in terms of the effectiveness and fairness of its management of combined environmental and social threats.
Studies such as those by Okonkwo and Ezenwegbu (2024), which find that subsidy removal in Nigeria sparked significant concern among citizens who lacked a clear understanding of mitigation strategies or social protection, as well as analyses of the success and failure of fossil-fuel subsidy reform across various settings by Droste et al (2024), indicate that, when it comes to distributing the burdens of adjustment policies effectively, “technical argumentation alone has rarely been able to overcome such deeply seated mistrust.” The need for state institutions to earn citizens’ confidence through fairness, reciprocity, and demonstrable competence is therefore crucial in contexts with lower levels of public trust.
These issues are exacerbated in countries such as Nigeria, which suffer from chronic failures in infrastructure provision. Hussainzad and Gou (2024) show, for instance, that informality places the burden of adapting to ecological threats onto already existing socio-ecological inequalities. The populism of survival therefore cannot be interpreted solely as a product of irrational or ideological anti-state discourse, but as a request for a visible display of state competence. It requires public recognition from the state that it is aware of how these crises disproportionately affect ordinary citizens and is therefore prepared to demonstrate fairness and protection when such crises occur.
It may or may not amount to explicitly anti-government discourse; but at its core, it expresses a demand for visibility. What citizens seek is not just state intervention, but a demonstration of its commitment to justice when addressing both economic pressures and the demands of adapting to the climate crisis. These developments are interpreted by populists as a crucial and opening field of study centered on real, survival-oriented daily experiences, rather than on the ideologies and leaders of state actors. The main dilemma for democratic governments in the coming decade will be less about acknowledging that an environmental crisis is underway than about fairly distributing the costs of confronting it.
References
Droste, N.; Chatterton, B. & Skovgaard, J. (2024). “A political economy theory of fossil fuel subsidy reforms in OECD countries.” Nature Communications, 15, 5452.
Gbadebo, A. D. (2025). “The political economy of fuel subsidy removal: Governance and sustainable development in Nigeria.” Journal of Governance and Administrative Reform, 6(1), 1–18.
Hussainzad, E. A., & Gou, Z. (2024). “Climate risk and vulnerability assessment in informal settlements of the Global South: A critical review.” Land, 13(9), 1357.
Okonkwo, A. E., & Ezenwegbu, J. C. (2024). “Removal of petrol subsidies and its impact for democratic governance in Nigeria.” Nnamdi Azikiwe Journal of Political Science, 9(3), 38–47.
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi argues that Hungary’s April 12 election represents a critical test of whether entrenched populist rule can be electorally challenged. While he notes that “it will definitely be a test of incumbency survival,” he emphasizes that deeper dynamics—“ideological adaptation, state resource asymmetries, and narrative control”—remain decisive. Assoc. Prof. Csehi highlights growing limits in Orbán’s populist discourse, which “has lost its novelty,” alongside shifting political conditions marked by economic grievances and the rise of the Tisza Party as a credible challenger. Yet, even in the event of electoral turnover, he cautions that deeply embedded institutional structures may persist, potentially leading to “a prolonged struggle over state capacity.” Hungary thus offers a crucial case for assessing the resilience and limits of populist governance in Europe.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Robert Csehi, Associate Professor and Program Director of the Political Science Doctoral Program at the Corvinus University of Budapest, offers a nuanced and theoretically grounded assessment of Hungary’s evolving political landscape on the eve of a pivotal electoral contest.
As Hungary approaches its parliamentary elections on April 12, 2026, the country stands at a critical juncture. After sixteen years of rule under Viktor Orbán, the election has come to signify more than routine democratic competition. It represents a broader test of whether entrenched populist governance—characterized by institutional consolidation, discursive dominance, and asymmetrical resource control—can be meaningfully challenged through electoral mechanisms. The campaign unfolds amid deep polarization, intensifying geopolitical tensions, and mounting concerns over democratic resilience, media pluralism, and institutional fairness. At the same time, the emergence of Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party has introduced a new dynamic into Hungary’s political competition.
Against this backdrop, Assoc. Prof. Csehi underscores that “it will definitely be a test of incumbency survival,” while emphasizing that the stakes extend beyond electoral turnover to questions of “ideological adaptation, state resource asymmetries, and narrative control.” In his view, the durability of Hungary’s populist system is no longer assured. He identifies emerging cracks within the governing discourse, noting that “the supply of the populist worldview… has become less creative” and “has lost its novelty,” with the government increasingly relying on repetitive narratives—particularly around the war in Ukraine—to sustain mobilization.
At the same time, structural shifts on both the supply and demand sides of politics are reshaping the electoral terrain. The rise of the Tisza Party, Assoc. Prof. Csehi observes, has created “a new channel for people to express their grievances,”while also reactivating political engagement at the grassroots level. Concurrently, worsening economic conditions have intensified public discontent, as “people’s everyday grievances are rising,” and the government finds it increasingly difficult to externalize responsibility for inflation, corruption, and declining public services.
Assoc. Prof. Csehi’s analysis situates Hungary within a broader comparative framework, highlighting the uncertain trajectory of mature populist regimes. While electoral defeat could mark “the end of the Orbán regime” in formal terms, he cautions that deeply embedded institutional structures may persist, generating “a prolonged struggle over state capacity and institutional de-capture.” Conversely, a renewed victory for Fidesz would signal that such regimes retain significant resilience, even under conditions of economic strain and ideological fatigue.
Ultimately, as Assoc. Prof. Csehi concludes, the Hungarian case offers a critical empirical test: whether “a mature, populist-authoritarian regime can still be changed… in an electoral process.” In this sense, Hungary’s 2026 election stands as a defining moment not only for the country itself, but for understanding the resilience—and limits—of populist rule across Europe.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Associate Professor Robert Csehi, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Populist Discourse Losing Creativity
Poster from political party Fidesz showing the opponents of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban surrounding billionaire philanthropist George Soros, Budapest, April 8, 2017.
Professor Csehi, welcome. Let me begin with the broader picture: In your scholarship, you argue that Hungarian populism has endured through the continuous reconstruction of “the people,” the redefinition of “the elite,” and the rearticulation of popular sovereignty. In the current campaign, do you still see this triadic logic operating effectively, or are its mobilizational limits beginning to emerge?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: I don’t think we do see some limitations to the effectiveness of this renewed populist discourse in Hungary. I think there are fundamentally three changes that actually challenge Orban’s effective populist discourse.
The first one is, in essence, that the supply of the populist worldview in the discourse has become less creative. It has lost its novelty. There were references to the war, for example, in Ukraine already in the 2022 elections—so four years ago. I mean, the war had just broken out, and they already used warmongering during that period. They pushed the campaign to the extreme in 2024 during the European parliamentary elections. They used essentially the same narrative, the same discourse. And they haven’t managed to really renew this discourse, and they keep talking about the same thing. They keep appealing to people’s fear of the war now. So, in comparison to previous elections, where every four years you had a new enemy and a new elite that was conspiring against Hungary and the government, we don’t really see that in 2026 compared to 2022 or 2024. So that’s one major change.
The second one obviously also affects, or concerns, the supply side of politics, and you already mentioned the rise of the opposition Tisza Party, which means there is actually a new channel for people to express their grievances and to mobilize their political demands behind a party which seems to have more legitimacy. It’s probably not the right word, but it resonates with people much better than the old opposition parties, which, on many grounds, have lost the trust of the people over the years—not only because they were ineffective, but also because they were involved in all sorts of scandals throughout the years. And now there is a new party which actually effectively challenges the government on a lot of issues and calls attention to many things that previously the old opposition, as we refer to it now, had not done. Plus, they really go down to the countryside, and they really do talk to people. They are engaging with the people and the electorate, and that makes a huge difference. So these are on the supply side, which are extremely relevant.
And then there is one demand-side feature which really has had a great effect. Since 2022, the Hungarian economy has not been doing very well. So, this has put a lot of things on the political agenda. People’s everyday grievances are rising, from inflation to public services, corruption, etc. It is not like Fidesz or Orban is able to cover these up anymore. We had skyrocketing inflation in the past few years, and it has become extremely difficult for the government to externalize these kinds of problems. And so people don’t shove it off anymore, like, “Oh, well, we’re still doing better no matter what the government does.” “Yeah, they might be corrupt, they might be wrong on certain policy issues, et cetera, et cetera, but we’re still better off than we were four years ago.” They don’t say that anymore. So, effectively, the economy plays a huge role in this entire story as well.
Election Tests Incumbency Survival
To what extent should the April 12 election be understood not merely as a contest between Fidesz and Tisza, but as a broader test of whether long-term populist incumbency can withstand mounting economic pressures, corruption fatigue, and shifting voter expectations?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: That’s a good question. It will definitely be a test of incumbency survival, in a sense, but, in the background, it is really about ideological adaptation, state resource asymmetries, and narrative control—namely, the extent to which these can still be maintained and used to hold power. I’m not sure to what extent these can actually withstand all the structural- and agency-based challenges that I’ve mentioned previously. So, it is going to be an interesting test from a political science perspective as well, to see whether they actually manage to survive or not, and to what extent a mature, populist-authoritarian regime can still be changed or won over in an electoral process. The jury is still out, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens afterwards.
EU Framed As Background Enemy
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister arrives for a meeting with European Union leaders in Brussels, Belgium on Dec. 13, 2019. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.
You have shown that Orbán’s Eurosceptic populism often adopts an anti-imperialist framing, portraying Brussels as an external elite constraining Hungarian sovereignty. How central is this narrative in the current campaign, and does it retain its resonance in a context where access to EU funds and economic stability are increasingly salient concerns?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: It’s a very important point in the elections. Not in terms of the EU being a central topic—by all means, that’s not the case. Really, Orbán’s campaign is focusing on the war in Ukraine. Still, they have managed to somehow link this up with the EU. They have had billboard campaigns showing Ursula von der Leyen and Manfred Weber together with Volodymyr Zelensky, suggesting that the EU is taking the money of Hungarians and channeling it to Ukraine and to President Zelensky. So, they try to mingle these things together, mix them, and bring in the EU as, again, this sort of background power that is mistaken and on the side of war.
They have populist, moralist, discursive division, where Orbán portrays himself as a pro-peace political actor, whereas everybody else who does not agree with him, by definition, becomes pro-war, even if it does not really make sense.
So, in a sense, the EU is still there; it is referenced as, once again, occupying a pro-war position. As I said previously, they try to repeat the same claims as they did in the 2024 European parliamentary elections—drawing these very fine lines between who is on the side of peace and who is on the side of war, and they clearly place Brussels and the EU on the side of the war. And as I said, it is not only about the war per se. They also try to refer to the financial side of it, bringing this back repeatedly—claiming that the EU is taking your money, holding back funds, and channeling them to Ukraine. So, they frame it as financing the war instead of supporting Hungarian people, etc.
So, it is not center stage—I would say it is still the sort of antagonistic relationship between Ukraine and Hungary at the moment—but they do try to bring this into the discussion: that the EU is somewhere in the background, conspiring and doing all sorts of shady and harmful things. And the reason why they do that is that over the past years they have managed to convert their electorate into the most Eurosceptic segment of the population. In comparison to all other party supporters—with the exception of Our Homeland, the far-right party—probably the most Eurosceptic electorate is behind Fidesz at the moment. So it is just natural that they also play those tunes for their voters.
Tisza Promises Policy Reset
Tisza leader Péter Magyar begins a symbolic “one million steps” march to Nagyvárad, Romania, addressing reporters with supporters in Budapest, Hungary on May 14, 2025. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
From the perspective of European integration, do you interpret this election as a confrontation between two competing models of EU membership—one sovereigntist and illiberal, the other oriented toward re-integration through rule-of-law compliance and institutional alignment?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: Yes and no. On the one hand, I would agree that Orban has had a very particular idea of defending sovereignty in the EU. He has thought that the defense of national sovereignty and national interest could only be pursued in a confrontational way. You have to use the channels of the European Council or the Council itself to block things and not really participate in negotiations and deliberations.
There have been multiple occasions where Orban was not present—they sent him out to have a coffee. From research, we know that Council negotiations have shifted somewhat in recent years. What we would describe as a kind of de-Europeanization in the Hungarian approach to EU affairs is what has occurred on multiple fronts.
Compared to that, Tisza and Magyar’s approach are definitely different from Orban’s on some issues. You mentioned the rule of law. Tisza claims that it will join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office as soon as it is in government. It also promises to resolve some of these rule-of-law issues and to bring back the funds that have been frozen under Orban’s regime. So, we can expect a return to more normal relations with the EU. This promise is also supported by the personnel envisioned to lead foreign and European affairs within the party.
That said, I say yes and no because I do think that Tisza also supports a model of European integration based on strengthening intergovernmental relations, as opposed to a supranational takeover in multiple areas. We have seen this time and again. They have run into conflicts on different policy measures, even within the European Parliament and within their own faction in the European People’s Party.
So, on the one hand, there is likely to be an effort to restore relations and the credibility of Hungary as a partner within the EU. On the other hand, there will be areas where they confront and challenge the direction of European policy. It is not going to be a return to the old days where Hungarian representatives simply nodded to everything the European Union demanded from the government. Rather, it will involve a stronger representation of national interests, but in a more cooperative—as opposed to confrontational—manner than Orban has pursued.
Turnover Won’t End Orbánism
If Péter Magyar and the Tisza party were to win, would that necessarily signify the end of the Orbán era, or has Orbánism become sufficiently institutionalized within the state, the media landscape, and patronage networks to persist beyond electoral turnover?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi:The easy answer, obviously, is that electorally this would be the end of the Orbán regime, at least temporarily.But when we really look into the structural features, I would say no. This will, in fact, be a very interesting period to study, to see how deep the roots of the regime actually went and grew, and how these roots actually act and behave under a new government.I would say there is fundamentally a deeper institutional structure here, which could make the life of the new government miserable on multiple accounts—from financial oversight to judicial oversight, etc. There are many aspects where the government has to govern effectively with its hands tied behind its back. So it is going to be difficult.
I would imagine that this will be something like a prolonged struggle over state capacity and institutional de-capture. They will try to take back some of these institutions with whatever legal means there are. Nevertheless, the government will have greater room for maneuver in terms of policies in many areas, and I do think that they can make changes that could have a positive outcome or resonance with the public.
And one thing we cannot really exclude as a possibility—again, the poll numbers are all over the place—but most independent pollsters show a 15 to even 20 percentage point lead for the opposition party, which could effectively also mean that Tisza would gain a two-thirds, or constitutional, majority. That would be a completely different ballgame, because with that, they could de-capture those institutions more easily. To what extent this would be done in a democratic way, or whether they would repeat something similar to what we have seen during the Fidesz era, I am not sure. I am just saying that there might be an opportunity for the new government to actually de-root the system, provided that they have a constitutional majority.
No Majority, No Regime Change
Some observers suggest that even a Tisza-led government could face significant institutional constraints stemming from constitutional engineering and entrenched loyalist networks. How should we conceptualize the possibility of electoral alternation without substantive regime transformation?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: This goes in line with my previous answer. Without a constitutional majority, what you will see is that there is likely to be governmental turnover, but there is not going to be a regime transformation. And then, there are different scenarios as to what will happen. If there is a constitutional majority, then we see a re-orientation or a re-democratization. If there is only governmental turnover without real regime transformation, what kind of room for maneuver does the new government have?
How do we conceptualize this? So this is definitely going to be an interesting case to analyze in terms of re-democratization attempts—whether they actually go deep or whether they are just going to hover at the surface, which we have seen before. We even had a study on this, on local governments, examining how they try to re-democratize even under a populist authoritarian regime. We might actually see something of this sort at the national level. But once again, the possible measures might be more confined if there is only a simple majority in Parliament, and that would definitely limit the options of the next government.
Loyalty And Shielding Protect Fidesz
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gives a speech to convince his respondents in Szeged on March 4, 2014.
Your work on populist resilience to corruption highlights how such regimes adapt to and withstand scandal. In Hungary today, which mechanisms—discursive reframing, institutional shielding, or partisan loyalty—appear most crucial in sustaining support for Fidesz?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: Given that the regime has reached its peak and is really a mature system, from a populist regime perspective, I would say, in line with our theoretical frame, that it is mostly the institutional shielding and the partisan loyalty that dominate at the moment. Let me give you an example, which is essentially a reflection of both. There is this huge scandal about the former governor of the National Bank (György Matolcsy) and his son. There is a scandal going around that hundreds of billions of forints were actually channeled out into private funds—essentially, they were just paid out to… we do not even necessarily know whom. We do know that the governor’s son really benefited from this. And what is happening now is that there is practically no police investigation going on, or, if there is, it is extremely slow. We do not really know what is happening. In the meantime, we already know that, for example, the governor’s son has tried to, or has already started to, ship his luxury car collection to Dubai, and these kinds of things.
So wealth is going out, and in the meantime, nothing is really happening. And nobody is really talking about the Matolcsy family, etc. So there is this partisan loyalty going on, and there is this institutional shielding, which does not allow these institutions to actually do anything about it. There is no prosecution going on. There might be some prosecution, but we do not really know why it is so limited, why it is so slow, why it is kept secret, and why they basically let the governor’s son do anything he pleases, given the fact that we know that hundreds of billions of forints were, in a sense, privatized. So, I do think that these two mechanisms are the most dominant ones.
Discursively, they do not even really try anymore. It is more like, “Well, we have nothing to do with the issue—let the institutions run their course,” but the institutions are not doing anything. So, it is just a sort of bogus narrative behind it.
What has really changed, on the other hand, is Péter Magyar’s rise in politics, because he is essentially an insider. And when he appeared, that was one of his biggest assets in politics, since this insider status was extremely relevant. When he talks about corruption claims against the government, it seems to mobilize anger much more effectively. This is what really matters here, because, on many issues, anger is a very strong motivational factor in politics, including in unseating incumbent governments. This is absolutely not a good feeling, I have to say, but it does trigger mobilization, and mobilization is key, obviously.
Peace Narrative Masks Polarization
The campaign has been strongly shaped by geopolitical narratives, particularly regarding Russia and Ukraine. Has Orbán’s positioning as a “peace-oriented” leader maintained its electoral appeal, or is his perceived proximity to Moscow becoming a source of political vulnerability?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: That’s not an easy question to answer. First of all, his portrayal of himself as “peace-oriented” is really just buying into his populist discourse of being a pro-peace person, while everybody else who does not agree with him is, by definition, pro-war. So, once again, you have this Manichean, moralistic kind of division within politics that populists are very fond of. Essentially, this type of division turns every political discussion and agenda point into a life-or-death situation. Here, it is literally portrayed as such: if we do not want this, then the next day, everybody is sent to the Ukrainian front and people will die there.
But I would not buy into this “peace-oriented leader” narrative at all. There is a columnist in one of the Hungarian weeklies who consistently describes Orbán as aggressor-oriented, and I think that is probably a better portrayal of what he actually is—without taking any normative position. If you ask what he means by peace, the government does not really have a clear idea of what peace would entail or how it should be achieved. In that sense, the aggressor-oriented description may be more accurate.
As for whether this narrative still works, I think it holds up quite well among the core electorate. We know from sociological and political studies that most of Orbán’s supporters come from the countryside, with lower levels of education and generally more limited economic means. Among these groups, the message still resonates. Talking about the war—through fearmongering, warmongering, and similar appeals—continues to be effective.
What they have also done quite effectively, and this is why they remain competitive, is to turn uncertainty around the war into anger. Studies on populism show that fear is not the main driver; anger is. Fear reflects uncertainty, whereas anger is directed—it needs a target. They have managed to convert uncertainty and fear into anger.
To some extent, President Zelensky also inadvertently contributed to this dynamic. A particular quote was picked up and amplified by pro-government media, portraying it as a threat to Orbán. This helped channel anger toward Zelensky and Ukraine.
They also continue to layer in additional discursive elements, such as claims that “they are taking your money.” Recently, the prime minister held town hall meetings across the country, where he accused protesters of siding with Ukraine and attempting to divert Hungarian resources there. This reflects a level of political rhetoric that is, frankly, quite unprecedented. Similarly, incidents such as damage to the Druzhba gas pipeline have been reframed as evidence that Ukraine is withholding Hungary’s energy supplies and weaponizing resources. This contributes to a constant, artificially orchestrated sense of anger directed at Ukraine. In that sense, the narrative still resonates with certain segments. There is some degree of creativity, but in terms of the broader narrative, they have not significantly shifted away from the war-centered discourse seen in 2022 and 2024.
Regarding Trump and Moscow, the situation is more complicated. Trump’s own actions—particularly the wars associated with his leadership—no longer support the earlier framing of him as a “pro-peace” figure. As a result, the government has largely stopped emphasizing this aspect and instead downplays it. Attempts to reinterpret such developments rhetorically have not been particularly convincing.
As for relations with Moscow, recent leaks concerning communications between Hungarian and Russian officials have raised questions. Depending on interpretation, these either reflect pragmatic diplomacy or suggest alignment with Russian interests, including the sharing of sensitive information.
Overall, both the Trump factor and the Russian connection appear to increase the government’s political vulnerability.
Trump Effect Mostly Symbolic
US President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán arrive for a working dinner at the NATO Summit in Brussels, Belgium on July 11, 2018. Photo: Gints Ivuskans / Dreamstime.
Hungary has long been embedded in a broader transnational network of right-wing populist actors. How significant is the “Trump effect” and Musk’s influence in this election, both in terms of symbolic validation and in reinforcing Orbán’s model of governance?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: I think it is really symbolic. I am not sure that, in terms of governance features, there is much there. Quite the reverse, I would say. It is really some American governors and high-ranking politicians who keep talking about copying this or that from Orbán, when it comes to, for example, dealing with LGBTQ issues in their states, etc. So, Orbán tries to position himself—and to some extent successfully—as a governance genius who should and could be copied by some of these international partners.
On the other hand, the extent to which they actually contribute to Orbán’s success is largely symbolic. As I said, the campaign is mainly about the war at this moment, so it is not really a question of whether there is transnational conservative endorsement or not—it does not matter that much. I do not see it that way. We had CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) Hungary, which is a sort of mimic meeting of CPAC in the US where they invite right-wing politicians and intellectuals. It is a significant event. Just a couple of days ago, they announced that J.D. Vance, the US Vice President, is coming next Tuesday to Hungary. They probably wanted Trump to come but could not manage it, so it will be J.D. Vance. And the American government has already signaled that it supports Orbán’s re-election.
But, what matters most, once again, for the future—or for the short-term political room for maneuver of the government—is really the European partners. The EU and other European right-wing leaders are closely watching the election, because it could fundamentally change dynamics within the European Council and more generally within the integration process in the EU.
Hungary Tests Populism’s Limits
Finally, Professor Csehi, from a comparative perspective, what would each plausible outcome—a renewed Fidesz victory, a Tisza-led breakthrough, or a contested post-election scenario—tell us about the broader trajectory of populist rule in Europe and the capacity of democratic systems to dislodge entrenched illiberal incumbents?
Assoc. Prof. Robert Csehi: If Fidesz wins, this is still going to be an interesting scenario and an interesting political experience, which would tell us that, despite economic strains and despite the ideological fatigue that the government shows, and despite a strong challenger—a new challenger party emerging—the system still has some resilience. Then we would need to find out what actually triggered this resilience, or what made this resilience possible.
Now, this resilience, obviously, would send a message that electoral challenge is still possible, even with a populist regime that is extremely mature in its institutional design and structural features, etc. Therefore, none of these populist regimes are actually immune to a more systemic fatigue, and, if they want to survive, they need to be more creative in how they maintain the system.
But definitely, with a Tisza win, we would get very good information on how much democratic backsliding there actually was in the system, across different aspects. Most likely, this would generate immense knowledge that we could gain, and that would be extremely valuable for future studies. So I am very much looking forward to seeing what will happen. Those are my two cents on this point.
In this interview with ECPS, Dr. Thomas Carothers offers a nuanced reassessment of contemporary democratic backsliding, challenging dominant explanations that prioritize socioeconomic grievances over political agency. He argues that elite opportunism and institutional permissiveness are central drivers of democratic erosion, cautioning against overgeneralizing from Western experiences. Emphasizing that “when institutions fail, protest becomes the last line of democratic defense,” Dr. Carothers highlights the enduring role of civic mobilization in constraining authoritarian drift. At the same time, he resists declinist narratives, noting that democratic “guardrails” continue to hold in many contexts. The interview ultimately frames global democracy as entering a new phase of contested resilience, shaped by the dynamic interplay of elites, institutions, and citizen action.
At a time when democracies across the globe face mounting pressures—from intensifying polarization in the United States and Europe to the growing assertiveness of authoritarian powers—the question of how democratic systems erode, endure, and renew themselves has taken on renewed urgency. In this context, Dr. Thomas Carothers, Director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program and Harvey V. Fineberg Chair for Democracy Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offers a timely and nuanced intervention. Speaking to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Carothers challenges prevailing explanatory frameworks and calls for a more differentiated understanding of democratic backsliding and resilience.
Central to his analysis is a critique of the widely invoked “democracy-not-delivering” thesis. As he observes,“democratic backsliding has been spreading around the world for over 20 years, but we’re still struggling to figure out why it’s occurring,” urging “a bit of humility” from both scholars and policymakers. Rather than attributing democratic erosion primarily to socioeconomic grievances, Dr. Carothers emphasizes the role of “power holders—elites and elite agency” in actively constraining democratic choice. He cautions against generalizing from the American and European experience, noting that in many contexts, citizens are not opting for extremist alternatives but are instead “not being allowed to make those choices” due to authoritarian interventions.
This analytical shift foregrounds the importance of political agency and institutional dynamics over structural determinism. Dr. Carothers expresses skepticism toward rigid dichotomies, arguing that the “structure-versus-agency framework… is not a particularly useful way” to understand contemporary democratic crises. Instead, he advocates for context-sensitive analysis that recognizes the interplay between institutional vulnerabilities and strategic elite behavior.
It is within this framework that Dr. Carothers advances one of his most compelling claims: “When institutions fail, protest becomes the last line of democratic defense.” In settings where courts, media, and civil society are systematically undermined, public protest emerges as a residual yet powerful mechanism of accountability. While acknowledging that even protest can be violently suppressed—as in cases like Tanzania or Nicaragua—he underscores that, in many democracies, mass mobilization continues to function as a critical constraint on executive overreach.
At the same time, Dr. Carothers resists overly pessimistic narratives. While democratic backsliding persists, he notes that “the rapid wave of backsliding has slowed somewhat,” and that in numerous cases institutional “guardrails have been holding up.” Drawing on comparative examples from Brazil, Senegal, and beyond, he highlights the capacity of civic mobilization and institutional resilience to counteract authoritarian drift.
Taken together, this interview situates contemporary democratic challenges within a broader landscape of contestation, adaptation, and uneven resilience. Rather than signaling an inevitable decline, Dr. Carothers suggests the emergence of a more complex equilibrium—one in which democratic erosion and renewal coexist, and where the future of democracy will depend on the dynamic interaction between elites, institutions, and citizens.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Dr. Thomas Carothers, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
We Still Don’t Fully Understand Democratic Backsliding
Figure from the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026.
Dr. Carothers, welcome. Let me begin with the broader picture: In your recent work, you challenge the “democracy-not-delivering” thesis by emphasizing elite opportunism and institutional permissiveness over socioeconomic failure. In light of current developments—from democratic strain in the United States to governance crises elsewhere—how does this shift reshape dominant explanatory frameworks, and what does it imply for the balance between structural and agency-based accounts?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: I appreciate this broad question. It’s surprising if we step back. Democratic backsliding has been spreading around the world for over 20 years, but we’re still struggling to figure out why it’s occurring. It’s interesting, and in a way surprising, that we haven’t really figured it out yet, and that there isn’t as much consensus as you might think there would be. I start with that. I think a bit of humility for all of us is in order here. If the policy community is looking to experts and saying, “Give us some answers,” I’m not sure the expert community is doing all that well, and I count myself in that.
But I would start by saying that, in a broad sense, Americans and Europeans—who have been experiencing a lot of democratic uncertainty and tremors, and in the case of the United States, some real backsliding in the last 5–10 years—are tending to take a pattern of events in their own countries and turn that into a very general explanation that I don’t think works very well in many places. What do I mean by that?
In the United States and Europe, broadly speaking, what you have seen over the last 20 years are societies where economic growth has slowed. A lot of people are angry about that, especially middle classes who don’t feel they are doing very well. At the same time, there has been significant sociocultural change in the form of immigration and broader progressive shifts across these societies. It turns out that many people are uncomfortable with that. So, many people are not happy economically, they feel quite unsettled socio-culturally, and in some cases they are opting for politicians or parties outside the mainstream, on both the right and the left. They are moving away from conventional center-left and center-right parties toward alternatives at the extremes, and that is unsettling for democracy.
But this is not a good explanation for what is happening with democratic backsliding in many other parts of the world. Let me take one case: Tanzania. Tanzania was a kind of so-so democracy in Africa—not very democratic, but not very autocratic—for a fairly long time.
Western Explanations Misread Global Democratic Decline
In the last year, however, it has undergone severe backsliding. There was an election, and people challenged the president, seeking some change. The president and her team essentially stole the election. When people protested, she cracked down in an unprecedented way. Hundreds of people were killed by security services. That is democratic backsliding. It had nothing to do with the Tanzanian middle class choosing alternatives at the extremes. They simply wanted decent reform and governance. What we see instead is a predatory power holder hanging onto power and violently suppressing dissent.
This is similar to what we see in Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega, over the last 10 years, has been challenged because he governs for the benefit of himself, his family, and a small circle of allies. When large-scale protests erupted in 2018, there was a severe crackdown—violence, repression, and more.
So, taking the American-European experience and assuming that this must be what is happening everywhere—that people are choosing the “wrong” politicians because they are unhappy with democracies not delivering—is misleading. Yes, people are unhappy in many countries, but in large parts of the world they are not choosing extremes; rather, they are choosing democratic alternatives and are not being allowed to make those choices because power holders—elites and elite agency—block them.
For this reason, I am very uncomfortable with the structure-versus-agency distinction. If we come in as analysts and say, “I think it’s mostly structure” or “I think it’s mostly agency,” we risk oversimplifying. Instead, we should take each case on its own terms, try to understand what is happening, and relax the insistence on categorizing it as one or the other. It is usually a combination of both.
Moreover, the concept of “structure” often covers a range of analytic ambiguities. Do we mean religious divisions? Immigration patterns? Social class structures? The term itself is quite vague.
In short—though I realize this is a long opening—the American-European experience is quite different from that of many other parts of the world. In those contexts, democratic backsliding often involves predatory power holders cracking down and steamrolling countervailing institutions and public protests. And the structure-versus-agency framework, in my view, is not a particularly useful way to approach such situations.
Public Protest Remains the Hardest Constraint on Elite Power
No Kings protest in New York City, USA, October 18, 2025—demonstrators rally against authoritarian policies and corruption in Donald Trump’s administration. Photo: Dreamstime.
If democratic erosion is primarily elite-driven, how should we reconceptualize citizen agency today—especially in highly polarized societies like the US and parts of Europe—where publics may appear simultaneously mobilized, constrained, and politically fragmented?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: If we recognize the power of elites to overturn constraints on their power—which is what’s happening in a lot of places, and it startles us when it happens, say, in India—we had tended to think that the rule of law in India was pretty well established. India had a very good court system for a long time. It had a high degree of judicial independence and a judicial excellence. Of course, there is a lot at the lower levels, a lot of backlogs, and all that kind of stuff, but India was a country with pretty solid rule of law in certain ways.
However, Modi has been able to undercut that in ways that have really unsettled people in India and that they did not expect. That’s through elite agency—through structure, it’s through his determined decision-making to think, I can say this, I can do that, I can put these people here, I can defy this—that’s elite agency in action.
Given that, what we have to think is: wow, the power of elite agency in many cases is formidable. And what can stop that? What can stop that is a very strong fortification of those norms, and also people protesting when that is happening, and people saying, we won’t take this. That’s why I focus so much on protests, because when elites steamroller the different institutions, they undercut the courts, they close down the media, they strangle civil society, they go through all the independent sources of power, strangle them one by one, asphyxiate them, cut them off.
The one thing they have trouble overcoming is public protest, because it’s not really an institution they can just undercut. Now, they can, once it happens, as in Tanzania or Nicaragua, get police and security services of different types to come out, detain people, arrest them, beat them up, and kill them. Unfortunately, they can override public protest. But that is, fortunately, at least in some democracies, a line that leaders don’t cross. They don’t go that far, and protests therefore have a really powerful effect, as in Nepal or Bangladesh, where protesters were able to overcome attempts to stop them, and they pushed for some really democratic change. So elite agency—the power of it—should make us think hard about what powers can stop it, and what we can do, if we care about democracy, to try to fortify those things that can limit elite agency.
Economic Development Still Stabilizes Democracy
To what extent does ongoing backsliding in relatively affluent democracies challenge modernization theory’s assumption that economic development stabilizes democracy, particularly under conditions of cultural backlash and identity-driven politics?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: It has certainly been a surprise for many political scientists that the United States is experiencing significant backsliding. The recent V-Dem report on democracy in the world charted an 18-point decline for the United States, which is a very large drop in the last year. The Freedom House report shows only a 3-point decline, but even 3 points is quite significant in the Freedom House methodology. So, we do have the case of the United States, which raises questions about the crucial work that Adam Przeworski did—showing the relationship between the level of economic development and the absence of democratic breakdown—but I think we need to be very careful.
The United States is the only wealthy established democracy—other than perhaps Israel. By “established,” I mean a pre-1989 democracy. I am not including Hungary and Poland in that category, as they are post-1989. Among long-established democracies at a certain level of wealth, it is the only one that has experienced significant backsliding in the last 10 to 15 years.
It is true that many Europeans feel unsettled by the rise of illiberal political forces in their societies, but none of those countries is experiencing significant backsliding yet. Now, it may come—there is no question that it might. So, I do not think modernization theory, or the idea that once you reach a certain level of economic development you are bound to be more stable democratically, has been overturned by events. Rather, I think the United States is a head-scratching case as to why this is happening there. What is more interesting analytically is not to discard modernization theory, but instead to ask: what is it about the United States that is so different from all the other wealthy established democracies—Canada, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, and so on—that makes it so democratically fragile at this moment?
So, modernization theory, or at least the theory about the relationship between economic development and democracy, is still holding. However, we do have this powerful and unusual case of the United States, which requires very careful thought.
Executive Aggrandizement, Not Populism, Drives Backsliding
Nested dolls depicting authoritarian and populist leaders Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan displayed among souvenirs in Moscow on July 7, 2018. Photo: Shutterstock.
How can we analytically disentangle populism as a discursive logic from executive aggrandizement as an institutional process, especially when contemporary leaders employ formally legal mechanisms to incrementally erode democratic norms?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: Wow, there are a lot of questions here; they’re very compact. Executive aggrandizement, which is the core pattern of backsliding that we see in many places, is where an executive amasses overweening power that is able to subvert the rest of the democratic system. Executive aggrandizement is the tool by which de-democratization and greater autocratization are occurring in a whole bunch of countries. But that’s not the same as populism, and we have to be really careful here. Some of these leaders who are carrying out executive aggrandizement are populists. Hugo Chávez was such a leader—he was elected, dismantled democracy, and engaged in executive aggrandizement; he was populist to the core.
Vladimir Putin has been aggrandizing the power of the executive in Russia over the last 25 years. In my view, he is not a populist. President Putin came from within the system. A populist is someone who comes from outside the system, divides, and says, “I’m going to attack the elite; I represent the people.” President Putin was not about the people versus the elite. He was the security service rising back up and asserting its power over Russian life—hardly a populist. He rode around on a horse once with his shirt off and had a picture taken, which some Russians felt made him look pretty good. I guess you could call that a populist technique. But I hardly think of him as a populist.
President Xi in China has been carrying out executive aggrandizement by removing term limits and by attempting, for example, to bring the military under greater political control. It is classic executive aggrandizement. Again, President Xi is not someone from outside the system who is dividing the country into old elites and the new people. He is the system. He rose up—his father was a grandee—he is a very well-integrated, well-embedded part of the system.
Therefore, executive aggrandizement is a process that leaders are using, both elected leaders and non-elected leaders, as in the case of President Xi. It is a form of taking over systems that is different from military coups and from state collapse, and so forth. It is the process that is defining democratic backsliding and autocratization in many countries. It is not the same thing as populism. Some populists engage in executive aggrandizement, not all. Some figures who engage in executive aggrandizement are populist, not all. So, it is very important to keep these concepts fairly clearly separate from each other.
Deep Structural Divides Drive America’s Polarization
In the current US context—marked by renewed Trumpism, institutional contestation, and electoral polarization—should we interpret developments as a case of “backsliding from within,” or as the exposure of long-standing structural vulnerabilities in American democracy?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: That gets to the question of what constitutes a structural vulnerability. The United States has some very basic fissures in society that have long been at the root of severe episodes of polarization in American life. The country has experienced waves of extreme polarization throughout its history. The Civil War was a period of intense polarization, and the country later moved beyond it. There was less polarization afterwards. The 1930s and the New Deal were also tremendously polarizing, followed by a period of lower polarization through World War II. In the 1960s and 1970s, polarization began increasing again and has reached very high levels over the past 10 to 20 years. So, the United States has this recurrent pattern of extreme polarization.
These waves tend to be rooted in the same underlying fissures—three in particular. One is a racial divide, which has been deeply divisive, not only in Black-white terms but also in a broader sense between those who support a more inclusive society and those who prefer a less inclusive one.
Second, religion in politics. The United States is, in many ways, a fairly religious society, and there has long been debate over the role of religion in public and political life. This debate continues today and remains highly divisive. Some believe religion should play a greater role, while others advocate for a clearer separation between religion and the state.
Third, the question of federal versus state control. Should the country have a strong federal government, or should power reside primarily with the states? This debate goes back to the founding of the Republic and was deeply embedded in the Civil War. It has remained a persistent and contested issue.
So, the United States has these structures. You could describe racial realities as a structure. You could consider federal versus state power as a structure. Religion—can that be called a structure? In some sense, yes. These factors provide a foundation that is distinct from Europe, where all three are generally less pronounced as basic fissures. They help explain why the United States, unlike many European countries, has experienced recurring waves of polarization.
I think what we are seeing in the United States today is the product of the latest episode of extreme polarization. Is this due to structure or agency? As I noted, there are underlying structural features of American society that contribute to the current divisions. At the same time, elite agency is clearly playing a role. When people discuss polarization in the United States, they often point to specific political actors—this politician did this, that politician did that—as polarizing forces. So, elite agency is also part of the picture.
When Politics Turns Tribal, Democracy Suffers
To what degree does affective polarization—visible in both US and European politics—function as a permissive condition for democratic erosion, enabling citizens to tolerate or justify norm violations by co-partisan leaders?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: Affective polarization—when one side basically hates the other, doesn’t trust it, and doesn’t think it should be allowed to come to power—is no longer just “I don’t like their tax policy.” Instead, it becomes, “I think they are bad Americans and would do terrible things to the country if they came to power, and I don’t want my daughter or son marrying one of them.” Affective polarization of that type is incredibly corrosive.
Because if it is based on the idea that the people on the other side—I hate them, I don’t trust them, and I think they are going to do harm to the country if they run it—then, when an election comes along, I may say: well, the choice is between a leader who is tidy-whitey and is going to follow every democratic norm but might let the other side in, versus someone who is really strong and willing to break the dishes needed to stay in power and keep those dangerous other people out. In that case, unfortunately, people trade off democratic norms for the sake of protecting their tribe, as people like to say.
In the United States, the very distinguished political scientist at Yale University, Milan Svolik, has done fundamental work showing that under conditions of extreme polarization, people are willing to trade away democratic norms for the sake of protecting their side.
Citizen Mobilization Can Halt Democratic Backsliding
Large protests demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government as part of the Anti-Quota Movement and Bangladesh Quota Reform Protests. Thousands took to the streets in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on August 4, 2024. Photo: M.D. Sabbir.
Your work suggests that protests serve both as indicators of democratic strain and as potential agents of renewal. How should we theorize this dual role in light of recent protest waves in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: At Carnegie, we run something called the Global Protest Tracker, which tries to keep track of every major anti-government protest in the world. If you go to it, you’ll see a list, and you can click on a country, and it turns out, oh, look, the Philippines just had major protests last month. Why? What were they about? And so forth. So, we’ve been watching protests very closely for a while. We’ve been running the tracker for seven years, and you learn a lot just by reading it every month.
Our researchers produce—Judy Lee, who works with us, is our main researcher on this—a tremendous memo every month analyzing the latest protests around the world. And you see that a good share of protests is about democracy. They are about citizens responding to executive overreach, often in the form of a stolen or compromised election. Sometimes they respond to attempts by a leader to remove a constitutional limit on power – “I’m going to serve a third or fourth term, no matter what the Constitution says. My ally at the Supreme Court will say that’s perfectly fine.”
So, citizens are protesting a great deal about democratic backsliding. Those protests are a sign of democratic strain, as you put it in your question, or even a sign of democratic breakdown. In many cases, they are also a major source of hope for stopping that process. They have stopped a number of efforts to extend constitutional term limits and have blocked some attempts to manipulate elections, although unfortunately not in other cases, such as Georgia or Belarus.
Protests like these reflect democratic strain, but they are also an embodiment of hope for something better. In more extreme cases, such as Bangladesh—extreme in the sense that events went very far—protesters swept out an autocratic regime and called for a return to a period when the country was at least reasonably democratic. Protests are key here.
Of course, many protests today are driven by economic grievances—fuel prices rise, people cannot afford to feed their families, and they protest about that, understandably. But there are linkages. In many places, protests are sparked by some kind of economic or governance trigger. In Serbia, for example, a specific incident occurred—a train station roof collapse, if I recall correctly. People then took to the streets and said, “This government stinks, it ought to go—I’ve had it with this regime.” A protest that begins over a particular trigger can then snowball into a broader anti-regime movement that pushes a government out or at least tries to.
Nepal was somewhat similar—an initial spark related to a government attempt to limit access to social media platforms. People began protesting, and one thing led to another, and soon the prime minister was out.
So, protests are critical in this age—particularly in an era of hard-headed leaders dismantling many of the institutions that might otherwise constrain them. As I said before, protests are critical here.
Some Movements Make Democracy More Exclusionary
In these contexts, how can we distinguish between mobilizations that deepen democratic accountability—such as rights-based or institutional reform protests—and those that instead amplify anti-system, populist, or illiberal dynamics?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: Be careful about that distinction. You can have an anti-system protest that is quite rights-based. For example, the Serbian protests have turned into anti-system protests, but they are also based on the idea that there should be greater rights. Nepal was similar – “Don’t take away our right to access this information”—and that, too, turned into an anti-system protest.
Now, as you are alluding to, there are protests that, if you look at their goals or the issues that have stirred them up, may be quite different. There might be an anti-immigrant protest—an immigrant is involved in a crime, and people go out and protest, saying, “We hate these people who look like this or talk like this.” That is not especially good for democracy; it could shrink democracy and make it more exclusive.
Or people may protest against efforts to make vaccines widely available, arguing that they are dangerous and opposing public health policies. That could be described as rights-based in some sense, but it is probably not going to do much to further democracy in that country.
There are certainly many protests that pursue goals other than what we would consider core democratic rights. It is more a matter of looking at the cause—what people are trying to advance through the protest—and then deciding whether it is pro-democratic or whether it is pushing democracy in a more exclusive or limited direction.
Decentralization Empowers Protest but Weakens Strategy
With the growing prevalence of decentralized, leaderless movements, does organizational horizontality enhance democratic inclusivity and resilience, or does it risk weakening strategic coherence and long-term political impact?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: A lot of protest movements are what analysts like to call leaderless protests these days, and leaderless protests are often a reality in countries that are fairly repressive, where people are afraid or unable to form leadership councils or to organize in a very visible way, and so they are leaderless by necessity. Some are more leaderless; others are leaderless simply because that is how they arose. They may begin with a group of students who are very unhappy about something, and someone texts, “Let’s all meet at the square at 9 p.m.,” and people surge out and start protesting. Then someone else says, “Tomorrow at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, let’s meet here,” and it starts to grow. The protest becomes a movement, but there was no real guiding council at any point.
Because of technology that facilitates organization in many countries, this encourages a decentralization of authority within protest movements, which can make for quick, unpredictable, and, in some cases, powerful protests. But as you suggest in your question, once a protest is successful, there comes a point when demands have to be formulated. There also comes a point when negotiations with those in power become necessary, or when something must happen to focalize the discontent into a platform for specific change.
I remember Tahrir Square during the protests in Egypt and the Arab Spring. It was a surge of people. There were many civic groups involved, so it was not entirely leaderless, but there were many different actors trying to mobilize. At a certain point, the military said to the protesters, “We need to talk seriously about what is going to happen with Mubarak—we are ready to talk. With whom do we talk?”
A group of people did emerge within the protest. One of them happened to be a friend of mine, an Egyptian. I remember being in my office in Washington, picking up the phone, and it was him calling me from Cairo. He said, “I’m with a group of protesters, and we’ve been asked to go talk to the military. What should we ask for? What is our demand with respect to Mubarak?” That was the moment when I thought that what had started as a kind of leaderless protest—or a protest with many different elements—was now focalizing. The military wanted to negotiate with someone and say, “If we agree that Mubarak is going to step down and go to Sharm el-Sheikh or somewhere else, will you leave Tahrir Square and go home?” They needed to negotiate with someone.
It is hard to negotiate with a leaderless octopus. So, there is a moment when these movements have to coalesce, and then, if they are successful—as in Nepal, where the government is out—who is in charge? Something has to happen. Leaderlessness can be beneficial for a while, but then things need to move forward, and there needs to be a concretization of the movement into some form of institutionalized action and development.
How States Respond to Protest Defines Democracy
‘March for Europe’ demonstrations in support of EU integration and membership at Liberty Square in Tbilisi, Georgia, on October 20, 2024. Photo: Mirko Kuzmanovic.
How do different state responses—from accommodation and co-optation in liberal democracies to repression in more authoritarian settings—shape protest trajectories, and what do these patterns reveal about regime adaptability?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: There is a pretty sharp line. A protest occurs in a country; it is large, it challenges the system, and it asks for fundamental change. And here is the line: do you turn the security services on the protest and say, “We are going to detain you, arrest you, beat you up, and kill you”? Or do you say, “We are a democracy, people have rights here, and you have the right to protest, and we will talk with you and try to address your concerns so that you will go away?” At that moment, when the regime really has its back to the wall and protests are surging, do they respond with repression, or do they respond through negotiation, patience, or some other non-repressive approach? That is a defining test of whether you are in a democracy or not.
In Georgia—Georgia was a democracy for a while—protests emerged and were then fueled by the alleged stealing of elections by Georgian Dream. The political system, or the regime, began cracking down on this protest movement, detaining and arresting people and allowing a certain degree of violence. That is a sign that Georgia was moving off the democratic path and into a more repressive direction.
This is a defining moment—how protests are treated—and I pay very close attention to it. There is not always a clear threshold: sometimes three protesters are killed—is that enough? But in extreme cases like Iran, where tens of thousands appear to have been killed by security services, that is a clear sign of a profoundly repressive, anti-democratic regime in which democracy has been entirely suffocated. Georgia is suffocating its democracy. Belarus has asphyxiated and suffocated its democracy.
Whereas other countries have remained on the other side of that line. Hungary, for example, has had significant protests over the last 5–10 years. Many people are unhappy with the Fidesz government, but it has not responded with outright repression. It has taken many steps to undercut civic groups, tilt the playing field, and use state resources for party purposes. These are anti-democratic actions, but it has not turned the guns on protesters, because Hungary is still on this side of that repressive line. So that line is very fundamental to understanding the overall trajectory of a country.
Broad Mobilization Creates a Firewall Against Authoritarianism
Your research highlights the importance of civil society mobilization and opposition coordination in reversing backsliding. How do these factors interact with institutional legacies in determining whether democratic erosion can be halted or reversed?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: It relates to what I’m saying. Civil society mobilization is critical in many places, such as Brazil in 2022. Bolsonaro had been in power for four years; he was an anti-democratic leader, disrespectful of democratic norms. He sought to undercut the courts, and there were real doubts about whether he would respect an electoral outcome. Later evidence suggested that he was trying to overturn the electoral result through coup planning and so forth.
In early 2022, as elections were on the horizon, there was very broad-scale citizen mobilization. It was civic mobilization, which included a political role for established political actors, but it was civic in the sense that it brought together a broad tent of people with many different views, united around the idea that Brazil should reject an undemocratic path and pursue a democratic one. Most of those involved believed this meant voting for Lula da Silva, but it was nonetheless a civic mobilization that proved quite effective in creating a firewall against the de-democratization of Brazil.
Poland was somewhat similar before the 2023 elections. There was extensive civic mobilization, with people frustrated by the PiS government and its anti-democratic characteristics.
Civic mobilization in cases of significant backsliding is very important. In the United States, you are seeing an increasing number of protests. Recently, there was another round of the “No Kings” protests; I think up to 8 million people were involved last time. That is a significant number—about 2–3 percent of the US population—engaged in protest activity. This kind of broad-based civic mobilization is often a critical element in pushing back against democratic erosion.
Democracy Support Faces a Moment of Profound Rethink
In an international environment shaped by intensifying great-power competition, declining Western commitment, rising authoritarian influence, and intensifying geopolitical competition and conflicts such as the Iran crisis, and the global diffusion of authoritarian practices, how should democracy promotion be reimagined—does it require normative re-legitimation, institutional reinvention, or a fundamentally new model of transnational democratic support?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: International democracy support needs a lot of things. International democracy support had been struggling for 10 or 15 years in the face of democratic backsliding in the world. Backsliding was happening, and people were saying that whatever amount of democracy support we were giving—both the amount and the nature of it—was not solving the problem. Backsliding was still spreading. What we were doing was not enough, and maybe it was also not the right thing.
There was already a lot of questioning of international democracy support and then came the arrival to power of Donald Trump in January 2025. He and his team rapidly put an end to almost all US democracy aid that was directly sponsored by the government. The United States had been, by far, the largest funder of such aid in the world. It simply walked away from that field and said: no election monitoring support—we do not do that anymore; support to civic groups—we do not do that anymore; we are going to close down our public broadcasting in other places; human rights support—no, we do not do that anymore. So that was a tremendous blow to the field of international democracy support.
Unfortunately, in that same year, a number of European governments, for different reasons, also faced significant pressure on their aid budgets. There was a great deal of strain on those budgets, partly because of the need to allocate resources to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. As a result, aid budgets in Europe were tight, and 2025 was a bad year for international democracy support.
Now the field, a year on, is in a period of reassessment. My colleague Richard Youngs and I, together with Rachel Kleinfeld, are working on this issue. We published a paper last year titled What Future for International Democracy Support?, and we are preparing an updated version later this year to assess how the field is evolving.
What we are finding so far is that there is a great deal of ferment. You mentioned the need for institutional rejuvenation, normative re-legitimation, and new methods. People are actively asking these questions: what narratives should we use to describe democracy more effectively? Given the sharp decline in available aid dollars and euros, we need new forms of engagement that are more localized and more network-oriented. We need to move away from the traditional model of “the West has the answers, and the rest of the world has the problems.” Today, everyone faces challenges. How can we work on a more horizontal basis? How can we move beyond the notion of aid as a one-way process and instead recognize that we are all confronting shared difficulties?
There is a great deal happening in the field, but it is constrained by limited resources. It is on the back foot and still in a state of shock after developments over the past year or two. Many people are out of work, many are frustrated, and many are disappointed. The field is therefore in a period of reconsolidation.
At the same time, it is not disappearing. Many organizations and democratic governments still want to support democracy beyond their borders. There are also regional organizations in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere that maintain pro-democratic norms. There are multilateral institutions at the global level that remain engaged, as well as numerous international non-governmental organizations. So, there is still a substantial international democracy support community, but it is undergoing a profound process of rethinking and reorientation.
Democratic Backsliding Has Slowed—but Risks Remain
Protesters protest for the freedom of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil on April 7, 2019. Photo: Cris Faga.
And lastly, Dr. Carothers, looking ahead, given the coexistence of democratic erosion, persistent polarization, and emerging forms of resistance, do you foresee a trajectory of continued democratic decline, adaptive resilience, or the emergence of a new equilibrium of “contested democracy” in the coming decade?
Dr. Thomas Carothers: That last question of yours is common in the final questions that I get, which are basically, you’re walking across a bridge as a democracy specialist—do you jump off into the river in despair, or do you keep walking and think, we’ll probably come through this? But you put it much more elegantly than I just did.
I think over the last 5 to 7 years, the rapid wave of backsliding has slowed somewhat. There is still a lot of backsliding occurring, but there are also a number of countries where guardrails have been holding up. Brazil was an important case of that in 2022–23. One could name many others. Senegal managed to withstand a fairly concerted attack on its democratic institutions by its president in the last couple of years. The Philippines came out of the Duterte period. The successor leader is not the world’s most democratic leader, but he is not Duterte. Bangladesh is undergoing some kind of renovation. Bolivia came through a period in which the government was trying to undercut democratic norms and institutions. So, there are many countries where democracy is holding up.
I was in a conversation the other day with the research director at Freedom House, who made the important observation that about three-quarters of the countries in the world do not change their democratic status year in, year out. We tend to think, it’s like our phone, where every app is jiggling and moving around. The world is not really like that. There is actually a fair amount of stability, and the number of cases that are moving rapidly in one direction or the other is quite small. So, I’m walking across the bridge—I’m not jumping off—but, it’s going to be difficult.
In this insightful ECPS interview, Professor Johannes Andersen offers a sobering diagnosis of Denmark’s evolving political landscape following the 2026 general election. He argues that the country is undergoing a profound structural transformation marked by voter de-alignment, declining trust, and increasingly fragmented party competition. While voters remain loosely anchored within traditional blocs, many no longer feel represented by specific parties, resulting in growing electoral volatility. At the same time, political parties are shifting from long-term representation toward short-term, issue-driven strategies. As Professor Andersen warns, this dynamic creates a paradox: expanded democratic choice coexists with rising confusion and distrust—pointing to a more unstable, yet still functioning, democratic system.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Johannes Andersen, Professor of Political Science at Aalborg University, offers a sobering and analytically rich assessment of Denmark’s evolving political landscape in the aftermath of the 2026 general election. Professor Andersen’s diagnosis captures a deeper structural transformation unfolding beneath the surface of what has long been considered one of Europe’s most stable democratic systems.
In the wake of Denmark’s closely contested 2026 general election, the country stands at a pivotal political moment—marked by fragmentation, the resurgence of the populist radical right, and renewed geopolitical tensions over Greenland. While the campaign was driven largely by domestic concerns such as the cost-of-living crisis and migration, the results also point to deeper shifts in political trust, voter alignments, and the structure of democratic competition. Professor Andersen’s analysis situates these developments within a broader transformation of democratic politics, emphasizing that Denmark is no longer experiencing episodic volatility but a sustained process of structural change.
At the core of his argument lies the claim that both voters and political parties are undergoing simultaneous and mutually reinforcing transformations. As he underscores, “we are witnessing really fundamental changes in this system,” driven by evolving voter attitudes and shifting party strategies. Voters, while still loosely anchored within traditional bloc structures, are increasingly detached from specific party identities – “voters no longer feel represented by a political party”—resulting in unprecedented levels of electoral fluidity. The fact that roughly half of the electorate has changed party allegiance in recent elections, with even higher volatility anticipated, illustrates the depth of this de-alignment.
At the same time, political parties have adapted by moving away from long-term representational commitments toward short-term, issue-driven competition. Rather than defending stable constituencies, they increasingly seek to maximize electoral appeal through targeted policy responses – “we are the best at solving this problem”—thereby reinforcing a political logic in which responsiveness replaces representation. This transformation is particularly visible in the growing centrality of migration politics, which now structures competition across both left and right.
Professor Andersen also highlights the gradual erosion of the welfare state as a unifying political project. Once the cornerstone of Danish social democracy, it has receded from the center of political discourse, replaced by fragmented issue politics and competing populist narratives. In this context, even strong executive performance does not necessarily translate into electoral gains, as demonstrated by the limited political returns from Denmark’s handling of the Greenland crisis.
Taken together, these dynamics point to what Professor Andersen describes as a new and inherently unstable political equilibrium—one defined by expanded voter choice but declining trust. As he cautions, “we are developing a new political culture based on growing confusion among voters,” where democratic dynamism coexists with increasing alienation.
The interview that follows explores these tensions in depth, beginning with the question of whether Denmark’s fragmentation reflects a temporary fluctuation or a more profound transformation of democratic politics.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Johannes Andersen, revised so slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Politics Has Shifted from Representation to Competition for Voters Across Issues
The Danish nation has cast its votes in the parliamentary elections. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Johannes Andersen, welcome. Let me begin with a foundational question:The 2026 election produced a highly fragmented outcome that appears to unsettle Denmark’s historically stable party system. Drawing on your work on political trust and voter attitudes, would you interpret this as a conjunctural fluctuation, or as evidence of a deeper process of de-alignment—where traditional cleavages and partisan loyalties are being replaced bymore individualized, volatile, and contingent forms of political engagement?
Professor Johannes Andersen: I would go for the second half of your question, because we are witnessing really fundamental changes in this system, and this has been going on for 10-20 years—perhaps even longer. There are two structural elements here that are very important. The first is that voters have changed their way of looking at politics, partly because political parties, at the same time, have changed their way of thinking about politics, developing politics, and approaching these questions more broadly. So, we have two structural elements that are both changing, and they are intertwined. I will try to explain that a little further.
When it comes to the voters, in the last election, half of the Danish electorate voted for a new political party. They changed their position in that sense. But most of them are still located within the blocs we know: the red bloc, or socialist bloc, and the blue bloc, the liberal or conservative bloc. So, voters are still, to a very large degree, positioned within these blocs. But they are changing parties within the blocs. As I mentioned, half of the voters changed their party in 2022. This time, my guess is that even more people—perhaps 55 percent of the voters—will change political parties.
So, in a way, you can see that voters no longer feel represented by a political party. This is one aspect of the fundamental change we are dealing with: people are becoming more confused and more insecure. They may still have a basic feeling that they are red or blue, but they are no longer linked to a particular political party.
That means that when election time comes, you see a great many voters searching for guidance. Last time, in 2022, up to 70 percent of voters used those tests published in newspapers, where they try to determine which party they should vote for. And many of them, on their first attempt, simply refused to choose the party the test suggested. But this is actually revealing. It points to a fundamental change: the feeling that one is not represented by a political party. That has changed profoundly for voters.
On the other hand, we have the political parties which are no longer oriented toward a particular group they want to defend, fight for, and help build a better society for. They are not trying to represent such groups in the best way they can. Instead, they are trying to compete for voters. They are becoming broader and broader in their appeal, and they are becoming better and better at identifying what a particular group wants. Then they propose political measures accordingly: we are the best at solving this problem; we are the best at solving that problem.
When it comes to issues, for example, water has been very important in the 2026 election. It could be pollution of the water. It could be the question of an ageing population—how should we deal with that? Or it could be the rising prices in the shops, where parties propose giving people a check, an amount of money they can use to buy groceries, especially food.
So, political parties are becoming more and more occupied with single issues, rather than with any structural or strategic project aimed at defending particular groups. On the one hand, then, we have voters who are becoming more insecure and who do not feel represented in any deeper sense. On the other hand, we have political parties that are increasingly eager to win more and more voters, no matter what.
And one of the issues that has become especially important for political parties—both in the red and blue, blocs—is immigration. The immigration question has become central even for the Social Democrats, and now also for the Socialist People’s Party, which is a left-wing party. They are becoming more and more interested in signaling that they do not want immigrants, especially those with a Muslim background. This issue has become very important for all of them, and they are now in competition over who is most eager to throw people out if they are involved in any kind of illegal activity—or perhaps even just visible Muslim religious activity. In that sense, they are eager to expel them, or even to throw them out.
The immigration issue—and especially immigration from Muslim countries—is, in a way, central. All these other issues they deal with—wanting to give people more money so they can buy food, wanting clean water, and so on—are linked to the immigration question in one way or another. They have to make sure that this does not become a way of scaring people. This is the fundamental structural situation in Denmark: on the one hand, people feel unrepresented; on the other hand, political parties are no longer truly interested in representing anyone. This is the issue, the structural issue, for understanding many of the details.
The Welfare State Has Faded from the Center of Danish Politics
Denmark votes in parliamentary elections in Copenhagen, Kastrup, Denmark, on November 1, 2022. Voters head to polling stations to cast their ballots in the general election. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dean Pictures / Dreamstime.
The electoral decline of the Social Democrats raises questions about the durability of catch-all party strategies. To what extent does this trajectory reflect not only the exhaustion of social democratic “big tent” politics under conditions of late modernity, but also a broader erosion of long-term voter attachments and collective identities that historically underpinned social democratic dominance?
Professor Johannes Andersen: I have reflected quite a bit on this question, because it opens up many important dimensions. One of the great strengths of the Social Democratic Party has been its development of the central idea of welfare rights. Citizenship has been understood not only in political and democratic terms, but also in terms of welfare-based social citizenship. The Social Democrats were able, as a strategic defense of workers and society more broadly, to build and expand the welfare state in increasingly comprehensive ways.
However, almost without anyone clearly noticing, this perspective has gradually been left out of both their political practice and public debate. Both the Social Democrats themselves and the organizations behind them, such as the unions, have become less focused on the welfare state—although unions and civil society actors still tend to emphasize universal welfare rights more than political parties do. At the same time, social organizations continue to defend welfare rights, but they face an increasingly difficult struggle. This is largely because the Social Democrats, historically the central defenders of the welfare state, have shifted their focus, becoming more and more preoccupied with the immigration issue.
This creates a highly uncertain electoral trajectory. On the one hand, the Social Democrats could regain support in future elections, perhaps reaching around 30 percent—high by contemporary standards, though still below their historical peak of around 40 percent, when they were the dominant force in defending the welfare state. On the other hand, they could also decline further, potentially falling to 15 percent or even lower. Such volatility is now entirely conceivable.
What we see, then, is a party increasingly focused on maximizing its electoral support by targeting specific issues. The Social Democrats, like other parties, recognize that voters can be mobilized around short-term concerns. If they can create the impression that they are capable of addressing these issues effectively, they may gain support—but they are doing so in direct competition with a growing number of parties.
This helps explain why there are now 12 political parties represented in Parliament. They are competing across a wide range of issues, and in the process, two key elements are eroding: first, the sustained defense of the welfare state system, and second, the belief among voters that the welfare state will reliably support them in times of need.
In turn, this opens the door to what we might describe as a more populist mode of politics. Parties increasingly link specific issues to direct promises – “we will solve this problem,” “we will address that concern”—while often adopting a critical stance toward elites. This dynamic is particularly evident among right-wing parties, especially those drawing support from rural constituencies, but it is also visible among left-wing parties, which similarly frame themselves as defenders of “the people” against elites or against the erosion of welfare state protections.
In short, this is a complex and evolving situation. The welfare state—both its defense and its development as a foundational pillar of Danish politics—has largely receded from the political agenda. Instead, across the 12 parties now represented in Parliament, there is a growing tendency to focus on short-term issues.
Geopolitical Leadership No Longer Guarantees Electoral Reward
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at a press conference during the COVID-19 crisis, Copenhagen, March 17, 2020. Photo: Francis Dean | Dreamstime.
Despite a potential “rally-around-the-flag” dynamic linked to the Greenland crisis, Mette Frederiksen did not translate geopolitical leadership into electoral gains. Does this indicate a growing decoupling between executive performance and electoral reward, suggesting that political trust has become more conditional, situational, and less anchored in traditional forms of leadership legitimacy?
Professor Johannes Andersen: Yes, that is correct. The Greenland issue did not ultimately help, although it appeared to do so at the outset. One of the reasons the election was called is that Mette Frederiksen saw an opportunity to gain additional support, and initially it seemed plausible that this could be achieved. However, the international crisis unfolded within the context of a centrist government composed of the Social Democrats, the Moderates, and the Liberals. While this coalition formally spans traditional bloc divisions, an analysis of Moderate voters suggests that they closely resemble those in the blue bloc. In that sense, one could argue that the government effectively contained two blue bloc parties alongside one from the red bloc.
During the Greenland crisis, the foreign minister was highly visible and active in defending Denmark’s interests as a kingdom, particularly in relation to Greenland. His performance was widely recognized, and voters appeared to acknowledge that he was doing a good job. Yet, when it came to the election, this did not translate into electoral gains. Support shifted within blocs—some voters moved toward the blue bloc, others toward the red—but there was no significant transfer of support across blocs. In effect, the situation resulted in a draw: neither side was able to capitalize electorally on the crisis.
This outcome likely came as a surprise to the government. Mette Frederiksen, who personally decided on the timing of the election, may have expected a more favorable result than what ultimately materialized.
A New ‘Center’ Is Emerging as a Strategic Position Against Extremes
Election campaign posters featuring Liberal leader and former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen displayed on a street during the campaign period in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 15, 2015. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dean Pictures / Dreamstime.
With Lars Løkke Rasmussen occupying a pivotal position, how should we rethink the notion of “the center” in fragmented multiparty systems? Is it still a sociologically grounded median space, or increasingly a strategic and discursive construction emerging from systemic fragmentation?
Professor Johannes Andersen: As I mentioned, when we look at the voters of the Moderates, their profile is almost identical to that of voters in the blue bloc. Their support base aligns closely with the average blue bloc voter, and their appeal increasingly reflects this orientation. At the same time, they emphasize that they do not belong to either the traditional right or the left. Instead, they construct an image of both sides as “extremes,” positioning themselves as an alternative to these perceived poles.
However, Denmark has a long tradition of a different kind of center, represented by the Radical Left (Radikale Venstre), which is a particularly interesting case. Historically, this party emerged from socially engaged small farmers in the countryside who were struggling to sustain their livelihoods. It represented their political voice during a period of hardship. On the other hand, the party advocated for social rights; and it supported economic liberalism. In this sense, it embodied a form of social liberalism that has been deeply rooted in Danish political tradition. Indeed, social liberalism played a significant role in the development of the welfare state, even if the Social Democrats were the primary force advancing and defending it. This combination of social and liberal ideas constituted what we might call the “classic” center in Danish politics.
Today, with the Moderates and Lars Løkke Rasmussen in the lead, we observe a markedly different conception of the center. Their position is defined less by a substantive ideological synthesis and more by a strategic stance against what they label as “extremism.” They seek to exclude the political extremes and present themselves as the responsible and pragmatic alternative within the system.
In this sense, we are witnessing the emergence of a new kind of center. Unlike the traditional social-liberal center, this formation reflects a different logic of political competition. It could even be described as a form of “centrist populism,” should this tendency continue to develop. In some respects, the Moderates may display more pronounced populist features than some of the traditional right-wing populist parties in Denmark.
Their approach involves defending what might be termed “the good people” and their interests—specifically, those who do not identify with more radical positions. They portray themselves as protecting these citizens from the uncertainty and instability generated by both radical left- and right-wing actors. Rather than targeting conventional elites, they construct a political elite associated with extremism, against which they position themselves as defenders of ordinary citizens.
In this way, we can observe the emergence of a new form of centrism—one that is no longer anchored in a stable sociological base but instead arises from a strategic and discursive effort to represent “the common people” against perceived political extremes.
Stability Is Promised, but Volatility Defines the New Political Landscape
How should we normatively and sociologically assess the growing role of centrist kingmaker parties in proportional systems? Does their pivotality enhance pluralist representation, or does it risk distorting democratic accountability while reshaping citizens’ perceptions of fairness and representation?
Professor Johannes Andersen: You raise an important point, particularly with regard to stability. If we look more closely at the Moderates, for example, a year ago they were close to the threshold of parliamentary representation. Their level of support fluctuates significantly—it rises and falls, almost in a “U-shaped” pattern, if you will—and at present they happen to be near a peak.
However, they have emerged from a position where they were not even represented in some of the polls. It is entirely possible that they could return to that position in the future. This reflects a broader dynamic I mentioned earlier: on the one hand, voters increasingly feel unrepresented, and on the other, parties no longer see themselves as representing clearly defined constituencies. The result is a highly fluid political system.
This is what some scholars describe as “hyperpolitics,” where a wide range of actors are constantly communicating, mobilizing, and competing. In such a context, it becomes possible, within a very short time frame, for new centrist parties or initiatives to emerge. Their strategic objective is often to prevent so-called “extremists” from gaining political influence.
My expectation is that even if the Moderates were to disappear, another actor could readily assume the same role. This is because the underlying logic is politically attractive: it acknowledges the existence of conflict but downplays its depth and seeks to avoid polarization. The core argument is that allowing “extremists” to shape political outcomes would generate uncertainty and instability.
In this sense, these parties offer voters a promise of security and stability. At the same time, however, they are themselves embedded in the same uncertainty that characterizes the broader system. Voters are unsure where to turn, and parties are continuously introducing new issues and policy proposals in an effort to remain competitive.
Overall, this points to an increasingly unstable political landscape—one in which volatility, rather than equilibrium, may become the defining feature.
The Danish People’s Party Has Shifted to a More Symbolic, ‘Aristocratic’ Populism
Election posters from various Danish political parties ahead of the June 2019 parliamentary election, Copenhagen, May 20, 2019. Photo: Deanpictures / Dreamstime.
The resurgence of the Danish People’s Party suggests renewed populist energy without systemic takeover. Does Denmark exemplify a model of “contained populism,” and to what extent should this be understood less as a party phenomenon and more as a set of diffuse attitudes embedded within the electorate?
Professor Johannes Andersen: To be honest, I am not entirely sure. The reason is that we are witnessing some rather specific developments in Denmark. The Danish People’s Party, for instance, has undergone a noticeable transformation in its political outlook and style of communication. It has become fundamentally critical of all other political parties, positioning itself as the only authentic representative of “the people.”
At the same time, it has adopted a style that could be described as almost aristocratic. It presents itself as more conservative than even the Conservative People’s Party and seeks to stand above the rest, while claiming to defend all Danes. This stylistic shift is significant. Although it may appear merely rhetorical, it reflects a broader repositioning: the party now frames itself as a guardian of the nation as a whole, rather than as the representative of a specific social group.
In this sense, while the strategy retains a familiar populist logic—defending “the people” against others—it does so in a more generalized and symbolic manner. This marks a departure from earlier, more targeted forms of representation.
At the same time, the Danish People’s Party faces growing competition from the Danish Democrats, who have adopted a more concrete and socially grounded approach. Their focus is on rural communities—people living in small towns who are directly affected by the closure of local shops, medical facilities, and other welfare institutions. These voters often feel that development is bypassing them, that their communities are in decline, and that their economic prospects are increasingly uncertain.
The Danish Democrats seek to give voice to these concerns by advocating for rural development and emphasizing respect for farmers and local livelihoods. In this sense, they represent a more specific, socio-economic form of populism, in contrast to the broader, more symbolic approach of the Danish People’s Party.
What we see, therefore, are two distinct models of populism operating within the right wing of the blue bloc. One is generalized and national in scope; the other is more targeted and rooted in particular social groups. The interaction between these two forms generates a certain degree of turbulence within the political landscape. Rather than cooperating, these parties are engaged in direct competition, each seeking to outmaneuver the other.
Democratic Dynamism Paired with Growing Alienation
And the final question, Professor Andersen. Would you characterize Denmark’s current trajectory as one of adaptive democratic resilience, or do these developments reveal underlying reservoirs of distrust and alienation that could, under specific conditions, enable a more decisive populist radical-right breakthrough?
Professor Johannes Andersen: In a way, I would say that we are developing a new political culture based on growing confusion among voters, with more and more people becoming increasingly uncertain. At the same time, we have what I would call central, government-based mass political parties that are primarily focused on attracting as many voters as possible, without being particularly concerned with their voters’ underlying interests.
This creates a situation in which voters and political parties are constantly moving in and out of alignment with one another. Some voters feel they can no longer trust politicians, while some politicians seek support by claiming to defend all people, fundamental rights, and citizens against major threats. This dynamic opens new opportunities for political parties to gain access to power, while also expanding the range of choices available to voters. As we can see, there are now 12 political parties represented in Parliament, and voters are continually trying to determine which party to support—often changing their choice from one election to the next.
This results in a new and inherently unstable situation which, at its best, may be seen as reflecting positive democratic dynamics, since voters have the freedom to choose among a wide array of alternatives. That is a strength. However, this same instability is also contributing to growing distrust toward politicians. People are becoming increasingly critical of politics and political actors.
As we can observe, the level of voter participation is relatively low and continues to decline. If this trend persists, it could become a serious problem. The Danish electoral system has traditionally been characterized by a high level of voter turnout, but this willingness to participate is now decreasing. We are therefore facing a fundamental challenge.
On the one hand, the system can still be described as a functioning democracy, with voters willing to explore different political options. On the other hand, it is producing increasing confusion among voters, who are becoming more critical of the democratic system as such.
