Please cite as: ECPS Staff. (2026). “Keynote by Professor Staffan I. Lindberg: The Chicken-and-Egg Dilemma — Systemic Crises and the Rise of Populism.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). April 28, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00148
The opening session of the ECPS Fifth Annual International Symposium offered a timely and intellectually rigorous entry point into one of the central dilemmas of contemporary politics: how liberal democracy can be defended, renewed, and reimagined amid systemic crisis and accelerating autocratization. Moderated by Professor Ibrahim Ozturk, the session combined normative urgency with empirical depth. In her opening remarks, Irina von Wiese underscored the geopolitical immediacy of democratic strain, while Professor Staffan I. Lindberg’s keynote, grounded in V-Dem data, traced the global scale of democratic erosion and challenged simplistic readings of populism by foregrounding anti-pluralism as a more precise analytical category. The discussion that followed further enriched the session, probing the measurement, lived experience, and reversibility of democratic decline across contexts.
Reported by ECPS Staff
The opening session of ECPS Fifth Annual International Symposium opened on April 21, 2026 within a carefully structured intellectual framework that brought together empirical rigor, normative urgency, and interdisciplinary reflection. Moderated by Professor Ibrahim Ozturk, the opening segment of the symposium set out to interrogate one of the defining challenges of contemporary politics: how liberal democracies can be reformed and safeguarded in an era marked by systemic crises, populist mobilization, and intensifying pressures on institutional resilience.
From the outset, the session positioned itself at the intersection of scholarly analysis and real-world political developments. The framing emphasized that democratic backsliding is no longer a peripheral or regionally confined phenomenon, but a global trend with profound implications for governance, legitimacy, and international order. In this context, the symposium’s thematic focus—linking systemic crises to populism and democratic resilience—provided a coherent lens through which to examine both structural drivers and political responses.
The opening remarks by ECPS Honorary President Irina von Wieseunderscored the urgency of the moment, situating the symposium within a rapidly evolving geopolitical landscape. Her reflections highlighted the accelerating pace of political change, particularly in transatlantic relations, and the difficulty of keeping analytical frameworks aligned with unfolding realities. This sense of temporal compression—where events outpace interpretation—reinforced the need for sustained, collective intellectual engagement.
The keynote address by Staffan I. Lindberg, Professor of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Founding Director (2012–2025) of V-Dem Institute, further anchored the session in empirical analysis, offering a data-driven diagnosis of global democratic decline. By questioning conventional interpretations of populism and emphasizing the role of anti-pluralism, the keynote set the stage for a deeper exploration of the mechanisms underlying democratic erosion.
The discussion segment that followed extended the analytical depth of the opening session by bringing empirical findings, methodological concerns, and lived political experience into direct dialogue. Participants engaged critically with the keynote’s claims, probing the interpretation of data, the pace and nature of democratic decline, and the conditions under which institutional resilience may still operate. The exchange moved fluidly between macro-level indicators and context-specific realities, revealing both the strengths and limits of comparative measurement in capturing complex political transformations. In doing so, the discussion underscored a central theme of the symposium: that understanding democratic backsliding requires not only robust data, but also careful attention to institutional nuance, temporal dynamics, and the contested nature of political change.
Taken together, the opening session established both the analytical foundations and the normative stakes of the symposium. It framed the subsequent discussions around a central tension: while the challenges facing liberal democracy are systemic and far-reaching, the possibilities for resilience and renewal remain contingent on timely, informed, and collective responses.
Opening Remarks
Irina von Wiese is ECPS Honorary President.
Irina von Wiese: Collective Intellectual Engagement in an Age of Uncertainty
At the opening of the ECPS Fifth Annual International Symposium, ECPS Honorary President Irina von Wiese set a reflective yet urgent tone, situating the event within a rapidly shifting global landscape marked by political volatility and democratic uncertainty. Addressing a geographically dispersed audience, she welcomed participants with a sense of continuity—recalling previous in-person gatherings—while underscoring the heightened significance of this year’s theme: reforming and safeguarding liberal democracy amid systemic crises, populism, and pressures on democratic resilience.
Her remarks were anchored in the immediacy of unfolding geopolitical transformations. Drawing on the recent launch of ECPS’s annual report on transatlantic relations—presented in Brussels and subsequently in Washington, D.C.—she emphasized how swiftly the international environment has evolved, to the point that even the most up-to-date analyses risk rapid obsolescence. This acceleration of change, particularly in relations between the United States and Europe, was described as both profound and disorienting, challenging not only scholars but also policymakers striving to interpret and respond to events in real time.
A central thread in her intervention was the interplay between domestic political dynamics and global geopolitical shifts. Developments within major democratic actors, especially the United States and European Union member states, were identified as key drivers reshaping international alignments. Within Europe itself, she noted ongoing political flux, including leadership changes and the persistent influence of populist forces, suggesting that the broader trajectory remains tilted toward autocratization rather than democratic renewal.
While deferring to the scholarly expertise of the symposium’s participants, von Wiese highlighted the normative and practical urgency of the symposium’s core question: whether contemporary populist surges signal a failure of liberal democracy or reflect more complex, reciprocal dynamics between institutions and political mobilization. This question, she implied, resists simplistic causal narratives and demands sustained interdisciplinary inquiry.
Importantly, her reflections were not confined to abstract analysis but grounded in lived political experience. Referencing her engagement in local electoral campaigning in the United Kingdom, she illustrated how broader patterns of populist mobilization are increasingly evident even in contexts once considered relatively resilient. Conversations with voters revealed familiar themes—disaffection, polarization, and shifting political allegiances—underscoring the diffusion of populist dynamics across national contexts.
In closing, von Wiese reaffirmed the value of collective intellectual engagement at a moment of uncertainty. By bringing together scholars and practitioners, the symposium was framed as a necessary space for critical reflection, exchange, and the generation of ideas capable of informing both academic debate and political practice.
Keynote Speech
Professor Staffan I. Lindberg: “The Chicken-and-Egg Dilemma: Systemic Crises and the Rise of Populism”
Figure from the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026.
Professor Staffan I. Lindberg delivered a comprehensive and empirically rich keynote that addressed one of the most pressing questions in contemporary political science: how should we understand the relationship between systemic crises and the rise of populist—or more precisely, anti-pluralist—politics? Framed as a “chicken-and-egg dilemma,” the lecture did not seek a simplistic causal answer. Instead, it mapped a complex, mutually reinforcing relationship between structural transformations, political agency, and institutional erosion, grounded in extensive cross-national data and longitudinal analysis.
Professor Lindberg began by situating his remarks within the broader findings of theV-Dem Institute’s 2026 Democracy Report, drawing on an expansive dataset that captures global developments in democratic governance, civil liberties, and institutional integrity. He presented a stark visual overview: a world increasingly marked by autocratization. Compared to the optimism that followed the “third wave” of democratization—beginning in the mid-1970s and extending through the end of the Cold War—the contemporary landscape is characterized by a reversal of democratic gains. The spread of red across global maps, indicating declining democratic quality, is not merely symbolic but empirically substantiated.
Yet, as Professor Lindberg emphasized, the interpretation of this decline depends critically on how democracy is measured. Conventional country-averaged indicators suggest a gradual, statistically significant downturn over the past two decades. On the surface, this might appear concerning but not catastrophic. However, such averages treat all countries equally, regardless of population size or global influence. This methodological limitation, he argued, obscures the true magnitude of the crisis.
When democracy is measured in terms of the average citizen’s experience—weighting countries by population—the picture changes dramatically. Under this lens, global democratic standards have regressed to levels last seen in the late 1970s. This implies that the cumulative gains achieved during decades of democratization have effectively been erased for the majority of the world’s population. Alternative weightings, including territorial size and share of global GDP, further reinforce this conclusion. In particular, the GDP-weighted measure reveals that economic power is increasingly concentrated in less democratic contexts, underscoring the geopolitical implications of democratic decline.
The New Era of Accelerating Autocratization
From this perspective, Professor Lindberg advanced a central claim: the world is experiencing a systemic crisis of democracy. This is not a localized or temporary fluctuation but a structural transformation affecting a majority of the global population. Indeed, approximately three-quarters of humanity now live under autocratic regimes. Such a statistic, he suggested, fundamentally alters the baseline assumptions of both scholarly analysis and policy discourse.
To deepen this diagnosis, the keynote shifted from static measurements to dynamic processes. Rather than focusing solely on aggregate levels of democracy, Professor Lindberg examined the number of countries actively democratizing or autocratizing at any given time. This approach revealed a striking asymmetry. During the mid-1990s, the peak of the third wave, over 70 countries were simultaneously advancing democratic reforms. Today, that number has dwindled to fewer than 20. In contrast, the number of countries undergoing autocratization has risen sharply, reaching levels unprecedented in modern history.
This comparative perspective led to one of the keynote’s most provocative assertions: the current wave of autocratization surpasses that of the 1930s in both scale and intensity. While acknowledging differences in the number of sovereign states across periods, Professor Lindberg noted that the proportion of countries and the share of the global population affected by democratic decline are now higher than during the interwar era. Moreover, the duration of the current trend—spanning approximately 25 years—exceeds that of earlier waves, suggesting a more entrenched and potentially more resilient pattern.
The cumulative nature of this transformation was further illustrated through a longitudinal analysis of autocratization episodes since the year 2000. Over this period, approximately 85 countries—nearly half of the world—have experienced significant democratic erosion. Importantly, the majority of these countries remain less democratic today than they were at the onset of the century. Even in cases where temporary reversals have occurred, the overall trajectory remains downward.
Democratic Resilience Amid Global Decline
Despite this bleak global picture, Professor Lindberg acknowledged instances of democratic recovery. Countries such as Brazil and Poland were highlighted as examples where broad-based political coalitions succeeded in reversing autocratizing trends. These cases demonstrate that democratic resilience is possible, particularly when diverse political actors unite around a shared commitment to institutional norms. However, such reversals remain the exception rather than the rule.
Having established the scale and depth of the crisis, the keynote turned to its underlying drivers. Professor Lindberg identified two interrelated mechanisms as particularly significant: the spread of disinformation and the intensification of political polarization. Drawing on both macro-level patterns and a growing body of micro-level experimental research, he argued that these factors play a central role in facilitating autocratization.
The relationship between disinformation and democratic decline is not merely correlational but strategic. In autocratizing contexts, governments and aligned actors systematically increase the production and dissemination of misleading or false information. This is not an accidental byproduct of political competition but a deliberate tactic. By flooding the information environment with contradictory narratives, these actors undermine citizens’ ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood. The resulting epistemic uncertainty erodes trust in institutions, media, and even the possibility of objective knowledge.
This process, Professor Lindberg suggested, has profound psychological effects. Faced with uncertainty about fundamental issues—national identity, economic prospects, security—individuals may become more receptive to appeals for strong leadership. In such contexts, the promise of clarity and decisiveness can outweigh concerns about democratic norms. Disinformation thus creates the conditions under which anti-democratic appeals become politically effective.
Disinformation, Polarization, and Democratic Breakdown
The second stage of the process involves the targeted use of disinformation to delegitimize political opponents. By portraying adversaries as existential threats—enemies of the nation, culture, or way of life—political actors can intensify polarization to a “toxic” level. At this point, the boundaries of legitimate political competition collapse, and the exclusion or repression of opposition becomes justifiable in the eyes of supporters. This dynamic, in turn, facilitates the concentration of power and the erosion of democratic checks and balances.
Importantly, Professor Lindberg cautioned against attributing these developments solely to “populism.” While the term is widely used to describe contemporary political movements, he argued that it lacks sufficient conceptual precision. Instead, he proposed focusing on “anti-pluralism” as the key analytical category. Drawing on data from the V-Party project, he demonstrated that political actors who reject pluralism—manifested in rhetoric that delegitimizes opposition, undermines democratic procedures, and concentrates authority—are significantly more likely to initiate autocratization once in power.
This finding has important implications. While populist rhetoric may coexist with anti-pluralist tendencies, it is not in itself a reliable predictor of democratic breakdown. Rather, it is the erosion of pluralist commitments—the willingness to accept political competition, institutional constraints, and the legitimacy of dissent—that signals the greatest danger. In this sense, anti-pluralism represents a more precise and normatively grounded concept for analyzing contemporary democratic challenges.
Empirical Evidence of Anti-Pluralist Democratic Decline
The empirical analysis supporting this argument was extensive. By operationalizing indicators derived from classic theoretical frameworks, including Juan Linz’s work on democratic breakdown, Professor Lindberg and his colleagues were able to track the evolution of party rhetoric over time. The results revealed a strong and consistent relationship between anti-pluralist discourse and subsequent democratic decline. This pattern holds across regions and political systems, underscoring its general applicability.
A particularly striking illustration of these dynamics was provided through the case of the United States. Using the Liberal Democracy Index, Professor Lindberg traced a sharp decline in democratic quality in recent years. While acknowledging the historical resilience of American institutions, he argued that the scale and speed of the current erosion are unprecedented. When compared to other cases of autocratization—such as Hungary, Turkey, and India—the United States stands out for the rapidity of its decline.
In comparative terms, the extent of institutional erosion observed in the United States over approximately one year is equivalent to processes that took several years in other countries. This includes the weakening of judicial independence, constraints on media freedom, and the concentration of executive power. Such developments, he noted, are not isolated but part of a broader pattern of executive aggrandizement—a gradual but systematic dismantling of democratic safeguards.
To convey the magnitude of this shif, Professor Lindberg drew a historical parallel with the early years of authoritarian consolidation in 1930s Germany. While careful to distinguish between contexts, he emphasized that the comparison is based on measurable indicators rather than rhetorical analogy. In terms of the speed and depth of democratic decline following an electoral victory, the current US trajectory is among the most dramatic recorded in modern datasets.
At the same time, the keynote emphasized that these processes are neither inevitable nor irreversible. The existence of democratic recoveries, albeit limited, points to the the importance of political agency and institutional resilience. Broad coalitions, civil society mobilization, and the defense of pluralist norms can counteract autocratizing trends. However, such efforts require both analytical clarity and sustained commitment.
Mutual Reinforcement of Crisis and Anti-Pluralism
In concluding his remarks, Professor Lindberg returned to the “chicken-and-egg” dilemma. Rather than resolving it definitively, he suggested that systemic crises and anti-pluralist mobilization are mutually constitutive. Economic inequality, cultural anxiety, and geopolitical instability create fertile ground for political actors who exploit division and uncertainty. In turn, the strategies employed by these actors—disinformation, polarization, institutional manipulation—exacerbate the very crises that enabled their rise.
This recursive dynamic, he argued, lies at the heart of the current democratic crisis. Understanding it requires moving beyond simplistic narratives and engaging with the complex interplay of structure and agency. By combining large-scale data analysis with theoretical insight, the keynote provided a robust framework for such engagement.
Ultimately, Professor Lindberg’s address offered both a sobering diagnosis and a call to action. The erosion of liberal democracy is neither abstract nor distant; it is a lived reality for the majority of the world’s population. Yet the tools for understanding and responding to this challenge—empirical data, comparative analysis, and interdisciplinary dialogue—are more developed than ever. The task, as framed in this keynote, is to deploy these resources with urgency, precision, and a renewed commitment to the principles of pluralism and democratic governance.
Discussions
During the Q&A session, von Wiese opened the discussion by expressing strong appreciation for the V-Dem Institute’s work, highlighting its importance as a reliable empirical resource for both scholars and practitioners. She then raised a pointed methodological question concerning the visual representation of democratic decline, particularly the apparent similarity in how Russia and the United States were depicted in one of the keynote slides. While explicitly acknowledging the seriousness of democratic backsliding in the United States, she noted that assigning similar visual intensity to two historically and institutionally distinct cases seemed counterintuitive, and invited clarification on the underlying classification criteria.
Responding to this query, Professor Lindberg emphasized that different slides captured different dimensions of democratic change. He clarified that in the principal map depicting current levels of democracy, the United States is still categorized as a democracy—albeit a declining one—while Russia occupies a markedly lower position. He acknowledged ongoing scholarly debate on this classification, noting that some experts consider the United States to have already crossed into competitive authoritarianism. However, according to V-Dem’s methodology, electoral indicators—updated during election cycles—still sustain its formal democratic classification pending further data.
Turning to the slide likely referenced, Professor Lindberg explained that it illustrated not absolute levels of democracy but the magnitude of change over time. In this context, countries are visually grouped according to the extent of their democratic decline rather than their current regime type. As such, the United States and Russia may appear similarly marked because both have experienced substantial downward shifts, albeit from very different starting points. Crucially, he underscored that the United States, despite recent erosion, remains significantly more democratic than Russia at comparable points in its trajectory.
Institutional Dynamics and the Limits of Executive Power
Bruce E. Cain is Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Director, Bill Lane Center.
The exchange between Professor Bruce E. Cainand Professor Lindberg brought into sharp focus an important tension between macro-level measurement and context-sensitive interpretation of democratic change. While both scholars agreed on the seriousness of contemporary democratic pressures, their dialogue revealed differing emphases regarding how to interpret the pace, depth, and institutional consequences of recent developments, particularly in the United States.
Professor Cain began by acknowledging the significance of Professor Lindberg’s research, while nonetheless expressing concern about what he perceived as potentially misleading visual representations. Speaking from the vantage point of lived political experience in the United States, he argued for a more nuanced reading of recent trends. In his view, it is essential to distinguish between rhetorical ambition, temporary political advantage, and enduring institutional transformation. While conceding that the trajectory described in the data might reflect the intentions of political leadership, he cautioned against equating those intentions with fully realized outcomes.
Central to Professor Cain’s intervention was the institutional variability of the American political system. He emphasized the importance of differentiating between periods of “trifecta” government—where executive and legislative power are unified—and periods of divided government. In an era of heightened polarization, he argued, these configurations produce more pronounced effects than in the past. Under unified control, executive authority can be rapidly expanded through coordinated legislative support and administrative action. However, this expansion is contingent rather than permanent. Once political control becomes divided, institutional resistance intensifies, slowing or reversing policy initiatives and reasserting checks and balances.
Professor Cain further highlighted the role of judicial processes, particularly the strategic use of procedural mechanisms such as the “shadow docket,” which can temporarily enable controversial executive actions. In his interpretation, some policies advanced under these conditions may ultimately be overturned, suggesting that the system retains corrective capacities. He also pointed to additional constraints—including public opinion, partisan opposition, and market reactions—that continue to shape political outcomes. Taken together, these dynamics suggest a more fluid and contested process than a linear model of democratic decline might imply.
In response, Professor Lindberg clarified that the contested visualizations were intended to capture the magnitude of democratic change rather than absolute regime equivalence. The similarity in color intensity, he explained, reflects the scale of decline relative to each country’s starting point, not a convergence in regime type. The United States, despite significant erosion, remains at a substantially higher level of democratic performance than historically autocratic regimes.
At the same time, Professor Lindberg defended the empirical basis of his broader argument, stressing that the pace and scope of institutional change in the United States are historically unprecedented. He pointed to the extensive use of executive orders, the shifting balance of power toward the presidency, and the systematic weakening of oversight mechanisms as indicators of substantial transformation. While acknowledging the presence of resistance and institutional friction, he maintained that these developments collectively represent a significant and measurable shift.
The exchange underscored the value of analytical pluralism. Professor Lindberg emphasized the importance of examining democratic change from multiple perspectives—both in terms of measurement and interpretation—while Professor Cain’s intervention highlighted the need to remain attentive to institutional dynamics and contextual variation. Together, their dialogue illuminated the challenges of capturing complex political realities through aggregate indicators, while reaffirming the importance of rigorous, multi-layered analysis in understanding contemporary democratic trajectories.
Erosion of Accountability in Practice
Professor Jack A. Goldstone, one of the world’s leading scholars of revolutions and social change, holds the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. Chair in Public Policy at George Mason University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Mercatus Center and Director of the Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions and Policy (SCIP).
The discussion deepened as Professor Jack A. Goldstoneentered the exchange, shifting the focus from methodological interpretation to the lived realities of political transformation in the United States. Speaking from his position in Washington, D.C., Professor Goldstone offered a vivid account of how institutional and symbolic changes are experienced on the ground, reinforcing and, in some respects, intensifying the concerns raised in the keynote.
He described a political environment marked by increasingly visible assertions of executive authority, from the personalization of public institutions to the reshaping of national symbols and spaces. These developments, he suggested, go beyond abstract indicators of democratic decline and manifest as tangible shifts in the character of governance and public life. Particularly striking in his account was the cumulative effect of such changes: taken individually, each might appear limited, but together they signal a broader reconfiguration of political norms.
Professor Goldstone placed special emphasis on pressures facing key pillars of democratic society, including universities, media, and civil liberties. He pointed to growing constraints on academic freedom, financial pressures on public institutions, and a climate in which both scholars and journalists may feel compelled to exercise caution in their speech. These dynamics, he argued, are compounded by structural changes predating the current administration, notably judicial decisions that have expanded executive immunity and facilitated the increasing influence of private and opaque funding in electoral politics. Such developments, in his view, have altered the institutional landscape in ways that extend beyond any single political actor.
While acknowledging the persistence of resistance, particularly at the level of state governments, local authorities, and lower courts, Professor Goldstone noted that these countervailing forces often face limitations, including judicial reversals and procedural constraints. The cumulative effect, he argued, is a system in which traditional mechanisms of accountability are increasingly strained, even if not entirely dismantled.
Responding briefly, Professor Lindberg affirmed the relevance of these observations, noting that many of the developments described are reflected in the empirical findings of the Democracy Report. He highlighted, in particular, the significance of recent judicial interpretations regarding presidential authority, which, in his assessment, effectively shift elements of legal accountability toward the executive. This, he suggested, represents not merely a policy shift but a structural reallocation of institutional power.
The Narrow Window for Democratic “U-Turns”
The discussion took a more forward-looking turn as Irina von Wiese raised the question of irreversibility in processes of democratic backsliding. Moving beyond diagnosis, her intervention focused on a critical concern for both scholars and practitioners: at what point does autocratization become so entrenched that democratic reversal is no longer realistically achievable through electoral means? Referencing recent political developments in Hungary and Poland, she highlighted both the possibility of reversal and the uncertainty surrounding its limits, asking whether there exists a threshold beyond which democratic recovery becomes unlikely.
In response, Professor Lindberg drew on empirical research conducted with colleagues on what he termed “U-turns,” or instances in which countries successfully reverse autocratizing trajectories. His findings suggest that such reversals tend to occur within a relatively narrow temporal window. Specifically, the likelihood of democratic recovery is highest within the first one or two electoral cycles following the onset of autocratization. Beyond this period, the probability declines sharply, indicating that time plays a decisive role in shaping political outcomes.
Professor Lindberg noted that cases such as Hungary, where a reversal occurred after a prolonged period of entrenched rule, are exceptional rather than typical. In most instances, once autocratizing actors consolidate control over key institutions, electoral competition becomes increasingly constrained, reducing the viability of democratic change from within the system. This observation aligns with broader research on electoral authoritarianism, which shows that repeated electoral cycles under such conditions tend to stabilize rather than undermine authoritarian rule.
Applying this framework to contemporary contexts, Professor Lindberg suggested that the window for democratic reversal in countries currently experiencing backsliding may be limited. Early intervention—whether through electoral mobilization, institutional resistance, or coalition-building—is therefore crucial. While he acknowledged that outcomes remain uncertain and contingent on multiple factors, the evidence points to a clear pattern: the longer autocratization persists, the more difficult it becomes to reverse.
Conclusion
The opening session of the ECPS Fifth Annual International Symposium made clear that the current crisis of liberal democracy cannot be understood through narrow institutional or purely electoral lenses alone. What emerged instead was a layered picture of democratic erosion as a structural, political, and epistemic process shaped by anti-pluralist mobilization, disinformation, polarization, and the weakening of institutional constraints. By placing empirical measurement in dialogue with political experience and comparative reflection, the session demonstrated that democratic backsliding is both globally patterned and nationally specific.
A particularly important contribution of the session lay in its refusal of easy binaries. Rather than presenting democracy and authoritarianism as fixed categories, the speakers and discussants illuminated the gradations, accelerations, and contingencies that define contemporary regime change. At the same time, the discussion underscored that analytical precision matters: the distinction between populism and anti-pluralism, between absolute democratic levels and the magnitude of decline, and between reversible erosion and entrenched authoritarian consolidation all bear directly on how the present moment is interpreted.
The session also highlighted that democratic resilience cannot be assumed as an automatic property of established institutions. It depends on timing, coalition-building, civic vigilance, and the continued legitimacy of pluralist norms. If autocratization is indeed cumulative and self-reinforcing, then democratic defense must be equally deliberate, coordinated, and sustained.
In sum, the opening session provided more than an introduction to the symposium. It established a conceptual and normative framework for the discussions that followed, reminding participants that the defense of liberal democracy demands not only diagnosis, but also intellectual clarity, institutional imagination, and political resolve.
In this ECPS European Observatory commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias offers a theoretically rich analysis of Péter Magyar’s electoral breakthrough, arguing that it should not be read as a simple liberal shift but as a reconfiguration of Hungarian nationalism. Focusing on migration and Mitteleuropa, he shows how Magyar preserves a moderated nationalist grammar while repositioning Hungary within a more plural, regionally grounded Europe. Rather than abandoning sovereignty or identity, this emerging project seeks to detach them from illiberal statecraft and reintegrate them into a European framework. The piece introduces the idea of a national Europeanism beyond Orbánism, highlighting the central question facing Hungary: whether nationalism can be rearticulated within democratic institutions without reproducing authoritarian dynamics.
Péter Magyar’s victory in Hungary should not be read as the sudden liberalization of Hungarian politics. Such a reading would be analytically tempting, but politically misleading. A society shaped by post-socialist dislocation, imperial memories, border anxieties, regional asymmetries, and sixteen years of illiberal statecraft is unlikely to move overnight from national-conservative politics to post-national liberalism. The defeat of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz marks a profound political rupture, but not necessarily an ideological tabula rasa. Yes, Magyar’s Tisza party won Hungary’s April 2026 election, ending Orbán’s sixteen-year rule and paving the way for the formation of a new government. Yet the more interesting question is not simply whether Hungary is “returning to Europe.” It is what kind of Europe, and what kind of nationalism, Magyar is now attempting to articulate.
The first signals suggest that Magyar’s emerging political project is not built against Hungarian nationalism, but through its reconfiguration. Its novelty lies less in abandoning the national grammar that Orbán radicalized than in relocating it within a more institutionally acceptable, pro-European, and strategically autonomous framework. Two discursive axes are particularly revealing. The first is migration, where Magyar preserves a nationalist concern with cultural cohesion, border control, and the limits of multicultural integration. The second is Mitteleuropa, where he appears to reimagine Hungary not as an isolated sovereigntist fortress, but as part of a Central European space capable of giving Europe greater internal plurality and strategic depth.
Taken together, these axes point towards a possible post-Orbán synthesis: nationalism without Orbán’s full illiberal infrastructure; Europeanism without unconditional deference to Brussels; and Central European regionalism without geopolitical ambiguity towards Moscow.
Migration and the Continuity of Nationalist Grammar
Migration remains the clearest field of continuity between Orbánism and the emerging Magyar project. Across Europe and the United States, immigration has become one of the privileged arenas through which contemporary nationalist politics articulates anxieties over identity, sovereignty, cultural continuity, and social trust. The populist radical right has been especially effective in transforming migration from a policy question into a symbolic frontier: between the nation and the outsider, order and disorder, cultural continuity and multicultural dissolution. In Cas Mudde’s terms, the radical right often combines nativism, authoritarianism, and populism, and migration is the issue through which these elements are most visibly condensed (Mudde, 2007). In the broader literature on cultural backlash, hostility to immigration is also interpreted as a reaction against cosmopolitanism, rapid value change, and perceived threats to national identity (Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
Orbán’s political genius was to radicalize this grammar and convert it into state ideology. Under his rule, migration was not merely a matter of border management. It became a civilizational drama: Christian Hungary against multicultural Europe; national sovereignty against Brussels; the border fence against liberal universalism. Migration offered Orbán a language through which economic insecurity, demographic anxiety, anti-EU resentment, and cultural conservatism could be fused into a single political narrative.
Magyar’s position appears less incendiary, but not simply opposite. According to The Guardian, he argued that Europe had “mismanaged” the migration crisis and that the issue should have been addressed primarily in countries of origin, rather than by bringing populations into Europe. This is not the language of liberal multiculturalism. Nor is it the apocalyptic rhetoric of Orbán’s civilizational border politics. It is something more subtle: a moderated, humanitarianized, and administratively respectable version of migration skepticism.
That ambiguity is politically important. On the surface, the emphasis on addressing migration in countries of origin can seem pragmatic and humane. It recognizes that migration has causes — war, poverty, instability, state failure, climate pressures — and that durable solutions cannot be reduced to reception policies in Europe. Yet the same formula may also operate as a politically acceptable form of closure: solidarity without settlement, assistance without multicultural transformation, responsibility without internal absorption.
This is where Magyar’s discourse preserves a nationalist grammar while softening its tone. Migration remains framed not only as a humanitarian issue, but as a question of cultural cohesion and governability. The political community is still imagined as something whose boundaries must be protected, whose identity cannot be indefinitely diluted, and whose social trust depends on controlled membership. In that sense, Magyar does not fully break with Orbán’s migration politics. He changes its register.
The distinction is therefore not between nationalism and liberalism. It is between two uses of nationalism. Orbán embedded nationalist discourse within an illiberal regime marked by institutional capture, constitutional engineering, media domination, and clientelist power consolidation; features widely discussed in the literature on Hungary’s hybrid and illiberal transformation (Bozóki & Hegedűs, 2018; Krekó & Enyedi, 2018; Scheppele, 2018). Magyar, by contrast, seems to be attempting to detach national-conservative discourse from that authoritarian infrastructure. His wager is that Hungarian voters did not reject nationalism as such; they rejected corruption, exhaustion, state capture, deteriorating public services, and Russia-friendly isolation.
This is a crucial insight. Orbán did not fall because nationalism disappeared from Hungarian society. He fell because his nationalism became inseparable from regime fatigue. Magyar’s challenge is therefore not to erase the national vocabulary, but to make it governable again.
Mitteleuropa and the Reinvention of European Agency
If migration reveals the continuity of Hungarian nationalist grammar, Mitteleuropa reveals its attempted transformation. Magyar’s Europeanism should not be read simply as a return to Brussels after the long Orbán years. It seems better understood as an effort to recover Central Europe as a strategic, historical, and political space within a more multidimensional Europe.
This distinction matters. A merely Brussels-centered interpretation would reduce Magyar’s project to normalization: Hungary returns to the European mainstream, restores its institutional credibility, unlocks EU funds, and abandons Orbán’s obstructive diplomacy.
There is truth in this reading. The new government’s early economic and ministerial signals suggest an emphasis on policy stability, EU funds, and economic recovery. But this is not the whole story. Magyar’s rhetoric points not only to reintegration, but to repositioning.
Mitteleuropa is not a neutral geographical term. It carries historical density. It evokes empires, shifting borders, multilingual societies, imperial collapse, Soviet domination, peripheralization, and the recurring experience of being located between larger powers. In Milan Kundera’s famous formulation, Central Europe was a kidnapped West: culturally Western, politically displaced eastwards by history (Kundera, 1984). Later interpretations of post-1989 Central Europe have stressed another dimension: the ambivalent relationship between liberal imitation, Western tutelage, and the resentment generated by the feeling of being permanently evaluated from outside (Krastev & Holmes, 2019).
Orbán exploited this historical repertoire through a politics of resentment. Hungary was presented as a besieged nation: pressured by Brussels, misunderstood by liberal elites, threatened by migration, and entitled to defend its own civilizational path. Sovereignty became trench warfare. Europe was not a plural home, but a disciplinary center. Central Europe became less a region of European agency than a rhetorical shield against liberal-democratic constraints.
Magyar appears to be proposing a different use of the same historical memory. His Mitteleuropa is not necessarily a retreat from Europe, but a way of making Europe more internally plural. It suggests that Hungary need not choose between two poor alternatives: Orbán’s nationalist isolation or passive obedience to a Brussels-centered technocratic order. Instead, Central Europe can be imagined as a third space: European but not submissive; nationally rooted but not authoritarian; historically conscious but not paranoid.
This is the deeper meaning of the “return of Mitteleuropa.” It is not nostalgia for empire. Nor is it a romantic escape from the European Union. It is a proposal for a Europe made of historical regions with their own memories, vulnerabilities, and strategic vocabularies. In this vision, Hungary is not a void between Germany and Russia, nor a problematic periphery to which Brussels grants certificates of good behavior. It is part of a Central European constellation capable of shaping Europe from within.
The contrast with Orbán is again instructive. Orbán’s Europe was vertical: Brussels above, Hungary below, sovereignty as resistance. Magyar’s Europe appears potentially horizontal: Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Warsaw, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Rome, Copenhagen, Brussels, and Budapest as parts of a plural continental architecture. Such a Europe is not merely a union of institutions; it is a field of regions, memories, and strategic positions.
This does not make Magyar a liberal cosmopolitan. Rather, it suggests a form of national Europeanism. The nation remains the primary symbolic community, but Europe becomes the necessary arena of agency. Mitteleuropa provides the bridge between the two. It allows Magyar to say that Hungary can be proudly national without being anti-European, and European without becoming politically weightless.
A Post-Illiberal National Europeanism?
Magyar’s two early signals therefore reveal a more complex ideological architecture than the language of “liberal victory” allows. Migration preserves the nationalist grammar. Mitteleuropa gives that grammar a new European geography.
The first axis is defensive: it protects the boundaries of the political community, insists on cultural cohesion, and keeps alive a skepticism towards large-scale multicultural integration. The second is expansive: it seeks to recover agency for Hungary and Central Europe within a more plural, multidimensional Europe. One axis looks inward, towards identity and membership. The other looks outward, towards regional strategy and European architecture.
The tension between them may define the coming Magyar period. If the nationalist grammar of migration hardens, it may reproduce exclusionary assumptions under a more polished vocabulary. If Mitteleuropa becomes another language of exceptionalism, it may simply replace Orbán’s resentment with a more elegant form of regional self-importance. But if the two axes are held in democratic balance, they may allow Hungary to move beyond Orbán without demanding that Hungarian society abandon the national vocabulary through which it still understands itself.
That is why Magyar’s project should not be understood as post-national liberalism. It is better described as an attempt at post-illiberal national Europeanism: a politics that preserves sovereignty, identity, and Central European memory, while seeking to detach them from authoritarianism, corruption, and Russian dependency.
The real test of post-Orbán Hungary will therefore not be whether nationalism disappears. It will not. The test is whether nationalism can be rearticulated within democratic institutions, European pluralism, and a regional imagination capable of enriching Europe rather than fragmenting it.
Magyar’s early discourse suggests that this is precisely the wager: to keep the nation but change its political grammar; to return to Europe, but not as a pupil; to recover Mitteleuropa, not as nostalgia, but as strategy.
References
Bozóki, A. & Hegedűs, D. (2018). “An externally constrained hybrid regime: Hungary in the European Union.” Democratization, 25(7), 1173-1189. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1455664
Krastev, I. & Holmes, S. (2019). The light that failed: A reckoning. Allen Lane.
Krekó, P. & Enyedi, Z. (2018). “Explaining Eastern Europe: Orbán’s laboratory of illiberalism.” Journal of Democracy, 29(3), 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2018.0043
Kundera, M. (1984). “The tragedy of Central Europe.” The New York Review of Books, 31(7), 33–38.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595841
Scheppele, K. L. (2018). “Autocratic legalism.” The University of Chicago Law Review, 85(2), 545–584.
In an interview with the ECPS, Associate Professor Petar Stankov offers a nuanced assessment of Bulgaria’s post-election trajectory under Rumen Radev. Challenging alarmist comparisons, he argues that “it is too early to tell” whether Radev will become an Orbán-style leader, suggesting instead that he “looks more like Fico,” pursuing a pragmatic balancing strategy. Assoc. Prof. Stankov interprets the electoral outcome as “a demand for stabilization after prolonged institutional volatility,” rather than a clear ideological shift. While economic constraints limit disruptive policymaking, he warns that the greater risk lies in institutional capture, particularly if opportunities for judicial reform are missed. Ultimately, Bulgaria’s trajectory will depend on whether reformist or rent-seeking dynamics prevail.
In the aftermath of Bulgaria’s April 2026 parliamentary elections, the country finds itself at a critical juncture shaped by the tension between political stabilization and the risk of democratic erosion. Following years of fragmentation, repeated elections, and institutional fatigue, Rumen Radev’s newly established Progressive Bulgaria party secured a decisive majority, capitalizing on anti-corruption sentiment, voter exhaustion, and socioeconomic anxieties linked to eurozone integration. While this outcome has brought a measure of political clarity, it has also intensified debates over Bulgaria’s democratic trajectory and its positioning between the European Union and Russia.
In a written interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Associate Professor Petar Stankov, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London, offers a nuanced and analytically grounded interpretation of these developments. Challenging alarmist comparisons, Assoc. Prof. Stankov argues that “it is too early to tell” whether Radev will evolve into an Orbán-style leader, suggesting instead that he “looks more like Fico,” pursuing a pragmatic balancing strategy rather than an overtly confrontational illiberal project.
At the core of Assoc. Prof. Stankov’s analysis is the argument that Radev’s victory reflects “a demand for stabilization after prolonged institutional volatility,” rather than a coherent ideological realignment. The electoral coalition that brought him to power, he notes, was “mobilized against discredited incumbents, not a coherent positive ideology,” drawing support from both left- and right-leaning constituencies. This heterogeneity, in turn, underscores the enduring salience of identity politics in Bulgaria, where Radev’s “balanced position” on Russia’s war in Ukraine resonated deeply “on identity grounds.”
Situating these dynamics within his broader framework of populist cycles, Assoc. Prof. Stankov characterizes Radev as “a short-term manifestation of populist demand,” rooted less in economic distress than in identity and fairness concerns, particularly dissatisfaction with the judicial system. In this sense, Bulgaria’s political landscape reflects structural patterns rather than exceptional rupture.
The interview also addresses the central question of whether Radev’s anti-corruption mandate will lead to institutional renewal or facilitate a new phase of power concentration. Here, Assoc. Prof. Stankov highlights a fundamental tension between reformist impulses and entrenched interests, warning that outcomes will depend on whether political actors pursue “institutional repair” or the redistribution of “political rents.”
On foreign policy, Assoc. Prof. Stankov underscores the importance of strategic ambiguity. While Radev may be “a natural candidate to do the Kremlin’s bidding,” he is unlikely to pursue a confrontational course vis-à-vis the EU, instead maintaining a careful balancing act shaped by Bulgaria’s structural constraints. Economically, these constraints significantly limit his room for maneuver, but Assoc. Prof. Stankov cautions that “politically, he may do more damage” if opportunities for judicial reform are squandered.
Ultimately, this interview with ECPS presents a measured yet critical assessment of Bulgaria’s evolving political order. By rejecting simplistic analogies and foregrounding structural dynamics, Assoc. Prof. Stankov highlights both the constraints and the risks inherent in Radev’s ascent—capturing a moment in which the promise of stability coexists uneasily with the possibility of democratic backsliding.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Associate Professor Petar Stankov, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
A Vote for Stability, Not Ideology
Then-Bulgarian President Rumen Radev speaks to the media following his meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on January 30, 2017. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Stankov, what does Rumen Radev’s landslide victory tell us about Bulgaria’s current political position after eight elections in five years? Should this outcome be interpreted primarily as a demand for stability and anti-corruption reform, or as evidence of a deeper ideological realignment?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: Radev’s victory is best read as a demand for stabilization after prolonged institutional volatility, rather than a clear ideological departure from underlying voter preferences. It mobilized a coalition against discredited incumbents, not a coherent positive ideology. What earned Radev support from the electorate was also his balanced position on the war that Russia started in Ukraine. As Russia has, justifiably or not, a special place in the hearts and minds of many Bulgarians, this stance resonated deeply on identity grounds.
How should we situate Radev’s victory within your broader theory of populist cycles? Does his rise reflect a classic populist moment in which economic anxiety, elite discredit, and identity-based grievances converge into a new electoral coalition?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: Populist cycles are a long-term phenomenon. Radev is a short-term manifestation of populist demand, which is consistently strong in Bulgaria. The theory of populist cycles rests on identity, fairness, and economic pillars. If it offers the appropriate lens through which to view Bulgarian politics at the moment, then identity and fairness certainly played a role, though less so the state of the economy. Identity mattered because voters appear to have stopped associating themselves with previous pro-Western populists, finding insufficient representation in them. Fairness also played a role, as the condition of the judicial system is no longer tolerable.
Identity Over Economics, Structure Over Cycles
In your earlier work on Bulgaria and Germany, you identify unemployment, inequality, trade openness, and migration as factors associated with stronger right-wing populist support. To what extent do these structural pressures help explain Radev’s success in 2026, even if he does not fit neatly into a conventional far-right mold?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: Yes, but only imperfectly. Cyclical pressures such as inflation and emigration may have been relevant. However, Radev’s support draws from both left- and right-leaning constituencies. This is consistent with identity factors and deeper structural issues shaping Bulgarian voters, rather than the cyclical factors that typically underpin a populist rise.
Radev won on an anti-corruption platform, but anti-corruption discourse in Central and Eastern Europe often serves as a bridge between democratic renewal and populist concentration of power. In your view, does his mandate open a path toward institutional repair, or does it risk legitimizing a new phase of executive centralization in the name of cleansing the system?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: This will depend on two opposing forces. On the one hand, there are new faces in politics under Radev who would like to start from scratch. This would be consistent with the institutional repair hypothesis. On the other hand, there are also some older figures among the incoming cohort of politicians who have not yet had the chance to secure a share of “political rents.” This would be consistent with the hypothesis that consolidation of power serves the redistribution of political rents rather than the renewal of democracy in Bulgaria. Whichever force prevails will determine whether Bulgaria moves toward rebuilding or redistributing. I sincerely hope that idealism will prevail, but history suggests that, in poorer countries, political rents often outweigh ideals.
Closer to Fico Than Orbán in Europe’s Fault Lines
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico speaks at a press conference following a Visegrad Group (V4) meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, on February 15, 2016. Photo: Dreamstime.
A central question for European observers is whether Radev represents the emergence of a new Orban-type actor inside the EU. Do you see him as a potential ideological successor to Orban in the nexus of EU-Russia tensions, or is that analogy too blunt for the Bulgarian case?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: On the surface, Radev and Orban appear more aligned with the interests of the Kremlin than with those of the EU. However, I think Radev strikes a more balanced tone, at least for now. Whether he will act as an Orban 2.0 is too early to tell, but I do not expect him to go as far as Orban did in his last term in office in terms of aligning with the Kremlin. At the same time, we should not be naive about Radev’s background: he is a military officer from a period when the Bulgarian army perceived NATO as an adversary and Russia as a source of public and ideological goods. It would be unnatural for him to suddenly change his identity.
If not Orban, is Radev better understood as closer to Robert Fico: rhetorically skeptical of Brussels and supportive of “pragmatic” relations with Moscow, yet constrained by economic dependence on the EU and by Bulgaria’s embeddedness in NATO and European institutions?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: I believe Radev fits that description. I expect him to pursue a balancing act without creating major disruptions for NATO or the EU.
How should we interpret Radev’s position on Ukraine? He has opposed military support and criticized parts of the EU’s approach, yet analysts suggest he may avoid outright vetoes while preserving Bulgaria’s role in the broader European defense ecosystem. Does this amount to strategic ambiguity, domestic balancing, or a more systematic geopolitical repositioning?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: It is not natural for Radev to oppose the interests of the Kremlin; doing so would run against who he is and how he has developed as an individual and as a politician. However, I do not think he is inherently confrontational. He projects confidence and a desire for dialogue, which may serve his strategy of ambiguity. Given his current level of electoral support, I do not think he needs to balance domestically—he holds the strongest political mandate in recent memory.
Pragmatism or Russophilia? A Shifting Political Language
What do Radev’s statements about renewing ties with Russia and rethinking Europe’s security architecture tell us about the evolving vocabulary of pro-Russian politics inside the EU? Are we seeing old-style Russophilia, or a newer populist language of “pragmatism,” sovereignty, and anti-moralism designed to be more electorally acceptable?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: Because of who Radev is, he is a natural candidate to do the Kremlin’s bidding in Europe, to re-legitimize the economic and political relationships between Europe and the Kremlin, and, why not, to do their dirty laundry. Let us not forget, however, that Radev represents a small and declining nation among many others. In that sense, although Radev is a valuable asset—the Kremlin will take any asset that comes its way at this stage—he is not its prime candidate. The Kremlin’s prime European asset is not even in Europe.
Your work argues that populists weaponize identity conflicts and economic hardships for political gain. In the Bulgarian case, which mattered more in this election: material grievances such as inflation, euro adoption, and living costs, or identity and geopolitical divisions over Russia, Europe, and national sovereignty?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: I believe the latter mattered more. Russian propaganda in Bulgaria is very strong, while the economy is not performing poorly enough for cyclical factors to outweigh identity conflicts.
Balancing Brussels and Moscow While Eyeing Judicial Reform
Radev is not a newcomer; he governed for years from the presidency before stepping down to seek executive power. Looking back at his presidential record, what patterns in his political style, institutional behavior, and crisis communication most help us anticipate how he may govern now as prime minister?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: It is hard for me to predict his moves as prime minister. Although he came to power with one of the most remarkable electoral victories in Bulgarian democratic history, he will probably not rush to disrupt what has worked well so far for the Bulgarian economy. For example, he attempted to launch a referendum on joining the Eurozone in his final year as president, but he would not take Bulgaria out of the Eurozone. He may be inclined to cozy up to the Kremlin, but he would not forgo the benefits of EU membership. What he could attempt—and history may credit him for—is to secure a constitutional majority for large-scale judicial reform. Whatever his rhetoric abroad, if he manages to fix that system, which has long hindered the development of a level playing field in Bulgaria, he will be remembered for his domestic achievements rather than his external balancing act.
Do you see Progressive Bulgaria as a durable governing project, or as a typical new-party vehicle built around a single leader and a temporary coalition of discontented voters? In other words, does this victory mark the stabilization of a new political order, or simply the latest phase in Bulgaria’s volatile anti-establishment cycle?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: Like any party built around a single leader rather than a consensual political platform, Progressive Bulgaria will likely fizzle out once Radev is no longer at its helm.
Reform Window or Lost Generation?
One of the themes in your research is that not all populists are equally damaging in economic governance, especially in Europe, where institutional constraints can mute the worst forms of macroeconomic populism. Given Bulgaria’s EU obligations, eurozone membership, and fiscal constraints, how much room does Radev actually have to behave as a disruptive populist in office? Yet your work also stresses that the economic moderation of populists does not necessarily prevent damage to the rule of law, democratic accountability, or civil society. If Radev is constrained economically, should the greater concern be institutional capture rather than macroeconomic irresponsibility?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: Economically, Radev has little room to do significant damage. His external constraints are substantial, and he would therefore be unable to pursue the kind of macroeconomic populism that has plagued Latin American economies in the past.
Politically, however, he may do more damage if he squanders his opportunity to build a majority for constitutional reforms that are vital for the country’s long-term development. If he does squander it, Bulgarians may need to wait another generation—or even two—before a similarly strong political figure emerges with a popular mandate for reform.
This broader concern, that European populists may do more damage politically than economically, raises an important question: if economic constraints limit their capacity for harm, should political constraints also be strengthened? There has recently been a proposal for EU institutional reform to limit the consensus principle in certain areas, particularly foreign policy. Proposals of this kind may bring the European project closer to its original vision of uniting European nations under shared values. However, the trade-off is that many smaller states could become less influential in decision-making. To protect itself from malign external influence, the EU may need to reconsider some of its foundational principles—evolve, or else…
Looking ahead, what is your medium-term forecast for Bulgaria under Radev? Do you expect a pragmatic, nationally framed but still fundamentally European government; a creeping illiberal turn marked by pressure on the judiciary and media; or a shorter-lived experiment in which governing responsibilities quickly erode the broad electoral coalition that brought him to power?
Assoc. Prof. Petar Stankov: That depends on how quickly he starts forming a coalition for constitutional change. If this part of his agenda starts finding excuses to be pushed further back in time while mundane issues take centre stage, the medium-term forecast for Bulgaria would not be great. If a majority for constitutional changes takes centre stage in the political narrative coming from Radev, then I would be more optimistic. In general, I would be an optimist until proven wrong, which, given the Bulgarian experience of the last few decades, has never been a hard theorem to prove.
Associate Professor Ildiko Otova, in an interview with the ECPS, offers a compelling analysis of Bulgaria’s post-election trajectory under Rumen Radev. Following a landslide victory driven by anti-corruption sentiment and political fatigue, Radev has consolidated power in a system marked by institutional fragility. Assoc. Prof. Otova argues that his success reflects not a new geopolitical shift, but a strategic exploitation of existing cleavages, enabled by a “specific discursive situation” of empty rhetoric and symbolic politics. While his ambiguity has mobilized a broad electorate, it also masks deeper risks. As populism transitions from protest to governance, Assoc. Prof. Otova warns that, under conditions of concentrated power and weak safeguards, “the path to autocracy becomes all too easy.”
In the aftermath of Bulgaria’s April 2026 parliamentary elections, the country has entered a new and uncertain political phase marked by both the promise of stability and the risk of accelerated democratic erosion. Rumen Radev’s newly formed Progressive Bulgaria party secured a decisive majority after years of political fragmentation, capitalizing on widespread anti-corruption sentiment, voter fatigue with repeated elections, and growing socioeconomic anxieties following eurozone accession. While his victory ended a prolonged cycle of unstable coalition governments, it also raised urgent questions about the future trajectory of Bulgarian democracy, particularly given Radev’s ambivalent positioning between the European Union and Russia.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Associate Professor Ildiko Otova, Head of Political Science Department at New Bulgarian University, offers a nuanced and analytically rigorous assessment of the structural and discursive dynamics underpinning Radev’s rise. As she argues, his victory “should not be attributed solely to Russia or to the broader Europe-Russia divide”; rather, it reflects a more complex political environment in which he has “skillfully exploited” existing cleavages, often “using minimal words and gestures to convey what different audiences want to hear.” This strategic ambiguity has allowed him to mobilize a remarkably heterogeneous electorate, ranging from pro-European reformists to nationalist and pro-Russian constituencies.
Assoc. Prof. Otova situates this development within a broader pattern of normalized populism in Bulgaria, where “what was once an episodic phenomenon has become a structural feature of the system.” In such a context, Radev’s success appears less as an anomaly than as the predictable result of a political order shaped by institutional distrust, party-system exhaustion, and what she terms a “specific discursive situation” characterized by cycles of “empty rhetoric” and symbolic politics. His campaign slogan, “We are ready, we can do it, and we will succeed,” captured this dynamic, offering not policy substance but an affective promise of exit from political stagnation.
At the same time, Assoc. Prof. Otova underscores the deeper identity tensions that continue to shape Bulgarian politics. Euroscepticism, she notes, is structured by enduring paradoxes, including the perception of the EU as an external imposition, contrasted with the framing of Russia as culturally “internal.” This ambivalence has enabled Radev to navigate competing geopolitical imaginaries while maintaining what she describes as a dual discourse, one directed at domestic audiences, another at Brussels.
Yet the central concern animating Assoc. Prof. Otova’s analysis is the transformation of populism from oppositional rhetoric into governing practice. With a consolidated parliamentary majority and limited institutional constraints, “concrete actions and policies are required,” and it is precisely under these conditions, she warns, that “the path to autocracy becomes all too easy.” In a system already marked by weak institutional safeguards and vulnerability to state capture, the concentration of executive power risks reproducing, rather than dismantling, entrenched oligarchic networks.
This interview with ECPS situates Bulgaria at a critical juncture. While Radev’s rise reflects broader global trends of democratic backsliding and populist normalization, Assoc. Prof. Otova’s insights highlight the contingent nature of political outcomes, shaped not only by leadership, but by institutional resilience, societal mobilization, and the unresolved tensions at the heart of Bulgaria’s democratic and European identity.
Ildiko Otova, an Associate Professor of Political Science and the Head of Political Science Department at New Bulgarian University.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Associate Professor Ildiko Otova, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Not a New Cleavage, but a Strategic Exploitation of Old Divides
Professor Otova, given your argument that Bulgarian Euroscepticism must be read through the historically embedded Europe–Russia axis, does Rumen Radev’s victory mark a new phase in this cleavage, or merely its latest institutional expression?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Relations with Russia have long been central to Bulgarian politics, shaped by shared history, culture, personal connections, economic ties, and geopolitical factors. A widely circulated photo of Radev with Putin drew significant attention, prompting international media to describe him as “Russia’s new Trojan horse in Europe.” Experts have rightly pointed to Russia’s involvement in Radev’s political rise and raised concerns about campaign interference, online influence operations, and opaque funding sources suggesting substantial investment.
However, Radev’s victory should not be attributed solely to Russia or to the broader Europe–Russia divide. His win does not mark a new phase in this cleavage; rather, he has skillfully exploited it, using minimal words and gestures to convey what different audiences want to hear. In a campaign—and a political environment—often full of empty rhetoric, Radev has become adept at using silence, paradoxically communicating exactly what various constituencies seek.
In practice, little is known about the figures in his party, but among those who have become visible, we observe both openly provocative pro-Russian positions and the exact opposite. This is not to downplay Russia’s role; instead, it underscores the need for more comprehensive explanations.
Euroscepticism Built on Cultural Paradoxes and Identity Tensions
To what extent does Radev’s rise reflect not only geopolitical ambivalence but also a deeper identity crisis in post-communist Bulgaria, where competing civilizational imaginaries—Europeanization, Slavic-Orthodox affinity, and post-socialist nostalgia—intersect? In your framework, how does this identity fragmentation reshape the nature of Bulgarian Euroscepticism?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Bulgarian Euroscepticism rests on several paradoxes. The first is that the EU and “Europe” are frequently depicted as external to Bulgaria and Bulgarians—as actors that impose unacceptable values and adopt a lecturing posture. Yet this hostility toward external influence does not extend to all external actors. Russia, for example, is often not perceived as foreign in the same way; rather, it is framed as culturally “internal” due to a presumed Slavic-Orthodox affinity.
The second paradox is temporal. Resistance to the EU did not precede Bulgaria’s accession but developed alongside it. Until the early 2000s, Bulgaria was characterized by a broad pro-European consensus.
Third, although Bulgaria has been an EU member state for years, European issues remain weakly embedded in its domestic political agenda. This does not mean that anti-EU narratives are absent. On the contrary, they are visible in discourses about massive migration allegedly changing the national gene pool, “stealing” the pensions of the elderly because EU policies and values are too liberal, and attacks on so-called “gender ideology,” among other themes.
Fourth, the deeper Bulgaria’s European integration becomes, the more its political elites tend to adopt anti-European positions. This shift occurs primarily through the normalization of populism. In this sense, within the Bulgarian context, the relationship between Euroscepticism and populism is particularly important—though not predetermined. There are also examples of populist, anti-establishment projects that remain pro-European. Among voters, too, there are those who are anti-establishment and anti-corruption yet remain pro-European. Notably, Radev has managed to mobilize them as well, including a significant portion of the so-called Generation Z.
There is also one more factor that should not be overlooked: his flirtation with the idea of a potential referendum on the euro. People do not necessarily need a rational explanation for why food is expensive; they need someone or something to blame. Prices do not even have to rise in reality—it is enough to sustain a narrative of rising costs. In this sense, the timing and the overall situation played perfectly into Radev’s hands.
Exhaustion, Silence, and the Power of Narrative Control
Protesters chant anti-government slogans during a demonstration in central Sofia, Bulgaria on July 26, 2013. Photo: Anton Chalakov / Dreamstime.
Should Radev’s success be understood primarily as anti-establishment populism, geopolitical revisionism, or a hybrid formation in which anti-corruption discourse masks a deeper pro-Russian reorientation?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Any of these three explanations is valid, yet even taken together, they remain too simplistic. As a citizen, I find it increasingly difficult to remain silent about the pervasive corruption in Bulgaria and the broader condition of the country, or to withhold my solidarity with the despair my fellow citizens feel toward the political elite. After the events of recent years, and the evident futility of going to the polls for an eighth time, there is a sense of collective exhaustion. Nevertheless, I will attempt an answer within an academic framework.
In my view, the main reason for his victory lies in what I would describe as a specific discursive situation. Since 2020, Bulgaria has been caught not only in a cycle of repeated elections but also in a cycle of empty rhetoric. Radev has managed to control the narrative so effectively that he appears to tell everyone what they want to hear—largely through silence. This is neither classic anti-elitist rhetoric built on the populist trope of the corrupt elite versus the honest, long-suffering people nor a standard expression of movements grounded in a thin-centred ideology.
“We are ready, we can do it, and we will succeed”—the words with which he announced his departure from the presidency, later adopted as his campaign slogan—projected a sense of purpose. They offered not concrete details, but hope for an exit from a cycle of meaningless repetition. In a political environment where emotions and symbolic gestures carry greater weight than rational argument, and where both traditional and digital media amplify urgency and a pervasive sense of crisis, this has proven sufficient. For citizens who are exhausted and perceive threats as omnipresent, such messaging resonates deeply.
Populism as the New Normal in Bulgarian Politics
In your work with Evelina Staykova, you argue that populism in Bulgaria has become normalized through party-system exhaustion, state–economy fusion, institutional distrust, and the digital turn. Does the 2026 election represent the culmination of this normalization?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Since 2001, Bulgaria has experienced several so-called waves of populism: the return of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the rise of GERB, and the emergence of post-2020, protest-driven, short-lived “pop-up” political projects. Taken together, these developments illustrate how what was once an episodic phenomenon has become a structural feature of the system. Paradoxically, the populist wave has itself become a constant.
Populism is now the defining characteristic of Bulgaria’s political order—the norm rather than the exception—making it unrealistic to expect fundamentally different outcomes. Radev fits squarely within this pattern: his victory represents not an unexpected populist surge, but the predictable result of a persistently populist political environment, shaped by the specific discursive situation I mentioned.
If this moment does represent a culmination, one might expect either a subsequent decline in populism or a reversion to pre-populist politics. However, such a scenario currently appears unlikely.
Radev has long combined anti-corruption, nationalist, and anti-establishment rhetoric from within one of the state’s highest institutions. Does his transition from the presidency to executive power illustrate the transformation of populism from protest discourse into governing logic?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: This is the greatest challenge he faces. The presidency, even though he ultimately governed alone through caretaker governments and later during the pre-election period, gave him the opportunity to craft narratives. However, when one commands such a majority and holds executive power, concrete actions and policies are required.
We have had populists in power before—the GERB administration is one such example—but the dynamics were different. The coalition nature of those governments, especially the most recent one, created room to maneuver. Under Radev, there will be no such leeway. And that is the greatest challenge we face. Under these conditions, the path to autocracy becomes all too easy.
Limits of the Orbán Analogy
Editorial illustration: Rumen Radev and Viktor Orbán depicted against national flags, symbolizing political tensions between Bulgaria and Hungary. Photo: Dreamstime.
How should we assess the analogy between Radev and Orbán? Does Radev possess the ideological coherence and institutional ambition required for Orbán-style illiberal state-building, or is Bulgaria’s EU dependency likely to constrain him?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Let us begin with the obvious: Orbán is an experienced politician with a long, well-documented, and easily traceable career. Radev, by contrast, was effectively parachuted from the military into the presidency—a role he has never fully mastered. He entered politics without a solid ideological, political, or broader conceptual foundation, essentially as an empty vessel into which almost anything could be poured.
Another obvious point is that Bulgaria is not Hungary. Radev lacks ideological consistency and has no substantial political background or prior experience; he is, to a large extent, a product of the circumstances that enabled his rise—a product of the status quo, the absence of alternatives, and the prevailing populist momentum. Looking back, we also cannot entirely rule out the possibility that his ascent was shaped by external forces. What is beyond doubt, however, is the presence of clear ambition.
In this sense, the emergence of a non-liberal form of democracy in Bulgaria cannot be ruled out. The European Union, having learned from its experience with Hungary, is likely to be far more cautious. Against this backdrop, Radev’s first major test will be the so-called judicial reform.
Is Radev better understood as an Orbán-type system builder, a Fico-type pragmatic Eurosceptic, or a specifically Bulgarian figure shaped by Russophile memory, anti-corruption politics, and institutional volatility?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: I do not think these comparisons meaningfully deepen our understanding of Radev or improve our ability to predict future developments. There are simply too many specific factors at play, and the international landscape is in constant flux. What existed elsewhere yesterday may not necessarily apply here tomorrow.
The Politics of Dual Discourse
Your research suggests that Bulgarian populism often blurs ideological distinctions. How should we classify Progressive Bulgaria: left-conservative, national-populist, technocratic-populist, or post-ideological?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Yes, populism undoubtedly blurs ideological distinctions; this is intrinsic to its nature. Consider Progressive Bulgaria’s program: despite the label “progressive,” its economic agenda is largely far right, even though some members of its expert economic team previously worked on more left-leaning projects. This example alone illustrates the extent to which ideological lines are being blurred.
For this reason, I see the party as best fitting within a post-ideological framework. Populism can be understood as a de-ideologized ideology. It incorporates elements from other ideologies, yet remains neither left nor right, and this is precisely one of the greatest dangers it poses—the de-ideologization, and consequently the depoliticization, of the political. Progressive Bulgaria, at least for now, aligns well with this understanding.
Does Radev’s discourse of “pragmatism” toward Russia and “critical thinking” toward Europe signal a strategic foreign policy stance, or does it reveal a more profound ontological insecurity in Bulgaria’s self-understanding as both a European and historically Russia-linked polity? How does identity anxiety translate into political legitimacy for such leaders?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: I believe these statements by Radev are part of a broader strategy to tell each audience what it wants to hear. It is highly likely that he will continue to use one discourse in Bulgaria and another in Brussels. This is nothing new; Bulgarian politicians have long maintained such a dual discourse. In Radev’s case, however, it will be especially evident, likely conveyed through various spokespersons as well.
At the same time, Radev will have to speak not only to pro-Russian citizens at home. The EU still enjoys the support of more than half of Bulgarians, and some of those who backed Radev did so not because of his pro-Russian stance, but because of his anti-corruption declarations. He will have to meet their expectations with tangible actions, as narrative alone will no longer suffice.
Strategic Ambiguity Between Brussels and Moscow
Radev’s Ukraine stance appears to combine opposition to military aid with reluctance to openly block EU decisions. Is this strategic ambiguity a governing necessity, or a sign of deeper tension between his electorate’s geopolitical pluralism and his own Russophile instincts?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: I cannot say whether Radev holds Russophile instincts. If he does, it would be rather ironic given his background in American military academies. Joking aside, there is a Russian saying: “We will live and we will see”—time will tell. However, I would assume that Radev will not openly oppose EU decisions.
To what extent did Radev absorb the political space of openly pro-Russian and nationalist parties such as Revival, and does this suggest moderation of the far right or mainstreaming of its core themes?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: The myth of moderation is remarkably persistent, but I do not find it convincing. For years, analysts have claimed that once the far right gains power, it will be tamed. The opposite has happened: instead, far-right views have steadily become the norm. One need only look across the EU to observe this trend.
When it comes to Revival, Radev succeeded in attracting a significant portion of its electorate. As I have already noted, he now faces the difficult task of continuing to speak to multiple constituencies at once—and to do so convincingly through his actions. This will determine whether he fully absorbs the Revival electorate or, conversely, whether that electorate becomes further radicalized and shifts into opposition. I would not underestimate the leader of Revival, who is a seasoned political actor.
Given Bulgaria’s captured institutions, weak trust, and repeated anti-corruption mobilizations, can Radev realistically dismantle oligarchic networks, or does his concentration of power risk reproducing the same state-capture logic under a new banner?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: This issue is extremely important. The resignation of the acting chief prosecutor, coming just days after Radev’s victory, was among the first signs of a new arrangement and already signals a realignment within oligarchic networks. I would also return to the question of how Radev’s seemingly expensive campaign was funded. Where did that money come from? Even these few points leave little room for optimism.
Radev’s regime is likely to reconstitute a state-capture model—perhaps initially in a more covert and less overtly assertive form—but such a configuration is unlikely to remain restrained over time.
From Anti-Elite Narrative to Elite Reality
Anti-government protests against corruption intensified across Sofia, Bulgaria on July 15, 2020. Photo: Dreamstime.
You have argued that anti-establishment populists in power may themselves become the new elite. How quickly might this paradox confront Radev once he assumes responsibility for inflation, eurozone adjustment, corruption reform, and EU funding?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Radev has long belonged to the elite. After all, he has been the sitting president for nearly nine years. His seemingly modest gestures—driving his own car, grumbling about the lack of parking spaces in Sofia, and publicly paying his parking tickets—are mostly for show, part of the narrative drafting.
That said, I understand the core of the question. Given the international environment and the many urgent issues awaiting resolution, the risk that mounting challenges will overwhelm the new status quo is very real. Radev’s victory will ultimately need to be substantiated through concrete actions. Let us return to the notion of a “de-ideologized ideology” and the broader process of depoliticizing politics. How can genuinely sustainable policies be designed when they are no longer anchored in a clear and coherent vision?
My concern is that the emerging political reality is stripping politics of its very essence: not only the capacity to deliver immediate solutions, but also the obligation to develop policies grounded in a substantive vision of the world and its internal order. Returning to Radev, it is entirely possible that the failure of the new elite could trigger a fresh wave of protests. The key questions are whether such protests would be strong enough and, more importantly, what kind of new political configuration they might produce.
A new, powerful actor—a new master of the narrative who can and will succeed—will not emerge overnight. The possibility that, if Radev fails, Bulgaria could enter yet another cycle of instability cannot be ruled out. Even so, I am inclined to believe that Radev and those around him will, at least for a while, remain in power.
Diaspora Divides and the Limits of Democratic Agency
In your work on contestatory citizenship, you highlight the transformative potential of civic agency. In the current context, can civic mobilization and diaspora engagement mitigate what appears to be an emerging crisis of democratic and European identity, or are these forms of participation themselves being reshaped by populist narratives of belonging and exclusion?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: Let me begin by noting that the diaspora is not necessarily pro-European—quite the contrary. While some are pro-European, others are anti-European, including Bulgarian emigrants in other EU member states. I continue to believe in the power of contestatory citizenship. However, as I have already noted, the key question is what exactly a new wave of protests might bring about.
Looking ahead, do you expect Radev’s Bulgaria to become a pragmatic EU-anchored government with Russophile rhetoric, a soft illiberal regime inside the EU, or an unstable populist experiment likely to fracture under the burdens of governance?
Assoc. Prof. Ildiko Otova: I do not think these three options are mutually exclusive.
In this incisive analysis, Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois interrogates how contemporary far-right discourse mobilizes gendered and aesthetic hierarchies to structure political legitimacy. Focusing on the controversy surrounding Rassemblement National (RN) leader Jordan Bardella’s relationship with Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Dr. Bauvois demonstrates how misogynistic rhetoric operates through a dual mechanism of delegitimation and idealization. The stigmatized figure of the female sociologist—constructed as intellectually suspect and aesthetically deficient—is juxtaposed with the idealized “princess” archetype, embodying socially sanctioned femininity. This contrast reveals how populist communication instrumentalizes gendered imagery, transforming private relationships into symbolic resources that reinforce political narratives, hierarchies of visibility, and claims to cultural legitimacy.
The relationship between Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally / Rassemblement National (RN), and Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies has recently attracted significant media attention in France and abroad, particularly after their romance was featured on the cover of a gossip magazine and circulated widely across both political and lifestyle media outlets.
During a televised exchange on this subject, Sébastien Chenu, a leading figure of the Rassemblement National, stated: “I am delighted that [Bardella] is in love, I am delighted that his partner, who could possibly become First Lady, is a young lady who speaks six languages.” Interpelled by the journalist who noted that Maria Carolina is a “luxury influencer,” he responded: “Why not!” He then added: “Not everyone is destined to be a sociology lecturer,”“ugly, badly groomed, and bitter,” (Chenu, n.d.).
Chenu’s remarks triggered significant backlash across political, media, and academic circles.As a national spokesperson for the Rassemblement National, Chenu is already recognized for his provocative communication style, which was especially apparent in this instance. The French National Union of Researchers, for instance, stated that these comments reflect the Rassemblement National’s anti-feminist positioning, which regularly targets women’s rights and reproduces outdated gender stereotypes.
The Sociologist: Failed Femininity
At the center of Chenu’s remark lies the figure of the Sociologist, a familiar symbolic target in far-right discourse. In France, sociology occupies a particularly visible position within broader “culture wars” dynamics, where academic disciplines become entangled in political and ideological conflicts over questions of identity, inequality, and gender. Within this context, sociology is often framed by some right-wing and far-right political actors as emblematic of a politicized or ideologically biased academia.
Crucially, however, the figure used by Chenu is here implicitly gendered: it is not a neutral academic subject that is evoked, but specifically the female sociology lecturer, whose presence is central to the rhetorical effect of the statement rather than incidental to it. The emphasis on a woman in an academic position is significant because it enables the statement to operate simultaneously through professional and gendered delegitimation, thereby amplifying its symbolic effect.
This framing reflects three intersecting discursive logics. First, populist anti-intellectualism constructs experts and academics, more often in social science, as ideologically driven rather than legitimate producers of knowledge. Second, it specifically frames female academics as socially deviant and suspect. Third, misogynistic aesthetic stereotyping delegitimizes women through appearance and affect, casting them as Chenu describes as “ugly” and “bitter.” Together, these patterns construct the figure of the female social sciences academic as a rhetorically productive figure within far-right discourse, whose authority is simultaneously undermined along epistemic, social, and gendered lines.
Female academics and public intellectuals are disproportionately targeted through appearance-based insults and narratives of emotional instability, particularly when they are associated with feminist or progressive positions. Within this frame, the figure of the female sociology lecturer mobilized by Chenu is used as an instance of failed femininity, insofar as she is represented as failing to conform to normative expectations of feminine appearance, emotional disposition, respectability and desirability.
The Princess: Worthy Femininity
In contrast to the representation of the female sociologist as ugly and bitter, Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies is implicitly constructed through a combination of aristocratic lineage and conventional markers of attractiveness—youth, blonde hair, and normative beauty—alongside her prestige and glamour. The opposition between these stereotypes reflects two radically different regimes of femininity within far-right populist discourse, structured around processes of delegitimation and idealization.
Within this configuration, the figure of the Princess does not merely function as an aesthetic ideal, but also as a form of symbolic validation. It produces a culturally legible ideal of femininity in which aesthetic conformity and social status reinforce one another. It illustrates how visibility and worth are distributed unevenly, rendering certain bodies desirable and socially legitimate, while others are marked as deviant or unworthy —an opposition explicitly echoed in Chenu’s references to ugliness and bodily neglect.
More than a static ideal, the Princess figure operates as a normative reference point for acceptable and desirable femininity, where beauty, refinement, and social legitimacy are tightly aligned. Taken together, these contrasting constructions of femininity serve a broader populist logic of image-making, in which gendered archetypes are mobilized to organize hierarchies of legitimacy, visibility, and credibility. In this sense, the Princess archetype embodies the “right” kind of femininity and womanhood within this symbolic economy—one that is aesthetically intelligible, socially valorized, and politically functional.
The Princess figure also works particularly well in the context of Bardella’s electoral positioning ahead of the 2027 presidential race, especially given the timing and circulation of the orchestrated, paparazzi-style photographs of the couple. The Princess figure is highly media-friendly and easily integrated into simplified narrative formats, including “fairy-tale” framings that translate personal relationships into emotionally resonant political stories. In this sense, rather than functioning as a private individual, the Princess operates as a branding resource.
The Populist Leader and the Princess: Romance as Political Resource?
This romance between the young, ambitious populist leader of the French far right and the glamorous jet-setter princess can indeed be seen as part of a wider strategy of political communication and personal branding, contributing to the construction of Bardella’s profile as a prospective presidential candidate.
It also reinforces a narrative of upward social mobility, in which Bardella’s self-presentation as emerging from a modest, working-class background is juxtaposed with his growing proximity to aristocratic lineage and inherited forms of cultural and social capital.
However, this construction is also potentially ambivalent. Bardella has long cultivated an image as a politician who speaks for ordinary people against the elites, a figure of social ascent from below. Yet his relationship with a luxury influencer, jetsetter and heir to a fortune worth several hundred million euros—risks complicating that populist narrative of proximity to these “ordinary people” he claims to represent.
References
Chenu, S. [@sebchenu]. (n.d.). “Je suis ravi de voir @J_Bardella amoureux et que tous les deux soient épanouis ! N’en déplaise à certains, tout le monde n’a pas vocation à finir comme une prof de sociologie à Nanterre, moche, mal coiffée et aigrie ! @franceinfo” [Post]. X.https://x.com/sebchenu/status/2045028471185821837
Urban waste governance in Nigeria reveals a critical yet overlooked nexus between environmental management, informality, and political legitimacy. This policy brief introduces the concept of survivalist populism to capture how structural exclusion within the informal waste economy generates distinct political subjectivities rooted in precarity, distrust, and disengagement. Despite underpinning material recovery and urban sustainability, informal waste workers remain marginalized, stigmatized, and criminalized—exposing a contradiction at the heart of state governance. The analysis demonstrates that exclusionary environmental regimes not only produce inefficiencies but also erode democratic legitimacy and risk fostering grievance-driven political mobilization. By advocating inclusive, circular governance frameworks, the brief positions environmental policy as a key site for democratic renewal, social inclusion, and the mitigation of emerging populist discontent.
In Nigeria, urban waste governance has remained an under-researched domain where the intersection of political contention, social marginalization, and emerging populist subjectivities can be observed. It is estimated that more than 32 million tons of solid waste are produced annually across the country, with approximately 13,000–15,000 tons generated daily by metropolitan Lagos alone, of which less than 40% is managed by formal waste collection systems (World Bank, 2020). This structural deficit has given rise to a vast informal waste sector, including scavengers, mobile waste traders, and community-based collectors, who constitute the backbone of material recovery systems—particularly for plastics and metals—thereby contributing to urban environmental sustainability.
Despite their indispensability for material recovery, the sector remains largely institutionally marginalized, socially stigmatized, and increasingly criminalized. This apparent contradiction—the necessity of these informal actors for material recovery alongside their political exclusion—points to a broader challenge in environmental governance at the nexus of urban informality and state legitimacy. Building on an urban political sociology perspective, alongside environmental governance scholarship, this policy brief argues that waste governance in Nigeria is fundamentally an issue of political legitimacy and citizenship at the urban level (Migdal, 2001; Davis, 2006).
Survivalist Populism and Urban Exclusion
This policy brief proposes the term survivalist populism to capture the emergence of political consciousness driven by structural exclusion in the informal economy. Survivalist populism describes a political orientation shaped by a lack of material security, institutional exclusion, and the daily struggle for urban survival. Distinct from programmatically oriented ideological populism and electorally driven populism, survivalist populism is affective, experience-driven, and rooted in the everyday conditions of survival.
In the informal waste economy, this type of political consciousness typically manifests through: (1) deep and entrenched distrust in state institutions; (2) narratives of neglect and exclusion; and (3) pragmatic avoidance of formal politics. This orientation signals a weakening of state legitimacy, as governance is often perceived as coercive rather than as a mechanism for welfare delivery.
As Norris and Inglehart (2019) argue, such dynamics often reflect a sustained political backlash rooted in prolonged social insecurity and inequality affecting marginalized populations. Phrases such as “we are unseen by government,” commonly used by actors in the informal waste sector, convey a sense of injustice and represent a redefinition of political identity beyond formal politics. This aligns with studies of informality demonstrating how marginalized groups often construct their own systems of governance in the absence of adequate state engagement (Hart, 1973; Migdal, 2001).
Informality, Labor and Urban Survival
Nigeria’s informal waste sector provides employment for millions and is a cornerstone of the wider informal economy, which supports more than 60 percent of national employment. The sector comprises a diverse group of predominantly young, often vulnerable and economically deprived individuals excluded from the formal economy. Their employment conditions are characterized by extreme income volatility, with earnings frequently falling below minimum wage benchmarks. At the same time, work is marked by precarious health and safety conditions, as it is typically carried out without personal protective equipment and often involves encounters with state agents, leading to harassment, evictions, and displacement.
Paradoxically, these informal workers are integral to urban environmental governance processes, recovering well over 50 percent of plastics across several Nigerian cities, reducing pressure on landfills, and supporting local manufacturing value chains. This situation exemplifies what Davis (2006) describes as the “structural indispensability of the urban poor within systems that simultaneously exclude them,” reflecting a persistent, state-induced failure to integrate informal labor, even as it continues to be tolerated and relied upon.
Governance Failures and Democratic Risks
The systemic exclusion of informal waste workers results in significant governance and democratic risks.
First, it reinforces the state’s dominant reliance on punitive, rather than inclusive, approaches to environmental governance by criminalizing participation in the sector. Informal waste picking is often banned or tightly regulated at the state level without providing viable livelihood alternatives.
Second, enforcement-led approaches to environmental regulation erode state legitimacy, as interventions are primarily experienced as coercive rather than enabling, particularly among excluded groups (Migdal, 2001).
Third, there are emerging signs of the political instrumentalization of exclusion and grievance, whereby marginalized groups are invoked in electoral rhetoric but excluded from substantive policymaking—a pattern that may transform social and environmental exclusion into a tool for political leverage.
Finally, these dynamics generate environmental inefficiencies, as the marginalization of recyclers weakens waste sorting and recovery systems, thereby increasing pressure on landfills. Collectively, these processes risk fostering long-term political disillusionment and undermining stability in urban governance.
Achieving effective environmental governance requires a critical shift toward inclusive, circular economy frameworks that recognize informal labor as essential to urban environmental sustainability.
Formal Integration and Recognition: Relevant environmental agencies at both state and national levels should take measures to formally recognize and register workers in the informal waste economy and ensure their inclusion in urban waste management systems through collaborative arrangements and partnerships among the state, the formal sector, and informal waste actors.
Circular Economy Integration: Circular economy strategies at both subnational and national levels must clearly identify and define informal waste workers as central participants in sustainable waste management, with targeted incentive packages to support small recycling enterprises and strengthen informal material recovery value chains.
Social Protection Measures: Support for these workers should be complemented by a targeted system of social protection that provides access to essential services such as microcredit and health insurance, as well as structured livelihood development and transition support programs.
Participatory Governance Structures: Urban waste management authorities should develop and operationalize structured participatory mechanisms that provide informal waste workers with a platform for engagement and a voice in decision-making processes affecting their livelihoods and the environment.
Narrative Reframing and Public Recognition: The persistent social stigmatization of informal waste workers should be actively challenged through reframing their roles as valuable contributors to urban environmental sustainability, rather than as nuisances within the cityscape, by both state institutions and the media.
Policy Implications for Europe and the Global South
The findings from Nigeria’s informal waste sector offer important lessons for European policymakers transitioning toward a circular economy, as well as for cities in the Global South undergoing rapid urbanization, where informality remains integral to urban service provision, but policy responses often oscillate between marginalization and criminalization. In Nigeria, neglecting informal environmental actors not only undermines the efficiency of environmental systems but can also lead to significant political consequences, including alienation, disengagement, and the emergence of populist responses.
This case underscores for European actors—particularly in contexts of increasing migration, urban informalization, and the shift toward circular economy models—the imperative of designing inclusive governance mechanisms that integrate vulnerable labor into formal systems rather than pushing it to the margins. More broadly, the findings highlight the need to conceptualize environmental governance as a tool of social inclusion and political consolidation, not merely technical efficiency. Failure to implement such reforms is likely to deepen urban political disaffection and accelerate the rise of grievance-driven populist mobilization.
Conclusion
The crisis of waste management in Nigeria is a manifestation of the structural tension between environmental governance and democratic inclusion. The persistence of exclusionary waste regimes reinforces a survivalist populist orientation grounded in precarity and institutional marginality, which may contribute to political instability. Conversely, the inclusion of marginalized informal waste collectors in formal policymaking processes offers mutually beneficial outcomes in terms of environmental efficiency and democratic legitimacy, thereby repositioning waste governance beyond a purely environmental imperative toward a nexus for inclusive urban democracy.
(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria and Nonresident Research Fellow at the ECPS.
References
Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. Verso. London
Hart, K. (1973). “Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 11(1), 61–89.
Migdal, J. S. (2001). State in society: Studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another. Cambridge University Press.
Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press.
World Bank. (2020). Nigeria: Enhancing solid waste management for sustainable urban development.
This commentary by Professor Majid Bozorgmehri situates the 2026 confrontation within a broader matrix of regional rivalry, nuclear deterrence, and asymmetric warfare. He argues that the conflict reflects not an isolated escalation but the deepening of a long-standing security dilemma, driven by both material power asymmetries and ideational forces. Drawing on a synthesis of realism and constructivism, Professor Bozorgmehri demonstrates how strategic calculation, identity, and normative commitments interact in shaping state behavior. As the war expands across multiple domains—from proxy networks to maritime chokepoints—it highlights the limits of conventional military superiority and points toward a likely trajectory of managed escalation, coercive diplomacy, and negotiated equilibrium.
The ongoing war involving Iran, the United States, and Israel in 2026 can be interpreted as a complex interstate conflict situated within a broader matrix of regional rivalry, nuclear deterrence concerns, and asymmetric warfare dynamics. Rather than constituting an isolated confrontation, the war reflects an intensification of long-standing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, generating wide-ranging humanitarian, economic, infrastructural, political, and environmental consequences. For Iran, which has already experienced prolonged exposure to international sanctions, economic stagnation, and domestic socio-political pressures, the war has exacerbated existing structural vulnerabilities while introducing new dimensions of humanitarian strain and systemic instability (Akhigbodemhe & Azubuike, 2025: 300). At the same time, this confrontation appears to be entering a qualitatively new phase with the potential to reshape the regional geopolitical order (Alobeid, 2025: 8).
From the standpoint of international relations theory, and particularly within the framework of structural realism, the conflict can be conceptualized as a manifestation of the security dilemma, whereby defensive measures undertaken by one actor are interpreted as offensive threats by others, thereby producing a self-reinforcing cycle of escalation (Waltz, 1979; Jervis, 1978; Baltaci, 2022: 2241). However, a single theoretical lens is insufficient to fully explain the dynamics of this war. A more comprehensive analytical framework emerges from the integration of realism and constructivism, as proposed in the concept of “realist constructivism” (Barkin, 2003: 338). Within this hybrid framework, the policies of the United States and Israel can be interpreted primarily through realist assumptions emphasizing power, security, and strategic calculation, whereas Iran’s behavior reflects a stronger influence of ideational factors, including identity, revolutionary ideology, and normative commitments. This theoretical synthesis enables a more nuanced understanding of how material power and normative structures interact in shaping state behavior.
Historically, the strategic rivalry between Israel and Iran has evolved over several decades, particularly since the late 1990s, into a multidimensional confrontation encompassing direct and indirect forms of conflict. Iran has consistently supported a network of non-state actors positioned along Israel’s periphery, while Israel has responded through a combination of military deterrence, intelligence operations, and targeted strikes aimed at constraining Iran’s regional influence (Dryden, 2023: 84; Tanios, 2020). The escalation observed in 2026, including coordinated military actions by the United States and Israel against Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure, represents the culmination of these long-term antagonisms. Such actions have been interpreted by analysts as preventive or preemptive strategies designed to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities and weaken its deterrence posture.
The military balance within this conflict is characterized by a pronounced asymmetry. The United States and Israel possess significant advantages in terms of conventional military capabilities, including advanced airpower, intelligence systems, and precision-strike technologies. In contrast, Iran has developed an asymmetric warfare doctrine intended to mitigate these disadvantages. This doctrine relies on ballistic missile systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, and decentralized proxy networks capable of operating across multiple theaters (Cordesman, 2007). Furthermore, Israel has intensified its military activities in Syria and expanded covert security cooperation with several Arab states, particularly in response to perceived Iranian entrenchment in the region (Furlan, 2022: 178). Consequently, the conflict cannot be reduced to a simple balance-of-power equation but should instead be understood as a confrontation between divergent strategic paradigms.
The persistence of Iran’s retaliatory capabilities despite sustained military pressure underscores a central finding in strategic studies: the superiority of conventional force does not necessarily guarantee decisive political outcomes when confronting a resilient and adaptive adversary (Arreguín-Toft, 2005). In this regard, the conflict demonstrates key features of hybrid warfare, combining direct interstate confrontation with proxy engagements, cyber operations, and economic coercion. Iranian-aligned groups operating across the Middle East and extending in some cases toward the Red Sea and parts of Eastern Africa, have contributed to broadening the geographical scope of the conflict (Bazoobandi & Talebian, 2023). This expansion complicates the strategic environment for both the United States and Israel, increasing the likelihood of miscalculation and unintended escalation (Byman, 2018).
One of the most critical dimensions of this escalation concerns maritime security, particularly in relation to the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-fifth (20.9 %) of global oil supply transits (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026). Any disruption in this chokepoint would have profound implications for the global economy, potentially triggering inflationary shocks, financial instability, and broader systemic risks (World Bank, 2025: 81–82). Additionally, the strategic positioning of external powers such as Russia and China suggests that their policies toward the conflict are likely to be shaped by broader geopolitical calculations, which may not fully align with Iranian expectations (Rasanah, 2024: 4).
Despite the scale and intensity of military operations, several structural constraints limit the likelihood of a decisive outcome. Iran’s territorial size, population base, and institutional resilience render the prospect of externally imposed regime change highly uncertain without large-scale ground operations. Historical precedents, including the interventions in Iraq and Libya, have demonstrated the risks associated with state collapse and regional fragmentation. In the Iranian context, such a scenario could invite intervention by neighboring powers—including Turkey, Pakistan, and Gulf states—while also potentially intensifying subnational movements, such as Kurdish aspirations for autonomy or independence. These risks significantly raise the potential costs of escalation for external actors.
At the same time, the United States faces considerable constraints related to resource allocation, domestic political considerations, and strategic prioritization, all of which reduce its willingness to engage in a prolonged and large-scale military campaign. Israel, despite its advanced military capabilities, remains constrained by its limited strategic depth and exposure to missile and drone attacks. These factors collectively suggest that the conflict is unlikely to culminate in a decisive military victory and is instead evolving toward a phase characterized by coercive diplomacy and strategic bargaining.
Recent developments in the diplomatic arena reinforce this interpretation. Indirect negotiations, temporary ceasefire arrangements, and discussions concerning limitations on Iran’s nuclear program indicate a gradual shift toward a mixed strategy that combines military pressure with diplomatic engagement (International Crisis Group, 2026). From a theoretical perspective, this transition is consistent with game-theoretic models in which rational actors seek to optimize outcomes under conditions of uncertainty while avoiding mutually destructive escalation.
A scenario-based assessment of the conflict suggests that the most probable outcome, with an estimated likelihood of approximately 45–55 percent, is a negotiated settlement involving partial de-escalation, limited restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, and some degree of sanctions relief. A second scenario, with a probability of approximately 25–30 percent, envisions the continuation of a low-intensity conflict characterized by intermittent military engagements and persistent proxy activity. Less probable scenarios include broader regional escalation (10–15 percent) and internal regime collapse in Iran (5–10 percent), the latter being constrained by the resilience of existing political and security structures.
Overall, the available evidence indicates that the conflict is unlikely to produce a decisive military resolution. Instead, it is more likely to evolve into a managed confrontation or a negotiated equilibrium shaped by structural constraints, strategic interdependence, and the limits of military power. Within this context, some analysts argue that the survival of a contained but adversarial Iranian posture may serve the strategic interests of the United States and its regional allies by reinforcing security dependencies among Persian Gulf states and facilitating incremental normalization between Israel and certain Arab countries. While this interpretation remains subject to debate, it highlights the broader geopolitical implications of the conflict and its potential to reshape regional alignments over the long term.
(*) Majid Bozorgmehri is a Professor at Imam Khomeini International University, Iran, and a Visiting Scholar at York University, Toronto, Canada.
References
Akhigbodemhe, E.J. & Azubuike, G.I. (2025). “A 12-day war with long-term collateral consequences: A multi-dimensional analysis of the Israel-Iran war.” IJPSG 2025; 7(9): 300-309, E-ISSN: 2664-603X DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33545/26646021.2025.v7.i9d.694
Barkin, J. S. (2003, Sep.) “Realist Constructivism.” International Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 3, Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association: 325-342. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3186573
Bazoobandi, S. & Talebian, H. (2023). “The Evolvement of Iran–Israel’s Rivalry in the Red Sea and Eastern Africa,” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 17:4, 341-355. DOI: 10.1080/25765949.2023.2299076, https://doi.org/10.1080/25765949.2023.2299076
Campa, K.; Rezaei, B.; Moorman ,C.; Wells, K.; Morrison N.; Grace M. & Annika G. (2026). “Iran Update Special Report, March 27, 2026. “ Analyst Notes: Data Cutoff: 2:00 PM ET, The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and The Critical Threats Project (CTP),
Cordesman, A. H. & Kleiber, M. (2007, January). “Iran’s Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities: The Threat in the Northern Gulf.” DOI: 10.5040/9798400672521 ISBN: 9780313346125 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381088434_Iran’s_Military_Forces_and_Warfighting_Capabilities_The_Threat_in_the_Northern_Gulf
DryDen, J. (2023, Spring). “IRAN, ISRAEL, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SKIES OVER THE MIDDLE EAST” ÆTHER: A JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC AIRPOWER & SPACEPOWER, VOL. 2, NO. 1, :84-95
Furlan, M. (2022). “Israeli Iranian relations: past friendship, current hostility.” Israel Affairs, 28:2, 170-183, DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2022.2041304 https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2022.2041304
Jervis, R. (1978) “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jan., 1978), pp. 167-214, The Johns Hopkins University. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2009958
Tanios, S. (2020, January). “Iran, Israel, the Persian Gulf, and the United States: A Conflict Resolution Perspective.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352546074_Iran_Israel_the_Persian_Gulf_and_the_United_States_A_Conflict_Resolution_Perspective
This collection assembles the reports and full video recordings of the 28-session ECPS Workshop Series, integrating the Oxford in-person programme (July 1–3, 2025) with its extended virtual continuation (September 2025–April 2026). Together, these sessions offer a sustained interdisciplinary inquiry into the political and normative complexities of invoking “the people” in contemporary democratic life, with populism as a central analytical lens. Across diverse cases and theoretical perspectives, the series examines how populism both reflects democratic grievances and actively reshapes institutional and symbolic orders. By tracing themes such as representation, identity, legitimacy, and technological transformation, the collection provides a comparative and analytically rigorous account of democracy under strain, while highlighting the conditions under which democratic resilience may still emerge.
Compiled by ECPS Staff
This collection brings together the reports and full video recordings of the sixteen-session ECPS Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches, convened between September 4, 2025 and April 16, 2026. The series constitutes a direct continuation and intellectual expansion of the three-day, eight-session in-person programme held at St. Cross College, University of Oxford, on July 1–3, 2025. Together, these interconnected formats form a sustained scholarly intervention into one of the defining political questions of our time: the meaning, mobilization, and consequences of invoking “the people” in contemporary democratic life.
The Oxford gathering established the conceptual and normative foundations of this inquiry. Set against the sobering reality that between 2012 and 2024 one-fifth of the world’s democracies disappeared, participants explored how populist discourse—often structured through stark “us versus them” binaries—has reshaped political competition, eroded institutional trust, and strained the pluralistic fabric of liberal democracies. At the same time, the discussions underscored that democracy’s trajectory is neither uniformly declining nor predetermined. Across contexts, democratic resilience continues to emerge, often through the same contested language of “the people” that fuels its erosion.
The subsequent virtual programme extended this dialogue across sixteen bi-weekly sessions, enabling a broader, more sustained, and globally inclusive exchange. Bringing together scholars from political science, law, sociology, history, philosophy, and the arts, the series examined how “the people” is constructed, institutionalized, and contested across diverse political and cultural settings. From populist authoritarianism and crises of representation to religion, identity, digital transformation, and decolonial perspectives, the sessions traced the multiple trajectories through which populism operates—as both a symptom of democratic strain and a force capable of reshaping democratic norms and institutions.
A central thread running throughout the series is the dual character of “the people” as both a normative ideal and a political instrument. While it can serve as a basis for democratic inclusion, participation, and renewal, it can equally function as a mechanism of exclusion, homogenization, and majoritarian domination. Understanding the conditions under which these divergent outcomes unfold requires precisely the kind of interdisciplinary and comparative engagement that this programme has sought to cultivate.
By presenting the reports alongside the full recordings, this collection invites readers and viewers to revisit, engage with, and critically reflect upon the rich discussions that unfolded over the course of both the Oxford conference and its virtual continuation. In doing so, it offers not closure, but an ongoing invitation to interrogate the evolving relationship between populism, representation, and the future of democracy in the twenty-first century.
The ECPS, in collaboration with Oxford University, launched its Virtual Workshop Series on “The Rise of Populist Authoritarianism around the World” on September 4, 2025. Spanning 16 sessions through April 2026, the series examines how populist strategies reshape democracy across diverse contexts. Chaired by Professor Oscar Mazzoleni, the opening session featured Professor David Sanders’ keynote on six structural drivers fueling populism and its growing threats to liberal democracy. Case studies explored populist dynamics in the US, India, Greece, Thailand, and Argentina, highlighting intersections of dynasties, corporate power, elite cues, and economic crises. Discussant Dr. João Ferreira Dias emphasized three takeaways: populism as performance, polarization over persuasion, and the enduring impact of national political cultures.
On September 18, 2025, ECPS held the second session of the Virtual Workshop Series — “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy. Chaired by Professor Mavis Maclean (Oxford), the panel examined Poland’s democratic trajectory through themes of patriotism, constitutional conflict, human rights, and representation. Highlights included Professor Joanna Kurczewska’s call to recover Solidarity’s inclusive legacy, Dr. Kamil Joński’s analysis of Poland’s constitutional “quagmire,” Professor Małgorzata Fuszara’s exploration of contested women’s and minority rights, and Professor Jacek Kurczewski’s reframing of judicial representation. Discussants added comparative and moral-philosophical perspectives. The session concluded that Poland’s experience reflects global struggles: reclaiming inclusive traditions, defending institutions, and embedding rights remain vital for democratic renewal.
On October 2, 2025, the ECPS, in collaboration with Oxford University, held the third session of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Chaired by Dr. Marietta D.C. van der Tol, the session examined how populist and illiberal actors across Hungary, Slovakia, and the United States instrumentalize the language of religious freedom to consolidate power and reshape national identity. Presentations by Dr. Marc Loustau, Dr. Juraj Buzalka, and Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen, followed by reflections from Dr. Simon P. Watmough and Dr. Erkan Toguslu, revealed how religion, once central to pluralism, is increasingly politicized as a weapon in culture wars and transnational illiberal strategies.
On October 16, 2025, the ECPS held the fourth session of its Virtual Workshop Series “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches.” The session examined how political actors construct and mobilize “the people” to legitimize both inclusive and exclusionary political projects. Chaired by Professor Oscar Mazzoleni, the session featured presentations by Samuel Ngozi Agu, Shiveshwar Kundu, and Mouli Bentman & Michael Dahan, each exploring different regional and theoretical perspectives. Abdelaaziz El Bakkali and Azize Sargın provided incisive discussant feedback, followed by a lively Q&A. Concluding reflections by Prof. Mazzoleni emphasized populism’s dual nature as both a political strategy and a symptom of structural democratic crises, setting the stage for future interdisciplinary debate.
Session 5 of the ECPS–Oxford Virtual Workshop Series examined how populist movements across different regions construct “the people” as both an inclusive democratic ideal and an exclusionary political weapon. Moderated by Dr. Heidi Hart, the session featured presentations by Dr. Amir Ali, Dr. Yazdan Keikhosrou Doulatyari, and Andrei Gheorghe, who analyzed populism’s intersections with austerity politics, linguistic identity, and post-communist nationalism. Their comparative insights revealed that populism redefines belonging through economic moralization, linguistic appropriation, and historical myth-making, transforming pluralist notions of democracy into performative narratives of unity and control. The ensuing discussion emphasized populism’s adaptive power to manipulate emotion, memory, and discourse across diverse democratic contexts.
On November 13, 2025, the ECPS, in collaboration with Oxford University, held the sixth session of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Under the skillful moderation of Professor Ilhan Kaya (Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada), the session featured Dr. Jonathan Madison, Dr. João Mauro Gomes Vieira de Carvalho, and Associate Professor Andreea Zamfira, who examined how populism both mirrors and magnifies democracy’s crisis of representation. Their analyses, complemented by insightful discussant interventions from Dr. Amir Ali and Dr. Amedeo Varriale, generated a vibrant dialogue on institutional resilience, digital disruption, and the reconfiguration of democratic legitimacy in an age of populist contention.
Session 7 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series offered a compelling interdisciplinary examination of how contemporary populism unsettles the foundations of democratic representation. Bringing together insights from digital politics, the history of political thought, and critical social theory, the session illuminated the multiple arenas—affective, constitutional, and epistemic—through which representation is being reconfigured. Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano revealed how memetic communication and generative AI reshape political identities and moral boundaries within far-right movements. Maria Giorgia Caraceni traced these dynamics to enduring tensions within the conceptual history of popular sovereignty, while Elif Başak Ürdem demonstrated how neoliberal meritocracy generates misrecognition and drives grievances toward populist articulation. Collectively, the session highlighted the necessity of integrated, cross-disciplinary approaches for understanding the evolving crisis of democratic representation.
On December 11, 2025, the ECPS convened Session 8 of its Virtual Workshop Series under the theme “Fractured Democracies: Rhetoric, Repression, and the Populist Turn.” Chaired by Dr. Azize Sargin, the session examined how contemporary populism reshapes democratic politics through affect, moral narratives, and strategic communication. Assoc. Prof. Paul Joosse explored charismatic populism, focusing on suffering, moral inversion, and ritualized transgression in Trumpism, while Artem Turenko analyzed the evolving rhetoric of AfD across the 2019 and 2024 European Parliament elections. Discussants Dr. Helena Rovamo and Dr. Jonathan Madison offered critical reflections on theory, methodology, and causality. A lively Q&A further addressed economic grievance, cultural representation, and the politics of knowledge production, underscoring the session’s interdisciplinary depth and relevance.
On January 8, 2026, ECPS convened Session 9 of its Virtual Workshop Series, titled “Populism, Crime, and the Politics of Exclusion.” The session was chaired and moderated by Dr. Helen L. Murphey, who framed exclusionary populism as a dual process that claims to empower an “authentic people” while simultaneously criminalizing stigmatized “others.” Assoc. Prof. Christopher N. Magno introduced the concept of criminal populism, showing how legal scandal and criminality can be transformed into political capital in the United States and the Philippines. Dr. Russell Foster examined how Austria’s FPÖ and France’s Rassemblement National legitimate anti-migration agendas through securitization and Gramscian metapolitics. Saga Oskarson Kindstrand drew on ethnographic research on the Sweden Democrats to challenge assumptions that populism undermines party organization. Discussants Hannah Geddes and Vlad Surdea-Hernea provided incisive reflections on theory, methodology, and democratic implications.
ECPS convened Session 10 of its Virtual Workshop Series on January 22, 2026, bringing together scholars to examine how democracies endure, adapt, and contest authoritarian pressures amid the normalization of populist discourse and the weakening of liberal-constitutional safeguards. Chaired by Dr. Amedeo Varriale, the session framed resilience as an active democratic project—defending rule of law, pluralism, and civic participation against gradual forms of authoritarian hollowing-out. Presentations by Dr. Peter Rogers, Dr. Pierre Camus, Dr. Soheila Shahriari, and Ecem Nazlı Üçok explored resilience across market democracies, local governance, feminist self-administration in Rojava, and diaspora activism confronting anti-gender politics. Discussants Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois and Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano connected these contributions through probing questions on the ambivalence, burdens, and transformative potential of resilience.
Session 11 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series, convened On Thursday, February 5, 2026, examined the tension between democratic inclusion as a normative promise and inclusion as an everyday institutional practice. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, the panel explored how belonging is constructed, experienced, and contested across administrative, participatory, historical, and theoretical domains. Contributions highlighted how exclusion often operates through subtle mechanisms—bureaucratic encounters, identity-based narratives, digital mobilization, and post-revolutionary boundary drawing—rather than overt denial. Across cases from the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, and liberal democracies more broadly, the session underscored that democratic legitimacy today depends on both representation and effective, fair governance. Collectively, the discussions illuminated why gaps between democratic ideals and lived experiences continue to fuel distrust, polarization, and populist mobilization.
Session 12 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series explored on On Thursday, February 19, 2026, how “decolonizing democracy” requires attention to the material and symbolic structures shaping participation, legitimacy, and representation. The presentations framed democracy not as a settled institutional model but as a contested field shaped by colonial legacies, extractive political economies, and identity-based struggles over inclusion and authority. Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja’s comparative study of Nigeria and the United Kingdom showed how environmental governance can produce “participation without power,” where formal inclusion coexists with persistent injustice. Dr. Salomon Essaga Eteme’s analysis of Cameroon highlighted how pluralism has intensified communal claims to state ownership, complicating political alternation. Supported by Dr. Gabriel Cyril Nguijoi’s feedback, the session underscored the value of concepts such as biocultural sovereignty and communocratic populism and emphasized the need for context-sensitive, interdisciplinary approaches to democratic renewal in the Global South.
Convened on On Thursday, March 5, 2026, Session 13 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series examined how “the people” are constructed, contested, and institutionalized across diverse political arenas. Chaired by Dr. Leila Alieva (Oxford School for Global and Area Studies), the panel brought together interdisciplinary perspectives on populism, democratic participation, and representation. Assistant Professor Jasmin Hasanović analyzed the ethnic dynamics of populist subject formation in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s post-Dayton political order. Dr. Sixtine Van Outryve explored how participants in France’s Yellow Vests movement sought to institutionalize grassroots assembly-based democracy. Nieves Fernanda Cancela Sánchez examined the exclusion of stateless and marginalized communities from international diplomacy, arguing for a “right to diplomacy.” Together, the contributions illuminated the evolving and contested meaning of “the people” in contemporary democratic politics.
On March 19, 2026, session 14 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series examined, how artificial intelligence, algorithmic infrastructures, and digital platforms are reshaping democratic participation in the contemporary era. Bringing together perspectives from political science, communication, cultural heritage, and democratic theory, the panel explored the implications of AI for political legitimacy, collective identity, and the future of “the people” in an increasingly post-digital world. Contributions ranged from public attitudes toward algorithmic governance and the role of ChatGPT in shaping cultural memory to Big Tech’s influence on class consciousness and the fragmentation of digital publics. Together, the presentations and discussions showed that AI is no longer external to democracy, but increasingly constitutive of its communicative, institutional, and symbolic foundations—raising urgent questions about power, accountability, and democratic contestation.
On Thursday, April 2, 2026, 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.
The final session of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series offered on April 16, 2026, a rich interdisciplinary reflection on democracy under conditions of deepening polarization. Bringing together legal, historical, and political perspectives, the panel illuminated how “the people” is constructed, contested, and mobilized across different contexts—from defamation law in the United States to institutional legitimacy in Israel, classical rhetoric in Athens, and emotional narratives in contemporary European populism. A central insight concerned the interplay of law, emotion, and symbolic representation in shaping democratic resilience and vulnerability. By foregrounding the cultural and affective dimensions of politics, the session underscored that democracy is not only institutional but deeply interpretive—sustained, challenged, and reimagined through competing narratives of identity, legitimacy, and belonging.
Please cite as: ECPS Staff. (2026). “ECPS Virtual Workshop Series / Session 16 — Voices of Democracy: Art, Law, and Leadership in the Era of Polarization.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). April 20, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00147
The final session of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series offered a rich interdisciplinary reflection on democracy under conditions of deepening polarization. Bringing together legal, historical, and political perspectives, the panel illuminated how “the people” is constructed, contested, and mobilized across different contexts—from defamation law in the United States to institutional legitimacy in Israel, classical rhetoric in Athens, and emotion narratives in contemporary European populism. A central insight concerned the interplay of law, emotion, and symbolic representation in shaping democratic resilience and vulnerability. By foregrounding the cultural and affective dimensions of politics, the session underscored that democracy is not only institutional but deeply interpretive—sustained, challenged, and reimagined through competing narratives of identity, legitimacy, and belonging.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On Thursday, April 16, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened the sixteenth and final session of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches, under the title “Voices of Democracy: Art, Law, and Leadership in the Era of Polarization.” Bringing together perspectives from legal studies, political science, history, and discourse analysis, the session examined how democratic life is shaped—and at times distorted—through struggles over representation, institutional legitimacy, collective identity, and the symbolic construction of “the people” in contexts marked by deepening polarization.
The participants of the session were introduced by ECPS intern Daniela Puggia, whose introductory remarks on behalf of ECPS set the stage for the discussion and helped situate the panel within the wider aims of the workshop series. Chaired by Dr. Joni Doherty(Kettering Foundation), the session was organized around a broad but urgent set of questions: how are democratic norms defended when truth itself becomes contested? In what ways do institutional arrangements persist under conditions of deep social division? How do political leaders transform grief, fear, or resentment into collective identity and consent? And what role do art, speech, and symbolic representation play in either sustaining or undermining democratic life?
The panel featured four intellectually rich and conceptually complementary presentations. Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy (Stetson University) examined the role of defamation law in defending democracy in the United States, focusing on the legal and political significance of the Freeman and Moss case in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Dr. Niva Golan-Nadir (Reichman University), co-authoring with Dr. Michael Freedman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), explored how religious policy and balanced dissatisfaction shape institutional legitimacy within the Israeli military. Professor Elizabeth Kosmetatou(University of Illinois Springfield) offered a historically grounded reinterpretation of Pericles’ Funeral Oration as a rhetorically sophisticated form of populist mobilization in wartime Athens. Dr. Cristiano Gianolla (University of Coimbra), together with Lisete S. M. Mónico and Manuel João Cruz, analyzed the exclusionary identity of “the people” in radical right populism through a comparative study of emotional narratives in Portugal and Italy.
The session was further enriched by the interventions of its discussants, Dr. Justin Patch (Vassar College) and Dr. Amedeo Varriale (University of East London), whose comments drew connections across the presentations and raised broader questions concerning aesthetics, institutional resilience, populist rhetoric, and democratic contestation. Together, the contributions of chair, speakers, discussants, and moderator produced a wide-ranging interdisciplinary dialogue on the fragility, adaptability, and symbolic politics of democracy in an age of polarization.
Dr. Joni Doherty: Art, Speech, and the Politics of ‘the People’
Dr. Joni Doherty is Senior program officer for Democracy and the Arts at Kettering Foundation.
In her opening remarks for the sixteenth and final session of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series, Dr. Joni Doherty offered a concise yet conceptually rich framing of the session’s intellectual terrain. Originally designed to engage with the intersection of art, law, and education in an era of deepening polarization, the session underwent a modest recalibration due to the postponement of contributions addressing the artistic dimension. Nevertheless, Dr. Doherty briefly reintroduced this element, situating it within a broader reflection on populism and the ambivalent role of “the people” in contemporary political discourse.
Her remarks underscored a central tension: while populism often invokes “the people” as a normative good—an embodiment of democratic legitimacy—it can equally serve as a mechanism of exclusion and manipulation. In this sense, the category of “the people” is neither neutral nor inherently virtuous, but rather contingent and politically constructed. Dr. Doherty drew a parallel with the domain of art and free expression, noting that while freedom of speech and artistic autonomy are foundational democratic values, they are not immune to instrumentalization. Both can function as vehicles of propaganda, capable of mobilizing affect, distorting reality, and obscuring empirical truths.
This duality, she suggested, provides a unifying thread across the session’s presentations. The cases to be discussed—ranging from electoral manipulation in the United States to competing value claims in Israeli society, from classical rhetorical strategies in Pericles’ Funeral Oration to contemporary identity-based narratives in Italy—each illuminate how emotional appeals and symbolic constructs can reinforce or undermine democratic norms. Particularly striking is the recurring interplay between legitimacy and exclusion, where competing visions of “the people” are mobilized against one another.
Dr. Doherty concluded by posing a guiding question for the session: how can scholarly inquiry into free speech and populism reveal their inherent complexities in ways that enhance our capacity to interpret—and respond to—contemporary political developments? Her remarks thus set a reflective and critical tone, inviting participants to move beyond binaries and engage with the nuanced dynamics shaping democratic life today.
Prof. Ciara Torres-Spelliscy: “‘I Miss My Name’: Why Black American Election Workers Like Ruby Freeman Turn to Defamation Law to Defend Democracy”
Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is Brennan Center Fellow and Professor of Law at Stetson University.
In her presentation, Professor Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy offered a penetrating legal and normative analysis of the role of defamation law in defending democratic institutions in the United States. Drawing on her longstanding research at the intersection of corporate law, election law, and political corruption, she situated her remarks within a broader intellectual trajectory shaped by a fundamental question: what is the proper role of money—and, more recently, truth—in a democracy under strain?
Opening with a personal reflection, Professor Torres-Spelliscy invoked an early lesson from her father, an African American artist, who urged her to “ask the big questions.” This intellectual orientation has guided her scholarship over two decades, from examining the influence of corporate money in politics to confronting the more urgent contemporary concern of democratic survival. Her recent work, focusing on why election workers have turned to defamation law, reflects this shift in emphasis from structural distortions of democracy to the immediate threats posed by disinformation and institutional erosion.
At the core of her presentation was an exploration of defamation as a distinct category within First Amendmentjurisprudence. While much of her earlier work engages with campaign finance law—where the US Supreme Court has controversially equated money with speech—this paper turns to the limits of protected expression. Defamation, defined as the publication of false statements that harm an individual’s reputation, occupies a narrow but significant exception to constitutional free speech protections. Yet, as she emphasized, the legal threshold for proving defamation—particularly for public figures or officials—remains exceptionally high, requiring demonstration of “actual malice” under the landmark precedent of New York Times v. Sullivan.
This doctrinal background framed her analysis of the events surrounding the 2020 US presidential election and its aftermath. Professor Torres-Spelliscy provided a detailed account of the multi-pronged efforts to overturn the election results, commonly referred to as “the big lie”—the false claim that Donald Trump had won the election. She unpacked the mechanisms through which this narrative was constructed and disseminated, highlighting its reliance on a series of interlocking falsehoods and legal maneuvers. These included attempts to seize voting machines, orchestrate the “fake elector” scheme across key swing states, pressure state officials to alter vote counts, and pursue extensive litigation challenging electoral outcomes.
Particularly striking in her account was the role of legal and institutional settings in amplifying disinformation. False claims were not merely circulated through partisan media but were presented in formal venues—legislative hearings and court filings—where audiences typically expect a higher standard of truthfulness. This institutional embedding of falsehoods lent them a veneer of credibility, contributing to their widespread acceptance. Among the most consequential instances were the defamatory allegations made against two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, whose routine administrative duties were recast as evidence of electoral fraud.
Professor Torres-Spelliscy then turned to the question of accountability, observing that traditional mechanisms—most notably criminal prosecution—largely failed to produce meaningful consequences. Efforts to prosecute Trump and his associates, including federal proceedings led by Special Counsel Jack Smith and state-level cases in Georgia, ultimately collapsed due to legal, procedural, and political constraints, including the Supreme Court’s controversial expansion of presidential immunity and longstanding Department of Justice policies regarding sitting presidents.
In this context, she argued, two avenues of accountability proved more effective: professional disciplinary actions against attorneys and civil litigation through defamation suits. The disbarment of figures such as Rudy Giuliani and others signaled a form of institutional sanction within the legal profession. More significantly, however, defamation lawsuits brought by Freeman and Moss demonstrated the potential of tort law to address harms that the criminal justice system could not.
The case against Giuliani was particularly illustrative. Based in part on his dissemination of manipulated video footage—a so-called “cheap fake”—the lawsuit resulted in a nearly $150 million jury award in favor of the plaintiffs. While subsequent settlements limited the broader legal impact of the case, Professor Torres-Spelliscy underscored its symbolic and deterrent value. The magnitude of the damages signaled that even in a permissive speech environment, there remain boundaries beyond which legal consequences can be severe.
At the same time, she acknowledged the limitations of this pathway. Settlements, while providing compensation to victims, curtailed the possibility of appellate rulings that might have clarified or recalibrated the “actual malice” standard. Thus, the opportunity for doctrinal evolution in defamation law—potentially lowering barriers for plaintiffs in cases of egregious disinformation—was foreclosed, at least for now.
The human dimension of these events remained central to her analysis. Professor Torres-Spelliscy highlighted the profound personal and social costs borne by election workers, who faced harassment, threats, and racialized abuse. Their experience underscored the vulnerability of those tasked with administering democratic processes and the extent to which disinformation can destabilize not only institutions but also individual lives.
In conclusion, the presentation advanced a cautiously optimistic argument: while many institutional safeguards failed in the face of coordinated efforts to undermine electoral integrity, defamation law emerged as a residual mechanism of accountability. It does not, in itself, resolve the structural challenges facing democracy, but it offers a tangible means of redress for those harmed by falsehoods and a potential deterrent against future abuses. In an era marked by the strategic manipulation of truth, this legal avenue, however limited, may remain an essential component of democratic defense.
Dr. Niva Golan-Nadir: State Institutions in Divided Societies: Religious Policy and Societal Dissatisfaction in the Israeli Military”
Dr. Niva Golan-Nadir is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Reichman University.
In her presentation at the session, Dr. Niva Golan-Nadir offered a theoretically grounded and empirically rich examination of how state institutions sustain legitimacy in deeply divided societies. Focusing on the intersection of religion, policy, and military cohesion in Israel, her analysis advanced a nuanced challenge to conventional democratic theory, particularly regarding the relationship between citizen satisfaction and institutional stability.
At the heart of her intervention lay a reconsideration of the democratic process as it operates under conditions of persistent social division. In standard accounts, institutional design is expected to respond to public dissatisfaction: when policies lose legitimacy, citizens express discontent, and democratic mechanisms facilitate adjustment or reform. Yet, as Dr. Golan-Nadir emphasized, this model often fails to capture the dynamics of real-world political systems. In many cases, institutional arrangements remain remarkably stable despite enduring dissatisfaction, suggesting the presence of structural barriers that inhibit policy change. These “policy barriers” can lock in contested arrangements, producing long-standing gaps between public preferences and institutional outcomes.
To explain this apparent paradox, she introduced what she termed the “balanced dissatisfaction hypothesis.” In divided societies—where multiple groups hold conflicting preferences—policy arrangements may generate dissatisfaction across the board, but not in a manner that disproportionately burdens any single group. Under such conditions, dissatisfaction becomes diffused and symmetrical, preventing the emergence of a unified opposition capable of driving institutional change. Rather than destabilizing the system, this equilibrium of discontent can, counterintuitively, sustain institutional legitimacy and cohesion.
The Israeli case provided a compelling empirical context for this argument. Defined as both a Jewish and democratic state, Israel maintains a complex and historically rooted relationship between religion and state institutions. Dr. Golan-Nadir traced these arrangements back to pre-state agreements forged in 1947 by David Ben-Gurion, who sought to ensure unity among Jewish factions by embedding religious authority within key areas of public life. These included observance of the Sabbath, regulation of kosher food in public institutions, religious control over marriage, and the segmentation of educational systems along religious lines. Over time, these arrangements expanded to encompass additional domains such as burial practices, conversion, and questions of military service.
The result is a highly institutionalized form of religion-state integration that shapes both civilian and military life. In the context of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), these dynamics become particularly salient. As a central state institution with mandatory conscription, the IDF brings together individuals from across the religious spectrum—secular, traditional, religious, and ultra-Orthodox—within a single organizational framework. At the same time, it incorporates formal religious structures, including a military rabbinate that oversees the implementation of religious guidelines.
Dr. Golan-Nadir highlighted how these arrangements generate friction across different segments of society. Secular Israelis often view religious regulations—such as restrictions on activities during the Sabbath—as intrusive, while religious groups may perceive the military environment as insufficiently accommodating of their practices. The issue of ultra-Orthodox conscription, in particular, has emerged as a focal point of contention, especially in light of ongoing military demands and personnel shortages. Yet despite these tensions, the IDF continues to enjoy relatively high levels of public trust, in stark contrast to other political institutions such as the parliament or government, where distrust levels are significantly higher.
Empirical data presented in the study reinforced this paradox. Surveys indicate widespread dissatisfaction with religious policies across Israeli society, with a majority expressing discontent. However, perceptions of institutional fairness remain strikingly balanced. When asked which groups benefit most from military policies, respondents distributed their answers almost evenly among secular, religious, and mixed categories. This symmetry suggests that no single group perceives itself as systematically disadvantaged relative to others, even if all experience some degree of dissatisfaction.
From a theoretical standpoint, this finding challenges the assumption that legitimacy depends on the satisfaction of preferences. Instead, Dr. Golan-Nadir’s analysis suggests that legitimacy may derive from a perceived equilibrium of burdens and benefits. In other words, institutions can maintain cohesion not by fully satisfying any group, but by ensuring that dissatisfaction is shared in a relatively even manner. This insight has important implications for the study of civil-military relations, where cohesion is often understood as contingent upon alignment between institutional practices and societal preferences.
The presentation also engaged with broader theoretical frameworks concerning divided societies. Drawing on concepts such as confessionalism and power-sharing, Dr. Golan-Nadir situated Israel alongside other cases—such as Lebanon or Belgium—where deep social cleavages shape institutional design. In such contexts, the state often seeks to balance competing interests through proportional representation and negotiated arrangements. However, the Israeli case demonstrates that balance can also emerge through less formal mechanisms, including the distribution of dissatisfaction itself.
A further dimension of the analysis concerned the role of religion as both a source of identity and a structural constraint. When embedded within state institutions, religion acquires an organizational form that can limit pluralism and create barriers to alternative expressions. This monopolization of religious authority can alienate segments of the population, yet it also stabilizes expectations and reduces uncertainty. In the military context, this duality is particularly evident: religious norms may constrain individual behavior, but they also provide a shared framework that contributes to organizational coherence.
Dr. Golan-Nadir concluded by reflecting on the normative implications of her findings. One might expect that periods of acute external threat—such as ongoing conflict—would prompt a reevaluation of contentious policies, particularly those affecting military effectiveness. Yet the persistence of existing arrangements suggests that even existential pressures may not suffice to overcome entrenched institutional barriers. This underscores the resilience of policy frameworks rooted in historical compromise and collective identity.
At the same time, her analysis invites a more cautious interpretation of institutional stability. The endurance of the status quo does not necessarily indicate the absence of conflict, but rather its containment within a structured equilibrium. Whether such an equilibrium can be sustained indefinitely remains an open question, particularly in light of shifting demographic patterns and evolving political dynamics.
In sum, the presentation offered a sophisticated account of how democratic institutions operate under conditions of division and constraint. By foregrounding the concept of balanced dissatisfaction, Dr. Golan-Nadir provided a novel lens through which to understand the persistence of contested policies and the resilience of institutional legitimacy. Her analysis not only enriches debates on religion and state in Israel but also contributes more broadly to the study of democracy in fragmented societies.
Professor Elizabeth Kosmetatou: “Pericles’ Funeral Oration: A Populist Rhetoric for War and Politics”
Elizabeth Kosmetatou , a Professor, History Faculty, University of Illinois, Springfield.
In her presentation, Professor Elizabeth Kosmetatou offered a striking reinterpretation of one of the most celebrated texts of classical antiquity: the Funeral Oration attributed to Pericles in Book II of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Long regarded as the quintessential affirmation of Athenian democracy and civic virtue, the speech was reassessed not simply as a noble statement of political ideals, but as a carefully calibrated act of political persuasion delivered at a moment of mounting anxiety, military uncertainty, and personal risk for its speaker. Rather than treating the oration as an uncomplicated monument to democratic values, Professor Kosmetatou situated it within the realities of war and argued that it may also be understood as an early and remarkably sophisticated example of populist rhetoric.
She began by recalling the speech’s conventional status in modern scholarship and public memory. For generations, the oration has been read as a defining expression of classical Athens at its democratic height, a speech in which Pericles appears as the model statesman articulating the virtues of a free and self-confident polis. Yet this familiar reading, she argued, obscures the urgency of the political circumstances in which the speech was delivered. The funeral took place in 431 BCE at the public cemetery in the Kerameikos, at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. This was no ordinary ceremonial occasion. It followed the city’s first military losses in a conflict that would eventually last twenty-seven years, devastate Athenian power, and end with the city’s defeat and submission to Sparta. The event therefore carried far more than commemorative meaning: it was also a politically charged moment in which public grief, wartime expectation, and the credibility of leadership converged.
Professor Kosmetatou stressed that Pericles had entered the war with enormous confidence and had persuaded the Athenians that victory would be swift and assured. Athens, he believed, possessed the naval strength, wealth, and strategic advantages necessary to prevail. But by the time of the funeral, the war had already begun to expose the fragility of those expectations. Spartan invasions had ravaged the Athenian countryside, casualties had mounted, and the prospect of a quick victory was fading. In this setting, the oration had to do more than honor the dead. It had to restore confidence, legitimize sacrifice, and preserve the political narrative that Pericles himself had helped create.
One of the most revealing features of the speech, in Professor Kosmetatou’s reading, is precisely what it does not do. Although it is ostensibly a funeral oration, the fallen soldiers occupy relatively little space within it. Their deaths are acknowledged, but they do not stand at the center of the address. Nor does the speech dwell on personal mourning. On the contrary, women—mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters—are sternly instructed to observe restraint and silence. Pericles’ famous admonition that a woman’s greatest glory lies in not being talked about “for good or for evil among men” was interpreted here as more than a conventional reflection of gender norms. It also functioned politically: women, as the group most likely to express grief publicly and emotionally, were discouraged from turning mourning into a spectacle that might spread panic, resentment, or resistance.
Instead of foregrounding the dead, the speech foregrounds Athens itself. Its laws, institutions, customs, military courage, openness, intelligence, refinement, and civic spirit become the real object of celebration. Pericles constructs a portrait of Athens as uniquely balanced and superior: a city that cultivates beauty without extravagance and wisdom without softness, a city open to the world yet strong in war, intellectually vibrant yet disciplined in public duty. In one of the most enduring phrases of the speech, Athens becomes “the school of Hellas,” not merely one polis among others, but the model and teacher of the Greek world. Professor Kosmetatou showed how this move transforms the speech from an elegy into an affirmation of collective identity. The war dead are honored primarily because they embody the city’s virtues; their deaths serve as evidence of Athens’ greatness rather than as an occasion for reflection on loss.
This rhetorical strategy, she argued, performs distinctly political work. By emphasizing Athens as an exceptional community, the speech dissolves internal differences among citizens and subsumes social variation into a single, idealized people. Wealth, status, local loyalties, and divisions within the demos are rhetorically erased in favor of a unifying civic identity. The Athenians are not represented as a plural or contested body politic, but as a morally coherent collective defined by its superiority over others. In this sense, the speech constructs “the people” in a way that is highly recognizable to modern analyses of populist discourse: a unified moral community is imagined into being and then mobilized in support of political aims.
Professor Kosmetatou further argued that the oration establishes a powerful contrast between Athens and its enemies, especially Sparta, even when Sparta is not explicitly named. Athens is portrayed as open, free, flexible, cultured, and self-confident; its adversaries, by implication, are secretive, rigid, austere, and inferior. War is thereby reframed. It is no longer simply a contest over power, territory, or strategic interests. It becomes a struggle between ways of life and between political systems. If Athens represents the highest form of civic and cultural development, then defending Athens becomes synonymous with defending civilization itself. Such a framing gives the war moral meaning and renders continued sacrifice not merely necessary, but noble.
The speech’s treatment of death is crucial in this regard. Pericles transforms the deaths of the soldiers into proof of civic excellence. The dead are not mourned primarily as individuals; they are elevated into symbols of the city’s enduring glory. His famous declaration that “For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men” was examined as a rhetorical device that universalizes and immortalizes sacrifice. Professor Kosmetatou noted as well the significance of the unknown soldier in the funeral procession, perhaps the earliest instance of this powerful symbolic figure. In a culture where burial and bodily integrity mattered deeply, the decision to honor an unidentified soldier at the head of the procession offered a potent answer to the anguish of those whose loved ones had vanished in war. Even in the absence of physical remains, the city would provide meaning, honor, and public remembrance.
Yet this elevation of sacrifice also contains a darker implication. By transforming private loss into collective glory, the speech prepares the city for further deaths. The dead are presented less as an occasion for caution than as a model to be imitated. Fathers are urged to take pride in their sons’ courage; young men are called to emulate the fallen; bereaved couples still capable of having children are implicitly or explicitly invited to replenish the ranks. The management of grief here becomes a means of sustaining war. The speech channels emotion into renewed commitment and turns mourning into a form of political mobilization.
Professor Kosmetatou also placed the funeral oration alongside the other speeches Thucydides attributes to Pericles, particularly the later speech in which the statesman adopts a markedly different tone. There, as public frustration intensifies, Pericles responds more harshly, effectively reminding the Athenians that they themselves voted for the war. This contrast is illuminating. The funeral oration appears as a moment of rhetorical confidence, a speech designed to inspire and unify before the harsher realities of protracted conflict become undeniable. Read together, the speeches reveal both the brilliance and the limits of Periclean leadership. The oration’s exalted vision of democratic identity stands in tension with the suffering, resentment, and eventual political backlash that followed.
The presentation concluded by insisting on the ambiguity of the funeral oration’s place in democratic thought. It remains one of the most eloquent surviving celebrations of civic community and democratic pride. But it is also a reminder that democratic rhetoric can be used to mobilize populations for destructive purposes, to suppress dissenting emotions, and to sustain a political narrative in the face of mounting evidence that reality has diverged from promise. In this sense, the speech is not only a monument to Athens, but one of the earliest and most enduring examples of how a political leader can transform collective grief into consensus, and shared identity into support for prolonged conflict. Professor Kosmetatou’s reading thus restored to the text its unsettling political edge, revealing its brilliance not only as literature or philosophy, but as an instrument of power.
Dr.Cristiano Gianolla: “The Exclusionary Identity of ‘The People‘ in Radical Right Populism”
Dr. Cristiano Gianolla is a Researcher at the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra.
In his presentation, Dr. Cristiano Gianolla offered a conceptually ambitious and methodologically innovative analysis of the exclusionary construction of “the people” in radical right populism. Drawing on research conducted within the broader project Unpacking Populism: Comparing the Formation of Emotional Narratives and Their Effects on Political Behavior, he explored the interplay of discourse, emotion, and political identification in two distinct yet revealing European settings: Portugal and Italy. The presentation moved beyond familiar accounts of populism as merely a politics of resentment or anger, instead proposing a more layered understanding of how emotion narratives structure belonging, exclusion, and political allegiance.
At the core of Dr. Gianolla’s intervention was the claim that radical right populism cannot be adequately understood without attention to its emotional architecture. While much of the earlier literature on populism tended to emphasize negative affects—fear, hatred, ressentiment, or anxiety—his work sought to capture a fuller emotional spectrum. Populist politics, he argued, does not mobilize only aversion toward enemies; it also generates positive emotions such as pride, admiration, security, and joy. These emotions are not incidental to populist discourse but constitutive of it. They help define who belongs to the people, what is worth defending, and which forms of political action become desirable or legitimate.
This argument was developed through the heuristic of the “emotion narrative,” an analytic device intended to bridge the cognitive and affective dimensions of politics. Rather than treating emotions as irrational residues external to political reasoning, Dr. Gianolla conceptualized them as embedded in narrative structures that orient individuals toward objects, values, and collective identities. Emotion narratives, in his formulation, are long-term, identity-related configurations that link political discourse to feelings about belonging, threat, and protection. They are produced not simply through isolated messages or campaign rhetoric, but through the circulation of meanings around what he called “deep objects” and “shallow objects.”
The theoretical inspiration for this framework was drawn from the work of Sara Ahmed on affective economies and from discourse-analytic approaches to emotions developed by scholars such as Manuel Alcántara-Pla. Deep objects, in Dr. Gianolla’s use of the concept, refer to those entities or values endowed with enduring emotional significance: homeland, family, liberty, security, national identity, and authority. These are perceived as both valuable and vulnerable. Shallow objects, by contrast, are the immediate figures, institutions, or groups that are interpreted as either threatening or protecting these deeper values. Migrants, minorities, political opponents, the European Union, or liberal elites can be cast as threats; leaders, parties, or certain favored groups may be represented as opportunities or safeguards. What matters is not the object in itself, but the emotional relation constructed around it.
To investigate how these dynamics operate, Dr.Gianolla and his co-authors adopted a mixed-methods approach that combined qualitative and quantitative tools. On the supply side, the research examined semi-structured interviews with members of parliament from two radical right parties: Fratelli d’Italia in Italy and Chega in Portugal. This allowed the study to trace how political elites articulate emotion narratives in their own language, linking political projects to particular visions of community, danger, and restoration. On the demand side, the team conducted surveys with representative samples in both countries shortly before national elections—Italy in 2022 and Portugal in 2024. Importantly, respondents were not asked only what they thought about certain political statements or scenarios, but what they felt about them. This shift from opinion to emotion marked a crucial methodological intervention.
For the survey component, Dr.Gianolla relied on the Geneva Emotion Wheel, a tool designed to capture a broad range of emotional responses across different levels of arousal and valence. Rather than reducing reactions to a simple positive/negative dichotomy, the instrument allowed the researchers to track several emotional families, including both high- and low-intensity forms of affect. Respondents were offered a range of emotional responses to political facts and hypothetical scenarios, thus making it possible to compare the affective profiles of radical right voters with those of other citizens.
The comparative design of the project was particularly instructive. Portugal and Italy provided two contrasting cases: one of recent far-right breakthrough, the other of long-standing populist entrenchment. In Portugal, the emergence of Chegasince 2019 represented a relatively new development within a political system historically resistant to far-right parliamentary success. In Italy, by contrast, Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) entered the study as part of a much longer tradition of populist and right-wing mobilization, and at a moment when it was poised to become the leading party of government. This asymmetry enabled Dr. Gianolla and his collaborators to examine how similar emotional mechanisms may operate differently depending on whether a party presents itself as insurgent outsider or imminent governing force.
The analysis of parliamentary interviews revealed strong thematic convergence across the two cases. Deep objects such as nation, security, family, liberty, and authority appeared consistently as emotionally charged values at the center of radical right discourse. These values were presented as under siege and in need of protection. Threatening shallow objectsincluded “bad” migrants, minorities associated with disorder or un-deservingness, and political actors on the left, who were portrayed as undermining national cohesion, weakening social norms, and privileging outsiders over the authentic people. Welfare chauvinism was especially visible in these narratives: social rights were not rejected in principle but redefined as benefits to be reserved for the deserving national in-group.
At the same time, the discourse also relied on positive emotional objects. “Good” migrants—particularly Ukrainians in the cases discussed—could be represented sympathetically, not as a contradiction but as a selective confirmation of the rule. Likewise, the leader and the party themselves emerged as positive shallow objects, invested with proximity, authenticity, and emotional attunement to the people. The party is not simply an instrument of representation; it becomes a medium through which citizens feel recognized, protected, and emotionally anchored.
The survey findings complemented these qualitative observations. When asked how they felt about certain political realities—such as membership in the European Union, the presence of populist parties in parliament, or the prospect of authoritarian leadership—radical right voters consistently displayed emotional patterns distinct from the rest of the electorate. In relation to the European Union, for example, these voters expressed less pride and more fear, sadness, or anger than others, especially in Italy. This suggested not only cognitive Euroscepticism but an affective distancing from supranational belonging. By contrast, the fact that populist parties had parliamentary representation generated stronger emotions of pride and admiration among radical right voters, alongside lower levels of shame or fear. These parties were not merely tolerated or strategically supported; they were emotionally embraced.
One of the most provocative results concerned hypothetical authoritarian leadership. In both Portugal and Italy, those aligned with the radical right were more likely to respond to the idea of an authoritarian leader with pride, joy, or admiration, and less likely to react with fear or anger. Dr. Gianolla did not present this as evidence of straightforward authoritarianism in a simplistic sense, but rather as an indication that centralized and personalized executive power can acquire positive emotional resonance within a populist political culture, especially when it is associated with order, decisiveness, and national protection.
These results fed into a broader argument about democratic vision. The political culture articulated through radical right populist emotion narratives privileges strong leadership, centralized executive authority, and representative identification over participatory pluralism. Referendums and direct democracy may still be invoked, but not necessarily as expressions of deliberative inclusion. Instead, the leader and party are themselves imagined as the direct embodiment of the people, reducing the need for more complex forms of mediation or plural negotiation. Diversity, in this framework, is not valued as a democratic resource but framed as a source of insecurity or dilution. The people become culturally homogeneous, morally superior, and emotionally bound to a threatened national core.
At the same time, the differences between the Portuguese and Italian cases underscored the importance of political context. Dr. Gianolla noted that Chega, still operating more clearly as an outsider force, retained a stronger anti-systemic tone in Portugal, while Fratelli d’Italia, campaigning to govern, moderated some of its outsider rhetoric and located its antagonism more visibly at the European rather than the national level. This distinction is revealing emotion narratives do not disappear as parties move closer to power, but they are recalibrated to fit different strategic positions.
In sum, Dr. Gianolla’s presentation offered a compelling contribution to the study of populism by showing that the exclusionary identity of “the people” is built not only through ideological content or institutional strategy, but through structured emotional worlds. Radical right populism succeeds, in part, because it provides emotionally coherent narratives that bind citizens to protected values, identify threatening others, and promise moral and political restoration. By integrating discourse analysis, affect theory, and survey research, the presentation illuminated how populism is felt as much as it is believed—and why its appeal cannot be understood without taking those feelings seriously.
Discussants’ Feedback
Feedback by Dr. Justin Patch
Dr. Justin Patch is an Associate Professor and Chair of Music at Vassar College.
In his discussant remarks, Dr. Justin Patch offered an unusually integrative reflection that drew the session’s presentations into a shared conceptual frame. Although he positioned himself, with some self-awareness, as an apparent outsider—given his own work on art, music, and political campaigns—his response revealed precisely the opposite. By following the threads of representation, emotional formation, symbolism, and aesthetic mediation across the presentations, he illuminated a deeper common structure underlying the session’s discussions. What emerged from his comments was a compelling argument that art, broadly understood, is not peripheral to politics but constitutive of the ways in which power persuades, identities are shaped, and democratic or populist formations are sustained.
His first set of reflections addressed Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy’s presentation on defamation law, election disinformation, and the weaponization of manipulated images in the aftermath of the 2020 US election. Dr. Patch read this case not only through legal or political categories, but through the history of aesthetic techniques. What stood out to him in the Giuliani case—especially the use of edited video to defame election workers—was the appropriation of artistic practices that historically relied on believability, illusion, and the manipulation of perception. He suggested that the “cheap fake” in question belongs to a much longer genealogy of visual deception, one that stretches from Renaissance perspective to twentieth-century cinematic montage. In this view, edited political media is not merely a technological distortion; it is the contemporary deployment of old artistic logics designed to make the eye believe what is not in fact true.
Dr. Patch’s observation was especially significant because it shifted the discussion from content to form. The problem was not simply that falsehood circulated, but that it did so through aesthetic means whose persuasive power is rooted in the history of representation itself. Renaissance perspective, he noted, originally involved mathematical and scientific precision, yet in art it became a means of grandeur and illusion. Likewise, cinematic techniques developed by masters such as Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated how editing could construct meaning, emotion, and even political consciousness by shaping what viewers believed they were seeing. In the hands of contemporary political actors, such techniques no longer elevate a public ideal but instead foster atomization, credulity, and manipulated subjectivity. Dr. Patch thus cast disinformation not merely as lying, but as the instrumentalization of artistic practice for anti-democratic ends.
Turning to Dr. Niva Golan-Nadir’s presentation on religious policy and social dissatisfaction within the Israeli military, Dr. Patch reframed the discussion around symbolism and representation. He was struck by her argument that relatively balanced dissatisfaction across different religious groups may help sustain cohesion within the IDF, and he posed a different but related question: through what symbolic means are these hardships rendered collectively meaningful? His comparison with the US military was instructive. In the American case, he suggested, institutions such as the Navy have become highly adept at romanticizing hardship, using what he called a form of “industrial art” to produce emotional identification with service, sacrifice, and discipline. Through these representational practices, suffering is not merely endured but made noble, even beautiful.
This led him to wonder whether something similar might operate in the Israeli case. If soldiers from distinct secular and religious backgrounds remain within a shared institutional framework despite dissatisfaction, perhaps this is not only because burdens are evenly distributed, but because hardship is symbolically represented in ways that make it appear shared, dignified, and necessary. Dr. Patch’s invocation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth deepened this interpretation. The line he paraphrased—about humanity one day being judged by the similarity of its needs rather than the quality of its wants—served as a suggestive lens through which to view Dr. Golan-Nadir’s findings. Common dissatisfaction, in this reading, does not simply produce tension; it may create a basis for solidarity when different groups recognize one another as giving something up for a larger collective purpose.
In responding to Professor Elizabeth Kosmetatou’s interpretation of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Dr. Patch found perhaps the clearest illustration of the intimate relation between populism, democracy, and artistic form. He read her account as making a bold historical claim: that populism is not a late distortion of democracy but may be bound up with democracy from its earliest rhetorical and political expressions. What particularly drew his attention was the way sacrifice is aesthetically rendered in wartime democracies. The glorification of death, he suggested, cannot operate through argument alone. It must be mediated through artistic representation—through speech, statuary, ritual, and symbolic pilgrimage.
In this respect, Dr. Patch emphasized that the transformation of sacrifice into civic glory depends on forms that give the bereaved something visible and collective in which to see their loss reflected. The tomb, the monument, the unknown soldier, the stylized oration—all are artistic mediations that transform individual grief into public meaning. He linked this insight to classic scholarship on nationalism, especially the work of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger on the invention of tradition. Collective identities, he implied, are never simply discovered; they are staged, performed, and materialized through representational forms that allow individuals to recognize themselves in something larger than themselves. What Professor Kosmetatou had shown in relation to Pericles, Dr. Patch suggested, was the early democratic-populist power of this aestheticization: a leader creates a collective subject not only by naming it, but by giving it visible, emotional, and commemorative form.
His response to Dr. Cristiano Gianolla’s presentation on emotional narratives in Portuguese and Italian radical right populism then brought the discussion into the present with explicitly theoretical force. Dr. Patch strongly endorsed the proposition that emotion is not secondary to politics but central to it. Against the still influential assumption—often traced to Enlightenment rationalism—that political judgment ought to be or can be separated from feeling, he insisted that emotion is “the engine” of politics and democracy. Here he connected Dr. Gianolla’s framework of deep and shallow objects to the sociological work of Zygmunt Bauman on friendship and enmity. What interested him was the way populism appears to collapse or recombine these categories. Rather than placing political objects on a linear scale of affinity or hostility, populist discourse creates a circle in which friendship and enmity operate simultaneously, binding identity and threat together in a mutually reinforcing emotional structure.
Dr. Patch then pushed Dr. Gianolla’s framework in a philosophical direction by suggesting that the distinction between deep and shallow objects echoes two competing Enlightenment notions of identity. One, associated with Kant, assumes that identity is something original and essential, obscured by false additions that must be stripped away. The other, associated with Rousseau, imagines the self as initially open or blank and gradually formed through accumulation and development. Populism, he suggested, appears to rely heavily on the first model: deep identity is imagined as something already there—national, authentic, prior—and politics becomes the work of clearing away the debris of modernity, pluralism, migration, or liberal mediation so that the “true” self or people can re-emerge. In this sense, radical right populism is not merely exclusionary in content; it is aesthetic and philosophical in form, presenting political identity as revelation rather than construction.
It is in the final segment of his remarks that Dr. Patch most fully articulated the broader significance of the arts across the session. Drawing on John Dewey, he argued that art is fundamental to democratic life because it enables people to create and express a sense of self rather than simply receive one from external authorities. Dewey’s claim that democracy requires widespread access to the arts was invoked not merely as a cultural ideal but as a political necessity. If people lack the means to represent themselves—to make poetry, music, images, performances, and other forms of expressive abstraction—then they are more vulnerable to having others tell them who they are. Under such conditions, strong leaders can step in and define the collective self on behalf of the population: this is who “we” are, this is who we have always been. Populism thrives, in part, where self-formation is impoverished and identity is outsourced.
This culminated in the central question Dr. Patch left with the group: how is art being used across these cases, by whom, and to what ends? More importantly, is there a counter-aesthetic, a “weapon of the weak,” capable of resisting homogenizing populist formations and their powerful emotional machinery? Rather than offering a definitive answer, he opened a crucial line of inquiry. Across legal disinformation, military cohesion, classical rhetoric, and contemporary populist discourse, he identified the arts not as decorative supplements but as active forces in the making of political realities. His remarks thus gave the session an unexpected but coherent conclusion: if populism and democracy are both inseparable from emotion and representation, then the arts remain one of the most contested and consequential terrains on which the struggle over political identity is fought.
Feedback by Dr. Amedeo Varriale
Dr. Amedeo Varriale earned his Ph.D. from the University of East London in March 2024. His research interests focus on contemporary populism and nationalism.
Dr. Amedeo Varriale’s remarks as discussant offered a measured, conceptually attentive engagement with each presentation, marked by both appreciation and careful analytical distancing. His intervention moved across legal theory, democratic legitimacy, classical political thought, and contemporary populism, drawing out both convergences and tensions within the panel’s contributions. Rather than imposing a single interpretive frame, he treated each paper on its own terms while situating it within broader debates on populism, democracy, and institutional resilience.
He began with Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy’s presentation on defamation law and the role of legal accountability in the aftermath of the 2020 US election. What struck him most was the combination of narrative accessibility and legal sophistication through which a highly complex issue had been rendered intelligible. The Freeman and Moss case, in his reading, served as a powerful illustration of the enduring importance of independent institutions—particularly courts—in safeguarding truth and protecting individual rights. He emphasized that the right not to be defamed is not merely a private concern but a fundamental component of democratic life, as reputational harm can effectively destroy civic participation and personal security.
From this starting point, Dr. Varriale drew a broader lesson about the nature of electoral integrity. While acknowledging that minor irregularities—clerical errors or isolated procedural mistakes—may occur in any electoral system, he underscored that such imperfections do not invalidate outcomes. This distinction, he suggested, is one that populist actors often blur or ignore. The “big lie” surrounding the 2020 election thus represents not simply a political strategy but a profound distortion of democratic norms. Yet he was careful to qualify this observation by noting that such denialism is not intrinsic to populism as a general phenomenon. In Europe, he observed, even radical right leaders have typically conceded electoral defeat. For this reason, he proposed understanding Trumpism as an “extremification” of populism—a trajectory in which populist rhetoric risks evolving into something closer to authoritarianism. Drawing implicitly on the work of Paul Taggart, he suggested that once populism crosses a certain threshold—abandoning electoral competition and institutional constraints—it ceases to be populism in any meaningful sense and becomes a qualitatively different political form.
Turning to Dr. Niva Golan-Nadir’s presentation on the Israeli military, Dr. Varriale approached the argument through the lens of institutional legitimacy in divided societies. He noted that a degree of dissatisfaction with state institutions is not only normal but structurally embedded in representative democracies. What distinguished the Israeli case, however, was the persistence of legitimacy in the face of such dissatisfaction. He attributed this, in part, to the unique position of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a central institution tied to national survival and collective identity. Universal conscription, in particular, transforms the military into a shared social experience rather than a distant bureaucratic apparatus.
At the same time, he highlighted the paradox at the heart of Dr. Golan-Nadir’s findings: dissatisfaction is not only widespread but symmetrically distributed. Religious and secular groups alike perceive the institution as insufficiently responsive to their respective norms and expectations. Yet precisely because no single group can claim ownership of the military, this dual dissatisfaction appears to sustain its cross-cutting legitimacy. Dr. Varriale interpreted this as a form of equilibrium—fragile but functional—where competing grievances prevent the monopolization of the institution by any one ideological camp. Still, he raised a crucial question for further inquiry: how durable is this balance? At what point might shared dissatisfaction shift from a stabilizing force to a source of delegitimization, particularly as social divisions deepen?
In his engagement with Professor Elizabeth Kosmetatou’s analysis of Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Dr. Varriale underscored the value of historical perspective in understanding contemporary populism. He praised the contribution for drawing a line of continuity between ancient and modern forms of political rhetoric, particularly in relation to war, identity, and leadership. The oration, as he interpreted it, framed the Peloponnesian War as a collective civic project, mobilizing citizens through appeals to shared identity and moral purpose. This, he suggested, resonates with modern political efforts to shape public opinion around conflict, including claims—such as those associated with Donald Trump—that complex wars can be resolved swiftly through decisive leadership.
However, Dr. Varriale was careful to distinguish between populism and demagogy, especially in the classical context. While figures such as Pericles are often labeled demagogues, contemporary populism, he argued, has developed into something more structured and ideologically articulated. It is no longer merely a rhetorical strategy to incite mass emotion but a broader political logic with programmatic elements. Even so, he acknowledged that Pericles’ rhetoric displayed key features associated with modern populism: a direct appeal to “the people,” the construction of an antagonistic other, and the moral elevation of the collective. In this sense, the Athenian case offers not a direct equivalence but a historically grounded analogy, illuminating the enduring dynamics of leadership, persuasion, and collective identity.
Dr. Varriale’s final set of reflections addressed Dr. Cristiano Gianolla’s study of emotional narratives in radical right populism in Portugal and Italy. Here, his emphasis fell on methodology and conceptual clarity. He commended the ambitious empirical design, particularly the combination of elite interviews and survey data capturing emotional responses.
He regarded this dual approach—linking the “supply side” of political discourse with the “demand side” of voter emotion—as a notable strength, especially in a field where affective dynamics are often acknowledged but less rigorously measured. The effort to map emotions systematically, rather than treating them as diffuse background conditions, struck him as both innovative and necessary for advancing the study of populism.
At the same time, Dr. Varriale introduced a series of careful conceptual reservations. He expressed some skepticism toward the proposition that a perceived “crisis of democracy” constitutes the central core of populist ideology. In his view, populism’s defining features remain more firmly anchored in anti-elitism and people-centrism, often accompanied by a critique not of democracy per se but of liberalism—especially in its neoliberal or technocratic forms. This distinction, he implied, matters analytically: framing populism primarily as a response to democratic crisis risks mischaracterizing actors who, rhetorically at least, claim to defend democracy against its perceived distortions.
He also engaged critically with the classification of contemporary parties, particularly the Italian case. While acknowledging that many scholars continue to place Fratelli d’Italia within the radical right family, Dr. Varriale suggested that such categorizations may lag behind political developments. He pointed to what he sees as a process of ideological moderation: softened positions on immigration, alignment with transatlantic institutions, and a more pragmatic engagement with European governance structures. This raised a broader question about whether certain parties are genuinely transforming or whether their positions are being normalized by a wider shift in the political center. The ambiguity, in his account, is not easily resolved.
This line of reflection led him to a more general observation about the contemporary European landscape. If positions once associated with the radical right—on migration control, sovereignty, or welfare chauvinism—are increasingly echoed by mainstream center-right actors, then two interpretations become plausible. Either the radical right has moderated, or the political mainstream has moved closer to it. In practice, he suggested, elements of both dynamics may be at play. The consequence is a blurring of ideological boundaries that complicates both scholarly classification and political judgment.
Despite these critical notes, Dr. Varriale’s overall assessment of Dr. Gianolla’s work remained strongly positive. He emphasized the clarity with which key concepts were defined, particularly the distinction between radical and extreme right—an analytical boundary that is often neglected in the literature. He also acknowledged the practical difficulty of conducting elite interviews and assembling comparative datasets, recognizing the empirical labor underpinning the study. These methodological achievements, in his view, contribute meaningfully to a field that still grapples with how best to integrate qualitative and quantitative insights.
Across all four interventions, a consistent thread in Dr. Varriale’s remarks was the importance of analytical precision without rigidity. He resisted sweeping generalizations, instead favoring distinctions that preserve the complexity of political phenomena: between populism and authoritarianism, dissatisfaction and delegitimization, demagogy and ideology, moderation and mainstreaming. His comments suggested a concern not only with what populism is, but with how it is studied—how categories are drawn, how evidence is interpreted, and how contemporary developments are situated within longer historical trajectories.
In closing, his tone returned to one of collegial appreciation. He acknowledged the intellectual range of the session and the quality of the contributions, framing his own interventions as prompts for further reflection rather than definitive critiques. What emerged from his discussion was less a unified theory than a set of carefully posed questions—about institutional resilience, emotional mobilization, historical continuity, and conceptual clarity—that linger beyond the session itself.
Q&A Session
The concluding Q&A session unfolded as a reflective and intellectually generative exchange, drawing together the conceptual threads of the presentations while opening new avenues of inquiry. Rather than merely clarifying points of detail, the discussion turned toward deeper questions about the nature of “the people,” the role of identity and exclusion, and the cultural and institutional conditions under which populism operates. What emerged was less a set of definitive answers than a layered conversation about tensions—between inclusion and exclusion, individuality and collective identity, emotion and reason, and, perhaps most strikingly, between democracy’s ideals and its practices.
The discussion opened with a question by moderator Dr. Joni Doherty that subtly shifted the analytical lens: how might the concept of intersectionality—associated with Kimberlé Crenshaw—complicate the populist construction of “the people” as a unified entity? This intervention introduced a productive dissonance. If populism depends on the simplification of social divisions into a singular collective subject, then intersectionality, by contrast, insists on the irreducible plurality of identities—race, class, gender, and more—that shape political experience. The question lingered over the session, prompting participants to consider whether populism necessarily erases complexity or whether, in some instances, it can accommodate it.
Dr. Justin Patch responded by reframing populism itself as a variable form, distinguishing between inclusive and exclusive variants. Drawing on theoretical currents associated with Ernesto Laclau and Margaret Canovan, he suggested that populism can function as an “empty signifier,” capable of incorporating diverse constituencies under a shared symbolic banner. In this reading, populism is not inherently exclusionary; at its most expansive, it allows individuals from different social locations to recognize themselves as part of “the people.” His reference to the broad—if unstable—coalitions in contemporary American politics illustrated this possibility, even as he acknowledged their fragility.
Dr. Cristiano Gianolla’s intervention both extended and qualified this perspective. While accepting that populist movements may attract support across intersecting social categories, he emphasized that their discursive structure often remains exclusionary. Drawing on the conceptual distinction developed by Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, he argued that many of the cases under discussion—particularly on the radical right—should be understood as exclusionary populisms, insofar as they construct a bounded national identity in opposition to perceived outsiders. At the same time, he pointed to the existence of more inclusionary forms, particularly in certain strands of left-wing populism, where the “people” may be articulated in more expansive, pluralistic terms. The implication was not that populism resolves the tension between inclusion and exclusion, but that it navigates it differently depending on context and ideological orientation.
Dr. Niva Golan-Nadir’s reflection drew the discussion back to a more foundational level. What united the presentations, she observed, was the persistent presence of an “us versus them” dynamic—an insight resonant with the political theory of Carl Schmitt. Whether in legal disputes, military institutions, historical rhetoric, or contemporary party politics, the construction of collective identity appeared inseparable from the delineation of an adversary. In this sense, the logic of populism was not an anomaly but an intensification of a broader political grammar in which enmity and solidarity are intertwined.
Dr. Amedeo Varriale offered a further refinement by challenging the distinction between inclusive and exclusive populism. In his view, all populisms are, at some level, exclusionary, because they necessarily define a boundary around “the people.” The difference lies not in whether exclusion occurs, but in whom it targets—immigrants, elites, or other groups. This observation shifted the emphasis from typology to structure: populism, by its nature, tends toward anti-pluralism, even if degrees and forms vary. Dr. Cristiano Gianolla’s subsequent response suggested a partial convergence. While acknowledging that populist practice often results in homogenization, he maintained that the discursive construction of “the people” may initially aspire to inclusivity, even if it ultimately collapses internal differences.
At this point, Dr. Doherty returned to the earlier invocation of intersectionality, grounding it in a more human register. Beneath the abstraction of “the people,” she noted, lie individuals with multiple, overlapping identities and interests. The process of subsuming these individuals into a singular collective inevitably produces tension—especially for marginalized groups whose experiences cannot be easily reconciled with dominant narratives. This observation resonated particularly with the discussion of divided societies, where competing identities must coexist within shared institutions. The question, implicitly, was whether populism can ever accommodate such complexity without erasing it.
A further shift occurred when Dr. Patch posed a more speculative question: is a “utopian populism” possible, or is populism inherently bound to struggle against an adversary? The responses suggested a cautious skepticism. Professor Elizabeth Kosmetatou drew on historical examples from antiquity, recalling attempts to construct egalitarian political communities—most notably the failed insurrection led by Aristonicus in Pergamon. These episodes, while imaginative, underscored the fragility of utopian projects and their vulnerability to political and military realities.
Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, in turn, approached the question from a contemporary perspective, offering a dual outlook. On one hand, she expressed concern about ongoing institutional pressures and the instrumental use of legal processes for political ends. On the other, she pointed to the resilience of civic action and the role of artistic and journalistic practices in countering misinformation and sustaining democratic engagement.
The conversation then turned more explicitly to the role of the arts—a theme that had surfaced throughout the session.Professor Torres-Spelliscy emphasized the importance of visual documentation and grassroots media in shaping public understanding, suggesting that creative practices can serve as a counterweight to manipulative narratives. ProfessorKosmetatou added a note of caution, highlighting the vulnerability of the humanities in the face of political and financial pressures. The contraction of support for the arts, she suggested, may weaken precisely those capacities—critical reflection, symbolic expression—that enable societies to resist authoritarian tendencies.
Yet this view was not left uncontested. Dr. Patch offered a counterpoint, arguing that artistic expression is not wholly dependent on institutional support. Drawing on examples such as graffiti culture, he suggested that creativity and resistance often emerge independently of formal funding structures. This exchange revealed a subtle tension: while institutions can enable and amplify artistic production, they may also constrain it, and their withdrawal does not necessarily extinguish creative expression.
As the session drew to a close, the discussion retained a sense of openness rather than resolution. The final reflections returned implicitly to the central paradox that had animated the exchange: populism, democracy, and identity are bound together in ways that resist simple categorization. The effort to define “the people” remains both necessary and fraught, entangled with questions of inclusion, exclusion, and representation. The Q&A session, in this sense, did not seek to resolve these tensions but to illuminate them—leaving participants with a richer, more nuanced understanding of the terrain they had collectively explored.
Conclusion
In its final session, the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series concluded with a timely and intellectually compelling reflection on the fragility, resilience, and contested meanings of democracy in an age of polarization. What bound the diverse contributions together was a shared concern with the political and symbolic construction of “the people” and with the institutional, rhetorical, and emotional mechanisms through which democratic legitimacy is either defended or distorted. Across legal, historical, political, and cultural registers, the session showed that democracy cannot be understood solely through formal procedures or constitutional design. It must also be examined through the narratives, affects, and representations that shape how communities imagine themselves and their adversaries.
The presentations collectively demonstrated that populism is not a singular phenomenon but a flexible political logic capable of operating through different institutional settings and historical contexts. Whether through disinformation and defamation in the United States, balanced dissatisfaction in Israeli state institutions, the rhetorical transformation of grief in classical Athens, or the emotional narratives of radical right populism in contemporary Europe, each case illuminated a distinct mode through which democratic orders are strained, mobilized, or reproduced. At the same time, the session made clear that democratic vulnerability does not imply democratic collapse. Law, institutional equilibrium, historical memory, artistic expression, and civic action all emerged as possible sites of resistance, even if each remains partial, contingent, and politically contested.
A particularly valuable contribution of the session was its insistence on the centrality of culture and emotion to democratic life. Art, speech, and symbolic performance were shown to be neither ornamental nor secondary, but integral to the ways political identities are formed and collective realities sustained. In this respect, the session moved beyond narrow oppositions between reason and emotion, law and culture, structure and agency. Instead, it offered an interdisciplinary account of democracy as a field of ongoing struggle over meaning, legitimacy, and belonging.
In sum, Session 16 provided a fitting conclusion to the workshop series. It left participants not with closure, but with a sharpened awareness of the complexity of democratic life and of the urgent need to study its tensions with analytical rigor, historical depth, and interdisciplinary openness.
As the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum approaches, debate has shifted from slogans to evidence. In this interview, Professor Mark Corner offers a measured but clear conclusion: “the UK has lost more than it has gained.” Drawing on political economy, constitutional analysis, and historical perspective, he revisits Brexit not as a singular rupture but as a dual crisis affecting both the European Union and the internal cohesion of the United Kingdom. Professor Corner highlights the paradox at the heart of Brexit—“taking back control” did not strengthen parliamentary sovereignty, but instead elevated popular sovereignty. At the same time, expectations of global economic freedom have given way to the enduring realities of geography and interdependence. His reflections situate Brexit as a revealing case of the gap between political promise and institutional consequence.
As the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum approaches, public debate has moved decisively beyond the binary language of Leave and Remain toward a more empirically grounded reckoning with Brexit’s long-term political and economic consequences. In this context, Professor Mark Corner, Emeritus Professor at the University of Leuven, offers a particularly valuable perspective. His work situates Brexit not simply as a rupture in Britain’s relationship with the European Union, but as a dual constitutional and political crisis—one affecting both the European project and the internal cohesion of the United Kingdom. Bringing together political economy, constitutional analysis, historical memory, and populist mobilization, his reflections illuminate how Brexit has reshaped not only policy but also political imagination.
In his interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Corner advances a sober conclusion captured in the headline of this conversation: “With Brexit, the UK has lost more than it has gained.” That judgment is not presented as a dramatic slogan, but as the outcome of a broader reassessment now taking place in British public life. As he puts it, “most economists would agree that the UK has lost more than it has gained,” and if that were not so, “the present government would [not] be trying so hard to move back toward a closer economic relationship with the EU.” In this sense, Brexit appears less as a fulfilled promise of renewed sovereignty than as a strategic rupture whose costs have become increasingly difficult to deny.
Yet Professor Corner’s account is more layered than a narrow economic audit. He draws attention to one of the central ironies of Brexit politics: that a project framed around “taking back control” did not, in fact, restore parliamentary sovereignty. On the contrary, he argues, the referendum “assert[ed] popular sovereignty over parliamentary sovereignty,”since most MPs would have preferred to remain. Similarly, the promise that Britain could flourish once “freed from the shackles of the EU” has, in his view, been undermined by the enduring reality of geography, interdependence, and trade. The fantasy of becoming “Singapore-on-Thames” has largely faded, replaced by the quieter recognition that “a very large share of our trade is conducted with Europe.”
The interview also places Brexit within a broader political and historical frame. Professor Corner shows how populist and radical-right actors have successfully shifted the argument away from economic performance toward sovereignty, border control, and cultural identity. In doing so, they have helped transform British political conflict from an older class-based divide into a more complex terrain shaped by “social and cultural division alongside economic division.” At the same time, he warns that Brexit’s most profound destabilizing effects may ultimately be domestic rather than European. While the feared cascade of exits from the EU never materialized, the United Kingdom itself remains vulnerable to centrifugal pressures, particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In his words, “in the long run, [these] may prove more troubling than the difficulties in the EU.”
In sum, Professor Corner’s reflections offer a penetrating and historically informed account of Brexit’s legacy. Far from vindicating the claims of its proponents, Brexit emerges here as a case study in the gap between populist promise and institutional consequence—one that continues to shape the future of Britain, Europe, and the politics of sovereignty itself.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Mark Corner, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Brexit Strains Britain More Than Europe
Professor Corner, welcome. InA Tale of Two Unions, you argue that Brexit must be understood simultaneously as a crisis of both the European Union and the British Union. Ten years on, how would you assess the relative degree of strain placed on each union, and has Brexit ultimately proven more destabilizing domestically than internationally?
Professor Mark Corner: I think it has. When the UK left in 2016, I remember seeing a book titled The EU: An Obituary.A lot of people thought that the UK’s departure would trigger a stampede. People began to talk about Nexit or Swexit after Brexit. But it didn’t happen.
It is important to note that, despite all the recent difficulties with Hungary, it did not leave the EU. It was not expelled from the EU. Yes, pressure was brought upon it, and in the recent election, it got rid of Orbán. But all this has happened with Hungary remaining a member of the EU.
In the case of the UK, there is an instability built into the fact that it is effectively a multinational state: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. It seems to me that the UK has done very little to develop some kind of stable constitutional structure around which these different nations can coalesce. I think there are difficulties. The forthcoming elections next month will show that there are difficulties. In fact, there will quite possibly be a nationalist first minister in Scotland, similarly in Wales, and there already is Michelle O’Neill in Northern Ireland. So, there will be difficulties in the UK, and in the long run, they may prove more troubling than the difficulties in the EU.
Economic Reality Undercuts Sovereignty Claims
Your work highlights the tension between parliamentary sovereignty and supranational governance. To what extent does the post-Brexit economic record—particularly reduced trade and investment—challenge the political narrative that “taking back control” enhances state capacity?
Professor Mark Corner: There are certain ironies here. There was a great deal of talk about taking back parliamentary control in 2016. But in fact, the Brexit vote did the very opposite. If Parliament had had the authority to decide on Brexit, a majority of MPs were against it. Effectively, what the referendum did was to assert popular sovereignty over parliamentary sovereignty. Members of Parliament—most of whom would have preferred to remain—accepted that this popular vote must be binding. I think that was the correct decision. But it hardly amounted to strengthening parliamentary sovereignty. So, I am not sure Brexit really led to that. It strengthened an idea of popular sovereignty, and that is something about which there can be a number of questions. But I do not think it strengthened parliamentary sovereignty.
As for the trade arguments, the general view in the UK now is that Brexit has not been beneficial to trade. In 2016, many people had the idea that, freed from the shackles of the EU, we could go out and strike ambitious trade deals with the far corners of the world—a deal with Japan, a deal with India—we would be free, no longer moored to Europe. But the reality is that, even in the 21st century, geographical proximity remains crucial, and a very large share of our trade is conducted with Europe. You can see the present government trying, as far as it can, to nudge itself back toward a closer economic relationship with the EU. This is quite different from the atmosphere under Boris Johnson, with all the talk of becoming “Singapore-on-Thames”—the idea that Britain could roam the world and secure major trade deals simply by freeing itself from Europe. That notion has largely disappeared.
Policy Shifts Signal Economic Costs
If we move beyond rhetoric to measurable indicators—GDP performance, trade volumes, FDI, labor market shifts—how would you construct a balanced “Brexit scorecard”? Does the empirical record validate or undermine the core claims of Brexit proponents?
Professor Mark Corner: Scorecards differ, and economists always arrive at different figures. You know the saying that an economist is someone who, if you ask for a phone number, gives you an estimate.
I would have to speak in general terms: most economists would agree that the UK has lost more than it has gained. If that were not the case, I do not think the present government would be trying so hard to move back toward a closer economic relationship with the EU.
In the last few days, there has been discussion of whether the UK could align with EU rules without having to secure a vote in Parliament on every measure. That is, in political terms, a dangerous way to proceed, but it is being considered because, economically, the government perceives the scorecard as pointing toward as close an alignment as possible for the UK’s benefit. I do not think it would pursue this course otherwise.
Populists Shift Debate to Identity
How has populist discourse, particularly on the radical and far right, managed to reinterpret or neutralize the economic costs of Brexit by shifting emphasis toward sovereignty, identity, and cultural autonomy?
Professor Mark Corner: That is an important point to make: the arguments are not simply about whether Brexit is economically beneficial. They also involve these other questions, and even during the 2016 campaign there were people on the Remain side who said, look, we are talking too much in terms of economics alone—we should think more broadly.
There is no doubt that issues like immigration were a very important factor in precipitating the Brexit vote. The idea that the UK could take back control of its borders, decide who was going to come in if it left the EU, and thereby maintain its cultural identity and its sovereignty was a very powerful argument at the time, and that has to be recognized. At the same time, there are some very powerful arguments against that position. There is a strong case in favor of multicultural and multinational society that has been built up in the UK over the last 50 years, and I do not think that is emphasized enough.
Because I am old, I can go back to the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, there were arguments about admitting members of the former British Empire, and there was talk of an “Asian” or “Black” invasion—the language was very racist. Yet at that time there was actually net emigration from the UK, so there was no real issue of rising numbers. The only objection could have been that people did not like those who were not white coming in.
I do not see that in the 21st century. There is still racism, of course, but it is not like it was in the 1960s or 1970s. People generally accept that society is made up of many different cultural backgrounds, and that this is worthwhile—that it is a benefit.
There is, however, a different kind of problem, which is that overall numbers—irrespective of color or ethnic background—have been rising very quickly. Any country whose population is increasing rapidly year by year is going to face difficulties adapting to that, whether or not it is beneficial in the long run. So, the nature of the argument is different from that of the 1960s or 1970s.
I also think it is rather unfortunate that even in 2016, when David Cameron tried to renegotiate terms with the EU, he did not say that we need a period in which to stabilize the numbers coming into the UK, regardless of their background. Within the EU, there are countries like Bulgaria, whose population fell from 9 million to 7 million and which face the opposite problem—they cannot stabilize their numbers because too many people have been leaving.
So, there might have been an opportunity to say that, yes, there is the principle of the four freedoms, but there are also moments when it is reasonable to argue that we need to stabilize population flows.
It has all become rather ironic, because the main issue over the last five or ten years since Brexit has not been large numbers of people coming from other parts of the EU, but from outside the EU. That is not in itself a problem, but rapid shifts in numbers, whether upward or downward, can create difficulties.
I find the idea of identity quite interesting. If you look at London, it has a Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan. He has won three times and may win a fourth in 2028. He is very keen on rejoining the EU. He is 100 percent a Londoner, but also 100 percent a Muslim. It seems to me that there is a very positive sense of a multinational, multicultural identity—certainly in cities like London, but also in other parts of the UK—which should not be underestimated.
Identity Politics Deepens Divisions
Photo: Lucian Milasan / Dreamstime.
Recent research suggests Brexit has produced enduring identity-based polarization (“Leavers” vs. “Remainers”). How does this align with your analysis of narrative construction and “historical arcs” in British political consciousness?
Professor Mark Corner: There is no doubt that there is a divide between Leavers and Remainers—you are right about that. It is reflected, for example, in the fact that the Reform Party at present shows a strong degree of continuity with UKIP and the Brexiteers of ten years ago. So, there is certainly a divide in the country.
But, of course, there has always been a political divide in the UK; it has simply been understood in different terms. Traditionally, people spoke of UK politics in terms of a strong class divide between the middle class and the working class, with Labour representing the working class and the Conservatives the middle class. That has largely broken down.
To some extent, this kind of division—once seen primarily in economic terms—has not been replaced but rather supplemented by a division in more cultural and identity-based terms: between those who are comfortable living in a multinational society and those who are not, and who feel that they are losing their identity.
Of course, the question then becomes: within the UK, do we mean identity as English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, or British? There are all sorts of questions about which identity we are referring to. So, there has always been division, but it has perhaps become more complex—combining social and cultural divisions alongside economic ones.
You can now see people who might traditionally have voted Labour, who are working class, choosing instead to vote Reform because they feel their identity is under threat, and that this matters more than protecting their economic livelihood. It has become a more complicated picture.
Narratives Replace Clear Policy
You warn against selective historical narratives that privilege moments of “splendid isolation.” To what extent has the far right—particularly figures like Nigel Farage and his UK Reform—successfully mobilized such narratives to legitimize Brexit and its aftermath?
Professor Mark Corner: The key point about the far right is that it largely consists of people who feel fed up with the way things are but do not have a very clear idea of how they could be better. My idea of what a populist is—though this may be a definition open to question—is someone who does not actually have a very clear idea of what they believe in. For them, politics becomes something like a sport. They latch onto people’s resentments and think about how to express them more effectively, how to take them further, and how to turn them into a real political campaign. I do not think they necessarily have a clear policy agenda. You may disagree with this, but I think for many people populism is a kind of sport—a very dangerous one—in which they do not generate ideas themselves but instead observe what people are saying and try to express those views even more forcefully.
So, it is often very difficult to pin things down exactly. Who, for example, can say precisely what the economic program of Nigel Farage is? This is partly a reaction to the fact that it is also quite difficult to say what the economic program of Keir Starmer is. There is a kind of vacuum in the center of British politics as well. To that extent, the rise of the Green Party is rather significant, because it does appear to be offering—at some risk to itself—some very clear ideas about what it would like to see happen. I do not see that coming from any other part of the British political spectrum.
Reform UK Channels Public Discontent
A placard urging voters to support Richard Pearse, the Reform UK candidate at the general election in Weston-super-Mare, UK on July 4, 2024. Photo: Keith Ramsey / Dreamstime.
How do you interpret the rise of Reform UK within the broader trajectory of populist radical right (PRR) politics in Britain? Is it a continuation of Brexit-era mobilization or a transformation into a more permanent political force?
Professor Mark Corner: It is certainly linked to the Brexiteers, but it is more a reflection of feelings of resentment and of being left out on the part of a significant minority of the population—people who feel they have been bypassed and ignored by the mainstream parties. To some extent, I think that is true. The Labour Party has notoriously taken for granted the support of people in poorer areas of the country and has not paid sufficient attention to their needs. That is perfectly true.
But, as I said, the idea that the Reform Party has really developed a clear program that attracts some and rejects others, beyond its hostility to immigration, is questionable. If you take the other side of the political spectrum, one may disagree with what the Greens propose, but it comes down to some very concrete proposals. For example, a 2% tax on the very rich—one may think this would lead to them all running off to the Bahamas and be economically catastrophic, or one may think it is a very good way of raising money—but it is at least clear. I do not see that sort of clarity from Reform, and I therefore wonder whether it is more than an expression of disaffection.
Populists Turn EU Skepticism into Power
Before 2016, Euroscepticism was not a dominant voter concern. In your view, how did it become the central axis of political mobilization, and what role did populist entrepreneurs play in this transformation?
Professor Mark Corner: Oh, gosh—there is a long answer to that. There has always been a problem in the UK in seeing EU membership as being in its economic interest. It is partly because of when we joined in 1973, after dealing with a couple of vetoes from de Gaulle in the 1960s—we first applied in 1961. We got in at the very moment when the post-war boom collapsed. There was an oil crisis, a little bit similar to today, and this precipitated very difficult economic circumstances in the 1970s. So, it was very easy for people in the UK to say that it was when we joined that economic community that all our troubles began. The 1960s were good years economically, and then we joined at the moment of crisis.
We also joined when there were the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy, which, whether good or bad, did not particularly benefit the UK, given its relatively small agricultural sector. Then there were all those arguments in the 1980s, when it was said that Britain was paying too much into the EU budget, and Mrs. Thatcher was running around saying, “we want our money back.” In that situation, it was very difficult to argue that, overall, EU membership was economically beneficial.
Then, of course, you had the campaign in 2016, with Nigel Farage and his big red bus, saying this is what we pay into the EU, and that we would get all our money back and invest it instead in the National Health Service, as he wrote on the side of the bus—totally ignoring all the money that came the other way. But he got away with it, because there was a fairly widespread feeling in the UK that it had not done well economically from being in the EU, and had not from the beginning. There is more of a sense now that the UK would do well economically by being part of the EU than there was for a long time when we were inside it.
Brexit Accelerates Culture Wars
XR protest in solidarity with refugees and climate migrants in Westminster, London, April 23, 2023. Photo: Jessica Girvan / Dreamstime.
To what extent has Brexit accelerated the shift from class-based politics to culture-war polarization, and how has this benefited Populist Radical Right (PRR) actors in structuring political competition?
Professor Mark Corner: I think it has. If you leave a group of 28 and say, no, we want to be on our own—we had too much cooperation, we were too close to you, and we want to get further away—then it does rather support the idea that people want to shut themselves up within their own separate identity.
But at the same time, there is perhaps a greater awareness now that we benefit more by working together. That includes cooperation with other EU countries. If you think of how vulnerable the UK feels at the moment—in terms of everything happening in Ukraine and the perceived unreliability of Trump—there is a growing sense that we really do need to work together with the EU, because otherwise we could be picked off separately. Then, that you can see, in political as well as economic terms, a strong incentive to engage with European countries, for instance in sharing the defense burden. Every week, I read articles about how the UK needs to spend more money on defense, warning that otherwise we are going to be attacked at dawn.
One of the things to note is that there is a great deal of wasted spending in defense, partly because different European countries do not cooperate. Eight years ago, President Macron suggested a common European army, but you do not hear much about that when UK defense chiefs argue that we must increase defense spending.
So, there is a strong case—not just in the economic sphere but also in the defense sphere—for taking a much more serious European approach. That may be one of the most important factors in the years ahead, because there is no doubt that we are in a very dangerous and vulnerable situation, and in such circumstances, people naturally think we should come together with those who are our friends—and that is, obviously, the other European countries.
Brexit Costs Fail to Shift Votes
Given the documented decline in trade integration and investment, why has this not translated into a sustained electoral backlash against Brexit-aligned parties? Does this reflect the resilience of populist framing?
Professor Mark Corner: I do not think it is simply a matter of populist framing. Getting back into the EU would not be easy, and one cannot simply assume that 27 countries would welcome the UK with open arms. The UK has caused a good deal of difficulty by leaving, and people might reasonably ask whether it would create further complications by returning. So, I do not think there is an easy path back in.
We might also have to accept certain conditions if we were to rejoin—things that have not been popular in the past. For instance, the EU might say that, as a new applicant, the UK would have to join the Eurozone. One could easily imagine political arguments arising from that. So, it is not a straightforward route.
In some ways, it might be preferable for the UK to approach the question more along the lines of Norway. Norway voted not to join the EU, partly because of the Common Fisheries Policy and its 2,000 miles of coastline. At the same time, however, it is part of the single market and contributes financially in order to participate. It may be that something along these lines would be a better option for the UK.
There is a genuine debate about how the UK should move closer to Europe. There is, however, a growing sense that it should be closer—not only for economic reasons, but also for political ones. When one considers the current geopolitical context—one superpower pressing in from the east, as in Ukraine, and another expressing interest in places such as Greenland in the west—it may be sensible to work more closely with allies in between.
I do not want to see this only in economic terms. Cultural considerations matter as well, and one of those is the defense of democracy. Whatever our ethnic backgrounds, we are part of democratic societies, and on either side, there are powerful, sometimes autocratic states. So democratic values are something we may wish to emphasize when thinking about cultural identity—values that are shared with the rest of Europe, including Hungary, I am glad to say.
Brexit Fuels UK Fragmentation Risks
Photo: Michele Ursi / Dreamstime.
Your book raises the possibility that Brexit could trigger centrifugal pressures within the UK itself. Ten years on, how do you assess the risks of fragmentation—particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland—and their connection to Brexit politics?
Professor Mark Corner: I think it could happen. Imagine yourself as a Scotsman for a moment. You had a vote in 2014 on whether to stay inside the UK, and David Cameron argued that leaving the UK would mean finding yourself outside the EU—and that this was not desirable. The Scots were quite influenced by this and voted to remain in the UK. Two years later, in the Brexit vote, the Scots voted to stay in the EU, yet the rest of the UK—England and Wales, at any rate—dragged them out. They may well feel that they were misled two years earlier. It is not surprising that many Scots feel betrayed. Another referendum is hardly impossible. At the time, it was described as a once-in-a-generation event. Well, fine—once in a generation—that was 2014. 2039 is not that far away; it is just over a decade from now. So, I would not be surprised if there were another referendum in the 2030s.
What has the UK done about this? It could have taken steps, and perhaps still could. It might say: look, we have this House of Lords—what is it actually doing? It is appointed, not democratic. It is, in effect, “North Korea on Thames.” It could be transformed into a second chamber in which the different nations and regions are represented, rather like the Bundesrat in Germany. This is especially relevant now, because it has often been argued that the imbalance in population—3 million Welsh, 5 million Scots, and 60 million English—makes such a structure unworkable. But the 60 million English can now be broken down: there is Andy Burnham in Manchester, a mayor of Liverpool, a mayor of the Northeast Combined Authority, and a mayor of London. They could form part of a second chamber with real powers, including, arguably, some veto authority. If that kind of constitutional reform were seriously developed in the UK—it has been suggested but never pursued very far—that is what is needed.
Without real constitutional reform, such as a powerful second chamber in which the nations and regions are represented, the centrifugal forces you mention are likely to prove too strong. It is not enough simply to talk about devolving more powers to Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland; they need to be brought into a genuinely national second chamber where they can exercise central authority.
Pressures Grow Within States, Not Between Them
Finally, do you see Brexit as a unique case, or as a broader “laboratory” illustrating the structural tension between globalization and national sovereignty—one that continues to fuel populist radical right movements across Europe?
Professor Mark Corner: There are obviously other dimensions to this. There are really two questions: do I think that other countries, or other member states, will try to leave the EU? In the short to medium term, I do not see that happening. There are, however, movements within member states—one might think, for example, of Catalonia—where there are quite powerful pressures, and it is possible that these will create certain difficulties in the years ahead. But they may not.
If nation-states are prepared to share power internally, in the same way that, as members of the EU, they share power externally, then such outcomes can be avoided. Of course, I cannot predict the future. But what I do not see is the kind of queue of member states leaving the EU that was once suggested — John Gillingham wrote The EU: An Obituary ten years ago. That scenario is not materializing. The pressure to leave exists primarily within nation-states rather than between them.
