Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former US President Donald Trump met to discuss the betterment of the relations of India and US at Heydrabad House in New Delhi on February 25, 2020. Photo: Madhuram Paliwal.

The Orphan Paradox in India and the USA

by with No Comment ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceHomeJournal of Populism StudiesLeadership & Persona

Please cite as:
Sharma, Dinesh & Streich, Gregory W. (2026). “The Orphan Paradox in India and the USA.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). July 06, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000128



Abstract

Why do some societies repeatedly elevate leaders marked by childhood loss, trauma, and adversity during periods of national crisis, while at other times they prefer leaders from established political, economic, and social elites? The Orphan Paradox explores a psychological, cultural, and developmental theory of democratic leadership that integrates developmental science, political history, economics, and personality theory to explain this recurring pattern in the United States and India. Drawing on biographical analyses of presidents and prime ministers from the eighteenth century to the present, the paper distinguishes between traumagenic outsiders—leaders whose identities were shaped by parental loss, family disruption, poverty, or other forms of early adversity—and patrician insiders, who emerged from stable, privileged, and institutionally embedded backgrounds. The central argument is that democratic electorates respond not only to policy preferences and economic conditions but also to symbolic narratives of resilience, authenticity, and continuity. During periods of war, economic inequality, institutional crisis, or social upheaval, voters are more likely to identify with leaders whose life histories embody hardship and recovery. Conversely, during periods of stability and prosperity, electorates tend to favor experienced insiders who represent institutional continuity, expertise, and elite governance. This dynamic produces a recurring epistemic or structural oscillation in democratic leadership between outsider reformers and insider custodians, which is not just a political phenomenon but a deeply psychological process.

Keywords: Orphan Paradox, Democratic Leadership, Political Psychology, Populism, Political Dynasties, Democratic Resilience, India, United States, Leadership

 

By Dinesh Sharma & Gregory W. Streich

Dynastic Politics in India and the USA

In both India and the United States, political dynasties have played a defining role in shaping democratic leadership, revealing how personal lineage and inherited legitimacy continue to intersect with modern electoral politics (Dal Bó et al., 2009; Hess, 2016).[1] In India, the Nehru–Gandhi family has dominated Congress Party politics for decades, serving as the symbolic and organizational center of the party since independence (Brass, 1994; Guha, 2007). Beyond the Congress, regional parties often mirror this pattern, functioning as quasi-familial enterprises in which leadership succession passes through kinship lines—examples include the Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh, the Thackerays in Maharashtra, and the Karunanidhi family in Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) (Jaffrelot & Verniers, 2016; Wyatt, 2013; Palshikar & Kumar, 2004). These familial structures often blur the boundaries between public service and private inheritance, creating networks of loyalty that reinforce both political continuity and resistance to internal reform (Chandra, 2016).

The United States, though formally committed to competitive primaries and elections with open political participation, exhibits its own dynastic patterns. The Kennedys, Bushes, Roosevelts, and Adams–each representing distinct political eras and ideological lineages—have used family name recognition, donor networks, and the symbolic capital of service and sacrifice to sustain their influence across generations (Hess, 2016; Feinstein & Masur, 2020). More recently, the Trump family’s growing presence within Republican politics underscores how populism, too, can potentially become dynastic, converting media visibility and brand identity into a new form of hereditary legitimacy (Saldin & Teles, 2020; D’Antonio, 2015). Trump may be the first modern president to combine outsider populism with explicit aspirations toward patrician and founder-level historical status. He attacks existing dynasties (Bush, Kennedy) yet simultaneously attempts to create a new one and to place himself in the symbolic lineage of Washington, Lincoln, and other nation-defining presidents such as Jackson and McKinley. 

Across both democracies, the enduring appeal of dynastic politics reflects a paradox: voters simultaneously profess faith in meritocracy while responding to the familiarity, continuity, and symbolic legitimacy that political families provide (Besley & Reynal-Querol, 2011). Dynasties persist by drawing upon accumulated forms of capital—symbolic, financial, social, and emotional (Bourdieu, 1986)—yet their influence often weakens during periods of public disillusionment, corruption scandals, economic distress, or generational fatigue (Vaishnav, 2017). Dynastic politics thus functions as both a stabilizing and destabilizing force within democracy, embodying the tension between inherited privilege and democratic renewal.

Yet the counterpart to the dynastic heir is the political orphan or the outsider—the individual who possesses neither inherited status nor established networks of privilege. In many democracies, moments of political upheaval create opportunities for leaders whose authority derives not from lineage but from narratives of adversity, resilience, and personal struggle. Among the most striking of these figures are those who experienced significant childhood loss through parental death, family disruption, abandonment, or displacement. The Orphan Paradox proposed here, which constitutes our main thesis, suggests that early experiences of rupture may cultivate psychological characteristics—such as independence, ambition, resilience, and a heightened sensitivity to insecurity—that can later translate into political leadership.[2] Whereas dynastic leaders inherit political capital, orphan leaders are often compelled to construct it. Their biographies resonate with citizens who perceive themselves as marginalized, overlooked, or excluded from established systems of power. It allows outsiders, such as orphans, to speak for the people against the establishment, as is evident in recent years in the populist turn and the rise of amateur politicians. In this sense, the orphan and the heir represent two competing pathways to political legitimacy: one rooted in inheritance and continuity, the other in adversity and self-creation.

The Orphan Paradox describes the condition of loss: the absence of foundational support—whether parental, institutional, cultural, or even genetic—creates a dual trajectory. On one hand, it heightens vulnerability to instability, alienation, and maladaptive coping; on the other, it can spark remarkable resilience, innovation, and self-determined leadership. This paradox applies across multiple domains of human experience, from individual psychology to political systems and technological development (Sharma, 2026, 2025).[3]

This paper examines these dynamics – the outsider and the heir, the orphan and the patrician – in two of the world’s largest and most populous democracies, India and the United States, both of which emerged from profound historical ruptures and continue to grapple with competing demands for continuity and change (Moffitt, 2016; Jaffrelot & Tillin, 2017). In particular, we connect the rise of Modi in India and Trump in the USA – two political populists, one of whom left home early as a teenager to seek spiritual renunciation and the other who carries the scars of a fraught relationship with his demanding and wealthy parents – with the current trend towards nationalists who take on corrupt elites on behalf of the people (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). Ironically, while in both India and the USA, there is a turn away from the familiar, stable, dynastic family names, both Modi and Trump are examples of how populists position themselves as outsiders seeking to become establishment insiders by creating their own autocracies or dynasties.

 

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Footnotes

[1]  This paper in large part is adapted from the forthcoming book, The Orphan Paradox (Sharma, 2026), which presents a detailed psychocultural, historical, and political analysis of leadership cycles in India and the US. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the ECPS workshop on September 4. 2025. We thank Professor Akis Kalaitzidis for his comments on this paper and the book. We are also immensely grateful to Dr. Arturo G. Munoz, senior political scientist at RAND Corporation, Washington DC, for his commentary on this project. This paper was partly inspired by the contemporary rise of nationalism worldwide. An earlier version of the proposal was reviewed by Dr. Munoz, who suggested that the argument would benefit from a stronger engagement with current political developments. In particular, he encouraged a more explicit comparison between Narendra Modi and Donald Trump as contemporary leaders whose rise reflects broader global trends. 

Parts of this paper were originally developed for an edited volume on WEIRD psychology, which critiques the overreliance on Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic populations in psychological research (Joseph Henrich et al., 2010); the goal here is to show how democracy takes different forms in different contexts. 

[2] For a full treatment of the underpinning of psychological, cultural, and political arguments, see the book, The Orphan Paradox (Sharma, 2026).

[3] The idea of the Orphan Paradox is interdisciplinary. First, developmental perspectives in leadership studies suggest that early experiences of trauma and loss can shape resilience, ambition, and identity formation over the life course. Work in political psychology and leadership analysis (e.g., Jerrold M. Post, 2003) highlights how formative adversity often informs leadership style and worldview. Second, my professional experience in the pharmaceutical sector exposed me to the concept of “orphan drugs” and “orphan markets,” terms institutionalized through policy frameworks such as the Orphan Drug Act. These refer to conditions or markets that lack early institutional support yet later become sites of innovation and intervention. 

Greece protests.

From Economic Crisis to Democratic Backsliding: Evidence from Thailand, Argentina, the United States, and Greece

by with No Comment ArticlesEconomicsEditor’s ChoiceHomeJournal of Populism Studies

Please cite as:
Kalaitzidis, Akis. (2026). “From Economic Crisis to Democratic Backsliding: Evidence from Thailand, Argentina, the United States, and Greece.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). July 06, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000127



Abstract

Economic crises often serve as incubators of populism. When currencies collapse, or debts spiral out of control, mainstream parties lose credibility, creating openings for leaders who claim to defend “the people” against distant elites. The cases of Thailand, Argentina, the United States, and Greece illustrate how crises enable populism, how populists frame economic struggles, and use them to subvert the political order. In Thailand, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis led to IMF-imposed reforms that hurt the rural poor. Thaksin Shinawatra rose on a populist platform of cheap healthcare and rural development, casting himself as defender of the countryside against Bangkok elites (Phongpaichit & Baker, 2009). In Argentina, the 2001–2002 default discredited neoliberal economic policies. Néstor and Cristina Kirchner mobilized popular anger against the IMF and creditors, mixing subsidies and protectionism with nationalist rhetoric (Levitsky & Murillo, 2008). In the United States, the 2008 financial crash produced dual populist currents: the Tea Party and Donald Trump on the right, and Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders on the left, both targeting elites, including Wall Street and the Washington establishment (Skocpol & Williamson, 2012; Frank, 2016). In Greece, Syriza rose during the Eurozone crisis, opposing austerity and demanding sovereignty from the EU “Troika” (Pappas, 2019). Across these cases, populists reframed abstract economic shocks as moral struggles, pitting ordinary people against elites, technocrats, or foreign powers (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Their policies emphasized immediate relief—subsidies, redistribution, debt resistance—over fiscal orthodoxy. Yet each also confronted the hard limits of global capitalism, leading to compromise, backlash, or renewed instability (Dornbusch & Edwards, 1991; Kahler & Lake, 2013). Economic crises highlight the tension between national democracy and global markets; populism thrives in this gap, using it to decay institutions and norms in democratic states. I argue that economic crises lead to democratic backsliding.

Keywords: Populism, Economic Crises, Democratic backsliding, Greece, USA, Thailand, Argentina

By Akis Kalaitzidis[1]

Do economic crises necessarily lead to democratic backsliding? My argument in this paper is that it does. Economic crises lead to increased populism, which ultimately erodes public confidence in the political system and degrades not only democratic regimes (Levitsky & Murillo, 2008) but also authoritarian ones (O’Donnell, 1999; Schedler, 2013). Bunce and Wolchik (2011) argued that the exclusionary populist politics of Slobodan Milosevic destroyed the multicultural authoritarian regime in Yugoslavia. Others have argued it is not necessarily the economic crises that produce populism but the conflict between the “winners and losers” of said economic crisis, which increases the feeling of loss among the many, something in conflict studies we call the Relative Deprivation thesis (Gurr, 1970). Others argue that it is race and status that are responsible for the increasing populism worldwide (Palmer, 2019). Finally, some blame global migratory patterns for being zero-sum, arguing that every newcomer is a net negative for the country that receives them (Palmer, 2019). 

Populist regimes are, par excellence, illiberal, argues Pappas (2019). In this sense, democracies decline step by step, embracing new institutional structures that undermine the preceding democratic ones and replace them with illiberal ones. Often personalistic, these new regimes create institutions closer to authoritarianism than to actual democracy and dominate their countries for a long time, for example, Hungary, Turkey, Argentina, etc. 

In this paper, I will examine four cases, in the order of the economic crises that affected them: Thailand in 1997, Argentina in 2001, the US in 2008, and Greece in 2015. It is my argument that economic crises arising from global economic dislocations and contagion (Desai, 2003) produce populist regimes that wreak havoc on established institutions and lead countries to political backsliding (Foa & Mounk, 2017). I will explain how populism works in light of severe financial crises, addressing the key elements such as a) its social base, b) the policies associated with the regime, c) its rhetoric, d) the organizational strategy of the regime, e) its leadership style, f) the mobilization associated with regime change, and finally, g) the legacy of each regime. 

Populism and Its Discontents

What is populism? And how does it affect different countries? Before I analyze my case studies, it is important to examine how these populist movements form and what they mean. Considering the variation in regimes and political cultures that produce populism, as well as the nebulousness of the concept, it is essential to define it as precisely as possible. Generically, the definition of populism is “a thin center ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus the ‘corrupt elite’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). Although Ernesto Laclau (2005) argued that populism does not lead to authoritarianism, my research finds evidence to the contrary. In fact, using populism as an intermediary variable, one can see that economic crisis can lead to political backsliding that takes the form of authoritarianism (Thailand, the USA) or not (Argentina and Greece), depending on political culture. I agree with Laclau that populism is a form of politics, not an ideology, but unlike Laclau, I view populism as a challenge to democracy and argue it should be viewed as such. 

Benjamin Moffit describes the various approaches to defining the concept through the years with a) the ideational approach, b) the strategic approach, and c) the discussive performative approach (Moffit, 2020). The Ideational approach argues that populism is a worldview and an ideology. Populism, sure enough, increasingly appeals to even the younger generation and has made inroads in even the strongest liberal democracies. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk argue that there are signs of the deconsolidation of democracies across the board (Foa & Mounk, 2017). Americans have long been growing dissatisfied with the state of their political system. As survey researchers have chronicled over recent decades, an overwhelming majority of citizens now believe that the US is ‘headed in the wrong direction,” (Foa & Mounk, 2017). 

In Europe, the shock of Brexit was felt in the corridors of European capitals, and some decided to work against the established order. Several populist leaders, among them the leaders of Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, made an extra effort to dismantle liberal justice requirements and regress their country’s democracy (The Guardian, 3.30.2026). It remains to be seen whether the trend of democratic backsliding can be reversed following Viktor Orbán’s decisive defeat. 

In general, there are two forms of backsliding according to Nancy Bermeo (2016: 6): “Backsliding can take us to different end points at different speeds. Where backsliding involves rapid and radical change across a broad range of institutions, it leads to outright democratic breakdown and to regimes that are unambiguously authoritarian.” In one of my cases, a complete deconsolidation of democracy happened with the end of a populist regime in Thailand. Essentially, the end of the Thaksin experiment was the rise of the Thai military. In the other three cases, the backsliding has been much more gradual, and in those cases, Bermeo argues: “Where backsliding takes the form of gradual changes across a broad range of institutions, it is less likely to lead to all-out regime change and more likely to yield political systems that are ambiguously democratic or hybrid” (Bermeo 2016: 6). In other words, illiberal democracies. 

The last three cases here, Argentina, the US, and Greece, experienced a decline in democratic values, with the US doing the heavy lifting under the Trump Administration. Yet, even in the mild cases of Greece and Argentina, we have seen a serious weakening of democratic institutions, thus “Democratic backsliding can thus constitute democratic breakdown or simply the serious weakening of existing democratic institutions for undefined ends. When backsliding yields situations that are fluid and ill-defined, taking action to defend democracy becomes particularly difficult,” (Bermeo, 2016:6). So as Palacios (2025: 1832) notes, “a large body of studies has found that populism ‘in the real world’ also has detrimental effects on the quality of democracy. Due to their ambiguous relationship with democracy, once in power, many populist forces adopt an agenda of institutional change that seeks to better approximate their illiberal democratic ideals to the practice.” 

What I argue in this paper is that populism transforms economic woes into political and, especially, moral conundrums, pitting parts of society against one another for the benefit of the leadership. The result of populism’s divisiveness is frequent democratic backsliding, as seen in Thailand, where it led to a coup d’ etat against Thaksin and renewed authoritarianism. In Greece, the collapse of the party system and increased violence among people, and in the US, the establishment of an authoritarian pronged leadership. Only in Argentina have the populists from the left been replaced by the populists of the right, with no discernible end to their economic woes.

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[1] Akis Kalaitzidis is a Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, Law, and International Affairs, University of Central Missouri. Email: kalaitzidis@ucmo.edu

US President Donald Trump speaks at a White House press briefing after a Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 near DCA Airport in Washington on January 30, 2025. Photo: Joshua Sukoff.

Liberal Democracy in the United States: The Challenge of Trumpism

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceHomeJournal of Populism Studies

Please cite as:
Streich, Gregory W. (2026). “Liberal Democracy in the United States: The Challenge of Trumpism.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). July 01, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000126



Abstract

Liberal democracy is increasingly challenged by the rise of populism in the twenty-first century. In the United States, the rise of President Donald Trump, a populist leader pursuing policies that differ from those of traditional Republican Presidents, is increasingly challenging the norms and institutions of liberal democracy. In this paper, I examine populism as an ideology, style, and strategy, and apply those criteria to Trumpism as a unique form of populism in the US. I also examine the economic, political, and cultural themes of Trumpism. And while Trumpism has a domestic orientation highlighted by the slogan “Make America Great Again,” it also has an international orientation highlighted by the slogan “America First.” In both orientations, it is transforming US liberal democracy from within and altering its position as a leading defender of liberal democracy and free trade on the international stage.

Keywords: populism; democratic backsliding; liberal democracy; Trumpism; nativism; ethnonationalism; populist foreign policy

 

By Gregory W. Streich

Introduction

The twenty-first century has not been kind to liberal democracy: there are now fewer democratic nations in the world than at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In 2005, there were 27 democratizing regimes compared to 12 autocratizing regimes, but by 2025, the numbers flipped to 18 democratizing regimes compared to 44 autocratizing regimes (Nord et al., 2026). Researchers at V-Dem have found that liberal democracies declined from 22.03% of all nations in 2000 to 17.83% by 2023, while over the same period, electoral autocracies held steady, representing 32.2% of all nations in 2000 and 31.84% in 2023 (Nord et al., 2025). Additionally, V-Dem dedicated a section titled “USA – A Democratic Breakdown in the Making?” in their Democracy Report 2025, drawing attention to President Trump’s actions that purged military and civil servants as well as threatened independent media outlets, judges, universities, and more (Nord et al., 2025: 46-47). As a result, V-Dem’s 2026 report concluded that the United States has lost its status as a liberal democracy for the first time in fifty years, and instead joins the ranks of “electoral democracies” in which “liberal characteristics of established democracies – such as checks and balances on the executive, respect for civil liberties, and the rule of law – are eroding”(Nord et al., 2026: 10).

Similarly, a February 2025 report from Bright Line Watch found that the “overall performance of American democracy on a 0–100 scale has fallen to the lowest levels observed since they began tracking this measure in 2017: 53 among the public and 55 among experts” (Bright Line Watch, 2025). In their 2026 report, the public’s rating of democracy in the US dipped to 49 in April 2025 before rebounding back to 52 in early 2026, while expert ratings were relatively unchanged at 56 (Bright Line Watch, 2026). Additionally, the US has seen its Freedom House scores drop in recent years from 89/100 “free” to 84/100 in 2025 to 81/100 in 2026 (Freedom House, 2025, 2026). To be sure, the US is still a strong democracy. But when the world’s oldest, wealthiest, and, in many ways, most powerful democracy is identified as a case of democratic backsliding (Levitsky & Way, 2025), this is a significant development that has important ramifications for the health of liberal democracy both domestically and globally.

While liberal democracy is in retreat around the world for several reasons, one is the rise of populism. Both left- and right-wing populist leaders and political parties have emerged in various countries in reaction to the economic challenges of globalization and the rise of migration, both of which have sparked the anti-globalist and anti-immigration reactions that fuel populism (Eatwell & Goodwin, 2018; Judis, 2016; Moffitt, 2016; Norris & Inglehart, 2019; Scheiring et al., 2024). As such, populism is a symptom of those underlying causes but also exacerbates those anxieties and fears. While the US has seen the emergence of a left-leaning populism in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders as a national political figure, in this paper, I focus on the rise of Trumpism as a right-leaning populism led by  Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” and “America First” movement. Indeed, political journalists have claimed that President Trump is undertaking the “Orbánization” (Beauchamp, 2024; Marantz, 2022, 2025) or even the “Putinization” of the US (Glasser, 2025; Kasparov, 2025).

Donald Trump is not alone in using populist appeals and styles to consolidate power and pursue his agenda. Populists of the left and right, such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, have all come to power through legitimate electoral mechanisms. However, once in office, “these populist leaders have skewed political competition by implementing discriminatory electoral rules, orchestrating partisan takeovers of the judiciary and of other independent institutions, and launching constant attacks on the media” (Rovira Kaltwasser & Taggart, 2025, p. 97). President Trump is following a similar playbook by using the power of the Presidency to reward friends and punish foes, all while consolidating more power in the Executive branch. For example, Trump has used Executive Orders, the Justice Department, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to purge civil servants and attack judges, independent journalists, and political opponents. He has also intimidated and threatened legal action and regulatory review of universities, media outlets, late-night talk show hosts, and law firms. And, he has asserted (and attempted to assert) Executive control over independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve, National Labor Relations Board, and the National Science Foundation (among others), usurped Congress’s power of the purse, and has gone to war in Iran without Congressional consultation or approval (Luttig, 2025).

To the extent that Trumpism appeals to social conservatives who openly admire Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin for their defense of traditional gender roles and opposition to what they see as decadent liberalism, immigration, and LGBTQ rights, it is little wonder that the domestic policies of Trump reflect some of the same policies pursued by Orbán as he has turned Hungary into an illiberal democracy (Beauchamp, 2024b; Field, 2025: 17; Marantz, 2022; Rudolph, 2024). Indeed, Orbán has attended and spoken at several CPAC events in the US as well as hosted CPAC events in Hungary, cementing the ideological convergence of Orbánism and Trumpism. Further, Snegovaya et al. (2023) highlight many socially conservative policies on traditional gender roles and opposition to LGBTQ rights of Putinism that overlap with Trumpism in the US. While there are important differences, these overlapping policy interests are why some social conservatives in the US view Putin and Russia as an ally of the US in the battle against what they see as decadent liberal Western values.

Given the populist turn in the US and elsewhere, we are witnessing the formation of a new ideological conflict that will shape the twenty-first century: the battle between liberal democracy on one side and various forms of populism, autocracy, and authoritarianism on the other. An open question is which side the US will take in this battle, especially when it is being transformed from within by Trumpism.

The remainder of this paper consists of four parts. In Part 2, I review the literature on populism to argue that Trumpism meets the criteria of populism in its ideology, style, and strategy. I then examine the economic (Part 3), political (Part 4), and cultural dimensions (Part 5) of Trumpism and, in so doing, draw out some of its domestic and international manifestations. I then conclude (Part 6) with some observations about future research questions for the study of populism in general and Trumpism in particular.

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Aung San Suu Kyi

Daughters of the Dynasties: Father-Daughter Succession in Asia and the United States

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceHomeJournal of Populism StudiesJOURNALSLeadership & Persona

Please cite as:
Sharma, Dinesh; Romagna, Britt; Lowenthal, Zara & Perez-Hosein, Jamilla. (2026). “Daughters of the Dynasties: Father-Daughter Succession in Asia and the United States.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). June 30, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000125



Abstract
Why do some democracies consistently produce female national leaders from political dynasties while others—with equally prominent political families—do not? This article addresses this puzzle through a comparative analysis of father–daughter succession in South and Southeast Asia and the United States. Although both regions feature competitive electoral democracies, influential political families, and mass media politics, they have produced markedly different patterns of female executive leadership. While South and Southeast Asia has generated numerous female prime ministers and presidents from political dynasties, the United States has produced no comparable case of a daughter of a president ascending to the presidency. Drawing on psychohistory, political psychology, comparative politics, and gender studies, the article argues that populism assumes different institutional forms across democratic contexts. In much of South and Southeast Asia, populist politics frequently operates through dynastic legitimacy, allowing daughters to inherit symbolic authority from charismatic or martyred fathers. By contrast, American populism has historically defined itself against entrenched political dynasties, making hereditary succession a political liability rather than a source of democratic legitimacy. The analysis combines two complementary studies. The first compares patterns of political and corporate father–daughter succession across Asia and the United States, including contemporary comparisons such as Chelsea Clinton and Paetongtarn Shinawatra. The second presents a psychohistorical comparison of Indira Gandhi and Rosemary Kennedy, demonstrating how family socialization, gender norms, disability, political culture, and historical context shaped radically different life trajectories.  The article concludes that female dynastic succession is shaped not by democracy alone but by the interaction of political institutions, populist narratives, patriarchal norms, historical memory, and elite family structures. By integrating comparative politics with psychohistory, it offers a novel framework for understanding how democracies construct legitimacy, political inheritance, and pathways to female executive leadership across cultures

Keywords: Populism, Political Leadership, Female Political Leadership, Political Dynasties, Leadership Succession, Gender and Politics, Political Psychology, Chelsea Clinton, Indira Gandhi, Rosemary Kennedy, India, United States, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thailand

 

By Dinesh Sharma, Britt Romagna, Zara Lowenthal & Jamilla Perez-Hosein  

Introduction

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, South and Southeast Asia produced an unusually large number of female national leaders compared with global trends. Many of these women—including Indira Gandhi in India, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Corazon Aquino in the Philippines, and Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar—emerged from powerful political dynasties as daughters, widows, or wives of assassinated, persecuted, or charismatic male leaders. Scholars argue that these women inherited symbolic legitimacy through family lineage, particularly in contexts where political parties and nationalist movements were deeply personalized around founding fathers and political martyrs (Richter, 1990; Derichs et al., 2011).

Paradoxically, patriarchal political cultures sometimes facilitated rather than prevented the rise of elite women leaders. Because these women were viewed through traditional gender roles—as mothers, daughters, or widows of the nation—they were often perceived as morally virtuous and less threatening than male rivals (Choi, 2015). This gendered moral capital enabled them to unify fragmented political movements and inherit charismatic authority from deceased or persecuted male relatives. In the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, for example, her identity as the daughter of Burmese independence hero Aung San provided symbolic continuity that strengthened opposition to military rule (Fleschenberg, 2008).

However, scholars also note that the same patriarchal structures that enabled women’s political ascent often constrained their authority once in power. Female dynastic leaders frequently faced military coups, assassination, corruption allegations, or resistance from male political elites who expected them to serve symbolic rather than executive roles. Moreover, many studies conclude that these leaders did relatively little to advance broader women’s rights or challenge patriarchal systems, often relying instead on traditional gender norms and dynastic legitimacy to maintain political authority (Blackburn, 2004; Jalalzai, 2013). Thus, the rise of female dynastic leaders in Asia illustrates the complex relationship between patriarchy, populism, political inheritance, and gendered legitimacy in democratic and postcolonial societies.

Research Question

Why are some democracies able to consistently produce powerful female leaders from political dynasties, while others exhibit a lack, or near absence, of national female leadership? Utilizing a quasi-experimental design and a naturalistic or qualitative methodology that examines the life histories of the daughters of national leaders in different democratic contexts—namely South and Southeast Asia and the United States—reveals important differences in how these political systems construct female power and authority (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010). Both regions contain large electoral democracies with mass political participation, modern media environments, and long traditions of competitive politics (Dahl, 1971). Yet, the trajectories of the daughters of national leaders differ strikingly across these settings, with many prominent female leaders emerging from South and Southeast Asian political systems (Jalalzai, 2013). This paper attempts to address this comparative difference by using a multi-method approach.

By contrast, daughters of US presidents have rarely entered formal political leadership. Figures such as Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill Clinton, and Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump, participated in political campaigns or held advisory roles, yet neither became a nationally elected leader. Despite the prominence of political families in the United States, dynastic succession through daughters has not produced a female president or equivalent national executive leader (Kazin, 1995; Lipset, 1996).

This contrast creates a useful naturally occurring comparative experiment. Both regions share electoral democracy and highly visible political families, yet they produce different outcomes in the political careers of daughters of national leaders. Examining these divergent life histories helps illuminate how political institutions, dynastic networks, gender norms, and populist narratives shape pathways to female national leadership (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017).

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Cargo ship transporting containers of waste to a recycling facility. Conceptual image of global waste trade and environmental pollution. Photo: Evgeniy Parilov | Dreamstime.

Waste Sovereignty and Plastic Colonialism: Environmental Power and Populism in the Global Political Economy of Waste

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeJournal of Populism Studies

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Please cite as:
Solaja, Oludele Mayowa. (2026). “Waste Sovereignty and Plastic Colonialism: Environmental Power and Populism in the Global Political Economy of Waste.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). June 11, 2026.  https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000124



Abstract

Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental problems of the twenty-first century, but the governance of global plastic waste is remarkably unequal. Significant volumes of plastic waste from developed countries are exported to developing countries in the Global South, where waste management infrastructure and regulatory capacity are often limited. While this movement of waste across borders is frequently discussed in terms of recycling efficiency or waste management capacity, these transactions are deeply embedded in unequal power relations within the global political economy. This article proposes a theoretical framework called Waste Sovereignty Theory (WST), which explains how international waste trade reproduces environmental power asymmetries between exporting and importing nations. Drawing on political ecology, environmental justice, postcolonial environmental governance, and emerging scholarship on environmental populism, the paper conceptualizes transboundary plastic waste flows as a form of plastic colonialism in which the ecological costs of production and consumption in wealthy countries are displaced onto less powerful states. The article introduces a Waste Sovereignty Theory Framework (WST Framework) that links four key dynamics—plastic production, transnational waste trade, governance inequality, and sovereignty claims—to explain contemporary struggles over environmental authority in the Global South. Using illustrative cases from Southeast Asia and Africa, the article demonstrates how states and communities respond through waste import bans, stricter regulatory regimes, waste repatriation policies, and the promotion of domestic recycling industries. These responses are interpreted not only as efforts to reclaim environmental governance but also as expressions of environmental populism, whereby affected populations challenge environmental burdens perceived as imposed by distant political, economic, and technocratic elites. Waste sovereignty thus emerges as both a claim to environmental justice and a form of political resistance against unequal structures of global environmental governance. The article argues that addressing the global plastic crisis requires more than technological improvements in waste management; it demands institutional reforms capable of confronting the structural inequalities embedded in contemporary systems of production, consumption, and environmental governance.

Keywords: Waste Sovereignty, Plastic Colonialism, Environmental Populism, Global Waste Trade, Environmental Governance, Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, Circular Economy, Global South

 

By Oludele Mayowa Solaja

Introduction

Plastic waste constitutes one of the leading contemporary environmental problems in the 21st century. Over the last decades, production of plastics in the global South have rapidly increase from less than 1 million tons per year in the 1950s to more than 400 million tons in a year and rapidly growing international plastic waste trade networks (Geyer et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2021; Clapp, 2022). Although plastic waste is created around the globe, its environmental burden has been distributed unevenly, that is, wealthy industrialized countries ship vast amounts of their waste to the Global South countries whose institutions and capabilities are often unable to manage this commodity (Brooks et al., 2018; Clapp, 2021). This paper considers that what often appears as technical problems with waste management or efficiency of recycling, are the consequences of underlying structural power relations within political economy that shaped global politics of waste management.

The political ecology literature frames such dynamics within a politics of unequal access to environmental resources. International industrial and consumer economies are producing vast flows of unwanted materials whose disposal is often externalized, whereby they can find an outlet within the weaker regulatory systems found in some Global South countries, leading to environmental contamination and informal dumping and recycling networks (Pellow, 2018; Liboiron, 2021). This is a pattern of waste colonialism where environmental harm produced by global industrial capitalism can be displaced from wealthy consumer economies to the periphery through the waste trade (Pellow, 2018; Liboiron, 2021). This in turn constitutes ecological distribution conflicts, whereby environmental burdens and their subsequent harm fall unevenly between social groups and geographic territories (Martinez-Alier, 2002).

Emergent trends in international waste markets highlight the politicization of these dynamics. The closure of the Chinese market to the majority of foreign waste exports under the National Sword policy in 2018 led to the redirection of massive flows of plastic waste to countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, overwhelming the existing domestic waste management systems of these recipient countries. Consequently, governments from the Global South such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and a host of African states have since imposed new regulations and repatriated illegal shipments of plastic waste, showing the burgeoning politics of the waste system.

Most academic literature on the global plastic crisis frames plastic waste as a technical problem of recycling efficiency or waste management systems, however there is an important politics of why environmental problems and the burden of waste are distributed unevenly. More focus has not been paid to the issue of environmental sovereignty – a State’s/Community’s authority over their environmental resource system, including regulation of trans-boundary flows and their control over development pathways, as a source of environmental power and control within global waste flows governed by the trade regime, global corporate supply chains, and disparities in regulation.

This article theorizes the politics of global waste governance by developing the Waste Sovereignty Theory (WST), which frames global waste systems as arenas of political struggle over authority where States and communities contest the uneven distribution of ecological burden. Waste Sovereignty Theory framework links four key mechanisms-production, trade networks, disparity in regulation, and sovereignty claims-to illuminate the operation of environmental power within current waste regimes. Waste sovereignty, within WST, signifies the authority of States, communities and social movements to assert control over the management of waste systems, including import flows, domestic recycling industry development and environmental common preservation. 

In this article, waste sovereignty is defined as the capacity of states, communities, and social institutions to exercise political, ecological, and economic authority over the governance of waste within their territories. This includes the power to regulate transboundary waste flows, control domestic recycling infrastructures, determine environmental standards, and shape the economic systems through which waste materials are managed or transformed into resources. Within the Waste Sovereignty Theory Framework (WST Framework), waste sovereignty therefore represents a form of environmental authority through which political actors contest the unequal distribution of ecological burdens generated by global production and consumption systems.

The theory of Waste Sovereignty extends the field of environmental governance in three main ways; first, situating the plastic crisis within the politics of production, consumption and the externalization of environmental impact. Second, it develops the discourse of environmental justice by placing issues of ecological inequity alongside control over environmental governance systems. Third, it theorizes responses to plastic waste in the Global South as claims to sovereignty from the peripheries in the form of restrictions on imports, new legislation, domestic recycling industries development etc.

Therefore this paper answers the questions: how does global plastic waste trade create a power disparity and how can the Waste Sovereignty Theory frame the emergence of fights for environmental governance in the Global South? Showing the dynamics of the WST through cases from Southeast Asia and Africa, the paper argues that plastic waste has become a politically embedded global issue and its solutions need to transcend purely technical strategies of waste management and recycling, and include the politics of environmental power and sovereignty within the waste system.

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Populism

Do Economic and Identity Cleavages Account for the Differences Between Left and Right Populism? Hungary, Venezuela, and the United States

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Lightcap, Tracy. (2026). “Do Economic and Identity Cleavages Account for the Differences Between Left and Right Populism? Hungary, Venezuela, and the United States.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). May 27, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000123

 

Abstract

Right- and left-wing populism are widely used concepts, but they lack a coherent theoretical framework. In this paper, I describe a new model developed by Dani Rodrik for understanding how right- and left-wing populist regimes function, and I test the model empirically. First, I describe some aspects of populism in both its left- and right-wing varieties and briefly outline the development of populism research. Second, I present the cleavage model proposed by Rodrik. Third, I examine two cases—the PSUV regime in Venezuela (left-wing populism) and the Fidesz regime in Hungary (right-wing populism)—as examples of the two populist trends. Fourth, I test the cleavage model using a classic computer-generated content analysis by creating dictionaries based on the manifestos of the PSUV and Fidesz in order to analyze speeches by the leaders of left- and right-wing populist regimes, Hugo Chávez and Viktor Orbán. Finally, I test the model on out-of-sample cases using speeches by Barack Obama and Donald Trump. I conclude that the model shows promising results and offer reflections on how the cleavage model advances our understanding of the differences between right- and left-wing populist regimes.

Keywords: economic cleavages, identity cleavages, left-wing populism, right-wing populism, content analysis

 

By Tracy Lightcap*

Introduction

Populism is a difficult concept to define. Populist movements embrace the entire spectrum of conventional politics but have a similar core appeal. Dani Rodrik defines them this way: “What all these (populist movements) share is an anti-establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people against elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalization, and often (but not always) a penchant for authoritarian governance,” (Rodrik, 2018: 1).[1]

Judis (2016) divides such regimes into right-wing and left-wing varieties. However, the difficulties in defining different tendencies in populism are reflected in the difficulties in conducting empirical research on the phenomena. There have been both qualitative (see, for example, Aslandis, 2016a, 2016b; Bánkuti et al., 2012, Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013) and quantitative (see Fernández-Gracia & Leungo, 2018; Popping, 2018; Hawkins, 2009; Ernst et al., 2017) efforts to distinguish right and left populist regimes from each other. A distinguishing aspect of these studies, however, is that they are descriptive in character, dividing populist regimes generally by reference to a historical inheritance of populism or to particular aspects of the political history of the countries examined. Theoretical explanations for right and left populism are less common.[2] This shortfall creates a problem for research on varieties of populism going forward.

In his papers Rodrik (2018, 2019) has presented a convincing model for how different populist regimes arise in different situations. Their scheme divides society into three main groups: elites, majorities of the middle class and poor, and minorities identified by ethnic, religious, or citizen status differences. This leads to two major potential divisions that populist movements exploit: economic (income/social class) and identity (ethnic-nationalist/cultural) cleavages. He argues that these cleavages shape the anti-establishment politics that Judis (2016) identifies in right- and left-wing populist regimes, but in different ways.

This paper aims to test the cleavages model proposed by Rodrik. The identification of economic and identity cleavages with right- and left-wing populist regimes will constitute a significant theoretical advance if the model proves valid. However, the identification of income/class and ethnic-national identity cleavages with, respectively, left- and right-wing populist regimes has yet to be tested empirically. I will test these hypothetical linkages through an empirical examination of the appeals made by populist regimes themselves.

First, I will provide a short overview of Rodrik’s model. I will then examine the two cases used to develop the analysis in this paper: the Fidesz regime in Hungary as an example of right-wing populism and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in Venezuela as an example of left-wing populism.

Then, applying the framework suggested by Rodrik, I examine Fidesz and PSUV manifestos in order to develop dictionaries of abstract terms distinguishing right- and left-wing regimes along cleavage lines. I use a classic content analysis of speeches by the leaders of the regimes in Hungary and Venezuela to determine how closely their public discourse tracks the differences proposed by Rodrik.

I then test the model beyond the initial cases by comparing speeches by Barack Obama and Donald Trump with those of Hugo Chávez and Viktor Orbán. Finally, I offer a few remarks about what has been learned and the future direction of the research.

[1] The difficulty with defining populism is, I think, a product of the way the politics in these movements works. There is an intentional unwillingness to express any general policy that would allow easy identification of a populist movement with establishment politics. Instead, the concerns of populist adherents are distracted by elite/mass divisions, concern about national economic and political independence, and, in right-wing populism, extreme nationalism and ethnic scapegoating. This is why some scholars (Aslandis, 2016b, Moffitt & Tormey, 2014) have refused to see populism as an ideology at all.

[2] But see Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013.

 

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AI, artificial intelligence, and the concept of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation: A man uses his smartphone displaying the red text “Fake News,” surrounded by related keywords. Photo: Dreamstime.

Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm

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Please cite as:
Syvak, Nikoletta. (2026). “Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm.” ECPS Book Reviews. European Center for Populism Studies. January 19, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/br0025

This review assesses Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm (2024), edited by Saul Newman and Maximilian Conrad, a timely and theoretically ambitious contribution to the study of contemporary populism. The volume advances the argument that post-truth populism is not merely about political lying, but about a deeper transformation in the status of facts, expertise, and epistemic authority in democratic life. Combining political theory, media studies, and comparative analysis, the book conceptualizes post-truth populism as an epistemic struggle in which claims to “truth” are grounded in identity and moral antagonism rather than verification. While the collection’s conceptual breadth sometimes comes at the expense of analytical coherence, it offers valuable insights into how populism reshapes knowledge, trust, and democratic governance in an era of information disorder.

Reviewed by Nikoletta Syvak*

This book review examines the edition 2024 – Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm, edited by Saul Newman and Maximilian Conrad, which explores the relationship between populism and post-truth in contemporary politics. The book offers an interpretation of post-truth populism (PTP) as a stable political complex in which anti-elitist mobilization logic is combined with a crisis of trust in expert knowledge and institutional sources of information. The review evaluates the central thesis of the collection, its place in political science literature, the quality of its arguments and empirical evidence, as well as its methodological strengths and limitations. It concludes that the book makes a significant contribution to the study of populism and political communication, although a unified conceptual framework is not always maintained at the level of individual chapters.

The main thesis of the collection is that post-truth is not limited to “lies in politics,” but reflects a change in the status of facts and expertise in the public sphere. The editors emphasize that populism has epistemic potential: the opposition between “the people” and “the elites” turns into a conflict between “the truth of the people” and “the manipulation of the elites,” where plausibility is subordinated to political identity (p. 4). In this sense, post-truth populism can be understood as a form of politics that not only ignores facts but actively redefines the conditions under which facts become legitimate in the first place. Particularly important is the idea that post-truth should be understood not as relativism, but as a kind of “truth fundamentalism”: actors can reject verifiable data while offering their own “only true” reality (p. 8).

The book is organized into four sections: theoretical debates about PTP, followed by chapters on political communication and media, counter knowledge and conspiracy narratives, and finally, the consequences for democracy (pp. 11-16). Thus, the collection combines political theory, media studies, and comparative politics, showing that post-truth politics concerns not only information bubbles but also the transformation of democratic institutions.

First, the book clearly positions itself within the political science literature on populism. The editors use an approach in which populism is understood as a “thin-centered ideology” based on a moral division of society into “pure people” and “corrupt elites” (p. 4). However, the collection also draws on the more recent “epistemic turn” in populism studies, which views populist politics as a struggle over knowledge, trust, and authority (p. 1). This allows the book to go beyond interpretations of populism exclusively as an electoral strategy or a reaction to economic crises.

Second, methodologically, the book is an edited volume, which means it includes different approaches. Qualitative methodology dominates conceptual analysis, a discursive approach, and case-oriented argumentation. However, the collection is not limited to theory. For example, the section on communication and media includes a study that uses experimental design to test how populist messages influence the perception of facts and the tendency toward “factual relativism.” This strengthens the book’s evidence base and shows that the PTP framework can be operationalized and tested, rather than just discussed at the level of metaphor.

Thirdly, the quality of writing and clarity of argumentation are generally high. The introduction provides a good introduction to the problem, quickly identifies its empirical relevance, and explains why post-truth populism cannot be reduced to moral condemnation of politicians. At the same time, it should be noted that some chapters in the collection may be theoretically dense and difficult for readers without prior knowledge: this is a typical feature of edited volumes, where a uniform style is not guaranteed.

Finally, the main question is how convincing the argument is and why it is important for us to pay attention to it. The strength of the book lies in its demonstration that PTP is not only about “fakes” and manipulation, but also about the erosion of trust as a resource of democratic governance. If citizens no longer share basic procedures for determining facts, rational public debate becomes impossible, and politics turns into a competition of moral narratives and identities. In this sense, the book raises a fundamentally important topic for contemporary political science

However, there are limitations. The term “post-truth populism” may be too broad and applicable to too many different phenomena, from anti-elite rhetoric to conspiracy theories and platform disinformation.

Furthermore, the claim of a “new paradigm” requires strict criteria: what exactly distinguishes PTP from mere populism plus media scandals? The collection presents a compelling formulation of the problem but does not always offer a single set of verifiable criteria that would allow PTP to be clearly distinguished from other forms of political communication.

Conclusion

Overall, the book makes a significant contribution to political science: it shows that populism should be analyzed not only as an ideology or mobilization strategy, but also as epistemic politics-the struggle for the legitimacy of knowledge and the right to “truth” in the public sphere (pp. 4-8). Despite its methodological heterogeneity and risk of conceptual vagueness, the collection is useful for researchers of populism, political communication, democratic theory, and the crisis of trust. The main merit of the book is its ability to explain why post-truth populism has become not a temporary anomaly but a symptom of structural changes in modern democracies.

 

(*) Nikoletta Syvak is a Graduate Student, Department of Political Science and International Relations, East China Normal University (ECNU). Email: syvaknikoletta@gmail.com

 

Newman, Saul & Conrad, Maximilian (eds.). Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. 349 pp. ISBN: ISSN 2946-6016 

Ferenc Gyurcsany at a meeting of European Social Democrats in the Willy Brandt House in Berlin on March 24, 2007. Photo: Mark Waters.

Alcoholic Mobsters and Welfare Criminals: Xenophobia, Welfare Chauvinism and Populism in Gyurcsány Ferenc’s Facebook Posts on Ukrainian Citizens Prior to the War

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Andits, Petra. (2026). “Alcoholic Mobsters and Welfare Criminals: Xenophobia, Welfare Chauvinism and Populism in Gyurcsány Ferenc’s Facebook Posts on Ukrainian Citizens Prior to the War.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). January 5, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000122



Abstract
This article examines how anti-Ukrainian sentiment was mobilized within Hungarian opposition politics prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Focusing on Gyurcsány Ferenc’s 2018 parliamentary election campaign, it analyzes two widely circulated Facebook posts that portrayed Ukrainians as welfare abusers and criminal outsiders. The article demonstrates how xenophobia, welfare chauvinism, and populist political style were combined through visual and narrative strategies to generate moral panic. By situating these representations in relation to Gyurcsány’s post-2022 pro-Ukrainian positioning, the study shows how Ukraine-related narratives function as strategically redeployable political resources rather than stable ideological commitments.

By Petra Andits*

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the publication of academic articles, books, and policy briefs focusing on Ukraine has proliferated. In this paper, I discuss the campaign of Gyurcsány Ferenc, the most prominent figure of the Hungarian opposition in 2018, leading up to the 2018 parliamentary elections and I argue that anti-Ukrainian sentiment constituted a significant building block of the campaign. In particular, I examine two infamous Facebook posts on Ukrainians posted by the politician. I investigate how Ukrainians were perceived outside the Russian–Ukrainian context and analyze the historical, cultural, and political references that they evoked. Specifically, I shall investigate three elements of the campaign: xenophobia, welfare chauvinism, and, above all, populism.

The campaign was not only deeply xenophobic but also deployed well-worn welfare-chauvinistic criticisms against Ukrainian citizens: ‘Do you agree that Ukrainian citizens who have never paid pension contributions in Hungary should not be allowed to receive pensions in Hungary?’ Gyurcsány asks voters, having announced in 2018 at the enlarged inaugural meeting of the DK National Council that a petition to this effect would be launched. He stated that hordes of Ukrainians enter Hungary and illegally claim pensions and, subsequently, citizenship rights.

The campaign – and the Facebook posts, in particular – also echoed essentially populist undertones. Interestingly, to date, Gyurcsány’s populist rhetoric has gone entirely unexamined, highlighting a key shortcoming of populist research, whereby the heterogeneity in what may be categorized as ‘populist’ rhetoric is underexplored (Kovács et al., 2022). I argue that ‘populism’ can take various shapes and often operates in accordance with a place-based logic that does not necessarily echo official political discourses (ibid). The Facebook posts reveal a populist moral struggle in which the popular hero (Gyurcsány himself) defeats the devil (Ukrainian welfare criminals backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán), and features urgency, crisis, and simplistic solutions – well-known ingredients in populist rhetoric.

The Demokratikus Koalíció’s narrative about Ukrainian pension fraud began to surface near the end of the 2018 election campaign A particularly striking aspect of the campaign is its intentional merging of two wholly distinct issues: first, the planned citizenship rights for minority Hungarians in Ukraine and, second, the pension benefits that some Ukrainians receive from the Hungarian state. Around that time, Orbán was engaged in initial negotiations with the Ukrainian authorities concerning the question of whether dual citizenship should be granted to minority Hungarians. These negotiations were sensitive, given that Ukraine does not allow dual citizenship, and the alignment between Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin further overshadowed the talks. Hungary also has a treaty with Ukraine, based on a 1963 intergovernmental agreement with the Soviet Union, according to which retired Ukrainian citizens who reside permanently in Hungary can apply to have their pensions paid there in Hungarian forints (HUF) (Caglar et al., 2011).

The Hungarian pension system does not simply convert their Ukrainian pensions into HUF but rather determines the amount on the basis of the beneficiary’s former employment using Hungarian mechanisms, as if they had worked in Hungary throughout their lives. This special pension entitlement is associated with residence and ostensibly has nothing to do with Hungarian citizenship,[i] given that any Ukrainian citizen with a permanent address in Hungary is eligible to receive it. Nevertheless, the opposition has intentionally blurred the two issue and incited an anti-Ukrainian hysteria.

In this paper, I have selected for analysis two consecutively published Facebook posts from the campaign in which Gyurcsány disseminated visual materials pertaining to Ukrainian migrants in Hungary. The first is a fact-finding video, entitled ‘In search of the 300,000 Ukrainian pensions’ and featuring Gyurcsány in the guise of a private detective[ii]; the other is a short educational cartoon.[iii] The posts sparked controversy and criticism both in Hungary and from Ukrainian officials, who accused Gyurcsány of spreading false information and promoting anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Hungary.[iv]The incident proved highly significant, as the first video became the second most-watched Hungarian political video of all time on social media,[v] surpassing, for instance, any video made by Orbán.

 

(*) Dr. Petra Andits is MSCA Seal of Excellence Fellow at the Free University of Bolzano where she leads a project on the emergence of sexual populism in Hungary in the context of migration. Petra is cultural anthropologist by training and holds a Ph.d. in Political and Social Inquiry from the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She was research fellow at various universities, among them Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Spain, Tel Aviv University, University of Granada, Ca’Foscari University in Italy as well as the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is also an experienced ethnographic and documentary film maker. Email: anditspetra@gmail.com; ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9448-7611

 

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The President of Tunisia, Kais Saied at the press conference with new Libyan Presidential Council head, Mohamed MenfiTripoli, Libya 17 March 2021

Civilizational Populism and Migration Diplomacy: Tunisia, the European Union, and Italy 

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceHomeHuman RightsJournal of Populism StudiesMigration

Please cite as:

Murphey, Helen L. (2025). “Civilizational Populism and Migration Diplomacy: Tunisia, the European Union, and Italy.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). November 23, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000121



Abstract

Civilizational populists prioritize territorial sovereignty in their approach to migration. In instances of North-South inequality, however, transit countries may be incentivized to accede to ideologically unpalatable agreements. To understand how these compromises are legitimized, this paper analyses Tunisia’s negotiations with the European Union following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in July 2023 that laid the foundations for cooperation over irregular migration. The deal faced challenges on both the Tunisian and EU sides. Tunisian president Kais Saied, a civilizational populist, chafed at perceived EU paternalism and threats to Tunisia’s sovereignty. The deal was also controversial within the EU due to the Saied regime’s human rights violations, which led to further scrutiny of the Tunisian government’s migration management practices. This article finds that Italy’s mediation, spearheaded by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, was successful in addressing these tensions. By positioning Italy as separate from EU paternalism through a shared framework informed by civilizational populism, Saied could justify engaging in positive-sum diplomacy with the Meloni government and symbolically dispel perceptions of diplomatic asymmetry.

Keywords: migration, European Union, Tunisia, populist foreign policy, Italy

 

By Helen L. Murphey*

Introduction

In April 2024, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Tunisian President Kais Saied for the fourth time in a year. The visit was presented as a success: the two leaders vowed to deepen cooperation, notably over migration, based on the principle of mutual benefit (Gasteli & Kaval, 2024). This successful outcome followed a tumultuous negotiation period with the European Union over a joint approach to migration governance, as some European Union members drew attention to Tunisia’s human rights record, and Saied reiterated his refusal to act as Europe’s border patrol (Dahmani, 2024). 

A closer examination of Italy’s role in facilitating EU-Tunisian cooperation over migration helps unpack how populists use foreign policy to preserve sovereignty and mount a symbolic defense of an embattled national identity. It is a truism that populists tend to pursue foreign policy programs that strengthen national sovereignty at the expense of greater long-term international cooperation. This pattern is particularly pronounced when authoritarian populists are driven by strong ethnonationalist concerns, resulting in a reticence to adopt policy positions that might benefit other nations or minority groups (Wajner et al., 2024: 1825). Many such ethnonationalist populist actors can be identified as civilizational populists (Morieson, 2023), a phenomenon referring to populists around the world who adopt a culturalized understanding of the ‘people’ as belonging to a civilizational heritage (Yilmaz & Morieson, 2022b). Such rhetoric allows for boundaries to be drawn between insiders and outsiders that imply a concern with race and demography while instead using the language of culture and civilizational continuity (Mandelc, 2025). This both draws on nationalist tropes while also transcending them through reference to a more grandiose imaginary (Brubaker, 2017: 1211). 

For such actors, migration forms a particularly potent issue. Not only is it is seen to threaten the ‘purity’ of the nation or region’s people, but it also is typically associated with the priorities of elites and their neoliberal economic project (Stewart, 2020: 1210). Indeed, civilizational populists’ construction of the ‘elite’ presents them as “culturally deracinated” and antagonistic to cultural and national specificity, in Brubaker’s framing (Brubaker, 2017: 1192). Migration thus combines populism’s tendency to differentiate itself from both global elites and their ideology of cosmopolitanism, as well as the “dangerous” foreigners who are often linked to crime and disorder (Taguieff, 1997: 20). Meloni herself has referred to migration as part of a “globalist” project to render Italy more economically and culturally vulnerable by depriving its citizenry of their natural identities (Kington, 2022). Yet civilizational populism – and its connections to race, religion, and ethnicity – also helps illuminate the logic of why some migrants may be more accepted than others. For example, while the Meloni regime has been critical of policies allowing for the intake of Middle Eastern and African migrants and refugees, it has been more welcoming towards Ukrainians fleeing the conflict.

In Tunisia, the issue of migration has been particularly salient under the Saied regime. Tunisia has long been a country of departure for migrants seeking to reach Europe, a pattern which accelerated after the economic and political instability following the Arab Spring. Yet while in the past, most migrants transiting from Tunisia to Europe have been of Tunisian origin, since 2023 Tunisia has become the largest point of departure for sub-Saharan African migrants embarking for Europe (Abderrahim, 2024). This has introduced new dynamics, including growing racist and anti-sub-Saharan African sentiments, that have been intensified by European policy favoring the externalization of migration governance. 

In referencing migration, Saied has used language typical of civilizational populism: he has presented mass sub-Saharan African migration as a demographic threat to Tunisian identity. Such rhetoric was civilizational rather than solely ethnonationalist: irregular migration, in his words, would transform Tunisia from a member of the Arab-Islamic community to “just another African country” (Al Jazeera, 2023). This statement drew on a long history of contestation within negotiations over Tunisia’s regional identity, as well as long-standing marginalization of the country’s Black population (Mzioudet, 2024). After Saied voiced these sentiments in an infamous and controversial speech, Tunisian police began escalating repression of migrants and punishing organizations that advocate on their behalf. 

Yet in addressing this issue, the Saied regime has had to balance competing priorities, indicating the complex and shifting power dynamics constraining populists’ agency in the foreign policy arena. The EU has been willing to offer much-needed financial support in exchange for Tunisian cooperation over migration governance. This dependency makes it difficult for Saied to adopt a classic civilizational populist positioning, in which sovereignty is performed through pure oppositionality (Dudlak, 2025: 629). In effect, however, more interceptions of migrant crossings at sea have led to increasing numbers of sub-Saharan Africans stranded in Tunisia, unable to work or obtain housing due to stricter government policies and further inflaming tensions with Tunisian citizens.

This article analyses the tensions at work in EU-Tunisian migration negotiations and their resolution through Italian mediation. Through analyzing official statements, politicians’ interviews with the press, media coverage, and debates within the European Union from the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in 2023 to the development of European-Tunisian migration partnership throughout 2024-2025, it traces the narratives advanced by proponents and antagonists of the MoU about migration within Tunisia, Italy, and the European Union. This allows for populism to be analyzed as both a strategy and ideology, builds on studies that similarly approach populism – and its links to securitized imaginaries – using a qualitative narrative analytical method centering intertextuality (Löfflmann, 2024). 

This study offers theoretical insights linking populist foreign policy to ontological security. Ontological security suggests that states – as well as international bodies – strive for continuity of identity, even at the cost of instability in their foreign relations (Mitzen, 2006). Through analyzing the EU-Italy-Tunisia relationship, this article argues that Meloni’s intercession, fueled in part by shared civilizational populist values between Meloni and Saied, helped the Saied regime cooperate with Europe whilst avoiding the appearance of subservience to the European Union. In so doing, it preserved both the ontological security of the Saied regime and its prioritization of sovereignty, as well as that of the European Union, who could distance themselves from the human rights abuses attending the deal. 

This article suggests that unequal power dynamics between the European Union and Tunisia – and between member states within the European Union – are essential in understanding the Saied regime’s seeming erraticism during migration negotiations. Consequently, it advances that bilateral relations between populists can be improved through symbolically differentiating themselves from multilateral institutions – which, in turn, can further empower populists on the global stage.

 

(*) Helen L. Murphey is a Post Doctoral Scholar at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University. She earned a PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews in 2023, where she was a Carnegie PhD Scholar. She has previously held an appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Whitman College. She is a Research Associate at the Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies at the University of St Andrews and an Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Religion at the Ohio State University. Her research interests include populism, conspiracy theories, religious social movements and migration. Email: murphey.27@osu.edu | ORCID: 0000-0002-1504-3818

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Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, attend a center-right coalition rally in Rome, Italy on March 01, 2018. Photo: Alessia Pierdomenico.

‘Patriots to Defend Our Identity from the Islamisation of Europe’: How Populist Leaders Normalise Polarisation, a Multimodal Discourse Analysis

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Reggi, Valeria. (2025). “‘Patriots to Defend Our Identity from the Islamisation of Europe’: How Populist Leaders Normalise Polarisation, a Multimodal Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). November 16, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000120

 

Abstract

This article presents the results of several studies on the communicative strategies of right-wing populist leaders in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom in 2021 and 2024. The analyses focus on Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of the National Rally (Rassemblement National) in France, Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) and Matteo Salvini of the League (Lega) in Italy, and Nigel Farage and Richard Tice of Reform UK. The research explores how these leaders construct ingroup and outgroup identities through discursive strategies, whether the outgroup is defined in civilisational terms and if these narratives have evolved over time, becoming ‘normalised.’ Employing qualitative multimodal analysis, the studies incorporate Plutchik’s (1991) classification of basic emotions, Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal theory, and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) framework for image composition. The findings suggest an instrumental use of religion to enhance polarisation, but with a notable transition from emotionally charged visual campaigns to more rationalised and institutionalised arguments, contributing to the normalisation of divisive discourse on immigration and national identity.

Keywords: civilisationism, multimodal discourse analysis, normalisation, populism, right wing

By Valeria Reggi

The discourse of right-wing populist parties in Europe has undergone significant transformations over recent years. As digital platforms become increasingly central to political communication, populist leaders have adapted their messaging strategies to reach and engage with their audiences more effectively. This work presents an overview of several studies – both ongoing and completed – on the populist discourse in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom in 2021 and 2024. It focuses on right-wing leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of the National Rally (Rassemblement National) in France, Giorgia Meloni of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) and Matteo Salvini of the League (Lega) in Italy, and Nigel Farage and Richard Tice of Reform UK. The aim is to explore how they construct their ingroups and outgroups and the discursive mechanisms they employ to reinforce their political narratives, with particular attention to instrumental references to religion as an oppositional divide (civilisational populism). The ultimate scope is to highlight possible trajectories towards normalisation (Krzyżanowski, 2020). In particular, the studies investigate how right-wing populist[3]leaders in France, Italy and the UK build the identity of their ingroup and outgroup and what discursive strategies they use (RQ1), if the outgroup is defined in civilizational terms (RQ2) and if it has changed and become normalised in time (RQ3).

The results show, first of all, a remarkable focus on religion as a means to define the ingroup against the outgroup, which confirms the relevance of studying populism under a civilisational lens. Moreover, they highlight some relevant shifts in the content shared on social media and official party websites between 2021 and 2024, which outlines possible paths towards the normalisation of civilisational polarisation in mainstream political debates. Although this overview involves data sets originated in different research contexts and with different objectives, and, accordingly, does not aim to present a comparison between definitive results, it suggests a possible trajectory in the communication of rightist populist parties and opens the path for further investigation on the normalisation of polarised debate.

The following section outlines the theoretical framework underpinning the research, offering insights into populism, the concept of normalisation, civilisationism, and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Section 3 provides a detailed account of the materials and methods employed in the analysis. Section 4 presents the key findings and engages in their discussion. The final section addresses the research questions directly, expands upon the discussion, and considers possible directions for future research. 

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