Dr. João Ferreira Dias argues that the contemporary center-left may be entering a decisive post-neoliberal phase by re-centering politics on material security rather than cultural conflict. Using Andy Burnham’s political vision as a point of departure—and drawing comparisons with Zohran Mamdani—he contends that democratic renewal depends on reconnecting progressive politics with the everyday concerns of housing, employment, public services, and economic security. While defending the achievements of cultural inclusion, Dr. Dias suggests that the left must once again become the primary political organizer of material insecurity if it is to counter the appeal of ethnonationalist populism. This timely commentary offers a compelling contribution to current debates on populism, post-neoliberalism, democratic representation, and the future of liberal-social democracy in an era of deep political realignment.
Andy (Andrew Murray) Burnham’s first speech in Downing Street, in reminding me of Zohran Mamdani, left me wondering whether we are witnessing a new tendency to recenter political action and political language on material questions. If this tendency is confirmed, it would mark a programmatic shift within Labour’s centrist and moderate left: one that is less ideological and more programme-driven than the radical left, which has lived off struggles for recognition and cultural emancipation. Put differently, the center-left wants to deprive the culture wars of their monopoly over the political agenda.
After decades in which the left increasingly became an interpreter of cultural transformations, Burnham is seeking to return it to its original function: politically organizing economic and social insecurity at a time when that insecurity has been captured largely by the radical right, through a clear articulation of economic resentment with conservative and nationalist appeals. Not because ethnonationalism follows automatically from economic insecurity, but because such insecurity creates fertile ground for converting material loss into cultural resentment (Gidron & Hall, 2020; Rodrik, 2021).
The causes of the erosion of the left’s social representativeness are by now well known. Both the radical left and the radical right identified a culprit behind growing economic unease and anxiety: the neoliberal policies that culminated in the 2008 crisis. Yet, following the success of the radical left during that period, left and right shifted their arenas of action, in a mirror game centered on the struggle for cultural hegemony between progressivism and cultural backlash (Hopkin, 2020; Mudge, 2018; Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
In the post-austerity turn, the left placed greater emphasis on policies recognizing voices historically rendered subaltern and on the struggle against white privilege. The agenda was commendable, but its timing proved challenging as immigration reshaped the social landscape and became an increasingly sensitive political and social issue, carrying with it both economic and cultural anxieties. The radical right, in turn, transformed these anxieties into an identitarian narrative according to which the loss of security, status, and control resulted not from the economic model, but from immigration, cosmopolitan elites, and the cultural transformation of Western societies (Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
Inflammatory rhetoric, readily identifiable culprits—corrupt politicians, immigrants, and “leftists”—and simplistic solutions to complex problems gave the ethnonationalist right room to grow among segments of the working and middle classes who were materially vulnerable, culturally disregarded, and politically estranged from elites. Many of these voters felt anxious about cultural change while parts of the radical left pointed the finger at them as racists, xenophobes, and beneficiaries of racial privilege (Gidron & Hall, 2020).
Like Mamdani, Burnham seems to understand the elementary formula for combating the radical right. It does not lie in continuing to impose a moral framework centered on patriarchy and white privilege, nor merely in explaining that, for example, Nigel Farage is wrong and is a populist. On the contrary, it requires addressing the needs to which he responds: economic and employment security, social protection, public safety, the creation of a sense of belonging and identity within a multicultural framework, and the promise of a shared horizon.
Burnham and Mamdani do not, of course, occupy the same ideological position. What brings them together is less the programme than the political method: making the left intelligible again through the price and quality of everyday life and returning to the idea of a platform broader than the segmentations on which it has come to depend. Rather than first asking voters to subscribe to a moral or identitarian framework, they show them what public power can do for housing, transport, employment, and essential services.
The ethnonationalist right offers security through the border, belonging through the ethnic nation, and a future through restoration. Burnham seeks to offer security through public services, belonging through community and territory, and a future through investment and reindustrialization. He therefore does more than promise protection against decline: he seeks to recover an idea of progress, mobility, and collective capacity, without which the left risks becoming merely the administrator of decay (Hopkin, 2020).
This does not mean, however, that the culture wars can simply be declared over. The radical right will continue to mobilize immigration, national identity, gender, religion, and historical memory even if the left prefers to concentrate on economic questions. The response cannot be to abandon cultural achievements and minority rights, but to integrate them into a universalist language and an idea of common civic belonging. Material politics is necessary, but insufficient. Yet it is now the best and most urgent weapon available to centrists everywhere.
The rematerialization of the centrist left is an essential step towards rebuilding an electoral base amid the urgent need to safeguard the principles of liberal-social democracy. Burnham does not appear to want to replace culture with economics, but rather to reconstruct materially the conditions of democratic belonging—a belonging that is as much of the left as of the right, as much liberal as conservative—which the radical right has converted into an ethnonationalist promise.
References
Gidron, N. & Hall, P. A. (2020). “Populism as a problem of social integration.” Comparative Political Studies, 53(7), 1027–1059. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414019879947
Mudge, S. L. (2018). Leftism reinvented: Western parties from socialism to neoliberalism. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674984837
Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595841
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming far more than information ecosystems—it is reshaping the constitutional foundations of democracy itself. In this interview with the ECPS, Professor Danielle Allen argues that the central challenge of AI is not merely technological but constitutional, requiring democratic societies to rethink representation, political power, and civic agency. Rejecting technological determinism, she contends that democratic institutions can still shape AI’s trajectory, provided they strengthen rather than diminish human judgment. Discussing populism, democratic backsliding, surveillance, intermediary institutions, digital citizenship, and constitutional reform, Professor Allen presents a compelling vision of democratic renewal grounded in one core principle: artificial intelligence should complement human capacities—not replace the judgment upon which liberal democracy ultimately depends.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the institutional architecture of democratic politics. While much public debate has focused on misinformation, deepfakes, automation, and employment, a growing body of scholarship suggests that the more profound implications of generative AI lie elsewhere: in its capacity to reshape political authority, democratic representation, and the constitutional foundations of liberal self-government. As AI systems increasingly mediate public discourse, organize information, influence political preferences, and concentrate unprecedented forms of economic and computational power, the central question is no longer simply how societies should regulate a new technology, but how constitutional democracies themselves must adapt to preserve political equality, civic agency, and democratic accountability.
Few scholars are better positioned to address these challenges than Professor Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and the Democratic Knowledge Project, and one of the world’s leading political philosophers working at the intersection of constitutional democracy, citizenship, technology, and democratic renewal. In her widely discussed Journal of Democracy essay, “The Real Dangers of Generative AI,” Professor Allen argues that contemporary debates have fundamentally misidentified the nature of the challenge. Rather than treating AI as merely a technological disruption, she contends that it represents a constitutional turning point requiring a fundamental rethinking of democratic institutions themselves.
In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Allen offers a remarkably expansive framework for understanding how AI intersects with democratic governance. Rejecting the conventional separation between technology and constitutional politics, she argues that “political institutions are themselves technologies” and therefore cannot be understood independently of technological transformation. From this perspective, AI is not simply another digital innovation but a force capable of altering the institutional mechanisms through which democratic societies organize representation, distribute political power, and preserve constitutional order.
Throughout the conversation, Professor Allen explores the twin dangers confronting liberal democracies: democratic collapse, produced by the erosion of trustworthy informational infrastructures, and democratic singularity, arising from unprecedented concentrations of computational, informational, and economic power. At the same time, she rejects technological determinism. Instead, she insists that democratic societies retain the capacity to shape AI’s trajectory through institutional reform, constitutional safeguards, and renewed democratic participation.
A recurring theme throughout the interview is the centrality of human agency. Professor Allen argues that democratic renewal ultimately depends not upon resisting technological innovation but upon designing institutions that preserve civic judgment and constitutional self-government. As she puts it, “technology always develops out of a moral vision,” making AI fundamentally a political rather than merely technical question. Consequently, she maintains that the essential democratic task is not simply regulating machines but ensuring that “AI should strengthen human judgment, not replace it.” That principle ultimately serves as the interview’s normative anchor, connecting questions of constitutional design, democratic education, AI governance, intermediary institutions, populism, surveillance, and the future of liberal democracy into a single coherent vision of democratic resilience in the age of artificial intelligence.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Danielle Allen, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Political Institutions Are Themselves Technologies
Facial recognition technology scans individuals and displays digital identity and personal data, illustrating AI-powered biometric surveillance. Photo: Piyamas Dulmunsumphun / Dreamstime.
Professor Allen, welcome!Let me begin with your recent Journal of Democracyarticle, “The Real Dangers of Generative AI.”You argue that public debate has focused too heavily on misinformation, deepfakes, and job displacement while overlooking AI’s deeper capacity to restructure political authority and democratic institutions. Why do you believe the greatest threat posed by generative AI is constitutional rather than merely technological, and how does this fundamentally change the way scholars should understand democratic backsliding?
Professor Danielle Allen: Thank you. It’s an important question. I would start by saying that I don’t draw a distinction between the merely technological and the constitutional. Political institutions are themselves technologies. Representation, when it was invented in the eighteenth century, along with electoral districts and voting methods and so forth, was a technology. It was a technology for channeling citizens’ voices into decision-making and producing a counterweight to the other forms of power that existed in monarchical and aristocratic structures. Consequently, any major technological change that affects information, communication, and related domains has the potential to disrupt that foundational technology through which we organize politics.
For the last four decades, policymaking circles have prioritized material well-being while substantially downgrading questions of political organization. As a result, we have underestimated and under-attended to the ways new technologies can disrupt our core political technologies because of this broader blind spot in thinking about politics. In that regard, what I’m trying to do is rectify a broader blind spot in policymaking—to help people remember that our political institutions, whether people have political empowerment, access to voice, and so forth, are essential parts of the story of human flourishing. We have to pay attention to those things as policymakers. And secondly, we have to pay close attention whenever a major disruptive technology directly interacts with those original technologies of representation.
The Concentration of Power Poses Dangers to Core Democratic Rights
You distinguish between what you call “democratic collapse” and “democratic singularity.” Could you explain how these two concepts differ? To what extent does the concentration of computational, informational, and economic power in a handful of corporations create conditions that resemble the concentration of political power traditionally associated with authoritarian regimes?
Professor Danielle Allen: Great question. What my co-author, E. Glen Weyl, and I were trying to do in that article was to describe two dangers that liberal democracies have to navigate. We call these the danger of collapse and the danger of singularity.
The danger of collapse is one in which the informational infrastructures on which you rely for popular sovereignty and institutionally driven decision-making no longer function because of misinformation, deepfakes, the collapse of identity systems, and things like that. That’s one danger the new technologies are provoking as they interact with the traditional technologies of representation.
The second danger is the concentration of power that you’ve been describing. That concentration can emerge in several ways. There’s the issue of capital, the concentration of capital, and the sort of political power that flows from it. There’s also the issue of the concentration of power through control of data and surveillance capacity. Both of those things harbor dangers to core democratic rights, whether those are rights of privacy or rights of equal voice in a political system, and so forth.
So, these are the two dangers: on the one hand, the possibility of chaos and collapse; on the other, the concentration of power. The hard question, then, is how the institutions of liberal democracy can steer through this period of rapid change and transformation, secure control over the new technologies, and truly integrate their capacities into the project of liberal self-government.
What We Really Have Is a Clash of Intermediaries
Truth Social displayed on a smartphone. The social media platform, owned by Donald Trump, was launched as an alternative to mainstream social media. Photo: Rokas Tenys / Dreamstime.
Across Europe and North America, populist leaders increasingly claim to represent “the people” while simultaneously attacking intermediary institutions such as independent media, universities, courts, and civil services. Does generative AI risk accelerating precisely this populist logic by allowing leaders to communicate directly with citizens while bypassing democratic intermediaries altogether?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. I would put the situation slightly differently. I would say it’s not so much that they’re bypassing intermediaries as deploying AI as a new kind of intermediary. In that regard, yes, the traditional intermediaries are under pressure from a new set of intermediaries. Those new intermediaries are the tech infrastructures that populists are using to communicate. In other words, when President Trump establishes Truth Social as an alternative to the existing social media platforms, he is not dispensing with intermediaries but creating his own intermediary, namely that platform.
So, what we really have is a clash of intermediaries. The challenge is that the old intermediaries—universities, newspapers, the traditional institutions, and so forth—grew up in a legal environment, and actively defended a legal environment, that placed a set of basic rights at its center: freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of civil society to maintain independence from government, and the like.
The new intermediaries, by contrast, are not necessarily dependent on those basic rights for their growth or committed to protecting them. That’s where the problem arises.
This is captured, for example, in the challenge surrounding Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act. That provision has essentially exempted social media platforms from regulation on the grounds that regulating them would amount to regulating speech. It collapses speech and algorithms. We ought to be able to regulate algorithms, which essentially perform an editorial or publishing function, in the same way that the print media found itself regulated.
Print media was liable for libel, defamation, and similar harms because of its editorial decisions, whereas social media platforms have been exempted from all of that. Mistakenly exempted, that’s the point I’m making. Because they have been able to flourish without the kinds of careful mechanisms for balancing the protection of speech rights with protection against harms such as defamation and libel, we have experienced rampant problems of misinformation. So, the point I’m trying to make is simply that the old intermediaries have baked into them a more stable and useful rights-based structure than the new intermediaries do.
The Personalized Algorithmic Universe Is Becoming Completely Unreliable
Your work suggests that democracy ultimately depends upon citizens sharing a sufficiently common informational environment. Yet generative AI enables highly individualized persuasion at unprecedented scale. Are we moving from an era of mass propaganda toward what might be called algorithmic individualized populism, where every voter effectively receives a personalized political reality?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. To some extent, I think the answer has to be ‘yes’. Although I think there’s a situation beyond that. What is really happening is that everybody is going to be thrown back on communication with their own trusted networks, and that’s what they will rely on as their source of information.
The personalized algorithmic universe is also one that people are already coming to recognize as completely unreliable. You can’t distinguish between AI-generated things and real things, and so forth. As we develop digital competence—and by that I mean the ability to use these tools ourselves so that we can understand how easily they can be manipulated and manipulate others—we will inoculate ourselves against some of the dangers of that algorithmic environment.
What that, then, means is that we will basically trust the people we actually know and our communications with those people. So, in a funny way, the very big world that we had made small through communications technology is about to become much bigger again. It is going to be harder for people to share trusted messages at scale, precisely because the level of distrust is going to be so high.
We Need Algorithms That Encourage People to Bridge Viewpoint Differences
Artificial intelligence as a next-generation technology shaping the digital era. Photo: Dreamstime.
One striking feature of contemporary populism is its capacity to transform emotional identity into political loyalty. To what extent do recommended algorithms and generative AI amplify precisely those forms of resentment, grievance, and identity polarization upon which contemporary populist movements increasingly depend?
Professor Danielle Allen: They certainly seem to be very active contributors to that. There’s important work being done now by technologists and political scientists to propose alternative structures for algorithms that are focused on pro-social incentives—algorithmic incentives that encourage people to build more bridges across viewpoint differences—and better contextualization tools so that people can see the full spread of opinion and understand where their own opinion sits within that landscape. That helps avoid some of the effects and emotional impacts that come from the siloization of opinion.
The problems you’re describing are all very real. They are the dominant problems in our social media and algorithmic landscape at the moment. At the same time, there really is innovative new work. I’m thinking of people like Aviv Ovadya and his colleague Luke Thorburn, and others who are generating an alternative set of structures for our algorithmic foundation.
Existing Scholarly Foundations Can Be Extended Into the Age of AI
Much scholarship on democratic erosion focuses on executive aggrandizement, judicial capture, electoral manipulation, and attacks on independent institutions. Does AI require us to rethink democratic backsliding itself by recognizing that democracy may now be weakened through the concentration of technological infrastructure rather than solely through constitutional manipulation?
Professor Danielle Allen: I’m not so sure if it requires fundamentally different analytical categories. When, for example, people were studying the genocides in Rwanda, Serbia, and Croatia, one of the key technologies that facilitated them was radio and its use to spread slurs, dehumanizing rhetoric, and memes that helped frame the ultimate victims of genocide as enemies and non-humans, and things like that. My point is that the study of autocracy has long included the study of technology and mass communication. Those pre-existing scholarly foundations can simply be extended into the contemporary context. I don’t think it’s a change of kind so much as a change of scale.
We Don’t Face an Emerging Problem—We Face an Already Existing One
You argue that democracy requires not merely political equality but also a broad distribution of power. Looking at the rapid consolidation of frontier AI among a handful of technology companies, do you believe liberal democracies face an emerging form of private constitutional power that existing democratic institutions are largely unequipped to regulate?
Professor Danielle Allen: I think we don’t face an emerging problem; we face an actually existent, interior problem. It has already emerged, and it’s a totally real problem. Europe has done a better job regulating this power than the US has. I’m thinking about the GDPR(The General Data Protection Regulation) and other forms of regulation, including the recent EU AI Act. That tells me it’s not that liberal democracies lack the capacity to regulate these technologies; it’s that the US, specifically, doesn’t have the capacity right now to regulate them. So, this is not a permanent problem but a political problem here in the US.
I also think we probably have a lot to learn from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the first Gilded Age, as we call it. We’re living through a second Gilded Age, and just as in the first, industrialization produced corporations with enormous concentrations of power, robber barons, and corporations that sought monopolistic control not only of the economy but also of political structures. We’re watching a repeat of all of that.
Those concentrations of power were broken up in the early twentieth century through a very serious array of anti-trust policies. People often point to the importance of the work of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, for example. Today, there’s a whole slew of what people call neo-Brandeisian anti-monopoly policies that many are advocating. I think we do need another era of trust-busting, breaking up those concentrations of power.
I know the dynamic right now between Europe, the EU, and the US is extremely complicated and painful. I will say that I take it as good news that Europe is starting to build a path toward empowering its own tech companies. I do think that taking on the monopoly of the US firms is an important thing to do.
There’s Going to Be a Battle Between Globe-Spanning Tech Powers and Nation-States
Elon Musk—founder and CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, owner of X (formerly Twitter), and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI—speaks at VIVA Technology (VivaTech), June 16, 2023. Photo: Frédéric Legrand / Dreamstime.
Throughout democratic history, monopolies over information have often strengthened authoritarian rule. How different is today’s AI revolution from earlier media revolutions such as radio, television, or social media? Does generative AI represent a quantitative extension of those transformations, or does it constitute a genuinely new constitutional moment?
Professor Danielle Allen: It’s a great question. To be honest, I don’t think I really have an answer. In some ways, it’s an obvious continuation, and I’ve already mentioned that. On the other hand, the speed and scale of change are wholly new for humanity. That’s honestly the part that concerns me the most: the rapidity and the totalizing nature of it.
Take the fact that somebody like Elon Musk can, in five years, manage to have half of the world’s satellites in space. It’s probably more than half of them by now. He has the capacity to intervene directly in geopolitical decision-making among the world’s nation-states. That’s what’s fundamentally different. The earlier technologies came into existence and existed essentially within nation-states. We now have corporations with a degree of political control that puts them in a more powerful position than nation-states.
It’s not that this has never happened before. In the eighteenth century, for example, Britain faced, roughly speaking, a similar kind of problem with the East India Company. Other European powers faced similar challenges with the colonial trading empires that they first allowed to grow and then discovered had gone beyond their control. That, of course, led to the struggles in the nineteenth century between nation-state governments and those colonial companies. We are likely to see another period of that kind of struggle.
I don’t think the nation-state is doomed. I don’t think it’s doomed primarily because people still live in places. Human beings are embodied, and we are instantiated in geographic locales. Our communities matter to us, and that feature of human life, which starts from the ground and extends outward, will continue to be an important part of governance and jurisdictionality. So, in that regard, there’s going to be a battle, for sure, between globe-spanning tech powers and nation-states. I do think nation-states can win in the end. And I would argue they should win. But it’s going to be a very hard period of struggle.
Technology Should Complement Human Intelligence, Not Replace It
In “How AI Fails Us,” you criticize the dominant vision of AI as autonomous intelligence and instead advocate technologies that augment human cooperation rather than replace it. How might this alternative vision reshape democratic governance? Could cooperative AI become a tool for democratic renewal rather than democratic erosion?
Professor Danielle Allen: I appreciate that question. What really matters here is that we sometimes think the way technology is currently unfolding is somehow a matter of the laws of nature or the laws of physics—that it’s simply a natural outgrowth of nature itself. That’s a mistake, and it already gives away too much power. Technology always develops out of some kind of moral vision. By moral vision, I mean a way of understanding human beings, human capacity, and the human relationship to nature and the world.
The argument of that paper is that the moral vision behind the current technological supernova rests on a flawed premise. That premise is that there is one thing called human intelligence, that it is singular, and that machines are trying to replicate and ultimately overcome it. Whereas, in fact, human intelligence is multiple. It comes in a whole range of varieties. Machine intelligence is also multiple. That plurality of our intelligences is valuable to specific societies and to humankind as a whole.
Plurality can be activated for tribalism, conflict, and division, or it can be activated for creativity, innovation, and cultural richness. One of the most important human projects, therefore, is to give ourselves the tools to activate the plurality of our intelligences for those positive outcomes.
If you begin with that basic vision of human beings and human well-being, then you can see a completely different approach to technological development. It is an approach based on activating that plurality in a positive way, one that requires complementing human intelligences rather than trying to overcome or replace them.
Very ordinary technologies, like the Zoom technology we’re using right now, provide a good example. Zoom complements what human beings can do. We can’t see across thousands of miles, so being able to do that through Zoom supplements what we are already able to do. It doesn’t actually replace anything we were previously doing. So, one can begin to envision a host of things that would be wonderful to be able to do that are all supplemental rather than replacing our core capacities.
We Need a Formally Articulated Bill of Rights Against the Powers of AI
Authoritarian governments increasingly combine sophisticated digital surveillance with artificial intelligence, while democratic governments are also rapidly adopting AI for policing, border control, and public administration. How can constitutional democracies harness AI’s administrative potential without gradually normalizing technologies of surveillance and executive concentration that undermine liberal constitutionalism?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. I think we’re at a point where we need a formally articulated bill of rights against the powers of AI. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as nation-states were consolidating their power, people articulated bills of rights. In the US case, we have the first ten amendments to the Constitution: rights to association, rights to expression, freedom from search and seizure without warrants, rights to trial by jury, and so forth.
All of those rights apply to the AI universe, but it is worth taking the time to elaborate on what is required to ensure that they are protected under the surveillance conditions made possible by AI. That’s a project for legal scholars—to spell out, at meaningful length, what those requirements are.
I do think the GDPR was a good model for extending those rights protections into the environment of digital data and the like. We need to keep building that edifice of crystal-clear legal protections and limitations. Again, some of the lawsuits right now against Anthropic and others, for example, for stealing authors’ works, are really important. We already have this rights-based framework, and with more investment of time and effort, we could use it much more comprehensively to cover the world of generative AI.
Generative AI Is Going to Accelerate the Capacity of Everything
Photo: Dreamstime.
Recent years have witnessed growing interaction between transnational populist movements, digital platforms, and algorithmically amplified political narratives. Do you believe generative AI is likely to accelerate the emergence of increasingly coordinated transnational populist ecosystems that operate beyond the regulatory capacity of individual democratic states?
Professor Danielle Allen: Generative AI is going to accelerate the capacity of everything. It will also accelerate the capacity of pro-democracy transnational networks to operate across borders. In that regard, it only changes the balance of power if only the populists use it.
The First Thing We Need Is Functional Democratic Governance
Much current AI regulation emphasizes safety, content moderation, transparency, and risk mitigation. Yet your work argues that these approaches address symptoms rather than underlying distributions of power. What institutional reforms would be necessary if democratic governments were to regulate AI according to constitutional principles instead of primarily technological ones?
Professor Danielle Allen: The two major things we need in the US are to get rid of corruption and restore suffrage. We have experienced an incredible erosion of voting rights in the US. Those two things—corruption, by which I mean the impact of money in our politics, and the erosion of voting rights—mean that our institutions have been captured by small oligarchic minorities pursuing their own financial interests through cronyist arrangements with tech companies.
So, when people ask that question, what they’re often wondering is, “Okay, what’s the specific regulation that you need to rein in a tech company?” What I want to say is that that’s actually operating at the wrong level. The first thing you need is functional democratic governance, where power actually lies with the people. Then the people will be able to apply regulations to tech companies.
We can devise all kinds of regulations—that’s not really the problem. The problem is whether power actually lies with the people or with the people who are in bed with the tech companies. Right now, it lies with people who are in bed with tech companies. That’s why we need fundamental reforms in the basic operations of democracy in the US to change that balance of power.
Digital Competence Matters More Than Digital Literacy
Your broader scholarship consistently emphasizes citizenship, civic identity, democratic participation, and shared constitutional purpose. In an era increasingly mediated by AI-generated information, how should democratic education evolve to prepare citizens not merely to detect misinformation but to sustain democratic judgment itself?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. There are a lot of important pieces there. I think highly of the work of Audrey Tong in Taiwan, who argues for an education in digital competence, not just digital literacy but competence. Again, if you know how to use the tools, you’re going to inoculate yourself against being abused by people who are using them.
So that’s one thing. But, to your point about judgment, cultivating the capacity for judgment is key. That means being able to—and here I’m drawing on some work by somebody named Scott Warren—to provide accurate accounts of what people who disagree with you think and why they think it. In other words, you have to train yourself out of your own silo in order to gain access to the full picture of what people are experiencing. One way to do that is by testing whether or not you can render the best version of your opponent’s argument. That’s a very basic skill, but it is no longer very common in our systems of instruction and education.
The work of judgment also requires understanding how to relate values and principles to empirical realities. To develop those skills, you actually have to spend time thinking about values. What are your values? Where do they come from? What are their sources? How do you justify them? What are other people’s values? How do they interact with each other? The work of connecting a values-based diagnosis to a values-based solution is also a learnable skill. So, those would be three things that I would point to as important to have inside our educational offerings.
We Should Deploy Technology to Elevate Human Judgment
Finally, stepping back from current technological developments, do you believe liberal democracy is entering a constitutional transformation comparable to those produced by the printing press, industrialization, or mass broadcasting? Looking ahead, what institutional innovations will be most essential if democratic societies are to ensure that artificial intelligence strengthens rather than weakens constitutional government, political equality, and democratic self-rule?
Professor Danielle Allen: Yes, I do think we are entering another period of major constitutional transformation of that kind. I wish I could give you a list of specific changes that will help us get where we want to go, but fundamentally, we need changes that strengthen human judgment. That runs a bit against the current at a moment when so much is eroding and replacing human judgment. That’s why I advocate various election system reforms in the US, because they would strengthen human judgment.
I also think there are many ways of deploying technology to elevate human judgment rather than denigrate it. AI sensemaking tools such as Polis and vTaiwan, which are deliberative democracy tools, use natural language to allow people to express themselves in their own words, while helping to bring the themes that people have generated to the surface and making us more visible to one another. Things like this can actually help strengthen human judgment.
The hard question, which I appreciate you’re asking, is this: How do we evaluate whether a technology is strengthening human judgment or weakening it? That seems to me to be one of the criteria we need to bake into our assessments of new models, new tools, and the other technologies that emerge into the world.
Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen’s book offers a compelling reinterpretation of American populism through the lens of political theology. Challenging conventional accounts that reduce populism to anti-elitism or electoral strategy, Rev. Dr. Bossen demonstrates how competing visions of “the people” are constructed through narratives of belonging, redemption, and collective identity. By tracing the historical continuity of white supremacist, Pan-African, and pluralistic populisms from the Progressive Era to Trumpism, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, and progressive labor politics, the book makes a significant contribution to contemporary populism scholarship. While its comparative framework occasionally risks creating an unintended moral symmetry between emancipatory and exclusionary movements, it remains an original, theoretically sophisticated, and highly recommended study for scholars of populism, political theology, religion, and American political development.
Few concepts have generated as much scholarly debate over the past two decades as populism. Whether understood as a thin ideology, a political style, a discursive logic, or a mode of constructing “the people,” populism has become one of the defining frameworks through which scholars interpret democratic transformation in the twenty-first century. Yet despite the flourishing literature on populism, comparatively little attention has been devoted to its religious dimensions or to the theological narratives that shape collective political identities. Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen’s The Political Theologies of Populism: The Garveyites, the Klan, and the Wobblies, 1905–1930. enters this crowded field with an ambitious and refreshingly original intervention. Rather than approaching populism primarily through electoral politics, party systems, or charismatic leadership, Rev. Dr. Bossen investigates the theological imagination underlying populist movements, arguing that populism is fundamentally a process of “people-making” through narratives of salvation, ritual, belonging, and collective identity. The book thus offers an innovative synthesis of political theology, American religious history, social movement studies, and populism scholarship.
The volume examines three influential movements of the Progressive Era: the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and the Second Ku Klux Klan. Although these organizations pursued radically different political objectives, Rev. Dr. Bossen argues that each sought to answer the constitutional question embedded in the opening words of the American Constitution—“We the People”—by constructing its own vision of who genuinely belonged within the political community. In doing so, he identifies three enduring forms of American populism: pluralistic populism, Pan-African populism, and white supremacist populism. These competing projects of collective identity, he contends, have not disappeared with the Progressive Era but continue to shape American political life into the twenty-first century.
Rev. Dr. Bossen is unusually well positioned to write such a study. Trained as both a historian and a scholar of religion, he is also an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister whose long involvement in labor activism—particularly within the IWW—deeply informs his analytical perspective. Rather than concealing his normative commitments behind claims of detached neutrality, Rev. Dr. Bossen openly acknowledges that the book emerged during a period marked by the resurgence of white supremacist politics in the United States. Echoing Howard Zinn’s famous observation that one cannot remain neutral on a moving train, he explicitly rejects the possibility of complete scholarly neutrality and instead argues that historical inquiry should contribute to understanding and resisting contemporary threats to democratic life.
This methodological transparency constitutes one of the book’s principal strengths. Rather than pretending to occupy an impossible position of complete objectivity, Rev. Dr. Bossen clearly situates his scholarship within broader democratic and ethical concerns. His extensive archival research, coupled with his experience as both minister and labor organizer, enables him to bridge historical analysis with contemporary political theory in a manner rarely achieved within existing populism scholarship.
Equally impressive is Rev. Dr. Bossen’s conceptual innovation. Instead of defining populism through anti-elitism, charismatic leadership, or ideological “thinness,” he shifts analytical attention toward the construction of collective political identity. Populism, in his account, is less about particular policy agendas than about the creation of a populus—an imagined political community whose boundaries define inclusion and exclusion. This emphasis resonates with Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populist articulation while simultaneously incorporating insights from Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary and Margaret Canovan’s work on “the people.” Yet Rev. Dr. Bossen moves beyond these traditions by arguing that political identities are sustained not merely through discourse but through deeply embedded theological narratives, rituals, myths, and symbols inherited from American Protestant culture.
Perhaps the book’s most significant contribution lies in demonstrating the historical continuity of these three competing populist traditions. Contemporary discussions of populism often begin with Donald Trump, Brexit, or the European radical right, inadvertently suggesting that populism is primarily a recent electoral phenomenon. Rev. Dr. Bossen persuasively demonstrates instead that today’s political conflicts are rooted in much older struggles over belonging, sovereignty, race, labor, and democracy. The three traditions he reconstructs during the Progressive Era continue to reverberate throughout American political development.
White supremacist populism, represented historically by the Second Ku Klux Klan, survives today in modified forms within elements of Trumpism and the broader MAGA movement. Its rhetoric of reclaiming the nation, defending “real Americans,” protecting traditional values, restricting immigration, and portraying demographic change as existential decline echoes many of the exclusionary narratives that Rev. Dr. Bossen identifies in early twentieth-century white populism. While contemporary movements operate within vastly different institutional and constitutional contexts, the underlying logic of constructing “the people” through exclusion exhibits remarkable historical continuity.
Similarly, the tradition Rev. Dr. Bossen describes as Pan-African populism did not disappear with Marcus Garvey and Garveyism. Rather, it evolved through successive generations of African American political mobilization—from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power and, more recently, Black Lives Matter. Although these movements differ profoundly in strategy, ideology, and organizational form, each represents an effort to redefine democratic membership by confronting the historic exclusion of Black Americans from the full promise of citizenship. Rather than simply demanding policy reform, they have sought recognition, dignity, and inclusion within the American political community itself.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s third tradition, pluralistic populism, likewise extends beyond the IWW. Its aspiration to construct solidarity across racial, ethnic, and occupational divisions can be traced through segments of the American labor movement, democratic socialism, Occupy Wall Street, and Bernie Sanders’ campaigns. Here, “the people” are constituted not by ethnicity or race but through shared economic interests and democratic participation. This continuity illustrates one of the book’s central insights: populism is not inherently authoritarian or democratic, progressive or reactionary. It is instead a contested political logic capable of generating radically different democratic projects depending upon how “the people” are imagined.
This tripartite framework represents one of the most original contributions of The Political Theologies of Populism. By recovering these competing historical traditions, Rev. Dr. Bossen challenges simplistic understandings that reduce populism either to an authoritarian pathology or to a democratic corrective. Instead, he demonstrates that American political development has long been characterized by competing populisms, each offering rival answers to the enduring constitutional question of who belongs within “We the People.” The chapters of the book develop this argument through a richly detailed historical reconstruction of the Progressive Era and its lasting influence on contemporary American politics.
The Enduring Legacies of White Supremacist, Pan-African, and Pluralistic Populisms
Rev. Dr. Bossen develops his central thesis through an eight-chapter structure that moves systematically from conceptual foundations to historical case studies before returning to the contemporary implications of his argument. Rather than presenting the Ku Klux Klan, the IWW, and UNIA as isolated historical phenomena, he demonstrates how each movement constituted a distinctive political theology—a comprehensive moral vision that sought not merely political power but the construction of a particular understanding of the people. This emphasis on “people-making” distinguishes the book from much of the existing literature on populism, which has frequently privileged electoral mobilization, anti-elitist rhetoric, or leadership styles over the deeper ontological question of collective identity.
The opening chapter situates American populism within the unresolved constitutional ambiguity surrounding the phrase “We the People.” Rev. Dr. Bossen argues that American political history is characterized less by a stable democratic consensus than by recurring struggles over membership, belonging, and sovereignty. Every major populist movement attempts to answer the same foundational question: who legitimately constitutes the American people? This conceptual move immediately elevates the discussion beyond conventional institutional analysis. Instead of treating populism as a temporary electoral pathology, Rev. Dr. Bossen understands it as an enduring contest over political ontology—that is, over the very constitution of the political community itself.
The subsequent chapter introduces what is arguably the book’s most original analytical contribution: the identification of three distinct varieties of American populism. White supremacist populism constructs the people through racial exclusion; pluralistic populism seeks solidarity across class and ethnic divisions; Pan-African populism builds collective identity around the shared historical experience of Black oppression and aspirations for racial self-determination. These three traditions are neither merely ideological positions nor electoral constituencies. They represent competing moral universes, each grounded in narratives of redemption, sacrifice, community, and historical destiny. In Rev. Dr. Bossen’s formulation, theology becomes less a matter of organized religion than of symbolic frameworks through which political communities understand themselves and their collective futures.
The conceptual richness of this framework becomes particularly evident in the chapters devoted to political ritual, mythmaking, and collective memory. Rev. Dr. Bossen convincingly demonstrates that each movement employed remarkably similar organizational mechanisms despite radically different political goals. All developed founding myths, sacred texts, ceremonial performances, songs, symbols, and narratives of salvation that transformed fragmented social groups into imagined political communities. The Klan’s rituals of racial purity, the UNIA’s Pan-African ceremonies, and the Wobblies’ labor songs all functioned as instruments for constructing political solidarity. Here, Rev. Dr. Bossen successfully bridges political theology with social movement theory by showing that identity formation depends not only upon ideological programs but also upon emotionally resonant symbolic practices.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its sustained attention to historical continuity. Rather than treating the Progressive Era as a closed historical episode, Rev. Dr. Bossen demonstrates that the competing populisms of the early twentieth century established durable political traditions whose influence extends well beyond their original organizational lives. This historical perspective offers a valuable corrective to contemporary scholarship, which frequently treats populism as a phenomenon emerging primarily after the global financial crisis of 2008 or the electoral victories of Donald Trump and other contemporary populists.
Indeed, one of the most illuminating aspects of the book is the ease with which Rev. Dr. Bossen’s historical framework can be extended into subsequent periods of American political development. The Pan-African populism represented by Garvey’s movement did not disappear with the decline of the UNIA. Instead, it evolved through successive generations of Black political mobilization. While Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement emphasized constitutional equality and nonviolent democratic inclusion, Malcolm X and later Black Power organizations increasingly embraced forms of collective self-determination that echoed certain elements of Garveyite political thought, albeit under profoundly different historical circumstances. Contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter similarly continue the struggle over democratic membership by insisting that Black Americans be recognized as fully equal participants within the American political community rather than perpetual outsiders.
Importantly, however, continuity should not be mistaken for identity. The Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, and Black Lives Matter differ significantly in leadership, ideology, organizational structure, and strategic objectives. Yet they share with Garveyism a fundamental concern with redefining political belonging and confronting structures of racial exclusion. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s framework allows readers to perceive these continuities without collapsing important historical distinctions.
A similar continuity characterizes pluralistic populism. The IWW’s aspiration to unite workers across race, nationality, and occupation prefigured later forms of progressive labor politics that sought to construct solidarity through shared socioeconomic interests rather than ethnic or racial identity. Although the organizational influence of the Wobblies declined dramatically after the 1920s, their broader democratic imagination survived within segments of the American labor movement, the New Left, Occupy Wall Street, and, more recently, Bernie Sanders’ campaigns for democratic socialism. These movements likewise understand democracy as requiring broad popular participation against concentrated economic power, illustrating the remarkable persistence of pluralistic populism across more than a century of American political development.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s discussion of progressivism further enriches this historical narrative. Rather than equating progressivism with contemporary liberal politics, he defines it as a political theology centered upon the administrative state, legal reform, and technocratic expertise rather than the construction of popular identities. Whereas populists seek to constitute a people, progressives seek to reform institutions. This distinction provides a useful analytical vocabulary for understanding why progressive governments often struggle to respond effectively to populist mobilization. Administrative competence alone rarely satisfies citizens searching for belonging, recognition, or collective purpose.
This insight carries considerable contemporary relevance. Much of the political conflict surrounding Trumpism cannot be adequately explained through policy preferences alone. Trump’s political success rested less on detailed programs than on constructing an emotionally resonant narrative of “real Americans” reclaiming their nation from perceived elites and outsiders. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s historical reconstruction demonstrates that this style of political mobilization has deep roots within American history. Trumpism thus appears less as an unprecedented rupture than as the latest manifestation of a much older tradition of exclusionary people-making.
Yet Rev. Dr. Bossen avoids the temptation to reduce populism to authoritarianism. His historical comparison instead reveals that competing populisms have long struggled against one another. White supremacist populism has consistently encountered resistance not only from institutional liberalism but also from alternative populist projects rooted in racial justice, labor solidarity, and democratic inclusion. This recognition substantially enriches contemporary debates by reminding readers that populism has never been politically monolithic. It has always been a contested terrain upon which rival democratic and anti-democratic visions compete to define the boundaries of political community.
By the midpoint of the book, therefore, Rev. Dr. Bossen has accomplished something remarkably difficult. He has transformed three seemingly disparate historical movements into components of a coherent analytical framework that explains not only the Progressive Era but also enduring patterns of American political development. His combination of archival depth, theoretical sophistication, and interdisciplinary ambition makes these chapters among the most intellectually stimulating contributions to recent scholarship on American populism and political theology.
The Political Theology of Populism from the Progressive Era to Trumpism
The latter half of the book represents the culmination of Rev. Dr. Bossen’s broader intellectual project. Having established that populist movements are fundamentally engaged in the construction of collective identities, Chapters Five through Eight examine the symbolic practices through which these identities are sustained. Here, the book moves beyond conventional political history into the domains of ritual, performance, salvation, memory, and political imagination. The result is an unusually sophisticated account of populism that integrates insights from religious studies, historical sociology, and political theory without sacrificing empirical depth.
Particularly illuminating is Rev. Dr. Bossen’s discussion of ritual and performance. Rather than treating ceremonies, uniforms, hymns, catechisms, or mass meetings as peripheral cultural phenomena, he demonstrates that they constituted the very mechanisms through which “the people” came into existence as a political community. The Garveyites’ elaborate parades, the Klan’s carefully choreographed ceremonies, and the Wobblies’ musical traditions each transformed abstract political ideas into lived collective experiences. Politics, in this account, becomes inseparable from emotion, symbolism, and shared moral narratives. Populism succeeds not merely because it articulates grievances but because it offers individuals a compelling sense of belonging during periods of profound social dislocation.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s treatment of political soteriology (his analysis of competing narratives of salvation) is equally original. Each movement promised redemption, albeit in radically different forms. The Klan envisioned the restoration of a purified White Protestant nation. The UNIA promised racial dignity, Black self-determination, and collective liberation from centuries of oppression. The IWW anticipated emancipation through industrial democracy and working-class solidarity. These contrasting visions demonstrate that populism cannot be reduced to anti-elitist rhetoric alone. Rather, it constitutes a moral project that offers comprehensive explanations of social crisis while simultaneously identifying the agents of redemption and the enemies of collective flourishing.
The chapters examining decline are particularly noteworthy because Rev. Dr. Bossen refuses to interpret organizational decline as ideological disappearance. Although each movement experienced institutional fragmentation, repression, or internal crisis, their underlying political imaginaries survived. This distinction between organizational collapse and ideological continuity represents one of the book’s most valuable contributions. Political movements may disappear, but the symbolic resources they generate often remain available for subsequent generations confronting new historical crises.
The concluding chapter, significantly entitled “Look for Me in the Whirlwind”: Enduring Populisms, demonstrates precisely this point. Rev. Dr. Bossen argues that the three competing populisms identified in the Progressive Era continue to animate American political conflict well into the twenty-first century. This historical continuity is arguably the book’s central achievement and provides an important corrective to interpretations that portray recent populist mobilization as historically unprecedented.
Indeed, contemporary American politics vividly illustrates the durability of Rev. Dr. Bossen’s analytical framework. Trumpism, despite its distinctive twenty-first-century media environment and electoral strategies, can be understood as the latest manifestation of the exclusionary populist tradition that Rev. Dr. Bossen identifies with the Second Ku Klux Klan. Such a comparison does not imply organizational continuity or ideological identity. Rather, it highlights recurring political logics. Both movements define “the people” through exclusionary conceptions of national identity, portray demographic change as existential decline, invoke nostalgia for a lost national greatness, and frame political conflict as an existential struggle between authentic citizens and corrupt elites allied with threatening outsiders.
The slogan “Make America Great Again,” for example, functions as more than an electoral slogan. It evokes a redemptive political narrative that promises national restoration following perceived moral decline. Immigration, globalization, demographic transformation, and multiculturalism become interpreted not merely as policy disagreements but as threats to the moral integrity of the nation itself. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s emphasis on political theology helps explain why such narratives resonate so powerfully. They address questions of identity and belonging rather than simply economic interests or governmental performance.
Conversely, Rev. Dr. Bossen’s category of Pan-African populism illuminates important dimensions of contemporary Black political mobilization. Although the Civil Rights Movement pursued constitutional equality through integrationist strategies largely absent from Garvey’s separatist vision, both sought to redefine democratic membership by challenging the exclusion of Black Americans from full political belonging. Later movements, including Black Power, increasingly emphasized cultural autonomy, community empowerment, and independent political agency—concerns that resonate more directly with aspects of Garveyite political thought.
More recently, Black Lives Matter has continued this broader historical struggle, albeit through decentralized organizational forms and digital activism unimaginable during the Progressive Era. Like earlier Black movements, it insists that democracy cannot be understood solely through formal legal equality but must confront enduring structures of racial domination embedded within public institutions. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s framework thus demonstrates that Pan-African populism has undergone significant transformation while retaining its central concern with reconstructing political community around principles of racial dignity, recognition, and justice.
Likewise, pluralistic populism continues to shape contemporary progressive politics. The IWW’s aspiration to organize workers across divisions of race, nationality, gender, and occupation anticipated later democratic socialist traditions emphasizing broad-based economic solidarity. Occupy Wall Street’s distinction between the “99 percent” and the “1 percent,” the resurgence of labor organizing across multiple sectors, and Bernie Sanders’ repeated appeals to working-class democracy all reflect attempts to construct an inclusive political people grounded primarily in shared economic interests rather than ethnic or racial identity.
Rev. Dr. Bossen’s historical reconstruction therefore challenges one of the dominant assumptions in current populism research: namely, that populism is inherently anti-democratic or necessarily associated with the political right. His comparative analysis instead demonstrates that democratic inclusion and authoritarian exclusion have long competed through rival populist projects. The decisive analytical question is not whether a movement is populist, but rather how it defines the people, who is permitted membership, andwhich forms of solidarity it seeks to institutionalize.
This insight significantly enriches ongoing scholarly debates surrounding populism. It moves beyond the binary opposition that has often characterized the literature, in which populism is either celebrated as democratic renewal or condemned as democratic pathology. Rev. Dr. Bossen instead presents populism as a contested political field within which multiple normative projects coexist. White supremacist populism, Pan-African populism, and pluralistic populism each mobilize “the people,” but they do so toward fundamentally different political horizons.
At the same time, the book’s impressive conceptual synthesis occasionally invites further reflection. By organizing these movements within a single comparative analytical framework, Rev. Dr. Bossen necessarily foregrounds structural similarities in their methods of identity construction. This comparison is intellectually productive and yields important theoretical insights regarding ritual, symbolism, and collective identity. Nevertheless, the comparative architecture also raises difficult normative questions that deserve closer consideration. Similarities in political form should not obscure profound differences in historical purpose, ethical orientation, or democratic aspiration.
This tension does not undermine Rev. Dr. Bossen’s larger argument. On the contrary, it demonstrates the analytical richness of his framework. Yet it also prepares the ground for a broader critical discussion concerning the limits of comparison itself—a discussion that becomes central to assessing both the book’s enduring significance and its principal limitations.
A Critical Assessment of Rev. Dr. Bossen’s Contribution
The greatest strength of the book lies in its intellectual ambition. Rev. Dr. Bossen successfully brings together fields that too often remain isolated from one another—American religious history, political theology, social movement theory, labor history, African American studies, and populism research—and demonstrates that each can enrich the others. His archival work is extensive, his command of the historical literature is impressive, and his conceptual framework offers an original vocabulary for understanding populism as an enduring struggle over collective identity rather than merely an electoral phenomenon. Particularly noteworthy is his insistence that populism should be understood as a process of “people-making,” one that is sustained through narratives, rituals, symbols, and moral imagination as much as through political programmes or charismatic leaders. In this respect, the book deserves to become a significant reference for future scholarship on American populism.
Equally commendable is Rev. Dr. Bossen’s willingness to acknowledge his own intellectual and political commitments. Unlike many scholars who present normative assumptions as methodological neutrality, Rev. Dr. Bossen explicitly situates himself as a Unitarian Universalist minister, labor activist, and advocate of democratic participation. His long engagement with the IWW informs both his historical sensitivity and his appreciation for grassroots democratic organization. This transparency strengthens rather than weakens the credibility of his scholarship because readers are never left wondering about the standpoint from which the analysis proceeds.
Nevertheless, precisely because the book is so theoretically ambitious, it also raises important methodological questions. The most significant concerns the comparative architecture itself. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s decision to analyze the Ku Klux Klan, the UNIA, and the IWW within a single conceptual framework is undoubtedly productive. It reveals common mechanisms through which populist movements construct collective identities and mobilize followers. Yet comparison, while indispensable as a historical method, carries its own risks.
Most notably, placing emancipatory and exclusionary movements within the same analytical structure can occasionally generate an unintended impression of moral symmetry. Rev. Dr. Bossen is careful throughout the volume to distinguish white supremacist populism from Pan-African and pluralistic populisms and repeatedly affirms his opposition to racial domination. His normative position is therefore never in doubt. Yet the comparative framework itself sometimes places disproportionate emphasis on structural similarities—rituals, myths, narratives of salvation, political symbolism, and collective identity formation—while giving comparatively less analytical attention to the fundamentally different ethical purposes toward which these mechanisms are directed.
This distinction matters considerably. White supremacist movements emerged historically to preserve racial hierarchy, political exclusion, and systems of domination. By contrast, Garveyism, despite its own ideological contradictions and internal tensions, developed as a response to centuries of racial oppression, disenfranchisement, colonialism, and segregation. Likewise, later African American political movements—from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Power and contemporary struggles for racial justice—cannot be adequately understood without recognizing that they sought democratic inclusion, equal citizenship, and protection from institutionalized violence rather than the exclusion of others from political membership.
To acknowledge that these movements all engaged in “people-making” is analytically illuminating. However, democratic theory also requires distinguishing between the politics of emancipation and the politics of domination. Similar mechanisms of collective identity formation do not necessarily imply comparable normative projects. A movement struggling to secure equal citizenship for historically excluded communities occupies a fundamentally different moral position from one seeking to preserve racial privilege through exclusion and violence. Future editions might therefore benefit from engaging more explicitly with scholarship on historical injustice, democratic inclusion, and recognition theory in order to sharpen this distinction further.
Relatedly, while Rev. Dr. Bossen convincingly demonstrates the persistence of three populist traditions across American history, greater engagement with contemporary comparative populism scholarship would have strengthened the book’s broader theoretical intervention. The framework developed by Ernesto Laclau regarding populist articulation, Cas Mudde’s influential conception of populism as a thin-centered ideology, Jan-Werner Müller’s emphasis on anti-pluralism, Nadia Urbinati’s work on populism and representation, Benjamin Moffitt’s theory of populism as political style, and Pierre Rosanvallon’s reflections on democratic legitimacy all offer fruitful points of dialogue. Rev. Dr. Bossen’s contribution stands comfortably alongside these major theorists, yet the conversation occasionally remains more implicit than explicit.
The book also invites reflection on developments beyond its historical period. Although Rev. Dr. Bossen concludes by emphasizing the endurance of the three populisms he identifies, readers are naturally drawn toward contemporary politics. Trumpism illustrates the remarkable resilience of white supremacist populist narratives centred upon national restoration, exclusionary conceptions of citizenship, and nostalgia for an idealized past. Conversely, Black Lives Matter, contemporary labor organizing, democratic socialism, and broader progressive coalitions demonstrate that Pan-African and pluralistic populisms likewise continue to evolve in response to changing social and political conditions. One of the book’s lasting achievements is precisely that it provides a conceptual vocabulary through which these contemporary developments can be interpreted within a much longer historical trajectory.
In sum, The Political Theologies of Populism succeeds because it fundamentally reframes the study of populism. Rather than asking whether populism is inherently democratic or authoritarian, Rev. Dr. Bossen encourages readers to ask a more fundamental question: Who constitutes “the people,” by what moral vision are they united, and whom does that definition inevitably exclude? In shifting attention from electoral competition to the moral construction of political communities, he significantly expands the conceptual horizons of populism research.
If one reservation remains, it concerns not the historical scholarship—which is exemplary—but the comparative balance of the analytical framework. While comparison reveals important structural affinities, greater normative differentiation between emancipatory and exclusionary populisms would have further strengthened the book’s democratic argument and prevented any possible reading that places victims of racial oppression and architects of racial domination within an overly symmetrical analytical space. This is, however, a criticism directed at the limits of comparison rather than the quality of the scholarship itself.
Taken as a whole, Rev. Dr. Bossen’s book is an impressive, original, and intellectually courageous work. It enriches our understanding of American political development by demonstrating that populism has never been a singular phenomenon but rather a contested field of competing democratic and anti-democratic projects. Combining historical depth with theoretical sophistication, it offers an important contribution not only to the study of populism but also to political theology, American intellectual history, religion and politics, and democratic theory. It deserves a wide readership among historians, political scientists, scholars of religion, and anyone seeking to understand why struggles over belonging continue to define American democracy in the twenty-first century.
Colin Bossen. The Political Theologies of Populism: The Garveyites, the Klan, and the Wobblies, 1905–1930. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2026.
As climate change increasingly reshapes patterns of human mobility, it is also transforming the political foundations of democratic citizenship. In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja argues that climate-induced displacement should no longer be understood solely as a humanitarian emergency or a security challenge, but as an emerging battleground over political membership and democratic inclusion. Introducing the innovative concept of Climate Citizenship Populism, Dr. Solaja demonstrates how environmental displacement is becoming a powerful resource for exclusionary populist narratives that redefine who belongs within the democratic community. By bringing together scholarship on populism, climate mobility, and democratic citizenship, the commentary offers an original analytical framework for understanding how environmental change is reshaping contemporary political conflict and why the future of democracy will increasingly depend on how societies respond to the politics of climate-driven belonging.
Climate change has progressed from being an environmental issue into a central political issue in the 21st century. As the entire debate and politics concerning climate change revolved around the issues of temperature increase, carbon emission, and environmental damage, the effects of climate change do not just end there. It is transforming the patterns of human inhabitation, transforming the ways of life of people, and fundamentally changing the geographical bases on which our understanding of citizenship rests. As environmental factors drive humans away, democracies now face a crucial dilemma: Who belongs to a world changed by climate change?
This article situates climate migration at the nexus of debates surrounding democracy, citizenship and populism. While populism has been defined as the political logic that distinguishes between ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’ (Mudde, 2004; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017), it is also shaped by debates over the ‘people’ and its boundaries. Populist movements often exploit existing anxieties over economics, culture, immigration and national identity. But in a warming, changing world, climate change-induced movement of people creates a new domain for this struggle.
Climate migration has become a key tool for constructing the ‘people,’ defining who is deserving and legitimating claims to belonging. Evidence for this transformation is widespread. The 2022 IPCC Report (2022) points to climate change as a major driver of increased human vulnerability due to weather extremes, ecosystem degradation and impacts on food and water. In recent years, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has documented that weather-related events cause the majority of new internal displacements worldwide. Nevertheless, climate-induced displacement cannot be understood in purely environmentalist terms but is a product of interactions among environmental changes, poverty, inequality, failures of governance, and armed conflict (Gemenne, 2011; McLeman, 2014). Therefore, climate migration reflects a broader set of unequal social and political relations that influence people’s ability to stay, adapt or leave their places of origin. The political debate on climate mobility, however, tends to remain framed within two dominant and limiting perspectives.
Firstly, it is widely regarded as a problem requiring a humanitarian response to protect vulnerable displaced people. Secondly, climate migrants are perceived as a threat to national security, welfare systems, labor markets, and cultural identity. Yet both approaches obscure a more profound transformation: climate migration is increasingly becoming a question of membership in the polity. The critical issue is not so much why people migrate as how existing political communities draw the boundaries of membership and belonging in the face of collapsing territorial stability. It is precisely within this terrain of uncertainty that populist politics appears particularly well positioned to thrive.
Populism is fundamentally concerned with issues of borders and political membership, often drawing on the divide between insiders and outsiders (Laclau, 2005; Müller, 2016). Climate-induced displacement offers a rich symbolic site for these populist efforts, since it is deeply entangled with concerns over the sovereignty of the nation-state, the administration of borders, the distribution of public goods, and the management of national culture. Climate migrants can thus be politically reframed not simply as dispossessed people, but as symbols of wider fears about social and political disorder.
Introducing Climate Citizenship Populism
To describe this new political tendency, this commentary introduces the term Climate Citizenship Populism. It is a variant of populism that uses environmental displacement to redraw the lines of democratic membership by defining climate migrants as a threat to the rights, resources, identity and sovereignty of a national community.
Climate Citizenship Populism is not like previous forms of political conflict over the climate, where the conflict might have been over whether climate change is occurring or over opposition to regulating it. It is based on the assumption of environmental disruption, but it is the social consequences that are politicized. Thus, the central conflict changes from a question of climate change to one of who pays the repercussions of climate change and who deserves political representation in a climate-changed world.
This analysis makes a helpful contribution to the current debate on populism in three significant ways. First, it sees climate-induced mobility as a new material trigger for populist mobilization, alongside the more commonly suggested economic insecurity, immigration, and cultural backlash. Second, it suggests that the focus of populist opposition has moved from immigration to democracy itself as the political nature of citizenship is transformed by environmental change. Third, it presents a new analytical framework—Climate Citizenship Populism—to make sense of the conversion of environmental displacement into exclusionary narratives of democratic citizenship.
The idea is to connect three lines of research that have been pursued independently so far: populism studies, climate mobility research and democratic citizenship theory. While existing studies have already provided interesting findings on adaptation and displacement, as well as on citizenship and territorial belonging, there is a lack of literature on climate migration and the governance of migration. The current body of research has shed light on migration and the governance of migration, adaptation and displacement, as well as on the relationship between territorial belonging and citizenship and rights, but there is a dearth of research on climate migration and the governance of migration. But there has been little effort to grasp how environmental displacement is influencing the political boundaries of citizenship through populist mobilization.
Climate Citizenship Populism thus draws attention to a more general shift in democratic politics. Climate change is not just an issue to be added to policy agendas but also a structural condition that alters the material and political conditions shaping societies’ notions of belonging. Populist players are now also trying to re-imagine the limits of the democratic community itself as patterns of human settlement are reconfigured amid environmental disruption. In the era of environmental disruption, patterns of human settlement are being redrawn, and populist actors are seeking to redefine the limits of the democratic community itself.
From Border Politics to Democratic Exclusion
Climate Citizenship Populism is not only possible politically; its reasoning can be seen in various regions. Whether it is a matter of humanitarianism or of political membership, sovereignty, and national belonging, a pattern is becoming increasingly recognizable: environmental displacement is increasingly understood as a political issue.
Climate mobility has increasingly been linked to broader European debates on immigration, border management, and national identity. Most contemporary migration movements are not solely a consequence of climate change, but the foreshadowing of future climate displacement has become a political issue. The incorporation of the theme of environmental mobility in more comprehensive narratives of demographic change, overburdened welfare states, housing crises and the failure of political elites to keep the nation together is becoming a hallmark of populist actors. In this sense, migrants are symbolic beings through which anxieties of globalization and social change are conveyed. It is not just the quantity, but the meaning associated with displacement in the stories of populism that has political dimensions.
These trends are also seen in North America, notably in political discussions about migration from climate-vulnerable Central America and the Caribbean. Studies have shown that economic insecurity, governance problems, and social vulnerability are interlinked with environmental pressures to shape migration decisions (McLeman, 2014; IOM, 2024). Political debates, however, tend to reduce such realities to a simple narrative about the border “crisis” and national insecurity. Climate displacement is integrated into a larger anti-immigration discourse, in which migrants serve as a symbol of the waning control of the state. Thus, environmental mobility becomes a political problem, ranging from global inequality to a perceived threat to national sovereignty.
Another facet of Climate Citizenship Populism is illustrated in the African context. In the Sahel and other affected areas of the Horn of Africa, there are growing incidences of internal, rather than trans-border, displacement driven by drought, desertification, flooding and resource pressures. These movements involve complex issues of land, livelihood, access to resources and political recognition. When resources are scarce, displaced people are sometimes portrayed as rivals for economic opportunities or public services, furthering narratives of territorial identity and belonging. In these settings, Climate Citizenship Populism does not appear as much as international border politics, but rather as a contestation over who is entitled to what land, resources, and community.
Perhaps the most profound challenge to conventional understandings of citizenship is provided by Small Island Developing States. Climate mobility raises more than just migration management questions, particularly for communities under existential threat from sea-level rise. Who, then, will be able to live on a land that is becoming uninhabitable, one where citizenship is organized? Climate displacement scholars have suggested that this type of event calls into question the notions of territorialized political membership (McAdam, 2012). They show how climate change is altering mobility patterns and destabilizing the sense of territory that underpins contemporary democratic citizenship.
Contributions to the study of Populism and Democratic Theory
Climate Citizenship Populism enriches the field of populism studies by introducing the idea that environmental disruptions should be considered a novel material condition of political mobilization. Previous scholarship has offered insightful accounts of populist politics as anti-elitism, cultural backlash, nationalism and immigration politics (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Moffitt, 2016). Climate Citizenship Populism is not an alternative to these explanations but an expansion of them, showing how political communities draw in their insiders/outsiders in the context of environmental instability.
This way of thinking takes the focus away from migration and towards citizenship. The classic discussions tend to revolve around whether migrants should be let in, kept safe, or kept out. Climate Citizenship Populism uncovers a more fundamental issue: What is the nature of democratic citizenship in an era when climate change is emerging as a primary factor in determining who can and cannot live? In this respect, climate migration is not just an issue for migration governance – it is an issue for the normative basis of democracy.
The idea also emphasizes the issue of climate justice. The concept of climate mobility is defined by deep global inequalities, including unequal historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and unequal ability to adapt to climate change (Caney, 2010; Shue, 2014). Responses to climate migration which exclude are likely to become new forms of democratic exclusion, building on the history of unequal climate impacts. There is a need for effective adaptation and migration policies and political frameworks that acknowledge shared vulnerability and differentiated responsibilities in the context of climate mobility.
Conclusion: Citizenship in a Climate-Changed World
Climate crises have become an essential part of the democratic political landscape. Along with the changing landscape of environmental mobility, environmental disruption is also changing the political questions of belonging, rights and membership. The question for democracies is not only how to deal with climate migration, but also how to maintain democratic inclusion in a world where territorial stability is no longer guaranteed.
Climate Citizenship Populism offers a framework for understanding how environmental displacement is becoming integral to current political identity and conflicts over democratic boundaries. It shows that climate change is not only adding to migration pressures, but also to political opportunities to draw lines about who is in and who is out. What this means is important. What populism is all about is the building of “the people”—and in the future, climate change will be a major factor in the picture of “the people. Debating emissions, adaptation, and environmental governance will thus be a part of the politics of the climate age, but so too will be debates over citizenship itself.
Class, industrialization and social redistribution were significant issues of the twentieth century. The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen globalization, migration and national identity come into conflict. Climate citizenship is likely to become a recurring battle in the next decades. Democracies are now at a pivotal point where they must decide whether climate insecurity strengthens their pursuit of exclusion or provides a moment to reconsider political belonging on the basis of ideas of justice, solidarity and shared fragility.
The future of democracy in a climate-changed world will ultimately depend not only on how societies respond to environmental transformation, but on how they answer the most basic political question of all: who belongs?
References
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Gemenne, F. (2011). “Why the numbers don’t add up: A review of estimates and predictions of people displaced by environmental changes.” Global Environmental Change, 21(S1), S41–S49.
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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2022). Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Cambridge University Press.
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Marshall, T. H. (1950). Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays. Cambridge University Press.
McAdam, J. (2012). Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law. Oxford University Press.
McLeman, R. (2014). Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges. Cambridge University Press.
Moffitt, B. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford University Press.
Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563.
Mudde, C. & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
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Shue, H. (2014). Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection. Oxford University Press.
For years, Hungary stood as the defining case of democratic backsliding within the European Union. Yet the 2026 election has transformed it into an equally important case of democratic recovery. In this timely interview, Dr. Hanna Folsz discusses why Hungary’s political transformation challenges prevailing assumptions about the durability of competitive authoritarianism. Drawing on her recent Journal of Democracy article, she argues that authoritarian institutional engineering ultimately remains vulnerable when broad civic mobilization, credible political leadership, and innovative opposition strategies converge. The conversation explores the underestimated role of civil society, the limits of media capture and economic coercion, the challenges of rebuilding democratic institutions, and the broader lessons Hungary offers for scholars and practitioners seeking to understand democratic resilience and authoritarian reversal in the twenty-first century.
For more than a decade, Hungary occupied a unique place in the comparative study of democratic backsliding. Under Viktor Orbán and Fidesz, it became widely regarded as the paradigmatic example of competitive authoritarianism within the European Union—a political system in which elections continued to exist but were increasingly distorted by constitutional engineering, media capture, economic coercion, and the systematic weakening of institutional checks and balances. Consequently, Hungary became not merely a national case but an international reference point for understanding how democracies erode from within.
Yet Hungary’s 2026 election has fundamentally altered that conversation. The defeat of Fidesz after sixteen years in power has transformed the country into one of the most consequential contemporary cases of democratic recovery. In her recent Journal of Democracy article, How Civil Society Defeated Orbán, Dr. Hanna Folsz —an Academy Scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where she will begin her appointment in August 2026 before joining IE University in Madrid as Assistant Professor of Political Science in 2027— argues that this democratic breakthrough cannot be explained solely by leadership change or electoral dynamics. Instead, she offers a broader theoretical argument about the hidden vulnerabilities of competitive authoritarian regimes and the underestimated capacity of civil society to reverse authoritarian consolidation.
As Dr. Folsz observes, “Even deeply entrenched competitive authoritarian regimes have vulnerabilities.” While Hungary experienced what she describes as “one of the most extensive and severe episodes of de-democratization or authoritarian consolidation in recent decades,” the very institutions and strategies that sustained Fidesz ultimately proved insufficient to guarantee permanent rule. Institutional engineering, media dominance, financial asymmetries, and intimidation undoubtedly raised the costs of political competition, yet they could not indefinitely substitute for declining public legitimacy. As she argues, “these authoritarian strategies do not guarantee lasting—everlasting—popularity or staying in office.”
A central contribution of Dr. Folsz’s research is her reassessment of the role of civil society. Rather than attributing the opposition’s victory primarily to the emergence of the Tisza Party or the leadership of Péter Magyar, she demonstrates how more than 2,500 decentralized “Tisza Islands” transformed latent civic capacity into effective political organization. In her words, “The role of civil society… is absolutely underestimated,” while “broad civic mobilization, new and fresh opposition challengers… and a credible alternative to voters are definitely a path to democratic reversal.”
In this interview, Dr. Folsz examines the mechanisms that enabled Hungary’s democratic breakthrough and explores their broader implications for comparative politics. She discusses the hidden effects of economic coercion, the limits of media capture, the importance of credible political leadership, and the challenges of democratic restoration after authoritarian rule. She also reflects on the responsibilities facing Hungary’s new government, emphasizing that electoral victory is only the beginning: “Changing governments is definitely only a precondition for democratic recovery.” Together, these insights offer an important contribution to ongoing debates on populism, democratic resilience, competitive authoritarianism, and the conditions under which entrenched illiberal regimes can ultimately be defeated.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Dr. Hanna Folsz, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Authoritarian Strategies Do Not Guarantee Permanent Rule
Hungarian government’s anti-immigration billboard says “STOP the refugees” in Budapest, Hungary on April 4, 2018.
Dr. Folsz, welcome!Let me begin with our first question. For more than a decade, Hungary was widely regarded as the paradigmatic case of democratic backsliding and competitive authoritarianism. Yet your recent Journal of Democracy article argues that the 2026 election also represents one of the most significant democratic reversals of authoritarian consolidation in recent years. How should we interpret the Hungarian election in comparative perspective? Does it represent an exceptional case, or does it reveal broader vulnerabilities inherent in contemporary competitive authoritarian regimes?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: The Hungarian case represents a combination of factors that disadvantage opposition parties or make opposition electoral victory exceedingly difficult. It is definitely an example of—maybe one of the most extensive and severe episodes of de-democratization or authoritarian consolidation in recent decades. Nevertheless, the Hungarian case also represents many of the common factors, or common difficulties, that oppositions experience and the strategies that aspiring authoritarians employ to entrench their rule.
No wonder Hungary serves as a preliminary case, an example for aspiring autocrats worldwide. Fidesz’s dominance in the media, the extensive financial advantage that it enjoyed—or made sure it enjoyed—compared to opposition parties and independent civil society, the severe disadvantages faced by the opposition in the electoral system, as well as the fear of opposition participation due to the repercussions, are all factors that are present in other cases as well.
It was the length of Fidesz rule that made these impediments especially significant, but it also showed that these authoritarian strategies do not guarantee lasting—everlasting—popularity or staying in office. And the lessons it offers are a set of lessons for other cases. Of course, these have to be adapted to context, but the Hungarian case shows that there are vulnerabilities to be exploited, that broad civic mobilization, new and fresh opposition challengers who understand the regime and its vulnerabilities and exploit them, and who present a credible alternative to voters, are definitely a path to democratic reversal. But I’m excited to delve more into the details of this throughout this interview.
The Role of Civil Society in Democratic Change Has Been Profoundly Underestimated
One of your central arguments is that the decisive innovation was not simply the emergence of the Tisza Party, but the rapid development of the decentralized network of Tisza Islands. Why were these semi-autonomous civic organizations able to succeed where traditional opposition parties repeatedly failed? More broadly, does this suggest that democratic resistance in authoritarian settings increasingly depends on civil society rather than party organizations?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: In my article, I make the argument that existing commentary and interpretations of the opposition’s recent electoral victory in Hungary pay a lot of attention to the emergence of the Tisza Party and its novelty, the charisma and skills of its leader, as well as the broader discontent with Fidesz rule after many years of economic stagnation that, in part, could be accounted for by the suspension of EU funds, as well as by extreme corruption and authoritarian overreach by Fidesz.
I argue that this is not the full story. To understand the opposition’s victory, we must take into account the extensive and unprecedented civic mobilization that occurred in Hungary around this election. In my article, I show that Tisza Islands—these semi-autonomous civic groups, small civic groups of at most 50 participants each—emerged across the country. Over 2,500 of these existed by the election. Within a span of a year and a half, they came to dominate civic and public life in Hungary.
They played an essential role in structuring political life, providing political information in their communities, and demonstrating the credibility of the party and the opposition as an alternative through highly visible activities, including extensive volunteering and local charity work that showed the opposition movement cared about the experiences and difficulties of everyday Hungarians. They also provided, basically, the campaign infrastructure for the Tisza Party throughout the election.
The party had very little money, very limited financial resources, in large part due to Fidesz’s actions and changes to party funding, as well as simply being a very new party. This meant that it did not have the resources for the kind of classic electoral campaign that we expect from political parties in democracies most of the time—one funded by donations or state funds, especially in Europe, and relying on an extensive party infrastructure, local offices, and so on. Instead, these Islands stepped up. They basically provided the campaign activists and even the financial resources for the campaign. That played an absolutely crucial role in Tisza’s eventual victory.
What this shows is that there are specific vulnerabilities, difficulties, and challenges for opposition parties in autocratizing and competitive authoritarian contexts. These include financial disadvantage, an absolute information disadvantage under an incumbent-controlled media infrastructure, and the total—or almost total—de-mobilization of the activist base and opposition voters who have become disillusioned with politics and opposition parties. This was definitely the situation Hungary found itself in in 2026, and it showed that the usual avenues for political change were no longer possible.
This is when we saw the very innovative collaboration between the Tisza Party and civil society through the Tisza Islands—these semi-autonomous groups that were only loosely connected to the party. This points to the fact that the role of civil society, the role we expect civil society to play, is absolutely underestimated. Parties will still be crucial, but we need to think about these innovative solutions and about how the strengths of civil society, the often-latent strengths of civil society, can be channeled into electoral competition.
Changing Governments Is Only a Precondition for Democratic Recovery
Tisza leader Péter Magyar begins a symbolic “one million steps” march to Nagyvárad, Romania, addressing reporters with supporters in Budapest, Hungary on May 14, 2025. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
For sixteen years, Viktor Orbán systematically weakened constitutional constraints, reshaped electoral institutions, captured much of the media, and subordinated state institutions to partisan control. Which of these legacies do you regard as the most difficult to reverse? Is democratic recovery primarily about changing governments, or about rebuilding institutions that have been deliberately hollowed out?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Changing governments is definitely only a precondition for democratic recovery. Democratic recovery cannot be achieved without rebuilding resilient democratic institutions and norms. And this is where the main challenge in Hungary lies today.
In Hungarian case, Fidesz was voted out of office. The electoral threat that Fidesz currently represents to the Tisza Party is very low. So, it seems that we do not have to be extensively afraid of Fidesz returning to power in four years. The bigger challenge, rather, is for the Tisza Party to effectively restore democratic institutions and norms while exercising self-restraint in the process.
We have seen them begin to address this challenge very early on with a great deal of energy, which has been very encouraging for many commentators and observers. Their first constitutional amendment was recently passed. They are taking steps to remove the previous president and are also beginning to hold Fidesz-affiliated elites accountable through judicial proceedings and investigations into corruption and other authoritarian transgressions.
We also know that they will begin the constitutional process of writing a new constitution. There is also a new head of the state media who has already been appointed to oversee the transition to a more pluralistic and more independent media environment.
The biggest challenge is to make sure that there are professional and lastingly independent checks and balances across all of these spheres. Tisza has an unprecedented mandate because it achieved a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the election. That means it can amend the constitution. There are basically very few, if any, institutional restraints on how it exercises its power.
So, what we want to see is that, across all these spheres—the judiciary, the media, and state institutions—they install not necessarily party loyalists but rather truly independent actors, and that they respect their independence and decisions, even when those decisions go counter to Tisza’s goals or electoral preferences in terms of ensuring its electoral support.
Hungary Shows That Pro-Democracy Civic Energy Is Easier to Mobilize Than We Assumed
Your research highlights the importance of latent civic capacity that survives even under prolonged authoritarian pressure. What does Hungary teach us about democratic resilience? Can civil society preserve democratic norms even when formal institutions have been substantially weakened?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: The Hungarian case definitely shows me, in a striking way, that civic capacity is latent rather than absent in cases such as Hungary. This is something I highlight in my article as well, because we have a very strong assumption in political science research and in public debates about democratic resilience and resistance to authoritarian pressure.
The assumption is that if we have an institutionally weak civil society, then effective democratic resistance is very difficult. It’s sort of a precondition for democratic resistance that there are existing civil society actors that can serve as a check, hold the government accountable, organize resistance, organize protests, and restructure public opinion around resistance. When this is missing, we assume that democratic reversals are much more difficult.
They are indeed more difficult. But the Hungarian case absolutely shows that it is much easier to bring pro-democracy civic capacity to the surface than we assumed. In Hungary, the Tisza Islands provided a loose organizational frame, and the Tisza Party provided the Tisza Islands with a purpose and a potential for democratic change that mobilized the population across the country, in localities and municipalities both big and small.
This points to a case for some positivity, some optimism, as well as a call for innovative approaches and a better understanding of citizens’ motivations, because political scientists, as well as pundits, assumed that such mobilization would not be possible and were taken by surprise by its scale and effectiveness.
If we take the opportunity and make the effort to talk to citizens more, understand their relationship with this regime, and recognize that there is this latent discontent that may not be expressed for fear of repercussions, but also because of a lack of hope that things could change, and if we can understand how citizens react to the provision of a credible alternative, to hope embodied in an opposition movement, then this might not take us by surprise. We might instead focus a little more on developing these innovative civic approaches in our attempts to achieve democratic reversals.
Economic Coercion Is One of the Most Overlooked Tools of Authoritarian Control
Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
In your broader research, you argue that economic retaliation constitutes one of the most overlooked mechanisms through which aspiring autocrats weaken political competition by deterring talented opposition candidates. How central was economic coercion to Orbán’s durability, and how much did overcoming fear of retaliation contribute to the opposition’s eventual breakthrough?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: One of the focuses of my research is the authoritarian strategy that I term economic coercion. I argue in one of my papers that this is a core strategy of authoritarian consolidation and control that we tend to overlook because we focus on the physical acts of repression that these regimes carry out, be it arresting opposition politicians and activists or banning opposition parties, et cetera.
But economic coercion is another crucial strategy. I define it as a credible threat of economic retaliation for opposition political activity. This means that not just opposition candidates, but activists or those who express public support for the opposition, they themselves or their family members, might face economic difficulties as a result.
Its employment-oriented form—one of its forms—carries the potential for employment loss, dismissals from jobs in the public sector, the state sector, or in regime-adjacent businesses. Its enterprise-oriented form focuses on retaliation against business owners and firms. If you participate in opposition politics, for instance as a candidate, or if you participated in Hungary during the Orbán period, you could very well expect that your firm would be subject to targeted tax audits, targeted tax penalties, or other forms of retaliation—basically, the denial of state contracts and grants that your firm might have previously received, as well as the turning away of suppliers and other businesses that were themselves afraid of retaliation for their association with the opposition.
This was an absolutely pervasive, indeed a defining, characteristic of the Hungarian regime and a major impediment for opposition parties. My interviews with opposition politicians, together with a survey that I conducted among opposition local politicians, pointed to this pervasive fear of retaliation and Fidesz’s media dominance as the two central reasons opposition politicians identified for their parties’—or their political side’s—weakness.
There are many examples of this. I talked to a number of opposition politicians who themselves were fired from their jobs. Or, for instance, if they had a partner who was a teacher, that partner was fired, and their businesses suffered extensive retaliation. But I also heard many stories of opposition activists being too afraid to put their face, appear in photos—for fear that they would face retaliation, to register as an activist for the party, or even to become a party member.
There are countless examples that opposition politicians would tell me. They would set up stalls for campaigns or for collecting signatures for different causes, and even acquaintances whom they knew very well in their private lives would be too afraid to look at them while they were out on the streets, for fear that their employer or their neighbor might see them, and that word would then spread through their social circle that they supported the opposition.
This presented a huge difficulty for parties, both in mobilizing activists for strong campaigns and in finding good candidates for electoral office. The Tisza Party actually faced many of these same challenges.
Conversations with lawyers at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, one of the main civil liberties protection organizations in Hungary, revealed that the number of cases of retaliatory firings, or proprietary retaliatory actions, that they encountered and were approached with actually increased significantly in the years following the emergence of the Tisza Party. My conversations and interviews with Tisza politicians themselves also revealed a staggering rate of such retaliation among their activist bases.
The way they overcame this is very remarkable and offers many important lessons. One of the most important strategies they employed was the Tisza Islands themselves, which provided a very low-visibility form of activism. Many activists I talked to in these Tisza Islands told me that they and their fellow activists could choose the level and form of activism they were comfortable with, depending on the degree of visibility. The lack of overt—or direct—association with the party also allowed them to evade some of the strongest retaliatory actions that we had previously come across.
Another important way in which the Tisza Islands contributed to mitigating the effects of retaliation was simply by affording the opposition greater visibility. This provided examples of courage and also evidence of the scale of retaliation, because fear of it often outstrips its actual occurrence.
Finally, Tisza started polling above Fidesz roughly a year and a half before the election, which was also very important because fear of economic retaliation operates on an assumption of future enforcement. If the opposition begins polling ahead of the governing party for such an extended period of time, there is at least some expectation that the governing party may lose the election, in which case retaliation will not proceed, or that any retaliation opposition activists or politicians experience will be undone once the new party comes to power.
This was crucial in progressively encouraging participation and lending confidence to the opposition. But it remained a formidable impediment, and it required a great deal of courage from all of the opposition activists I spoke to, as well as from the politicians of the Tisza Party, to stand publicly with the opposition in the way that they did. That is absolutely one of the most commendable actions one could undertake in such a political environment.
When Propaganda Collides with Lived Experience, Its Credibility Begins to Collapse
Poster from political party Fidesz showing the opponents of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban surrounding billionaire philanthropist George Soros, Budapest, April 8, 2017.
Hungary has often been cited as perhaps Europe’s most advanced example of media capture. Yet despite overwhelming informational asymmetries, the opposition ultimately managed to reach voters. Does this suggest that grassroots civic networks can compensate for authoritarian control of traditional media, or were there broader structural changes—including digital communication—that weakened the effectiveness of media capture?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: These grassroots civic networks played a very important role. There was an almost total lack of access to independent news in many parts of the country, predominantly outside of the larger cities. Almost all news sources were controlled by Fidesz by 2024, around the time of the emergence of the Tisza Party. One of the especially important early functions of the Tisza Islands was simply to provide public spaces for these new, alternative information environments where politics could be discussed.
During their first few months, many of these Tisza Islands focused primarily on inviting outside speakers or holding public discussions, talks with experts, and conversations among activists about the political situation. They identified the most important local issues and explored how Fidesz’s wrongdoing, corruption, authoritarian actions, and mismanagement of the economy and public resources contributed crucially to the local problems and difficulties Hungarians were facing. Through these speaker series, the Tisza Islands allowed people to connect the dots between their local experiences and the broader authoritarian encroachment and entrenchment of Fidesz in the country.
Having these communities in which to discuss politics was also something very new. Many of the activists I interviewed noted that this was the first time they could speak openly about politics without fear and simply discuss political developments among themselves. It created a much better shared understanding of the political situation in the country.
Nevertheless, there were three other factors that were also crucial. Beyond the emergence of these Islands and these local information spaces, the growing importance of the digital sphere was absolutely significant, as was the increasing conflict between people’s personal experiences, their economic hardships, and Fidesz’s narrative of its own successes.
In terms of the digital sphere and social media, we could see by the early 2020s, especially after the COVID pandemic, a very important shift in the way online and non-traditional news sources gained ground. YouTube, podcasts, and other social media platforms became very important sources of news in Hungary. Partizán is one of these networks—the largest podcast and YouTube network for independent news in Hungary. Its videos routinely achieved hundreds of thousands of views in a country of fewer than 10 million people. That’s very significant.
Another important way in which the rise of the digital sphere mattered was how Péter Magyar, current prime minister and the leader of the Tisza Party, exploited and leveraged it masterfully to gain popularity. His campaigns and political activities were always online. We heard from many commentators throughout the election how important it was that Péter Magyar travelled across the country, visiting Hungarian towns and villages, both large and small, after entering Hungarian politics. For two years, he was almost constantly on the ground talking to Hungarian voters.
One of the most important aspects of this, however, was that every single one of his appearances was livestreamed on his social media platforms. This created an almost constant connection with Hungarian voters, made possible by the rise of social media in politics. It further enhanced his credibility by demonstrating how hard he was working and strengthened his direct connection with voters.
Finally, another important reason why Fidesz’s media dominance—and its effectiveness—began to weaken was the increasingly apparent conflict between Hungarians’ lived experiences and Fidesz’s official narrative. Beginning in the early 2020s, and especially after 2022, Hungary experienced significant economic stagnation and record inflation. Inflation averaged around 20 percent in 2022 and remained at a similarly high, though somewhat lower, level in 2023. Food price inflation was particularly severe.
When Hungarians experienced firsthand that they could afford much less than in previous years, while Fidesz continued to emphasize its achievements and the support it was providing through its distributive programmes, this sharply contradicted people’s lived experiences. As a result, the credibility of Fidesz’s propagandistic narrative in the media outlets it controlled declined substantially, and Hungarians increasingly began seeking out alternative sources of news.
Opposition Strategy Matters Just as Much as Authoritarian Strategy
Orbán’s governments demonstrated remarkable sophistication in redesigning electoral rules, constitutional institutions, and oversight bodies without formally abandoning electoral competition. Does Hungary demonstrate that authoritarian institutional engineering eventually reaches diminishing returns, particularly when legitimacy begins to erode?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Definitely. What the Hungarian case points to with respect to this question is simply that competitive authoritarian regimes still rely on popularity to persist. So, however much electoral rules are redesigned, institutions are amended, and oversight bodies are captured, if unpopularity starts to emerge, if the regime loses its credibility and legitimacy—especially its performance legitimacy—then these institutional changes cannot guarantee that it stays in power.
Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, the Fidesz regime employed limited physical repression and party bans. That is something we are starting to see in cases such as Turkey, which does not have the constraints of the EU and has shown a willingness to use these tools against the opposition. This can represent much more significant constraints and make it much more difficult for the regime’s unpopularity to translate into electoral change and opposition victory.
The other important caveat is that opposition strategy does matter. Having a broad-appeal electoral strategy and offering a credible alternative that promises competent governance in the interests of the Hungarian people—and can credibly deliver on that promise—is crucial if these governing parties are to start losing elections or even come close to losing them.
Looking, for instance, at the 2022 election in Hungary, where Fidesz actually achieved its strongest performance under its rule, even though the election took place amid record inflation, economic stagnation, extreme corruption, and authoritarian overreach, shows that voters rejected the opposition alternative. There were plenty of reasons to dislike the regime, plenty of reasons to want change, but that change simply did not materialize through the opposition.
Performance Legitimacy Mattered Even More Than Ethno-populist Appeals
Orbán has frequently been analyzed as one of the architects of contemporary right-wing populism, combining majoritarian rhetoric with illiberal constitutionalism. Looking back, to what extent was Fidesz’s success primarily rooted in populism, and to what extent did it evolve into a more conventional authoritarian patronage regime whose survival depended increasingly on state control rather than popular mobilization?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Fidesz’s populism was important to its staying in power and its ability to consolidate its rule, but it was by far not the only factor that mattered. If anything, performance legitimacy in voters’ eyes was even more important than the populist, ethno-populist appeals that we saw, especially in the second half of Fidesz’s rule.
In terms of Fidesz’s populism, we could definitely see that these radical-right nationalist ethno-populist appeals became very prevalent, especially in the second half of the 2010s. We saw this when immigration became the cornerstone issue for Fidesz, and when this sort of anti-immigration rhetoric became a very powerful tool that allowed it to win the 2018 election with resounding popularity.
But even then, Fidesz’s distributive programs were crucial. A very important element was this kind of regime-to-voter patronage—not just giving resources to a small elite but also providing financial benefits directly to voters so that they saw a financial benefit in their own pockets from supporting the regime. This was very important, and Fidesz very consciously leveraged these strategies.
We saw that when these strategies failed, when the economic gains that people felt they had experienced under Fidesz rule disappeared, Fidesz became less popular. Its deployment of nationalism, its use of this outside-threat narrative, this classic populist narrative, was not enough to ensure that it stayed in power and continued to mobilize its base.
In sum, the transformation of the economy to ensure Fidesz’s continuity in power was very important. These distributive programs directed at voters were crucial. Of course, part of that also involved establishing a political elite, an economic elite that gave Fidesz its economic base—this sort of oligarchic network that supported its control over the media and made sure that economically independent opposition actors had a very difficult time gaining ground.
Those factors were important as well. But populism is just not enough of an explanation.
Hope for Change Required a Credible Political Entrepreneur
Peter Magyar, a popular opposition politician of celebrity status meeting the press at the site of a soccer arena and miniature train station in Viktor Orban’s village in Felcsut, Hungary. on May 24, 2024. Photo: Blue Corner Studio.
Your article emphasizes that civic mobilization required not only existing social networks but also what might be called a credible political entrepreneur in Péter Magyar. How important is leadership in activating dormant democratic capacities? Could similar civic energy have emerged without a figure capable of coordinating and legitimizing it?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Coordination and the hope of change were absolutely essential to the civic energy that we saw in Hungary, and they had to come from a credible source. They had to come from a credible political entrepreneur or group that promised this. It did not necessarily have to be Péter Magyar, but he is a highly politically skilled politician. He was able to recognize these opportunities, as well as the vulnerabilities of the regime. This was very important in activating the civic energy in the country.
One of the preconditions is simply that there has to be a vision for political change. I think what Péter Magyar did right, why he was important, and why he was able to do this was the energy that voters saw in him as he travelled around the country on his nationwide tours, day after day, rally after rally, meeting after meeting, demonstrating that he took this seriously and that he was able to connect with people. Hearing him speak, hearing him identify the problems with the regime, and also hearing him present some possible solutions was also important.
A strong performance in the 2024 European Parliament election also gave him and his party the ability to have voters’ expectations, or hopes for change, coalesce around them. That was crucial. He emerged at the right time, when there was very strong dissatisfaction with Fidesz but no opposition alternative or opposition option that voters really saw, and he had the skills to fill that role.
But it could have been someone else. It’s obviously very hard to know. What is crucial, however, is the coordinating and legitimizing role that a political entrepreneur provides.
Innovative Civic Mobilization May Be More Transferable Than Hungary’s Institutions
Many scholars have viewed Hungary as the model that inspired democratic erosion elsewhere, from Central Europe to Latin America and even the United States. Do you believe Hungary’s democratic recovery offers transferable lessons for opposition movements confronting competitive authoritarian governments elsewhere, or are Hungary’s political and institutional conditions too distinctive for meaningful comparison?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: I absolutely think that it offers lessons. Of course, if you look at a different case, you will always have to adapt the strategies and adapt the insights to the challenges that the opposition side faces against aspiring autocrats or competitive authoritarian rulers elsewhere. That is natural.
What we need is a very good understanding of the Hungarian case and of what features of the Hungarian case made this possible, and then a good understanding of the other local context to see how this could be adapted. Some notable traits of the Hungarian experience are sometimes potentially underestimated in commentary that uses the Hungarian case as a promise of hope for democratic change elsewhere.
It’s absolutely crucial that Fidesz was in power for 16 years, a very significant amount of time. In a lot of previous cases of reversal, we have seen less consolidated regimes. And there was very strong dissatisfaction with Fidesz by the time the Tisza Party came around, but that could not previously be channeled into electoral politics.
There was also very limited physical repression, so there were no arrests. There were also no party bans, et cetera, as I already mentioned. This is something that means these lessons, especially the lessons around civic mobilization, could be very different and harder to adapt in cases where such repression is very significant.
It is also important to recognize that the level of disadvantage for the opposition was actually more severe in Hungary than in a lot of other cases. This gives us hope for other cases—that if a reversal could happen here, then that can translate elsewhere. But it also might give too much comfort to opposition actors elsewhere, because it might have taken this level of disadvantage for the opposition to use innovations in civic mobilization, and for this new challenger, the Tisza Party, to emerge, and for voters to recognize that the existing opposition parties could not promise the kind of change they hoped for.
The model of this innovative civic mobilization, the model of a new credible challenger emerging that promises meaningful, positive change in Hungarian living conditions, and then promises good governance as well as the rooting out of corruption and democratic restoration, is very important.
We probably cannot get too comfortable. This level of disadvantage that the opposition had in Hungary is actually something that, maybe, shows that we do not need to reach that stage for other countries, for political entrepreneurs and political actors to take on these lessons in other cases. Maybe this avenue, this broad-based appeal that Tisza had, rather than just chipping away at Fidesz supporters or convincing only a few demobilized voters to turn out, is something that can work in other cases. Instead, creating a broad-based movement is something that can work in other cases and can promise much better opportunities for democratic restoration with a strong mandate afterward.
The Greatest Challenge Is Ensuring That the New Government Constrains Itself
A central feature of democratic backsliding in Hungary involved the gradual weakening of judicial independence and constitutional oversight. Following the recent constitutional reforms initiated by the new government, what principles should guide efforts to restore judicial autonomy without creating the perception that one form of politicization is simply replacing another?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: This is a very important challenge in Hungary right now. As I already mentioned, the Tisza Party entered office with an unprecedented mandate. It holds a two-thirds majority in parliament, which in Hungary permits constitutional amendments and essentially allows the party to unilaterally amend the constitution. There is no need for the support of the new opposition parties in parliament, and this gives Tisza extensive control over institutional reform.
They have already used this power, and they have promised to use it further in relation to the judicial system. A constitutional amendment was just approved on July 13 by the Hungarian parliament that restored a mandatory retirement age of 70 for Constitutional Court judges. This involves four of the 15 judges losing their mandates, including the president of the Constitutional Court, who was a very important Orbán appointee.
They have also promised to implement changes to the selection rules for the presidents of various judicial bodies. For instance, these changes would involve judges choosing or proposing candidates instead of the president independently selecting a nominee. But ultimately, all of these changes would still rest on ratification by a two-thirds majority in parliament. So they would still give Tisza the opportunity to make the final choice.
We see many positive changes that could introduce more independent rules and restore a more independent judicial sector in Hungary. But it is very important that the party exercises self-restraint and is potentially even braver and more resolute in making changes that constrain the Tisza Party itself.
Because even some of these proposed rules—for instance, leaving the appointment of the presidents of various judicial bodies to a two-thirds parliamentary majority—would still give the party essentially full discretion, or at least a very high degree of discretion, over who these officeholders are going to be. The biggest challenge is making sure that Tisza actually constrains itself and establishes a genuine separation of the judiciary from the executive branch and, to some degree, from the legislative branch through these reforms, thereby binding both itself and its successors. Whether Tisza ultimately carries out these changes that may also be politically uncomfortable for itself absolutely remains to be seen.
Democratic Restoration Must Never Become Political Retribution
The new government has promised to dismantle what it describes as the “Orbán system” while introducing sweeping constitutional reforms and anti-corruption measures. How can democratic governments dismantle authoritarian legacies without themselves appearing to engage in victor’s justice or constitutional overreach? Where should democratic restoration end and political retribution begin?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: This is a key challenge of democratic restoration and democratic restoration efforts. Ensuring that these efforts proceed in a rule-of-law-abiding manner is often very difficult, as we have seen, for instance, in Poland, and it is something that inevitably draws a great deal of public attention.
In Hungary, this challenge is also present. There is an exceptionally high degree of public legitimacy for dismantling the Fidesz system and holding Fidesz politicians and its oligarchic elite accountable for their wrongdoing and their actions against the national interest. Fidesz currently enjoys at most 20 percent support in the polls in Hungary, which is exceedingly low. We have also seen an absolute exodus of voters from the Fidesz camp, even after the party lost the election.
There is a clear public mandate. But this process of accountability should be pursued in a very careful manner. The most important thing, so far, is that Tisza is at least promising to pursue it through judicial channels. They have also emphasized that this will likely be a lengthy process.
That said, I do see two dangers. The first is that abandoning the judicial route could become a temptation, and that would absolutely undermine the legitimacy of dismantling the Orbán system in the eyes of many. I think it should, because democratic self-restraint is something this party has to practice and demonstrate if it wants to reintroduce it into Hungarian politics.
I also see another danger. To me, it is the possibility that Tisza may not allow Fidesz to be evaluated again by Hungarian voters as a political alternative in the full sense that we should expect in a democratic system.
For instance, Tisza’s recent proposal for a constitutional amendment introduced a 12-year term limit for MPs in Hungary that would apply retroactively. This follows the adoption of an eight-year limit for prime ministers, also applied retroactively, which many interpreted partly as satisfying voters’ demands that Orbán should not be able to return to power, while also serving as an act of self-restraint by Tisza.
That measure has enjoyed broad public support in Hungary, at least for now. But the proposed 12-year limit for MPs has generated much more public debate. Its retroactive application means that most of the high-profile Fidesz leaders we have seen in recent years would likely be unable to run for office again if this rule actually enters the Constitution.
To me, this does not give voters the opportunity to reject Fidesz themselves, which, in all likelihood, we think they would actually do at the polls in the next election. Instead, it appears more like a measure of retribution than one that serves the restoration of healthy democratic competition.
Lasting Democratic Trust Depends on Meaningful Citizen Participation
Supporters of the TISZA Party gather on Andrássy Avenue in Budapest during a national march led by Péter Magyar on Hungary’s March 15 national holiday, March 15, 2026. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
Years of polarization, clientelism, and institutional capture often leave citizens deeply distrustful of politics itself. Beyond constitutional reforms, what strategies are necessary for rebuilding citizens’ confidence that democratic institutions can once again operate impartially and effectively?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: What is very interesting about the Hungarian case, and what is very closely related to the civic mobilization that we saw ahead of the election, is that there is an unprecedentedly broad interest in, and enthusiasm for, politics and following politics in Hungary, even after the election. That is very promising. The disaffection that we saw over more than a decade of Fidesz rule appears to have been reversed during this election and seems to persist even afterward.
But in many ways, there is still distrust of Tisza among many voters. Of course, the country’s experience over the past decade and a half has been one of politicians abusing public authority and public office for authoritarian entrenchment and private gain through corruption. There is, understandably, concern among Hungarian voters that any party—especially one with such a large mandate—could eventually fall victim to the same dynamics.
The more immediate concern is whether these participatory channels, this broad-based participation represented by the Tisza Islands and these activist groups, will continue to feed into politics itself or instead be discarded. Because maintaining them could build trust and strengthen the connection between citizens and politics.
Tisza has promised to institutionalize such participatory mechanisms. They are currently setting up the Institution for Functioning in Humane Hungary, which they describe as an institution for strengthening popular participation in politics through consultation with professionals, former civil society actors, as well as voters on proposed constitutional amendments, new public policies, and broader forms of public and civic involvement.
This is very promising, but it has not happened yet. We do not yet know exactly what it will look like. The party has asked voters and its activists for patience while it develops ways to channel this civic energy into politics and effective public policymaking in Hungary.
This is one of the most important questions that remains to be answered. The party can reasonably be granted some patience, especially as it is working very hard to meet the conditionalities required for EU funds to be restored to Hungary by the end of the summer. But after that, if this vision of popular participation in governance does not begin to materialize, some degree of public pressure would be very beneficial.
The EU Should Have Acted Earlier and More Decisively
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission arrives for a EU Summit, at the EU headquarters in Brussels, on June 30, 2023. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.
The European Union has frequently been criticized both for responding too slowly to Hungary’s democratic backsliding and for possessing limited enforcement tools. Looking retrospectively, what lessons should European institutions draw from the Hungarian experience regarding the defense of liberal democracy among member and candidate countries?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: There’s been a great deal of excellent research, including by R. Daniel Kelemen, on the role that the EU played through its lack of action against Hungary, and at times even its support for Hungary and Viktor Orbán, in failing to become an effective obstacle to authoritarian entrenchment. Kelemen’s research shows that European party politics in the European Parliament plays a very important role. There were incentives within the European People’s Party (EPP) to support Orbán despite his authoritarian transgressions, in order to advance the EPP’s broader political objectives within the EU. That points to an important lesson: party politics within the European Union cannot be allowed to impede efforts to stop authoritarian entrenchment in an EU member state.
There have to be clear red lines. There have to be cordons sanitaires around far-right parties within the EU. We have already seen some steps in this direction. But the other important lesson—and perhaps the more important one—is that the EU should act more quickly and be more willing to invoke the conditionality of EU funding.
A large share of EU funding to Hungary was suspended in 2022, and that was one of the key reasons for the weakening of Fidesz’s support. It contributed significantly to the lack of infrastructure investment, the slowdown in economic dynamism, and the broader economic stagnation and difficulties that Hungary experienced over the past four years, all of which substantially increased public dissatisfaction.
Conditionality is a very powerful tool, and it is a legitimate one. Invoking conditionality in determining access to EU funding is entirely legitimate, and it should be used in cases such as this.
Where Violent Repression Is Limited, Peaceful Democratic Change Remains Possible
Some scholars have argued that competitive authoritarian regimes are inherently unstable because they continue to rely on elections for legitimacy, while others view them as remarkably durable hybrid systems. Has the Hungarian case altered your own understanding of the long-term resilience—or fragility—of competitive authoritarian regimes?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: For one, 16 years of Fidesz rule in Hungary is a remarkably long time. Even if the regime ultimately proved vulnerable to an electoral challenge, it still represented an unprecedented period of authoritarian rule within the European Union that we must take seriously. The fact that an authoritarian regime could emerge under the conditions that it did in Hungary is, in itself, an absolute testament to the power of these authoritarian movements.
Nevertheless, the main lesson is that these regimes, and their continuity, ultimately rest on popularity. It requires a much greater shift of voters away from the regime than in democracies for that to translate into an opposition electoral victory. But there is hope. There is real potential for that to happen. Civic mobilization and the electoral mobilization of voters behind the opposition are what can ultimately bring these regimes to an end. As long as there is limited capacity and infrastructure for violent repression, there remains the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power.
The Hungarian case shows that this middle ground of competitive authoritarian regimes—those that resort only limitedly to physical repression, banning opposition parties, and the kinds of tools that we see in some other contexts—is ultimately fragile. These regimes are vulnerable to a sustained loss of electoral popularity.
Defeating Authoritarianism Requires Strategies Beyond Those of Ordinary Democracies
Finally, Hungary has demonstrated both how democracies can gradually erode and how authoritarian incumbents can eventually be defeated electorally. Yet democratic recovery is often considerably more difficult than democratic decline. Looking ahead, what will determine whether Hungary becomes a lasting example of democratic renewal rather than merely another episode of political alternation? And what broader lessons should scholars of populism, democratic resilience, and authoritarianism take from Hungary’s extraordinary political trajectory?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: In terms of what Hungary will ultimately become an example of, I certainly hope that it will be a lasting example of democratic renewal. But that depends on several conditions. For one, it is important that we see self-restraint from the Tisza Party. Somewhat unfortunately, this is a situation in which we have to rely on self-restraint by the governing party because of its extraordinary political mandate.
But I also think it is crucial that we see the emergence of political alternatives to the Tisza Party in the coming years in Hungary. Entering the 2030 election with the Tisza Party facing only a very weakened Fidesz as its main opposition would be very disadvantageous for Hungarian politics if Fidesz continues to weaken in the way it has over the past couple of months.
It’s very hard to see that providing an incentive for voters to evaluate the Tisza Party against the strong benchmark that we would like to see in a democracy. There is also, for now, no real political alternative to Tisza on the left or liberal side in Hungary. We effectively have a political system with three right-wing parties. Tisza is currently very much a moderate party, but nevertheless its two challengers are on the right. Mi Hazánk, the third party in parliament, is a far-right party.
If this situation persists, it is difficult to see how voters could exercise meaningful democratic choice in the 2030 election. To me, that is very important for a successful democratic recovery. It would also place healthy pressure on Tisza, so that we do not have to rely solely on self-restraint by the party and on extra-parliamentary, extra-electoral mobilization to encourage Tisza to help Hungary achieve a strong democratic renewal.
In terms of the broader lessons from the Hungarian case and Hungary’s extraordinary political trajectory, I see a couple of important lessons that focus on the opposition and on opposition to authoritarian incumbents.
Very often, when we think about these regimes and the reasons for their popularity, we focus on the authoritarian strategies that governing parties employ. We examine institutional manipulation, authoritarian entrenchment, media capture, the capture of civil society, economic coercion, as well as ethnopopulist and distributive appeals to voters, together with voters’ willingness to tolerate these transgressions. But we also need to think seriously about the role that the availability of opposition and credible alternatives plays in allowing such regimes to survive and preventing a democratic alternative from emerging. Hungary shows that the combination of a new political party and a broad-based civic movement built around semi-autonomous civic organizations and civic groups can become a powerful vehicle for democratic change.
The Hungarian experience also offers two further lessons. First, it demonstrates that broad-based civic mobilization is possible. We should therefore think much more seriously about these possibilities and about what kinds of innovations enable opposition movements to overcome the distinctive challenges they face under authoritarian incumbents. We may simply need to be much more inventive.
Second, we cannot continue to operate under assumptions about democratic competition that are derived from established democracies when we are dealing with authoritarian contexts. The rules of the game are fundamentally different. Accordingly, the strategies that opposition movements must employ in these settings are also likely to be fundamentally different from those that work in democracies.
Drawing on comparative evidence from Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, and beyond, Associate Professor Laura Gamboa offers a compelling rethinking of democratic resilience in an age of gradual authoritarianism. Rather than viewing democratic backsliding solely through the ambitions of would-be autocrats, she demonstrates that democratic survival depends equally on the strategic choices of opposition parties, constitutional courts, and civil society. Reflecting on Colombia’s 2026 presidential election, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa argues that the results present “a mixed story,” simultaneously revealing institutional resilience and new democratic vulnerabilities. She warns that contemporary authoritarianism advances incrementally—often becoming visible only when “it’s usually too late”—while urging democratic actors to address citizens’ grievances, strengthen institutional legitimacy, reduce polarization, and defend constitutional democracy without abandoning democratic principles.
The contemporary crisis of democracy rarely unfolds through dramatic coups or sudden constitutional collapse. Instead, democratic erosion increasingly advances through legal reforms, institutional manipulation, and the gradual concentration of executive power. This slow-moving process has transformed democratic backsliding into one of the defining political challenges of the twenty-first century, raising urgent questions about how constitutional democracies can defend themselves against elected leaders who weaken democratic institutions from within. Few scholars have contributed more to answering these questions than Associate Professor Laura Gamboa of the University of Notre Dame, whose work has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of democratic resilience.
Unlike much of the earlier literature, which focused primarily on aspiring autocrats, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa redirects attention to the democratic opposition itself. In Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy and New Forms of Democratic Erosion in Latin America, she argues that democratic survival depends not only on the ambitions of authoritarian leaders but also on the strategic choices of opposition parties, constitutional courts, legislatures, and civil society. By shifting the analytical focus from autocrats to democratic resistance, her scholarship offers one of the most original frameworks for explaining why some democracies withstand authoritarian pressures while others gradually succumb.
The timing of this interview is especially significant. Colombia’s 2026 presidential election has reignited debates about democratic accountability, populism, institutional resilience, and constitutional government across Latin America. While many observers interpreted the election as a straightforward ideological shift to the political right, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa argues that “the 2026 elections give us a mixed story.” She highlights both the resilience of Colombia’s democratic institutions and troubling warning signs, emphasizing that “both the candidate who won the election and the president’s unwillingness to recognize the election results are not good news for democracy.” Her assessment reminds us that electoral alternation alone neither guarantees democratic renewal nor necessarily signals democratic decline.
A recurring theme throughout the interview is the changing nature of authoritarianism. Contemporary autocrats rarely destroy democracy overnight. Instead, they rely on constitutional reforms, elections, plebiscites, and legal mechanisms to weaken liberal democracy incrementally. As Assoc. Prof. Gamboa warns, “by the time the threat becomes evident, it’s usually too late.” Because democratic erosion often proceeds under the appearance of constitutional legality, recognizing the danger of autocratization before institutions are fundamentally weakened has become increasingly difficult.
The interview also challenges conventional assumptions about populism. Rather than treating it as inherently incompatible with democracy, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa describes populism as “a double-sided coin,” capable of expanding political inclusion while simultaneously encouraging personalistic leadership and executive aggrandizement. Equally important, she argues that democratic oppositions must resist dismissing populist voters. “All of these would-be autocrats come to power because they tap into some kind of discontent,” she explains, emphasizing that democratic forces must address underlying grievances rather than simply condemn their political expression. Ultimately, her message is one of strategic democratic resilience: defend institutions, broaden coalitions, reduce polarization, and remember that “doing politics in a society that is not polarized is significantly easier than doing politics in a society that is polarized.” In an era of democratic uncertainty, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa offers a compelling roadmap for understanding—and resisting—the gradual erosion of constitutional democracy.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Associate Professor Laura Gamboa, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Colombia’s 2026 Elections Give Us a Mixed Story
Credential-giving ceremony to President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella and Vice President-elect Jose Manuel Restrepo by the National Electoral Council in Bogota, Colombia on June 25, 2026. Photo: Anamaria Mejía / Dreamstime.
Professor Gamboa, welcome, and let me begin with Colombia’s recent presidential election. This election has been widely interpreted as a decisive shift to the political right following Gustavo Petro’s presidency. Yet throughout your scholarship, you have consistently argued that electoral alternation should not be confused with democratic deterioration or democratic recovery. What do the election results ultimately tell us about the health of Colombian democracy? Should this election be understood primarily as ideological realignment, democratic accountability in action, or as another manifestation of the broader anti-establishment politics reshaping contemporary democracies?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: The 2026 elections give us a mixed story. On the one hand, when Gustavo Petro came to power, many Colombians were very worried that he was going to become “the second Chávez”—that he was not going to step down. And here we are. As far as I can tell, he’s planning to step down. Now, there’s the minor issue of his not recognizing the election results, which I’ll get into in a second. But he is stepping down, and Colombia’s main institutional infrastructure remains intact. Congress and the courts were able to check the president whenever they needed to, while also allowing some of his proposals to move forward. So I think that’s good news.
I also think this has probably been true since 2018, and it became significantly clearer in 2022, but these last four years have been, in many ways, a sort of spring for Colombian politics. For the longest time, Colombian politics revolved around security: How did we deal with the armed conflict? Over these past four years—and certainly during this past election—we’ve been discussing healthcare and pension reform. We’ve also been questioning, for good or for bad—you can agree or disagree with these questions—what used to be regarded as unquestionable macroeconomic orthodoxy, something we simply weren’t supposed to touch. For the first time, these issues have become part of the political conversation, and I think that’s important in any democracy. So I do think that there has been some kind of ideological realignment. We no longer have the simple pro-peace versus anti-peace divide, but rather a much more complicated political landscape in our electoral arena.
That being said, I also think that both the candidate who won the election and the president’s unwillingness to recognize the election results are not good news for democracy. I don’t remember ever seeing a president fail to recognize election results. Our elections are not perfect, by any means, but they’re pretty good. Our electoral system works well, and people generally trust the election results. So I think that’s bad news.
I also think Abelardo de la Espriella, who won the election, is a far-right candidate who ran a campaign based on emotions, outlandish statements, and sweeping proposals. He has claimed that he wants to govern by decree. He has appointed members of his cabinet who are anti-globalists and promoters of conspiracy theories. So I think none of that is good news for democracy.
The Path from Democratic Victory to Democratic Breakdown
ThroughoutResisting Backsliding, you caution against equating electoral victories by controversial or populist leaders with democratic breakdown. What analytical criteria should scholars use to distinguish between ordinary democratic alternation, constitutional conflict, and genuine democratic erosion? At what point does vigorous democratic competition become a threat to democracy itself?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: I depart from the principle that, no matter how crazy someone may be, if you win a democratic election—one that is free and fair and won without cheating—you deserve to govern for whatever period the law provides, whether that’s a presidential term or a prime minister’s term. This is true for presidents like Joe Biden, who I believe has a normative preference for democracy. I also think it’s true for Donald Trump, who I really don’t think has a normative preference for democracy.
What I don’t think, however, is that you get to govern like a king. In a democracy, presidents, prime ministers, legislatures, and judiciaries are subject to constitutions and the rule of law. In that regard, authoritarian leaders who try to evade or ignore these constraints are a danger to democracy. That’s when we’re facing genuine threats to democracy.
Between someone being a danger to democracy and someone actually eroding democracy, however, there are two distinct steps. First, there is a person trying; then there is a person succeeding in those attempts. In many ways, we have to think about this sequentially.
Why Democratic Erosion Is Harder to Recognize Than Ever
You argue that twenty-first-century democracies rarely collapse through classic military coups but instead erode gradually through legal and constitutional means. Why has democratic backsliding become such a slow-moving institutional process rather than an abrupt rupture, and does this gradualism paradoxically make contemporary authoritarianism more difficult both to recognize and to resist?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: This is one of the great achievements of the end of the Cold War. All of a sudden, we all like democracy, and we all want to be democrats. Citizens, foreign governments, and international organizations have all become supporters of democracy, broadly conceived, and no leader wants to be labeled undemocratic or anti-democratic. There are important symbolic and practical consequences to being “a dictator.” In order to avoid being called a dictator, leaders with authoritarian tendencies generally don’t resort to overtly abrasive actions like coups, self-coups, or the kinds of moves we used to see in the past. Instead, they turn to methods that are much more covert.
They still want to gain control over other branches of government. They still want to govern without limits. But they don’t want to do so in a way that would brand them as authoritarians or dictators. Of course, the problem with this kind of democratic backsliding is that, when these leaders try to undermine democracy without appearing to be dictators, they usually use and abuse the very levers of democracy. They try to change the rules. They invoke popular power to bypass other institutions. They resort to false information and other practices that are not necessarily visibly undemocratic, but are nevertheless undemocratic.
Precisely because these actions are not visibly undemocratic, they are very difficult to identify. It’s hard for someone who is concerned about democracy to say, “You are trying to undermine democracy,” when the only thing the president appears to be doing is proposing a constitutional reform. Or when the only thing the president appears to be doing is calling for a plebiscite. After all, plebiscites are supposed to be highly democratic. A lot of people are voting, so it’s really difficult to convey where the threat lies. And by the time the threat becomes evident, it’s usually too late.
The Double-Edged Nature of Populist Politics
The former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez (L) and Nicolas Maduro (R) in Cumana, Venezuela, April 17, 2009. Photo: Harold Escalona.
Much of the public debate assumes that populism inevitably produces democratic backsliding. Yet your work suggests a more nuanced relationship. Under what political and institutional conditions does populism become compatible with democratic inclusion, and when does it evolve into a vehicle for executive aggrandizement and democratic erosion?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: Populism is a double-sided coin. I don’t think you get one without the other. On the one hand, all populists are vehicles for inclusion. They tend to mobilize people who were previously outside the political arena. This was true of Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina in the 1940s. It was true for Hugo Chávez in the 1990s and early 2000s, and it is also true for Donald Trump.
We see something similar in Colombia. The recent election, with Abelardo de la Espriella and Iván Zepeda running, produced an unprecedented turnout in Colombia’s recent history. These leaders clearly know how to speak to groups that have not been incorporated into the political arena. The problem is that their ability to bring these groups into politics is closely tied to the way they connect with people. They don’t rely on institutional channels—particularly political parties—to relate to their constituencies. Instead, they operate outside those channels. Not only that, but sometimes—and more often than not—they actively delegitimize those institutional channels, which makes them, and only them, the sole viable leader. That, in turn, makes them incredibly dangerous for democracy because, if you see yourself as the only translator of the popular will, then you can never leave office.
So, I think populism is, in that sense, a double-sided sword. On the one hand, populists tap into some kind of grievance, perhaps an unfulfilled need or a lack of representation. In doing so, they mobilize people who were not part of the political conversation before. But the way they do so is incredibly personalistic, charismatic, and ultimately authoritarian.
So, when they become presidents, you have this inherent tension: a leader who is able to mobilize large numbers of people who were previously outside the political arena, but also a leader who wants to remain in power because he sees himself as the translator of the popular will.
Democratic Survival Depends on Opposition Strategy
One of your book’s most original contributions is shifting attention away from aspiring autocrats toward the democratic opposition itself. Why do you believe the behavior of opposition parties is so frequently underestimated in explaining democratic survival? More fundamentally, can democratic oppositions unintentionally accelerate democratic erosion even while believing they are defending democracy?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: Although my book was published in 2022, the analytical lens has increasingly shifted toward the opposition ever since Donald Trump came to power. If you ask me why scholars didn’t pay much attention to the opposition before, my first instinct is that these kinds of phenomena—populists coming to power, undermining institutions, and eroding democracy—were largely seen as phenomena of the Global South. So we simply didn’t think very much about democratic survival. But when Donald Trump came to power—when this became something that was happening in the United States—all of a sudden scholars, activists, and practitioners were forced to think seriously about democratic survival.
To a certain extent, the prevailing attitude toward the Hugo Chávezes, Evo Moraleses, and Rafael Correas of the Global South was: “Oh, yeah, those people gain power there. Of course they’re going to win there. These countries are poor, they’re weak, they have weak parties.” When Donald Trump won the election in the United States, however, we were suddenly confronted with the fact that these kinds of leaders could also win office in countries we considered consolidated democracies. And all of a sudden, we were confronted with a new question: We have to think about democratic survival. This has to be a real possibility.
There’s something about the way we think about dictators in general that makes it very difficult to see successes and failures as a byproduct of opposition strategies. The academic world has largely split into two camps. One camp believes that when would-be autocrats or dictators fail, it’s because the dictator was weak. So, of course, they were going to fail. It doesn’t matter who the opposition was or what the opposition did. The dictator was simply weak. Likewise, when dictators succeed, it becomes a kind of fait accompli: of course, the dictator was going to win because the dictator was strong.
Then, there’s the camp in which I position myself. But I’m really standing on the shoulders of some incredibly important scholarship, including one of my favorite books, Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik’s work on the color revolutions in Eastern Europe. That scholarship looks at the other side of the bottle. Rather than focusing on strong or weak dictators, it focuses on strong or weak oppositions, or on strategically smart and well-organized oppositions.
If you’re in one camp, it’s very difficult to see what the other camp is seeing. So I think those are the two reasons why the opposition was so often overlooked.
The only reason I started thinking about the opposition is because I’m originally from Colombia. In 2012, we had a visitor here at Notre Dame, where I was doing my PhD, who was talking about how Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales who were able to erode democracy because they were so popular. At the time, I had just come out of Álvaro Uribe’s government. Of course, any Colombian knows that Uribe was incredibly popular, at least until fairly recently.
So all of a sudden, I found myself asking, “Okay, but hold on. If popularity is all that matters, then we should have expected Álvaro Uribe to succeed.” That question, of course, led me to start looking at what Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq call the “near misses.” Why do some countries succeed while others fail?
But I don’t think that question would have been obvious to anyone who wasn’t thoroughly familiar with the Colombian case. The assumption was simply that Álvaro Uribe was never going to succeed because he ultimately did not succeed. There’s a kind of tautological logic underlying many of these cases.
Your typology distinguishes between moderate institutional opposition and radical extra-institutional resistance. Yet when democratic institutions themselves become increasingly captured by elected autocrats, many opposition actors argue that extraordinary measures become necessary. How should democratic forces determine when institutional resistance remains democratic—and when radical resistance risks giving autocratizers the pretext they need to repress, delegitimize, or criminalize the opposition?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: This is a very complicated question because, to a certain extent, it is connected to this duality, this double-sided nature of democratic backsliding. The fact that it happens slowly provides opportunities for the opposition. But the fact that it happens so slowly also makes it very difficult to identify exactly where the threat lies.
My book mostly analyzes presidents who come to power democratically. In other words, I don’t analyze Nicolás Maduro because he never came to power democratically. Nor would I analyze the later terms of Erdoğan, who I don’t think has come to power democratically in the past two elections. I focus on presidents who come to power democratically. And, to the extent that these presidents come to power democratically, it is incredibly important to respect the electoral process.
Not only because that’s the democratic thing to do—you cannot claim that the other side is violating democracy if you’re not willing to respect its basic tenets—but also because many of these leaders come to power by tapping into real grievances. They don’t come to power out of thin air. There’s something missing in the system that these leaders are responding to, and the people they represent deserve to have their voices heard.
When Hugo Chávez came to power, he did not inherit a perfect Venezuela. He came to power in a country where the political class had become corrupt, the economy was collapsing, inequality was through the roof, and the mechanisms of representation—particularly the political parties—had become deeply delegitimized. Yes, Hugo Chávez certainly contributed to the further de-legitimization of institutions. But the weakness of Venezuela’s traditional parties long predated Chávez’s arrival on the political scene.
So, I think these leaders tap into something that is real, and I don’t think we can simply ignore those grievances because we disagree with them. The same is true of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump is a would-be autocrat, and I really don’t agree with—or think that—his positions on immigration or LGBTQ+ communities are going to make this country any better. But I do think the grievances that propelled him to power are real. People felt that their towns were changing because, all of a sudden, there were many newcomers. People felt that opportunities were going to someone else. Those feelings are real, and they need to be grappled with.
So, if you simply say, “Well, this president that you elected democratically is not a legitimate president,” you’re ignoring the grievances of those citizens. That’s a mistake. It’s much smarter to grapple with those grievances and figure out how to address them—not how to embrace the policies, but how to address those feelings of not being seen and not being heard, which are actually at the core of many of these problems.
Of course, as I mentioned before, autocrats don’t get to govern like kings. If they commit crimes or do things in office that they shouldn’t do, there are constitutional mechanisms to deal with them and remove them. Sometimes those mechanisms work, and sometimes they don’t. Most constitutions include some form of impeachment process. Parliamentary systems have votes of no confidence. There are institutional mechanisms for dealing with these situations that don’t require organizing in the streets, launching a coup, or organizing a strike to force the president to resign.
I think using institutions is, in general, a good idea, regardless of repression. I don’t think, however, that institutions, in and of themselves, function the same way in the early stages of democratic erosion as they do in the later stages. I hear this criticism all the time when people read my book. They come back and say, “Well, institutions weren’t going to work in Venezuela in 2015.” My response is: of course, they weren’t. Those institutions had already been co-opted. They were no longer impartial referees of political competition. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t participate in elections.
Choosing not to use those institutions simply means abandoning political space that you could still occupy. It does mean, however, that institutions alone are not enough. At that point, you have to think about whether it makes sense to combine them with certain extra-institutional strategies, as we saw, for example, in Guatemala in 2023. Bernardo Arévalo entered an election that he was very unlikely to win. The stars aligned, he made it into the runoff, and he ultimately won. But because the system had already been co-opted—and because, more specifically, the electoral authorities were effectively controlled by the attorney general—he was unlikely to actually become president unless something else happened. And that something else happened in the streets. Indigenous communities, peasant organizations, and urban groups mobilized to defend the election.
So, to answer the question, when there is a democratic electoral process and one of these leaders becomes president, they have earned the right to govern within the limits of the law. I also think that using institutions is a good idea regardless. And I cannot think of a single example in which extra-institutional strategies pursuing radical goals actually helped promote democracy.
In Latin America, we had one successful coup, the one against Manuel Zelaya. What ended up happening was that Zelaya was removed from office, but another authoritarian leader was installed in his place. Honduras remained close to authoritarianism during the first few years afterward and has been authoritarian ever since. So, I just don’t think that advances democracy. It may advance one side of the political spectrum, but it doesn’t advance democracy.
Successors Can Become Democracy’s Unexpected Defenders
Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos participates in the March for Life in Bogotá, Colombia, on March 8, 2015. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your comparison of Colombia under Álvaro Uribe and Venezuela under Hugo Chávez shows that similar institutional pressures can produce radically different outcomes depending on opposition strategy. Looking back from today’s vantage point, what is the most important lesson Colombia offers about resisting democratic erosion without abandoning democratic legitimacy?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: The first lesson is the one I pointed out earlier. I think that kind of opposition protects democracy in the long term. By the time Álvaro Uribe stepped down, we still had a Constitutional Court, we still had a Congress that had not been co-opted, and we still had oversight agencies. I think that, in and of itself, is incredibly important.
There’s another lesson here, and I sometimes get criticized for it. People who read my book say, “How can you say that?” They argue that I end the Colombian chapter on an overly optimistic note, as though Colombia somehow just lived happily ever after in this blessed democracy, which is really not true.
So, let me put it this way. I don’t think moderate institutional strategies that stop democratic erosion are designed to advance democracy. They stop the bleeding. They stop the immediate threats to democracy. In doing so, they create windows of opportunity for others, later on, to deepen and expand democracy. That’s what happened in Colombia. Juan Manuel Santos came to power, pushed forward the peace agreement, and Colombia became a better democracy afterward than it had been when Álvaro Uribe stepped down.
There’s another criticism I sometimes receive about the Colombian case. People say, “What are you talking about? It was a member of Uribe’s coalition who actually came to power.” Uribe himself couldn’t run, but Juan Manuel Santos—his former minister of defense—won the presidency. To that, I would simply say: yes, but successors are not the autocrat.
We’ve been pleasantly surprised by a number of successors in Latin America and elsewhere. Lenín Moreno, who succeeded Correa, was not Correa’s puppet. Santos was not Uribe’s puppet. Luis Arce has had a more mixed trajectory, but, to a certain extent, after coming to power, he also veered away from Evo Morales and his attempts to remain in office. So, successors are not necessarily the same as their charismatic predecessors. That’s something we need to keep in mind, because sometimes those successors are our best chance to protect democracy.
Legitimacy Makes Courts Democracy’s Strongest Guardrails
In your recent work on “courts against backsliding,” you argue that independent courts can engage in “constitutional balancing” and slow or stop autocratization. What makes courts effective defenders of democracy in some contexts, while in others they become captured, politicized, or unable to contain executive power?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: I’ll make a distinction first, and I don’t think it’s one we make often enough. Courts can be, and often are, potential guardrails against democratic erosion. But sometimes they are the drivers of democratic backsliding. To a certain extent, democratic erosion in countries like Guatemala—and, I say this more cautiously, the United States—has been driven by certain courts. Definitely not all courts, but certain ones.
So, when I talk about constitutional balancing, I’m talking about courts that are designed to be guardrails for democracy, not courts that are pushing the process forward.
This research—which is still ongoing—is something I’m conducting with Ezequiel González-Ocantos from Oxford and Benjamín García Holgado from the University of Delaware.
For these courts to be successful, they need to have some kind of legitimacy. One of the lessons from the Colombian case is that, to a certain extent, the Constitutional Court was able to curb Álvaro Uribe’s attempts to undermine democracy because the court itself enjoyed a high degree of legitimacy. It was in a position that, for instance, the Venezuelan Supreme Court—before Chávez changed the Constitution—was not.
So the first thing I would say is that it’s not so much about the court being independent or autonomous as it is about the court being legitimate in the eyes of the public and about people being willing to defend that legitimacy. I also think there’s something about how the court rules that is very important.
In the article you’re referring to, we talk about constitutional balancing. What we mean by constitutional balancing is that, when democracy is threatened by violations of horizontal accountability—that is, attempts by the executive, or others, to undermine checks and balances—the court can rely on a more orthodox jurisprudence to rule against those attempts and preserve the constitutional balance.
This orthodox approach to threats against checks and balances is usually more effective than a more heterodox approach because it is easier to defend and support. If you think about it, what usually happens is that you have a very popular incumbent trying to change the Constitution while claiming some kind of democratic mandate. Then you have an unelected court trying to stop that incumbent.
If the court relies on existing written law or long-standing jurisprudence, it can act much more forcefully than if it relies on some kind of out-of-the-blue theory to rule against the incumbent. This becomes very clear when you compare the case of Mexico with the case of Colombia, although it’s also true of Argentina and other countries.
In Colombia, during Álvaro Uribe’s government, the Constitutional Court relied on a constitutional provision stating that constitutional reforms had to follow a particular procedure. What the opposition did inside Congress was to signal to the court when Congress was violating that procedure. The court therefore ruled primarily on those procedural irregularities.
During Álvaro Uribe’s government, the court and some of its allies were developing what we call the constitutional substitution theory. That theory suggested that if constitutional reforms went beyond a certain point, they were no longer reforms but attempts to replace the Constitution, and that the Constitution could not be replaced through ordinary constitutional amendment. On that basis, the court could rule against those reforms. But in the early 2000s, this was still a very new theory, so the Constitutional Court in Colombia invoked it only very rarely in its rulings against Uribe. Today, we see the court invoking it left and right, but twenty years have passed.
Some scholars believed that the Mexican Supreme Court could invoke the same theory to stop the judicial reform that ultimately dismantled judicial independence in Mexico. The Mexican Court, to a certain extent, played with that possibility. But because the theory had never been used in Mexico, it was very difficult for the court suddenly to argue, almost out of thin air, that this judicial theory justified ruling against a very popular incumbent. So, we think jurisprudence matters.
There’s also other work that points to two additional factors I think are important. One is that the Colombian Constitutional Court has been very good at ruling even-handedly. In Spanish, we have a saying that the court gives to both God and the devil. The justices understood that they needed to protect both themselves and the institution, so they were very careful not only to constrain the government but also to present themselves as a balanced court.
The other line of research that is very important focuses on how courts build legitimacy through networks of allies, both inside and outside the judiciary. We’re talking not only about justices, but also lawyers, legal NGOs, and activists who have a vested interest in preserving the court. These actors help support the justices and make it much more difficult for an incumbent to fire them, dismantle the court, or undermine it in other ways.
Why Constitutional Constraints Matter More Than Speed
Your work with Sandra Botero shows how Colombia’s Constitutional Court indirectly expands the strategic repertoire of minority coalitions in Congress by allowing them to document procedural irregularities and challenge legislation. Can institutional obstruction be a democratic tool of resistance, and how can we distinguish legitimate constitutional defense from anti-democratic sabotage?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: Like populists, institutional controls—or these kinds of institutional checks—are two-sided coins. On the one hand, they’re really good at curbing potential autocrats who leverage majorities, and they’re really good at protecting minorities, regardless of who those minorities are, from abuses of power. I think that’s a good thing. But, on the other hand, this also means that they sometimes curb the will of the majority and, in doing so, constrain policy reforms that many of us might regard as beneficial for the community or for the country.
I don’t know if you can have one without the other. I think this is a trade-off. If you want institutions that are able to check other branches of government—in this case, a court that can check both the executive and Congress—that court inevitably becomes a source of moderation for public policy. I don’t think there’s a way to have one without the other.
And I also don’t think this is an entirely bad thing. Let me explain why. Colombia has had many presidents, some of whom I supported and some of whom I didn’t. In 2016, Juan Manuel Santos was pushing for the peace process, which I strongly supported. He wanted to pass a reform that would have allowed him to introduce the legislation implementing the peace agreements to Congress and turn it into law while curtailing the ability of members of Congress to add amendments or modify it in any way, shape, or form.
This would have significantly sped up the implementation of the peace agreements and probably would have changed the ability of subsequent governments—both Iván Duque’s and Gustavo Petro’s—to undermine those agreements. That being said, it would also have created an incredibly dangerous precedent for future presidents, one that I fear could be used for purposes I would consider less “democratic” or beneficial for the community.
The court ruled against it. Indeed, implementing the peace agreement and turning it into law was arduous and complicated, and it certainly diluted some of its provisions. There’s no doubt about that. But I would rather have that than allow a president whom I don’t trust, and whom I think is inherently authoritarian, like Abelardo de la Espriella, to use that same power to push through measures that would violate human rights or allow him to govern without any meaningful constraints. That is incredibly dangerous.
As a matter of fact, it’s one of the reasons why I’m very hesitant—or very ambivalent—about my view of the filibuster in the United States. Most Democrats, and most of my colleagues, will tell you that the filibuster is terrible because Republicans have mostly used it to obstruct the Obama and Biden administrations—to block judicial appointments, obstruct policy agendas, and prevent the implementation of Democratic priorities. And I think they’re right. But I also think that the filibuster today is the last institutional tool Democrats in Congress have to stand on if they are to have any chance of even minimally curtailing what I see as an incredibly dangerous and authoritarian agenda on the part of the current government.
So, I don’t think you can have one without the other. But if I have to choose, I’d rather have a court that moderates the policy agenda while also protecting me from people whom I consider to be autocrats than a court that does not moderate the policy agenda and is also unable to protect me from people whom I think are authoritarian.
Lowering Polarization Is One of Democracy’s Strongest Defenses
Protesters march peacefully through Bogotá calling for the impeachment of President Gustavo Petro and opposing the government’s proposed reforms on April 21, 2024. Photo: Anamaria Mejía / Dreamstime.
Finally, drawing together your work on Colombia, Venezuela, Latin America, courts, opposition strategy, and democratic resilience, what would a global “democratic resistance playbook” look like today? What are the core mistakes opposition actors must avoid, and what principles should guide democratic forces confronting elected leaders who erode democracy from within?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: I have a couple of ideas: One of the core mistakes—and I see this happening time and time again—is dismissing the reasons why the autocrat comes to power. All of these would-be autocrats come to power because they tap into some kind of discontent. Opposition parties and pro-democratic movements should take that discontent seriously. They should ask themselves how they can address it. My understanding is that, more often than not, this discontent reflects a lack of representation.
It’s not about whether people prefer stricter or more permissive immigration policies, or whether they support reproductive rights. It’s about people wanting to be seen by those who govern them and wanting to be understood by those who govern them.
What Hugo Chávez had that other politicians lacked was the ability to present himself as one of the people he represented. Álvaro Uribe had a similar strength. He, too, presented himself as one of the people he represented. The same is true of Trump. The same is true of leaders like Abelardo de la Espriella, and even Gustavo Petro, who is, in some ways, a Colombian populist on the left.
We really need to think very carefully about representation. When confronting one of these populist leaders in the executive, we need to reflect on what we’re missing and what we failed to tap into.
If we do this as pro-democratic activists, practitioners, and scholars—if we take these questions seriously—it will enable us to approach opposition differently.
Rather than approaching opposition as a mechanism for getting rid of everything the other side represents, we can approach it in a more respectful manner toward the voters—not the autocrat, but the voters who put that person into office.
It will allow us to see the coalition that brings these autocrats to power as more diverse than we often assume, and perhaps find allies at the margins. And allies at the margins are a great idea because they help us build broader coalitions. They are the Juan Manuel Santoses of the story.
That also reduces the feeling that you need to get rid of this guy today. In doing so, it allows you to develop longer-term strategies that protect democracy while also lowering polarization.
To have a polarized society, you need two sides. You need the polarizer, but you also need somebody to respond to that polarization. If you don’t respond to that polarization, it’s really hard to polarize. Ask Gustavo Petro. Doing politics in a society that is not polarized is significantly easier than doing politics in a society that is polarized.
A society that is not polarized allows you to build coalitions with the other side. It allows you to highlight the importance of protecting institutions beyond immediate policy interests. It allows you to draw voters toward more moderate candidates. So, in the long run, it allows you to accomplish much more.
Those are the two mistakes that I see opposition actors making time and time again when confronting these kinds of situations.
Hungary’s democratic transition has entered a decisive new phase following Péter Magyar’s electoral victory, but, as Professor Kim Lane Scheppele argues, defeating an autocrat is only the beginning of democratic restoration. In this timely interview, Professor Scheppele examines the constitutional dilemmas confronting Hungary’s new leadership: dismantling autocratic legalism without reproducing it, restoring judicial independence, ensuring accountability without political revenge, and rebuilding institutions capable of sustaining genuine democratic competition. Drawing broader lessons for democracies facing executive aggrandizement, she contends that successful democratic recovery requires more than electoral change. Hungary’s experience, she argues, may become a comparative model for constitutional reconstruction—provided that democratic reformers succeed in limiting their own power while rebuilding the institutional foundations of liberal constitutional democracy.
For more than a decade, Hungary has occupied a central place in comparative debates on democratic backsliding, constitutional capture, and the rise of legalistic authoritarianism. Under Viktor Orbán, the country became the paradigmatic example of how elected leaders could gradually dismantle liberal democracy not by suspending constitutional order but by systematically reshaping it from within. Through constitutional amendments, judicial restructuring, electoral engineering, and the concentration of executive authority, Hungary demonstrated that democratic erosion in the twenty-first century increasingly proceeds through law rather than outside it. Yet the electoral defeat of Orbán has fundamentally transformed the scholarly conversation. The central question is no longer how democracies decay, but whether they can be successfully rebuilt once authoritarian legal structures have become deeply institutionalized.
In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Kim Lane Scheppele, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University, examines one of the most consequential constitutional experiments currently unfolding in Europe: Hungary’s attempt to move from autocratic rule toward democratic restoration. Drawing upon decades of research on constitutionalism, judicial independence, autocratic legalism, and democratic resilience, Professor Scheppele argues that Hungary may now become not only the world’s foremost laboratory of democratic backsliding but also an unprecedented laboratory of democratic recovery.
Throughout the interview, Professor Scheppele repeatedly distinguishes democratic restoration from ordinary democratic transition. Electoral victory, she insists, represents only the first step. As she memorably observes, “The real test of democracy is not the first election—but the next one.” The ultimate challenge is whether a new democratic government can dismantle institutions deliberately designed to prevent future political alternation while simultaneously avoiding the temptation to reproduce concentrated executive power.
One of the interview’s central contributions concerns what Professor Scheppele describes as the paradox of autocratic legality. Because Orbán entrenched political domination through constitutional and legal mechanisms, democratic reformers may confront situations in which “when law entrenches autocracy, following it may preserve the regime.” This raises profound constitutional dilemmas concerning judicial reform, constitutional replacement, accountability, and the relationship between legality and democratic legitimacy.
Professor Scheppele also explores the practical architecture of democratic reconstruction. She argues that “power must be limited even during democratic restoration,” advocates a constitutional process in which “the rules of the game” are democratically rewritten, and proposes a broader understanding of the rule of law rooted in European constitutional standards rather than exclusively in national legal continuity. Her discussion of judicial reconstruction, constitutional redesign, and transnational legal constraints offers an important comparative framework extending well beyond Hungary.
Perhaps most significantly, Professor Scheppele identifies the political conditions that made democratic change possible. Hungary’s experience demonstrates, she argues, that successful democratic opposition must “fight corruption, build a big tent, and take people out of fear.”
Looking ahead, she concludes that the durability of democratic recovery will depend upon three immediate institutional priorities: reforming the Constitutional Court, restoring meaningful judicial checks, and redesigning the electoral system. Whether Hungary succeeds or fails, she suggests, will shape how democracies around the world think about rebuilding constitutional government after authoritarian capture.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Kim Lane Scheppele, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
The Real Test of Democracy Is Not the First Election—but the Next One
Péter Magyar speaks at a public demonstration near the Hungarian Parliament building in Budapest on April 6, 2024. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
Professor Scheppele, welcome!To begin, in your recent Journal of Democracyarticle, you argue that Péter Magyar’s electoral victory represents only the beginning—not the culmination—of Hungary’s democratic recovery. Why is defeating an autocrat at the ballot box fundamentally different from dismantling an autocratic regime? More broadly, what distinguishes democratic transition from democratic restoration after more than a decade of constitutional capture?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: This is such a good question. It depends on what we think democracy is. There’s a very thin version of democracy in which democracy simply means that you’re ruled by whoever you last elected. But there’s also a separate question, and this is more how I tend to think about democracy and what it requires. Democracy is about getting to the next election so that you can rotate power. It’s not just about whether the people who are currently in charge were elected. In order to achieve a fully democratic transformation, you have to guarantee not only that the election you just had was free and fair and capable of rotating power, but also that whatever happens after that first election—or, shall we say, the election that brings new people into office—they will be able to guarantee democratic elections in the future.
This is where there has to be a pivot from winning a campaign, which is what a challenger has to do to overthrow an autocrat, to actually governing, which means dismantling the structures that any new democrat could simply walk into. I mean, Péter Magyar in Hungary could just step into the driver’s seat of this convoy that Viktor Orbán has built and drive it off into the sunset as Hungary’s newest dictator. He could do that. But the crucial question is whether he can actually transform the system so that it is capable of replacing even him. That’s a different kind of project and, in some ways, a much more difficult one because of the temptations of power.
When Law Entrenches Autocracy, Following It May Preserve the Regime
Throughout your scholarship, you have shown that contemporary autocrats increasingly govern through law rather than outside it—a phenomenon you famously conceptualized as “autocratic legalism.” If authoritarian consolidation has been accomplished through constitutional amendments, ordinary legislation, judicial appointments, and legally entrenched institutions, can democratic restoration also proceed exclusively through legal means, or are there moments when strict constitutional fidelity risks preserving the very architecture of autocracy?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: Another great question. These new legalistic autocrats—and Viktor Orbán really sets the gold standard for how to do this in a bad way—show that one thing you can do is simply lock down all power by law. That was what Viktor Orbán did. He was able to do it because he had this kind of constitutional majority, with two-thirds of the parliamentary seats. When he was elected, he was able to install a friendly president. They expanded the number of judges on the Constitutional Court to capture it. They basically legally changed the entire environment in which they operated, so that within only three years, Orbán controlled all of the levers of government that could make a real difference in governing.
Now Péter Magyar walks into that system. The Orbán holdovers are still there. The problem is that he can’t govern as long as those holdovers block anything he does that either makes the outgoing Fidesz party accountable or prevents its return to power. So this is the dilemma. In order to remove those folks, it turns out they’ve all been protected by the laws that Viktor Orbán put in place. Just to give you one example, the president of the country—who’s sort of a figurehead—has one important task, which is to sign all laws and constitutional amendments. Now, he can block anything the parliament passes, even with Péter Magyar’s overwhelming majority. His term, however, lasts three more years.
So, what do they do about him? It turns out the law on the presidency was amended just last year to remove the one avenue the parliament would have had to impeach him. Which is to say, there are no legal avenues left for the Parliament to remove the President without hitting another roadblock, which is the packed Constitutional Court. And then, if they go after the Constitutional Court, the only way to get rid of judges is for the other judges to vote to remove their colleagues, which they won’t do because the institution’s packed. So, when you’ve got a situation like that—where it’s been deliberately constructed to make it impossible for the next government to actually govern—you may have to break the law to get to the point where democratic recovery is possible.
If democratic recovery means getting to the next election so that rotation of power is possible, you’ve got to get rid of the roadblock. This is what Péter Magyar is up against now. There’s a constitutional amendment that may be voted as we speak, that would have the effect of removing the president and changing the composition of the Constitutional Court, among many other things. It’s being attacked by “rule-of-law advocates” because it doesn’t actually follow legal procedures.
So this is where you have a choice. Do you follow the law set up by the autocrat to preserve their capture even when they lose elections? Or do you have to break that law to create the possibility of a more robust democracy? I’m in favor of the latter. I know a lot of international organizations are in favor of the former. That’s where we have the debate.
Power Must Be Limited Even During Democratic Restoration
Supporters of the TISZA Party gather on Andrássy Avenue in Budapest during a national march led by Péter Magyar on Hungary’s March 15 national holiday, March 15, 2026. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
One of the deepest dilemmas facing any post-autocratic government is how to dismantle institutions deliberately designed to prevent democratic change. How can a democratic government undo constitutional capture without itself appearing to engage in the same kind of majoritarian constitutional engineering that characterized Viktor Orbán’s rule? Where should democrats draw the line between constitutional correction and constitutional overreach?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: Again, this is great, and it follows from what we were just talking about. Basically, Péter Magyar has to get rid of these roadblocks. There’s just no way he can govern without doing that. In some sense, he will have to break the law to make the law. That’s where he is.
Now, what people are nervous about—and ironically, what Orbán’s followers have been doing—is saying, “What about checks and balances? What about the rule of law?” At that point, you want to say, “Look, you guys had 16 years in which you abolished checks and balances and designed the rule of law so that it only benefited you.” So I don’t think those are the folks we need to listen to here. But here’s the dilemma. It’s entirely possible for somebody who comes into Péter Magyar’s position, with this level of parliamentary support, to run off the rails and create the next dictatorship. It’s absolutely possible. So there have to be checks on that process.
Here are a couple of things that give me hope about the Hungarian transition.
The first constitutional amendment that Péter Magyar put before the Parliament was one that would limit the lifetime occupancy of the prime ministership to eight years over a lifetime. Now, that law—which the president signed, although he signed it with a signing statement that makes it ambiguous what the law does, but that’s for the next challenge—disqualifies Viktor Orbán from coming back. But it also disqualifies Péter Magyar from serving more than one more term. He said, “I will follow this law and only stay here a maximum of eight years, provided you reelect me the next time.” That’s good. That’s a power-limiting move. There are some other power-limiting moves that they’ve been making as well.
One of the things they’ve also done is limit the terms of members of parliament to 12 years. That will also prevent a lot of Orbán’s cronies, who helped set up that system, from coming back. It controversially also excludes a lot of the old communist dissidents who sat in parliament for many years and are still around, still useful, and still helpful. So it’s a controversial amendment, but again, it’s a kind of cleaning house. We don’t want anybody to be in power forever. All of those are good signs.
What they’re also doing now with this new giant 17th Amendment to the Constitution is shortening the terms of office of some of the officeholders. One way Orbán entrenched himself was by appointing the public prosecutor for nine years, the head of the Constitutional Court for 12 years, and all of these key offices that lasted beyond elections, through multiple electoral rounds. So they’re shortening the terms of office of a number of those officials, which is good because it makes entrenchment harder.
They’re also, through this 17th Amendment, trying to make it much more difficult for the government to capture policy. Another thing Orbán did was to create almost 50—what are called in Hungarian cardinal laws, as they get translated, or constitutional laws for those who do comparative constitutional politics. These are laws that require almost the parliamentary strength of a constitutional amendment to amend.
Orbán locked down everything from social welfare policy—just across the board—on issues that ought to rotate with a rotation of power. Orbán locked his system in. So they’re also reducing the number of two-thirds laws, which makes it easier for any successor government to change whatever it is that the Magyar government is doing. In other words, they’ve looked at the whole system and they’re trying to un-entrench it, so that whoever follows them in power is not bound by the same strictures that they have to govern with. They have to break the law to do that. That’s what they’re doing. A lot of it is power-limiting on their behalf.
When the Rules of the Game Are Captured, the Rules Must Be Rewritten
Your work repeatedly warns that legal continuity may paradoxically preserve autocratic power. How should democratic reformers approach inherited constitutions that remain formally valid but have been systematically transformed into instruments of executive domination? Is there a point at which constitutional legality itself becomes an obstacle to constitutional democracy?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: The point of a constitution is to set the rules of the game, politics being the game. What happens when politics captures the rules of the game? That’s what happens under autocratic capture, where autocrats design the rules of the game so that only they can win. It was something of a miracle that Péter Magyar was able to break through Orbán’s electoral system, which has guaranteed Orbán these supermajorities.
Magyar was only able to do that by essentially reverse-engineering Orbán’s system and campaigning in the countryside because, under Orbán’s system, the votes in the countryside counted two or three times as much as votes in the cities. That’s another story. I have another Journal of Democracypiece, published right after the election, that shows how he did that. Once he breaks through that system, you’ve got this whole other problem with the constitution, which locks in the rules of the game to benefit Fidesz.
So what Péter Magyar has now said is that they’re going to start, in September, a constitutional drafting process that will be inclusive, that will review all of this, and that, under his watch, will produce a new constitution. These two amendments—the 16th, which limits the prime minister’s term of office to eight years over a lifetime, and this new, very large 17th Amendment, which essentially removes the president and some of the Constitutional Court judges, cuts back the number of two-thirds laws, and shortens the terms of office of these officeholders—are all meant to be provisional. They are intended simply to allow the government to govern in the meantime until it reaches a new constitutional drafting process. They haven’t announced what that process looks like. But that’s one way to overcome an autocratic constitution: involve the public, through a democratic process, in rewriting it. That’s what they’ve said they’re going to do.
Europe’s Rule of Law Must Help Democracies Escape Autocratic Capture
Flags of Hungary and the European Union displayed together in Budapest. Hungary has been an EU member since 2004. Photo: Jerome Cid / Dreamstime.
You have written extensively about the systematic dismantling of judicial independence in Hungary and Poland. Once a judiciary has been politically captured over many years, can genuine judicial independence simply be restored through new appointments, or does democratic reconstruction require a more fundamental rethinking of judicial institutions, appointment mechanisms, and constitutional guarantees?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: In Hungary and Poland, the judiciaries were captured in different ways, and that’s why you need different mechanisms to undo the capture. In Poland, when the Law and Justice Party (PiS) government came into power, they just took a sledgehammer to the courts. They put judges onto the Constitutional Court unlawfully because the PiS government did not have the constitutional majority that Orbán had to change the Constitution. So they just rammed their folks onto the Constitutional Court, changed the procedure for appointing constitutional judges, and captured the court by brute force. It wasn’t literally force, but the point was that it wasn’t legal.
They, then, changed the system for appointing judges so that judges were appointed through an overtly political process. After eight years of PiS, which was the pro-autocratic party—there had been 3,500 judges appointed. What do you do with that? You don’t have a spare judiciary. What the Ombudsman Adam Bodnar, who became the Justice Minister, tried to do was to say, “Let’s dissolve the Constitutional Court and start over.” The Venice Commission, which is the advisory body of the Council of Europe, came in and said, “No, you can’t do that.”
To which—and I have a critique of the Venice Commission in Verfassungsblog—my response is that you’ve got to actually help these governments get over autocratic capture, or nothing else matters. Unfortunately, the Venice Commission is not doing that.
So that was the first proposal. The Constitutional Court remains there. Instead, what the government has been doing in Poland is simply refusing to publish its decisions, at which point they can’t take effect. It’s not an elegant solution, and it’s not a legal solution, but it keeps the court from becoming an obstacle to the transition.
As for the ordinary judiciary, the Bodnar proposal was to classify judges into multiple categories. One approach was to recognize that, in most of Europe, the judiciary is a civil-service-type organization. You go to law school to train to be a judge. You come out as a baby judge. You get appointed to a small judgeship and then get promoted through the ranks. Bodnar’s proposal was that anyone who came through that system should get to stay because it was not a politically influenced process.
Then there were the judges who were already judges when PiS came to power, and PiS promoted them through this politically charged process. Bodnar said, “Okay, you take all those judges, and you put them back where they were when PiS came in.” So they’re not going to lose their jobs; they’re just going to lose their promotions.
Then there’s a set of judges that PiS brought in from the outside to populate especially the highest reaches of the judiciary, and they were really the political force within the judiciary. Bodnar proposed firing them. The Venice Commission also didn’t like that.
So we’re sort of between a rock and a hard place. You’ve got the Venice Commission—and now Human Rights Watch on the new Hungarian proposals. These organizations are committed to the rule of law, and their view is that you can’t escape autocratic capture unless you do every step by lawful means.
My worry about that is that if the law was put in place to prevent a transition to any other government, you’re never going to get out of it if that’s your view of the rule of law. So what I proposed was something else. Actually, I’m going to say something about Hungary, and then I’ll come back to that broader point.
In Hungary, it’s a little bit easier to deal with the judiciary. The Constitutional Court is totally packed. That really has to be either dissolved or dealt with by either putting new judges on or taking judges off. You cannot live with that court as it stands.
In the Hungarian case, I’ve proposed that the parliament establish a court above the Constitutional Court, which can review all Hungarian legislation—all Hungarian normative acts, as they’re called, meaning acts that have legal force—for their compliance with European law. So there’s a double review. The Constitutional Court does whatever it does with the Constitution as it stands. Then you’ve got this other court that tries to bring Hungary into line with European standards. I don’t know if they’re going to do that, but that’s one way out without firing the judges.
This gets me to my broader proposal. The great thing about being in Europe is that Europe has a very dense network of transnational organizations. It has the European Union for Hungary and Poland. It also has the Council of Europe. Between those two bodies, there is a really substantial set of laws and principles to which any constitutional government should adhere.
The European Court of Justice, just after the Hungarian election, handed down its pending case against Hungary concerning Hungary’s abolition of LGBTQ rights. In that judgment, Commission v. Hungary, the Court said that Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union—that’s the provision requiring member states to honor democracy, the rule of law, and human rights—actually has an independent legal force above and beyond other violations of European law.
That gives us a framework for thinking that there is a set of standards outside the national governments that they have to adhere to in order to be a constitutional democracy in good standing. The European Court of Human Rights also has an additional body of law that can be used to stabilize these governments.
So what I’ve been suggesting is a different conception of the rule of law. You can have the rule of law as the Venice Commission and Human Rights Watch understand it, which is to say, you just look at the national law and ask, “Is it following national law?” If you’ve been through all these years of autocratic capture, national law is awful. Or national law is designed to keep the autocrats in place.
If you’re in a place like Europe—or, actually, the same works with Latin America and the Inter-American Court system—you’ve got transnational law that also binds your country. That actually counsels the restoration of democracy. If you violate national law in order to bring your country back into alignment with transnational law, that is what I call the rule of law writ large. You’re not violating the rule of law. You’re resolving a conflict-of-laws problem, as lawyers would say, between national law and the European standards to which all these countries have pledged themselves and which are legally binding.
So, we should understand this as an ordinary conflict-of-laws problem. What happens when you’ve got two laws in a legal system that clash with each other? You’ve got to resolve that somehow. This is a standard conflict-of-laws problem where you resolve the conflict in favor of European law, and that gives you the wiggle room, in some sense, to violate national law as long as you’re following these standards. And this goes back to one of your earlier questions: What constrains these new democrats—let’s call them democrats for now, the people who just won the election? What prevents them from simply engaging in a power grab? The answer is that they’re constrained by these transnational standards. There is a rule of law that they are accountable to. As long as that’s true, and as long as the transnational organizations pledge to work with these countries through the transition, I’m much less worried about the violation of national law than I would be otherwise.
Make Orbán Poor Again—Not Necessarily a Prisoner
US President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán arrive for a working dinner at the NATO Summit in Brussels, Belgium on July 11, 2018. Photo: Gints Ivuskans / Dreamstime.
Many Hungarians understandably demand accountability for corruption, abuse of power, and constitutional dismantling under the Orbán government. Yet democratic transitions have often struggled to distinguish legitimate accountability from political revenge. How can a new government pursue meaningful legal and political accountability while preserving due process, judicial impartiality, and the rule of law that it seeks to restore?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: This is a very important question. Right after the election in Hungary—and also in Poland several years ago—the first reaction was simply joy. “Oh my God, we’ve gotten rid of them. We have this chance to start over. We have this possibility of democratic renewal.” People were dancing in the streets of Budapest. Hungarians are not always an optimistic lot.
I keep saying that one of the reasons why I moved to Hungary, learned this crazy language, and decided to focus on Hungary was that when they translated Winnie-the-Pooh into Hungarian, the most important character became Eeyore the donkey. It was completely changed in the translation, and Eeyore is really depressive. Everything is kind of awful. So there’s a kind of national tendency to be suspicious of people who are too optimistic. Yet, after this election, it was just amazing. As many of my friends wrote to me—I couldn’t be there for the election—it was like a totally changed country. It was just amazing. So, there’s this kind of euphoria. Then what starts to happen is that people remember what the prior government did to them.
We’re now seeing people writing. By the way, if you want to follow Hungary, Facebook is the place. We’re seeing a lot of people writing: “The Orbán government deprived me of my career. The Orbán government shut down my business. The Orbán government prevented my kid from getting into college. The Orbán government made me leave the country.” You see all of these things as the cost of dictatorship, which was real for many people.
Now you’re seeing that Péter Magyar promised during the campaign that this would no longer be a country without consequences. He said there would be consequences for the people who stole democratic government in Hungary. Now there’s this debate about what those consequences should be. You do see an increasing number of calls to take Viktor Orbán and his inner circle and put them all in jail. That’s not what Péter Magyar, so far at least, has talked about.
From what I can tell from his pronouncements—and I must say I agree, if this is what he intends—he wants to disqualify them from coming back into government again. That’s an absolutely reasonable militant-democracy move. This is what happened after World War II, when neo-Nazi groups were prevented from governing across Europe. By the way, communist groups that promised to overthrow the government were also banned.
There has to be a sense that if you’re an enemy of democracy, you can’t stand for election again. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. There’s always a question about how far down you go, which of Orbán’s people were simply carrying out orders and would carry out the orders of any other government, and which people were really the engineers. But it’s a small country. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that Orbán’s government was not a government that engaged in massive crimes against humanity or war crimes. Yes, perhaps against refugees and asylum seekers. That was where the carnage was, and that’s a separate matter. But with regard to Hungarians, it was mostly a matter of depriving people of their livelihoods, and it was mostly a matter of stealing all the money in sight. So, my slogan has been: “Make Orbán poor again.” Claw back the assets that they spent all those years stealing.
Now this has also been one of Péter Magyar’s priorities. As part of the next round of constitutional amendments, there’s an amendment on the floor of parliament to establish something called the National Asset Recovery Authority. Along with parliamentary committees that have already started work, it would be tasked with figuring out what happened to all the corruption in the Orbán regime. Who benefited? Where did all this money go?
The budget is now deeply in debt. The oligarchs around Orbán, his family, and his close circle are all massively rich. They stole public funds, so the goal is going to be to claw back those public funds and make them poor again. That’s revenge enough. I would not go the route of criminal prosecutions and prison because, once you start talking about depriving people of their liberty, you’re really in a different world—one in which not only do you need due process protections, but you also need to be able to convict them of crimes that existed at the time they were committed. So, I’m in favor of disqualification and disgorgement as kind of my slogan: keep them from coming back, take away all the assets they stole, and be done with it.
Fight Corruption, Build a Big Tent, and Take People Out of Fear
Labour Day celebrations at Old Town Square in Prague on May 1, 2017, featuring a banner depicting democracy as a leaf eaten by caterpillars labeled Putin, Kaczyński, Orbán, Babiš, Trump, and Fico. Photo: Jolanta Wojcicka.
Hungary has frequently served as the laboratory of democratic backsliding, with institutional innovations later appearing elsewhere. As countries across Europe and beyond confront increasingly sophisticated forms of executive aggrandizement, should Hungary now also become a laboratory for democratic recovery? Which lessons from Hungary’s experience do you believe have the greatest comparative significance for democracies facing similar trajectories?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: I’m a Hungary specialist, so I always think Hungary is a laboratory for everything interesting. But here’s the thing: I do think it’s a really interesting model for democratic recovery.
We can start with elections. One of the dilemmas with elections in autocratic systems is that the autocrat, the autocrat’s party, and its cronies spend a lot of time delegitimizing the opposition. They also rig the electoral system. So, it becomes very difficult to change power through elections. That’s really what autocracy means. The question is how you achieve a change of government in a peaceful, lawful manner. This is where Hungary provides a really good lesson.
First of all, Péter Magyar is a very unlikely candidate. He was a member of Orbán’s party for 20 years. He broke with the party in February 2024. Before that, very few Hungarians knew who he was. He essentially emerged out of nowhere because there was a corruption scandal in Hungary. What had happened was that the president of the country, allegedly with the support of the justice minister, engineered a pardon for a man who had covered up a pedophilia scandal in a state school.
Orbán’s government had been presenting itself as “Mr. Christian Europe,” defending children and all that kind of stuff. Once people realized they were pardoning pedophiles, this became a moral crisis for the government. Viktor Orbán responded by firing the justice minister, whom he said had recommended the pardon, and by calling on the president to resign, which she did. These were the only two women in Orbán’s governmental orbit. Suddenly, he had an all-male cabinet again.
At that moment, Péter Magyar stepped out of obscurity into the public spotlight and said, “Viktor Orbán, how dare you hide behind women’s skirts?” Macho thing, right? To understand why he did that, it’s important to know that this is where the story becomes very personal. At the time, he was going through an acrimonious divorce from the justice minister, Judith Varga. He had emerged from that marriage—and every woman I know finds this immensely creepy—having secretly taped their dinner conversations in order to have dirt against her in the divorce. During those conversations, she also exposed some of the corruption of the Orbán regime.
So he emerges from all this and this is not a promising start. It starts to raise the broader question—we’re in the middle of the Graham Plattner scandal in the United States at the moment—of how abusive these people are who suddenly become charismatic political figures. So I was skeptical from the beginning, given this background. He comes out of the marriage, gallantly defends his wife and the president who had just resigned, and then uses the tapes to say, “I know all about the corruption in the Orbán government, and we need to get rid of it.” That attracts a crowd. Then, in February 2024, he suddenly realizes, “Geez, I can actually cobble together a party and run in the June European Parliament elections.”
Which he does. He attracts crowds with his anti-corruption message. He cobbles together a party. I don’t think he knew half the people who were on his party list. They stand for election, and that’s when it becomes evident that there is so much anger at the Orbán government and such a desire for a new face. It’s a center-right face. This is a center-right country. You’re not going to get a left-wing victory out of this electorate except under very unusual circumstances.
Suddenly, in the European Parliament election, he gets one-third of the vote. You can build something out of nothing, and it was all centered on corruption. That became the theme. The first lesson, then, is: don’t campaign on left-right issues. Corruption was not something unique to the left. It’s not like campaigning on gay rights—which, much as I believe in them, is divisive in a center-right country. Nor was it campaigning on immigration, which is the far right’s hot-button issue.
He campaigned on corruption, and then he began saying: corruption is what has deprived you of all the things you expect the state to provide. The healthcare system is falling apart. You know that because you go to hospitals and they’re simply not up to standard. The transportation system is terrible. Public transit breaks down all the time. Your schools are failing. Why? Because they stole the money. That became the foundation of his campaign. He stayed relentlessly on that message: they stole the money, and that’s why you don’t have services. And how do you recover what the state should be providing? You recover your democratic voice and get rid of the autocrats. He stayed on that message for two years.
Let me just say a couple more things. That’s one lesson. If you build a big tent around a political message that is neither left nor right, you can attract support across the political spectrum. Péter Magyar also very carefully studied the electoral system. He’s a lawyer. They’re all lawyers in Hungary. As a law professor, I love that because it means I understand how they think. He clearly understood how the electoral system worked. Rural votes were where all the action was. If you could win the countryside, you could win the election.
Under the Hungarian electoral system, there was a tipping point where, if you reached a certain number of rural votes, you received bonus seats that produced constitutional supermajorities. So, Péter Magyar spent two years campaigning in villages. Sometimes he visited four, five, six, even seven villages in a single day. There’s a wonderful election map showing everywhere he went and comparing those places with the areas that voted for Orbán and those that voted for Magyar. Overwhelmingly, the villages he visited voted for him.
He would arrive with no security and tell people, “You don’t have to live in fear. We should not live in fear in this country.” Because one thing autocrats do—and we’re seeing this now in the United States—is to wield the power of the state. If they decide to go after you, they can crush you through criminal prosecutions, tax audits, or by making sure your family loses access to social benefits.
I had one friend who had lived abroad for a while, and suddenly those years disappeared from his pension calculations, cutting his pension in half. The state can do all kinds of things to individuals if they stand up to it. So, people retreat. They begin to treat politics the way they treat the weather. It’s terrible today, so I’ll put on a raincoat, but I’m not going to try to change it because I can’t. You have to bring that passive population, captured by fear, back into the active electorate.
The Magyar rallies mattered not only because of what he said. He talked about everything I’ve just described. But he also sang patriotic songs, recited the poetry everyone learns in grade school, waved the Hungarian flag, and projected patriotism. That was crucial for winning conservative voters in the countryside. Most importantly, though, he kept saying, “We shouldn’t live in fear.”
As people came to those rallies, they saw that their neighbors were there too. That emboldened them to bring in others who had still been hiding from politics. The rallies became moments when people could finally see that everyone else felt exactly as they did—that the Orbán regime had become intolerable. All of this is a way of saying that you can build an election campaign around a centrist message focused on corruption and state dysfunction.
You have to build a big tent. You have to bring people out of the defensive crouch they adopt under autocracy, where they’re simply trying to stay beneath the radar of a government that can crush them through the machinery of the state. Once you’ve built that kind of political force, you can win. What Péter Magyar ultimately did was to win the countryside and hit that tipping point. It’s like winning the lottery. Suddenly, he has 53 percent of the vote and 71 percent of the seats in parliament. Then you’re living in a completely different political world.
Just one last thing. In Brazil, the United States, and Poland—other cases where aspirational autocrats were defeated through elections—the margins of victory were very narrow. That meant the incoming governments had much less room to remove the autocratic holdovers left behind by their predecessors. Sure enough, in Brazil we see Bolsonaro’s son leading in the polls. He was recently damaged by a financial scandal, but absent that, it looked as though he would surely have won. Bolsonaro’s movement remains strong enough to return. We’ve had the re-election of Donald Trump. And PiS remains very strong in the polls in Poland, and we still don’t know how things will unfold there.
In other words, unless you break the cycle of autocrat-democrat —which always occurs along a declining trajectory for democracy because the new democrats lack the strength to dismantle the autocratic capture left behind by the previous government—the autocrats simply come back and deepen the process. That’s why you need this kind of overwhelming electoral victory. That’s what Péter Magyar’s victory teaches us, and it’s something other countries should aim for.
There’s going to be a second part to this story: Will Magyar succeed in overcoming all of these autocratic roadblocks without installing himself as the new autocrat? That’s where we are now. I think the signs are optimistic. But I’m also a little nervous, because any political power without checks is potentially devastating. When you have this kind of parliamentary majority and you’re dismantling the existing checks while saying, “Look, in the future we’re going to have more checks,” that’s a very vulnerable moment. We’ve all got to keep our eyes on the prize here. Is Hungary going to come back? We hope it will—and that it will become a model.
The First Years Will Determine Whether Democracy Truly Returns
Finally, if you were advising Hungary’s new democratic leadership today, what would you identify as the three most urgent priorities during the first years of democratic reconstruction? And perhaps even more importantly, what mistakes must democratic governments avoid if they hope not merely to remove an autocrat but to build a constitutional democracy capable of enduring long after today’s political moment has passed?
Professor Kim Lane Scheppele: Okay, that’s hard. The first thing is that, in the Hungarian system—and this is where every system is going to be a little bit different—you have to draw what Viktor Orbán himself would call a power map. Where is power concentrated? Where are the choke points?
In the Hungarian system, the most important choke point is the Constitutional Court. If I were Péter Magyar, I would have gone after the Constitutional Court first, rather than the presidency and many other offices, because that’s really where everything funnels together, and it’s going to be his biggest roadblock. So I would say the first priority is figuring out how to deal with the Constitutional Court. I think there are ways to do that. For example, changing its jurisdiction by law so that it can’t review many of the things the government is about to do. I also think the idea of putting a court above it has merit. There are a lot of possible approaches, but the Constitutional Court would be the first priority.
The second priority is putting checks on the new government. I think those checks can come in several different ways. Take this National Asset Recovery Authority, for example, which they’re setting up to investigate how state money was stolen. My concern is that the draft proposal doesn’t build in judicial review. It needs checks on these essentially unlimited prosecutorial powers.
Then there’s the ordinary judiciary. I mentioned the Constitutional Court, but I didn’t talk about what happened to the ordinary judiciary in Hungary. It’s much easier to fix than it is in Poland. The way they captured the judiciary in Hungary was by appointing the court presidents, appointing enough friendly judges on every court, and giving the court presidents the power to assign any case to any judge. Most judges in Hungary are still independent. If you get rid of the court presidents and deal with that small group of friendly judges on each court, you don’t have to replace the entire judiciary as you would in Poland, where you’ve got 3,500 judges. Getting rid of the court presidents alone would do a great deal to restore judicial independence. Then you need to build judicial checks into some of the new institutions that the Magyar government has created.
The third priority is that—not immediately, but not too far into the future—they need to revisit the election law, because it was designed to produce these constitutional supermajorities. Hungary needs to return to a proportional representation system. That has to be put in place so that the Magyar government can guarantee that, even if it is reelected, it won’t come back with another two-thirds majority. You need to make all of these changes while they still have this parliamentary majority. But you also need to reassure the public that the next election will not allow any single party to dominate the system like this again.
So, my top three would be: reform the Constitutional Court, restore the ordinary judiciary by building checks throughout the system, and then change the election law.
The ECPS Academy Summer School 2026 brought together leading scholars to examine how geoeconomics, populism, technological competition, and strategic rivalry are transforming the European Union’s place in the international order. Spanning nine lectures, the programme explored the evolution of EU trade policy, the crisis of multilateralism, transatlantic relations, strategic autonomy, de-risking, the Indo-Pacific, EU–Asia relations, Japan’s emerging populism, and the Union’s capacity to exercise global leadership through law, regulation, and market power. Combining insights from international political economy, European integration, international law, comparative politics, and strategic studies, the lectures demonstrated that Europe’s future will depend upon its ability to reconcile economic openness, democratic resilience, and strategic responsibility amid an increasingly fragmented and contested geopolitical landscape.
Reported by ECPS Staff
The ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, held online from July 6–10, 2026, brought together an international community of scholars, policymakers, and students under the theme“Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition.” Against a backdrop of intensifying great-power rivalry, democratic polarization, technological transformation, and the growing politicization of international economic relations, the programme explored how Europe is redefining its role within an increasingly fragmented global order. Throughout five days of intellectually rich discussions, participants examined the profound ways in which geopolitics, trade, security, law, technology, and domestic politics have become inseparably intertwined, challenging many of the assumptions that shaped the post-Cold War international system.
The nine lectures presented during the Summer School approached these transformations from complementary disciplinary and regional perspectives. Together, they examined the evolution of European Union trade policy, the crisis of multilateralism, the changing political economy of transatlantic relations, the rise of geoeconomics, strategic autonomy, de-risking, Europe’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific, the implications of US–China strategic competition, the resilience of EU–Japan relations, and the European Union’s capacity to exercise global leadership through law, regulation, and market power. Rather than treating these issues as isolated policy domains, the programme consistently demonstrated how contemporary international politics is increasingly shaped by the interaction of domestic political developments, populist mobilization, technological innovation, economic security, and geopolitical competition.
A recurring theme throughout the Summer School was the recognition that Europe now operates in a world where economic interdependence has become both a source of prosperity and an instrument of strategic rivalry. As globalization gives way to geoeconomics, and as trade, investment, technology, and supply chains become matters of national security, the European Union faces the complex challenge of preserving openness while strengthening resilience, maintaining multilateral cooperation while pursuing strategic autonomy, and defending liberal democratic values amid intensifying geopolitical contestation.
The reports collected in this volume seek to capture not only the substance of each lecture but also the broader intellectual dialogue that emerged across the programme. The reports synthesize the lecturers’ principal arguments while situating them within wider scholarly debates in international political economy, European integration, comparative politics, international law, and strategic studies. Read together, these reports provide a comprehensive account of one of the central questions confronting Europe today: how can the European Union reconcile economic openness, democratic legitimacy, and strategic responsibility in an international order increasingly defined by uncertainty, power competition, and global transformation?
How has the European Union’s trade policy evolved from championing liberal multilateralism to pursuing strategic autonomy in an era of geopolitical rivalry? In his opening lecture at the ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, “Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition,” Professor Arlo Poletti examines the historical transformation of EU trade policy against the backdrop of globalization, China’s rise, populist contestation, and the growing weaponization of economic interdependence. Moderated by Dr. Sonali Chowdhry, the session demonstrates that contemporary trade policy can no longer be understood solely through the lens of market liberalization but must increasingly be viewed as an instrument of geopolitical strategy, economic resilience, industrial policy, and European strategic autonomy.
As international trade becomes increasingly entangled with geopolitical rivalry, democratic legitimacy, and populist politics, understanding the future of the rules-based trading order has never been more urgent. In his lecture at the ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, “Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition,” Professor Kent Jones examines how the resurgence of populism—particularly under Donald Trump’s second presidency—is reshaping the World Trade Organization (WTO) and challenging the legitimacy of multilateral trade governance. Moderated by Dr. Neo Sithole, the session combines international economics, institutional theory, and political economy to explore why the future of global trade depends not only on markets and tariffs but also on trust, shared norms, and the political foundations of international cooperation.
What happens when the political foundations of the transatlantic partnership begin to erode? In his lecture at the ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, “Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition,” Professor Erik Jones argues that Europe is entering a “post-Atlantic” era in which the assumptions that sustained EU–US cooperation since the Second World War are being fundamentally reconfigured. Moderated by Professor Elaine Fahey, the session examines how globalization, democratic polarization, populism, and geopolitical rivalry are reshaping transatlantic trade relations, European strategic autonomy, and the liberal international order. Combining historical perspective with political economy, the lecture offers a compelling framework for understanding Europe’s changing role in an increasingly fragmented world.
Can the transatlantic trading order survive the rise of populism? In his lecture at the ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, “Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition,” Professor Alasdair Young argues that Donald Trump’s second presidency marks a fundamental break with more than seventy years of EU–US trade cooperation. Moderated by Dr. Jessica Lawrence, the session explores how populist narratives, protectionism, geopolitical rivalry, and legal innovation are transforming the politics of international trade. Combining historical perspective with international political economy and trade law, Professor Young demonstrates that the future of transatlantic relations will depend not only on commercial negotiations but also on reconciling economic openness with democratic legitimacy, strategic autonomy, and global stability.
The European Union’s pursuit of strategic autonomy has emerged as one of the defining geopolitical debates of the twenty-first century, reflecting the growing convergence of security, economics, technology, and global power competition. In this intellectually stimulating lecture, Associate Professor Reuben Wong examined how Europe’s search for greater strategic independence has been reshaped by an increasingly volatile international environment marked by intensifying US–China rivalry, Russia’s revisionism, and rapid technological transformation. Challenging conventional assumptions about Europe’s transatlantic relationship and its approach toward China, he argued that strategic autonomy requires not only stronger defense and economic security instruments but also a fundamental reassessment of Europe’s place within an emerging multipolar order. The lecture offered participants a provocative and nuanced framework for understanding the future of European geopolitics.
As Europe deepens its engagement with the Indo-Pacific, the region has become far more than a distant theatre of economic opportunity—it has emerged as a central arena where geopolitical competition, technological innovation, supply-chain resilience, and strategic autonomy intersect. In this insightful lecture, Dr. Giulio Pugliese demonstrated how the Indo-Pacific evolved from a Japanese strategic narrative into a defining framework for understanding twenty-first-century international politics. Examining the growing rivalry between the United States and China, Taiwan’s geopolitical and technological significance, and the implications of Washington’s increasingly transactional alliance strategy, he argued that Europe must move beyond traditional regional perspectives and formulate a coherent Indo-Pacific policy rooted in its own interests. The lecture offered participants a nuanced understanding of how Europe’s future security and prosperity are becoming increasingly intertwined with developments across Asia.
Japan has long been regarded as an outlier in comparative studies of populism, distinguished by political stability, Liberal Democratic Party dominance, and limited immigration. In this thought-provoking lecture, Professor Axel Berkofsky challenged that conventional wisdom, arguing that Japan has entered its own delayed populist moment. Examining the rise of the Sanseito party, demographic decline, labor shortages, identity politics, and the evolution of conservative nationalism, he demonstrated how structural economic pressures and political discourse are reshaping Japanese democracy. The lecture also assessed the resilience of EU–Japan relations, highlighting the enduring importance of the Economic Partnership Agreement despite growing geopolitical uncertainty. Combining comparative politics with international political economy, Professor Berkofsky offered a nuanced framework for understanding populism beyond its traditional European context.
Professor Markus Kotzur’s lecture explored one of the defining questions of contemporary European integration: can the European Union translate its regulatory influence into genuine geopolitical leadership? Rejecting conventional measures of power centered solely on military capability, he argued that the EU’s comparative advantage lies in its constitutional foundations, legal authority, and capacity to shape global norms through regulatory governance. Examining concepts such as Normative Power Europe, the Brussels Effect, and strategic autonomy, the lecture demonstrated how Europe’s economic strength, legal order, and institutional resilience remain essential assets amid intensifying geopolitical competition. Combining European constitutional law with international relations and political economy, Professor Kotzur offered a compelling vision of an EU capable of reconciling values with strategic responsibility in a fragmented international order.
Professor Markus Kotzur’s lecture explored one of the defining questions of contemporary European integration: can the European Union translate its regulatory influence into genuine geopolitical leadership? Rejecting conventional measures of power centered solely on military capability, he argued that the EU’s comparative advantage lies in its constitutional foundations, legal authority, and capacity to shape global norms through regulatory governance. Examining concepts such as Normative Power Europe, the Brussels Effect, and strategic autonomy, the lecture demonstrated how Europe’s economic strength, legal order, and institutional resilience remain essential assets amid intensifying geopolitical competition. Combining European constitutional law with international relations and political economy, Professor Kotzur offered a compelling vision of an EU capable of reconciling values with strategic responsibility in a fragmented international order.
Reported by ECPS Staff
The concluding lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, held under the overarching theme “Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition,” addressed one of the most consequential questions confronting European integration today: Can the European Union exercise genuine geopolitical leadership in an increasingly fragmented international order? While much contemporary debate focuses on Europe’s economic competitiveness, military preparedness, or strategic autonomy, the lecture by Professor Markus Kotzur, Professor of European and International Law at the University of Hamburg and Vice Dean for International Relations, invited participants to examine a more fundamental issue. Before asking whether the European Union possesses sufficient power to lead, it is necessary to clarify what leadership itself means for a political entity that is neither a sovereign state nor a conventional international organization. Drawing upon constitutional law, international law, and European integration studies, Professor Kotzur argued that the future of European leadership depends not merely on accumulating material capabilities but on reconciling legal legitimacy, regulatory influence, political integration, and strategic purpose within a rapidly evolving geopolitical environment.
The session was introduced by Dr. Camille Nessel, who situated the discussion within the European Union’s broader geopolitical transformation initiated during Ursula von der Leyen’s first Commission. Recalling von der Leyen’s ambition to create a “geopolitical Commission” in 2019, Dr. Nessel explained how this initiative fundamentally altered scholarly and policy debates surrounding the European Union’s external role. Whereas previous decades had largely conceived European integration through the lenses of market integration and regulatory governance, recent developments increasingly emphasize economic security, strategic partnerships, critical raw materials, and geopolitical competition. Trade policy, environmental regulation, and technological governance have progressively become instruments of geopolitical influence rather than merely vehicles of economic integration. In this context, concepts such as open strategic autonomy, economic security, and regulatory sovereignty have emerged at the center of European policymaking, raising new questions about how the Union can exercise influence while remaining committed to multilateralism and the constitutional values upon which European integration has historically rested. Dr. Nessel’s introduction effectively framed the lecture by illustrating that Europe’s external policies can no longer be understood independently of broader geopolitical transformations, particularly the rise of China, renewed great-power competition, and increasing skepticism toward globalization.
Can the European Union Lead? Reconceptualizing Power, Political Community, and Global Actorship
Professor Markus Kotzur is a Professor of European and International Law at the University of Hamburg and Vice Dean for International Relations.
Building upon this context, Professor Kotzur proposed that discussions of European leadership often begin from an inadequate premise. Much contemporary commentary measures geopolitical influence primarily through traditional indicators of state power—military capability, coercive capacity, or hegemonic dominance. Such perspectives, strongly associated with realist approaches to international relations, inevitably portray the European Union as structurally disadvantaged when compared with major powers such as the United States or China. Yet Professor Kotzur argued that this comparison overlooks the Union’s distinctive political character. Rather than attempting to evaluate the European Union as though it were an ordinary nation-state, he suggested conceptualizing it as a political community—a unique form of political organization that transcends the conventional distinction between sovereign state and international organization. This conceptual shift, he maintained, fundamentally alters how European leadership should be understood.
For Professor Kotzur, describing the European Union as a political community emphasizes that European integration extends far beyond economic cooperation or market regulation. The Union embodies an ongoing process of political integration grounded in shared constitutional values, institutional cooperation, and collective decision-making. Consequently, Europe’s capacity for leadership cannot be reduced solely to military capabilities or traditional notions of sovereignty. Instead, its influence derives from the interaction of legal authority, regulatory capacity, democratic legitimacy, and institutional resilience. The European Union therefore exercises a form of political leadership fundamentally different from that of conventional great powers—a leadership rooted less in coercion than in governance, coordination, and the production of international norms.
This argument naturally led Professor Kotzur to distinguish between different conceptions of power itself. Realist perspectives traditionally associate leadership with material capabilities, particularly military strength and the ability to impose outcomes through coercive means. Judged according to these criteria alone, the European Union undoubtedly faces significant limitations. Defense remains primarily the responsibility of individual member states, while security has historically depended upon NATO and, above all, the strategic umbrella provided by the United States. Compared with the military capabilities of Washington or Beijing, the European Union possesses only limited autonomous coercive capacity. Yet Professor Kotzur cautioned participants against equating these limitations with geopolitical irrelevance. Power, he argued, also assumes regulatory, legal, institutional, and normative forms that have become increasingly important within an interconnected global economy.
Indeed, one of the lecture’s central themes was that the European Union has historically developed precisely these alternative forms of influence. Rather than aspiring to classical hegemonic dominance, Europe has sought to shape international behavior by establishing legal standards, promoting regulatory convergence, and embedding international cooperation within institutional frameworks. This distinctive mode of influence reflects the constitutional foundations of the Union itself. Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, which enshrines democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as the Union’s foundational values, provides not only an internal constitutional framework but also the normative basis for Europe’s external engagement. In Professor Kotzur’s view, these legal principles have enabled the European Union to become a global standard-setter whose influence often extends far beyond its territorial borders.
At the same time, the lecturer acknowledged that the international environment sustaining this model has changed profoundly. For much of the post-Cold War period, a functional division of labor characterized transatlantic relations. While the United States largely assumed responsibility for military security through NATO, the European Union concentrated on economic integration, regulatory governance, and the promotion of multilateral norms. This arrangement allowed Europe to exercise considerable international influence without developing equivalent military capabilities. However, shifting geopolitical realities—including Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, intensifying strategic competition with China, and growing uncertainty regarding American security commitments under Donald Trump’s second presidency—have increasingly exposed the limitations of this model. Europe can no longer assume that military security will remain permanently outsourced while it focuses exclusively on regulatory leadership.
These developments, Professor Kotzur suggested, require a fundamental reconsideration of European leadership itself. Rather than abandoning its normative foundations, the European Union must determine how legal authority, economic strength, and strategic capability can be combined within a coherent geopolitical strategy. Leadership in today’s international order demands more than the capacity to regulate markets; it increasingly requires resilience, institutional coordination, technological innovation, and credible security capabilities. Yet Europe’s comparative advantage continues to reside in the constitutional and legal traditions that distinguish it from more conventional great powers. The challenge therefore lies not in replacing normative power with military power but in integrating both within a broader conception of strategic actorship.
By framing the discussion in this manner, Professor Kotzur established the analytical foundation for the remainder of the lecture. The central question was no longer simply whether Europe possesses sufficient power to compete with other global actors, but whether its unique combination of law, regulation, political integration, and democratic legitimacy can provide the basis for effective geopolitical leadership in an era increasingly defined by strategic rivalry and geoeconomic competition. This perspective would subsequently guide his examination of the European Union’s normative influence, the Brussels Effect, and the evolving concept of strategic autonomy.
Normative Power Europe, the Brussels Effect, and the Evolution of Strategic Autonomy
European Union flags against European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
Having established that the European Union should be understood as a distinctive political community rather than a conventional nation-state, Professor Kotzur turned to the sources of Europe’s international influence. If the Union lacks the military capabilities traditionally associated with great-power politics, how has it nevertheless managed to shape global governance and international economic relations? Professor Kotzur argued that the answer lies in Europe’s longstanding role as a normative and regulatory power, a form of influence that derives not from coercion but from the ability to establish legal standards that increasingly structure international political and economic behavior. This regulatory capacity, he suggested, remains one of the European Union’s greatest strategic assets, even as the geopolitical environment becomes more competitive and uncertain.
Central to Professor Kotzur’s argument was the concept of Normative Power Europe, which has occupied a prominent place in European integration scholarship for more than two decades. Unlike traditional powers that project influence primarily through military or economic coercion, the European Union has historically sought to shape international conduct through the diffusion of legal norms, constitutional principles, and regulatory standards. Democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and sustainable development constitute not merely internal constitutional values but also external objectives guiding European foreign relations. According to Professor Kotzur, these principles provide the normative foundation upon which the Union’s international influence has long rested. Rather than compelling other actors to follow European preferences, the Union seeks to encourage convergence by making adherence to these standards increasingly advantageous for states wishing to deepen political or economic cooperation with Europe.
Professor Kotzur explained that this normative influence operates through two complementary mechanisms. The first ispositive conditionality, whereby closer cooperation with the European Union—including association agreements, neighborhood partnerships, accession negotiations, and preferential trade arrangements—is linked to the adoption of European legal and constitutional standards. Countries aspiring to strengthen relations with the Union are encouraged to improve democratic governance, judicial independence, human rights protection, and the rule of law. This “more for more” approach reflects the belief that regulatory convergence strengthens both political cooperation and legal certainty. In this sense, European integration has historically functioned not only as an economic project but also as an instrument for promoting constitutional transformation beyond the Union’s borders.
The second mechanism operates through market access. Access to the European Union’s vast internal market increasingly depends upon compliance with European regulatory requirements. Firms wishing to export products, provide services, or invest within the European market must satisfy standards relating to product safety, environmental protection, digital governance, consumer rights, competition policy, and increasingly artificial intelligence. Compliance therefore becomes not merely a legal obligation but an economic necessity. Through this process, European regulations frequently extend far beyond the Union’s territorial jurisdiction, influencing commercial practices across global markets without relying upon traditional forms of extraterritorial coercion.
This phenomenon, Professor Kotzur observed, is most commonly described as the Brussels Effect. Building upon the influential scholarship surrounding this concept, he explained that the European Union’s enormous market size, combined with its sophisticated regulatory framework, often incentivizes multinational corporations to adopt European standards globally rather than maintaining separate regulatory systems for different jurisdictions. Because complying with a single high regulatory standard is often more efficient than producing multiple versions of the same product, firms frequently extend European rules to operations beyond Europe itself. Consequently, regulations adopted in Brussels may shape business practices in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and North America despite the absence of formal international legal obligations.
Professor Kotzur highlighted several contemporary illustrations of this regulatory influence. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) fundamentally reshaped global approaches to privacy and digital governance by establishing one of the world’s most comprehensive data protection regimes. Similarly, the Artificial Intelligence Act seeks to position Europe at the forefront of regulating emerging technologies through a risk-based legal framework that may influence legislative developments far beyond the European Union. Environmental policies associated with the European Green Deal, including sustainability standards and climate-related regulations, likewise demonstrate how domestic European legislation increasingly generates significant international repercussions. These examples illustrate that regulatory power has become an important dimension of contemporary geopolitics, particularly as technological innovation and global supply chains become progressively integrated.
Yet Professor Kotzur also emphasized that the Brussels Effect should not be understood simply as a technocratic process driven by legal expertise. Rather, it reflects a broader transformation in the relationship between markets and political authority. Regulation itself has become an instrument of geopolitical influence. By determining the conditions under which access to one of the world’s largest consumer markets is granted, the European Union exercises considerable leverage over international commercial behavior. This capacity enables Europe to project influence internationally even where its military capabilities remain comparatively limited. Regulatory governance thus constitutes an alternative form of power, rooted in economic interdependence rather than territorial coercion.
Nevertheless, Professor Kotzur argued that recent geopolitical developments increasingly challenge the sufficiency of normative power alone. The relative stability that once enabled Europe to rely primarily upon regulatory influence has gradually eroded under the pressures of great-power competition, technological rivalry, and economic coercion. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China, and growing uncertainty surrounding transatlantic relations have all demonstrated that legal standards alone cannot guarantee geopolitical resilience. The European Union therefore faces the difficult task of preserving its identity as a normative power while simultaneously developing greater strategic capacity.
This challenge has given increasing prominence to the concept of strategic autonomy, which Professor Kotzur approached through both linguistic and political analysis. Returning to the Greek origins of the concept, he explained that autonomia signifies the capacity to live according to one’s own laws, while strategy refers to the ability to lead and direct collective action. Strategic autonomy therefore implies far more than economic independence or military capability. It represents the capacity of a political community to formulate and pursue its own objectives independently while remaining faithful to its underlying constitutional values. Europe, in this conception, seeks neither isolation nor disengagement but the ability to make sovereign strategic decisions without excessive dependence upon external actors.
Importantly, Professor Kotzur deliberately omitted the increasingly fashionable adjective “open” from his presentation’s title in order to stimulate critical reflection. Rather than accepting “open strategic autonomy” as an uncontested policy objective, he encouraged participants to consider whether genuine strategic autonomy can remain fully open under conditions of intensifying geopolitical rivalry. This question reflects one of the European Union’s most fundamental contemporary dilemmas. Europe seeks simultaneously to preserve openness, defend multilateralism, strengthen economic resilience, and reduce excessive strategic dependencies. Reconciling these objectives requires careful balancing between economic integration and geopolitical prudence.
By the end of this section, Professor Kotzur had demonstrated that Europe’s future leadership cannot depend exclusively upon either normative influence or strategic power in isolation. The Brussels Effect continues to provide the European Union with remarkable global regulatory reach, yet contemporary geopolitical realities increasingly demand that this regulatory capacity be complemented by greater strategic resilience. Rather than abandoning its identity as a community founded upon law and multilateralism, Europe must learn to integrate regulatory influence with a more comprehensive understanding of geopolitical actorship. In doing so, the Union seeks to transform legal authority into a broader form of strategic leadership capable of navigating an international order that is becoming simultaneously more interconnected and more contested.
From Outsourced Security to Strategic Responsibility: Institutional Limits and the Future of European Defense
Photo: Pavlo Lys.
Having examined the European Union’s regulatory influence and the conceptual foundations of strategic autonomy, Professor Kotzur shifted the discussion toward one of the Union’s most persistent structural challenges: the relationship between legal competence, political will, and military capability. Rather than delivering a purely expository lecture, Professor Kotzur transformed this section into an interactive dialogue, inviting participants to reflect upon whether the existing constitutional framework of the European Union is capable of supporting meaningful geopolitical leadership. Their questions and observations became an integral component of the discussion, illustrating precisely the kind of interdisciplinary debate that the ECPS Academy Summer School seeks to foster.
Professor Kotzur began by emphasizing that discussions surrounding European defense cannot be separated from the constitutional architecture established by the EU Treaties. Unlike sovereign states, whose governments exercise inherent authority across the full spectrum of foreign and security policy, the European Union operates according to the principle of conferral, whereby it may act only in areas where competencies have been explicitly transferred by its member states. This legal principle, fundamental to European constitutional law, continues to shape every debate concerning the Union’s geopolitical ambitions. While economic integration has become highly supranationalized, foreign policy and defense remain areas in which national governments retain extensive authority. Consequently, the question confronting Europe is not simply whether it desires greater strategic autonomy, but whether its constitutional framework currently permits such ambitions to be fully realized.
Rather than providing an immediate answer, Professor Kotzur invited participants to consider whether the existing treaty framework already contains sufficient legal instruments for the European Union to become a more significant geopolitical actor or whether meaningful strategic autonomy would ultimately require comprehensive treaty reform. This interactive approach encouraged students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to engage directly with questions that are often confined to specialist legal scholarship.
Several participants offered observations that significantly enriched the discussion. One participant suggested that European defense integration had historically remained underdeveloped precisely because military security had long been outsourced to the United States through NATO. As long as Washington guaranteed Europe’s security, the incentives to construct genuinely autonomous European defense capabilities remained relatively weak. Professor Kotzur broadly agreed with this historical assessment. He recalled that attempts to establish European defense structures date back to the earliest years of post-war integration but repeatedly encountered political resistance. One recurring concern was that independent European military structures might duplicate—or even weaken—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Consequently, NATO became the principal framework for collective defense, while European integration concentrated largely upon economic and political cooperation.
At the same time, Professor Kotzur stressed that the situation has evolved considerably since the adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon, which significantly expanded the legal foundations for cooperation in foreign and security policy. Although the Treaties do not currently permit the creation of a fully-fledged European army, they nevertheless provide important mechanisms through which member states can deepen defense cooperation. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) establish institutional frameworks for joint action, while initiatives such as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) demonstrate that considerable progress remains possible without immediate treaty revision. From a legal perspective, therefore, the European Union already possesses greater flexibility than is often assumed, even if important constitutional limitations remain.
The discussion subsequently broadened to consider whether recent geopolitical developments have fundamentally altered the political incentives surrounding European defense integration. Professor Kotzur suggested that two historic developments have acted as powerful catalysts. The first was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which fundamentally transformed European perceptions of security by demonstrating that large-scale interstate war had returned to the European continent. The second was the return of Donald Trump to the American presidency, which further intensified doubts regarding the long-term reliability of the United States as Europe’s principal security guarantor. Together, these developments have accelerated debates over strategic autonomy far more rapidly than decades of academic discussion ever achieved.
Drawing upon Germany’s own experience, Professor Kotzur pointed to the profound transformation in domestic political attitudes toward defense spending. The concept of Zeitenwende, introduced following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, symbolizes a broader shift in German political culture regarding military responsibility. Political parties traditionally associated with pacifism, most notably the Green Party, have increasingly accepted that preserving peace may require greater investment in defense capabilities. This evolution illustrates how external geopolitical shocks can reshape democratic consensus, generating political support for policies that previously appeared unimaginable. What had once seemed politically controversial has increasingly become regarded as a necessary response to changing strategic realities.
Yet Professor Kotzur cautioned that military capability alone cannot create effective European leadership. Institutional legitimacy remains equally important. Another participant questioned whether Europe’s remarkable political diversity—comprising twenty-seven democracies with distinct historical experiences, domestic electorates, and strategic priorities—might itself constitute an obstacle to coherent foreign policy. Professor Kotzur acknowledged this challenge while rejecting the conclusion that diversity necessarily precludes collective action. The European Union’s legal personality under international law, established by the Treaty of Lisbon, enables it to conclude international agreements, participate in international organizations, and exercise meaningful diplomatic influence. Although foreign policy frequently requires consensus among member states, this institutional complexity should not be mistaken for institutional incapacity.
The discussion also addressed the politically sensitive question of hegemonic leadership. Professor Kotzur noted that, unlike the United States or China, European political discourse has historically regarded the very concept of hegemony with considerable suspicion, reflecting the continent’s experience of imperialism, nationalism, and colonial domination. Yet participants observed that even the European Union’s normative ambitions contain elements of hegemonic influence insofar as Europe seeks to encourage—or at times require—other countries to adopt its legal and regulatory standards. Professor Kotzur accepted this observation but distinguished between coercive hegemony and normative leadership. The European Union’s objective, he argued, should not be domination but persuasion, exercising influence through law, cooperation, and mutually beneficial partnerships rather than through military coercion.
Questions concerning Germany’s expanding military role further highlighted the complexity of European defense integration. Participants noted that increasing German defense expenditures inevitably evoke historical sensitivities among neighboring countries. Professor Kotzur acknowledged these concerns but suggested that today’s context differs fundamentally from earlier periods of European history. Germany’s rearmament takes place within dense multilateral institutions—NATO, the European Union, and an extensive network of constitutional safeguards—that substantially reduce the risks traditionally associated with unilateral military expansion. Contemporary defense integration therefore represents not a return to historical rivalries but an attempt to strengthen collective European security within established democratic frameworks.
Ultimately, this interactive exchange illustrated one of the lecture’s central insights: Europe’s future as a geopolitical actor depends not simply upon acquiring greater military capabilities but upon successfully integrating constitutional legitimacy, democratic support, institutional coordination, and strategic purpose. The European Union already possesses important legal foundations for deeper security cooperation, yet translating these possibilities into effective geopolitical leadership requires sustained political commitment from its member states. Strategic autonomy, Professor Kotzur suggested, is therefore neither exclusively a legal project nor solely a military one. It represents an ongoing constitutional and political process through which Europe seeks gradually to assume greater responsibility for its own security while remaining faithful to the principles of democracy, multilateralism, and the rule of law that have long defined the European project.
Europe Between Values and Power: Strengthening the EU’s Global Leadership in an Era of Geopolitical Fragmentation
The European Union’s AI Act introduces restrictions on high-risk artificial intelligence applications and requires greater transparency from companies regarding data use and algorithmic practices. Photo: Dreamstime.
In the final section of his lecture, Professor Kotzur moved beyond diagnosing the European Union’s geopolitical challenges to outlining a constructive vision of how the Union might strengthen its global leadership without abandoning the constitutional principles that have long defined the European project. Rather than advocating a radical transformation into a traditional military power, Professor Kotzur argued that Europe’s future influence depends upon building strategically upon its existing strengths while adapting to an international environment increasingly characterized by geopolitical rivalry, technological competition, economic coercion, and the erosion of multilateral institutions. His concluding reflections therefore sought to reconcile realism with legal idealism, arguing that effective European leadership requires neither the abandonment of normative values nor naïve reliance upon them alone, but rather a careful integration of power and principle.
Central to Professor Kotzur’s concluding argument was the proposition that the European Union should “strengthen its strengths.” Throughout the history of European integration, the Union’s greatest comparative advantage has not been military capability but economic integration, regulatory governance, and legal certainty. Attempting to imitate the geopolitical behavior of traditional great powers would therefore be both unrealistic and strategically counterproductive. Instead, Europe should continue to capitalize upon the assets that have already made it one of the world’s most influential political actors: its single market, its sophisticated regulatory framework, its institutional stability, and its capacity to shape international standards. These resources remain significant sources of geopolitical influence even within an increasingly competitive international system.
Accordingly, Professor Kotzur argued that revitalizing multilateral trade should remain one of the European Union’s foremost strategic priorities. While acknowledging the growing dysfunction of the World Trade Organization (WTO)—particularly the paralysis of its dispute-settlement mechanism—he maintained that Europe possesses both the credibility and the economic weight necessary to champion the renewal of rules-based international commerce. The European Union’s continued commitment to reducing barriers to trade, supporting predictable legal frameworks, and defending multilateral economic governance reflects not only economic interests but also broader constitutional values rooted in openness, cooperation, and legal certainty. In an era when many major powers increasingly employ tariffs, sanctions, and industrial policy as geopolitical instruments, Europe’s defense of an organized multilateral trading system constitutes both a strategic necessity and an expression of its normative identity.
At the same time, Professor Kotzur rejected any suggestion that Europe should distance itself fundamentally from the United States despite recent political tensions. Although the return of Donald Trump and growing uncertainty surrounding American foreign policy have accelerated debates over strategic autonomy, transatlantic relations, he argued, remain an indispensable pillar of European security and prosperity. What requires reconsideration is not the partnership itself but its internal balance. Europe should assume greater responsibility for its own defense while preserving the broader Atlantic alliance. In this sense, strategic autonomy complements rather than replaces transatlantic cooperation. A stronger European defense capability would ultimately reinforce NATO by enabling a more balanced distribution of responsibilities between European allies and the United States. Strategic autonomy should therefore be understood as a process of maturation rather than separation.
Professor Kotzur likewise emphasized that Europe’s geopolitical credibility increasingly depends upon technological innovation and industrial competitiveness. Regulatory leadership alone will prove insufficient if Europe gradually loses its capacity to innovate in emerging sectors. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, digital infrastructure, renewable technologies, and advanced manufacturing have become decisive arenas of international competition. Should Europe fall behind technologically, its ability to establish global standards through instruments such as the AI Act or environmental regulation will inevitably diminish. Normative influence cannot be sustained indefinitely without corresponding scientific, technological, and economic capacity. Consequently, investment in innovation represents not merely an economic policy but a strategic imperative essential to maintaining Europe’s long-term geopolitical relevance.
Environmental leadership occupied a similarly prominent place within Professor Kotzur’s concluding reflections. The European Green Deal, together with the broader objective of achieving climate neutrality, exemplifies the European Union’s aspiration to combine economic modernization with global environmental responsibility. Yet Professor Kotzur cautioned that successful climate leadership requires greater sensitivity toward historical inequalities and the needs of developing countries. Drawing upon principles of international environmental law, particularly the doctrine of common but differentiated responsibilities, he argued that industrialized European states bear special responsibilities in supporting sustainable development across the Global South. Financial assistance, technological cooperation, and equitable climate partnerships are therefore indispensable if European environmental policies are to retain international legitimacy rather than being perceived as protectionist or neo-colonial instruments.
This emphasis on partnership naturally extended to Professor Kotzur’s discussion of the Global South. One of the lecture’s most forward-looking arguments concerned the need for Europe to diversify its international relationships beyond its traditional geopolitical partnerships. If strategic autonomy ultimately seeks to reduce excessive dependence upon any single external actor, the European Union must cultivate broader and more balanced global networks. Emerging economies in India, Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia should therefore be viewed not merely as markets but as long-term strategic partners capable of contributing to a more resilient and diversified international order. Agreements such as the EU–Mercosur trade agreement, although politically controversial, illustrate the broader strategic logic underpinning this approach. Similarly, Africa’s rapidly expanding population and economic potential present opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation founded upon equality rather than paternalism. Professor Kotzur stressed that such partnerships require honest engagement with Europe’s colonial legacy while simultaneously focusing upon future-oriented cooperation based on mutual respect and shared interests.
Importantly, Professor Kotzur argued that Europe’s normative commitments should continue to shape these partnerships, albeit in a more dialogical manner. Rather than presenting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as unilateral prescriptions imposed upon others, the European Union should promote these principles through sustained dialogue and cooperative engagement. Such an approach recognizes that constitutional values remain central to the European project while acknowledging the increasingly pluralistic nature of contemporary international politics. Europe’s credibility, he suggested, depends less upon moral preaching than upon demonstrating that liberal democracy, legal certainty, and multilateral cooperation provide practical advantages in addressing common global challenges.
As the lecture drew to a close, Professor Kotzur returned to the question posed in its opening moments: Can the European Union lead? His answer was neither unequivocally optimistic nor unduly pessimistic. Europe possesses significant assets—economic strength, regulatory influence, constitutional legitimacy, and institutional resilience—that continue to distinguish it from other global actors. Yet these advantages cannot be taken for granted. Sustaining European leadership will require continued investment in innovation, stronger defense capabilities, renewed commitment to multilateralism, and deeper partnerships with emerging regions of the world. Above all, the European Union must avoid the false choice between values and power. Its greatest comparative advantage lies precisely in its ability to combine legal legitimacy with strategic purpose, transforming constitutional principles into instruments of effective international leadership.
Taken together, Professor Kotzur’s lecture offered a sophisticated synthesis of European constitutional law, international relations, and geopolitical strategy. By demonstrating that leadership in the twenty-first century increasingly depends upon the interaction of regulatory authority, economic resilience, technological innovation, institutional legitimacy, and strategic responsibility, he challenged simplistic conceptions of power based solely upon military capabilities. Instead, he argued that Europe’s future role in an increasingly fragmented international order will depend upon its capacity to strengthen its existing advantages while adapting pragmatically to new geopolitical realities. In doing so, the lecture encapsulated one of the central messages of the ECPS Academy Summer School: that Europe’s place “between oceans” will ultimately be determined not only by external competition but also by its own ability to reconcile openness with resilience, values with interests, and normative ambition with geopolitical responsibility.
Japan has long been regarded as an outlier in comparative studies of populism, distinguished by political stability, Liberal Democratic Party dominance, and limited immigration. In this thought-provoking lecture, Professor Axel Berkofsky challenged that conventional wisdom, arguing that Japan has entered its own delayed populist moment. Examining the rise of the Sanseito party, demographic decline, labor shortages, identity politics, and the evolution of conservative nationalism, he demonstrated how structural economic pressures and political discourse are reshaping Japanese democracy. The lecture also assessed the resilience of EU–Japan relations, highlighting the enduring importance of the Economic Partnership Agreement despite growing geopolitical uncertainty. Combining comparative politics with international political economy, Professor Berkofsky offered a nuanced framework for understanding populism beyond its traditional European context.
Reported by ECPS Staff
While much scholarly and policy attention has focused on the rise of populism across Europe and North America, Japan has long appeared to constitute a notable exception to this global political trend. For decades, the country’s remarkable political stability, the electoral dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and its comparatively homogeneous social structure appeared to insulate it from the anti-establishment movements that transformed politics elsewhere. Yet recent developments suggest that this exceptionalism may no longer hold. The emergence of overtly populist and anti-immigration political actors, coupled with growing public anxiety over demographic decline, economic stagnation, inflation, and national identity, indicates that Japan is increasingly experiencing many of the political tensions reshaping advanced democracies more broadly.
Against this backdrop, the eighth lecture of the ECPS Academy Summer School 2026, held under the overarching theme “Europe Between Oceans: The EU in the Age of Geoeconomics, Populism, and Strategic Competition,” explored the evolving relationship between domestic political transformation and international economic cooperation through the lens of EU–Japan relations and populism. Delivered by Professor Axel Berkofsky, Full Professor at the University of Pavia and Co-Head of the Asia Centre at the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), the lecture combined comparative politics, international political economy, and East Asian studies to examine whether Japan is witnessing the emergence of its own variant of populism and how these developments may shape one of the European Union’s most important strategic partnerships in Asia.
Japan’s Late Encounter with Populism
Professor Axel Berkofsky is Full Professor at the University of Pavia and Co-Head of the Asia Centre at the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI).
The session was introduced by Dr. Sébastien Goulard, Manager of Cooperans and an expert on EU–Asia connectivity projects, who situated the lecture within the broader comparative study of populism. He observed that while populism has become a defining feature of European politics over the past three decades—manifesting itself through movements ranging from Brexit in the United Kingdom to the electoral successes of radical-right and radical-left parties across the continent—its development in Asia has followed a more uneven trajectory. Dr. Goulard briefly pointed to examples such as Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency in the Philippines before posing the central question that would animate the lecture: Does Japan, long regarded as politically exceptional, now face its own populist moment? Equally important, he asked whether any rise of Japanese populism could affect the EU–Japan partnership, particularly given that many populist movements elsewhere have been deeply skeptical of international trade agreements and economic integration. His framing effectively connected domestic political developments in Japan to broader debates surrounding globalization, regional cooperation, and the future of liberal international order.
Rethinking EU–Japan Relations in an Age of Political Discontent
Professor Berkofsky started his lecture by underscoring that Japan has long represented something of a puzzle within comparative studies of populism. While right-wing populist movements expanded across much of Europe during the 1990s and 2000s, and Donald Trump’s election transformed American politics, Japan appeared remarkably resistant to similar developments. Unlike many Western democracies, where established party systems fragmented under the pressure of anti-establishment mobilization, Japanese politics continued to be dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party, whose uninterrupted rule—interrupted only briefly on two occasions since 1955—provided an extraordinary degree of institutional continuity. This prolonged political stability, Professor Berkofsky suggested, delayed rather than prevented the emergence of populist politics.
The lecturer explained that understanding Japan’s political exceptionalism requires appreciating the unique character of the LDPitself. Rather than functioning as a narrowly ideological organization, the LDP historically operated as a broad catch-all party composed of multiple internal factions representing diverse constituencies. Through an intricate system of intra-party bargaining, factional competition, and clientelist networks, the party successfully incorporated competing interests while maintaining overall political dominance. Prime ministers changed frequently, often every twelve to eighteen months, yet the governing party remained the same. Consequently, political stability did not depend upon individual leaders but upon the institutional resilience of the LDP as Japan’s dominant governing organization. This remarkable continuity, Professor Berkofsky argued, insulated Japan from many of the political ruptures experienced elsewhere, reducing opportunities for anti-system movements to gain electoral traction.
Nevertheless, Professor Berkofsky contended that important changes have gradually emerged beneath this surface stability. The watershed moment, in his view, came with the 2025 lower house elections, during which the overtly populist and xenophobic Sanseito (“Japan First”) party secured representation in Japan’s parliament by winning approximately 7.4 million votes and fifteen parliamentary seats. Although modest by European standards, Professor Berkofsky regarded this breakthrough as historically significant because it marked the first time that an explicitly populist, anti-immigration movement had established a meaningful parliamentary presence in post-war Japan. The country’s long-standing immunity to global populist currents had, he argued, effectively come to an end. Japan had become, in his words, a “latecomer” to the global populist wave rather than a permanent exception to it.
Importantly, Professor Berkofsky cautioned participants against interpreting this development as an abrupt rupture with Japan’s political past. Instead, he argued that contemporary populism has developed gradually within an existing political environment where elements of nationalism, cultural conservatism, and skepticism toward immigration had long been present, albeit often in implicit rather than explicit form. Japanese society itself, he stressed, should not be characterized as inherently xenophobic or racist. Having lived and worked extensively in Japan, Professor Berkofsky emphasized both his personal admiration for the country and the openness of Japanese society in everyday life. Yet beneath this generally welcoming social environment there had always existed what he described as a latent distinction between “the Japanese” and “the outsiders.” This distinction did not automatically translate into exclusionary politics, but it provided fertile political ground upon which more overt nationalist narratives could subsequently be constructed.
According to Professor Berkofsky, this gradual normalization of exclusionary political discourse accelerated significantly during the premiership of Shinzo Abe. While Abe remained firmly within the mainstream LDP tradition rather than representing an anti-system outsider, his administration increasingly legitimized political rhetoric that portrayed foreigners with greater suspicion and framed questions of national identity more prominently within public debate. Professor Berkofsky carefully distinguished between Abe’s policies and those of contemporary European radical-right leaders, noting that Japan under Abe did not become a populist regime. Rather, Abe expanded the boundaries of politically acceptable discourse by making previously marginal nationalist themes more mainstream. Discussions surrounding immigration, cultural identity, and national sovereignty became increasingly visible within Japanese political life, creating opportunities for more explicitly populist actors to advance even stronger versions of these arguments in subsequent years.
This trajectory, Professor Berkofsky argued, reached a new stage under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whom he described as representing a more assertive and uncompromising version of the conservative nationalism associated with Abe. Although Takaichi continues to govern through the institutional framework of the LDP rather than through a newly created populist movement, her political rhetoric increasingly revolves around themes familiar to observers of European populism: identity politics, concerns over immigration, anxieties regarding national cohesion, and skepticism toward globalization. Professor Berkofsky drew explicit comparisons with leaders such as Giorgia Meloni in Italy, arguing that although important historical and institutional differences remain, contemporary conservative discourse in Japan increasingly resembles broader international trends evident across numerous advanced democracies. Populism, he suggested, has become a genuinely global phenomenon whose ideological vocabulary increasingly transcends regional boundaries.
One of the lecture’s central analytical contributions lay in Professor Berkofsky’s insistence that Japan’s emerging populism cannot be understood simply by borrowing European categories. Unlike many European countries, Japan remains one of the world’s least immigrant-intensive societies. Foreign residents account for only around three percent of the total population, an extraordinarily low proportion compared to most advanced industrial democracies. Consequently, anti-immigration narratives claiming that foreigners threaten employment opportunities, overwhelm welfare systems, or fundamentally transform Japanese society rest upon empirical foundations that Professor Berkofsky repeatedly described as highly questionable. Indeed, one of the striking paradoxes emphasized throughout the lecture was that Japan’s populist discourse has emerged despite the absence of the large-scale immigration flows typically associated with the rise of anti-immigration politics elsewhere. This paradox would become one of the central themes explored during the remainder of the session, as Professor Berkofsky examined how demographic decline, labor shortages, and economic stagnation have created political opportunities for populist entrepreneurs despite Japan’s continued need for greater levels of immigration.
National Identity, Immigration, and the Political Mainstream: The Gradual Normalization of Populist Discourse
Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photo: Dreamstime.
Having argued that Japan has entered what he described as its own delayed populist moment, Professor Berkofsky devoted the second part of his lecture to explaining why this transformation has occurred despite the country’s long-standing reputation for political moderation and institutional stability. Rather than attributing Japan’s changing political landscape to a sudden surge of anti-establishment sentiment, he argued that contemporary populism has emerged through a gradual process of ideological normalization within the political mainstream itself. This process, he suggested, differs significantly from the trajectories observed in many European democracies, where populist parties frequently arose in opposition to established political elites. In Japan, by contrast, important elements of nationalist and identity-based politics developed from within the governing establishment before eventually creating opportunities for more explicitly populist actors to flourish.
Central to Professor Berkofsky’s analysis was the political legacy of Shinzo Abe, whose nearly eight years in office made him Japan’s longest-serving post-war prime minister. Professor Berkofsky was careful to reject simplistic characterizations of Abe as a populist in the European or American sense. Abe neither campaigned as an anti-system outsider nor sought to dismantle existing political institutions. Instead, he remained firmly embedded within the LDP and governed through established institutional channels. Nevertheless, Professor Berkofsky argued that Abe played a pivotal role in shifting the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. Under his leadership, themes of national identity, patriotism, constitutional revision, security normalization, and historical memory acquired far greater prominence within public debate than they had during previous decades. Although these themes remained largely compatible with mainstream conservative politics, they also contributed to the gradual legitimization of rhetorical strategies that later proved advantageous for more overtly populist movements.
According to Professor Berkofsky, Abe’s greatest political innovation lay not in introducing entirely new ideas but in redefining the political center of gravity. Issues that had previously occupied the margins of political discussion gradually entered mainstream discourse. Questions concerning immigration, cultural cohesion, and the preservation of Japanese identity increasingly became legitimate subjects of electoral competition rather than peripheral concerns associated with fringe nationalist organizations. This evolution mirrored broader developments observable across many advanced democracies, where mainstream conservative parties increasingly incorporated elements of populist rhetoric in response to shifting public attitudes. Professor Berkofsky emphasized that such developments should not be interpreted as evidence that Japan had become fundamentally xenophobic. Rather, they reflected the gradual politicization of issues that had previously remained relatively insulated from electoral contestation.
The lecturer then turned to the administration of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whom he presented as representing a further stage in this ideological evolution. While Takaichi continues to govern through the institutional framework of the LDP, Professor Berkofsky suggested that her political style places greater emphasis on themes of national sovereignty, cultural identity, and immigration control than many of her predecessors. Her rhetoric increasingly resonates with narratives familiar from contemporary European conservative politics, particularly those stressing the need to protect national traditions against the perceived pressures of globalization and demographic change. Although important contextual differences remain, Professor Berkofsky drew comparisons with political figures such as Meloni, arguing that conservative politics across advanced democracies increasingly shares a common vocabulary centered upon nationhood, identity, borders, and sovereignty.
Yet Professor Berkofsky repeatedly cautioned participants against assuming direct equivalence between Japan and Europe. One of the lecture’s most important comparative insights concerned the striking disparity between the intensity of anti-immigration rhetoric and the actual scale of immigration into Japan. Unlike Germany, France, Sweden, or Italy, Japan has experienced relatively limited immigration. Foreign nationals constitute only a small proportion of the overall population, and immigration has historically remained tightly regulated. Consequently, political narratives portraying Japan as overwhelmed by immigration bear little resemblance to empirical reality. Professor Berkofsky described this disconnect as one of the defining paradoxes of contemporary Japanese politics: anti-immigration discourse has intensified despite the absence of mass immigration itself.
Demographic Decline, Economic Anxiety, and the Rise of Sanseito
A campaign poster for the right-wing populist Sanseito party in Tokyo, Japan. The slogan *Nihon o Nameruna* (“Don’t underestimate Japan” or “Don’t look down on Japan”) reflects the party’s nationalist political message. Tokyo, July 11, 2025. Photo: Hiroshi Mori / Dreamstime.
Having demonstrated how nationalist discourse gradually entered Japan’s political mainstream, Professor Berkofsky turned to the structural conditions that have enabled explicitly populist movements to gain electoral traction. Central to this discussion was the emergence of Sanseito, which he identified as the clearest expression of right-wing populism in contemporary Japanese politics. Although the party remains considerably smaller than the dominant LDP, its parliamentary breakthrough marked a significant turning point, establishing an institutional foothold for political narratives long associated with European and American populism. Rather than dismissing Sanseito as a temporary protest movement, Professor Berkofsky argued that its electoral success reflects deeper socioeconomic and demographic transformations reshaping Japanese politics.
Sanseito has positioned itself as a challenger to Japan’s political establishment by combining nationalism, economic protectionism, skepticism toward globalization, and particularly strong opposition to immigration. Presenting itself as the defender of “ordinary people” against detached political elites and international influences, the party’s slogan, “Japan First,” echoes nationalist rhetoric that has become increasingly familiar across advanced democracies. Yet Professor Berkofsky stressed that Japanese populism should not be viewed simply as an imitation of its European or American counterparts. Rather, it represents the adaptation of broadly similar narratives to Japan’s distinctive political institutions, demographic realities, and historical experience.
Immigration occupies the center of Sanseito’s political message. The party attributes rising crime, economic insecurity, and social fragmentation to increasing numbers of foreign workers. Professor Berkofsky challenged these claims as empirically unsupported. Japan remains one of the least immigrant-intensive societies among advanced economies, and available crime statistics provide no evidence that foreigners constitute a disproportionate burden on public safety. Likewise, labor-market data indicate that migrant workers overwhelmingly fill positions in sectors experiencing chronic labor shortages rather than displacing Japanese employees. Agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hospitality, logistics, and elderly care increasingly depend upon foreign labor simply to maintain existing levels of production and service provision. Far from undermining Japanese society, immigration has become an indispensable component of economic sustainability.
This disconnect between political rhetoric and demographic reality formed one of the lecture’s central arguments. Professor Berkofsky emphasized that Japan’s principal challenge is not excessive immigration but the opposite: an insufficient inflow of foreign workers to offset rapid population ageing, persistently low fertility rates, and a shrinking workforce. Employers across the economy increasingly struggle to recruit labor, while long-term demographic projections point toward further decline. Under these conditions, reducing immigration would almost certainly deepen Japan’s economic difficulties rather than alleviate them.
The paradox, Professor Berkofsky argued, illustrates a broader characteristic of contemporary populism. Its political effectiveness derives less from empirical accuracy than from its ability to simplify complex structural problems into emotionally compelling narratives. Long-term economic stagnation, weak wage growth, inflation, declining purchasing power, and demographic decline are multifaceted challenges rooted in economic, technological, and demographic change. Yet populist actors frequently attribute these developments to more visible political targets such as immigration, globalization, or detached elites. Even in a country where immigration remains comparatively limited, these narratives resonate because they tap into broader anxieties surrounding national identity, cultural continuity, and social cohesion.
Professor Berkofsky nevertheless cautioned against reducing Japan’s political transformation solely to economic grievances. While acknowledging that many citizens have experienced genuine economic insecurity after decades of slow growth and rising living costs, he argued that concerns about immigration also reflect deeper questions of identity and national belonging. Public unease cannot simply be dismissed; however, it should not be mistaken for an accurate description of Japan’s demographic realities. Policymakers therefore face the challenge of balancing legitimate concerns over social integration with the country’s undeniable economic need for greater international labor mobility.
Japan’s experience, Professor Berkofsky concluded, offers an important comparative perspective on the global evolution of populism. Unlike many European countries, where anti-immigration movements emerged following sustained immigration, Japan has witnessed the rise of similar political narratives despite maintaining exceptionally low levels of foreign residents. This demonstrates that identity politics need not depend upon large-scale migration alone but can also emerge from broader demographic anxieties, economic uncertainty, and shifting political discourse. By distinguishing carefully between rhetoric and empirical evidence, Professor Berkofsky showed that Japan’s encounter with populism reflects a complex interaction of demographic decline, economic pressures, identity politics, and institutional change rather than a straightforward rejection of globalization itself
The lecture also highlighted the increasingly important role of digital communication in facilitating populist mobilization. Like many contemporary populist movements elsewhere, Sanseito has proven particularly effective at utilizing social media platforms to disseminate simplified political messages, challenge mainstream media narratives, and cultivate direct communication with supporters. Professor Berkofsky noted that such strategies have enabled relatively small political organizations to achieve levels of visibility that would previously have required far greater organizational resources. The digitalization of political communication has therefore lowered barriers to electoral competition while simultaneously amplifying emotionally charged narratives concerning immigration, national identity, and political distrust. Although Japan’s media environment differs significantly from those found in many Western democracies, similar technological dynamics increasingly shape political discourse across advanced industrial societies.
Throughout this section, Professor Berkofsky consistently urged participants to distinguish between the political success of populist narratives and their analytical validity. Anti-immigration rhetoric may resonate with segments of the electorate experiencing economic anxiety, yet demographic evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Japan’s long-term prosperity depends upon attracting—not excluding—greater numbers of foreign workers. Likewise, blaming globalization or immigration for structural economic challenges risks obscuring deeper issues relating to productivity, demographic ageing, labor-market reform, and fiscal sustainability. Populism, in this sense, offers politically powerful narratives but rarely provides comprehensive solutions to the complex problems confronting advanced industrial democracies.
By examining the rise of Sanseito within this broader structural context, Professor Berkofsky demonstrated that Japan’s political transformation reflects far more than the emergence of a new political party. It illustrates how demographic decline, economic insecurity, identity politics, and digital communication increasingly interact to reshape democratic competition across advanced societies. Japan may have entered the global populist era later than Europe or the United States, but the underlying dynamics driving this transition reveal striking similarities. The country’s experience therefore offers valuable comparative insights into how populism adapts to distinct national contexts while drawing upon an increasingly shared repertoire of political narratives, grievances, and electoral strategies.
Populism, Free Trade, and the Future of EU–Japan Relations
Photo: Marian Vejcik / Dreamstime.
In the concluding section of his lecture, Professor Berkofsky shifted from analyzing Japan’s domestic political transformation to assessing its implications for one of the European Union’s most important strategic partnerships in Asia. Returning to the question posed at the beginning of the session, he asked whether the gradual emergence of populist politics in Japan might ultimately undermine the deepening economic and political cooperation between Tokyo and Brussels. His answer was deliberately cautious. While acknowledging that populist narratives are becoming increasingly visible within Japanese politics, Professor Berkofsky argued that there remains little evidence to suggest that Japan is on the verge of abandoning its long-standing commitment to international economic openness. Unlike many European and North American populist movements, whose electoral success has often been accompanied by hostility toward free trade agreements and multilateral institutions, Japanese populism has thus far developed within a political environment where broad elite consensus continues to support international economic engagement. Consequently, the future of EU–Japan relations appear considerably more resilient than many observers might initially assume.
Professor Berkofsky reminded participants that the EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which entered into force in 2019, remains one of the most comprehensive bilateral trade agreements ever concluded by either party. Negotiated against the backdrop of growing protectionist tendencies elsewhere, the agreement represented a powerful political statement in favor of rules-based trade, multilateral cooperation, and open markets. Covering approximately one-third of global GDP and creating one of the world’s largest free trade areas, the EPA extended well beyond tariff reductions to encompass regulatory cooperation, government procurement, intellectual property, environmental standards, and sustainable development. For both Brussels and Tokyo, the agreement symbolized a shared commitment to preserving an international economic order increasingly challenged by geopolitical rivalry and economic nationalism.
At the same time, Professor Berkofsky cautioned against viewing the partnership through overly idealized lenses. Despite its considerable achievements, the EPA has not eliminated all commercial frictions between the two economies. Agricultural market access, sanitary and phytosanitary regulations, public procurement, automotive trade, and steel safeguard measures continue to generate periodic disagreements. European exporters frequently seek greater access to Japanese agricultural markets, while Japanese firms remain attentive to European trade defense measures affecting industrial products. These issues, Professor Berkofsky suggested, should not be interpreted as evidence of weakening relations but rather as normal features of a mature economic partnership between two highly developed economies with occasionally divergent commercial interests. Importantly, such disagreements continue to be managed through institutional dialogue and negotiated compromise rather than escalating into broader political conflict.
This institutional resilience, Professor Berkofsky argued, distinguishes EU–Japan relations from many contemporary trade relationships increasingly characterized by unilateral tariffs, retaliatory sanctions, and economic coercion. Both parties continue to view predictable rules, legal certainty, and multilateral governance as essential foundations of international economic cooperation. Even as governments around the world increasingly embrace industrial policy, supply-chain diversification, and strategic competition, Brussels and Tokyo remain committed to maintaining a broadly liberal trading relationship. In this respect, the EU–Japan partnership has acquired significance extending beyond bilateral commerce itself, serving as an important example of how advanced democracies can continue supporting international economic openness while adapting to a more uncertain geopolitical environment.
The lecture nevertheless acknowledged that domestic political developments could gradually complicate this picture. Should populist parties expand their electoral influence, trade agreements may become increasingly vulnerable to broader political debates concerning sovereignty, globalization, and national identity. Professor Berkofsky noted that this pattern has already become familiar across Europe, where opposition to international trade agreements often extends beyond economic concerns to encompass wider anxieties regarding immigration, democratic accountability, environmental regulation, and cultural identity. While Japan has not yet experienced comparable levels of political contestation surrounding trade policy, the emergence of more vocal nationalist actors suggests that similar debates may become increasingly prominent in future electoral campaigns. The challenge for policymakers will therefore be to preserve public support for economic openness while addressing legitimate concerns regarding inequality, regional disparities, and economic insecurity.
One of Professor Berkofsky’s most important observations concerned the relationship between economic performance and political stability. He argued that Japan’s experience demonstrates how prolonged economic stagnation, declining real incomes, and demographic pressures can gradually erode confidence in established political institutions even where those institutions remain highly stable by international standards. Populist movements frequently gain support not because they offer comprehensive policy solutions but because they provide emotionally compelling narratives that identify clear causes for complex structural problems. Consequently, defending liberal economic cooperation requires more than simply emphasizing the aggregate benefits of free trade. Governments must also demonstrate that globalization generates broadly shared prosperity capable of maintaining democratic legitimacy. Failure to address the distributive consequences of economic change risks creating political opportunities for movements seeking to replace nuanced policy discussions with simplified nationalist narratives.
Professor Berkofsky further suggested that the European Union may itself draw valuable lessons from Japan’s experience. Although Europe and Japan differ substantially in terms of immigration levels, demographic structures, political institutions, and historical development, both confront remarkably similar long-term challenges: ageing populations, labor shortages, technological competition, slowing productivity growth, and increasing geopolitical uncertainty. Both have also sought to balance economic openness with greater strategic resilience without abandoning their commitment to rules-based international cooperation. In this sense, EU–Japan relations increasingly extend beyond traditional trade diplomacy to encompass broader cooperation on economic security, digital governance, technological innovation, supply-chain resilience, and the defense of multilateral institutions. These shared interests provide a strong foundation upon which the partnership can continue to develop despite evolving domestic political landscapes.
Throughout his concluding remarks, Professor Berkofsky repeatedly resisted alarmist interpretations of Japan’s political trajectory. While acknowledging that the country’s immunity to populism has weakened, he argued that contemporary Japanese politics remains fundamentally different from the highly polarized environments observed in several Western democracies. The LDP continues to dominate national politics, institutional continuity remains strong, and broad elite consensus in favor of international engagement persists. Populist actors have undoubtedly entered the political arena, but they have not displaced the established structures that continue to shape Japanese policymaking. Consequently, the emergence of parties such as Sanseito should be understood less as evidence of systemic political rupture than as an indication that Japan is gradually experiencing political dynamics already familiar elsewhere.
As the lecture concluded, Professor Berkofsky returned to the broader comparative perspective that had framed his analysis from the outset. Japan, he argued, should no longer be viewed as an exceptional democracy somehow insulated from the social and political transformations affecting other advanced industrial societies. Rather, it represents a particularly instructive case illustrating how populism adapts to distinctive national contexts while responding to common structural pressures. Demographic decline, economic uncertainty, globalization, identity politics, and digital communication increasingly interact across democratic systems in ways that transcend regional boundaries. Yet Japan’s experience also demonstrates that institutional resilience, pragmatic policymaking, and sustained international engagement can moderate these pressures without eliminating them entirely.
Taken as a whole, Professor Berkofsky’s lecture offered participants a sophisticated comparative framework for understanding the evolving relationship between domestic political change and international economic cooperation. By tracing Japan’s gradual encounter with populism while simultaneously examining the resilience of EU–Japan relations, he demonstrated that contemporary debates surrounding globalization, immigration, and national identity cannot be separated from wider questions of demographic transformation, economic governance, and strategic competition. In doing so, the lecture reinforced one of the central themes of the ECPS Academy Summer School: that Europe’s future “between oceans” will increasingly depend upon its ability to cultivate resilient partnerships with like-minded democracies facing many of the same political, economic, and geopolitical challenges.
