In Panel 3, Maria Jerzyk (Masaryk University) presented an interdisciplinary analysis of how children are used as symbolic tools in populist discourse in post-communist Poland.

ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 4 — Politics of Belonging: Voices and Silencing

Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2025). “ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 4 — Politics of Belonging: Voices and Silencing.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00106

 

Panel IV of the ECPS Conference 2025, held at St Cross College, Oxford University (July 1–3), explored the theme “Politics of Belonging: Voices and Silencing.” Chaired by Dr. Azize Sargın (ECPS), the panel investigated how belonging is constructed and contested through populist discourse and historical memory. Dr. Maarja Merivoo-Parro (University of Jyväskylä) examined olfactory memory and grassroots aid in Estonia’s democratic awakening. Maria Jerzyk (Masaryk University) analyzed how the figure of the child is symbolically instrumentalized in Polish populism, revealing deep continuities with communist-era narratives. Together, the papers offered rich insights into how identity, exclusion, and affect shape democratic participation in post-authoritarian and populist contexts.

Reported by ECPS Staff

Panel IV of the ECPS Conference 2025, titled Politics of Belonging: Voices and Silencing, was held on the morning of July 2 at St Cross College, University of Oxford. As part of the broader conference theme—‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches—this panel delved into how democratic belonging is shaped, contested, and narrated within and beyond populist frameworks.

Chaired by Dr. Azize Sargın (PhD), Director of External Relations at the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), the session opened with a theoretically grounded overview of the politics of belonging. Dr. Sargın emphasized that in an age of resurgent populism, belonging is no longer a neutral or merely affective category but a highly politicized mechanism of inclusion and exclusion. Populist actors increasingly construct “the people” by drawing sharp lines between insiders and outsiders, often invoking exclusionary logics tied to ethnicity, morality, or national destiny. Drawing on insights from political theory and migration studies, she outlined two key dimensions of belonging: “to whom one belongs” (social group affiliation) and “where one belongs” (spatial-territorial identity), both of which play critical roles in populist and post-authoritarian contexts.

The panel featured two intellectually rich and methodologically distinct papers. Dr. Maarja Merivoo-Parro (Marie Curie Fellow, University of Jyväskylä) explored the role of olfactory memory in the democratization of Estonia, arguing that cross-border sensory exchanges—especially smells tied to Finnish aid—played a profound role in shaping political consciousness and belonging during the late Soviet period. Maria Jerzyk (Masaryk University, Czechia) examined how children are symbolically deployed in contemporary Polish populist narratives, tracing striking continuities with communist-era state propaganda. She showed how the child functions as both a vessel of national purity and a screen for projecting anxieties over societal change.

Together, these contributions offered a powerful demonstration of how the politics of belonging operate through both the body and the imagination—an approach that resonated strongly with the interdisciplinary aims of the ECPS Conference.

Opening Remarks by Dr. Azize Sargın 

Dr. Azize Sargın, Director of External Relations at the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), opened the first panel of the second day of ECPS Conference at the University of Oxford with a concise yet conceptually rich introduction to the session’s theme: The Politics of Belonging, Voices, and Silencing. Her remarks served to establish a theoretical and thematic framework, situating the panel within broader academic debates on identity, exclusion, and populism.

Dr. Sargın emphasized that questions of belonging have become increasingly politicized in recent years, particularly under the influence of populist movements that define “the people” through narrow, exclusionary frameworks. Populist rhetoric, she noted, often draws stark lines between insiders and outsiders, thus marginalizing those deemed threats to the imagined national community. This binary logic fundamentally reshapes notions of identity, social boundaries, and democratic participation.

Drawing on scholarship in the field, she distinguished between two core dimensions of belonging: to whom one belongs (social group belonging) and where one belongs (spatial or territorial belonging). She argued that both questions are central to the study of populism—domestically, through the politics of exclusion within state borders, and transnationally, in the experiences of immigrants and diasporas navigating their place within multiple communities.

Importantly, Dr. Sargın differentiated between the personal, affective experience of belonging and the politics of belonging—the latter being a deliberate political project aimed at constructing collective identities. Concluding, she underscored the temporal and contested nature of belonging, and the panel’s aim to explore these dynamics in historical and interdisciplinary perspective.

Maarja Merivoo-Parro: The Scents of Belonging: Olfactory Narratives and the Dynamics of Democratization

Chaired by Dr. Azize Sargın, this panel explored the sensory and symbolic dimensions of belonging and exclusion in populist contexts, with Maarja Merivoo-Parro examining olfactory narratives and democratization, and Maria Jerzyk analyzing the role of children in post-communist populist discourse in Poland.

In her richly evocative and methodologically innovative presentation, titled “The Scents of Belonging: Olfactory Narratives and the Dynamics of Democratization,” Dr. Maarja Merivoo-Parro (Marie Curie Fellow, University of Jyväskylä) offered a compelling interdisciplinary account of how smell shaped and symbolized the democratization process in late Soviet-era and post-Soviet Estonia. Delivered during Panel 4 of the ECPS Conference 2025 at Oxford University, her paper bridged political history, cultural memory, and sensory studies to examine how grassroots aid from Finnish citizens not only supported material survival but also catalyzed a sensory awakening to democratic possibility.

Merivoo-Parro began by setting the geopolitical stage: the late 1980s economic collapse in Soviet-occupied Estonia, and the contrasting openness of nearby Finland. Despite Finland’s cautious official stance due to “Finlandization”—a Cold War policy of alignment to Soviet interests—ordinary Finnish citizens took unprecedented grassroots action. They formed personal networks with Estonians, delivering tailor-made humanitarian relief (food, medicine, clothes, toys) in an improvised diplomacy of the people. These exchanges were not only materially transformative but also emotionally intimate and culturally revealing.

What made this aid unique, argued Dr. Merivoo-Parro, was its sensory intensity—especially its olfactory dimension. Western hygiene products, foods, and technologies carried unfamiliar yet alluring smells that stood in stark contrast to the scarcity and uniformity of Soviet life. Smell, she explained, is neurologically encoded with emotion and memory, and these olfactory stimuli became vessels of hope, aspiration, and belonging. Finnish deodorant, chocolate, and even the lingering scent of well-laundered clothes subtly communicated democratic abundance, cultivating what she called a “smell of democracy.”

She illustrated this dynamic through oral history, children’s correspondence, and anecdotal recollections—such as a girl’s envy at her Finnish pen-pal’s casual mention of ice cream. These accounts revealed the disjuncture between two neighboring worlds and illustrated how material exchanges carried symbolic, even ideological weight.

Critically, Dr. Merivoo-Parro suggested that this early, tangible exposure to democratic life inoculated Estonia against the pathologies of many post-Soviet transitions. Unlike other former Soviet republics that experienced high levels of corruption and authoritarian backsliding, Estonia pursued a robust democratic trajectory. Dr. Merivoo-Parro provocatively likened this process to Pavlovian conditioning: Estonians became conditioned to associate democracy with reliability, dignity, and material abundance—not through abstract theory but through smell, taste, and lived experience. This sensory grounding helped them “hit the ground running” in 1991, fostering low corruption, high civic trust, and strong digital and educational institutions.

In closing, she proposed that this case demonstrates the need to expand democratic theory beyond legal and institutional frameworks to include sensory, affective, and cultural registers. Belonging, she argued, is not only a political status but also a sensory experience—one capable of fostering or foreclosing democratic identification. Her intervention thus resonated deeply with the conference’s interdisciplinary mission and underscored the value of unexpected analytical lenses in studying democratization.

Dr. Merivoo-Parro’s talk stands as a powerful reminder that democracy is not only read in constitutions or heard in speeches—but smelled, touched, and tasted in daily life.

Maria Jerzyk: Silent Symbols, Loud Legacies — The Child in Populist Narratives of Post-Communist Poland

In her thoughtful and innovative presentation, Maria Jerzyk (graduate student, Masaryk University, Czechia) offered a compelling interdisciplinary analysis of how children function as symbolic instruments within populist political discourse in post-communist Poland. Her paper, titled “Silent Symbols, Loud Legacies: The Child in Populist Narratives of Post-Communist Poland,” brought to light the ideological potency of the child figure—often marginalized in both academic and policy debates—while interrogating its historical continuity and symbolic plasticity from communist to contemporary populist regimes.

Jerzyk opened by observing a common omission in populism studies: while elites, migrants, and minority groups frequently occupy the spotlight as the primary antagonists or protagonists in populist narratives, the child—less visible, less vocal—is often overlooked. Yet, she contended, the symbolic power attached to children is profound. In Poland, particularly under the rule of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, children have been recast as vessels of moral authority, purity, and national continuity. This symbolic construction is neither neutral nor inclusive. It privileges the “ideal child”—patriotic, Catholic, obedient, and heterosexual—while marginalizing children who do not conform, including those who are queer, politically engaged, or critical of nationalist narratives.

To uncover the mechanics of this symbolic deployment, Jerzyk drew from three intersecting disciplines: populism studies, childhood studies, and the sociology of memory. This triangulated framework enabled her to situate children not merely as political recipients or rhetorical props, but as figures embedded in a contested moral economy shaped by post-communist legacies. Her central questions—why exclusionary populist narratives around children still resonate in Poland, and how these narratives adapt motifs from the communist past—guided a deeply contextual and historically grounded investigation.

One of Jerzyk’s central arguments was that populist discourses, like their communist predecessors, rely on a binary construction of the child: one to be celebrated and one to be feared. Under communism, the ideal child was disciplined, collectivist, and loyal to the socialist cause; deviant children were framed as dangerous, Westernized, and individualistic. In the contemporary populist regime, the ideological content has shifted from socialism to nationalism and traditionalism, yet the structural logic remains intact. The ideal child today symbolizes moral rectitude and cultural belonging, while those who diverge—especially children of migrants or LGBTQ+ youth—are seen as ideological threats, vulnerable to foreign influence and moral decay.

Jerzyk offered a particularly striking illustration of how these dynamics are operationalized through the metaphor of the school. In both communist and populist Poland, schools are treated not only as educational institutions but also as ideological battlegrounds where future citizens are shaped. She referenced archival propaganda films from the 1960s in which children, during summer holidays, were depicted building schools with their own hands—a powerful image of self-disciplining youth serving the state. This motif reappears in contemporary populist discourses where state officials position schools as protective spaces for instilling “proper” values and shielding children from ideological contamination, whether from liberal elites, Western media, or LGBTQ+ advocates.

Methodologically, Jerzyk combined discourse analysis of recent political speeches by Law and Justice (PiS) officials with a close reading of archival media from the communist period. This diachronic approach enabled her to identify what she termed “symbolic recycling,” whereby contemporary populists inherit and reframe motifs from the past to legitimize present anxieties. She provided translated excerpts from speeches and slogans to reveal how moral panics are manufactured and how boundaries are drawn between “our children” and “their children”—a division that mirrors broader populist strategies of inclusion and exclusion.

Throughout her analysis, Jerzyk emphasized that children, though prominently featured in populist discourse, are rarely treated as autonomous political subjects. Drawing on insights from childhood studies, she reminded the audience that children are not merely “citizens in the making,” but existing participants in the political community—albeit frequently denied voice, agency, and representation. This silencing, she argued, is symptomatic of a broader authoritarian dynamic, wherein the child becomes a screen upon which adult anxieties, traumas, and aspirations are projected.

Jerzyk’s intervention was also attentive to the role of historical trauma and memory. She introduced the concept of “post-civic trauma”—a form of collective suffering linked to the legacy of communism—which remains latent in many post-communist societies. In Poland, she argued, this trauma is not only remembered but actively instrumentalized by populist leaders who draw upon Cold War tropes of cultural invasion, Western decadence, and moral crisis to justify repressive policies in education and family life.

She concluded her presentation by reflecting on the structural absence of children’s rights in Poland. Notably, the country lacks an independent ombudsperson for children—a role that is subject to parliamentary appointment and thus highly politicized. This institutional gap, coupled with the widespread belief (echoed in a Polish saying) that “children and fish have no voice,” contributes to a civic environment where children are spoken about but rarely spoken with. This cultural and institutional silencing, Jerzyk suggested, reinforces populist strategies that rely on symbolic purity while stifling actual pluralism.

Jerzyk’s presentation ultimately served as both scholarly analysis and normative appeal. She urged the audience to consider how the child—seemingly apolitical—serves as a powerful vehicle for moral panic, exclusionary nationalism, and cultural nostalgia. Populism, she argued, claims to break with the past, yet it inherits one of the most potent symbols of state ideology: the child. In both past and present, the child remains a “silent symbol,” but the ideological legacies it carries speak volumes.

Her talk thus made a vital contribution to the interdisciplinary goals of the ECPS conference. It not only expanded the scope of populism studies but also foregrounded the ethical and political urgency of treating children as full participants in the democratic project, rather than as mute emblems of contested futures.

Conclusion

Panel IV of the ECPS Conference 2025—Politics of Belonging: Voices and Silencing—brought into sharp focus the nuanced and often overlooked ways in which symbolic and sensory politics shape collective identities under populist and post-authoritarian regimes. Through the interdisciplinary lenses of cultural memory, childhood studies, and affect theory, the panel illuminated how belonging is constructed not only through institutional frameworks, but also through deeply embodied and historically situated experiences. 

Both Dr. Maarja Merivoo-Parro and Maria Jerzyk underscored the persistence of ideological residues from past regimes, highlighting how present populist actors selectively inherit and retool historical narratives to legitimize exclusionary claims. Their work advanced the conference’s broader aim—captured in its title ‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches—by demonstrating that the politics of inclusion and exclusion unfold not only through speeches and ballots, but through scent, schooling, silence, and symbolic order.


 

Note: To experience the panel’s dynamic and thought-provoking Q&A session, we encourage you to watch the full video recording above.

 

Co-chaired by Elia Marzal and Bruno Godefroy, Panel 3, titled "Populist Threats to Constitutional Democracy," featured the EUCODEM team’s critical research on judicial erosion, the misuse of referenda, pro-independence populism, and institutional mechanisms to protect democratic systems.

ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 3 — Populist Threats to Modern Constitutional Democracies and Potential Solutions

Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2025). “ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 3 — Populist Threats to Modern Constitutional Democracies and Potential Solutions.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00105

 

Panel III of the ECPS Conference 2025, held at the University of Oxford, gathered five scholars from the Jean Monnet Chair in European Constitutional Democracy (EUCODEM) at the University of Barcelona to explore how populist forces are challenging liberal-democratic norms—and what institutional remedies might resist them. Chaired by Dr. Bruno Godefroy, the session addressed threats to judicial independence, the populist appropriation of secessionist demands, and the theoretical underpinnings of populism as a political strategy. It also examined the role of parliaments and second chambers in preserving constitutional order. Drawing from both comparative and case-specific perspectives—ranging from Spain and Scotland to Canada and the United States—the panel provided a timely and interdisciplinary diagnosis of populism’s constitutional impact and offered potential avenues for democratic resilience in increasingly polarized societies.

Reported by ECPS Staff

Panel III of the ECPS Conference 2025 at the University of Oxford brought together a group of distinguished scholars from the Jean Monnet Chair in European Constitutional Democracy (EUCODEM) at the University of Barcelona. Titled “Populist Threats to Modern Constitutional Democracies and Potential Solutions,” the session explored some of the most pressing challenges facing contemporary liberal democracies, from the erosion of judicial independence and the weaponization of secessionist demands, to the theoretical foundations of populist strategy and the underutilized potential of second chambers in democratic governance.

Chaired by Dr. Bruno Godefroy, Associate Professor in Law and German at the University of Tours, the panel featured five papers, each delving into different dimensions of populist encroachment on liberal-democratic norms. 

Kicking off the session was Dr. Daniel Fernández, who traced the intellectual lineage of populism through the works of Heidegger, Lacan, and Laclau, offering a conceptual map of populism as a strategic response to post-hegemonic pluralism. Following this, Dr. Marco Antonio Simonelli examined how populist regimes strategically erode judicial independence, using comparative cases from Europe and the United States to illustrate how institutional autonomy can be dismantled under the banner of democratic legitimacy. Dr. Núria González then shifted the focus to secessionist populism, comparing Catalonia and Scotland to argue that the method of pursuing independence—via institutional fidelity or populist defiance—has long-term consequences for democratic cohesion.

In the final two presentations, Dr. Elia Marzal and Dr. Roger Boada explored structural alternatives to populist polarization. Marzal emphasized the Canadian model of parliamentary centrality in mediating secession, while Boada critically assessed Spain’s second chamber as a cautionary tale of underperformance and political vulnerability. 

Collectively, the panel offered a rich interdisciplinary dialogue that blended constitutional theory, comparative jurisprudence, and political analysis—illuminating the risks posed by populism and the democratic pathways that might still be reclaimed.

Daniel FernándezTheoretical Foundations of Modern Populism: Approaches of Heidegger, Lacan and Laclau

At Panel 3 of the ECPS Conference 2025, Dr. Daniel Fernández traced the philosophical roots of modern populism through the thought of Heidegger, Lacan, and Laclau, offering key insights into its impact on contemporary democracies.

Delivered during Panel 3 of the ECPS Conference 2025 at Oxford University, DrDaniel Fernández’s presentation, titled “Theoretical Foundations of Modern Populism: Approaches of Heidegger, Lacan and Laclau,” offered a foundational philosophical and constitutional roadmap for understanding populism’s intellectual lineage and strategic application in contemporary democracies. As Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at Universitat de Lleida, Dr. Fernández situated his intervention as a bridge—from philosophy to political theory to constitutional interpretation—providing the analytical groundwork for subsequent panelists.

The presentation began with a touch of humor and humility, yet what followed was an incisive and ambitious effort to condense a dense intellectual genealogy into a three-part inquiry: (1) What are the philosophical influences on Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of populism? (2) What is the core political question they pose and how do they answer it? (3) Is there a shared constitutional logic underlying populist strategies?

Addressing the first question, Dr. Fernández identified three major philosophical influences: Heidegger, Lacan, and Gramsci. Heidegger’s notion of Dasein—that human understanding is historically and socially embedded—informs Laclau and Mouffe’s rejection of political universals. For them, there is no fixed political subject, no final revolution, and no overarching ideology. Lacan’s theory of constitutive lack, which posits an unfillable void in human identity and language, is transferred by Laclau and Mouffe to the political domain: political identities are never fully complete but instead are formed and reformed through the discursive struggle over “empty signifiers.” Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and Heidegger’s view of politics as conflict converge in Laclau’s core argument that politics is a permanent agonistic struggle for meaning and power, waged through discourse rather than the discovery of objective reality.

Dr. Fernández emphasized that for Laclau and Mouffe, the essential political question—posed most clearly in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy—is how to gain and maintain political power within pluralistic democracies, given the impossibility of universal values or fixed identities. Their answer is populism—not as a regime or ideology, but as a political strategy. This strategy unfolds in three stages: first, constructing an adversary; second, framing this adversary not only as antagonistic but as “agonistic” (posing an existential threat to the group’s inclusion in the public sphere); and third, consolidating hegemony by mobilizing discourse across all spheres of life. Here, Dr. Fernández keenly noted the affective turn in populism: emotions, not rational deliberation, become the engine of mobilization.

The third part of the presentation dealt with constitutional theory. Dr. Fernández asked: Can populism be reconciled with constitutional democracy, or does it entail a fundamental reorientation of constitutional norms? Drawing a distinction between populism in opposition and in power, he observed that the strategy shifts: in opposition, populists seek to stretch and destabilize liberal-democratic institutions, maximize dissent, and bypass intermediaries like parties and media. Once in government, however, they move to restrict dissent, delegitimize checks and balances, and monopolize the exercise of popular sovereignty—while still maintaining the façade of electoral democracy.

Despite these strategic differences, Dr. Fernández identified a common constitutional logic across populist movements. First, populism redefines the people as a unified sovereign entity distinct from the plural citizenry. Sovereignty, under this vision, is not confined to the constituent moment but remains ever-present in the leader or the movement. Second, populists reject representation in favor of embodiment: leaders do not represent the people; they are the people. As such, they seek to dismantle parliamentary authority and concentrate power either directly in “the people” (in opposition) or in the executive (in power). Third, democracy becomes equated with decision, not deliberation. Consensus is abandoned, and constitutions are perceived not as foundational agreements but as constraints to be overcome.

In conclusion, Dr. Fernández offered three takeaways. First, Heidegger, Lacan, and Gramsci’s reconfigurations of self, language, and power deeply inform Laclau and Mouffe’s discursive populism. Second, populism was conceived as a strategy to win power in post-hegemonic, pluralistic societies. And third, while Laclau and Mouffe did not articulate a full constitutional theory, the implementation of their ideas has generated widespread constitutional tension—redefining sovereignty, eroding liberal safeguards, and foregrounding antagonistic leadership.

Dr. Fernández ended with a provocative question: Can democracy endure if political conflict becomes a permanent condition of public life? And more pressingly: Does the constant reproduction of political confrontation eventually create the very discontent that leads to undemocratic solutions? These questions, left deliberately open, invited both scholarly reflection and urgent political introspection.

Marco Antonio Simonelli: Erosion of the Independence of the Judiciary

In Panel 3, Dr. Marco Antonio Simonelli examined how populist regimes are systematically undermining judicial independence in modern constitutional democracies.

In his incisive and sobering presentation titled “Erosion of the Independence of the Judiciary,” Dr. Marco Antonio Simonelli—Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona—offered a deeply legalistic yet politically resonant analysis of the ways judicial independence is being systematically undermined across contemporary constitutional democracies, especially under populist regimes. Taking the audience through a historically grounded, comparative, and multi-level assessment, Dr. Simonelli’s talk demonstrated how the erosion of judicial independence is not an isolated institutional anomaly but part of a broader authoritarian drift within democracies, often legitimized under the rhetoric of popular sovereignty.

Framed as a more strictly legal follow-up to preceding theoretical discussions, Dr. Simonelli’s argument proceeded in three carefully structured stages: first, a conceptual clarification of judicial independence and its role in constitutional democracy; second, an analysis of formal and informal attacks on judicial authority, particularly in populist regimes; and third, a review of possible legal and institutional remedies to protect the judiciary from political capture.

To begin, Dr. Simonelli returned to the roots of the idea of judicial independence in liberal constitutionalism. He invoked Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des Lois and the doctrine of the separation of powers to underscore that limiting government power requires not only legislative-executive separation, but a structurally insulated judiciary. While Montesquieu was cautious of judicial overreach—famously calling judges “the mouth of the law”—his model remained foundational in liberal democratic systems. By contrast, in the American tradition, Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Federalist Papers, viewed the judiciary as the “least dangerous” branch, possessing “neither the purse nor the sword.” Hence, Hamilton championed institutional safeguards such as life tenure and salary protection in Article III of the US Constitution to shield judges from political pressure.

Yet as Dr. Simonelli pointed out, while the US judiciary historically assumed a strong role in the separation of powers (e.g., Marbury v. Madison), in Europe the judiciary was more traditionally envisioned as the guardian of fundamental rights rather than an assertive counterbalance to the legislative and executive branches. Nevertheless, both models assume the indispensability of an independent judiciary for democratic governance.

Dr. Simonelli then provided a working definition of judicial independence, emphasizing structural guarantees like tenure security, impartial appointment processes, financial autonomy, and protection from executive interference. However, he noted that one crucial area of contention—particularly in comparative constitutional law—is the mode of judicial appointment. While European models tend toward merit-based career tracks, often with internal judicial oversight, the US and Latin American systems favor political appointments, raising questions about politicization and dependence.

From this doctrinal foundation, Dr. Simonelli pivoted to his core argument: that judicial independence is increasingly under threat, especially in populist contexts. He traced the roots of skepticism toward judicial power to North American legal scholarship in the 1980s and early 2000s, citing figures like Alexander Bickel and Ran Hirschl, the latter of whom warned against the emergence of juristocracy—a political regime ruled by unelected judges. Although these critiques were initially academic, Dr. Simonelli argued that they anticipated the current populist playbook, in which political leaders present judicial independence as an elitist obstacle to the “will of the people.”

The most visible and documented assaults on judicial independence, according to Dr. Simonelli, have occurred in Hungary and Poland. Beginning with Viktor Orbán’s rise to power in 2010–2011, Hungary launched a series of legislative reforms aimed at undermining judicial autonomy—lowering retirement ages, reshaping judicial councils, and centralizing disciplinary procedures under executive control. Poland followed a similar trajectory. Such formal attacks, Dr. Simonelli warned, are increasingly complemented by informal methods: rhetorical delegitimization, character assassinations of judges, and public discourse that portrays courts as politically motivated actors opposed to national interests.

Yet these dynamics are not limited to Eastern Europe. Citing recent statements from Elon Musk, Nigel Farage, and Donald Trump, Dr. Simonelli showed how even in consolidated democracies like the United States and the UK, public trust in the judiciary is being eroded by populist actors. The US Supreme Court’s declining legitimacy—only 30% of Americans now see it as independent, down from 40% in 2017—illustrates how hyper-politicized appointment processes and media-fueled polarization degrade the judiciary’s democratic function.

Dr. Simonelli emphasized that polarization—social as well as institutional—undermines judicial independence by blocking consensus on appointments and embedding judges within partisan frames. He illustrated this with the example of the Obama administration’s blocked judicial nominations, the Senate’s “nuclear option,” and the ensuing politicization of the Supreme Court. A similar impasse has stalled appointments in Spain, where the Council of the Judiciary has remained deadlocked for six years due to partisan gridlock.

Despite the bleak outlook, Dr. Simonelli concluded on a cautiously optimistic note, outlining a series of institutional remedies. These include (1) diversifying judicial appointment authorities to prevent single-party capture; (2) establishing anti-deadlock mechanisms, such as those adopted in Germany’s 2024 reform of its Constitutional Tribunal; and (3) enhancing judicial transparency, as demonstrated by Italy’s Constitutional Court, which has introduced public-facing programs and amicus curiae participation to build civic trust.

Finally, Dr. Simonelli underscored the importance of multi-level governance in defending judicial independence. The European Union, through the Commission and the Court of Justice, played a decisive role in resisting the collapse of judicial autonomy in Poland and, to a lesser extent, Hungary. He noted that events such as the 2025 Budapest Pride march—unthinkable without EU pressure—demonstrate the restraining influence of supranational frameworks.

In closing, Dr. Simonelli offered a pointed reminder: judicial independence is not a technocratic luxury, but the backbone of constitutional democracy. As populist movements challenge liberal norms under the banner of “the people,” defending the judiciary’s autonomy becomes not merely a legal imperative but a democratic one.

Núria González: Pro-Independence Movements as A Populist Way Out in Multinational Contemporary Societies

Dr. Núria González analyzed how pro-independence movements in liberal democracies often adopt populist strategies within a constitutional framework.

In her sharp and comparative presentation titled “Pro-Independence Movements as a Populist Way Out in Multinational Contemporary Societies” Dr. Núria González, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona, explored the constitutional dimensions and populist inflections of secessionist movements in liberal democracies. Using Catalonia (2017) and Scotland (2014–2022) as her principal cases, Dr. González drew a compelling contrast between two pro-independence movements operating under liberal democratic conditions but adopting strikingly different approaches to law, institutional legitimacy, and democratic procedure.

Dr. González positioned her contribution at the intersection of constitutional law and populism. She acknowledged the conceptual ambiguity surrounding the term “populism,” but emphasized that, for constitutional lawyers, populism is identifiable when political leaders directly challenge counter-majoritarian institutions—especially courts—and circumvent established legal procedures. This framing set the analytical tone: populism, she argued, is less about ideological content and more about a mode of political action that undermines institutional and legal restraints.

Her analysis focused first on the Catalan case. Beginning in 2012, Catalonia’s regional government, led by a coalition of pro-independence parties, pursued a referendum on secession from Spain. Their public discourse framed the initiative in emotionally resonant but legally simplistic terms—slogans like “voting is normal” and “this is about democracy” dominated the narrative. However, Dr. González underscored that referenda on secession are far from “normal” or common practice in constitutional democracies, citing examples where such votes have been banned or severely restricted (e.g., the United States, Germany, Italy, and Spain). While Canada and the UK permitted such referenda under specific political conditions, they remain legal exceptions, not norms.

Spain’s constitutional framework poses significant hurdles to unilateral secession. Article 1.2 of the Spanish Constitution declares that national sovereignty resides in the Spanish people as a whole, and Article 2 affirms the “indissoluble unity” of the Spanish nation. Furthermore, while the Spanish Constitutional Court recognizes the legitimacy of advocating for independence, it insists that such goals can only be pursued through formal constitutional amendments, which require supermajoritarian support—effectively an institutional safeguard to ensure broad consensus on foundational changes.

Despite these constraints and repeated rulings from both the Spanish Constitutional Court and the Catalan High Court, the Catalan Parliament in 2017 passed two laws aimed at authorizing a referendum and initiating the creation of a Catalan republic. These laws were approved by an absolute parliamentary majority—72 out of 135 seats—but Dr. González emphasized that this majority represented only 48% of the Catalan electorate. The laws not only violated the Spanish Constitution but also contravened Catalonia’s own Statute of Autonomy, which requires a two-thirds majority for amendments. In her view, this episode revealed a populist strategy: a deliberate bypassing of legal constraints and institutional warnings in favor of majoritarian, identity-driven mobilization.

The Catalan leadership’s decision to proceed with the October 2017 referendum—despite judicial prohibitions—constituted, in Dr. González’s interpretation, a textbook example of populist defiance of counter-majoritarian institutions. She stressed that this confrontational approach exacerbated societal polarization in Catalonia, leaving deep political and social wounds that persist today.

In contrast, Dr. González turned to the Scottish case, which she presented as an example of institutional fidelity within a liberal democratic framework. The 2014 Scottish referendum on independence was legally permitted, politically negotiated, and constitutionally authorized. The UK’s constitutional flexibility—grounded in parliamentary sovereignty and an uncodified constitutional order—enabled the central government to temporarily amend the Scotland Act of 1998, thereby granting the Scottish government the authority to organize the referendum.

What is remarkable, Dr. González argued, is the political and institutional maturity with which the UK handled the question of secession. Even political actors historically opposed to devolution, like Margaret Thatcher, publicly acknowledged Scotland’s right to self-determination. The referendum was made possible not through legal defiance but through democratic consensus and negotiated legal channels.

She then addressed the more recent episode in 2022, when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon sought to organize a second referendum following Brexit. Sturgeon proposed a non-binding, consultative referendum, hoping to remain within Scotland’s devolved competencies. However, rather than proceeding unilaterally, the Scottish Government submitted the bill to the UK Supreme Court for pre-emptive judicial review. The Court ruled that even an advisory referendum on secession would have significant political and legal consequences, and thus exceeded the Scottish Parliament’s competencies. The Scottish response, Dr. González emphasized, was telling: rather than defy the Court, Sturgeon publicly accepted the ruling and sought alternative democratic strategies—such as treating future elections as de facto referenda.

This difference in legal and political comportment forms the crux of Dr. González’s argument. She concluded that the Scottish case illustrates a constitutionalist approach to secession—one that respects institutional boundaries, legal clarity, and the rule of law—while the Catalan case demonstrates a populist pattern: the instrumentalization of democratic language to circumvent constitutional norms and foster antagonistic “us vs. them” dynamics.

Her final reflection was pointed and poignant: one of the reasons Catalonia remains more polarized and socially fractured than Scotland, she argued, lies in the different paths their leaders chose. Where Scottish leaders pursued independence through institutional loyalty and negotiated democracy, Catalan leaders opted for a populist route that prioritized emotional mobilization over constitutional legality.

In sum, Dr. González’s comparative inquiry provided not just a legal diagnosis but also a normative caution: in multinational democracies, how secessionist claims are pursued matters as much as the claims themselves. Populism, in this context, is not defined by aspirations to independence, but by the willingness to defy the constitutional framework that makes democracy possible.

Elia Marzal: The Role of Parliaments in Secession Referenda — Canadian Doctrine and Consensus Democracy in Decision-Making Processes

In Panel 3, Dr. Elia Marzal offered a constitutional and theoretical reassessment of how liberal democracies should respond to secessionist claims.

In her presentation, Dr. Elia Marzal, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona, offered a jurisprudentially grounded and theoretically expansive reconsideration of how liberal democracies should approach secessionist claims. Focusing on the Canadian experience, Dr. Marzal argued that parliamentary institutions—not referenda—ought to be central in mediating territorial disputes in heterogeneous states. Far from endorsing referenda as inherently democratic instruments, she challenged their assumed neutrality and democratic legitimacy in contexts marked by pluralism and constitutional complexity.

Drawing on the landmark 1998 opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada and the subsequent Clarity Act (2000), Dr. Marzal demonstrated that Canada’s constitutional response to the Quebec question has been widely misunderstood. While often cited by secessionist movements as a liberal precedent that affirms the legitimacy of independence referenda, a closer reading of the Court’s reasoning reveals a more nuanced reality. Dr. Marzal emphasized that the Canadian framework is not referendum-centered but rather designed around parliamentary mediation, institutional pluralism, and procedural complexity.

At the core of the 1998 ruling, Dr. Marzal observed, lies an effort to reconcile the tension between legality and legitimacy: the former grounded in constitutional norms and the latter in democratic aspirations for self-determination. The Court did not resolve this tension through a simple endorsement of popular vote; instead, it laid out a multilayered process of negotiation involving federal and provincial institutions, subnational governments, and other relevant actors, including indigenous communities. In this model, Parliament assumes a pivotal role, functioning both as arbiter and guarantor of institutional legitimacy.

This centrality of Parliament was later codified in the Clarity Act, which grants the Canadian federal Parliament the authority to determine whether a referendum question is clear and whether the resulting majority is sufficient to warrant negotiations. Dr. Marzal interpreted this not as a marginal procedural safeguard but as a fundamental assertion of parliamentary sovereignty in a context where democratic legitimacy must be constructed—not assumed.

To underscore the continuing relevance and challenges of this model, Dr. Marzal examined more recent developments in Canadian federalism, including Alberta’s Sovereignty Act (2022) and ongoing debates in Quebec about adopting mechanisms to shield the province from federal interference. While these provincial initiatives invoke the rhetoric of autonomy, she warned that they risk distorting the spirit of the Canadian legal framework by deploying legal tools in service of unilateralism rather than institutional dialogue.

Dr. Marzal then turned to the United Kingdom’s 2022 Supreme Court opinion concerning the Scottish Government’s push for a second independence referendum. Much like in Canada, the UK Court affirmed that constitutional change must proceed through legislative authorization—reaffirming Parliament’s role as the central forum for constitutional adjudication. In both jurisdictions, she noted, courts have recognized that the legitimacy of secessionist claims cannot be divorced from institutional frameworks designed to represent the full diversity of the polity.

The theoretical foundation of Dr. Marzal’s analysis draws from social choice theory and public choice theory. Social choice theory, she explained, underscores the inherent limitations of aggregating individual preferences through majoritarian mechanisms such as referenda. Public choice theory, by contrast, highlights the difficulties of reaching legitimate outcomes in contexts of high polarization and affirms the need for decision-making processes that secure genuine consent.

In Dr. Marzal’s interpretation, the Canadian Supreme Court’s 1998 opinion was not merely a judicial ruling but a constitutional design effort—an attempt to construct a deliberative, consensus-oriented model of democratic legitimacy. This model resists the populist impulse to collapse complexity into binary choices and instead affirms that legitimacy arises from the interaction of diverse institutions, procedures, and actors within a pluralist constitutional order.

Two key conclusions emerged from her analysis. First, the legitimacy of decisions concerning secession is directly proportional to the complexity and inclusivity of the procedures used to reach them. The more divisive the issue, the more robust and multilateral the process must be. Second, Dr. Marzal stressed that in such high-stakes contexts, democracy cannot be reduced to the will of a singular “people.” Rather, it must be reimagined as a process of consensus-building through representative, pluralistic, and deliberative institutions—chief among them, Parliament.

In closing, Dr. Marzal called for a reorientation of secession debates away from populist and plebiscitary framings and toward the rich, if demanding, tradition of consensus democracy. By restoring parliamentary centrality and institutional dialogue to the heart of democratic decision-making, she argued, states can respond to secessionist claims in a manner that is both constitutionally sound and democratically legitimate.

Roger Boada: Potential Solutions: Second Chambers, Demos and Majoritarian Body

n Panel 3, Dr. Roger Boada explored the role of second chambers and majoritarian bodies as potential institutional solutions to strengthen contemporary constitutional democracies.

In his presentation titled “Potential Solutions: Second Chambers, Demos and Majoritarian Body,” Dr. Roger Boada, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona, examined the theoretical and institutional potential of second chambers in contemporary constitutional democracies. While the title suggested a broad comparative analysis, Dr. Boada offered a focused and critical assessment of the Spanish Senate, using it as a case study to reflect on wider questions of democratic representation, constitutional design, and the institutional containment of populism.

Dr. Boada began by situating bicameralism within a broader normative framework. He noted that the traditional rationale behind second chambers is rooted in an anti-populist impulse: the belief that the demos cannot be adequately represented by a single, majoritarian legislative body. A second chamber, in this context, is meant to reflect social and territorial pluralism, provide a space for sober second thought, and moderate legislative impulses driven by fleeting popular majorities. In federal or quasi-federal systems, this usually manifests as a “territorial chamber” intended to provide representation for constituent units such as states or regions.

Dr. Boada traced the constitutional debates in Spain during the transition to democracy in the late 1970s, where two competing visions for the Senate were considered. The first envisioned the Senate as a territorial chamber, echoing the model of the US Senate or the German Bundesrat, where subnational units are given a participatory role in national decision-making. The second envisioned it as a moderating or revising chamber, inspired more by the British House of Lords, with a focus on reflection and legislative oversight. Ultimately, Dr. Boada argued, the Spanish Constitution opted for the latter, despite Article 69.1’s declaration that the Senate is the “Chamber of territorial representation.”

To support this claim, Dr. Boada examined both the powers and composition of the Senate. Functionally, the Spanish Senate has few competencies that would distinguish it from the lower chamber (the Congress of Deputies) in territorial matters. It plays no unique role in approving or amending the statutes of autonomy—the foundational legal texts of Spain’s autonomous communities. Nor does it serve as a regular venue for intergovernmental dialogue or conflict mediation between the central government and the regions. The sole exception is Article 155 of the Constitution, which allows the Senate to authorize coercive measures against an autonomous community in cases of serious constitutional violation—a power used only once, during the Catalan crisis of 2017.

Dr. Boada then turned to the composition of the Senate, which further undermines its claim to territorial representativeness. The majority of senators are elected on a provincial basis, but provinces in Spain have no political autonomy; only the autonomous communities do. Moreover, only around 20% of senators are appointed by regional parliaments, and even these appointees tend to act along national party lines rather than representing regional interests per se. In practice, Dr. Boada noted, senators—whether elected or appointed—do not behave in ways that distinguish them as representatives of territorial constituencies. The dominance of political parties within the Senate further undermines any distinctive regional function.

Given these institutional realities, Dr. Boada concluded that the Spanish Senate functions far more like a revising or moderating chamber than a federal or territorial one. However, even in this role, its influence is limited. The Senate can veto legislation or propose amendments, but both actions can be easily overridden by the Congress of Deputies. Its legislative productivity is marginal: only 15 bills originating in the Senate have become law since 1978. Nor does it carry the auctoritas that characterizes second chambers in some other parliamentary systems, such as the British House of Lords.

Dr. Boada observed a curious paradox in recent Spanish politics. Since 2023, the Senate has been under the control of the opposition party (the centre-right Partido Popular), while the Congress remains governed by a fragile left-leaning majority. This political asymmetry has led the Senate to assume a more assertive, oppositional role—issuing legislative vetoes, initiating constitutional conflicts, and acting as a de facto counterweight to the executive. However, this newfound assertiveness has not been met with institutional reinforcement. On the contrary, Dr. Boada showed that the governing majority in Congress has responded by curtailing some of the Senate’s powers—for instance, altering budgetary procedures and reducing its influence in public media governance.

This dynamic, Dr. Boada warned, reflects a structural vulnerability: when second chambers become politically inconvenient, their limited powers may be further weakened rather than reimagined or bolstered. The Senate’s increased activity has not translated into increased legitimacy or capacity, but rather into institutional backlash.

In concluding, Dr. Boada offered two critical reflections. First, the Spanish Senate does not currently fulfill the functions traditionally ascribed to second chambers—neither as a robust territorial forum nor as a meaningful legislative check. Second, any serious conversation about the role of second chambers in pluralist democracies must grapple with political realities: without constitutional guarantees of autonomy, representativeness, or procedural weight, second chambers risk becoming either symbolic appendages or targets of majoritarian retrenchment.

In sum, Boada’s presentation used the Spanish Senate as a lens through which to explore the broader question of how institutional design can (or cannot) accommodate pluralism, resist populist simplification, and enhance democratic resilience. His analysis called for a reassessment of second chambers not merely as institutional relics, but as potentially vital—if currently underdeveloped—sites for democratic negotiation in divided societies.

Conclusion

Panel III of the ECPS Conference 2025 delivered a rich, interdisciplinary examination of the constitutional vulnerabilities exposed by the rise of populism and proposed forward-looking strategies for democratic resilience. Across five presentations, the panelists offered a powerful synthesis of theory, case law, and comparative analysis, moving beyond abstract critiques to address the institutional mechanics of populist encroachment and possible legal remedies.

Several core insights emerged. First, Dr. Daniel Fernández’s philosophical excavation of populism underscored its strategic use of antagonism, identity construction, and constitutional disruption. Far from being ideologically neutral, populism reconfigures the meaning of democracy—reducing it to majoritarian assertion and executive embodiment. Second, Dr. Marco Antonio Simonelli highlighted the structural erosion of judicial independence, not only in Eastern Europe but across established democracies, where populist leaders increasingly frame courts as elite obstacles to the popular will. His analysis of institutional safeguards and multi-level governance revealed both the fragility and critical importance of judicial autonomy.

Third, Dr. Núria González’s comparative study of Catalonia and Scotland illuminated the profound difference in democratic outcomes when secessionist claims are pursued through populist defiance versus constitutional fidelity. Complementing this, Dr. Elia Marzal’s intervention re-centered the role of parliaments in secession debates, urging a shift from plebiscitary to deliberative models of democracy rooted in institutional pluralism. Finally, Dr. Roger Boada’s critique of the Spanish Senate exposed the risks of symbolic institutionalism in the face of populist pressure and underscored the need to reinvigorate second chambers as meaningful forums for territorial representation and legislative restraint.

Together, the panelists made clear that constitutional democracies must adapt not by mimicking populist rhetoric, but by renewing institutional frameworks that enable inclusion, negotiation, and complexity. In an age of polarization, democratic endurance depends not just on resisting populism—but on designing systems capable of absorbing and transforming it.


 

Note: To experience the panel’s dynamic and thought-provoking Q&A session, we encourage you to watch the full video recording above.

Alina Utrata, Murat Aktaş, Luana Mathias Souto and Matilde Bufano explore how artificial intelligence, digital infrastructures, and Big Tech influence democratic participation, redefine 'the people,' and challenge gender rights and state foundations in the digital age.

ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 2 — “The People” in the Age of AI and Algorithms

Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2025). “ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel 2 — “The People” in the Age of AI and Algorithms.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00104

 

Panel II: “‘The People’ in the Age of AI and Algorithms” explored how digital technologies and algorithmic infrastructures are reshaping democratic life. Co-chaired by Dr. Alina Utrata and Professor Murat Aktaş, the session tackled questions of power, exclusion, and political agency in the digital age. Together, their framing set the stage for two timely papers examining how algorithmic filtering, platform capitalism, and gendered data practices increasingly mediate who is counted—and who is excluded—from “the people.” With insight and urgency, the session called for renewed civic, academic, and regulatory engagement with the democratic challenges posed by artificial intelligence and transnational tech governance.

Reported by ECPS Staff

As our technological age accelerates, democracy finds itself in an increasingly precarious position—buffeted not only by illiberal politics but also by opaque digital infrastructures that quietly shape how “the people” see themselves and others. Panel II, titled “The People in the Age of AI and Algorithms,” explored how artificial intelligence, social media, and digital governance are reconfiguring the foundations of democratic life. Far from being neutral tools, these technologies actively structure political subjectivity, reshape the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and deepen existing inequalities—often with little accountability.

This timely and incisive session of the ECPS Conference at the University of Oxford, held under the title “‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches” between July 1-3, 2025, was co-chaired by Dr. Alina Utrata, Career Development Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute and St John’s College, Oxford University, and Professor Murat Aktaş from the Department of Political Science at Muş Alparslan University, Turkey. Together, they provided complementary perspectives that grounded the panel in both international political theory and real-world geopolitical shifts.

Dr. Alina Utrata opened the session by noting how technology corporations—many based in the United States and particularly in Silicon Valley—play a crucial role in shaping today’s political landscape. Referencing recent headlines such as Jeff Bezos’s wedding, she pointed to the growing entanglement between cloud computing, satellite systems, and global power dynamics. She emphasized the importance of discussing AI in this context, particularly given the intense debates currently taking place in academia and beyond. Her remarks framed the session as an opportunity to critically engage with timely questions about artificial intelligence and digital sovereignty, and she welcomed the speakers’ contributions to what she described as “these thorny questions.”

Professor Murat Aktaş, in his opening remarks, thanked the ECPS team and contributors, describing the panel topic as seemingly narrow but in fact deeply relevant. He observed that humanity is undergoing profound changes and challenges, particularly through digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence. These developments, he suggested, are reshaping not only our daily lives but also the future of society. By underlining the transformative impact of these technologies, Aktaş stressed the importance of discussing them seriously in this panel.

The panel brought together two compelling papers that tackled these questions from interdisciplinary and intersectional perspectives. Dr. Luana Mathias Souto examined how digital infrastructures exacerbate gender exclusion under the guise of neutrality, while Matilde Bufano explored the political dangers of AI-powered filter bubbles and the rise of the “Broliarchy”—a new digital oligarchy with profound implications for democratic governance.

Together, the co-chairs and presenters animated a rich discussion about how emerging technologies are not only transforming democratic participation but also reshaping the very concept of “the people.”

Dr. Luana Mathias Souto: Navigating Digital Disruptions — The Ambiguous Role of Digital Technologies, State Foundations and Gender Rights

In her powerful presentation, Dr. Luana Mathias Souto (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, GenTIC, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) analyzed how digital technologies, often portrayed as neutral and empowering, are increasingly used as instruments of exclusion, surveillance, and patriarchal control—especially targeting women.

In her compelling presentation, Dr. Luana Mathias Souto, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the GenTIC Research Group, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, examined how digital technologies—often framed as neutral tools of empowerment—are increasingly functioning as mechanisms for exclusion, surveillance, and patriarchal reinforcement, particularly against women. Her ongoing research critically interrogates how the foundational elements of statehood—sovereignty, territory, and people—are being redefined by the digital age in ways that intersect with illiberal ideologies and gender-based exclusion.

Dr. Souto opened by historicizing the exclusion of women from the category of “the people,” a structural pattern dating back centuries, and argued that this exclusion is not alleviated but rather exacerbated in the digital era. Drawing from feminist critiques and Global South scholarship, she explored how data flows and digital infrastructures decouple sovereignty from territoriality, complicating legal protections for individuals across borders. The concept of “digital sovereignty,” she noted, allows powerful private actors—particularly US-based tech giants—to co-govern people’s lives without accountability or democratic oversight. This dynamic renders traditional state functions increasingly porous and contested, especially in terms of enforcing regulations like the EU’s GDPR against surveillance practices rooted in the US legal and security regime.

Central to Dr. Souto’s argument is the idea that digital fragmentation not only challenges state sovereignty but also disrupts the cohesion of the political subject—the “people.” This fragmentation is manifested in what she called “divisible individuals,” where digital identities are reduced to segmented data profiles, often shaped by discriminatory algorithms. Despite the proclaimed neutrality of data, these systems encode longstanding social biases, particularly around gender. Dr. Souto emphasized how digital infrastructures—designed predominantly by male, white technocrats—perpetuate sexist norms and deepen women’s exclusion from political recognition.

She devoted particular attention to FemTech (female technology), highlighting apps that track menstruation, ovulation, and sexual activity. While marketed as tools of empowerment, Dr. Souto argued these technologies facilitate new forms of surveillance and control over women’s bodies. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, data from such apps have reportedly been used in criminal investigations against women seeking abortions. Similar practices have emerged in the UK, where antiquated laws are invoked to justify digital searches of women’s phones. Beyond legal threats, FemTech data has also been exploited in employment contexts, where employers potentially use reproductive data to make discriminatory decisions about hiring or promotions.

Dr. Souto linked these practices to broader alliances between tech elites and anti-gender, illiberal movements. By promoting patriarchal values under the guise of neutrality and innovation, tech companies offer a platform for regressive gender ideologies to take root. This fusion of technological governance with far-right agendas—exemplified by calls for “masculine energy” in Silicon Valley—is not incidental but part of a broader effort to rebrand traditional hierarchies within supposedly apolitical spaces.

In conclusion, Dr. Souto called for a fundamental challenge to the presumed neutrality of digital technologies. She argued that reclaiming democratic space requires recognizing how digital infrastructures actively shape who is counted as part of “the people”—and who is excluded. Without such critical engagement, the digital revolution risks reinforcing the very forms of patriarchal and illiberal governance it once promised to transcend.

Matilde Bufano: The Role of AI in Shaping the People — Big Tech and the Broliarchy’s Influence on Modern Democracy

In a thought-provoking presentation, Matilde Bufano (MSc, International Security Studies, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies / University of Trento) explored the complex interplay between AI, social media infrastructures, and the weakening of democratic norms in the era of Big Tech.

In a sobering and richly analytical presentation, Matilde Bufano, MSc in International Security Studies at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and the University of Trento, examined the deeply intertwined relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), social media infrastructures, and the erosion of democratic norms in the age of Big Tech. Her paper, “The Role of AI in Shaping the People: Big Tech and the Broliarchy’s Influence on Modern Democracy,” offered a timely, practice-oriented reflection on how algorithmic technologies—far from being neutral tools—play a crucial role in shaping public consciousness, manipulating democratic engagement, and amplifying societal polarization. Drawing from her dual background in international law and digital politics, Bufano delivered a cross-disciplinary critique that challenged both policy complacency and academic detachment in the face of AI-driven democratic disruption.

At the heart of Bufano’s analysis lies a powerful assertion: democracy is not only threatened from outside by illiberal regimes or authoritarian populism, but also from within, through the algorithmic architecture of digital platforms that increasingly mediate how citizens engage with one another and with politics. The COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bufano, marked an inflection point. As physical interaction gave way to a digital public sphere, citizens became more dependent than ever on technology for information, identity, and even emotional validation. This shift coincided with an intensification of algorithmic curation, wherein AI systems selectively filter, promote, or suppress information based on user behavior and platform profitability.

Bufano focused on two key mechanisms underpinning this dynamic: algorithmic filtering and algorithmic moderation. Algorithmic filtering sorts through vast quantities of online content using coded preferences—ostensibly for user relevance, but in practice to optimize engagement and advertising revenue. This results in the formation of “filter bubbles,” echo chambers where users are continually exposed to like-minded content, reinforcing existing beliefs and psychological biases. Bufano distinguished between collaborative filtering—which groups users based on shared demographics or behavioral traits—and content-based filtering, which recommends material similar to what a user has previously interacted with. Both reinforce a feedback loop of ideological reinforcement, generating a form of identity-based gratification that discourages critical engagement and cross-cutting dialogue.

Crucially, this personalization is not politically neutral. Bufano demonstrated how algorithmic design often prioritizes sensationalist and polarizing content—particularly disinformation—because of its virality and ability to prolong user attention. Ninety percent of disinformation, she argued, is constructed around out-group hatred. In this context, algorithmically curated media environments deepen societal cleavages, producing a form of affective polarization that goes beyond ideological disagreement and encourages personal animosity and even dehumanization of political opponents. This is especially visible in contexts of crisis, such as during the pandemic, when scapegoating of Asian communities proliferated through local Facebook groups, or in the use of conspiracy theories and “phantom mastermind” narratives to channel social discontent toward imagined enemies.

The political consequences of this trend are severe. Filter bubbles inhibit democratic deliberation and increase susceptibility to manipulation by foreign and domestic actors. Bufano cited examples such as Russian disinformation campaigns in Romania, illustrating how AI-driven social media platforms can serve as conduits for election interference, especially when publics are already fragmented and mistrustful of institutions. These risks are magnified by a dramatic rollback in fact-checking infrastructures—most notably in the United States, where 80% of such systems were dismantled after Trump’s presidency, and mirrored in countries like Spain.

Bufano introduced the concept of the Broliarchy—a portmanteau of “bro” and “oligarchy”—to describe the growing political influence of a narrow cadre of male tech billionaires who control the infrastructure of digital discourse. No longer confined to private enterprise, these actors now exert direct influence on public policy and regulation, blurring the boundary between democratic governance and corporate interest. She illustrated this with the example of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X), which led to a 50% increase in hate speech within weeks due to weakened content moderation policies. Such developments, Bufano warned, compromise democratic accountability and entrench anti-democratic values under the guise of free expression and innovation.

While Bufano acknowledged the European Union’s recent steps toward regulation—especially the Digital Services Act (DSA), which seeks to promote transparency and safety in content recommendation systems—she emphasized the limitations of regional legislation in a global digital ecosystem. AI remains a “black box,” inaccessible to users and regulators alike. Without global accountability frameworks, national or regional efforts risk being outpaced by platform evolution and cross-border data flows.

In conclusion, Bufano made a dual appeal. First, for institutional and legal reforms capable of subjecting algorithmic systems to democratic oversight, including mandatory transparency in how recommender systems operate. Second, for renewed civic engagement and media literacy among citizens themselves. Democracy, she reminded the audience, cannot be fully outsourced to algorithms or regulators. It requires a culture of critical reflection and active participation—both online and offline. Reclaiming this space from the Broliarchy, she argued, means not only resisting disinformation and polarization, but reimagining democratic communication in ways that are inclusive, pluralistic, and resistant to both technological and ideological capture.

Bufano’s presentation, blending empirical insight with normative urgency, underscored the need for interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing one of the most urgent challenges of our time: how to ensure that digital technologies serve, rather than subvert, the democratic ideal.

Conclusion

Panel II of the ECPS Conference 2025, “The People in the Age of AI and Algorithms,” offered a powerful and urgent exploration of how digital infrastructures are reshaping the foundations of democratic life. As the presenters compellingly demonstrated, artificial intelligence, algorithmic governance, and platform capitalism are not passive tools but active agents that shape political subjectivities, influence public opinion, and determine who is included in or excluded from the category of “the people.” Across both presentations, a clear throughline emerged: digital technologies, while often framed in terms of neutrality and innovation, are in fact deeply embedded in structures of inequality, bias, and elite power.

Dr. Luana Mathias Souto illuminated how digital technologies intersect with patriarchal norms to undermine gender rights and state sovereignty, showing how the global tech ecosystem facilitates new forms of surveillance and control over women. Matilde Bufano, in turn, unpacked the algorithmic logic behind political polarization and democratic backsliding, naming the emergence of the “Broliarchy” as a key actor in this process. Together, their insights revealed a troubling paradox: while democracy should enable broad participation and dissent, the very platforms that now mediate political life often amplify exclusion and entrench concentrated power.

Rather than offering despair, the panel ended on a call to action. Both speakers urged the need for democratic oversight, global regulation, and enhanced digital literacy to reclaim public space and political agency in the algorithmic age. As AI technologies continue to evolve, so too must our frameworks for accountability, inclusion, and democratic resilience.


 

Note: To experience the panel’s dynamic and thought-provoking Q&A session, we encourage you to watch the full video recording above.

SummerSchool

ECPS Academy Summer School — Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders (July 7-11, 2025)

Are you interested in global political affairs? Do you wish to learn how to draft policy recommendations for policymakers? Are you seeking to broaden your knowledge under the guidance of leading experts, looking for an opportunity to exchange views in a multicultural, multidisciplinary environment, or simply in need of a few extra ECTS credits for your studies? If so, consider applying to the ECPS Summer School. The European Centre for Populism Studies (ECPS) invites young individuals to participate in a unique opportunity to evaluate the relationship between populism and climate change during a five-day Summer School led by global experts from diverse backgrounds. The Summer School will be interactive, enabling participants to engage in discussions in small groups within a friendly atmosphere while sharing perspectives with the lecturers. You will also take part in a Case Competition on the same subject, providing a unique experience to develop problem-solving skills through collaboration with others under tight schedules. 

Overview

Climate change intersects with numerous issues, transforming it into more than just an environmental challenge; it has developed into a complex and multifaceted political issue with socio-economic and cultural dimensions. This intersection makes it an appealing topic for populist politicians to exploit in polarizing societies. Therefore, with the rise of populist politics globally, we have seen climate change increasingly become part of the populist discourse. 

Populist politics present additional barriers to equitable climate solutions, often framing global climate initiatives as elitist or detrimental to local autonomy. Thus, populism in recent years has had a profound impact on climate policy worldwide. This impact comprises a wide spectrum, from the climate skepticism and deregulation policies of leaders like Donald Trump to the often-contradictory stances of left-wing populist movements. 

We are convinced that this pressing issue not only requires an in-depth understanding but also deserves our combined effort to seek solutions. Against this backdrop, we are pleased to announce the ECPS Summer School on “Populism and Climate Change: Understanding What Is at Stake and Crafting Policy Suggestions for Stakeholders”, which will be held online from 7 to 11 July 2025. This interdisciplinary five-day program has two primary objectives: a) to explore how both right-wing and left-wing populist movements approach the issue of climate change and how they influence international cooperation efforts and local policies, and b) to propose policy suggestions for stakeholders to address the climate change crisis, independent of populist politics. 

We aim to critically examine the role of populism in shaping climate change narratives and policies; provide a platform for exploring diverse political ideologies and their implications for climate action; and foster a deeper understanding of the tension between economic, political, and environmental interests in both right and left-wing populist movements. Critically engaging with the key conclusions from the Baku Conference on climate justice and populism (2024), we will particularly look at the impact of authoritarian and populist politics in shaping climate governance. 

Methodology

The program will take place on Zoom, consisting of two sessions each day and will last five days. The lectures are complemented by small group discussions and Q&A sessions moderated by experts in the field. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with leading scholars in the field as well as with activists and policymakers working at the forefront of these issues.

Furthermore, this summer school aims to equip attendees with the skills necessary to craft policy suggestions. To this end, a Case Competition will be organized to identify solutions to issues related to climate change and the environment. Participants will be divided into small groups and will convene daily on Zoom to work on a specific problem related to the topic of populism and climate change. They are expected to digest available literature, enter in-depth discussions with group members and finally prepare an academic presentation which brings a solution to the problem they choose. Each group will present their policy suggestions on the final day of the programme to a panel of scholars, who will provide feedback on their work. The groups may transform their presentations into policy papers, which will be published on the ECPS website. 

Topics will include:

  • Climate justice: global dichotomy between developed and developing countries 
  • Local responses from the US, Europe, Asia and the Global South
  • Eco-colonialism, structural racism, discrimination and climate change
  • Populist narratives on sustainability, energy resources and climate change
  • Climate migration and populist politics
  • Climate, youth, gender and intergenerational justice
  • Eco-fascism, climate denial, economic protectionism and far-right populism
  • Left-wing populist discourse, climate activism and the Green New Deal
  • Technological advancement and corporate responsibility in climate action.

Program Schedule and Lecturers 

Monday, July 7, 2025

Lecture One: (15:00-16:30) Far-right and Climate Change

Lecturer: Bernhard Forthchner (Associate Professor at the School of Art, Media and Communication, University of Leicester).  

Moderator: Sabine Volk (Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism (IRex), Tübingen University).

Lecture Two: (17:30-19:00) — Climate Justice and Populism

Lecturer: John Meyer (Professor of Politics, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt).

Moderator: Manuela Caiani (Associate Professor in Political Science, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy).

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Lecture Three: (15:00-16:30) –– Climate Change, Food, Farmers, and Populism

Lecturer: Sandra Ricart (Assistant Professor at the Environmental Intelligence for Global Change Lab, at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy).

Moderator: Vlad Surdea-Hernea (Post-doctoral Researcher, Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna).

Lecture Four: (17:30-19:00) — Ideology Meets Interest Group Politics: The Trump Administration and Climate Mitigation

Lecturer: Daniel Fiorino (Professor of Politics and Director at the Centre for Environmental Policy, American University). 

Moderator: Azize Sargın (PhD., Director of External Relations, ECPS).

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Lecture Five: (15:00-16:30) — Art, Climate, and Populism

Lecturer: Heidi Hart (Arts Researcher, Nonresident Senior Fellow at ECPS).

Moderator: João Ferreira Dias (Researcher, Centre for International Studies, ISCTE) (TBC)

Lecture Six: (17:30-19:00) — Populist Discourses on Climate and Climate Change

Lecturer: Dr. Eric Swyngedouw (Professor of Geography, University of Manchester). 

Moderator: Jonathan White (Professor of Politics, LSE).

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Lecture Seven: (15:00-16:30) —Climate Change, Natural Resources and Conflicts

Lecturer: Philippe Le Billon (Professor of Political Geography at the University of British Columbia).

Moderator: Mehmet Soyer (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Utah State University).

Lecture Eight: (17:30-19:00) — Climate Change Misinformation: Supply, Demand, and the Challenges to Science in a “Post-Truth” World

Lecturer: Stephan Lewandowsky (Professor of Psychology, University of Bristol).

Moderator: Neo Sithole (Research Fellow, ECPS)

Friday, July 11, 2025

Lecture Nine: (17:30-19:00) — Populist Narratives on Sustainability, Energy Resources and Climate Change

Lecturer: Robert Huber (Professor of Political Science Methods, University of Salzburg).

Moderator: Susana Batel (Assistant Researcher and Invited Lecturer at University Institute of Lisbon, Center for Psychological Research and Social Intervention).

Who should apply?

This course is open to master’s and PhD level students and graduates, early career researchers and post-docs from any discipline.  The deadline for submitting applications is June 16, 2025. The applicants should send their CVs to the email address ecps@populismstudies.org with the subject line: ECPS Summer School Application.

We value the high level of diversity in our courses, welcoming applications from people of all backgrounds. 

As we can only accept a limited number of applicants, it is advisable to submit applications as early as possible rather than waiting for the deadline. 

Evaluation Criteria and Certificate of Attendance

Meeting the assessment criteria is required from all participants aiming to complete the program and receive a certificate of attendance. The evaluation criteria include full attendance and active participation in lectures.

Certificates of attendance will be awarded to participants who attend at least 80% of the sessions. Certificates are sent to students only by email.

Credit

This course is worth 5 ECTS in the European system. If you intend to transfer credit to your home institution, please check the requirements with them before you apply. We will be happy to assist you; however, please be aware that the decision to transfer credit rests with your home institution.


 

Brief Biographies and Abstracts

 

Day One: Monday, July 7, 2025

Far-right and Climate Change

Bernhard Forchtner is an associate professor at the School of Arts, Media, and Communication, University of Leicester (United Kingdom), and has previously worked as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany), where he conducted a project on far-right discourses on the environment (2013-2015, project number 327595). His research focuses on the far right and, in particular, the far right’s multimodal environmental communication. Publications include the two edited volumes The Far Right and the Environment (Routledge, 2019) and Visualising Far-Right Environments (Manchester University Press, 2023).

Abstract: This lecture will offer an overview of the current state of research on the far right and climate change (with a focus on Europe), considering both political parties and non-party actors. The lecture will discuss both general trends of and the dominant claims employed in climate communication by the far right. In so doing, it will furthermore highlight longitudinal (affective) changes and will discuss the far right’s visual climate communication (including its gendered and populist dimension).

Reading list

Ekberg, K., Forchtner, B., Hultman, M. and Jylhä, K. M. (2022). Climate Obstruction. How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet. Routledge. pp. 1-20 (Chapter 1: ‘Introduction’) and 69-94 (Chapter 4: ‘The far right and climate obstruction’).

– ‘The far right and climate obstruction’ offers a review of research on the far right and climate change, while ‘Introduction’ provides a general conceptual model of how to think about different modes of climate obstruction.

Forchtner, B. and Lubarda, B. (2022): Scepticisms and beyond? A comprehensive portrait of climate change communication by the far right in the European Parliament. Environmental Politics, 32(1): 43–68.

– The article analyses climate change communication by the far right in the European Parliament between 2004 and 2019, showing which claims have been raised by these parties and how they have shifted over time.

Schwörer, J. and Fernández-García, B. (2023): Climate sceptics or climate nationalists? Understanding and explaining populist radical right parties’ positions towards climate change (1990–2022). Political Studies, 72(3): 1178-1202.

The article offers an analysis of manifestos of Western European political parties, illustrating salience and positioning over three decades.

 

Climate Justice and Populism

John M. Meyer is Professor in the Departments of Politics and Environmental Studies at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. As a political theorist, his work aims to help us understand how our social and political values and institutions shape our relationship with “the environment,” how these values and institutions are shaped by this relationship, and how we might use an understanding of both to pursue a more socially just and sustainable society. Meyer is the author or editor of seven books. These include the award-winning Engaging the Everyday: Environmental Social Criticism and the Resonance Dilemma (MIT, 2015) and The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford, 2016). From 2020-2024, he served as editor-in-chief of the international journal, Environmental Politics.

Abstract: Many have argued that an exclusionary conception of “the people” and a politicized account of scientific knowledge and expertise make populism a fundamental threat to effective action to address climate change. While this threat is very real, I argue that it often contributes to a misguided call for a depolicitized, consensus-based “anti-populist” alternative. Climate Justice movements can point us toward a more compelling response. Rather than aiming to neutralize or circumvent the passions elicited by populism, it offers the possibility of counter-politicization that can help mobilize stronger climate change action. Here, an inclusive conception of “the people” may be manifest as horizontal forms of solidarity generated by an engagement with everyday material concerns.

Reading List

John M. Meyer. (2025).  “How (not) to politicise the climate crisis: Beyond the anti-populist imaginary,” with Sherilyn MacGregor. Politische Vierteljahresschrift.

John M. Meyer. (2024). “The People; and Climate Justice: Reconceptualising Populism and Pluralism within Climate Politics,” Polity.

John M. Meyer. (2024). Power and Truth in Science-Related Populism: Rethinking the Role of Knowledge and Expertise in Climate Politics, Political Studies.

Additional Recent Readings

Driscoll, Daniel. (2023). “Populism and Carbon Tax Justice: The Yellow Vest Movement in France.” Social Problems, 70 (1): 143–63. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spab036 

Lucas, Caroline, and Rupert Read. (2025). “It’s Time for Climate Populism.” New Statesman (blog). February 7, 2025. https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2025/02/its-time- for-climate-populism 

White, Jonathan. (2023). “What Makes Climate Change a Populist Issue?” Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment Working Paper, no. No. 401 (September). https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/working-paper-401-White.pdf.

 

Day Two: Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Delving into European’ Farmers Protests and Citizens’ Attitudes Towards Agriculture in a Climate Change Context: Insights from policy and populism

Sandra Ricart is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Intelligence Lab at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She holds a PhD in Geography – Experimental Sciences and Sustainability by the University of Girona, Spain, in 2014 and performed postdoctoral stays at the University of Alicante (Spain), Università degli Studi di Milano and the Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (France), and Wageningen University and Research (Netherlands). She was an invited professor at the Landcare Research Centre in New Zealand and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a human-environment geographer, her research focuses on climate change narratives and behavior from farmers’ and stakeholders’ perspectives, delving into how social learning and behavior modelling can be combined to enhance adaptive capacity, robust decision-making processes and trusted policy co-design. Dr. Ricart co-authored more than sixty publications, attended several international conferences, and participated in a dozen international and national research projects. Sandra serves as Assistant Editor of the International Journal of Water Resources Development and PLOS One journal, and she is an expert evaluator by the European Commission and different national research councils.

Abstract: Though there are national differences, farmers across Europe are generally upset about dropping produce prices, rising fuel costs, and competition from foreign imports, but are also concerned by the painful impacts of the climate crisis and proposed environmental regulations under the new CAP and the European Green Deal. These common challenges motivated, in 2024, a series of protests from the Netherlands to Belgium, France, Spain, Germany and the UK, with convoys of tractors clogging roads and ports, farmer-led occupations of capital cities and even cows being herded into the offices of government ministers. Farmers have felt marginalised as they feel overburdened by rules and undervalued by city dwellers, who tend to eat the food they grow without being much interested in where it came from. In this context, farmers started to receive increasing support from a range of far-right and populist parties and groups, who aim to crystallise resentment and are bent on bringing down Green Deal environmental reforms. This talk will delve into the reasons behind farmers’ protests and the link with populism, providing examples, as well as an analysis of citizens’ perspectives on agriculture and climate change strategies, which will enrich the debate on the nexus between policy and populism.

Reading List

Special Eurobarometer 538 Climate Change – Report, 2023, Available here: https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2954 

Special Eurobarometer 556 Europeans, Agriculture, and the CAP – Report, 2025. https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3226

Zuk, P. (2025). “The European Green Deal and the peasant cause: class frustration, cultural backlash, and right-wing nationalist populism in farmers’ protests in Poland.” Journal of Rural Studies, 119:103708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103708

Newspapers

What’s behind farmers’ protests returning to the streets of Brussels? https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/05/19/whats-behind-farmers-protests-returning-to-the-streets-of-brussels

Rural decline and farmers’ anger risks fuelling Europe’s populism. https://www.friendsofeurope.org/insights/frankly-speaking-rural-decline-and-farmers-anger-risks-fuelling-europes-populism/

From protests to policy: What is the future for EU agriculture in the green transition? https://www.epc.eu/publication/From-protests-to-policy-What-is-the-future-for-EU-agricultre-57f788/

Farmer Protests and the 2024 European Parliament Elections https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2024/number/2/article/farmer-protests-and-the-2024-european-parliament-elections.html

Neoliberal Limits – Farmer Protests, Elections and the Far Right. https://www.arc2020.eu/neoliberal-limits-farmer-protests-elections-and-the-far-right/

Green policies, grey areas: Farmers’ protests and the environmental policy dilemma in the European Union. http://conference.academos.ro/node/1467

How the far right aims to ride farmers’ outrage to power in Europe. https://www.politico.eu/article/france-far-right-farmers-outrage-power-europe-eu-election-agriculture/

 

Ideology Meets Interest Group Politics: The Trump Administration and Climate Mitigation

Daniel J. Fiorino teaches environmental and energy policy at the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC, and is the founding director of the Center for Environmental Policy. Before joining American University in 2009, he served in the policy office of the US Environmental Protection Agency, where he worked on various environmental issues. His recent books include Can Democracy Handle Climate Change? (Polity Press, 2018); A Good Life on a Finite Earth: The Political Economy of Green Growth (Oxford, 2018); and The Clean Energy Transition: Policies and Procedures for a Zero-Carbon World (Polity, 2022). He is currently writing a book about the US Environmental Protection Agency. 

Abstract: The rise of right-wing populism around the world constitutes one of the principal challenges to climate mitigation policies. The defining characteristics of right-wing populism are distrust of scientific expertise, resistance to multilateral problem-solving, and strong nationalism. Climate mitigation involves a reliance on scientific and economic expertise, an openness to multilateral problem-solving, and setting aside nationalist tendencies in favor of international cooperation. At the same time, the Republican Party in the United States maintains a strong affiliation with the interests of the fossil fuel industry. These two factors have led to a Trump administration that is hostile to climate mitigation and participation in global problem-solving. This presentation examines the policies of the Trump administration with respect to climate mitigation and the effects of a right-wing populist ideology when combined with the historical alliance of the Republican Party with the interests of the fossil fuel industry.

Reading List

Fiorino, D. J. (2022). “Climate change and right-wing populism in the United States.” Environmental Politics, 31(5), 801–819. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.2018854

Huber, R.A. (2020). “The role of populist attitudes in explaining climate scepticism and support for environmental protection.” Environmental Politics, 29 (6), 959–982. doi:10.1080/09644016.2019.1708186

Lockwood, M. (2018). “Right-wing populism and the climate change agenda: exploring the contradictions.” Environmental Politics, 27 (4), 712–732. doi:10.1080/09644016.2018.1458411

 

Day Three: Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Art Attacks: Museum Vandalism as a Populist Response to Climate Trauma?

Heidi Hart (Ph.D. Duke University 2016) is a Nonresident Senior Resident (Climate and Environment) with ECPS. She is also a guest instructor in environmental humanities at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Her books include studies of climate grief, sound and music in climate- crisis narrative, and the destruction of musical instruments in ecological context.

Abstract: This lecture explores activist vandalisation of museum artworks, acts that draw attention to the climate emergency as they both subjugate human-made artworks and create new layers of visual and performative aesthetics. “Art Attacks” describes examples of recent art vandalism and subsequent academic responses, most of which remain ambivalent about the effectiveness of art destruction for the sake of ecological awareness. Two questions arise when investigating these interventions: do the actors involved function as environmental populists, as Briji Jose and Renuka Shyamsundar Belamkar have postulated (2024), and are they driven by a sense of climate trauma, a question informed by Katharine Stiles’ work on trauma’s role in destructive forms of art-making (2016)? Answering the first question requires looking at arguments against the convergence of populism and environmentalism and finding places where they do in fact overlap “in unconventional, problematic, and surprising ways” (ECPS Dictionary of Populism). Answering the second question leads to an exploration of how the climate emergency is experienced and mediated as trauma (Kaplan 2016, Richardson 2018). This lecture argues that an embodied sense of present and future emergency can indeed lead to a creative-destructive nexus of climate action, useful even in its ambivalence, in what Bruno Latour has termed “iconoclash” (2002).

Reading List

Jose, Briji and Renuka Shyamsundar Belamkar. (2024). “Art of Vandalism: A Response by Environmental Populists.” In: J. Chacko Chennattuserry et al., Editors, Encyclopedia of New Populism and Responses in the 21st Century. Springer Singapore, 2024, DOI 10.1007/978-981-99-7802-1.

Richardson, Michael. (2018). “Climate Trauma, or the Affects of the Catastrophe to Come.” Environmental Humanities, 10:1 (May 2018), DOI 10.1215/22011919-4385444.

Teixeira da Silva, Jaime A. (2023). “Is the Destruction of Art a Desirable Form of Climate Activism?” Environmental Smoke 6:1 (2023), DOI 10.32435/envsmoke. 20236173-77.

 

The Climate Deadlock and The Unbearable Lightness of Climate Populism

Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at The University of Manchester, UK and Senior Research Associate of the University of Johannesburg Centre for Social Change, South Africa. He holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Roskilde University and the University of Malmö. He works on political ecology, critical theory, environmental and emancipatory politics. He is the author of, among others, Promises of the Political: Insurgent Cities in a Post-Democratic Environment (MIT Press), Liquid Power: Contested Hydro-Modernities in 20th Century Spain (MIT Press) and Social Power and the Urbanisation of Nature (Oxford University Press). He is currently completing a book (with Prof. Lucas Pohl) entitled Enjoying Climate Change (Verso).

Abstract: Over the past two decades or so, the environmental question has been mainstreamed, and climate change, in particular, has become the hard kernel of the problematic environmental condition the Earth is in. Nonetheless, despite the scientific concern and alarmist rhetoric, the climate parameters keep eroding further. We are in the paradoxical situation that ‘despite the fact we know the truth about climate change, we act as if we do not know’. This form of disavowal suggests that access to and presence of knowledge and facts do not guarantee effective intervention. This presentation will argue that the dominant depoliticised form of climate populism can help to account for the present climate deadlock, and will suggest ways of transgressing the deadlock.

My presentation focuses on what I refer to as Climate Populism. We argue that climate populism is not just the prerogative of right-winged, xenophobic, and autocratic elite and their supporters, but will insist on how climate populism also structures not only many radical climate movements but also the liberal climate consensus. I argue that the architecture of most mainstream as well as more radical climate discourses, practices, and policies is similar to that of populist discourses and should be understood as an integral part of a pervasive and deepening process of post-politicisation. Mobilising a process that psychoanalysts call ‘fetishistic disavowal’, the climate discourse produces a particular form of populism that obscures the power relations responsible for the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. I shall mobilise a broadly Lacanian-Marxist theoretical perspective that permits accounting for this apparently paradoxical condition of both acknowledging and denying the truth of the climate situation, and the discourses/practices that sustain this.

Reading List

Swyngedouw E. (2010) “Apocalypse Forever? Post-Political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change”, Theory, Culture, Society, 27(2-3): 213-232.

Swyngedouw E. (2022) “The Depoliticised Climate Change Consensus.” In: Pellizzoni L., Leonardi E., Asara V. (Eds.) Handbook of Critical Environmental Politics. E. Elgar, London, pp. 443-455.

Swyngedouw E. (2022) “The Unbearable Lightness of Climate Populism.” Environmental Politics, 31(5), pp. 904-925. DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2022.2090636

Jonathan White is Professor of Politics at the London School of Economics.  Books include In the Long Run: the Future as a Political Idea (Profile Books, 2024), Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2019), and – with Lea Ypi – The Meaning of Partisanship (Oxford University Press, 2016).

 

Day Four: Thursday, July 10, 2025

Climate Change, Natural Resources and Conflicts

Philippe Le Billon is a professor of political geography and political ecology at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining UBC, he was a Research Associate with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and worked with environmental and human rights organisations. His work engages with linkages between environment, development and security, with a focus on extractive sectors. He currently works with environmental defenders, including on small-scale fisheries and the ‘green transition’.

 Abstract: This lecture examines how the rise of populist politics is reshaping the nexus between climate change, natural resources, and conflicts. As climate impacts intensify, populist leaders across the political spectrum have exploited environmental anxieties, fueling nationalist rhetoric, weakening environmental regulations, and framing green transitions as elite-driven agendas. This has deepened social divisions and contributed to violent responses to both fossil fuel extraction and climate mitigation projects. The lecture will explore how populist regimes often repress environmental defenders, delegitimise scientific consensus, and stoke resentment against marginalised groups, further aggravating conflict dynamics. Case studies will illustrate how populism can exacerbate resource-related tensions, undermine international cooperation, and stall urgent climate action. The session will conclude with policy recommendations to counteract these trends, including democratic safeguards, support for “leave-it-in-the-ground” campaigns, and stronger protections for environmental activists. Ultimately, this talk highlights the urgent need to confront populist narratives in the pursuit of climate justice and conflict prevention.

 

Climate Change Misinformation: Supply, Demand, and the Challenges to Science in a “Post-Truth” World

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol, whose main interest lies in the pressure points between the architecture of online information technologies and human cognition, and the consequences for democracy that arise from these pressure points.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council, a Wolfson Research Merit Fellowship from the Royal Society, and a Humboldt Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science (UK) and a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science. He was appointed a fellow of the Committee for Sceptical Inquiry for his commitment to science, rational inquiry and public education. He was elected to the Leopoldina (the German national academy of sciences) in 2022. Professor Lewandowsky also holds a Guest Professorship at the University of Potsdam in Germany. He was identified as a highly cited researcher in 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Clarivate, a distinction that is awarded to fewer than 0.1% of researchers worldwide.

His research examines the consequences of the clash between social media architectures and human cognition, for example, by researching countermeasures to the persistence of misinformation and spread of “fake news” in society, including conspiracy theories, and how platform algorithms may contribute to the prevalence of misinformation. He is also interested in the variables that determine whether or not people accept scientific evidence.
 He has published hundreds of scholarly articles, chapters, and books, with more than 200 peer-reviewed articles alone since 2000. His research regularly appears in journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications, and Psychological Review. (See www.lewan.uk for a complete list of scientific publications.)

His research is currently funded by the European Research Council, the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, the UK research agency (UKRI, through EU replacement funding), the Volkswagen Foundation, Google’s Jigsaw, and by the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) Mercury Project.

Professor Lewandowsky also frequently appears in print and broadcast media, having contributed approximately 100 opinion pieces to the global media. He has been working with policymakers at the European level for many years, and he was the first author of a report on Technology and Democracy in 2020 that has helped shape EU digital legislation.

Abstract: I examine both the “supply side” and “demand side” of climate denial and the associated “fake news”. On the supply side, I report the evidence for the organised dissemination of disinformation by political operatives and vested interests, and how the media respond to these distortions of the information landscape. On the demand side, I explore the variables that drive people’s rejection of climate science and lead them to accept denialist talking points, with a particular focus on the issue of political symmetry. The evidence seems to suggest that denial of science is primarily focused on the political right, across a number of domains, even though there is cognitive symmetry between left and right in many other situations. Why is there little evidence to date of any association between left-wing political views and rejection of scientific evidence or expertise? I focus on Merton’s (1942) analysis of the norms of science, such as communism and universalism, which continue to be internalised by the scientific community, but which are not readily reconciled with conservative values. Two large-scale studies (N > 2,000 altogether) show that people’s political and cultural worldviews are associated with their attitudes towards those scientific norms, and that those attitudes in turn predict people’s acceptance of scientific. The norms of science may thus be in latent conflict with a substantial segment of the public. Finally, I survey the options that are available to respond to this fraught information and attitude landscape, focusing on consensus communication and psychological inoculation.

Reading List

Cook, J., van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., & Lewandowsky, S. (2018). The Consensus Handbook. DOI:10.13021/G8MM6P.

Sinclair, A. H., Cosme, D., Lydic, K., Reinero, D. A., Carreras-Tartak, J., Mann, M., & Falk, E. B. (2024). Behavioural Interventions Motivate Action to Address Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/x3wsb

Lewandowsky, S. (2021). Climate Change Disinformation and How to Combat It. Annu Rev Public Health. 42:1-21. Doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-090419-102409. Epub 2021 Dec 23. PMID: 33355475

Hornsey, M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2022). “A toolkit for understanding and addressing climate scepticism.” Nature Human Behaviour, 6(11), 1454–1464. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01463-y

 

Day Five: Friday, July 11, 2025

Populist Narratives on Sustainability, Energy Resources and Climate Change

Robert A. Huber is a Professor of Political Science Methods at the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg. He earned his PhD from ETH Zurich in 2018. Prior to joining the University of Salzburg, Robert served as a lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. Additionally, he holds the position of co-editor-in-chief at the European Journal of Political Research and the Populism Seminar. Robert’s primary research focus revolves around examining how globalisation poses new challenges to liberal democracy. Utilising state-of-the-art methods, he investigates areas such as trade policy, climate and environmental politics, and populism. His work has been featured in journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, and Political Analysis.

Abstract: With climate change being a central challenge for humankind and far-reaching action being necessary, populists have decided to position themselves against climate change. But what is it about populists that makes them take this stance? And is it just a political show or rooted in their worldview? This lecture scrutinises how populism, thick ideological leaning and contextual factors lead to climate sceptic positions among populist parties. We also reflect on whether this translates to the citizen level.

Reading List

Forchtner, Bernhard, and Christoffer Kølvraa. (2015). “The Nature of Nationalism: Populist Radical Right Parties on Countryside and Climate.” Nature and Culture, 10 (2): 199–224. https://doi.org/10.3167/nc.2015.100204.

Huber, Robert A., Tomas Maltby, Kacper Szulecki, and Stefan Ćetković. (2021). “Is Populism a Challenge to European Energy and Climate Policy? Empirical Evidence across Varieties of Populism.” Journal of European Public Policy, 28 (7): 998–1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1918214.

Lockwood, Matthew. (2018). “Right-Wing Populism and the Climate Change Agenda: Exploring the Linkages.” Environmental Politics, 27 (4): 712–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1458411.

Zulianello, Mattia, and Diego Ceccobelli. (2020). “Don’t Call It Climate Populism: On Greta Thunberg’s Technocratic Ecocentrism.” The Political Quarterly, 91 (3): 623–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12858.

Roundtable I of the ECPS–Oxford Conference 2025, held on July 1–3 at St Cross College, was titled “Politics of the ‘People’ in Global Europe.” Chaired by Professor Jonathan Wolff, the session featured presentations by Professor Martin Conway, Professor Aurelien Mondon, and Professor Luke Bretherton.

ECPS Conference 2025 / Roundtable I — Politics of the ‘People’ in Global Europe

Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2025). “ECPS Conference 2025 / Roundtable I — Politics of the ‘People’ in Global Europe.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00103

 

Held at the University of Oxford on July 1, 2025, Roundtable I of the ECPS Conference launched the discussions of “‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy.” Chaired by Professor Jonathan Wolff, the session explored how “the people” is constructed, contested, and deployed in contemporary European and global politics. Presentations by Professors Martin Conway, Aurelien Mondon, and Luke Bretherton examined the historical resurgence of popular politics, the elite-driven narrative of the “reactionary people,” and the theological dimensions of populism. Together, the contributions offered a nuanced, interdisciplinary account of how populism’s democratic and anti-democratic potentials shape the political imagination and institutional realities of the 21st century.

Reported by ECPS Staff

Roundtable I of the ECPS Conference, hosted at the University of Oxford on July 1-3, 2025, brought together leading scholars to explore the shifting meanings and political uses of “the people” in contemporary Europe and beyond. Titled “Politics of the ‘People’ in Global Europe,” this session opened the in-person component of the Conference “‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy,” an interdisciplinary initiative addressing the democratic backsliding, populist resurgence, and the pathways toward civic resilience in the 21st century.

Chaired by Professor Jonathan Wolff (Senior Research Fellow, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford; President, Royal Institute of Philosophy), the roundtable featured three distinguished speakers: Professor Martin Conway (University of Oxford), Professor Aurelien Mondon (University of Bath), and Professor Luke Bretherton (University of Oxford). Their presentations tackled the historical re-emergence of “the people” as a political category, the elite construction of the so-called reactionary public, and the theological undercurrents of populist discourse—particularly in relation to Christianity.

Taken together, the presentations demonstrated that “the people” is not a static or universally democratic force. Rather, it is a flexible and contested category, often constructed, instrumentalized, and redefined by elites, political movements, and media systems. While it can serve as a source of democratic renewal—as in historical instances of resistance to authoritarian regimes—it can also be mobilized to undermine pluralism, dismantle institutions, and sacralize exclusionary forms of nationalism.

The roundtable emphasized that populism is neither inherently democratic nor inherently authoritarian. Its normative direction depends on how “the people” are imagined, who is included or excluded, and whether political participation is broadened or curtailed. The session challenged participants to move beyond reductive narratives that blame “the people” for democratic erosion, instead urging deeper inquiry into how elites, ideologies, and media infrastructures shape public discourse and democratic practice.

As Europe and its transatlantic partners grapple with polarized electorates, declining trust in institutions, and re-enchanted political imaginaries, understanding the politics of “the people” remains central to safeguarding and reimagining democratic life in our time.

Professor Martin Conway: “The Reappearance of ‘The People’ in European Politics”

Professor Martin Conway (far right), Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Oxford, delivers his talk titled “The Reappearance of ‘The People’ in European Politics” during Roundtable I of the ECPS–Oxford Conference 2025.

In his compelling presentation, Martin Conway, Professor of Contemporary European History, University of Oxford, explored the reemergence and reconfiguration of “the people”in contemporary European politics. He framed his remarks within a broader intellectual and historical reflection on democratic transformation and political disruption, noting that current anxieties about populism echo earlier eras of upheaval in European history.

Professor Conway began by acknowledging what he termed a prevailing “liberal anxiety”—a sense of unease about the future of democracy that has come to define our political moment. This anxiety, articulated by many mainstream figures including Baroness Royall and commentators like Timothy Garton Ash, reflects a broader fear that democracy is moving in a precarious or even regressive direction. Conway noted that this sentiment contrasts sharply with the optimism of two decades ago, when history was assumed to be progressing in a linear, liberal-democratic trajectory. The shift, he argued, is not unprecedented; similar concerns were widespread in Europe on the eve of the revolutions of 1848. Today, we once again live in a period marked by ambient pessimism and apprehension about what lies ahead.

Several structural transformations underpin this shift, according to Professor Conway. First, he pointed to the stagnation and decline of living standards across much of Europe. While there are exceptions—such as regions in Spain or Poland—many Europeans have experienced over a decade of economic insecurity, eroding the sense of progress and stability that once undergirded liberal democratic institutions. This economic fragility, exacerbated by global market forces and the retreat of the welfare state, has deeply unsettled large segments of society, particularly small businesses, farmers, and precarious workers.

A second, related transformation is the collapse of analog political structures and their replacement by digital media environments. Professor Conway emphasized that the move to digital communication has “anarchized” political debate by weakening the traditional channels—such as party structures and deliberative institutions—that previously organized and moderated political participation. What has emerged in their place is a more fragmented, volatile, and emotionally charged political space.

Beyond these socio-economic and technological shifts, Professor Conway focused on a deeper historical development: the breakdown of a stable model of disciplined, representative democracy that had defined much of postwar Europe. This model, characterized by proportional representation, enduring party systems, and a deeply embedded political elite, ensured predictability and continuity. Politicians might lose a seat in parliament, but often resurfaced in other public roles—“never losing the chauffeur-driven car,” as Professor Conway wryly observed, referencing Belgian politics.

Today, according to Conway, that model is under strain. Challenger parties—often short-lived, leader-centric, and ideologically fluid—have emerged across Europe. They range from the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang to leftist, Maoist-rooted movements in Belgium and populist coalitions in Italy. These parties often lack coherent platforms but are united in their appeal to “the people” as a reactive force. Their rise reflects the erosion of elite control and the democratization—but also destabilization—of political life.

Populism, Professor Conway argued, is the label most often applied to this phenomenon. However, he warned that historians are justifiably skeptical of the term. While political scientists like Cas Mudde have successfully theorized populism as a “thin ideology,” historians are more attuned to national contexts, ideological distinctions, and historical specificity. The danger, Conway suggested, lies in collapsing all anti-establishment movements into a single, undifferentiated category, thereby overlooking the distinct traditions—secular, religious, leftist, rightist—that shape each movement.

Nonetheless, Professor Conway underscores that populism, for all its analytical imprecision, captures a genuine insurgent reality: the reassertion of “the people” in forms that diverge significantly from the norms of 20th-century political action. These new forms of engagement are often marked by a rejection of institutional decorum, a distrust of expertise, and the rise of emotionally driven, male-dominated political performances that are less about coherent goals and more about expressive, affective protest.

This shift from rational deliberation to emotional expression—what Professor Conway termed “a change in the musical key of European politics”—is both a cultural and political transformation. It reflects not only structural changes in how politics is conducted, but also the symbolic and psychological reorientation of “the people” as a force both feared and romanticized. Whereas 1989 symbolized the disciplined, hopeful advance of freedom through mass protest in Eastern Europe, today’s mobilizations often appear to many observers as erratic, exclusionary, and disruptive.

Professor Conway underscored that the liberal political class has responded by building rhetorical and institutional defenses—what he called “anti-popular politics.” These include efforts to create legal buffers against referenda, avoid direct electoral challenges, and portray populist movements as inherently irrational, racist, or manipulated by shadowy online forces. Yet such reactions, he warned, risk becoming elitist and anti-democratic in themselves.

In his closing reflections, Professor Conway posed several critical questions: Why did we assume that history would progress smoothly and democratically? Why do we dismiss the democratic potential embedded in disruptive and turbulent popular movements? And crucially, why are we so unwilling to recognize that today’s “people,” for all their volatility, remain committed to democratic participation—albeit in forms unfamiliar and uncomfortable to the liberal imagination?

The reappearance of “the people” in European politics, Professor Conway concluded, should not be seen merely as a threat. Rather, it presents an opportunity—if approached critically and constructively—to rethink the boundaries, forms, and aspirations of democracy in 21st-century Europe.

Professor Aurelien Mondon: “The Construction of the Reactionary People”

Donald Trump’s supporters wearing “In God We Trump” shirts at a rally in Bojangles’ Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 2, 2020. Photo: Jeffrey Edwards.

In his incisive presentation, “The Construction of the Reactionary People,” Aurelien Mondon, Professor of Politics, University of Bath, critically unpacked the prevailing narrative that positions contemporary far-right and authoritarian populism as an authentic expression of the will of “the people.” Drawing on over 15 years of research, Professor Mondon challenged the assumption that the so-called “reactionary people” are an organic democratic force. Instead, he argued that this concept is largely an elite-driven construction—a top-down narrative shaped by media, political actors, and intellectuals.

Professor Mondon began by distinguishing between two problematic “P” words: populism and the people. He cautioned against the overuse and imprecision of populism as a catch-all term, which, he argued, has distracted scholars and commentators from a more meaningful analysis of democracy. Instead, he emphasized the importance of critically interrogating how the people are represented, invoked, and constructed in political discourse—especially in reactionary and exclusionary ways.

Central to Professor Mondon’s argument is the idea that the figure of the reactionary people—often depicted as the “white working class” or “the left behind”—has been strategically constructed by elite discourse to justify regressive political shifts. Citing the rhetoric of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, Mondon highlighted how these elite actors positioned themselves as champions of ordinary people, despite their wealth and elite status. For example, in a speech delivered shortly after the Brexit vote and just before Trump’s election in 2016, Farage drew a direct connection between disaffected Welsh voters and the American rust belt, constructing a transatlantic narrative of popular revolt. Yet, as Professor Mondon pointed out, this framing was less about listening to real grievances and more about legitimizing reactionary, often xenophobic agendas under the guise of popular will.

Empirically, Professor Mondon’s research—particularly in collaboration with Dr. Aaron Winter—demonstrates that the supposed mass support of the white working class for Brexit and Trump has been overstated or misrepresented. Their studies of electoral data reveal that lower-income individuals were in fact less likely to support Trump or Brexit. Many abstained from voting altogether, and among those who did vote, a significant proportion supported establishment candidates such as Hillary Clinton or remained skeptical of nationalist populism. Trump’s and Brexit’s bases, according to the presentation of Professor Mondon, were more accurately characterized by middle- and upper-income voters, including older property owners—groups not typically considered “left behind” in any meaningful socioeconomic sense.

Yet this data was widely ignored in mainstream discourse. Prestigious media outlets—from Newsweek and The Guardian to The Washington Post and Harvard Business Review—repeatedly promoted the notion that the rise of Trump and Brexit reflected the voice of the working-class majority. Professor Mondon emphasized that political scientists, journalists, and commentators across the spectrum helped entrench this myth. In doing so, they lent legitimacy to exclusionary and reactionary politics, even while claiming to merely reflect public sentiment.

Importantly, Professor Mondon warned that this elite narrative has real consequences. It racializes the working class by equating working-class identity with whiteness, thereby excluding ethnic minorities and immigrants who are themselves often working-class. It naturalizes racism by framing it as an inevitable response to economic hardship, rather than a political choice or a construct of political elites. And it normalizes regressive politics by presenting them as the authentic voice of a democratic majority.

This construction is, to Professor Mondon, continually reinforced by media coverage. For example, recent violent anti-migrant demonstrations in the UK were portrayed by outlets like the BBC as expressions of legitimate, working-class anger—despite the racist and xenophobic nature of the acts. The BBC even apologized for calling the far-right Reform Party “far-right.” Similarly, headlines after these riots claimed they were driven by “economic grievances,” offering justification rather than critique.

Professor Mondon challenged this narrative with data from Eurobarometer surveys, which show a stark gap between what people say matters to them personally—such as healthcare, jobs, and education—and what they perceive as problems for the country—typically immigration, a perception shaped by media and political discourse. During the 2016 Brexit campaign, for example, immigration emerged as a top concern at the national level, but it barely registered as a personal priority. This discrepancy reveals the power of media agenda-setting and elite framing in constructing “public opinion.”

Professor Mondon further questioned why only certain actors are granted the status of “the people.” Those protesting for climate action, racial justice, or trans rights are often dismissed as “elite,” “woke,” or “naïve.” Meanwhile, racist protestors, anti-migrant agitators, or conservative culture warriors are hailed as representing “real people” with “legitimate concerns.” Even billionaire authors like J.K. Rowling, or politicians like Farage and Trump, are cast as victims of elite suppression and defenders of democratic expression.

This discursive bias shapes policy outcomes. Both conservative and center-left parties—such as Labour under Keir Starmer—justify rightward shifts in immigration and cultural policy by claiming they are responding to “the people’s” demands. Yet, Professor Mondon argued, such moves are often preemptive responses to media-generated moral panics rather than genuine democratic pressures. The result is a cycle in which reactionary politics are platformed and amplified, while progressive movements are marginalized.

In concluding, Professor Mondon offered several urgent recommendations. First, we must stop exaggerating the electoral strength of the far right and critically interrogate low voter turnout and political disengagement. Second, we should resist euphemizing reactionary politics as “populism”—if a policy is racist or authoritarian, it should be named as such. Third, we must reject the reflex to blame “the people” for the democratic crisis, and instead scrutinize how power, media, and elite discourse mediate public knowledge and shape perceptions. Finally, Professor Mondon called for a critical reassessment of liberalism’s role in enabling far-right resurgence. Liberal elites’ failure to address inequality, racism, and disenfranchisement has contributed to the very crisis they now lament.

Rather than discarding “the people” as a dangerous force, Professor Mondon argued, scholars and policymakers must engage more honestly with the democratic potential of the broader population. The challenge lies not in taming the people, but in confronting the forces that construct reactionary myths in their name.

Professor Luke Bretherton: “Christianity in A Time of Populism”

A man clasps his hands in prayer during the opening ceremonies of President Donald Trump’s “Keep America Great” rally at the Wildwoods Convention Center in Wildwood, New Jersey, on January 28, 2020. Photo by Benjamin Clapp.

In his presentation, Luke Bretherton, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, offered a nuanced theological and political analysis of populism, with particular attention to its relationship with Christianity. Rather than treating populism solely as a pathological deviation from democratic norms—as is common in much of the European and North American literature— Professor Bretherton argued that populism is a perennial and ideologically fluid component of democratic life. Populism, he suggested, oscillates between democratic and anti-democratic forms, each shaping the political terrain in profound, and at times, conflicting ways.

Professor Bretherton opened by critiquing the dominant academic and journalistic lens through which populism is often viewed—namely, as an aberration associated with far-right, anti-immigrant movements. This narrow interpretation, he argued, overlooks historical and global instances of populism as vehicles of democratization, such as the Solidarity movement in Poland, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and even populist peasant movements like La Vía Campesina. He emphasized that populism’s ideological indeterminacy makes it resistant to clear categorization on the traditional left-right spectrum, functioning instead as a vessel for diverse, often contradictory, political projects.

According to Professor Bretherton, populism’s complexity lies in its dual potential: it can either renew democratic life or corrode it. Drawing on the work of Margaret Canovan and Ernesto Laclau, Bretherton explained that populism arises from tensions internal to democracy itself, particularly between its redemptive promise—rule by the people—and its pragmatic reality, in which elite negotiation and institutional mediation often dominate. When the redemptive aspect is perceived to have been lost, populist movements emerge to reclaim it, often invoking the language of purity, moral renewal, and direct representation.

To differentiate forms of populism, Professor Bretherton proposed a typology contrasting democratic populism with anti-democratic populismDemocratic populism seeks to broaden political participation, construct shared moral vocabularies, and nurture long-term, deliberative engagement. It builds institutions, invests in civic education, and aims to create pluralistic forms of common life. Examples include community organizing movements like Citizens UK or the early American Populist movement of the late 19th century, which drew on religious traditions to foster democratic deliberation.

By contrast, anti-democratic populism, according to Professor Bretherton, simplifies political space through exclusion and dichotomy, often bypassing deliberative institutions in favor of plebiscitary rule and strongman leadership. It construes the people in essentialist, ethnoreligious, or racialized terms, delegitimizing opposition as traitorous or unpatriotic. Leaders like Donald Trump embody this form of populism, claiming to represent the “real people” while delegitimizing institutional checks and balances.

Professor Bretherton warned that while both forms of populism share characteristics—emphasis on leadership, romanticization of the “ordinary people,” skepticism toward elites and bureaucracy—they differ in their normative trajectories. Democratic populism aims to cultivate shared responsibility for the common good, while anti-democratic populism facilitates personal withdrawal from public life and the erosion of civic institutions in favor of authoritarian consolidation.

The latter part of Professor Bretherton’s presentation focused on the intersection between populism and Christianity. He argued that populism draws heavily on theological tropes, often reconfiguring religious narratives to legitimize its political vision. Christian theology itself, according to him, has longstanding populist impulses—particularly within Protestant traditions that emphasize unmediated access to God and critique ecclesial hierarchy. These impulses have historically fueled resistance to both clerical and political elites. However, Professor Bretherton cautioned that such impulses can be co-opted by anti-democratic populist movements, as seen in the rhetoric of far-right parties like Germany’s AfD or France’s Rassemblement National, which claim to defend Christian culture while attacking institutional churches.

Professor Bretherton emphasizes that this tension stems from the anti-institutional nature of anti-democratic populism, which bypasses mediating structures—such as churches or representative institutions—in favor of a direct identification between the leader and the people. Theologically, this dynamic manifests as a form of idolatry, in which the nation or a charismatic leader is elevated to a messianic role, effectively substituting for Christ. Bretherton described this as a “Christophobic and anti-ecclesial” form of Christianity—one that empties faith of its creedal and ethical commitments and repurposes it as a tool of exclusionary cultural identity.

Rather than treating Christian references in populist rhetoric as merely superficial or secularized, Professor Bretherton argued that we are witnessing a re-enchantment of political discourse. Far-right populism, he contended, does not secularize Christian symbols but sacralizes secular notions like sovereignty and nationhood, effectively reversing the modern trajectory of disenchantment. This shift represents a new kind of political theology, one in which secular concepts are infused with religious meaning, producing an existential, quasi-spiritual political struggle.

Professor Bretherton highlights global examples—from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamist turn in Turkey to the rise of Hindu nationalism in India—that illustrate the resurgence of political movements in which the sacred and the political are strategically recombined with potent effect. In Europe, this re-enchantment emerges in response to technocratic liberalism’s perceived hollowness and its failure to address existential anxieties, community dislocation, and crises of agency.

Professor Bretherton concluded by asserting that Christianity must confront these dynamics with a return to its core commitments: love of God and neighbor, solidarity with the stranger, and the rejection of idolatrous narratives of salvation through nation or leader. The Church, he insisted, must become a site of resistance against both authoritarianism and technocratic alienation by cultivating forms of common life grounded in justice, plurality, and mutual care. The ultimate theological task, he contended, is to convert politics from a false gospel of domination into a means of neighboring—turning the earthly city into a penultimate place of peace rather than seeking salvation through it.

Conclusion

Roundtable I of the ECPS Conference 2025 at the University of Oxford offered a compelling and multifaceted reflection on the politics of “the people” in a time of democratic uncertainty and populist resurgence. Under the skillful moderation of Professor Jonathan Wolff, the session foregrounded how “the people” remains a highly malleable and contested category—evoked to both revitalize and erode democratic life. Drawing on historical, political, and theological perspectives, the speakers dismantled simplistic narratives that equate populism either with democratic renewal or authoritarian decline. Instead, they highlighted the need to interrogate how elites, institutions, and media infrastructures construct and instrumentalize notions of “popular will” for divergent ends.

A shared theme emerged: that contemporary politics is marked not simply by polarization, but by a crisis of representation, legitimacy, and moral imagination. Whether in the reappearance of emotionally charged political forms (Conway), the elite-driven construction of reactionary publics (Mondon), or the sacralization of exclusionary ideologies (Bretherton), the roundtable underscored the urgency of rethinking democratic participation. As the idea of “the people” continues to shape our political futures, this conversation reminded us that its meaning must remain a site of critical, ethical, and democratic contestation.


 

Note: To experience the panel’s dynamic and thought-provoking Q&A session, we encourage you to watch the full video recording above.

Professor Arend Lijphart, one of the most influential political scientists of the past and present century and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Professor Arend Lijphart: Presidentialism Creates a Greater Risk of Democratic Collapse

In a wide-ranging interview with ECPS, renowned political scientist Professor Arend Lijphart warns that the design of democratic institutions plays a decisive role in democratic resilience or erosion. Drawing from over 50 years of comparative research, Professor Lijphart argues that presidential and majoritarian systems—as seen in the US, India, and the UK—enable dangerous concentrations of power. “Some electoral systems make the concentration of power much more likely,” he states. In contrast, parliamentary systems with proportional representation foster inclusion, accountability, and stability. His core message is urgent: consensus democracy is not just more effective—it’s essential in resisting authoritarian backsliding. “Strong governments may decide faster,” he notes, “but they often decide wrongly.”

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving a wide-ranging interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Arend Lijphart, one of the most influential political scientists of the past and present century and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, offers a sobering diagnosis of the institutional roots of intensifying democratic backsliding. Drawing on over five decades of comparative research, Professor Lijphart—one of the signatories of the International Declaration Against Fascism,” published on June 13, 2025, alongside Nobel laureates, public intellectuals, and leading scholars of democracy and authoritarianism—revisits his foundational distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracies to illuminate why authoritarian populism so often flourishes in systems that concentrate political power. At the heart of his critique lies a stark warning: “Presidentialism creates a greater risk of democratic collapse.”

Throughout the interview, Professor Lijphart argues that the structural design of presidential and winner-takes-all electoral systems—such as those in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom—facilitates the erosion of liberal democratic norms. “Some electoral systems make the concentration of power much more likely,” he warns. “In presidential systems—such as the United States—we currently see a significant concentration of executive power.” Even parliamentary democracies are not immune, especially when paired with majoritarian electoral rules like first-past-the-post. These systems, he explains, enable governments to take power without majority support and to gradually expand their authority unchecked.

Professor Lijphart draws a direct connection between these institutional flaws and the rise of what he calls “strongman rule”—a hallmark of modern authoritarianism. “It is about trying to organize the entire society in such a way that civil society is weakened—anything that can challenge the authority of the single-person ruler or a single-party ruler.” From Trump’s attacks on journalists and universities to Modi’s and Erdoğan’s efforts to centralize power, Professor Lijphart sees a global pattern enabled by institutional design.

But he also offers a proven alternative: consensus democracy. Based on parliamentary systems and proportional representation (PR), these arrangements, he argues, are “much, much better” not only at ensuring inclusive governance but at resisting authoritarian encroachment. “Consensus systems do just as well—or even a little bit better” than majoritarian ones in terms of performance, he says, while also producing lower levels of terrorism, greater satisfaction with government, and stronger representation for women and minorities.

While Lijphart acknowledges that no democratic system offers perfect safeguards, his message is clear: “Strong governments may make decisions more easily than coalition or power-sharing governments—but those decisions are often the wrong ones.” His long-standing mantra—parliamentary government and proportional representation—emerges not simply as a technical preference, but as a democratic imperative in an age of global authoritarian drift.

Here is the transcript of our interview with Professor Arend Lijphart, edited lightly for readability.

Majoritarian Systems Invite Authoritarian Drift

Nested dolls depicting authoritarian and populist leaders Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan displayed among souvenirs in Moscow on July 7, 2018. Photo: Shutterstock.

Professor Arend Lijphart, thank you so very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your typology of democratic systems (1968), you contrast majoritarian and consensus models. To what extent do majoritarian systems—especially those lacking robust institutional checks, as seen in Hungary and India—enable the concentration of power that facilitates the rise of authoritarian or fascistic regimes?

Professor Arend Lijphart: I think this seems to be happening in many places—not everywhere, but in lots of places—that a government comes into power and then gradually expands its power step by step.

You’re specifically talking about the judicial system. It’s important that the system is strong, but in democratic systems, that depends very much on other factors. I think more important—and I guess that’s the main message of my book Patterns of Democracy—is that there should be more sharing of power, so that we do not get a concentration of power.

Some electoral systems make the concentration of power much more likely. For example, in presidential systems—such as the United States—we currently see a significant concentration of executive power. The same can occur in parliamentary systems, as in the United Kingdom. This typically happens when the electoral system is what the British call “first past the post,” or what is known in the US as the plurality system. That system creates a concentration of power.

In Britain, for instance, power can end up in the hands of a party that did not win a majority of the vote. The same happened in the 2016 US presidential election, where Donald Trump was elected despite receiving significantly fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. This, in my view, highlights a key weakness of both presidential systems and parliamentary systems that employ majoritarian electoral rules. But perhaps I’m circling around your question rather than addressing it directly.

Fascism Weakens Civil Society to Centralize Power

My second question is: The recent declaration you signed warns of a global authoritarian drift. How do you view the contribution of majoritarian democratic structures—particularly those favoring winner-takes-all outcomes, such as in the United Kingdom or the United States—to this resurgence of fascistic traits in contemporary politics?

Professor Arend Lijphart: I consider fascism to involve, among other things, strongman rule. It is about trying to organize the entire society in such a way that civil society is weakened—anything that can challenge the authority of the single-person ruler or a single-party ruler. Weakening civil society means targeting independent institutions and external sources of power.

In the United States, for instance, the federal system—because of its decentralization—provides some protection against the concentration of power. That’s one safeguard. The judicial system and the rest of civil society are also crucial. Yet we are currently seeing efforts to undermine these very institutions. Under President Trump, we’ve seen attempts to weaken universities, to attack journalists, and to discredit lawyers who may oppose the government. This all contributes to a dangerous concentration of power.

And what can we do about it? I signed that declaration to call attention to the danger. The declaration itself may not have any immediate or specific effect, but it is important that people become more aware of the threats we are facing in democratic systems today.

Consensus Democracies Are More Resilient

In your co-authored article with Matt Qvortrup (2013), you demonstrate that majoritarian democracies are significantly more prone to fatal domestic terrorism. Do similar institutional vulnerabilities—like those evident in the United States post-January 6 or in Brazil under Bolsonaro—help explain the susceptibility of these systems to authoritarian populist mobilization today?

Professor Arend Lijphart: Actually, my entire work—specifically Patterns of Democracy—shows that consensus democracies work better than majoritarian democracies. The old wisdom in political science was that you need majoritarian democracy in order to have a strong enough government to run things effectively. But what I found in a comparative study of 36 countries is that the idea of a strong and effective government is not the province only of majoritarian systems. Consensus systems do just as well—or even a little bit better.

Moreover, consensus systems are much, much better at doing other things. For example, when there is consensus in government, there’s likely to be less danger of terrorism. And there are many other advantages—better representation of women, better representation of minorities, greater public satisfaction with government, and so on. So it really all kind of boils down to that.

And then the question is—and perhaps I’m making this answer too long—is how do you create a consensus system? I think there are two mechanisms that are especially important: parliamentary government rather than presidential government, and proportional representation rather than majoritarian elections. Now, those two things are not, if installed, a guarantee of success. It’s not a sufficient condition for success—but I would say it’s a necessary one. It doesn’t guarantee that it will work, but it is more likely to work than the alternative.

No System Offers Absolute Guarantees

In “Democracy in the 21st Century,” you argue that democracies that ignore the institutional superiority of parliamentary government and proportional representation risk degradation. In the light of backsliding cases like Tunisia, Turkey, and Israel, what constitutional reforms would be most effective in preventing the kind of democratic erosion outlined in the declaration?

Professor Arend Lijphart: I suppose there’s really no guarantee—take Israel, for example. It essentially has a parliamentary government. Turkey, on the other hand, began with a parliamentary system but later shifted to presidentialism. Still, I’m not entirely sure. There’s simply no assurance that any given system will succeed. That said, I recall listening to a lecture by one of the authors of the important book How Democracies Die, and their central argument, as I understand it, is that democracies often collapse gradually.

That can happen in both systems. In a presidential government, it could be the president that decides, with the aid of the armed forces, to take over power—or the armed forces simply take over power. And I asked the author, does it make a difference whether you have a presidential or parliamentary government? And he said, “Oh, I see there is a political scientist in the audience”—that was me—but he said, yes, in presidential government you have a greater chance that this will happen than in parliamentary government. But there’s obviously just no guarantee whatsoever to ward off this danger.

Proportional Representation Could Have Prevented the Rise of the BJP

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is showing victory sign with both hand to supporters at Bharatiya Janata Party office amid the results of the Indian General Elections 2024 in New Delhi, India on June 4 2024. Photo: PradeepGaurs.

Your 1985 work on electoral rules illustrates the democratic benefits of proportional representation (PR). Given the rise of exclusionary populism in countries with first-past-the-post systems—such as the UK, the US, and India—how might PR systems act as a structural safeguard against democratic backsliding?

Professor Arend Lijphart: Well, I think in the case of the US, it would help to have proportional representation. Right now, even though it’s a presidential system, the president effectively controls the legislature. If you had proportional representation, there would likely be a multiparty system, and there would be much less chance that the president could control the legislature to the extent we see now in the United States. 

In fact, this past week you could see a similar dynamic in India. I wrote about India and the possible dangers for Indian democracy in the 1990s, and I said the danger is that an authoritarian party—namely, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—could come to power. How can you prevent that? The BJP does not have a popular majority. What the Congress Party should have done when they were in power was introduce proportional representation. I think that would have—again, there’s no guarantee— made it less likely for the BJP to emerge as the strongest party in India. The BJP has been engaged in democratic backsliding. Minorities have not been adequately protected, and so on. We know what is going on, and India has shifted from a liberal democracy to what is now an illiberal democracy. It’s no longer the kind of shining example of a big country in Asia that manages to be a stable democracy.

When Power Is Shared, Democracy Stands Stronger

Given your long-standing critique of power concentration in majoritarian systems, how can electoral reform—particularly the adoption of PR or mixed-member systems, as seen in Germany or New Zealand—disincentivize authoritarian tendencies and promote institutional pluralism in increasingly polarized democracies?

Professor Arend Lijphart: Well, again, you mentioned Germany and New Zealand—they basically have mixed-member systems that are fundamentally proportional. It’s just less likely that an extreme party will come to power. I mean, it’s kind of amazing to think about Germany in the early 1930s. How did Hitler come to power? Hitler never won an election. He was defeated in the presidential election by Hindenburg, and in the last free parliamentary election, the Nazi Party won more than 40% of the vote. But there were other conservative parties. The president then appointed Hitler to be chancellor, and that, of course, was the beginning of the complete end of democracy in Germany. But the important thing to remember is that—even in a time of severe crisis in Germany—and with the Nazi Party claiming they would solve everything, they still did not win a majority. And obviously, under proportional representation, parties can still win a majority, but it’s just less likely that it will happen.

Your 2010 research on democratic quality highlights the representational benefits of consensus systems for women and minority groups. In the light of resurgent anti-gender and exclusionary rhetoric in countries like Poland, Italy, Turkey and the US, how crucial is electoral system design in sustaining democratic inclusiveness and resilience?

Professor Arend Lijphart: Yes, indeed what proportional representation does is make it more likely that women and members of minority groups get representation—and if they get representation, they gain a political voice and some political power. I remember being in New Zealand and listening to an interview with the woman Prime Minister. This was after the change to proportional representation, and there was a proposal by her party to introduce some limits on proportional representation. She was asked, “Do you favor that?” And she said, “Well, just wait a minute. Proportional representation has made it easier for women to get representation,” and she pointed to the larger number of women in her own party. So, she said, “Well, let’s just wait a bit with limiting proportional representation,” because she was then thinking of protecting the women members of her own party. So, when women and minority group members gain representation, it is more likely to lead to policies and outcomes that advance the interests of women and minorities.

Social Media Amplifies Extremes—Just Like Primary Elections

Social Media

In an era marked by digital disinformation and epistemic fragmentation—phenomena actively weaponized in democratic erosion cases like India, Brazil, and Hungary—how must electoral and media institutions evolve to uphold the rational, inclusive discourse central to your model of consensus democracy?

Professor Arend Lijphart: I guess I don’t have a good answer to that. What do you do about social media, when so many voices—especially extreme ones—dominate the space? It reminds me of what has happened with primary elections in the United States. The idea was to give more influence to voters. But in practice, turnout tends to be very low, and those who do vote are often the most passionate and extreme. So instead of improving representation, the primary system has become a vehicle for amplifying more radical views. 

I think something similar is happening with social media: extreme voices gain disproportionate attention. And honestly, I don’t know what to do about that. Shutting down social media isn’t an option—people wouldn’t accept it. But the potential, and I think real, danger of extremism spreading through these platforms remains a serious concern.

Proportional Representation and Federalism Help Diffuse Power

The declaration, you signed, warns that fascism historically erodes the separation of powers. How can the institutional diffusion of authority in consensus democracies serve as a bulwark against executive aggrandizement, especially in light of how Erdoğan in Turkey and Modi in India have centralized power?

Professor Arend Lijphart: If you have—and again, I always come back to the same answer—a parliamentary government and proportional representation, you’re more likely to have a diffusion of power. But of course, in India they do not have proportional representation, which they really should have.

Now, you’re talking about an institutional diffusion of authority. For instance, a presidential system with separation of powers and a federal system with considerable decentralization. I think a federal system with a high degree of decentralization is one way of decreasing the danger of fascism and the concentration of power.

The problem with federalism, for instance in the United States—but also in countries like Brazil and Argentina—is that it means giving special representation to the states. In the case of the United States, it’s equal representation of the states of the federation, and this results in huge inequality of population. So you have a problem that is not a necessary element of federalism, but it often goes together with it.

In the case of Germany, also, Germany is a federal system, and I think that is helpful for its democracy. There is some inequality there too, but not as extreme as in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina.

Inclusion Weakens Extremists by Exposing Their Incompetence

Geert Wilders (PVV) during an interview at the Plenary Debate in the Tweede Kamer on June 4, 2024, in The Hague, Netherlands. Photo: Orange Pictures.

In systems where populist leaders have weakened judicial independence and neutralized parliamentary oversight—as seen in Israel’s controversial judicial overhaul and Hungary’s court packing—how might consociational design principles be leveraged to insulate democratic institutions from authoritarian encroachment?

Professor Arend Lijphart: I could come back to saying there are just no absolute instruments that will do—it is just less likely when you have a good proportional representation system and a parliamentary government. But, as you see in the case of Israel, they have a parliamentary government, and they do have proportional representation. Yet there is one party and its allies that has power, and it’s using it to slowly erode this.

That’s the idea in the book How Democracies Die—if you have a group, a party, or a president that has this power and aims to undermine the system, aims to concentrate power in one party’s or one person’s hands, then it’s not a guarantee that democracy will be preserved. But again, I think it’s all just less likely in parliamentary systems with proportional representation.

Your functionalist rationale for consensus democracy emphasizes broad-based inclusion. How can inclusive, multiparty coalitions help depolarize political discourse and counteract the “us-versus-them” narratives instrumentalized by authoritarian populists in cases like Venezuela or El Salvador?

Professor Arend Lijphart: If you have a highly divided and potentially polarized society, it’s important to include a broad range of parties and to foster compromise, even with those holding very different points of view. I often think it is better, when extreme parties are present—as in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands—to try to include them in government rather than to enforce what is known in Belgium as the cordon sanitaire, which excludes such parties.

In the Netherlands, for example, the tendency has been to include these parties, and doing so has often revealed that they are not particularly effective in governance—they lack qualified people to serve in government roles. In that sense, inclusion can become a way of letting them destroy themselves. Most recently, the Dutch cabinet collapsed after Wilders’s party—arguably the main extreme party—was part of the government but has since withdrawn. According to current opinion polls, they are now likely to lose votes. By being included and then shown to be ineffective, these parties have weakened themselves.

We Need a Broader Cultural Shift Toward Consensus and Inclusion

And lastly, Professor Lijphart, the anti-fascist declaration urges stronger international institutions. How might the core principles of consensus democracy—such as proportionality, minority protection, and power-sharing—inform the reform of multilateral bodies like the UN, EU, or African Union to more effectively resist authoritarian influence and erosion of global democratic norms?

Professor Arend Lijphart: I wish I knew. One thing I can say is that international organizations like the United Nations have increasingly shifted toward a preference for proportional representation—particularly to enhance minority representation. That was the case in Iraq, and I think it marks a significant change in the general attitude toward government and electoral reform.

Historically, the individuals who had influence in politics and governance tended to admire the British system. But in the case of the United Nations, for example, they advocated for proportional representation in Iraq. While Iraq is clearly not a well-functioning democracy, this still reflects a broader institutional endorsement of such reforms.

Of course, I would argue that these organizations should listen to experts who understand the specific context of each country and can guide them away from the assumption that strong governments are synonymous with good governance. Strong governments may make decisions more easily than coalition or power-sharing governments—but those decisions are often the wrong ones.

What we need, clearly, is a broader cultural shift. There’s an important relationship between culture and structure: if a society has a more consensual culture, it is more likely to develop consensual institutional structures. Conversely, introducing consensual structures—again, I always return to my mantra of parliamentary government and proportional representation—makes it more likely that consensus-oriented norms will take root.

Professor Baskın Oran, a veteran and venerated Turkish political scientist.

Professor Oran on Turkey’s Erdogan Regime: “Let’s Just Call It a ‘Democratic Administration’—So That No Harm Comes to Anyone”

In an era when even naming an oppressive regime can invite peril, Professor Baskın Oran offers a cuttingly ironic response to a straightforward question: How should we define Turkey’s current political system? His reply—”Let’s just say a ‘democratic administration,’ so that no harm comes to anyone”—encapsulates the climate of fear and repression under Erdogan’s rule. In this wide-ranging interview, the veteran scholar and dissident traces historical fascism’s return through economic crisis, digital dependency, centralism, and xenophobia. With clarity and conviction, Professor Oran explores how Turkey’s authoritarian populism mirrors global patterns while revealing homegrown roots—and why excessive control may ultimately become the regime’s undoing.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Baskın Oran, a veteran and venerated political scientist, offered reflections that resonate deeply with the political climate in Turkey today. In times when truth is often criminalized and words carry the weight of consequences, the choice to speak cautiously is, in itself, a powerful political act. When asked to define the nature of Turkey’s current regime—whether it aligns more with fascism, authoritarian populism, competitive authoritarianism, or autocracy—Professor Oran answered with quiet precision: “Let’s just say ‘a democratic administration,’ so that no harm comes to anyone—shall we?” That one sentence, both ironic and revealing, captures the essence of the repression gripping contemporary Turkey. It also offers a striking entry point into the mind of one of Turkey’s most principled and enduring intellectuals.

As one of the signatories of the International Declaration Against Fascism,” published on June 13, 2025, alongside Nobel laureates, public intellectuals, and leading scholars of democracy and authoritarianism, Professor Baskın Oran stands out as a figure whose life and career have been deeply shaped by Turkey’s political upheavals. Born in İzmir in 1945, Oran was convicted in 1971 while still a student at Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye) for participating in a protest march, resulting in his dismissal from his post as a research assistant. After a successful legal battle, he was reinstated by administrative court order. He later earned a PhD in international relations and completed postdoctoral research in Geneva on international minority rights.

Oran’s struggles did not end with student activism. Following the 1980 military coup, he was once again purged from his university post—only to be reinstated and removed again under martial law provisions. For eight years, he survived by working various jobs, including editing for AnaBritannica. In 1990, he was finally reinstated for good and rose to become a full professor by 1997. In 2004, his authorship of the “Minority Rights and Cultural Rights Report” for the Human Rights Advisory Board led to criminal charges under infamous articles 216 and 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Though ultimately not convicted, the ordeal reinforced Oran’s image as a courageous dissenter within the Turkish academy.

That lifelong defiance permeates this interview with the ECPS, though it is now tempered with the strategic irony born of experience. In this wide-ranging conversation, Professor Oran explores the structural logic of fascism—“the most extreme and harmful form of capitalism,” as he puts it—and traces its return through today’s economic and geopolitical crises. Comparing the present moment to the capitalist collapse of 1929, he warns: “Back then, everyone tried to protect their own economy by closing to imports—and international trade collapsed. We’re witnessing a very similar process today.”

For Professor Oran, the rise of anti-immigration sentiment in the West and the shift from targeting “internal enemies” to “external threats” signals a reconfiguration, not a disappearance, of fascist logics. In Turkey, he argues, this reconfiguration is expressed through intense centralization, erosion of local governance, and state suppression of Kurdish identity and representation. “Fascism is centralism taken to its extreme,” he observes, linking today’s appointment of state trustees (kayyım) to a long tradition of top-down governance.

Yet even as he traces the parallels between historical fascism and present-day authoritarianism, Professor Oran remains grounded in a nuanced reading of political causality. He credits the excesses of past Kemalist policies—including headscarf bans and cultural repression—as having laid the groundwork for the current regime: “Those oppressive measures prepared the conditions for today’s authoritarianism.”

Despite this sobering diagnosis, Professor Oran ends with a dialectical warning rather than despair: “Excessive centralism and intervention in democratic will—dialectically speaking—mark the first step toward a regime’s self-destruction.”

In a political environment where naming power risks invoking its wrath, Professor Oran’s careful yet cutting answer—“a ‘democratic administration,’ so that no harm comes to anyone”—becomes more than evasion. This subtle yet telling response speaks volumes about the repressive nature of the current regime in Turkey. Coming from a scholar whose life has been marked by principled resistance and personal cost, Professor Oran’s cautious phrasing is itself a reflection of the political climate—one in which even naming the regime carries risk.

What follows is the full transcript of our interview with Professor Baskın Oran, originally conducted in Turkish and lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Fascism Is the Most Extreme and Harmful Form of Capitalism

Photo of a woman protester holding an anti-fascism sign during the Women’s March on January 21, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Richard Gunion.

Professor Oran, thank you very much for participating in our interview. How do you evaluate the historical continuity emphasized in the anti-rising fascism declaration—which you signed—through the statement, “fascism never disappeared; it merely remained on the sidelines for a while”? In your view, in what ways does today’s fascism differ from the classical fascisms of the 20th century, and what structural similarities does it maintain?

Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran: First of all, I would like to point out that while speaking on this subject, I do not wish to appear overly Marxist, but fascism—which is the most extreme and harmful form of capitalism—is a tool that the capitalist system resorts to when it feels threatened. We have witnessed this in the past as well.

The declaration from Italy, which I gladly signed, reminded us that the fascism of the Mussolini era is now resurfacing. This is a very accurate observation. In fact, it is possible to go even further back to the historical crises of capitalism. Today, we are experiencing a digital revolution. Artificial intelligence is also a significant part of this transformation—just like the Industrial Revolution that began in the late 18th century. That era brought major opportunities, but the working class was severely oppressed.

Today, too, many professions are disappearing due to digitalization. For example, I previously had one of my books translated by an American for publication in the US. Now, there’s no need for that—translation programs can complete it within a few days. These developments can be used for good or bad—technology itself is neutral.

We discussed the emergence of capitalism in the late 18th century and drew parallels with the present day, right? Then, about a hundred years later, in the late 19th century, the imperialist extension of capitalism emerged. They seized regions—especially in Africa and Asia—through every means possible, including military occupation.

We know that the crises of capitalism are inherent in its nature—they arise periodically from within the system itself. For instance, the Great Depression of 1929 was the result of such an internal contradiction. Just like today, all states at that time tried to cope by shutting down imports. What does that mean? It means blocking other countries’ exports, which in turn paralyzes international trade. But countries had no choice due to the crisis they were in. The 1929 crisis began with a stock market collapse in New York and soon spread worldwide. In the end, every country tried to protect its own economy, and the global economy essentially collapsed. We are witnessing a very similar process today.

However, this time there is a crucial distinction: today’s developments stem not only from capitalism’s internal contradictions but also from external pressures. A key example is China, which, despite maintaining Communist Party rule, has largely embraced a capitalist economic model. This shift has deeply unsettled Western powers—particularly during Donald Trump’s presidency. In response, economic protectionist measures were introduced, including attempts to impose significant tariffs on Chinese goods, which in turn posed risks to the European economy as well.

The dynamics we are witnessing today echo those of earlier historical moments—namely, the crises at the end of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Great Depression of 1929. These parallels make the declaration I signed not merely a warning about present dangers, but a timely reminder that the past continues to shape our political and economic future.

The Real Fear Lies with the Regime Itself

Despite living under the Erdoğan regime, you have once again demonstrated an example of intellectual courage by being among the signatories of the declaration. In your view, how should the responsibility of intellectuals against fascism be defined under today’s conditions? How can the calls in the declaration—such as boycott, strike, and collective action—be concretized for academic and cultural circles?

Professor Baskın Oran: 
Frankly, I don’t think I’ve shown any major intellectual reaction in this matter. I mean, being afraid of something this small is out of the question. After all, as you know, there’s Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code—insulting the president. But in this case, such a situation does not exist. No matter how much they try to stretch it, they cannot justify or substantiate such a claim. Therefore, it would not be right to see this as a small act of heroism.

As for the second part of your question: To be honest, I don’t always trust the (Turkish main opposition Republican People Party) CHP. However, the current trajectory of the CHP under the leadership of Özgür Özel is quite positive. This should be acknowledged, and he should be congratulated accordingly. Because he is truly expanding the societal movement to broader masses and succeeding in integrating with the people. He’s going beyond mere declarations and embracing a political approach that translates into action.

And precisely because of this, arrest warrants are being issued for those around him, and attempts are being made to ban political opponents—especially Ekrem İmamoğlu—from participating in elections. The system is clearly afraid of this new, young, and rightly governed CHP. That’s why I believe this process should be supported. 

Yes, if one day the CHP reverts to its old ways, then we will resume our criticisms. But for now, I support the CHP under Özgür Özel’s leadership.

A Turkish man in Hyde Park, London, shows support for protesters in Istanbul following the eruption of nationwide demonstrations—Turkey’s largest anti-government unrest —challenging then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authority in June 2013.
Photo credit: Ufuk Uyanik.

Authoritarianism in the West Is Rooted in a Deep Fear of the Consequences of Its Own Imperial Past

What role have the structural ruptures caused by imperialist expansion—gaining momentum in the late 19th century—in underdeveloped countries, and the waves of migration originating from these regions, played in the rise of fascist and authoritarian tendencies currently observed in the West? In this process, how has the concept of “development” undergone an inversion or distortion?

Professor Baskın Oran: Now, what you are actually asking me—albeit implicitly—is the following: In some developed countries, we are witnessing the hardening and spread of authoritarian regimes; however, at the same time, you are reminding us that similar authoritarian tendencies are also emerging in less developed countries. For example, within the European Union, we observe this trend especially in Poland and Hungary. On the other hand, you are also pointing out the grave actions committed by Israel in Gaza and how they are not being sufficiently condemned by the Western world—particularly by the European Union. You are essentially asking, “Why is this happening?” If I’m understanding your question correctly, I’ll respond right away.

This authoritarian turn and drift away from democracy in developed countries actually stems from a deep fear. And the root of that fear lies in the following reality: The desperate people living in countries oppressed by imperialist forces since the late 19th century no longer know what to do. With hope, they head toward more developed countries, seeking asylum.

Considering that the populations of these developed countries are already limited, that their social security systems are strong, and that these systems are also targeted for use by migrants, a major sense of fear has emerged in these societies. This fear has led to the rise of right-wing politics. Especially through the discourse of anti-immigration and anti-asylum seekers, this fear has provided fertile ground for legitimizing authoritarianism. That’s the heart of the matter.

Trump Globalized the Monroe Doctrine

How do you evaluate the United States’ position—particularly in the Middle East—its Israel-backed aggressive stance, and its anti-Iran strategy in the context of a contemporary reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine? What kind of groundwork has the unipolar order that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union laid for this process?

Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran: You brought up a very important point by mentioning Trump. Trump is, in fact, a typical contemporary representative of the Monroe Doctrine. People generally understand this doctrine as follows — this is also how it’s taught in schools: “America should not interfere in European affairs.” Because Europe’s affairs are complicated, and since America was newly founded at the time, getting involved could harm it. That is the first proposition of the doctrine. However, the real significance of the Monroe Doctrine lies in its second proposition: Europe, too, shall not interfere in the developments on the American continent. In other words, there is a principle of mutual non-intervention.

Trump, however, has taken this second proposition and interpreted it in an entirely different way. The issue is no longer confined to the American continent; Trump has extended this principle globally and is essentially saying: “I will intervene anywhere in the world, but no one may interfere with me.” With this mindset, he is trying to exert pressure everywhere — from Canada to Denmark, from China to Iran. One of the tools he uses for this pressure is Israel. By supporting Israel’s authoritarian and fascist policies, he is in fact pursuing his own global strategy. Looking at the current situation, we see that Trump has become an extremely radicalized representative of the second and most important proposition of the Monroe Doctrine: “I will interfere with everyone, but no one may interfere with me.”

Civilizations That Merely Consume Technology Do Not Survive

To what extent has the difference between producing and merely consuming technology throughout history determined whether civilizations survived or not? For instance, what kinds of historical parallels can be drawn between the impact of the Industrial Revolution on underdeveloped societies and the impact of today’s digital revolution on those same societies? Does the asymmetry between producers and consumers of digital technology constitute a new regime of dependency?

Professor Baskın Oran: Of course, it creates dependency—because there is a world of difference between producing technology and merely consuming it. In fact, just recently, in 2024, Çağatay Anadolu wrote a very interesting article. In that piece, he went quite far back in history and offered an eye-opening analysis.

He said something along these lines: As you know, we descend from Homo sapiens. But before Homo sapiens, there were Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were not as skilled as the sapiens in things like tool-making or abstract thinking. And while we cannot be sure whether the Neanderthals were wiped out by the Homo sapiens, he argued that it is entirely logical for the Neanderthals—who ended up in the position of technology consumers in contrast to the technology-producing sapiens—to have vanished over time. I found this interpretation quite enlightening.

We’re talking about the Stone Age—actually not even about humans, but about human-like species, hominids. Even back then, the difference between producing and consuming technology determined the fate of entire species. Today, we are facing a similar situation: In the digital age, the disparity between societies that produce technology and those that only consume it creates a new regime of dependency.

Crushed Societies Give Rise to Authoritarianism and War

Mass protests in Russia demanded the release of Alexei Navalny. Police detained protesters in Moscow, Russia, on January 31, 2021. A girl holds a sign saying “Freedom for Putin from office!” Photo: Elena Rostunova.

How do you interpret the structural and political similarities between the rise of economic protectionism, authoritarian regimes, and the atmosphere of pre-world war following the 1929 Depression, and today’s neoliberal crisis moment? Are figures like Trump, Putin, Erdoğan, etc., representative of an updated form of fascism in this process?

Professor Baskın Oran: There is a very serious similarity here. The process that began with the 1929 crash of the New York Stock Exchange needs to be carefully examined. Why did it collapse? Because the market had suddenly and excessively risen. Such sharp increases followed by steep declines can devastate stock exchanges. In that situation, people panicked, withdrew, and the market collapsed.

As we just discussed, this collapse triggered the 1929 Depression. Following that, all countries tried to overcome the crisis by restricting imports and increasing exports. But that wasn’t possible—because everyone was trying to do the same thing simultaneously. In an instant, international trade collapsed. And this, ultimately, led to the Second World War.

The Treaty of Versailles, which followed the First World War (1914–1918), imposed such severe conditions on Germany that the people could barely breathe. German women were forced to sell their jewelry. Hitler took advantage of this immense pressure and came to power through a democratic election in 1933. 

Around the same time, we see a parallel in Turkey: Mustafa Kemal launched the War of Independence in 1919 in response to the unbearable terms imposed by the Treaty of Sèvres on the Ottoman Empire. Just as Versailles had done to Germany, Sèvres imposed unacceptable obligations on the Ottomans.

There is an important lesson here: international treaties cannot be based on crushing one side; if they are, they lead to new crises and wars. Treaties must be mutually acceptable. Lausanne is an example of this. It remains the only World War I peace treaty still in force because it was balanced.

Turning Fear into Power: Populists Redefine the ‘Other’ to Justify Authoritarianism

In your view, does the shift from the rhetoric targeting the ‘internal enemy’ in classical fascism to the perception of an ‘external threat’ through rising anti-immigrant sentiment in developed countries today indicate a transformation in the structural codes of fascism? In this context, what kind of political significance does the redefinition of the ‘other’ carry?

Professor Baskın Oran: Actually, we just talked about this. The main reason why governments in developed countries that push the limits of democracy or verge on fascism come to power through elections is the fear generated by immigrants. The sudden influx of asylum seekers creates a significant perception of threat in these countries. However, the root of this fear is a direct consequence of the imperialist policies initiated in the 19th century.

Populism frequently derives its legitimacy from an artificial conflict constructed between “the people” and “the elite.” How has this form of conflict laid the groundwork for a model of authoritarianism in Turkey? How would you analyze the relationship between the populist rhetoric of the administration under Erdoğan’s leadership and its actual authoritarian practices?

Professor Baskın Oran: Let me begin by saying this: The main factor that brought the Erdoğan regime to power and strengthened it was the excesses of past Kemalist practices. Especially during the military coup periods, the oppressive and denigrating measures laid the groundwork for this process.

One of the most striking examples is the rector and vice-rector of Istanbul University of the time preventing veiled female students from entering the university. Can such a thing be acceptable? A university is a place where a thousand voices echo, a space for thought and freedom of expression. A veiled student should be able to enter the university; both veiled and unveiled should benefit equally from this environment.

So what happens if a veiled student is not admitted? She stays at home, waits to get married, and raises daughters who are veiled just like herself. But if she does enter university, she will take courses like my “Nationalism and Minorities” class and be exposed to new ideas. This is precisely the point: the oppressive excesses of Kemalist policies are what initiated the process that laid the foundations of today’s authoritarian regime in Turkey.

Therefore, we must analyze the emergence of Turkey’s authoritarian regime not solely through the lens of populism, but also within this historical context. Moreover, the Erdoğan regime’s increasingly repressive policies in recent years are actually fueling a process that may bring about its own downfall. Let’s not forget: the logic of dialectics applies to everyone.

Excessive Centralism Marks the First Step Toward a Regime’s Self-Destruction

Do the trustee policy targeting municipalities governed by the DEM Party and the CHP in Turkey, as well as the legislative attempts to transfer municipal powers to provincial governors, align with the classical centralist reflexes of fascism? Could you evaluate these developments in comparison with historical experiences of fascism?

Professor Baskın Oran: Fascism, by definition, is centralism taken to its extreme; in fact, fascism is the most radical form of centralization. After the War of Independence, the implementation of centralist policies in Turkey—specifically Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s, later Atatürk’s, rise to power as a single-man ruler and continuation of that rule—can be understood to a certain extent. Of course, by “understood,” I don’t mean “justified” or “approved.” One of the clearest examples of this excessive centralism was how it was applied to the Kurds. This is a broad topic, but just to give an example: from the Eastern Reform Plan (Şark Islahat Planı) to today, we are talking about a centralism where even speaking Kurdish can still be penalized, albeit indirectly.

As you just mentioned, removing mayors elected by popular vote and replacing them with centrally appointed trustees—either governors or district governors—is a clearly fascist practice. Such actions make the Kurdish issue increasingly intractable and end up strengthening parties like the DEM Party, which advocate against this oppression. Even the CHP, which has long maintained a distant stance on these matters, begins to feel its influence.

In this sense, excessive centralism and intervention in the democratic will—dialectically speaking—mark the first step toward a regime’s self-destruction.

‘Native and National Judiciary’ Is Just a Euphemism for Authoritarian Retreat from Universal Law

Does the frequent emphasis in recent years on a ‘national and native judiciary’ represent a departure from universal legal principles and the instrumentalization of the judiciary? What is the function of such rhetoric in the construction of ideological hegemony by populist-authoritarian regimes?

Professor Baskın Oran: There was a time when there was no ideological framework whatsoever to support people who were under extreme oppression. It was only after World War I that the concept of “minority rights” emerged. In fact, Articles 37 to 45 of the Treaty of Lausanne are titled “Protection of Minorities.” This was the first time such a protection mechanism entered the agenda of international law.

Following the Second World War, this concept evolved further with the emergence of the notion of “human rights.” Especially after the 1950s, efforts to institutionalize human rights gained momentum, leading to the establishment of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. Turkey also recognized the jurisdiction of this Court and pledged to comply with its rulings. However, unfortunately, despite this commitment, Turkey largely fails to implement these decisions.

For instance, in cases like those of Selahattin Demirtaş and Osman Kavala, the clear and binding rulings of the European Court of Human Rights are being ignored. The core reason for this is that such decisions are perceived as a threat by the centralized and repressive ideological structure in Turkey. This amounts to an attempt to avoid implementing human rights. But such a stance is not sustainable in the long run.

The frequent emphasis on a so-called “native and national judiciary” must also be understood in this context. This slogan signals a break from universal legal principles and the instrumentalization of the judiciary for political ends. Populist-authoritarian regimes deliberately employ such rhetoric to construct ideological hegemony. In reality, the phrase “native and national” is a euphemism for a regressive, inward-looking, and authoritarian vision that seeks to legitimize distancing from universal values.

Assimilation Backfires Once Identity Forms

Kurdish protesters gather in Taksim Square, Istanbul, on April 13, 2010, following the assault on Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk, who suffered a broken nose. Photo: Sadık Güleç.

Do the pressures on Kurdish citizens in the areas of language, culture, and representation—alongside the appointment of state trustees (kayyım) to municipalities—indicate that Turkey is moving away from a democratic resolution to the Kurdish issue? How do you foresee this approach impacting both national unity and democratization in the long term?

Professor Baskın Oran: Nazism has now reached such a point in the global and Turkish context that I believe Turkey is approaching the end of its centralized structure and its negative effects on Kurdish citizens.

Let me put it this way: you can attempt to assimilate a minority—a group treated as second-class citizens. This is a common historical occurrence. But assimilation has its limits: up until the point when a collective identity emerges within that group. Once that awareness forms, all further efforts at assimilation backfire and only serve to strengthen that group identity.

Turkey reached this point in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but failed to recognize it. Today, with the influence of external dynamics, this collective awareness has become even more visible. In this context, the autonomous Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria must be emphasized. This structure is supported by the most powerful country in the world—the United States—and is also recognized by the Syrian regime.

The current regime in Turkey, out of concern over this development, has initiated a second attempt at reform. The first attempt began in 1993, when Öcalan declared a ceasefire. Now, on July 17, 2025, it is planned that 30-40 PKK members will symbolically lay down their arms in a formal ceremony. This points to a very significant and positive development for Turkey.

“Let’s Just Call It a ‘Democratic Administration’—So That No Harm Comes to Anyone”

The foreign policy of the Erdoğan administration is frequently used as a tool for generating domestic political legitimacy. Does Turkey’s gradual shift away from Western values toward a “Russia-like” model resemble the foreign policy reflexes of fascism?

Professor Baskın Oran: Now, if you pay attention, there are two leaders with whom Erdoğan has very good relations: Trump and Putin. One is the head of the United States, the other of Russia. Although these two countries are fierce rivals and constantly at odds with one another, Erdoğan has managed to establish close ties with both. So, what is the common feature of these two leaders? Both are figures who have established—or are attempting to establish—autocratic regimes. That’s all I have to say.

Lastly, considering current developments, how would you conceptually define the regime in Turkey? Among terms such as fascism, authoritarian populism, competitive authoritarianism, and autocracy, which one do you think best fits today’s Turkey? Why?

Professor Baskın Oran: We’ve actually discussed this before. Let’s just say “a democratic administration,” so that no harm comes to anyone—shall we?

Panel 1, titled “Politics of Social Contract,” takes place during the ECPS Conference 2025 at St Cross College, University of Oxford, on July 1. Chaired by Dr. Lior Erez (Blavatnik School of Government, Nuffield College), the panel features presentations by Sabine Carey, Robert Johns, Katrin Paula, Nadine O'Shea, Nathan Tsang, and Simon Clemens.

ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel I — Politics of Social Contract

Please cite as:
ECPS Staff. (2025). “ECPS Conference 2025 / Panel I — Politics of Social Contract.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00102

 

Panel I – Politics of the Social Contract at the ECPS Conference 2025 brought together diverse approaches to examine how democratic legitimacy, resistance, and pluralism are evolving in the face of global democratic backsliding. Chaired by Dr. Lior Erez (Oxford University), the panel featured Professor Robert Johns and collaborators presenting experimental research on public support for human rights under repression; Nathan Tsang (USC) explored how Hong Kong diaspora communities engage in covert resistance through cultural expression; and Simon Clemens (Humboldt University) introduced Isabelle Stengers’ cosmopolitical philosophy, proposing a radical politics of coexistence over consensus. Together, the presentations reflected on how the idea of “the people” is being contested, reimagined, and mobilized across social, empirical, and philosophical registers.

Reported by ECPS Staff

Panel 1 of the ECPS Conference “‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy,”—titled Politics of the Social Contract—offered a rich, interdisciplinary exploration of how democratic legitimacy, group identity, and political resistance are being reimagined in response to the erosion of liberal democratic norms. Held at St. Cross College, Oxford, and chaired by Dr. Lior Erez (Alfred Landecker Postdoctoral Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government and Nuffield College, Oxford), the session brought together empirical, ethnographic, and philosophical perspectives on the contested meanings of citizenship and coexistence in our contemporary moment.

The social contract—once the symbolic foundation of liberal democracy—has come under intense pressure in recent years. The rise of exclusionary populist movements, the securitization of public discourse, and the erosion of trust in institutions have all complicated the relationship between citizens and the state. Yet, even as these developments undermine traditional models of political legitimacy, new forms of democratic practice and resistance are emerging. This panel offers an interdisciplinary examination of how these tensions play out in empirical and philosophical terms.

The panel began with a presentation by Professor Robert Johns (University of Southampton), who—alongside co-authors Sabine Carey, Katrin Paula, and Nadine O’Shea—shared findings from an innovative survey experiment conducted in Germany. Their study investigated public support for police violence across various protest scenarios and tested whether different rhetorical frames—rooted in human rights, democracy, or universalism—could reduce support for repression. Strikingly, they found that traditional rights-based arguments were only modestly effective, and that democratic appeals had greater persuasive power. The research revealed the fragility of rights discourse and the challenge of mobilizing public support across group divides.

The second paper, by Nathan Tsang (University of Southern California), shifts the focus to diasporic resistance under authoritarian threat. Drawing from rich ethnographic fieldwork with Hong Kong communities in the US, Tsang reveals how cultural activities can serve as subtle yet powerful platforms for political expression—especially under the shadow of transnational repression. His analysis shows how everyday practices blur the line between political and non-political, reshaping our understanding of what resistance can look like.

Finally, Simon Clemens (Humboldt University of Berlin) invites us into the philosophical realm of cosmopolitics, drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers to rethink pluralism, coexistence, and the political beyond the demos. Clemens challenges both liberal and radical democratic assumptions, offering a vision of politics rooted in heterogeneity, co-presence, and what he calls “cosmic proceduralism.”

Together, these papers open vital questions about power, belonging, and democratic futures in an unsettled world.

Professor Robert Johns: “Exploring Human Rights Attitudes: Outgroup Perception and Long-term Consequences 

Robert Johns, Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton, presents the paper of his research team on human rights attitudes and outgroup perceptions during Panel I, Politics of Social Contract, at the ECPS Conference 2025 held at St Cross College, University of Oxford, on July 1, 2025.

In his empirically grounded and theoretically ambitious presentation, Robert Johns, Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton, examined the complexity of public attitudes toward human rights, with particular attention to how such attitudes are influenced by group identity, discursive framing, and rhetorical context. Delivered during Panel 1 of the ECPS Conference at Oxford University, his talk—titled “Exploring Human Rights Attitudes: Outgroup Perception and Long-term Consequences”—was a candid reflection on both the possibilities and limitations of persuasion in bolstering public support for human rights protections.

Professor Johns opened with an acknowledgment of the methodological diversity of the symposium and introduced his team’s (Sabine Carey, Katrin Paula and Nadine O’Shea) “quantitative persuasion experiment,” aimed not merely at observing public opinion but at exploring how to strengthen democratic and rights-based commitments in an age of populist backlash. He critiqued the prevailing notion that rights-supporting attitudes are stable, arguing instead that they are often thin, situationally dependent, and subject to manipulation by both rhetorical framing and group biases.

At the heart of Professor Johns’s research was a large-scale survey experiment conducted in Germany, designed to examine public reactions to the use of excessive police force against demonstrators. As Professor Johns explained during his presentation, respondents were randomly assigned to read a vignette describing peaceful protests, with the identity of the protestors varied across conditions—Muslim groups, climate activists, right-wing demonstrators, or an unspecified group. The primary dependent variable was the level of support for a hypothetical proposal to grant police amnesty for using excessive force in such scenarios.

Crucially, the study tested whether various types of arguments opposing this policy—framed in terms of human rights, democratic norms, universalism, or slippery-slope reasoning—could diminish public support for repression. As Professor Johns noted, a control group received no normative framing, providing a baseline against which the persuasive impact of each justificatory appeal could be assessed. 

Professor Johns’ findings were striking. Across the sample, about one-third of respondents supported the repressive measure. Yet, surprisingly, most of the interventions—particularly those grounded in explicit human rights language—had only modest or negligible persuasive effects. The strongest rhetorical appeal was not a rights-based argument at all, but rather an appeal to “democratic rights,” suggesting that public support may be more easily activated by the language of democratic norms than by abstract invocations of “human rights.”

The study also explored how group attitudes shaped policy support. Respondents who harbored negative views toward the outgroup mentioned in the vignette—especially Muslims and climate activists—were significantly more likely to support repressive policies. However, even among this subgroup, some framing interventions, particularly those emphasizing universality or future consequences, slightly reduced support for police impunity. Intriguingly, the only subgroup where the interventions had a noticeable effect were those respondents who had previously signaled a willingness to deny rights across multiple domains—those least committed to human rights. This paradoxical finding suggested that even people initially inclined to restrict rights might be susceptible to targeted persuasion, while those who profess stronger commitments often remain unmoved.

Professor Johns also acknowledged the broader discursive challenge facing human rights advocacy. He pointed to the structural asymmetry between “urgent,” emotionally charged justifications for repression (e.g., national security, law and order) and the often abstract, long-term nature of rights-based arguments. In public debates, human rights defenders are frequently forced into reactive positions, which are temporally and rhetorically disadvantaged. As Professor Johns noted, in televised or political discourse, “rights” advocates often lose momentum by having to concede moral complexity or nuance in response to emotionally powerful narratives focused on threats, danger, or victimhood.

In concluding, Professor Johns emphasized that the lack of strong persuasive effects in the study was not necessarily a failure but an invitation to recalibrate both the content and the communication of human rights advocacy. He posed several provocations for future research and political practice: Should we reframe human rights in terms more resonant with popular democratic identity? Can rights-based arguments be made more immediate, urgent, or emotionally compelling? And how do we bridge the psychological gap between “us” and “them” when advocating for truly universal rights?

Ultimately, Professor Johns’ presentation underscored the fragility of rights-based norms in the public imagination and the difficulty of mobilizing support across group boundaries in polarized societies. Yet it also suggested that with careful framing, strategic messaging, and attention to underlying group perceptions, there remains space to expand public commitment to inclusive democratic principles. His empirical approach—rigorous yet normatively engaged—offered a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about how best to defend and revitalize the language of rights in a climate of democratic uncertainty.

Nathan Tsang: “Doing Politics Non-politically: Explaining How Cultural Projects Afford Political Resistance” 

Umbrella Movement protesters gather in Admiralty, Hong Kong, after the launch of Occupy Central on September 28, 2014, demanding democratic reform and public consultation. Police blocked key access routes. Photo: Mike K.

Nathan Tsang, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Southern California, presented his ongoing ethnographic research titled “Doing Politics Non-politically: Explaining How Cultural Projects Afford Political Resistance.” The project explores how diasporic Hong Kongers in the United States engage in political resistance within seemingly non-political cultural contexts. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, Tsang’s analysis offers a nuanced sociological account of how diasporic communities under threat of transnational repression navigate and perform political expression in the everyday.

Tsang’s inquiry originates in an empirical puzzle he encountered while attending a Chinese New Year festival organized by Hong Kong immigrants in the US. Amid the food stalls and traditional decorations, he noticed politically charged banners and banned books—materials overtly critical of the Chinese regime. What struck him was the blending of cultural celebration with veiled political protest. Why, he asked, do diaspora Hong Kongers embed political messaging in cultural settings? And how is political resistance sustained under the constraints of surveillance and repression from abroad?

The backdrop to this phenomenon is the 2019 Hong Kong protest movement, followed by intense repression by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments. Many activists fled and now live in exile, facing both psychological trauma and the threat of transnational repression. As Tsang noted, diaspora Hong Kongers wish to remain politically engaged without exposing themselves or loved ones to state retaliation. This has led them to embed resistance within cultural forms—New Year fairs, movie clubs, and community centers—allowing them to “do politics non-politically.”

While this blending of culture and politics in exile has precedent—similar dynamics have been observed in the Turkish, Iranian, and Tibetan diasporas—Tsang argues that existing literature leaves gaps. Most notably, while repression is often theorized as a top-down force that curtails public expression, less is known about how individuals interpret and navigate repression in real-time, social contexts. Furthermore, scholars have yet to fully explore how individual acts of covert resistance become collectively legible and politically potent. Tsang’s intervention centers on this “how” question: How do individuals under threat of repression switch between cultural and political modes of engagement in everyday life? How does resistance become collectively cued and sustained?

To answer this, Tsang adopts an interactionist ethnographic methodology. He embedded himself in two diasporic Hong Kong cultural organizations located in a major US West Coast city: a movie club that promotes Hong Kong cinema and a community center offering social gatherings and workshops. Both organizations were founded by former activists from the 2019 movement and operate in the same local network. By selecting highly similar cases—geographically co-located, ideologically aligned, and socially overlapping—Tsang sought to isolate the micro-interactional dynamics that differentiate more successful political cueing from less effective ones.

These dynamics, Tsang argues, demonstrate that political speech in diasporic communities under repression is contingent not only on intention but on a shared ability to “read the room.” Through repeated participation in communal settings, individuals learn when it is safe—and expected—to shift from being cultural consumers to political actors. These micro-cues and switches, often mundane and unnoticed, are the mechanisms through which political communities are built and sustained under repression.

A third case, from the US Pacific Northwest, further supported this argument. There, a movie screening group resembled the earlier movie club, but with one key difference: a small stand offering books on Hong Kong politics. This unassuming addition, not even strategically planned, catalyzed in-depth public discussions about resistance and community formation. Tsang concluded that such material cues—books, spatial layouts, symbolic gestures—can serve as powerful anchors for interactional shifts toward political engagement.

Theoretically, Tsang’s research bridges social movement theory, diaspora studies, and the sociology of culture. While concepts such as abeyance (from movement scholarship) and hidden transcripts (James Scott) capture aspects of suppressed activism, Tsang insists on the importance of micro-sociological analysis: the cues, environments, and interactions through which resistance becomes collectively meaningful. His work contributes to the growing body of scholarship that treats culture not merely as a resource or backdrop, but as an active site of political negotiation.

Tsang concluded with a sobering reflection. While his findings highlight creative resistance, he also cautioned against romanticizing these efforts. In recent fieldwork, he has observed “Hong Kong Trumpists”entering the same cultural spaces to reshape diasporic narratives in line with right-wing populism. This underscores that the same interactional dynamics that enable resistance can also be harnessed to spread illiberal ideologies. Hence, understanding how political meaning is cued in everyday life is crucial not only for recognizing resistance but also for identifying the incubation of populist backlash.

Tsang’s presentation, rich in ethnographic detail and theoretical insight, offered a compelling portrait of how politics persists—and is transformed—in spaces where it is ostensibly absent. His work sheds light on the subtle yet powerful ways diasporic communities negotiate identity, solidarity, and resistance in an era of transnational repression.

Simon Clemens: “From Demos to Cosmos: Isabelle Stengers’ Cosmopolitical Philosophy and Democratic Pluralism”

Simon Clemens, Doctoral Researcher at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, presents his paper titled “From Demos to Cosmos: The Political Philosophy of Isabelle Stengers” during Panel I at the ECPS Conference 2025, held at St Cross College, University of Oxford, on July 1, 2025.

Simon Clemens, a doctoral researcher at the Cluster of Excellence “Contestation of the Liberal Script” (SCRIPTS) and the Theory of Politics program at Humboldt University of Berlin, delivered a nuanced presentation exploring the political philosophy of Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers. Titled “From Demos to Cosmos: The Political Philosophy of Isabelle Stengers,” the presentation aimed to reinterpret democratic politics and pluralism through the lens of what Stengers calls “cosmopolitics.”

Clemens contextualized his talk within his broader dissertation research, which interrogates the political significance of the so-called “new materialisms”—a theoretical tradition that reconsiders the relationship between nature and culture, particularly in light of climate crisis and transformations in the sciences. Through this framework, Clemens argued that Stengers offers an alternative imagination for politics that departs from liberal and utilitarian frameworks, introducing a politics grounded not in consensus or inclusion, but in co-presence and heterogeneity.

Clemens began by contrasting Stengers’ approach to pluralism with that of John Rawls, the quintessential liberal theorist. Rawls, in his theory of “reasonable pluralism,” acknowledges the coexistence of diverse worldviews in a democratic society, held together by an “overlapping consensus” of reasonable doctrines. Clemens noted that for Rawls, this consensus emerges from the institutional conditions of liberal democracy, enabling a coherent political framework that respects difference within bounds of reasonableness.

Stengers, however, rejects this premise. Rather than viewing pluralism as stemming from reasonable disagreement about a shared world, she posits that the world itself is fundamentally heterogeneous. Drawing from her work with Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine in the philosophy of science, Stengers argues that even the natural sciences—particularly physics and thermodynamics—offer conflicting and irreducibly divergent perspectives on the nature of reality. Thus, heterogeneity is not just a social fact or epistemological disagreement but an ontological condition.

To conceptualize how such radical heterogeneity can coexist politically, Stengers develops two central concepts: the “ecology of practices” and “cosmopolitics.” An “ecology of practices” refers to the co-existence of diverse knowledge systems, ways of life, and forms of evaluation that interact without collapsing into a singular hierarchy. Each practice is embedded in specific environments, produces its own modes of meaning, and carries internal logics that cannot be subordinated to universal standards. This ecology does not demand consensus but mutual awareness and the maintenance of relations that allow different practices to endure.

Cosmopolitics, meanwhile, names the political moment in which these ecologies interact. Importantly, Clemens emphasized that Stengers departs from Kantian cosmopolitanism, which seeks universal moral order. Instead, cosmopolitics resists universalization and instead foregrounds what she calls “co-presence”: the simultaneous, non-hierarchical existence of entities and practices that assert their heterogeneity. It is, in her view, a political response to the “generalized state of war” imposed by projects of global homogenization, including capitalist globalization and abstract universalism.

Clemens then turned to what he termed “cosmic proceduralism”—Stengers’ approach to political process that eschews quick resolutions and seeks to create space for heterogeneity to express itself. The core practice here is “slowing down”: a deliberate deceleration of decision-making and political composition to make room for those whose practices and values are often excluded or marginalized.

Slowing down, Clemens explained, is not inertia but attentiveness. It is the art of “paying attention to those inhabiting the land,” to borrow Stengers’ phrase. In practical terms, it introduces hesitation into otherwise mobilized, goal-oriented political processes. This aligns with Stengers’ critique of “mobilization” in both scientific and political contexts, where speed and efficiency often override careful consideration of affected actors.

Complementing this is her interest in the figure of the “diplomat,” who negotiates among divergent worlds not by imposing unity but by pacifying potentially hostile interactions. Through diplomacy and slowing down, a fragile mode of coexistence is made possible—a cosmos that is always emergent and never fully known.

In the final section, Clemens addressed the implications of Stengers’ cosmopolitics for democratic theory, particularly the concept of the demos. Drawing on thinkers like Jacques Rancière and Claude Lefort, he noted that radical democratic theory defines the demos as inherently open and contestable. “We, the people” is never a closed category; it is always subject to expansion and redefinition.

However, Clemens argued that Stengers moves away from the inclusion-oriented logic of radical democracy. Her concern is not with expanding the demos to include the excluded, but with preserving the heterogeneity of forms of life without subsuming them into a unified political subject. In this sense, her cosmopolitics does not seek to rule “in the name of the people,” but to enable the coexistence of radically diverse actors—what might be called the rule of the heterogeneous.

This leads to a provocative claim: the liberal and even radical democratic emphasis on inclusion can become coercive when it imposes a shared ontology or worldview. Inclusion, in this view, risks annihilating difference under the guise of universality. Thus, Stengers’ cosmopolitics can be read as a post-democratic or even anti-democratic gesture—not in the sense of rejecting democracy, but of shifting its foundation from shared rule to plural coexistence.

Clemens concluded by noting that Stengers’ political philosophy makes an important intervention in both democratic theory and broader discussions of pluralism. It challenges the consensus-seeking, universalist tendencies of liberalism and radical democracy alike. By proposing a cosmopolitical proceduralism rooted in heterogeneity, slowing down, and non-hierarchical co-presence, Stengers reimagines political life as the careful negotiation of difference rather than its resolution.

In an era of planetary crisis, epistemic conflict, and social fragmentation, Clemens suggested, such a rethinking may be not only timely but necessary. Cosmopolitics, in this light, becomes a radical democratic gesture that centers the right to exist differently—not just for people, but for practices, worlds, and beings too often ignored by traditional political thought.

Conclusion

Panel I of the ECPS Conference 2025 at Oxford University illuminated the evolving tensions within the modern social contract by offering deeply complementary empirical, ethnographic, and philosophical insights. Each presentation underscored the ways in which democratic legitimacy is not only being tested but reconfigured in response to exclusionary populism, transnational repression, and ontological pluralism. From Robert Johns’ sobering data on the limits of rights-based persuasion to Nathan Tsang’s compelling ethnography of diasporic resistance and Simon Clemens’ philosophical reimagining of democracy through Stengers’ cosmopolitics, the panel revealed the fragility and adaptability of democratic norms under contemporary pressure.

Chair Dr. Lior Erez skillfully moderated a session that moved fluidly between grounded data, lived experience, and theoretical provocation. What emerged was a picture of “the people” not as a unified voice, but as a contested terrain—shaped by identity, institutional trust, and the search for meaningful participation. The session called not for nostalgia over lost democratic certainties but for rigorous engagement with the evolving forms of political subjectivity, belonging, and resistance. As the crisis of the liberal script deepens, such interdisciplinary dialogues remain vital in charting pathways toward inclusive, resilient, and plural democratic futures.


 

Note: To experience the panel’s dynamic and thought-provoking Q&A session, we encourage you to watch the full video recording above.

Participants of the ECPS Conference 2025 at St Cross College, University of Oxford, gather for a group photo on July 1, 2025.

Opening Session of the ECPS Conference 2025: ‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy – Interdisciplinary Approaches

Please cite as:
ECPS Staff (2025). “Opening Session of the ECPS Conference 2025: ‘We, the People’ and the Future of Democracy – Interdisciplinary Approaches.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). July 8, 2025. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00101

The ECPS Conference 2025 at the University of Oxford began with a timely and thought-provoking opening session that explored the evolving meaning and political utility of “the people” in democratic discourse. Sümeyye Kocaman offered a nuanced welcome, highlighting how the term has been used across history to empower, exclude, and politicize identity. Kate Lindsay Mavor, Master of St Cross College, underscored the value of interdisciplinary exchange in addressing democratic challenges, noting how the College’s diverse academic environment aligned naturally with the conference’s aims. Baroness Janet Royall then delivered a compelling keynote, warning of the double-edged nature of “the people” as both democratic ideal and populist tool. Her address emphasized the need for inclusion, institutional integrity, civic renewal, and interdisciplinary cooperation in the face of democratic erosion. The session set the stage for critical and globally relevant dialogue across disciplines.

Reported by ECPS Staff

The opening session of the ECPS Conference 2025 at the University of Oxford commenced with a series of remarks that collectively set an intellectually rich and politically urgent tone for the days ahead. Sümeyye Kocaman, DPhil candidate at St. Catherine’s College and conference coordinator on behalf of the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), offered a thoughtful and inclusive welcome, grounding the event in the contested and evolving significance of “the people.” She reflected on how this concept—invoked across diverse historical, geographical, and ideological contexts—has served both emancipatory and exclusionary purposes. Drawing on her research and recent electoral analyses, she highlighted the growing resonance of populist narratives and the imperative to examine how democratic rhetoric shapes lived experience beyond the ballot box.

Following Kocaman, Kate Lindsay Mavor, CBE, Master of St Cross College, welcomed participants on behalf of the host institution. Emphasizing the interdisciplinary character of St Cross—a graduate college home to scholars from over 60 fields—she noted the alignment between the conference’s aims and the College’s commitment to cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Baroness Janet Royall of Blaisdon, Principal of Somerville College, then delivered an incisive keynote, urging participants to confront the dual nature of “the people” as both democratic foundation and potential populist weapon. Her address called for rigorous, interdisciplinary engagement and collective democratic renewal.

Welcome Address by Conference Coordinator Sümeyye Kocaman

Sümeyye Kocaman, Managing Editor of Populism & Politics, and the coordinator of the ECPS Conference 2025 on behalf of the European Center for Populism Studies, opened the event with a thoughtful and inclusive welcome. Expressing gratitude to participants for arriving so promptly, she framed the conference around the contested nature of “the people.” Kocaman also highlighted the plurality and political weight of the term across time and place. From 19th-century American democratization to Cold War securitization and from the ideological symbolism of Albania’s People’s Republic to contemporary struggles for women’s rights and labor justice, she emphasized that invocations of “the people” are never ideologically neutral.

Kocaman noted that in populism studies, “the people” remains a central but fluid category—emerging in various forms such as “digital populism,” “climate populism,” and others. This terminological proliferation, she argued, speaks to the field’s theoretical dynamism but also to its increasing relevance in everyday political life. Drawing from her own research, she underscored the need to interrogate how notions of “the people” function not just in electoral discourse, but in the daily lived experiences of individuals and communities. This perspective, she asserted, is especially urgent in light of rising populist rhetoric across both Eastern and Western Europe, as recently documented in ECPS’s report on the EU elections.

Kocaman closed by acknowledging the collaborative support of academic and institutional partners—including the Rothermere American Institute, the European Studies Centre, Oxford’s Democracy Network, and scholars from Berlin and Brighton—and expressed solidarity with scholars unable to attend due to geopolitical crises. Her closing remarks served as a poignant reminder of the stakes of the conference: engaging critically with the idea of “the people” under conditions of global instability and democratic uncertainty.

Welcome Address by Kate Lindsay Mavor on Behalf of the Host College

Kate Lindsay Mavor, CBE, delivers the opening remarks at the ECPS Conference 2025 held at St Cross College, University of Oxford, on July 1, 2025.

Kate Lindsay Mavor, CBE, Master of St Cross College, opened the Conference with a warm and appreciative welcome to all participants. She expressed genuine delight that the conference was taking place at St Cross and extended her congratulations to Sümeyye Kocaman for organizing what she described as an exceptionally rich and meaningful academic program. She also offered thanks to Ben Gladstone, Junior Dean at St Cross, for his role in helping bring the event to the college.

Mavor took a moment to reflect on the nature of St Cross College itself—an entirely graduate institution at the University of Oxford, with approximately 620 students representing over 60 academic disciplines. She noted that this unique breadth makes the College an especially fertile ground for interdisciplinary dialogue, and she emphasized that hosting events like the ECPS Conference is very much in line with the College’s mission to encourage rigorous, open, and diverse scholarly conversations.

She acknowledged the topic of the conference—centered on the idea of “the people” and its implications for contemporary democracy—as both pressing and, in some respects, deeply unsettling. Yet she expressed hope that the conference would provide space for thoughtful, evidence-based discussion at a time when such engagement is more necessary than ever. She concluded by welcoming attendees once again and graciously passed the floor to Janet Royall, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, Principal of Somerville College, Oxford University.

Keynote Address by Janet Royall (Baroness Royall of Blaisdon)

Baroness Janet Royall of Blaisdon, Principal of Somerville College, delivers the keynote address during the opening session of the ECPS Conference 2025 at St Cross College, University of Oxford, on July 1, 2025.

Baroness Royall, in her opening address, brought to the fore a compelling blend of political insight, institutional experience, and democratic advocacy. While modestly noting her non-academic background, she framed her intervention with both humility and urgency—an acknowledgment of the significance of the moment and the thematic depth of the conference.

Speaking from her current role as Principal of Somerville College and her former position as Chair of the People’s History Museum in Manchester—a self-declared “museum of democracy”—Baroness Royall underscored the symbolic and practical weight of convening such a conference at a time when democracy is under unprecedented strain. Her address moved fluidly from personal reflection to systemic critique, offering a panoramic view of the challenges and possibilities that define our democratic era.

Baroness Royall opened by commending the ECPS and conference organizers for their vision and rapid execution of a robust program. She recalled an early conversation in January 2025 with the conference coordinator, Sumeyye Kocaman, about an “embryonic” idea to convene a gathering on the theme of “We, the People.” In less than six months, that idea had matured into an intellectually rigorous and internationally inclusive conference. She highlighted the potential of this initiative to lay the groundwork for a broader academic and civic endeavor, notably the proposed Oxford Democracy Network—a platform to foster long-term collaboration around democratic renewal.

At the heart of Baroness Royall’s speech was the concept of “the people”—both as a foundational democratic ideal and as a source of contemporary political peril. She asked, pointedly, whether the title of the conference might have been better framed as “We, the People and the Precarious Future of Democracy.” This rhetorical shift captured her broader concern: that the invocation of “the people” has become a double-edged sword in today’s political landscape.

Baroness Royall cited the alarming statistic that one-fifth of the world’s democracies have declined or disappeared between 2012 and 2024, pointing to a structural crisis in democratic governance. This regression, she argued, is not attributable to a singular cause but reflects a toxic convergence of polarizing narratives, us-versus-them mentalities, and the erosion of social cohesion. Crucially, she emphasized that these trends do not signal the end of democracy, but rather call for its reinvention—grounded in inclusion, resilience, and renewed solidarity.

Drawing on her political experience, Baroness Royall articulated how the phrase “we the people,” while historically empowering—as in the US Constitution—can also be weaponized. When deployed inclusively, the phrase serves as a unifying force, anchoring citizenship in shared values and a common public life. However, in the hands of authoritarian populists, the same phrase is used to divide, exclude, and delegitimize. By framing political opponents as enemies of the people, populist leaders transform democratic mechanisms into tools of domination. Royall cited cases such as Hungary, India, Turkey, and the United States, where the language of majoritarian legitimacy is used to undermine pluralism, erode judicial independence, and roll back minority rights. In such contexts, democracy may persist in name but is hollowed out in substance.

To confront these challenges, Baroness Royall stressed the necessity of interdisciplinary engagement. No single field, she argued, can adequately diagnose or respond to the crisis of democracy. Political science and law illuminate how constitutions shape and channel power; sociology and anthropology explore the socio-cultural dimensions of exclusion and cohesion; history and philosophy provide the longue durée through which the evolution of “the people” can be understood; and media and technology studies reveal how digital platforms both fracture and connect public discourse. She notably added science to this list—an unusual but thought-provoking inclusion—arguing that scientific knowledge and the practices of truth-seeking are indispensable to democratic life. Citing Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse, she affirmed that “democracy is built on truth and trust,” and that science, in its ideal form, sustains both.

Baroness Royall’s address was marked by a tone of constructive realism. While expressing concern over democratic decline, she rejected fatalism. Instead, she outlined a multidimensional agenda for democratic renewal. First, she called for a redefinition of “the people” as an inclusive and dynamic community, one capable of accommodating diversity without retreating into fragmentation. Here, she invoked the post-Apartheid experience of South Africa as a model for constructing cross-cutting civic identities that transcend ethnic or sectarian divisions.

Second, Baroness Royall underscored the need to reinforce institutional integrity. This involves defending the independence of the judiciary, safeguarding electoral systems, and protecting a free press—all vital bulwarks against the authoritarian temptation of majoritarian rule.

Third, she emphasized civic renewal through grassroots participation, deliberative assemblies, and public education. Democracy, in her view, is not merely a set of institutions but a culture of engagement—a shared commitment to dialogue, complexity, and the common good.

Fourth, she called for global solidarity. Authoritarian populism is a transnational phenomenon and demands coordinated international responses. Civil society watchdogs, transnational legal norms, and cross-border academic partnerships must be part of the democratic arsenal.

Turning to her own political reflections, Baroness Royall acknowledged the widespread disillusionment with politicians. She argued, however, that this disaffection is often rooted in unrealistic public expectations. Voters demand lower taxes, higher pensions, and expanded public services—expectations that cannot be reconciled without trade-offs. Populists exploit this cognitive dissonance by offering simple solutions to complex problems. In contrast, genuine democracy, she insisted, requires honesty—about limits, about governance, and about the costs of collective decisions.

She also lamented the decline of local journalism and the rise of disinformation—particularly via AI-generated content—which has fractured the public sphere. Without a shared reality, she warned, the very possibility of democratic deliberation is undermined. In this context, she called for renewed investment in the civic infrastructure of knowledge: public media, media literacy, and forums for reasoned debate.

Baroness Royall then addressed a structural limitation of democracy often left unspoken: the influence of global capital. She noted that the need to placate financial markets can restrict democratic choice, creating a form of “attenuated democracy” where formal procedures persist but real power is constrained. This reality, she argued, highlights the need for vigilance and adaptation to preserve meaningful democratic sovereignty.

In her concluding remarks, Baroness Royall affirmed the value of the ECPS conference and its role in advancing a crucial intellectual and political mission. The “We, the People” program, she said, addresses the central paradox of modern democracy: that the very concept designed to empower citizens can also be used to erode their rights. By combining rigorous scholarship with policy-relevant insights, the conference aims not only to diagnose democratic decay but also to formulate strategies for renewal.

Baroness Royall closed on a note of cautious optimism, invoking Antonio Gramsci’s famous formulation: “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” While the threats to democracy are serious, she maintained that collective action, informed deliberation, and institutional resilience can chart a path forward. She expressed hope that the conference would inspire not only intellectually stimulating discussions but also concrete contributions to policy and democratic reform.

Conclusion 

The opening session of the ECPS Conference 2025 laid a compelling foundation for the days ahead, offering both a sobering diagnosis of democratic fragility and an urgent call for renewal grounded in intellectual rigor and interdisciplinary collaboration. Anchored by the interventions of Sümeyye Kocaman, Kate Lindsay Mavor, and Baroness Janet Royall, the session deftly mapped the theoretical and practical stakes of examining “the people” as a contested and evolving concept at the heart of democratic politics.

Kocaman’s remarks highlighted the historical plurality and ideological malleability of “the people,” urging participants to interrogate its use not only in electoral campaigns but also in shaping everyday political experiences. Mavor emphasized the role of academic institutions in fostering open dialogue on questions of urgent public concern. Baroness Royall, meanwhile, offered a far-reaching keynote that moved from democratic theory to global political realities. Her speech underscored the double-edged nature of “the people” in democratic discourse—capable of both mobilizing collective agency and justifying exclusionary populism.

Collectively, these addresses set a tone of cautious optimism. While acknowledging the pressures of democratic backsliding, disinformation, and socio-political fragmentation, each speaker reaffirmed the possibility of renewal through civic education, institutional reform, and cross-sector dialogue. The session concluded with a clear message: that democracy cannot be taken for granted, and that critical, interdisciplinary engagement is essential not only for understanding the present crisis, but also for envisioning democratic futures that are more inclusive, participatory, and resilient. As the conference moves forward, the intellectual commitments voiced in the opening session will serve as both compass and challenge—calling participants to contribute meaningfully to the urgent task of democratic revitalization.

Dr. Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus at Princeton University, and former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

Professor Richard Falk: The US Is Experiencing a ‘Weimar Moment’

In this urgent ECPS interview, Professor Richard Falk warns that the US is facing a “Weimar moment”—a fragile liberal democracy under siege by a resurgent ultra-right. A signatory of the International Declaration Against Fascism, Professor Falk links today’s “techno-fascist enthusiasts” to a global authoritarian drift. He critiques surveillance capitalism, weaponized nationalism, and soft authoritarianism, highlighting leaders like Trump, Modi, Erdoğan, and Netanyahu as drivers of this ideological mutation. Despite this grim trajectory, Professor Falk calls for renewed “normative resistance”—a defiant civic ethics rooted in critical thinking, international law, and solidarity. This interview is a vital reflection on the future of democracy, authoritarianism, and global justice.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In a political climate increasingly marked by creeping authoritarianism, disinformation, and democratic fragility, Dr. Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus at Princeton University, and former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, offers a powerful and sobering warning: the United States, he says, is currently undergoing a “Weimar moment.” This, he explains, refers to “a democratic superstructure and a liberal opposition, but one that is weak and unable to really mount effective resistance to a rising, ultra-right political formation.” Drawing on history and contemporary global trends, Professor Falk suggests we are witnessing not merely a democratic crisis, but the possible prelude to a systemic authoritarian transformation.

This interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) comes in the wake of the “International Declaration Against Fascism,” published on June 13, 2025. Professor Falk was one of the signatories, alongside Nobel laureates, public intellectuals, and leading scholars of democracy and authoritarianism. Echoing the spirit of the 1925 Anti-Fascist Intellectuals’ Manifesto, the declaration warns that “the threat of fascism is back—and so we must summon that courage and defy it again.” It urges citizens worldwide to resist not only overt autocracy, but also the instrumentalization of law, culture, media, and technology in the service of “techno-fascist enthusiasts.”

In our interview, Professor Falk elaborates on how the architecture of 21st-century power—surveillance capitalism, digital disinformation, populist polarization—is reshaping classical authoritarian strategies. While differing in structure and aesthetic from 20th-century fascism, he argues today’s movements share its core ambitions: the monopolization of political space, the stigmatization of dissent, and the erosion of checks and balances under charismatic strongmen. He points to figures like Trump, Modi, Erdoğan, and Netanyahu as examples of a new ideological formation—what he elsewhere calls a “mutation of soft authoritarianism” that weaponizes nationalism, racialized resentment, and neoliberal precarity.

Yet Professor Falk is not entirely pessimistic. He highlights the enduring relevance of “normative resistance”—a civic and intellectual defiance rooted in critical inquiry, public ethics, and transnational solidarity. In an age of disinformation and partisan moralism, he calls for a recommitment to truth, international law, and the unfinished democratic project, warning that the erosion of global governance and international legal norms risks a regression “to an era of colonialism, suffering, and destruction.”

Here is the transcript of our interview with Professor Richard Falk, edited lightly for readability.

The Threat of Fascism Is Real, but the Form Has Mutated

Professor Richard Falk, thank you so very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: You were among the signatories of the recent declaration warning of the return of fascism. In your view, how does the current resurgence of authoritarian-nationalist politics differ in structure, aesthetic, and operational logic from the classical 20th-century fascism? Can we still meaningfully use the term “fascism” across such divergent historical contexts without diminishing its analytical precision?

Professor Richard Falk: That’s a very tough starting question and requires a good deal of reflection and nuance to do justice to it. It’s important—of course, a crucial question.

One of the striking differences is that the resurgence of especially autocratic tendencies in the West is less focused on internal class relations than on the threats of migration and immigration, and the outsider rather than the enemy inside, which was a feature particularly of the Nazi version of fascism. But generally, the struggles in Italy and Spain that resulted in fascist emergence as dominant forces were essentially internal in their vital strategy.

Furthermore, there was a different technological environment in the early decades of the 20th century than what exists currently. The forms of control and resistance are really radically different. In the present world situation, due to the innovative technology that we group under the phrase “digital age.”

But the core features of militarism and a single charismatic leader that exert control over the political space and do not respect divergent views—I think that feature is present. Also, the resistance of the state to dissent and protest is characteristic of this new wave of far-right politics.

Whether it’s useful to connect this current wave with the problems that underlay World War II is something that needs exploration and debate. I’ve sometimes referred to the situation in my country, the US, as experiencing what I call a “Weimar moment.” That is, where you have a democratic superstructure and a liberal opposition, but it’s weak and unable to really mount effective resistance to a rising, ultra-right political formation. It takes advantage of crises in the domestic economy and in the success or failure of state undertakings. But it’s essentially concerned with a monopolizing of political power and economic influence and control. And in that sense, there is a continuity. The German and Spanish versions of fascism particularly stress this alliance between the state and the military. In the Spanish case, you had the Catholic Church. There was a kind of anti-communist element in the struggle.

I don’t know as much about the Italian political atmosphere accompanying the rise of Mussolini, but I think there was also a right-left division in the country—a polarization. So each of these fascist narratives of the past has its own originality and characteristics, and in one sense even grouping them together may be questionable because it overlooks those differences.

So, on balance, it is useful to warn of the emergence of a new phase in the encounter between liberal democracies and fascist movements. However, it can be misleading to treat this phenomenon as uniform, given its inherently heterogeneous nature. The situation in the United States, for example, differs markedly from that in major European countries—and even more so from key Global South contexts such as India, or, in a different way, China and Russia. While these cases may fall outside the conventional scope of what is typically labeled “fascism,” they share certain characteristics: a concentration of power in the hands of a single leader, systematic surveillance, the stigmatization of dissent, and a concerted effort to monopolize the political sphere through an alliance between economic elites and political leaders.

Techno-Authoritarianism Has Already Arrived in Some States

Photo: Shutterstock

The declaration warns of “techno-fascist enthusiasts.” How do you interpret the convergence of surveillance capitalism, algorithmic governance, and digital disinformation ecosystems with authoritarian statecraft? Are we witnessing the emergence of a new modality of domination—a digital totalitarianism—beyond Orwellian metaphors?

Professor Richard Falk: I think that is a threat; whether it will materialize in that kind of absolutist form is not yet clear or certain. We are at a period, I believe, of transition in which resistance—and even a reversal of these tendencies—remains a possibility. In other words, I don’t think we’re predetermined at this stage to have that future, though there are alarming signs that this is where the major liberal democracies are headed.

Some of the more organized autocratic societies have already more or less arrived at those points. I would mention India, China, and Russia as being very well organized to manage a kind of techno-authoritarianism that, in the Chinese case, produces some pretty impressive results for its population. It is not war-prone in the way that fascism is usually portrayed. So, again, it may be misleading to group autocratic tendencies in various states into one category, because the originality of the Chinese path is quite notable and seems to have some advantages compared to the liberal democratic path.

Today’s Fascistic Movement Has a Blueprint, Opposition Does Not

A century after the Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals in 1925, what enduring ethical and strategic lessons can today’s democratic societies extract from those who risked everything to confront fascism at its inception? Are there analogues today to the cultural complicity and intellectual appeasement that enabled fascist ascendancy then?

Professor Richard Falk: I think again, speaking first about the United States, which I know best, there’s definitely that similarity of a weak liberal opposition and a very impassioned autocratic, fascistic movement that has very dedicated conceptions of what it wants to achieve. Trump came to his second presidential term with a very worked-out plan or blueprint of how to govern in the light of the acceptance of this autocratic, authoritarian, anti-democratic set of aspirations, and he seems to have at least temporarily neutralized the economic oligarchs by having them—for opportunistic reasons—join with his MAGA movement. And that does suggest a drift toward this kind of consolidated authoritarian governance structure.

There are some glimmers of light that suggest it may not be so simplistic to fulfill these autocratic ambitions. One of the glimmers of light was the outcome in New York City of the race to become mayor, which surprised most Americans—and even most New Yorkers—by selecting, by an impressive margin, the Muslim son of a mixed parental background, a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, who seemed to defy all the traditional biases associated with the drift to the ultra-right. And it’s at least being welcomed in the US as a warning to the Democratic establishment that they better get their oppositional act together or they’ll be bypassed by this more progressive alternative politics. I happen to know the parents of Zohran Mamdani quite well, and it’s very thrilling for people who had these progressive hopes.

Normative Resistance Persists in a Structurally Degraded Public Sphere

In a political landscape defined by polarization, truth decay, and performative resistance, what forms of civic defiance remain normatively defensible and strategically viable? Is there still space for what you have elsewhere called ‘normative resistance’ within a structurally degraded public sphere?

Professor Richard Falk: It’s a very interesting question, marked by contradictory tendencies. There is a clear effort to shrink the space for critical discourse, alongside a growing recognition that the ultra-right project is largely incompatible with knowledge-based politics. One of its defining features—and here we see continuity with earlier fascist movements—is a preference for mobilizing people through emotional and belief-based appeals, with little regard for empirical truth. It is therefore unsurprising that leading universities in the United States have become primary targets of this ultra-right agenda.

Equally unsurprising is the simultaneous embrace of an aggressive nationalism and a retreat from internationalism—whether in the form of the UN or collaborative responses to global challenges like climate change. These forces coexist in a contradictory political landscape where tensions are mounting but remain unresolved.

The harsh treatment of undocumented immigrants—who are nonetheless vital to key sectors of the economy—reveals some of these contradictions. Even Trump has had to walk back elements of his anti-immigration stance when it came to essential labor in agriculture, restaurants, and other industries where undocumented workers are difficult to replace.

Predatory Capitalism Fuels Authoritarian Resentment

A protester holds a banner demanding economic justice. Photo: Shutterstock.

You have long emphasized the dangers of ‘soft authoritarianism’ embedded within liberal orders. From Modi to Erdoğan, from Netanyahu to Trump, do you regard contemporary populist authoritarianism as a transitional phase toward a more explicit fascist ethos—or does it represent a distinct ideological mutation altogether?

Professor Richard Falk: Well again, that’s a very hard question which requires a clearer crystal ball than one in my possession. In other words, it can go either way—or both ways—and differently in different places. I think one of the interesting recent developments is the normalization of the language of genocide as applied to Israel’s violence in Gaza. That was—and still is—a prohibited terminology on the part of the governments supporting Israel, and it’s used selectively as a way of punishing protesters. But still, within societies at large, that terminology—the naming of the violence—is no longer abnormal or extreme: to refer to it as genocide, or to refer to the pre-October 7th situation as apartheid.

And that represents a victory of sorts for those who want a truth-based mode of governance, which is associated with liberalism, the tradition of the Enlightenment, and the whole role of science. So you have this peculiar attitude of the ultra-right, which on one side uses instrumentally the politics of surveillance—a kind of fascist variant of a surveillance state—and on the other side is very unsupportive of scientific research, technological innovation, and really of knowledge acquisition within leading centers of learning. And the hostility, for instance, to foreign students that is taking hold here—which was one of the tendencies of the Trump presidency—is emblematic of this tendency.

Your scholarship on global capitalism critiques the deep structural inequalities produced by neoliberal orthodoxy. How do you see these economic dislocations—especially the evisceration of public goods, precaritization of labor, and austerity—as constituting fertile ground for authoritarian-populist narratives and politics of resentment?

Professor Richard Falk: It has created those fertile grounds, and Trump and others around the world have known how to take advantage of them to win support from those elements of society that are most victimized by what I call ‘predatory capitalism’. This model is highly exploitative toward vulnerable sectors of society and facilitates growing inequalities between a tiny number of successful entrepreneurial individuals and the broader population. At the same time, it is fiscally stingy toward those at the bottom of the economic scale. This dynamic exacerbates class-based polarization and generates widespread alienation and resentment—sentiments that are effectively mobilized by belief-driven, strong leaders like Trump, Modi, or Erdoğan, as you mentioned.

Resistance Depends on Forces Outside the Bipartisan Order

Can the anti-fascist imperative itself become captive to ideological co-optation or instrumentalization? How can progressive actors preserve the ethical clarity of anti-fascist struggle without succumbing to partisan reductionism or performative moralism?

Professor Richard Falk: Of course, that remains to be seen—how strong they are. I don’t have much confidence in the liberal wing of the political spectrum, represented here by the Democratic Party and elsewhere, for instance, in the UK by the Labour Party. Those who accept the structure of capitalism and nationalism tend not to have the political will to maintain resistance in the face of strong repressive policies. That creates my fear that these autocratic, fascistic movements will test the resilience of the political system, and that resistance will depend on a surge of affiliation and commitment to what I call the progressive portions of society—those outside the framework of the bipartisan political structures that dominate most sovereign states.

In the light of Israel’s recent military operations in Gaza and the structural conditions of Palestinian dispossession, how would you assess the extent to which settler-colonial regimes today deploy fascistic methods under the rubric of democratic self-defense or counterterrorism?

Professor Richard Falk: That really depends on whether you consider Israel an anomaly or something more menacing globally as part of this regressive trend. I tend to view it as an anomaly because of the additional influence of Zionist ideology added onto the settler-colonial project, and that gives it a dehumanizing focus on dominating the other in the name of racial supremacy. And that’s why a Zionist state like Israel turns into an apartheid regime, treating the resident population as a persecuted presence in their own homeland.

It’s really a repetition of the story of settler colonialism in the white breakaway British colonies of North America, Australia, and New Zealand, where apartheid practices gave way to the embrace of a genocidal strategy in order to achieve the ends of a purified ethnic hierarchy that completely marginalizes the native population.

But I don’t see that happening beyond Israel—certainly not in as crude a form. You have some of it in India, with the treatment of Muslims by the Hindu nationalist orientation of the Modi government, especially in Kashmir, where many of these same tendencies are evident. But I don’t find it a general characteristic.

International Law as Sword for Enemies, Shield for Friends

And lastly, Professor Falk, you have consistently critiqued the asymmetries of global governance. Does the international community’s paralysis in the face of enduring Palestinian suffering reflect not only political hypocrisy but a deeper erosion of the normative foundations of international law itself?

Professor Richard Falk: Yes, I’m guilty of all those things. And I think the comparison between the Western reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine and its reaction to Israel’s behavior in Gaza and the West Bank is illustrative of using international law and the UN as a sword against enemies while using international law and the UN as a shield protecting friends.

So you have complete double standards between how law is working when you’re dealing with an adversary, and how law works when you’re dealing with your own behavior or that of your close allies. You have that dualism in the reaction—on the one side, to Ukraine, where there are impassioned appeals to the UN and to the International Criminal Court; and with Israel, where the UN is denounced and the International Criminal Court is repudiated when it issues arrest warrants.

So it undermines law as a regulative framework that governs behavior and turns it into a policy instrument with inconsistent use for friends and enemies.