Please cite as: Syvak, Nikoletta. (2026). “Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm.” ECPS Book Reviews. European Center for Populism Studies. January 19, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/br0025
This review assesses Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm (2024), edited by Saul Newman and Maximilian Conrad, a timely and theoretically ambitious contribution to the study of contemporary populism. The volume advances the argument that post-truth populism is not merely about political lying, but about a deeper transformation in the status of facts, expertise, and epistemic authority in democratic life. Combining political theory, media studies, and comparative analysis, the book conceptualizes post-truth populism as an epistemic struggle in which claims to “truth” are grounded in identity and moral antagonism rather than verification. While the collection’s conceptual breadth sometimes comes at the expense of analytical coherence, it offers valuable insights into how populism reshapes knowledge, trust, and democratic governance in an era of information disorder.
Reviewed by Nikoletta Syvak*
This book review examines the edition 2024 – Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm, edited by Saul Newman and Maximilian Conrad, which explores the relationship between populism and post-truth in contemporary politics. The book offers an interpretation of post-truth populism (PTP) as a stable political complex in which anti-elitist mobilization logic is combined with a crisis of trust in expert knowledge and institutional sources of information. The review evaluates the central thesis of the collection, its place in political science literature, the quality of its arguments and empirical evidence, as well as its methodological strengths and limitations. It concludes that the book makes a significant contribution to the study of populism and political communication, although a unified conceptual framework is not always maintained at the level of individual chapters.
The main thesis of the collection is that post-truth is not limited to “lies in politics,” but reflects a change in the status of facts and expertise in the public sphere. The editors emphasize that populism has epistemic potential: the opposition between “the people” and “the elites” turns into a conflict between “the truth of the people” and “the manipulation of the elites,” where plausibility is subordinated to political identity (p. 4). In this sense, post-truth populism can be understood as a form of politics that not only ignores facts but actively redefines the conditions under which facts become legitimate in the first place. Particularly important is the idea that post-truth should be understood not as relativism, but as a kind of “truth fundamentalism”: actors can reject verifiable data while offering their own “only true” reality (p. 8).
The book is organized into four sections: theoretical debates about PTP, followed by chapters on political communication and media, counter knowledge and conspiracy narratives, and finally, the consequences for democracy (pp. 11-16). Thus, the collection combines political theory, media studies, and comparative politics, showing that post-truth politics concerns not only information bubbles but also the transformation of democratic institutions.
First, the book clearly positions itself within the political science literature on populism. The editors use an approach in which populism is understood as a “thin-centered ideology” based on a moral division of society into “pure people” and “corrupt elites” (p. 4). However, the collection also draws on the more recent “epistemic turn” in populism studies, which views populist politics as a struggle over knowledge, trust, and authority (p. 1). This allows the book to go beyond interpretations of populism exclusively as an electoral strategy or a reaction to economic crises.
Second, methodologically, the book is an edited volume, which means it includes different approaches. Qualitative methodology dominates conceptual analysis, a discursive approach, and case-oriented argumentation. However, the collection is not limited to theory. For example, the section on communication and media includes a study that uses experimental design to test how populist messages influence the perception of facts and the tendency toward “factual relativism.” This strengthens the book’s evidence base and shows that the PTP framework can be operationalized and tested, rather than just discussed at the level of metaphor.
Thirdly, the quality of writing and clarity of argumentation are generally high. The introduction provides a good introduction to the problem, quickly identifies its empirical relevance, and explains why post-truth populism cannot be reduced to moral condemnation of politicians. At the same time, it should be noted that some chapters in the collection may be theoretically dense and difficult for readers without prior knowledge: this is a typical feature of edited volumes, where a uniform style is not guaranteed.
Finally, the main question is how convincing the argument is and why it is important for us to pay attention to it. The strength of the book lies in its demonstration that PTP is not only about “fakes” and manipulation, but also about the erosion of trust as a resource of democratic governance. If citizens no longer share basic procedures for determining facts, rational public debate becomes impossible, and politics turns into a competition of moral narratives and identities. In this sense, the book raises a fundamentally important topic for contemporary political science
However, there are limitations. The term “post-truth populism” may be too broad and applicable to too many different phenomena, from anti-elite rhetoric to conspiracy theories and platform disinformation.
Furthermore, the claim of a “new paradigm” requires strict criteria: what exactly distinguishes PTP from mere populism plus media scandals? The collection presents a compelling formulation of the problem but does not always offer a single set of verifiable criteria that would allow PTP to be clearly distinguished from other forms of political communication.
Conclusion
Overall, the book makes a significant contribution to political science: it shows that populism should be analyzed not only as an ideology or mobilization strategy, but also as epistemic politics-the struggle for the legitimacy of knowledge and the right to “truth” in the public sphere (pp. 4-8). Despite its methodological heterogeneity and risk of conceptual vagueness, the collection is useful for researchers of populism, political communication, democratic theory, and the crisis of trust. The main merit of the book is its ability to explain why post-truth populism has become not a temporary anomaly but a symptom of structural changes in modern democracies.
(*) Nikoletta Syvak is a Graduate Student, Department of Political Science and International Relations, East China Normal University (ECNU). Email: syvaknikoletta@gmail.com
Newman, Saul & Conrad, Maximilian (eds.). Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. 349 pp. ISBN: ISSN 2946-6016
Iran is entering a critical juncture as renewed protests expose both the fragility and the resilience of the Islamic Republic. In this in-depth interview with the ECPS, Dr. Kamran Matin argues that since the 2009 Green Movement, the Iranian regime has ruled “primarily through coercion rather than consent,” relying on repression while retaining the support of only a small social base. Yet violence alone does not explain regime survival. As Matin emphasizes, the Islamic Republic endures “not only through violence, but through a fragmented opposition” that lacks organizational depth, ideological coherence, and a credible alternative vision. Drawing on political economy, Gramscian theory, and regional geopolitics, Dr. Matin analyzes why economic shocks quickly become systemic political crises in Iran—and why, despite widespread de-legitimation, the unresolved question of “what comes next” continues to constrain revolutionary outcomes.
Iran has entered one of the most volatile phases of its post-1979 history. The protest wave that erupted after the sharp currency shock of late December 2025 quickly escalated into explicitly anti-regime mobilization, revealing not only the depth of socio-economic dislocation but also the political vulnerabilities of the Islamic Republic. In this interview with the European Center for Populism Studies, Dr. Kamran Matin—Reader in International Relations at the University of Sussex—offers a theoretically informed analysis of the current conjuncture, foregrounding two interlinked claims that capture the central stakes of the moment: “Since 2009, [the] Iran regime has ruled by coercion, not consent,” and “[the] Iran regime survives not only through violence, but through a fragmented opposition.”
For Dr. Matin, the disputed 2009 election and the Green Movement mark a critical turning point in the regime’s mode of rule. As he emphasizes, “almost all of these signals are present in some form, but at least since 2009—going back to that critical moment—the Iranian state, the Islamic Republic, has ruled primarily through coercion rather than consent.” In his account, the erosion of consent is not merely ideological but institutional: the narrowing of factional pluralism and the weakening of reformist mediation diminished the regime’s capacity to manage dissent through electoral incorporation. The result, he argues, is a system that “retains the support of a small segment of Iranian society—perhaps 10 to 15 percent at most, and maybe closer to 10 percent,” while relying on “brute force: repression, torture, imprisonment, surveillance, and so on” to govern the remainder.
Yet Dr. Matin’s analysis also resists purely repression-centered explanations of authoritarian durability. Alongside state violence, he argues, regime survival is sustained by the organizational weakness and strategic incoherence of its opponents. “I would argue that, in addition to massive levels of violence, what sustains the regime is precisely the fractured nature of the opposition, its disorganization, and the absence of a political discourse that appeals equally to the main segments of society.” Even as protests broaden to include bazaar networks, students, workers, women, and peripheral provinces, the opposition—he contends—lacks the institutional capacity to translate mobilization into a viable transition project. “Apart from state violence,” he continues, “this lack of an organized alternative—ideologically, discursively, and organizationally—is a key factor keeping the regime in power.” The enduring strategic dilemma is therefore not simply the de-legitimation of the regime, but the absence of a credible successor: “Many people ask themselves, ‘What comes next?’”
Across the interview, Dr. Matin situates these dynamics within wider debates on revolutionary crises, hegemonic contestation, and regional geopolitics. He examines how economic shocks in a rentier political economy can rapidly become systemic political conflict; how coercion is deployed through targeted and exemplary violence; and how opposition plurality can both energize revolt and inhibit the formation of a unifying, “national-popular” project. Taken together, Dr. Matin’s intervention offers a stark but analytically precise assessment of Iran’s predicament: a regime increasingly dependent on coercion, confronting a society in revolt—yet facing an opposition still struggling to answer the question that shadows every revolutionary moment: what comes next?
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Dr. Kamran Matin, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
In Iran, There Is No Sharp Distinction Between the Economic and the Political
Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Hamaney on billboard in Tabriz, Iran on August 11, 2019.
Dr. Kamran Matin, thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Protests in Iran reportedly originated in a sharp currency shock on 28 December 2025 and rapidly escalated into explicitly anti-regime mobilization. Through what causal pathways do socio-economic dislocations in Iran—currency collapse, inflationary spirals, and distributive breakdown—translate into systemic political contestation rather than reformist grievance, and how does Iran’s specific configuration of state–market–religious authority condition this radicalization?
Dr. Kamran Matin: First of all, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to discuss the protests in Iran. Your question is obviously very dense and contains multiple sub-questions. I will try to address them one by one, to the extent that I remember them.
In terms of economic grievances translating into political contestation, I think we have to bear in mind that Iran is still largely a rentier state. Therefore, like many rentier states—but also developmental states in general—there is hardly anything that is not political in essence. There is no sharp distinction between the economic and the political, because the economic accumulation of capitalists, or the work that the working class does for capitalists, in a country like Iran is ultimately not based—if I use the language of Marxist political economy—on surplus value in the sense we understand it in theory. Rather, profit is ultimately a redistribution of external rent by the state to various sections of society. As a result, the distribution of profit and wealth is politically determined, although not directly; it is mediated through multiple institutions and mechanisms.
In that sense, it is very easy in Iran for economic problems to become political issues. This has always been the case, even before the revolution, during the Shah period. Currently, however, this dynamic has intensified, because the combination of sanctions, the illicit economy, and the informal economy means that control over currency, in particular, is very tightly exercised. The government allocates foreign currency at different rates to different actors. There are cheaper rates from which large industrialists or merchants can benefit, but access to these requires proximity to the state or the government. So even economic competitiveness becomes a fundamentally political process. It is not economic in the straightforward sense that greater efficiency or lower production costs automatically generate higher profits. That logic has very limited purchase in a place like Iran.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the protests began in the so-called bazaar and then very quickly turned into a popular, widespread political movement. However, we should also bear in mind that the bazaar, in the context of Iran—and to some extent perhaps even in Turkey—has somewhat different meanings and characteristics. Historically, the term bazaar referred to the large mercantile bourgeoisie involved in trade. But in recent decades, and probably even earlier, the bazaar has come to include different layers. For example, the current protests were not initiated by traditional, ideologically religious merchants as such, but by shopkeepers selling electronic goods. These goods are imported, especially from Asia—South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere—and these traders were unable either to buy or to sell because the currency was in free fall. As a result, they initiated the protests. Because society as a whole was already suffering from high inflation, unemployment, and general economic insecurity, the wider population could easily identify with their grievances.
As for the second part of your question—about Iran’s specific configuration of state–market–religious authority and how it conditions this situation. The bazaar, particularly its traditional merchant class, has historically been very close to the ulama, or clerical class, through intermarriage and shared religious conservatism. At the same time, the security forces—the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the Basij militia—have largely been recruited from the petty bourgeoisie, as well as from these social strata in different parts of Iran. There is therefore a close linkage among these elements. The government itself may be internally diverse, with competing factions, but in moments of crisis such as the current one, these factions tend to close ranks in order to weather the storm. The Supreme Leader plays a key role in maintaining a certain level of coherence within this system, though that is something we might discuss later.
Finally, there is, of course, the question of minorities, nationalities, and women—the gender dimension. In the last major wave of protests, the “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi,” or “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, women and subaltern nations were at the forefront, while large cities—especially in majority Persian-speaking regions—were comparatively quiet. This time, however, the pattern has been somewhat different. The protests began in Tehran and other major cities, while significant sections of Kurdistan remained relatively quiet, although some areas were highly active and bore the brunt of repression in the early days—places such as Ilam or Kermanshah. This difference also calls for explanation and is related to the way the previous protest wave was suppressed, as well as to the fragility and temporary nature of solidarity between the center—Persian speakers or Iranian nationalists more generally—and groups such as the Kurds, the Baluch, and the Arabs.
I hope I have addressed your question, but I am sure that we will return to many of these issues again in subsequent questions.
Wider, More Popular, Yet Unorganized: The Limits of Expanding Protest Coalition
“Woman, life, freedom”: London protest draws thousands following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody on January 10, 2022. Photo: Vehbi Koca.
If the current protest wave incorporates bazaar and merchant networks alongside students, workers, women, and peripheral provinces, how does this re-composition of class alliances alter the movement’s structural power, organizational density, and leverage vis-à-vis the state when compared to 2009, 2017–19, and 2022? In particular, does bazaar participation reintroduce a historically decisive—but long dormant—node of revolutionary capacity?
Dr. Kamran Matin: The fact that the bazaar was involved is significant, because in the previous protests you mentioned there was always this notion that the so-called gray area of the Iranian population was not participating. By this gray area, people meant those who were unhappy or dissatisfied but not willing to go to the streets, protest, and risk their lives. This time around, that changed, because we saw participation not only in big cities but also in small ones. There were a large number of casualties in places whose names I had never even heard before—very small towns in distant provinces like Khorasan in the northeast, near Afghanistan—where historically we have seen very little in the way of radical protest against the regime.
So, I think this time the protests were wider and more popular, with the partial exception of Kurdistan, which again has to do with the way Iranian nationalism operates. Opposition forces often fail to acknowledge Kurdish grievances as such, and not only that: by accusing Kurds of separatism and of being foreign agents, they actually—albeit indirectly—help the Iranian state repress them even more brutally. As a result, people were very afraid of much harsher repression in Kurdish areas, and some parts remained quiet, although, there were many protests in other regions.
Another important point is the significance of the Green Movement in 2009. Just to clarify, in case readers do not remember, it was triggered by a disputed election in which Ahmadinejad was declared the winner, even though Mousavi, the other candidate, contested the result, leading to large protests. That episode effectively resulted in the strategic marginalization of the so-called reformist faction within the Islamic Republic from the state apparatus and state power. This had incredibly important consequences for subsequent protests, because before 2009 the Islamic Republic was often able to remain flexible vis-à-vis popular mobilization. The reformist faction could articulate some of the grievances, allowing people to continue expressing their dissatisfaction through the electoral system by voting for reformist candidates. In this way, the Islamic Republic was able to absorb a great deal of social and political energy and was therefore not as fragile or brittle politically as it later became.
With the sidelining of the reformists, the state became more or less monolithic, dominated by what Western commentators often describe as hardliners or conservatives. Reformists did not disappear entirely, but they no longer wielded any significant power. At the same time, people lost faith in the reformist route to change. From that point onward, every new protest became more radical. Electoral participation dropped dramatically, even according to the state’s own statistics, which are themselves highly engineered and manipulated. Around 2017 or 2018, a famous slogan emerged: “Neither reformists nor conservatives—this is the end of the story.” In effect, people were saying that they no longer trusted either faction, which meant that they were now seeking radical change in the state itself. In their view, the Islamic Republic had to go.
In the most recent protests, we can also see that there was no reference to any possible alternatives within the establishment or the regime, and the slogans were overtly radical. Many of these slogans had appeared in previous protest waves as well, but from the limited footage I have seen, the key difference was the level of determination shown by protesters in confronting the security forces. They fought them in the streets and, in some cases, even chased them away. This is why, on the 8th or 9th of January, the regime deployed the IRGC. There are also many reports suggesting that the regime brought in militias from Iraq—the Shi‘a militias of the PMU, or Hashd al-Shaabi—as well as other foreign elements of the so-called axis of resistance that it could mobilize. The idea was that, because they were foreigners, they would have no relatives or social ties that might restrain their actions.
So, the density was there, and the scale was there, but organization was not necessarily present—and that is something we may want to discuss further.
Why Repression, Not Legitimacy, Remains the Regime’s Decisive Pillar
Free Iran Protest in Toronto, Ontario: A large group of demonstrators marches south along Bay Street. Photo: Cameron Ballantyne Smith.
In assessing whether the Mullah regime is approaching a decisive rupture, which indicators matter most analytically: elite fissures within the clerical–security nexus, defections or hesitation within coercive institutions, breakdowns in fiscal extraction and strike coordination, or erosion of regime legitimacy withinreligious networks? How should these signals be weighted relative to one another?
Dr. Kamran Matin: Almost all of these signals are present in some form, but at least since 2009—going back to that critical moment—the Iranian state, the Islamic Republic, has ruled primarily through coercion rather than consent. It still retains the support of a small segment of Iranian society—perhaps 10 to 15 percent at most, and maybe closer to 10 percent. For the rest, it relies on brute force: repression, torture, imprisonment, surveillance, and so on.
If I use Gramscian language, there were periods when a form of hegemonic governance existed, combining coercion with consent. Consent was generated through elections—however engineered they may have been—but also through internal plurality and factional diversity. Reformists and hardliners coexisted, and people could choose one over the other. At the time, many Iranians used to say that they were choosing the “bad” over the “worse.” That option, however, was removed after 2009. From then on, there was effectively only the “very bad” to vote for.
All the other indicators you mention are also present: dire economic conditions, a deep crisis of regime legitimacy, a lack of future prospects, international isolation, and geopolitical weakening—especially since October 7 and developments affecting the so-called proxy forces in the region, the fall of Assad, and related events. Without sheer violence, the Islamic Republic would not be standing. We can see this clearly in the current round of protests as well. Millions of people took to the streets across Iran, in both small towns and large cities, and yet within two nights the regime killed so many people that it managed to force the population back into their homes.
I would say—and this is not just my view, but one shared by scholars of revolution—that it is not enough for a population simply to reject the way it is ruled for a revolution to succeed. For a revolution to succeed, the state must also be unable to repress in the way it has. As long as the repressive and security organs of the state are both willing and capable of suppressing protests, the regime is likely to survive. This is precisely what we have seen over at least the past ten years. So, I think this is the most important indicator.
An indirect confirmation of this can be seen in the way the 12-day war last summer paved the way for the current protests. Militarily, people saw that the Islamic Republic was unable to defend itself. A large number of the most senior commanders of the IRGC were killed on the first day, and the so-called axis of resistance forces disappeared from the political scene, at least temporarily. This created the impression that the state was far more fragile than before, which encouraged people—or gave them the courage—to act as they did this time.
On top of that, there was a statement by Trump, which initially emboldened the protesters. But we know what happened afterward: he changed his position, and the threat of intervention, at least for now, disappeared. This again demonstrates how vital the physical, coercive power of the state remains for keeping it intact and for sustaining the current elite in power. The moment it changes, the Islamic Republic will fall.
So, everything now really depends on whether the coherence of the security apparatus and the repressive organs of the state can be maintained in the period ahead.
Many Symbols, No Common Project
Building on your work on societal multiplicity and the nation’s Janus-like form, how should we interpret the coexistence of competing symbolic projects in the streets—monarchist iconography, republican imaginaries, feminist slogans, and multi-ethnic frames? Under conditions of uneven and combined development, does this plurality enable a Gramscian “national-popular” articulation, or does it risk fragmenting sovereignty claims in ways that invite external instrumentalization?
Dr. Kamran Matin: I cannot remember the exact words, but Lenin has this famous line that says revolution brings together the most extreme, diverse, and different forces into some sort of unplanned alliance against the status quo. So, it is not surprising that we see very different forces—ideologically, politically, and socially—on the streets. Like most revolutions, these protests in Iran are defined more by opposition to what exists than by a shared vision of the alternative that each actor seeks to establish.
Historically, it is in such contexts that an organized political party or movement can harness this massive social energy toward a particular political objective. This role was played in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini, a charismatic leader who was able, in some ways, to direct the revolutionary movement. He was vague enough to appeal to all sections of society, while at the same time being very clear in his opposition to the monarchy. This was central to how he built a hegemonic force, as he managed to present the particular interests of Islamists as the general interest of society as a whole. This, of course, ended once the revolution succeeded, when we saw how even Khomeini had to rely on massive violence to consolidate the post-revolutionary state.
At present, we have a great diversity of social and political forces and classes, but the opposition lacks two crucial things. First, it lacks organization on the ground—again, with the partial exception of Kurdistan, where Kurdish parties have a long history of organized politics. I am sure there are clandestine networks in Kurdish cities and elsewhere, but nothing comparable exists in the rest of Iran, for a variety of reasons. One key reason is that since the 1980s the Islamic Republic has invested almost everything in the physical destruction of the left: mass executions, imprisonment, forced exile, and, even in exile, hundreds of assassinations of dissidents and political leaders. Anyone who could potentially have played a leading role was eliminated.
As a result, we lack organization, we lack charismatic figures, and neither the left nor the liberals possess organic intellectuals in the Gramscian sense. A national-popular front or bloc, in Gramsci’s formulation, also requires organic intellectuals who can articulate a hegemonic project capable of uniting otherwise disparate sectors of the opposition. We do not have this, and in some respects we see the opposite dynamic at work.
Among monarchist forces gathered around the son of the former king, Reza Pahlavi, there is a strong unwillingness to engage in collaboration on an equal footing with other opposition forces. They seek dominance rather than partnership and claim a form of quasi-divine legitimacy. It is almost treated as the birthright of Reza Pahlavi to become the next monarch of Iran, or at least to lead a transitional period. As a result, meaningful cooperation with other parties or opposition groups becomes impossible. The so-called Georgetown alliance during the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement collapsed very quickly precisely for this reason, as he withdrew rather than accept equality with others.
Another major source of fragmentation within the opposition is the deployment of an exclusionary Iranian nationalism—by monarchists, by liberals in the opposition, and by the Islamic Republic itself. After the 12-day war, there was a sudden surge in nationalist symbolism: the promotion of Cyrus the Great, the erection of his statue in Tehran, and the revival of symbols of ancient Iran by the regime. The Islamic Republic understood that Islamist discourse could no longer mobilize society, but that nationalist appeals still might. At the same time, this further alienated the non-Persian peripheries of Iran, which in fact constitute more than half of the population: Azeri Turks, who make up roughly 20 to 25 percent; Kurds, around 10 to 15 percent; as well as Arabs, Baluch, Turkmens, Gilaks, and others.
Most of these groups are unwilling to contribute to the rise to power of forces that already seek to subordinate them politically and culturally. This denial of Iran’s internal diversity by large sections of the opposition creates a major barrier to forming a genuinely powerful nationwide opposition bloc. Each opposition group on its own is too small or too weak to overthrow the regime, yet the discourses they deploy and the strategies they pursue also prevent them from agreeing even on a minimal common program to confront the Islamic Republic.
I would argue that, in addition to massive levels of violence, what sustains the regime is precisely the fractured nature of the opposition, its disorganization, and the absence of a political discourse that appeals equally to the main segments of society. The Women, Life, Freedom slogan did manage to do this briefly. However, as I noted earlier, it was quickly undermined both by internal divisions within the opposition and by the regime itself. Within weeks, an alternative slogan emerged—“Man, Motherland, Development”—which is strikingly reminiscent of fascist slogans from Mussolini’s Italy. Woman, Life, Freedom versus Man, Motherland, Development. Until recently, Reza Pahlavi even displayed this slogan on his profile on X. I think the brief hegemonic role played by the Women, Life, Freedom slogan was significant, but it was actively undermined by substantial sections of the Iranian opposition.
Necro-politics in Practice: How the Regime Governs Through Maiming, Fear, and Exemplary Violence
Pro-government demonstrators march in support of the regime after the weekly Friday Prayers on January 05, 2018 in Tehran.
Reports describe systematic maiming, mass casualties, and targeted injuries amid an intensifying crackdown under communication blackouts. How should we conceptualize this repertoire of violence—deterrence, exemplary punishment, strategic mutilation, or biopolitical terror—and what does comparative evidence suggest about its medium-term political effects on mobilization, radicalization, and regime cohesion?
Dr. Kamran Matin: The Islamic Republic has a very complex necro-politics. Even the treatment of the dead has a particular political economy. In addition to what you mentioned in the question, many people have been shot in the eyes. This is very deliberate, because the aim is for those who are injured to remain alive and visible, walking around in public, so that others see this as the fate of anyone who opposes the regime.
This is particularly striking because, in the past, the Islamic Republic sought to conceal its violence. Even now, it is only in recent years that there has been some acknowledgement that in 1988 around 3,000 to 5,000 political prisoners were executed. At the time, almost nobody knew; most Iranians were unaware because it was carried out entirely in secrecy. By contrast, today state media actually show the protests and even display bodies in morgues and other locations.
What is also remarkable is that when families of those who have been killed go to collect the bodies of their loved ones, they are required to pay for the bullets that were fired at them. For each bullet, they are reportedly asked to pay around seven million Iranian tomans, which at the current exchange rate is roughly $80 or so—I cannot recall the exact figure. In other words, families are literally required to pay for the bullet that killed their loved one in order to retrieve the body.
On top of that, there are reports that families are offered the option of signing a document stating that the person who was killed was a member of the Basij, the pro-government militia—thus turning them, quote-unquote, into a “martyr.” This allows the government to claim that large numbers of security forces were killed by terrorists allegedly backed by Israel, the US, and others. If families refuse, the bodies may be buried in unmarked graves, and the family may never know where their loved one is buried. In some cases, families are confronted with this choice in addition to the financial demand.
I should add, however, that demanding money for bullets or for the return of bodies is not new. This practice was widespread in the 1980s, especially in Kurdistan, but also in cases involving political prisoners who were executed or hanged in prisons. The Islamic Republic therefore deploys violence in a highly complex and sophisticated manner. It uses exemplary punishment to deter others from protesting and to instill fear across society. When people see injured individuals everywhere, or witness bodies being withheld, mishandled, buried anonymously, or simply disappearing, the psychological impact is deeply traumatizing.
In the short term, this strategy may work for the regime by frightening people into submission. In the longer term, however, it produces enormous anger and even hatred within society—among individuals, families, and communities. This accumulated resentment is likely to erupt again in future protest waves. Yet the Islamic Republic is almost built on periodic crises; in a sense, it thrives on them. Just before we began, I saw a pro-regime journalist or activist claiming that, thanks to God, these recent events have extended the life of the Islamic Republic by fifty years.
They feel that they have not only repressed the protests, but that the very fact of having done so successfully has given them a sense—not of legitimacy, but of unassailability. This, in turn, makes people think twice before participating in the next round of protests.
Why Iran’s Opposition Is Unprepared for Transition
During revolutionary moments, the question of political succession becomes decisive. How would you characterize the current opposition landscape in terms of organizational depth, ideological coherence, and governing capacity, and what risks emerge when maximalist anti-regime unity is not matched by institutional preparedness for transition?
Dr. Kamran Matin: The opposition has none of these: neither organizational depth, nor a clear plan, nor the human capacity to run post-regime governance in any meaningful way at the moment. The material elements are there, but they are not organized in any coherent way. Again, I would distinguish between the situation in Kurdistan and the rest of Iran, because there are important differences.
I could talk for hours about this, but briefly, there are organized Kurdish parties with bases very close to the border, and there is an organic connection with society. As we remember from 1979, the moment the Shah fell, the Kurdish regions became autonomous and self-governing because this organizational infrastructure was already in place. We see similar patterns in Rojava after 2011, or in Iraq after the 1991 Kuwait War. But in the rest of Iran, we do not have this, and I think this absence is absolutely crucial.
Apart from state violence, this lack of an organized alternative—ideologically, discursively, and organizationally—is a key factor keeping the regime in power. Many people ask themselves, “What comes next?” And this is precisely why many were reluctant to take to the streets in the past. One reason Reza Pahlavi’s name was chanted in some protests is that people believed he had a workable plan, although we later saw that he really did not. He called on people to go to the streets and suggested that help was on the way, echoing Trump’s rhetoric, and obviously nothing materialized. In fact, many people now blame him for a significant portion of the casualties in Iran. So, overall, the opposition is rather weak.
Trump’s Iran Rhetoric Aims at Behavioral Change, Not Regime Change
US Presidential candidate Donald Trump held a campaign rally at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on November 4, 2024. Photo: Chip Somodevilla.
US President Trump’s call for Iranians to “keep protesting” and his claim that “help is on its way” mark an unusually explicit rhetorical intervention. How do such statements reshape internal protest dynamics, regime threat perceptions, and escalation logics—and where do they sit on the spectrum between moral encouragement, strategic signaling, and coercive diplomacy?
Dr. Kamran Matin: I think for Trump all three are objectives—strategic signaling, coercive diplomacy, and moral encouragement. But ultimately, he is pursuing his own interests. And his primary interest is not regime change, but a change in the regime’s behavior. That is crucial, because it means that Trump may seek to instrumentalize the protests in order to extract a deal from the regime.
The problem is that Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, cannot make such a deal, because it would be perceived as a form of submission. Any agreement—at least one based on US conditions—would be seen as a defeat of the regime. And those conditions are unacceptable: no nuclear enrichment, no long-range missiles, and no proxy forces. These are core pillars of the Islamic Republic, so they simply cannot concede them. This means that even though US preference is for behavioral change rather than regime change as such—and this is clearly articulated in the US National Security Strategy released a few weeks ago, as well as reflected in recent US interventions, such as in Venezuela—this strategy has inherent limits.
Trump was hoping that internal pressure within Iran, combined with the threat of intervention, could be leveraged to secure a deal that would advance US objectives in the Middle East, open Iranian markets, and distance Iran from China, among other goals. This has not happened. And the United States does not appear to have a clear plan for what to do if a deal proves impossible. This is where US and Israeli positions diverge to some extent. For Israel, any attack would need to lead to a radical outcome; otherwise, it would incur the costs of Iranian retaliation without achieving a clear political objective. This helps explain the confusion over recent developments, including why Trump has not followed through on what he initially appeared to signal.
That said, revolutions have historically been aided—often indirectly and unintentionally—by foreign powers. The October Revolution succeeded in part because of World War I and the weakening of the Tsarist regime. The French Revolution was linked to a severe fiscal crisis driven by geopolitical rivalry with England. More broadly, many classical revolutions have occurred in the context of war and wider geopolitical crises. In this respect, Iran is not exceptional.
The key issue, however, is whether there is sufficient organization on the ground to take advantage of these geopolitical and inter-imperialist rivalries. Unfortunately, to a large extent, there is not.
Why Rojava’s Future Lies Beyond Counterterrorism
Turning to Syria, with Kurdish-held areas under renewed assault and the future of Rojava/AANES increasingly uncertain, what are the plausible political trajectories—forced integration, negotiated autonomy, territorial rollback, or renewed international guarantees—and which are structurally most likely given current regional alignments?
Dr. Kamran Matin: The current so-called transitional government is clearly no different in terms of what it wants to do with the Kurdish parts of the region in Syria, or with other minorities. We have seen what it has done to the Druze and the Alawites. The fact that it is not doing more, or has not been able to do so, is because there has been resistance against it. So, I would say the long-term aim of this government is to control the entirety of Rojava, while making some sort of symbolic concessions—such as the decree announced yesterday (January 16, 2026) recognizing the Kurdish language to some extent—but without any constitutional guarantee of self-governance of the kind the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) demands.
From what happened in Aleppo in recent weeks, we know that this followed very quickly after a meeting in Paris between Israel, the Syrian transitional government, and the United States; I believe Turkey was present as well. It seems there has been an agreement that areas under SDF or Rojava control should be limited to east of the Euphrates. At the moment, the SDF is being evacuated from other regions. Leaders of the Autonomous Administration might think this will become the natural border between their autonomous region and the rest of Syria, and that may be the case in the short term, but I am confident that pressure will continue and that the government will push for more.
The Syrian government is prepared to make every concession possible to Israel in order to prevent intervention and then, with the help of Turkey, to deal with the Autonomous Administration in a gradual manner. Initially, it was thought that the so-called resolution process in Turkey—including PKK disarmament and dissolution—was the price the Kurdish movement was paying to keep Rojava safe. But I think this assessment has changed. At first, the Turkish state was clearly worried about Israel attempting to recruit allies in the region, as well as about Iran and the possibility of Iran fragmenting. Over time, however, Turkey regained its momentum. Now it is using the so-called resolution process precisely to keep the PKK, or whatever it is now called, out of the Rojava scene, and in fact to use the absence of conflict with the PKK in order to concentrate its efforts on Rojava.
I have written about this in recent weeks and days, and I do not know how much the Rojava leadership reads or listens to external advice, but I think they should be very concerned. This process is not going to end. Pressure will advance step by step, and attempts will be made to retake territory incrementally. The Autonomous Administration must ensure that its relationship with the United States is not based solely on counterterrorism and ISIS. It needs to push for some form of political recognition and for a decentralized or federal system. Otherwise, renewed conflict between the two sides is inevitable.
Regional Powers Prefer a Weakened Iran to a Collapsing One
How do regional power calculations—the Erdogan regime’s anti-Kurdish security doctrine, Damascus’s centralization drive, Russia’s brokerage role, and US/Gulf/Israeli threat perceptions—intersect with Iran’s internal crisis, and what implications does each Iranian outcome (hardening, fragmentation, or transition) carry for the fate of Rojava?
Dr. Kamran Matin: This is a very complex question. In terms of existing states—not just Turkey, but also the transitional government in Syria—they are ultimately driven by a vision of a centralized, unified, and homogeneous state. In societies characterized by a multiplicity of peoples, this model clearly does not work except through violence. And violence begets violence, which is precisely what we have witnessed over the past hundred years.
In that sense, any event or process that leads to de facto decentralization of power in these states—for example, what happened in Iraq in 2003—is viewed as a major threat. Turkey still regrets having allowed the KRG to emerge in the first place, and it now harbors similar concerns regarding Iran. As a result, Turkey—which is ostensibly a regional competitor of Iran—is now openly assisting the Islamic Republic. It opposes US intervention and provides intelligence against Kurdish armed forces, because it believes that the moment the Iranian state weakens, another Kurdish entity could emerge. Such a development would have direct implications for the Kurdish question within Turkey itself.
In this sense, the Kurdish question is a challenge for all these states, but at the same time it also constitutes the basis for their tactical cooperation—and even strategic alignment—at critical moments. If Iran were to weaken significantly, or if a situation similar to Syria in 2011–12 were to unfold there, this would pose a serious challenge for Turkey. At the same time, it is important to note that Iran has a large Azeri Turkish population. Some observers are concerned that Turkey might seek to instrumentalize this segment of Iranian society through Turkish nationalist sentiments in order to establish a foothold in northwestern Iran. There is also the question of Azerbaijan and whether the two might coordinate in such a scenario.
That said, from the perspective of regional states, the overall calculus appears to be that a weakened Islamic Republic is preferable to one that collapses entirely. This helps explain why Arab states, too, have urged the United States not to attack Iran. A breakdown of central authority and a deeply unstable Iran are outcomes that alarm everyone. At the same time, while many regional actors are hostile to the Islamic Republic, they also do not want to see an unmanaged, uncontrolled, and unplanned collapse of the Iranian state. As a result, they are actively seeking to prevent such an outcome.
Please cite as: Ferreira Dias, João. (2026). “Opening the Political Pipeline: Transparency and Civic Access to Party Lists as an Antidote to Populist Distrust.” Policy Papers. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 15, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/pop0006
Abstract
The erosion of trust in liberal democracy – and the dynamic, described by Yascha Mounk, of a growing separation between democracy and liberalism – should be understood in a context of hyper-surveillance, that is, hyper-vigilance and intensified scrutiny. The massification of education and the acceleration and fragmentation of the media environment (online news and social media) have made a persistent social and experiential gap between voters and elected officials increasingly difficult to sustain politically—one that previously drew much of its legitimacy from the formal act of voting and from longer electoral cycles. In this setting, the demand for illiberal solutions emerges plausibly from disenchantment with politics, driven by three factors: (i) civic participation reduced to electoral moments; (ii) thin representative linkages that weaken proximity and blur accountability; and (iii) the perception that political parties function as closed recruitment machines, with internal circuits of elite reproduction and low permeability to merit and to extra-partisan social experience. When integrity failures and scandals compound these conditions, a narrative of moralization and “purification” intensifies and broadens populist repertoires, both in bottom-up variants on the radical left and in broad-based variants on the radical right—directed upward against elites and, at times, downward against minorities and immigrants. The paper’s point of departure is that citizens tolerate delegation when liberal democracy is perceived as functional and fair, particularly in the delivery of the welfare state and in the integrity of fiscal governance. Within a European framework, the paper proposes measures to increase transparency in list formation and open political recruitment (including regulated civic pathways into party lists) as a way to reduce the credibility of populist antagonism and strengthen democratic resilience.
Politics and policy – as two sides of the same coin – have become, in the last few decades, increasingly under hyper-surveillance, due to the growth of traditional media and the proliferation of social media. Historically, the media have functioned as the “fourth estate” (after government, parliament, and courts), a long-standing and pervasive concept that translates the social, political, and economic impact of media in modern societies, and that is widely associated with social democratization and political accountability (Schultz, 1998).
But while “citizen journalism” was a foundational idea that dwells in the concept of expanding the role of the citizen as a “watchdog” (Bennett & Serrin, 2005), weblogs and social media became a structural reconfiguration of the information ecosystem. Early blogging ecosystems were often framed as expanding voice and scrutiny beyond traditional gatekeepers, sometimes complementing or contesting mainstream agendas and lowering barriers to agenda-setting (Sánchez-Villar, 2019). However, social media further accelerated the cycle of attention and reward structures around fast, affective engagement, transforming complex ideas into memes, as argued by Yascha Mounk (2023) concerning post-modern theories and their translation into an “identity synthesis.”
The shift from broadcast to participatory media means surveillance is no longer top-down (state over citizens) but multi-directional: citizens monitor elites, and elites monitor public sentiment via data analytics. The hyper-visibility of political life redefines legitimacy and accountability. But social media proved the limits of this participatory media to work as watchdogs as a functional substitute for deliberative scrutiny, promoting slacktivism, a low-cost and symbolic participation (Christensen, 2011), and producing a set of high-cost externalities, including echo chambers, bubbles, misinformation, and hate speech. Importantly, the empirical literature is mixed on whether low-cost online actions crowd out offline engagement; the stronger claim is that platform dynamics can reconfigure incentives, attention, and affect in ways that strain deliberation.
As argued by Cass Sunstein (2017), democracy’s sustainability is at stake due to digital dynamics that undermine the basis of a healthy public sphere. Inspired by Habermas, Sunstein argues that the republic requires different types of citizens to interact and debate, with exposure to diverse arguments, while also prevailing on a common ground. However, the algorithm favors echo chambers and epistemic bubbles that reinforce preconceptions and beliefs, thereby undermining democratic dialogue.
This sketch of the informational ecosystem matters because continuous scrutiny changes how citizens interpret political distance. When everyday monitoring highlights missteps, style, and personal conduct—often detached from policy substance—trust can erode and politics can be read through a moral register. In such settings, accountability is simultaneously intensified (everything is visible) and blurred (responsibility is hard to attribute), creating a demand for clarity that representative institutions rarely satisfy.
This political purity has a strong link to theological backgrounds, since the tension between purity and danger is foundational in Judeo-Christian cultures (Douglas, 1966). Applied to political contexts, the grammar of purity is related to political messianism (Ferreira Dias, 2022) and populist-demagogic leaders (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018) who claim to represent the true voice of ‘the pure people’ (v.g., Ziller & Schübel, 2015; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). In practical terms, “purification” narratives convert institutional distrust into a moral diagnosis (“the system is rotten”) and a moral remedy (“clean it up”), which expands the repertoire of anti-establishment mobilisation.
All this context of “algorithmcracy” (Amado, 2024) puts stress on the democratic system, vulnerable to a range of factors such as economic crisis, political radicalization, and international affairs. Yet the key point for this paper is not that digital dynamics “cause” democratic erosion on their own, but that they magnify the political costs of long-standing representational frictions, especially the gap between who elects and who is elected.
Additionally, democracy is experiencing a singular crisis due to the emergence of illiberal responses, producing a split between democracy and liberalism, as argued by Yascha Mounk (2018). According to the author, since the 2008 economic crisis, native-born citizens have been experiencing a combination of emotional reactions to political, social, and demographic changes. First, a lack of hope among youth generations when comparing their welfare to that of their parents at the same age. Second, intense demographic changes – due to migration and refugee inflows and politicised migration debates – are producing emotional responses both in the US and Europe, with a return to nativist claims (Marchi & Zúquete, 2024; Betz, 2017; Marchi & Bruno, 2016; Guia, 2016) and racial working-class ressentiment (Begum et al., 2021; Carnes & Lupu, 2021; Mondon & Winter, 2020a, 2020b; Morgan & Lee, 2018). Third, a rapid progressive consensus in western societies – the so-called “woke culture,” i.e., and “identity-centred progressive agenda” – placed significant challenges, including strong claims about normative change, in terms of language, literature, and art revision based on (i) personal character of the artist/author versus the creation itself, (ii) current morality seen as the ultimate and correct moral. This led to the re-awakening of immaterial culture wars, with a tension between a cultural left and the cultural backlash of the radical right (Ferreira Dias, 2025; Fukuyama, 2018; Hunter, 1991, 1996).
These pressures converge on a structural vulnerability of representative democracy: the gap between who elects and who is elected. Under hyper-surveillance, that gap becomes easier to see and harder to legitimate—especially when (i) civic participation is largely episodic and confined to elections, (ii) representative linkages remain thin, and accountability is perceived as diffuse, and (iii) party recruitment is experienced as opaque or endogamous, privileging internal pipelines over merit and extra-partisan social experience. When integrity failures and scandals are added to this mix, the resulting moral register (“clean-up” and “purification”) increases the plausibility of populist antagonism and demand for illiberal shortcuts. The remainder of the paper, therefore, develops the political recruitment loop as a mechanism linking hyper-surveillance to democratic disenchantment, and proposes a phased, auditable policy toolbox: minimum transparency standards and civic access pathways into party lists, within a European framework, using Portugal as an illustrative case.
The Problem in Europe: Hyper-Surveillance Meets a Representation Gap
Representative democracy has always rested on a tension: citizens govern themselves only indirectly, by selecting others to make decisions in their name (Pitkin, 1967; Urbinati, 2006). This is a consequence of a long-term political process, related to the transition from absolutist monarchy to democracy (Manin, 1997). While the idea that power lies with the people was essential to desacralize the right to rule, the notion that representation seems to be the most effective way to fulfil the will of the majority leads to discomfort, since the will of the people is only indirectly and highly mediated (Manin, 1997; Przeworski, 2018). In stable periods, that tension is often politically manageable because the legitimacy of delegation is anchored in a simple ritual – elections – and in an expectation that institutions will remain broadly functional and fair between electoral moments (Manin, 1997). In other terms, we may say that people accept the rules of democracy – i.e., being set apart from decisions – if they are gaining from it. It is the economy of political satisfaction (Easton, 1965; Scharpf, 1999).
On the other hand, it leads to a recent, however intense, debate: how representation is limiting representativeness, and how representativeness is a political limitation to parties’ independence (Pitkin, 1967; Urbinati, 2006). In more practical terms, demographic changes are demanding affirmative and corrective actions – like quotas – for Parliament to reflect social diversity (Dahlerup, 2006; Krook, 2009; Phillips, 1995). However, while those affirmative actions are producing results, many social movements are claiming that political actors should act like the citizens rather than being independent (Dovi, 2007; Mansbridge, 2003). For instance, it means that it is not enough to have black people in the parliament, government, and other places, but they should act like activist movements expect them to do (Mansbridge, 1999; Phillips, 1995). This is also applied to other visible traits of politicians, despite the racial aspect making this more evident (Young, 2000).
What Changed: Mass Education and the Acceleration of the Information Ecosystem
First, the massification of education increases the baseline capacity to evaluate political claims and the expectation that power must justify itself continuously. Even when information is imperfect, higher educational attainment broadens the social demand for reasons, transparency, and competence. In practical terms, citizens are more likely to notice inconsistency (between rhetoric and action), opportunism (between promises and constraints), and privilege (between ordinary life and elite trajectories).
Second, a more educated public is also very critical of politicians’ abilities, often being cynical towards what seems to be political careers, especially when they start from a young age and involve limited experience of the real world (Bovens & Wille, 2017; Mair, 2013; Przeworski, 2018). In countries where political parties maintain organized youth wings, it is more likely for citizens to see them as “factories of politicians”, i.e., early entry points that socialize and recruit future candidates, producing greater resentment about the gap between electors and the elected (Jalali et al., 2024; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).
Third, the media environment shifted from periodic broadcast scrutiny to continuous participatory visibility. Traditional media long operated as a “fourth estate,” associated with accountability and the monitoring of power (Schultz, 1998). But the contemporary cycle is faster and more affective: social media ecosystems reward speed, novelty, and emotional resonance, often compressing complex issues into symbolic conflict. In Mounk’s account of contemporary identity politics, the public arena becomes particularly prone to moralized framings and simplified oppositions, an environment in which political legitimacy is judged not only by outcomes but by conduct, language, and symbolic alignment (Mounk, 2023).
European Symptoms: Low Trust, Party Dislike, and Perceptions of Closure
The European symptom profile is consistent: political parties attract among the lowest levels of trust, and citizens frequently describe politics in terms of closed careers and self-serving elites (Mair, 2013; Przeworski, 2018). In the EU-wide Standard Eurobarometer 101 (Spring 2024), only 22% of respondents “tend to trust” political parties (EU27), while large majorities report distrust (European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, 2024). Even where trust in other institutions fluctuates, parties remain a focal point for scepticism because they control access to representation: they filter who appears on ballots, how political careers progress, and how internal accountability operates (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).
Perceptions of closure are reinforced where party careers are seen as starting early and progressing through organized youth wings and internal staff roles. While parties tend to see it as a symptom of democracy, citizenship, and generational renovation, public opinion goes on the opposite side, being suspicious of a “jobs for the boys” factory.
Evidence from Portugal suggests an “iceberg-shaped” recruitment ladder: youth wings may be visible as entry points, yet their representation compresses sharply at the decisive stages of candidate selection and electable list placement, with informal bargaining between youth organizations and party leadership shaping outcomes (Jalali et al., 2024). In this sense, anti-establishment narratives are not only moral reactions to individual politicians but institutional reactions to party-controlled filters, what Przeworski (2018) summarizes as the perception that elections reproduce “establishment,” “elites,” or even a political “caste.”
This feeds perceptions aligned with the “cartelization” diagnosis in party scholarship: parties may remain indispensable to democratic coordination while becoming less socially rooted and less permeable to external talent, particularly where public funding and state-linked resources reduce reliance on membership and local embeddedness (Katz & Mair, 1995, 2009; Mair, 2013). Whether or not one adopts the cartel thesis in full, it captures a critical policy-relevant intuition: if citizens experience parties as closed recruitment machines, distrust becomes a rational inference rather than mere cynicism (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).
Finally, the moral register of politics – particularly intense in digital environments –amplifies how integrity failures are interpreted. Scandals do not merely signal individual misconduct; they can erode institutional trust and confirm a broader narrative of closure (“they protect their own”), especially where gatekeeping is opaque (Bowler & Karp, 2004). In that sense, hyper-surveillance often functions less as a neutral accountability tool and more as a lens that magnifies the reputational costs of distance, opacity, and perceived self-reproduction.
A useful contrast is provided by single-member constituency systems such as the United Kingdom. Comparative work on electoral incentives suggests that systems encouraging personal vote-seeking strengthen incentives for constituency-oriented behaviour (Carey & Shugart, 1995), and UK evidence indicates that MPs’ constituency communication and service respond to re-election incentives (Auel & Umit, 2018; Cain et al., 1984; Norton & Wood, 1993). However, stronger constituency linkage does not remove party gatekeeping: candidate selection remains an intra-party process, and perceptions of closure can persist when recruitment is opaque or centrally controlled (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). The implication for European reform debates is therefore precise: improving accountability “at the front end” (representative–constituent linkage) helps, but tackling disenchantment requires reforming the “back end” of democracy: how parties recruit, select, and promote candidates.
Bridge Conclusion
This paper conceptualises the gap between electors and elected as a recruitment loop rather than merely a communication failure. Citizens watch politics continuously but can intervene meaningfully only episodically; they observe parties as gatekeepers but cannot see inside the gatekeeping process. Under these conditions, accountability becomes diffuse and trust costly. Portugal illustrates this dynamic in microcosm: party youth wings function as visible entry points but are seldom translated into real candidate diversity (Jalali et al., 2024). The challenge is therefore to open recruitment without undermining parties’ capacity to coordinate democracy, to make delegation intelligible again. The following section proposes a pragmatic policy toolbox for doing so, balancing transparency, civic access, and organizational integrity (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Katz & Mair, 1995; Mair, 2013).
Policy Toolbox: Opening without Breaking Parties
The central policy challenge is to widen civic access to representation without undermining parties’ coordinating functions. Parties are not merely electoral vehicles; they aggregate preferences, recruit candidates, structure parliamentary majorities, and make responsibility legible in government (Mair, 2013). Yet when parties are experienced as closed recruitment machines, distrust becomes a rational inference rather than a purely moral reaction, especially under hyper-surveillance, where citizens can observe political life continuously but cannot observe how candidacies are actually made (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). The toolbox proposed here follows a simple logic: make recruitment intelligible (transparency), make entry plausible (civic pathways), and make integrity credible (anti-capture safeguards). These reforms are designed to be phased, auditable, and compatible with freedom of association and party autonomy, principles emphasized in European standards on party regulation (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020).
First Tool
A first tool is a minimum transparency standard for candidate selection. The aim is not to impose a single “best method” of selection, but to require that parties publish the basic architecture of their recruitment decisions in advance: who decides, by what criteria, on what calendar, and with what right of appeal or review. The OSCE/ODIHR and Venice Commission guidelines underline that party regulation should protect pluralism while encouraging democratic internal functioning and clarity of rules (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020). Translating this into a practical standard means requiring parties to publish written procedures for list formation (including eligibility, stages, and decision bodies) and to report aggregated outcomes after selection (e.g., number of applicants, share coming from outside internal party roles, and basic diversity indicators, reported in non-identifying form). This aligns with the OECD’s emphasis on openness and inclusiveness as trust-relevant “values” drivers: citizens judge not only outcomes, but also whether processes are fair, transparent, and intelligible (OECD, 2017). Crucially, transparency here is not punitive; it is a low-cost infrastructural reform that reduces the informational asymmetry that makes gatekeeping look arbitrary.
Second Tool
A second tool is to create civic access pathways into party lists, designed to reduce the perception that politics is an insiders’ career ladder. Research on recruitment repeatedly shows that who reaches office depends on filters that operate well before election day, such as party selectors, eligibility rules, and informal networks (Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). The policy aim, therefore, is to add a structured “external entry” channel alongside internal recruitment, without delegitimizing internal party work.
One workable design is a phased system of “civic slots” on party lists, limited in share, clearly defined in eligibility, and tied to an open call. Selection can combine a rule-based screening stage (including blind review where feasible for qualifications and experience), and a plural evaluation panel that includes party representatives plus external members with credibility (e.g., retired judges, academics, civil society leaders). This design reflects the core insight of candidate selection studies: openness alone does not guarantee fairness; the rules of selection and the identity of selectors shape capture risks and public legitimacy (Hazan & Rahat, 2010). To address the predictable objection that “amateurs cannot govern,” parties can attach a standardized training and mentoring track for civic entrants, which preserves competence while changing the optics and reality of permeability.
Third Tool
A third tool is a set of anti-endogamy and integrity safeguards that reduce the probability that openness becomes performative or captured. Here, European integrity standards provide a clear anchor: GRECO’s Fourth Evaluation Round explicitly focuses on corruption prevention for members of parliament, including ethical principles, conflicts of interest, restrictions on certain activities, asset and interest declarations, and enforcement mechanisms (Council of Europe, GRECO, n.d.).
Yet, the toolbox does not require reinventing ethics regulation; it requires connecting recruitment openness to integrity credibility. Practically, parties adopting civic pathways should commit to (i) basic conflict-of-interest declarations for candidates, (ii) simple anti-nepotism rules and disclosure obligations for close family ties in politically relevant appointments, and (iii) clear restrictions on incompatible roles where these create perceptions of insider privilege.
Because parties differ legally across European systems, the policy point is not uniform legal transplantation but a minimum package of auditable commitments that makes “purification” rhetoric less plausible by making integrity rules visible and enforceable.
Fourth Tool
A fourth tool is incentives and certification. One reason reforms fail is that voluntary openness is individually costly for a party, especially if competitors remain closed. A practical solution is a transparency certification: an independent audit against a checklist aligned with the minimum transparency standard, civic access design, and integrity safeguards. This can begin as voluntary and reputational, then become scalable if legislatures choose to connect it to permissible incentives (for example, earmarked public funding for training civic entrants, or additional reporting support), always within the constraints recommended in European party-regulation guidance (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020). The OECD’s trust framework is relevant here: where citizens perceive institutions as open and aligned with public-interest values, trust becomes easier to rebuild; where processes remain opaque, even good outcomes are discounted (OECD, 2017).
Fifth Tool
A fifth, optional tool is participatory selection mechanisms that do not substitute for parties but complement them. Partial primaries or citizen panels (mini-publics) can be used not to choose entire lists, but to evaluate candidates’ competence and integrity claims in a structured, evidence-based setting. The point is to convert hyper-surveillance into functional accountability: create moments where citizens engage substantively with candidate profiles rather than through algorithmic fragments. Because participatory selection can intensify factionalism or media spectacle, it should be deployed cautiously and only with anti-capture rules and clear scope limits (Hazan & Rahat, 2010).
In sum, taken together, these tools aim to change the political economy of distrust by shifting recruitment from an opaque internal practice to a partially visible civic interface. This is particularly relevant in contexts where youth wings function as visible pipelines, yet the decisive stages of list placement remain compressed and informally negotiated, reinforcing the perception that internal circuits dominate political mobility (Jalali et al., 2024). The toolbox is therefore designed to “open without breaking”: to preserve party coordination while lowering the symbolic and practical distance between electors and elected.
Policy Recommendations, Implementation Roadmap, and Metrics
Recommendations
Recommendation 1 —Adopt a European minimum transparency standard for candidate selection. Parties should publish, ex ante, a written procedure for list formation (eligibility criteria; stages and calendar; decision body; complaint/review channel) and, ex post, an aggregated report on the selection process (e.g., number of applicants; number shortlisted; basic non-identifying diversity indicators; and the share of candidates coming from outside internal party roles). This does not impose a single selection model; it makes gatekeeping legible and therefore contestable on procedural grounds (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020). The expected impact is to reduce informational asymmetry and weaken the plausibility of “closed casta” narratives under hyper-surveillance (European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, 2024; Mair, 2013).
Recommendation 2 — Implement phased civic access pathways (“civic slots”) into party lists. Parties should reserve a limited and gradually expandable share of list positions for candidates recruited through an open call, with eligibility rules that allow genuine external entry (Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). Selection should be rule-based and staged: a first screening phase can be partly blinded where feasible (qualifications, experience), followed by a plural evaluation panel combining party and external members with high credibility. This targets the core driver of disenchantment identified in recruitment research: citizens can vote, but they cannot realistically enter the pipeline (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).
Recommendation 3 — Add anti-endogamy and integrity safeguards that make openness credible. Where recruitment opens, the system must also signal credible integrity boundaries: baseline conflict-of-interest declarations for candidates; simple anti-nepotism disclosure rules; and enforceable incompatibility rules where accumulation of roles creates perceptions of insider privilege. These measures align with European anti-corruption frameworks that emphasize conflicts of interest, codes of conduct, and enforceability for MPs (Council of Europe, GRECO, n.d.). The expected impact is to prevent openness from being dismissed as symbolic and to reduce “purification” dynamics that thrive on scandal amplification.
Recommendation 4 — Create a transparency certification (voluntary first, scalable later). An independent audit against a short checklist (procedural transparency; civic pathway design; basic integrity disclosures) can generate reputational incentives while limiting the collective-action problem where no party wants to “disarm” unilaterally. This is a policy instrument, not a European legal requirement; it is justified by the governance literature on rebuilding trust through competence and values (OECD, 2017).
Recommendation 5 — Publish annual aggregated metrics to track whether pipelines are actually opening. Parties (or an independent public body) should report a small set of comparable indicators annually (see below). This shifts debate from moral accusation to measurable change and allows phased reforms to be evaluated and adjusted (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020).
Implementation Roadmap (0–48 months)
In months 0–12, implement the minimum transparency standard (Recommendation 1) and launch a pilot civic pathway with a small number of civic slots (Recommendation 2), accompanied by a basic integrity package (Recommendation 3). In parallel, start the voluntary certification scheme (Recommendation 4) and define the common reporting template (Recommendation 5).
In months 12–24, expand civic slots modestly (conditional on applicant volume and audit results), institutionalize the plural panel model, and introduce routine disclosure checks (lightweight, standardized, and auditable).
In months 24–48, consolidate reforms: embed transparency and reporting as stable practice, commission an independent evaluation, and recalibrate thresholds (slot share, screening rules, disclosure scope) based on observed capture risks and legitimacy gains.
Portugal can remain an illustrative benchmark rather than a dedicated section: recent evidence on the translation from youth recruitment to electable list placement shows why “pipeline visibility” does not automatically equal “pipeline openness,” and why reforms must target the decisive stages of selection (Jalali et al., 2024).
Metrics & Evaluation (minimal set)
A compact metrics package should track: (1) the share of elected officials with substantial professional experience outside party/political roles (aggregated); (2) average tenure and rotation rates in elected office; (3) number of applicants per civic slot and selection rates; (4) compliance scores on the transparency checklist (party-level, annually); and (5) time-series trends in trust in parties (national and EU benchmarks, including Eurobarometer) (European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, 2024).
Conclusion
Hyper-surveillance did not create Europe’s representation gap, but it has raised the political cost of long-standing features of representative government: mediated will-formation, professionalized political careers, and party gatekeeping. When citizens can monitor politics continuously yet cannot observe – or access – the recruitment process, accountability becomes diffuse and trust becomes costly. The policy aim is therefore not moral “purification,” but infrastructural repair: opening the political pipeline while preserving parties’ coordinating capacity. A minimum transparency standard, civic access pathways, and credible integrity safeguards together can transform hyper-vigilance into functional accountability, reducing the plausibility of populist antagonism and strengthening democratic resilience (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Mair, 2013; OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020).
References
Amado, M. A. N. (2024). Algoritmocracia: Utopia, Distopia e Ucronia. Editora Dialética.
Auel, K., & Umit, R. (2018). Explaining MPs’ communication to their constituents: Evidence from the UK House of Commons. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 20(3), 731–752. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118762280
Begum, N., Mondon, A., & Winter, A. (2021). Between the ‘left behind’and ‘the people’: Racism, populism and the construction of the ‘white working class’ in the context of Brexit. In Routledge handbook of critical studies in whiteness (pp. 220-231). Routledge.
Bennett, W. L., & Serrin, W. (2005). The watchdog role. In G. Overholser & K. H. Jamieson (Eds.), The institutions of American democracy: The press (pp. 169–188). Oxford University Press.
Betz, H. G. (2017). Nativism across time and space. Swiss Political Science Review, 23(4), 335-353.
Bovens, M. A. P., & Wille, A. (2017). Diploma democracy: The rise of political meritocracy. Oxford University Press.
Cain, B. E., Ferejohn, J. A., & Fiorina, M. P. (1984). The constituency service basis of the personal vote for U.S. representatives and British members of parliament. American Political Science Review, 78(1), 110–125. https://doi.org/10.2307/1961252
Carey, J. M., & Shugart, M. S. (1995). Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: A rank ordering of electoral formulas. Electoral Studies, 14(4), 417–439. https://doi.org/10.1016/0261-3794(94)00035-2
Carnes, N., & Lupu, N. (2021). The white working class and the 2016 election. Perspectives on Politics, 19(1), 55-72.
Christensen, H. S. (2011, February 7). Political activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or political participation by other means? First Monday, 16(2). https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3336
Council of Europe, Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). (n.d.). Fourth Evaluation Round: Corruption prevention in respect of members of parliament, judges and prosecutors. https://www.coe.int/en/web/greco/evaluations/round-4
Dahlerup, D. (Ed.). (2006). Women, quotas and politics. Routledge.
Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge.
Dovi, S. (2007). The good representative. Blackwell Publishing.
Easton, D. (1965). A systems analysis of political life. John Wiley & Sons.
European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication. (2024, May 23). Standard Eurobarometer 101 – Spring 2024.
Ferreira Dias, J. (2022). Political messianism in Portugal, the case of andré ventura. Slovenská politologická revue, 22(1), 79-107.
Ferreira Dias, J. (2025) Guerras Culturais: os ódios que nos incendiam e como vencê-los. Lisboa: Guerra e Paz.
Fukuyama, F. (2018). Identity: Contemporary identity politics and the struggle for recognition. Profile Books.
Hazan, R. Y., & Rahat, G. (2010). Democracy within parties: Candidate selection methods and their political consequences. Oxford University Press.
Hunter, J. D. (1991). Culture wars: The struggle to control the family, art, education, law, and politics in America. New York: Basic Books.
Hunter, J. D. (1996). Reflections on the culture wars hypothesis. In J. L. Nolan Jr. (Ed.), The American culture wars (pp. 37-58). University Press of Virginia.
Jalali, C., Silva, P., & Costa, E. (2024). Youth with clipped wings: Bridging the gap from youth recruitment to representation in candidate lists. Electoral Studies, 88, 102767. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102767
Katz, R. S., & Mair, P. (1995). Changing models of party organization and party democracy: The emergence of the cartel party. Party Politics, 1(1), 5–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068895001001001
Krook, M. L. (2009). Quotas for women in politics: Gender and candidate selection reform worldwide. Oxford University Press.
Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die: What history tells us about our future. Crown.
Mair, P. (2013). Ruling the void: The hollowing of Western democracy. Verso.
Manin, B. (1997). The principles of representative government. Cambridge University Press.
Mansbridge, J. (1999). Should Blacks represent Blacks and women represent women? A contingent “yes”. The Journal of Politics, 61(3), 628–657.
Mansbridge, J. (2003). Rethinking representation. American Political Science Review, 97(4), 515–528.
Marchi, R., & Bruno, G. (2016). A extrema-direita europeia perante a crise dos refugiados. Relações Internacionais, (50), 39-56.
Marchi, R., & Zúquete, J. P. (2024). Far right populism in Portugal. Análise Social, 59(2 (251), 2-19.
Mondon, A., & Winter, A. (2020a). Whiteness, populism and the racialisation of the working class in the United Kingdom and the United States. In Whiteness and nationalism (pp. 10-28). Routledge.
Mondon, A., & Winter, A. (2020b). Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream. Verso Books.
Morgan, S. L., & Lee, J. (2018). Trump voters and the white working class. Sociological Science, 5, 234-245.
Mounk, Y. (2018). The people vs. democracy: Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Harvard University Press.
Mounk, Y. (2023). The identity trap: A story of ideas and power in our time. Penguin Group.
Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Norris, P., & Lovenduski, J. (1995). Political recruitment: Gender, race and class in the British Parliament. Cambridge University Press.
Norton, P., & Wood, D. M. (1993). Back from Westminster: British members of parliament and their constituents. University Press of Kentucky.
OECD. (2017). Trust and public policy: How better governance can help rebuild public trust. OECD Publishing.
Phillips, A. (1995). The politics of presence. Clarendon Press.
Pitkin, H. F. (1967). The concept of representation. University of California Press.
Przeworski, A. (2018). Why bother with elections? Polity Press.
Scharpf, F. W. (1999). Governing in Europe: Effective and democratic? Oxford University Press.
Schultz, J. (1998). Reviving the fourth estate: Democracy, accountability and the media. Cambridge University Press.
Sunstein, C. R. (2017). #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. Princeton University Press.
Urbinati, N. (2006). Representative democracy: Principles and genealogy. University of Chicago Press.
Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and democracy. Oxford University Press.
Ziller, C., & Schübel, T. (2015). “The pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”? Political corruption, political trust and the success of radical right parties in Europe. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 25(3), 368-386.
On January 8, 2026, ECPS convened Session 9 of its Virtual Workshop Series, titled “Populism, Crime, and the Politics of Exclusion.” The session was chaired and moderated by Dr. Helen L. Murphey, who framed exclusionary populism as a dual process that claims to empower an “authentic people” while simultaneously criminalizing stigmatized “others.” Assoc. Prof. Christopher N. Magno introduced the concept of criminal populism, showing how legal scandal and criminality can be transformed into political capital in the United States and the Philippines. Dr. Russell Foster examined how Austria’s FPÖ and France’s Rassemblement National legitimate anti-migration agendas through securitization and Gramscian metapolitics. Saga Oskarson Kindstrand drew on ethnographic research on the Sweden Democrats to challenge assumptions that populism undermines party organization. Discussants Hannah Geddes and Vlad Surdea-Hernea provided incisive reflections on theory, methodology, and democratic implications.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On Thursday, January 8, 2026, theEuropean Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened Session 9 of its Virtual Workshop Series, titled “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Held under the session theme“Populism, Crime, and the Politics of Exclusion,” the session brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore how populist actors mobilize crime, security, and moral threat to redefine political belonging—deciding who counts as “the people,” who is constructed as a dangerous “other,” and how these distinctions increasingly enter mainstream politics.
The workshop opened with welcoming and technical remarks by ECPS intern Stella Schade, who introduced the session’s structure, speakers, and discussants on behalf of ECPS, situating the event within the Center’s broader commitment to comparative and theoretically grounded research on populism.
The session was chaired and moderated by Dr. Helen L. Murphey (Postdoctoral Scholar, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University), whose introduction provided the session’s conceptual frame. Dr. Murphey emphasized that exclusionary populism operates through a dual logic: empowering an “authentic people” while simultaneously stigmatizing “others” as criminal, threatening, or disorderly. She highlighted how populists present themselves as reluctant political actors pushed into action by crisis and elite failure, while claiming exclusive authority over law and order. Importantly, she noted that these narratives are no longer confined to populist outsiders but increasingly circulate within mainstream party competition. Her framing raised core questions about the evolution of exclusionary discourse, its entanglement with crime and popular culture, and its implications for democratic norms and party organization.
Dr. Christopher N. Magno, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Justice Studies and Human Services at Gannon University, presented “From Crime Shows to Power: The Rise of Criminal Populism,” introducing criminal populism as a framework for understanding how leaders transform criminality into political capital. Moving beyond penal populism, Dr. Magno showed how indictments and scandals are reframed as proof of authenticity and persecution, strengthening affective ties with supporters while eroding accountability. Drawing on cases from the United States and the Philippines, he demonstrated how criminal identity becomes a political asset.
Dr. Russell Foster, Senior Lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London, School of Politics & Economics, Department of European & International Studies, delivered “The Legitimization Process of the FPÖ’s and the NR’s Migration Policies,” examining how radical right parties in Austria and France mainstream anti-immigration positions through securitization and cultural adaptation. Using a Gramscian lens, he argued that migration is increasingly criminalized by being linked to anxieties over housing, welfare, and identity, while stressing that radical right trajectories vary across national contexts.
Saga Oskarson Kindstrand, PhD candidate at Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po, presented “Anti-Party to Mass Party? Lessons from the Radical Right’s Party Building Model,” challenging the assumption that populism rejects mediation. Based on ethnographic research on the Sweden Democrats, she argued that populist discourse can sustain dense party organization by moralizing membership, valorizing “ordinary people,” and cultivating urgency—re-legitimating the party as a representative vehicle.
The presentations were followed by engaged interventions from Hannah Geddes (PhD Candidate, University of St. Andrews) and Dr. Vlad Surdea-Hernea (Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna). Their critiques highlighted shared strengths in challenging established assumptions while probing issues of novelty, case selection, class, and internal party power. Together, the session offered a cohesive examination of how populism reshapes crime, exclusion, and democratic representation.
Moderator Dr. Helen Murphey: The Adaptive Politics of Populist Exclusion
Dr. Helen L. Murphey is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University.
Dr. Helen Murphey opened Session 9 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop series by situating the panel within both a timely political moment and an evolving scholarly debate. Beginning with acknowledgements to ECPS, the presenters, and the audience, she framed the session—Populism, Crime, and the Politics of Exclusion—as an interdisciplinary conversation addressing one of the most pressing intersections in contemporary populism research.
From the outset, Dr. Murphey emphasized that exclusionary populism, the unifying focus of the three papers, is defined by a dual logic of empowerment and marginalization. While such movements claim to restore political voice to what they portray as the “authentic people,” they simultaneously construct stigmatized “others,” frequently associating these groups with crime, insecurity, and social disorder. Within this framework, exclusionary populists present themselves as the guardians of law, order, and security—values they argue have been abandoned by political elites and mainstream parties.
Dr. Murphey further highlighted a recurring feature of populist self-representation: the claim to reluctant political engagement. Populists, she noted, often depict themselves and their constituencies as driven into politics by crisis rather than ideology. Importantly, she observed that exclusionary narratives are no longer confined to overtly populist actors. Instead, themes of identity, securitization, and exclusion have increasingly migrated into the political mainstream, raising urgent analytical and normative questions.
Against this backdrop, Dr. Murphey outlined several core challenges for scholars. These included understanding how exclusionary populism evolves over time, how it becomes entangled with issues such as crime, security, and popular culture, and what consequences these developments hold for democratic norms and institutions. She also underscored the need to examine how populist claims to represent “the people” shape internal party structures and collective self-perceptions.
The session’s papers, Dr. Murphey argued, respond directly to these questions through diverse case studies, methodologies, and theoretical approaches. Together, they illuminate understudied dimensions of exclusionary populism, particularly its emotive, affective, and cultural dynamics. She stressed that exclusionary boundaries are often deliberately vague and malleable, allowing populist actors to recalibrate identities and grievances as they become embedded within formal political systems.
Concluding her remarks, Dr. Murphey invited participants to reflect on the democratic implications of these shifting contours of exclusion and passed the floor to the first presenter, signaling the start of a discussion aimed at deepening understanding of populism’s complex and adaptive nature.
Assoc. Prof. Christopher N. Magno: “From Crime Shows to Power: The Rise of Criminal Populism”
Christopher N. Magno is an Associate Professor, Department of Justice Studies and Human Services, Gannon University.
In his presentation titled “From Crime Shows to Power: The Rise of Criminal Populism,” Associate Professor Chris Magno of Gannon University offered a provocative and theoretically ambitious account of how crime has been transformed from a political liability into a powerful resource within contemporary populist politics. Drawing on more than two decades of comparative research on the Philippines and the United States, Assoc. Prof. Magno advanced the concept of criminal populism as a novel analytical framework for understanding the convergence of populism, spectacle, and criminality in democracies under strain.
Assoc. Prof. Magno began by situating his scholarly trajectory, noting that his doctoral research at Indiana University Bloomington examined crime as a form of political capital in the Philippines. Upon encountering the concept of penal populism—most notably developed by John Pratt—he initially understood it as a phenomenon largely confined to “crime warrior” politicians in liberal democracies. Penal populism, as Dr. Magno summarized, rests on punitive political agendas framed through wars on drugs, immigration, terrorism, and communism, all of which rely on the symbolic criminalization of racialized and marginalized “others.” This logic, he argued, reinforces a rigid division between a supposedly threatened, morally upright “people” and a dangerous, criminalized “them.”
However, Dr. Magno emphasized that this framework became insufficient to explain emerging political developments, particularly following the electoral success of Donald Trump. Trump’s rise, despite—or rather through—his extensive legal controversies, revealed a critical shift: criminality itself had become a political credential. What was once disqualifying was now openly embraced and weaponized. This realization prompted Dr. Magno’s ongoing book project with New York University Press, which conceptualizes criminal populism as a distinct political formation in which legal transgressions, indictments, and scandals are transformed into sources of legitimacy, authenticity, and mass mobilization.
At the core of Dr. Magno’s argument is the claim that contemporary populist leaders increasingly use criminal records and legal persecution as political assets. Rather than denying or concealing wrongdoing, criminal populists reframe themselves as victims of corrupt elites and politicized justice systems. Through this performative inversion, courts, arrests, and trials are converted into stages of political theater. Indictments become “badges of honor,” reaffirming outsider status and strengthening emotional bonds with disillusioned publics. Dr. Magno argued that this pattern is no longer exceptional but increasingly normalized across democratic systems.
Empirically, Dr. Magno illustrated this trend through comparative electoral data. In the United States, multiple candidates facing criminal investigations secured victories during the 2018 midterm elections, while Trump retained strong electoral viability amid multiple felony indictments. In the Philippines, the pattern was even more pronounced: a majority of candidates facing trials, investigations, or prior convictions won office in both the 2019 and 2025 elections. These developments, Dr. Magno argued, signal a broader transformation in democratic norms, where accountability no longer weakens political authority but may actively enhance it.
To systematize these dynamics, Dr. Magno introduced four ideal-typical categories of politicians who use crime as political capital. The first type, crime warrior politicians, derive legitimacy from aggressively positioning themselves as defenders of law and order. Importantly, Dr. Magno challenged the assumption that this model is exclusive to the political right, pointing to Bill Clinton as a key example. Clinton’s embrace of tough-on-crime rhetoric and legislation, Dr. Magno showed, coincided with rising incarceration rates—particularly among African Americans—even as crime rates declined. This illustrated how penal populism operates through fear amplification, crime propaganda, and the mobilization of state institutions to produce political popularity.
The second category, criminal politicians, consists of leaders who openly acknowledge their own criminal acts and convert them into claims of authenticity. Here, Dr. Magno highlighted Rodrigo Duterte, who repeatedly confessed to killing individuals and promised further extrajudicial violence as part of his war on drugs. Duterte’s electoral success, Dr. Magno argued, rested on his unapologetic embrace of criminality, which resonated with voters seeking decisive, transgressive leadership. Dr. Magno underscored that thousands of documented drug war killings—now under consideration by the International Criminal Court (ICC)—form part of this broader pattern of fascistic criminal governance.
The third type, political criminals, refers to figures whose acts of protest, rebellion, or resistance are criminalized by authoritarian or corrupt regimes. While Dr. Magno acknowledged historical examples such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., his focus remained on the Philippine context, where dissidents and “coup leaders” have repeatedly transformed criminalized identities into electoral success. These actors, he argued, exploit state repression and the weaponization of law to build political legitimacy grounded in defiance.
The fourth and most extreme category, fascist criminal politicians, combines elements of crime warrior and criminal politician archetypes. These leaders both fight crime and commit it, openly violating legal norms in the name of order. Duterte again served as Dr. Magno’s paradigmatic case, as did Trump in the US context. Fascist criminal politicians, Dr. Magno argued, exceed constitutional limits, normalize extrajudicial violence, and blur the boundary between legality and criminality, thereby hollowing out democratic institutions from within.
Throughout the presentation, Dr. Magno emphasized that criminal populism operates through spectacle, emotion, and selective victimhood. Crime narratives overwhelmingly focus on street crime and marginalized populations, while elite crimes—such as corruption, environmental destruction, and corporate abuse—remain conspicuously absent. By exploiting public anxieties around crime, criminal populists redirect grievance away from structural inequalities and toward racialized or impoverished “others.”
In concluding, Dr. Magno stressed that criminal populism represents a profound challenge for democratic accountability and the rule of law. As criminality becomes normalized—and even celebrated—as political capital, the moral foundations of democratic legitimacy are fundamentally altered. His framework, grounded in long-term comparative research, offers scholars a critical lens for understanding how crime, populism, and power increasingly converge in contemporary political life.
Dr. Russell Foster: “The Legitimization Process of the FPÖ’s and the NR’s Migration Policies”
Dr. Russell Foster is a Senior Lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London, School of Politics & Economics, Department of European & International Studies.
In his presentation, Dr. Russell Foster (King’s College London) delivered an unsparing account of how radical-right actors in Europe have helped convert anti-immigration positions—from once-fringe commitments into increasingly mainstream political common sense. Dr. Foster framed the topic as “depressingly apt” for the opening of 2026, situating the discussion within an atmosphere of accelerating radical-right momentum across multiple democracies. The talk unfolded as both an analytical map of party evolution in Austria and France and a conceptual argument about how exclusionary politics gains legitimacy not only through party strategy, but through deeper shifts in political culture.
Dr. Foster began by crediting his co-author, Professor Murat Aktas, for extensive work on the paper, and then outlined the study’s two guiding angles. The first angle concerns variation: while the literature often treats the “European radical right” as a coherent phenomenon, Dr. Foster argued that cross-national similarities can be superficial. Beneath shared slogans and familiar tropes lie national, regional, and local differences that shape how exclusionary policies are narrated and why they resonate. The second angle concerns explanation: to understand why criminalizing narratives about migration become broadly accepted, the paper draws on a Gramscian lens of hegemony and metapolitics. This approach shifts attention away from a purely top-down reading of party manifestos and campaign rhetoric toward the cultural conditions and everyday anxieties that make certain claims feel plausible and politically actionable.
A key motif running through Dr. Foster’s remarks was the rejection of singularity. Just as his earlier work on Euroscepticism emphasized that there are “multiple Euroscepticisms,” he suggested there are likewise multiple radical-right narratives across Europe. These narratives do not operate as simple copies of one another, nor do they necessarily mirror developments in the United States or other global contexts. The implication is methodological as well as political: comparative scholarship must resist flattening diverse trajectories into a single model, especially when trying to explain “mainstreaming”—the process by which exclusionary frames seep into the broader political field.
To clarify what sort of “right” is under examination, Dr. Foster offered a three-part typology. First, the “old right” was described as traditional Burkean conservatism: authority, tradition, continuity, and a largely upper-middle-class politics of maintenance—an establishment conservatism he suggested is increasingly in retreat. Second, the “extreme right” was characterized as overt neo-Nazism—an imagery of violent subcultural extremism that persists but remains socially stigmatized. Third, and central to the paper, the “radical right” was presented as a hybrid formation—what he noted has been dubbed “hipster fascism”: a politics that borrows flexibly from across the ideological spectrum, including the center, segments of the left, and even environmental themes, while retaining an exclusionary core. This radical-right formation, in Dr. Foster’s telling, is defined less by crude nostalgia than by adaptability, presentation, and the strategic recalibration of stigma.
Within this conceptual frame, migration served as the primary policy domain through which Dr. Foster traced legitimization. He argued that the framing of immigration has shifted over time: from earlier narratives that treated immigration as a cultural or even “medicalized” threat (suggesting contamination or societal illness) toward a securitized and criminalized framing in which migration becomes a question of law, disorder, and public safety. This shift is not presented as a sudden invention of the 21st century, but rather as an intensification—an acceleration in the last two decades as radical-right parties have learned to link migration to broader anxieties over housing, employment, education, healthcare, and welfare. Migration, in this storyline, becomes a “master key” issue: a flexible explanatory device used to connect disparate social grievances into one coherent politics of blame.
The comparative heart of the talk focused on two parties: Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) and France’s Rassemblement National (RN). Dr. Foster treated them as parallel case studies—both emerging in the postwar period, both marginal for decades, both rising sharply in the late 20th and early 21st centuries—yet he emphasized meaningful divergences in origins, strategy, and their relationship to governing power.
The FPÖ’s trajectory was presented as beginning nearer to the extreme-right pole. Founded in the mid-1950s after Allied withdrawal, the party was described as having been established by former National Socialist members, with its early leadership tied directly to the political structures of the Nazi era. Yet by the 1980s, Dr. Foster argued, internal shifts began to reposition the party toward respectability. The election of Norbert Steger in 1980 signaled an attempt at liberalization—an effort to appear more acceptable within democratic competition. That repositioning accelerated, paradoxically, with the rise of Jörg Haider in 1986, who pushed the party toward a sharper radical-right orientation and expanded anti-immigration messaging amid rising public anxieties. Dr. Foster described the 1990s as a further pivot point: as the Cold War ended, the party moved away from overt anti-communism and leaned more heavily into Euroscepticism and immigration. The critical marker of political breakthrough arrived in October 1999, when the FPÖ entered government in coalition with the Austrian People’s Party—an early European example of a radical-right party moving from protest to power.
Dr. Foster highlighted that, by the mid-2000s, the FPÖ’s anti-immigration rhetoric hardened again, especially under Heinz-Christian Strache, who intensified a discourse less rooted in older ethnic nationalism and more structured around a contemporary anti-immigrant logic. This repositioning proved politically advantageous as large-scale migration to Europe increased after the Arab Spring in 2011 and during the 2014–2016 migration crisis. Austria’s role as a transit country enabled the FPÖ to translate transnational events into national alarm. Dr. Foster stressed a recurring populist technique here: deliberate vagueness. By keeping categories of threat flexible, parties can “capitalize upon external events they did not cause,” retrofitting those events into an already-available narrative of invasion, insecurity, and criminality. Migration, in the FPÖ’s rhetoric, was reframed not simply as economic pressure or cultural change, but as Islamic threat—and, by extension, as a security and crime issue.
RN’s trajectory was presented as both comparable and distinct. Unlike the FPÖ’s immediate postwar origins, RN’s predecessor emerged in the 1970s, shaped by different historical sediments—anti-communism, antisemitism, and the aftershocks of imperial collapse. Under Jean-Marie Le Pen, it was positioned firmly within the idiom of the old extreme right. Yet, as with the FPÖ, Dr. Foster identified a major strategic shift from the late 1990s into the early 2000s, as the party began to pursue broader acceptability.
Where RN diverged, Dr. Foster argued, was in its relationship to governing responsibility. The FPÖ’s entry into coalition government created exposure: it had to bear consequences for policy and compromise, and it suffered popularity losses—before later recovery. RN, by contrast, had often gained influence without holding national executive power. This produced a distinct mode of mainstreaming: rather than governing directly, RN shaped the agenda indirectly by exerting pressure on mainstream parties, pushing them to adopt securitized, criminalized migration narratives. Dr. Foster characterized this as a metapolitical accomplishment: a capacity to move the boundaries of what can be said and proposed, even from opposition. He invoked the logic of “sniping from the sidelines,” where radical-right actors influence policy while evading the accountability costs of implementation.
Across both cases, Dr. Foster located a shared acceleration after major systemic shocks: the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, the migration crisis from 2014 onward, and—most sharply—the post-pandemic period. These moments, in his framing, expanded the “demand side” for exclusionary narratives. Economic insecurity, housing pressures, fraying trust in institutions, and general disillusionment with traditional politics created a receptive environment for frames that depict migration as the cause of scarcity and insecurity. The parties’ “supply side” strategy—softening overt extremism, abandoning some older tropes, and adopting a “veneer of civilization”—was presented as the enabling condition for legitimacy. But the deeper engine of mainstreaming was cultural: anxieties already present in society, which radical-right actors interpret, amplify, and bind into a coherent story.
Gramsci’s metapolitics served as the theoretical hinge connecting these observations. Dr. Foster treated the radical right less as the creator of public anxiety than as a highly skilled reader of it—an actor adept at sensing “where the wind is blowing socially” and attaching grievances to a politics of exclusion. This is where transnational movements and digital communication enter the account: social media, he argued, has made metapolitics easier by enabling the circulation of narratives, images, and everyday performances of relatability. He pointed to RN’s “de-demonization” efforts and the cultivation of ordinary, lifestyle-based authenticity—politics staged as casual normality rather than elite ritual—as a key mechanism in making radical-right actors seem socially acceptable even as exclusionary policy content remains.
Dr. Foster closed by returning to two concluding claims. First, both parties demonstrate a broad shift from medicalization toward criminalization of immigration—recasting migrants less as cultural outsiders and more as threats to social order. Second, both parties illustrate an evolution from hard Euroscepticism toward what he termed “Euro-alternativeism”: not seeking exit from the European project, but seeking to reshape it into a fortress logic of securitization, sometimes articulated through “great replacement” imaginaries. Ending on what he called a “delightfully cheerful note,” Dr. Foster left the audience with a bleak but analytically precise picture: legitimization is not a single act but a process—built through national histories, cultural anxieties, strategic moderation of style, and the steady normalization of criminalized boundary-making as everyday political reason.
Saga Oskarson Kindstrand: “Anti-Party to Mass Party? Lessons from the Radical Right’s Party Building Model”
Saga Oskarson Kindstrand is a PhD candidate at Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po.
In her presentation, Saga Oskarson Kindstrand (Sciences Po) offered an analytically focused intervention into a familiar assumption in populism studies: that populist politics rejects mediation and therefore tends to weaken or bypass party organization. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with members of the Sweden Democrats, she proposed a more paradoxical reading. Rather than treating populism as the enemy of party-based linkage, her account suggested that populism can actively enable dense organizational ties—reviving, in certain respects, the relational grammar of the mass party.
Kindstrand opened by positioning the paper as an article-in-progress, shaped through multiple presentations as she refined its framing and contribution. Her starting point lay in the “older” literature on crisis of representation and party linkage—work that diagnoses how political parties attempt to sustain relationships with constituencies under altered social conditions. Within that debate, populism is often treated as either an endpoint of party decline or as a form of democracy that can function without parties. She pointed to formulations—such as Peter Mair’s notion of “populist democracy” as popular democracy without parties—as emblematic of a broader scholarly tendency to presume that populism seeks immediacy: direct, unmediated expression of “the people’s will” rather than representation through institutional intermediaries.
From this theoretical backdrop, Kindstrand sketched a synthetic map of how populism is commonly described across different schools. In an ideological register, populism is frequently opposed to constitutionalism: pluralism, minority rights, checks and balances, and procedural mediation are depicted as constraints on popular sovereignty. In a strategic register, populism is often associated with charismatic leadership and the circumvention of established party channels. In organizational accounts, populism appears as personalization, weak institutionalization, “anti-party” self-presentation, memberless structures, and publicity-driven linkages that privilege direct communication over internal deliberation. Across these literatures, she argued, distinct approaches converge on a shared conclusion: populism tends toward the rejection of mediation.
She then introduced the empirical puzzle that motivated her research. In recent years, a number of radical right populist parties in Europe have moved against this expectation by investing heavily in local organization: building branches and party offices, recruiting fee-paying members, and creating structured opportunities for activism and advancement. Some scholarship has even suggested these parties are “reviving the mass party.” This development, she noted, is puzzling not only because it appears to contradict the theoretical image of populism as anti-intermediary, but also because it defies a standard cost–benefit logic used in membership studies. Membership in stigmatized radical right parties can carry high social costs and limited career returns; yet membership has expanded nonetheless. The persistence of this pattern, she argued, signals that something beyond material incentives is sustaining attachment.
Against this backdrop, Kindstrand proposed a perspective shift: to understand contemporary radical right party-building, one must look at linkage—and crucially, from the viewpoint of members themselves. Her question was not merely whether these parties have organizations, but how they construct and sustain relational bonds with members and supporters, and how members perceive their own role in democratic representation. Do members believe in the party’s mediating power? Do they experience the party as a vehicle connecting “ordinary people” to decision-making, akin to classic mass-party imaginaries?
To answer these questions, Kindstrand presented findings from an ethnographic study conducted in Sweden with Sweden Democrat party members across different levels of engagement. Her research design combined interviews with participant observation of meetings and local activities, treating the party as a discursively constituted institution—one whose meaning and authority are continually produced through language, practices, and shared self-understandings. She briefly contextualized the Sweden Democrats as Sweden’s radical right party: long present as an organization since the 1980s, but relatively new as a parliamentary actor after entering the Riksdag in 2010, and widely discussed as having attracted segments of former Social Democratic and working-class support.
The presentation’s central claim was deliberately counterintuitive: the Sweden Democrats’ ability to cultivate mass-party-style linkage was not despite their populism, but because of it. Kindstrand organized this argument around three recurring themes that emerged in her fieldwork—each a familiar populist motif, but reinterpreted through the lens of party-based representation.
The first theme concerned representation through resemblance. Members repeatedly described the party as constituted by “ordinary Swedes,” an identity portrayed as self-evident yet rarely defined with precision. This vagueness, rather than weakening the category, appeared to strengthen its adhesive power: “ordinary” became an inclusive boundary marker for those who felt socially and politically unseen. Members articulated a belief that because the party was made up of ordinary people, it knew what ordinary people wanted. Political competence was grounded not in expertise or institutional experience, but in proximity to everyday life—being “close to life” and therefore able to “see the problems.” In this narrative, mainstream parties were represented as detached elites—physically and symbolically located in Stockholm, distant from the lived consequences of political decisions, especially on immigration. Populism’s anti-establishment stance thus operated as an epistemology: it claimed that social truth is accessible primarily through lived experience, and that ordinaryness is itself a credential.
Within this representational frame, Kindstrand observed a notable moral grammar: the party was described less as a career ladder and more as a citizen duty. Members frequently rejected careerism, portraying involvement as an obligation to society rather than a self-development project. This moralization of participation aligned with the second theme: the centrality of formal membership. For her respondents, political engagement was not primarily defined as online activism, symbolic support, or loose affinity. The preferred—and valorized—form was formal membership: paying dues, attending meetings, doing paperwork, and participating in the internal rhythms of party life. Joining was narrated as an act of courage, precisely because it entailed stigma. Members spoke of losing friends, encountering hostility from relatives, and feeling threatened—especially those who had joined earlier, when social sanctions were reportedly stronger. Paradoxically, these costs intensified meaning rather than deterring engagement: stigma functioned as a purification mechanism that distinguished insiders from outsiders and reinforced loyalty.
Kindstrand suggested that exclusion from mainstream legitimacy did not only consolidate identity; it also shaped the form of participation. When open political identification carried risk, members became less reliant on visible online expressions and more dependent on in-person networks and local organizational spaces. In her telling, this dynamic inadvertently strengthened local party structures, creating a participatory ecology resembling older mass-party models. She gestured toward Duverger’s “bullseye” model of affiliation—layers of involvement and commitment radiating outward—as a better descriptor of what she observed than the flatter, looser organizational patterns often attributed to contemporary parties.
The third theme was efficacy: a strong belief in the party as a vehicle for change. Here, populism’s crisis narrative did substantial work. Members frequently described Sweden as being in decline and framed politics as urgent, even existential. Mainstream parties were cast as self-serving and unresponsive, and this perceived abandonment strengthened the conviction that only the Sweden Democrats could correct national trajectory. Members described their engagement in future-oriented moral terms—securing safety for children, protecting the country, and restoring order. These narratives produced an affective intensity that made membership meaningful even when individual influence seemed limited. A single member might not “make change,” but being a small part of a collective project was experienced as politically consequential.
In this sense, Kindstrand’s presentation reframed populist anti-establishment discourse as an engine of organizational reproduction. By narrating crisis, betrayal, and urgency, the party could present itself as a historically necessary instrument—echoing, in form if not in content, the early 20th-century mass party described by political scientists Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair as the vehicle through which underrepresented groups gained access to state power. The difference in Kindstrand’s account was that the Sweden Democrats’ linkage was not built on class-based identity in the classic sense. Although class references sometimes surfaced, “ordinary people” functioned as a more flexible identity—portable across occupational categories and capable of absorbing multiple grievances.
Across the presentation, Kindstrand revealed an underlying argument about populism’s relationship to mediation. While populist theory often equates populism with immediacy and hostility toward intermediaries, Kindstrand’s material suggested that populism can also re-sacralize the party as a mediator—so long as the party is imagined not as an elite institution but as an extension of “the people.” In that configuration, the party does not appear as a barrier between citizens and decision-making; it appears as the people’s own organizational body, an authentic conduit into the state. The party becomes legitimate precisely because it claims to negate the distinction between representatives and represented.
Kindstrand concluded by returning to the initial puzzle: why radical right populist parties can sometimes build membership organizations that mainstream parties struggle to sustain. Her findings suggested that the answer may lie less in incentives and more in meaning—specifically, in how populist narratives transform membership into moral duty, stigma into solidarity, and organizational routines into evidence of authenticity. In that sense, the Sweden Democrats’ organizational strength did not contradict populism’s representational claims; it operationalized them. Rather than dissolving party mediation, populism—under certain conditions—can rebuild it on the basis of resemblance, loyalty, and crisis-driven efficacy.
Discussants’ Feedback
Hannah Geddes
Hannah Geddes is a PhD Candidate at the University of St. Andrews.
In her role as discussant, Hannah Geddes (PhD Candidate, University of St. Andrews) offered a thoughtful and analytically generous set of reflections on the three papers, emphasizing their shared strength in challenging entrenched assumptions within populism research. Her feedback moved sequentially through the presentations, combining close engagement with constructive questions that opened space for further theoretical development.
Geddes began with Saga Oskarson Kindstrand’s paper, which she described as particularly compelling in its formulation of a clear and persuasive puzzle. She highlighted the strength of the paper’s core move: juxtaposing dominant expectations about populism—especially the assumption that populist politics is inherently immediate, anti-institutional, and resistant to party organization—with empirical evidence that complicates those claims. Geddes praised the way the paper reframed what appears, at first glance, as a contradiction into a productive analytical insight. Rather than presenting the findings as merely “filling a gap,” she noted, the paper demonstrated that the assumed contradiction between populism and party mediation may not exist in the way the literature presumes.
A central point of appreciation concerned Kindstrand’s constructivist and interpretivist approach. Geddes emphasized that treating parties as discursively constituted institutions was not a limitation but a key strength of the research. She suggested that this perspective allows the analysis to move beyond causal explanation toward a richer understanding of what parties mean to members, and how those meanings reshape assumptions about organization, representation, and linkage. In this respect, Geddes encouraged the author to lean more explicitly into this epistemological stance, arguing that the paper’s contribution lies precisely in unsettling dominant theoretical categories rather than establishing linear causal relationships.
Turning to the presentation on the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and France’s National Rally, Geddes expressed strong interest in the analysis of immigration and its linkage to broader social concerns. She noted that the discussion of how migration is connected to housing, welfare, and security anxieties was particularly illuminating. Drawing on her own context in Scotland, she raised questions about the demand side of radical-right politics—specifically whether economic grievances are the primary driver, or whether cultural and securitized frames take on autonomous force. She also queried how economic discontent becomes translated into cultural or criminal narratives, describing this transformation as one of the most intriguing aspects of the presentation.
Geddes further reflected on the argument that radical-right parties employ deliberate vagueness in their rhetoric. She questioned whether this vagueness should be understood as intentional strategic ambiguity or as a more structural feature of how such parties operate and adapt to shifting grievances. While not pressing for a definitive answer, she highlighted the analytical value of interrogating intention versus structure in explanations of mainstreaming and legitimation.
In her comments on Chris Magno’s presentation on criminal populism, Geddes again returned to the theme of challenging assumptions. She commended the paper for moving beyond the familiar figure of the “crime warrior” politician and for demonstrating how criminal identity itself can be transformed into political capital. Particularly striking to her was the idea that political actors can simultaneously embody both crime-fighting authority and criminal transgression—an apparent contradiction that the empirical material showed to be politically viable. Geddes posed a key question here: whether this duality represents a contradiction that politicians consciously exploit, or whether they have succeeded in fusing these identities into a coherent populist performance.
Finally, Geddes raised questions about the role of class across the presentations, especially in relation to crime and migration. While acknowledging the emphasis on race and immigration, she suggested that class dynamics—particularly their apparent reconfiguration or blurring—deserved further exploration, especially in European contexts where traditional class cleavages appear increasingly unsettled.
Concluding her remarks, Geddes praised all three presenters for clearly articulated puzzles, empirical richness, and a shared willingness to rethink core assumptions in the study of populism. Her feedback framed the session as a cohesive and intellectually stimulating exchange that advanced both theoretical and empirical debates.
Dr. Vlad Surdea-Hernea
Dr. Vlad Surdea-Hernea is a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna.
In his role as discussant at the session, Dr. Vlad Surdea-Hernea, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, offered a set of analytically probing and methodologically oriented reflections on the three papers. His feedback emphasized their shared ambition to unsettle established assumptions in populism research, while also pressing presenters to clarify conceptual scope, empirical grounding, and causal claims.
Dr. Surdea-Hernea began by endorsing Hannah Geddes’s earlier observation that all three papers were united by a willingness to challenge dominant frameworks. Turning first to Assoc. Prof. Chris Magno’s paper on criminal populism, he described the conceptual intervention as innovative and intellectually stimulating, particularly in its move beyond penal populism toward criminality as political capital. At the same time, he raised a historical question about novelty. Drawing attention to early twentieth-century precedents—such as socialist candidates in the United States who campaigned explicitly as convicted prisoners—he questioned whether criminal populism should be understood as an entirely new phenomenon or as a contemporary reconfiguration of a longer-standing strategy. He suggested that tracing such antecedents could strengthen the framework by clarifying what is genuinely novel and what represents continuity.
A second point concerned the relationship between theory and evidence. While praising the conceptual originality of the argument, Dr. Surdea-Hernea cautioned that some empirical illustrations risked appearing adjacent rather than integral to the theoretical claims. He encouraged a tighter integration, arguing that the empirical material should serve as the backbone of the conceptual innovation rather than as illustrative side notes. In his view, the project’s real potential lay not in assembling compelling anecdotes, but in advancing a coherent framework for understanding how crime, populism, and legitimacy intersect—one that could anchor broader debates.
Moving to the paper on the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and France’s National Rally (RN), Dr. Surdea-Hernea focused on comparative scope and framing. He questioned the logic of case selection by asking how the argument might travel to contexts where radical right parties have become mainstream despite the absence of large immigrant populations, such as parts of Eastern Europe. Exploring such “deviant cases,” he suggested, could illuminate whether the criminalization of migration operates similarly where migration is more imagined than experienced.
He also reflected on the paper’s discussion of responsiveness. While agreeing that radical right actors are adept at sensing social anxieties and adapting their messaging, he cautioned against formulations that might be misread as implying that responsiveness itself is normatively problematic. He encouraged clearer differentiation between democratic responsiveness and the strategic reframing of grievances through exclusionary narratives. Additionally, Dr. Surdea-Hernea suggested that the role of mainstream center-left and center-right parties during and after the 2014–2015 migration crisis deserved greater attention. Within a Gramscian framework, he argued, it would be valuable to clarify whether radical right narratives emerged “downstream of culture” or whether mainstream parties played a more constitutive role in shaping that culture through their responses to crisis.
In his comments on Saga Oskarson Kindstrand’s paper, Dr. Surdea-Hernea raised two interconnected questions. First, he queried whether populist parties that emphasize membership and internal participation actually grant members greater power in practice. If they do, he suggested, this would imply a genuinely distinct organizational form—one that may require rethinking what is meant by a “party” as an institutional vehicle. Second, he pointed to the empirical status of members’ claims. Assertions that populist parties are composed of “ordinary people,” he noted, are at least partially testable through demographic data on class, education, and age. Whether such claims are accurate or not would not undermine the argument, but each outcome would carry different theoretical implications—either confirming real organizational distinctiveness or revealing the power of belief and persuasion within party discourse.
Concluding, Dr. Surdea-Hernea emphasized that these questions were offered in a constructive spirit. Across all three papers, he saw strong foundations for further development and praised the session as a rich and engaging contribution to ongoing debates on populism, representation, and exclusion.
Questions from Participants
Chair Dr. Murphey opened the floor to audience participation by inviting collective reflection on the discussants’ feedback and the presenters’ arguments. She also highlighted a written comment from an audience member, Dr. Heidi Hart, who echoed Hannah Geddes’s earlier question to Chris Magno regarding the paradox of anti-crime rhetoric advanced by actors who themselves engage in or normalize criminality. Dr Hart noted the timeliness of this issue in light of a recent shooting of a US citizen in Minnesota and encouraged reflection on how such events intersect with the performative dimensions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rhetoric and enforcement practices. Her intervention underscored how criminal populism operates not only discursively but also through real-time securitized performances by state actors.
Dr. Murphey then directed a question to Dr. Russell Foster concerning his typology of right-wing politics—distinguishing between the “old right,” the “extreme right,” and the contemporary radical right. While the old right was described as grounded in Burkean notions of tradition, she observed that today’s radical right also mobilizes appeals to “tradition,” albeit in reconfigured forms. Citing cultural battles over gender roles and family structures, Dr. Murphey asked whether this suggested a transformed, rather than abandoned, relationship to tradition—raising the possibility that tradition itself has become a more flexible and strategically redeployed resource within radical right politics.
Dr. Bulent Kenes followed with a question addressed to Saga Oskarson Kindstrand, drawing on his close observation of Swedish politics. He asked whether the organizational and discursive strategies identified among the Sweden Democrats were mirrored by mainstream parties, particularly in light of the Tidö Agreement, which has drawn center-right and even Social Democratic actors closer to radical right framings. Dr. Kenes queried whether similar narratives on criminality and migration were diffusing across the party system, suggesting a broader process of normalization and contagion beyond the populist radical right itself.
Responses by Presenters
Assoc. Prof. Chris Magno’s Response
In his response to the discussants’ feedback and audience questions, Assoc. Prof. Chris Magno offered clarifications that further situated his concept of criminal populism within a longer historical and comparative arc, while also addressing questions of class, identity, and apparent contradiction.
Dr. Magno began by engaging directly with Dr. Surdea-Hernea’s question regarding novelty. He agreed that the use of criminal identity as political capital is not a recent invention, stressing that his book project explicitly traces its roots to the colonial period. In the opening chapter, he examines how state power itself emerged through crime during the US colonization of the Philippines, arguing that many of the core elements of criminal populism—eugenics, racial othering, criminalization, propaganda, militarized policing, and surveillance—were forged in imperial contexts. He introduced the idea of a “colonial feedback loop,” whereby techniques developed in colonial governance later return to the metropole and are redeployed in contemporary democratic politics. This historical framing, he explained, is central to his comparative analysis of the Philippines and the United States, and challenges the assumption that criminal populism is a phenomenon confined to the Global South.
Responding to questions raised by Hannah Geddes on contradiction and class, Dr. Magno emphasized that criminal populists actively manipulate identities associated with poverty and marginalization. He illustrated this with examples from the United States, noting how Donald Trump transformed his mugshot into a fundraising and mobilizing tool, intentionally aligning his criminalized image with populations historically subjected to criminalization, particularly African Americans. Similarly, in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte maintained extraordinarily high approval ratings—including among lower-income groups—despite conducting a violent “war on drugs” that disproportionately targeted the poor.
Dr. Magno further extended this logic to Bill Clinton, observing that Clinton retained strong African American support even amid scandal, underscoring how representation often operates symbolically rather than materially. Across cases, he argued, criminal populism thrives on irony and contradiction: leaders claim to embody marginalized identities while simultaneously enacting policies that harm those very groups.
Concluding, Dr. Magno reiterated that while criminal populism has deep historical roots, it is in the present moment that it has crystallized into a distinct political formation—marking a shift away from traditional penal populism toward the strategic weaponization of criminality itself as a source of legitimacy and power.
Dr. Russell Foster’s Repsonse
In his response to the feedback and questions, Dr. Russell Foster offered a wide-ranging and clarifying reflection that reinforced the conceptual ambitions of his paper while acknowledging areas for further refinement. Speaking from a comparative and theoretically self-aware position, Dr. Foster addressed questions of typology, tradition, case selection, responsiveness, and intentionality in the politics of the radical right.
Beginning with Dr. Murphey’s question on typology and tradition, Dr. Foster emphasized that the distinction between the old right, extreme right, and radical right should not be understood as rigid or mutually exclusive. While the old right is often associated with Burkean appeals to tradition, he argued that both the old and radical right rely on what Eric Hobsbawm famously termed “invented traditions.” In this sense, the contemporary radical right does not abandon tradition but actively manufactures new ones. Dr. Foster illustrated this through the example of gender politics, noting the emergence of highly stylized and exaggerated gender roles—hyper-masculine men and submissive “trad wives”—that would have been largely absent from radical right discourse a decade or two ago. These narratives, he suggested, exemplify how tradition is strategically reconstructed rather than inherited.
Addressing Hannah Geddes’s and Dr. Surdea-Hernea’s questions on supply and demand, Dr. Foster stressed that radical right narratives only gain traction where there is an underlying social appetite for them. While such parties may supply exclusionary frames, these frames resonate because they align with existing anxieties. Economic grievances remain central, but they are often experienced indirectly—through housing insecurity, job precarity, limited educational opportunities, and broader political disillusionment. Foster also pointed to cultural fatigue, including backlash against what some perceive as “peak woke,” as another source of demand that the radical right is adept at exploiting.
On case selection, Dr. Foster explained that Austria and France were chosen precisely because they offer contrasting yet complementary trajectories: a large state where the radical right has not governed nationally and a smaller one where it has entered government twice and rebounded electorally after failure. Responding to questions about countries with limited immigration, he argued that similar patterns can be observed in places such as Poland, Hungary, and the United Kingdom. Here, digital media and transnational narratives allow radical right actors to mobilize fear and civilizational rhetoric even in the absence of direct exposure to migration.
Dr. Foster also clarified a potential misreading of the argument on responsiveness. He stressed that the paper does not condemn responsiveness per se; rather, it critiques the framing of grievances as existential and criminal threats. When migration is securitized and criminalized, he argued, legitimate policy debates can slide into exclusionary politics with severe real-world consequences, as illustrated by the UK’s “hostile environment” policies and the Windrush scandal.
Finally, on the question of whether radical right vagueness is deliberate, Dr. Foster acknowledged the epistemic limits of intent. While it may be impossible to prove conscious strategy, he suggested that vagueness functions politically by allowing adaptability. Whether intentional or structural, this ambiguity enables radical right actors to remain relevant across shifting contexts—an adaptability that, in his view, remains one of their most consequential strengths.
Saga Oskarson Kindstrand’s Response
In her response to the feedback and questions, Saga Oskarson Kindstrand offered a focused clarification of her argument, addressing issues of intra-party power, social composition, and the broader diffusion of populist practices within Swedish politics. Her remarks reaffirmed the analytical intent of her study while drawing clear boundaries around what the article seeks—and does not seek—to explain.
Responding first to questions about whether populist radical right parties genuinely empower their members, Kindstrand emphasized that this varies across cases. In the Swedish context, she noted, the Sweden Democrats do not grant members greater internal influence than mainstream parties and, in some respects, offer even less internal democracy. This limited empowerment is, she argued, typical rather than anomalous. Importantly, she suggested that this does not weaken her argument; instead, it deepens the puzzle. Conventional theories would expect strong incentives—such as internal influence—to drive membership. Yet high levels of commitment persist despite centralized control, indicating that other mechanisms sustain organizational loyalty.
Kindstrand linked this centralization to stigma and exclusion. Because the party is subject to intense public scrutiny and reputational risk, tight control over messaging and behavior is framed as necessary. Granting extensive autonomy to local members is perceived as dangerous, particularly as the party has moved closer to governing power by supporting a coalition. As political influence increases, she observed, efforts to discipline the organization and manage public image intensify rather than recede.
Turning to questions about whether members’ claims of being “ordinary people” are empirically accurate, Kindstrand acknowledged the legitimacy of the concern. Existing studies, she noted, suggest that Sweden Democrat politicians tend to have lower levels of education and income prior to entering politics compared to representatives of other parties—patterns that may reflect both the party’s rapid growth and its outsider status. However, she stressed that adjudicating the truth of these claims is not the primary aim of her article. Instead, her focus lies on how such claims function discursively to sustain a particular organizational form and sense of belonging.
Finally, addressing the diffusion of populist rhetoric across the party system, Kindstrand agreed that mainstream parties in Sweden increasingly echo Sweden Democrat frames, particularly on migration and criminality. This agenda-setting role, she argued, powerfully reinforces members’ sense of efficacy. Observing other parties adopt their positions is interpreted internally as evidence that the party is reshaping politics—further strengthening organizational cohesion and belief in its transformative capacity.
Closing Remarks by Dr. Helen Murphey
In her closing assessment, Dr. Helen Murphey offered a synthetic reflection that drew together the panel’s core themes while highlighting their broader implications for the study of populism, crime, and exclusion. Thanking the presenters, discussants, and audience, she characterized the session as both intellectually engaging and conceptually enriching, particularly in its collective contribution to understanding the exclusionary dynamics at the heart of contemporary populism.
Murphey identified the construction of identity—alongside practices of inclusion and exclusion—as a unifying thread across the presentations. Central to this, she argued, was the differentiated treatment of crime within exclusionary populist narratives. Drawing on Chris Magno’s intervention, she emphasized how certain forms of criminality are attributed vertically to elites—through discourses of corruption and “draining the swamp”—while other forms are attributed horizontally to marginalized groups, who are cast as threats to social order. At the same time, she noted the paradoxical tolerance, and even valorization, of particular transgressions when they are framed as necessary tools to challenge an unjust status quo. This selective moralization of crime, she suggested, resonates strongly with criminological insights into how illegality is socially coded and unevenly sanctioned.
Murphey further underscored the adaptability of exclusionary populism, highlighting how shifting circumstances allow movements to recalibrate narratives of crime, security, and grievance. This adaptability, she argued, plays a key role in the mainstreaming of exclusionary ideas. Building on insights from scholarship on diffusion, she pointed to how legitimate socio-economic grievances—such as austerity, housing shortages, and affordability crises—become linked to politics of exclusion, thereby creating pathways through which non-populist actors adopt populist frames.
Concluding, Murphey emphasized that the session’s discussions demonstrated not only the mutability of exclusionary populism but also its capacity to reshape broader political discourse. She thanked ECPS for convening the workshop and closed by passing the floor back to the organizers, marking the session as a fitting and reflective start to 2026.
Conclusion
Session 9 closed with a clear analytical takeaway: “crime” operates less as a neutral policy domain than as a political grammar through which exclusionary populism makes boundaries appear natural, urgent, and democratically defensible. Across the three papers, crime and security functioned as elastic categories—capable of being redirected toward elites (as corruption and betrayal), toward marginalized groups (as disorder and threat), and toward institutions themselves (as politicized justice). In this sense, the session illuminated how populism’s promise of protection is inseparable from its capacity to moralize inequality and translate social conflict into hierarchies of belonging.
The discussion also underscored that exclusionary politics is simultaneously discursive, organizational, and institutional. Dr. Magno’s framework emphasized how legal jeopardy can be recoded as authenticity and persecution, turning accountability mechanisms into stages of political spectacle. Dr. Foster’s comparative analysis showed how the securitization of migration becomes “common sense” through metapolitical work: linking everyday grievances—housing, welfare, jobs—to civilizational narratives that render exclusion as prudence. Kindstrand’s ethnographic findings, meanwhile, complicated the assumption that populism merely bypasses intermediaries. Instead, populist discourse can re-legitimate party organization by moralizing membership, intensifying solidarity under stigma, and narrating participation as civic duty.
The discussants sharpened the session’s implications for research design and theory-building. Questions about historical antecedents, case selection beyond high-immigration contexts, the role of mainstream parties in producing cultural “demand,” and the empirical status of members’ claims collectively highlighted a shared methodological challenge: how to distinguish novelty from recombination, strategy from structure, and perception from measurable social composition—without reducing populism to either elite manipulation or voter pathology.
With Dr. Helen Murphey’s moderation providing conceptual continuity, the session ultimately positioned exclusion as an adaptive political technology: strategically vague, emotionally resonant, and increasingly portable across arenas and actors. The broader conclusion for scholarship is that the politics of exclusion cannot be studied only through rhetoric or electoral outcomes. It requires tracing how moral categories of criminality circulate through institutions, organize collective identities, and normalize new thresholds of coercion—thereby reshaping democratic accountability from within.
In this Voice of Youth (VoY) article, Emmanouela Papapavlou delivers a powerful reflection on state violence, immigration enforcement, and the fragile boundaries of democratic accountability. The article critically examines the fatal shooting of a civilian woman by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026. Moving beyond official narratives of “self-defense,” Papapavlou situates the incident within broader patterns of institutional violence, racialized enforcement, and the erosion of human rights under the banner of security. By drawing historical parallels to the killing of George Floyd and interrogating the politics of “law and order,” the piece challenges readers to reconsider whose lives are protected—and whose are rendered expendable—in contemporary democracies.
By Emmanouela Papapavlou*
In a world where the concept of “security” weighs increasingly heavily on public policy, the use of state violence remains one of the most contentious and polarizing issues. In recent days, news that an agent of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed a 37 year-old woman in Minneapolis has reignited the debate over the limits of state power, institutional impunity, and human rights in one of the world’s most developed democracies.
The incident took place on January 7, 2026, during a large-scale operation aimed at enforcing immigration law in the city. Official statements from government authorities described the shooting as an act of self-defense, claiming that the woman attempted to “strike officers” with her vehicle. At the same time, however, video footage and eyewitness accounts contradict this version of events, suggesting that the gunshot was fired as the driver was attempting to leave the scene, without an evident and immediate threat to the officers’ lives.
The government’s effort to justify the action, even employing language such as “domestic terrorism operation,” has sparked outrage and skepticism among local officials, human rights organizations, and ordinary citizens. The mayor of Minneapolis openly stated that the self-defense arguments were “false” and called for ICE to withdraw from the city altogether. Many have described the killing as a clear example of excessive use of force by state authorities, particularly within the context of a large enforcement mission that disproportionately targets vulnerable communities.
But can this case truly be treated as an isolated incident? Or does it represent yet another link in a growing chain of violent encounters that follow a disturbingly familiar pattern? The Minneapolis killing is already being described as at least the fifth fatal outcome of similar federal operations over the past two years, suggesting that law enforcement strategy has evolved into an aggressive and dangerous form of violence, often exercised without meaningful accountability or transparency.
Social scientists and activists point out that the use of force by state authorities, whether in immigration enforcement or neighborhood policing, frequently activates deeper structures of social inequality. When the rhetoric of “law and order” is prioritized over human safety, trust between state institutions and the communities they serve erodes rapidly. And this raises a fundamental question: is the principle of “legality” applied equally to everyone, or is it selectively deployed as a tool of control and discipline over specific social groups?
This case cannot be examined outside its broader historical context. In 2020, in the same city of Minneapolis, George Floyd was killed as a police officer pressed a knee into his neck, turning a routine arrest into a public execution witnessed by the world. That moment became a global symbol of systemic police violence and racial injustice, igniting mass protests and exposing how deeply embedded power, race, and state violence are within modern societies.
And yet, how much has truly changed since then? Even today, the way state violence is addressed, whether through policing or immigration enforcement, continues to be shaped by the same logic that transforms people into threats and human lives into acceptable risks. The stories of those killed become symbols not only of injustice, but of a persistent institutional indifference toward the protection of life and dignity.
The Minneapolis case therefore serves as a reminder that violence exercised by institutions is not merely a “tragic mistake” or an “unfortunate exception.” It is part of a broader relationship between power and vulnerability that tests the very foundations of democracy and human rights. And just as in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, a new generation is once again refusing to accept narratives that normalize violence in the name of security. A generation that insists on asking the same uncomfortable question: what does security really mean, when preserving it requires the loss of human life?
(*)Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com
This commentary interrogates the rising popularity of “dopamine detox” as a moralized response to digital overload and burnout, situating it within contemporary populist logics. Rather than challenging the political economy of platform capitalism, the discourse reframes structural problems of attention extraction, inequality, and exhaustion as failures of individual self-discipline. Drawing on political economy and cultural sociology, the piece argues that dopamine detox resonates with a depoliticized form of populism that governs through moral binaries—disciplined versus undisciplined—rather than through explicit elite–people antagonism. By transforming self-control into a civic and economic virtue, the trend normalizes inequality and obscures corporate and regulatory responsibility. Ultimately, the commentary shows how neoliberal self-help cultures intersect with populist moralization to shift blame downward while leaving platform power largely unchallenged.
By Zeynep Temel*
The term “dopamine detox” has emerged as a popular self-regulation trend across digital platforms, wellness cultures, and productivity discourses in the past few years. It is being promoted as a remedy for distraction, burnout, and declining focus; through practices such as abstaining from social media, minimizing pleasurable stimuli, reducing digital consumption such as screen time, and deliberately embracing “boring” routines. The concept promises mental clarity and renewed productivity through individual restraint on various different platform ranging from TikTok videos to self-help books and corporate wellness advice.
However, this trend goes beyond dopamine detox’s popular neuroscientific framing, as it effectively reflects a broader political and moral shift. This shift is visible in how attention, self-control, and responsibility are actively governed under contemporary capitalism. This commentary therefore argues that dopamine detox should be understood not merely as a lifestyle trend or productivity technique, but as a neoliberal moral project that resonates with contemporary populist narratives. The reason behind this is that dopamine detox, instead of challenging the structural conditions that produce distraction and exhaustion, places the responsibility onto individuals. This relocation transforms self-discipline into moral virtue while also depoliticizing systemic inequalities embedded in the digital attention economy.
From Neuroscience to Moral Narrative
The scientific language surrounding dopamine detox is often misleading. In essence, the neuroscientific definition of dopamine is more complex than it simply being a “pleasure chemical.” It is a neurotransmitter that is involved in motivation, learning, and reward prediction. In fact, work by Berridge & Robinson (1998) demonstrates that dopamine is more closely associated with “wanting” and incentive salience than with pleasure itself. Clinical interventions related to dopamine regulation are also typically reserved for neurological or psychiatric conditions, bearing little resemblance to the lifestyle practices promoted online as “dopamine detox.”
Several scholars and clinicians further emphasize that dopamine detox lacks empirical grounding as a medical or neuroscientific intervention. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke notes that while excessive stimulation can indeed shape habits and compulsive behaviors, the idea of “resetting” dopamine through short-term abstinence is mainly metaphorical than clinical (Lembke, 2021).
However, the concept has gained remarkable cultural traction, and for a reason. As Eva Illouz (2007) argues, therapeutic language often migrates into everyday life not for being scientifically precise, but because it provides moral narratives of self-improvement and personal responsibility. In the case of “dopamine detox” therapeutic language functions to frame distraction as personal weakness, and to frame restraint as a signal of maturity, rationality, and self-mastery.
The Attention Economy and Individualized Responsibility
Political economy of digital platforms is also a crucial component of the rise of dopamine detox. Systemic extraction and monetization of attention are building blocks of contemporary platform capitalism. Similarly, social media platforms rely on algorithmic personalization, feedback loops, and continuous stimulation to maximize engagement and advertising revenue (Zuboff & Schwandt, 2019).
The way in which social media infrastructures shape user behavior is demonstrated in various empirical research. One of them is Zulli & Zulli’s (2020) work saying TikTok fosters “imitation publics” by encouraging users to replicate trends, sounds, and formats through algorithmic visibility incentives. Another one is Schellewald’s ethnographic research demonstrating how TikTok’s “For You” page structures everyday interaction by curating content flows that blur the boundary between personal expression platform-driven circulation (Schellewald, 2024).
While these structural dynamics exist, dopamine detox discourse rarely questions platform design, corporate incentives or regulatory responsibility, and instead reframes overstimulation as a problem of individual excess (too much scrolling, too much pleasure, too little discipline). This shift echoes Michel Foucault’s description of neoliberal governmentality, in which individuals are encouraged to govern themselves according to market rationalities rather than asking for collective or institutional intervention (Foucault et al., 2010). The result is a paradoxical form of resistance that leaves the underlying economic model of attention extraction intact.
Moralized Productivity and Populist Resonance
Dopamine detox resonates with contemporary forms of populism not through electoral rhetoric or charismatic leadership, but through moralization. Because cultural and neoliberal variants of populism often operate by translating structural and economic problems into questions of individual virtue and responsibility, dopamine detox mirrors populist logics that divide subjects into “disciplined” and “undisciplined,” or the self-controlled and the irresponsible. In this sense, dopamine detox does not mobilize populism through the language of “the people” versus “the elite,” but through a moral distinction between the disciplined and the undisciplined. This type of populism governs through self-blame; thus dopamine detox discourse exemplifies a depoliticized, affective form of populist reasoning.
This framework transforms self-control into an economic and moral virtue, and productivity into a character trait instead of output. As observed by Jonathan Crary, even rest and withdrawal are increasingly instrumentalized as strategies to enhance future productivity rather than as forms of genuine refusal (Crary, 2014).
Dopamine detox fits neatly into this moral economy. High-dopamine activities such as social media usage, gaming, and entertainment are viewed as threats to cognitive capital and economic self-worth. By contrast, abstention is celebrated as common sense and self-discipline. This logic mirrors Weberian asceticism in a digital age-updated way, where self-denial signals moral legitimacy and economic rationality (Weber, 1930).
Crucially, this moralization obscures inequality as the capacity to disengage from platforms, curate “low dopamine” lifestyles or embrace minimalist routines assumes material security. For precarious workers, freelancers, and gig-economy participants, constant connectivity is more of a condition of survival than that of choice.
Affective Governance and the Politics of “Calm”
“Affective governance,” a term coined by Sara Ahmed (2024) signifying the circulation of emotions that attach moral value to certain ways of being is an important component of dopamine detox narrative. This affective hierarchy favors calm, controlled subjects whose lives fit white-collar work and middle-class wellness norms.
Crucially, this hierarchy is not sustained only through discourse, but also through aesthetics. It is reproduced through carefully curated visual and lifestyle cues involving neutral color palettes, quiet mornings, and minimalist routines, thereby connecting dopamine detox to broader cultural trends such as “clean girl” aesthetics, soft productivity, and wellness minimalism.
Depoliticization Through Self-Blame
What makes dopamine detox particularly significant is its depoliticizing effect. It normalizes exhaustion as a personal management issue rather than a political one by turning structural problems of attention extraction into individualized moral responsibility. This shift mirrors broader neoliberal-populist dynamics in which systemic failures ranging from labor precarity to digital surveillance are reframed as matters of individual choice and discipline.
In this regard, dopamine detox illustrates a subtle but powerful form of contemporary populist reasoning: one that governs through affect, morality, and self-blame; rather than focusing on regulating platforms, addressing corporate power or rethinking digital labor.
Conclusion: Detox Without Transformation?
This commentary argues that dopamine detox should be understood not as a scientifically grounded intervention, but as a neoliberal and moralized response to platform-induced overstimulation. It claims to resist distraction and burnout by framing them as failures of individual discipline which ends up in reinforcing the very economic logics causing them.
The political question then, is not about whether individuals need to reduce screen time, but why attention economies remain largely unregulated while self-discipline is constantly promoted as the solution. Another question that arises is if dopamine detox risks becoming yet another form of self-blame -rather than transformation- in an economy designed to exhaust, unless the political economy of platforms is addressed.
(*) Zeynep Temel is a PhD candidate in International Political Economy at Marmara University, Istanbul, but currently based in Shanghai. Her research interests span inequality, platform capitalism, popular culture, and gender, with a regional focus on East Asia. She works on how economic and political structures shape everyday practices, identities, and moral expectations, particularly through attention, consumption, and labor under contemporary capitalism.
References
Ahmed, S. (2014). The cultural politics of emotion (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press.
Berridge, K. C. & Robinson, T. E. (1998). “What is the role of dopamine in reward? Hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?” Brain Research Reviews, 28(3), 309–369. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-0173(98)00019-8
Crary, J. (2014). 24/7: Late capitalism and the ends of sleep. Verso.
Foucault, M.; Senellart, M.; Ewald, F.; Fontana, A.; Davidson, A.I. & Burchell, G.D. (2010). The birth of biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79.
Illouz, E. (2007). Cold intimacies: The making of emotional capitalism. Polity Press.
Lembke, A. (2021). Dopamine nation: Finding balance in the age of indulgence. Unabridged. Penguin Audio.
Müller, J. (2016). What Is Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812293784
Schellewald, A. (2024). “Discussing the role of TikTok sharing practices in everyday social life.” International Journal of Communication, 18, 909–926.
Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Scribner/Simon & Schuster.
Zuboff, S. & Schwandt, K. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.
Zulli, D. & Zulli, D. J. (2020). “Extending the Internet meme: Conceptualizing technological mimesis and imitation publics on the TikTok platform.” New Media & Society, 24(8), 1872-1890. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820983603 (Original work published 2022)
In this analytically rich commentary, ECPS Youth Group member Saurabh Raj examines how direct welfare delivery is transforming electoral politics in India. Focusing on the recent Bihar assembly election, Raj shows how visible and targeted benefits—especially cash transfers to women—have become a powerful political language shaping voter participation and choice. Conceptualising this shift as “freebie populism,” the article argues that welfare now operates not only as a developmental tool but as a mode of political mobilisation, mediated through digital infrastructures and personalised state–citizen encounters. While caste, religion, and ideology remain influential, Raj highlights the growing importance of the individual beneficiary as a new axis of political belonging. Situating Bihar within broader interstate patterns, the article raises critical questions about democratic accountability, political reasoning, and the future trajectory of Indian democracy.
The recent Bihar state[1] assembly election provides a useful lens to examine how welfare-centred mobilisation is reshaping contemporary electoral politics in India. Bihar recorded its highest ever voter turnout at 66.9 percent. The gender pattern was even more striking. Women voted at 71.6 percent while men voted at 62.8 percent. In 130 of the 243 constituencies, more women than men participated. These are not small variations or one time anomalies. They represent a structural shift in who participates and who determines electoral outcomes (Basu 2021).
The pattern of results closely mirrors this shift. The incumbent governing coalition won 114 of the 130 seats where women led the turnout which is close to 88 percent of all such constituencies. This alignment coincided with the scale and timing of welfare measures that reached women directly, warranting closer analytical attention. A direct cash transfer equivalent to approximately USD 120 to over twelve million women shortly before the election was only one part of a wider package that included pension increases, electricity bill relief and higher payments for frontline workers. The opposition responded with guarantee booklets, registration drives and promises of future support, as well as cards distributed by Jan Suraj[2] that signalled an alternative welfare imagination. Welfare was not an accessory to the campaign. It was the central axis around which political mobilisation occurred.
This election therefore makes visible a broader phenomenon that has been unfolding across India. Welfare centred electoral strategies are transforming political communication, voter reasoning and the emotional structure of democratic belonging. The rise of freebie populism, a term used here to describe the combination of populist rhetoric with highly visible and personalised welfare delivery, marks a distinct shift in how the state is imagined and how voters evaluate political actors. The term “freebie populism” is used here as an analytic category rather than a normative judgement. It refers not to the undesirability of welfare provision but to a specific political logic in which competitive electoral incentives privilege immediacy, visibility, and personalisation of benefits. This logic differs from rights-based or institutionalised welfare regimes, where entitlements are routinised and less directly tied to electoral cycles. The distinction is important, as the argument advanced here concerns the mode of political mobilisation rather than the legitimacy of welfare itself.
Methods Note
This commentary draws on publicly available data from the Election Commission of India (Election Commission of India, 2024), state budget documents, press releases, field reporting in Hindi and English media and academic literature on populism, welfare delivery and voting behaviour. Interpretive arguments build on comparative work on populism (Mudde, 2004; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017) and on scholarship that links welfare delivery to political participation (Khemani, 2022; Kruks Wisner, 2018). Additional reference is made to studies on gendered political engagement, digital welfare architecture and direct benefit transfer systems. The purpose of this article is analytical rather than predictive. It aims to situate the Bihar experience within a wider conceptual and empirical framework that illuminates the changing nature of electoral politics in India.
Classic Understandings of Populism
Cas Mudde defines populism as a thin centred ideology that imagines society as divided between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” and insists that politics must directly express the general will (Mudde, 2004). Because it is thin centred, it can attach itself to a range of ideological projects including right wing, left wing or regionally specific imaginations of welfare, nationalism and identity. Mudde and Kaltwasser note that populism becomes powerful when leaders present themselves as direct protectors of ordinary citizens and construct emotional and symbolic shortcuts that bypass institutions and complex policy debates (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017).
Comparative research from Latin America demonstrates how populist leaders frequently combine emotive rhetoric with selective welfare delivery to cultivate direct affiliation with the masses (Hawkins, 2010; Roberts, 2015). These transfers are not incidental. They are political instruments through which belonging is reinforced and legitimacy is sustained. In India, populism has historically relied on religious mobilisation, symbolic gestures, charismatic leadership or caste-based appeals. Material transfers existed but did not shape political identity in the pronounced way witnessed today.
The current moment therefore extends rather than replaces classic understandings of populism. It adds a strong material and bureaucratically mediated dimension that is deeply embedded in the digital public infrastructure of the state. This dimension is responsible for the heightened immediacy with which political commitment is experienced.
Conceptualising Freebie Populism
Freebie populism represents a contemporary variant of populist mobilisation in which the primary bridge between leaders and citizens is constructed through direct material transfers rather than symbolic or rhetorical appeals alone. It does not replace classic definitions of populism but operationalises the promise of protection and recognition by making it tangible through targeted benefits. Cash transfers, subsidised electricity, expanded pensions, and free travel serve as visible proof of political commitment. These benefits act as recurring reminders that the state, often personified through political leadership, acknowledges the immediate material needs of citizens. Three features distinguish freebie populism from broader welfare politics.
Immediacy is central, as transfers are often timed close to elections and their effects are felt within household budgets almost immediately. Voters therefore perceive the state not as a distant bureaucracy but as a source of immediate relief.
Visibility is another critical feature. Digital transfers generate SMS alerts and bank notifications, and these alerts themselves function as instruments of political communication, turning a routine bureaucratic act into a concrete political moment.
Personalised recognition is a third characteristic. Scholars note that direct transfers create a strong sense of being acknowledged by the state, particularly among women who manage household finances (Khemani, 2022). This personalisation transforms welfare from a bureaucratic entitlement into a more intimate political relationship between the individual and the state.
Freebie populism does not erase caste or religious identities, which remain significant in shaping expectations and voting behaviour (Jaffrelot, 2021). However, welfare delivered directly to individual bank accounts establishes a new axis of political belonging. A woman from the Yadav or Paswan community may continue to retain group-based preferences, but her voting choices are also influenced by whether the state has reached her personally. The digital architecture of Aadhaar-linked transfers deepens this individualisation, making the relationship between the voter and the state more immediate, measurable, and experientially reliable.
Bihar and the Emergence of the Individual Beneficiary
The Bihar election demonstrates the mechanics of freebie populism with unusual clarity because the scale of targeted transfers was unprecedented. The distribution of ten thousand rupees to more than one crore twenty lakh women created a widespread perception that the state was acknowledging their economic vulnerability. This was part of a larger environment that included electricity bill relief, increased pensions and higher remuneration for frontline workers. These measures were repeatedly communicated through public meetings, local level messaging and digital outreach, ensuring that beneficiaries associated them with the ruling leadership.
The opposition attempted to counter this by centring women in its own campaign. Guarantee booklets, self-registration drives and targeted promises sought to build an alternative welfare narrative. Jan Suraj’s cards, for instance, attempted to construct a future oriented welfare claim. Yet the immediacy of actual deposits seemed to carry greater weight than future promises. Voters were able to verify receipt of benefits in the most tangible sense.
Turnout and voting patterns align closely with this political strategy. Women led the turnout in 130 constituencies, and the incumbent governing coalition won 114 of these. The fact that this alignment occurred during a period of intense welfare messaging suggests the strong influence of direct benefits on electoral behaviour. The political message materialised not as an abstract claim but as a verified deposit received through a mobile phone alert. Politics was increasingly experienced through the position of the individual beneficiary.
This alignment does not imply that welfare purchases votes. Rather it indicates that welfare is functioning as a channel through which political recognition, credibility and responsiveness are evaluated. Voters appear to be rewarding the government for delivering measurable relief and penalising actors whose promises remain untested.
Shifting Political Behaviour
The Bihar data indicates that freebie populism is reshaping political behaviour in ways that build on and extend earlier research. Scholars have noted that low-income voters are highly strategic and responsive to welfare delivery, often making reasoned decisions based on evidence of state performance (Khemani, 2022; Kruks Wisner, 2018). The Bihar experience reinforces this insight and highlights three important dimensions of change.
First, welfare is increasingly becoming the primary language of political recognition. Women voters demonstrated exceptionally high turnout and a strong preference alignment in constituencies where welfare delivery was both visible and recent, suggesting that direct transfers and other targeted benefits have emerged as key instruments through which citizens assess the state’s commitment.
Second, citizenship itself is being experienced through the household economy. This does not reduce political engagement to a transactional exchange but instead reflects a new democratic imagination in which the state operates as a direct economic actor within the household. For many women, welfare programmes provide relief from domestic pressures, enhance financial independence, and support caregiving responsibilities, thereby strengthening political agency. At the same time, political reasoning is increasingly grounded in immediacy.
Third, freebie populism shifts the focus from abstract or long term developmental claims toward the voter’s immediate lived experience. Citizens evaluate political actors on the credibility, timing, and scale of benefit delivery and the responsiveness they witness in practice. This approach does not indicate passivity; rather, it reflects active and informed political calculation based on tangible outcomes and personal experience (Chauchard, 2017).
Taken together, these patterns suggest that political loyalty is increasingly shaped by repeated and recognisable acts of recognition rather than broad ideological or identity-based appeals, signalling a profound shift in how democratic engagement is conceptualised and practiced.
These patterns resonate with findings from other democracies where targeted welfare provision has become central to electoral competition, including parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. In such contexts, welfare delivery increasingly functions as both policy and political communication, blurring the boundary between governance and mobilisation. The Indian case therefore contributes to a growing comparative literature on how material distribution reshapes democratic participation under conditions of economic precarity.
Patterns Beyond Bihar
The pattern observed in Bihar is not an isolated development but part of a broader transformation in electoral politics across multiple Indian states. Welfare centred strategies have become essential elements of political competition, and their design increasingly reflects the logic of freebie populism, where visible and immediate benefits shape political belonging and voter behaviour. Each state offers a slightly different model, yet all demonstrate the growing centrality of targeted welfare in shaping electoral outcomes.
Jharkhand provides a clear example of this shift. The state expanded support for low-income women through age linked educational transfers and targeted assistance schemes that reached households directly. These interventions were not presented merely as development initiatives but became central to political communication, especially in rural districts where economic insecurity remains acute. The emphasis on young women and first-generation learners created a perception that the state was intervening meaningfully in the life chances of vulnerable households. Political actors highlighted these measures during election campaigns, illustrating how welfare has become a key electoral asset.
Maharashtra further demonstrates the consolidation of welfare centred politics. The Ladki Bahin Scheme placed women at the centre of the electoral narrative by offering regular financial assistance and presenting the state as an active participant in household welfare. The scheme was supported by recognisable branding, sustained outreach and continuous communication that associated the ruling leadership with direct support for women. This combination of financial transfers and symbolic visibility strengthened the perception that welfare was both a right and a political commitment, reinforcing the link between beneficiaries and the state.
Telangana presents another version of this emerging trend. Successive governments have relied heavily on targeted welfare, particularly through agricultural support schemes, marriage assistance programmes and community specific initiatives. These policies created strong emotional and material incentives for distinct social groups and demonstrated that welfare could be used strategically to cultivate enduring political alliances. Welfare delivery in Telangana has become an essential component of electoral mobilisation rather than a supplementary tool and continues to play a decisive role in shaping partisan loyalty.
Tamil Nadu offers one of the longest running traditions of welfare linked mobilisation in India. The contemporary phase builds on earlier frameworks but introduces new elements such as free bus travel for women, expanded meal schemes, higher pensions and targeted relief for vulnerable households. Welfare delivery is deeply integrated into political identity and party narratives. Campaigns consistently highlight the immediacy and continuity of state support, reinforcing the idea that welfare programmes are expressions of political care rather than bureaucratic entitlements.
Across these states, welfare is framed not merely as development but as a direct political relationship. This relationship is mediated through digital systems that enable individual bank transfers, local mobilisation networks that translate policy into political communication, frontline workers who act as intermediaries between the state and beneficiaries and the emotional resonance generated when citizens experience state recognition in concrete and material form. Together, these elements show how freebie populism has become a national phenomenon shaping political participation and redefining the meaning of electoral competition.
However, important differences remain across states. In Tamil Nadu and other states, welfare programmes are embedded within long-standing party institutions and ideological narratives, reducing their electoral immediacy. In contrast, states such as Bihar and Jharkhand exhibit a more episodic and election-timed deployment of benefits, intensifying their political salience. These variations suggest that freebie populism operates most strongly where welfare delivery is newly individualised and weakly institutionalised.
Limits of Attribution and Scope of Argument
This article advances an interpretive rather than causal argument between welfare transfers and electoral outcomes. Voting behaviour is shaped by multiple overlapping factors, including caste alignments, candidate credibility, party organisation, and broader political narratives. The observed alignment between women-led turnout and electoral outcomes in Bihar should therefore be read as indicative rather than deterministic.
The argument advanced here is that welfare delivery has acquired heightened political salience under conditions of digital transfer, electoral competition, and economic precarity. Direct benefits function as signals of state responsiveness that voters incorporate into broader political reasoning. This does not imply political passivity or vote-buying; rather, it reflects strategic and experiential evaluation by citizens based on verifiable state action. Future research using booth-level data or longitudinal beneficiary tracking would allow for more precise estimation of causal effects.
Conclusion
Welfare centred mobilisation has become a central feature of contemporary electoral competition in India. The Bihar assembly election provides a useful illustration of how direct and visible welfare delivery is reshaping patterns of political participation by foregrounding the individual beneficiary as a significant site of democratic engagement. High female turnout and the alignment of women dominated constituencies with electoral outcomes underline the growing importance of welfare as a medium through which citizens experience and evaluate state responsiveness.
This shift does not indicate a decline in political reasoning or a reduction of citizenship to transactional exchange. Instead, it reflects a reorientation of democratic judgement in which voters increasingly rely on observable and verifiable state action to assess political credibility. Welfare delivery, mediated through digital and bureaucratic systems, functions not only as policy intervention but also as a communicative practice that signals recognition, reliability, and proximity between the state and citizens.
At the same time, the increasing centrality of welfare in electoral mobilisation raises important questions for democratic accountability. An emphasis on immediacy and visibility may encourage short term distributive competition at the expense of institutional consolidation and sustained policy debate. As electoral legitimacy becomes more closely tied to the timing and scale of benefits, political contestation risks narrowing to questions of delivery rather than deliberation.
The broader challenge for Indian democracy therefore lies not in the expansion of welfare itself but in the political logic through which welfare is mobilised. Understanding how welfare delivery reshapes political participation, voter reasoning, and experiences of citizenship is essential to assessing the evolving character of democratic practice in India. The Bihar case suggests that future electoral outcomes will increasingly be shaped by how convincingly the state makes itself present in the everyday lives of citizens, alongside enduring influences of identity, ideology, and organisation. Beyond India, the analysis highlights how welfare delivery can reconfigure democratic engagement in contexts where citizens encounter the state most directly through material transfers.
(*) Saurabh Raj is a core team member at the Indian School of Democracy and is associated with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). He has a decade of experience in Indian politics and elections.
References
Aiyar, Y., and Walton, M. (2015). “Rights, accountability and citizenship: Examining India’s social welfare architecture.” Accountability Initiative.
Basu, P. (2021). “Women and electoral participation in India: Changing patterns of turnout and political engagement.” Economic and Political Weekly, 56(12), 34 to 42.
Chauchard, S. (2017). Why representation matters: The meaning of ethnic quotas in rural India. Cambridge University Press.
Election Commission of India. (2024). State Assembly Election Data: Bihar.
Hawkins, K. A. (2010). Venezuela’s Chavismo and populism in comparative perspective. Cambridge University Press.
Jaffrelot, C. (2021). Modi’s India: Hindu nationalism and the rise of ethnic democracy. Princeton University Press.
Khemani, S. (2022). “Political economy of welfare delivery in India.” World Bank Research Observer, 37(2), 245 to 270.
Kruks Wisner, G. (2018). Claiming the state: Active citizenship and social welfare in rural India. Cambridge University Press.
Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541 to 563.
Mudde, C., and Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Roberts, K. M. (2015). Changing course in Latin America: Party systems in the neoliberal era. Cambridge University Press.
Footnotes
[1] Bihar, one of India’s most populous and economically disadvantaged states, has historically exhibited lower levels of state capacity and social welfare penetration, making recent shifts in voter participation particularly significant.
[2] A recently formed political party in Bihar positioning itself around governance and welfare reform.
In this wide-ranging interview with the ECPS, Dr. Matías Bianchi offers a powerful diagnosis of contemporary illiberalism. Moving beyond regime-centric explanations, Dr. Bianchi argues that today’s defining shift is normative: “illiberal actors no longer need to pretend they are liberal.” He shows how illiberalism now operates through transnational networks embedded within liberal democracies, sustained by funding, coordination, and discourse originating largely in the Global North. Highlighting the erosion of liberal legitimacy, the normalization of illiberal language, and the structural weakening of the nation-state, Dr. Bianchi underscores why democratic institutions struggle to respond—and what is at stake if they fail to adapt.
In an era marked by democratic backsliding, geopolitical fragmentation, and the global diffusion of illiberal norms, understanding the evolving nature of authoritarian and illiberal politics has become an urgent scholarly and policy task. In this in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Matías Bianchi, Director of Asuntos del Sur in Buenos Aires and co-author of “The Illiberal International,” offers a compelling diagnosis of contemporary illiberalism—one that departs decisively from regime-centric and state-centric explanations.
At the heart of Dr. Bianchi’s analysis lies a striking observation captured in the interview’s headline: “Illiberal actors no longer need to pretend they are liberal.” For Dr. Bianchi, the defining feature of the current moment is not the novelty of illiberal ideas themselves, but rather a profound normative and cultural shift that has lifted the constraints once requiring authoritarian or illiberal actors to cloak their agendas in liberal rhetoric. As he explains, “What we aim to show is that there is a set of actors working together and collaborating at different levels—geopolitical, institutional, and interpersonal—for whom liberal practices and ideas are no longer the goal.”
This “shedding of pretense,” as Dr. Bianchi describes it, represents a critical marker of the contemporary illiberal turn. Practices that were once “forbidden, punished, or had to be concealed are now openly articulated.” The symbolic need to maintain democratic façades—what Dr. Bianchi recalls through Fidel Castro’s claim that “we are a real democracy”—has eroded. “That veil is no longer necessary,” he argues, signaling a transformation not only in political behavior but also in the boundaries of legitimacy and civility within democratic publics.
Crucially, Dr. Bianchi situates illiberalism not as a discrete regime type but as a networked, relational political formation that increasingly operates within liberal democracies themselves. He emphasizes that many illiberal actors are embedded in ostensibly democratic systems—“in the European Union, the United States, or other contexts”—and that a major novelty of the past decade is that “much of the financing, support, and networking now originates from the US and Europe,” regions once seen as the pillars of the liberal international order.
Throughout the interview, Dr. Bianchi traces how cross-border coordination, transnational funding, and shared discursive strategies—exemplified by platforms such as The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) or slogans like “Make Europe Great Again”—have accelerated the normalization of illiberalism. These networks thrive amid what he identifies as a deeper crisis of liberalism itself: declining legitimacy, shrinking human rights cooperation, and the inability of liberal institutions to deliver material security, social inclusion, and credible governance in an increasingly unequal and digitally mediated global order.
Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Dr. Matías Bianchi, slightly revised for clarity and flow.
Illiberal Actors Now Operate Openly Within Liberal Regimes
A banner depicts democracy as a leaf eaten by “caterpillars” named Putin, Kaczynski, Orban, Babis, Trump, and Fico on Labour Day, May 1, 2017 in Old Town Square, Prague. Photo: Jolanta Wojcicka.
Dr. Matías Bianchi, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: How do you conceptualize illiberalism in distinction from classical authoritarianism and competitive autocracy? In“The Illiberal International,”illiberalism appears neither reducible to established authoritarian rule nor fully captured by frameworks of competitive authoritarianism or democratic erosion. What core institutional and normative markers define this “illiberal international,” particularly in terms of its relationship to legality, electoralism, and claims to popular sovereignty?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: In our article, we do not engage in a fine-tuned conceptualization of each of the concepts you mentioned. Rather, what we aim to show is that there is a set of actors working together and collaborating at different levels—geopolitical, institutional, and interpersonal—for whom liberal practices and ideas are no longer the goal. Our liberal order, already weakened, is being challenged, and we are not entirely certain about the motivations behind this challenge. Some actors may be seeking greater financial resources, others may wish to control their political space, while others pursue more ideological objectives, such as creating a new order, as in the case of Javier Milei in Argentina. They may have different aims, but what they share is that liberal practices—such as the Woodrow Wilson–style liberal global order—are no longer central.
Traditionally, autocratic or authoritarian frameworks focus primarily on regimes. What we show, however, is that many of these illiberal actors are often operating within liberal regimes—such as those in the European Union, the United States, or other contexts. That is precisely what we seek to demonstrate. A key feature of the current situation is that much of the financing, support, and networking now originates from the US and Europe, which were once the primary sustainers of the liberal global order. This represents a major novelty of the past decade.
As for the practices or markers we observe, one of the most significant is a cultural shift that enables ideas and practices that existed before but are now expressed more openly. In a sense, there has been a shedding of pretense surrounding liberal ideas, allowing actors to operate more freely. This is an important marker. Practices that were once forbidden, punished, or had to be concealed are now openly articulated. Even in Cuba, Fidel Castro used to say, “We are a real democracy.” There was always a veil that needed to be maintained. I believe that this veil is no longer necessary, and that in itself is a telling marker.
Illiberalism Has Gone Transnational
What explains the shift from predominantly domestic processes of democratic backsliding to increasingly coordinated, cross-border illiberal networks? In your article, illiberalism appears less as a discrete regime type than as a relational, networked political formation. How does this reconceptualization challenge state-centric and regime-centric approaches in comparative politics and international relations?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: Many of the things I am going to say are not directly related to the article and are more my own ideas, and not necessarily shared with my co-authors. What we are witnessing is a contested situation. The world order we are living in still includes a liberal order, but it is lacking both legitimacy and power. At the same time, other actors are gaining momentum; they have more financial resources and greater cooperation across many areas, including technology and the military.
This operates at different levels, which is a crucial point. The key dimension here is the network—that these actors are collaborating more than ever before. If you look back a decade or two, these networks were far more limited. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), for instance, was something quite restricted. “Make Europe Great Again” was either very limited or did not exist at all. Now, however, these spaces are becoming global. You have CPAC in Latin America, CPAC in Europe, and these platforms are expanding and increasingly sharing resources.
I think this development is related to the loss of pretense—that these ideas no longer need to be hidden. This, in turn, changes the game. There is more funding, while at the same time the liberal camp is lacking resources, lacking investment, and experiencing less cooperation. So, while this dynamic operates at different levels, the networks functioning simultaneously are particularly important.
For example, Tucker Carlson making Milei a global phenomenon, with hundreds of millions of viewers for his interviews, allows people across the United States to become familiar with this phenomenon. All of this network-based collaboration, to me, is absolutely crucial.
Illiberal Power Reveals Itself Through Discourse Before It Acts
Drawing on V-Dem data, the Authoritarian Collaboration Index, and your own empirical research, which indicators most effectively capture the qualitative transformation—not merely the quantitative expansion—of authoritarian cooperation in recent years? Which measures best reveal the growing organizational capacity, coordination, and strategic coherence of illiberal actors at the global level?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: Again, this goes beyond our analysis. I would say, once more, that the key element is the normative shift. There has been a change in what can be said at the level of language. Insults and the demonization of adversaries or other political actors have become more acceptable; at the level of discourse, the line of civility has shifted. This normative change is crucial, and it is followed by action. Language comes first.
When you start making statements such as “women are this,” or when Muslims or immigrants are targeted, you begin naming things, and then actions follow—ICE raids and other measures come afterward. So, the normative shift, in terms of what is allowed without penalties, is essential. In the past, if actions like those taken by Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or by others had occurred, there would have been phone calls from the White House or Brussels. There would have been at least threats involving investments, financial support, or other consequences.
I am not sure those calls exist anymore. All of these shifts occur, again, at the level of language, which has penetrated civic discourse within societies, but also at the global level, where the normative environment itself has changed. There is a fundamental normative shift at work.
When No One Enforces the Rules, Illiberal Networks Move Faster
This editorial image, captured in Belgrade, Serbia, showcases an array of novelty socks featuring the likenesses of Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump in Belgrade, Serbia on December 12, 2024. Photo: Jerome Cid.
Why have authoritarian and illiberal networks become more agile and effective than democratic alliances, despite the latter’s historical institutional advantages? To what extent do procedural neutrality, consensus-based decision-making, and legal formalism within liberal institutions create structural vulnerabilities that illiberal actors exploit?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: That is a very good question. I see liberal practices as a kind of social contract and a global contract. However, they need to be sustained by power. At some point, someone imposed those rules and others complied. I am not sure there is still sufficient power sustaining that liberal order at the international level, or in many cases at the national level. As a result, there is little punishment for violating it. So I am not sure this is primarily a question of institutional design; rather, it is a question of legitimacy. It is also about the fact that these regimes have not been delivering—both within countries and at the level of the global order.
International cooperation on human rights is shrinking. By 2026, it is estimated to be 50 percent lower than it was three years ago. Support for independent journalists, NGOs engaged in strategic human rights litigation, and networks of young leaders seeking to promote democratic practices have declined dramatically. At the same time, other arenas have gained resources and visibility, with social media playing a major role in amplifying influence and reach. That is part of a different discussion, but the bottom line is that there is no longer sufficient power sustaining that contract. So, again, I am not sure this is a question of design; it is more fundamentally about power.
Illiberal Networks Exploit 21st-Century Tools While Democracy Speaks in 20th-Century Language
Your analysis highlights how liberal institutions’ commitment to proceduralism and neutrality can be exploited from within. Is this best understood as an institutional design flaw, a crisis of political will, or a deeper contradiction within liberal constitutionalism itself?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: This partially relates to what I just said: the lack of legitimacy and the lack of power. At the same time, I want to emphasize that the global arena is contested. There is no clear winner. It has always been contested, but there was once a clear predominance of liberal, pro-democracy, and human-rights–oriented international regimes, while alternative models were weaker.
Today, the illiberal camp is growing, and illiberal networks and actors are increasingly effective in using 21st-century tools—misinformation, the manipulation and circulation of information, and the construction of conspiracy theories that support their worldview and preferred version of facts. A particularly important turning point was the pandemic, which exposed how nation-states and the international order lacked sufficient capacity to respond effectively. This moment acted as a major trigger; for instance, it coincides with the period when Milei entered politics.
These actors have been highly effective in exploiting digital communication, narratives, and misinformation, which have proven especially appealing. In particular, they have successfully mobilized people’s disappointment and anger. When populations became frustrated by real-life experiences—lockdowns, unemployment, children being forced into online learning, and the collapse of healthcare systems—these grievances were skillfully leveraged to generate resentment toward democracy and politics more broadly.
They have also been effective in promoting narratives such as “we are outsiders,” “we are going to drain the swamp,” or, as Milei puts it, attacking la casta, the political elite portrayed as the worst. Meanwhile, the democratic camp continues to rely on 20th-century tools—narratives that resonated in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s but are no longer persuasive today.
Why should I pay my taxes if education continues to deteriorate? Why should I contribute to my pension fund if I will receive very little when I retire? We continue to invoke narratives of the social contract, welfare, and liberal rights when lived realities no longer fully align with them, or at least do so far less than before. Illiberal actors have been very effective at exploiting this anger and loss of legitimacy. As we all know, when people are angry, those who manage to tap into that emotion can manipulate their will.
Illiberalism Grows Where the Nation-State Loses the Power to Set Boundaries
To what extent should the rise of the illiberal international be understood as the product of structural transformations in the global political economy—such as shifts in GDP distribution, energy interdependence, and technological capacity—rather than ideological convergence alone?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: This is part of my own research, so I will not bring my co-authors into this. My work is precisely about this issue. I am fully convinced that the crucial challenge lies in the weakening power of the nation-state. As we know, democracy flourished only when there was a strong nation-state—institutions capable of placing boundaries on de facto powers, whether capitalist entrepreneurs seeking to maximize profits, illegal actors, large media conglomerates, or other forms of concentrated power. Democracy functioned more effectively when the state was able to exert some control over these forces.
What we have witnessed is a long-term erosion of this capacity since the 1970s, driven by the deregulation of the financial sector and neoliberal policies that diminished the role of the state. This was followed by a series of crises—from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the household debt crises of 2008 and 2013 to, most significantly, the COVID-19 pandemic, which marked a profound transformation. Today, inequality is no longer defined by the top 1 percent; rather, it is the top 0.01 percent, whose wealth has grown by a thousand percent over the past decade, while the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population has seen living standards stagnate or even decline.
This also raises the issue of sovereignty—the ability to regulate transnational commerce and transnational information flows. With the rise of social networks, we now face an unprecedented situation: privately owned platforms such as Twitter or X, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram function as their own media ecosystems, reaching billions of people worldwide. The lack of effective regulation means that these actors determine what is acceptable in public discourse, which voices are amplified, and which are marginalized.
All of these developments point to structural factors affecting sovereignty, the provision of public goods, and civic discourse—three key arenas of stateness. The problem is that nation-state institutions were designed for national boundaries, analog societies, and national markets, whereas today we inhabit digital, globalized societies. The central challenge, then, is how to rebuild political capacity—to recreate forms of stateness capable of regulating de facto powers in the current context.
Illicit Networks Spread as States Lose the Power to Enforce Rules
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission arrives for a EU Summit, at the EU headquarters in Brussels, on June 30, 2023. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.
How central are illicit financial flows, money laundering, and transnational corruption networks to the reproduction of illiberal politics within formally democratic systems? To what extent should these networks be understood not merely as enabling mechanisms but as constitutive pillars of contemporary illiberalism, shaping political competition, institutional capture, and democratic hollowing from within?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: This is part of the same answer. These dynamics have always been present in liberal systems. Money laundering, drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking have long existed. What has changed is our capacity to control them. There is now less power to set and enforce rules.
As a result, these practices have, in a sense, spread. This is something we show in our article. There is no longer a clear “axis of evil” overseeing what were once perceived as isolated authoritarian or illiberal practices. Instead, these dynamics have become far more widespread. We now see even middle powers, such as Turkey or Hungary, exercising influence—for example, Hungary funding the Vox political party in Spain, or Vox supporting Kast in Chile.
This points to a broader diffusion of such practices and, at the same time, to fewer constraints, fewer penalties, and weaker deterrents against this kind of behavior.
When Norms Shift, Language Turns into Action
Events such as The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and “Make Europe Great Again” blur boundaries between conventional conservatism and authoritarian narratives. How does this discursive hybridization accelerate the normalization of illiberalism within democratic publics?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: There is a widespread diffusion of these practices that, again, were present before. Many of these ideas existed previously, but now they operate without constraints. The change—the normative shift in these cases—is crucial. It is crucial for redefining the boundaries of civic space and for determining what is considered acceptable or unacceptable in public debate.
These dynamics generate cultural change, and that cultural change is central in these arenas. It allows actions to follow that have meaningful impact. Although we might initially see this as merely a matter of language or narratives—about women, about feminists being labeled as fascists, and similar claims—there are people who act upon these narratives.
One striking example from a couple of months ago in Argentina involved a political activist of Milei who killed all the women in his family and was constantly mobilized by anti-feminist narratives. A similar dynamic can be observed in the United States with ICE and immigration, where many volunteers actively work for ICE.
That is what is changing. These networks, again, existed before, or at least similar networks existed, but they were marginal and could not operate so openly. Now they are visible, awarding prizes and running their own news outlets, and that represents a major change.
The Global Order No Longer Polices Illiberal Behavior
How do authoritarian or illiberal middle powers—such as Turkey, the UAE, Hungary, and Saudi Arabia—operate as brokers or hubs within transnational illiberal networks, and how does their intermediary role complicate binary distinctions between “core” and “peripheral” autocracies in the global authoritarian ecosystem?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: I have already touched on this, but I want to return to the issue of the erosion of the global order. In the past, at least, a middle power selling weapons had to ask for permission. Today, there is a much freer flow of such activities. For example, the Emirates selling weapons to rogue regimes, or Hungary funding Vox, as I mentioned earlier. There is far less control over these actions. As a result, it is no longer just the “axis of evil” that we used to think about 20 years ago. These dynamics are now widespread at different levels, and this reflects a broader shift in the balance of the global order.
Russia Disrupts, China Builds—and Democracy Must Respond Differently
The Indian Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, is pictured with the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, and the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, in Goa, India on May 25, 2019. Photo: Shutterstock.
How do Russia and China differ in their modalities of illiberal influence—financial, ideological, technological, and diplomatic—and where do their strategies converge? How should we analytically distinguish Russia’s coercive and disruptive practices from China’s more institutionalized, developmental, and techno-governance–oriented approaches, and what do these differences imply for the design of effective democratic counter-strategies?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: That is a very good question. Russia has less soft power and relies more heavily on hard power, particularly through cyberattacks and arms sales. This calls for a specific set of responses, including stronger cybersecurity measures, better control over weapons distribution, and more effective countermeasures against disinformation.
China, by contrast, is more complex. It is the second-largest economy in the world and the largest foreign investor in roughly half of the world’s countries. Its influence operates largely through development investments, as you noted—building bridges, infrastructure, highways, and nuclear plants. This requires a different kind of response. The problem is that the United States and the European Union have been retracting from development investment. This is not only about recent USAID cuts; it has been happening for a long time. Meanwhile, China has been expanding the Maritime Silk Road through investment and trade, even in countries that are not particularly sympathetic to China’s political ideas, such as Chile under its new government, which nevertheless maintains very strong commercial ties with China.
This form of influence demands a different response—one based on greater investment and more credible policies. During the Pax Americana, the United States and Europe, in their hegemonic roles, often acted “under the table.” We should recall that the US funded many military coups in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century, and that Europe has had deeply problematic practices in Africa for decades. This duality has always existed; it is not a simple story of good and bad actors. However, as Western actors retract and offer less, these contradictions become more visible and more damaging.
In this context, the risk is that some regimes are openly calling out what they perceive as the hypocrisy of Europe and the United States: “You are not offering as much as they are. They are building schools and infrastructure, and you are not.”As a result, democratic strategies must be different and more complex. It is not only about money; it is also about credibility—being credible in contracts and in international agreements. Credibility itself is central.
Democracy Must Be Made Attractive Again—Across All Levels
Are existing global and regional institutions reformable enough to confront the illiberal international, or do we need entirely new organizational forms?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: Political scientists are trained more to analyze past events than to forecast the future. But I would say that we need to look at the larger picture and think strategically. If we want to restore the strength of a liberal order based on human rights, respect for people, economic development, and a sense of equality and inclusion, we need to rethink how we build the political muscle to sustain it.
As I said before, in my opinion, the major crisis is that the institutional framework we have—the nation-state—lacks power. And it is not simply about going back to the nation-state. We need to restore ideas of stateness, sovereignty, the provision of public goods, and the creation of a civic community. The question is: what institutional frameworks, powers, and financial resources can sustain that? I feel that the nation-state alone is no longer sufficient. So the broader strategic challenge—the forest, not just the trees—is how we rebuild democratic power.
At the same time, we need to think about tactics. We need to make democracy more attractive, not by relying on the narratives of the 1950s and 1960s, but by speaking the language of our time and developing more appealing communication strategies. We need to strengthen networks of people who want to live in democracy, who still believe in it, and who want to defend it.
We need also to work at the geopolitical level, at the level of institutional networks, but also at the community and even individual levels. For example, in schools, we see emerging practices in different countries focused on critical thinking—teaching people to recognize when they are being exposed to misinformation or manipulation strategies, and to take a step back. At the same time, we need to think carefully about how we treat our neighbors, how we speak to our peers, and how we engage with our political opponents. I feel that, tactically, we need to think across these different levels where we can act, while at the same time conceptualizing and building new political power to sustain a rules-based, rights-based society.
Without a More Honest Global Order, Polarization and Conflict Will Deepen
UN Security Council meeting on the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, New York, August 25, 2016. Photo: Ognjen Stevanovic.
And lastly, Dr. Bianchi, under what conditions could democratic coordination regain momentum, and what do you see as the most plausible best- and worst-case scenarios for liberal democracy over the next decade?
Dr. Matías Bianchi: I think the next decade will be highly contested. I feel that things could go very wrong. We currently have several wars underway, any of which could escalate at any moment. We also face irresponsible global leadership. In Washington, for example, the language toward China shifted four or five years ago; policymakers no longer speak of an adversary but of an enemy. With that mindset, things can indeed go very wrong.
We could face a severe scenario marked by war and increasing societal polarization—developments we have experienced before and that we do not want to return to. At the same time, the desire for order has not disappeared. Clearly, we need to build a better one: a more honest order, one in which the Global South has greater influence and in which power and resources are more equitably distributed.
The United States and Europe still have an opportunity to help shape the rules of this order. However, they need to understand that these rules can no longer be based on hegemonic dominance, or on the United States acting as a hegemon in particular. Instead, the focus must be on designing rules that meaningfully include emerging powers, especially China.
If this does not happen, current trends will continue: China will further distance itself from liberal institutions and expand its own alternatives—such as the BRICS and other trade and financial frameworks. This will only deepen a bifurcated global order. There is much that could be done with greater generosity and a stronger commitment to inclusion, particularly toward the Global South and Asia.
In this commentary, Dr. Hafza Girdap offers a compelling comparative analysis of populism, law, gender, and freedom across two authoritarian contexts. Bringing Shirin Ebadi’s “The Golden Cage” into dialogue with transnational feminist theory, Dr. Girdap examines how populist regimes in Iran and Turkey moralize “the people,” narrow citizenship, and weaponize law to discipline dissent—particularly women’s dissent. Drawing on her original framework of contextual gendered racialization, she shows how gender governance operates through both patriarchy and racialized belonging. The article foregrounds women’s resistance as a form of epistemic, legal, and care-centered praxis, redefining freedom not as order or security, but as memory, accountability, and collective struggle beyond the confines of the “golden cage.”
This piece offers a condensed commentary drawn from a broader, ongoing project of mine that seeks to trace a coherent trajectory bridging sociology, feminist theory, and human rights practice. Centering the experiences of racialized and marginalized women, my project examines how women actively reclaim voice, produce knowledge, and build solidarities across borders. By integrating scholarship with activism, it aims not only to interpret structures of oppression but also to intervene in them—amplifying marginalized women’s voices, reshaping public discourse, and contributing to justice-oriented social change at both local and global levels.
Within this framework, the article examines populism, gendered repression, and resistance in Iran and Turkey by bringing Shirin Ebadi’s The Golden Cage into dialogue with transnational feminist theory and my conceptual framework of contextual gendered racialization.
Across both cases, populism constructs a moralized vision of “the people,” narrows plural citizenship, and weaponizes law to discipline dissent, particularly women’s dissent. Read together, Iran and Turkey reveal a shared trajectory from revolutionary or reformist promise to authoritarian consolidation, where legality becomes an instrument of domination, intimacy is reorganized by fear, and women’s resistance redefines freedom not as comfort or order, but as accountability, memory, and collective care (Shabnam, 2016).
Populism and the Moral Community
In post-1979 Iran, Islamist populism intertwined anti-imperialism with religious moralism, deifying state power as the authentic voice of the ummah and framing dissent as moral deviance or foreign betrayal. Hardship, repression, and top-down governance are justified as ethical sacrifice, while sovereignty is equated with the regime itself (Qaderi et al., 2023; V for Human, 2025; Bottura, 2024).
In Turkey, the populism of ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan evolved from counter-Kemalist majoritarianism into a religio-nationalist project that performs unity through slogans such as “one nation, one flag, one religion,” increasingly centralizing authority in the figure of the leader. While initially framed as democratizing, this project narrowed citizenship through moral conformity, loyalty, and cultural homogeneity (Yalvaç & Joseph, 2019; Yabancı, 2022).
Ebadi’s metaphor of the “golden cage” captures the populist bargain in both contexts: material security, national pride, and moral certainty are offered in exchange for silence. Belonging becomes conditional, and pluralism is redefined as threat. Populism thus does not merely mobilize “the people”; it redraws their boundaries.
From Rule of Law to Rule-by-Law
Ebadi’s central assertion, “law without justice is violence,” resonates powerfully across both cases. In Iran, juridical language legitimates repression through moralized penalties, surveillance, and gender policing. Courts, decrees, and security forces recode dissent, especially women’s défiance, as disorder, immorality, or national betrayal. Following the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, intensified surveillance technologies and punitive legislation targeted women’s everyday presence in public space (V for Human, 2025, Makooi, 2025).
In Turkey, a shift from institutional reform to rule-by-law recalibrated the judiciary, media, and religious institutions to executive power. Gender governance became a central showcase of this transformation. The withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention via presidential decree exemplified how formal legality can be used to hollow out rights while projecting a moralized policy turn. In both contexts, legality masks authoritarian consolidation, transforming law into a technology of control rather than protection (Girdap, 2021; Sarac et al., 2023).
Family, Fear, and Everyday Life
The Golden Cage demonstrates how authoritarianism penetrates the most intimate spaces of life. Ebadi’s family narrative traces siblings forced into divergent ethical trajectories; revolutionary idealism punished by imprisonment or execution, loyalist complicity pursued for survival, exile chosen at the cost of belonging. Love and loyalty become calculations of risk under surveillance.
Ebadi’s family members function as ethical projections under coercion: the revolutionary idealist destroyed by the system, the loyalist navigating compromise at psychological cost, and the exile living with safety and loss. Ebadi herself stands as the ethical center, a jurist-witness insisting that memory is a civic duty and that law must be reclaimed for justice. Her feminism is not abstract; it is anchored in accountability, testimony, and refusal to forget.
Contemporary Turkey echoes this intimate violence. Employment bans, travel restrictions, stigmatization of dissidents, and criminalization of speech ripple through households. Families become sites of risk management; ordinary communication is shaped by caution. The political becomes domestic, and repression is lived not only through spectacular events but through everyday self-censorship and fractured trust.
Gender as the Authoritarian and Democratic Measure
Gender emerges as both the primary target of authoritarian control and the most sensitive measure of democratic erosion. In Iran, women led the Woman, Life, Freedom movement following the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini. Despite lethal repression, mass arrests, and intensified surveillance, women’s everyday practices, particularly in urban spaces, signal irreversible shifts in presence, visibility, and refusal (European Parliament, 2022; Blout, 2025).
In Turkey, women’s citizenship is increasingly restricted into motherhood, family duty, and moral loyalty. Feminism and LGBTQI+ activism are framed as moral and foreign threats, while patriarchal governance is legitimated through religious and nationalist discourse. The Istanbul Convention withdrawal galvanized resistance, making gender a central site through which democratic backsliding and civic resilience are simultaneously revealed.
My framework of contextual gendered racialization sharpens this analysis by showing how Sunni Turkishness is privileged through an ethno-religious “Turkishness Contract,” producing double marginalization for Kurdish, Alevi, Armenian, and dissenting women. Gendered governance thus operates through both patriarchy and racialized belonging (Unlu, 2023).
Transnational Racialization and Migration
Racialization travels across borders. In Turkey, difference is marked through proximity to dominant Sunni Turkish identity rather than skin color; minority women are symbolically racialized as deviant or suspect. In the United States, Muslim women become hyper-visible within Islamophobic regimes of surveillance, legally white, socially brown (Aziz, 2020). Hijab, accent, and names trigger institutional scrutiny across immigration, healthcare, education, and labor.
Women respond through strategic identity management: negotiating visibility, silence, and speech; altering dress or disclosure; cultivating selective belonging. These practices constitute feminist praxis rather than mere adaptation, resisting both authoritarian repression and reductive Western feminist frames. Situated feminisms emerge from lived negotiation rather than abstraction (Girdap, 2025).
Law, Memory, and Care as Resistance
Across Iran and Turkey, women deploy diverse resistance strategies that transform opposition from episodic protest into durable institution-building. Ebadi’s ethic of defending rights even within captured institutions finds parallels in feminist lawfare and documentation practices in Turkey. Litigation, femicide databases, survivor testimonies, and non-enforcement audits preserve public memory and sustain accountability even when legal victories are limited. As national protections erode, opposition-led municipalities expand shelters, hotlines, training, and care infrastructures, producing constituent feminism beyond electoral cycles. Campaigns such as #İstanbulSözleşmesiYaşatır(#IstanbulConventionSavesLives) and recurring protests after femicides sustain public scrutiny and agenda pressure. Groups like Mor Dayanışma link gender violence to labor precarity, militarism, ethnic repression, and anti-LGBTQI+ moral panics, expanding coalitions and articulating care-centered, class-conscious feminist praxis (Mor Dayanışma, 2025; Najdi, 2025; Şeker & Sönmezocak, 2021).
Conclusion: Freedom Beyond the Golden Cage
Bringing Ebadi’s ethic of law, memory, and freedom together with a transnational feminist analysis clarifies the stakes of the Iran–Turkey comparison. In both contexts, populism narrows [established] citizenship into a moral community, and gender becomes the key nexus of belonging. Yet women’s epistemic and practical resistance, through legal advocacy, documentation, care spaces, migration, and transnational solidarity, takes a huge step to widen citizenship back into rights, pluralism, and accountability.
Freedom, in this sense, is not comfort or order. It is collective remembering, feminist institution-building, and sustained struggle against normalization. The golden cage is broken not by silence, but by women who insist on memory, justice, and shared political futures across borders.
References
Aziz, Sahar F. (2020). “Legally White, Socially Brown: Racialization of Middle Eastern Americans.” In: Routledge Handbook on Islam and Race (ed. Zain Abdullah), Rutgers Law School Research Paper No. Forthcoming, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3592699 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3592699
Bottura, Beatrice. (2024). “Theocracy, Radicalism and Islamist/Secular Populism in Iran, Afghanistan & Tajikistan.”European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). October 18, 2024. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp0089
European Parliament. (2022). Protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini.https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/733671/EPRS_ATA%282022%29733671_EN.pdf
Girdap, H. (2025). “Racialization and Response Through Embodied Identification.” In: From a Shadow to a Person: A Gender Studies Assessment of Women in the Middle East, edited by Shilan Fuad Hussain, Routledge, manuscript in preparation.
Holliday, Shabnam J. (2016). “The legacy of subalternity and Gramsci’s national–popular: populist discourse in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Third World Quarterly, 37:5, 917-933, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1113872
Qaderi, H.; Delavari, A. and Golmohammadi, A. (2023). “Populism and Politics in Iran after the Islamic Revolution: Content Analysis of Presidential Speeches from 1989 to 2017.” Political Strategic Studies, 12(44), 9-58. doi: 10.22054/qpss.2022.66333.3002
Sarac, B. N.; Girdap, H., & Hiemstra, N. (2023). “Gendered state violence and post-coup migration out of Turkey.” Women’s Studies International Forum, 99, 102796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102796
Şeker, Berfu and Sönmezocak, Ezel Buse. (2021, June). “Withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention: War on Gender Equality in Turkey.” Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/06292021_Freedom_House_Turkey_Policy_Brief-2-Withdrawal-from-the-Istanbul-Convention.pdf
Unlu, B. (2023). “The Turkishness contract and the formation of Turkishness.” In: F. M. Gocek & A. Alemdaroglu (Eds.), Kurds in Dark Times. Syracuse University Press.
Yalvaç, F. & Joseph, J. (2019). “Understanding populist politics in Turkey: a hegemonic depth approach.” Review of International Studies, 45(5), 786–804. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26843268
In his incisive analysis, Dr. Amir Ali, examines how the 2025 Bihar Provincial Assembly elections have reinvigorated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s populist dominance in Indian politics. Situating Bihar’s results within India’s shifting electoral landscape, Dr. Ali shows how the BJP-led coalition’s victory undermines expectations of anti-incumbency following the party’s 2024 parliamentary setback. He critically engages controversies surrounding the Election Commission of India, welfare-driven electoral strategies, and the shrinking space for opposition politics. Drawing on his broader scholarship on populism, democracy, and sovereignty, Dr. Ali warns that the consolidation of power from “Parliament to Panchayat” raises serious concerns for institutional autonomy and democratic accountability in what V-Dem has termed an “electoral autocracy.”
Amir Ali*
The recently concluded election in the eastern Indian province of Bihar in early November 2025 was a shot in the arm for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Bihar is one of the poorest provinces of the country with a per capita income that is a mere fraction of richer provinces. High unemployment levels result in outflux of unskilled workers. Among the controversies that plagued the Bihar assembly elections was the running of special trains carrying Bihari workers from the northern province of Haryana that abuts the national capital Delhi, back to their native province, to ensure they could vote.
Despite its economic backwardness, Bihar is politically very important. The ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is today the dominant political party in the country. It has replaced the earlier one-party dominant system of the Indian National Congress, that led India’s freedom struggle against British colonial rule. The BJP is at the center of the ruling coalition called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). In the province of Bihar, the coalition partner of the BJP is the Janata Dal United JD(U) whose party boss, Nitish Kumar has been Chief Minister since 2005. Nitish Kumar is a leader whose political origins lie in samaajwaad or Indian socialism. Mr. Kumar is also known for his constant political flip-flops as he has constantly switched sides to continue in power. Back in 2015 he successfully fought the election in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). This time the RJD was competing against him, winning only 25 seats.
The alliance between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal United JD(U) performed surprisingly well, winning together with other smaller allied parties, 202 seats in the 243-seat legislative assembly. The result was a major blow for the opposition I.N.D.I.A alliance that includes the once powerful Congress Party. The resounding victory of the ruling BJP led alliance means a further political consolidation, captured in a stated desire to prevail over Indian politics from ‘Parliament to Panchayat’ (the lowest tier of local self-governance at the level of the village). The ruling BJP has also expressed an intent to rid the country of the supposed baleful presence of the Congress that is captured in the Hindi expression of a Congress mukt Bharat (India/Bharat rid of the Congress).
The shrinking of the opposition becomes a cause for concern, especially as India has been characterized by the V-Dem institute as an ‘electoral autocracy.’ The provincial assembly election in Bihar needs to be seen in the backdrop of the 2024 parliamentary elections in which the ruling BJP suffered a setback as its numbers declined from 303 in 2019 to 240, forcing it into relying on significant support from coalition partners. This was viewed by the opposition as signaling a waning of the electoral dominance of the BJP.
Two Developments in the Run-up to the Election
The run up to the Bihar assembly election in early November 2025 was marked by two developments. The first was the announcement by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, four months prior to the elections. This became controversial on account of the onerous demands of documentation put on voters to ensure their names were on the voters’ list. The opposition immediately protested and appealed to the Supreme Court of India, which did not stop the SIR exercise, but demanded lenient consideration in terms of the documents that voters were required to produce. The opposition had hoped to make the revision of electoral rolls an issue in the elections, suggesting in their campaigns that the ruling BJP was conniving with the Election Commission of India to ‘steal’ votes.
The aspersions cast on the Election Commission of India are unfortunate. It is a constitutional body that under Article 324 of the constitution is guaranteed autonomy from the executive to conduct free and fair elections. The Election Commission of India has generally been above board in terms of its conduct with a succession of Chief Election Commissioners, who head the institution, taking independently assertive positions against ruling governments. If the opposition’s allegations about lack of autonomy of the Election Commission are true, then this would tend to underline the anti-institutional element, characteristic of much populist politics that while exaggeratedly elevating the purity of the people, excoriates the very institutions that mediate the people’s will. The leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party has conducted a series of explosive press conferences where he has displayed proof of the Election Commission of India’s ‘conniving’ with the ruling BJP to ensure the latter’s electoral victory.
The second significant development in the run up to the elections was the decision taken by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar to announce the disbursal of ten thousand rupees (95.75 Euros) for women voters under a scheme to promote women’s self-employment. Analysts felt that this was decisive in terms of winning the elections for the ruling NDA coalition. Opponents of the ruling coalition cried foul at the decision announced in late September 2025. This was just before the model code of conduct came into place. Such announcements are seen as an infringement of the model code of conduct as they may induce votes in favor of the ruling party.
Whither Anti-incumbency?
The election results from Bihar impart momentum to the ruling BJP led coalition as the year 2025 closes. Next year in early 2026, provincial assembly elections are due in two more states further to the east of Bihar, in the provinces of West Bengal and Assam. The elections result in Bihar, especially considered in the light of the electoral setback that the BJP suffered in the parliamentary elections at the federal level in early 2024, seem to put paid to the phenomenon of anti-incumbency which refers to the uphill task that an incumbent party experiences as it seeks re-election. The BJP’s dominance seems to defy what in India is called the law of anti-incumbency.
(*) Dr. Amir Ali is a faculty member at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Prior to this he taught at the Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia University. He was Agatha Harrison Memorial Visiting Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford between the years 2012 to 2014. He has authored two books South Asian Islam and British Multiculturalism (Routledge, 2016) and Brexit and Liberal Democracy: Populism, Sovereignty and the Nation-State (Routledge, 2022). His areas of teaching, research and writing are political theory, multiculturalism, group rights, British politics and political Islam. His regularly written political commentary on Indian and global politics has appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly, Al Jazeera English, the Indian periodical Outlook and in Indian broadsheet newspapers such as The Indian Express, The Hindu, and The Telegraph.
