Professor Marlene Laruelle argues that the contemporary challenge to liberal democracy extends far beyond electoral populism. In this wide-ranging ECPS interview, she contends that illiberalism has evolved into a substantive political project that offers alternative visions of identity, belonging, community, and political order. Rejecting the notion that liberal democracy is merely a victim of external threats, Professor Laruelle emphasizes that many illiberal movements emerge from liberalism’s own contradictions, particularly the socio-economic and cultural consequences of neoliberalism. The interview explores the future of Trumpism, Christian nationalism, Russia’s role in global ideological networks, the rise of alternative epistemic communities, and the cultural foundations of “banal illiberalism.” Despite her concerns, Professor Laruelle sees the current moment as an opportunity to rethink and renew democracy.
Interview by Selcuk Gultasli
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Marlene Laruelle, Full Professor in the Department of Political Science at Luiss University in Rome and one of the foremost scholars of illiberalism, ideological contestation, and the global challenges facing liberal democracy, argues that contemporary politics can no longer be adequately understood through the lens of populism alone. Instead, she contends that the rise of illiberalism reflects a deeper ideological transformation—one that challenges the normative dominance liberalism has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War and forces democracies to confront fundamental questions about identity, belonging, and political community.
Drawing on her extensive scholarship on illiberalism, Russia, transnational ideological networks, and democratic contestation, Professor Laruelle maintains that “illiberalism is an alternative political project” rather than merely a reactionary or anti-democratic impulse. While populism functions as a mobilizing framework organized around the opposition between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite,” illiberalism offers a more substantive worldview that questions the foundational assumptions of the liberal order itself. In her view, understanding why illiberalism resonates requires moving beyond electoral behavior and examining the deeper social imaginaries through which citizens seek meaning, moral order, and collective belonging.
A central theme of the interview is Professor Laruelle’s rejection of the notion that illiberalism is simply liberalism’s external adversary. Instead, she argues that “liberalism is generating its own critics from within.” The social and economic consequences of neoliberal globalization, rising inequality, cultural fragmentation, and the erosion of shared forms of citizenship have created a growing demand for political projects that promise identity, security, and community. As she notes, liberal institutions often respond through procedural neutrality and technocratic solutions, while many citizens increasingly seek “belonging” and “meaningful answers.” This mismatch, she suggests, helps explain the appeal of illiberal movements across the democratic world.
Perhaps the most striking argument advanced by Professor Laruelle concerns the durability of the illiberal challenge. Contrary to interpretations that view Trumpism, Orbánism, and related movements as temporary electoral phenomena, she argues that “the illiberal offer is here to stay.” Electoral defeats may alter political leadership, but they do not eliminate the deeper cultural narratives, moral frameworks, and social aspirations that sustain illiberal politics. Indeed, Professor Laruelle believes that contemporary democracies are entering a new era of ideological competition in which “liberalism is no longer the obvious normative answer” and “no longer the only game in town, as it was for the last 30 or 40 years.”
The interview also explores the transnational circulation of illiberal ideas, Christian nationalism and its challenge to liberal pluralism, Russia’s role as an ideological laboratory rather than a “puppet master,” the emergence of alternative epistemic communities in the digital age, and the growing importance of what Professor Laruelle calls the cultural and everyday dimensions of “banal illiberalism.” Throughout, she emphasizes that the future of liberal democracy depends not only on institutional resilience but also on its ability to recover a compelling moral and social vision.
Yet despite her sober diagnosis, Professor Laruelle concludes on a cautiously hopeful note. The current crisis of liberalism, she argues, should also be understood as an opportunity—an invitation to reopen debates about the social contract, political imagination, and the kind of democratic future citizens wish to build together.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Marlene Laruelle, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Populism Mobilizes, Illiberalism Offers a Vision
Professor Laruelle, welcome! To begin, you have argued that the concept of illiberalism increasingly offers a more useful analytical framework than populism for understanding contemporary political transformations. What does the concept of illiberalism capture that populism cannot, and why do you believe the analytical focus should shift from populist mobilization to illiberal social imaginaries?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: Populism is usually understood in the traditional literature—and there is a huge scholarship on it—as a kind of thin-centered ideology that is primarily organized around a binary opposition between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite.” It is essentially a mobilizing format that can then be filled with different content, whether on the left or the right.
Illiberalism, by contrast, is a substantive ideological orientation. It frames itself as a challenge to the foundational pillars of the liberal order. It opposes individual rights in favor of more collective rights; it opposes procedural mechanisms in favor of a majoritarian, more executive-power vision of law and order; and it opposes pluralism in favor of a more majoritarian vision. So, it is an alternative political project that captures the current political moment much better than populism has been able to do. The two overlap in many respects, but not in everything.
What I also find interesting is that illiberalism invites us to understand its thickness. Why does it work? It is not only about who is voting for whom and why, but also about why it makes sense to so many people. Why are people looking for belonging and for a new moral order that goes against liberal norms? Illiberalism therefore invites us to revisit social imaginaries and to ask why the liberal democratic order now seems to be marked by a kind of empty social imaginary. I think that is the key question today. For me, illiberalism is the best analytical tool for exploring these questions.
Neoliberalism Produced Winners and Losers
Your work suggests that illiberalism should not be understood simply as liberalism’s external enemy but also as a product of liberalism’s own contradictions. Which failures of contemporary liberal democracies have most significantly contributed to the rise of illiberal movements across Europe and North America?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: I’m not comfortable with this idea that illiberalism has somehow happened to liberal democracy, as if liberal democracy were the victim of illiberalism. I think it’s important to see liberalism as generating its own critics from within, and there are different types of failures that have been producing illiberalism.
Usually, the literature looks at both socio-economic issues, because we have always associated liberalism with economic prosperity. Political liberalism going hand in hand with economic liberalism. Ands now we live, at least in the Western world, in societies where there is a strong feeling that neoliberalism has produced some losers. We have rising socio-economic inequality and a sense that neoliberalism has failed to produce both socio-economic progress and equality. So, that’s the first major source of criticism against liberalism.
The second is more on the cultural side. Liberal progressivism and liberal multiculturalism have been difficult for part of our citizens to receive as a form of shared citizenship. Instead, they have been perceived as a reversal of privileges, a kind of hierarchy of victim narratives. And there is a growing feeling that a shared community is disappearing.
What is also important is that, globally, we now live in a world where we have grown into highly atomized individualities within a social and media environment that has deeply fragmented our communities.
At the same time, liberalism tends to respond through procedural rights by telling us that institutions are neutral. It tells us that it is not there to define what is good and what is not good, but simply to preserve the neutrality of institutions. In a sense, this creates a kind of ideological vacuum, because it offers an answer that is primarily normative and institutional. It sounds like a technocratic answer, while people are looking for belonging and for meaningful answers. And that is what illiberal movements are providing. They offer meaningful answers that speak to identity and security, that provide a sense of purpose, while liberalism tends to respond through institutions, neutrality, and rights. This mismatch is one of the reasons it has become so difficult for liberalism to formulate responses that resonate as common sense for many people.
The Illiberal Offer Is Here to Stay
Many observers continue to interpret Trumpism, Orbánism, and similar movements primarily through the lens of electoral populism. Do these cases represent temporary populist waves, or are they manifestations of a deeper civilizational challenge to liberal modernity itself?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: In a sense, they can be both. You can have a temporary electoral wave and, at the same time, a deep—though I wouldn’t use the term civilizational—social transformation in the way people envision what makes us live together. I think we are witnessing both.
The fact that Orbán lost the election after 16 years in Hungary may indicate that a particular electoral cycle has come to an end. But that does not mean illiberalism has lost. It does not mean that what illiberalism represented has disappeared.
In the same way, Trump may lose the next election, but that would not mean that illiberalism, as a political project in its American version, will disappear. So, the electoral cycle is one thing. The deeper transformation—and the fact that this illiberal offer is now there to challenge liberalism and to argue that liberalism is no longer the obvious normative answer that there are alternative visions of the political order—is something that I believe is here to stay.
This is a long-run phenomenon that will likely remain with us for several decades. Depending on the country, there will be different forms of competition. Sometimes the liberal vision seems to prevail; at other times, the illiberal one appears to gain the upper hand. So, I think we are now living through an interregnum moment in which ideological competition has returned. Liberalism is no longer the only game in town, as it was for the last 30 or 40 years.
Most Illiberal Movements Are Homegrown
Together with Christophe Jaffrelot, you have emphasized the transnational dimensions of global illiberalism. To what extent are contemporary illiberal actors consciously learning from one another across borders, and how important are these transnational exchanges in sustaining illiberal politics worldwide?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: The transnational dimension is real, but it is important not to overstate it in terms of organizational coherence. I would resist the idea that there is some kind of coordinated international project, because that would be a mistake of interpretation. The majority of illiberal phenomena are homegrown, operating through local actors who are adapted to their own cultural contexts.
What we see instead is parallel evolution—parallel transformations of societies in different cultural settings that are producing parallel responses and parallel illiberal strategies. At the same time, there is coordination between these different forces through forms of selective borrowing. They look at what works, both in terms of shared narratives and shared techniques for becoming influential.
Of course, social media play a role, but the culture of podcasts, for example, also matters: the kinds of language that are used and the ways certain ideas are repackaged. Concepts such as civilizationalism, gender ideology, and cultural Marxism circulate across borders. And, of course, there is mutual support and solidarity among different illiberal leaders. So, some coordination may exist, and there is certainly intellectual and tactical borrowing. But I still think the domestic context remains the key one, and I would strongly resist the idea that everything is highly coordinated.
When you look closely, we have very often tended to overemphasize, for example, Russian influence or, more recently, Trump’s influence on developments in Europe. When you examine these cases in detail, you still find that domestic influences and domestic mechanisms are the primary drivers, with local actors exercising their own agency. External influence can certainly be present, but it is an additional layer rather than the key structural element.
For Many, Trumpism Will Be Remembered as a Golden Age
You have described Christian nationalism as one of the “deep stories” behind Trumpism. How do you assess the relationship between MAGA politics and broader illiberal trends in the United States? Has Trumpism become a durable ideological project that will outlast Donald Trump himself?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: That’s an important—indeed, a key—question. Trumpism is already a repackaging of many elements that were present on the right and far-right landscape in America long before Trump. It is a repackaging of these ideas around Trump’s personality. One can imagine that once Trump leaves the political scene, many of these elements will continue to exist. Some aspects of the Trump cult of personality may disappear, but much more will remain. Many cultural visions of the world—the conspiracy culture, the broader Americana tradition, and the culture of podcasting—will endure. They may acquire a different hero, or even multiple heroes, but they will persist. For a segment of the American constituency, the age of Trumpism will probably be remembered as a kind of golden age.
So, they may move beyond Trump himself, but they will continue to envision America as a genuine, deep America—a Christian national America fighting against cosmopolitan coastal elites. All of these elements are likely to remain. They may be repackaged, and of course their relationship to institutional democracy could undergo important transformations, but they will endure even after Trump has left the scene.
That is why thinking about the electoral cycle is important, but I do not think it is the most strategic consideration. Even on the day Trump loses an election, I do not think Trumpism as a political culture will disappear.
Christian Nationalism Rejects Neutral Pluralism
In your recent work, you argue that Christian nationalism has evolved into an illiberal interpretation of religion. What makes contemporary Christian nationalism particularly consequential for liberal democracy, and how does it differ from more traditional forms of religious conservatism?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: What has been happening in the US with Christian nationalism is precisely that it has become politicized. It is no longer primarily about defending religious practices or institutional church interests; it is really about asserting a kind of civilizational claim over the public order. The claim is that America is a Christian nation and, therefore, that liberal pluralism cannot be neutral. If it is neutral, then it is hostile to the real identity of America. Consequently, the public order, the institutions, and the Constitution must be Christian in order to be in tune, in sync, with the country’s true identity. So, this is fundamentally an illiberal claim because it rejects the liberal premise of equal citizenship regardless of religious identity.
The other element that is really important for understanding Christian nationalism is that it essentializes political conflict. It gives a political-theological reading to every political struggle. If every political conflict is understood as a theological battle between Good and Evil—with capital letters—then, in a sense, you are pushing for your opponents to be defeated in a dramatic way, even through violence, because they represent Evil with a capital E.
So, it is really a way of essentializing political conflict and refusing any form of compromise. In that sense, it runs counter not only to liberalism but even to the basic requirements of a functional democracy. In that respect, it represents a major transformation of American political culture. Even if these elements were always present, they have now assumed a much larger dimension under the Trump administration.
Russia Amplifies More Than It Creates
Western discussions often focus on Russian military power or disinformation campaigns. Yet your scholarship points to Russia’s role as a producer and exporter of illiberal narratives. How should we understand Russia’s place within the global ecosystem of illiberal ideas today?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: I have indeed been working on this issue for years. I do not like the image of Russia as the puppet master behind all illiberal forces in Europe or the United States. Rather, I think Russia has been an incredibly productive ideological laboratory for illiberal ideas since the 1990s, for several reasons linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia has also functioned as a kind of legitimizing mirror. For many illiberal actors, it offered an example of developments they admired: the assertion of civilizational identity, the strong leader, the macho image embodied by Putin, and the narrative of traditional values. All of these elements helped illiberal forces in Europe and the United States feel validated in their own beliefs.
At the same time, I do not think Russia was the only model. For years, Orbán also played a similar role, embodying developments that other illiberal leaders hoped to see emerge in their own countries.
For me, it is important to understand Russia first as a precursor in articulating narratives around sovereignty, civilizationalism, traditional values, and multipolarity. Of course, Eurasianism carries its own distinctive identity and civilizational brand.
Russia should also be seen as a mirror through which illiberal forces could gain confidence in their own vision and seek different forms of support—whether through media recognition, political recognition, or, at times, financial recognition.
However, I do not subscribe to the puppet-master narrative, because I do not believe Russia created the majority of these illiberal forces. It amplifies and validates them, but, as I have emphasized, most of them are local actors with their own agency.
Russian Influence Thrives Through Decentralization
In your work on Russia’s “entrepreneurs of influence,” you challenge simplistic assumptions about centralized Kremlin control. How does this more decentralized model of ideological influence alter our understanding of how illiberal narratives travel across borders?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: Russia has been very effective precisely because it was, or has been for a very long time, a weak and relatively poor state. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia operated through a highly decentralized strategy of rebuilding influence. It allowed various ideological influencers and entrepreneurs of influence to experiment with what could work in the media sphere, in forms of hybrid—or so-called hybrid—or asymmetric warfare, and in the creation of networks of support.
This decentralization is actually what makes Russian influence more resilient, because it does not depend on a single channel that can be shut down. Instead, it creates a diffuse ideological ecosystem that is much harder to counter. Of course, the research you are referring to was conducted before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since 2022, things have changed considerably, and there has been a much greater closure of the Russian influence system, which has become far more centralized.
That said, if we look at how Russia continues to influence the broader contrarian ideological ecosystem, it still operates through multiple narratives. Russia has the capacity to produce narratives that resonate not only with the European far right but also with some of the contrarian leftist voices in Europe and the United States. It can speak to Muslim constituencies in the Middle East. It can appeal to anti-neocolonial forces in Africa. It can resonate with traditional anti-imperial movements in Latin America. It can also connect with more classic post-communist constituencies in countries such as Vietnam or China.
So, Russia still possesses this ability to frame a contrarian identity in different political and cultural languages, and that capacity remains intact. Of course, each of these audiences is relatively niche. But when all of these niches are taken together, they still constitute a significant network of influence.
Illiberalism Travels Through Demand, Not Design
Your research with Erica Marat argues that China and Russia often act less as exporters of illiberalism than as enablers of pre-existing domestic trends. How should we rethink the relationship between external authoritarian influence and indigenous sources of democratic backsliding?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: Indeed, that is the subject of a book that will be published in a few months by Cornell University Press, titled A Farewell to Liberalism. In it, we examine six countries that have received what we call services for illiberal governance from Russia and China—whether technological services from China or more industrial, economic, and informational support from Russia.
What we try to demonstrate is that the existing literature often interprets these dynamics as cases of Russia and China exporting illiberalism or authoritarianism. Our argument, however, is that local actors are the ones deciding both the level of influence they wish to receive and the specific kinds of imports they are willing to accept from Russia and China. These choices depend on how they position themselves vis-à-vis the West and on how they manage their relationships with domestic civil society and political opposition.
So, this is fundamentally a book about the demand side of so-called democratic backsliding. It seeks to restore agency to local actors and to show that the spread of illiberal values around the world is far more a locally driven process of demand than the product of some grand design orchestrated by Russia and China. We need to restore agency to local actors and recognize that they selectively take from Russia, from China, but also from the United States, whatever they believe serves their interests and needs.
In that sense, the book offers a different reading of the international system—one that is deeply transactional in nature. Countries increasingly pursue strategies of multi-alignment, taking a little from Russia, a little from China, a little from the West, and a little from the United States, while creating their own room for maneuver by playing the great powers against one another.
Russia Was a Model of Successful Illiberalism
Across Europe and beyond, segments of the radical right have long expressed admiration for Putin’s Russia. What explains this attraction, and how has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine altered—or failed to alter—these ideological affinities?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: Russia was indeed, for a long time, a highly successful model for many European far-right movements, although there were always important nuances. For far-right actors in countries bordering Russia—such as Finland, Romania, Poland, and others with a long experience of Russian domination—the attitude was never particularly Russophile but rather Russophobic.
For much of the Western European far right, however, Russia was seen as a model of a successful illiberal political project: a strong state, sovereignty, the defense of traditional gender and family norms, openly Christian values, anti-globalism, and nationalism. It was a package that resonated with many Western far-right actors and was regarded as genuinely inspiring.
As I mentioned, Orbán’s Hungary also emerged as an alternative model that many found attractive. Already after 2014, it became apparent that, for many Western and American far-right actors, Hungary represented a more appealing model than Russia because it was perceived as less controversial.
After 2022, however, many of these far-right actors were forced to renegotiate how they framed their relationship with Russia. In most cases, they toned down their association with Russia, adopted a more nuanced position, and reframed their interpretation of the conflict. This did not necessarily mean becoming openly pro-Ukrainian. Rather, it meant arguing that too much money should not be spent on Ukraine’s defense or that Russia had its own reasons for launching the invasion.
Each country, depending on its cultural context and the political room for maneuver available to its far-right leaders, adjusted its narrative accordingly. An interesting case is Giorgia Meloni in Italy. She represents a good example of an illiberal leader who has consistently been pro-Western, pro-NATO, and anti-Russian. So, there was always diversity within the broader illiberal camp.
Since 2022, we have indeed witnessed a growing line of division. Some radical far-right groups have become openly pro-Ukrainian, with some individuals even going to fight on the Ukrainian side. Others have continued to maintain a pro-Russian position. The key dividing factor lies in how these actors interpret the broader geopolitical and civilizational divide. Either they adopt a pro-Western orientation, or they embrace a more multipolar worldview. That distinction largely explains whether they take a pro-Ukrainian or a pro-Russian stance.
Shared Rhetoric Masks Deep Geopolitical Differences
Your work on France, Italy, Hungary, and Serbia reveals important geopolitical divisions within the far right. Has the war in Ukraine fragmented the transnational far-right movement, or has it merely reshaped existing cleavages between nationalist actors?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: Indeed, the geopolitical dimension has always generated tensions among different far-right groups, precisely because some have been perceived as too openly pro-Russian, while others have been viewed as too favorable to NATO. These tensions have always been present. If we look, for example, at the way far-right groups have operated in the European Parliament, the geopolitical line of division has consistently been an important factor.
I think this dynamic has been partly reshaped since Trump’s re-election in January 2025, because the relationship with the United States suddenly became part of the equation, not just the relationship with Russia. One of the key questions now concerns attitudes toward Trump: to what extent do Western and Central European far-right actors want to support the United States, and to what extent do they feel the need to distance themselves from it?
We saw this clearly when Trump made very aggressive claims regarding Greenland. There were significant differences among European illiberal leaders in how they interpreted their relationship with Trump. So, the geopolitical line of division is now no longer only about Russia; it also concerns the United States.
At the same time, what we see emerging is that many of these actors have adopted a narrative that largely originated in the United States: the idea of Western civilization. Whatever their differences, there is a shared belief that Western civilization must be defended. Of course, this notion of Western civilization can have different boundaries and imply different relationships with Russia. But these actors are trying to construct a kind of empty signifier that is flexible enough to provide them with a common geopolitical narrative. In reality, however, they continue to hold quite diverse geopolitical perspectives.
Culture Matters as Much as Politics
You have shown that illiberal ideas circulate not only through parties and governments but also through novels, media personalities, intellectuals, and cultural networks. Are liberal democracies underestimating the cultural dimension of illiberal diffusion?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: Yes, that is something I feel very strongly about. We have looked at illiberalism too much through the lenses of institutions, elections, and disinformation, and in doing so, we have often overlooked the fact that illiberal values circulate through culture. By culture, I mean fiction, music, films, festivals, and the broader wave of patriotism and rediscovery of national or regional histories. Historical reenactments, lifestyles, food habits, clothing, body language, wellness, and health issues all play a role. Especially after COVID, everything related to health and the body became particularly important.
I think many of these elements contribute to shaping both liberal and illiberal cultures. If you look at the vast world of podcasters and influencers, many illiberal voices are not talking about politics in the narrow sense of institutions and parties. They are talking about ways of life. For me, this is the new frontier of research that we need to explore: what I would call ‘banal illiberalism’.
In much the same way that Michael Billig’s concept of banal nationalism captured the everyday, often aestheticized expressions of national identity, we need a concept that captures the everyday expression of a worldview infused with illiberal values. This is important because once illiberal values become embedded in lived experience, they cannot be countered through factchecking alone. The issue is no longer simply one of disinformation or misinformation. It is much more complex than that. It concerns the way people interpret the world and responding to that requires an entirely different set of tools from those we have spent the past decade developing to combat disinformation.
Fact-Checking Misses the Deeper Problem
To what extent have digital platforms enabled the construction of alternative epistemic communities in which illiberal narratives can flourish independently of traditional gatekeepers, experts, and mainstream media?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: That’s a good example of what I was saying. These digital platforms are indeed creating communities with their own authorities, their own validation procedures, and their own sense of what counts as credible evidence. That is why it becomes increasingly difficult to find ways of talking to one another. We find ourselves in a kind of post-trust system in which we have lost a common language for determining what is true and what is not, as well as a shared set of tools for deciding what constitutes reality.
Once you lose this common epistemic ground, it becomes very difficult to rebuild anything collectively. That is why I think factchecking and platform regulation can be useful, but they miss the deeper dynamic. And that deeper dynamic is probably the need to find ways of rebuilding communities that live together. I say that fully aware that it is much easier said than done. But I do think we are now functioning within increasingly closed epistemic worlds, and that reality needs to be taken very seriously.
Moreover, this tendency is likely to intensify as artificial intelligence further separates different perspectives on the world. Each of us may end up living in a more closed informational environment because AI will increasingly read and interpret the world for us in highly individualized ways. So, this is one of the major challenges we face because it directly affects the question of how democracy can survive. If each of us experiences a different reality, then the fundamental question becomes: what do we still share?
Liberalism Must Recover a Moral Language
If illiberalism reflects genuine social grievances and not merely manipulation or disinformation, can liberal democracies successfully counter it through institutional reforms alone, or must they also offer a new moral and cultural narrative capable of inspiring citizens?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: I belong to the group of people who believe that institutional answers alone will not be enough. Everything associated with institutional neutrality—the proceduralism of liberalism—has, to a large extent, lost credibility. It has become associated with technocracy, neoliberalism, depoliticization, and forms of elite control. So, I think that if liberalism is to succeed, it will need to be willing to make substantive normative claims about solidarity, social justice, dignity, and community, rather than relying solely on procedural principles.
Of course, that would be a challenging move and would inevitably create tensions within liberalism itself. But I do not think there is another way for liberalism to answer the fundamental questions people are asking: Why do we want to live together, and what do we want to share together?
I also think liberalism will need to be willing to engage with the other side and recognize that it is no longer the only political offer on the table. Alternative political projects exist, and liberalism needs to accept being in dialogue with them, even if it tends to regard them as illegitimate.
At the same time, liberalism needs to have a very deep internal conversation about its relationship with neoliberalism. Many of the socio-economic tensions it faces today are rooted in the current political economy.
So, if liberalism is to be rescued, it will have to find a way to loosen or sever its relationship with neoliberalism, one way or another. It is a very difficult discussion, but I believe it is one that liberalism must be willing to confront if it hopes to survive.
The Firewall Strategy May Be Backfiring
Many governments have responded to illiberal challenges through regulation, fact-checking initiatives, and restrictions on foreign influence. Are these defensive measures sufficient, or do they risk reinforcing the very anti-elite narratives that fuel illiberal mobilization?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: That is a difficult question. These measures may sometimes be necessary, but they tend to backfire in the majority of cases. In a sense, they arrive too late. I am thinking, for example, of the election in Romania or the strategy of the firewall against certain European far-right parties—the idea that everyone should unite and vote against them in order to prevent them from gaining access to power. These parties have now become so strong that we may have passed the point at which such firewall strategies could still be effective. I wonder whether they are now primarily backfiring by creating the impression that democracy is refusing to give these actors a voice and refusing to accommodate them.
Of course, if you are a voter of a far right or illiberal party, you may feel that you are being denied the opportunity to test that political offer. As a result, we are caught in a kind of vicious circle that will be very difficult to break. We can see this in the debates surrounding the possibility of banning the AfD in Germany as an extremist party, or in the discussions in France about whether Marine Le Pen should be prevented from running for office.
These examples illustrate the tensions that are emerging. The tension between democratic legitimacy and a justice system that operates according to its own form of legitimacy is becoming increasingly difficult to manage. Liberalism has traditionally been about managing such tensions. But once liberalism loses credibility, the relationship between democracy and justice itself becomes the problem.
The Illiberal Challenge Is Also an Opportunity
And lastly, Professor Laruelle, looking ahead, do you believe we are witnessing a temporary period of turbulence within liberal democracy, or the emergence of a genuinely post-liberal era in which illiberalism becomes a durable and legitimate alternative model of political order?
Professor Marlene Laruelle: I’m both optimistic and pessimistic. I think the illiberal offer is here to stay for a long time, and we should accept that reality. In a sense, we should view it as an opportunity to reinvent democracy. I am among those who believe that liberalism, as we have experienced it, has reached its limits and has, in many ways, been living off a kind of inherited rent that had become largely empty. What we are witnessing today is an opportunity to renew democracy in a deeper and more meaningful sense.
We should therefore see this moment as a chance to reopen fundamental debates: What kind of social contract do we want? What kind of vision do we have for the future? What kind of political imagination do we want to build together? On that level, I am optimistic. I think it depends on us to seize this opportunity and to put the big questions back on the table.
At the same time, I am pessimistic because I do not think this process will be easy. The challenges are enormous. We are facing multiple crises simultaneously, and the difficulties before us are profound. We are likely to experience several years, perhaps even decades, of turbulent and difficult times. Yet this remains a unique opportunity. In a sense, we have no alternative but to take up the challenge and confront it. So, despite everything, I want to remain optimistic.
