Professor Niklas Bolin argues that the Sweden Democrats’ most consequential transformation is institutional normalization rather than ideological moderation. As Sweden approaches the September 13 election, SD has become deeply integrated into the political mainstream while retaining a resilient populist configuration centered on people-centrism, anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, and antagonism. Professor Bolin stresses that “institutional normalization does not necessarily mean ideological moderation,” even as SD has gained substantial influence through the Tidö Agreement. He also notes that the party has won “an important ideological battle” as restrictive migration positions have become mainstream. Yet normalization creates a paradox: the more successful SD becomes, the more it becomes part of the establishment it has long defined itself against.
Five days before Sweden’s September 13 parliamentary election, the country enters the final stretch of the campaign with an unusually fluid electoral landscape. The latest Novus/TV4 poll places the opposition at 50.3 percent and the Tidö parties at 47.9 percent, with the gap still within the statistical margin of error. The Liberals (L) have climbed to 4.3 percent—just above the parliamentary threshold—while other recent polls still place them below it, making their survival one of the most consequential variables in government formation. At the same time, the Social Democrats (S) remain the largest party overall, while the Sweden Democrats (SD) continue to challenge or surpass the Moderates (M) for leadership of the Swedish right.
In this interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Niklas Bolin, Professor of Political Science at Mid Sweden University, argues that the most significant transformation of the Sweden Democrats is not necessarily ideological moderation but institutional normalization. As he puts it, “Institutional normalization does not necessarily mean ideological moderation.” A party, he stresses, can become “more professional, more accepted by the other parties, and more integrated into the political mainstream without changing its ideological worldview.”
This distinction is crucial for understanding SD’s trajectory. The party has moved from pariah status to substantial policy influence through the Tidö Agreement, while its core populist configuration—people-centrism, anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, and antagonism—has remained resilient. Professor Bolin therefore cautions that the party’s normalization and growing political influence should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that it has “become less populist” or that “its ideology has changed to the same degree.”
The interview also explores how SD’s success has reshaped the wider party system. Professor Bolin notes that Swedish migration policy has “clearly moved in a more restrictive direction” and that positions considered controversial 10 or 15 years ago are “today almost political mainstream.” In that sense, he argues, “the Sweden Democrats won an important ideological battle.” Yet this mainstreaming produces a paradox: when other parties adopt similar positions, they both legitimize SD and reduce the salience of issues the party once dominated electorally.
Bolin further suggests that SD’s growing success creates a tension between outsider identity and establishment power. The party has benefited from substantial influence without formal governmental responsibility, but “the more successful the party becomes, the more it becomes part of the establishment itself.”
Against this backdrop, the 2026 election is about more than which bloc wins. It tests whether Sweden is consolidating a new party system in which the radical right has not merely entered the mainstream, but helped redefine it.
Here is our interview with Professor Niklas Bolin, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
SD’s Almost Automatic Growth Is Probably Over
Swedish political parties intensified their campaigning ahead of the critical September 13, 2026 parliamentary election, setting up campaign stands in prominent public squares to promote their platforms and election promises. The image shows party campaign stands in the square connecting the two sections of Åkersberga Centrum in Österåker, Sweden. Photo: Bulent Kenes.
Professor Bolin, welcome! In your analysis of the Sweden Democrats’ setback in the 2024 European Parliament election, you asked whether it was merely a “speed bump” or the beginning of an “uphill journey.” Two years later, with SD polling around 19–20 percent but no longer showing the almost exponential growth that characterized its rise since 2010, how would you answer that question today? Has SD reached a structural ceiling, or is it simply becoming a normalized large party subject to ordinary electoral fluctuations?
Professor Niklas Bolin: I’m not sure that we can talk about a structural ceiling, but the Sweden Democrats have clearly entered a different phase. When you have reached around 20%, it’s obviously much more difficult to continue growing at the same pace. So, we should expect more normal electoral fluctuations. This doesn’t mean that the Sweden Democrats cannot grow further, but this almost automatic growth that we have seen for many years is probably over.
The Sweden Democrats Won an Important Ideological Battle
You explained SD’s poor 2024 European election partly through an “agenda effect”: immigration had declined in salience compared with peace, democracy, and climate. Looking toward September 13, are we reaching the limits of the electoral advantage that anti-immigration politics has given SD? Or has SD already won the ideological battle by pushing restrictive migration policies into the mainstream, even if it no longer monopolizes their electoral benefits?
Professor Niklas Bolin: We need to separate the importance of immigration as an electoral issue from the development of migration policy. When migration is high on the political agenda, this benefits the Sweden Democrats because voters associate the party with this issue. But when other issues dominate, as, for instance, in the European election of 2024, this advantage becomes smaller.
If we, on the other hand, look at policy, the Sweden Democrats have been extremely successful. Swedish migration policy has clearly moved in a more restrictive direction, and positions that were controversial 10 or 15 years ago are today almost political mainstream. In that sense, the Sweden Democrats won an important ideological battle. But at the same time, the political conflict has become less salient, and therefore it becomes less important when voters decide who to vote for.
Other Parties’ Shifts Give Legitimacy to SD
The Sweden Democrats entered parliament as an isolated radical-right challenger, whereas today much of the Swedish center-right accepts positions on migration, crime, and integration once associated primarily with SD. Does this “mainstreaming paradox” strengthen SD by legitimizing its diagnosis of Swedish society, or weaken it by allowing mainstream parties to compete on issues SD once owned?
Professor Niklas Bolin: It does a little bit of both, actually. On the one hand, it has clearly strengthened the Sweden Democrats. When other parties adopt similar positions that the Sweden Democrats have argued for over a long period of time, it gives legitimacy to the party, of course. But this success might also be a problem for the Sweden Democrats. When parties move closer to the party on migration, for instance, and crime, there is less political conflict over these issues. So, this can make voters focus on other issues instead.
Political Mainstreaming Does Not Require Ideological Change
Your recent research shows that although the frequency of SD’s populist statements declined between 2010 and 2024, its underlying populist configuration—people-centrism, anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, and antagonism—remained resilient. Should we therefore distinguish between SD’s institutional normalization and ideological moderation? Has governmental influence made the party more respectable without necessarily making it less populist?
Professor Niklas Bolin: I think this distinction is important. Institutional normalization does not necessarily mean ideological moderation. A party can become more professional, more accepted by the other parties, and more integrated into the political mainstream without changing its ideological worldview. So, although the Sweden Democrats have become, at least to some extent, normalized and have significant political influence, we should not automatically conclude from this that the party has become less populist or that its ideology has changed to the same degree.
Governing Together Is Different from Staying Together in Opposition
The parliament (Riksdag) building in Stockholm, Sweden. Photo: Dreamstime.
The 2022 election fundamentally reconfigured Swedish politics through the mainstream right’s abandonment of the cordon sanitaire and the creation of a government dependent on SD through the Tidö Agreement. Four years later, how should we assess the Tidö experiment? Has it created a durable two-bloc structure, or has governing together exposed deeper contradictions within the center-right?
Professor Niklas Bolin: Many people, including myself, are probably surprised by how well the cooperation between the government and the Sweden Democrats has worked. Before 2022, it was sort of an open question whether the center-right parties and the Sweden Democrats could cooperate closely over a full electoral period, and they have now shown that they can.
But I would still, to some extent, hesitate to describe Sweden as having a stable two-bloc system.
There are also clear tensions on the left side of politics. In particular, the Center Party (C) and the Left Party (V) have very different positions, primarily on economic policy, and may find it very difficult to cooperate after the election.
And I’m not sure that the parties to the right will necessarily stay together if they lose the election. It’s one thing to cooperate in government and another thing to stay together in opposition.
It Is Becoming Harder for SD to Present Itself as an Opposition Party
SD gained unprecedented policy influence through the Tidö Agreement without formally entering government. Has this allowed the party to enjoy the benefits of incumbency without fully bearing its costs? After four years of visible influence, can SD still credibly present itself as an anti-establishment force confronting political elites?
Professor Niklas Bolin: To some extent, yes. This was one of the advantages of this arrangement for the Sweden Democrats. The party has received great influence without taking formal responsibility for government, so if voters are dissatisfied, the party can distance itself from the government while, at the same time, taking credit for policies that it has supported. But I also think that this becomes increasingly difficult over time. Voters know that the Sweden Democrats have been deeply involved in government policy. And it becomes more difficult to say that you are an opposition party when you have this level of influence. So, the party has built much of its political identity on being an outsider and criticizing the political establishment. But the more successful the party becomes, the more it becomes part of the establishment itself.
The Liberals Have Long Struggled to Define Their Political Role
The Liberals may now be the most consequential variable in government formation, with recent polls placing them below the 4-percent threshold. You have written about the party’s conflictual leadership transition and changing political orientation. To what extent is its present crisis rooted in an unresolved identity conflict between its socially liberal, pro-European tradition and participation in a bloc dependent on SD?
Professor Niklas Bolin: The Liberals have, for a long time, had difficulty defining their role in Swedish politics, and the cooperation with the Sweden Democrats has made this problem perhaps even more visible. The party traditionally combined center-right economic policy with social liberalism and strong support for European integration, and, of course, a very critical stance towards the Sweden Democrats. Moving from that position to close cooperation with the Sweden Democrats is obviously a major change. So, voters need to understand why they should vote for a small party rather than one of the larger ones. And that has been a difficult question for the Liberals to answer.
Pro-Tidö and Anti-SD Voters Both Have Larger Alternatives
More specifically, has cooperation with SD contributed to the Liberals’ prolonged position below the threshold? Have they entered a strategic trap in which voters comfortable with the Tidö bloc prefer M or SD, while socially liberal anti-SD voters have moved toward C or the center-left? Has the pursuit of governmental relevance endangered the party’s parliamentary survival?
Professor Niklas Bolin: I wouldn’t say that cooperation with the Sweden Democrats is the only explanation. The Liberals were already struggling before the agreement with the Sweden Democrats, but the current strategy creates a different and perhaps even more difficult electoral position. Voters who strongly support the Tidö cooperation can choose the Moderates or the Sweden Democrats, which are much larger parties. At the same time, voters who identify with the socially liberal tradition but strongly oppose the Sweden Democrats can choose the Center Party or the center-left. So, I guess the Liberals are a bit squeezed from both directions.
Swedish Politics Is No Longer Only About Left and Right
Politicians and campaigners engage with voters at the Sweden Democrats’ election hut in a city square in Uppsala, Sweden, on August 17, 2026, ahead of Sweden’s parliamentary elections. Photo: Krister Hägglöf / Dreamstime.
The Center Party has moved away from cooperation with SD, while the Liberals chose the opposite path and now risk disappearing from parliament. Does the 2026 election therefore signal the dissolution of Sweden’s traditional bourgeois orblå-gulapolitical space? If so, what new structure is replacing it?
Professor Niklas Bolin: For many years, the Moderates (M), the Center Party (C), the Liberals (L), and the Christian Democrats (KD) formed one political bloc, even if there were important differences between these parties. The rise of the Sweden Democrats has changed this drastically. All these parties have made different choices in relation to the Sweden Democrats. The Moderates and the Christian Democrats have accepted close cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, and the Liberals eventually chose the same path, while the Center Party has moved in the opposite direction.
So, Swedish politics is no longer only about left and right. Attitudes towards the Sweden Democrats have also been important for determining which parties can cooperate with each other. As long as the Sweden Democrats remain a large party—and I don’t see anything that suggests this will change in the near future—it’s difficult to see a return to the old bloc system, at least as long as the Center Party maintains its current stance towards the Sweden Democrats.
Kristersson Will Remain the Right’s Prime Ministerial Candidate
Ulf Kristersson, Prime Minister of Sweden, arrives for a doorstep statement during the NATO Eastern Flank B9 (Bucharest Nine) Summit in Riga, Latvia, on June 11, 2024. Photo: Gints Ivuskans / Dreamstime.
Current polls show an unusual asymmetry: the Social Democrats (S) remain the largest party overall, while SD often polls ahead of the Moderates on the right. If the Tidö parties retain a majority, would it remain politically sustainable for M to provide the prime minister while being considerably smaller than SD? At what point would an SD claim to cabinet participation—or eventually the premiership—become difficult to resist?
Professor Niklas Bolin: For this election the situation is quite clear. The parties have agreed that Ulf Kristersson is their candidate for Prime Minister, and also that the Sweden Democrats will enter the government if they win. Even if the Sweden Democrats become somewhat larger than the Moderates, Kristersson will remain Prime Minister. So, the more interesting question is what happens in the longer term, so to speak. I mean, if the Sweden Democrats become larger than the Moderates also in the next election, and especially if this continues, it will become increasingly difficult for the Sweden Democrats to accept that the Moderates automatically get the position of Prime Minister.
C–V Differences Make the Post-Election Equation Difficult
Conversely, if the polling advantage of S, V, C and MP survives election day, what government do you regard as most plausible? Could Sweden sustain a Social Democratic-ledröd-gröngovernment relying simultaneously on V and C, despite their major differences on taxation, labour markets, welfare and economic policy?
Professor Niklas Bolin: A Social Democratic-led government would be the most likely outcome, but it’s quite hard to say exactly what such a government would look like. At the moment, it’s difficult to see how the Center Party (C) and the Left Party (V) would agree, especially on economic policy. I also think it would be difficult for the Left Party to immediately give up its demand to be part of the government. So, forming a government after this election could take time, I guess. It’s possible that one or more proposals will be voted down before the parties are ready to compromise. But in the end, they will find a solution. Few parties would want to risk a new election, and that may make possible compromises that might seem difficult today.
A Change of Government Would Not Mean a Return to Pre-Tidö Policies
Critics of the Tidö period argue that tougher migration and citizenship policies, expanded coercive powers, and increasingly majoritarian rhetoric have altered aspects of Sweden’s liberal-democratic political culture; supporters see them as legitimate responses to crime and failed integration. If a Social Democratic-led government supported by V and C emerges, how much of the Tidö-era transformation could realistically be reversed? Or has Swedish politics undergone a deeper rightward recalibration?
Professor Niklas Bolin: I think much of this more restrictive migration and crime policy will remain, even if there is a change of government. The Social Democrats have moved quite close to the government on many of these issues. One of the reasons for this is that they want to reduce the political conflict over migration and crime and move the focus to their issues.
And I don’t think the Social Democrats want to risk being criticized again for having a migration policy that is sort of too generous. So, it will be difficult for the parties to the left of the Social Democrats to push policy very far in another direction. Some policies may change, but I would not expect a major return to the policies that we had before the Tidö government.
There Is No Single Explanation for Sweden’s Growing Gender Gap
Sweden is also witnessing a striking gender divergence among younger voters: young women increasingly lean toward progressive, green, and left parties, while young men disproportionately support conservative and radical-right alternatives. What explains this widening gap? Are young women and men responding differently to the same social changes, or increasingly inhabiting different educational, social, and digital worlds that generate distinct political outlooks?
Professor Niklas Bolin: There’s probably no single explanation for this gender gap. Education is one important factor. Young women are more likely than young men to go to university, and education is related to political attitudes on issues such as immigration, climate, and gender equality. There are also growing differences between young men and women on some of these political issues. But, we should be careful about explaining too much. The gender gap is clear, but we still need more research to understand why it has grown.
Career-Oriented Youth Members Tend to Be Less Radical
Your research shows that youth wings do not simply reproduce the preferences of senior parties: radicals remain prominent, especially in center-left organizations, while politically motivated members seek to influence their parties more than career-oriented members do. What does this tell us about the generation now entering Swedish politics? Could youth wings reinforce rather than moderate ideological and gender polarization?
Professor Niklas Bolin: It’s difficult to say. There’s not much research on what happens when youth members move on to the senior parties. Our research shows that more radical members are often more interested in influencing policy, while those interested in a political career tend to be less radical. But we do not know what happens when they move on, so to speak. Do the more radical members become more moderate, or do they try to change the party? We need more research to see.
More Women in Politics Does Not Necessarily Mean Ideological Change
Your research on young women in party youth wings finds that women report greater increases than men in their desire to influence party policy and stand as candidates, particularly in center-right youth wings. Could this growing political efficacy eventually transform not only voting patterns but also the gender composition and ideological direction of Swedish party elites?
Professor Niklas Bolin: Many Swedish parties are already quite gender-balanced, at least when we look at candidates and elected politicians. But if participation in youth wings increases young women’s willingness to influence policy and become candidates, this could, of course, help maintain or even strengthen that balance in the future. When it comes to ideological effects, I’m not sure. More women in politics does not necessarily mean that parties move in a particular ideological direction.
A Center-Left Victory Is the Most Likely Outcome
Swedish political parties conducted their final day of campaigning in Malmö ahead of the 2022 general elections. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean.
Finally, just days before the election, the Social Democratic (S)-led side remains ahead, SD is larger than M (Moderate Party) in several polls, and the Liberals hover around the threshold. Taking together the electoral arithmetic, the Tidö legacy, Center Party’s changing position, and SD’s transformation from pariah to pivotal party, what is your projection for the next government? And what kind of party system will emerge: renewed left–right competition, a consolidated two-bloc system centered on attitudes toward SD, or a deeper political realignment?
Professor Niklas Bolin: I’m not sure that we social scientists are very good at making predictions, but if I had to make one, I would look at the polls that indicate that the opposition still has a small lead, at least. So, I would say that a victory for the center-left is the most likely outcome, but I’m not certain, of course.
The more difficult question is what happens after the election. At the moment, it’s hard to see what kind of left-leaning government could get enough support in the parliament. On the other hand, if the center-right wins, the situation is much clearer.
In the longer term, I think the Sweden Democrats will continue to become more accepted as a normal political party. Things that seem impossible today can change quite quickly in politics. We’ve seen that with the Sweden Democrats over the last 10 years.
So, it’s possible that the Center Party, or even the Social Democrats, become less negative towards the Sweden Democrats in the future, even if government cooperation seems quite unlikely today. And we know from the past that once the cordon sanitaire has been broken, it’s very difficult to build it up again.
Professor Howard Lavine argues that the Democratic Party’s path to renewal lies less in ideological repositioning than in economic populism, political energy, and credible material outcomes. While MAGA remains rooted in status threat and a revanchist politics of cultural restoration, Professor Lavine sees greater opportunity for Democrats in focusing on affordability, wages, healthcare, and economic security. He cautions that the “socialist” label may create unnecessary electoral vulnerability, even as the Sanders–AOC–Mamdani current helps reorient the party toward working-class concerns. For Professor Lavine, most voters are not moved primarily by ideological sophistication but by whether political leaders deliver tangible improvements. The strategic imperative is therefore clear: Democrats should “pivot purely to economics” and demonstrate what they can concretely achieve for working-class voters.
In an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Howard Lavine, Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and former Director of the Center for the Study of Political Psychology, argues that the Democratic Party’s central challenge is less one of ideological definition than of political branding, economic credibility, and mobilizational energy. His assessment is particularly relevant ahead of the 2026 US midterm elections, as Democrats confront both a weakened but still deeply entrenched Trumpism and the growing influence of figures associated with democratic socialist and economic-populist politics. For Professor Lavine, however, the label itself may be more liability than asset: “The Democrats are making themselves vulnerable to some degree by using the socialist label.”
Professor Lavine draws a sharp distinction between the cultural politics underpinning MAGA and the economic terrain on which Democrats may have greater room to rebuild. MAGA, he argues, remains rooted in status threat and “a revanchist impulse to restore the prior order in which white Christian men feel comfortable in their dominant status.” Yet he does not believe racial and cultural identities necessarily foreclose an economic realignment. Swing voters, he stresses, are generally not those most deeply embedded in MAGA ideology. For Democrats, the crucial question is whether they can translate economic-populist appeals into tangible results: “What matters is the economic outcomes.” Policies themselves are comparatively less important because “most people aren’t going to understand what you say. They’re going to understand what’s happening on the ground.”
This emphasis on economics also shapes Professor Lavine’s interpretation of the Sanders–AOC–Mamdani current. He resists treating it primarily as an ideological socialist project, describing it instead as an effort to rebrand Democrats as more clearly aligned with working-class interests. Indeed, he argues that “the energy is in economic populism. It’s nowhere else.” At the same time, he warns that invoking socialism risks obscuring that advantage: “Too many people don’t like it; it’s not helping Democrats.”
More broadly, Profesor Lavine questions whether ideology itself is what moves most voters. “It’s really not about ideology,” he says of progressive candidates’ recent appeal; what voters are responding to is energy, anger, and a clearer sense of political purpose. In his view, Democrats should therefore move away from cultural issues that animate the academic left and “pivot purely to economics.” The strategic lesson is straightforward: “The more it focuses on economics, the better.” But electoral success ultimately requires more than rhetoric or branding. Once in power, Democrats must demonstrate “what they can do,” and, crucially, “what they can do specifically for the white working class.”
Here is our interview with Professor Howard Lavine, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
The Trump Administration Is Ginning Up Status Threat
Donald Trump delivers a victory speech after his big win in the Nevada caucus at Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, flanked by his sons Eric (right) and Donald Jr. (left) in Las Vegas, NV. Photo: Joe Sohm.
Professor Lavine, welcome! Your recent work with Christopher Parker describes MAGA as a reactionary movement driven substantially by “status threat”—the perception among historically dominant groups that social change has diminished their standing. Two years ago, Trumpism returned to governing power. Does holding power reduce that sense of threat, or can MAGA continually regenerate feelings of cultural dispossession even while controlling the presidency?
Professor Howard Lavine: It’s a very good question. One could reasonably assume that when the party in power is doing everything it can to restore the dominance of heritage groups—white Christian men—status threat would be assuaged. Howvere, we don’t find any evidence of that. We’ve been tracking status threat since the beginning of the Biden administration through July of this year, and status threat scores have not changed.
It hasn’t changed in part because Trump is ginning it up. And I don’t mean just Trump, but the entire apparatus within the MAGA movement. These are independent actors that are coordinating with one another and reaching millions and millions of people, continuing to present them with evidence that social and demographic change is going to lead to the decline of men, the decline of Christians, and the decline of whites.
Now, part of that is demographic change that no political party can control. Whites will become a minority of the population in about 2045, and Christians sometime between 2040 and 2060. So it’s not entirely related to partisan politics. But, the Trump administration is—whether it is doing this wittingly or not, consciously or not—ginning up status threat.
The Republican Party Has Been Captured by MAGA
You describe MAGA as a movement that ultimately “has taken over a party.” Should we therefore understand today’s Republican Party as a case of movement capture rather than ordinary ideological evolution? And what particular difficulties does that create for Democrats trying to oppose a Republican Party whose identity has become so closely fused with Trumpism?
Professor Howard Lavine: No, it’s the former. The movement has captured the party. Ideological evolution would suggest something different. Think about the change in 2016. I know that most of your readers might not have seen the Republican debates in 2015, but there were 17 people on the stage, and almost all of them were presenting themselves as Reaganite Republicans. Except for Trump.
Now, what Trump might have known—again, consciously or not—was that the Republican Party was no longer a party of Reaganite supporters. It had become a party of ethno-nationalists, concerned with immigration and with the prestige of heritage Americans, who felt besieged not only by the Obama presidency but by the longer sweep of American politics since the 1990s. So, things like political correctness and other sorts of mostly insular academic movements have reverberated somewhat beyond academia, but this is too abrupt a shift to consider it cultural evolutionary change. No, it’s an abrupt capture by a movement.
What this has to say for Democrats is what you began to see under George W. Bush, was an educational realignment, mostly among whites. Whites without a college education moved over to the Republicans. Whites with a college education who were Republican moved over to the Democrats. So, that was an early indication that the Democratic Party was going to be realigned, just as the Republican Party has been captured by MAGA.
But if you’re thinking about this in narrow electoral terms, in American politics, midterm elections are really referendums on the president. What we have in 2026 is just a very clear sense of dissatisfaction with issues related to affordability and the war in Iran.
Under Biden, let’s say in 2022, inflation was 8%, and that crashed his popularity. That was the case all over the West. Inflation was just as high in Belgium, France, and Germany. So, I guess the point I’m making here is that what people are seeing now is not just that gas prices are too high, but that Trump’s actions are clearly responsible. Inflation in Western Europe is half to a third of the size that it is in the United States. And people—not only those who are highly attentive to politics, but those who are around the median, even below the median—are very angry.
So, Trump is underwater everywhere, and I don’t think it much matters. We can get more into the Democratic split, but I don’t think what the Democrats say or do matters very much.
It’s Really Not About Ideology—It’s About Energy
US President Donald Trump greets supporters at MAGA rally for Presidential election 2020 at Harrisburg airport in Middletown, PA on September 26, 2020.
MAGA offers supporters a powerful account of who “the people” are, what they have lost, and who is responsible. Democrats have a much more heterogeneous coalition and often lack an equally clear organizing narrative. Is this one of their principal psychological disadvantages—a coalition broad enough to win elections but too fragmented to generate a comparably strong political identity?
Professor Howard Lavine: The Democrats are, right now, in a very specific place: voters want to see energy. They want to see their representatives and candidates express outrage. But the public is not ideologically informed, apart from a very small stratum at the top. Ten or 15% understand left and right. So, it’s really not about that. It’s more about candidates who, in the past, mostly campaigned in a way that was not as sharply critical of the other party as Democrats are craving now. They want that. To the extent that progressive or Democratic Socialist candidates are winning—for example, in Michigan, House seats in Manhattan, and a couple of other places, including Colorado—it’s mainly about the energy and the sort of tough talk. It’s really not about ideology.
Now, you have other people surrounding the insurgent candidates, and Sean Piker, for example, and these people have millions of followers. They’re much more likely to couch their preferences in ideological terms, but they’re much less salient. They’re only reaching people who are already going to vote for Democrats, especially in a year when Democratic enthusiasm is extremely high. They’re not reaching the voters who swing elections—mostly independents and unhappy members of the incumbent party, of whom there are now more.
So it’s really not about ideology. It’s about, especially among younger voters, wanting to see their candidates become more animated, more angry, and meet Trump’s rhetoric from the opposite perspective. Mamdani is somewhat like AOC, too, but Mamdani is an executive and can do more. He’s a mayor. He has more of a socialist policy agenda, but that doesn’t really translate outside New York. The policy agenda is very concrete and easy to understand. It’s about affordability, subsidized housing, and government-owned grocery stores that will bring prices down and such. That isn’t really what the Democratic Socialists are mostly about. AOC and Mamdani are exceptions.
Democratic Inversion Is a Bad Thing
Your concept of “democratic inversion” suggests that citizens increasingly adjust their policy beliefs to fit their partisan identity rather than choosing parties on the basis of prior beliefs. If so, does ideological uncertainty within the Democratic Party become especially costly because the party itself is less able to provide clear cues about what being a Democrat means?
Professor Howard Lavine: The parties are extremely polarized. When the choice presented to the electorate is simply Republican versus Democrat, it doesn’t really matter what the policy is. Democrats will prefer the Democratic policy. They’re not going to scrutinize it terribly deeply, and most of them won’t understand much about its specifics. Even Democrats running for Congress realize that it’s not really about policy. It’s about showing energy to counter Donald Trump.
The idea of democratic inversion has been around for decades. It’s probably a little bit higher among Democrats, but it’s very high among partisans of both parties, in part because the structure of choice is simply one party or the other. You’re not invited to make up your own policy. Democratic inversion is a bad thing. People should arrive at their political judgments before they pick a party and a candidate. But most of the population—nearly all of it—doesn’t do that. If any sector or stratum of the population does, it’s surprisingly people who are not politically sophisticated. They don’t know what the party’s messages are, so they can’t conform to them, and therefore inversion can’t occur.
Which is ironic. You’d think that the people who are most sophisticated, most knowledgeable, and most aware would start with their own beliefs. It’s just the opposite. I’m only saying this because this is what the research shows over and over again: the most aware partisans are willing simply to adopt the positions of their parties.
Elections Turn Very Much on Recent Economic Change
The November midterms provide an unusually important test. Democrats currently appear more energized than Republicans, and Trump’s approval remains weak. Should the election primarily be understood as a referendum on Trump, or will it also tell us whether Democrats have developed a compelling affirmative identity of their own?
Professor Howard Lavine: Again, largely a referendum on Trump. People are very angry. If you look at it, the issues are inflation and affordability. It’s not about democratic decline. Americans care about democracy, but not that much. Elections turn very much on recent economic change. What we’re seeing here is not only an average 50% increase in gas prices, but also high inflation that can be traced directly to Trump’s policies. And he only seems to be making it worse.
So, a lot of Republican candidates do not want to be seen with him, which is often the case when the president has a low approval rating. Trump’s approval rating is anywhere from the mid- to high 30s, but the most recent polls are in the low 30s, so we might be seeing a decline to a point that we almost never see. Bush left office in 2008 with a 32% approval rating. That’s historic. Nixon did for other reasons, but Bush did because of the economy, and Trump for the same reason.
He’s even underwater on immigration, meaning more people oppose than support his immigration policy, and that is his most important policy. People don’t like the way it’s being implemented. They don’t believe that what was advertised is anything like what Trump is currently doing. They’ve tried to make it more on the quiet. They turned Minneapolis into Fallujah for a couple of months, realized that was unpopular, but the number of arrests and deportations is at an all-time high.
But no, I don’t think the Democrats have much. It may be that in Michigan, some voters might look at Al-Sayed somewhat more negatively than they would his more establishment opponent, but he’s ahead in all the polls. There hasn’t been a single poll where Mike Rogers was ahead, but I think the energy matters. I think Trump has really engulfed the field. There’s really almost nothing outside of Donald Trump.
The Word Socialism Is Just a Very Bad Choice
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the “Bernie Is Back” political rally in Queensbridge Park, Queens, New York, on October 19, 2019. Photo: Aleksandr Dyskin / Dreamstime.
That question becomes especially important as democratic socialist figures seek to shape what that affirmative identity might look like. Before assessing their electoral and organizational potential, however, it may be useful to clarify the concept itself. What distinguishes contemporary democratic socialism in the United States from classical socialism and communism, but also from European-style social democracy? Is the Sanders–AOC–Mamdani current best understood as a genuinely socialist project seeking a deeper transformation of capitalism, or as a more radical version of social democracy operating within a liberal-democratic framework?
Professor Howard Lavine: I don’t even think it’s a radical version of European social democracy. It’s simply projecting a brand—a reputational brand within the Democratic Party—to be more favorable toward the working class, which is probably both morally admirable and strategically correct. The Democrats did a lot better when they were able to win the working class. Since the party inverted, the Republicans have done considerably better. The Democrats simply prefer to be the party of the working class rather than the party of expensively educated elites. Because, there aren’t as many of them. They have cultural and economic power, but they don’t have political power because there aren’t enough of them.
I think the rhetoric—the word socialism—is just a very bad choice. Not that Americans know what it means; they just know they don’t like it. Socialism, Nazism, all the -isms are unpopular. What they want to hear is that the party cares more about them than it does about the more culturally based concerns of highly educated people. The Democrats have gone through a woke period, which AOC recently condemned as crazy, mostly because she realizes that there’s just no political profit in continuing to push wokeism. But because Europe is so substantially to the left in its social democratic ideology and provision, the Democrats simply want to change their brand to attract working-class people who might be disenchanted with Trump.
Meanwhile, there is a crack in the MAGA movement. A lot of MAGA voters—three-time MAGA voters—are beginning to wonder whether the Trump administration cares more about tech oligarchs than the working class. So, it’s a strategically advantageous pivot, both because it does seem to be more squarely focused on the working class economically rather than the upper middle class culturally, and also because, in the late Trump years—he’s about to be a lame duck either way—he’s losing support among Republicans specifically on economic issues.
The Republican Party has mostly been about social or cultural issues, and now the party has captured a group of people who are concerned about economic issues, but the Republicans are not delivering. That’s not just Trump; that’s standard Republican policy from the time of Reagan: cut taxes, reduce them on the wealthy, and reduce the social safety net. So it is not Trump; it’s the Republicans.
Trump probably wouldn’t have wanted to do this, but the Republicans cut Medicaid, which is a social safety net policy that does a lot of things for the elderly and the non-elderly poor, and that will reverberate over the next 12 months. Benefits will be eliminated or substantially lower for MAGA people as much as for non-MAGA people, and so MAGA people are probably looking more than they were in 2016 at specifically economic issues.
Democratic Socialism Is No Longer a Fringe
Zohran Mamdani at the Dominican Heritage Parade on 6th Ave in Manhattan, New York City, August 10, 2025. Photo: Aleksandr Dyskin.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been joined by the success of Zohran Mamdani and a broader insurgent left, while Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan Senate primary victory demonstrates the appeal of similar progressive economic politics even beyond explicitly democratic socialist candidates. Are we reaching the point where this tendency can no longer be regarded as the Democratic Party’s fringe?
Professor Howard Lavine: That’s a great question. I would like to think that will be true by the time of the 2028 election. That’s the goal: to rebrand the party. The party is seen by younger voters in particular—and this might include voters under 50—as somewhat ideologically stagnant. They’re not providing as strong a contrast to the Republican Party as younger voters need.
Again, this is both about energy and anger, which is what the Democratic base wants to see. But it’s also, as voters will come to find out, about preserving the safety net and refocusing the party on the working class. So, to answer the question provisionally, yes. I think it is no longer a fringe. It will become stronger.
The Democrats Have Lost Energy in the Trump Years
How seriously should we take the analogy between MAGA’s rise within the Republican Party and democratic socialism’s growing influence among Democrats? Could a movement once considered peripheral eventually reshape the Democratic Party’s agenda, candidate selection, activist base, and political vocabulary as profoundly as MAGA transformed the GOP—or are the two cases fundamentally different?
Professor Howard Lavine: No, I don’t think so. They’re fundamentally different in the sense that they’re somewhat apples and oranges. One is more focused on culture, which the Republicans always were. Now it’s ethno-nationalism. Now it’s pitting white Christians against everyone else.
It is about rebranding, as I said, and it’s about recapturing energy. The Democrats have lost energy in the Trump years. They were excited in 2020 because Trump was weakened, people were generally dissatisfied, and his approval rating was low. But the Democrats now realize they can’t rely on that. They need, as you say, an optimistic vision. They need not just to rely on negative partisanship.
I hate to refer to it as democratic socialism. They’ll drop the socialism part at some point, but that’s the only game in town. By 2028, the goal is to rebrand the party around something much more energetic. I hesitate to say policy, because policy doesn’t really move voters very much, but rather a brand, a reputation, an understanding of what the Democrats are. They need something more active.
The Democrats are also beholden to what we now call the Epstein class: billionaires. The Democrats need to shed that. Once they win the House, most likely—and they could win the Senate—but either way, they could start issuing subpoenas to people who are implicated in the Epstein situation, and that’s what Democrats want to see.
This is why Obama’s popularity, after he got into office, just plummeted, because he refinanced the banks and let ordinary Americans go bankrupt. That was very unpopular and a bad move, and I think you would agree with that now. But it’s what the Democrats need to do to re-energize their brand. Nobody knows what they stand for, at least outside of the people who are already gonna vote, no matter what.
The Energy Is in Economic Populism
From a more positive perspective, could democratic socialism help resolve the Democratic Party’s current deadlock? Sanders, AOC, and Mamdani offer ideological clarity, recognizable adversaries, grassroots enthusiasm, and a straightforward economic agenda centered on affordability, housing, healthcare, wages, and inequality. Could this provide the political identity and mobilizational energy mainstream Democrats have struggled to generate?
Professor Howard Lavine: Yes, absolutely. They need to do that. If they don’t, it will be strongly to their detriment. With a 50-50 electorate, the last three elections have basically been ties. Now, you can’t have an exact tie, so one party wins. But I think that, for the Democrats to break out and attempt to become the majority party, which they once were, that’s exactly what they’ll need to do. The energy is in economic populism. It’s nowhere else. There’s no other alternative being proposed.
Revanchist Impulse Getting Worse and Worse
Your work emphasizes that status threat is revanchist: it seeks to recover a social hierarchy perceived as lost. Democratic socialist rhetoric generally points in the opposite direction, promising future material gains and greater equality. Could this allow the left to channel dissatisfaction through an aspirational politics rather than the nostalgic politics of restoration that characterizes MAGA?
Professor Howard Lavine: It’s quite likely that what you’ll see as the result of a re-energized Democratic Party around social change is increased polarization. No, I don’t think that revanchist impulse is going to go away, because demographic change doesn’t require social change, which is what you’re talking about.
But as we get closer to becoming a majority-minority country, it will become inevitable that whites and Christians, both declining in numbers and as percentages of the population, are headed toward minority status. So, I don’t think the revanchist impulse is likely to disappear anytime soon. The question is how it’s packaged.
Trump is a rather crude communicator. I don’t mean crude simply in the sense that he says crude things, although of course he does, and that’s his calling card. But he’s not doing it in a way that, say, J.D. Vance or somebody else could, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom that Vance can’t hold together the MAGA movement.
But the MAGA movement is underpinned by what we would call status threat, as well as by a revanchist impulse to restore the prior order in which white Christian men feel comfortable in their dominant status. Right now, they’re not feeling that. So, I don’t see that revanchist impulse disappearing. I see it getting worse and worse as we move toward a more multiracial America.
What Matters Is the Economic Outcomes
Could a stronger economic-populist message help Democrats shift political conflict away from terrain favorable to Trump—race, immigration, cultural hierarchy, and status loss—and toward wages, housing, healthcare, corporate power, and economic insecurity? Or are racial and cultural identities now too deeply embedded in partisan politics for such a strategic shift to succeed?
Professor Howard Lavine: No, I don’t think they are, because the voters who swing elections are not those who are deeply embedded in MAGA’s ideology. But it’s not really about the policies. They can say anything they want; the policies will be understood only in some fractional sense. What matters is the economic outcomes. If they deliver on what they promise, they will do well. If they promise the moon and deliver none of it, they won’t. And the same is true with Mamdani. So, it’s really about economic outcomes.
But you have to start with policies, and policies have to start with branding. Of those three—branding, policies, and outcomes—policies are the least important. Most people aren’t going to understand what you say. They’re going to understand what’s happening on the ground. Are prices getting higher? Are they steadying out? Is the social safety net becoming stronger? Or is it always on the brink of leaving millions and millions of people in poverty?
If the outcomes are achieved, the brand will become more legitimate and longer-lasting, and will become more deeply embedded in the consciousness of the top 40–50% of aware voters.
Cultural Identities Versus Economics
Photo: Mar Tas / Dreamstime.
Your experimental research found that racial cues pushed Trump supporters and opponents in sharply different directions. Does this suggest a limit to the democratic-socialist assumption that material politics can reunify working-class voters? Can class-based appeals actually weaken status threat, or will economic questions themselves continue to be interpreted through racial and partisan identities?
Professor Howard Lavine: That’s another great question. I think the answer depends first on the economic context. Right now, the answer is yes. Under more prosperous conditions, I think it won’t. Then you tend to get cultural politics.
Right now, there’s a clamoring that is all about economics. I mean, not among the MAGA group. They’re concerned with restoring what they perceived—and what was, in reality—a country that privileged whites and Christians and where men ruled the roost. So, if economic times continue to be difficult, an economic-populist message will take root and be competitive.
At some point—and this is perhaps one of the largest debates in political science and political psychology—it comes down to identities, cultural identities versus economics. It really depends. At the end of the Clinton years, everything was looking great. People had every opportunity to say, “We can ignore economics because we’re all fine, and now we can become a party of identitarians,” which the Democrats began to do.
But I don’t see economics falling away from the top of the agenda anytime soon. I think it’ll dominate the 2028 elections, which will be to the great detriment of the Republican Party. I don’t think those cultural messages will be as important when people can’t afford gas, groceries, or their medical bills. People living on the edge are living much further on the edge, and I think that will matter, at least for 2028.
American politics doesn’t stay the same. It could be different in 2030, just as it was in 2010 and 2018, for that matter. Those were the first midterms of Obama and Trump. They got wiped out.
So, when we come back to outcomes, parties realize that the first Congress they have—which is when they most often have unified control of government—is the only time they’ll be able to do anything. By the end of a president’s first term, those effects are generally exhausted. And there’s usually no opportunity to do anything big again because you have lost the House of Representatives in your first midterm. That’s what happened to Clinton, that’s what happened to Obama, that’s what happened to Trump, and Biden didn’t even control the House.
Democratic Voters Will Continue to Push an Economically Populist Message
The 2026 midterms offer a particularly important test because insurgent-progressive candidates must now move from Democratic primaries into general elections. Michigan’s Senate race is especially significant. Will November help determine whether this politics can expand beyond safe urban constituencies into the competitive states and districts Democrats need to control Congress?
Professor Howard Lavine: Michigan’s gonna be looked at very carefully. But it’s one election, and it’s one state, and its dynamics are bounded by time and context. If Al-Sayed loses, I don’t think the entire apparatus of the Democratic left is going to collapse. There will be other interpretations.
So, no, I don’t think one example will be decisive. I think voters will become disenchanted if they see that the slate of candidates they regard as qualitatively different, or different in kind, from Democratic establishment candidates loses across the board. If they lose across the board, maybe they’ll come back to the drawing board.
But one election—the Michigan election—no, I don’t think that’s enough, because I think Democratic voters who control the brand of the party, to the extent that voters control the party’s brand, which I think they increasingly do, will continue to push an economically populist message.
I’d rather label it that way than democratic socialism. The word socialist is going to have to be excised. Too many people don’t like it; it’s not helping Democrats. It’s the influencers outside of party strategists who love the socialist label. Aside from that, it’s supporters of Bernie. Sadly. Trust me
A Vague Term Like Socialism Just Can’t Compete
Republicans are already trying to make socialism itself an issue in the midterms, including through congressional resolutions explicitly linking Democrats to democratic socialist politics. Does that indicate genuine electoral vulnerability for Democrats, or does it show that Republicans recognize the left’s potential to construct a competing populist narrative around economic inequality and concentrated wealth?
Professor Howard Lavine: I think both are true, but more importantly than either of those things, the Republicans don’t have much to campaign on. The running joke is that the only thing they can do is talk about trans athletes, of which there are about five in the country. They don’t really have much to say, but the Democrats are making themselves vulnerable to some degree by using the socialist label.
There will be some people who hesitate to vote for Democrats and may refuse to do so on that basis. It remains to be seen whether this is almost entirely a referendum on Trump or whether the Republicans gain any traction simply by using the word socialism. They’ve used that since Obama, and I don’t think it’s really done much, because most voters don’t understand it, and those who do are already committed to voting for one party or the other.
But this year, voters are so singularly concerned with their economic pocketbooks that a vague term like socialism just can’t compete.
Your work on resistance to persuasion shows that politically engaged voters are particularly capable of rejecting counter-attitudinal messages, sometimes becoming even more certain of their existing views. Does that mean Democrats waste too much effort trying to win committed MAGA voters? Should their priority instead be less-engaged citizens, irregular voters, younger voters, and those whose partisan identities remain relatively weak?
Professor Howard Lavine: Young MAGA voters are unstable. They haven’t formed strong partisan identities. Once they do, it’ll become a lot harder. But there is always competition for swing voters, meaning voters who don’t have a strong party identification. Then there are young voters who are not socialized into the party system. They might vote Republican, and they might even identify as MAGA, but they’re not so deeply embedded in both a belief system and a social world that they can’t be persuaded. So there is such a thing as the persuadable voter, and it’s not a trivial portion of the electorate. I think resistance to persuasion and backfire are generally seen when you’re talking about people who have strong priors.
The Persuadable Voter Is Less Burdened by Strong Party Ties
There is also a normative danger in the MAGA analogy. If democratic socialists became dominant within the Democratic Party, could they eventually reproduce the “democratic inversion” you identify on the right—where movement loyalty determines policy beliefs and internal dissent becomes suspect? What separates healthy ideological renewal from another form of partisan capture?
Professor Howard Lavine: Democratic inversion has been so robust and stable for so long that it’s a permanent feature of the dynamics of democratic citizenship, so it’s a failure of democratic citizenship. But that’s not something that’s going to go anywhere. Again, what I said earlier is that those people who tend to follow the leader, who are inverted, tend to be voters who are, first, certain to vote, second, certain to vote for their party’s candidate. So those people are lost to democratic inversion. And again, those are the people who are most aware and most interested in politics.
The persuadable voter is one who is less burdened by strong party ties and is willing to weigh the evidence, come to a conclusion, and then, potentially, move into a party based on a non-inverted process, meaning that they have come to believe certain values, hold certain policy preferences or goals for the country, and see one party or the other as the basis of that.
We see that already with respect to the growing influence of a fairly heritable personality trait called authoritarianism. That is more strongly structuring American politics, and that’s not inversion. That’s a personality—a deep, heritable personality characteristic—that is sorting the public, mostly the white public, into the Democratic and Republican Party, so inversion isn’t everything. But it’s a dominant dynamic, and there are non-inversion dynamics that are occurring as well. The authoritarianism-to-partisan-identity process is one of them.
The More It Focuses on Economics, the Better
Finally, the November midterms may offer an early answer to the Democratic Party’s larger dilemma. Could the Sanders–AOC–Mamdani phenomenon provide the economic narrative, organizational energy, and political purpose needed to rebuild the party against Trumpism? Or could moving too far toward democratic socialism sacrifice precisely the moderate and cross-pressured voters Democrats need to regain Congress and eventually the presidency?
Professor Howard Lavine: Another great question. I would say the answer is the first one. What they realized—and AOC has, by stating that woke was crazy, or woke one was crazy—is that focusing on cultural issues, especially cultural issues that animate the academic left, is extremely damaging to the party’s brand. So, what AOC and others recognize is that you have to pivot purely to economics. Again, it’s less about how extreme the policies are and more about what they do with power if they take it, and how successful they are with it.
Biden was pretty successful. But inflation and the perception of him as elderly and not fit to run again—which he had promised he wouldn’t do before changing his mind—will probably determine whether the next democratic-left projects succeed. So, the bottom line is: the more it focuses on economics, the better. Beyond that, once they take power, they have to show what they can do, and specifically what they can do for the white working class.
In this interview, Imran Bayoumi examines how the weakening of multilateral institutions and the rise of transactional diplomacy are reshaping global power in ways that often favor authoritarian and populist governments. He argues that authoritarian middle powers benefit from greater flexibility to hedge between competing blocs, while democracies remain constrained by alliances, institutions, and domestic accountability. Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerges as a key example: Ankara has “managed to play and interact with both realms at the same time,” using populist nationalism to present strategic balancing as the defense of national interests. Bayoumi also warns that weakening Western cohesion benefits revisionist powers, while calling for a “retooled American leadership” capable of rebuilding democratic cooperation in a more fragmented international order.
In an era of intensifying geopolitical fragmentation, weakening multilateral institutions, and increasingly transactional diplomacy, authoritarian and populist governments may find themselves unusually well positioned to exploit the emerging international disorder. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Imran Bayoumi, Deputy Director and Resident Fellow with the GeoStrategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, examines how the erosion of the rules-based international order is altering the balance between democratic constraints and authoritarian flexibility. His central argument is not that autocracies are inherently stronger, but that a fragmented system can reward governments able to hedge between competing powers, bypass institutional constraints, and personalize foreign policy. As Bayoumi puts it, authoritarian middle powers “have experience with hedging” and are less constrained by the institutions and alliances that shape the choices of democratic states.
The decline of multilateralism is particularly consequential because it lowers the costs of defying established rules. According to Bayoumi, states increasingly feel comfortable “bypassing multilateral bodies,” ignoring treaties and challenging norms because the prospect of meaningful punishment has diminished. Yet he cautions against reducing this transformation simply to populism: “It’s a mix of both things: populism and power.” At the same time, the personalization of diplomacy associated with contemporary populist politics is becoming increasingly significant, as foreign policy becomes more closely tied to leaders themselves rather than institutions and professional bureaucracies.
Turkey provides one of the interview’s clearest illustrations of this emerging geopolitical flexibility. Still embedded in NATO and Western institutions, Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has simultaneously cultivated relations across competing geopolitical blocs. Bayoumi describes Turkey as a country that has “managed to play and interact with both realms at the same time.” Populist nationalism, he argues, has been crucial to legitimizing this strategy domestically: “Erdogan has been able to sell this balancing strategy as a way of being able to secure Turkey’s interests first.” The willingness to purchase Russian air-defense systems while remaining within NATO exemplifies how Ankara combines alliance membership with strategic hedging.
More broadly, Bayoumi warns that weakening Western alliances and institutional cohesion ultimately benefits revisionist authoritarian powers. “Every action that undermines the strong ties between the United States and its allies is a benefit for them,” he argues, pointing to the growing cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Yet he rejects the idea that authoritarian ascendancy is inevitable. Instead, he calls for “some sort of retooled American leadership” capable of accommodating the growing autonomy of middle powers while rebuilding institutions and democratic cooperation. The challenge, therefore, is not simply to restore the old international order, but to construct a more resilient one capable of reconciling democratic values, strategic power, and an increasingly multipolar world.
Here is our interview with Imran Bayoumi, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Authoritarian Middle Powers Are Better Equipped to Hedge
Figure from the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026.
Mr. Bayoumi, welcome!In “Why Today’s Global Disorder Rewards Authoritarians,” you argue that autocratic middle powers are particularly well placed to benefit from today’s fragmented international system because they can hedge between larger powers and pursue highly transactional relationships. What is it specifically about authoritarian government that gives these countries greater room for maneuver than democratic middle powers? Could democratic states adopt similar strategies without weakening their democratic principles?
Imran Bayoumi: In the article, I lay out two factors that I’ve identified. The first is that these autocratic middle powers have experience with hedging. They’ve balanced between different blocs of great powers for a lot longer than these democratic middle powers are now trying to. They’re not constrained by these broader institutions and alliances that are now seeming more and more like a burden.
The second factor is that they are adept at these kinds of personalist politics that we’ve seen really dominate the second Trump administration and the broader political deal-making space. You saw Qatar donate the Boeing 747 for the new Air Force One at the start of the second Trump administration. In terms of hedging, I talk about it in the article, but Kazakhstan, for example, has signed up to both China and Washington’s flagship AI programs.
Therefore, these states are really better in this kind of disruption. They know how to gain influence in ways that democratic states would struggle with. If a democratic state was to donate a jumbo jet, there would probably be some sort of parliamentary pushback, discussions in the media, and potential repercussions that I don’t think authoritarians would be subject to.
So, can democratic states adopt these traits? Sure, it’s just harder for them to do so. There’s nothing stopping them from having a more personalist foreign policy. Nothing’s stopping them from hedging, but they face constraints. I don’t think their populations may want that. It’s harder to leave treaties if you have to have a parliament approve that. I think norms are a big thing, too. I can’t imagine that the Canadian public, for example, would be happy if Prime Minister Carney donated a large amount of military equipment to the United States in exchange for a trade deal. So, there’s nothing in theory stopping them, but the institutions and norms that they adhere to are a real limit.
Alliances Remain an Asset, but New Risks Are Emerging
You suggest that democratic middle powers such as Canada, Australia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom are constrained partly because their economies and security systems were deeply integrated into the US-led postwar order. By contrast, authoritarian middle powers were often less integrated into that system. Has the very institutional dependence that once protected democracies now become a strategic weakness in a more unstable world?
Imran Bayoumi: I’m not sure I would say that it’s a weakness. I don’t think the NATO alliance is a weakness. That’s still the most successful alliance in history, and there’s still great value to states being part of it, regardless of how disruptive and unpredictable they might see Washington as acting.
That being said, it also exposes them to new risks. I think you’ve seen the United States talk about annexing Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, putting kind of ad hoc tariffs in place, and all of this really weakens the strength of those institutions. So, I wouldn’t go so far as to say being part of them is a weakness right now, but it’s certainly a factor that undermines the security, economic interests, and sovereignty of some of these states in the current moment.
If we were really to see full-out great power war, and NATO was attacked and responded, Article 5 was invoked, I don’t think any of these states would see that as a weakness. They would see the alliance as a great benefit. So, these institutions still have great potential and promise. The problem is that we’re actively undermining them, and we need to change that course.
Bilateral Diplomacy Thrives as Institutional Constraints Weaken
Populist leaders often present international institutions, treaties, courts, and alliances as restrictions imposed by distant elites on national sovereignty. Does the weakening of the rules-based international order therefore create a particularly favorable environment not only for authoritarian governments but also for populist leaders who prefer bilateral deals and leader-to-leader diplomacy over multilateral institutions?
Imran Bayoumi: I think the current moment does. When we saw the rules-based international order with bodies like the UN supported by the US and backed by other countries, there were real costs to defying these major institutions and going against global norms. The threat of sanctions was real, as were the loss of market access and diplomatic isolation. What we’ve seen is that now states of all sizes feel more comfortable bypassing multilateral bodies to get action, ignoring treaties, ignoring what they previously signed, and maybe bucking norms because they think that the threat or possible punishment is lesser. There’s no cost associated with their revisionist actions. These bilateral deals are peaking because of that.
The stronger state can now enforce a deal that it wants and get its outcome. But, there are a few interesting threads also to pick up. One is that even though these multilateral institutions maybe are not as strong, the value and the brand of them are still strong. We still see populist autocratic leaders traveling to the UN every September to make a speech. So, there’s still value in that brand and in that address. Maybe the institution is not strong, but the broader value is and could be resurrected.
I touched on this earlier, but to return to your original question, I’m not sure it favors populist leaders so much as actors with power. Looking back, even before the Trump administration, if the United States pursued a bilateral deal with a less powerful populist leader, it would still be able to dictate the terms of that deal largely because of its relative power. So, it’s a mix of both things: populism and power.
Populism Is Accelerating the Personalization of Foreign Policy
Photo: Shutterstock.
Your argument focuses heavily on increasingly personalized and transactional diplomacy. This also seems characteristic of populist politics, where leaders frequently claim that personal strength and negotiating skill can replace institutions and professional bureaucracies. Do you see a connection between the global rise of populism and the wider shift from institutional diplomacy toward personalized diplomacy?
Imran Bayoumi: Yes, similar to my previous answer, that as populism rises and the foreign policy of countries increasingly becomes about the personalities of those leaders themselves, you do start to see this trend. People start to meet their partners where they are. I think there are some good examples here. King Charles gifted President Trump a bell from a naval submarine that bore his name. We’re even starting to see democracies meet this kind of populist trend. But I’d go back to the power thing. I think power really underpins this system. So, I’m not sure that personal strength and negotiating skill are any better than multilateral institutions if you’re still negotiating, arguing, or dealing with a more powerful state. Military and economic power are two constant underpinnings that exist regardless of the broader dynamic.
Democracies Still Face Constraints That Autocracies Escape
You write that autocratic governments are primarily concerned with regime survival rather than electoral accountability. But democratic populist governments can sometimes develop similar priorities by weakening courts, attacking independent media, politicizing the bureaucracy, and concentrating authority around the executive. Should we therefore think of the advantage you describe as belonging strictly to authoritarian regimes, or more broadly to highly centralized and personalized political systems?
Imran Bayoumi: I think it applies to both, but with the caveat that, in these still highly centralized systems that are maybe partially free democracies, the party can still lose power. If you look at Hungary, there was an election and there was a change in government.
I really tried to focus on autocratic states in my article, arguing that they don’t have to worry about these kinds of institutional checks and balances that highly centralized liberal democracies may have to worry about to a lesser extent, but that are still there. There’s still media, there are still courts, and there are still other ways that they can pressure the government.
Whereas in autocracies, they don’t have to worry about that. So, I think it applies to both, but there’s that caveat that it could change. Political systems change, and in these highly centralized, personalized systems, the media ecosystem, the justices, and the courts could be a vector for that change.
Washington Has Fully Embraced Personalized Foreign Policy
The Trump administration itself raises an important question for your argument. Trump has repeatedly criticized international organizations and alliances, emphasized personal relationships with foreign leaders, and favored transactional bargaining over traditional diplomatic institutions. To what extent has the United States under Trump begun to practice the kind of personalized foreign policy that you associate with authoritarian states?
Imran Bayoumi: Two things here. First, Washington has fully embraced this personalized approach to foreign policy. The diplomacy between President Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea during Trump’s first term is a good example. It involved exchanging letters and Trump addressing Kim Jong-un personally. I don’t think it was particularly successful, although it did result in a few summits. Tensions between the two countries remain high, but that kind of personalized diplomacy has clearly carried over into the second administration.
I would, however, push back somewhat on the idea that this approach is associated solely with authoritarian states. At the moment, authoritarian states may be better suited to handle it because they have more experience with this kind of diplomacy and know how to make it work. But over the longer term, they are unlikely to be the only states to practice or utilize personalist foreign policy.
Democratic Backsliding Could Carry Strategic Costs Abroad
Following from that, could there be an authoritarian dimension to the transformation of American foreign policy under Trump? I do not mean that the United States has simply become an authoritarian state, but rather whether the weakening of institutional constraints, the personalization of executive power, and the preference for loyalty and bilateral bargains are making American statecraft resemble some features traditionally associated with authoritarian governance.
Imran Bayoumi: The literature and public discourse around this topic are pretty clear. There is a very real risk of democratic backsliding in the United States, and there are concerns there. Ultimately, whatever US foreign policy looks like over the next decade, the next five years, or whatever timeframe you want to look at, there is a real risk that the kinds of factors you laid out—the personalization of executive power, the preference for blind loyalty, and bilateral deals—will weaken US foreign policy and national security writ large, rather than simply making the United States resemble an autocratic foreign policy.
I think the bigger challenge is not so much what it looks like, but what results it achieves for Washington and for American citizens. The risk is that it will produce a more dangerous world, one where we have more shaky, bilateral, ad hoc deals that are not built on these broad, treaty-bound alliances.
It would be a world where American interests are harder to define and therefore harder to defend, and where American power has lost some credibility. So, revisionist states feel more comfortable challenging it, undermining it, and acting against it. That’s a real challenge. How do we stop that? How do we change that? And what does a new, more powerful, newly designed American foreign policy look like to meet the challenges of the 21st century, deal with revisionist autocracies that are challenging Washington’s power, and also recognize the growing power of these smaller middle-power countries?
Fragmentation Rewards States That Can Move Faster and Hedge More Freely
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attends a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Ukraine’s Independence Day in Kyiv, Ukraine on August 24, 2025. Photo: Vladyslav Musiienko / Dreamstime.
In “Don’t Fall for the Middle-Power Mirage,” you question Mark Carney’s hope that democratic middle powers can build an alternative multilateral order. Democratic states appear divided over how far they should distance themselves from Washington, while authoritarian middle powers can cooperate selectively with Washington, Beijing, Moscow, and regional powers at the same time. Does this mean that fragmentation itself structurally favors governments that are less committed to fixed alliances and common political values?
Imran Bayoumi: In the current moment, 100%. That article really talks about two factors. One is that democratic middle powers, even if they were to answer the call that Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out at the Davos World Economic Forum earlier this year, can’t agree on the approach to doing so. In that article, I talk about then-UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mark Carney. The week after Carney’s speech, Starmer had a different approach. He said, we don’t have to choose; we can balance all sides, play all sides, something to that effect. So that’s the first challenge. Democratic middle powers are not even on the same page.
I think that, in this era of disruption and upheaval, countries that don’t have these long-standing institutional ties and alliances can play both sides. They’re more nimble and can move faster. It goes back to the other article we talked about, where their populations may not want leaders to stay committed to these institutions, or, if they do, the leaders can ignore the will of their population. So, they’re more comfortable making these deals that might invite media blowback.
They don’t necessarily have to get parliamentary approval, or, if they do, it could be rubber-stamped. So, they’re more nimble and can act in different ways. The challenge for them is that they still recognize that there’s value in alliances and in this broader dynamic. Even if you look at Canada, which under Carney is trying to advocate for this new kind of vision of the international system, it’s not about abandoning NATO or totally pulling out of NORAD, the binational command here.
Therefore, there’s still a recognition that alliances are valuable and that these kinds of treaty-bound obligations are strong for a reason. These bilateral deals may be a temporary boon, but I don’t think they should be read as an indication of long-term success.
Revisionism and Pragmatism Increasingly Coexist
You distinguish between authoritarian states that actively seek to revise the international order and those that simply exploit its weakening. But is “pragmatic opportunism” really politically neutral? When governments such as Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Kazakhstan benefit from weaker democratic norms, looser conditionality, and more transactional great-power competition, do they not also have an interest in preserving—and perhaps deepening—the erosion of the rules-based order, even if they do not openly seek to replace it?
Imran Bayoumi: This is a really important point. These states—their erosion, or actions contributing to the erosion, of the current international order—are a real risk. Going back to my previous answer, I don’t think they’re trying to build what comes next. There’s not a clearly defined broader international architecture that they’re building toward. They’re more taking advantage of the current disruption.
In the long-term, I don’t know what they will try to build. Even though they’re now preying on this disruption, it would be a mistake to say that they didn’t benefit in some way from the previous international order as well. So, even though Carney’s vision might be incredibly tough to achieve, he’s at least trying to figure out what comes next.
To your point, I think they have an interest in both sides. In some areas and sectors, they want to weaken the current international order and advance their own interests. On some topics, however, they want to strengthen it.
China, for example, is still very committed to this idea of international standard-setting when it comes to telecoms and, potentially, artificial intelligence. These are the broad multilateral structures, forums, and venues that we associate with the previous international order. But in other ways, China and other states are quite revisionist. They don’t want to cede sovereignty; they want to achieve their own goals.
So, I think it’s this balancing act, and part of this tension is a realization that there’s a real question of what comes next. You will have to build what comes next, and that might be harder than merely reacting to the current disruption.
Turkey Shows How Populist Nationalism Can Legitimize Geopolitical Hedging
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the opening of the Natural Gas Pipeline (Turkstream) in Istanbul, Turkey on November 19, 2018.
Turkey seems to present an especially difficult case for your argument. It remains a NATO member and benefits from Western security and economic institutions, while under Erdogan it has also experienced severe democratic backsliding, increasing authoritarianism, and a highly personalized and populist foreign policy. Is Turkey effectively benefiting from both worlds—using its place inside the Western institutional order while simultaneously exploiting the strategic flexibility associated with authoritarian middle powers? And to what extent has populist nationalism enabled Erdogan to present this balancing strategy not as dependence or inconsistency, but as evidence of multi-directional foreign policy, sovereignty, and national strength?
Imran Bayoumi: Turkey’s a very interesting case, and it’s one of those countries that has really managed to play and interact with both realms at the same time. The most recent kind of development there, with President Trump talking about lifting sanctions on Turkey that he himself put in place in his first term, is really a testament to the kind of power of personalized diplomacy and the strides in relations that Turkey has developed with the Trump administration in this second term.
To the second part of your question, in terms of populist nationalism, I think that’s key. Erdogan has been able to sell this balancing strategy as a way of being able to secure Turkey’s interests first. If that means buying Russian air defense systems while also being part of NATO, that’s what it takes. But, it goes back to my earlier point, where these kinds of illiberal, partially free democracies that still have elections, these leaders are still susceptible at some stage. So, there’s still, even if it’s limited, kind of opposition media in and out of the country that can pressure these leaders, and that maybe be a weakness. Therefore, there’s also a recognition that they need to work with everyone or work to sell the message more so than true authoritarian states that may not even communicate these foreign policy decisions.
Turkey’s Dual Alignment Reflects Strategic Geography and Diplomatic Flexibility
The recently signed Mecca Joint Defense Agreement between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan seems to take this strategy a significant step further by creating a collective-defense arrangement among three important regional powers, while Turkey simultaneously remains inside NATO. Do you see the Mecca Pact as another example of Ankara hedging within an increasingly fragmented order, or does it represent something more consequential—the beginning of an alternative security architecture that could gradually reduce Turkey’s dependence on the Western alliance system? And what does Turkey’s ability to participate in both arrangements tell us about why today’s global disorder may particularly reward authoritarian or highly personalized middle powers?
Imran Bayoumi: I actually think the Mecca Pact is more about regional security. I don’t think it should be read as an attempt by Turkey, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia to build a true international order alternative to the US-led alliance system, or to China or Russia. For these three countries, it reflects a recognition that the Middle East will remain markedly different after the conclusion of the Iran war, whenever that might be. They’ve seen that Iran may be weakened in some respects. Its economy has certainly taken a beating. The Supreme Leader was killed, but at the same time, it remains quite disruptive when it wants to be. It has control of the Strait of Hormuz and has launched attacks on a lot of the Gulf countries.
This is really about ensuring these countries’ own security in the region. You have Iran on one side, and then there’s also a recognition that the long-term presence of the United States in the region can no longer be guaranteed. No one knows what that will look like. It could be a substantial drawdown, and without the US there, there are all these other long-standing security threats that may emerge.
So, I see this pact more as strengthening the security of these three countries within the Middle East, within a volatile region that all three of them occupy. It’s a long-term bet that the region will remain unstable and that there’s value in having these alliances and partnerships.
The question with the Mecca Pact in particular is: how far does it go? What does it look like when a state is actually challenged? Is there an Article 5-style response, like you would see with NATO, where other nations commit troops and commit to fighting? Or is there just the provision of economic aid or military equipment, without necessarily joining the conflict with troops on the ground?
What Turkey’s ability to participate in both arrangements tells us is that Turkey has been able to play this system well. It understands that it occupies a geographically strategic and relevant location. It’s able to maintain ties and communications with key global players, and there’s recognition among the US and other NATO countries that it’s perhaps in their interest to have Turkey able to hold discussions with Russia and facilitate that channel, while also having a strong ally in the Middle East that can represent the alliance’s interests there.
So, as much as I think it’s a testament to Turkey’s ability to navigate this disruption, there’s also probably a bit more give than we may want to admit on Washington’s side, London’s side, and Berlin’s side. It’s helpful to have states that can both be your ally and talk to other still powerful, if not revisionist, countries.
Revisionist Autocracies Benefit Whenever Western Cohesion Weakens
In your New Statesman article on the “axis of autocracies,” you emphasize that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do not constitute anything like an authoritarian NATO. Their interests differ, and their cooperation remains limited and transactional. Yet you argue that they can still benefit from American strategic mistakes. Is it therefore misleading to focus too much on whether authoritarian states form a coherent alliance, when the more important issue may be that they benefit from the same weakening of Western institutions?
Imran Bayoumi: That’s right. To be clear, they’re working very closely together. Russia, for example, is providing targeting data to Iran to assist with Iran’s war that the United States is fighting. China has been an economic lifeline to Russia during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and North Korea is providing troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine. Even though there’s no formal alliance system, these kinds of levers of cooperation and ties are deepening between these states.
You’re also right that we don’t need to focus on, or wait for, them to sign a formal alliance before being worried about the threat they pose. Every action that undermines the strong ties between the United States and its allies is a benefit for them. Tariffs against Washington’s trading partners that force them to look to new sources, such as China, are a weakness. Actions that undermine alliance cohesion, like threatening to take Greenland, are also a weakness, and the beneficiaries are really these revisionist autocracies.
So, we don’t need to wait for them to form a formal alliance and sign a treaty. We can be worried in the short term. I’m not sure they’ll ever get to that place, and that doesn’t mean we should wait to counter that threat.
Without Clear Goals, Tactical Victories Can Undermine Long-Term Power
Photo: Pavel Kusmartsev / Dreamstime.
Your analysis of the Iran war makes an important distinction between tactical success and strategic success. The United States might weaken Iran militarily while simultaneously increasing Russian energy revenues, diverting American military resources away from Asia, and creating tensions with European allies. Does this reflect a wider problem in American strategy—an ability to win individual confrontations while gradually weakening the alliances and resources that underpin its long-term power?
Imran Bayoumi: This has been a recurring challenge for the United States since it launched the 2003 Iraq War. It has been hard for the US to win decisively, and looking back to the first Trump administration, there was more of a recognition of that. This administration—the second Trump administration—may have been somewhat falsely emboldened by the relatively well-executed operation to remove Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, and bring him back to the United States to face trial. Militarily and tactically, that was quite a spectacular operation, with no lives lost. You can debate whether there has really been a transition to democracy or whether the lives of Venezuelan people have markedly improved, but more broadly, this was seen as a success and may have given a false sense of security moving into the Iran war.
One interesting thing to note about the Iran war, and this demonstrates that values still matter, is that if you look at the start of the war and German Chancellor Merz’s statements, he was initially in support of it when President Trump was framing the war as an opportunity for the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their leaders. Then, once we saw the United States abandon that goal—though it was never really clear whether that was one of the core goals to begin with—and there was a recognition that this was going to be a longer-term conflict, you then saw Merz and other leaders come out against it.
There are a few things here. First, there is definitely a difference between tactical military success on the battlefield and translating that into strategic success in the long term. That’s a long-standing challenge. But the other point that’s maybe a bit more interesting and harder to tease out is that there is still support for these broad values-based interventions. The problem is that, in Iran specifically, I don’t think the war is being executed with a level of strategy and clear goals that would allow allies to support it.
That’s the challenge. Now we’re in this stalemate where both Iran and the United States increase leverage week over week. Sometimes one has more than the other, and there’s no clear off-ramp. That undermines US power and credibility and raises the question, in the eyes of allies: what does the US want here?
Rebuilding Allied Trust Will Take Much Longer Than Losing It
There may also be a populist dimension to this problem. Populist foreign policy often favors highly visible demonstrations of strength—tariffs, military strikes, threats, sanctions, territorial claims—because they can be presented domestically as proof of decisive leadership. But can policies that are politically attractive at home produce strategic costs abroad that only become visible years later?
Imran Bayoumi: That’s a real challenge, and we’re starting to see that now. With the Iran war—and more broadly with the actions this administration has taken—it will take a long time to rebuild the trust that the US had with its allies and partners. That trust still exists on some level. I don’t think it’s totally gone, but it has diminished. The next administration—or this administration, if it decides to change course going forward—will face a key question: how do we manage our relationships with allies, recognizing that they will now want more? They’ve diversified, they’ve taken steps to increase their defense spending, and they want to ensure their sovereignty as well. So what does this broader dynamic look like going forward? That’s a real challenge that I’m not sure many are thinking about.
What the future of the international order looks like is going to be a real challenge. I don’t think everything we’ve taken for granted over the past 80 years can continue to be taken for granted. Things will have to change. Some of these challenges might not be evident in the immediate future.
China Gains Influence by Showing Up Where Democracies Do Not
Map: Shutterstock.
In your work on China’s policing partnerships in the Pacific, you show that Beijing gains influence not simply through military power but through police training, surveillance systems, security assistance, infrastructure, and relationships with political elites. Does authoritarian influence spread partly because authoritarian governments are particularly willing to connect foreign policy with internal security and regime protection? And how should democracies compete without supporting similar forms of political control?
Imran Bayoumi: I think that’s certainly part of it. There is this recognition in authoritarian states that the technology China is selling can help preserve their power. But in the Pacific specifically, it’s more about the fact that China showed up and is willing to offer these goods for cheap. Public safety is a real concern for these governments, and if China is the one offering to help with policing when the US, Australia, or New Zealand is not there, most countries would take that offer of help.
The broader challenge is for the US and its allies to show up and offer cheap or affordable solutions and policies. In terms of what can be done differently, the Pacific is actually almost a success story now. You’ve seen Australia really invest in deepening its security ties across the region, and I’m focusing on that since that was the starting point of this article, or this question. It’s built out these broad security deals. It’s providing police training. There’s a big Pan-Pacific policing initiative, security initiative, and Australia has invested in cultural ties as well. Fore example, it’s used rugby as a way to strengthen support and ties and really build those stronger connections.
So, I don’t think democracies can’t compete or can’t still be attractive partners. The challenge, though, is that they have to offer something as good or better at a competitive price point. It’s hard when that can’t be underwritten by the state.
Democracy Remains a Valuable Organizing Principle
You have also criticized Washington for overlooking democratic backsliding or human-rights violations when dealing with strategically important partners. But if great-power competition gives authoritarian governments more alternatives, American pressure becomes harder to apply because governments can threaten to turn toward China or Russia. How can democracies defend democratic standards without pushing strategically important states toward authoritarian powers?
Imran Bayoumi: I’ll focus specifically on the US here. The United States still has a ton to offer, and countries still want to partner with it, regardless of how disruptive it may be in the current moment. It’s partly about the United States being comfortable using its leverage and its power. We’re seeing it use that power and leverage in ways that undermine its relationships and weaken them writ large. So I would pull that back and instead focus on how we build stronger relationships and how we present the US as a still attractive partner especially in terms of economic and military power.
Then, what are the conditions for partnering with the US? I don’t think that’s really any different from the past. There are opportunities to condition arms sales, trade agreements, and broad diplomatic agreements. So, Washington still has this kind of draw. Even though authoritarian states may be able to hedge better, they’re still hedging, which means there are still two powers—or multiple great powers. They’re not blindly allying themselves with Russia or China, or some combination of that. There’s still something they want from Washington.
It’s all about how we use what Washington has to incentivize changes in behavior. One last point: Democracy is still a valuable organizing principle. You could look at Madagascar last year, which had a youth movement that toppled the government and helped push it toward what may be some sort of democratic transition. So, there is still support for these values, and Washington needs to find a way to elevate that and try to create conditions for that change.
Renewed American Leadership Must Accommodate a More Decentralized World
Finally, you do not argue that authoritarian victory is inevitable. Russia and China have serious economic and demographic weaknesses, and authoritarian partnerships remain much less reliable than democratic alliances. If today’s disorder currently rewards authoritarian and populist forms of politics, what changes would be necessary for the international system to reward democratic cooperation again? And does that require simply restoring American leadership, or developing a new model in which democratic middle powers have much greater autonomy?
Imran Bayoumi: I’m not sure I know the answer to what changes the international system needs to make. But one important point, which I’ve touched on before and which you picked up in the question, is that the international system will look different going forward. What we will have to grapple with—we being the United States, or policymakers here in the United States—is that middle powers, both democratic and authoritarian, will have more power. They might not be able to build a whole new international system, but they will have the power to advance their interests in certain sectors, on certain topics, and in certain regions. So, the new international system will have to deal with their desire for autonomy.
That being said, I still think there is value in having a hegemon. The system still needs one strong power that can draw all of these states together, make them work together, and enforce the rules of the system while maintaining and growing it. Going forward, what we’ll need is some sort of retooled American leadership—one that recognizes the growing power of smaller states and the defining challenges of the moment, whether those come from revisionist states or from non-state threats such as climate change and the challenge of dealing with technology. It also needs to be able to build new institutions or revitalize existing ones in order to spur cooperation and continue that momentum.
In this interview with ECPS, Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde examines how authoritarianism, populism, and democratic backsliding increasingly intersect with struggles over civil society and international norms. She argues that autocracies view independent civic mobilization as a strategic threat because rights-based movements can generate broader networks of resistance. The conversation also explores how conservative and populist actors use transnational networks to contest LGBTQ+ rights, human rights norms, and the role of international organizations. Dr. Valverde highlights the growing polarization of international civil society, the strategic use of migration as interstate leverage, and the resurgence of sovereignty-based challenges to the liberal international order. Together, these developments reveal how democratic erosion increasingly unfolds across both domestic and international arenas.
In an era marked by democratic backsliding, transnational populism, and growing contestation over international norms, the struggle over civic space has become increasingly central to the future of liberal democracy. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde, Assistant Professor in the Department of International Studies at ITAM in Mexico, argues that authoritarian governments do not merely resist particular rights claims; they are deeply concerned with the broader political capacity that autonomous civil society can generate. As she puts it, “Any rights-based mobilization becomes a focal point around which other regime opponents can build networks to resist the regime’s power.”
This insight lies at the heart of Dr. Valverde’s analysis of authoritarian opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. Drawing on her Journal of Democracy research with Gino Pauselli, she emphasizes that conservative ideology alone cannot explain authoritarian behavior. Their argument instead identifies a threefold logic: “repression of civil society, opposition to the liberal international order, and the instrumental use of conservative ideology.” For Dr. Valverde, the civil-society mechanism is especially revealing because rights-based mobilization can create organizational capacities that extend well beyond a single policy issue. Hence her conclusion that “both liberal and illiberal networks and governments understand civic space access itself as a strategic asset.”
The interview also broadens this argument beyond domestic authoritarianism. International organizations themselves, Dr. Valverde argues, have become arenas of normative competition. Conservative NGOs and governments increasingly use the same institutional channels once associated primarily with progressive advocacy, while seeking to influence judges, commissioners, and policy agendas. What is at stake, she stresses, is “not only outcomes, but also the IO’s function itself.” This process can produce what she calls “neutralization”: weakening an international organization’s capacity to advance norms without formally reversing its previous commitments.
These dynamics are closely connected to populism. Dr. Valverde rejects the idea that populists simply learn from autocracies; she instead points to “shared transnational infrastructure” linking conservative and populist actors across borders. She also warns against reducing democracy to electoral legitimacy. Populist leaders, she notes, often reason that “If I won the election, then I represent the people, and if I represent the people, I can do no wrong.” Such logic, she argues, can rapidly undermine checks and balances and weaken non-elected institutions essential to democracy.
Taken together, the conversation presents civic space not as a secondary democratic concern, but as a core arena in which authoritarianism, populism, human rights, and international order increasingly intersect.
Here is our interview with Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Rights from Above Do Not Empower Civil Society
United Nations headquarters in New York City, US. Photo: Dreamstime.
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde, welcome! YourJournal of Democracyarticle argues that authoritarian governments oppose LGBTQ+ rights not simply because of cultural conservatism but because these rights strengthen civil society, reinforce liberal international norms, and potentially expand spaces for political contestation. This moves the discussion beyond morality into regime survival. To what extent should we understand contemporary anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns as instruments of authoritarian governance rather than merely expressions of conservative ideology?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: That’s a fantastic question, and first of all, thank you very much for your interest in my article with Gino Pauselli in the Journal of Democracy. As scholars, we always dream of being read and of our scholarship being of interest. Responding to your question, I think that the dichotomy is analytically useful, but empirically, maybe it’s too clean. Our article shows that autocracies vote against SOGI, or Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Resolutions at the United Nations Human Rights Council, over 80% of the time. It explains this through a threefold logic: repression of civil society, opposition to the liberal international order, and the instrumental use of conservative ideology, not ideology alone.
I think that maybe the civil society repression channel is the most diagnostic. Social rights function as a proof of concept that a minority, once granted rights, mobilizes to expand them, or also just to gain them. That, exactly, is a capacity autocracies need to suppress, regardless of the issue. The clearest evidence in our article that the governance logic beyond ideology is what works best is Cuba: an authoritarian government that voted in favor of all five United Nations Human Rights Council social resolutions between 2011 and 2022, while never empowering independent LGBTQ+ civil society. So, rights granted from above, with no domestic accountability and mobilization attached.
So, yes, conservative ideology is one of the three interacting levers in our article, but we think about it as deployed instrumentally, where useful for legitimation and alliance building, and dispensable where regime survival logic points elsewhere, as in Cuba.
Civic Space Is a Strategic Asset
Your explanation places civil society at the center of authoritarian calculations. Rather than fearing LGBTQ+ communities themselves, authoritarian governments appear to fear the broader mobilizational capacity that rights-based movements generate. Does this suggest that authoritarian regimes increasingly perceive all forms of autonomous civic organization as interconnected threats, regardless of the specific issue around which they initially mobilize?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: Yes, I do think so. I think that the mechanism doesn’t necessarily depend on said rights specifically. Any rights-based mobilization becomes a focal point around which other regime opponents can build networks to resist the regime’s power. So, this generalizes empirically to the tools autocracies more generally use, like foreign agent laws, NGO registration barriers, and propaganda status.
I’m currently working on anti-gender network mobilization at the Organization of American States (OAS), which shows the same generalized logic from the opposite ideological direction: conservative civil society networks treating access to international organizations (IOs) as an important focal point for infrastructure building, so, like, for training, coalition formation, and the creation of relevant normative frameworks, independent of any single policy win. And so, I think both liberal and illiberal networks and governments understand civic space access itself as a strategic asset.
Transnational Networks Matter More Than Autocratic Learning
Across Europe and Latin America, populist leaders frequently portray LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, migration, and multiculturalism as elements of a single ideological project imposed by liberal elites. Do you see evidence that contemporary populists have learned from authoritarian regimes how to transform cultural issues into broader narratives about national sovereignty and democratic legitimacy?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: That’s also a great question. I would resist learning from autocracies as the primary mechanism. It is better explained by shared transnational infrastructure than by diffusion from authoritarian regimes to populist governments.
I’ve been working on gender ideology at the OAS, and that gender ideology, as a concept, is a deliberately elastic floating signifier that articulates SOGI, reproductive rights, education, and public health into a single civilizational frame. In the case of the OAS, that infrastructure is facilitated by some very famous NGOs and networks, like Alliance Defending Freedom, CitizenGo, the International Organization for the Family, and the Congreso por la Vida y la Familia, which train and finance authoritarian-adjacent but also democratically elected populist actors at the same time.
So, I would say that, in the case of Latin America, the populist right couples sovereigntist nationalism with a religiously coded foreign threat, rather than immigration-centered nativism, which is also interesting. But this is a parallel development to the frameworks used and the narratives employed by authoritarian regimes. I wouldn’t say that populist governments learn from authoritarian regimes.
International Norms Create Lasting Institutional Effects
Participants march through the streets during Prague Pride, a major LGBTQ+ parade and celebration, in Prague, Czech Republic, on August 12, 2017. Photo: Madeleine Steinbach.
Your research demonstrates that battles over LGBTQ+ rights increasingly unfold within international organizations, particularly the United Nations Human Rights Council. Some observers assume these debates are largely symbolic. Yet your work suggests they have genuine political consequences. Why do authoritarian governments invest so much diplomatic capital in resisting seemingly non-binding international norms?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: That’s a great question as well. I would say that non-binding norms matter. Non-binding doesn’t mean costless or inconsequential, so precedent accumulates. Also, regarding United Nations Human Rights Council resolutions specifically, they might be non-binding, but at the same time they establish mandates. For example, in the case of SOGI resolutions at the United Nations, they created the Independent Expert on SOGI rights in 2016, whose mandate was renewed by the resolutions of 2019 and 2022. That creates institutional machinery, reporting, monitoring, and a reference point that autocracies correctly read as a foothold for further, maybe even binding, developments.
In the case of autocracies, what happens at the domestic level matters less because of their repression of civil society and the lack of pathways for different domestic actors to influence politics. But in the case of democracies, even non-binding resolutions may serve as mobilization focal points for domestic policy wins. So, non-binding norms have evidently become relevant sites of contestation for both authoritarian regimes and opposing democratic regimes. And that has made such resolutions rare items at the United Nations Human Rights Council because they are consistently forced to a formal vote.
So, unlike the 74% of resolutions passed by consensus at the Council between 2006 and 2020, SOGI resolutions are usually voted on because of the relevance attached to them, and they draw above-average opposition, with up to 43% voting no against a 21% baseline. I would also say that what happens at the United Nations Human Rights Council is relevant as a coordination good for autocracies and other anti-SOGI rights actors themselves, because participation and opposition allow them to build what we can call backlash networks and rehearse a shared vocabulary that travels to other normative fights in international and national forums.
International Organizations Are Arenas of Normative Competition
Your doctoral research examines how civil society gains access to international organizations and transforms access into political influence. At a time when authoritarian governments seek to restrict civic participation both domestically and internationally, have international organizations themselves become contested arenas where democracy and authoritarianism increasingly compete for normative influence?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: Yes, I would say definitely so, and increasingly in more symmetric ways. You mentioned my doctoral thesis, and in my thesis I work on civil society access to international organizations. In my thesis, I show, for example, conservative NGO participation at the Organization of American States (OAS), which is an organization I mentioned before but didn’t quite explain. The OAS is the main regional, multi-purpose organization of the Americas. The United States, Canada, Latin American countries, and the Caribbean countries participate in this organization, and it has been very relevant in terms of normative developments in the human rights arena, as well as in other issues.
In the case of human rights, it has a commission, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which closely parallels the European Court of Human Rights, if people reading this interview are familiar with the European Court. Individuals can access the Commission and the Court in order to get redress for human rights violations at the national level. And it’s very interesting how the Inter-American human rights system has driven progress on SOGI rights, especially in Latin America.
It, for example, led to the adoption of same-sex marriage in Costa Rica, and that has generated backlash. Conservative NGO participation—anti-SOGI rights NGO participation at the OAS, especially at the General Assembly—went from zero in the 1990s to 128 organizations by 2019, reaching close to a third of civil society participation at its peak, using identical access channels and similar strategies to those of pro-SOGI rights NGOs.
Conservative NGOs and conservative governments are also lobbying for the election of conservative judges and commissioners, so what’s contested is not only outcomes, but also the IO’s function itself.
In a later paper, which builds around my work on my doctoral dissertation, I talk about neutralization, which is disabling an IO as a driver of norm expansion without reversing prior commitments. That’s what we see today at the OAS, where discussions on SOGI rights are being stalled because of backlash and fear of backlash. I think that’s a very interesting development happening at IOs today.
International Civil Society Is More Polarized Than We Thought
Much of the democratic backsliding literature focuses on elections, constitutions, and judicial independence. Your scholarship instead highlights civil society, international norms, and transnational advocacy networks. Has political science underestimated the extent to which democratic erosion occurs through the gradual weakening of societal actors rather than through dramatic institutional change?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: I am a student of international relations, a scholar of international relations, so I would say that, yes, political science has indeed underestimated the extent to which democratic erosion might also be advanced at the international level—at that level, through the weakening of societal actors rather than through dramatic institutional change. I wouldn’t necessarily generalize to research on domestic politics.
But I do think that, at the international level, in international relations, we have tended to think of societal actors as pretty homogeneous. So, most of the literature and research of the 1990s on civil society actors in IOs and transnational advocacy networks focused on pro-progressive human rights actors, or progressive actors more generally. And it was, like, the conventional knowledge that only those actors actually cared about what happened at the international level and accessed the international level to exercise pressure on their domestic governments to advance human rights causes, for example.
We have learned more recently that that’s definitely not the case, and that we even ignored, for a long time, how diverse civil society is, not only at the domestic level but also at the international level, and the polarization dynamics that emerge when civil society organizations that have contrasting ideas on certain topics, like SOGI rights, all access and all try to push forward their agendas in IOs.
I do think that this is a phenomenon that is usually not observed as dramatic institutional change, but rather as something that builds more progressively in IOs, and that has interesting implications for what IOs can do in terms of advancing human rights and advancing democracy. And I think that neutralization, for example, which I already mentioned, is a category that talks about this more nuanced and more progressive, little-by-little institutional change.
‘Backlash Networks’ Are Still Mostly Defensive
In yourJournal of Democracyarticle, you describe how authoritarian governments cooperate internationally to resist the expansion of LGBTQ+ rights through what might be called “backlash networks.” These coalitions appear increasingly coordinated across regions. Are we witnessing the emergence of an alternative international normative order, or are these alliances better understood as defensive coalitions seeking to slow liberal norm diffusion?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: Based on the empirical evidence, I would say that, up until today, the system is more defensive. So, for example, the anti-gender networks’ litigation at the OAS is reactive, no? It tries to diminish the influence of progressive actors at the OAS, for example, by submitting amici curiae in cases brought by others. So, I read that as a response to an unfavorable opportunity structure in the Inter-American human rights system, and that might change over time.
But I do think that, right now, what we see is not reversal yet. I think reversal might happen, but right now, we don’t see decisions at the OAS or at the United Nations Human Rights Council that adopt substantive alternative standards from anti-SOGI rights networks. So, we do not see resolutions regarding, for example, an absolute right to life, or gender ideology being used as a category to talk about a threat, as it is usually framed by anti-SOGI rights actors.
So, rather, we see defensive coalitions seeking to slow liberal norm diffusion, as you mentioned. Influence shows up in stalled agendas and dissenting opinions, not new international norms. That said, I would say that the coordination infrastructure of backlash networks—for example, lobbying for ideologically proximate judges and commissioners at the OAS, training pipelines, and north-south funding flows—is being built for the long run.
And elected officials now sympathetic to these agendas are positioned to eventually build an alternative international normative order. So, I would say that being defensive today and building an alternative order later are not mutually exclusive, and we might see that in the future.
Migration Control Creates Interstate Leverage
Disembarkation of 300 migrants from Libya from the German rescue ship Sea-Watch 3 in Pozzallo, Province of Ragusa, Italy, on June 9, 2022. Photo: Alec Tassi.
Your more recent work introduces the concepts of migration power and migration statecraft, arguing that migration flows themselves have become instruments of interstate influence. This shifts migration from being merely a humanitarian or domestic policy issue to becoming a foreign policy resource. How does this conceptualization change the way political scientists should understand migration in an era of geopolitical competition?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: That’s an interesting question, and also thank you for reading that paper with Natalia Saltalamacchia. In that paper, we reconceptualized migration flows themselves as a power resource, comparable in kind, not just in effect, to more conventional instruments of statecraft.
Using Baldwin’s relational anatomy of power, the key conceptual move is that migration power is constituted, so it exists only because destination states have decided domestically that controlling migration is a vital interest.
So, the target zone securitization of migration is what turns a transit or origin state’s population movements into leverage, or an instrument of statecraft. I think this is interesting. It reframes the weapon of the weak intuition as conditional, not structural. Exercising migration power credibly requires real institutional capacity, so border enforcement and processing infrastructures, which some fragile states lack.
But that’s why we see the strongest cases, like Morocco, Turkey, and Egypt. They are all states with functioning migration bureaucracies. But I do think that it’s an interesting turn to think not necessarily in terms of geopolitical competition. I think it’s more interesting for thinking about North-South relations.
What typically is the leverage that less powerful states have vis-à-vis more powerful states? So, for example, the case of Mexico vis-à-vis the United States. For the United States, for the government of Donald Trump, it is very important that Mexico engages and cooperates with the US in terms of the containment of migrants at the US-Mexico border. That gives Mexico some leverage vis-à-vis the United States, even when we as Mexicans have always been very aware of how asymmetrical our relationship with the US is. So, it’s very interesting to think about how North-South dynamics change when this leverage exists on the side of southern countries, and this leverage is, paradoxically, created in part by northern states that see migration as a threat.
Migration has increasingly become a bargaining tool in relations between states—from the Belarus–EU border crisis to Turkey’s agreements with the European Union and Morocco’s management of migration toward Spain. Does your framework suggest that migration is evolving into a standard instrument of statecraft comparable to sanctions, trade policy, or energy diplomacy?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: I am not a scholar of migration, but I think this is a conceptual article. It is trying to provide some analytical tools and some relevant concepts to understand dynamics that we are indeed observing today, including some of the relevant empirical examples you just mentioned. I would also mention the very recent crisis regarding Morocco-Spain relations in Ceuta. In late July, thousands of people left Morocco and tried to reach Spain through Ceuta, which is a Spanish territory, in an enormous flow of people that unfortunately had terrible humanitarian consequences, because many of those migrants died.
What probably happened, given the enormous number of people crossing at the same time, was that the Moroccan government facilitated the crossing, or encouraged the crossing, to exercise political pressure on Spain. Migration is being used as an instrument of statecraft. I would compare it to energy sanctions or trade policy. In this case, the one that can exercise migration statecraft is the less powerful state, which doesn’t necessarily happen with all types of statecraft. Obviously, it varies.
I just want to finish the comment by recognizing also how problematic this is in terms of ethics. Because what we’re talking about is people’s lives. Exercising migration contention, or facilitating migration flows to exercise pressure on other states, depends on governments mobilizing or containing people who are trying to move across borders to have access to better living conditions. Migration statecraft is very problematic in this sense, but it’s something that we are observing today in the world, and that it’s important to name.
Populism and Migration Diplomacy Reinforce Each Other
Populist leaders often frame migration as an existential domestic threat, while governments simultaneously employ migration strategically in international negotiations. How do these two dimensions interact? Are domestic populist narratives and international migration statecraft increasingly reinforcing one another?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: That’s a great question, and I think the two are indeed mutually reinforcing through the co-constitution mechanism at the center of Natalia Saltalamacchia’s and my article. Populist domestic narratives that frame migration as an existential threat are precisely what increase the value states place on migration control. That value, in turn, creates leverage that other states can exploit.
So, the causal relationship runs both ways. When migration statecraft succeeds, the episode can also be interpreted domestically as confirmation that migration is indeed the existential threat populists have described, thereby reinforcing the very narrative that generated the vulnerability in the first place. This creates a feedback loop with no obvious breaker.
The more governments perform toughness on migration for domestic audiences, the more valuable migration becomes as a lever for whoever controls the migration flow. That’s a genuinely understudied dynamic linking the populism and migration diplomacy literatures, which have generally developed separately.
The Liberal Order Is Being Challenged from Within
From Left: Hungary PM Viktor Orban, Poland PM Beata Szydlo, Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka and Slovakia PM Robert Fico pose prior their meeting in Prague on February 15, 2016.
Throughout your scholarship, there is an ongoing tension between universal human rights and state sovereignty. In today’s geopolitical environment, where sovereignty has re-emerged as a central political slogan for both populist and authoritarian governments, has the balance between these principles shifted in ways that fundamentally challenge the post-Cold War liberal international order?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: That’s also a great question. I would start by recognizing that the tension between universal human rights and state sovereignty has always existed. What universal human rights seek to achieve is to protect citizens from abuses of power by their own governments. There has therefore always been this very interesting tension between international human rights norms, institutions, and mechanisms, on the one hand, and state sovereignty, on the other, because when IOs or other states criticize a country’s human rights record, they are addressing a deeply internal matter: how a government treats its own citizens. So, this is not new.
However, I do think that the sovereignty-based justification for opposing international human rights norms has become more salient in the last couple of years because of the turn toward more nationalist governments in much of the world, and also because of the rise of authoritarian governments. These governments are, of course, particularly opposed to universal human rights norms and to international actors expressing opinions about or criticizing their domestic records, because they frequently violate human rights. That’s a basic trait of authoritarianism.
But yes, this is also because they want to maintain very tight control over domestic civil society. So, I would say that, yes, definitely, this tension has become more salient over time, and this does challenge the post-Cold War liberal international order. We must also recognize that it is not only authoritarian governments or populist governments in the Global South that are opposing or contesting universal human rights. Some of the main proponents of the liberal international order itself are also doing so, with the United States being the most relevant case.
So, besides normative contestation at IOs, we must also look at what happens, for example, with funding in the next couple of years. There is a real threat that international institutions may no longer be able to deliver in areas such as monitoring mechanisms because funding that has traditionally been provided by the United States may no longer be available. I think this is also a highly relevant dynamic, beyond the more discursive contestation of universal human rights norms.
Winning Elections Is Not Enough for Democracy
Your work on civil society implicitly broadens the concept of political representation beyond elected institutions. Many populist leaders claim that elections alone provide sufficient democratic legitimacy. Yet your research suggests that democratic governance also depends upon organized civic participation and international advocacy. Should we rethink democratic representation as extending well beyond electoral politics?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: Yes, I would say it is a fundamental, core trait of populist governments to associate democratic legitimacy almost entirely with the electoral mandate, and that’s obviously worrisome. It leads populist leaders to say, “If I won the election, then I represent the people, and if I represent the people, I can do no wrong.” That kind of logic can quickly lead to dynamics of democratic erosion, for example, at the domestic level, by contesting and weakening non-elected officials who are also fundamental to democracy. A particularly emblematic case is the judiciary.
So, we must consider that democratic representation extends well beyond electoral politics and also depends on checks and balances on elected leaders, however large their mandates might be. We traditionally think of those checks and balances as domestic, and those are obviously the most relevant ones—for example, what happens at the legislative and judicial levels. But I think the international system also matters as a check and balance on the actions of domestic governments, especially in the case of human rights and other international commitments that the international community has a legitimate interest in upholding.
Gender Ideology Bundles Multiple Political Conflicts
The political contestation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights increasingly overlaps with debates about migration, gender equality, reproductive rights, and academic freedom. Do you see these issues gradually converging into a broader global struggle over the meaning of democracy itself, rather than remaining separate policy debates?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: It’s a very interesting question. There is definitely some convergence across the issue agendas you mentioned. I would not necessarily describe it as a struggle over the meaning of democracy itself, but there is certainly a real convergence in the way these issues are framed.
For example, in my research on the OAS, I examine the use of gender ideology as a unifying concept among populist-right actors and conservative NGOs. In that context, it functions as a deliberately elastic floating signifier that allows the same coalition to move across different topics—including education, public health, SOGI rights, and reproductive rights—without losing coherence.
Populist sovereigntist rhetoric performs a similar bundling function in relation to issues such as migration and multiculturalism. But I would caution against treating all of this as one undifferentiated struggle. The actors, mechanisms, and even regime-type correlations differ from one issue to another.
For example, the relationship between autocracy and LGBTQ+ rights is very robust, as we have already discussed, and autocracies are very likely to oppose SOGI rights. Migration statecraft, by contrast, operates differently. In the case of migration, it is wielded by both democracies and autocracies with roughly symmetric logics.
And regarding the meaning of democracy itself, I would say that the dispute is not so much about democracy being destroyed as about how much democracy actually matters and whether democratic regimes are still considered necessary. It is also about whether we still need the international system and the liberal international order that was constructed after World War II. Two main issues definitely contested across these different, issue agendas.
Populist-Right Trends Are Converging Across Regions
Nested dolls depicting authoritarian and populist leaders Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan displayed among souvenirs in Moscow on July 7, 2018. Photo: Shutterstock.
Having worked extensively on Latin American politics while engaging broader comparative questions, do you believe Latin America offers distinctive insights into democratic resilience that Europe and North America often overlook? Conversely, are there emerging authoritarian strategies in Europe that may increasingly influence political developments across Latin America?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: I would actually say that the current trends in Europe and Latin America are quite similar. We are seeing a rise of populist-right governments in both regions. In Latin America, over the past few months, we have seen the election of Alberto de la Espriella in Colombia and Kast in Chile. Elections are coming up in October in Brazil, and it’s unclear whether the Bolsonaros will return to government or whether Lula will be re-elected. We also see this turn in Argentina with Milei—this is not just a development of the last couple of months, but of the last couple of years.
We also see right-wing governments associated with Fujimori in Peru and with Noboa in Ecuador. And there is a broader trend, at least in the Western world, toward these right-wing governments. We might even think of them as forming a kind of transnational coalition, in the sense that there are links between different far-right and populist-right actors at both the European and Latin American levels.
For example, the influence of the Spanish far right in Latin America is very interesting. In Spain, the far right is represented by Vox, which also has a civil society branch, CitizenGo. CitizenGo and Vox have very interesting links to the populist right in Latin America, including support for political campaigns. Some of the narratives they employ are also copied and used in Latin American countries, and CitizenGo provides funding to Latin American conservative civil society organizations.
So, there are definitely political developments in both regions influencing one another. I don’t know whether Latin America offers distinctive insights into democratic resilience. I’m actually very concerned about current political developments in the region, and our institutions are weaker than those in most European countries. We will see how institutions respond to the democratic erosion dynamics that may emerge across Latin America in the next few years, and how those processes compare with developments in Europe. But the jury is still out on this particular question.
Backsliding and Institutional Backlash Are Increasingly Intertwined
And lastly, Professor Valverde, taken together, your scholarship examines civil society, international organizations, migration, human rights, and democratic governance from multiple perspectives. Looking ahead, which emerging development—whether democratic backsliding, transnational populism, migration diplomacy, digital disinformation, geopolitical fragmentation, or the weakening of international institutions—do you believe will most profoundly reshape the future of liberal democracy over the next decade, and where should scholars concentrate their attention?
Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde: I am particularly interested in democratic backsliding processes and in how international institutions might lock in certain international commitments to preserve international norms such as human rights norms, or whether they will fail to play this relevant locking role, which is something that has been theorized in international relations.
So, for example, there are some very famous articles from the 1990s, especially the one by Andrew Moravcsik on how transitioning democracies lock in international commitments in order to prevent future governments from backsliding, because there is already an international commitment to uphold. He writes about this in the context of European countries committing to the European human rights system.
I think that we are at an interesting time to test that theory and to see whether the international system will provide some safeguards against democratic backsliding, but also how international organizations and international institutions more generally will be—and already are—arenas of contestation over issues related to democratic backsliding, but also to the more general upholding of international human rights norms.
I think it’s a very interesting time to study, both from the perspective of comparative politics and from international relations, how these dynamics of democratic backsliding and the backlash against international institutions interact.
In this interview, Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, editors of the recently published volume ‘The Radical Right and Demographic Populism,’ examine how contemporary populist radical right politics increasingly connects immigration, fertility, gender, family, religion, and national identity through the politics of demographic survival. They conceptualize “demographic populism” as a framework linking cultural survival to biological reproduction and transforming demographic change into an existential political struggle. The discussion explores demographic weaponization, conspiracy narratives, Fratelli d’Italia’s calculated ambivalence, and generational adaptations within the Austrian Freedom Party’s youth organizations. Moving beyond Europe, Professor Mazzoleni and Dr. Koxha also address transnational diffusion, political sovereignty, aging, migration, labor shortages, and AI, highlighting how demographic transformations may create new opportunities for populist radical right mobilization while posing significant challenges to democratic resilience.
Contemporary populist radical right (PRR) politics increasingly organizes questions of immigration, fertility, gender, religion, family, and national identity around a common concern: the demographic reproduction of “the people.” In this ECPS interview, Professor Oscar Mazzoleni of the University of Lausanne and Dr. Klaudia Koxha (a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Lausanne), editors of the recently published volume The Radical Right and Demographic Populism, explain how this convergence can be understood through the concept of “demographic populism.” As Professor Mazzoleni puts it, issues conventionally treated as separate increasingly converge on a fundamental political question: “Who is entitled to reproduce the true people?” Demographic populism, he argues, reveals how anti-immigration, anti-gender, and pronatalist claims can share “a single Manichean logic of demographic survival versus extinction.” Dr. Koxha sharpens this argument, explaining that “cultural survival” becomes tied to “the biological reproduction of a specific people with specific characteristics.”
The interview begins by developing this conceptual intervention and distinguishing demographic realities from their political weaponization. Aging, declining fertility, and migration are genuine policy challenges, Dr. Koxha stresses; what distinguishes populist radical-right politicization is the question of whose reproduction constitutes the desirable demographic future. This is how demographic change becomes “existential and moralized.” Professor Mazzoleni similarly identifies “demographic weaponization” as central to understanding how statistical and social transformations are reframed as political struggles over collective survival. Their approach consequently bridges populism studies and critical demography, treating demography simultaneously “as a set of conditions and as a political frame.”
The discussion then turns to how demographic populism operates in concrete political settings. Professor Mazzoleni examines Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, arguing that governmental participation has encouraged not straightforward ideological moderation but “more sophisticated strategies.” Through calculated ambivalence, coded references to “demographic winter,” and a division of discursive labor, radical ideas can be maintained while communication is adapted to broader audiences. In this formulation, demographic populism shifts the perceived threat “from political and economic dispossession to biological and cultural survival,” while immigration becomes embedded within a wider master frame encompassing natality, family, welfare, and religion.
Dr. Koxha’s analysis of the Austrian Freedom Party’s (FPÖ) youth organizations then introduces a generational dimension. While youth branches reproduce core radical-right positions, they adapt them to young people’s concerns and can sometimes “radicalize it further.” Yet Dr. Koxha also identifies greater internal heterogeneity than might be expected, particularly regarding religion, abortion, and LGBTQ+ issues. Crucially, declining religiosity does not necessarily entail rejecting cultural Christianity, which can instead operate “as a marker of national or civilizational identity.”
Finally, the interview broadens comparatively to transnational diffusion, sovereignty, demographic decline, migration, labor shortages, and artificial intelligence. Professor Mazzoleni argues that these transformations “can create a structure of opportunities for radical-right populism,” while Dr. Koxha highlights the political contradiction whereby migration can simultaneously be a practical response to aging and be reframed as evidence of “demographic displacement.” The democratic challenge, she concludes, is to confront the material consequences of demographic transformation without accepting that demographic change necessarily entails “cultural extinction” or that “one group’s security requires another’s exclusion.”
Here is our interview with Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Who Is Entitled to Reproduce the True People?
Crowds gather along the quay to visit tall ships during Sail 2010 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on August 19, 2010. Photo: Jan Kranendonk.
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, welcome! Throughout the book, you argue that immigration, fertility, gender, religion, LGBTQ+ rights, and family politics should not be studied as separate cultural issues but as interconnected elements of what you call ‘demographic populism.’ What convinced you that existing theories of populism were no longer sufficient to explain these developments, and what analytical blind spots does your concept overcome?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Scholarship usually treated immigration, gender, religion, and family as separate cultural issues, also when we talk about populism, largely because of disciplinary divisions, and read them through the cultural backlash lens alone. What convinced us otherwise was recognizing that all these issues converge on one question: Who is entitled to reproduce the true people? Demographic populism overcomes the blind spot of separating nativism from reproduction, showing that anti-immigration, anti-gender, and pronatalist claims share a single Manichean logic of demographic survival versus extinction.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I would just briefly contextualize what this means in terms of the research that we know so far. Exactly as Oscar mentioned, research already tells us about how radical right populist parties engage with these topics separately. They started out with immigration, with these positions against non-native others, the cultural others. Then we learned how their agenda expanded and how gender equality, LGBTQ+ advocates, or advocates of diverse forms of family, of religious tolerance, etc., can become sources for fueling this typical Manichaean logic.
So, the proponents of such diversity become enemies to the people in the populist logic. However, these are not just different sources that fuel the Manichaean logic. If we put them together in one common framework, which is ‘demographic populism,’ they reveal exactly the demographic logic that Oscar just mentioned. In other words, the cultural survival, which is what these parties had been mostly politicizing, becomes tied to the biological reproduction of a specific people with specific characteristics.
Demographic Change Becomes Existential and Moralized
Your framework suggests that demographic change is not politically consequential by itself; rather, it becomes politically powerful once interpreted through narratives of existential threat. How should scholars distinguish between legitimate democratic debates about demographic trends and the populist politicization of demography?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: The book is really clear that demographic developments are real. So, when we talk about aging, fertility decline, migration, these are legitimate policy questions. We also know that welfare regimes or pension systems depend on such characteristics. Societies try to hold on to these systems by partly relying on migration, a younger population, which is usually the active labor force. Then some of these migrants eventually form families, and this can help to offset aging populations. At the same time, we also see discussions across societies about how to support young working couples to form families, women to reconcile work and family life, so that they can have the means to follow their careers, provide for themselves, for the children. So, we have these different discussions around demographic change, and this is the broader aspect.
But for the populist radical right, these alternatives are not considered as solutions in themselves, because the populist radical right specifically asks: Who are these people, this active labor force that we need to support our welfare regimes, our pension systems, etc.? Who are these prospective families that will support our systems and push back aging populations?
Here we see the continuity for the radical right is on the so-called native population. So, the disagreement isn’t whether aging or fertility decline exists, but we go back to what Oscar mentioned in the first question: Whose reproduction is imagined as the desirable solution? And this is how demographic change becomes existential and moralized.
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: It’s important to underline the point that demographic weaponization is the key point. So, demography is at the center, it becomes at the center of political battle, in which radical right populism is a clear and an important actor, shaping and reshaping demography as a political issue. Of course, demography is, for demographers, about fertility, about immigration, is about statistics of these dynamics, but this aspect can be demographically framed in a specific way. This is exactly what radical right populism tries to do.
Demography Is Both a Set of Conditions and a Political Frame
One of the book’s most important contributions is its attempt to bridge populism studies with critical demography. Do you see this as the beginning of a new interdisciplinary research agenda, and what questions should future scholars prioritize?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Yes, of course, we try to open an interdisciplinary agenda. Critical demography’s attention to power relations behind births, fertility, mortality, and migration allows us to treat demography simultaneously as a set of conditions and as a political frame. Future research should prioritize the supply-side link between populism and conspiracy, the appeal of demographic weaponization among specific groups—youth, women, rural voters—and its institutional and policy effects on democratic resilience.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I don’t have anything to add to that. I guess exactly the last point, particularly, is interesting on the demand side: When and why do citizens of different societal groups accept these otherwise separate issues as parts of one whole demographic thread?
Demographic Populism Is No Longer Confined to the Radical Right
You conclude that demographic populism increasingly connects conspiracy theories with mainstream party politics. Does this suggest that conspiracy thinking has evolved from a fringe phenomenon into a governing logic of parts of the contemporary radical right?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Yes, this is a key point: demographic populism is not just about the radical right. It could be mainstream; it’s part of the contemporary discussion about the demographic winter. It’s not just about the radical right. Conspiracy can be a mediation or a fuel for this kind of increasing interest and use of demographic populism. This is an important point that we try to underline in the conclusion.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I think it’s exactly that—the amplification, maybe we could put it. It’s a complementary amplification force for populism. Because what conspiracy does is it adds this intentionality. So it’s not just a populist anti-elite discourse that relies on some sort of elite that looks after its own interests, but the conspiracy also adds this dimension of the elite deliberately undermining the people. So it’s like a deliberate choice, and this is how, like Oscar mentioned, conspiracy becomes an amplifier, in some ways, for populism.
Calculated Ambivalence Allows Moderation and Radicalism to Come Together
A poster for the 2024 European elections featuring Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome, Italy on May 4, 2024. Photo: Stefano Chiacchiarini.
Dear Professor Mazzoleni, in your chapter on Fratelli d’Italia, you argue that the party has successfully reconciled governmental responsibility with radical-right ideology through ambivalent populist and conspiratorial discourse. Why has ambiguity become politically more effective than explicit radicalism?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Relevant parties in government face a trade-off between demarcation and accommodation, between the capacity to maintain radicalization and to integrate into the system. At the same time, they must retain radical support without losing moderate voters and coalition allies. So, it’s important to consider this trade-off, not just unethical or moral issues. It’s a question of electoral survival and electoral success. So, calculated ambivalence—this concept came from Ruth Wodak, the specialist in sociolinguistics—resolves this by producing, in the discourse, assumed associations between contradictory meanings.
This is not just anecdotal, but it’s based on a strategy, trying to cope with different audiences, decoding that there are different expectations. Because parties are not unitary actors, that’s also important. Intra-party, intra-leader ambivalence lets moderation and radicalism come together, normalizing controversial claims while avoiding public condemnation. Because we have this party needs to be in the system and they sometimes reproduce anti-establishment stances. With this kind of calculated ambivalence, and with many discursive tools, they try to do that. We show that Fratelli d’Italia is able, during the first part of the government coalition period, to achieve this kind of ambivalence strategy.
Fratelli d’Italia Adapts Its Communication While Maintaining Radicalization
Your analysis suggests that Fratelli d’Italia rarely invokes the Great Replacement theory directly, preferring coded demographic language instead. Does this represent ideological moderation, or simply a more sophisticated communication strategy aimed at broader electoral legitimacy?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Primarily, more sophisticated strategies, not ideological moderation. Meloni’s manifesto and speeches drop ethnic substitution in favor of demographic winter, so trying to have a kind of mainstream label, while ministers of Fratelli d’Italia inside the government led by Meloni, such as Lollobrigida, Roccella, and others, voice fuller conspiratorial versions of Great Replacement.
So, they resonate with Great Replacement theory, and it is important to underline this division of discursive labor + de-racialization. This question of Great Replacement theory is strongly connected with racial issues, but also denialism and euphemism allow the Great Replacement, for itself, to survive intact behind a government facade. That’s important in the sense that these discursive tools are able to adapt communication, maintaining radicalization by the party.
Demographic Populism Shifts the Threat to Biological and Cultural Survival
You have written extensively on populism for many years. Compared with earlier waves of European populism, what is genuinely new about demographic populism? Is it primarily an ideological transformation or an adaptation to new electoral realities?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: It’s important to say that populism is the defense of the true people, in terms of discursive claims—a true people under threat by different kinds of external powers. This deals with sovereignty, of course, political sovereignty, economic prosperity, and anti-establishment protests. Demographic populism shifts the threat from political and economic dispossession to biological and cultural survival.
In a sense, it’s both an ideological transformation and an adaptation to new electoral realities, trying to cope with new, emerging demands. It’s an ideological revival in which demography becomes the symbolic battlefield of the radical right’s long counter-revolution against LGBT rights, feminism, and so on. At the same time, it’s an adaptation to declining birth rates, aging, and migration, which are part of a broader demographic transformation in many countries, especially European ones, but not only.
In a sense, it’s both an ideological transformation and an adaptation to new electoral realities, trying to cope with new, emerging demands. In this sense, it’s an ideological revival in which demography becomes the symbolic battlefield of the radical right’s long counter-revolution against LGBT rights, feminism, and so on. At the same time, it is an adaptation to declining birth rates, aging, and migration, which are part of a broader demographic transformation in many countries, especially European ones, but not only.
It is interesting to say that, unlike interwar genetics in the past, today’s version is civilizational and culturally racist, rather than openly biological. It’s important to connect this aspect with biology and culture, and try to introduce this kind of demographic populism as able to frame the entire discourse nowadays by the radical right.
The Great Replacement Reframes Anti-Immigration Politics Demographically
A group of war refugees walks through a cornfield on the Serbia-Croatia border on November 3, 2015, as they seek passage to the EU. Many are Syrian refugees fleeing conflict. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.
Many populist radical-right (PRR) parties increasingly combine welfare protection, national sovereignty, and family policies into one political package. Is demographic populism gradually replacing immigration as the master frame through which these parties organize their broader ideological projects?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Immigration remains central, according to this book, but is increasingly subsumed, integrated within a demographic master frame that links natality, family, welfare, and religion. The Great Replacement is precisely the device through which anti-immigration stances are reframed demographically. So, rather than substitution, we observe absorption, integration. Immigration becomes one variable in a broader ideological project about who reproduces the nation and under what moral authority. The nation is the people, and these people and the nation are to be built under a specific moral authority—of course, the traditional family.
Youth Branches Adapt Radical-Right Politics to Generational Concerns
Dear Klaudia, your chapter examines how the youth organizations of the Austrian Freedom Party reinterpret demographic issues through specifically generational concerns. What surprised you most about the differences—and similarities—between youth activists and the senior party leadership?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: First of all, the similarities were actually quite strong, because the youth branches do reproduce the FPÖ’s anti-immigration, anti-gender diversity, climate-skeptic positions. The difference is specifically in the generational framing. So, if the senior party tends to emphasize security, sovereignty, civil liberties, economic stability, youth branches emphasize how these issues supposedly affect young Austrians, in particular, and their future.
But to be quite frank, it was not this alignment between the youth branches and the senior party regarding core ideological positions, or this generational framing, that surprised me about the findings. What really, really struck me instead was some intra-youth variation regarding topics such as LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, or the role of the church. Now, I wouldn’t overstate this variation based on the data set, because it’s quite subtle. But it did make me think that there’s probably much more heterogeneity within radical-right youth than we tend to assume.
Being Less Religious Does Not Mean Rejecting Cultural Christianity
Young people are statistically less religious and often more socially liberal than older generations. Yet your research suggests that radical-right youth organizations remain highly receptive to demographic narratives. What explains this apparent paradox?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: The question ties quite nicely to the point I made in the previous answer regarding this heterogeneity within youth branches. Religion, for instance, is also rather inconsistent across the youth branches. We see, for example, anti-abortion discourse as largely absent, except in Vienna. There are inconsistencies also when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues. Sometimes they’re silenced, sometimes they’re moderated. So, the youth branches don’t simply reproduce every conservative issue equally.
At the same time, they do remain strongly receptive to anti-immigration narratives and can instrumentalize gender equality against Muslim migrants. Regarding your point about the paradox, I think there’s a distinction that might help explain it. Being less religious does not necessarily mean that you reject cultural Christianity or nativist identity politics. Christianity here can also function as a marker of national or civilizational identity, rather than primarily as a religious practice.
Classical Nativism Is Underneath Demographic Populism
Your findings indicate that youth activists frame migration not only as a cultural issue but also as competition over education, employment, and future opportunities. Does demographic populism therefore represent a generational adaptation of classical nativism rather than a fundamentally new ideology?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: Clearly, classical nativism is underneath it, so I would not claim that demographic populism is this entirely new ideology. But its analytical value is precisely in showing how different issues become connected. As you mentioned, in my chapter, migration is linked to education, to employment, to gender, to family, to youth, and ultimately to demographic survival, by focusing on the so-called native youth as, basically, the agents of reproduction of a specific kind of people. Moreover, Great Replacement also, as a way of thinking, extends beyond migration into gender equality, diversity. In this regard, I would see the analytical value precisely in demonstrating how these different issues can be connected together in the framework of demographic survival.
Youth Branches Can Reproduce Party Ideology and Radicalize It Further
European Parliamentary election posters of the FPÖ in Vienna, Austria, on May 15, 2024. Photo: Shutterstock.
Youth organizations often function as ideological laboratories for future party elites. Based on your research, do you expect today’s demographic narratives to become even more central to tomorrow’s radical-right politics?
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: The chapter in itself does not longitudinally establish that today’s youth discourse becomes tomorrow’s party discourse. That needs to be clear. But it does show that youth branches can and do reproduce party ideology. And what they also do quite well is contextualize it to their cohort and adapt it to generational concerns. Sometimes, even radicalize it further, as we’ve seen in the examples of Vienna or Tyrol, where we saw the most explicit articulations of Great Replacement narratives. For instance, while the central party actually continued to frame immigration more around security rather than these openly conspiratorial framings. This can suggest that youth branches may reproduce party ideology, but also, at times, radicalize it further. This might potentially have an impact on the main party’s discourse over time, but we would have to research that more systematically.
Your volume spans Europe as well as North and South America. Despite these different historical contexts, remarkably similar demographic narratives appear across countries. Are we witnessing policy diffusion between radical-right actors, or do these narratives emerge independently in response to similar social anxieties?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Both, and they reinforce each other. Similar anxieties related to structural transformation, declining fertility, aging, secularization, shrinking white or Christian majorities arise independently. However, they only become politically powerful once framed and mobilized by political actors. So, transnational infrastructures, such as the World Congress of Families, are relevant for the radical right across the world. US-Russia anti-abortion cooperation and social media circulation demonstrate deliberate diffusion, including astroturfing that manufactures the appearance of grassroots demand.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I would not have much to add. I think the transnational linkages that Oscar mentioned explain it very well, that these are not credential. Just very briefly on what the comparative question is, I would say it is basically how similar narratives are adapted to different national settings. This could be due to these transnational linkages; it could be due to diffusion through social media messaging. The mechanisms are different, but the core issue is how these similar narratives are indeed adapted across different national contexts.
Sovereignty Is Also Based on the Reproduction of the People Exercising It
One of the most striking themes of the book is that demographic populism links biological reproduction with political sovereignty. Does this represent a shift away from classic economic populism toward what might be called ‘biopolitical populism,’ where the central political question becomes who has the right to reproduce the nation?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Of course, the point here is not just to talk about sovereignty as a political dimension, but sovereignty is also based on the reproduction of the people exercising this sovereignty. The question is not just the capacity of the people to respond to the threat in terms of sovereignty, or political sovereignty, but other political dimensions, in terms of elections, in terms of decision-making, but also about the way by which we reproduce ourselves in terms of cultural belonging, national dimension, religious belonging etc. So, that’s important to frame this aspect, because all these dimensions—all diaspora, religion, cultural, national belonging—pass through biological reproduction and the family. The family is considered a pillar of this reproduction of the good and the true people. In this sense, we can we talk about biopolitical populism.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: I would just add, regarding your question about which concept could work better, that I would still retain demographic populism because, in the end, demographic populism is broader than reproduction alone. It’s not just about who gets to be reproduced and who gets to reproduce the nation, but also about under what moral authority. So, fertility is not simply about fertility; it becomes about what kind of society should continue, and here there are other mechanisms that come into play, like religion, heteronormative views of family, and so on. Therefore, I still consider demographic populism conceptually better able to capture this dynamic.
AI Can Create New Opportunities for Radical-Right Populism
Photo: Dreamstime.
And lastly, looking ahead, demographic decline, population ageing, migration, artificial intelligence, and labor shortages are likely to reshape democratic politics simultaneously. Which of these developments do you believe will most profoundly transform the future of radical-right populism, and how should democracies respond without reinforcing the very narratives they seek to challenge?
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: I think all these different aspects—aging, labor shortages, also pushed by artificial intelligence—can create a structure of opportunities for radical-right populism. They, of course, help these kinds of actors connect these developments to immigration and pro-natalist policies. In a sense, they can exploit this kind of structural transformation to propose their own demographic populist message. In this sense, I think the response is, of course, about defending gender and reproductive rights and all liberal democratic values, but at the same time, we have to be aware that this kind of defense should also address the structural transformation that I mentioned before.
Dr. Klaudia Koxha: Again, the question ties back to one of the first questions in this interview. Aging societies do need an active labor force. So far, migration has been one way of responding to that. But as we can see, the radical right can simultaneously take the same migration that comes as a solution to aging societies, transform it, and present it as evidence of demographic displacement. This is how the policy response to one demographic challenge—aging populations—becomes framed as another demographic threat, while at the same time, there are policies that actually try to address it through counteraction by relying partly on migration. So, I think this tension is perhaps the most consequential—the interaction between aging, labor shortages, and migration—precisely because of the political contradiction it creates.
I think democracies need to address the real material consequences of demographic change, so this is something that needs to be talked about and addressed, without accepting the premise that demographic change necessarily means cultural extinction. Or that one group’s security requires another’s exclusion. So, those are points that must enter the public debate to have a constructive discussion around the demographic challenges that societies experience.
Professor Oscar Mazzoleni: Can I say something more about the book? Because you stress the point that the book covers different contexts—not just European, but also American and Russian contexts. I think it’s also important to mention the methodological and disciplinary approaches, because we are political scientists and sociologists, and we also have anthropologists. In the book, we also have supply-side and demand-side approaches to these issues.
It’s important to mention these multidisciplinary, multi-method approaches that converge in the book and also in this proposal about demographic populism. There is also intergenerational scholarship in the book, ranging from PhD students to senior scholars. In this project, we really try to bring together different perspectives and, at the same time, create a convergent and common project in order to explain what is happening today in the transformation of radical-right populism.
Professor Justin Gest argues that democratic resilience depends not only on institutions but also on the citizens who remain to sustain them. In this ECPS interview, Professor Gest discusses his concept of “democratic drain”—the depletion of liberal democratic political capital through emigration—and explains how large-scale departures can weaken resistance to populist and authoritarian backsliding. He warns that democracies are “highly susceptible to demographic change” and that the phenomenon is spreading beyond its European “poster child” to countries including Turkey, Israel, India, and potentially the United States. Professor Gest also examines immigration politics, demographic ageing, and populist mobilization, arguing that migration should be framed in terms of the national interest and that “the way countries treat their most vulnerable” is indicative of the state of their democracy.
In an era when democratic backsliding is typically diagnosed through institutional erosion—the weakening of courts, legislatures, electoral safeguards, and checks on executive power—Professor Justin Gest directs attention to a less visible but potentially consequential force: the changing composition of the citizenry itself. Professor and Director of the Public Policy Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and the award-winning author of seven books, including Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Democracy, Professor Gest argues that understanding democratic resilience requires taking demographic change seriously. “What I think has been missing is the human dimension,” he tells the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), emphasizing that democracies “are also highly susceptible to demographic change.”
At the heart of Professor Gest’s argument is what he calls a “depletion effect”: when citizens with liberal democratic values leave in large numbers, their departure can diminish the political and civic resources available to resist authoritarianism. Migration remains, he stresses, “an expression of human freedom and human agency,” yet hundreds of thousands or millions of individual decisions to leave can produce “a very significant collective effect.” The result is a provocative reconsideration of emigration not simply as individual mobility, but as a process capable of reshaping the democratic prospects of countries of origin.
This dynamic may also strengthen populist and authoritarian governments. Professor Gest argues that the depletion of democratic human capital can allow “populist governments or authoritarian-leaning governments to get away with the backsliding” that might otherwise have been politically punished. Europe remains “the poster child for democratic drain,” particularly Central and Eastern Europe, but Professor Gest sees the phenomenon broadening to countries including Turkey, Israel, India, and potentially the United States. Indeed, he warns that “we are seeing the beginnings of a democratic drain in the United States,” even as American institutions, civic associations, and the judiciary continue to provide important sources of resilience.
The interview also situates democratic drain within the wider politics of migration, populism, and demographic transformation. Professor Gest argues that immigration politics is “principally driven by political entrepreneurs” and challenges narratives of invasion and chaos, while advocating immigration as a pursuit of the national interest. Most importantly, migration governance itself becomes a democratic test. “The way countries treat their most vulnerable,”Professor Gest argues, including foreigners and ethnic or religious minorities, “is indicative of the state of their democracy”—an observation he says may constitute an indictment of several countries, including the United States.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Justin Gest, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Democracies Are Highly Susceptible to Demographic Change
People shop in Gamla Stan (Old Town) in Stockholm, Sweden on August 23, 2018.
Professor Gest, welcome! Your recent Journal of Democracy article challenges the conventional literature on democratic backsliding by arguing that scholars have focused too heavily on institutional erosion while overlooking the political consequences of selective emigration. In many ways, you shift the analytical focus from what governments do to who remains within the polity. Do you see democratic drain as a complementary mechanism within existing theories of democratic erosion, or are you proposing a fundamentally new paradigm that requires us to rethink how democratic resilience itself should be conceptualized?
Professor Justin Gest: That’s a great question. No, I see this as complementary rather than a fundamentally new paradigm. There has been some excellent scholarship on the prospects for democratization, the forces that drive it, and the forces that generate backlash. What I think has been missing is the human dimension. Democracies, for all their institutions and their susceptibility to structural change, are also highly susceptible to demographic change.
So, if there is—as I argue and demonstrate—this depletion effect, whereby people with liberal democratic values leave a country in large numbers, that, too, will have consequences. It complements, supplements, and helps contextualize the institutional changes that scholars have traditionally focused on.
Migration Is an Expression of Human Freedom and Human Agency
One of the article’s most original contributions is its reinterpretation of Albert Hirschman’s “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.” Traditionally, exit has been viewed as an individual response to political dissatisfaction. Your argument suggests that, when aggregated, millions of individual exits become a collective political force with systemic consequences. Does this imply that emigration should no longer be understood merely as a personal freedom but also as a phenomenon carrying democratic externalities? How should liberal democracies reconcile the individual’s right to leave with the collective costs that large-scale democratic exit may impose on countries of origin?
Professor Justin Gest: I certainly don’t think that we should be blaming anyone for making these very personal choices, and I don’t think we should be restricting them from doing so. Ultimately, migration is an expression of human freedom and human agency, of instantiating the democracy, the rights, and the freedoms that people want. But it is certainly complicated because of the effect that it has on the prospects for future democracy in the countries that people leave behind. And, of course, one person, one family, or one household’s decision doesn’t change a country. But when hundreds of thousands or even millions of people make the same choice, then that can have a very significant collective effect.
Your work implicitly treats democracy as something sustained not only by constitutions and institutions but also by what might be called democratic human capital—citizens willing to organize, protest, deliberate, and defend democratic norms. Has political science underestimated the demographic foundations of democratic resilience? Should future democracy indices begin measuring civic composition alongside institutional quality? In other words, can a democracy remain institutionally intact while gradually losing the civic foundations necessary for its long-term survival?
Professor Justin Gest: Yes, it certainly could. And it would be brilliant to be able to measure this. It does take some monitoring, but in many ways, the large-scale departure of people with democratic political values could be a signal of what’s to come in fragile democracies, or even not-so-fragile democracies. So, it would be wise to measure these things. It’s not especially costly. These are data that are collected and can be collected via regular survey research. It can be very predictive of the prospects for democracy thereafter.
When You Have Brain Drain, You’re Also Encountering Some Democratic Drain
Brain drain. Photo: Francesco Scatena / Dreamstime.
Your concept deliberately extends—but also departs from—the classic literature onbrain drain. Highly educated citizens are not necessarily the same people as those most committed to democratic participation. Conceptually, what distinguishes democratic drain from brain drain, and what does each explain that the other cannot?
Professor Justin Gest: That’s a great question. Brain drain is a reference to the phenomenon of the departure and depletion of economic capital when immigrants leave. They take their intellectual capital, their ideas, and their skill set with them when they leave. What democratic drain is looking at is a phenomenon of political capital—the departure of people with certain values and proclivities.
These two very well overlap. People with democratic values tend to have middling levels of education compared to their countrymen. So it is very likely that there’s a lot of overlap—that when you have brain drain, you’re also encountering some democratic drain.
What they predict is really different because brain drain has been shown to be accompanied by what’s called a brain gain, where people can remit the ideas and the things that they learn from abroad, and in some cases the money that they make from abroad, into capital investment, remittances, and social remittances back home. It’s not clear that it’s so easy to diffuse democracy across borders in the same way. Diaspora politics are certainly lively and active, but how impactful they are in actually creating regime changes is really more dubious.
Democratic Drain and Authoritarian Resilience
Your findings suggest that politically engaged, educated, and internationally connected citizens are often the most likely to emigrate from countries experiencing democratic decline. Could this selective emigration unintentionally strengthen populist and authoritarian movements by reshaping not only the electorate but also the broader ecology of civil society? In other words, does democratic drain help explain why some populist governments appear to become electorally stronger even as dissatisfaction with their governance increases?
Professor Justin Gest: The short answer is yes. That’s, in many ways, precisely what I expect and what I observe. Because of that decline of human capital, because of that depletion, it basically allows populist governments or authoritarian-leaning governments to get away with the backsliding that we otherwise would be observing and that would otherwise be punished, potentially, if, in the counterfactual, those immigrants had never left.
One possible criticism is that emigration merely reflects democratic decline rather than contributing to it. How confident are you that democratic drain becomes a self-reinforcing mechanism of authoritarian resilience rather than simply another consequence of poor governance? What evidence would most convincingly establish that causal relationship?
Professor Justin Gest: That’s a really good question. I think it’s likely to be both. You have certain democratic-leaning, liberal-leaning citizens who are very alert to changes and quick to respond when they see that there is further decline in the future, when they anticipate that decline. So, that is possible. That is certainly possible.
In my own research, there’s good evidence to suggest that elections that place people into office who have authoritarian leanings trigger people to want to leave. In that case, we observe that it comes after. However, what I also observe in the book is that there’s everyday migration of people who are not triggered by politics but are actually triggered by economic opportunities, by the opportunity to reunify with family members, loved ones, and relatives, or by people pursuing their educations abroad. Those people are not leaving for political reasons, and they are leaving in large numbers before any authoritarian backsliding might be taking place.
So, it’s likely to be both. It’s likely that more economically driven and family-driven migration is taking place independently of political backsliding. But there are also responses to political backsliding as well.
Nostalgic Deprivation Helps Explain That Backlash
A Trump supporter holds up a “Make America Great Again” sign at presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rally in the convention center in Sioux City, Iowa, on November 6, 2016. Photo: Mark Reinstein.
Across your work—from “Roots of the Radical Right”to your comparative research on nostalgic deprivation—you argue that perceptions of social, political, and economic decline shape populist support. How do these earlier findings relate toDemocratic Drain? Do you see nostalgic deprivation and democratic drain as two sides of the same process: one explaining why citizens embrace populism, the other explaining why others decide to leave?
Professor Justin Gest: That’s a really interesting point. Rarely do I deliberately connect my books together. They are certainly contributing to what we are witnessing, yes. And they are, in some ways, two sides of the same coin, because one of the biggest paradoxes of democratic drain is that when immigrants come over to the destination country, they are bringing with them ostensibly liberal, democratic political capital that they’re removing from their country of origin.
However, they’re not necessarily creating a sort of democratic renaissance in the country of destination. They’re not necessarily seeing those values enrich the democracy where they’re going. Quite the opposite: we have seen in many examples across the world today that immigrants’ arrival actually triggers a populist authoritarian backlash.
And so, yes, I think that nostalgic deprivation, which yearns for an earlier period, helps explain that backlash. But technically we’re talking about two different groups of people. We’re talking about one group of people who are remaining in their country of origin and witnessing the arrival of immigrants, and the other is referring to the immigrants themselves and their countries of origin.
Management, Order, and Control Do Not Prevent a Country from Being Open to Migration
Throughout Europe, mainstream parties have increasingly adopted stricter positions on immigration, often in an effort to contain the electoral rise of the radical right. From a comparative perspective, does this strategy reduce support for populist challengers, or does it instead contribute to the normalization of their political agenda?
Professor Justin Gest: It’s a really good, important question. I think it depends on how it’s being done by mainstream parties. I certainly think that mainstream, and particularly center-left, parties have been very politically vulnerable to attacks and criticism that they are too lenient about migration and that their approaches lead to chaos or, at least, to indiscriminate admissions policies. In some cases that might be fair.
I think that many center-left parties have historically been reluctant to talk about management, control, and order, using words like these on the campaign trail and in the design of their policies. But management, order, and control do not prevent a country from being open to migration. Having managed, controlled, and orderly flows of people coming in and out does not mean that you’re stopping people from coming in and out. It just means that you actually are in control of it. It means that you’re being discriminatory in who you are letting in and whether they support national political and policy goals, and who do not.
So I think that, yes, ostensibly it does legitimize what some of the far-right and populist parties are saying, but not in a way that necessarily obviates or prevents center-left and center-right parties from facilitating the normal flows of immigrants coming in and out of their borders. So, it’s complicated. It really does depend on the governments.
Certainly, there are going to be a lot of lazy politicians that ape what they hear on the far right rather than actually thinking about how to mechanically manage an orderly immigration system. Shame on those lazy politicians. But, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Immigration Is a Very Emotional Political Subject Matter
Your work has consistently shown that demographic change becomes politically consequential when it is interpreted through narratives of identity and belonging. To what extent is the contemporary success of populist movements driven by demographic realities themselves, and to what extent by the political entrepreneurs who frame those realities as existential threats?
Professor Justin Gest: I think it’s principally driven by political entrepreneurs. What research has shown—not my own personal research, but others’—is that the general public is broadly not very numerate when it comes to the extent to which immigrants are arriving at borders, especially in a really big country like Germany, the United Kingdom, France, or the United States.
These are large countries where immigrants can blend in very easily and diffuse across big cities and smaller suburbs. So, it’s largely a feeling. Immigration is a very emotional political subject matter, and far-right political entrepreneurs have told people that their countries are being invaded. They’ve told people of chaos and massive influxes of people coming into the country.
There certainly have been increases, and there certainly has been an upward trajectory in numerous places, particularly when you put it as a share of the national population, which is often declining due to aging and lower fertility rates. But it’s certainly not the chaos and the invasion that people are describing. So, broadly, I would say that this is driven by political entrepreneurs, even if the numbers do have an upward trend.
Immigration Should Be Framed as a Pursuit of the National Interest
A group of war refugees walks through a cornfield on the Serbia-Croatia border on November 3, 2015, as they seek passage to the EU. Many are Syrian refugees fleeing conflict. Photo: Ajdin Kamber.
Recent demographic projections suggest that aging societies across North America, Europe, and East Asia will increasingly depend on immigration to sustain economic growth and labor markets, even as anti-immigration politics continue to gain electoral traction. Migration is therefore often presented either as an economic necessity or as a political and cultural threat. Your scholarship suggests that this binary is overly simplistic. How do you explain the growing disconnect between demographic realities and political demand, and how should democratic societies approach migration if the objective is to preserve democratic legitimacy, social cohesion, and long-term economic sustainability?
Professor Justin Gest: They should really switch to a lens on immigration that is much more directly related to the national interest. I think that so much of the debate around immigration, and in some cases the policy design, has really been framing immigration as a humanitarian act—that immigration systems are rescuing vulnerable, susceptible, and weak people from poorer and conflict-driven societies.
And certainly humanitarian migration is an element of many countries’ immigration programs, and a very important one, I’ll say, and one that I think we ought to expand. However, the vast majority of immigrants do not fit that profile.
Immigrants are some of the most significant contributors to our economies, to the enrichment of our societies, and to the sustainability of our populations. And so, bringing them in is not doing anyone any favors except the country itself. I should say it’s doing everyone a favor, including the country itself. So, framing immigration as a pursuit of the national interest is the best and most accurate way to be pursuing it politically.
How Countries Treat Migrants Is Indicative of the State of Their Democracy
In your work on migrant rights and immigration governance, you argue that migration policy reflects broader democratic values rather than simply border management. Do you believe the treatment of migrants has become an increasingly reliable indicator of the health of democratic institutions?
Professor Justin Gest: To some extent it has been. I think there are exceptions where you have a not very democratic institution facilitating the humane entry and exit of immigrants with minimal violations of their rights. A place like that could be Singapore. I’d say Singapore is more of an exception, though.
Certainly, Singapore’s rights profile is not perfect. It’s not what you’d see in a place like Denmark or France. In Denmark, interestingly, they have an excellent rights profile and a very strong democracy, but their policies towards immigrants have become steadily less generous over time. But they’re not violating anyone’s rights, at least certainly not to the extent that we see in other countries.
So, yes, I do think that the way countries treat their most vulnerable, and treat people who are from other places who are members of ethnic or religious minorities, who are foreigners, is indicative of the state of their democracy. That’s probably an indictment of a number of countries, including the United States and its decline democratically over the last 10 years.
Much of your research emphasizes that public attitudes toward immigration are shaped not only by economic realities but also by political narratives and elite framing. In an era of misinformation and social media, have political entrepreneurs become more influential than demographic realities themselves in shaping public perceptions of migration?
Professor Justin Gest: Without a question, yes.
Immigration Is a Way of Creating a Sort of Population Equilibrium Globally
Across advanced democracies, governments increasingly face a paradox: ageing populations and labor shortages make immigration economically necessary, while anti-immigration politics remain electorally attractive. Is this contradiction becoming one of the defining governance challenges for contemporary liberal democracies?
Professor Justin Gest: It has been one of the most fundamental and intractable challenges, certainly. But my prescription really relates to what I said earlier about reframing this as a national interest. I think that each policy should be framed in such a way that the public understands that when the state is admitting people they’re not doing immigrants a favor without actually pursuing the national interest as well.
Immigration is where these different interests become mutual. They come together. And that’s one of the most wonderful things about this. It’s particularly poignant at this moment in demographic history, because we have Global North countries, fundamentally or primarily, that are experiencing rapid aging and very severe drops in fertility rates. And we have many countries in the Global South, in lower-income countries, that are experiencing population booms that are unsustainable, given their economies and their ability to give people jobs.
So, actually, immigration is a way of creating a sort of population equilibrium globally, while also addressing critical problems for politicians and public officials in both the Global South and the Global North.
We Are Seeing the Beginnings of a Democratic Drain in the United States
Labour Day celebrations at Old Town Square in Prague on May 1, 2017, featuring a banner depicting democracy as a leaf eaten by caterpillars labeled Putin, Kaczyński, Orbán, Babiš, Trump, and Fico. Photo: Jolanta Wojcicka.
Following the 2024 US presidential election, there has been renewed discussion about Americans—particularly academics, journalists, scientists, and young professionals—considering relocation abroad. Is the United States beginning to exhibit early symptoms of democratic drain, or do its institutional resilience and federal structure make it fundamentally different from the countries examined in your research?
Professor Justin Gest: I think both are true. We are seeing the beginnings of a democratic drain in the United States. The phenomenon has clearly reached US shores, and it’s beginning to take place now, even if it’s just in the early days. But at the same time, the United States possesses certain unique advantages in its institutions, civic associations, and judiciary that act as a form of resilience against this creep of democratic backsliding.
Interrupting the Democratic Drain Cycle
Across Europe, several countries that have experienced democratic backsliding—including Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia—have also witnessed sustained outward migration. Do you see Europe as the principal laboratory for democratic drain, or are similar patterns now emerging across a much broader range of democracies?
Professor Justin Gest: Europe is certainly the poster child for democratic drain, and it’s one of the reasons why I focus so much of my research on Central and Eastern Europe—places like Hungary, Serbia, Poland, etc. However, democratic drain is broadening now, and it surely already has before this. You know, other countries to look at would certainly include places like Turkey, Israel, India, and, as I mentioned earlier, potentially the United States.
Ifdemocratic drainbecomes a self-reinforcing cycle—where democratic decline encourages emigration, which in turn further weakens democratic resistance—what practical steps can democratic governments take to interrupt that cycle? Are institutional reforms, economic opportunities, or renewed civic engagement likely to be the most effective response?
Professor Justin Gest: I’m not sure about the latter question, but certainly in terms of what to do about this at the countries-of-origin level. When you have this steady depletion of people leaving, the most direct solution is to cultivate the regeneration of more people with democratic political values. And so that comes from education and public information campaigns, and supporting movements for democracy that educate people and cultivate an appetite for freedoms and rights, such as those that democracies promise and protect. So, that is the best way: supporting the organizations, the civil society groups, the political parties that are seizing and doing their best to cultivate more liberal and democratic norms in the people that they represent.
The Future of Migration and Democracy
And lastly, Professor Gest, taken together, your scholarship explores the intersections of migration, identity, inequality, populism, and democratic representation. Looking ahead, which emerging development—whether artificial intelligence, demographic ageing, climate mobility, rising nationalism, or growing geopolitical instability—do you believe will most fundamentally reshape the relationship between migration and democracy over the coming decade?
Professor Justin Gest: It’s a strong list you put together. It’s clearly all of the above. Each of the meta-phenomena that you mentioned plays a role. Ultimately, I think that the first step we can take to address the challenges that migration poses for democracy and democratization is to recognize those challenges. I think that more and more public officials are coming to realize that there is this relationship.
There is a relationship, and that means that if you care to protect democracy, but you also understand and recognize the critical benefits of a healthy, orderly, and well-managed immigration system, then you have to work to pursue them both, and you have to be cognizant of their relationship to each other as you make policies.
You also have to recognize that there are actors in this world who do not care about the protection of democracy, who do not care for immigrants—sometimes for very hateful reasons, and others just because they don’t think that they’re necessary. In any case, those actors will seize upon the vulnerabilities of this relationship between migration and democracy.
So, people who want to protect them both have to recognize this relationship and act accordingly. Otherwise, the temptations and the allure of easy solutions, slogans, and disinformation are going to win.
As Abelardo de la Espriella assumes Colombia’s presidency on August 7, 2026, the country enters a defining moment in its democratic development. In this timely ECPS interview, Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson examines how insecurity, rather than ideological realignment alone, has reshaped Colombia’s political landscape and accelerated the rise of security-centered populism. While acknowledging widespread public demands for stronger state authority, she warns that democratic governance cannot be reduced to coercive effectiveness. Drawing on Colombia’s own experience with armed conflict, peacebuilding, and institutional reform, Arnson argues that “offering a blank check to the armed forces and police vis-à-vis accountability invites future abuse.” The interview explores the future of the Peace Accord, human rights, constitutional checks and balances, US-Colombia relations, and the broader implications of Latin America’s rightward turn for liberal democracy.
As Abelardo de la Espriella (ADLE) prepares to assume Colombia’s presidency on August 7, 2026, the country stands at a critical juncture in its democratic trajectory. His election concludes four years of Gustavo Petro’s unprecedented left-wing administration but simultaneously inaugurates a new political era shaped by mounting public insecurity, institutional distrust, and the growing appeal of punitive forms of governance. Across Latin America, deteriorating security conditions have fueled the rise of leaders who promise decisive action against crime, often accompanied by populist rhetoric that portrays liberal democratic constraints as obstacles rather than safeguards. Colombia now finds itself at the center of this regional transformation, raising fundamental questions about whether democratic resilience can be reconciled with demands for stronger executive authority and uncompromising security policies.
In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson—adjunct lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and former director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars—places Colombia’s political transition within the broader evolution of Latin American democracy. Rather than viewing ADLE’s victory as evidence of a sweeping ideological realignment, Dr. Arnson argues that insecurity, disappointment with governance, and anti-incumbent dynamics provide a more persuasive explanation. While acknowledging an observable regional rightward trend, she cautions that “it’s important not to exaggerate the anti-incumbency aspect” or “the degree of ideological realignment of the electorate,” emphasizing that Colombian voters remain positioned largely in the ideological center.
The interview’s central concern, however, lies beyond electoral politics. It focuses on the democratic implications of governing through an increasingly militarized conception of public security. Arnson argues that ADLE successfully capitalized on widespread perceptions that Petro’s Paz Total strategy had failed, allowing him to dominate the campaign through promises of an “iron fist” approach. Yet she also warns that the popularity of coercive policies should not obscure the institutional dangers they entail. Drawing on Colombia’s painful experience with the “false positives” scandal and other abuses committed during previous security campaigns, she insists that military effectiveness cannot be separated from democratic accountability and respect for human rights.
This concern reaches its sharpest expression in Dr. Arnson’s warning about the incoming administration. “The temptation during the ADLE administration to do away with human rights and legal constraints on the armed forces is high,” she cautions. While recognizing the urgency of restoring public security, she argues that “offering a blank check to the armed forces and police vis-à-vis accountability invites future abuse and a delegitimization of state forces.” In her view, indiscriminate coercion ultimately undermines the very objectives it seeks to achieve by weakening citizen trust and disproportionately harming Colombia’s most vulnerable communities.
Beyond security policy, Dr. Arnson examines the future of Colombia’s 2016 Peace Accord, the resilience of judicial institutions, relations with the United States under a second Trump administration, and the broader rise of security-centered populism throughout Latin America. Throughout the interview, she offers a nuanced reminder that democratic stability depends not merely on defeating armed actors but on preserving constitutional restraints, maintaining institutional checks and balances, and ensuring that the pursuit of order never comes at the expense of the rule of law. As Colombia enters the ADLE era on August 7, these questions are likely to define not only the country’s democratic future but also broader debates over populism, security, and democratic governance across the hemisphere.
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson is an adjunct lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and former director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Here is the revised version of our interview with Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Anti-Incumbency Mattered, but It Does Not Fully Explain the Election
Colombia’s 2026 election has been interpreted by many observers as part of a broader regional resurgence of the populist radical right. Do you see Abelardo de la Espriella’s victory primarily as an ideological realignment, a backlash against Gustavo Petro’s presidency, or as another manifestation of the increasingly anti-incumbent nature of democratic politics in Latin America?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: There is undeniably a rightward trend in Latin American politics: since Donald Trump took office in January 2025, all 7 Latin American elections in South or Central America (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, and Peru) have been won by the center- or far right. Not all those elected are populists or outsiders; and most, but not all, reflected an anti-incumbent wave. Donald Trump’s explicit endorsement of victorious presidential candidates in Honduras and Colombia may have played a role, given the importance of the United States to both countries, but the impact is difficult to quantify.
Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella (ADLE) cast himself as an outsider and in certain aspects he was. A lawyer and businessman with his own luxury brands, ADLE created his own political movement and electoral vehicle—Defensores de la Patria—outside the established party system. Prior to his election he had never held political office.
A notable feature of the 2026 presidential election was the collapse of Colombia’s traditional right, represented by Paloma Valencia of the Centro Democrático party. She was endorsed by former president Álvaro Uribe and won a primary of rightist candidates that did not include ADLE. In the first round, Valencia was attacked as one of the políticos de siempre(same old politicians) and garnered less than 7 percent of the vote. Meanwhile centrist presidential candidates together pulled in just over 5 percent, although centrist mayors govern five of Colombia’s largest cities.
There was certainly an anti-incumbent aspect to ADLE’s election, as leftist candidate Iván Cepeda pledged continuity with many of the policies of President Gustavo Petro, including the widely criticized negotiations with criminal and quasi-insurgent groups under the rubric of Paz Total. But it’s important not to exaggerate the anti-incumbency aspect. Petro’s approval rates rose to over 46 percent in February 2026, following increases in the minimum wage. Moreover, ADLE won by an extremely narrow margin—just under 252,000 votes of the over 26 million cast, less than one percent. Without the votes of 390,974 Colombians living abroad, ADLE would have lost to Cepeda.
Similarly, one must not exaggerate the degree of ideological realignment of the electorate. As political scientist Orlando Pérez has pointed out, the way Colombian voters defined themselves on a left-right spectrum changed very little between 2020 and 2024. On a scale of one to ten (with zero on the far left and 10 the far right), the Colombian average in 2024 was 5.3, up only 0.4 from 2020, and well below the 2002 peak of 6.8.
De la Espriella Won by Owning the Security Narrative
You have long argued that Colombian democracy must be understood through the interaction of political institutions, armed conflict, and state legitimacy. To what extent does this election reveal that insecurity, rather than ideology, has become the principal driver of electoral behavior, allowing populist outsiders to redefine political competition around order rather than representation?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: One area of clear advantage for ADLE was on security issues. Petro’s signature policy of Paz Total was widely seen as a disastrous failure. Multiple indicators showed rising insecurity in rural and urban areas, including the assassination of a prominent center-right candidate in 2025, the territorial expansion of illegal armed groups and their dominance over local populations, increased kidnappings, extortion, and child recruitment, and the growth of criminal economies such as drug trafficking and illegal mining. Public opinion polls prior to the election overwhelmingly showed that “public order” was the principal concern of Colombian voters, far outstripping the second most reported issue, unemployment and the economy. Iván Cepeda’s pledge to continue Petro’s policy of negotiating with armed groups allowed De la Espriella to dominate the security narrative.
ADLE proposed numerous “iron fist” security measures, including robust military campaigns to retake territory, fumigate coca crops, build maximum security “mega-prisons” modeled on those in El Salvador, expand military budgets, and invest in intelligence, technology, and equipment for the armed forces and police. He also pledged a reinvigorated security alliance with the United States and Israel. Some of his proposals were unrealistic—he initially vowed to recapture territory in the first 90 days of his term. But his proposals, punctuated by worsening security indicators and a spate of deadly bombings in southwest Colombia before the election, resonated with the public.
Issues of social inclusion—a staple of populist politics—did not figure prominently in ADLE’s campaign. He vowed to shrink the size of the state by 40 percent and emphasized the role of free markets in growing the economy. He cited his private sector experience as the key to rapidly resolving one of Colombia’s most longstanding, thorny issues: land tenure. He also announced vague plans to address hunger by convincing prominent businessmen to purchase agricultural products in various departments of the country. At the same time, he appealed to voter sentiment by promising to come down with an “iron fist” (mano de hierro) against those who would steal public funds. He proposed the creation of an anti-corruption “search bloc,” the kind of specialized police unit that hunted down Pablo Escobar in the early 1990s.
Security Populism Has Become a Staple of Latin American Politics
Armed riot police on the streets of Bogota, Colombia on May 01, 2016. Photo: Dreamstime.
Throughout Latin America we increasingly observe candidates who combine anti-establishment rhetoric with promises of uncompromising law-and-order policies. Is Colombia witnessing the emergence of a distinctly Colombian version of right-wing populism, or does De la Espriella fit into a broader transnational family that includes leaders such as Nayib Bukele, Javier Milei, Donald Trump, and José Antonio Kast?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: The problems of crime and violence in Latin America are long-standing and profound. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “Latin America and the Caribbean remain the region most affected by organized crime and gang-related violence.” Homicide rates vary in different sub-regions and within countries, but are the highest in the world, almost four times the global average. Regional homicide rates declined between 2015 and 2023, but the UNODC reported that “the level of lethal violence remains alarmingly high.”
Homicides reflect only part of the story, however. Security analyst Robert Muggah has underscored how “lived insecurity often manifests as extortion at shopfronts, robbery on commuting routes, spectacular high-visibility incidents, and a persistent suspicion that criminals exercise de facto authority in specific neighborhoods.” In many countries, the fear of crime outstrips actual indicators of crime and violence. Muggah argues that the “disjuncture between real and perceived violent crime is most evident in places once seen as comparatively safe but where organized crime and everyday violence have become more visible.”
As a result, UNODC found that only 44 percent of citizens in Latin America feel safe walking alone in their neighborhood at night, the lowest percentage in the world and almost 30 percent lower than the global average. Chilean scholar Lucía Dammert has characterized the region’s security challenges in terms of the existence of multi-dimensional and deeply rooted structures of illegal power. These have emerged from a “perfect storm” of political crisis, corruption, criminal penetration of the state, powerful criminal economies, violent forms of dispute resolution, and the weakness of state institutions responsible for public safety.
Against this backdrop, security populism has become a staple of political campaigns, as fearful citizens demand what Muggah has called “expanded coercive power.” Governments have responded by imposing states of emergency, granting expanded powers to the military to fight crime, and pursuing judicial reforms to limit the rights of the accused and impose harsher sentences. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has adopted the most draconian measures, improving security but at a horrendous cost to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. His notorious anti-terrorism prison known as CECOT is a model which many leaders on the right look to emulate. ADLE’s pledge to construct ten mega-prisons reflects the appeal of the so-called “Bukele model.” Indeed, when a journalist asked De la Espriella to respond in one word to the name Bukele, he responded, “the future.”
Elite Connections Do Not Prevent Anti-Elite Appeals
One striking feature of election campaign was the prominence of anti-elite discourse despite the fact that several leading candidates were themselves deeply embedded in political and economic elites. Does this suggest that contemporary populism has become less about social representation than about constructing a moral narrative that divides society between virtuous citizens and corrupt establishments?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: For all his anti-elite pretensions, Colombian journalists have pointed out ADLE’s numerous connections to Colombia’s political and private sector elite. During his legal career he defended right-wing members of Congress ultimately convicted for their ties to paramilitary groups (the so-called parapolítica scandal). He also served as a defense lawyer for other business and government figures accused of corruption, including the notorious Alex Saab, accused of massive corruption and laundering money for the Venezuelan dictatorship. In addition, ADLE has surrounded himself with well-known figures in Colombia’s political class. His vice-presidential running mate, José Manuel Restrepo, held two ministerial posts during the Iván Duque presidency (Minister of Commerce, Industry, and Tourism and Minister of Finance and Public Credit) and his choice for Interior Minister, Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, served as president of the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Miguel Gómez Martínez, ADLE’s designate for Finance Minister, is a former ambassador and deputy comptroller general. These individuals are expected to provide important governing experience for the new administration.
Despite his many elite connections, ADLE’s campaign featured a staple of populist discourse—the division of society between the virtuous “people” and corrupt elites. ADLE claimed to represent “losnunca” (the nobodies) against los de siempre (the usual suspects or established political class). The anti-elite messaging struck a chord considering the low regard of Colombian citizens for key political institutions. Polling by the Colombian firm Invamer in February 2026 showed that political parties, the judicial system, and the Congress were viewed more unfavorably than any other institution in Colombia except the ELN criminal insurgency. (The armed forces and the Catholic Church scored highest).
Another feature of populism is the view that opponents are enemies to be crushed, not legitimate political actors with whom to bargain. During the campaign, ADLE declared himself the “sworn enemy” of the left (which he threatened to “disembowel”), qualifying them as “criminals,” “bandits,” and “narcoterrorists.” Invoking an all-out Manichaean struggle between good and evil, he characterized the election as a choice between “totalitarianism and democracy.” He claimed divine inspiration for his decision to run, telling Spain’s El País that God had told him to enter politics at a moment of “extreme danger” to the homeland. The battle was not just political, he said, but also “moral and spiritual” given that “evil inhabits the Casa de Nariño,” the presidential house.
ADLE emphasized conservative family values but was not above vulgar language and demonstrations of hypermasculinity. He boasted that women voters were attracted by the size of his genitals and claimed that he had the “balls” (cojones) to take on established interests.
It is an open question as to whether ADLE’s populist campaign tactics will spill over into his governing style and whether the inclusion of seasoned center-right politicians in his cabinet will moderate his propensity for disruption.
False Claims of Fraud Erode Trust Even When Elections Are Fair
Colombia’s former President Gustavo Petro. Photo: Dreamstime.
The election was accompanied by allegations of electoral irregularities and public questioning of preliminary results. You recently warned that fraud narratives without evidence can undermine democratic institutions. More broadly, how dangerous is the normalization of electoral delegitimization in countries with otherwise credible electoral systems? Can repeated attacks on electoral integrity become a form of democratic erosion even when institutions ultimately withstand them?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: No one did more to undermine confidence in the electoral system that President Petro himself. For months he spread false narratives about fraud and refused to accept ADLE’s victory; a group of his supporters have filed a judicial complaint aimed at declaring the election null and void. Petro accused the National Civil Registry (Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil), in charge of voter registration and vote tabulation, of manipulating results before the election. Petro also lashed out at Colombian and Israeli companies for their supposed electoral intervention. Even after Iván Cepeda himself recognized ADLE’s victory, Petro claimed that “the Colombian people have elected Iván Cepeda.”
The fraud narrative was amplified on social media. According to the US-based Carter Center, the campaign marked the first “widespread use of artificial intelligence” in Colombian elections, contributing to the spread of disinformation. This included “false messages about voting, out-of-context videos suggesting fraud, alleged early results, and misleading narratives about the transparency of the vote count.”
Despite repeated denunciations of fraud, Petro failed to present supporting evidence. An election observer team from the European Union praised the electoral system’s transparency, safeguards, and rapid publication of results. Observers from the Organization of American States and Colombia’s own Electoral Observation Mission (Misión de Observación Elctoral, MOE) acknowledged complaints and made recommendations to improve technical aspects of election administration but similarly found no evidence to support fraud allegations.
Had Cepeda won the election, one presumes that Gustavo Petro would have desisted from claiming fraud. Insisting on the narrative will continue to erode faith in Colombia’s institutions, fostering ongoing polarization and ultimately damaging its democracy.
Performance Matters as Much as Democratic Principles
Colombia’s 1991 Constitution was designed to broaden democratic inclusion after decades of political violence. Yet thirty-five years later, many Colombians appear willing to support leaders advocating exceptional measures against crime and armed groups. Does this suggest that constitutional democracy is increasingly being judged less by liberal principles than by its perceived capacity to deliver security and effective governance?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: It is probably not the case that citizens are indifferent to issues of democratic practices, civil liberties, and human rights. In its most recent survey in 2024, the Santiago-based polling firm Latinobarómetro found that 61 percent of Colombian’s agreed with the statement that “democracy may have its problems but it’s the best system of government.” At the same time, Latinobarómetro found that a scant 20 percent of Colombians were satisfied with the way democracy functioned. The gap demonstrates an important weakness in Colombia’s democratic system—its capacity to deliver things that citizens want and need: security and economic opportunity. An alarming majority of Colombians—52 percent—said they didn’t care if a non-democratic government came to power “if it solved problems.” Vanderbilt University’s LAPOP has consistently found that crime victimization and support for authoritarian measures go hand in hand. And in his book, The Crisis of Modern Capitalism, British financial correspondent Martin Wolf found that an essential ingredient of democratic stability was an economy that provided for a decent standard of living. Government performance, rather than abstract principles, is key to the future of representative democracy, in Colombia and elsewhere.
Security Without Accountability Invites Future Abuse
Bogotá, Colombia — January 18, 2009: Colombian soldiers march during a military parade in Plaza de Bolívar, the historic heart of Bogotá. Photo: King Ho Yim / Dreamstime.
Throughout your work you have emphasized that unresolved violence weakens democratic institutions. If Colombia shifts from Petro’s strategy of negotiation toward a far more coercive security doctrine, what lessons should policymakers draw from Colombia’s own history regarding the relationship between military effectiveness, democratic accountability, and respect for human rights?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: Of the many incoherencies of Petro’s Total Peace policy, the most important was a lack of strategic vision concerning the relationship between military force and political negotiations with insurgent or criminal groups (in recent years, the line has all but disappeared). Ceasefires with multiple armed groups allowed them to expand their territorial presence and increase their coercive control over the civilian population. By contrast, the peace accord between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and Colombia’s largest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was concluded after a sequence of military operations, most notably between 2008 and 2012, that profoundly weakened the insurgency.
The Colombian experience also demonstrates that military and political advances absent efforts to establish legitimate state presence throughout the national territory are easily reversible. Following the FARC’s demobilization in 2017, other armed groups, not the state, filled the vacuum of power. These groups competed amongst themselves for lucrative drug routes and other sources of illegal rent. The 2016 peace accord provided an historic opportunity to extend state presence throughout the countryside, in security as well as development terms. The failure to do so began late in the Santos administration, continued under the Duque administration, and accelerated during Petro’s term.
That said, Colombia also illustrates the dangers of military force not bounded by democratic and human rights norms. Over a period of decades—but principally between 2002 and 2008—the military murdered over 7,800 young men from poor neighborhoods, dressing them up in guerrilla uniforms to inflate body counts. This was the “false positives” scandal, the worst blow to the prestige of the armed forces in recent times. Other undemocratic practices carried out in the name of security during the Uribe years included the illegal wiretapping of opposition politicians, Supreme Court justices, and journalists. This led to the dissolution of Colombia’s domestic intelligence agency, the DAS.
The temptation during the ADLE administration to do away with human rights and legal constraints on the armed forces is high. ADLE has proposed total judicial security for public security forces ….“an absolute priority to the public forces over the narcoterrorists regarding international humanitarian law.” However necessary it is to improve security in Colombia, offering a blank check to the armed forces and police vis-à-vis accountability invites future abuse and a delegitimization of state forces. The tasks of weakening violent actors and illegal economies, recovering state control of territory, and reinforcing citizen trust in the police and armed forces are undermined by indiscriminate tactics that inevitably have their greatest impact on poor communities.
Sustainable Peace Depends on Governance, Not Only Coercion
How should we understand the relationship between populism and Colombia’s long-standing armed conflict? Does persistent insecurity create unusually fertile conditions for populist leaders who promise decisive action, or does populist politics itself risk further polarizing a society that has struggled for decades to build sustainable peace?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: During Petro’s term, a dynamic of confrontation between and among armed groups largely replaced confrontation between such groups and the government, with disastrous consequences for the civilian population. According to the International Committee for the Red Cross, the humanitarian consequences of the armed conflict in 2025 reached “the most serious level in the last decade.” Restrictions on movement (confinements), extorsion, forced recruitment, and displacement reflect a perverse gobernanza criminal in Colombia’s rural areas where the state has historically been absent. The increase in the number of combatants comprising Colombia’s eight principal illegal armed groups has been staggering since the peace accord with the FARC: from approximately 6,500 in 2017 to more than 27,000 today, according to government figures compiled by the Bogotá think tank, Fundación Ideas para la Paz. While significant increases took place under the previous government of President Iván Duque, the pace of growth accelerated between 2023-2025 during Petro’s term.
This is the backdrop to ADLE’s victory. He laid out his security approach in a February 2026 interview with Colombia’s leading daily, El Tiempo. To combat all the forms of violence, he said, one had to begin by fumigating 333,000 hectares of coca, “the base of the pyramid” and source of income for criminal confederations. He also proposed bombing narcoterrorist camps and killing or capturing ten ringleaders in each Colombian department.
One does not have to discount the importance of a robust security strategy to weaken criminal groups and the illicit economies on which they rely to observe that force alone will not establish state legitimacy. Colombia’s peace agreement posited that rural development and creating the conditions for sustainable livelihoods, especially in coca-producing areas, were essential ingredients of governance and stability. That premise remains as valid today as it was in 2016.
Undermining the Peace Accord Would Be Counterproductive
The 2016 Peace Accord remains one of the most ambitious peacebuilding projects in recent history. To what extent could a more confrontational security strategy alter the political consensus surrounding the peace process? Is Colombia entering a period of policy correction, or might it risk reversing some of the institutional gains achieved since the agreement?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: One of the biggest obstacles to peace accord implementation has been, precisely, the lack of consensus over its provisions. This was reflected most dramatically in the narrow victory of the “No” vote in an October 2016 plebiscite. But since then, the accord has been embedded in Colombian law and the constitution, providing for some, albeit uneven, degree of implementation over the last decade. Most important have been programs of reinsertion for some 11,000 former combatants as well as focused development programs, known as PDET’s, to provide development opportunities for conflict- and coca-affected communities. The Petro administration oversaw some advances in land restitution but most of the rural reform agenda remains pending, as do other important aspects of the accord.
The University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, which measures accord implementation, noted in June 2026 that “violence remains the primary impediment to sustainable peace.” The Institute noted the “gap between ambitious planning and territorial reality” and cited a “pressing need to accelerate structural reforms.”
To what extent, if at all, the ADLE administration will pursue further implementation of the 2016 accord remains to be seen, although it is unlikely. The Trump administration maneuvered in 2025 to narrow the mandate of the UN mission verifying implementation of the peace agreement, eliminating its monitoring of the accord’s ethnic chapter and the work of the transitional justice mechanism known as the JEP (Special Jurisdiction for Peace). ADLE has vowed to abolish the JEP; and although it has constitutional standing, he could simply starve the court of funds. The same holds true for other aspects of the accord, including programs to reincorporate demobilized fighters into civilian life.
Efforts to undermine the peace agreement will likely prove to be counter-productive. Without judicial guarantees and sustainable livelihoods, hundreds if not thousands of demobilized guerrillas could be tempted to return to arms, worsening the security challenges.
Human Rights Institutions Face Growing Political Pressure
Protesters march peacefully through Bogotá calling for the impeachment of President Gustavo Petro and opposing the government’s proposed reforms on April 21, 2024. Photo: Anamaria Mejía / Dreamstime.
You have written extensively about the importance of human rights in democratic consolidation. Around the world, however, populist leaders increasingly portray human rights institutions as obstacles to popular sovereignty and effective governance. How vulnerable are Colombia’s judicial institutions, constitutional safeguards, and human rights mechanisms to this increasingly widespread populist critique?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: Since winning the election, ADLE has vowed to eliminate several entities charged with overseeing peace and human rights issues, folding their functions into other ministries. Those on the chopping block include the office of the High Commissioner for Peace, and the presidential advisors for National Reconciliation and for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law. Like President Javier Milei in Argentina, ADLE has plans to slash government positions and dramatically shrink the size of the state. There is undoubtedly a need for state reform and improved inter-agency coordination in Colombia. For example, Colombian scholar Michael Weintraub has identified over two dozen government entities involved in drug policy. Colombia has two institutions with important human rights responsibilities—the Defensoría del Pueblo and the Procuraduría General de la Nación (the People’s Defender and Inspector General, respectively.) The leaders of both institutions are elected by the Colombian legislature from a slate of candidates put forward by the executive branch and the courts. The heads of these agencies serve four-year terms which end in 2028 (Defensor) and 2029 (Procurador). Hence, while activities of both institutions can be affected by budget and personnel cuts, ADLE is not at liberty to remove the existing leadership.
Especially troubling is ADLE’s hostility to multilateral organizations and human rights bodies. He has tempered pledges made in 2025 to withdraw Colombia from the UN, OAS, and Inter-American human rights system, but he has made no secret that he views these organizations as biased, inefficient, and contrary to Colombia’s interests. Eliminating or reducing the UN and OAS presence within Colombia would be especially damaging, given the rising human and economic toll of conflict and violence. Multiple parts of the UN system, including the Verification Mission for the Peace Process, the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) all play critical roles. These include verifying the implementation of the peace agreement, providing assistance to displaced populations and refugees (nearly 3 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants have entered Colombia since 2014), and addressing the worsening human rights and humanitarian crisis in rural areas. All parts of the UN system, in Colombia and elsewhere, have suffered budget cuts that are largely a product of reductions in US assistance. For its part, the OAS provided extensive monitoring of the first and second rounds of the 2026 elections, pushing back against narratives of fraud and making numerous recommendations to strengthen electoral institutions and processes; and since 2004, the OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process has also provided important support for peacebuilding.
ADLE’s plans to intensify military operations, if coupled with efforts to reduce the presence of key international actors, could significantly worsen the already dire situation facing conflict-affected populations.
Washington and Bogotá Are Entering a New Phase of Cooperation
Your recent work highlights both the enduring strategic importance of Colombia for the United States and growing tensions in bilateral relations. Under a new right-leaning Colombian administration and a second Trump presidency, do you anticipate a restoration of the traditional US-Colombia partnership, or could new disagreements emerge despite greater ideological affinity?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: US-Colombia relations will tighten substantially following the years of tension and near rupture during the Petro years. Deputy Assistant Secretary of War Joseph Humire visited Colombia in July 2026, pledging to take cooperation to “new levels” and invoking a “Plan Patriota 2.0,” an important symbolic reference to Álvaro Uribe’s 2002 security policy. Also in July, a high-level Colombian delegation visited Washington, including the incoming vice president and ministers of finance, trade, foreign affairs, and defense. The group held a whirlwind of meetings in the executive branch, Congress, and international development banks, with officials emphasizing a “new beginning” in bilateral relations.
ADLE has called for tightening relations with the United States and Israel, citing needs for new military equipment, technology, intelligence and AI capacity, and expanded troop levels. His view that narcoterrorism constitutes not just a threat to Colombia but to the national security of the United States dovetails seamlessly with that of the Trump administration. Early in his term President Trump designated drug cartels and gangs as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and late last year informed the US Congress that actions by cartels “constitute an armed attack against the United States.” In that context, the United States has carried out dozens of attacks on so-called narcolanchas in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing hundreds in what critics decry as violations of the laws of war.
Along with other conservative leaders in the hemisphere, ADLE is poised to eagerly join the Trump administration’s Americas Counter Cartel initiative and participate in the security alliance known as the Shield of the Americas. It remains to be seen, however, what concrete assistance will flow through these programs, despite the pressing need for regional collaboration in combatting organized crime. At the same time, a more direct US role in Colombian security operations—something alluded to in the White House Counterterrorism Strategy—could provoke a strong backlash among ADLE opponents who constitute roughly half the electorate.
ADLE’s and the Trump administration’s militarized approach to counter-drug strategy is likely to meet its most significant obstacles in the US Congress. This will be especially true if the US mid-term elections put Democrats in control of one or, potentially, both houses of Congress. Thus far, President Trump has relied on Republican majorities in the House and Senate to support, however narrowly, his foreign policy priorities. That said, the foreign aid bill signed into law in February 2026 contained provisions advanced by Democrats that conditioned 20 percent of military financing on progress in bringing human rights violators to justice, reducing threats and attacks on civil society activists, and protecting Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities. Democrats will insist—as they have over the decades of US-Colombian cooperation—on the human rights, humanitarian, and development dimensions of bilateral relations. Restoring what had been a bipartisan consensus over the importance of US-Colombian relations will require accommodating not just the Trump administration and Republicans, but also congressional Democrats. Álvaro Uribe ignored such concerns to his peril, ultimately failing to overcome resistance to a long-sought bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) because of human rights concerns.
The Trump administration is also likely to support financing from both the US Treasury and international financial institutions to stabilize Colombia’s economy. Government spending and public debt mushroomed during Petro’s presidency as he suspended the so-called fiscal rule designed to limit the debt-to-GDP ratio. The incoming ADLE administration inherits a fiscal deficit that has already resulted in a downgrading of Colombia’s credit rating. Cutting the budget to restore fiscal balance has the potential to detonate social unrest.
Executive Ambition Will Face Legislative and Judicial Constraints
Unidentified people in the senate meeting, in congress building in Bogota, Colombia on October 22, 2017. Photo: Pablo Hidalgo / Dreamstime.
Many scholars argue that contemporary democratic crises are increasingly characterized not by abrupt authoritarian breakdowns but by gradual institutional erosion. Looking ahead, what indicators should observers watch most closely in Colombia to distinguish democratic correction from democratic backsliding under the incoming government?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: Political scientist Michael Coppedge has identified two main paths to democratic backsliding: attacks on civil liberties and a free press, and the erosion of checks and balances (what the scholarly literature calls “horizontal accountability”). Backsliding is associated with power grabs by the executive branch, the weakening of judicial institutions, and efforts to undermine the independence of electoral and other institutions.
ADLE may be tempted to rule by decree, but he is likely to face legislative and judicial checks on his power. The composition of the legislature since the March 2026 elections saw Petro and Cepeda’s Pacto Histórico party win the largest number of seats in the House and Senate, significantly more than Álvaro Uribe’s center-right Centro Democrático. According to Colombia Risk Analysis, a consultancy, Colombia’s traditional Conservative and Liberal parties, together with the centrist Partido de la U, captured 47 Senate seats. These parties constitute a “swing” bloc with which ADLE will have to negotiate, issue by issue, to enact parts of his agenda.
ADLE cannot even count on the center-right to back his priorities all the time. When the new Congress was inaugurated in July 2026, a bizarre left-right alliance between the Pacto Histórico and Centro Democrático kept ADLE’s preferred candidate from being elected legislative president. Recurrent obstacles of this sort might tempt ADLE to try to bypass the Congress altogether, but Colombia’s Constitutional Court has the ultimate authority to rule on the constitutionality of executive decrees and legislation. The Court is widely respected as a defender of Colombia’s rights-oriented 1991 Constitution.
It Is Too Early to Declare a Permanent Rightward Turn
There were lots of Venezuelans crossing the border into the land of Colombia. This was captured in La parada, Colombia. Photo: Shutterstock.
Finally, stepping back from Colombia itself, do you believe Latin America is entering a new political cycle in which populist radical-right movements increasingly replace the left-populist wave or “pink tide” of the previous decade? Or are we witnessing something more profound—a regional transformation in which ideology matters less than citizens’ demand for security, state effectiveness, and political order?
Dr. Cynthia J. Arnson: The electoral successes of the far right in Latin America are a relatively new phenomenon (this excludes right-wing military regimes that took power by force). Thus, it is perhaps too soon to make sweeping conclusions about what their electoral victories bode for the region.
Some analysts view the recent spate of right-wing successes as part of an anti-incumbency trend, in which the deep challenges of governance, particularly in confronting crime and organized crime, lead to popular frustration and a subsequent swing of the political pendulum. If this view is correct, and if the right proves no more successful in improving security and livelihoods than their left-wing predecessors, future elections could see the pendulum swing away from right-led governments. That said, three countries in Latin America—the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Mexico—bucked the anti-incumbency trend in their most recent presidential elections, suggesting that the desire for alternation may be less potent than before. Furthermore, polling by Latinobarómetro and others shows little evidence of a large ideological realignment of the region’s electorate, with most voters placing themselves towards the middle of the ideological spectrum.
Chilean political scientist Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, co-editor of a 2026 volume, The Far Right in Latin America, has identified commonalities among far-right actors in Latin America, Europe and the United States; they are “capitalizing on feelings of status loss and declining political relevance among groups unsettled by the gradual incorporation of historically marginalized populations.” Low or mediocre economic growth, stagnating or declining real wages, the high cost of living (exacerbated now by the Iran war), culture wars, and the mistrust or rejection of elites provide a common backdrop for the rise of far-right leaders.
Whereas the “rise of the left” in Latin America in the aughts was associated with a critique of neoliberalism and the structural adjustment reforms advocated by Washington-based institutions, for Rovira and other analysts, the rise of the right is linked to cultural rather than economic issues. These include family, traditional gender roles, religion, and opposition to abortion and LBGTQ rights. Today’s right-wing governments inherit a longstanding feature of rightist politics having to do with crime-fighting strategies. Two decades before Nayib Bukele imposed a 2022 state of emergency and jailed close to 1.5 percent of the Salvadoran population, El Salvador’s right-wing presidents imposed mano dura and súper mano dura policies to curb gang violence. Rightists since the 1990s have rejected rights-based efforts to fight crime through policies aimed at fostering social inclusion, community policing, and youth-oriented crime prevention. Deteriorating security conditions in Latin America—both real and perceived—have created a backlash against policies viewed as “soft on crime,” creating a fertile climate for the emergence of “punitive populism” embraced by the right long before Latin America’s most recent electoral cycle.
The anti-immigrant sentiment that has super-charged the right in Europe and the United States is reflected unevenly in Latin America. Chile’s rightist president José Antonio Kast made opposition to immigration a central tenet of his campaign, linking the rise in crime to foreign gangs such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua. By contrast—and despite the presence of close to three million Venezuelans in Colombia—anti-migrant sentiment did not figure in ADLE’s campaign.
It is difficult to predict how long the current rightward shift will last. The salience of identity politics means that politicians will have to satisfy not only demands for improved performance in the security and economic arenas but also appeal to voters’ sense of self in relation to others in society. Polarization is likely to deepen as core values become all-or-nothing objects of contestation. How this dynamic plays out will be central to determining liberal democracy’s future.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming far more than information ecosystems—it is reshaping the constitutional foundations of democracy itself. In this interview with the ECPS, Professor Danielle Allen argues that the central challenge of AI is not merely technological but constitutional, requiring democratic societies to rethink representation, political power, and civic agency. Rejecting technological determinism, she contends that democratic institutions can still shape AI’s trajectory, provided they strengthen rather than diminish human judgment. Discussing populism, democratic backsliding, surveillance, intermediary institutions, digital citizenship, and constitutional reform, Professor Allen presents a compelling vision of democratic renewal grounded in one core principle: artificial intelligence should complement human capacities—not replace the judgment upon which liberal democracy ultimately depends.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the institutional architecture of democratic politics. While much public debate has focused on misinformation, deepfakes, automation, and employment, a growing body of scholarship suggests that the more profound implications of generative AI lie elsewhere: in its capacity to reshape political authority, democratic representation, and the constitutional foundations of liberal self-government. As AI systems increasingly mediate public discourse, organize information, influence political preferences, and concentrate unprecedented forms of economic and computational power, the central question is no longer simply how societies should regulate a new technology, but how constitutional democracies themselves must adapt to preserve political equality, civic agency, and democratic accountability.
Few scholars are better positioned to address these challenges than Professor Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and the Democratic Knowledge Project, and one of the world’s leading political philosophers working at the intersection of constitutional democracy, citizenship, technology, and democratic renewal. In her widely discussed Journal of Democracy essay, “The Real Dangers of Generative AI,” Professor Allen argues that contemporary debates have fundamentally misidentified the nature of the challenge. Rather than treating AI as merely a technological disruption, she contends that it represents a constitutional turning point requiring a fundamental rethinking of democratic institutions themselves.
In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Allen offers a remarkably expansive framework for understanding how AI intersects with democratic governance. Rejecting the conventional separation between technology and constitutional politics, she argues that “political institutions are themselves technologies” and therefore cannot be understood independently of technological transformation. From this perspective, AI is not simply another digital innovation but a force capable of altering the institutional mechanisms through which democratic societies organize representation, distribute political power, and preserve constitutional order.
Throughout the conversation, Professor Allen explores the twin dangers confronting liberal democracies: democratic collapse, produced by the erosion of trustworthy informational infrastructures, and democratic singularity, arising from unprecedented concentrations of computational, informational, and economic power. At the same time, she rejects technological determinism. Instead, she insists that democratic societies retain the capacity to shape AI’s trajectory through institutional reform, constitutional safeguards, and renewed democratic participation.
A recurring theme throughout the interview is the centrality of human agency. Professor Allen argues that democratic renewal ultimately depends not upon resisting technological innovation but upon designing institutions that preserve civic judgment and constitutional self-government. As she puts it, “technology always develops out of a moral vision,” making AI fundamentally a political rather than merely technical question. Consequently, she maintains that the essential democratic task is not simply regulating machines but ensuring that “AI should strengthen human judgment, not replace it.” That principle ultimately serves as the interview’s normative anchor, connecting questions of constitutional design, democratic education, AI governance, intermediary institutions, populism, surveillance, and the future of liberal democracy into a single coherent vision of democratic resilience in the age of artificial intelligence.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Danielle Allen, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Political Institutions Are Themselves Technologies
Facial recognition technology scans individuals and displays digital identity and personal data, illustrating AI-powered biometric surveillance. Photo: Piyamas Dulmunsumphun / Dreamstime.
Professor Allen, welcome!Let me begin with your recent Journal of Democracyarticle, “The Real Dangers of Generative AI.”You argue that public debate has focused too heavily on misinformation, deepfakes, and job displacement while overlooking AI’s deeper capacity to restructure political authority and democratic institutions. Why do you believe the greatest threat posed by generative AI is constitutional rather than merely technological, and how does this fundamentally change the way scholars should understand democratic backsliding?
Professor Danielle Allen: Thank you. It’s an important question. I would start by saying that I don’t draw a distinction between the merely technological and the constitutional. Political institutions are themselves technologies. Representation, when it was invented in the eighteenth century, along with electoral districts and voting methods and so forth, was a technology. It was a technology for channeling citizens’ voices into decision-making and producing a counterweight to the other forms of power that existed in monarchical and aristocratic structures. Consequently, any major technological change that affects information, communication, and related domains has the potential to disrupt that foundational technology through which we organize politics.
For the last four decades, policymaking circles have prioritized material well-being while substantially downgrading questions of political organization. As a result, we have underestimated and under-attended to the ways new technologies can disrupt our core political technologies because of this broader blind spot in thinking about politics. In that regard, what I’m trying to do is rectify a broader blind spot in policymaking—to help people remember that our political institutions, whether people have political empowerment, access to voice, and so forth, are essential parts of the story of human flourishing. We have to pay attention to those things as policymakers. And secondly, we have to pay close attention whenever a major disruptive technology directly interacts with those original technologies of representation.
The Concentration of Power Poses Dangers to Core Democratic Rights
You distinguish between what you call “democratic collapse” and “democratic singularity.” Could you explain how these two concepts differ? To what extent does the concentration of computational, informational, and economic power in a handful of corporations create conditions that resemble the concentration of political power traditionally associated with authoritarian regimes?
Professor Danielle Allen: Great question. What my co-author, E. Glen Weyl, and I were trying to do in that article was to describe two dangers that liberal democracies have to navigate. We call these the danger of collapse and the danger of singularity.
The danger of collapse is one in which the informational infrastructures on which you rely for popular sovereignty and institutionally driven decision-making no longer function because of misinformation, deepfakes, the collapse of identity systems, and things like that. That’s one danger the new technologies are provoking as they interact with the traditional technologies of representation.
The second danger is the concentration of power that you’ve been describing. That concentration can emerge in several ways. There’s the issue of capital, the concentration of capital, and the sort of political power that flows from it. There’s also the issue of the concentration of power through control of data and surveillance capacity. Both of those things harbor dangers to core democratic rights, whether those are rights of privacy or rights of equal voice in a political system, and so forth.
So, these are the two dangers: on the one hand, the possibility of chaos and collapse; on the other, the concentration of power. The hard question, then, is how the institutions of liberal democracy can steer through this period of rapid change and transformation, secure control over the new technologies, and truly integrate their capacities into the project of liberal self-government.
What We Really Have Is a Clash of Intermediaries
Truth Social displayed on a smartphone. The social media platform, owned by Donald Trump, was launched as an alternative to mainstream social media. Photo: Rokas Tenys / Dreamstime.
Across Europe and North America, populist leaders increasingly claim to represent “the people” while simultaneously attacking intermediary institutions such as independent media, universities, courts, and civil services. Does generative AI risk accelerating precisely this populist logic by allowing leaders to communicate directly with citizens while bypassing democratic intermediaries altogether?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. I would put the situation slightly differently. I would say it’s not so much that they’re bypassing intermediaries as deploying AI as a new kind of intermediary. In that regard, yes, the traditional intermediaries are under pressure from a new set of intermediaries. Those new intermediaries are the tech infrastructures that populists are using to communicate. In other words, when President Trump establishes Truth Social as an alternative to the existing social media platforms, he is not dispensing with intermediaries but creating his own intermediary, namely that platform.
So, what we really have is a clash of intermediaries. The challenge is that the old intermediaries—universities, newspapers, the traditional institutions, and so forth—grew up in a legal environment, and actively defended a legal environment, that placed a set of basic rights at its center: freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of civil society to maintain independence from government, and the like.
The new intermediaries, by contrast, are not necessarily dependent on those basic rights for their growth or committed to protecting them. That’s where the problem arises.
This is captured, for example, in the challenge surrounding Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act. That provision has essentially exempted social media platforms from regulation on the grounds that regulating them would amount to regulating speech. It collapses speech and algorithms. We ought to be able to regulate algorithms, which essentially perform an editorial or publishing function, in the same way that the print media found itself regulated.
Print media was liable for libel, defamation, and similar harms because of its editorial decisions, whereas social media platforms have been exempted from all of that. Mistakenly exempted, that’s the point I’m making. Because they have been able to flourish without the kinds of careful mechanisms for balancing the protection of speech rights with protection against harms such as defamation and libel, we have experienced rampant problems of misinformation. So, the point I’m trying to make is simply that the old intermediaries have baked into them a more stable and useful rights-based structure than the new intermediaries do.
The Personalized Algorithmic Universe Is Becoming Completely Unreliable
Your work suggests that democracy ultimately depends upon citizens sharing a sufficiently common informational environment. Yet generative AI enables highly individualized persuasion at unprecedented scale. Are we moving from an era of mass propaganda toward what might be called algorithmic individualized populism, where every voter effectively receives a personalized political reality?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. To some extent, I think the answer has to be ‘yes’. Although I think there’s a situation beyond that. What is really happening is that everybody is going to be thrown back on communication with their own trusted networks, and that’s what they will rely on as their source of information.
The personalized algorithmic universe is also one that people are already coming to recognize as completely unreliable. You can’t distinguish between AI-generated things and real things, and so forth. As we develop digital competence—and by that I mean the ability to use these tools ourselves so that we can understand how easily they can be manipulated and manipulate others—we will inoculate ourselves against some of the dangers of that algorithmic environment.
What that, then, means is that we will basically trust the people we actually know and our communications with those people. So, in a funny way, the very big world that we had made small through communications technology is about to become much bigger again. It is going to be harder for people to share trusted messages at scale, precisely because the level of distrust is going to be so high.
We Need Algorithms That Encourage People to Bridge Viewpoint Differences
Artificial intelligence as a next-generation technology shaping the digital era. Photo: Dreamstime.
One striking feature of contemporary populism is its capacity to transform emotional identity into political loyalty. To what extent do recommended algorithms and generative AI amplify precisely those forms of resentment, grievance, and identity polarization upon which contemporary populist movements increasingly depend?
Professor Danielle Allen: They certainly seem to be very active contributors to that. There’s important work being done now by technologists and political scientists to propose alternative structures for algorithms that are focused on pro-social incentives—algorithmic incentives that encourage people to build more bridges across viewpoint differences—and better contextualization tools so that people can see the full spread of opinion and understand where their own opinion sits within that landscape. That helps avoid some of the effects and emotional impacts that come from the siloization of opinion.
The problems you’re describing are all very real. They are the dominant problems in our social media and algorithmic landscape at the moment. At the same time, there really is innovative new work. I’m thinking of people like Aviv Ovadya and his colleague Luke Thorburn, and others who are generating an alternative set of structures for our algorithmic foundation.
Existing Scholarly Foundations Can Be Extended Into the Age of AI
Much scholarship on democratic erosion focuses on executive aggrandizement, judicial capture, electoral manipulation, and attacks on independent institutions. Does AI require us to rethink democratic backsliding itself by recognizing that democracy may now be weakened through the concentration of technological infrastructure rather than solely through constitutional manipulation?
Professor Danielle Allen: I’m not so sure if it requires fundamentally different analytical categories. When, for example, people were studying the genocides in Rwanda, Serbia, and Croatia, one of the key technologies that facilitated them was radio and its use to spread slurs, dehumanizing rhetoric, and memes that helped frame the ultimate victims of genocide as enemies and non-humans, and things like that. My point is that the study of autocracy has long included the study of technology and mass communication. Those pre-existing scholarly foundations can simply be extended into the contemporary context. I don’t think it’s a change of kind so much as a change of scale.
We Don’t Face an Emerging Problem—We Face an Already Existing One
You argue that democracy requires not merely political equality but also a broad distribution of power. Looking at the rapid consolidation of frontier AI among a handful of technology companies, do you believe liberal democracies face an emerging form of private constitutional power that existing democratic institutions are largely unequipped to regulate?
Professor Danielle Allen: I think we don’t face an emerging problem; we face an actually existent, interior problem. It has already emerged, and it’s a totally real problem. Europe has done a better job regulating this power than the US has. I’m thinking about the GDPR(The General Data Protection Regulation) and other forms of regulation, including the recent EU AI Act. That tells me it’s not that liberal democracies lack the capacity to regulate these technologies; it’s that the US, specifically, doesn’t have the capacity right now to regulate them. So, this is not a permanent problem but a political problem here in the US.
I also think we probably have a lot to learn from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the first Gilded Age, as we call it. We’re living through a second Gilded Age, and just as in the first, industrialization produced corporations with enormous concentrations of power, robber barons, and corporations that sought monopolistic control not only of the economy but also of political structures. We’re watching a repeat of all of that.
Those concentrations of power were broken up in the early twentieth century through a very serious array of anti-trust policies. People often point to the importance of the work of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, for example. Today, there’s a whole slew of what people call neo-Brandeisian anti-monopoly policies that many are advocating. I think we do need another era of trust-busting, breaking up those concentrations of power.
I know the dynamic right now between Europe, the EU, and the US is extremely complicated and painful. I will say that I take it as good news that Europe is starting to build a path toward empowering its own tech companies. I do think that taking on the monopoly of the US firms is an important thing to do.
There’s Going to Be a Battle Between Globe-Spanning Tech Powers and Nation-States
Elon Musk—founder and CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, owner of X (formerly Twitter), and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI—speaks at VIVA Technology (VivaTech), June 16, 2023. Photo: Frédéric Legrand / Dreamstime.
Throughout democratic history, monopolies over information have often strengthened authoritarian rule. How different is today’s AI revolution from earlier media revolutions such as radio, television, or social media? Does generative AI represent a quantitative extension of those transformations, or does it constitute a genuinely new constitutional moment?
Professor Danielle Allen: It’s a great question. To be honest, I don’t think I really have an answer. In some ways, it’s an obvious continuation, and I’ve already mentioned that. On the other hand, the speed and scale of change are wholly new for humanity. That’s honestly the part that concerns me the most: the rapidity and the totalizing nature of it.
Take the fact that somebody like Elon Musk can, in five years, manage to have half of the world’s satellites in space. It’s probably more than half of them by now. He has the capacity to intervene directly in geopolitical decision-making among the world’s nation-states. That’s what’s fundamentally different. The earlier technologies came into existence and existed essentially within nation-states. We now have corporations with a degree of political control that puts them in a more powerful position than nation-states.
It’s not that this has never happened before. In the eighteenth century, for example, Britain faced, roughly speaking, a similar kind of problem with the East India Company. Other European powers faced similar challenges with the colonial trading empires that they first allowed to grow and then discovered had gone beyond their control. That, of course, led to the struggles in the nineteenth century between nation-state governments and those colonial companies. We are likely to see another period of that kind of struggle.
I don’t think the nation-state is doomed. I don’t think it’s doomed primarily because people still live in places. Human beings are embodied, and we are instantiated in geographic locales. Our communities matter to us, and that feature of human life, which starts from the ground and extends outward, will continue to be an important part of governance and jurisdictionality. So, in that regard, there’s going to be a battle, for sure, between globe-spanning tech powers and nation-states. I do think nation-states can win in the end. And I would argue they should win. But it’s going to be a very hard period of struggle.
Technology Should Complement Human Intelligence, Not Replace It
In “How AI Fails Us,” you criticize the dominant vision of AI as autonomous intelligence and instead advocate technologies that augment human cooperation rather than replace it. How might this alternative vision reshape democratic governance? Could cooperative AI become a tool for democratic renewal rather than democratic erosion?
Professor Danielle Allen: I appreciate that question. What really matters here is that we sometimes think the way technology is currently unfolding is somehow a matter of the laws of nature or the laws of physics—that it’s simply a natural outgrowth of nature itself. That’s a mistake, and it already gives away too much power. Technology always develops out of some kind of moral vision. By moral vision, I mean a way of understanding human beings, human capacity, and the human relationship to nature and the world.
The argument of that paper is that the moral vision behind the current technological supernova rests on a flawed premise. That premise is that there is one thing called human intelligence, that it is singular, and that machines are trying to replicate and ultimately overcome it. Whereas, in fact, human intelligence is multiple. It comes in a whole range of varieties. Machine intelligence is also multiple. That plurality of our intelligences is valuable to specific societies and to humankind as a whole.
Plurality can be activated for tribalism, conflict, and division, or it can be activated for creativity, innovation, and cultural richness. One of the most important human projects, therefore, is to give ourselves the tools to activate the plurality of our intelligences for those positive outcomes.
If you begin with that basic vision of human beings and human well-being, then you can see a completely different approach to technological development. It is an approach based on activating that plurality in a positive way, one that requires complementing human intelligences rather than trying to overcome or replace them.
Very ordinary technologies, like the Zoom technology we’re using right now, provide a good example. Zoom complements what human beings can do. We can’t see across thousands of miles, so being able to do that through Zoom supplements what we are already able to do. It doesn’t actually replace anything we were previously doing. So, one can begin to envision a host of things that would be wonderful to be able to do that are all supplemental rather than replacing our core capacities.
We Need a Formally Articulated Bill of Rights Against the Powers of AI
Authoritarian governments increasingly combine sophisticated digital surveillance with artificial intelligence, while democratic governments are also rapidly adopting AI for policing, border control, and public administration. How can constitutional democracies harness AI’s administrative potential without gradually normalizing technologies of surveillance and executive concentration that undermine liberal constitutionalism?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. I think we’re at a point where we need a formally articulated bill of rights against the powers of AI. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as nation-states were consolidating their power, people articulated bills of rights. In the US case, we have the first ten amendments to the Constitution: rights to association, rights to expression, freedom from search and seizure without warrants, rights to trial by jury, and so forth.
All of those rights apply to the AI universe, but it is worth taking the time to elaborate on what is required to ensure that they are protected under the surveillance conditions made possible by AI. That’s a project for legal scholars—to spell out, at meaningful length, what those requirements are.
I do think the GDPR was a good model for extending those rights protections into the environment of digital data and the like. We need to keep building that edifice of crystal-clear legal protections and limitations. Again, some of the lawsuits right now against Anthropic and others, for example, for stealing authors’ works, are really important. We already have this rights-based framework, and with more investment of time and effort, we could use it much more comprehensively to cover the world of generative AI.
Generative AI Is Going to Accelerate the Capacity of Everything
Photo: Dreamstime.
Recent years have witnessed growing interaction between transnational populist movements, digital platforms, and algorithmically amplified political narratives. Do you believe generative AI is likely to accelerate the emergence of increasingly coordinated transnational populist ecosystems that operate beyond the regulatory capacity of individual democratic states?
Professor Danielle Allen: Generative AI is going to accelerate the capacity of everything. It will also accelerate the capacity of pro-democracy transnational networks to operate across borders. In that regard, it only changes the balance of power if only the populists use it.
The First Thing We Need Is Functional Democratic Governance
Much current AI regulation emphasizes safety, content moderation, transparency, and risk mitigation. Yet your work argues that these approaches address symptoms rather than underlying distributions of power. What institutional reforms would be necessary if democratic governments were to regulate AI according to constitutional principles instead of primarily technological ones?
Professor Danielle Allen: The two major things we need in the US are to get rid of corruption and restore suffrage. We have experienced an incredible erosion of voting rights in the US. Those two things—corruption, by which I mean the impact of money in our politics, and the erosion of voting rights—mean that our institutions have been captured by small oligarchic minorities pursuing their own financial interests through cronyist arrangements with tech companies.
So, when people ask that question, what they’re often wondering is, “Okay, what’s the specific regulation that you need to rein in a tech company?” What I want to say is that that’s actually operating at the wrong level. The first thing you need is functional democratic governance, where power actually lies with the people. Then the people will be able to apply regulations to tech companies.
We can devise all kinds of regulations—that’s not really the problem. The problem is whether power actually lies with the people or with the people who are in bed with the tech companies. Right now, it lies with people who are in bed with tech companies. That’s why we need fundamental reforms in the basic operations of democracy in the US to change that balance of power.
Digital Competence Matters More Than Digital Literacy
Your broader scholarship consistently emphasizes citizenship, civic identity, democratic participation, and shared constitutional purpose. In an era increasingly mediated by AI-generated information, how should democratic education evolve to prepare citizens not merely to detect misinformation but to sustain democratic judgment itself?
Professor Danielle Allen: That’s a great question. There are a lot of important pieces there. I think highly of the work of Audrey Tong in Taiwan, who argues for an education in digital competence, not just digital literacy but competence. Again, if you know how to use the tools, you’re going to inoculate yourself against being abused by people who are using them.
So that’s one thing. But, to your point about judgment, cultivating the capacity for judgment is key. That means being able to—and here I’m drawing on some work by somebody named Scott Warren—to provide accurate accounts of what people who disagree with you think and why they think it. In other words, you have to train yourself out of your own silo in order to gain access to the full picture of what people are experiencing. One way to do that is by testing whether or not you can render the best version of your opponent’s argument. That’s a very basic skill, but it is no longer very common in our systems of instruction and education.
The work of judgment also requires understanding how to relate values and principles to empirical realities. To develop those skills, you actually have to spend time thinking about values. What are your values? Where do they come from? What are their sources? How do you justify them? What are other people’s values? How do they interact with each other? The work of connecting a values-based diagnosis to a values-based solution is also a learnable skill. So, those would be three things that I would point to as important to have inside our educational offerings.
We Should Deploy Technology to Elevate Human Judgment
Finally, stepping back from current technological developments, do you believe liberal democracy is entering a constitutional transformation comparable to those produced by the printing press, industrialization, or mass broadcasting? Looking ahead, what institutional innovations will be most essential if democratic societies are to ensure that artificial intelligence strengthens rather than weakens constitutional government, political equality, and democratic self-rule?
Professor Danielle Allen: Yes, I do think we are entering another period of major constitutional transformation of that kind. I wish I could give you a list of specific changes that will help us get where we want to go, but fundamentally, we need changes that strengthen human judgment. That runs a bit against the current at a moment when so much is eroding and replacing human judgment. That’s why I advocate various election system reforms in the US, because they would strengthen human judgment.
I also think there are many ways of deploying technology to elevate human judgment rather than denigrate it. AI sensemaking tools such as Polis and vTaiwan, which are deliberative democracy tools, use natural language to allow people to express themselves in their own words, while helping to bring the themes that people have generated to the surface and making us more visible to one another. Things like this can actually help strengthen human judgment.
The hard question, which I appreciate you’re asking, is this: How do we evaluate whether a technology is strengthening human judgment or weakening it? That seems to me to be one of the criteria we need to bake into our assessments of new models, new tools, and the other technologies that emerge into the world.
For years, Hungary stood as the defining case of democratic backsliding within the European Union. Yet the 2026 election has transformed it into an equally important case of democratic recovery. In this timely interview, Dr. Hanna Folsz discusses why Hungary’s political transformation challenges prevailing assumptions about the durability of competitive authoritarianism. Drawing on her recent Journal of Democracy article, she argues that authoritarian institutional engineering ultimately remains vulnerable when broad civic mobilization, credible political leadership, and innovative opposition strategies converge. The conversation explores the underestimated role of civil society, the limits of media capture and economic coercion, the challenges of rebuilding democratic institutions, and the broader lessons Hungary offers for scholars and practitioners seeking to understand democratic resilience and authoritarian reversal in the twenty-first century.
For more than a decade, Hungary occupied a unique place in the comparative study of democratic backsliding. Under Viktor Orbán and Fidesz, it became widely regarded as the paradigmatic example of competitive authoritarianism within the European Union—a political system in which elections continued to exist but were increasingly distorted by constitutional engineering, media capture, economic coercion, and the systematic weakening of institutional checks and balances. Consequently, Hungary became not merely a national case but an international reference point for understanding how democracies erode from within.
Yet Hungary’s 2026 election has fundamentally altered that conversation. The defeat of Fidesz after sixteen years in power has transformed the country into one of the most consequential contemporary cases of democratic recovery. In her recent Journal of Democracy article, How Civil Society Defeated Orbán, Dr. Hanna Folsz —an Academy Scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where she will begin her appointment in August 2026 before joining IE University in Madrid as Assistant Professor of Political Science in 2027— argues that this democratic breakthrough cannot be explained solely by leadership change or electoral dynamics. Instead, she offers a broader theoretical argument about the hidden vulnerabilities of competitive authoritarian regimes and the underestimated capacity of civil society to reverse authoritarian consolidation.
As Dr. Folsz observes, “Even deeply entrenched competitive authoritarian regimes have vulnerabilities.” While Hungary experienced what she describes as “one of the most extensive and severe episodes of de-democratization or authoritarian consolidation in recent decades,” the very institutions and strategies that sustained Fidesz ultimately proved insufficient to guarantee permanent rule. Institutional engineering, media dominance, financial asymmetries, and intimidation undoubtedly raised the costs of political competition, yet they could not indefinitely substitute for declining public legitimacy. As she argues, “these authoritarian strategies do not guarantee lasting—everlasting—popularity or staying in office.”
A central contribution of Dr. Folsz’s research is her reassessment of the role of civil society. Rather than attributing the opposition’s victory primarily to the emergence of the Tisza Party or the leadership of Péter Magyar, she demonstrates how more than 2,500 decentralized “Tisza Islands” transformed latent civic capacity into effective political organization. In her words, “The role of civil society… is absolutely underestimated,” while “broad civic mobilization, new and fresh opposition challengers… and a credible alternative to voters are definitely a path to democratic reversal.”
In this interview, Dr. Folsz examines the mechanisms that enabled Hungary’s democratic breakthrough and explores their broader implications for comparative politics. She discusses the hidden effects of economic coercion, the limits of media capture, the importance of credible political leadership, and the challenges of democratic restoration after authoritarian rule. She also reflects on the responsibilities facing Hungary’s new government, emphasizing that electoral victory is only the beginning: “Changing governments is definitely only a precondition for democratic recovery.” Together, these insights offer an important contribution to ongoing debates on populism, democratic resilience, competitive authoritarianism, and the conditions under which entrenched illiberal regimes can ultimately be defeated.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Dr. Hanna Folsz, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Authoritarian Strategies Do Not Guarantee Permanent Rule
Hungarian government’s anti-immigration billboard says “STOP the refugees” in Budapest, Hungary on April 4, 2018.
Dr. Folsz, welcome!Let me begin with our first question. For more than a decade, Hungary was widely regarded as the paradigmatic case of democratic backsliding and competitive authoritarianism. Yet your recent Journal of Democracy article argues that the 2026 election also represents one of the most significant democratic reversals of authoritarian consolidation in recent years. How should we interpret the Hungarian election in comparative perspective? Does it represent an exceptional case, or does it reveal broader vulnerabilities inherent in contemporary competitive authoritarian regimes?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: The Hungarian case represents a combination of factors that disadvantage opposition parties or make opposition electoral victory exceedingly difficult. It is definitely an example of—maybe one of the most extensive and severe episodes of de-democratization or authoritarian consolidation in recent decades. Nevertheless, the Hungarian case also represents many of the common factors, or common difficulties, that oppositions experience and the strategies that aspiring authoritarians employ to entrench their rule.
No wonder Hungary serves as a preliminary case, an example for aspiring autocrats worldwide. Fidesz’s dominance in the media, the extensive financial advantage that it enjoyed—or made sure it enjoyed—compared to opposition parties and independent civil society, the severe disadvantages faced by the opposition in the electoral system, as well as the fear of opposition participation due to the repercussions, are all factors that are present in other cases as well.
It was the length of Fidesz rule that made these impediments especially significant, but it also showed that these authoritarian strategies do not guarantee lasting—everlasting—popularity or staying in office. And the lessons it offers are a set of lessons for other cases. Of course, these have to be adapted to context, but the Hungarian case shows that there are vulnerabilities to be exploited, that broad civic mobilization, new and fresh opposition challengers who understand the regime and its vulnerabilities and exploit them, and who present a credible alternative to voters, are definitely a path to democratic reversal. But I’m excited to delve more into the details of this throughout this interview.
The Role of Civil Society in Democratic Change Has Been Profoundly Underestimated
One of your central arguments is that the decisive innovation was not simply the emergence of the Tisza Party, but the rapid development of the decentralized network of Tisza Islands. Why were these semi-autonomous civic organizations able to succeed where traditional opposition parties repeatedly failed? More broadly, does this suggest that democratic resistance in authoritarian settings increasingly depends on civil society rather than party organizations?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: In my article, I make the argument that existing commentary and interpretations of the opposition’s recent electoral victory in Hungary pay a lot of attention to the emergence of the Tisza Party and its novelty, the charisma and skills of its leader, as well as the broader discontent with Fidesz rule after many years of economic stagnation that, in part, could be accounted for by the suspension of EU funds, as well as by extreme corruption and authoritarian overreach by Fidesz.
I argue that this is not the full story. To understand the opposition’s victory, we must take into account the extensive and unprecedented civic mobilization that occurred in Hungary around this election. In my article, I show that Tisza Islands—these semi-autonomous civic groups, small civic groups of at most 50 participants each—emerged across the country. Over 2,500 of these existed by the election. Within a span of a year and a half, they came to dominate civic and public life in Hungary.
They played an essential role in structuring political life, providing political information in their communities, and demonstrating the credibility of the party and the opposition as an alternative through highly visible activities, including extensive volunteering and local charity work that showed the opposition movement cared about the experiences and difficulties of everyday Hungarians. They also provided, basically, the campaign infrastructure for the Tisza Party throughout the election.
The party had very little money, very limited financial resources, in large part due to Fidesz’s actions and changes to party funding, as well as simply being a very new party. This meant that it did not have the resources for the kind of classic electoral campaign that we expect from political parties in democracies most of the time—one funded by donations or state funds, especially in Europe, and relying on an extensive party infrastructure, local offices, and so on. Instead, these Islands stepped up. They basically provided the campaign activists and even the financial resources for the campaign. That played an absolutely crucial role in Tisza’s eventual victory.
What this shows is that there are specific vulnerabilities, difficulties, and challenges for opposition parties in autocratizing and competitive authoritarian contexts. These include financial disadvantage, an absolute information disadvantage under an incumbent-controlled media infrastructure, and the total—or almost total—de-mobilization of the activist base and opposition voters who have become disillusioned with politics and opposition parties. This was definitely the situation Hungary found itself in in 2026, and it showed that the usual avenues for political change were no longer possible.
This is when we saw the very innovative collaboration between the Tisza Party and civil society through the Tisza Islands—these semi-autonomous groups that were only loosely connected to the party. This points to the fact that the role of civil society, the role we expect civil society to play, is absolutely underestimated. Parties will still be crucial, but we need to think about these innovative solutions and about how the strengths of civil society, the often-latent strengths of civil society, can be channeled into electoral competition.
Changing Governments Is Only a Precondition for Democratic Recovery
Tisza leader Péter Magyar begins a symbolic “one million steps” march to Nagyvárad, Romania, addressing reporters with supporters in Budapest, Hungary on May 14, 2025. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
For sixteen years, Viktor Orbán systematically weakened constitutional constraints, reshaped electoral institutions, captured much of the media, and subordinated state institutions to partisan control. Which of these legacies do you regard as the most difficult to reverse? Is democratic recovery primarily about changing governments, or about rebuilding institutions that have been deliberately hollowed out?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Changing governments is definitely only a precondition for democratic recovery. Democratic recovery cannot be achieved without rebuilding resilient democratic institutions and norms. And this is where the main challenge in Hungary lies today.
In Hungarian case, Fidesz was voted out of office. The electoral threat that Fidesz currently represents to the Tisza Party is very low. So, it seems that we do not have to be extensively afraid of Fidesz returning to power in four years. The bigger challenge, rather, is for the Tisza Party to effectively restore democratic institutions and norms while exercising self-restraint in the process.
We have seen them begin to address this challenge very early on with a great deal of energy, which has been very encouraging for many commentators and observers. Their first constitutional amendment was recently passed. They are taking steps to remove the previous president and are also beginning to hold Fidesz-affiliated elites accountable through judicial proceedings and investigations into corruption and other authoritarian transgressions.
We also know that they will begin the constitutional process of writing a new constitution. There is also a new head of the state media who has already been appointed to oversee the transition to a more pluralistic and more independent media environment.
The biggest challenge is to make sure that there are professional and lastingly independent checks and balances across all of these spheres. Tisza has an unprecedented mandate because it achieved a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the election. That means it can amend the constitution. There are basically very few, if any, institutional restraints on how it exercises its power.
So, what we want to see is that, across all these spheres—the judiciary, the media, and state institutions—they install not necessarily party loyalists but rather truly independent actors, and that they respect their independence and decisions, even when those decisions go counter to Tisza’s goals or electoral preferences in terms of ensuring its electoral support.
Hungary Shows That Pro-Democracy Civic Energy Is Easier to Mobilize Than We Assumed
Your research highlights the importance of latent civic capacity that survives even under prolonged authoritarian pressure. What does Hungary teach us about democratic resilience? Can civil society preserve democratic norms even when formal institutions have been substantially weakened?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: The Hungarian case definitely shows me, in a striking way, that civic capacity is latent rather than absent in cases such as Hungary. This is something I highlight in my article as well, because we have a very strong assumption in political science research and in public debates about democratic resilience and resistance to authoritarian pressure.
The assumption is that if we have an institutionally weak civil society, then effective democratic resistance is very difficult. It’s sort of a precondition for democratic resistance that there are existing civil society actors that can serve as a check, hold the government accountable, organize resistance, organize protests, and restructure public opinion around resistance. When this is missing, we assume that democratic reversals are much more difficult.
They are indeed more difficult. But the Hungarian case absolutely shows that it is much easier to bring pro-democracy civic capacity to the surface than we assumed. In Hungary, the Tisza Islands provided a loose organizational frame, and the Tisza Party provided the Tisza Islands with a purpose and a potential for democratic change that mobilized the population across the country, in localities and municipalities both big and small.
This points to a case for some positivity, some optimism, as well as a call for innovative approaches and a better understanding of citizens’ motivations, because political scientists, as well as pundits, assumed that such mobilization would not be possible and were taken by surprise by its scale and effectiveness.
If we take the opportunity and make the effort to talk to citizens more, understand their relationship with this regime, and recognize that there is this latent discontent that may not be expressed for fear of repercussions, but also because of a lack of hope that things could change, and if we can understand how citizens react to the provision of a credible alternative, to hope embodied in an opposition movement, then this might not take us by surprise. We might instead focus a little more on developing these innovative civic approaches in our attempts to achieve democratic reversals.
Economic Coercion Is One of the Most Overlooked Tools of Authoritarian Control
Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
In your broader research, you argue that economic retaliation constitutes one of the most overlooked mechanisms through which aspiring autocrats weaken political competition by deterring talented opposition candidates. How central was economic coercion to Orbán’s durability, and how much did overcoming fear of retaliation contribute to the opposition’s eventual breakthrough?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: One of the focuses of my research is the authoritarian strategy that I term economic coercion. I argue in one of my papers that this is a core strategy of authoritarian consolidation and control that we tend to overlook because we focus on the physical acts of repression that these regimes carry out, be it arresting opposition politicians and activists or banning opposition parties, et cetera.
But economic coercion is another crucial strategy. I define it as a credible threat of economic retaliation for opposition political activity. This means that not just opposition candidates, but activists or those who express public support for the opposition, they themselves or their family members, might face economic difficulties as a result.
Its employment-oriented form—one of its forms—carries the potential for employment loss, dismissals from jobs in the public sector, the state sector, or in regime-adjacent businesses. Its enterprise-oriented form focuses on retaliation against business owners and firms. If you participate in opposition politics, for instance as a candidate, or if you participated in Hungary during the Orbán period, you could very well expect that your firm would be subject to targeted tax audits, targeted tax penalties, or other forms of retaliation—basically, the denial of state contracts and grants that your firm might have previously received, as well as the turning away of suppliers and other businesses that were themselves afraid of retaliation for their association with the opposition.
This was an absolutely pervasive, indeed a defining, characteristic of the Hungarian regime and a major impediment for opposition parties. My interviews with opposition politicians, together with a survey that I conducted among opposition local politicians, pointed to this pervasive fear of retaliation and Fidesz’s media dominance as the two central reasons opposition politicians identified for their parties’—or their political side’s—weakness.
There are many examples of this. I talked to a number of opposition politicians who themselves were fired from their jobs. Or, for instance, if they had a partner who was a teacher, that partner was fired, and their businesses suffered extensive retaliation. But I also heard many stories of opposition activists being too afraid to put their face, appear in photos—for fear that they would face retaliation, to register as an activist for the party, or even to become a party member.
There are countless examples that opposition politicians would tell me. They would set up stalls for campaigns or for collecting signatures for different causes, and even acquaintances whom they knew very well in their private lives would be too afraid to look at them while they were out on the streets, for fear that their employer or their neighbor might see them, and that word would then spread through their social circle that they supported the opposition.
This presented a huge difficulty for parties, both in mobilizing activists for strong campaigns and in finding good candidates for electoral office. The Tisza Party actually faced many of these same challenges.
Conversations with lawyers at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, one of the main civil liberties protection organizations in Hungary, revealed that the number of cases of retaliatory firings, or proprietary retaliatory actions, that they encountered and were approached with actually increased significantly in the years following the emergence of the Tisza Party. My conversations and interviews with Tisza politicians themselves also revealed a staggering rate of such retaliation among their activist bases.
The way they overcame this is very remarkable and offers many important lessons. One of the most important strategies they employed was the Tisza Islands themselves, which provided a very low-visibility form of activism. Many activists I talked to in these Tisza Islands told me that they and their fellow activists could choose the level and form of activism they were comfortable with, depending on the degree of visibility. The lack of overt—or direct—association with the party also allowed them to evade some of the strongest retaliatory actions that we had previously come across.
Another important way in which the Tisza Islands contributed to mitigating the effects of retaliation was simply by affording the opposition greater visibility. This provided examples of courage and also evidence of the scale of retaliation, because fear of it often outstrips its actual occurrence.
Finally, Tisza started polling above Fidesz roughly a year and a half before the election, which was also very important because fear of economic retaliation operates on an assumption of future enforcement. If the opposition begins polling ahead of the governing party for such an extended period of time, there is at least some expectation that the governing party may lose the election, in which case retaliation will not proceed, or that any retaliation opposition activists or politicians experience will be undone once the new party comes to power.
This was crucial in progressively encouraging participation and lending confidence to the opposition. But it remained a formidable impediment, and it required a great deal of courage from all of the opposition activists I spoke to, as well as from the politicians of the Tisza Party, to stand publicly with the opposition in the way that they did. That is absolutely one of the most commendable actions one could undertake in such a political environment.
When Propaganda Collides with Lived Experience, Its Credibility Begins to Collapse
Poster from political party Fidesz showing the opponents of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban surrounding billionaire philanthropist George Soros, Budapest, April 8, 2017.
Hungary has often been cited as perhaps Europe’s most advanced example of media capture. Yet despite overwhelming informational asymmetries, the opposition ultimately managed to reach voters. Does this suggest that grassroots civic networks can compensate for authoritarian control of traditional media, or were there broader structural changes—including digital communication—that weakened the effectiveness of media capture?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: These grassroots civic networks played a very important role. There was an almost total lack of access to independent news in many parts of the country, predominantly outside of the larger cities. Almost all news sources were controlled by Fidesz by 2024, around the time of the emergence of the Tisza Party. One of the especially important early functions of the Tisza Islands was simply to provide public spaces for these new, alternative information environments where politics could be discussed.
During their first few months, many of these Tisza Islands focused primarily on inviting outside speakers or holding public discussions, talks with experts, and conversations among activists about the political situation. They identified the most important local issues and explored how Fidesz’s wrongdoing, corruption, authoritarian actions, and mismanagement of the economy and public resources contributed crucially to the local problems and difficulties Hungarians were facing. Through these speaker series, the Tisza Islands allowed people to connect the dots between their local experiences and the broader authoritarian encroachment and entrenchment of Fidesz in the country.
Having these communities in which to discuss politics was also something very new. Many of the activists I interviewed noted that this was the first time they could speak openly about politics without fear and simply discuss political developments among themselves. It created a much better shared understanding of the political situation in the country.
Nevertheless, there were three other factors that were also crucial. Beyond the emergence of these Islands and these local information spaces, the growing importance of the digital sphere was absolutely significant, as was the increasing conflict between people’s personal experiences, their economic hardships, and Fidesz’s narrative of its own successes.
In terms of the digital sphere and social media, we could see by the early 2020s, especially after the COVID pandemic, a very important shift in the way online and non-traditional news sources gained ground. YouTube, podcasts, and other social media platforms became very important sources of news in Hungary. Partizán is one of these networks—the largest podcast and YouTube network for independent news in Hungary. Its videos routinely achieved hundreds of thousands of views in a country of fewer than 10 million people. That’s very significant.
Another important way in which the rise of the digital sphere mattered was how Péter Magyar, current prime minister and the leader of the Tisza Party, exploited and leveraged it masterfully to gain popularity. His campaigns and political activities were always online. We heard from many commentators throughout the election how important it was that Péter Magyar travelled across the country, visiting Hungarian towns and villages, both large and small, after entering Hungarian politics. For two years, he was almost constantly on the ground talking to Hungarian voters.
One of the most important aspects of this, however, was that every single one of his appearances was livestreamed on his social media platforms. This created an almost constant connection with Hungarian voters, made possible by the rise of social media in politics. It further enhanced his credibility by demonstrating how hard he was working and strengthened his direct connection with voters.
Finally, another important reason why Fidesz’s media dominance—and its effectiveness—began to weaken was the increasingly apparent conflict between Hungarians’ lived experiences and Fidesz’s official narrative. Beginning in the early 2020s, and especially after 2022, Hungary experienced significant economic stagnation and record inflation. Inflation averaged around 20 percent in 2022 and remained at a similarly high, though somewhat lower, level in 2023. Food price inflation was particularly severe.
When Hungarians experienced firsthand that they could afford much less than in previous years, while Fidesz continued to emphasize its achievements and the support it was providing through its distributive programmes, this sharply contradicted people’s lived experiences. As a result, the credibility of Fidesz’s propagandistic narrative in the media outlets it controlled declined substantially, and Hungarians increasingly began seeking out alternative sources of news.
Opposition Strategy Matters Just as Much as Authoritarian Strategy
Orbán’s governments demonstrated remarkable sophistication in redesigning electoral rules, constitutional institutions, and oversight bodies without formally abandoning electoral competition. Does Hungary demonstrate that authoritarian institutional engineering eventually reaches diminishing returns, particularly when legitimacy begins to erode?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Definitely. What the Hungarian case points to with respect to this question is simply that competitive authoritarian regimes still rely on popularity to persist. So, however much electoral rules are redesigned, institutions are amended, and oversight bodies are captured, if unpopularity starts to emerge, if the regime loses its credibility and legitimacy—especially its performance legitimacy—then these institutional changes cannot guarantee that it stays in power.
Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, the Fidesz regime employed limited physical repression and party bans. That is something we are starting to see in cases such as Turkey, which does not have the constraints of the EU and has shown a willingness to use these tools against the opposition. This can represent much more significant constraints and make it much more difficult for the regime’s unpopularity to translate into electoral change and opposition victory.
The other important caveat is that opposition strategy does matter. Having a broad-appeal electoral strategy and offering a credible alternative that promises competent governance in the interests of the Hungarian people—and can credibly deliver on that promise—is crucial if these governing parties are to start losing elections or even come close to losing them.
Looking, for instance, at the 2022 election in Hungary, where Fidesz actually achieved its strongest performance under its rule, even though the election took place amid record inflation, economic stagnation, extreme corruption, and authoritarian overreach, shows that voters rejected the opposition alternative. There were plenty of reasons to dislike the regime, plenty of reasons to want change, but that change simply did not materialize through the opposition.
Performance Legitimacy Mattered Even More Than Ethno-populist Appeals
Orbán has frequently been analyzed as one of the architects of contemporary right-wing populism, combining majoritarian rhetoric with illiberal constitutionalism. Looking back, to what extent was Fidesz’s success primarily rooted in populism, and to what extent did it evolve into a more conventional authoritarian patronage regime whose survival depended increasingly on state control rather than popular mobilization?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Fidesz’s populism was important to its staying in power and its ability to consolidate its rule, but it was by far not the only factor that mattered. If anything, performance legitimacy in voters’ eyes was even more important than the populist, ethno-populist appeals that we saw, especially in the second half of Fidesz’s rule.
In terms of Fidesz’s populism, we could definitely see that these radical-right nationalist ethno-populist appeals became very prevalent, especially in the second half of the 2010s. We saw this when immigration became the cornerstone issue for Fidesz, and when this sort of anti-immigration rhetoric became a very powerful tool that allowed it to win the 2018 election with resounding popularity.
But even then, Fidesz’s distributive programs were crucial. A very important element was this kind of regime-to-voter patronage—not just giving resources to a small elite but also providing financial benefits directly to voters so that they saw a financial benefit in their own pockets from supporting the regime. This was very important, and Fidesz very consciously leveraged these strategies.
We saw that when these strategies failed, when the economic gains that people felt they had experienced under Fidesz rule disappeared, Fidesz became less popular. Its deployment of nationalism, its use of this outside-threat narrative, this classic populist narrative, was not enough to ensure that it stayed in power and continued to mobilize its base.
In sum, the transformation of the economy to ensure Fidesz’s continuity in power was very important. These distributive programs directed at voters were crucial. Of course, part of that also involved establishing a political elite, an economic elite that gave Fidesz its economic base—this sort of oligarchic network that supported its control over the media and made sure that economically independent opposition actors had a very difficult time gaining ground.
Those factors were important as well. But populism is just not enough of an explanation.
Hope for Change Required a Credible Political Entrepreneur
Peter Magyar, a popular opposition politician of celebrity status meeting the press at the site of a soccer arena and miniature train station in Viktor Orban’s village in Felcsut, Hungary. on May 24, 2024. Photo: Blue Corner Studio.
Your article emphasizes that civic mobilization required not only existing social networks but also what might be called a credible political entrepreneur in Péter Magyar. How important is leadership in activating dormant democratic capacities? Could similar civic energy have emerged without a figure capable of coordinating and legitimizing it?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: Coordination and the hope of change were absolutely essential to the civic energy that we saw in Hungary, and they had to come from a credible source. They had to come from a credible political entrepreneur or group that promised this. It did not necessarily have to be Péter Magyar, but he is a highly politically skilled politician. He was able to recognize these opportunities, as well as the vulnerabilities of the regime. This was very important in activating the civic energy in the country.
One of the preconditions is simply that there has to be a vision for political change. I think what Péter Magyar did right, why he was important, and why he was able to do this was the energy that voters saw in him as he travelled around the country on his nationwide tours, day after day, rally after rally, meeting after meeting, demonstrating that he took this seriously and that he was able to connect with people. Hearing him speak, hearing him identify the problems with the regime, and also hearing him present some possible solutions was also important.
A strong performance in the 2024 European Parliament election also gave him and his party the ability to have voters’ expectations, or hopes for change, coalesce around them. That was crucial. He emerged at the right time, when there was very strong dissatisfaction with Fidesz but no opposition alternative or opposition option that voters really saw, and he had the skills to fill that role.
But it could have been someone else. It’s obviously very hard to know. What is crucial, however, is the coordinating and legitimizing role that a political entrepreneur provides.
Innovative Civic Mobilization May Be More Transferable Than Hungary’s Institutions
Many scholars have viewed Hungary as the model that inspired democratic erosion elsewhere, from Central Europe to Latin America and even the United States. Do you believe Hungary’s democratic recovery offers transferable lessons for opposition movements confronting competitive authoritarian governments elsewhere, or are Hungary’s political and institutional conditions too distinctive for meaningful comparison?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: I absolutely think that it offers lessons. Of course, if you look at a different case, you will always have to adapt the strategies and adapt the insights to the challenges that the opposition side faces against aspiring autocrats or competitive authoritarian rulers elsewhere. That is natural.
What we need is a very good understanding of the Hungarian case and of what features of the Hungarian case made this possible, and then a good understanding of the other local context to see how this could be adapted. Some notable traits of the Hungarian experience are sometimes potentially underestimated in commentary that uses the Hungarian case as a promise of hope for democratic change elsewhere.
It’s absolutely crucial that Fidesz was in power for 16 years, a very significant amount of time. In a lot of previous cases of reversal, we have seen less consolidated regimes. And there was very strong dissatisfaction with Fidesz by the time the Tisza Party came around, but that could not previously be channeled into electoral politics.
There was also very limited physical repression, so there were no arrests. There were also no party bans, et cetera, as I already mentioned. This is something that means these lessons, especially the lessons around civic mobilization, could be very different and harder to adapt in cases where such repression is very significant.
It is also important to recognize that the level of disadvantage for the opposition was actually more severe in Hungary than in a lot of other cases. This gives us hope for other cases—that if a reversal could happen here, then that can translate elsewhere. But it also might give too much comfort to opposition actors elsewhere, because it might have taken this level of disadvantage for the opposition to use innovations in civic mobilization, and for this new challenger, the Tisza Party, to emerge, and for voters to recognize that the existing opposition parties could not promise the kind of change they hoped for.
The model of this innovative civic mobilization, the model of a new credible challenger emerging that promises meaningful, positive change in Hungarian living conditions, and then promises good governance as well as the rooting out of corruption and democratic restoration, is very important.
We probably cannot get too comfortable. This level of disadvantage that the opposition had in Hungary is actually something that, maybe, shows that we do not need to reach that stage for other countries, for political entrepreneurs and political actors to take on these lessons in other cases. Maybe this avenue, this broad-based appeal that Tisza had, rather than just chipping away at Fidesz supporters or convincing only a few demobilized voters to turn out, is something that can work in other cases. Instead, creating a broad-based movement is something that can work in other cases and can promise much better opportunities for democratic restoration with a strong mandate afterward.
The Greatest Challenge Is Ensuring That the New Government Constrains Itself
A central feature of democratic backsliding in Hungary involved the gradual weakening of judicial independence and constitutional oversight. Following the recent constitutional reforms initiated by the new government, what principles should guide efforts to restore judicial autonomy without creating the perception that one form of politicization is simply replacing another?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: This is a very important challenge in Hungary right now. As I already mentioned, the Tisza Party entered office with an unprecedented mandate. It holds a two-thirds majority in parliament, which in Hungary permits constitutional amendments and essentially allows the party to unilaterally amend the constitution. There is no need for the support of the new opposition parties in parliament, and this gives Tisza extensive control over institutional reform.
They have already used this power, and they have promised to use it further in relation to the judicial system. A constitutional amendment was just approved on July 13 by the Hungarian parliament that restored a mandatory retirement age of 70 for Constitutional Court judges. This involves four of the 15 judges losing their mandates, including the president of the Constitutional Court, who was a very important Orbán appointee.
They have also promised to implement changes to the selection rules for the presidents of various judicial bodies. For instance, these changes would involve judges choosing or proposing candidates instead of the president independently selecting a nominee. But ultimately, all of these changes would still rest on ratification by a two-thirds majority in parliament. So they would still give Tisza the opportunity to make the final choice.
We see many positive changes that could introduce more independent rules and restore a more independent judicial sector in Hungary. But it is very important that the party exercises self-restraint and is potentially even braver and more resolute in making changes that constrain the Tisza Party itself.
Because even some of these proposed rules—for instance, leaving the appointment of the presidents of various judicial bodies to a two-thirds parliamentary majority—would still give the party essentially full discretion, or at least a very high degree of discretion, over who these officeholders are going to be. The biggest challenge is making sure that Tisza actually constrains itself and establishes a genuine separation of the judiciary from the executive branch and, to some degree, from the legislative branch through these reforms, thereby binding both itself and its successors. Whether Tisza ultimately carries out these changes that may also be politically uncomfortable for itself absolutely remains to be seen.
Democratic Restoration Must Never Become Political Retribution
The new government has promised to dismantle what it describes as the “Orbán system” while introducing sweeping constitutional reforms and anti-corruption measures. How can democratic governments dismantle authoritarian legacies without themselves appearing to engage in victor’s justice or constitutional overreach? Where should democratic restoration end and political retribution begin?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: This is a key challenge of democratic restoration and democratic restoration efforts. Ensuring that these efforts proceed in a rule-of-law-abiding manner is often very difficult, as we have seen, for instance, in Poland, and it is something that inevitably draws a great deal of public attention.
In Hungary, this challenge is also present. There is an exceptionally high degree of public legitimacy for dismantling the Fidesz system and holding Fidesz politicians and its oligarchic elite accountable for their wrongdoing and their actions against the national interest. Fidesz currently enjoys at most 20 percent support in the polls in Hungary, which is exceedingly low. We have also seen an absolute exodus of voters from the Fidesz camp, even after the party lost the election.
There is a clear public mandate. But this process of accountability should be pursued in a very careful manner. The most important thing, so far, is that Tisza is at least promising to pursue it through judicial channels. They have also emphasized that this will likely be a lengthy process.
That said, I do see two dangers. The first is that abandoning the judicial route could become a temptation, and that would absolutely undermine the legitimacy of dismantling the Orbán system in the eyes of many. I think it should, because democratic self-restraint is something this party has to practice and demonstrate if it wants to reintroduce it into Hungarian politics.
I also see another danger. To me, it is the possibility that Tisza may not allow Fidesz to be evaluated again by Hungarian voters as a political alternative in the full sense that we should expect in a democratic system.
For instance, Tisza’s recent proposal for a constitutional amendment introduced a 12-year term limit for MPs in Hungary that would apply retroactively. This follows the adoption of an eight-year limit for prime ministers, also applied retroactively, which many interpreted partly as satisfying voters’ demands that Orbán should not be able to return to power, while also serving as an act of self-restraint by Tisza.
That measure has enjoyed broad public support in Hungary, at least for now. But the proposed 12-year limit for MPs has generated much more public debate. Its retroactive application means that most of the high-profile Fidesz leaders we have seen in recent years would likely be unable to run for office again if this rule actually enters the Constitution.
To me, this does not give voters the opportunity to reject Fidesz themselves, which, in all likelihood, we think they would actually do at the polls in the next election. Instead, it appears more like a measure of retribution than one that serves the restoration of healthy democratic competition.
Lasting Democratic Trust Depends on Meaningful Citizen Participation
Supporters of the TISZA Party gather on Andrássy Avenue in Budapest during a national march led by Péter Magyar on Hungary’s March 15 national holiday, March 15, 2026. Photo: Istvan Balogh / Dreamstime.
Years of polarization, clientelism, and institutional capture often leave citizens deeply distrustful of politics itself. Beyond constitutional reforms, what strategies are necessary for rebuilding citizens’ confidence that democratic institutions can once again operate impartially and effectively?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: What is very interesting about the Hungarian case, and what is very closely related to the civic mobilization that we saw ahead of the election, is that there is an unprecedentedly broad interest in, and enthusiasm for, politics and following politics in Hungary, even after the election. That is very promising. The disaffection that we saw over more than a decade of Fidesz rule appears to have been reversed during this election and seems to persist even afterward.
But in many ways, there is still distrust of Tisza among many voters. Of course, the country’s experience over the past decade and a half has been one of politicians abusing public authority and public office for authoritarian entrenchment and private gain through corruption. There is, understandably, concern among Hungarian voters that any party—especially one with such a large mandate—could eventually fall victim to the same dynamics.
The more immediate concern is whether these participatory channels, this broad-based participation represented by the Tisza Islands and these activist groups, will continue to feed into politics itself or instead be discarded. Because maintaining them could build trust and strengthen the connection between citizens and politics.
Tisza has promised to institutionalize such participatory mechanisms. They are currently setting up the Institution for Functioning in Humane Hungary, which they describe as an institution for strengthening popular participation in politics through consultation with professionals, former civil society actors, as well as voters on proposed constitutional amendments, new public policies, and broader forms of public and civic involvement.
This is very promising, but it has not happened yet. We do not yet know exactly what it will look like. The party has asked voters and its activists for patience while it develops ways to channel this civic energy into politics and effective public policymaking in Hungary.
This is one of the most important questions that remains to be answered. The party can reasonably be granted some patience, especially as it is working very hard to meet the conditionalities required for EU funds to be restored to Hungary by the end of the summer. But after that, if this vision of popular participation in governance does not begin to materialize, some degree of public pressure would be very beneficial.
The EU Should Have Acted Earlier and More Decisively
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission arrives for a EU Summit, at the EU headquarters in Brussels, on June 30, 2023. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.
The European Union has frequently been criticized both for responding too slowly to Hungary’s democratic backsliding and for possessing limited enforcement tools. Looking retrospectively, what lessons should European institutions draw from the Hungarian experience regarding the defense of liberal democracy among member and candidate countries?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: There’s been a great deal of excellent research, including by R. Daniel Kelemen, on the role that the EU played through its lack of action against Hungary, and at times even its support for Hungary and Viktor Orbán, in failing to become an effective obstacle to authoritarian entrenchment. Kelemen’s research shows that European party politics in the European Parliament plays a very important role. There were incentives within the European People’s Party (EPP) to support Orbán despite his authoritarian transgressions, in order to advance the EPP’s broader political objectives within the EU. That points to an important lesson: party politics within the European Union cannot be allowed to impede efforts to stop authoritarian entrenchment in an EU member state.
There have to be clear red lines. There have to be cordons sanitaires around far-right parties within the EU. We have already seen some steps in this direction. But the other important lesson—and perhaps the more important one—is that the EU should act more quickly and be more willing to invoke the conditionality of EU funding.
A large share of EU funding to Hungary was suspended in 2022, and that was one of the key reasons for the weakening of Fidesz’s support. It contributed significantly to the lack of infrastructure investment, the slowdown in economic dynamism, and the broader economic stagnation and difficulties that Hungary experienced over the past four years, all of which substantially increased public dissatisfaction.
Conditionality is a very powerful tool, and it is a legitimate one. Invoking conditionality in determining access to EU funding is entirely legitimate, and it should be used in cases such as this.
Where Violent Repression Is Limited, Peaceful Democratic Change Remains Possible
Some scholars have argued that competitive authoritarian regimes are inherently unstable because they continue to rely on elections for legitimacy, while others view them as remarkably durable hybrid systems. Has the Hungarian case altered your own understanding of the long-term resilience—or fragility—of competitive authoritarian regimes?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: For one, 16 years of Fidesz rule in Hungary is a remarkably long time. Even if the regime ultimately proved vulnerable to an electoral challenge, it still represented an unprecedented period of authoritarian rule within the European Union that we must take seriously. The fact that an authoritarian regime could emerge under the conditions that it did in Hungary is, in itself, an absolute testament to the power of these authoritarian movements.
Nevertheless, the main lesson is that these regimes, and their continuity, ultimately rest on popularity. It requires a much greater shift of voters away from the regime than in democracies for that to translate into an opposition electoral victory. But there is hope. There is real potential for that to happen. Civic mobilization and the electoral mobilization of voters behind the opposition are what can ultimately bring these regimes to an end. As long as there is limited capacity and infrastructure for violent repression, there remains the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power.
The Hungarian case shows that this middle ground of competitive authoritarian regimes—those that resort only limitedly to physical repression, banning opposition parties, and the kinds of tools that we see in some other contexts—is ultimately fragile. These regimes are vulnerable to a sustained loss of electoral popularity.
Defeating Authoritarianism Requires Strategies Beyond Those of Ordinary Democracies
Finally, Hungary has demonstrated both how democracies can gradually erode and how authoritarian incumbents can eventually be defeated electorally. Yet democratic recovery is often considerably more difficult than democratic decline. Looking ahead, what will determine whether Hungary becomes a lasting example of democratic renewal rather than merely another episode of political alternation? And what broader lessons should scholars of populism, democratic resilience, and authoritarianism take from Hungary’s extraordinary political trajectory?
Dr. Hanna Folsz: In terms of what Hungary will ultimately become an example of, I certainly hope that it will be a lasting example of democratic renewal. But that depends on several conditions. For one, it is important that we see self-restraint from the Tisza Party. Somewhat unfortunately, this is a situation in which we have to rely on self-restraint by the governing party because of its extraordinary political mandate.
But I also think it is crucial that we see the emergence of political alternatives to the Tisza Party in the coming years in Hungary. Entering the 2030 election with the Tisza Party facing only a very weakened Fidesz as its main opposition would be very disadvantageous for Hungarian politics if Fidesz continues to weaken in the way it has over the past couple of months.
It’s very hard to see that providing an incentive for voters to evaluate the Tisza Party against the strong benchmark that we would like to see in a democracy. There is also, for now, no real political alternative to Tisza on the left or liberal side in Hungary. We effectively have a political system with three right-wing parties. Tisza is currently very much a moderate party, but nevertheless its two challengers are on the right. Mi Hazánk, the third party in parliament, is a far-right party.
If this situation persists, it is difficult to see how voters could exercise meaningful democratic choice in the 2030 election. To me, that is very important for a successful democratic recovery. It would also place healthy pressure on Tisza, so that we do not have to rely solely on self-restraint by the party and on extra-parliamentary, extra-electoral mobilization to encourage Tisza to help Hungary achieve a strong democratic renewal.
In terms of the broader lessons from the Hungarian case and Hungary’s extraordinary political trajectory, I see a couple of important lessons that focus on the opposition and on opposition to authoritarian incumbents.
Very often, when we think about these regimes and the reasons for their popularity, we focus on the authoritarian strategies that governing parties employ. We examine institutional manipulation, authoritarian entrenchment, media capture, the capture of civil society, economic coercion, as well as ethnopopulist and distributive appeals to voters, together with voters’ willingness to tolerate these transgressions. But we also need to think seriously about the role that the availability of opposition and credible alternatives plays in allowing such regimes to survive and preventing a democratic alternative from emerging. Hungary shows that the combination of a new political party and a broad-based civic movement built around semi-autonomous civic organizations and civic groups can become a powerful vehicle for democratic change.
The Hungarian experience also offers two further lessons. First, it demonstrates that broad-based civic mobilization is possible. We should therefore think much more seriously about these possibilities and about what kinds of innovations enable opposition movements to overcome the distinctive challenges they face under authoritarian incumbents. We may simply need to be much more inventive.
Second, we cannot continue to operate under assumptions about democratic competition that are derived from established democracies when we are dealing with authoritarian contexts. The rules of the game are fundamentally different. Accordingly, the strategies that opposition movements must employ in these settings are also likely to be fundamentally different from those that work in democracies.
Drawing on comparative evidence from Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, and beyond, Associate Professor Laura Gamboa offers a compelling rethinking of democratic resilience in an age of gradual authoritarianism. Rather than viewing democratic backsliding solely through the ambitions of would-be autocrats, she demonstrates that democratic survival depends equally on the strategic choices of opposition parties, constitutional courts, and civil society. Reflecting on Colombia’s 2026 presidential election, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa argues that the results present “a mixed story,” simultaneously revealing institutional resilience and new democratic vulnerabilities. She warns that contemporary authoritarianism advances incrementally—often becoming visible only when “it’s usually too late”—while urging democratic actors to address citizens’ grievances, strengthen institutional legitimacy, reduce polarization, and defend constitutional democracy without abandoning democratic principles.
The contemporary crisis of democracy rarely unfolds through dramatic coups or sudden constitutional collapse. Instead, democratic erosion increasingly advances through legal reforms, institutional manipulation, and the gradual concentration of executive power. This slow-moving process has transformed democratic backsliding into one of the defining political challenges of the twenty-first century, raising urgent questions about how constitutional democracies can defend themselves against elected leaders who weaken democratic institutions from within. Few scholars have contributed more to answering these questions than Associate Professor Laura Gamboa of the University of Notre Dame, whose work has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of democratic resilience.
Unlike much of the earlier literature, which focused primarily on aspiring autocrats, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa redirects attention to the democratic opposition itself. In Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy and New Forms of Democratic Erosion in Latin America, she argues that democratic survival depends not only on the ambitions of authoritarian leaders but also on the strategic choices of opposition parties, constitutional courts, legislatures, and civil society. By shifting the analytical focus from autocrats to democratic resistance, her scholarship offers one of the most original frameworks for explaining why some democracies withstand authoritarian pressures while others gradually succumb.
The timing of this interview is especially significant. Colombia’s 2026 presidential election has reignited debates about democratic accountability, populism, institutional resilience, and constitutional government across Latin America. While many observers interpreted the election as a straightforward ideological shift to the political right, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa argues that “the 2026 elections give us a mixed story.” She highlights both the resilience of Colombia’s democratic institutions and troubling warning signs, emphasizing that “both the candidate who won the election and the president’s unwillingness to recognize the election results are not good news for democracy.” Her assessment reminds us that electoral alternation alone neither guarantees democratic renewal nor necessarily signals democratic decline.
A recurring theme throughout the interview is the changing nature of authoritarianism. Contemporary autocrats rarely destroy democracy overnight. Instead, they rely on constitutional reforms, elections, plebiscites, and legal mechanisms to weaken liberal democracy incrementally. As Assoc. Prof. Gamboa warns, “by the time the threat becomes evident, it’s usually too late.” Because democratic erosion often proceeds under the appearance of constitutional legality, recognizing the danger of autocratization before institutions are fundamentally weakened has become increasingly difficult.
The interview also challenges conventional assumptions about populism. Rather than treating it as inherently incompatible with democracy, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa describes populism as “a double-sided coin,” capable of expanding political inclusion while simultaneously encouraging personalistic leadership and executive aggrandizement. Equally important, she argues that democratic oppositions must resist dismissing populist voters. “All of these would-be autocrats come to power because they tap into some kind of discontent,” she explains, emphasizing that democratic forces must address underlying grievances rather than simply condemn their political expression. Ultimately, her message is one of strategic democratic resilience: defend institutions, broaden coalitions, reduce polarization, and remember that “doing politics in a society that is not polarized is significantly easier than doing politics in a society that is polarized.” In an era of democratic uncertainty, Assoc. Prof. Gamboa offers a compelling roadmap for understanding—and resisting—the gradual erosion of constitutional democracy.
Here is the revised version of our interview with Associate Professor Laura Gamboa, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Colombia’s 2026 Elections Give Us a Mixed Story
Credential-giving ceremony to President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella and Vice President-elect Jose Manuel Restrepo by the National Electoral Council in Bogota, Colombia on June 25, 2026. Photo: Anamaria Mejía / Dreamstime.
Professor Gamboa, welcome, and let me begin with Colombia’s recent presidential election. This election has been widely interpreted as a decisive shift to the political right following Gustavo Petro’s presidency. Yet throughout your scholarship, you have consistently argued that electoral alternation should not be confused with democratic deterioration or democratic recovery. What do the election results ultimately tell us about the health of Colombian democracy? Should this election be understood primarily as ideological realignment, democratic accountability in action, or as another manifestation of the broader anti-establishment politics reshaping contemporary democracies?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: The 2026 elections give us a mixed story. On the one hand, when Gustavo Petro came to power, many Colombians were very worried that he was going to become “the second Chávez”—that he was not going to step down. And here we are. As far as I can tell, he’s planning to step down. Now, there’s the minor issue of his not recognizing the election results, which I’ll get into in a second. But he is stepping down, and Colombia’s main institutional infrastructure remains intact. Congress and the courts were able to check the president whenever they needed to, while also allowing some of his proposals to move forward. So I think that’s good news.
I also think this has probably been true since 2018, and it became significantly clearer in 2022, but these last four years have been, in many ways, a sort of spring for Colombian politics. For the longest time, Colombian politics revolved around security: How did we deal with the armed conflict? Over these past four years—and certainly during this past election—we’ve been discussing healthcare and pension reform. We’ve also been questioning, for good or for bad—you can agree or disagree with these questions—what used to be regarded as unquestionable macroeconomic orthodoxy, something we simply weren’t supposed to touch. For the first time, these issues have become part of the political conversation, and I think that’s important in any democracy. So I do think that there has been some kind of ideological realignment. We no longer have the simple pro-peace versus anti-peace divide, but rather a much more complicated political landscape in our electoral arena.
That being said, I also think that both the candidate who won the election and the president’s unwillingness to recognize the election results are not good news for democracy. I don’t remember ever seeing a president fail to recognize election results. Our elections are not perfect, by any means, but they’re pretty good. Our electoral system works well, and people generally trust the election results. So I think that’s bad news.
I also think Abelardo de la Espriella, who won the election, is a far-right candidate who ran a campaign based on emotions, outlandish statements, and sweeping proposals. He has claimed that he wants to govern by decree. He has appointed members of his cabinet who are anti-globalists and promoters of conspiracy theories. So I think none of that is good news for democracy.
The Path from Democratic Victory to Democratic Breakdown
ThroughoutResisting Backsliding, you caution against equating electoral victories by controversial or populist leaders with democratic breakdown. What analytical criteria should scholars use to distinguish between ordinary democratic alternation, constitutional conflict, and genuine democratic erosion? At what point does vigorous democratic competition become a threat to democracy itself?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: I depart from the principle that, no matter how crazy someone may be, if you win a democratic election—one that is free and fair and won without cheating—you deserve to govern for whatever period the law provides, whether that’s a presidential term or a prime minister’s term. This is true for presidents like Joe Biden, who I believe has a normative preference for democracy. I also think it’s true for Donald Trump, who I really don’t think has a normative preference for democracy.
What I don’t think, however, is that you get to govern like a king. In a democracy, presidents, prime ministers, legislatures, and judiciaries are subject to constitutions and the rule of law. In that regard, authoritarian leaders who try to evade or ignore these constraints are a danger to democracy. That’s when we’re facing genuine threats to democracy.
Between someone being a danger to democracy and someone actually eroding democracy, however, there are two distinct steps. First, there is a person trying; then there is a person succeeding in those attempts. In many ways, we have to think about this sequentially.
Why Democratic Erosion Is Harder to Recognize Than Ever
You argue that twenty-first-century democracies rarely collapse through classic military coups but instead erode gradually through legal and constitutional means. Why has democratic backsliding become such a slow-moving institutional process rather than an abrupt rupture, and does this gradualism paradoxically make contemporary authoritarianism more difficult both to recognize and to resist?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: This is one of the great achievements of the end of the Cold War. All of a sudden, we all like democracy, and we all want to be democrats. Citizens, foreign governments, and international organizations have all become supporters of democracy, broadly conceived, and no leader wants to be labeled undemocratic or anti-democratic. There are important symbolic and practical consequences to being “a dictator.” In order to avoid being called a dictator, leaders with authoritarian tendencies generally don’t resort to overtly abrasive actions like coups, self-coups, or the kinds of moves we used to see in the past. Instead, they turn to methods that are much more covert.
They still want to gain control over other branches of government. They still want to govern without limits. But they don’t want to do so in a way that would brand them as authoritarians or dictators. Of course, the problem with this kind of democratic backsliding is that, when these leaders try to undermine democracy without appearing to be dictators, they usually use and abuse the very levers of democracy. They try to change the rules. They invoke popular power to bypass other institutions. They resort to false information and other practices that are not necessarily visibly undemocratic, but are nevertheless undemocratic.
Precisely because these actions are not visibly undemocratic, they are very difficult to identify. It’s hard for someone who is concerned about democracy to say, “You are trying to undermine democracy,” when the only thing the president appears to be doing is proposing a constitutional reform. Or when the only thing the president appears to be doing is calling for a plebiscite. After all, plebiscites are supposed to be highly democratic. A lot of people are voting, so it’s really difficult to convey where the threat lies. And by the time the threat becomes evident, it’s usually too late.
The Double-Edged Nature of Populist Politics
The former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez (L) and Nicolas Maduro (R) in Cumana, Venezuela, April 17, 2009. Photo: Harold Escalona.
Much of the public debate assumes that populism inevitably produces democratic backsliding. Yet your work suggests a more nuanced relationship. Under what political and institutional conditions does populism become compatible with democratic inclusion, and when does it evolve into a vehicle for executive aggrandizement and democratic erosion?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: Populism is a double-sided coin. I don’t think you get one without the other. On the one hand, all populists are vehicles for inclusion. They tend to mobilize people who were previously outside the political arena. This was true of Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina in the 1940s. It was true for Hugo Chávez in the 1990s and early 2000s, and it is also true for Donald Trump.
We see something similar in Colombia. The recent election, with Abelardo de la Espriella and Iván Zepeda running, produced an unprecedented turnout in Colombia’s recent history. These leaders clearly know how to speak to groups that have not been incorporated into the political arena. The problem is that their ability to bring these groups into politics is closely tied to the way they connect with people. They don’t rely on institutional channels—particularly political parties—to relate to their constituencies. Instead, they operate outside those channels. Not only that, but sometimes—and more often than not—they actively delegitimize those institutional channels, which makes them, and only them, the sole viable leader. That, in turn, makes them incredibly dangerous for democracy because, if you see yourself as the only translator of the popular will, then you can never leave office.
So, I think populism is, in that sense, a double-sided sword. On the one hand, populists tap into some kind of grievance, perhaps an unfulfilled need or a lack of representation. In doing so, they mobilize people who were not part of the political conversation before. But the way they do so is incredibly personalistic, charismatic, and ultimately authoritarian.
So, when they become presidents, you have this inherent tension: a leader who is able to mobilize large numbers of people who were previously outside the political arena, but also a leader who wants to remain in power because he sees himself as the translator of the popular will.
Democratic Survival Depends on Opposition Strategy
One of your book’s most original contributions is shifting attention away from aspiring autocrats toward the democratic opposition itself. Why do you believe the behavior of opposition parties is so frequently underestimated in explaining democratic survival? More fundamentally, can democratic oppositions unintentionally accelerate democratic erosion even while believing they are defending democracy?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: Although my book was published in 2022, the analytical lens has increasingly shifted toward the opposition ever since Donald Trump came to power. If you ask me why scholars didn’t pay much attention to the opposition before, my first instinct is that these kinds of phenomena—populists coming to power, undermining institutions, and eroding democracy—were largely seen as phenomena of the Global South. So we simply didn’t think very much about democratic survival. But when Donald Trump came to power—when this became something that was happening in the United States—all of a sudden scholars, activists, and practitioners were forced to think seriously about democratic survival.
To a certain extent, the prevailing attitude toward the Hugo Chávezes, Evo Moraleses, and Rafael Correas of the Global South was: “Oh, yeah, those people gain power there. Of course they’re going to win there. These countries are poor, they’re weak, they have weak parties.” When Donald Trump won the election in the United States, however, we were suddenly confronted with the fact that these kinds of leaders could also win office in countries we considered consolidated democracies. And all of a sudden, we were confronted with a new question: We have to think about democratic survival. This has to be a real possibility.
There’s something about the way we think about dictators in general that makes it very difficult to see successes and failures as a byproduct of opposition strategies. The academic world has largely split into two camps. One camp believes that when would-be autocrats or dictators fail, it’s because the dictator was weak. So, of course, they were going to fail. It doesn’t matter who the opposition was or what the opposition did. The dictator was simply weak. Likewise, when dictators succeed, it becomes a kind of fait accompli: of course, the dictator was going to win because the dictator was strong.
Then, there’s the camp in which I position myself. But I’m really standing on the shoulders of some incredibly important scholarship, including one of my favorite books, Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik’s work on the color revolutions in Eastern Europe. That scholarship looks at the other side of the bottle. Rather than focusing on strong or weak dictators, it focuses on strong or weak oppositions, or on strategically smart and well-organized oppositions.
If you’re in one camp, it’s very difficult to see what the other camp is seeing. So I think those are the two reasons why the opposition was so often overlooked.
The only reason I started thinking about the opposition is because I’m originally from Colombia. In 2012, we had a visitor here at Notre Dame, where I was doing my PhD, who was talking about how Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales who were able to erode democracy because they were so popular. At the time, I had just come out of Álvaro Uribe’s government. Of course, any Colombian knows that Uribe was incredibly popular, at least until fairly recently.
So all of a sudden, I found myself asking, “Okay, but hold on. If popularity is all that matters, then we should have expected Álvaro Uribe to succeed.” That question, of course, led me to start looking at what Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq call the “near misses.” Why do some countries succeed while others fail?
But I don’t think that question would have been obvious to anyone who wasn’t thoroughly familiar with the Colombian case. The assumption was simply that Álvaro Uribe was never going to succeed because he ultimately did not succeed. There’s a kind of tautological logic underlying many of these cases.
Your typology distinguishes between moderate institutional opposition and radical extra-institutional resistance. Yet when democratic institutions themselves become increasingly captured by elected autocrats, many opposition actors argue that extraordinary measures become necessary. How should democratic forces determine when institutional resistance remains democratic—and when radical resistance risks giving autocratizers the pretext they need to repress, delegitimize, or criminalize the opposition?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: This is a very complicated question because, to a certain extent, it is connected to this duality, this double-sided nature of democratic backsliding. The fact that it happens slowly provides opportunities for the opposition. But the fact that it happens so slowly also makes it very difficult to identify exactly where the threat lies.
My book mostly analyzes presidents who come to power democratically. In other words, I don’t analyze Nicolás Maduro because he never came to power democratically. Nor would I analyze the later terms of Erdoğan, who I don’t think has come to power democratically in the past two elections. I focus on presidents who come to power democratically. And, to the extent that these presidents come to power democratically, it is incredibly important to respect the electoral process.
Not only because that’s the democratic thing to do—you cannot claim that the other side is violating democracy if you’re not willing to respect its basic tenets—but also because many of these leaders come to power by tapping into real grievances. They don’t come to power out of thin air. There’s something missing in the system that these leaders are responding to, and the people they represent deserve to have their voices heard.
When Hugo Chávez came to power, he did not inherit a perfect Venezuela. He came to power in a country where the political class had become corrupt, the economy was collapsing, inequality was through the roof, and the mechanisms of representation—particularly the political parties—had become deeply delegitimized. Yes, Hugo Chávez certainly contributed to the further de-legitimization of institutions. But the weakness of Venezuela’s traditional parties long predated Chávez’s arrival on the political scene.
So, I think these leaders tap into something that is real, and I don’t think we can simply ignore those grievances because we disagree with them. The same is true of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump is a would-be autocrat, and I really don’t agree with—or think that—his positions on immigration or LGBTQ+ communities are going to make this country any better. But I do think the grievances that propelled him to power are real. People felt that their towns were changing because, all of a sudden, there were many newcomers. People felt that opportunities were going to someone else. Those feelings are real, and they need to be grappled with.
So, if you simply say, “Well, this president that you elected democratically is not a legitimate president,” you’re ignoring the grievances of those citizens. That’s a mistake. It’s much smarter to grapple with those grievances and figure out how to address them—not how to embrace the policies, but how to address those feelings of not being seen and not being heard, which are actually at the core of many of these problems.
Of course, as I mentioned before, autocrats don’t get to govern like kings. If they commit crimes or do things in office that they shouldn’t do, there are constitutional mechanisms to deal with them and remove them. Sometimes those mechanisms work, and sometimes they don’t. Most constitutions include some form of impeachment process. Parliamentary systems have votes of no confidence. There are institutional mechanisms for dealing with these situations that don’t require organizing in the streets, launching a coup, or organizing a strike to force the president to resign.
I think using institutions is, in general, a good idea, regardless of repression. I don’t think, however, that institutions, in and of themselves, function the same way in the early stages of democratic erosion as they do in the later stages. I hear this criticism all the time when people read my book. They come back and say, “Well, institutions weren’t going to work in Venezuela in 2015.” My response is: of course, they weren’t. Those institutions had already been co-opted. They were no longer impartial referees of political competition. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t participate in elections.
Choosing not to use those institutions simply means abandoning political space that you could still occupy. It does mean, however, that institutions alone are not enough. At that point, you have to think about whether it makes sense to combine them with certain extra-institutional strategies, as we saw, for example, in Guatemala in 2023. Bernardo Arévalo entered an election that he was very unlikely to win. The stars aligned, he made it into the runoff, and he ultimately won. But because the system had already been co-opted—and because, more specifically, the electoral authorities were effectively controlled by the attorney general—he was unlikely to actually become president unless something else happened. And that something else happened in the streets. Indigenous communities, peasant organizations, and urban groups mobilized to defend the election.
So, to answer the question, when there is a democratic electoral process and one of these leaders becomes president, they have earned the right to govern within the limits of the law. I also think that using institutions is a good idea regardless. And I cannot think of a single example in which extra-institutional strategies pursuing radical goals actually helped promote democracy.
In Latin America, we had one successful coup, the one against Manuel Zelaya. What ended up happening was that Zelaya was removed from office, but another authoritarian leader was installed in his place. Honduras remained close to authoritarianism during the first few years afterward and has been authoritarian ever since. So, I just don’t think that advances democracy. It may advance one side of the political spectrum, but it doesn’t advance democracy.
Successors Can Become Democracy’s Unexpected Defenders
Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos participates in the March for Life in Bogotá, Colombia, on March 8, 2015. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your comparison of Colombia under Álvaro Uribe and Venezuela under Hugo Chávez shows that similar institutional pressures can produce radically different outcomes depending on opposition strategy. Looking back from today’s vantage point, what is the most important lesson Colombia offers about resisting democratic erosion without abandoning democratic legitimacy?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: The first lesson is the one I pointed out earlier. I think that kind of opposition protects democracy in the long term. By the time Álvaro Uribe stepped down, we still had a Constitutional Court, we still had a Congress that had not been co-opted, and we still had oversight agencies. I think that, in and of itself, is incredibly important.
There’s another lesson here, and I sometimes get criticized for it. People who read my book say, “How can you say that?” They argue that I end the Colombian chapter on an overly optimistic note, as though Colombia somehow just lived happily ever after in this blessed democracy, which is really not true.
So, let me put it this way. I don’t think moderate institutional strategies that stop democratic erosion are designed to advance democracy. They stop the bleeding. They stop the immediate threats to democracy. In doing so, they create windows of opportunity for others, later on, to deepen and expand democracy. That’s what happened in Colombia. Juan Manuel Santos came to power, pushed forward the peace agreement, and Colombia became a better democracy afterward than it had been when Álvaro Uribe stepped down.
There’s another criticism I sometimes receive about the Colombian case. People say, “What are you talking about? It was a member of Uribe’s coalition who actually came to power.” Uribe himself couldn’t run, but Juan Manuel Santos—his former minister of defense—won the presidency. To that, I would simply say: yes, but successors are not the autocrat.
We’ve been pleasantly surprised by a number of successors in Latin America and elsewhere. Lenín Moreno, who succeeded Correa, was not Correa’s puppet. Santos was not Uribe’s puppet. Luis Arce has had a more mixed trajectory, but, to a certain extent, after coming to power, he also veered away from Evo Morales and his attempts to remain in office. So, successors are not necessarily the same as their charismatic predecessors. That’s something we need to keep in mind, because sometimes those successors are our best chance to protect democracy.
Legitimacy Makes Courts Democracy’s Strongest Guardrails
In your recent work on “courts against backsliding,” you argue that independent courts can engage in “constitutional balancing” and slow or stop autocratization. What makes courts effective defenders of democracy in some contexts, while in others they become captured, politicized, or unable to contain executive power?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: I’ll make a distinction first, and I don’t think it’s one we make often enough. Courts can be, and often are, potential guardrails against democratic erosion. But sometimes they are the drivers of democratic backsliding. To a certain extent, democratic erosion in countries like Guatemala—and, I say this more cautiously, the United States—has been driven by certain courts. Definitely not all courts, but certain ones.
So, when I talk about constitutional balancing, I’m talking about courts that are designed to be guardrails for democracy, not courts that are pushing the process forward.
This research—which is still ongoing—is something I’m conducting with Ezequiel González-Ocantos from Oxford and Benjamín García Holgado from the University of Delaware.
For these courts to be successful, they need to have some kind of legitimacy. One of the lessons from the Colombian case is that, to a certain extent, the Constitutional Court was able to curb Álvaro Uribe’s attempts to undermine democracy because the court itself enjoyed a high degree of legitimacy. It was in a position that, for instance, the Venezuelan Supreme Court—before Chávez changed the Constitution—was not.
So the first thing I would say is that it’s not so much about the court being independent or autonomous as it is about the court being legitimate in the eyes of the public and about people being willing to defend that legitimacy. I also think there’s something about how the court rules that is very important.
In the article you’re referring to, we talk about constitutional balancing. What we mean by constitutional balancing is that, when democracy is threatened by violations of horizontal accountability—that is, attempts by the executive, or others, to undermine checks and balances—the court can rely on a more orthodox jurisprudence to rule against those attempts and preserve the constitutional balance.
This orthodox approach to threats against checks and balances is usually more effective than a more heterodox approach because it is easier to defend and support. If you think about it, what usually happens is that you have a very popular incumbent trying to change the Constitution while claiming some kind of democratic mandate. Then you have an unelected court trying to stop that incumbent.
If the court relies on existing written law or long-standing jurisprudence, it can act much more forcefully than if it relies on some kind of out-of-the-blue theory to rule against the incumbent. This becomes very clear when you compare the case of Mexico with the case of Colombia, although it’s also true of Argentina and other countries.
In Colombia, during Álvaro Uribe’s government, the Constitutional Court relied on a constitutional provision stating that constitutional reforms had to follow a particular procedure. What the opposition did inside Congress was to signal to the court when Congress was violating that procedure. The court therefore ruled primarily on those procedural irregularities.
During Álvaro Uribe’s government, the court and some of its allies were developing what we call the constitutional substitution theory. That theory suggested that if constitutional reforms went beyond a certain point, they were no longer reforms but attempts to replace the Constitution, and that the Constitution could not be replaced through ordinary constitutional amendment. On that basis, the court could rule against those reforms. But in the early 2000s, this was still a very new theory, so the Constitutional Court in Colombia invoked it only very rarely in its rulings against Uribe. Today, we see the court invoking it left and right, but twenty years have passed.
Some scholars believed that the Mexican Supreme Court could invoke the same theory to stop the judicial reform that ultimately dismantled judicial independence in Mexico. The Mexican Court, to a certain extent, played with that possibility. But because the theory had never been used in Mexico, it was very difficult for the court suddenly to argue, almost out of thin air, that this judicial theory justified ruling against a very popular incumbent. So, we think jurisprudence matters.
There’s also other work that points to two additional factors I think are important. One is that the Colombian Constitutional Court has been very good at ruling even-handedly. In Spanish, we have a saying that the court gives to both God and the devil. The justices understood that they needed to protect both themselves and the institution, so they were very careful not only to constrain the government but also to present themselves as a balanced court.
The other line of research that is very important focuses on how courts build legitimacy through networks of allies, both inside and outside the judiciary. We’re talking not only about justices, but also lawyers, legal NGOs, and activists who have a vested interest in preserving the court. These actors help support the justices and make it much more difficult for an incumbent to fire them, dismantle the court, or undermine it in other ways.
Why Constitutional Constraints Matter More Than Speed
Your work with Sandra Botero shows how Colombia’s Constitutional Court indirectly expands the strategic repertoire of minority coalitions in Congress by allowing them to document procedural irregularities and challenge legislation. Can institutional obstruction be a democratic tool of resistance, and how can we distinguish legitimate constitutional defense from anti-democratic sabotage?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: Like populists, institutional controls—or these kinds of institutional checks—are two-sided coins. On the one hand, they’re really good at curbing potential autocrats who leverage majorities, and they’re really good at protecting minorities, regardless of who those minorities are, from abuses of power. I think that’s a good thing. But, on the other hand, this also means that they sometimes curb the will of the majority and, in doing so, constrain policy reforms that many of us might regard as beneficial for the community or for the country.
I don’t know if you can have one without the other. I think this is a trade-off. If you want institutions that are able to check other branches of government—in this case, a court that can check both the executive and Congress—that court inevitably becomes a source of moderation for public policy. I don’t think there’s a way to have one without the other.
And I also don’t think this is an entirely bad thing. Let me explain why. Colombia has had many presidents, some of whom I supported and some of whom I didn’t. In 2016, Juan Manuel Santos was pushing for the peace process, which I strongly supported. He wanted to pass a reform that would have allowed him to introduce the legislation implementing the peace agreements to Congress and turn it into law while curtailing the ability of members of Congress to add amendments or modify it in any way, shape, or form.
This would have significantly sped up the implementation of the peace agreements and probably would have changed the ability of subsequent governments—both Iván Duque’s and Gustavo Petro’s—to undermine those agreements. That being said, it would also have created an incredibly dangerous precedent for future presidents, one that I fear could be used for purposes I would consider less “democratic” or beneficial for the community.
The court ruled against it. Indeed, implementing the peace agreement and turning it into law was arduous and complicated, and it certainly diluted some of its provisions. There’s no doubt about that. But I would rather have that than allow a president whom I don’t trust, and whom I think is inherently authoritarian, like Abelardo de la Espriella, to use that same power to push through measures that would violate human rights or allow him to govern without any meaningful constraints. That is incredibly dangerous.
As a matter of fact, it’s one of the reasons why I’m very hesitant—or very ambivalent—about my view of the filibuster in the United States. Most Democrats, and most of my colleagues, will tell you that the filibuster is terrible because Republicans have mostly used it to obstruct the Obama and Biden administrations—to block judicial appointments, obstruct policy agendas, and prevent the implementation of Democratic priorities. And I think they’re right. But I also think that the filibuster today is the last institutional tool Democrats in Congress have to stand on if they are to have any chance of even minimally curtailing what I see as an incredibly dangerous and authoritarian agenda on the part of the current government.
So, I don’t think you can have one without the other. But if I have to choose, I’d rather have a court that moderates the policy agenda while also protecting me from people whom I consider to be autocrats than a court that does not moderate the policy agenda and is also unable to protect me from people whom I think are authoritarian.
Lowering Polarization Is One of Democracy’s Strongest Defenses
Protesters march peacefully through Bogotá calling for the impeachment of President Gustavo Petro and opposing the government’s proposed reforms on April 21, 2024. Photo: Anamaria Mejía / Dreamstime.
Finally, drawing together your work on Colombia, Venezuela, Latin America, courts, opposition strategy, and democratic resilience, what would a global “democratic resistance playbook” look like today? What are the core mistakes opposition actors must avoid, and what principles should guide democratic forces confronting elected leaders who erode democracy from within?
Assoc. Prof. Laura Gamboa: I have a couple of ideas: One of the core mistakes—and I see this happening time and time again—is dismissing the reasons why the autocrat comes to power. All of these would-be autocrats come to power because they tap into some kind of discontent. Opposition parties and pro-democratic movements should take that discontent seriously. They should ask themselves how they can address it. My understanding is that, more often than not, this discontent reflects a lack of representation.
It’s not about whether people prefer stricter or more permissive immigration policies, or whether they support reproductive rights. It’s about people wanting to be seen by those who govern them and wanting to be understood by those who govern them.
What Hugo Chávez had that other politicians lacked was the ability to present himself as one of the people he represented. Álvaro Uribe had a similar strength. He, too, presented himself as one of the people he represented. The same is true of Trump. The same is true of leaders like Abelardo de la Espriella, and even Gustavo Petro, who is, in some ways, a Colombian populist on the left.
We really need to think very carefully about representation. When confronting one of these populist leaders in the executive, we need to reflect on what we’re missing and what we failed to tap into.
If we do this as pro-democratic activists, practitioners, and scholars—if we take these questions seriously—it will enable us to approach opposition differently.
Rather than approaching opposition as a mechanism for getting rid of everything the other side represents, we can approach it in a more respectful manner toward the voters—not the autocrat, but the voters who put that person into office.
It will allow us to see the coalition that brings these autocrats to power as more diverse than we often assume, and perhaps find allies at the margins. And allies at the margins are a great idea because they help us build broader coalitions. They are the Juan Manuel Santoses of the story.
That also reduces the feeling that you need to get rid of this guy today. In doing so, it allows you to develop longer-term strategies that protect democracy while also lowering polarization.
To have a polarized society, you need two sides. You need the polarizer, but you also need somebody to respond to that polarization. If you don’t respond to that polarization, it’s really hard to polarize. Ask Gustavo Petro. Doing politics in a society that is not polarized is significantly easier than doing politics in a society that is polarized.
A society that is not polarized allows you to build coalitions with the other side. It allows you to highlight the importance of protecting institutions beyond immediate policy interests. It allows you to draw voters toward more moderate candidates. So, in the long run, it allows you to accomplish much more.
Those are the two mistakes that I see opposition actors making time and time again when confronting these kinds of situations.
