In this timely and analytically rich commentary, Associate Professor Attila Antal examines the aftermath of Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat and the formidable challenge of dismantling an entrenched authoritarian system. Moving beyond the electoral outcome, Assoc. Prof. Antal argues that the core question is whether Hungary is witnessing a mere сhange of government or a deeper regime transformation. He identifies three interrelated arenas—propaganda and moral panic, institutionalized autocracy, and transnational authoritarian networks—as central to this process. The analysis underscores that while electoral victory is decisive, it is insufficient on its own: the durability of Orbánism lies in its embedded structures. The piece ultimately frames Hungary as a critical test case for democratic resilience and the possibility of reversing authoritarian consolidation within the European Union.
The Orbán government, which had been in power since 2010, was defeated in the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections. The Tisza Party, which formed a united opposition, will in all likelihood hold a two-thirds, i.e., constitutional, majority in the National Assembly. The most important question for the coming period is whether this strong mandate will be sufficient to dismantle an institutionalized authoritarian regime.
The election resulted in a landslide victory for the opposition, and although final/official results are not yet available and recounts are still underway (98.94% of votes have been tallied), the current results show that Hungarian society has risen up against the Orbán government: the ruling parties’ list received 2,375,468 votes (39.53% of the votes cast), the Tisza Party received 3,128,859 votes, representing 52.1% of the total, and the far-right Mi Hazánk party will also enter parliament with 343,684 votes (5.74% of the total).
All this means that currently (as of April 15, 2026), with 137 members (having won 93 individual districts and 44 seats on the party list), the Tisza Party is the largest faction in the 199-member Hungarian parliament, while the former ruling party, Fidesz-KDNP, received a dramatically small 56 seats (the collapse of the ruling parties occurred at the level of individual constituencies, where they managed to win 14 seats, accompanied by 43 list seats), and the far-right Mi Hazánk party received 6 seats from the party list.
The collapse of the Orbán government was thus caused, on the one hand, by the radical loss of individual constituencies (traditional rural constituencies belonging to Fidesz were lost to the Tisza Party, where non-Orbánist candidates had previously almost never won), and this was compounded by the record-high voter turnout, which can be interpreted within the context of the mood for systemic change: 5,988,778 people cast their votes, representing 79.56% of eligible voters.
In my view, the fact that the authoritarian Orbán government could be removed through an election does not negate the regime’s authoritarian nature, and only time will tell whether what has occurred is merely a change of government or a change of regime. However, despite its very significant mandate, the Tisza Party will have a very difficult task dismantling the remnants of the authoritarian Orbán regime. In what follows, I will examine this from three perspectives: Orbán’s politics of hatred, the institutionalization of autocracy, and the international network of autocracies.
Dealing with the Hatred and Moral Panic Generated by the Orbán Regime
One of the most important challenges in dismantling the authoritarian regime is dismantling the Orbán propaganda machine, which has been a fundamental pillar of Orbán’s power politics since 2010. This culminated in the 2026 campaign, in which the Orbán regime effectively functioned as a tool of Putin’s propaganda.
Starting in 2015, the fabrication of enemy stereotypes was continuous: refugees and immigrants, NGOs and civil society, the EU and Brussels, domestic political opponents, George Soros and his institutions. From 2022 onward, however, the Orbán regime was increasingly defined by overt Putinist hate-mongering and daily moral panic.
All of this led to President Zelenskyy becoming the greatest enemy in the 2026 campaign, with Hungarian propagandists portraying the Tisza Party as if it represented no Hungarian interests whatsoever and served Ukrainian and Brussels interests. The main message was that if the opposition came to power, Hungary would be dragged into the war—in other words, only Orbán could prevent the worst from happening.
All of this had a devastating effect on Hungarian public discourse, and the lies and hatred propagated became unbearable for Hungarian society. Orbán sought to make people believe that he wanted to avoid war, but in reality, from a communicative and ideological standpoint, he had long since entered it—on Putin’s side.
These leaks played a key role in preventing the Orbán regime—which presumably cooperates continuously with the Russians—from successfully carrying out any gray-zone operations, while also reinforcing the Hungarian opposition’s belief that the Orbán regime had committed treason.
It has thus become clear that the Orbán regime is capable of stoking hatred to the extreme, and addressing this both socially and institutionally must be a key task for the next government. Maintaining the remnants of Orbán’s autocracy and failing to hold those responsible to account will create a situation that could pave the way for the next authoritarian backlash.
Dismantling the Institutional and Political Foundations of the Authoritarian Regime
There is no doubt that the next government’s second-biggest challenge will be dismantling the institutionalized autocracy—a task that will not be easy for the new government, even with a supermajority to amend the constitution. For this reason, Péter Magyar called on the most important public officials of the Orbán regime to resign on election night, even though they have so far indicated that they will not step down.
A key issue for the new democracy and constitutional order to be built is the neutralization of the remnants of the Orbán regime embedded in the public and political system. A related question is how the new government will act to ensure accountability and whether it will find a way to reclaim the assets that the oligarchs of the Orbán regime have stashed away in private capital funds.
All of this has significance beyond itself, since it is precisely the nature of law in authoritarian systems to declare solutions and matters that are unacceptable from a democratic perspective to be legal; however, this seriously jeopardizes both the functioning of democracy and the constitutional norms intended to be institutionalized.
The Collapse of Orbán’s Regime in the Context of the International Authoritarian Right
Not only did the Orbán regime collapse unexpectedly in a political sense, but so too did the international authoritarian right-wing structure that Orbán had sought to build. It proved to be a significant sign that, on April 5, 2026, explosives were found on the Serbian section of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, and although Orbán’s propaganda tried to use this against the Ukrainians in line with the campaign, President Vučić surprisingly did not prove to be a partner in supporting Orbán.
The most surprising development, however, was that the Kremlin quickly let go of Orbán’s hand (at least on the surface). Orbán, who had represented Russian interests to the very end, was met with a remark from Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, who stated, “we were never friends,” adding that they were satisfied that Hungary remained open to pragmatic cooperation.
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The Hungarian opposition’s victory over the Orbán regime could therefore serve as an important lesson in several respects for the European Union and, more broadly, for authoritarian political regimes. On the one hand, it is a significant lesson that illiberal authoritarian regimes operating under one-party hegemony can be defeated through elections; however, the international political environment and the cooperation that supports the opposition through political and other means can play an important and indispensable role in this (as was the case with the Western and Central and Eastern European forces supporting the Tisza Party).
Through the Orbán regime’s constant vetoing, its incitement of hatred against Ukraine, and its representation of Putinist interests within the EU, it has essentially provoked a form of international and Hungarian cooperation that can rightly be described as the first manifestation of a cross-border “militant democracy” within the EU.
The coming period will determine whether the success of the April 2026 election will bring about merely a change of government or something more: the removal of an embedded authoritarian regime. For this to happen, the new Hungarian government and the EU must work together to dismantle the remnants of the Orbán regime; this could deal a decisive blow to the international authoritarian right.
In this incisive commentary, Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois examines the broader European implications of Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat, focusing on its strategic significance for France’s Rassemblement National (RN) ahead of the 2027 presidential race. Moving beyond surface-level interpretations, she argues that Orbán functioned as a crucial “proof of concept” for sovereigntist politics within the EU—an external validation that strengthened the RN’s claims to governability. His defeat, therefore, does not destabilize the party electorally but compels a recalibration of its narrative. By reframing the outcome as democratic alternation rather than ideological failure, the RN preserves its political coherence. The analysis offers a nuanced account of how transnational references shape—and are reshaped within—contemporary far-right strategy.
The defeat of Viktor Orbán is not merely a Hungarian political event. It constitutes a broader stress test for the coherence of the European far right—and, more specifically, for the strategic positioning of the Rassemblement National (RN) ahead of the pivotal 2027 French presidential election. For years, Orbán was more than an ally for Marine Le Pen and her party; he served as a demonstration case—a tangible and living example that a sovereigntist, anti-liberal project could not only attain power within the European Union but sustain it over time.
Orbán as a ‘Proof’ That the Model Works
Hungary under Orbán has long served as a proof of governability, allowing the RN to argue that its political project is not theoretical but already implemented in another EU member state. Marine Le Pen’s participation in the Budapest rally on March 23, 2026, illustrated this alignment. During the event, she explicitly praised Viktor Orbán, describing him as “a visionary” and “a pioneer,” while also referring to him as her “friend” (Le Monde, 2026). This reflects a broader pattern in far-right politics: the use of cross-national examples as legitimacy tools, where foreign governments become narrative evidence of domestic feasibility. However, the RN’s strong endorsement of Orbán, followed by his significant electoral setback, forced the party to reinterpret the result in a way that preserves its own political narrative.
Reframing Defeat as Democratic Confirmation
The RN has strategically reframed the meaning of the defeat. Rather than appearing weakened by its strong support for a losing leader, it presents the outcome as evidence of normal democratic functioning. Orbán is depicted as a legitimate leader who, after a prolonged period in power, is simply being replaced through free elections. In this narrative, he is not discredited; instead, his defeat is recast as part of routine democratic alternation.
RN leading figure Jean-Philippe Tanguy stated: “We see that not only are voters free, but they are free to make a massive choice… After 16 years in power […] it is the desire for alternation expressed by a sovereign people,” (France Inter, April 13, 2026).
In this reading, Orbán’s defeat does not call his political model into question, because it is explained as the result of voters freely exercising their sovereignty. The RN therefore maintains a dual posture: continued political sympathy for Orbán’s project combined with respect for electoral sovereignty. This allows the party to neutralize any potential credibility costs associated with its earlier endorsement, while also reinforcing the idea that national political changes do not disrupt the broader continuity of sovereigntists politics across Europe.
No Electoral Spillover into France
Electorally, the impact on the RN in France is likely to be limited. Despite Orbán’s defeat, the RN remains one of the strongest political forces ahead of 2027 and is consistently ranked as the leading party in voting intention polls. Its support base continues to be shaped primarily by domestic factors, including immigration, cost-of-living pressures, and persistent dissatisfaction with traditional governing parties. Orbán’s setback does not significantly alter these underlying dynamics.
However, it does remove an important external reference point that the RN had used to demonstrate that its political model had already been successfully implemented elsewhere in Europe. Without this example, the argument shifts from demonstrative to more declarative, weakening the party’s comparative narrative without significantly affecting its core electorate.
Orbán’s weakening, therefore, does not destabilize the RN’s position in France, nor does it alter its trajectory toward the 2027 presidential election. What it does affect is a narrative structure—the party’s ability to rely on external validation as evidence of political feasibility. The key development, then, is not an ideological rupture but an interpretative adjustment.
In an interview with the ECPS, Professor Pepper Culpepper argues that populism should not be treated as inherently anti-democratic. Rather, under certain conditions, it can function as a corrective force that exposes failures of responsiveness and pressures elites to address neglected public demands. Drawing on his work on quiet politics, corporate scandal, and democratic accountability, Professor Culpepper distinguishes between populism rooted in political failure and that driven by economic unfairness. While the former can erode pluralism, the latter may help rebalance distorted relations between citizens, markets, and institutions. The interview offers a nuanced reflection on public anger, corporate power, and the democratic potential—as well as the dangers—of contemporary anti-elite mobilization.
At a moment when democratic systems are under strain from two mutually reinforcing pressures—rising populist mobilization and the growing concentration of corporate power—the question of whether public anger can renew democratic accountability has acquired unusual urgency. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS),Professor Pepper Culpepper, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Blavatnik Chair in Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, offers a careful but provocative answer. Drawing on his influential scholarship—from Quiet Politics to his recent book Billionaire Backlash— Professor Culpepper argues that populism should not be understood simply as a threat to democracy. Under certain conditions, it can function as a corrective force, signaling failures of responsiveness and compelling elites to confront public demands they have too long ignored.
This argument runs directly through the spirit of the interview’s headline: “Populism Is Democracy’s Way of the People Telling Elites to ‘Listen Harder’.” Rather than treating populism as inherently pathological, Professor Culpepper urges a more discriminating view. In his recent Journal of Democracy article, “When Populism Can Be Good,” co-authored with Taeku Lee, he distinguishes between two broad dimensions of anti-elite sentiment: one rooted in political failure, the other in economic unfairness. For Professor Culpepper, this distinction is decisive. A populism centered on political failure—marked by distrust in elections, media, and institutions—can become corrosive to pluralism. By contrast, populist energies organized around economic unfairness may serve as a democratizing counterweight to entrenched power. As he puts it, “there are, of course, many negative aspects of populism, but one positive dimension is its potential to enhance responsiveness.”
The interview shows that this concern with responsiveness is inseparable from Professor Culpepper’s broader work on corporate scandal, media narratives, and regulatory change. Across cases ranging from the Beef Trust and The Jungle to Cambridge Analytica, AI regulation, and Big Tech, he explores how moments of public outrage can disrupt what he famously described as “quiet politics”—those domains in which organized business interests dominate because public attention is weak. Scandals, in his account, operate like “earthquakes”: they release latent pressure, render previously obscure issues politically salient, and sometimes create openings for institutional reform. Yet these openings do not arise automatically. They depend on policy entrepreneurs, compelling narratives of blame, and political actors capable of translating outrage into durable regulation.
What emerges from this conversation is a deeply textured account of the ambivalence of populism in contemporary democracy. Professor Culpepper does not romanticize anti-elite anger; he repeatedly underscores the dangers of polarization, scapegoating, and demagogic capture. Still, he insists that democratic theory must take seriously the possibility that public outrage, when directed at economic concentration and political unresponsiveness, can help rebalance distorted systems of power. The key question, as he suggests, is not whether populism exists, but which grievances it channels and toward what ends. In that sense, this interview is both an analysis of populism and a meditation on democracy’s capacity for self-correction.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Pepper Culpepper, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
When Anti-Elitism Strengthens Rather Than Undermines Democracy
Photo: Michal Suszycki / Dreamstime.
Professor Culpepper, welcome. Let me begin with a broader conceptual question:In “When Populism Can Be Good,” you distinguish between a pluralism-threatening populism and a corrective, anti-elite populism. Under what institutional, discursive, and socio-economic conditions does the latter emerge as a democratizing force rather than degenerating into illiberal majoritarianism?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: Thanks for that question. It’s a big one, so let me try to unpack it. In our recent article in the Journal of Democracy, “When Populism Can Be Good,”my co-author, Taeku Lee, and I examine the different components that sit within populism. We distinguish between two broad dimensions, which we can discuss further: one focused on political failure and the other on economic unfairness. We ask whether it is really true, as many people—especially elites like us—tend to assume, that populism is necessarily bad for democracy.
In our view, a form of populism that undermines pluralism is indeed harmful to democracy. By pluralism, I mean a community composed of multiple members coming from different backgrounds, with different allegiances—religious, racial, or political. Anything that weakens our willingness to work together as a community is detrimental to democratic life. We find that such dynamics are more closely associated with political failure than with economic unfairness, though I can say more about that later.
Your question, then, is about the conditions under which one dimension comes to dominate over the other. I think the answer is ultimately contingent, and it depends on what we might call the bulk of latent public opinion—what people are really concerned about. That is one side of the equation. The other concerns what political parties choose to offer within the system in response. Do they mobilize around political failure, which is associated with many of the elements that undermine pluralism, or around economic unfairness, which is not associated with those same dynamics?
Which Grievances Make Populism More Democratic?
Your framework identifies “political failure” and “economic unfairness” as distinct but overlapping sources of anti-elite mobilization. How do these dimensions interact in shaping the trajectory of populist politics, and which is more conducive to democracy-enhancing outcomes?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: These tendencies can coexist in a single person’s mind, but what we do is use factor analysis from 36,000 interviews across four countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—to understand which types of views cluster more closely together.
On the political failure side, these are people who tend to agree with statements such as: elections don’t matter; you can’t trust what you read in the mainstream media; and conspiracy-type views, such as the idea that a small group of people run the world. All of these reflect perceived failings of political institutions, suggesting that the game is politically rigged.
On the other side is the economic unfairness dimension, which is much more associated with the notion that the economic system is rigged—that elites have succeeded only because of this system and that they cannot understand the problems faced by ordinary people.
Thus, these two dimensions capture two aspects of failure: one concerns the responsiveness of the political system, and the other concerns the economic system within which it is embedded. I think it is important to step back and consider how the two relate, which is your question. That relationship is shaped by where we are structurally within capitalism. We are currently in a period marked by the enormous concentration of very large companies—particularly, though not exclusively, in the tech sector—and these firms shape many of the conditions of our lives.
Historically, this period resembles the era leading up to 1900, when there was a strong populist movement in the United States, associated with William Jennings Bryan and his famous “Cross of Gold” speech. That movement, like populist movements today, was driven by grievances against urban elites and the sense that ordinary people were being taken advantage of. At its core, populism is a moralized claim about the divide between the common person and the elite.
That earlier phase gave way to the Progressive movement, a period in which both Democrats and Republicans agreed that large trusts—big steel, big oil, and big finance—had grown too powerful and needed to be brought back under control. When these two dimensions come together, they can become powerful forces. In particular, the economic unfairness dimension can generate a strong pushback against large corporations, and we think—both in this article and in our book—that there are good reasons to expect this dynamic to shape developments in the years ahead.
How Episodic Shocks Recalibrate Accountability
In“Billionaire Backlash,” you conceptualize corporate scandals as focusing events that can disrupt entrenched policy equilibria. How do such episodic shocks compare to longer-term populist mobilizations in their capacity to recalibrate democratic accountability?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: Think of them a little bit like earthquakes. They release pressure—pressure that has built up in public opinion. If I can go back for a moment to the Progressive Era in the United States, there was one particular trust—the Beef Trust, that is, the meatpackers—that dominated American food production. Its dominance was such that around 200 laws were proposed between 1880 and 1900 to improve food hygiene, largely because Europeans would not even import American meat due to its poor sanitary conditions. All of those laws failed. That is the kind of blocked politics we often see today, where it is very difficult to get anything through Congress or many parliaments.
What changed in 1906 was the emergence of a corporate scandal with the publication of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. This released latent public opinion. It was, as you suggest, an episodic shock—a one-time disruption—but it triggered institutional change. It led to the creation of the American Food and Drug Administration, and American food was thereafter regulated. This did not eliminate business power; industry remained strong, and food producers continued to wield influence. But it did establish a regulatory framework within which those interests had to operate. In that sense, episodic shocks can generate institutional changes that constrain actors who previously enjoyed much greater freedom.
To return to your question, the recalibration of democratic accountability occurs when governments actually deliver what people want. Colleagues such as Steve Macedo and Jenny Mansbridge have argued that populism is democracy’s way of the people telling elites to “listen harder.” We believe that is the moment we are in. There are, of course, many negative aspects of populism, but one positive dimension is its potential to enhance responsiveness. We have witnessed a period in which corporate power has grown while governments have remained strikingly unresponsive. Large majorities favor some form of AI regulation, yet meaningful regulation has not emerged.
Democratic accountability, then, requires institutions that respond to what citizens actually want, rather than primarily to what business interests demand. In this sense, accountability often advances through episodic shocks; it rarely emerges through other mechanisms.
Blame, Narrative, and the Politics of Reform
Building on your work on media effects, how do framing, narrative construction, and attribution of responsibility mediate the translation of scandal-driven outrage into sustained regulatory change rather than transient symbolic responses?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: That ultimately depends, as we discuss at length in the book, on the emergence of policy entrepreneurs. You are right that framing and narrative construction are key to how we interpret what a scandal means, and there is always an effort to advance competing interpretations when a scandal emerges, including over who is responsible. But effective scandals tend to attribute blame quite efficiently. A scandal is corporate malfeasance that is made public and becomes salient; that is what a scandal is, by definition.
So, blame typically involves something going wrong within the corporate system, brought into the public eye by the malfeasance, and people respond by saying, “I always thought that was going on.” That generates public outrage, but outrage alone does not produce legislation. If laws are to be passed, you need actors who have been working for a long time to advance reform.
These policy entrepreneurs are, in a sense, the central figures of our book, Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy, because they are the ones—whether inside the political system, like the EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, or outside it, like the Austrian activist Max Schrems or the California property developer Alastair McTaggart—who use moments of corporate scandal to push for concrete change. They step in and say, “Here is what needs to happen, and the government must respond.” When a compelling narrative is already in place and public demand is high, that is when politicians begin to pay attention.
Scandals and the Limits of Business Power
Photo: Dreamstime.
To what extent can scandal-induced public attention overcome the structural advantages of “quiet politics,” or are these moments better understood as temporary punctuations within a broader equilibrium of business dominance?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: I think they are the latter. They are best understood as temporary punctuations within a broader equilibrium of business dominance. But that is the nature of capitalism. Democracy rests on the idea that each person of electoral age is equally valuable—one person, one vote. That is not how resources are allocated in capitalism. Capitalism allocates resources, often quite unequally, in order to maximize efficiency. This produces a strong concentration of financial resources, which can then be translated into political resources. So, capitalism is always going to be unbalanced in favor of business. I have spent my whole career writing about that, and I feel quite comfortable saying it. But the imbalance can take different forms and degrees.
What we see in corporate scandals is a partial redressing of that imbalance. These moments can constrain the ability of business interests to dominate by making certain issues highly salient issues on which the public is watching closely and pressing politicians to deliver outcomes that impose some limits on business power.
You can see this in the kinds of cases we study, often involving quite complex issues such as privacy regulation or financial regulation. Scandals like Cambridge Analytica or Goldman Sachs bring these otherwise abstruse issues into public view. Once they become salient, people demand a response, and governments often provide one. That institutional change then shifts the balance of power in politics, even if only partially.
We are not suggesting that this leads to a fully equal democracy in which everyone has the same level of influence. Large businesses will always remain powerful, and there is a certain legitimacy to that, since they are often engines of economic growth, which is itself important for democracy. But the current distribution of power—so heavily concentrated in the hands of a small number of controlling owners—is not what many people want. What we find is that scandals can play a meaningful role in redressing that imbalance.
Affect, Elections, and Democratic Pushback
Your research highlights the role of affect—particularly anger—in catalyzing support for regulation. How can democratic systems channel such emotions into constructive policy change without amplifying the risks of polarization, scapegoating, or demagogic capture?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: We are already living in an age of polarization, scapegoating, and demagogic capture. So, the question is not simply how to worry about those risks, but how to overcome them. Anger that goes unaddressed leads precisely to the outcomes we are seeing. But anger, when properly channeled—through political parties that seek to respond to it and articulate a democratic program—is how these dynamics can be pushed back.
I do not need to explain this, especially in light of the recent Hungarian election, where a party like Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, which has been in power for a long time and has served as a leading example of nationalist populism, faced significant pressure. You even had figures like J.D. Vance attempting to support Orbán’s government as part of a broader alignment among populist right-wing governments globally—I use the word “axis” advisedly.
And yet, despite gerrymandering and the structural advantages embedded in the system—despite the fact that Orbán’s allies control many of the largest industries—you still see moments of public anger and surges of popular support that can operate powerfully through democratic institutions. As long as elections continue to be held, leaders remain accountable to them.
Populism, Redistribution, and the Limits of State Trust
In your work on inequality narratives, framing the economy as “rigged” appears to shift redistributive preferences. How does this narrative intersect with populist discourse across the ideological spectrum, and where do its democratizing potentials encounter normative or institutional limits?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: Let me say a bit about that article, since it may not be familiar to all your readers. We conducted a study in which we exposed people in various countries to a “rigged system” narrative. We essentially presented the same story about inequality in each country, framing it as a rigged system, based on a paper by Joseph Stiglitz, but substituting country-specific statistics. So, people were reading about their own country, its level of inequality, and the idea that the system was rigged.
In every country we studied, this led to a shift in opinion in favor of redistribution—except in the United States. There, we did not observe the same shift. People appeared to accept that the system was indeed rigged when they read the article, but they did not trust the state to carry out redistribution.
This suggests that, in most contexts, populist discourse around redistribution can be quite effective in moving public opinion toward greater support for redistribution. But in the United States, there is such deep skepticism about the state that this effect is much more limited.
When thinking about the normative or institutional limits, I would say they are largely shaped by political context—by the extent to which people have developed views about the state’s capacity to bring about change, and about what they perceive to be the main threats within the system. In the United States, many people tend to see government primarily as a source of red tape and bureaucracy, rather than as an instrument for promoting equality or reducing inequality of opportunity. Most people, in fact, are uncomfortable with inequality of opportunity, even if they do not expect full equality of outcomes.
So, when we talk about normative or institutional limits, we are really referring to the political demands that exist within each country. These are legitimately and democratically contested, and they vary across national contexts.
Why Some Scandals Escape Partisan Filters
Photo: Dreamstime.
How does partisan polarization reshape the effects of corporate scandals, particularly in fragmented media environments where competing narratives assign blame in divergent ways and potentially blunt consensus for reform?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: Yes, that is really the core argument of our book on corporate scandals. Corporate scandals are among the few types of scandals that can sometimes escape this polarization effect—though not always. They can escape it because partisan scandals—most political scandals you are familiar with—do not resonate equally across the political spectrum. People interpret them through partisan lenses. If a scandal involves a party on the left, those on the left tend to defend the individual involved, while those on the right attack them, and vice versa.
That is not typically the case with corporate scandals. Here, you have CEOs, senior executives, or controlling shareholders engaging in behavior that people across the political spectrum may not find surprising but still find outrageous. Because of this, corporate scandals can sometimes cut across partisan divides and break through polarization.
However, this does not always hold. It can break down when the issue at stake in a corporate scandal has already become politically contested and polarized. We see this clearly in the case of climate change in the United States. In the early 1990s, climate change was among the least polarized issues, with Republicans and Democrats holding broadly similar views. By 2015 and beyond, it had become one of the most polarized issues. As a result, scandals involving companies like ExxonMobil elicit very different responses from Republicans and Democrats.
Another situation in which the effect breaks down is when a corporate leader is personally politically polarizing. Take the example of Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. He was widely seen as a major Democratic donor, even though he also contributed to Republicans in an effort to influence policy. The political left interpreted the FTX scandal as evidence of the need for stronger regulation, while the right framed it as a case of moral hypocrisy and individual wrongdoing—something akin to a “bad apple” problem, often with the added emphasis that he was a Democratic donor.
This divergence in interpretation has shaped how the American public now views cryptocurrency regulation, producing a clear partisan divide—even though most people have only a limited understanding of how cryptocurrency works. Once polarization becomes embedded in an issue, corporate scandals have a much harder time generating broad-based resonance.
Personalizing Power, Mobilizing Outrage
Your analysis of financial regulation suggests that personalization of blame can intensify public engagement. To what extent is such personalization a necessary heuristic for mobilization, and to what extent does it obscure deeper structural dynamics of capitalist power?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: When I give presentations about the book, I sometimes have very wealthy people in the audience—occasional centimillionaires, if not billionaires. Their reaction is often: I understand what you are saying about large companies, but what is wrong with billionaires? What have they ever done? They have simply been very successful. Why should we be angry about them?
I do not take a normative position on that, but I can say that people do take a view. Public opinion, broadly speaking, does not clearly distinguish between the actions of large corporations and those of billionaires. Billionaires provide easily recognizable faces for what are otherwise more complex and abstract dynamics—what you refer to as the structural dynamics of capitalism.
In that sense, billionaires put a face on what people perceive as problematic or unreasonable in corporate behavior. Take, for example, debates about AI firms building data centers without local approval, even when such projects may raise local energy prices. That is a complicated political issue. But if you place figures like Sam Altman, the head of a major AI company, in front of the public, people recognize him, and he becomes a focal point. Similarly, Elon Musk—who spans AI and the broader tech sector through Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI—serves as a highly visible figure around whom public attention can coalesce.
So, billionaires, as individuals, help make these dynamics more intelligible. If the goal is to mobilize people politically, discussing structural dynamics may work well in a graduate seminar or a policy school like the one where I teach. But in broader political life, recognizable individuals make those dynamics more concrete and significantly increase public engagement.
Big Tech, Public Resentment, and Regulatory Demand
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce in Washington, D.C., April 11, 2018. Photo: Dreamstime.
In an era marked by the concentration of power in platform capitalism and Big Tech, do corporate scandals retain their capacity to generate broad reform coalitions, or are we witnessing the limits of scandal-driven accountability in highly networked economies?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: Well, we will see. The argument of our book is that what people respond to is the reality of their daily lives. That is what latent opinion is all about. It suggests that people feel constrained by the fact that corporations are making choices that are not democratically accountable.
So, when we send rockets into space, we tend to cheer the government—for example, NASA in the United States, which has recently sent a rocket around the moon. But in reality, it is a private company, SpaceX, that is doing much of the production and effectively running large parts of the space program. Private companies are increasingly performing roles that governments used to play.
As a result, people have growing resentment toward large corporations that, once they reach monopoly positions—whether it is Amazon or Facebook—can engage in what Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification,” making people’s lives worse while extracting monopoly rents. This is a major source of public concern.
So, when you ask whether we have reached the limits of scandal-driven politics, I would say that scandal-driven politics works particularly well when the structural conditions of capitalism make people especially sensitive to the inability of politics to restrain large companies. These firms are responsible for much of the economic growth, while many others do not benefit in the same way. This creates a strong demand for regulatory constraints, because people do not necessarily believe that these companies act in the public interest—they act in their own private interest, which is what private companies are designed to do.
There is, in other words, a growing disjuncture between the power of these companies and the degree to which they are held accountable by the political system. For that reason, I do not think scandal-driven politics will diminish; if anything, it is likely to intensify over time.
Cambridge Analytica and Divergent Regulatory Paths
How do focusing events such as transnational scandals—Cambridge Analytica being a paradigmatic example—travel across jurisdictions, and under what conditions do they produce convergent versus divergent regulatory responses?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: To answer this question, I want to return to my concept of the policy entrepreneur. What happened with Cambridge Analytica was that it was revealed that the data of nearly 90 million Facebook users, many of them in the United States, had been taken by this political consulting firm. Cambridge Analytica claimed to use these data to run micro-targeted advertisements, suggesting that it could influence outcomes such as the Brexit referendum and the 2016 Clinton–Trump election. There is no evidence that Cambridge Analytica actually affected electoral outcomes, but it is certainly true that the 2018 revelations by The Guardian and The New York Times made the issue of privacy enormously salient and severely damaged Facebook’s reputation—something from which Facebook, now Meta, has never fully recovered. Indeed, Facebook remains one of the most distrusted institutions in public opinion as a result of this episode.
In terms of divergent regulatory responses, the European Union had already passed privacy regulation in the form of the GDPR—the General Data Protection Regulation—building on earlier controversies such as the PRISM scandal, in which major tech companies were found to be cooperating with intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ. In Europe, policymakers such as Margrethe Vestager were able to build on the public outrage generated by Cambridge Analytica to advance further regulation, including the Digital Markets Act in competition policy and the Digital Services Act in online safety, thereby strengthening the regulatory framework governing Big Tech.
In the United States, by contrast, national-level politics proved highly constrained. Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress, where both Democrats and Republicans criticized him following the Cambridge Analytica revelations. However, a telling moment occurred when Senator Orrin G. Hatch asked Zuckerberg how Facebook made money without charging users, to which Zuckerberg replied, “Senator, we sell ads.” That exchange illustrated a broader problem: many policymakers lacked a clear understanding of the digital economy, which limited their capacity to impose effective regulation.
As a result, while federal action stalled, regulatory innovation emerged at the state level. In California, the property developer Alastair McTaggart seized on the surge in public concern following Cambridge Analytica and pushed for a referendum to introduce strong privacy protections, comparable in some respects to the GDPR. Faced with this prospect, tech companies negotiated a legislative compromise, resulting in a new law passed in 2018. When subsequent amendments threatened to weaken it, McTaggart mobilized public opinion again and successfully backed another referendum in 2020, which passed with a clear majority and included provisions preventing the law from being diluted.
What we see, then, is that different jurisdictions respond to transnational scandals in distinct ways, depending on their institutional contexts and prior regulatory trajectories. In California, new privacy regulation emerged where none had existed before; in the European Union, existing regulatory frameworks were deepened and expanded. In both cases, however, the transnational shock of the Cambridge Analytica scandal prompted significant regulatory responses.
Photo: Dreamstime.
When Populism Corrects and When It Corrodes
If certain forms of populist mobilization can enhance democratic accountability, what distinguishes “bounded” or policy-focused anti-elitism from system-level populism that ultimately erodes liberal democratic institutions?
Professor Pepper Culpepper: I am not sure that system-level populism necessarily erodes liberal democratic institutions. We, in the policy elite tend to assume that populism involves people espousing simple solutions that are unlikely to work, and therefore not being serious. But what populism is doing at a systemic level is expressing something deeper. Policy-focused anti-elitism is not really the distinction we should be making. Rather, the key question is which part of the system people are upset about. Do they focus on political failure, or on economic unfairness? And I think there are people who focus on both.
These are not simply policy-driven positions. They reflect deeper forms of public dissatisfaction with what the system is delivering. It is a question of public outrage, and whether that outrage is channeled along the lines of political failure or along the lines of economic unfairness. I think that this distinction ultimately shapes whether populism acts as a constructive rebalancer of democracy or as a force that undermines it.
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos argues that AI is not merely a tool of efficiency, but a political force that may reconfigure both democratic governance and populist mobilization. In this ECPS interview, he warns that replacing bureaucrats with AI can erode “democratic legitimacy” and produce what he calls “automated majoritarianism,” where average cases are processed efficiently while minorities and outliers are disadvantaged. He also challenges the assumption that AI automatically strengthens authoritarian rule, showing instead how false positives, false negatives, and “threshold whiplash” can generate resistance within authoritarian systems. Most strikingly, he suggests that AI may transform populism itself: unlike earlier technological disruptions centered on manual labor, AI increasingly threatens “intellectual work and highly skilled labor,” potentially broadening the social base of anti-elite backlash and reshaping the future of political discontent.
At a moment when artificial intelligence is increasingly presented as a transformative force in governance, public administration, and political control, Jason Anastasopoulos, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia, offers a far more cautious and analytically nuanced perspective. In this ECPS interview, he argues that the effects of AI cannot be understood through simplistic assumptions of either technological salvation or authoritarian omnipotence. Instead, AI emerges in his account as a politically embedded system whose consequences depend on data quality, institutional incentives, and the broader regime context in which it operates.
A central theme running through the interview is the challenge AI poses to conventional understandings of democratic legitimacy and representation. Anastasopoulos warns that “replacing bureaucrats with AI has the potential to erode democratic legitimacy and decrease the extent to which people not only perceive the legitimacy of the system but also actually receive fair outcomes.” This concern is rooted in his broader claim that algorithmic governance does not merely automate decisions; it subtly transforms the normative foundations of administration itself. Because AI systems rely on “data from the past and on statistical averages,” whereas human officials can apply individualized judgment, the shift toward automation risks creating what he calls “automated majoritarianism,” in which average cases are processed efficiently while minorities and outliers are systematically disadvantaged.
At the same time, Assoc. Prof. Anastasopoulos highlights the political implications of AI beyond democratic administration, particularly in relation to populism and authoritarianism. Against the widespread belief that AI necessarily strengthens authoritarian rule, he emphasizes the “autocrat’s calibration dilemma,” showing how false positives and false negatives generate what he terms “threshold whiplash.” Far from ensuring seamless control, AI can create backlash, misclassification, and resistance, even within highly monitored societies. In this respect, the interview complicates dystopian assumptions about authoritarian omniscience by showing how predictive technologies can also destabilize the very regimes that rely on them.
Most strikingly, however, Assoc. Prof. Anastasopoulos suggests that AI may reshape populist politics in new ways. Whereas earlier waves of technological disruption primarily displaced manual and industrial labor, contemporary AI increasingly threatens “intellectual work and highly skilled labor.” This shift, he argues, may transform the social basis of political discontent. Populist mobilization, long rooted in anti-elite appeals to economically dislocated working-class constituencies, may now expand to incorporate professional and knowledge-sector groups who find themselves newly exposed to technological precarity. In that sense, AI may transform populism not only by intensifying backlash against opaque governance, but also by mobilizing constituencies that have not historically stood at the center of populist revolt.
In sum, Assoc. Prof. Anastasopoulos’s reflections offer a sophisticated intervention into contemporary debates on AI and politics. His analysis underscores that AI is neither politically neutral nor institutionally self-executing. Rather, it is a force that can unsettle democratic legitimacy, complicate authoritarian control, and reconfigure the social terrain of populist mobilization. Far from being merely a tool of efficiency, AI may become a catalyst for profound political realignment.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Associate Professor Jason Anastasopoulos, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
AI Doesn’t Simply Strengthen Authoritarian Control
AI generative technology, big data, globalization, and analytics management concepts. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Anastasopoulos, welcome. In “The Limits of Authoritarian AI,” you introduce the “autocrat’s calibration dilemma,” where predictive systems must tradeoff between false positives and false negatives. How does this structural constraint reshape prevailing assumptions that AI inherently strengthens authoritarian control?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: That’s a really good question. I think the common conception of AI is that it will strengthen authoritarian control in a linear fashion, and this makes sense to a certain extent. It is also true in the short run. One of the recurring themes in dystopian narratives is the emergence of a surveillance state in which authoritarian governments exert control over their populations through cameras, social credit systems, and similar technologies. To some extent, this does seem to be the case in the short term. In the long run, however, the use of AI is much more complicated.
This is because of the errors that it generates—namely, Type 1 and Type 2 errors. For readers who may not be familiar with these concepts, they refer to false positives and false negatives, respectively, and are commonly introduced in basic statistics. A Type 1 error occurs when someone is incorrectly identified as a positive case—for example, when a COVID test indicates that a person has the virus when they do not. A Type 2 error, by contrast, occurs when the test indicates that someone does not have the virus when they actually do.
All AI systems, as fundamentally predictive systems, operate under these same constraints. They can misclassify individuals—identifying someone as a threat to the regime when they are not or failing to identify someone who actually poses a risk. These errors carry political consequences, and managing those consequences becomes an inherent challenge for authoritarian regimes. Each type of error entails distinct political trade-offs, which I would be happy to elaborate on further.
Authoritarian Regimes Risk ‘Threshold Whiplash’ When Using AI for Control
Building on this dilemma, to what extent does the probabilistic nature of AI undermine the aspiration of authoritarian regimes to achieve total informational dominance and preemptive repression?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: This is where the political consequences of Type 1 and Type 2 errors come into play. This is where authoritarian regimes run into resistance when using AI in the long run, as opposed to the short run. In the short run, these tools are indeed tremendous for monitoring populations. Facial recognition systems can be linked to databases that identify people instantaneously. In China, for example, a social credit system is being developed that could potentially track movements and shape behaviors in ways consistent with regime preferences. But in the long run, the calibration dilemma that autocrats face becomes decisive.
This is something authoritarian regimes actually institutionalize. In China, bureaucracies exist to calibrate AI systems for these kinds of Type 1 and Type 2 errors. Let me outline the political issues that arise from these errors. For Type 1 errors, the biggest problem in an authoritarian context—where a leader is trying to predict who is risky—is that individuals are labeled as threats when they are not. When too many false positives are generated, opposition to the regime itself increases. In other words, you might have 100 individuals who are genuinely threatening, and the AI system identifies them—but it also identifies 100,000 others who are not. Those individuals, ironically, may become threats precisely because they are falsely labeled as such.
So, because of false positives, the regime creates more threats than it would have had otherwise. Authoritarian rule depends on a belief that compliance leads to tolerable outcomes—being left alone, not punished, not having one’s mobility restricted. Type 1 errors undermine this expectation, producing backlash and fueling social movements.
We have seen this in cases such as Zero-COVID policies and the Henan bank protests, which we discuss in the paper. Individuals were falsely labeled as COVID-positive to prevent them from protesting a banking scandal. This generated public outrage and forced the government to scale back. In other words, the use of AI produced the very instability it was meant to prevent.
For Type 2 errors, the problem is reversed. The regime faces real threats, and if AI systems fail to detect them, those threats can operate in the shadows. This dynamic produces what we call a cycle of “threshold whiplash.” Initially, regimes set thresholds low to maintain tight control, which increases Type 1 errors and triggers backlash. In response, they raise the threshold, which increases Type 2 errors, allowing real threats to go undetected.
At the same time, individuals alienated by false labeling may become politically active and organize against the regime. In this way, AI generates a cycle in which efforts at control inadvertently produce the very resistance the regime seeks to suppress.
Authoritarian Incentives to Report Stability Degrade AI from Within
Artificial intelligence as a next-generation technology shaping the digital era. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your work suggests that prediction systems are not merely technical tools, but political instruments embedded in institutional incentives. How do bureaucratic and party-level incentives distort AI outputs in authoritarian settings?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: That’s a really good question. The focus here is primarily on China, where regional bureaucratic leaders have incentives to report stability metrics to Beijing. There is a strong desire for Beijing to see that, across all regions within China, things are looking good—that conditions are stable.
What happens with AI systems, then, is that officials tend to downplay any activity identified by these systems that might suggest instability in a region. As a result, when such distorted data is fed into the new AI systems being developed, it creates a significant gap between on-the-ground realities and what the AI system reports, ultimately degrading the quality of the system itself. In this way, bureaucratic incentives to report stability end up undermining AI performance over time, as these systems are trained on data that is simply of low quality.
AI Decision-Making Can Erode Both Perceived and Actual Fairness
In your research on democratic administration, you argue that replacing human discretion with AI risks eroding accountability and reason-giving. How should we theorize the relationship between algorithmic governance and democratic legitimacy?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: One of my papers on the problem of replacing bureaucratic discretion with AI identifies a recent trend in many places; some of it is aspirational, and some of it has actually been implemented. The trend is that many regimes, not just authoritarian regimes but democratic countries as well, are seeking to replace bureaucratic discretion, and bureaucrats more generally, with AI systems.
For example, Keir Starmer is one of the figures who is very interested in doing so in the UK. Widodo in Indonesia has actually replaced a few levels of the bureaucracy with AI systems. One of the problems that the paper identifies is that when you replace bureaucratic discretion with AI systems, you remove some of the important safeguards that exist for democratic governance.
Specifically, AI systems have this issue where they do not think like human beings—that is the fundamental problem. Democratic legitimacy, in many ways, is based on the idea that another human being will review your case and be able to reason through whatever decision needs to be made by the state in your particular situation. What I argue in that paper is that there are certain types of decisions—decisions relating to rights, and decisions involving very important issues where someone’s rights could be taken away—that should not be delegated to automated systems. This is because the idea of justice and democracy itself depends on a human being assessing your case at an individual level and applying human judgment in a way that would be deemed fair both theoretically, from a philosophical perspective, and in terms of the perceptions of those being judged.
So, a lot of it comes down to the fact that replacing bureaucrats with AI has the potential to erode democratic legitimacy and decrease the extent to which people not only perceive the legitimacy of the system but also actually receive fair outcomes.
Another problem I identify in that paper is a technical one. I have training in machine learning and statistics, as well as in political philosophy, and I try to understand how these systems work and what their technical implications are. One of the problems with AI, and with any prediction system, is that it does a very good job of assessing the average case, but a very poor job of assessing cases that would be considered edge cases. If the circumstances that a person brings to an AI system are very unusual, the system is not going to be able to provide a good prediction.
As a result, you have what I call automated majoritarianism, where the AI system performs well for most people, but for minority groups and for individuals whose cases fall outside the norm, it performs very poorly. This can ultimately alienate a large segment of the population. These are some of the key issues I identify regarding the risks of replacing bureaucratic discretion with AI.
AI facial recognition in a crowded urban setting, highlighting risks to privacy and personal freedom (AI-generated). Photo: Irina Yeryom / Dreamstime.
If democratic governance depends on individualized judgment and justification, can AI ever be reconciled with these normative commitments, or does it fundamentally reconfigure the meaning of administrative fairness?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: I think it actually does end up fundamentally reconfiguring the meaning of administrative fairness, and it does so in a way that is subtle and not very obvious. A lot of it, again, comes down to how AI systems make decisions versus how humans make decisions.
Humans make decisions based on their experience and their adherence to norms that are either embedded in institutions or exist in society. Whereas AI systems simply make decisions based on data from the past and on statistical averages. So, with a human being, you get an individualized decision, whereas with an AI system, you get a decision based on aggregate data.
That has implications for the future of administrative fairness, because the types of decisions made by AI systems, given how they function, are fundamentally different from those made by humans. How those decisions differ will depend on the circumstances to a certain extent. But we have already seen, for example, in cases from the criminal justice system, that AI systems, when they try to predict whether someone is likely to be a recidivist, can produce problematic outcomes. There is a system called the COMPAS.
This is not really an AI system per se; it is more of a machine learning algorithm, although most AI systems are based on machine learning to some extent. What the COMPAS system does is to make predictions about who would be considered at high risk of recidivism in the future. Imagine someone is arrested, their data is collected, and it is fed into this algorithm. The algorithm then predicts whether that person is risky, on a scale from 1 to 10, and this affects how they are treated within the criminal justice system. If they are predicted to be high risk, they may receive a harsher sentence and be treated more punitively; if they are predicted to be low risk, they are more likely to receive leniency.
What some authors at ProPublica found in a 2016 study was that these systems generated a much higher false positive rate for African American offenders compared to white offenders. In other words, they predicted that Black offenders were more likely to be a future risk even when they were not. This is what the well-known ProPublica article “Machine Bias”demonstrated.
In that case, it showed that AI systems can perpetuate biases into the future. They can create a situation where past discrimination becomes embedded in the criminal justice system, and once that happens, it is much more difficult to correct than with human decision-makers. With humans, you can intervene more directly—you can audit decisions or remove individuals—but with AI systems, you would have to change the entire system, including vendors and underlying models, which is far more complex.
So, these are some of the ways in which AI can reshape our understanding of administrative fairness. We will need to develop systems to audit AI in order to prevent bias, and we will have to continually ensure that these systems do not embed biases that could create long-term unfair outcomes for minority groups and others whose lives are affected by AI-driven decisions.
AI Should Inform Decisions, but Humans Must Remain in the Loop
You propose a “centaur model” where AI complements rather than replaces human decision-makers. What institutional safeguards are necessary to prevent this hybrid model from drifting toward de facto automation and accountability erosion?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: The idea behind the Centaur model is pretty simple. We need to ensure that when really important decisions are being made within government—decisions that can affect people’s lives and relate to issues of fairness or justice—there is always a human decision-maker in the loop. An AI system can be good at making predictions, but it should only be used as one piece of information within a broader file that a human decision-maker can draw upon.
The problem with this kind of Centaur model, however, is that it runs up against the incentives many governments have to cut costs. This is especially true at the state and local levels in the United States, and also for lower-level governments in Europe and elsewhere, where there are strong incentives to automate decisions.
What may ultimately prevent the Centaur model from being implemented—even though I think it is a good model—is the political economy of governance. A system that combines human judgment with AI could produce decisions that are both fairer and more just than those made by humans alone, who have biases, or by AI systems alone, which come with their own set of problems.
But these advantages may be outweighed by structural pressures. If there is insufficient tax revenue, sustained pressure to cut costs, and a broader cultural disposition—especially in the United States—that views bureaucrats as unnecessary or ineffective, then populist demands to reduce administrative capacity may lead to full automation. In such a scenario, the Centaur model would not take hold.
Instead, you could end up with layers of bureaucracy fully delegated to AI, which introduces its own risks. In that sense, the key issue is public pressure to shrink bureaucracies—something we have seen in various reform movements—combined with governments’ ongoing efforts to reduce costs. Together, these dynamics can push systems toward automated governance rather than hybrid models, and that is something people need to be aware of.
Addressing this requires a broader cultural shift. People need to understand that bureaucrats are not simply obstacles—such as those encountered at the Department of Motor Vehicles—but are integral to ensuring fairness and accountability in governance. Without that shift, we risk moving toward fully automated systems that may replicate the flaws of bureaucracies while simply making decisions faster, not better. That is the main concern I have.
AI Can Centralize Power by Aligning Decisions More Closely with Political Leaders
Three high-definition video surveillance cameras operated by the city police. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your work on delegation highlights how authority is structured through constraints and discretion. How does the delegation of decision-making authority to AI systems alter classic principal–agent problems in democratic governance?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: That’s a really good question. The way in which the delegation of authority to AI systems alters the classical problem is the following. The traditional principal–agent problem between bureaucracies and higher levels of authority is that, say in the United States, Congress wants a law passed. They pass the law and then expect it to be implemented in a way that is consistent with their intentions.
However, members of Congress and other elected leaders often lack the expertise required to implement laws themselves. For example, in the case of environmental legislation, they do not have the technical knowledge to determine how regulations should be applied in practice. As a result, they delegate this authority to expert bureaucrats, such as those in the EPA, who are responsible for implementation. The principal–agent problem arises because bureaucrats may have preferences that differ from those of elected leaders, meaning that delegation can produce outcomes that do not fully align with the preferences of those who delegated the authority.
In theory, AI could mitigate this problem. Elected leaders could design and select AI systems that align more closely with their own preferences, whether ideological or pragmatic. From the perspective of higher-level officials, AI systems can therefore be appealing, as they may replace bureaucrats who exercise independent discretion and might make decisions that leaders do not favor.
However, I think this is problematic from the public’s perspective. It leads to greater centralization of power and reduces discretion at the ground level. Bureaucrats often possess forms of expertise that elected leaders simply do not have and replacing that expertise with AI systems could introduce significant risks. Laws might not be implemented correctly, and outcomes might reflect not the interests of the public, but rather the preferences of elected leaders—or even the interests of the vendors who design the AI systems. This is where a new kind of principal–agent problem can emerge.
Perceived Unfair AI Decisions Can Fuel Populist Backlash
In the context of populism, how might the increasing use of AI in governance deepen representation gaps, particularly if citizens perceive decisions as opaque, impersonal, or technocratically imposed?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: I think that’s a real problem, and much of it comes down to the idea of backlash that I discuss in my paper on “The Limits of Authoritarian AI” with my co-author, Jason Lian.
If people perceive that AI systems are making decisions that are unfair, the resentment and backlash this generates can fuel an increase in populist movements and a desire to remove those who rely on AI systems but are not populists. That is one key risk I see emerging.
AI can certainly increase support for populist leaders. Such leaders are often somewhat anti-technology and frequently campaign on anti-technology platforms. If AI-based decisions generate sufficient backlash, this can provide them with powerful political fuel. In that context, we could see a sharp rise in support for populist leaders as a means of rolling back the system to a time before AI systems were producing decisions perceived as unfair.
Technological Displacement Expands the Social Base of Populism
Senior male manager addressing workers in open plan office. Photo: Monkey Business Images / Dreamstime.
Your research on technological change and populism suggests that economic disruption can fuel political discontent. How might AI-driven labor displacement interact with democratic backsliding and the rise of populist movements?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: There’s a lot of research on this, which finds that populists often draw on the idea that technology—especially automation—will replace people and take their jobs away. This is something we’ve seen since in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites in England were, of course, a well-known populist movement that relied on an anti-technology stance.
The Luddite movement emerged in response to the invention of the steam engine, which displaced large amounts of guild labor in textile production. Whenever there is labor displacement due to technological change, there is almost certainly backlash from those who are unemployed or otherwise disaffected by these new automation systems.
In that sense, AI is no different. It gives populist leaders something to point to, allowing them to claim that they will provide solutions to AI-driven displacement. But in practice, when they are elected, they often fail to deliver those solutions. Instead, they may cooperate with those who develop AI systems and even promote their expansion.
Nevertheless, this remains a powerful and enduring populist position. Historically, populist leaders promise to address the consequences of technological change, yet technological progress continues regardless. Still, their ability to mobilize those affected by labor displacement is likely to grow as more jobs are disrupted.
What is particularly interesting about AI, compared to earlier technologies like the steam engine, is that it is displacing not only manual labor but also intellectual work and highly skilled labor. As a result, the nature of populist and social movements may evolve, as populists begin to incorporate these groups into their constituencies rather than focusing primarily on the working class. This could become an important new dimension of populist politics moving forward.
Distrust of Bureaucracy Could Enable ‘Algorithmic Populism’
To what extent does AI governance risk creating a new form of “algorithmic populism,” where political actors leverage automated systems to claim efficiency while obscuring responsibility?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: That’s exactly the problem I identified before. Could you explain what you mean by algorithmic populism more specifically? Political leaders or actors leveraging automated systems to claim efficiency while obscuring responsibility.
That’s the general problem with AI. It’s one of the key tensions. I’m not entirely sure about the idea of algorithmic populism in general, but one condition that could give rise to it is, especially in cultures like the United States where there is a deep distrust of bureaucracies, a situation in which AI systems are perceived as being better than human bureaucrats.
In those cases, it would be easy for a political actor—an “algorithmic populist,” as you put it—to accelerate the replacement of bureaucrats with AI in government, which would again lead to many of the problems I discussed earlier. And some figures—Donald Trump, for example, who could be considered a populist—might even be seen as algorithmic populists to a certain extent, in that they promote technology and advance a strong AI agenda.
In such situations, you create a scenario where you end up with the same problems associated with AI that I mentioned earlier, but the process continues to advance. I don’t know exactly what the future would look like in terms of how an algorithmic populist movement might develop, but it is an interesting idea to consider.
Data Quality Will Determine Whether AI Supports Democracy or Control
Photo: Shutterstock
And lastly, Professor Anastasopoulos, looking ahead, do you see AI as ultimately stabilizing or destabilizing democratic systems—and what key variables will determine whether it becomes a tool of democratic renewal or authoritarian entrenchment?
Assoc. Prof. Jason Anastasopoulos: I’m actually pretty hopeful about AI and its effect on democracy. I think it’s going to have two effects in general: one within democratic systems and the other within authoritarian systems.
I think a lot of it comes down to data quality. In democratic systems, AI can do a very good job of helping decision-makers make fairer, more just, and more efficient decisions. That’s because, within democratic systems, the information fed into AI systems comes from a range of democratic processes—deliberation, free speech, and so on. As a result, the quality of AI systems is very high when they are used to further democratic principles and support democratic rule.
However, in authoritarian systems—and this is something I discuss in “The Limits of Authoritarian AI”—authoritarian regimes seek to use AI to control their populations. The fundamental problem they encounter is one of information. This problem relates directly to the fact that when people are being monitored, they change their behavior and hide their preferences. As a result, the information that feeds into AI systems ends up being of much lower quality in authoritarian regimes than in democratic ones. I believe this tends to further destabilize authoritarian regimes as they attempt to tighten control through AI systems and encounter the kind of threshold whiplash I mentioned earlier. Over time, authoritarian regimes may come to realize that AI tools are not the panacea they may have expected. That realization could open the door for social democratic movements within authoritarian regimes to take advantage of the instability created by AI.
In sum, for democratic nations, as long as we avoid a situation in which we eliminate all layers of government and replace them with AI, it can be a stabilizing force. In contrast, in authoritarian regimes, it is likely to be destabilizing—at least temporarily—and may eventually push those systems toward greater democratization if they continue to rely on AI. They might, of course, decide to abandon AI systems and revert to older forms of authoritarian control, but I don’t think that is very feasible in the modern world. Instead, what we may see is a gradual broadening of democracy globally as AI systems are adopted for different purposes.
Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois shows how a single legal case can reverberate far beyond its national context, becoming a transnational resource in contemporary culture wars. The conviction of Päivi Räsänen by the Finnish Supreme Court—carefully distinguishing between protected religious expression and punishable factual claims—has been rapidly reframed into a simplified narrative of “persecuted faith.” In this process, complex legal reasoning gives way to emotionally resonant claims about censorship and moral decline. Dr. Bauvois highlights how transatlantic conservative networks mobilize such cases to advance broader agendas, transforming local disputes into symbolic battlegrounds. The episode ultimately reveals how culture wars today are not merely domestic conflicts but globally circulated struggles over truth, authority, and the boundaries of legitimate speech.
On 26 March 2026, Finland’s Supreme Court convicted Päivi Räsänen, a long-serving Christian Democrat MP and former Minister of the Interior, of incitement against a minority group. The conviction concerned a 2004 pamphlet by Räsänen, whose title roughly translates to “Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Understanding of Humanity.” The Court noted that Räsänen described homosexuality as “a disorder of psychosexual development” and a “sexual abnormality.”
The pamphlet’s claims about homosexuality were found to be framed as factual generalizations, not religious expression, and therefore fell within hate speech law. By contrast, her 2019 social media post—which quoted a Bible verse to criticize the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland for sponsoring Helsinki Pride and added that homosexuality was “shameful and sinful”—was deemed protected religious expression.
The political reaction was swift. Riikka Purra, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance from the Finns Party, wrote on social media: “Freedom of speech took another serious hit today through the supreme court’s voting decision.” But the ripple effect extended beyond Finland. The US Embassy in Finland called the verdict “a troubling ruling for religious freedom and freedom of expression.” A Washington Post editorial sharply criticized the decision, opening with: “Finland is often ranked as the happiest country on Earth, but that’s only if you like cold winters and harsh limitations on freedom of expression.” The conviction also drew a response from the Trump administration. Riley Barnes, a top official in the US State Department, argued on X that the conviction is “baseless” and that “in a democracy, no one should face trial for peacefully sharing their beliefs.”
The Context: Struggles over Gender and Sexuality
The Räsänen case is not an isolated legal dispute. It exemplifies a broader shift in Western democracies: the growing centrality of culture wars to populist mobilization. Increasingly, conflicts are driven by cultural backlash—a reaction against progressive value change that fuels today’s culture wars (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Nowhere is this more evident than in the transnational struggles over gender and sexuality, which are the central front of contemporary culture wars (Ayoub & Stoeckl, 2024; Goetz & Mayer, 2023).
At stake in the Räsänen case is therefore not only a legal boundary but an epistemic conflict: a struggle over who has the authority to define truth, normality, and the limits of acceptable speech regarding gender and sexuality. On one side stand scientific and legal institutions that define homosexuality as a normal variation of human sexuality – a position codified by the WHO’s removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1990. On the other side are religiously grounded claims asserting moral truths, often framed as non-negotiable values.
The Finnish Supreme Court’s reasoning reflects this tension. By classifying Räsänen’s pamphlet statements as factually incorrect generalizations, the court affirms the authority of scientific and legal knowledge. At the same time, it draws a clear line: religious belief remains protected, but its translation into degrading claims about a minority group is not.
“Flagship” for Transatlantic Conservative Networks
The significance of the Räsänen case extends far beyond Finland. It has become a resource in transnational culture wars, especially around gender and sexuality. Contemporary conservative politics are indeed increasingly organized through cross-border networks that coordinate legal strategies, political messaging, and legislative agendas (Cooper, 2017; Du Mez, 2020).
For instance, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) —a US-based conservative Christian legal advocacy group classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group—has supported Räsänen throughout her trial, providing legal aid and raising funds. ADF has framed her case as prime evidence of a growing threat to free speech and religious liberty in Europe.
This framing has reached the highest levels of US politics. On 4 February 2026—over a month before the Finnish Supreme Court’s final conviction—Räsänen testified before the US House Judiciary Committee at a hearing titled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation.” She was invited by Republican lawmakers, including Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who has very strong ties with the conservative Christian think-tank The Heritage Foundation. During her visit, Räsänen also attended a Prayer and Repentance gathering alongside Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a prominent conservative Republican who has expressed alignment with Project 2025, the ideological and political programme laid out by the Heritage Foundation.
For transatlantic conservative and Christian-right networks, Räsänen functions as a “flagship” —a symbolic figure they can brandish to illustrate how bad things are in Europe. Her experience is a cautionary tale used to support claims that Europe is suppressing Christian expression, that European legal systems are hostile to traditional religious beliefs, and that free speech protections are under threat from European regulatory models. The fact that she was actually acquitted of the Bible-quoting charge is conveniently omitted. The narrative that she was prosecuted for “quoting the Bible” is politically useful, even if factually false.
The Politics of Simplification: From Legal Nuance to Moral Narratives
The Räsänen case illustrates how complex legal judgments are translated into simplified moral narratives. Nuanced legal distinctions—such as the Supreme Court’s careful separation of protected religious speech (the social media post) from punishable factual generalizations (the pamphlet)—are flattened into binary oppositions: freedom versus censorship, faith versus secularism, Christian truth versus gender ideology.
Media coverage sympathetic to Räsänen conveniently ignores the complexity of the ruling—which found that context, framing, and genre matter. Conservative and Christian media outlets such as The European Conservative, Christian Network Europe, and The Hungarian Conservative have covered the case with simplifying headlines like “Is It Hate Speech to Call Homosexuality a Sin?” These outlets frequently refer to hate speech laws as instruments of secular oppression, ignoring the court’s explicit reasoning that religious expression remains protected.
This simplification is not accidental but constitutive of populist politics. It enables actors to construct clear moral boundaries, mobilize emotions, and reinforce collective identities. The Räsänen case thus functions as a symbolic resource, anchoring abstract claims about moral decline in concrete, personalized narratives that can travel across borders.
The distinction between protected belief and punishable speech is replaced by a more resonant narrative: Räsänen is a respectable Christian politician, a grandmother and physician, sanctioned simply for expressing her faith. This narrative ignores the court’s explicit acquittal on the Bible charge and its careful reasoning. But in the logic of culture war mobilization, accuracy is secondary to affective resonance. A long, complex legal judgment does not rally supporters. A story of martyrdom does.
Conclusion
The Räsänen case is no longer about what she wrote or said, but about what others have made of her. A complex verdict has been simplified and redeployed, its original details mattering less than its political and ideological utility.
The involvement of The Heritage Foundation and the broader MAGA movement is not coincidental. In recent years, The Heritage Foundation has actively cultivated alliances with European conservative, right-wing and far-right actors—politicians, think tanks, and nationalist movements—across Hungary, Czechia, Spain, France, and Germany, and has reportedly engaged with parliamentary groups such as Patriots for Europe.
Räsänen did not become a flagship on her own. Within these conservative circles, some ideas from Project 2025 are seen as transferable to European debates on immigration, sexuality and regulation. Räsänen’s case, her hearing, and her symbolic elevation by US conservative networks are small but significant components of this larger agenda.
The Räsänen case illustrates a wider pattern: culture wars are increasingly produced transnationally, circulating through networks that reframe narratives across borders. A local case becomes a global resource, translated and repurposed for the aims of the culture war.
References
Ayoub, P. M. & Stoeckl, K. (2024). The global fight against LGBTI rights: How transnational conservative networks target sexual and gender minorities. NYU Press.
Du Mez, K. K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. Liveright.
Goetz, J. & Mayer, S. (2023). Global Perspectives on Anti-Feminism. Edinburgh University Press.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge University Press.
Dr. Arash Azizi of Yale University argues that the Iran Islamic Republic is likely to survive, but in a transformed form shaped less by ideology and more by pragmatism. In this ECPS interview, he suggests that Iran’s longstanding strategy of “sustained hostility toward the United States and enmity toward Israel… is not sustainable,” pushing the regime toward recalibration. Rather than collapse, Dr. Azizi foresees a shift: the decline of “Soleimaniism,” the rise of a securitized political order, and a growing emphasis on regional integration and diplomatic engagement. While power consolidates around military-security elites, Iran may simultaneously pursue normalization and reconstruction. The result, he argues, is not the end of the Islamic Republic, but its reconfiguration into a more technocratic, less ideological, and strategically adaptive state.
Amid an intensifying cycle of confrontation between Iran, Israel, and the United States, the Middle East is entering what can only be described as a structurally transformative moment. Long characterized by proxy conflict and calibrated ambiguity, regional dynamics have now shifted toward direct interstate confrontation, leadership rupture, and accelerating geopolitical fragmentation. The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, the subsequent consolidation of power within a narrower elite, and sustained US–Israeli military pressure have together transformed a protracted shadow war into an overt systemic crisis. These developments raise urgent questions about the durability of the Islamic Republic, the reconfiguration of its strategic doctrine, and the broader implications for regional order.
In this context, this ECPS interview with Dr. Arash Azizi, who is a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at Yale University, offers a timely and analytically rich intervention. As a scholar of Iranian politics and regional geopolitics, Dr. Azizi situates current developments within a longer trajectory of ideological evolution, institutional transformation, and strategic recalibration. His central argument—captured in the headline assertion that “the Islamic Republic will survive, but in a less ideological, more pragmatic form”—provides a unifying thread through the discussion.
At the heart of Dr. Azizi’s analysis lies the contention that the foundational logic of Iran’s revolutionary project is undergoing erosion. The model of regional power projection associated with Qassem Soleimani—what he describes as a “collection of militias that functioned very much as a unified multinational army”—has, in his view, reached the limits of its historical relevance. “That era is now largely over,” he notes, emphasizing that even prior to the latest war, “Soleimaniism was already under significant strain.” The cumulative effects of internal dissent in Iraq and Lebanon, combined with Israel’s military campaign and the collapse of allied structures in Syria, have rendered the “axis of resistance… even more out of vogue.”
Yet Azizi resists narratives of imminent regime collapse. Instead, he identifies a process of transformation rather than breakdown. The Islamic Republic, he argues, has come to recognize that its long-standing strategy of “sustained hostility toward the United States and enmity toward Israel… is not sustainable.” In its place, a more pragmatic orientation is emerging—one oriented toward “regional integration,” “a business-like relationship with the United States,” and eventual diplomatic normalization. This shift does not imply liberalization in a conventional sense, but rather a rebalancing of ideological ambition and strategic necessity.
Simultaneously, however, this transformation is unfolding alongside the consolidation of a more securitized political order. The post-Khamenei landscape, Dr. Azizi suggests, reflects “the rise of a security state, a militarized state… with important elements from the IRGC calling the shots.” This dual movement—toward external pragmatism and internal securitization—defines the paradox of Iran’s current trajectory.
Taken together, Dr. Azizi’s analysis points to a hybrid future: a state that sheds elements of its revolutionary identity while preserving—and in some respects intensifying—its coercive core. The result, as he suggests, is not the end of the Islamic Republic, but its reconstitution: less ideological, more technocratic, and increasingly embedded within a shifting regional order.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Dr. Arash Azizi, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Iran’s Axis Strategy Is Fading as a New Regional Logic Emerges
Palestinians celebrate Iran’s missile strikes on US bases in Iraq, burning US and Israeli flags during a rally in Khan Yunis, Gaza, honoring Qasem Soleimani. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Dreamstime.
Dr. Azizi, welcome. Let me begin with the broader picture: In “The Shadow Commander,” you show how Qassem Soleimani institutionalized a model of regional power projection that fused ideological militancy, informal diplomacy, and IRGC autonomy. After the killing of Ali Khamenei, the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei, and the direct US-Israeli war on Iran, how should we now think about the afterlife of “Soleimaniism” within a post-charismatic, wartime Islamic Republic?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Thank you—that’s a very good question. Soleimaniism, or the axis of resistance as it existed under Soleimani—namely, a collection of militias that functioned very much as a unified multinational army capable of operating across multiple battlefields simultaneously—had particular relevance at its height. That era is now largely over. The killing of Soleimani, of course, was significant.
But there were also important challenges in Iraq and Lebanon, the two heartlands of the axis of resistance. Within the Shia communities in both countries, the mass protests of 2019 posed a serious challenge to established parties. There is a clear and growing desire within Iraqi and Lebanese societies for more integrated, sovereign states, as well as for stronger connections with the Arab world—through the Arab League and a renewed emphasis on Arab identity. This, in turn, makes it problematic for large parts of their political systems to remain beholden to a non-Arab power like Iran.
For all these reasons, even if you had asked me this question in early 2023, I would have said that Soleimaniism was already under significant strain.
In the aftermath of October 7, with Israel’s decimation of several members of the axis, and the fall of the Syrian regime, the axis of resistance has become even more out of vogue. While there are now claims, in the context of the current war, that the axis has regained relevance, I remain skeptical. I do not think that “Soleimaniism,” as you call it, has a future in this sense.
This raises the question: if not, what will Iran’s relationship with these various militias look like going forward? I think the answer is that it will become more closely tied to Iran’s broader effort to act as a regional player, primarily through political support for these groups. That support is likely to become more political and less military in nature. As a result, power in Tehran will be transformed, and Iran’s relationship with these groups will also evolve. We are therefore likely to see greater integration of Iran into the region, and less reliance on the revolutionary militia model that operated under Soleimani.
Endless Hostility to the US and Israel Is No Longer Sustainable for Iran
To what extent do the recent US–Israeli strikes and aggression—explicitly coupled with regime-change rhetoric—redefine the Islamic Republic’s threat perception from chronic containment to acute existential insecurity, and how might this shift alter its long-term grand strategy?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The Islamic Republic has just withstood 40 days of fighting with the United States and Israel. In the long term, I think the Iranian state—whether it is the Islamic Republic or whatever might replace it, and there may well be internal transformations—has realized that this trajectory of hostility, this grand strategy, to use the words of some like Vali Nasr, of sustained hostility toward the United States and enmity toward Israel, is not sustainable. As a result, I think they will increasingly look toward regional integration, an end to the historic dispute with the United States, and the emergence of Iran as a regional power that may still have disputes—within the region and beyond—but does not incorporate them into its revolutionary identity.
Veiled woman walks past anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda mural outside the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Photo: Jack Malipan / Dreamstime.
Tehran Is Trying to Trade Brinkmanship for Regional Recognition
Recent cease-fire agreement suggests that Tehran is demanding not a temporary end of hostilities but binding guarantees against renewed attack, reparations, and recognition of its coercive leverage in the Strait of Hormuz. Do these demands indicate strategic weakness dressed up as defiance, or a regime conclusion that controlled brinkmanship has enhanced Iran’s bargaining position?
Dr. Arash Azizi: If you really look at these demands, they are an attempt to redefine Iran’s role in the region and a recognition that the status quo does not work. So, Iran’s thinking in terms of non-belligerence is significant, because it would mean that it also needs to end its belligerence toward the US.
Demands such as recognition of its control over Hormuz and recognition of its power make sense, not for a revolutionary revisionist actor, but for one that seeks to be part of—and recognized within—the status quo. So, while they still hold on to ambitions of expelling US forces from the region, they understand that the more likely outcome is Iran’s integration into the region and its recognition by its neighbors—Saudi Arabia and others.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan—these powers recognizing Iran—and a more business-like relationship with the United States. So, if the new leadership in Iran—and we should remind ourselves that this is a new leadership about whom we know relatively little; this is not about Mojtaba Khamenei, who is absent anyway, but about Bagher Ghalibaf and similar military figures who are now in charge—if they are able to press ahead and achieve some results in the talks in Islamabad or in future negotiations, they would have truly transformed the Islamic Republic and ushered Iran into a new era, one likely to be defined not by international isolation but by regional integration and global recognition by the US.
What We Are Seeing Is the Rise of a Militarized Security State
How has the death of Ali Khamenei and the contested authority of Mojtaba Khamenei changed the internal architecture of power? Are we witnessing a succession that strengthens clerical supremacy, or one that accelerates the long-term transfer of effective authority toward the IRGC and security institutions?
Dr. Arash Azizi: It is the latter. The death of Khamenei and the rise of Mojtaba, who is very much a stand-in for the security services of the regime, further the rise of security and militarized elements to power—those in the IRGC and beyond. Bagher Ghalibaf is very much an embodiment of the IRGC, and he is now the strongest man in Iran. In many ways, he is Iran’s de facto leader. The new National Security Advisor, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, is also an embodiment of IRGC insiders. So, this is very much the rise of a security state, a militarized state in Iran, with important elements from the IRGC calling the shots.
The question is what shape this order will take, and that is harder to answer. Will it be more like North Korea or more like Vietnam? That is one way of thinking about it. So far, we have seen many more signs pointing toward Vietnam than North Korea. The evidence for that can be seen, for example, in how Ghalibaf is operating. We should not forget that he has been a partner of reformists and centrists. He is now effectively praised by Rouhani and also by President Pezeshkian, who is a reformist. When he ran for president in 2024, he very much ran as a centrist. So, it looks like this militarized Iran will move toward a more centrist and more diplomatic direction, perhaps also a more technocratic and pragmatic one.
Iran May Survive, but It Will Not Resemble the Islamic Republic We Knew
Billboard depicting Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei and Imam Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini on a building wall in Tehran, Iran, April 2018. The portraits honor the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini (Supreme Leader 1979–1989), and his successor Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader 1989–2026), whose images frequently appear in public spaces as symbols of the regime’s ideological authority. Photo: Dreamstime.
In your recent writing, you argue that the Islamic Republic may survive, but in a different form. What, precisely, is that altered form likely to be under wartime conditions: a more naked military-security state, a narrower dynastic-clerical regime, or an unstable hybrid unable to restore prewar equilibrium?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The main differences would be that Iran would drop a couple of the core policies of the Islamic Republic. It would abandon its social puritan repression. It will be less obsessed with being an Islamist puritan society, where women have to cover up and so on, and will liberalize in this respect.
It would also replace its traditional, ideologically Islamist, anti-American, anti-Israeli foreign policy with one that is more realpolitik-oriented and based on regional integration, a business-like relationship with the United States, and the resumption of diplomatic ties with the United States.
So, it will appear more like a country such as Pakistan, or in some ways Turkey, in terms of foreign policy. Of course, Turkey is different, as it is a member of NATO and has a democratic structure, with important distinctions. But Iran will become more of a non-aligned player, part of a multipolar world order that centers its own interests, rather than one that seeks to position itself within an anti-American order.
As I said, this would mean resuming diplomatic ties with the United States, and the overall shape of the regime would change significantly. It would be a country open to business with the West, and it would no longer resemble the Islamic Republic we have seen over the past few decades.
Tehran Is Using Escalation to Redefine Its Place in the Region
Iran’s retaliation across Israeli territory, US assets, and Gulf-linked energy infrastructure suggests that regionalization is no longer a latent option but an active strategy. Should we read this as a coherent deterrence doctrine, or as evidence that Tehran’s escalation ladder is becoming more improvised and risk-acceptant under existential pressure?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Iran has long had a plan that, if attacked, it would regionalize the conflict and raise its costs for everyone. I see these chaotic attacks on major neighbors—Kuwait, Cyprus, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia—as an attempt to redefine its role in the region and, ultimately, to gain recognition as a regional power.
This is part of the current interregnum after Khamenei, during which the Islamic Republic—the Iranian state—is trying to redefine its place in the region. It is engaging in various forms of maneuvering in order to eventually reach some form of peace and secure recognition of its position.
At the same time, it is plausible that IRGC generals who have now experienced war with these countries will continue to pursue a policy of brinkmanship. They may become accustomed to using kinetic action whenever they fail to achieve their goals, which could, at some point, reignite a larger war—one that might involve a regional effort to defeat Iran and force it to submit.
The Regime Is Increasingly Ruling over Ruins
Israeli strikes on petrochemical facilities, transport infrastructure, and broader economic assets appear designed not only to degrade military capability but to impose systemic economic pain. How might this reshape the regime’s social base, especially among urban middle classes, workers, and peripheral populations already strained by sanctions and repression?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The regime already has a very small base. Should wartime conditions end now, it will face massive economic problems. Iran has been severely degraded not just in military terms, but in its civilian capabilities as well. To give just one example, Iran barely has any civilian aircraft left. It faces major problems: most of its airports are destroyed, and even where airports remain intact, civilian aircraft have been destroyed. It is, in many ways, a regime ruling over ruins.
All of this makes it very difficult for the regime to continue without facing further social alienation and, ultimately, renewed protests and insurrections. The only way out is a deal with the United States that would lift sanctions, improve its regional status, and provide some financial relief—something it is also trying to secure through its control over the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, it needs diplomatic pathways if it is to reach any kind of social equilibrium. Otherwise, it will face recurrent crises.
The War Mobilized the Regime’s Base, but It Did Not Legitimize the Regime
“Woman, life, freedom”: London protest draws thousands following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody on January 10, 2022. Photo: Vehbi Koca.
Comparative research often shows that war can produce either nationalist rally effects or heightened de-legitimation. In Iran’s case, do you think external attack is more likely to temporarily consolidate the regime, or to deepen the public’s sense that the state is both repressive and strategically ruinous?
Dr. Arash Azizi: It has mobilized the regime’s base; it has not expanded it, but it has mobilized it. One reason for this is that the opposition had created a facade—an illusion that the regime was easy to bring down and that external attacks would quickly lead to its collapse. This meant that the regime’s very survival could be framed as a major victory. In many ways, it was the opposition that made this equation possible. So, the effect has been a mobilized base and, in many ways, a demoralized opposition.
But the regime has not gained legitimacy. There remains a deep gap between it and much of Iranian society, and this war has not helped; if anything, it has made matters worse. It has once again revealed itself as a trigger-happy state, one willing to engage in conflict without prioritizing the economic well-being of its citizens. Unless it changes course, it will continue to face serious crises of legitimacy.
Iran’s Democratic Opposition Still Lacks a Credible Unified Front
You have recently stressed that Iran lacks a credible, organized democratic alternative ready to inherit power. In light of wartime devastation and elite fragmentation, what would have to happen for a domestically rooted democratic bloc to emerge with sufficient legitimacy, coordination, and national reach?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Different opposition groups, both inside and outside Iran, would need to put their differences aside, come together, and build a united front, offering a credible, coherent, and solid alternative. This remains a tall order, but that is what needs to happen. Efforts such as the Iran Freedom Congress, recently launched in London, are a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. There also needs to be serious coordination with elements inside Iran. Still, it remains a very tall order, and it is harder to achieve in wartime than it would be in peacetime.
The Opposition Needs Discipline, Cohesion, and a Credible Forward-Looking Platform
Iranian citizens living in Turkey protest the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini and the Iranian government in front of the Iranian Consulate General in Istanbul on October 4, 2022. Photo: Tolga Ildun.
For exiled opposition figures seeking relevance at this moment, what institutional commitments would be indispensable for credibility inside Iran: constitutional guarantees, transitional justice mechanisms, minority protections, civilian control of the military, or something more foundational?
Dr. Arash Azizi: First of all, they would need to build organizations abroad that demonstrate a degree of political discipline, unity, and flexibility. They would need to create actual membership-based organizations that bring together different elite figures and reflect a degree of political cohesion. They have not done that.
They would then need to offer a political platform that seeks both to unify the opposition and to remain flexible. This would require balancing transitional justice mechanisms with amnesty provisions, for example, to signal that there is a path open to former security forces or other figures of the regime—and perhaps even a possibility of negotiating with them. They would also need to demonstrate an ability to galvanize public opinion and mobilize constituencies abroad.
In short, they would need to present a credible, forward-looking political alternative that can also be taken seriously internationally. This is a very tall order, and the opposition has done little that resembles it so far. What exists instead is a highly fragmented landscape.
In what might be described as the Republican, center-left segment of the opposition, there is fragmentation, a lack of organization and cohesion, and no meaningful strategic unity. The Iran Freedom Congress represents an attempt to address this. On the right-wing side, among Reza Pahlavi and monarchist groups, one finds a revanchist, somewhat chauvinistic, and disorganized opposition, marked by hostility toward other opposition actors. Much of its strategy appears tied to the Israeli-American attack, which has already occurred and is no longer particularly popular among Iranians.
Under these conditions, both sides of the opposition find themselves in disarray. Other groups, such as the MEK (The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran), have long functioned as a cult-like organization with a limited base and continue to struggle for relevance. Moreover, if negotiations between Iran and the United States were to succeed—improving Iran’s international standing not only with the US but also with Europe and others—this would further undercut the opposition.
In your recent analysis, you warned about the dangers of a Kurdish incursion strategy encouraged from outside. How serious is the risk that attempts to weaponize Iran’s peripheries could simultaneously weaken the regime and undermine the prospects for a democratic, territorially coherent post-Islamic Republic order?
Dr. Arash Azizi: They are not even that likely to weaken the regime. Rather, they are likely to send Kurds, Baluch, and others—especially the Kurds—into a strategic dead end, where the Iranian regime would be able to amass significant forces and crush them in blood. Moreover, to the extent that such efforts succeed—if they manage to “liberate” any part of Iranian territory—they would risk triggering prolonged civil war and fragmentation and would be unlikely to improve the prospects for any kind of democratic transition in Iran.
Brute Repression Has Become the Regime’s Main Instrument of Rule
How should we understand the regime’s current repression strategy—including executions and intensified securitization—under wartime conditions? Does conflict give the state a renewed ideological cover for crushing dissent, or does it reveal the extent to which coercion has become the regime’s primary remaining instrument of governance?
Dr. Arash Azizi: The Islamic Republic is very much relying on brute repression, and it believes that it has beaten back the opposition to some extent. It has significantly mobilized its base, energizing it after the war, and is now using that opportunity to clean house and to display naked brutality toward its opponents. But this is not sustainable in the long term. You cannot bring thousands of people onto the streets every day, as it has been doing during the war, especially when economic problems arise—and they will. The economic problems already exist, but they will deepen into specific crises.
In that sense, the repressive apparatus will eventually encounter limits. At present, however, figures such as Mohseni Eje’i, the head of the judiciary, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the National Security Advisor, and the police chief are key political actors whose entire portfolios and profiles are rooted in judicial and security repression.
It may well be that those seeking to argue that Iran has changed and can offer a new social pact to its people would need to marginalize these figures—perhaps replace them, remove them from office, or constrain their power—in order to gain broader public support. At some point, the regime will need to expand its social base, and repression alone will not achieve that.
If Iran Overplays Hormuz, It Risks Alienating the Entire Region
Iranian coastline near the Strait of Hormuz, with a container ship passing near Bukha, Oman, May 28, 2021. Photo: Pavel Muravev / Dreamstime.
The Strait of Hormuz has reemerged as both a military lever and a diplomatic bargaining chip. From the standpoint of regime survival, is Hormuz best understood as Tehran’s strongest deterrent asset, or as a dangerously costly instrument that internationalizes the conflict and narrows Iran’s room for political recovery?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Iran is not drunk on the power of using Hormuz. For many decades, it had threatened to close it, and now it has. It has obviously worked in a way: it has helped disrupt global trade. You could say it is the single most important element in the eyes of President Trump, and it is very clear that it is going to emerge as an important part of the negotiations.
At the same time, Trump has shown some openness to dealing over this issue, including the idea of using crypto as payment, and this may even be linked to some crypto companies that would be seen as favorable by the US. This shows that there are unprecedented aspects to the situation. At the same time, the European Union has strongly objected to Iran’s posture of wanting to claim tolls over the Hormuz Strait.
So, this is a new area. If Iran handles it well, it could gain recognition of its importance and control here, and perhaps even derive some financial benefits from it as part of its attempt to integrate into the region and gain recognition. If not, and if it overplays its hand, it will further alienate the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the broader international community, and at some point, perhaps even China and others will not be pleased if it continues to disrupt trade. So far, that has not been the case. China has been somewhat shielded from the war. It has strategic oil reserves, and Iran does allow some ships to pass, which can benefit China. But if this continues in the long term, it will become a liability.
Washington Wants an Interlocutor in Tehran More Than a Total Collapse
From a comparative and historical perspective, do the policies pursued by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu reflect a coherent long-term strategy aimed at restructuring Iran’s regional role, or do they risk generating unintended consequences such as regime hardening, regional fragmentation, or the empowerment of more radical actors within Iran’s security apparatus? In this context, how viable is externally induced regime change in Iran today, and which outcomes appear most plausible?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Externally induced regime change has not quite worked yet. Of course, President Trump claims that there is regime change, and that there has been important change within the regime, but it is still very much the same regime. Whether the strategy of the United States was for Khamenei to be replaced by Ghalibaf, I doubt that. It appears that their strategy was based on the hope that there could be some sort of capitulation or collapse of the regime—something of that sort—which did not occur.
The Israelis have a more long-term view, and also a more contingent one. By this I mean they were satisfied with some of the military degradations. They would have welcomed a national uprising to bring down the regime, but they were not necessarily relying on it. They may also try to activate elements inside Iran in the future, hoping that the post-war period will provide an opportunity to facilitate the regime’s fall. So, they maintain a longer-term, and as I said, more contingent perspective.
Ultimately, the United States, under President Trump, wants to engage with Iran and incorporate it into its regional security architecture—as a partner, or at least as an interlocutor. If Ghalibaf is willing to cooperate in certain ways, they would likely consider that a satisfactory outcome. Israel would be more cautious about such a development. However, if a deal with the United States includes the degradation of Iran’s nuclear program and the shipment of its enriched uranium abroad, Israel may also, perhaps reluctantly, come to view it as the least bad outcome.
Most Regional Powers Want Iran Contained, Not Broken
Photo: Pavel Kusmartsev / Dreamstime.
Regional actors are recalibrating in real time as the war disrupts energy markets and threatens wider escalation. How do you see Gulf monarchies, Turkey, and Russia interpreting a weakened but still dangerous Iran: as a partner to contain, an adversary to exploit, or a collapsing center whose instability could spill across the region?
Dr. Arash Azizi: Indeed, the countries you named are very different. Each of them has a distinct view of Iran. But let’s start with the GCC and Saudi Arabia. I think they would want an Iran that is contained, but not broken, and not driven into civil war. Not too weakened either, but contained and defined within a clear framework, so that it becomes less of a revolutionary, disruptive actor, less of a revisionist force, and more confined within its place.
Turkey would even more sympathetically prefer such a contained Iran that is also a partner, and one that could maintain its historic relationship with Turkey.
Russia is re-evaluating the importance of the Middle East in its strategy. At the moment, it has to deal with the fall of the Syrian regime, and it has been able to maintain a relationship with the new Syrian leadership. But, it is reassessing its Middle East policy and would be content to sustain relations with different regional actors, from Iran to Israel and others. I am not sure, however, that the Middle East occupies a central place in its broader strategic priorities.
Of course, one would be eager to see the work of scholars specializing in Iran and Russia–Middle East relations, such as Dr. Nikolay Kozhanov and others, who are better placed to offer a more precise prognosis of Russia’s evolving role.
The Most Plausible Outcome Is Transformation, Not Total Collapse
And finally, Dr. Azizi, looking ahead, which trajectory do you regard as most plausible: negotiated de-escalation with mutual guarantees, prolonged regional war, hardline consolidation under a narrower security elite, or a messy transition in which the Islamic Republic survives institutionally but loses much of its ideological and social coherence?
Dr. Arash Azizi: A few of these—a combination of several of these trajectories. I think the Islamic Republic will transform. It will lose its ideological coherence. I think we will see negotiated de-escalation. In due time, we are also likely to see Iran’s integration into the region and the opening of diplomatic ties with the United States, but this will occur alongside the persistence of a securitized state at the top.
That is my general prognosis. This outcome is more likely than a permanently mobilized, revolutionary, revisionist, ideological, North Korea-like state in Iran. That scenario remains less probable.
It is much more likely that Iran—the new Iran—will be more cynical but also more pragmatic and technocratic, and that it will attempt to undergo post-war reconstruction. And by post-war, I do not mean only the recent conflict, but also the longer period shaped by sanctions and Iran’s shadow war with the United States and Israel. I therefore expect the next phase to be one of economic development and reconstruction for Iran.
This analysis by Yacine Boubia challenges the dominant economic explanations of populism by foregrounding the central role of cultural transformation. Drawing on Ronald Inglehart’s “silent revolution” and the cultural backlash thesis, it argues that immigration has become the most visible and politically charged symbol of broader shifts in identity, values, and social order. Populism, in this account, is not simply a reaction to material deprivation but a response to perceived cultural displacement and status loss. By linking economic disruption with identity-based anxieties, the article demonstrates how immigration functions as a focal point for wider conflicts over belonging, representation, and democratic legitimacy in contemporary Western societies.
The dominant narrative surrounding the rise of populism in Europe and the United States has long been grounded in economics. Globalization, automation, and trade shocks are often said to have produced a class of “left behind” voters who turned to populist leaders out of material deprivation. While this account captures an important dimension of structural change, it ultimately misdiagnoses the core political dynamics at work. Populism is not simply a reaction to economic hardship. It is, more fundamentally, a response to cultural transformation—one in which immigration has become the most visible and politically salient symbol of broader social change.
To understand this shift, it is necessary to return to the long arc of value change identified by Ronald Inglehart. Beginning in the postwar decades, advanced industrial societies underwent what he termed a “silent revolution,” as rising prosperity and educational expansion reshaped public priorities. Survival-oriented values gradually gave way to self-expression, autonomy, and cosmopolitan openness (Inglehart, 1977; Inglehart & Norris, 2019). Over time, these shifts became embedded in institutions, elite discourse, and policy frameworks, particularly within urban, highly educated populations.
Yet this transformation was never evenly distributed. Large segments of the population—often older, less formally educated, and more rooted in national or local traditions—did not merely lag behind this shift; they experienced it as a form of displacement. What appeared to some as progress appeared to others as erosion: of authority, of social cohesion, and of a familiar moral order. The political consequences of this divergence became increasingly visible after the late 1960s, when cultural liberalization accelerated across Western democracies and elite consensus around multiculturalism and individual autonomy solidified.
It is within this context that immigration assumes its central political role. Immigration is not merely one issue among many; it is the issue through which broader cultural transformations are rendered visible, tangible, and politically immediate. Debates over borders, asylum, and integration are simultaneously debates about national identity, social trust, and the pace of cultural change itself. The European migration crisis did not create these tensions, but it crystallized them, transforming diffuse anxieties into direct political conflict across the continent.
The differential reception of refugee populations further illustrates how cultural categorization shapes political responses. The Ukrainian refugee crisis, following Russia’s 2022 invasion, was widely framed in Europe as a conventional interstate war producing displaced populations that were more easily incorporated into existing asylum systems. By contrast, earlier inflows of refugees from Syria and parts of the Middle East were more frequently politicized through debates over long-term integration, welfare capacity, and security concerns. Material conditions alone cannot explain these differences. They reflect processes of perceived cultural proximity, geopolitical framing, and institutional response mechanisms within the European Union.
Scholars of migration and political psychology have long noted that public attitudes toward migration are structured not only by economic calculations but also by perceived cultural distance and social trust. Emmanuel Todd’s recent work, La Défaite de l’Occident (2024), contributes to this discussion by emphasizing that societies interpret geopolitical and demographic change through deeper assumptions about cultural cohesion and civilizational identity. From this perspective, differential refugee reception reflects not simply policy design but underlying social narratives about similarity, belonging, and national self-understanding.
The framework developed by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart captures these dynamics with particular clarity. Their “cultural backlash” thesis argues that support for populist parties is driven less by absolute economic deprivation than by perceived status loss among groups once embedded within dominant cultural hierarchies (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Immigration, in this context, functions not merely as a policy issue but as a symbolic focal point through which broader anxieties about identity and social change are expressed. It becomes the terrain on which struggles over cultural authority are fought.
The United States exhibits a parallel trajectory. The rise of Donald Trump cannot be fully understood through economic grievance alone. Empirical studies of the 2016 election have consistently shown that attitudes toward immigration, cultural change, and racial identity were among the strongest predictors of support for Trump (Sides et al., 2018). His appeal lay less in policy detail than in his ability to articulate a sense of loss—of border control, national coherence, and institutional trust. Immigration functioned as the central issue through which these concerns were politically mobilized.
This mobilization was amplified by changes in the digital information environment. Scholars of political communication have highlighted how social media platforms and data-driven campaigning enabled more granular targeting of affective and identity-based grievances. While the precise influence of firms such as Cambridge Analytica is debated in the academic literature, broader research on “computational propaganda” and social listening suggests that political actors increasingly adapt messaging to pre-existing online sentiment patterns rather than shaping them from above (Bennett & Livingston, 2018).
None of this implies that economic factors are irrelevant. On the contrary, the structural effects of globalization have played a crucial role in shaping the terrain on which cultural conflict unfolds. Trade exposure, deindustrialization, and regional inequality have increased perceptions of economic insecurity in many Western societies (Autor et al., 2013). However, these economic disruptions do not translate mechanically into political outcomes. Their salience is mediated through cultural interpretation. Economic decline becomes politically consequential when it is embedded within narratives of identity, recognition, and perceived neglect.
In this sense, globalization operates as a force multiplier rather than a primary cause of populism. Communities experiencing economic stagnation are more likely to interpret immigration through lenses of competition and cultural threat, and more likely to view political elites as detached from their lived realities. Populist movements succeed precisely because they fuse economic anxiety with cultural grievance into a single coherent narrative—one that pits “the people” against both external pressures and internal elites (Mudde, 2004).
Across Europe, parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the National Rally (RN) in France have institutionalized this synthesis. While differing in national context, these movements share a common structure: opposition to immigration, skepticism toward supranational governance, and a broader critique of liberal elite consensus. Their success underscores the extent to which cultural backlash has become embedded within contemporary political competition.
The policy implications are significant. If populism were driven primarily by economic inequality, then redistribution and growth-oriented policies might be sufficient to mitigate its rise. But if it is rooted in cultural backlash, such measures will prove insufficient on their own. Economic policy cannot resolve conflicts over identity, belonging, and social norms. Nor can these conflicts be dismissed as irrational without further deepening political polarization.
A more realistic approach begins by recognizing that populism emerges from genuine, if conflicting, experiences of social transformation. The “silent revolution” identified by Inglehart has reshaped Western societies in profound ways, but it has also produced new forms of cultural stratification. In the United States, this process was accelerated by the political economy of the 1980s and 1990s, where deregulation and neoliberal convergence under both Republican and Democratic administrations coincided with the rise of cosmopolitan urban centers and multicultural policy frameworks. These developments, reinforced during the Clinton and Obama eras, contributed to a perception among some voters that cultural and institutional change was occurring without adequate democratic mediation.
Immigration, as the most visible manifestation of these broader transformations, will therefore remain central to political conflict in advanced democracies. Understanding populism requires moving beyond the false dichotomy between economics and culture. It is the interaction between structural change and subjective perception that drives political behavior. Until this interplay is fully acknowledged, explanations will remain partial, and policy responses will continue to fall short.
References
Inglehart, R. (1977). The Silent Revolution – Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics, Princeton University Press.
Inglehart, R. & Norris, P. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, Cambridge University Press.
Autor, D., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. (2013). “The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade,” ANNUAL REVIEW OF ECONOMICS, Vol. 8:205-240 (Volume publication date October 2016) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-080315-015041
Sides, J., Tesler, M., & Vavreck, L. (2018). Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, Princeton University Press.
Bennett, W. L. & Livingston, S. (2018). “The disinformation order: Disruptive communication and the decline of democratic institutions.” European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 122–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118760317
Todd, E. (2024). La Défaite de l’Occident, Gallimard.
In an interview with the ECPS, Sheri Berman challenges dominant crisis narratives by arguing that democratic backsliding is “neither unexpected nor, in many cases, recent in origin.” Situating current turbulence within long-term structural and historical trajectories, she emphasizes that democratic instability reflects the enduring difficulty of building and sustaining democratic institutions. Critiquing post–Cold War optimism, she characterizes today’s moment as “a kind of natural correction” to overly teleological expectations. Berman further conceptualizes populism as both symptom and driver of democratic dysfunction, rooted in representation gaps, economic insecurity, and institutional decay—dynamics that continue to reshape both domestic politics and the global liberal order.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Sheri Berman, Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University, argues that contemporary democratic erosion should not be understood as an abrupt rupture or an unprecedented crisis, but rather as the outcome of deeper structural, historical, and institutional processes long in the making.
At a time when democratic backsliding, populist mobilization, and institutional erosion are reshaping political landscapes across regions, Professor Berman’s intervention directly challenges prevailing interpretations that frame democracy’s troubles as sudden or exceptional. Instead, she insists that the current conjuncture must be situated within longer-term transformations affecting political representation, institutional trust, and the social foundations of democratic governance. As she puts it, these developments are “neither unexpected nor, in many cases, recent in origin.”
At the center of her argument lies a powerful critique of post–Cold War democratic optimism. The expansion of democracy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries fostered what she identifies as overly teleological assumptions about liberal democracy’s inevitability. Yet, drawing on historical patterns of democratic “waves” and their inevitable reversals, she emphasizes that “building stable, well-functioning democracies is extraordinarily difficult.” What many interpreted as linear progress was, in fact, always vulnerable to reversal. In this sense, today’s turbulence is best understood as “a kind of natural correction” to earlier expectations.
A central analytical contribution of Professor Berman’s framework is her insistence that populism should be understood simultaneously as symptom and driver. It reflects deep dissatisfaction with political institutions and representation—citizens do not support anti-establishment actors unless they believe existing systems are failing them. At the same time, once in power, populists can intensify polarization and further undermine democratic norms. As she notes, while populism begins as “a symptom of democratic dissatisfaction,” it can also “actively deepen the erosion of support for democracy” once it acquires political authority.
This dual perspective is closely tied to her emphasis on structural transformations, particularly the emergence of representation gaps and the long-term consequences of neoliberal economic change. Rising inequality, economic insecurity, and technological disruption—alongside cultural tensions around identity and migration—have combined to produce a multifaceted crisis of democratic legitimacy. Importantly, these forces do not operate in isolation but reinforce one another, generating a political environment marked by both widespread dissatisfaction and a striking absence of coherent ideological alternatives.
Extending her analysis to the global level, Professor Berman offers a sobering assessment of the liberal international order. In one of her most striking remarks, she observes that “the American-led international order, at least for now, is pretty much dead.” Yet even here, she resists simplistic explanations: the disruptive impact of Trumpism, she argues, reflects not only leadership choices but also preexisting structural vulnerabilities within both American democracy and the broader international system.
Taken together, Professor Berman’s reflections offer a historically grounded and analytically nuanced account of democratic decline. Rather than treating the present as an anomaly, her assessments invite a deeper reckoning with the long-term political, economic, and institutional dynamics that have made contemporary democratic backsliding both possible—and, in many respects, predictable.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Sheri Berman, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
From Democratic Waves to Undertows
Two rows of stones embedded in Berlin’s streets mark the former path of the wall dividing East and West Berlin. Photo: Ine Beerten / Dreamstime.
Professor Berman, welcome. In your recently published article “Democracy’s Troubles Should Be No Surprise,” you argue that current democratic backsliding reflects long-term structural and historical dynamics rather than a sudden rupture. In light of ongoing crises, how does this perspective challenge prevailing “crisis narratives” that frame democratic decline as unexpected or recent?
Professor Sheri Berman: I would say that the most obvious way is that these developments are neither unexpected nor, in many cases, recent in origin. Let me begin by differentiating between two types of cases. The first involves backsliding in recently transitioned countries. By this, I mean those that moved from authoritarianism to democracy during what we now refer to as the third wave—that is, the large set of countries that democratized during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. These are relatively recent transitions, meaning that democracy in these contexts is still comparatively young.
Then we have a second set of countries—those with long-standing democracies, including the country I am currently in, which is at the forefront of this not very auspicious group—where we have also seen significant democratic problems, even democratic backsliding.
It is important to distinguish between these two types of cases because the nature and causes of backsliding in recent versus more established democracies differ. However, in neither set of cases should these developments be considered surprising.
Let me explain why. With regard to recent cases, when we look back at history and examine previous democratic waves—such as those following the First and Second World Wars in the 20th century, as well as in Europe in 1848—we see that all of them were followed by undertows. This is precisely why we use the term “wave”: every wave has an undertow, referring to the failure or reversal of some of these new democratic experiments. Thus, the very concept of a wave should have reminded scholars and observers that such reversals are to be expected.
This is not simply a matter of history repeating itself; there is a causal logic at work. Building stable, well-functioning democracies is extraordinarily difficult. While it may seem that the hardest task is removing an authoritarian regime—and that is indeed difficult—it is, in fact, even harder to construct a stable democracy afterward.
We can observe this in the historical record: there are far more examples of democratic transitions than of successful democratic consolidations. Therefore, we should have anticipated that many countries undergoing transitions during the third wave would struggle or fail to consolidate democracy. This should not have come as a surprise.
What is more unusual—and what we were less theoretically and historically prepared for—is the extent of the problems now facing long-established democracies such as the United States. These countries were long considered “consolidated,” a term implying that they were stable and secure. That assumption has proven incorrect.
In my recent article in the Journal of Democracy, I outline some of the reasons for this. I argue that if we had paid closer attention to the social and economic foundations upon which scholars believed democracy rested, we would have seen that these foundations had been eroding for quite some time. As a result, the institutional weaknesses and political dissatisfaction currently affecting long-established democracies should not be regarded as particularly surprising.
Today’s Democratic Turbulence as a Correction, not a Collapse
Your work suggests that earlier waves of democratic optimism—especially after the Cold War—rested on overly teleological assumptions about liberal democracy’s inevitability. To what extent is today’s turbulence, including rising geopolitical conflict and democratic polarization, better understood as a correction of those expectations rather than a systemic breakdown?
Professor Sheri Berman: They are definitely a correction of those earlier, overly optimistic expectations. The advantage of being a scholar is that you get to study both history and contemporary events. Anyone familiar with the history of democracy would have understood, based on previous democratic waves, that the idea that all the countries transitioning in the late 20th and early 21st centuries would, within a generation or two, become something like Sweden was clearly unrealistic.
At the same time, the optimism is understandable. The late 20th century was, in many ways, a remarkable period. In some respects, I wish we were still living in it. It is better to be surrounded by optimism than by pessimism, which is now quite pervasive, particularly across the West. But while that optimism reflected genuine democratic progress and the expansion of freedom and liberty in formerly authoritarian societies, it was also bound to fade.
So, on one level, what we are experiencing today is a kind of natural correction. The specific trajectories—how newer democracies have backslid or how older democracies are encountering difficulties—are hard to predict in detail. But the broader shift away from the extraordinary optimism of the late 20th century—the belief that liberal democracy would not only succeed in the short term but also consolidate over the long term, bringing freedom and prosperity to all parts of the globe, even those not yet reached in that period—was always likely to be followed by significant disappointment. Anyone with a solid understanding of history, and of what it actually takes to make democracy work, should have recognized that.
Populism as Both Symptom and Accelerator of Democratic Decay
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.
You have famously argued that populism is a symptom rather than a cause of democratic dysfunction. In the current conjuncture—marked by inflation, migration pressures, and governance crises—how should scholars distinguish between populism as a reactive phenomenon and as an active driver of democratic erosion?
Professor Sheri Berman: I think populism is both of those things, as you suggest. It is definitely a symptom.At the same time, once populist parties or politicians gain a certain degree of power, they acquire the ability to intensify dissatisfaction, polarization, and related dynamics. Let me unpack that a bit. Populism is a symptom in the sense that people will not vote for anti-establishment parties if they believe the establishment—that is, existing mainstream parties and political institutions—is doing a good job. That is simply a truism.
So, when politicians and parties begin to gain support by criticizing existing parties, politicians, and institutions as corrupt, ineffective, or unrepresentative, they are doing so because a significant portion of the population believes this to be true. In that sense, such parties should be understood as a symptom of dissatisfaction among a not insignificant number of citizens with the establishment and the existing order. They are, as you noted, clear indicators of democratic dysfunction.
However, once these actors begin to gain power—once they have a voice within the system, participate regularly in the political process, and perhaps even enter government or coalitions—they can further deepen this dissatisfaction. The most obvious way they do so, though not the only one, is through rhetoric. By persistently portraying the system as corrupt, demonizing opponents, and framing both rival politicians and voters not merely as people with different policy preferences but as actors opposed to the common good—people who do not have your best interests at heart or who would threaten you if they gained power—they amplify polarization and democratic discontent.
This dynamic operates alongside the policies that populists implement when in power, which, as numerous studies show, are often counterproductive. Thus, while populism originates as a symptom of democratic dissatisfaction, it can also actively deepen the erosion of support for democracy and broaden dissatisfaction once it gains voice and power within the system.
When Mainstream Parties Drift, Populists Fill the Void
How does this “symptom” framework reshape our understanding of the rise of the populist radical right in Europe and Trumpism in the United States, particularly in relation to declining trust in institutions and widening representation gaps?
Professor Sheri Berman: This is another way of getting at the same issue. It is absolutely correct for both scholars and concerned citizens to view populist parties—on both the left and the right—and actors like Trump as drivers of polarization and potential undermining of democratic institutions. However, if we fail to recognize that they are also symptoms of widespread dissatisfaction, frustration, and discontent with existing parties and political institutions, then we will never be able to, so to speak, “solve” the problem of populism.
You mentioned representation gaps, which I and many other scholars have examined closely. If we look at Europe—since this is an ECPS interview—there is no doubt that establishment parties, both center-left and center-right, have developed significant representation gaps, even with their own voters, on key issues. Center-left parties, for instance, moved away from their traditional, broadly defined left-wing economic profile in the late 1990s, which alienated many of their former working-class and otherwise disadvantaged supporters.
At the same time, both center-left and center-right parties drifted away from voters more broadly on a range of social and cultural issues, most notably immigration in the European context. Studies of party positions in the early 21st century show that these parties were often quite distant from the preferences of the median voter on this issue.
As a result, they opened up political space not only for new or challenger parties to advance positions that mainstream parties had effectively abandoned, but also for the perception to take hold that these established parties had lost either the willingness or the capacity to represent voters’ preferences.
Beyond Monocausal Explanations: The Complex Roots of Populism
In your review of populism’s causes, you emphasize the limits of monocausal explanations. In today’s context of digital campaigning, algorithmic amplification, and economic insecurity, how should we conceptualize the interaction between demand-side grievances and supply-side political entrepreneurship?
Professor Sheri Berman: This is a difficult issue, sometimes more so for scholars than for concerned citizens. When people look around today, in what feels like a world of pervasive pessimism, they see a wide range of problems. If you were to ask the proverbial man or woman on the street why Trump has been so popular, or why he was able to get elected twice, they would likely point to broad economic grievances—a sense that the economy is not doing well, that people’s futures are uncertain, and that they are worried about their children’s prospects. They might also point to perceived breakdown and dysfunction in their communities, concerns about illegal immigration and uncontrolled borders, anxieties about tech companies being out of control, and social media “frying” their children’s brains while making everyone more polarized and angrier.
In other words, the average person intuitively understands that multiple factors are contributing to dissatisfaction with the existing order and, in turn, feeding into populism. Scholars, however, tend to look for a single explanatory variable—an independent variable that allows for a clear causal account. The difficulty is that the world we are dealing with is simply too complex for such simplification.
There are clearly many forces driving the current moment, including support for populism and, more broadly, the democratic dissatisfaction and dysfunction we see today. These include significant economic challenges; the serious consequences of rapid demographic change in American and European societies, often—though not exclusively—linked to unprecedented levels of immigration; and, as you noted, technological transformations such as automation, social media, and now AI.
All of these are substantial challenges, and it would be difficult for any party or government to address them effectively. While one can imagine more effective responses than those we have seen, these pressures are nonetheless real and complex. They are shaping the current conjuncture, particularly in the West.
Democratic Erosion as the Product of Both Agency and Structural Decay
Figure from the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026.
Given your skepticism toward rigid structure-versus-agency dichotomies, how can we better theorize elite responsibility in democratic backsliding—especially in cases where political leaders actively challenge electoral norms or judicial independence—without neglecting broader structural transformations?
Professor Sheri Berman: There is absolutely no doubt that we need, as both scholars and citizens, to focus closely on political actors who are playing fast and loose with the democratic rules of the game. If leaders pack or ignore the judiciary, sideline the legislative branch, or undermine the independence of civil society and the media, these are clear causes and drivers of democratic backsliding, and they deserve sustained attention.
Political actors who actively seek to undermine democracy are, therefore, a legitimate focus of scholarly analysis. We need to understand the processes of democratic erosion carried out by populist, illiberal, and anti-democratic politicians and parties. Citizens, too, should remain attentive to these developments, since democracy is what enables societies to function—at least potentially—in a peaceful way, to resolve conflicts, and to address collective challenges.
That said, this is the agency side of the story: the actors who are undermining norms and institutions. But we also need to recognize, as we have discussed, that widespread frustration with establishment parties, political elites, and democratic institutions is equally important. In other words, we need a kind of two-level analysis, recognizing that the actions of populist politicians and parties often represent the final step in a broader causal chain.
Donald Trump, for example, sought political office earlier, in the 2000s and again in 2012, but received virtually no support. He rose to power in 2016 when the broader context had deteriorated, and even then, the damage he caused was more limited compared to what we have seen more recently. The ability of politicians and parties to undermine democracy depends not only on their agency, but also on the strength of the institutions and norms they confront. When those institutions and norms have weakened, actors are able to exercise their agency far more effectively.
We therefore need to understand not only the multi-causal nature of democratic backsliding, but also the broader structure–agency dynamic that underpins political life in general and is especially visible in processes of democratic erosion.
Democratic Collapse Begins Long Before It Becomes Visible
Building on your engagement withHow Democracies Die, how do you assess the relative importance of formal institutional weakening versus the erosion of informal norms—such as mutual toleration—in highly polarized democracies like the United States?
Professor Sheri Berman: That is, in a way, a follow-on question to the previous one. How Democracies Die, the seminal book by Dan Ziblatt and Steve Levitsky, helped both political scientists and concerned citizens understand that we had reached a point where politicians like Donald Trump and others were beginning to undermine norms and institutions in ways that were pushing democracies toward backsliding, or even autocratization.
To my mind, what they were doing—tracing these developments historically and highlighting their dangers—was identifying the end stage of a broader process. We had reached a point where politicians and parties were coming to power and actively engaging in democratic erosion. At the same time, we are now at a stage where we understand much more about how this process unfolds. Scholars like Ziblatt, Levitsky, and many others have done an excellent job of tracing what is now often referred to as the authoritarian playbook: how democratic backsliding occurs. In the West, this typically does not happen through coups, as it often did in the past, but through a gradual process in which norms and institutions are weakened from within.
However, this should be understood as the endpoint of a longer causal process. It is a crucial stage—one at which intervention is still possible—but by the time a system reaches this point, its norms and institutions have already weakened to a degree that makes them vulnerable. In that sense, we are now moving beyond the dynamics highlighted in How Democracies Die toward a broader recognition that the processes described in that book are rooted in deeper structural conditions.
Gradual Backsliding Is Harder to Recognize—and Resist
Do you see today’s pattern of democratic erosion—often gradual, legalistic, and electorally legitimated—as fundamentally different from earlier authoritarian breakdowns, or as part of a longer historical continuum that includes past democratic crises?
Professor Sheri Berman: These questions are helpful because they build on one another. As I mentioned, and as many scholars have emphasized, coups and immediate ruptures—quick authoritarian takeovers—were quite common in the past. What we are experiencing in the West today, less so than in other parts of the world, is different. We still see coups and rapid democratic breakdowns elsewhere, but in the West, the kind of post–third wave decay we are discussing has largely occurred through what is often called the authoritarian playbook—through a much more gradual undermining and hollowing out of democracy from within.
This pattern is therefore more common today, particularly in the West, than what we have seen historically. In a way, this also makes it more difficult to respond effectively, because there is often debate about how serious the erosion really is. Are we truly facing democratic backsliding? Is any particular move decisive in either accelerating or stopping the process? This creates a kind of puzzle for both scholars and citizens.
Many people do not fully recognize what is happening until it is too late, and this dynamic also generates significant divisions within the small-d democratic camp. For example, in the United States, while most within the Democratic Party believe that Trump and the Republicans pose a threat to democracy, there are very different views about how to respond—what the appropriate strategy is and where the core problem lies.
By contrast, when there are troops in the streets, it is clear to everyone that the priority is to get them back into the barracks. In a situation like this, however, where erosion is gradual and incremental, it becomes much harder to generate consensus and to coalesce around an effective strategy for resisting democratic decline.
Why Economic Insecurity Amplifies Cultural Grievances
Dutch farmers protest against measures to reduce nitrogen emissions in the city centre of The Hague, the Netherlands, on June 28, 2022. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your work links democratic instability to the long-term consequences of neoliberal capitalism. In light of current cost-of-living crises and inequality debates, to what extent should contemporary populism be understood as a political economy crisis rather than a cultural backlash?
Professor Sheri Berman: I think it’s both. As we have discussed before, there are a number of causes. On the demand side, both economic challenges and the grievances they generate are absolutely crucial.But social and cultural grievances are also important, along with, as we noted earlier, technological changes that are increasing polarization and dissatisfaction in our societies. It is very difficult to understand the democratic dissatisfaction that is feeding populism—and, partially through populism, democratic decay—without looking at economic grievances. That is to say, without considering rising inequality, growing insecurity, and disruptions stemming from automation, trade, and, potentially in the not-too-distant future, AI.
These are all factors creating a great deal of dissatisfaction among citizens. In turn, we know from strong scholarship that in such contexts it becomes much easier to increase the salience of social and cultural grievances, which are also central to contemporary democratic dysfunction. It becomes easier to direct attention to the perceived downsides of immigration when people believe that immigrants may be taking their jobs or using scarce public resources. Why, they might ask, should their tax money go toward housing for immigrants when there is not enough public housing for them? Why should they support a welfare state that can barely respond to their own needs, rather than helping those who have come from outside? These dynamics are therefore very difficult to disentangle, and they feed off each other in deeply pernicious ways.
From Grand Ideologies to Fragmented Discontent
You describe ideological transformation as a two-stage process requiring both the de-legitimation of existing paradigms and the emergence of alternatives. Are we currently in an “interregnum” where dissatisfaction is high but coherent ideological replacements—whether on the left or right—remain underdeveloped?
Professor Sheri Berman: I would say that this is indeed true. Part of this is that, as a historically minded social scientist, when I look back at previous eras of ideological ferment—the 1930s, for instance, the interwar period, or even the post-war period—we had real ideological alternatives. In the interwar period, we had fascism, National Socialism, and communism. These were ideologies—entire Weltanschauungen, or worldviews. They were not only opposed to liberal democracy—both clearly were—but also aspired to remake society and the economy.
What we have today are rather grievance-based movements on both the right and the left that share some similarities with their predecessors. On the left, we see anti-capitalist, anti-elite rhetoric, often accompanied by a degree of illiberalism. On the right, we see strong elements of nativism, xenophobia, and racism, as part of a broader illiberal backlash, along with, in some sectors, a kind of idealization of the past—the idea that society can return to a more traditional, often implicitly Christian, social order.
But these currents are much more inchoate than their predecessors. They draw on bits and pieces of earlier ideologies without the same coherence or power. I would also say they are more negative than positive on both the left and the right. They consist largely of grievances that have been brought together: dissatisfaction with capitalism on the left, anger about geopolitical issues such as Israel and Gaza, and on the right, resentment toward social change and elites.
It is important to remember, however unattractive it may seem to us now, that communism, fascism, and National Socialism also offered what I would carefully call positive visions. They articulated a sense of what a new future would look like. They did not only seek to destroy the old order but to create something new. I do not see that today.
That does not mean that these contemporary movements are not dangerous—they are, in many ways, very dangerous—but we are not dealing with the same kind of ideological conflict that characterized what Eric Hobsbawm and others have called the ideological twentieth century.
Why Exclusion of Populists Becomes Impossible
How does your framework help explain the persistence and normalization of far-right actors within democratic systems, even in relatively stable economies, and their increasing presence in mainstream coalition politics?
Professor Sheri Berman: To some degree, this is simply a result of their electoral success. It is very hard to keep out parties in proportional representation systems, as in Europe, that are getting 20–25% of the vote. The parties that have come to power in Europe have done so simply because they have won elections—not majorities, but enough that it is not possible to keep them out of power.In that sense, it is fairly straightforward to understand why they have gained the power and influence that they have. And it creates a number of knock-on effects, returning to the idea we discussed earlier about symptom and cause. If we look at a situation like the one that currently exists in Germany, the AfD is polling so high that it is almost impossible in many German states—and may very well soon be impossible at the national level—to put together a coalition government that does not include them.
You are therefore facing a situation in which the alternatives are either incoherent or minority governments, both of which have difficulty putting together coherent policy packages capable of solving society’s problems, thereby driving dissatisfaction further, or including in your coalition—especially in the German case, because the AfD is among the more radical right-wing parties in Europe today—a party that is clearly illiberal and potentially even anti-democratic.
This is a very difficult situation, simply from a mathematical perspective, in many of these countries. In other European countries, we have seen right-wing populists come to power, and, honestly, they have not had that much impact on democracy. We have had right-wing populists in power in the Netherlands, in Finland, and now, obviously, in Italy, and there, I would say that while they may be problematic in some ways, we have not seen the kind of democratic erosion that some predicted would occur.
So, you really have to look at these developments on a case-by-case basis. The AfD in Germany is something most observers are watching closely, because it is a much more radical right-wing party than its counterparts in places like the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, or even Italy.
Trumpism as a Symptom of Deep Structural Divisions
Donald Trump’s supporters wearing “In God We Trump” shirts at a rally in Bojangles’ Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 2, 2020. Photo: Jeffrey Edwards.
In the case of Trumpism’s influence on US politics, should it be interpreted primarily as an expression of long-standing structural cleavages, or as the result of contingent elite strategies and institutional vulnerabilities?
Professor Sheri Berman: For me, Trump is very much a symptom. He has now caused a significant amount of democratic backsliding—an unprecedented amount, I would say—but there is simply no way to understand the Trump phenomenon without looking back, as I mentioned and as I discussed in the article you referenced at the beginning in the Journal of Democracy, at very deep structural problems in American society and the American economy.
There is no way to understand why people would, first, vote for him, and second, be so frustrated with the Democrats, without considering what are now decades of social decay and economic division. This is clearly a situation in which Trump was a symptom of underlying social, economic, and political problems and, once in power, has intensified all of the above—not only for the United States but for the rest of the world as well.
Trump and the Unraveling of a Fragile International System
Given your argument that democracy’s troubles are historically rooted, how should we interpret current claims about the “collapse” of the global liberal order—especially amid rising authoritarian powers and weakening multilateralism?
Professor Sheri Berman: That is downstream of many of the things we have been discussing here—most notably, but not exclusively, the rise of Donald Trump. Trump, as a key progenitor of democratic backsliding in the United States, has, since coming to power—particularly over the past year, but also since 2016—undermined democratic norms and institutions in a very significant way. He has also taken an axe to the liberal democratic order. But, again, that liberal democratic order was not particularly healthy beforehand.
I have used, in other writings—and I am sure others have as well—the idea of an immune system. If two people are standing in a train car and one has a compromised immune system, and someone coughs, that person might get sick, while the other simply leaves the train and continues with their life. The fact that Trump has been able to cause so much damage reflects the existence of significant structural weaknesses in the liberal democratic order to begin with.
This is a kind of iterative or cyclical process. At the same time, there is no doubt that the decay we have seen in the liberal democratic order over the past year, in particular, is very much the result of conscious choices made by the Trump administration—to increase divisions with allies, to attack institutions that had long been part of this order, and to form alliances with actors such as Russia that have been fundamentally opposed to it. All of these are clearly deliberate actions—agency, so to speak. But, again, his ability to come to power and to pursue this course reflects deeper structural weaknesses that he has been able to exploit.
Can Middle Powers Rebuild What US Leadership Abandoned?
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.
As transatlantic divergence becomes an observable reality—particularly under Trump’s renewed leadership—how should we interpret the effective “de-coupling” of the United States and Europe and its effect on the legitimacy and authority of international institutions? Does this fragmentation mark a structural erosion of the liberal international order, or the emergence of a more pluralized and contested system of governance with competing centers of norm-setting?
Professor Sheri Berman: I think it would be very hard to maintain, or to return to, some version of that liberal international order without American commitment and, alongside that, some kind of renewed alliance between the United States and Europe.I do not see that happening, even if Trump leaves, simply because at this point there is so much water under the bridge. If I were a European, even if a Democrat came to power in the next election, I would be very wary about hitching my horse to the United States, knowing that right around the corner there could come another version of Trump—Vance, Rubio, or someone similar. So, I think it is going to be very hard to recreate that, although I do think that if a Democrat comes to power, we will see some attempts to do so.
The alternative, as you mentioned, and as several people have been discussing—including Macron and Mark Carney in Canada—is to replace this American-led liberal international order with something new, potentially better, constructed by middle powers. My response to that is: more power to you. I hope you can do that. I think it would be good for those countries and for the globe. Historically, however, it is very difficult to construct an international order without some kind of hegemon, both pushing that project forward and willing to absorb some of the collective costs.
So, this is where we are right now. The American-led international order, at least for now, is pretty much dead. Whether middle powers can step in to patch things up enough to prevent further fragmentation remains to be seen. I hope they can, for the good not only of their own citizens but of the globe, but it concerns me greatly.
Rebuilding Representation as the Key to Democratic Stability
Finally, looking ahead, what are the most critical variables shaping democracy’s future in this context of geopolitical rivalry and domestic polarization: the renewal of representation, economic restructuring, or the restoration of democratic norms—and how might these interact to stabilize or further strain democratic systems?
Professor Sheri Berman: That is a very large question to end on. Let me say something broad and perhaps not particularly profound, which is that I actually think the domestic level is the key driver here. That is to say, the central challenge is figuring out how to get mainstream political parties—it does not necessarily have to be the old ones; again, some people may be fed up with social democratic, Christian democratic, and conservative parties—but parties that are committed to democracy need to figure out how to address, as we have discussed, the economic challenges their societies are facing, the social and cultural challenges they are confronting, and the technological changes that are driving so much disruption.
Can they do that? If they can, then we will see support for these anti-establishment, disruptive populist parties decline, and these political systems stabilize. I firmly believe that more stable democracies—not only in the West but also in other parts of the globe—will be in a much better position to address international challenges, whether civil wars, interstate wars, or climate change. They will also be better positioned to deal with international challenges and to recreate, as we discussed in the previous question, some form of viable international cooperation, including international institutions and organizations.
If we can reconstruct some degree of democratic stability, not just in the West but also elsewhere, the benefits would be significant. Turkey, for example, is a major actor and a bridge between the West and the Middle East. A stable, well-functioning democratic regime there would be a major boon, most importantly for Turkey’s own citizens, but also an important contribution to addressing a wide range of global challenges. So, again, I am hopeful that parties committed to liberal democracy can somehow manage to get their act together and become more effective and responsive to their citizens.
As Hungary approaches the April 12 elections, Viktor Orbán’s long-standing rule faces a critical test shaped by both domestic discontent and geopolitical realignments. In this interview, Associate Professor Attila Antal characterizes the regime as a “constitutional dictatorship,” arguing that the election is not about democratic legitimacy but about securing “public support for its own dictatorial turn.” He highlights how authoritarian legality, sustained through a “dual state” and permanent emergency governance, has hollowed out democratic competition. At the same time, the rise of Péter Magyar and mounting generational and material grievances signal growing resistance. Situated within broader transnational authoritarian networks, Hungary’s election emerges as both a domestic referendum and a geopolitical fault line for European democracy.
As Hungary approaches its pivotal parliamentary elections on April 12, 2026, the country stands at a defining juncture in the trajectory of European populism. After more than a decade and a half of rule by Viktor Orbán, the electoral contest no longer centers merely on party competition, but on whether an entrenched authoritarian-populist regime—characterized by institutional asymmetries, constitutional engineering, and the continuous production of political enemies—can still be meaningfully challenged through democratic means. At the same time, the emergence of Péter Magyar and the Tisza Party has introduced new uncertainty into a system long sustained by what Attila Antal describes as a “hegemonic power bloc,” raising the stakes of what increasingly resembles a systemic referendum.
In this context, Attila Antal, Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, offers a sobering interpretation of the current moment. In his view, the Orbán regime has evolved beyond conventional electoral authoritarianism into what he terms a “constitutional dictatorship,” where formal legality coexists with substantive domination. Most strikingly, Assoc. Prof. Antal argues that “the Orbán regime is not seeking democratic legitimacy in the 2026 elections, but rather public support for its own dictatorial turn.” This diagnosis reframes the election not as a mechanism of accountability, but as a plebiscitary instrument designed to consolidate power under conditions of managed legality.
Crucially, Assoc. Prof. Antal situates Hungary’s electoral moment within a broader geopolitical reconfiguration. He underscores that Orbán has increasingly treated foreign and European policy “as a kind of geopolitical playing field,” cultivating alliances with both Eastern and Western authoritarian actors. The alignment with figures such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin reflects not only ideological affinity but also strategic positioning within an emerging transnational authoritarian network. As Assoc. Prof. Antal notes, Hungary has come to function as a “Trojan horse” for Putinist influence within the European Union, transforming the election into “a European and Western geopolitical issue and interest.” This external dimension is mirrored internally by a deepening social cleavage, as segments of Hungarian society remain firmly oriented toward the West while the regime consolidates a pro-Russian political base.
This external dimension intersects with internal tensions, including growing social discontent and a generational divide that reflects what Assoc. Prof. Antal describes as “a very strong generational revolt against Orbán’s authoritarian populism.”
At the core of Assoc. Prof. Antal’s analysis is the concept of authoritarian law and the “dual state,” where a formally normative legal order coexists with a politically driven prerogative structure. Under prolonged states of emergency and rule by decree, Hungary has become, in his words, “a contemporary example of dual state,” raising profound questions about whether elections can still function as instruments of democratic alternation. The opposition’s strategy of contesting the regime “by its own rules” thus reflects a deeper dilemma: whether authoritarian systems can be dismantled through participation in the very institutional frameworks they have reshaped.
Assoc. Prof. Antal’s assessment is stark. The durability of Orbánism, he suggests, lies in its capacity to adapt, radicalize, and survive through escalating authoritarianism. As he warns, the regime “can only survive by becoming increasingly dictatorial,” a trajectory that poses not only a domestic challenge but “a grave danger to both Hungarian and European societies as a whole.”
Here is the edited version of our interview with AssociateProfessor Attila Antal, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
Geopolitics and Domestic Change Reshape Orbánism
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.
Professor Antal, in your work you describe Hungarian authoritarian populism as a system that fuses political identity construction, executive aggrandizement, and the legal-institutional reorganization of power. In the 2026 campaign, do you see Orbánism still functioning as a hegemonic political project, or has it entered a phase of ideological exhaustion in which its capacity to define “the people” and monopolize popular sovereignty is beginning to weaken?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is a key issue for understanding the Orbán regime as a whole and the current situation. Indeed, Orbán has built an authoritarian regime in which the ruling parties have reigned as a kind of hegemonic center—or, to use Antonio Gramsci’s terminology, as a hegemonic power bloc. However, the transformation of the opposition has changed the situation and shaken this hegemonic project. This is, however, a complex situation: in recent years, Orbán had become so confident that he increasingly focused on geopolitics; more precisely, he treated foreign policy and European policy as a kind of geopolitical playing field, where he built power and political alliances with both Eastern and Western authoritarian regimes. It is no coincidence that the two most significant imperialist powers, Trump and Putin, have both assured Orbán of their support. So, I see the collapse of Orbán’s hegemonic project as only partially attributable to domestic political factors: we are witnessing that Orbán’s downfall has become a European and Western geopolitical issue and interest, and this resonates with the anger of Hungarian society, which, for the most part, remains oriented toward the West.
Enemy Narratives Persist but Face Social Limits
You have argued that authoritarian populism in Hungary relies on permanent enemy-production. In the current election, where Kyiv, Brussels, liberal elites, and domestic opponents are again being woven into a single antagonistic narrative, how should we understand this strategy: as a sign of discursive resilience, or as evidence that the regime has become trapped in repetitive forms of mobilization?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: The enemy creation of the Orbán regime is a highly complex story. There is no doubt that the constant creation of enemy images is one of the most prominent components of the authoritarian populist toolkit. Since 2010, the Orbán regime has operated with the following main enemy images: migrants, George Soros, civil society, Brussels, the gender politics, and the domestic political opposition.
From this perspective, 2022 marks a turning point, as Putin’s aggression required the construction of a new enemy image – an incredibly difficult task, given that the attacked Ukraine must be transformed into the new enemy. All of this is connected to the “Putinization” that has taken place within the Orbán regime. The propaganda and discursive framework are thus in place, yet creating this new enemy image also means that Orbán and his allies face the reality that a significant portion of Hungarian society is quite averse to Russians due to Hungarian history. At the same time, Orbán and his allies have succeeded in turning their own camp into a pro-Russian faction, which has resulted in an incredibly deep social cleavage.
Anti-Orbánism Unites a Fragmented Opposition
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.
To what extent should the April 12 vote be interpreted not simply as a contest between Fidesz and Tisza, but as a referendum on whether a mature authoritarian-populist regime can still be electorally displaced despite media asymmetries, constitutional engineering, and patronage entrenchment?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: As I mentioned earlier, the Orbán regime itself and the new opposition forming against it can be understood within a geopolitical context. One could also say that, in many respects, the European Union has had enough of the Putinist influence that the Orbán regime represents as a “Trojan horse.” At the same time, this dissatisfaction is just as true of Hungarian society: at the moment, the opposition is held together by anti-Orbánism and the fact that the Orbán regime has seriously neglected governance and the basic needs of the Hungarian people. In this sense, the Hungarian election can indeed be interpreted as a referendum on the political system.
Dual State Logic Structures Political Competition
Your recent work on authoritarian law suggests that contemporary autocratic projects do not abolish legality so much as repurpose it. In the Hungarian case, how should we conceptualize the election itself: as a democratic mechanism still capable of producing alternation, or as a legally managed arena whose formal openness coexists with substantive authoritarian constraint?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: I think this is a very important question. When I analyzed the legal system of the Orbán regime, I drew on the “dual state” approach developed by Ernst Fraenkel, who studied the nature of National Socialist law in the interwar period. In this authoritarian state, there exists a legal system that is totally influenced by politics (which Fraenkel calls the Prerogative State), while at the same time there is the Normative State, which is less defined by political influence.
The Orbán regime has effectively been operating under a state of emergency since 2015, and since 2022, the prime minister has essentially been governing by decree. So, we are facing a contemporary example of dual state.
In my view, there is a very strong dilemma: can this system be overthrown by accepting its rules of the game and participating in the election, or can we overthrow the system as a result of a collective popular decision and establish new democratic electoral rules? It now appears that the opposition side of Hungarian society is choosing the former solution, that is, it wants to defeat the authoritarian system by its own rules. At the same time, it is certain that in the event of a possible change of government, we will have to face the problem posed by authoritarian law.
Enemy Logic Embedded in Governance Structures
Campaign poster of Viktor Orbán ahead of the April 12, 2026, parliamentary elections. Photo: Bettina Wagner / Dreamstime.
You have written about the “Constitutionalized Image of Enemy” embedded in the Hungarian Fundamental Law. How central is this constitutionalized enemy logic to the present campaign, especially in Orbán’s efforts to portray Tisza, Brussels, and Ukraine not as legitimate competitors, but as existential threats to the political community?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: The most recent amendment to the Fundamental Law took place in April 2025. The Hungarian Fundamental Law has indeed been used to create the prevailing political enemy images: certainly, with regard to migration and gender politics. I have termed this as the “Constitutionalized Image of the Enemy.” In this sense, therefore, the image of the enemy enshrined in the constitution did not play a role in the current campaign. At the same time, the 12th Amendment to the Fundamental Law established the Office for the Protection of National Sovereignty in December 2023, which played a very significant role in enabling the Orbán regime to essentially begin using state and bureaucratic tools against its political opponents and Hungarian society. In other words, the “dual state” mentioned earlier operates at the constitutional level as well.
Geopolitical Counterweight Shapes Opposition Rise
From the standpoint of your theory of authoritarian populism, is Péter Magyar best understood as a democratic challenger to Orbánism, or as a post-Fidesz corrective emerging from within the same political and ideological ecosystem?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is a very difficult question, and it would be too early to give any definitive answer at this stage. I would rather point out that the Hungarian election has a very strong geopolitical context. The Péter Magyar phenomenon and the European support structure behind it can also be understood as a geopolitical counterweight to Hungary’s shift toward Orbán and Putin. At the same time, there is no doubt that Orbán’s challenger was socialized within the Orbán regime and, in many respects, is attempting to correct the right-wing conservative politics that Orbán has betrayed. Here, however, it is worth noting once again that the vast camp behind the Tisza Party is far more complex and is currently held together by the constraints of the electoral system and anti-Orbánism.
Youth Revolt Meets Rural Entrenchment
Independent polling and current reporting suggest that younger voters are disproportionately aligning with Tisza, while Fidesz retains stronger support among older and more rural constituencies. Do you interpret this as a generational realignment against authoritarian populism, or merely as a contingent reaction to economic stagnation and elite scandal?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is also a key issue. There is no doubt that the authoritarian populism of the Orbán regime has, intentionally or not, created a generational and regional divide. A significant portion of rural and elderly Hungarian voters is far more susceptible to the enemy stereotypes and messages manufactured by the regime’s propaganda. Thus, there is a very strong generational revolt against Orbán’s authoritarian populism, particularly because Orbán is effectively blackmailing not only the EU but also Hungarian society: the former with constant vetoes, and the latter with constant threats of leaving the EU.
Middle-Class Erosion Fuels Political Backlash
Given your emphasis on the relationship between neoliberal restructuring and authoritarian populism, how important are material grievances—stagnant growth, inflation, deteriorating public services, and corruption fatigue—in weakening the regime’s capacity to maintain consent? Can economic deterioration disrupt a system whose legitimacy has long depended on symbolic conflict rather than policy performance?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: From a political-economic perspective, the Orbán regime was based on a class consensus in which the (upper) middle class and national big business formed an alliance. This was underpinned by pre-COVID-19 economic prosperity and massive amounts of EU funding. During this period of economic prosperity, however, a neoliberal state emerged that systematically dismantled public services, particularly in the healthcare and education sectors. When the polycrisis emerged (EU crises, pandemic, war), the dismantled Orbán state proved unable to handle the crisis: alongside the groups in the worst situations, the declining Hungarian middle class is the biggest loser of the Orbán regime. In other words, the rebellion against the Orbán regime is, in many respects, also of a material nature.
War Narrative Enables Democratic Suspension
How do you interpret Orbán’s continued “peace versus war” framing in light of your broader work on the politics of exception? Is this campaign discourse best seen as a contemporary form of emergency politics—one that converts geopolitical uncertainty into a justification for executive concentration and democratic suspension?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: As I mentioned, since 2022 the prime minister has essentially been governing by decree, encroaching even on areas of public policy where a state of emergency has no place. Meanwhile, political propaganda has constantly claimed that the Orbán regime is the only guarantee of peace. This has come to a head in the current campaign, with the Orbán machine conveying the message that the opposition is on the side of the Ukrainians and is dragging Hungary into the war. Governing through extraordinary measures is thus a political and communicative reframing: the Orbán regime has essentially suspended parliamentary democracy and portrayed the Ukrainian side (including the EU and the Hungarian opposition) as wanting war. I believe that this is not just some kind of fake news campaign, but the pure and frightening manifestation of an authoritarian state.
Sovereigntist Rhetoric Masks Strategic Dependence
Hungary’s pro-Russian posture has become a major campaign fault line. In your view, does Orbán’s Moscow-friendly stance still function as a coherent ideological expression of sovereigntist anti-liberalism, or is it increasingly becoming a liability as the war in Ukraine reshapes the moral and geopolitical boundaries of European politics?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: Orbán’s pro-Russian policy is a complex phenomenon. At least three aspects are worth highlighting. On the one hand, there is no doubt that, with regard to the international authoritarian right, there exists a kind of ideological coalition whose political-theoretical foundation is an anti-liberal conservative approach dating back to Carl Schmitt. Second, the Orbán regime has radically relinquished energy sovereignty in favor of Putinism. Third, there is also no doubt that Orbán and his regime are personally dependent on Putin’s system. Here, then, lies a radical contradiction: the Orbán regime, which is sovereignist at the level of propaganda, has deliberately renounced the sovereignty of the Hungarian state and is weakening European sovereignty in favor of Russia. The deeper implications of this can only be revealed after the election.
Militant Democracy as a Possible Path
You have shown how exceptional governance can become normalized. If Tisza were to win without a constitutional supermajority, would Hungary enter a phase of partial alternation without regime transformation—in other words, a situation in which a new government governs through institutions still structured by the old exception-centered order?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: I believe this is one of the main consequences of the dilemma I mentioned earlier: namely, how to dismantle an authoritarian system – either by adhering to its own rules or through more revolutionary means. If there is a change of government and a two-thirds majority is achieved, dismantling the authoritarian power of the Orbán regime will be a challenge. If, however, the change of government occurs with a simple majority, it may become inevitable to consider how the authoritarian system can be dismantled using the tools of militant democracy.
EU Influence and Domestic Revolt Intersect
Tisza Party volunteer collecting signatures in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary on June 5, 2024 during a nationwide campaign tour ahead of the European Parliament elections. Photo: Sarkadi Roland / Dreamstime.
What would a Tisza victory actually reveal about the Orbán system: that authoritarian-populist rule remains vulnerable to democratic challenge, or that only an insider-led revolt from within the regime’s broader political class can break such a system electorally?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: Based on what we’ve seen so far, I believe a potential victory for Tisza would have two implications. On the one hand, it would signal that the EU has had enough of Putinism directly influencing European politics. On the other hand, it would mean that authoritarian populism has become completely detached from social reality, and that Hungarian society has had enough of a political agenda built on constant hatemongering and the suspension of normality.
Authoritarian Consolidation Beyond Legitimacy
Conversely, if Fidesz were to retain power despite signs of economic strain, ideological repetition, corruption exposure, and opposition momentum, what would that tell us about the resilience of contemporary populist rule in Europe? Would it suggest that once authoritarian populism successfully constitutionalizes its power, elections alone become insufficient to dislodge it?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: I believe this is the most important issue of our time. Unfortunately, my grim assessment is that the Orbán regime is not seeking democratic legitimacy in the 2026 elections, but rather public support for its own dictatorial turn. I have long regarded the Orbán regime as a constitutional dictatorship, which means, on the one hand, that contemporary autocracies have a constitutional framework, and on the other hand, that certain segments of society have renounced democracy and accept the exercise of authoritarian power. Overall, therefore, the Orbán regime can only survive by becoming increasingly dictatorial, a trend that poses a grave danger to both Hungarian and European society as a whole.
Competing Visions of European Sovereignty
From the perspective of European integration, do you see this election as a struggle between two models of sovereignty: Orbán’s confrontational, anti-imperial, anti-Brussels sovereigntism and a more cooperative, rule-of-law-based claim to national interest that Tisza is trying to articulate? Or is that dichotomy too neat for the political realities of contemporary Hungary?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: First of all, the Orbán regime is indeed imperialist, and it pursues policies that serve Russian imperialist interests. The Hungarian election is crucial from the perspective of European integration, as the dilemma is whether there exists a European sovereignty that can be relied upon to stand up against authoritarian tendencies such as Trumpism and Putinism. I am committed to the idea, as Karl Loewenstein put it, that democracy must develop its own self-defense mechanisms and fight back – in our case, at both the member state and EU levels.
External Validation Meets Internal Resistance
Matryoshka dolls featuring images of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump displayed at a souvenir counter in Moscow on March 16, 2019. Photo: Shutterstock.
Hungary has become a reference point within transnational right-wing networks, and Orbán continues to attract symbolic support from US and European conservative actors. In analytical terms, how much does this external validation matter domestically? Does it strengthen the regime’s legitimacy, or does it mainly reinforce Orbán’s self-image as a global ideological entrepreneur?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: From the perspective of ideological and political networking, the Orbán regime truly acts as a mediator between Western and Eastern authoritarian tendencies. This is why organizing the European far right is of key importance to Orbán. All of this undoubtedly has an impact on his own camp. At the same time, Orbán’s status as a “global ideological entrepreneur” represents the very project against which the Hungarian opposition has been able to unite and become committed to a change of government.
De-capture vs. Persistence of Orbánism
Finally, through the lens of your work on authoritarian law and exceptional governance, what would be the most theoretically significant post-election question for scholars to watch: whether electoral alternation occurs, whether institutional de-capture proves possible, or whether the deeper legacy of Orbánism survives regardless of who forms the next government?
Associate Professor Attila Antal: This is also one of the most important dilemmas of our era from both a Hungarian and a European perspective, as the political and legal consequences of the Orbán regime are toxic to European integration as a whole. On the one hand, just as happened after World War II, we must once again grapple with the question of how to take democratic action against authoritarian legal and political systems. On the other hand, and even more importantly: we must finally prevent the distortion of liberal democracies toward authoritarianism not only through constitutional institutions but also through effective economic and cultural means. In my view, it is crucial to examine how global capitalism and neoliberalism have distorted liberal constitutionalism and how they have eroded the social foundations of democracies through austerity measures and the dismantling of welfare systems.
In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja introduces the notion of “survival populism” to capture how environmental crisis and material insecurity are reshaping democratic politics in the Global South. Moving beyond conventional ideational approaches, the article foregrounds lived experiences of hardship—linking fuel price shocks, flooding, energy insecurity, and inflation to moral claims about fairness, state responsibility, and distributive justice. Through the case of Nigeria, Dr. Solaja demonstrates how climate-related disruptions and policy reforms converge to erode institutional trust and reconfigure political contestation. Rather than rejecting climate policy per se, citizens contest its unequal burdens. The article thus reframes democratic distress as rooted in distributive conflict, offering a compelling framework for understanding how ecological crisis fuels new forms of populist mobilization and legitimacy crises.
In much of the Global South, the politics of survival and the politics of environmental crisis have become deeply intertwined. What were once distinct policy domains—the politics of fuel prices, flood mitigation, food inflation, waste accumulation, and energy insecurity—have converged into a single, lived experience of persistent hardship. For millions of citizens, the environmental crisis is not primarily defined by climate reports, international negotiations, or adaptation frameworks, but by submerged homes, rising transport costs, prolonged electricity outages, disrupted livelihoods, and escalating prices for basic goods.
Within such contexts of livelihood insecurity, ecological degradation takes on political meaning. Citizens come to see hardship not just as the result of misfortune or climatic fluctuation, but as an instance of unequal protection, institutional neglect and democratic distance. Under such conditions, public politics enters a new phase: a populism of survival emerges.
“Populism of survival” names a distinct mode of political interpretation that links environmental and economic distress to moral claims about state responsibility, fairness, and sacrifice. It departs from classical theories of populism by foregrounding the lived experience of hardship. Unlike the variants often associated with populist mobilizations in the Global North and East—typically structured around a binary opposition between “the people” and “the elite”—populism of survival is rooted in citizens’ experiences of material insecurity. Fuel becomes political when rising prices constrain mobility and limit access to basic goods; flooding becomes political when relief is inadequate or unevenly distributed; waste becomes political when its unequal management deepens social inequalities and disproportionately endangers already vulnerable populations.
In such contexts, public anger arises not only from opposition to environmental policy reforms but also from citizens’ everyday moral intuitions about who bears the costs of environmental disruption, who is required to pay, and who is protected. The relationship between climate policy and democratic legitimacy begins to erode when policies are perceived as non-distributive or unfair. Increasingly, the roots of climate populism lie in conflicts over how the costs and benefits of environmental transition are allocated. As Harrison (2025) observes, “across many settings, opposition to environmental reforms may stem not from a rejection of climate policies per se, but from opposition to the inequities of how their costs are distributed.”
An illustrative example of these dynamics can be found in Nigeria, where the government removed fuel subsidies in May 2023 and framed the resulting increase in fuel prices as a necessary macroeconomic adjustment. Public discourse surrounding the policy quickly became highly politicized, as rising fuel costs contributed to significant inflation and tightened household budgets. While state officials justified the reform in terms of fiscal discipline and economic rationalization, many citizens interpreted it through a moral lens: why should those at the bottom struggle to make ends meet while those with access to power remain insulated from such burdens? As Gbadebo (2025) argues, public responses to subsidy removal were shaped not only by the material consequences of economic hardship but also by concerns over governmental credibility and the plausibility of promised developmental outcomes.
These processes were intensified by other long-standing environmental and structural vulnerabilities and crises that now affected a wider portion of society than in past years. Following the floods that devastated numerous states—destroying livelihoods, homes, and arable lands—rising costs merged with food insecurity and frequent blackouts to form an inseparable social and ecological predicament. The state could no longer frame this predicament as exclusively “natural” or solely as the outcome of a natural disaster or poor market conditions. The experience was one of combined, cumulative crisis, and the credibility of the state in addressing such predicaments is tied to its performance on both fronts.
Flooding has, in particular, emerged as a major site of citizen dissatisfaction and a potent factor driving democratic distress. Displaced communities that have lost homes and productive capacity immediately feel cheated when the amount or distribution of government aid seems to reproduce and reinforce existing patterns of social inequality, and they begin to ask why state assistance appears uneven across communities and is not delivered to them preferentially. Climate policy has entered a phase in which state legitimacy is judged not solely in terms of its objectives or rationale, but also in terms of the effectiveness and fairness of its management of combined environmental and social threats.
Studies such as those by Okonkwo and Ezenwegbu (2024), which find that subsidy removal in Nigeria sparked significant concern among citizens who lacked a clear understanding of mitigation strategies or social protection, as well as analyses of the success and failure of fossil-fuel subsidy reform across various settings by Droste et al (2024), indicate that, when it comes to distributing the burdens of adjustment policies effectively, “technical argumentation alone has rarely been able to overcome such deeply seated mistrust.” The need for state institutions to earn citizens’ confidence through fairness, reciprocity, and demonstrable competence is therefore crucial in contexts with lower levels of public trust.
These issues are exacerbated in countries such as Nigeria, which suffer from chronic failures in infrastructure provision. Hussainzad and Gou (2024) show, for instance, that informality places the burden of adapting to ecological threats onto already existing socio-ecological inequalities. The populism of survival therefore cannot be interpreted solely as a product of irrational or ideological anti-state discourse, but as a request for a visible display of state competence. It requires public recognition from the state that it is aware of how these crises disproportionately affect ordinary citizens and is therefore prepared to demonstrate fairness and protection when such crises occur.
It may or may not amount to explicitly anti-government discourse; but at its core, it expresses a demand for visibility. What citizens seek is not just state intervention, but a demonstration of its commitment to justice when addressing both economic pressures and the demands of adapting to the climate crisis. These developments are interpreted by populists as a crucial and opening field of study centered on real, survival-oriented daily experiences, rather than on the ideologies and leaders of state actors. The main dilemma for democratic governments in the coming decade will be less about acknowledging that an environmental crisis is underway than about fairly distributing the costs of confronting it.
References
Droste, N.; Chatterton, B. & Skovgaard, J. (2024). “A political economy theory of fossil fuel subsidy reforms in OECD countries.” Nature Communications, 15, 5452.
Gbadebo, A. D. (2025). “The political economy of fuel subsidy removal: Governance and sustainable development in Nigeria.” Journal of Governance and Administrative Reform, 6(1), 1–18.
Hussainzad, E. A., & Gou, Z. (2024). “Climate risk and vulnerability assessment in informal settlements of the Global South: A critical review.” Land, 13(9), 1357.
Okonkwo, A. E., & Ezenwegbu, J. C. (2024). “Removal of petrol subsidies and its impact for democratic governance in Nigeria.” Nnamdi Azikiwe Journal of Political Science, 9(3), 38–47.
