Oona Hathaway

Prof. Hathaway: A Moment of Peril—and Possibility—to Reimagine the International Legal Order

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Giving an interview to the ECPS, Professor Oona A. Hathaway reflects on the resilience and fragility of the post-1945 international legal order at what she describes as a moment of both peril and possibility. She identifies the prohibition on the use of force as the “bedrock of the modern legal order,” yet warns that today’s geopolitical climate is marked by “extraordinary instability” and mounting challenges from major powers. International law, she argues, ultimately depends on shared belief: “what makes international law work is that states believe it works.” If repeated unilateral uses of force erode that belief, a “reverse norm cascade” could follow. Yet Professor Hathaway also stresses that crisis can generate renewal—an opportunity to reimagine and reconstruct a more equitable and effective international legal order rather than surrender to fatalism.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Oona A. Hathaway—Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School; Professor of Political Science in Yale’s Department of Political Science; Faculty at the Jackson School of Global Affairs; Director of the Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges; and president-elect of the American Society of International Law—reflects on the resilience and fragility of the post-1945 international legal order at a moment she describes as both perilous and generative. The organizing theme of the interview is captured in the headline, “A Moment of Peril—and Possibility—to Reimagine the International Legal Order.” For Professor Hathaway, the contemporary crisis is not simply episodic noncompliance but a potentially systemic turning point—one that tests whether the prohibition on the use of force, which she calls the “bedrock of the modern legal order,” can endure under conditions of populism, geopolitical rivalry, and eroding rule-of-law commitments.

Professor Hathaway situates today’s tensions within a longer arc of normative transformation. The post-1945 order, she argues, was both a “genuine normative revolution that restrained power” and a system sustained by the strategic interests of dominant states. Yet the present moment raises acute questions about its durability. In her view, “what makes international law work is that states believe it works,” and the danger is that repeated unilateral uses of force could tip the system toward a “reverse norm cascade,” in which states “no longer believe that these rules matter and therefore no longer act as if they matter.” The concern is not only erosion, but the possibility of a broader unraveling in which the rules cease to structure expectations.

Several sections of the interview underscore why “today’s instability is unprecedented in the postwar international legal order.” Professor Hathaway emphasizes that in the post–World War II era “we’ve ever been at a moment of such instability and uncertainty” as when the most powerful state appears “clearly willing to use military force in violation of the UN Charter that it once championed.” This connects directly to another theme: “when rule-makers break the rules, the damage is far greater.” As Professor Hathaway notes, US violations are “particularly destructive,” not least because of the “failure of the international community to respond or push back forcefully,” shaped by entrenched assumptions about US stewardship and deep economic interdependence.

Yet Professor Hathaway also insists that breakdown need not foreclose renewal. “It is a moment of extreme challenge,”she concludes, “but it is also a moment of opportunity and creativity.” The task, she suggests, is to resist fatalism and instead “think together about what a more equitable and effective international legal order might look like”—because “it is up to us to decide which it will be.”

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Oona A. Hathaway, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Elin Bjarnegård

Prof. Bjarnegård: Gender Will Become a Central Fault Line Between Liberal Democracy and Authoritarian Populism

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In this ECPS interview, Professor Elin Bjarnegård (Uppsala University) argues that gender is no longer a side issue but “a useful, malleable concept for authoritarian leaders”—and will become “an increasingly central fault line” separating liberal democracy from authoritarian populism. Moving beyond a simple backlash thesis, she shows how regimes alternate between ‘genderbashing’ and ‘genderwashing’, weaponizing equality talk for legitimacy at home and abroad. Professor Bjarnegård also links democratic backsliding to gendered intimidation, online harassment, and what she calls “sexual corruption.” Noting that the Epstein files revealed abuses “in the corridors of power” in democratic settings too, she warns that personalistic rule heightens risk—especially the “impunity surrounding them.” She urges resisting polarization, scrutinizing symbols, and asking where gender concretely matters in policy.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In an era marked by democratic erosion and the global rise of authoritarian populism, gender politics has emerged not merely as a cultural battleground but as a strategic axis of regime competition. In this interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Elin Bjarnegård of Uppsala University argues that gender will increasingly function as a defining fault line separating liberal democratic governance from authoritarian populist rule. Moving beyond conventional explanations that frame anti-gender politics primarily as ideological backlash, Professor Bjarnegård emphasizes the instrumentalization of gender as a tool of political survival, legitimacy, and international signaling. As she explains, “gender becomes a useful, malleable concept for authoritarian leaders—a powerful symbol that can be mobilized for regime purposes,” underscoring how strategic deployment rather than doctrinal conviction often drives contemporary gender politics.

This strategic perspective helps explain why gender rights are likely to intensify as a central arena of geopolitical and normative contestation. Professor Bjarnegård anticipates that “gender rights, or perhaps the strategic use of gender, will become an increasingly central fault line,” not only because of ideological polarization but also because gender provides an “easy, simplistic narrative to deploy strategically” in polarized societies. Such narratives enable regimes to oscillate between exclusionary rhetoric and symbolic inclusion, reinforcing domestic authority while communicating selectively with international audiences.

The interview also highlights the darker governance implications of weakened accountability in populist and authoritarian systems, particularly regarding gendered abuses of power. Drawing on her concept of “sexual corruption,” Professor Bjarnegård reframes such abuses as systemic governance failures rather than isolated misconduct. Referencing the recent release of the Epstein files, she cautions against simplistic regime-type explanations, noting that “these gendered abuses of authority have also proliferated in the corridors of power in predominantly democratic contexts in Europe and the United States.” Yet she stresses that personalistic rule and eroded oversight create heightened risks in authoritarian settings, where such systems are “more at risk both of experiencing these gendered abuses and, perhaps especially, of the impunity surrounding them—of people not reporting them, of them remaining unseen, and of not being addressed.” This dynamic speaks directly to the broader vulnerability of populist authoritarian governance to gendered exploitation and unaccountable power.

More broadly, Professor Bjarnegård situates these patterns within a continuum of gendered violence that includes psychological intimidation, reputational attacks, and digitally mediated harassment—forms of coercion that undermine democratic participation without overt repression. Taken together, her analysis suggests that gender politics is becoming a diagnostic lens through which scholars can assess democratic resilience, institutional integrity, and the trajectory of global political competition. The interview thus positions gender not as a peripheral social issue but as a central structural dimension of contemporary struggles between liberal democracy and authoritarian populism.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Elin Bjarnegård, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

ECPS Virtual Workshops-Session 12

Virtual Workshop Series / Session 12 — Decolonizing Democracy: Governance, Identity, and Resistance in the Global South

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Session 12 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series explored how “decolonizing democracy” requires attention to the material and symbolic structures shaping participation, legitimacy, and representation. The presentations framed democracy not as a settled institutional model but as a contested field shaped by colonial legacies, extractive political economies, and identity-based struggles over inclusion and authority. Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja’s comparative study of Nigeria and the United Kingdom showed how environmental governance can produce “participation without power,” where formal inclusion coexists with persistent injustice. Dr. Salomon Essaga Eteme’s analysis of Cameroon highlighted how pluralism has intensified communal claims to state ownership, complicating political alternation. Supported by Dr. Gabriel Cyril Nguijoi’s feedback, the session underscored the value of concepts such as biocultural sovereignty and communocratic populism and emphasized the need for context-sensitive, interdisciplinary approaches to democratic renewal in the Global South.

Reported by ECPS Staff

On Thursday, February 19, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened Session 12 of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches, under the theme “Decolonizing Democracy: Governance, Identity, and Resistance in the Global South.” The session foregrounded a core problem in contemporary democratic theory and practice: how democratic institutions—often inherited, transplanted, or externally modeled—are reshaped, contested, and resisted in postcolonial contexts marked by extractive political economies, unequal state–society relations, and enduring struggles over recognition and voice.

Moderated by Neo Sithole (University of Szeged), the workshop approached “the people” not as a stable category but as a contested political project—produced through governance arrangements, mobilized through identity, and asserted through resistance. Across the session, democracy emerged less as an institutional endpoint than as a field of struggle in which colonial legacies, state power, and community agency intersect. Rather than treating decolonization as a symbolic discourse, contributors examined its concrete implications for how participation is structured, how resources are governed, and how legitimacy is claimed in environments where the state’s democratic form may coexist with exclusionary or coercive practices.

The session brought together two presentations that, while distinct in focus, converged on a shared concern with democratic deficit: the gap between formal mechanisms of participation and the effective capacity of communities to shape political and material outcomes. First, Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja (Olabisi Onabanjo University) examined environmental governance as a critical site of democratic contestation in a paper jointly authored with Busayo Olakitan Badmos (Olabisi Onabanjo University), titled “Decolonial Environmentalism and Democracy: A Comparative Study of Resource Governance in Nigeria and the United Kingdom.” Positioning environmental politics within the broader architecture of power, he explored how colonial histories and technocratic governance models marginalize local knowledge and produce “participation without power,” while proposing biocultural sovereignty as a pathway toward more inclusive ecological governance.

Second, Dr. Salomon Essaga Eteme (University of Ngaoundéré) analyzed electoral politics and identity mobilization in Cameroon in “Africa at the Test of Populism: Identity Mobilisations, Crises of Political Alternation, and the Trial of Democracy,” jointly authored with Dr. Yves Valéry Obame (University of Bertoua / Global Studies Institute & Geneva Africa Lab). His contribution interrogated how multiparty competition can intensify communal claims to representation, framing elections not as programmatic contests but as struggles over inclusion, alternation, and the symbolic ownership of the state.

The discussion was anchored by Dr. Gabriel Cyril Nguijoi (National Institute of Cartography; ICEDIS), whose role as discussant helped connect the papers’ empirical insights to broader debates on coloniality, accountability, and democratic substance. His interventions highlighted how both contributions disrupt common analytical shortcuts—whether the assumption that environmental injustice is confined to the Global South, or the notion that repeated elections necessarily constitute democratic consolidation. 

Taken together, Session 12 offered a layered and comparative exploration of how democracy is challenged—and potentially renewed—through the politics of governance, identity, and resistance in postcolonial settings.

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Associate Professor Andrés Mejía Acosta.

Assoc. Prof. Mejía Acosta: State Erosion Is Faster Than State Building and Harder to Reverse

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In this interview with the ECPS, Associate Professor Andrés Mejía Acosta (University of Notre Dame, Keough School of Global Affairs) explains why populist leaders often weaken state capacity strategically rather than accidentally. For populists, he argues, “state institutions and agencies get in the way of a more unilateral, discretionary, non-democratic type of governance,” prompting efforts to “ignore, dismantle, bypass, or merge” oversight bodies that constrain executive power. Assoc. Prof. Acosta underscores the asymmetry between construction and destruction: “state building… takes decades and even centuries,” yet “state dismantling… can be done very quickly,” with lasting effects on democratic recovery. He links institutional erosion to patronage politics, discretionary spending, and the weakening of accountability networks—dynamics that make reversals of democratic backsliding harder when “state mechanisms are no longer functioning.”

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Andrés Mejía Acosta, Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, offers a sobering analytical framework for understanding how contemporary populist governance erodes state capacity and, in turn, weakens democratic resilience. Anchored in his influential research on “state hollowing,” Assoc. Prof. Mejía Acosta argues that the weakening of bureaucratic institutions is not an accidental byproduct of populist rule but a deliberate governing strategy. For populist leaders, he explains, “state institutions and agencies get in the way of a more unilateral, discretionary, non-democratic type of governance,” making their dismantling instrumental to consolidating power.

Highlighting the core theme captured in the interview’s title, Assoc. Prof. Mejía Acosta stresses the asymmetry between the slow construction and rapid destruction of state institutions. While comparative politics has long recognized the difficulty of building capable states, he warns that their erosion can occur with alarming speed and lasting consequences: “In the case of state building, we have long understood that it takes decades and even centuries to build and strengthen states, but we are now learning that state dismantling apparently does not take long; it can be done very quickly.” This accelerated dismantling, he argues, produces durable institutional damage that outlives the populist incumbents themselves, making democratic recovery far more difficult. Once oversight agencies, regulatory bodies, and accountability mechanisms are weakened or eliminated, the very infrastructure required for democratic renewal may no longer function.

Throughout the conversation, Assoc. Prof. Mejía Acosta situates state erosion within the broader literature on democratic backsliding while distinguishing it from classical authoritarian consolidation. Whereas backsliding targets elections, mediafreedom, and political competition, state hollowing undermines the administrative and fiscal capacities that sustain governance itself. The result is a mutually reinforcing cycle: weakening representative institutions enables further bureaucratic dismantling, while eroding state capacity deactivates democratic safeguards. As he notes, this dynamic creates long-term structural damage: “This phenomenon of state erosion will have long-term consequences that make reversals of democratic backsliding more difficult. It will be harder to recover democratic practices when state mechanisms are no longer functioning.”

Drawing on empirical examples from Latin America and beyond, Assoc. Prof. Mejía Acosta also emphasizes how populist regimes selectively weaken oversight institutions while expanding discretionary spending, coercive apparatuses, and patronage networks. Agencies responsible for environmental regulation, poverty evaluation, or fiscal monitoring become targets precisely because they constrain executive discretion. In their place emerges a governance model characterized by informality, opacity, and clientelistic redistribution—conditions that entrench incumbents while undermining public accountability.

Yet the interview is not solely diagnostic. Assoc. Prof. Mejía Acosta concludes with cautious optimism about democratic resilience, underscoring the need for cross-sectoral coalitions, institutional reforms, and sustained civic mobilization. As authoritarian tendencies penetrate deeper into governance structures—“as if the authoritarian illness is spreading through the body”—he calls for a global effort to rebuild the institutional foundations of democracy.

Taken together, this interview provides a theoretically rich and empirically grounded account of how populist leaders hollow out states from within—and why the consequences for democracy may endure long after the political moment has passed.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Associate Professor Andrés Mejía Acosta, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow:

Toru Tsuda

Dr. Tsuda: Takaichi’s Ascent to Power Represents Continuity Rather Than a Populist Rupture

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In an interview with the ECPS, Dr. Taro Tsuda of Meiji University argues that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s landslide victory and supermajority mandate signify continuity within Japan’s dominant-party system rather than a populist break. Despite her historic status as Japan’s first female prime minister and her “diligent and tough-speaking” leadership style, Dr. Tsuda stresses that her agenda and career remain rooted in the Liberal Democratic Party’s mainstream. He interprets her electoral success as part of the LDP’s strategy to reclaim drifting conservative voters and preempt challenger movements, with Takaichi herself becoming the party’s central electoral asset. Her rise, he concludes, demonstrates how leadership personalization and institutional resilience can reinforce—rather than disrupt—established structures of governance.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Taro Tsuda—Assistant Professor at the School of Political Science and Economics at Meiji University, Tokyo, and a scholar of Japanese political institutions, party dynamics, and leadership—offers a nuanced interpretation of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s dramatic rise and governing trajectory. His analysis comes at a pivotal moment: PM Takaichi’s landslide electoral victory delivered a two-thirds supermajority for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner, dramatically consolidating executive authority and granting her administration an exceptional legislative cushion. As Japan’s first female prime minister, combining a programmatic conservative agenda with a leadership style widely perceived as both “diligent and tough-speaking,” Takaichi has reshaped the political landscape—strengthening conservative forces while advancing an ambitious policy program that includes fiscal stimulus, proposed consumption-tax cuts, technological and AI-driven industrial strategy, and a more assertive regional security posture. Yet, as Dr. Tsuda emphasizes, these developments should not be misread as evidence of a populist rupture.

Contrary to narratives portraying her ascent as a transformative break, Dr. Tsuda argues that Takaichi’s premiership represents continuity within Japan’s historically institutionalized dominant-party system. “It is definitely the former rather than the latter,” he explains when asked whether the so-called “Takaichi boom” constitutes personalized leadership rather than populism, noting that she emerges from the LDP, “which has been the dominant party in Japan since 1955.”Because populism typically involves an anti-establishment appeal “pitting the population against a harmful elite,” her leadership—rooted firmly within the ruling party’s mainstream—does not fit that model. Indeed, he stresses that her ideas and career path have remained “very much within the mainstream of the LDP,” making it “very hard…to say that her becoming Prime Minister would constitute a populist rupture.” In this reading, even her decisive electoral mandate and willingness to adopt politically risky positions on issues such as Taiwan and China reflect programmatic assertiveness rather than anti-system mobilization.

Dr. Tsuda further contends that Takaichi’s electoral success should be understood as part of the LDP’s adaptive strategy to reabsorb drifting conservative voters and preempt challenger movements. Faced with defections to newer right-leaning parties, the party leadership sought to reconstruct its electoral “big tent,” successfully drawing many of those voters back. This, he argues, forms “a sort of short-term and perhaps longer-term strategy…to prevent that kind of populist challenge to its incumbency.” Her personal popularity proved central to this effort: Takaichi “became the face of the LDP for this election,” attracting independents and younger voters who had previously been skeptical of the party.

By situating Takaichi’s premiership within longer trajectories of LDP dominance, Shinzo Abe’s legacy, and Japan’s evolving security and economic priorities, Dr. Tsuda’s interview highlights how leadership personalization, ideological clarity, and institutional continuity can coexist. The result, he suggests, is not a populist upheaval but a powerful example of how dominant parties renew authority through strategic adaptation—demonstrating that even historic milestones, such as Japan’s first female premiership and a sweeping supermajority victory, may ultimately reinforce rather than disrupt established structures of governance.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Dr. Taro Tsuda, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Professor Nandini Sundar

Prof. Sundar: Almost Every Institution in India Has Been Subverted to Advance a Supremacist Agenda

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In this interview with the ECPS, Professor Nandini Sundar (Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University) delivers a stark assessment of India’s institutional trajectory under the BJP and its ideological parent, the RSS. Her central claim is unequivocal: “Almost every institution in this country has now collapsed, or has been subverted, in order to further the supremacist agenda.” She situates current developments within the longer history of Hindutva ideology, emphasizing the RSS’s founding goal of a Hindu supremacist state. Professor Sundar argues that a narrative of majoritarian victimhood underpins historical revisionism, institutional capture, and restrictions on academic freedom. She also highlights transnational pressures, noting that a “very active Hindutva diaspora” has targeted scholars abroad, constraining research and debate globally.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Nandini Sundar— Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, and one of India’s most prominent sociologists and a leading voice on democracy, violence, and state power—offers a stark assessment of the trajectory of Indian institutions under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Her central claim is unequivocal: “Almost every institution in this country has now collapsed, or has been subverted, in order to further the supremacist agenda.” Situating contemporary developments within the longer history of Hindutva ideology, Professor Sundar argues that the BJP cannot be understood apart from the RSS, “an unregistered, secretive organization” founded in 1925 “to establish a Hindu supremacist state in which all others would be second-class citizens.”

At the heart of this project, she explains, lies a powerful narrative of majoritarian victimhood. RSS discourse portrays Hindus as historical victims of “800 years of colonialism,” conflating Muslim rule with British imperialism and mobilizing a sense of lost civilizational pride. This paradox—an overwhelming majority imagining itself as dispossessed—underpins a wide array of policies, from historical revisionism to institutional capture. According to Professor Sundar, the claim to represent a wronged majority translates into concrete restrictions on academic freedom through ideological appointments, funding pressures, surveillance, and curricular transformation. Universities, in particular, have been reshaped to ensure that “only our narrative, only our voice, should count,” transforming spaces once associated with pluralism into arenas of political conformity and patronage.

The interview highlights how Hindutva governance operates not only through formal state mechanisms but also through diffuse networks of affiliated organizations and vigilante actors. Student groups such as the ABVP (the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) and other RSS-linked formations function simultaneously as political mobilizers and instruments of intimidation, embedding campuses within what Professor Sundar calls a broader “ecosystem of vigilantism.” Meanwhile, democratic institutions—from courts to electoral bodies and media regulators—are portrayed as formally intact yet substantively hollowed out, enabling what she describes as the preservation of democratic form alongside the erosion of democratic substance.

Professor Sundar also draws attention to the transnational dimension of these dynamics. A “very active Hindutva diaspora,” she notes, has targeted scholars abroad, orchestrating harassment campaigns and reputational attacks that restrict academic inquiry on India globally. As a result, she warns, it has become “very difficult for anyone working on India to be able to research, write, and think freely, whether inside the country or outside the country.”

Taken together, her analysis presents Hindutva not merely as a domestic political ideology but as a comprehensive project of institutional transformation, cultural redefinition, and epistemic control. By foregrounding the links between majoritarian resentment, institutional subversion, and the policing of knowledge, this interview offers a sobering account of how democratic systems can be repurposed to sustain exclusionary rule while maintaining the appearance of constitutional continuity.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Nandini Sundar, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Professor Benjamin Carter Hett, a leading historian of Nazi Germany at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Professor Hett: Trump Is Vastly Less Astute and Less Ruthless Than Hitler

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Professor Benjamin Carter Hett, a leading historian of Nazi Germany at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, joins ECPS to reflect on the promises—and pitfalls—of historical analogy in an age of democratic stress. Grounded in his research on Weimar collapse and authoritarian mobilization, Professor Hett argues that humiliation remains a key driver of populist politics, pointing to Trump’s insistence, “I am your retribution,” as a revealing signal of grievance politics. He also draws sharp structural parallels between Nazi attacks on “the system” and contemporary slogans such as “the swamp,” which work to delegitimize democracy from within. Yet Professor Hett resists false equivalence: Trump, he emphasizes, is “vastly less astute and vastly less ruthless than Hitler,” and lacks “any compelling ideological vision,” remaining “totally improvisatory.” The interview probes elite accommodation, “reality deficits,” and backlash dynamics.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In an era increasingly shaped by populist insurgencies, democratic erosion, and polarized historical analogies, few scholars are better positioned to assess the uses—and abuses—of the past than Professor Benjamin Carter Hett. A leading historian of Nazi Germany at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, Professor Hett has devoted his career to analyzing how democratic systems collapse from within. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), he reflects on the dynamics of authoritarian mobilization, the politics of grievance, and the limits of historical comparison—culminating in his striking assessment that “Trump is, of course, vastly less astute and vastly less ruthless than Hitler.”

Professor Hett’s analysis begins not with institutions but with emotions. Drawing on his research into the Nazi rise to power, he argues that humiliation—rather than ideology alone—often supplies the combustible fuel of authoritarian movements. A “core explanation” for Nazism’s ascent, he explains, was a widespread perception among supporters that they had been “humiliated by domestic elites” and by the settlement of World War I. He sees echoes of this dynamic today: “Substantial segments of the electorate in the United States and in European countries appear to be experiencing a sense of humiliation reminiscent of that felt by many Germans in the interwar period.” Trump’s campaign rhetoric, especially the promise “I am your retribution,” exemplifies how perceived loss of status can be politically weaponized.

Yet the interview’s central theme—highlighted by its title—is not crude equivalence but analytical differentiation. Professor Hett repeatedly underscores that, despite structural parallels, Trump lacks the strategic capacity and ideological coherence that made Hitler historically transformative. Whereas Nazism fused charismatic authority with a totalizing worldview—what Nazis called “the Idea”—Trumpism appears improvisational, transactional, and deeply personalist. This distinction, Professor Hett suggests, limits its authoritarian potential. Trump, he argues, possesses “no compelling ideological vision behind him” and is “totally improvisatory,” driven more by a desire for adulation and material reward than by a programmatic project of domination.

The interview also revisits Professor Hett’s influential argument that democratic breakdown can stem from “hollow victory” as well as defeat. Despite America’s triumph in the Cold War, many citizens experienced globalization, automation, and rising inequality as loss rather than success, producing resentment analogous to the disillusionment that followed World War I. Such grievances, once reframed as cultural humiliation rather than economic hardship, become fertile ground for populist mobilization.

Equally significant is Professor Hett’s discussion of elite miscalculation. Just as conservative elites in Weimar believed they could harness Hitler’s popularity, many contemporary political and economic actors initially treated Trump as a manageable aberration. History, he warns, shows how such bargains can backfire—even when the leader in question is less capable than his predecessors.

Ultimately, Professor Hett’s cautiously optimistic conclusion is that the very differences highlighted in the title—Trump’s relative lack of ruthlessness, ideological depth, and strategic discipline—may also constitute democracy’s resilience. Historical patterns may rhyme, he suggests, but they do not mechanically repeat.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Benjamin Carter Hett, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Professor Werner Pascha.

Professor Pascha: Western Democracies Should Learn from Japan’s Long-Term Politics

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In this interview with the ECPS, Professor Werner Pascha—Emeritus Professor of East Asian Economic Studies—examines Japan’s evolving political economy amid electoral volatility, fiscal strain, and geopolitical uncertainty. Reflecting on the LDP’s supermajority, he cautions against reading the outcome as systemic rupture, arguing instead for “continuity” and warning of a possible “popularity bubble.” Professor Pascha also clarifies how populism operates differently in Japan, where elite–people antagonism is “very rare,” and highlights the persistence of technocratic governance, noting that “the technocratic model remains very much alive.” Framing Japan’s approach as “strategic pragmatism,” he argues that Western democracies should look beyond “short-term electoral cycles” and take East Asia seriously as “highly instructive.”

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In a wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Werner Pascha—Emeritus Professor of East Asian Economic Studies (Japan and Korea) and Associate Member of the Institute of East Asian Studies (IN-EAST) at the University of Duisburg-Essen—offers a nuanced assessment of Japan’s contemporary political trajectory under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. At a time when many advanced democracies are grappling with populist insurgencies, fiscal strain, and geopolitical fragmentation, Professor Pascha suggests that Japan’s experience—particularly under Takaichi’s unexpectedly strong mandate—deserves closer scrutiny: “we should not only look at Europe or the US, but also keep East Asia in mind, as it is highly instructive.”

PM Takaichi’s landslide electoral victory, which delivered a two-thirds supermajority for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner, has dramatically consolidated executive authority and provided her government with an exceptional legislative cushion. As Japan’s first female prime minister, she combines a programmatic ideological profile with a distinctive leadership style that voters perceive as both “diligent and tough-speaking.” Her rapid ascent and decisive electoral endorsement have reshaped the political landscape, strengthening conservative forces and enabling her to advance an ambitious policy agenda. This includes large-scale fiscal stimulus, proposed consumption-tax cuts, a renewed industrial strategy focused on technological innovation and artificial intelligence, and a more assertive security posture in East Asia. Her leadership has also been marked by a willingness to take politically risky positions—particularly regarding Taiwan and China—that have resonated domestically while heightening regional tensions.

At the same time, PM Takaichi’s policy agenda has raised significant concerns about fiscal sustainability and market confidence. Japan’s already elevated public debt—among the highest in the developed world—has made investors sensitive to expansionary fiscal measures, and early market reactions to her proposals have underscored the tension between electoral mandates and macroeconomic credibility. Nevertheless, her overwhelming electoral mandate may also provide political space for policy recalibration and more cautious implementation, a dynamic that Professor Pascha identifies as characteristic of Japan’s long-standing pattern of governance.

Crucially, Professor Pascha cautions against interpreting Sanae Takaichi’s rise as evidence of systemic transformation. Rather than signaling a structural rupture in Japan’s political economy, he emphasizes continuity: “I would regard it as continuity. I do not really see a major change developing in Japan.” Even the scale of the LDP’s victory, he suggests, may partly reflect “a kind of popularity bubble” surrounding Takaichi rather than a durable realignment. 

Importantly, Professor Pascha resists simplistic narratives about Japan’s supposed technocratic decline. Despite electoral promises and fiscal pressures, “the technocratic model remains very much alive.” While no longer operating in the rigid form of the postwar developmental state, policymaking continues to rest on strategic planning—particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence and economic security.

This continuity is best captured, in Professor Pascha’s view, by the concept of “strategic pragmatism”: the capacity to pursue long-term goals while remaining adaptive in implementation. Japan’s 2022 economic security legislation, he observes, reflects a broader and longstanding logic dating back to the 1980 doctrine of “comprehensive security.” The pattern is strikingly consistent: Japan adapts without abandoning strategic orientation.

This framework helps explain how Japan can accommodate electoral responsiveness, conservative policy shifts, and technocratic governance without sacrificing institutional stability. It also highlights the broader relevance of Japan’s experience for Western democracies facing shorter electoral cycles and increasingly volatile political environments. As Professor Pascha suggests, Japan’s model of calibrated, long-term political management—now embodied in Takaichi’s leadership—offers an instructive counterpoint to the reactive and polarized dynamics visible across Europe and North America. In his view, “Western countries might do well to study this concept more closely and to look beyond short-term electoral cycles.” Japan’s political economy, often underestimated, may thus provide a model of long-term calibration under conditions of uncertainty.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Werner Pascha, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

ECPS VirtualWorkshops Series - Session11

Virtual Workshop Series — Session 11: Inclusion or Illusion? Narratives of Belonging, Trust, and Democracy in a Polarized Era

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Session 11 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series examined the tension between democratic inclusion as a normative promise and inclusion as an everyday institutional practice. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, the panel explored how belonging is constructed, experienced, and contested across administrative, participatory, historical, and theoretical domains. Contributions highlighted how exclusion often operates through subtle mechanisms—bureaucratic encounters, identity-based narratives, digital mobilization, and post-revolutionary boundary drawing—rather than overt denial. Across cases from the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, and liberal democracies more broadly, the session underscored that democratic legitimacy today depends on both representation and effective, fair governance. Collectively, the discussions illuminated why gaps between democratic ideals and lived experiences continue to fuel distrust, polarization, and populist mobilization.

Reported by ECPS Staff

On Thursday, February 5, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened Session 11 of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches, under the theme “Inclusion or Illusion? Narratives of Belonging, Trust, and Democracy in a Polarized Era.” The session brought together scholars working across political theory, political sociology, comparative politics, and historical analysis to examine a central tension of contemporary democracy: the growing disjuncture between formal promises of inclusion and the everyday experiences and institutional practices through which belonging is granted, denied, or conditionally recognized.

The workshop opened with welcoming and framing remarks by ECPS intern Stella Schade, who situated the panel within the broader aims of the series: to scrutinize how invocations of “the people” can function both as a democratic claim-making device and as a mechanism of boundary drawing that facilitates exclusionary politics. 

Associate Professor Andreea Zamfira (University of Bucharest) chaired and moderated the session, providing an interpretive frame that foregrounded the duality between the “defined” and the “definers.” Her introduction emphasized that inclusion operates simultaneously as an affective, lived experience of belonging and as a political-institutional process through which elites, parties, bureaucracies, and other authorities define legitimate membership in the demos. This perspective oriented the panel toward subtle mechanisms—discursive, administrative, legal, and historical—through which democratic inclusion may become performative, selective, or strategically narrowed.

The papers collectively illuminated how legitimacy and exclusion are produced at multiple levels of governance and across distinct contexts. PhD candidate Ariel Lam Chan (Stanford University) examined citizen engagement with the administrative state through a conjoint experimental design that tested how procedural and performance cues shape “approach intention” toward public-facing agencies. 

Dr. Dieudonné Mbarga (Independent Researcher) brought a comparative Global South perspective to democratic resilience, analyzing how active citizenship and participatory governance can strengthen accountability while also risking polarization and instrumentalization—particularly in digitally mediated political environments. 

Dr. Ali Ragheb (University of Tehran) offered a historically grounded account of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1906), arguing that democratic breakdown followed from the post-victory narrowing of “the people,” especially through the exclusion of women and minorities. 

Complementing these empirical interventions, PhD candidate Saeid Yarmohammadi (University of Montreal) developed a theoretical argument about how identity politics and contested procedures of social justice can unintentionally intensify populist dynamics by deepening “us/them” boundaries within liberal democracies.

The session’s discussion was enriched by interventions from Professor Jennifer Fitzgerald (University of Colorado) and Dr. Russell Foster (King’s College London), whose feedback linked the presentations to wider debates on legitimacy, polarization, civic participation, and the variable meanings of “the people.” 

Taken together, Session 11 offered a cohesive and analytically layered exploration of how contemporary democracies confront not only the challenge of governing effectively, but also the deeper question of who is recognized as belonging—and on what terms—in an increasingly polarized political age.

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Hugo Ferrinho Lopes

Dr. Lopes: Ventura Mobilized ‘Latent Populists,’ but Authoritarian Appeals in Portugal Have Limits

by MultimediaVideos

André Ventura’s qualification for the presidential runoff marks a critical moment in Portuguese politics, long viewed as resistant to far-right breakthroughs. In this interview with the ECPS, Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes (EEG-UMinho & Iscte-IUL; ICS-ULisbon) argues that Ventura’s advance is “less a sudden presidential earthquake than a clear manifestation” of an ongoing party-system shift—deepened by fragmentation on the mainstream right and declining abstention. Dr. Lopes explains how Chega mobilized “latent populists” once a viable radical-right option emerged, while also stressing the limits of authoritarian and nativist appeals in a second-round contest that requires broader legitimacy. The result, he suggests, is a normalized but still constrained radical right: agenda-setting and organizationally consolidated, yet facing ceilings shaped by elite incentives, affective polarization, and presidential norms of moderation.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

The qualification of André Ventura, leader of the populist radical right party Chega, for the presidential runoff marks a watershed moment in contemporary Portuguese politics. Long regarded as an exception within Southern Europe for its resistance to far-right breakthroughs, Portugal now finds itself grappling with a transformed party system, declining abstention, and the normalization of a radical right actor at the highest symbolic level of the state. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes, an invited assistant professor at EEG-UMinho and Iscte-IUL, and an associate researcher at ICS-ULisbon, offers a nuanced and empirically grounded analysis of what Ventura’s rise does—and does not—signify for the future of Portuguese democracy. 

At the core of Dr. Lopes’s argument is a rejection of the idea that Ventura’s presidential advance represents a sudden rupture. Instead, he situates it within a longer trajectory of party-system transformation. As he notes, Ventura’s runoff presence is “less a sudden presidential earthquake than a clear manifestation of a party-system shift that has already been underway,” one that began with Chega’s parliamentary breakthrough and was accelerated by fragmentation on the mainstream right. In Sartorian terms, Portugal is experiencing increasing ideological distance and fragmentation, dynamics that presidential elections—through personalization and strategic voting—tend to amplify.

A central theme running through the interview is the role of political supply. Dr. Lopes emphasizes that Chega did not emerge because Portuguese voters suddenly radicalized, but because a long-standing gap on the cultural and conservative dimension of party competition was left unfilled. This allowed Ventura, an experienced political communicator with extensive media exposure, to capture what Dr. Lopes describes as “latent populists who were activated once a viable alternative became available.” Importantly, this mobilization was facilitated by institutional conditions—such as a lower effective electoral threshold in 2019—and by Chega’s rapid transition from entrepreneurial project to organizationally consolidated party.

Yet the interview also highlights the limits of Ventura’s appeal. Despite declining abstention disproportionately benefiting Chega, Dr. Lopes stresses that Ventura’s electorate remains strikingly stable rather than expansive. “Ventura is competing against himself,” he observes, as voters from eliminated candidates increasingly coalesce behind his opponent in the runoff. This pattern reflects what he characterizes as a de facto cordon sanitaire driven less by formal elite coordination than by affective polarization and voter hostility toward the far right.

Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Lopes cautions against overestimating the governing potential of authoritarian rhetoric in Portugal. While Chega has successfully imposed issues such as immigration and security on the national agenda, “relying solely on authoritarian and nativist appeals is insufficient” in a second-round presidential contest that demands broader democratic legitimacy. The interview thus paints a picture of a radical right that is normalized, agenda-setting, and organizationally entrenched—but still constrained by institutional structures, elite incentives, and the enduring appeal of moderation in Portuguese presidential politics.

Together, these insights offer a sober prognosis: Chega has reshaped the political landscape, but its path toward governing viability remains uncertain, contested, and far from inevitable.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Assistant Professor Hugo Ferrinho Lopes, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.