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

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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.

VirtualWorkshops-Session10

Virtual Workshop Series / Session 10 — Resisting the Decline: Democratic Resilience in Authoritarian Times

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ECPS convened Session 10 of its Virtual Workshop Series, bringing together scholars to examine how democracies endure, adapt, and contest authoritarian pressures amid the normalization of populist discourse and the weakening of liberal-constitutional safeguards. Chaired by Dr. Amedeo Varriale, the session framed resilience as an active democratic project—defending rule of law, pluralism, and civic participation against gradual forms of authoritarian hollowing-out. Presentations by Dr. Peter Rogers, Dr. Pierre Camus, Dr. Soheila Shahriari, and Ecem Nazlı Üçok explored resilience across market democracies, local governance, feminist self-administration in Rojava, and diaspora activism confronting anti-gender politics. Discussants Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois and Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano connected these contributions through probing questions on the ambivalence, burdens, and transformative potential of resilience.

Reported by ECPS Staff

On Thursday, January 22, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened Session 10 of its Virtual Workshop Series, titled “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Held under the theme “Resisting the Decline: Democratic Resilience in Authoritarian Times,” the session brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to examine how democratic systems, institutions, and civic actors seek to withstand—and, at times, transform—the pressures generated by authoritarian resurgence, the normalization of populist discourse, and the erosion of liberal-constitutional guarantees across diverse political contexts.

The workshop opened with welcoming remarks by ECPS’s Reka Koleszar, who introduced the session’s theme, outlined the format, and presented the contributing scholars and discussants. Her opening situated Session 10 within ECPS’s broader intellectual agenda: advancing comparative, theory-informed, and empirically grounded research on populism and its implications for democratic governance, civic space, and rights-based politics. 

The session was chaired by Dr. Amedeo Varriale (PhD, University of East London), whose framing remarks offered a synthetic lens for the panel. Drawing attention to the contemporary “populist zeitgeist,” Dr. Varriale underscored how authoritarianism increasingly advances not merely through abrupt ruptures, but through gradual practices that hollow out democratic norms while preserving formal institutional shells. Against this backdrop, he proposed democratic resilience as an active project: the defense of rule of law, pluralism, and rights through institutions and civic participation, as well as the re-engagement of citizens whose disillusionment can become a resource for anti-democratic entrepreneurs.

Four presentations explored resilience across distinct but connected domains. Dr. Peter Rogers (Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Macquarie University) delivered “Resilience in Market Democracy,” interrogating resilience as a traveling concept shaped by market logics, welfare-state capacities, and shifting moral expectations of citizenship. Dr. Pierre Camus (Postdoctoral Fellow, Nantes University) presented “The Contradictory Challenges of Training Local Elected Officials for the Future of Democracy,” analyzing how professionalization and training—often justified as democratizing—can also reproduce inequalities and widen the distance between representatives and citizens. Turning to conflict and non-state governance, Dr. Soheila Shahriari (EHESS) offered “The Rise of Women-Led Radical Democracy in Rojava,”examining feminist self-administration as civil-society resilience amid regional authoritarianism and geopolitical exclusion. Finally, Ecem Nazlı Üçok (PhD Candidate, Charles University) presented “Feminist Diaspora Activism from Poland and Turkey,” conceptualizing exile-based feminist organizing as a site of transnational resistance to anti-gender politics and authoritarian repression.

Discussion was enriched by two discussants: Dr. Gwenaëlle Bauvois (University of Helsinki) and Dr. Gabriel Bayarri Toscano (Rey Juan Carlos University), whose interventions connected the papers through shared questions about the ambivalence of resilience, the distribution of democratic burdens, and the conditions under which resilience becomes transformative rather than merely adaptive.

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António Costa Pinto

Prof. Costa Pinto: If Victorious, Ventura Would Pursue Orbán-Style Authoritarianism in Portugal

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In this in-depth ECPS interview, Professor António Costa Pinto—one of Europe’s leading scholars of authoritarianism—offers a historically grounded analysis of Chega’s meteoric rise and André Ventura’s advance to the second round of Portugal’s 2026 presidential election. Far from an electoral accident, Professor Costa Pinto situates Chega’s breakthrough within long-standing structural conditions, recurrent political crises, and the fragmentation of the center-right. He traces how Ventura mobilizes authoritarian legacies of “law and order,” welfare chauvinism, and anti-elite resentment without openly rehabilitating Salazarism. Immigration, demographic change, and plebiscitary populism emerge as key drivers of Chega’s success. Crucially, Professor Costa Pinto argues that Orbán’s Hungary—not Trump or Bolsonaro—serves as Ventura’s primary model, raising urgent questions about democratic resilience in Portugal as uncertainty on the right deepens.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In this in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor António Costa Pinto—Research Professor (ret.) at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, and a leading authority on authoritarianism and the radical right—offers a historically grounded analysis of the unprecedented rise of Chega and its leader, André Ventura. The discussion is anchored in a critical political moment: Ventura’s advance to the second round of the 2026 presidential election, which Professor Costa Pinto describes as neither a mere accident nor a sudden rupture, but the product of deeper transformations within Portuguese democracy.

As Professor Costa Pinto explains, Chega’s breakthrough cannot be understood as an isolated electoral shock. “The Chega Party and André Ventura have, in a way, a short history in Portuguese democracy,” he notes, “but over the last four years, the party has gone from one MP and 1.5 percent to 23 percent.” This rapid ascent, he argues, reflects the convergence of long-standing structural conditions—most notably the persistence of conservative authoritarian values in Portuguese society—with a series of destabilizing political crises that created what he calls “populist junctures.”

A central theme of the interview is the fragmentation of the center-right, which Professor Costa Pinto identifies as a key enabling factor. Portugal now has “three parties representing the right in Parliament,” and Chega’s strategy is explicitly hegemonic: to replace the traditional center-right as the dominant force. Ventura, Professor Costa Pinto observes, has succeeded because “he was able to mobilize his electorate,” even as his capacity to expand it in a runoff remains uncertain.

The interview also situates Chega within Portugal’s authoritarian legacies without reducing it to a simple revival of Salazarism. While Chega does not openly rehabilitate the Estado Novo (the corporatist Portuguese state installed in 1933), Professor Costa Pinto notes that it selectively draws on the past, particularly through “law and order” and moral authority. “Salazar is presented as the example of a non-corrupt dictator,” Professor Costa Pinto explains, adding that Chega appropriates “the idea of a conservative regime in which law and order prevailed,”while avoiding deeper identification with an unpopular dictatorship.

Immigration emerges as the party’s most powerful mobilizing issue. According to Professor Costa Pinto, “the central card that Chega has been playing over the last four years—and one that is closely associated with its electoral success—is immigration.” He links this to recent demographic shifts, especially increased migration from South Asia, and to growing anxieties among working-class voters. These dynamics underpin Chega’s welfare chauvinism, which combines statist social policies with exclusionary nationalism.

Crucially, Professor Costa Pinto frames Ventura within a transnational authoritarian constellation. “In a way, Orbán is the model for Ventura,” he states plainly. “The type of regime that Ventura would seek to consolidate in Portugal… is precisely the kind of competitive authoritarian regime that Orbán has managed to establish in Hungary.” While Trumpist styles and Bolsonaro’s experience in Brazil matter symbolically, Professor Costa Pinto stresses that Ventura adapts these influences pragmatically to Portuguese political culture.

Ultimately, the interview raises pressing questions about democratic resilience. While Professor Costa Pinto believes that Ventura is unlikely to win the presidency, he cautions that “the game is not over” on the right. Portugal, he concludes, faces a period of sustained uncertainty—one in which democratic institutions remain intact, but increasingly contested.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor António Costa Pinto, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Daniel Triesman1

Professor Treisman: Trump’s Push for Executive Aggrandizement Puts Democratic Resilience to the Test

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In this ECPS interview, Professor Daniel Treisman examines how Trump’s political style intersects with the logic of informational autocracy and democratic backsliding. Drawing on “Informational Autocracy,” he argues that contemporary authoritarianism often relies less on mass repression than on “controlling narratives, selective coercion, and performance legitimacy.” Trump’s pressure on comedians, broadcasters, universities, and law firms, Professor Treisman suggests, reflects a familiar “inclination” toward intimidation—yet “the outcome was different,” because democratic institutions can still generate pushback. The core issue, he stresses, is whether US checks and civil society can withstand “executive aggrandizement”—the drive to “go beyond the formal or traditional powers of the office and consolidate control.” 

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In an era marked by democratic backsliding, populist leadership, and the reconfiguration of informational power, the resilience of liberal democracy has become a central concern for scholars and policymakers alike. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Daniel Treisman—Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research—offers a nuanced and empirically grounded assessment of how Donald Trump’s political strategy intersects with the logic of informational autocracy, executive aggrandizement, and democratic fragility.

Drawing on his influential work Informational Autocracy (co-authored with Sergei Guriev), Professor Treisman situates Trump’s threats against comedians, journalists, universities, and other institutional actors within a broader global pattern in which contemporary autocrats rely less on mass repression than on “controlling narratives, selective coercion, and performance legitimacy.” While Trump’s behavior often resembles that of informational autocrats, Professor Treisman emphasizes a crucial distinction: “So, while the inclination is similar, the outcome was different.” Episodes such as the pressure placed on late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel reveal Trump’s “tendency to expand his power and to overstep traditional limits,” but also the continued—if uneven—capacity of democratic institutions and civil society to push back.

At the core of the interview lies a central analytical question: whether Trump’s conduct represents a failed or incomplete attempt to translate informational autocracy into a still-competitive democratic system. As Professor Treisman puts it, “The real question… is how resilient democratic societies and civil societies in democratic settings can prove to be in response to a leader who seeks what is often called executive aggrandizement.” This concern animates Professor Treisman’s discussion of selective intimidation, signaling repression, and the targeting of elite institutions—strategies designed to “score some visible victories” and deter broader resistance without resorting to outright censorship.

The interview also explores how new media ecosystems and the rise of a tech “broligarchy” complicate classical models of informational control. Professor Treisman highlights the hybrid arrangements created by platform ownership, algorithmic amplification, and strategic alignment between populist leaders and tech elites, noting that these dynamics allow political actors to undermine epistemic authority “without overt censorship.” While Trump has aggressively pressured legacy media through litigation and regulatory threats, his relationship with major technology firms remains more transactional and indirect—distinct from the tightly coordinated media control characteristic of full informational autocracies.

Beyond the US case, Professor Treisman offers comparative insights into charismatic populism in Latin America, bureaucratized authoritarianism in Russia and Hungary, and the structural uncertainties surrounding democratic decline. Reflecting on Democracy by Mistake, he cautions against deterministic readings of democratic erosion, stressing that “mistakes can be forces for good” as well as for authoritarian empowerment. In closing, Professor Treisman urges analytical humility: distinguishing between cyclical stress and durable authoritarian transformation, he argues, remains inherently uncertain, as history “does not come with labels that are easy to read.”

Taken together, this interview provides a sober, theoretically informed reflection on Trumpism, informational power, and the fragile boundaries between democratic contestation and authoritarian drift.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Daniel Treisman, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Francisco Rodríguez

Prof. Rodríguez: Venezuela Is No Longer About Venezuela, It’s About Demonstrating Power

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Giving an interview to the ECPS, Professor Francisco Rodríguez argues that today “Venezuela is no longer about Venezuela; it is about demonstrating power.” He reassesses Chavismo’s constitutional refoundation, noting that “not even the most hardline opponents of Chavismo question the Constitution today,” while stressing that redistribution collapsed when oil rents vanished: “The model of oil-rent redistribution simply does not work if there are no rents to distribute.” Professor Rodríguez highlights the durability of moral antagonism—“us versus them”—and shows how social policy can operate as rule: “We bring you food; we take care of your family’s needs.” Crucially, he links the post-Maduro landscape to Delcy Rodríguez’s room for maneuver, arguing that if she can claim Washington is no longer backing the opposition, she can frame Maduro’s seizure as “a strategic victory.” Yet he warns that US demands for “power-sharing with the opposition” would be “deeply problematic for Chavismo.” He concludes that Trump’s approach is transactional: “not demanding political reform… [but] asking Venezuela to sell oil.”

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Francisco Rodríguez—Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Faculty Affiliate at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies—offers a comprehensive analysis of Venezuela’s post-Maduro political trajectory. Situating the case at the intersection of populist state resilience, authoritarian adaptation, and shifting US power strategies, Professor Rodríguez advances a stark diagnosis: “Venezuela is no longer about Venezuela; it is about demonstrating power.” In his account, the country has become a geopolitical signal—a site through which coercive capacity, transactional hegemony, and the limits of democratic opposition are being tested.

Professor Rodríguez begins by reassessing the foundational pillars of the Chávez-era project—constitutional refoundation, oil-rent redistribution, and the moralization of politics—arguing that these were not merely leader-centered strategies but elements of a durable populist state architecture capable of surviving leadership decapitation. While personally critical of the 1999 Constitution, he notes that “not even the most hardline opponents of Chavismo question the Constitution today,” underscoring how deeply constitutional refoundation has been absorbed into Venezuela’s political ethos. Even critics, he observes, now invoke the Constitution “as a model that the Maduro government is failing to uphold.”

On political economy, Professor Rodríguez emphasizes that populist redistribution depends on material abundance. “The model of oil-rent redistribution simply does not work if there are no rents to distribute,” he argues, pointing to a 93 percent collapse in oil revenues between 2012 and 2020. This collapse, compounded by US sanctions, forced the regime toward pragmatic—and even neoliberal—adjustments, not as a matter of ideological conversion but constraint. As Professor Rodríguez puts it, the economy remained closed “not because the government didn’t want it open, but because the United States government didn’t allow it.”

A central theme throughout the interview is the durability of moralized politics. Chavismo’s framing of politics as an existential struggle between “the people” and apátridas (stateless persons in Spanish/Portuguese, S.C) continues to structure both regime and opposition behavior. Professor Rodríguez cautions that this antagonistic grammar cannot be easily abandoned, particularly because “the opposition has also embraced a moralized framework, albeit from the opposite angle.” This mutual entrenchment helps explain why moments that might have enabled institutional cohabitation—most notably the opposition’s 2015 parliamentary victory—instead produced escalation and breakdown.

Within this transformed landscape, Professor Rodríguez devotes particular attention to Delcy Rodríguez’s room for maneuver. He argues that her political viability now hinges on whether she can credibly claim that Washington is no longer backing the opposition. Under those conditions, Maduro’s seizure can be reframed as “a strategic victory,” preserving Chavismo’s narrative of confrontation. At the same time, Professor Rodríguez warns that any US demand for “power-sharing with the opposition” would be “deeply problematic for Chavismo,” requiring a fundamental rewriting of its moral and institutional grammar.

The interview culminates in Professor Rodríguez’s assessment of US intervention under Donald Trump. Contrary to expectations, Trump did not demand democratization or power transfer, but oil. “What Trump is effectively doing now is not demanding political reform,” Professor Rodríguez explains; “he is asking Venezuela to sell oil to the United States.” This approach reflects a broader logic of informal empire: “It is more efficient to rule through domestic elites who follow US directives than to administer the country directly.” In this sense, Venezuela becomes less a national case than a global message—one that signals the new rules of transactional power, and the risks they pose for democratic oppositions worldwide.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Francisco Rodríguez, slightly revised for clarity and flow.