In this commentary for the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Amir Ali examines the resurgence of India’s student-led protests against the Modi government, linking concerns over electoral integrity, institutional independence, and democratic backsliding to the socioeconomic consequences of neoliberalism. Focusing on the Cockroach Janata Party’s mobilization, he explores growing youth disillusionment with political institutions, educational inequalities, and diminishing employment opportunities. Dr. Ali argues that India’s Generation Z must connect its democratic resistance to a broader critique of neoliberal economic policies that have deepened inequality and undermined public goods. Drawing comparative lessons from recent electoral developments in Brazil, Serbia, and the United States, he advocates reclaiming socialism and secularism as complementary foundations for India’s democratic renewal.
India’s young cockroach protesters were back on the streets of New Delhi in early October. This was just a little over two months after the late July showdown with the government that earned the rare resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, when Delhi was experiencing the late-July humidity, occasionally relieved by monsoon showers. The October reemergence of the cockroaches happened when the Delhi weather was becoming milder as the onset of winter approached.
The Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) had called for a protest on October 10 and the Delhi Police, under the direct control of India’s powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, denied permission for the protests. Shah is a close associate of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has an image as a tough, uncompromising strongman. Events took a more dramatic turn when Abhijit Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janata Party, along with two of his associates, was arrested as soon as the flight on which they were traveling landed in Delhi. The videos taken on cell phones from inside the plane and then posted on social media showed Delhi police personnel entering the aircraft. This reinforced the impression, now widespread in India, that the government was panicking. As protests were disallowed at the Jantar Mantar protest site in Central Delhi, a mushrooming of protest sites took place, wherever demonstrators found themselves being prevented from moving further by the police.
The Delhi Police’s crackdown on protesters and journalists covering these events was brutal and again reinforced the impression that the Modi government was nervous, increasingly on the back foot and resorting to desperate, knee-jerk measures.
In the previous round in July, young cockroach protesters expressed their frustration at the decrepit state of Indian entrance examinations that in turn was a larger reflection of the moribund state of public education. They targeted the Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, and, as mentioned, were able to extract his resignation. In the October round of protests, they targeted the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar over discontent with the implementation of an extensive electoral roll revision exercise and an overall feeling that he was kowtowing to the Modi government. The demand for Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation has, however, fallen on deaf ears.
Election Commissions Past and Present
The Election Commission of India, for many years before the advent of the Modi government, was a widely respected and fiercely independent institution whose autonomy was ensured through Article 324 of the Indian Constitution. It is headed by two elections commissioners and one Chief Election Commissioner. Some prominent Chief Election Commissioners became well known for their ability to stand up to the government of the day to ensure that no incumbent government had the temerity to bully the Commission. Back in the 1990s, a redoubtable Chief Election Commissioner like T. N. Seshan made his commitment to his constitutional role clear in no uncertain terms.
Less than a decade later, in 2002, the Chief Election Commissioner J. M. Lyngdoh prevented Narendra Modi, who was then Chief Minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat from holding early elections to the Gujarat provincial assembly. This was soon after the vicious communal violence that the state had experienced in the months of March and April that year. Mr. Modi had been accused of not doing enough to control the violence. Lyngdoh’s opposition to holding early elections was premised on the inability of many displaced victims living in refugee camps to vote, and who were likely to do so against Mr. Modi. This led to Mr. Modi mocking the Chief Election Commissioner for preventing the elections from taking place by emphasizing his full name, which is James Michael Lyngdoh. These insinuations invoked Lyngdoh’s Christian identity and reinforced Mr. Modi’s notorious minority baiting. The elections were held later that year, and Mr. Modi won.
More recent Election Commissioners who have resisted the Modi regime, such as Ashok Lavasa in 2019, have found themselves at the receiving end of the government’s ire. The controversial current Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar whose resignation, as mentioned earlier, became the focal point of this round of the cockroach campaign in October, seems far more malleable—indeed, compliant. Suggestions have been made that the Election Commission under him does the Modi government’s bidding, raising a question mark over the fairness of elections. A recent controversial piece of legislation, The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act 2023 granted effective lifelong immunity for actions that Election Commissioners took in office. The legislation also altered the appointment process. Earlier a three-member committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India selected election commissioners. This changed to replace the Chief Justice of India with a Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister, giving the government of the day the decisive upper hand in selecting election commissioners.
One of the most controversial decisions that the Election Commission under Gyanesh Kumar has taken is to conduct the Special Intensive Revision of Rolls (SIR). The first state to conduct this exercise was Bihar in June 2025, just months before provincial assembly elections in that state were to be held in November 2025. The SIR has since been extended to many other parts of the country. The most disturbing aspect of the exercise is the Kafkaesque requirement of documentation where inclusion on the rolls depends on proving that a voter or the voter’s parents’ names figured in a previous electoral exercise conducted over two decades ago. This has led to people frantically looking for documents to ensure their inclusion on the current list by being ‘mapped’ on a two-decade-old list. The result, as has been widely reported, is the deletion and thereby disenfranchisement of 130 million people from the voter roll. More worryingly, the emphasis the Election Commission of India places on sanitized and ‘pure’ voter rolls is indicative of an almost ominous electoral cleansing.
The Indian Express Reported Dissent within the Election Commission
The Indian Express report tended to reinforce questions that had been raised over the conduct of the Election Commission. The Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, had in several widely reported press conferences claimed that he had documentary evidence to back the damning claims he was making about electoral malpractices. The Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar took great umbrage at these attacks.
The Emergence of Youth and Student Leaders
In both the July and October rounds of protests, some prominent youth leaders have emerged. From the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) have emerged its founder Abhijit Dipke, Sourav Das and Ashutosh Ranka. In the more recent round, the President of the left-wing All India Students Association (AISA) Neha Bora, a PhD candidate at New Delhi’s prominent Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), played a very significant role. While many of these protesters were detained and arrested, there were worrying reports of some violent counter protesters to whom the Delhi Police appeared to be turning a blind eye.
With the threat of violence looming, a successful march call was given by Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition and head of India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress. The march saw large numbers of people participating on October 12 with no violence. It culminated in the filing of a petition at the Supreme Court of India.
Visible decline and dysfunction have taken hold in constitutional institutions in India like the Election Commission and even the judiciary, especially as the over 12 years of the Modi regime have progressed. India’s youth protests pointed towards this in a tangential sort of way. What they have achieved more centrally, through their irreverence, is to completely puncture the carefully curated image of Prime Minister Modi as a brand name spelling a strong, decisive leadership. This brand image was built up by preventing people from speaking out against him, enforced by a silencing of dissent, which youngsters have nonchalantly shrugged off.
The Future of Youngsters Shortchanged by Past Decades of Neoliberalism
What the cockroach protests have not been able to do, so far, is connect concretely to how the future of youngsters in India, and for that matter across the world, has been shortchanged by past decades of economic neoliberalism. India began resolutely on the path of economic neoliberalism in July 1991 when the finance minister Manmohan Singh, who subsequently became Prime Minister in 2004, announced these policies. These neoliberal economic policies are often referred to as LPG which is an acronym for Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization. These policies have been underway for the past 35 years and there has been a kind of consensus that has developed on them between the Congress and the currently ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Between them, these two parties have ruled for the lion’s share of the past three and a half decades. The Congress was in power for 15 of these 35 years, from 1991 to 1996 and then from 2004 to 2014. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power for 18 of these 35 years and this covers the years 1998-1999, followed by 1999-2004 and 2014 to the present. The remaining two years form an interlude between 1996 and 1998 when a series of fractious coalitions tried unsuccessfully to stake out a politics that differed from the Congress and the BJP.
That two-year interlude ended in 1998 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP came to power. The subsequent six years of BJP-led rule revealed how the party accepted the orthodoxy of economic neoliberalism, despite the commitment to a broad Gandhian socialism that found its way into the party’s constitution when it was founded in 1980. The BJP government under Vajpayee combined this new commitment to economic neoliberalism and its traditional Hindu nationalism. For the purposes of running and maintaining the coalition that he led, Vajpayee, reputed for wearing an emollient ‘liberal’ mask, was willing to put the central elements of the Hindu nationalist agenda on the back burner.
Keeping in mind the BJP’s adoption of economic neoliberalism, combined with a vague background commitment to Gandhian socialism, one notes something similar in the Congress. Fifteen years prior to its announcement of the 1991 neoliberal economic policies, the Congress back in 1976 under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, during the Emergency that clamped down on constitutional fundamental rights, had inserted, through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, the word socialism into the Preamble of the Constitution alongside secularism. Both the Congress and the BJP have embraced economic neoliberalism while retaining an uneasy historical commitment to socialism—a contradictory and problematic legacy. This contradiction is more troubling in the case of the Congress. At the same time the BJP’s commitment to economic neoliberalism is far more aggressive. This article concludes by suggesting that the Congress under Rahul Gandhi will have to rescue and redeem that troubled legacy of socialism, if it wants to envision the contours of a post-Modi India.
Before arriving at that conclusion, it is important to do a quick assessment of how the past decades of neoliberalism have shortchanged the future of India’s youth who are potentially at the forefront of political change today. These past three decades of economic neoliberalism have yielded, for at least two decades, a considerable degree of economic growth. Throughout the decade of the 2000s with the BJP coalition under Vajpayee, succeeded by the Congress-led coalition, the Indian economy did grow at significant rates. Such growth over the 2000s also led to an uptick in employment and this was a significant reason for the Congress Party coming back to power in 2009 with an even more comfortable majority.
This is where the story of India’s economic growth under neoliberalism becomes complicated. The world economy was being roiled by the headwinds of the 2008 global financial crisis, just as the Congress was returned to power in 2009. From 2010 onwards, a series of exaggerated corruption allegations were made against the Congress government that were understandably amplified by the opposition BJP that was eager to come back to power. The BJP did come to power in 2014 with a hefty majority under Narendra Modi that ended almost two and a half decades of coalition era politics in India.
India’s Jobless Growth and Gen Z’s Revolt Against Neoliberalism
India’s growth story continued in the first years of the Modi government, but sceptics started pointing to the jobless nature of this growth. The most infamous aspect of the ending of India’s growth story was the controversial decision to demonetize high value currency notes that PM Modi surprisingly and shockingly announced on November 8, 2016, almost exactly ten years ago. The compliant electronic media, that has become notorious for never asking questions of the Modi government, sycophantically hailed it as a master stroke. The economist Jean Drèze offered a more sobering assessment that this was like shooting at and deflating the tires of a racing car. The outcome of this would be an economy that would careen out of control and, in doing so, jeopardize the careers of India’s Gen Z who were growing up and about to enter a job market that would prove to be non-existent for them.
India’s Gen Z protesters were born between the years 1997 and 2012. In other words, they were born between those years when India’s liberalization polices were being consolidated and then yielding whatever returns they had to, in terms of growth clocked throughout the decade of the 2000s. As Gen Z has grown up and increasingly entered the job market, the very same economic neoliberalism that was unfolding against the backdrop of their childhoods has condemned them to a bleak future of little or no prospects. India’s economic neoliberalism that was toasted and celebrated in India and across the world during their childhoods has mortgaged, foreclosed and shortchanged their future.
This is where the creative potential of Gen Z protests needs to be harnessed. These protests, if they are to have a meaningful impact, on the future of Indian politics and its redemption from the vagaries of the neoliberal market, must connect the dots of the orthodoxy of economic neoliberalism to the precarity of their future.
There is no reason why these obvious dots cannot be connected. A few weeks after the October cockroach protests, election results in Serbia showed how two years of student protests could topple the twelve-year-old government of Aleksandar Vucic. Very shortly after that, the US midterm elections revealed a rout of Trump’s Republicans. The Democrats’ blue tsunami was facilitated by a clear movement of the democrats to the left and the success of numerous Democratic Socialist and progressive candidates like Abdul el Sayed who ran for the senate seat from Michigan. El-Sayed has called for universal health care and health as a public good rather than the commoditized private good that it has been for so many years with the pervasive private health insurance market in the US.
In India health care and the role of the private sector is a ticking time bomb. It has not impacted the Gen Z youngsters, who may, however, be perceptive enough to see its impact on their parents and certainly grandparents. Indian youngsters between age 15-29 constitute a whopping 371 million and were once lauded by PM Modi as a ‘demographic dividend.’ They now look almost certainly poised to turn against him.
Conclusion: Redeeming Socialism, Secularism and Democracy
In US politics it seems that the word socialism has suddenly stopped being the unspeakable blasphemy it once was. Future politics in India, the US and many countries across the world may have to be built upon a viable socialism that combines itself with a meaningful democracy. The only way democracy can prevent itself from being hollowed out is to move away from the congruence that has been maliciously created between democracy and the free market.
The global backsliding of democracy is connected to the extension of neoliberal markets for goods like healthcare, education and housing. Gen Z protests will have to foster the overlap between democracy and socialist policies that will create public goods in healthcare, housing and education and most importantly, create employment. The redistributive presence of public goods can reduce widening inequality and sustain flourishing democracies in the 21st century, the opposite of democratic backsliding witnessed over the last decade. The election results in Brazil, where Lula defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, as well as those in Serbia and the US midterms are promising as they halt far-right populism. However, democratic waves can be notoriously fickle.
As far as India is concerned, one way of consolidating democracy is to go back to the year 1976, much before the current Gen Z was born and when some of their parents may have been toddlers and indeed may not even have been born. That year the Indira Gandhi regime during the Emergency wrote into the constitution’s Preamble the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular,’ as mentioned earlier, a sordid legacy. India’s socialism has never been secular enough, as its socialist leaders, notably Jay Prakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia and George Fernandes ushered in right-wing Hindutva nationalism in the name of claiming some notion of authentic Indian indigeneity
India’s secularists, many of them urbane liberals enthusiastically welcomed the role of neoliberal ‘free’ markets. The future of India’s young population may depend on whether its political institutions can reclaim and reinvigorate the principles of socialism and secularism. That would have to begin by realizing that India’s socialism was never secular enough and that her secularism was never socialist enough.
In an exclusive interview with the ECPS, Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević of the University of Belgrade examines Serbia’s student-led electoral breakthrough and its implications for populism, competitive authoritarianism, and democratic renewal. Following the October 25, 2026, defeat of Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling coalition, Professor Vladisavljević argues that the Students’ List represents an inclusive democratic movement rather than another manifestation of anti-establishment populism. Highlighting the movement’s commitment to political pluralism, minority inclusion, and the rule of law, he contrasts its grassroots mobilization with Vučić’s personalized authoritarianism, clientelism, and media manipulation. Yet he cautions that electoral victory alone cannot guarantee democratic consolidation. Serbia’s enduring challenge is translating popular resistance into accountable institutions, independent journalism, and sustainable democratic governance.
Serbia stands at a historic crossroads. Nearly two years of student-led protests, sparked by the November 2024 Novi Sad railway-station tragedy, culminated in the October 25, 2026, electoral defeat of Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling coalition. Yet the transition from authoritarian rule to democratic consolidation remains uncertain. Beyond the electoral breakthrough lies a fundamental question: Does Serbia’s student-led movement represent another manifestation of anti-establishment populism, or does it offer a genuinely inclusive alternative to personalized authoritarian rule?
In an exclusive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS),Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević, who teaches comparative and Serbian politics at the University of Belgrade and is a former President of the Serbian Political Science Association, examines the relationship between populism, authoritarianism, popular resistance, and democratic renewal. His research encompasses democratization, social movements, nationalism, ethnic conflict, and political communication.
Challenging interpretations that equate popular mobilization with populism, Professor Vladisavljević argues that Serbia’s student movement is fundamentally different from the exclusionary politics associated with Vučić’s personalized rule. “I wouldn’t describe this as an anti-establishment mobilization. The target was Vučić’s authoritarian, personalist rule,” he explains. Rather than rejecting democratic institutions, the movement seeks their restoration through political pluralism, institutional accountability, and the rule of law.
Professor Vladisavljević emphasizes that the movement’s organizational foundations distinguish it from conventional populist mobilization. Unlike Serbia’s democratic breakthrough in October 2000, when political parties dominated the opposition, the recent transformation placed students, universities, and their broader social allies at the center of political resistance. Its explicit goals, he explains, are “democratic renewal and the protection of political pluralism.”
The interview also examines how Vučić’s populist appeals gradually gave way to entrenched clientelism, media manipulation, and institutional abuse. Reflecting on the regime’s declining capacity to mobilize supporters voluntarily, Professor Vladisavljević concludes: “That tells you a great deal about how thin these populist appeals were throughout.”
Equally significant is the movement’s inclusive approach toward Serbia’s national minorities. Cooperation between Serbian and Bosniak students, particularly across Belgrade and Novi Pazar, has opened possibilities for bottom-up democratic integration, challenging longstanding patterns of ethnonational division.
Nevertheless, Professor Vladisavljević cautions that defeating authoritarianism does not automatically guarantee democratic consolidation. The Students’ List must transform its horizontal, deliberative movement into functioning representative institutions while safeguarding independent journalism, reforming the security sector, and dismantling corruption. As he warns, “short-term efforts obviously won’t be sufficient.”
Ultimately, Serbia’s experience raises broader questions for democratic movements confronting competitive authoritarianism elsewhere: whether inclusive civic mobilization can overcome personalized rule without reproducing its exclusionary logic, and whether electoral victory can become the foundation of lasting democratic transformation.
Here is our interview with Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Serbia’s Student-Led Victory Marks the Beginning of Democratic Renewal
Students and demonstrators gather at Slavija Square in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026, for the “You and I, Slavija” protest, calling for early parliamentary elections. Photo: Dejan Krsmanovic / Dreamstime.
Professor Vladisavljević, thank you for joining us. You have compared the Students’ List victory to October 5, 2000, describing it as a turning point in Serbian history. What makes this electoral breakthrough different from the overthrow of Milošević, and what obstacles could prevent it from producing lasting democratic consolidation?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: I think this was more than an electoral breakthrough. It was the culmination of nearly two years of massive protests and popular mobilization against corruption and authoritarian rule. In terms of the outcome, it was not just another change of government, but actually the end of authoritarian rule and the beginning of democratic renewal. So, in a way, the outcome is comparable to what happened in Hungary just a few months ago.
If you compare the two events, in 2000 and more recently, you see that the opposition coalitions were very broad, encompassing not only political but also social actors. However, 26 years ago, political parties formed the core of the opposition, while other actors remained on the margins. This time, political parties were on the margins, while the student movement and its various allies were at the center. So, that’s quite different from what we had before, and in comparative terms, it represents something of a novelty.
The key unknown now is how this leaderless, horizontally organized student movement and its allies, built on deliberation and inclusion, will make the transition to and adapt to political institutions, particularly those of representative democracy. They’re now entering Parliament and will have to form a government and govern. So, it remains to be seen how this will work out.
Students Seek Legal Accountability, Not Revolutionary Justice
In your November 3 RTS interview, you argued that corruption had become a governing practice under Vučić and questioned his controversial last-minute presidential pardons. How can Serbia dismantle entrenched networks of corruption while ensuring that accountability does not turn into politically motivated retaliation?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: That’s a significant challenge because this regime was not simply authoritarian in the sense that it held competitive but not free and fair elections, allowed independent media to exist while systematically undermining media freedoms, and abused public institutions and resources to its own advantage and against the opposition. It was also a deeply corrupt, clientelist regime.
I think there is no danger of revolutionary justice here. If you look at the range of demands put forward by the student movement and its allies, you see that they aim to root out corruption in the short term while building the rule of law in the long term.
The focus is on using legal means to fight corruption, and we’ve seen this in the last few days, as professionals within institutions that previously failed to address corruption have actually begun to do so. The prosecutorial service, the central bank, and other institutions have suddenly started functioning.
This is unfolding through the legal process, so nobody is actually demanding any kind of revolutionary justice. They simply demand that these institutions start operating and do their part to root out clientelism and corruption.
Vučić’s Authoritarianism Rested on Informal Rule
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić participates in an SNS political campaign at Hall Čair in Niš, Serbia, on March 30, 2022. Photo: Radule Perisic.
You have emphasized the need to reform Serbia’s police and security services, which you argue were subordinated to partisan interests. Can these institutions be democratized through leadership changes alone, or does the transition require a more fundamental restructuring of civil-military and security-sector relations?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: Leadership change in the security sector is essential because most top officials were loyal followers of Vučić and his ruling party. Obviously, there were quite a few professionals, and there still are, but they had been marginalized for many years. So, changing leadership is the first step, but reforms need to be pursued more broadly.
In Serbia’s case, the problem lies not so much in the institutional setup of the security sector or political institutions more generally. If you look at the key institutions, they resemble those in the West. The point is that Vučić’s regime, just like Milošević’s in the late 1990s, was based on informal rule, which essentially means the selective application of the law. So, what you need to do is ensure that all institutional actors stay within the law and operate on its basis.
That’s why I think the demands of the student movement and the victory it brought have raised expectations among professionals within these institutions, which have suddenly started functioning. There are quite a few professionals within the civil service, judiciary, local government, and public sector as a whole who were simply sidelined. They routinely dealt with minor cases, while all controversial cases were handled by officials loyal to Vučić. So, this change now opens things up.
Again, the question is whether the Students’ List will have the capacity to pursue those goals in the long term, because short-term efforts obviously won’t be sufficient.
Vučić’s Regime Relied More on Media Manipulation than Political Repression
Your research highlights the relationship between media pluralism, political competition, and democratic quality. Following the reported changes at RTS, what reforms are essential to dismantle partisan media control and restore independent journalism without replacing one form of political influence with another?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: Vučić’s regime relied principally on media manipulation and sophisticated spin rather than repression. There was some repression, but it was more selective, targeting key opponents. The focus was on the media, including major electronic media outlets, the public broadcaster, other national television networks, and a range of cable networks targeting different audiences supportive of the regime. Despite all this, there was still considerable space for independent media, although admittedly limited to low-circulation daily and weekly newspapers, cable television networks with restricted reach—accessible to about 30% of the population—and specialized investigative journalism outlets.
Overall, there was quite a lot of high-quality journalism, even under authoritarian rule. The challenge now is to move this high-quality journalism from the margins to the very center of the media landscape, particularly to the public broadcaster and national commercial television networks.
The experience from the Milošević period suggests that those working at the public broadcaster tend to shift their support quickly from one ruling party to another, so there is some danger of that happening again. However, it seems to me that the two-year struggle against the regime helped most people who supported the Students’ List realize how important independent journalism is, because it was part of that struggle. Such massive popular mobilization over the last two years would have been impossible without independent journalism. In a way, the movement and independent journalists protected each other. That is why many people now recognize the importance of independent journalism and will demand it.
The question, again, is whether the Students’ List will have the capacity to achieve this in the long term, because the transformation will take time. It involves not only the public broadcaster but also other commercial television networks with national coverage and a range of cable channels that the regime developed and funded from the public purse. So, there is quite a lot of work to do.
Student Revolution Was the Culmination of a Decade of Popular Resistance
Serbian students and citizens protest against government corruption following the Novi Sad railway station accident, at Slavija Square in Belgrade, Serbia, on December 22, 2024. Photo: Mirko Kuzmanovic / Dreamstime.
The Novi Sad railway-station tragedy triggered nearly two years of student-led protests that ultimately challenged Vučić’s political dominance. What explains the movement’s success where previous opposition parties and protest campaigns had failed? Was its decisive advantage organizational innovation, moral legitimacy, or the regime’s declining capacity to maintain public consent?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: Obviously, no single factor can explain the movement’s success. I think what really matters is examining the broad mobilization over the last two years. The election campaign and victory were the culmination of this sustained resistance.
You have to understand this popular mobilization as the culmination of previous waves of massive protests over the last decade or so. There were several waves of mobilization in 2018–19, including six months of weekly protests in Belgrade and other cities. Then, in 2023, following the mass murders, there was a similar wave of mobilization. This was followed by a large, more decentralized campaign against lithium extraction across Serbia.
So, in a way, this was just the tip of the iceberg. There were already mobilized constituencies, not only in urban areas but also across the country, as the campaign against lithium extraction had extended into rural areas. The Novi Sad tragedy in November 2024, in which 16 people were killed, was therefore a trigger. It was not simply an accident; it was an accident caused by corruption. The tragedy revived these existing energies.
Now, why was this mobilization broader and more massive than previous protests? One important reason was the involvement of students. Interestingly, Serbia has a tradition of student protests, dating back to 1968 and continuing throughout the 1990s against Milošević. Student mobilization was part of the broader opposition movement during that period, but after 2000, students were no longer involved in politics.
Their renewed involvement was therefore an additional factor. Previously, popular mobilization had been led by opposition parties. This time, several factors came together. As students expanded the mobilization further, their popularity weakened both the regime’s capacity to respond and its public support. So, the movement’s success resulted from a combination of factors coming together at that particular moment.
Students Turned Popular Resistance into Electoral Power
In your research on competitive authoritarianism and popular protest, you emphasize how mobilization can transform political institutions and opposition capacities. How did Serbia’s decentralized student movement convert sustained street protests into an electoral majority, and what does this reveal about the relationship between contentious politics and electoral competition?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: If you look at the mobilization over the last two years, as well as previous waves of mobilization, there has always been an interaction between institutional politics and popular politics outside formal institutions, with spillover from one to the other.
Even during this mobilization, there were such spillovers. People were protesting in the streets, while the opposition was advancing their demands within institutions, including Parliament, local government, and the like. As I mentioned earlier, the election campaign was just the tip of the iceberg of this broad mobilization.
All the key actors—the student movement, organizations, local participant assemblies, and self-organized groups, supported by the logistical resources of opposition parties and civil society organizations—simply shifted their tactics from contentious politics to electoral campaigning.
This transition was not particularly difficult because the students had already shifted their demands. Initially, they demanded accountability from those blamed for the tragedy in Novi Sad. But the government did not respond; it ignored their demands. So, about a year and a half ago, the students began demanding early parliamentary elections.
In a way, everyone expected that elections would eventually take place, and they had been preparing for them through logistical arrangements, training, and other activities. So, the transition was not sudden; everyone had been preparing for it. I think this illustrates a broader point: contentious politics should never be studied separately from institutional politics because the two are closely intertwined.
Opposition Parties Cannot Safeguard Elections Alone
Reports of extensive citizen-led election monitoring suggest that civil society played an important role in protecting the electoral process. Does Serbia demonstrate that defeating competitive authoritarianism requires citizens not merely to mobilize voters but also to compensate for the failures of captured electoral institutions?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: In competitive authoritarian regimes, the political playing field is obviously skewed. This affects not only elections but also involves the ruling party’s abuse of public institutions and resources to its own advantage and against its opponents.
In this context, it is not always easy for opposition parties to mobilize enough well-organized activists to staff polling stations and arrange election monitoring to prevent electoral manipulation, including vote buying. Opposition parties cannot do this on their own; they need others to help. Civil society organizations often provide that support, but these efforts become even more effective when they involve a much broader range of people, including self-organized citizens. In Serbia’s case, this included the student movement and local participant assemblies.
Serbia has never had so many people trained to staff polling stations and monitor elections. There were even mobile groups tasked with protecting polling station personnel and election monitors from regime thugs. Drawing on experiences from local elections, when thugs were used to target these individuals, organizers had to anticipate and address such threats. I think this offers an important lesson for opposition movements in other authoritarian regimes: involve as broad a range of citizens as possible.
Competitive Authoritarian Regimes Unintentionally Create Opportunities for Their Own Defeat
Students and citizens protest against government corruption in Zrenjanin, Serbia, on January 25, 2026, demanding justice and accountability for the 16 victims of the tragic railway station canopy collapse in Novi Sad. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your scholarship argues that competitive authoritarian regimes create institutional opportunities for opposition mobilization even while restricting democratic freedoms. Did Vučić’s electoral defeat expose this inherent vulnerability, or does Serbia represent an exceptional convergence of mass protest, opposition coordination, and declining regime legitimacy?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: This is an interesting issue. I have studied competitive authoritarian regimes in the Balkans during the 1990s, particularly Milošević’s regime, examining how it responded to protests and how protests emerged and developed under competitive authoritarianism.
I concluded that this sort of context, in a way, unintentionally facilitates popular protests. Under competitive authoritarianism, government opponents have legal opportunities to organize and challenge the government, both within and outside institutions. Elections are not free and fair, but they are competitive, and people participate in them. At the same time, opposition actors are systematically suppressed and restricted in their activities. This context creates grievances through the systematic violation of media freedoms and the abuse of public resources against opponents.
So, there is a combustible mix. You have genuine legal opportunities to organize and space for political organization, even though the system is not democratic. At the same time, opposition actors are systematically suppressed in one way or another, creating additional grievances. You also have rapid spillovers between institutional and contentious politics, which often unfold in parallel and create political crises.
What’s particularly interesting is that this permissive context also facilitates nonviolence among protesters, which is useful for democratization. Protests can have immediate consequences, such as regime crises, but they also have long-term effects—what I call constitutive consequences. This means that protests shape the identities, interests, and capacities of both authoritarian elites and opposition forces.
It’s a complex and very interesting process. In Serbia’s case, this permissive context provided space for the opposition to organize and operate, but that’s only part of the story. Another important question is how these opportunities are taken up and by whom, because in some cases, there simply aren’t many actors capable of doing so.
Serbia also has a tradition of popular mobilization. I mentioned the waves of protest over the last decade, but these actually build on the protests against Milošević in the 1990s. So, what we see today is very much what we saw under Milošević in the 1990s. That tradition helps explain the current developments.
Vučić’s Defeat Exposes the Limits of Populism in Sustaining Personalist Authoritarianism
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán meets with Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić during an official visit to Belgrade, Serbia, on September 5, 2016. Photo: Ognjen Stevanovic / Dreamstime.
In your 2023 article with Aleksandra Krstić, you describe populism as the “soft” face of competitive authoritarianism under Vučić. How did populist appeals help normalize authoritarian practices domestically and internationally? Does the regime’s electoral defeat suggest limits to populism’s capacity to sustain personalized rule?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: When Vučić’s party came to power, he was initially second-in-command to Tomislav Nikolić, who had won the presidential election. However, Vučić used his position as Deputy Prime Minister to launch a massive anti-corruption campaign targeting prominent businessmen, which caused his popularity to skyrocket. He then used his personal popularity as an important political resource to confront institutional and other opponents. He promoted the interests of poorer citizens and advocated inclusive economic policies. As I mentioned, there was the anti-corruption drive, along with patriotic appeals and, in parallel, rhetoric supporting EU integration—much like Erdoğan initially.
However, once Vučić consolidated power, he no longer needed to rely so heavily on these populist appeals. Instead, he used and abused public institutions and resources against his opponents, while corruption and clientelism expanded dramatically. What is particularly significant is that, in the early years after 2012, Vučić was able to mobilize supporters to attend rallies voluntarily. Yet, just a few years later, he needed enormous organizational and logistical efforts by public institutions to bring people to similar rallies.
We saw this clearly over the last two years. While the opposition mobilized literally hundreds of thousands of people in this small country, Vučić could not mobilize even a few thousand without coercion or bribing people to attend. That tells you a great deal about how thin these populist appeals were throughout.
The Students’ List Seeks Political Pluralism and Inclusion
The Students’ List defeated not only the ruling establishment but also marginalized much of the traditional opposition. How should we distinguish this anti-establishment mobilization from populism itself? Could the movement’s broad appeal against corrupt elites eventually reproduce the exclusionary political logic it opposed?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: I wouldn’t describe this as an anti-establishment mobilization. The target was Vučić’s authoritarian, personalist rule. The democratic opposition—that is, the opposition parties—was not really a target. Rather, these parties were sidelined or marginalized as less effective partners in the struggle against the regime. At the center of the opposition over the last two years were the universities. The student movement was obviously central, but professors fully supported the students, so it was essentially a movement rooted in higher education, further supported by mobilization in primary and secondary education.
If you look at the Students’ List, which emerged from this mobilization, its representatives are now in Parliament. Most of them have PhDs, so we will have not only a government of experts but also a parliamentary majority of experts. There is therefore no real anti-establishment drive. The explicit goals are democratic renewal and the protection of political pluralism. There is also a strong emphasis on the rule of law as an instrument for fighting corruption and clientelism.
I would also say that there is a broadly inclusive approach toward various previously excluded groups, such as national minorities. They were not politically excluded, but they were co-opted through clientelistic and corrupt practices under Vučić. Now, there is an attempt to include them directly. Several Bosniak and Hungarian candidates will serve as members of Parliament on behalf of the Students’ List. So, there is a very open and inclusive attitude rather than a populist drive. I don’t see that as an issue.
Independent Media and Social Networks Were Essential to Breaking Vučić’s Media Dominance
Your studies of political cartoons, media discourse, and smear campaigns demonstrate how political communication shapes authoritarian power and resistance. How important were alternative media, social networks, and symbolic protest performances in overcoming Vučić’s media dominance and transforming public perceptions of political legitimacy?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: As I mentioned earlier, the regime relied primarily on media manipulation, while repression was highly selective. The regime developed various means to maintain this control. However, opponents of the regime responded, and independent media and high-quality journalism played an essential role in popular resistance. Independent journalists were seen as partners in the struggle, and whenever the government attempted to pressure independent media, the broader movement responded. In this sense, independent media became part of a wider political and social coalition.
Another important factor was the global shift from traditional media to social media. The government also tried to exert influence in this sphere. Vučić had an army of trolls attempting to contain the opposition’s influence on social media. Many of these individuals were employed in the public sector but, instead of performing their official duties, engaged in trolling on Vučić’s behalf.
Nevertheless, he could not counter the popular energies expressed through social media. Opinion polls show that, over the last two years, there has been a major shift toward social media as a primary source of information. The opposition clearly had much greater access to social media than to traditional media. So, once again, it was a combination of several factors.
Vučić Abandoned Ideology in Favor of Power
Serbian politics has long been shaped by Kosovo, Orthodox Christianity, historical grievances, and competing narratives of European identity. To what extent did Vučić incorporate these themes into civilizationalist populism? Can the student-led movement establish a more inclusive democratic identity without reigniting nationalist polarization?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: Vučić began his political career in the early 1990s as a member of Vojislav Šešelj’s extremist and chauvinist Serbian Radical Party. Šešelj was later convicted of war crimes. During the 2000s, after Šešelj went to The Hague, the party gradually moved away from its extremism.
Following successive electoral defeats, Vučić and other leading figures moved toward a more moderate conservative position, eventually forming the Serbian Progressive Party. They realized that they could not come to power on a radical nationalist agenda. They therefore moderated their program and adopted many of their rivals’ positions, emphasizing democracy, EU integration, and even post-conflict reconciliation in the region. By and large, these changes gained acceptance among Western actors and governments.
However, once in power, Vučić gradually abandoned ideology altogether. He delivered different messages to different constituencies and even became quite accommodating toward the government in Pristina over Kosovo. For him, what mattered most was consolidating power and remaining in office.
If you look at the students, they have been very inclusive, particularly toward national minorities. One especially important development during the two years of protests was the connection between students in Belgrade and Novi Pazar—that is, between Serbs and Bosniaks. This opened up new possibilities for bottom-up integration.
At this point, the students remain focused on inclusion, and this resonates with both the Serb majority and national minorities. Many members of national minorities actually voted for the Students’ List rather than for national minority parties, which represents something of a novelty in Serbia.
Vučić Used International Alliances to Project Political Importance Beyond Serbia
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić attend a welcoming ceremony in Belgrade, Serbia, on October 10, 2017. Photo: Dreamstime.
Vučić maintained political relationships with Viktor Orbán and other nationalist and illiberal actors in Europe. How significant were these transnational networks for his political resilience? Could their continued cooperation allow defeated populist leaders to retain influence and obstruct democratic consolidation?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: Obviously, they cooperated for mutual support and protection. Vučić occasionally emphasized his close relationships with Orbán and Fico and claimed to have a similar relationship with Putin.
But I don’t really think these relationships had much influence on his domestic standing. Perhaps his links with Putin mattered to some extent, but those with Orbán mattered less. It was largely an attempt to portray himself as an important figure not only in domestic politics but also on the international stage. However, this was more a matter of appearances than reality.
Student Movement Offers a Bottom-Up Model of Democratic Inclusion
Your research on Yugoslavia and post-conflict societies demonstrates how popular mobilization can produce either democratization or nationalist radicalization. What distinguishes Serbia’s current student movement from earlier nationalist mobilizations, and could democratic renewal create new opportunities for addressing Kosovo and the region’s unresolved ethnic conflicts?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: The international and domestic context today is very different from that of the 1990s and 2000s. In the early 1990s, the disintegration of Yugoslavia reopened all sorts of old issues and animosities. At this point, however, most of these issues have been resolved in one way or another, so many of them will no longer be relevant to the Students’ List.
As I mentioned earlier, the student movement is based on deliberation and inclusion, particularly when it comes to national minorities. This approach will undoubtedly be reflected in broader regional relations. However, whether it will have a lasting effect or become a model for the entire region remains to be seen, because that depends on all sides, not just one.
Again, as I mentioned, the Students’ List advocates a model of integration from below—a bottom-up approach. By contrast, integration efforts proposed in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia, have often followed a top-down approach. So, it remains to be seen how this will work out.
Broad Social Coalitions Are Essential to Challenging Authoritarianism
Your comparative research examines popular protest in Serbia, Ukraine, Poland, and other authoritarian contexts. Which elements of Serbia’s student-led mobilization could inspire democratic resistance in countries such as Turkey, Georgia, or Hungary? What institutional and geopolitical conditions determine whether protest movements can successfully translate mobilization into regime change?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: The breadth of the opposition coalition is essential. Often, a political coalition alone is not sufficient; what is needed is a broader social coalition involving not just political parties but also a wide range of other relevant actors. If you look at Serbia over the last two years, the student movement has obviously been central, but it is not just about the students. The Students’ List brings together a wide range of partners representing a broader social coalition.
You can see similar patterns in other countries. In Georgia, for example, opposition parties have traditionally been weak, while civil society actors play a more significant role, with students also contributing substantially. In Turkey, on the other hand, political parties remain central, so there is a more traditional focus on party politics. Hungary falls somewhere in between, with Tisza, which is formally a political party but essentially functions as a broader social movement.
The general trend is toward broader coalitions than we have seen in the past. New political actors who were previously less important are also emerging. It remains to be seen whether this model will spread to other countries in the coming years. Obviously, such a model cannot easily be transferred from one context to another.
Personalist Authoritarian Regimes Are More Vulnerable Because They Lack Organizational Capacity
Finally, Professor Vladisavljević, your scholarship challenges the assumption that authoritarian regimes are largely immune to pressure from below. Does Serbia’s 2026 experience require us to reconsider prevailing theories of authoritarian resilience and revolutionary change? What broader lessons does it offer for understanding how contemporary autocracies collapse—and why democratization sometimes fails to follow their defeat?
Professor Nebojša Vladisavljević: Some traditional lessons remain highly relevant, although perhaps in a slightly different context. One important factor is the coherence of regime organizations. When you have strong political parties, strong public institutions, and some form of bureaucratic regime supported by ideology, these are difficult for the opposition to confront.
The less coherent these organizations are, the easier they are to challenge. This is particularly true of personalist regimes based on informal rules, such as Milošević’s regime in the 1990s or Vučić’s over the last decade. These regimes are easier for the opposition to confront because they lack organizational capacity.
I also mentioned the breadth and commitment of opposition forces. This has traditionally been an important factor, from classic revolutions to the more urban, nonviolent revolutions of recent decades. However, we now have additional actors who were not previously involved.
The international context also matters, particularly whether autocrats receive substantial external support. At the same time, we are dealing with new types of regimes and political actors.
Many competitive authoritarian regimes differ from the traditional authoritarian regimes that characterized much of the 20th century. They allow considerable space for opposition activities, and this relatively permissive environment facilitates nonviolent action.
So, all these factors come together in different ways, depending on the particular context.
In this commentary, Professor Lane Kenworthy examines the implications of the November 3, 2026, US midterm elections for American democracy. Despite concerns about electoral interference, the elections proceeded relatively smoothly, with high voter turnout and Democrats securing majorities in both chambers of Congress. Professor Kenworthy highlights the resilience of electoral institutions, the judiciary’s role in safeguarding voting procedures, and the significance of strengthened congressional oversight. Yet he cautions that democratic vulnerabilities persist, particularly regarding the influence of wealthy donors, partisan redistricting, and unequal political representation. While economic dissatisfaction, corruption, and foreign policy concerns largely shaped voting behavior, the results could reinforce institutional checks and electoral accountability. The ultimate test, he argues, lies in sustaining democratic safeguards beyond 2026.
By Lane Kenworthy*
American voters delivered a rebuke to the Trump administration and the Republican Party in the 2026 midterm election. The Democratic Party won comfortable majorities in both the House of Representatives (about 57% of the seats) and the Senate (55%). What does the election and its outcome imply for current and future democracy in the United States?
Despite efforts by President Trump and his administration, the election went relatively smoothly. While the Trump administration in the months leading up to the election made a host of attempts to prevent early voting, to block certain people from voting, to criminally prosecute election workers, and to have some election results (such as the Senate election in Alaska) thrown out, courts consistently—in 30 out of 30 cases—ruled against the administration. Many of the justices ruling in these cases, including on the nation’s Supreme Court, had been appointed by Republicans. Nor was there any significant interference with election-day in-person voting. Elections are run by state governments, and a number of those governments signaled they were prepared to counteract any efforts to intimidate voters on election day. Another fear, that the administration would seize ballot boxes or voting machines, also didn’t come to pass.
In the end, voter turnout is estimated to have been 49%. That’s the highest in any midterm election since the 1940s. From 1950 to 1970, turnout in US midterms averaged 45%. From 1974 through 2018, the average fell to just 37%. In 2018 and 2022 it jumped to 47%, and 2026 looks to have furthered this recent upward trend. One reason for the recent rise in voter participation is increased opportunity to vote early. About half of Americans who voted did so before the November 3 election day, either in person or by mail.
In the year leading up to the election, President Trump encouraged state governments in conservative states to redraw the boundaries of House of Representative districts in a way that would maximize the number of Republicans elected. Several, such as Texas, did so. However, some left-leaning states, such as California, responded by redrawing their districts to maximize the number of Democrats elected. The vote margin in favor of Democrats turned out to be so large—nationwide, about 13 percentage points—that red-state redistricting was of little or no help to Republican candidates.
On the night of the election, after it had become clear that the Republican’s had lost their majority in both houses of Congress, President Trump, in an interview with the New York Times, said he would accept the election results. That’s encouraging, though it wouldn’t be surprising if he changes his mind. Following his defeat in the presidential election in 2020, his administration filed 76 lawsuits attempting to have the results overturned in various states. When those suits failed, a violent mob attempted to prevent the sitting Congress and the vice president from certifying the election results on January 6, 2021.
Will the winning candidates in the House and Senate actually be seated in January 2027? The Trump administration and its Justice Department might attempt to collude with state officials to refuse to certify the election results. In this election, the margin of defeat for Republicans in both the House and the Senate was so large that this type of effort would be unlikely to make a difference even if were to succeed. But if it’s tried, it will once again be up to courts to compel the certification.
The Democratic majorities in both congressional bodies will provide a significant check on the Trump administration over the next two years. The House of Representatives can investigate wrongdoing by the administration and its officials, and the Senate can block appointment of judges, including Supreme Court justices, who may share Trump’s limited commitment to democracy.
The midterm election results in the states might turn out to be equally significant for democracy’s future in America. Recent presidential elections have tended to hinge on the results in six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In 2028, when the Republican Party may nominate another Trump-like candidate for the presidency, each of these five states will have a Democratic governor. And most of them will have a Democratic Party majority in one or both of the state legislative bodies. This should help to safeguard against election interference by the outgoing Trump administration.
Was democracy “on the ballot” in the 2026 midterms? Did Americans reject Republicans because they see the Trump administration, or the Republican Party as a whole, as a threat to democracy? This may have mattered, but probably not very much. Public opinion surveys suggest cost-of-living concerns, the war in Iran, and corruption were the top issues. By “corruption” most Americans likely had in mind Trump’s efforts to use the presidency to enrich himself and his family, his pardoning of assorted criminals, and his appointment of unqualified billionaires to his cabinet, rather than his attempts to interfere in elections or call their fairness into question.
This interpretation is consistent with what we saw in the United States in 2022, when, as Larry Bartels points out, “scores of Republican members of Congress who had supported or condoned Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ effort following the 2020 election stood for reelection. In contested general elections, they did not fare significantly worse or better than their counterparts who had bucked Trump—the electoral cost of ‘disregarding democratic principles’ was essentially zero.”
Another threat to democracy in the United States—at least to democracy understood as equality of opportunity to influence policy—is money in politics. There are few effective limits on the use of private money in American elections (especially since the Supreme Court’s Citizens Unitedruling in 2010), so the country’s massive inequality of income and wealth makes it possible for the rich to have a sizeable advantage in influencing who gets elected.
Because its tax and regulatory policy preferences tend to be closer to those of rich individuals and large companies, the Republican Party is more likely to benefit from this. Prior to 2026, Democrats had been able to offset that disadvantage: total campaign expenditures by and for Democrats and Republicans tended to be roughly equal. In 2026, however, money from rich individuals, especially but not only Elon Musk, tended to heavily favor Republicans.
We don’t yet have the money totals for the 2026 midterms, and early figures indicate that Democratic candidates may have offset the big-donor money by far outraising Republicans in contributions from smaller donors. So, it’s possible that overall campaign expenditures were once again pretty similar between the two parties. Moreover, if Republicans did have a large money advantage in this election, it doesn’t seem to have helped them much, if at all. Still, this development may be a worrisome signal for what the future holds.
Even so, for supporters of democracy there is much to cheer about the 2026 US midterms—the fact that they occurred, the fact that they went smoothly, the fact that voters punished the political party that has failed to stand firmly in favor of liberal democracy, the fact that (so far) the election results haven’t been contested, and the fact that both the national and state-level results are likely to help protect democracy in 2028 and perhaps beyond.
(*) Lane Kenworthy is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Yankelovich Chair in Social Thought at the University of California, San Diego. He studies the causes and consequences of living standards, capabilities, poverty, inequality, mobility, employment, economic growth, social policy, taxation, public opinion, and politics in the United States and other wealthy, long-standing democracies. His books include The Good Society (thegoodsociety.net), Is Inequality the Problem? (2025), Would Democratic Socialism Be Better? (2022), Social Democratic Capitalism(2020), How Big Should Our Government Be? (2016), Social Democratic America (2014), Progress for the Poor (2011), Jobs with Equality(2008), Egalitarian Capitalism (2004), and In Search of National Economic Success (1995). More information on his research and teaching is available at lanekenworthy.net.
In an exclusive interview with the ECPS, Professor Mukulika Banerjee of the London School of Economics and Political Science warns that India’s controversial electoral-roll revisions risk transforming political citizenship into an instrument of exclusion. Describing the reported deletion of approximately 130 million voters as part of “the biggest assault on India’s electoral system that independent India has seen,” she highlights the disproportionate vulnerability of Muslims, Dalits, women, and other marginalized communities. Professor Banerjee examines how student-led protests are challenging democratic backsliding, political intimidation, and Hindu majoritarianism while forging broader alliances around electoral integrity. Drawing on her scholarship on everyday democracy, she argues that protecting political equality requires sustained civic participation, institutional accountability, vigilance, and collective democratic action.
India is witnessing a significant wave of youth-led protests challenging unemployment, educational injustice, and the erosion of democratic accountability. The emerging Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has expanded its mobilization from examination irregularities to contested electoral-roll revisions, raising fundamental questions about political representation, citizenship, and the resilience of democracy under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.
In an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Mukulika Banerjee, Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, offers a critical assessment of India’s democratic trajectory. Drawing on her influential scholarship on electoral participation, everyday citizenship, democratic culture, and the social foundations of political life, she examines how controversies surrounding electoral integrity threaten the principles of political equality and inclusive citizenship.
At the heart of Professor Banerjee’s analysis is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and reports of approximately 130 million deletions. Describing the controversy as “the biggest assault on India’s electoral system that independent India has seen,” she warns that the country’s historically inclusive electoral framework risks becoming an instrument of political exclusion. According to Professor Banerjee, the reported deletions have disproportionately affected Muslims, Dalits, indigenous communities, women, and other socially disadvantaged groups.
For Professor Banerjee, the consequences extend far beyond electoral competition. India’s democratic achievement has rested on the equalizing power of the ballot, particularly for citizens experiencing profound socioeconomic hierarchies. As she explains, “This equalizing power of the vote, of political equality, which is a very basic democratic right, is highly valued in India.” She cautions that electoral-roll revisions could undermine precisely this foundation of citizenship, transforming the right to vote from a universal democratic entitlement into a mechanism of selective political inclusion.
The interview also explores the emergence of student-led resistance as a potential counterweight to institutional democratic backsliding. Professor Banerjee argues that young protesters have challenged a pervasive climate of intimidation while bringing opposition parties, farmers’ unions, and civil society organizations together around electoral integrity. Their mobilization, she suggests, demonstrates that “in order to live in a democracy, you have to be an active citizen.”
Beyond India, Professor Banerjee situates these developments within broader debates over authoritarian populism, crony capitalism, Hindu majoritarianism, and transnational democratic resistance. Her analysis connects electoral exclusion to economic inequality and the erosion of institutional accountability.
Ultimately, Professor Banerjee’s warning is also a call for sustained democratic engagement. Drawing on her metaphor of democracy as a plant requiring constant care, she concludes: “In order to cultivate democracy, you need vigilance, you need patience, you need hard work, and you need hope.”
Here is our interview with Professor Mukulika Banerjee, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
India’s Youth-Led Movement Has Shaken the Political Status Quo
Students participate in a peaceful nighttime protest organized by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in New Delhi, India. Demonstrators sit together on the road, holding placards and posters, chanting slogans, and expressing their demands. Photo: Kamlesh Kumar / Dreamstime.
Professor Banerjee, thank you for joining us. Let me begin with India’s student-led protests. The emerging Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has expanded its mobilization from grievances over examination irregularities and unemployment to challenging the Election Commission and broader questions of democratic accountability. What are the movement’s principal demands, and how have these initial socioeconomic grievances evolved into a wider challenge to Modi’s political legitimacy and institutional authority?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: There has, quite rightly, been a lot of international attention on the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which has really shaken the status quo in so many ways. To understand what has happened over the last few months, particularly between July and November, we need to identify two phases.
The first phase was very much led by the Cockroach Janta Party and affiliated student groups, who went on a hunger strike in July, calling for the resignation of the education minister over exam irregularities. Of course, exam irregularities are a very serious issue in a country where the median age is under 30. These are young people with skills looking to enter the job market. For many young people, taking these exams is actually the only way to achieve social mobility. That is why it was such a big deal and why thousands and thousands of students got behind them.
As we saw, two things happened. The first was the government’s response, which involved unprecedented police brutality, including the use of pellet guns and water cannons, as well as arrests and detentions of peaceful protesters. These were young people who were very Gandhian in their spirit of resistance. The second was the outcome: ultimately, after weeks of protests, the education minister had to resign.
So that was phase one. In phase two, these students, quite correctly, took up an associated set of protests and issues that had been raised by the political opposition, primarily the Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi, who had been talking about electoral irregularities for years. But these concerns simply hadn’t gained traction. People said, “Oh, he can’t win elections, so he is blaming the elections.”
Then, in September, there was a very important investigative exposé by The Indian Express, one of India’s biggest newspapers, revealing a series of irregularities within the Election Commission. Two of the three election commissioners came forward to the press and said they had been objecting to illegal, unconstitutional changes to the electoral process that the chief election commissioner had been making without consultation. This led to much wider recognition of an issue that had been simmering.
Those of us who watch elections and electoral processes in India had been raising these concerns for many months. Rahul Gandhi had also been articulating this issue. But it really gained momentum from September onward. By then, having tasted success with the resignation of the education minister, the Cockroach Janta Party put its weight behind the issue of electoral irregularities.
What we saw by November 1, at this absolutely massive rally in the center of India’s capital, was an alignment of interests. Pretty much every single opposition party, including political parties that had supported Narendra Modi’s BJP government in the past, came out to protest against electoral irregularities.
All the student groups and all the farmers’ unions, which are a very important part of India’s political landscape, came together behind this issue. So, what we are seeing in November is this broader alignment of interests around a very fundamental issue that affects every citizen in India.
Electoral Roll Deletions Threaten the Equalizing Power of the Vote
The CJP is demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation amid controversy over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and reports of approximately 130 million deletions from draft lists. What explains these demands, and what risks might such revisions pose to electoral integrity and equal citizenship, particularly for marginalized communities?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: This is the biggest assault on India’s electoral system that independent India has seen. India has justifiably prided itself on its electoral system, despite the challenges. People need to recognize that when a national election is held in India, it really is the largest human exercise anywhere on the globe. The electorate itself is larger than 900 million people. So, conducting free and fair elections at this scale is, in itself, an achievement. Many of us have written books and given lectures across the world celebrating this incredible feat.
Now, this very electoral system has certain characteristics that made it so admirable and also explain why Indian citizens have embraced it and become such enthusiastic voters. India’s voter turnout is high and rising. More women vote than men. Socially disadvantaged groups vote in larger numbers. There are reasons for this enthusiasm, and they relate to two things.
Structurally, India’s electoral list—who is on the voters’ list—operates on a principle of inclusion. Right from the start, when India first held its elections in 1950–51 and the Election Commission was established, the principle was: if you live in India, you will be on the electoral list. If you were a foreigner or somebody who should not be on the electoral list, evidence had to be produced to strike you off the list. But the default position was to include you.
This is how people who are homeless, who live on sidewalks—and India is an incredibly poor country—were still included. Everybody, whether you sleep rough or live in a mansion, had their name on the voters’ list. Certainly, in my own research, I found, up and down the country, that people really valued this. They said, “Look, I have nothing, but I have a vote. And on the day of the election, I am the same as the guy living in the mansion next to me, while I sleep on the sidewalk.”
This equalizing power of the vote, of political equality, which is a very basic democratic right, is highly valued in India. This is what has been assaulted. So, when we say that there have been 130 million deletions—more than 10% of India’s population and 15% of the electorate—we are talking about a very significant number.
What nobody is quite able to explain, and what the Election Commission hasn’t responded to, is why these deletions have taken place. The Home Minister, Amit Shah, has come out and, on more than one occasion, said, “Well, this is a cleanup of the rolls because there have been too many infiltrators into India who are living in India, who don’t belong to India, who are not citizens, and we need to clean them up, clean the rolls and get rid of them.”
The question people are asking, of course, is: if 130 million people are infiltrators in India, what was the Home Minister doing? It’s his job to keep the country safe. But what we all understand, those of us who study Indian politics, is that this is a euphemism for Muslims, socially disadvantaged groups, Dalits, indigenous communities—tribals, as they’re called in India—and women. These groups have been overwhelmingly affected by the deletions.
There is another theory. When you break down the vote share by social group in the 2024 elections, when Prime Minister Modi’s BJP failed to win a majority, it was these groups that were less likely to vote for him. So, the cleanup is really a cleanup of the electorate, designed to create an electorate that is likely to vote for this government in perpetuity.
India’s Students Have Broken the Climate of Fear Through Humor and Resistance
Protesters gather at August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai, India, to demonstrate against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), December 2019. Photo: Adnan Mukri / Dreamstime.
Despite police detentions, restrictions, and allegations of intimidation, student mobilization continues. How do you assess the government’s response, and what factors will determine whether these demonstrations can sustain their momentum? Could coercive measures further undermine Modi’s political legitimacy?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: The main thing that should be noted about these students’ protests is just how humorous and cheeky they were. As we all know from history, the one thing any authoritarian regime or dictator does not like is being laughed at. They do not like humor. The students, as they said themselves, had so little to lose that they had no fear of calling out the utter hypocrisy, the utter silence, and the out-of-touch nature of the political establishment. They made very good use of social media to disseminate these messages.
To understand the significance of this, people need to realize that before these Cockroach Janta Party movements in the middle of 2026, there was a huge climate of fear in India. People did not speak openly or critically of the government. They simply did not. Even in universities, there has been a clampdown on academic freedom. In civil society, people have been jailed for asking questions. India ranks 157th out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index. People have been hounded, punished, and jailed without cases across the country. The aim was to create terror and intimidation, to silence people. And it was successful. People mostly kept their mouths shut and carried on with their jobs if they could do so.
The students broke that. By openly saying things that people felt and thought, they shifted something very fundamental in Indian politics. The government’s response was twofold.
The first was violent, as I said before: beating students mercilessly, denying them food and water, and using pellet guns. A student lost his eye during these protests. The second came when the government realized that the students were not backing off. They were not going to be cowed by this kind of violence. In fact, it was fueling their anger and protests. The prime minister made a brief attempt to engage with the students on social media, producing late-night reels addressing young people. But unfortunately, these became the butt of even more jokes, as evidence of just how out of touch he was with the social media game, for instance.
Now, this is significant because, for this prime minister, image and how he looks in public are of huge significance. Prime Minister Modi’s presence is ubiquitous across the Indian landscape. Every streetlamp has his image on it. Every free bag of rice distributed to 800 million citizens of India has his image on it. Even the COVID vaccine certificates used to have his photograph on them. So, for somebody who is so image-conscious, having that image taken down was significant.
The government tried to stall for a very long time but ultimately had to give in to the pressure, and the education minister resigned. But we also need to note that the day after the education minister resigned, when Parliament was in session, he showed up and his fellow parliamentarians welcomed him with applause. No new education minister was appointed. The person who was appointed was already holding another portfolio. So, it’s not as if the government has done anything to really address the demands raised by the students.
Defending the Vote Could Unite India’s Diverse Political and Social Movements
The CJP’s growing cooperation with opposition parties and civil society suggests an expanding political agenda. What does the movement stand for beyond its immediate demands, and can it develop a coherent political platform without losing its decentralized character? What lessons might it draw from the anti-corruption origins of the Aam Aadmi Party?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: Many people pointed out that the huge public gathering held on November 1 at Ramlila Maidan took place at exactly the same location where the India Against Corruption movement had gathered. That movement ultimately helped oust the previous government in 2014, saw Narendra Modi come to power, and led to the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party. So, there are parallels being drawn. But to my mind, this is a new kind of formation and alignment because the issue here is a little bit like corruption, which affects everybody. In this case, however, the issue is literally fundamental to everybody’s identity and position in society: the vote.
This is something that every single Indian can identify with. So, this alignment is probably unprecedented in the sense that it represents a very broad church, because everybody is affected by it. I also find this alignment extraordinary. As academics, when we study social movements and political establishments, and how social movements work within democratic politics, this is a textbook case of various civil society activists, student groups, and political parties coming together on a united platform. They are all very different in their politics, and some are single-issue groups.
How this is going to proceed is another question. Now, within this united platform, one should note that the students, young people, and farmers’ unions bring, first and foremost, energy. They bring the students’ cheekiness and humor, but also years and years of protest or resistance to a certain kind of politics and a certain kind of economic policy that have disaffected a large number of Indians. So, they bring that energy.
Political parties, on the other hand, have party workers, legal support, and organizational heft. They can also use Parliament, if Parliament is allowed to function. That, sadly, does not happen enough in India. During the July protests, when the students of the Cockroach Janta Party were on the streets, on hunger strike, parliamentarians were trying to raise exactly the same issues within Parliament to support them from inside Parliament. But those efforts were stalled and stalled and stalled by the government, so they never really could have that discussion.
But returning to this broad platform, this broad church of different kinds of political organizations coming together, I think it has now been recognized that there is a single issue that affects everybody. It doesn’t matter what you are fighting for; your vote is fundamental to everybody.
How this pans out will depend on harnessing this energy and spreading it across the country. The message that every single Indian is at risk when an Election Commission can act with such impunity, with the Supreme Court looking the other way and enabling this travesty of electoral dismantling that has happened in India, is something everybody needs to understand. But, as we know, politics requires work. It’s the boring, hard work of mobilizing every single person on the street on a daily basis. Frankly, the next few months and years are going to be about that.
Voters queue at a polling station in Sendra village near Beawar during the Panchayati Raj elections in India on September 28, 2020, held amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with turnout exceeding 83 percent in the first phase across 25 districts. Photo: Dreamstime.
India Is a Textbook Case of Crony Capitalism Enriching a Privileged Few
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio signed a Starlink distribution agreement in March 2025, but their rivalry resurfaced in October 2026 over regulatory approvals. How does this relationship illuminate the intersection of corporate concentration, digital infrastructure, and political power under Modi? Does it raise broader questions about the relationship between economic elites and populist authoritarian governance?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: India, sadly, is a textbook case of what we call crony capitalism. If we are worried, after the US midterms, about what they have exposed regarding the tech bros and the Republican Party, or at least President Trump, India is a classic case where we really need to dismantle the narrative of India’s high economic growth rates, celebrated around the world and by the Indian government, and examine the basic figures of India’s economy.
Yes, there are robust growth rates, but where are these growth rates coming from? One percent of India’s population owns 40% of its wealth. The people who have benefited from the regime in power are minuscule in number. You can literally count these corporations on the fingers of one hand. So, it’s not even the corporate lobby as a whole that stands to gain. A large part of India Inc. is deeply unhappy about the concentration of access to privileges among a handful of companies close to the prime minister and the BJP, which have done very well and are driving this economic growth story.
So, the Elon Musk–Ambani Jio story that you mentioned has to be seen against this backdrop. When I say that 1% owns 40% of the wealth, that also indicates the extent of social inequality in a country where 90% of India’s population lives on less than $60 a month. So, this is a poor country. Eight hundred million people, or two-thirds of the population, require free rice and wheat to survive. Malnutrition is on the rise. It is not a healthy economy for everyone. Some people have done extremely well, and they drive the headlines and the top-line figures. That economic scenario has to be understood when we talk about Ambani, Elon Musk, Adani, and the government.
The story of Musk, Ambani, the government of India, and India’s economy also has to be seen in tandem with Indo-US relations. Indo-US relations have relied for a long time on the so-called special chemistry—the bromance—between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi. Prime Minister Modi has campaigned for President Trump on US soil, asking the diaspora to vote for him. It has been a long association.
But this actually came to no good with the tariff wars and India being slapped with 50% tariffs. A lot, at one level, depends on Trump’s capriciousness. Nobody can say what he’s going to do, when he’s behind Musk, when he’s not, when he’s going to impose tariffs, or what he’s going to do from one day to the next.
There is also a story about India’s position on the global stage. To follow up on the earlier anecdote, just last month, Marco Rubio was in India to negotiate with the same Reliance, with the same Mr. Ambani, to get his refineries to accept more Venezuelan crude. But when Marco Rubio made that demand, he didn’t bother going to the capital or going through diplomatic protocols and niceties. He flew straight to Bombay, asked the foreign minister to meet him there, and met directly with Mr. Ambani to negotiate this.
Critics of this kind of crony capitalism and economic policy would say that this doesn’t bode very well for India’s standing in the world, vis-à-vis any country, let alone the US, when its leadership can be seen as dispensable and negotiations can take place directly with businessmen. Remember, this is not a business-to-business dealing. This is Marco Rubio coming to make this demand. It’s not even an ask. So, there is a story of complicity and collusion that a lot of critics, especially in the last two or three months, have begun to question very loudly.
The Trump-Modi Bromance Has Failed to Deliver for Hindu Nationalist Politics in America
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former US President Donald Trump met to discuss the betterment of the relations of India and US at Heydrabad House in New Delhi on February 25, 2020. Photo: Madhuram Paliwal.
In your 2025 analysis with Shaurya Dev, you described US–India relations under Trump and Modi as increasingly transactional. With trade negotiations facing renewed difficulties in October 2026, how do the leaders reconcile nationalist rhetoric with economic interdependence? To what extent does their personal political affinity influence bilateral relations?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: We’ve already been talking about part of this question. What we can add is that recent research from Carnegie shows that the diaspora, on which Prime Minister Modi relies heavily to shape and strengthen Indo-US relations, has overwhelmingly supported the Democrats—about 60% of it. The majority of Indians in America tend to be on the Democratic side.
But what the last few years have shown, especially under President Trump, is that a significant part of the diaspora, among the remaining 40%, thought that by hitching their wagon to the Trump-Modi bromance, they could advance what they saw as a common agenda: a pro-Israel, anti-Muslim, pro-majoritarian agenda that they believed they shared with the Republican Party.
As they’ve found under President Trump 2.0, that is far from the case. When there is an anti-immigration narrative, they don’t say, “Oh, these are the good Hindu Indians who supported the Republicans.” Instead, you’re a brown person living on US soil, and you are just as likely to be targeted as others. This explains some of the swing away from the Republicans in this year’s midterm elections.
So, there are increasingly vocal expressions of opposition from Indian-origin American politicians like Ro Khanna, who even today has tweeted his complete rejection of Hindutva politics, of the Hindu majoritarian politics that the BJP espouses. Of course, there were huge victories in the midterms for precisely the kind of candidates who will call out Islamophobia and the practice of serving corporate cronies at the expense of working-class needs.
The much-celebrated mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, whose mother is of Indian origin, and Nithya Raman in Los Angeles are not only American politicians of Indian origin, but they are also exactly the kind of US politicians that Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t. He lost his election, and he was prominent in espousing precisely the kind of misogynistic diatribe directed against a certain kind of progressive politics. In the American context, the diasporic politics of the RSS, the cultural organization that backs Prime Minister Modi, have involved supporting politicians of Indian origin who share the same values, and Islamophobia is a very important element of that. We don’t know about somebody like Vivek Ramaswamy’s links with the RSS, but what we do know is how much the RSS actually got behind him.
Again, when we talk about US–India relations, there is the government-to-government Trump-Modi relationship and the trade deal, which, as you’ve been saying, has been hanging in the balance for over a year now. Every time we ask for an update, we’re told it’s imminent, but it hasn’t yet come through. Meanwhile, the sort of capricious tariff wars we’ve been discussing have continued.
But there is a second story, which I was also highlighting, involving groups like the RSS abroad, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), as it’s called, which have cultivated a certain kind of Indian-origin American politician in the hope that they will strengthen their larger cultural project. At least the last few elections in the US, and certainly the midterms, have shown that this hasn’t really paid off.
Hindutva Represents a Fundamentally Different Vision of India from Its Constitutional Ideals
Modi’s political project often presents Hindu civilizational identity as foundational to Indian nationhood. How should we distinguish Hinduism’s religious and cultural plurality from Hindutva’s political construction of the nation? Could tensions between these understandings weaken the ideological foundations of Hindu majoritarian populism?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: We hope it will, for those of us who believe in India’s Constitution, which declares India a secular nation that celebrates its diversity. Every major religion in the world is found in India. Many of those religions were born in India, while Islam came to India very early. Christianity came to India long before it reached various parts of Europe, including Britain, where I live. So, the traditions of these religions are deeply rooted in India’s soil.
As my favorite Bollywood actor, Shah Rukh Khan, said in an interview some years ago, India is like a garden with lots of different flowers and colors, and if you take even one away, it spoils the painting. You can’t imagine India without any one of those elements. It would no longer be India.
I think it’s a beautiful analogy that helps answer your question. First, it is a celebration of the diversity that makes India what it is. Second, it’s also a reaffirmation of democratic politics, because democracy is actually the only way you could possibly manage such diversity. It is by devolving power, having a federal structure, maintaining the separation of powers, and keeping the government equidistant from all religions—which is India’s brand of secularism—that you can manage this diversity.
The Hindutva project, in contrast, which Prime Minister Modi and his party support and which the major cultural organization, the RSS, now over 100 years old, backs, represents a completely different imagination of India: that because India has a Hindu majority, it is a Hindu-majoritarian country, and everybody else can live as second-class citizens. Living as second-class citizens is not a dignified life, first of all. Second, it may not be a life at all, because what we’ve seen in the last decade is pervasive, everyday violence against minorities, including Dalits, who are at the bottom of the caste hierarchy.
Muslims have been targeted as easy prey, with bulldozers being used to remove their shops and homes and Muslims being pushed into ghettos in various places. So, you can’t live anywhere you want in India if you’re a Muslim.
There has been a steady marginalization of minorities and violence inflicted on them, which is part of the Hindutva project. That is not the image of India that the Constitution celebrates. It’s not the image of India that the country’s founders imagined and created at the time of independence from colonialism.
Volunteers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Vijyadashmi festival, a large gathering or annual meeting during Ramanavami a Hindu festival in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh on October 19, 2018. Photo: Pradeep Gaurs.
Democracy Requires Active Citizens, Not Blind Devotees of Political Leaders
In your 2015 essay “Modi Bowled Them Over, but They Are Fans and Not Citizens,” you examined the transformation of political allegiance into personalized devotion. Has Modi’s charismatic leadership cultivated a political culture in which loyalty increasingly displaces democratic scrutiny? Could the student movement signal a reassertion of citizenship over political fandom?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: Yes, the short answer is absolutely. What students, political parties, and civil society groups have shown is that, in order to live in a democracy, you have to be an active citizen. That is your responsibility. Electing a government is not enough. After the election, you must hold your representatives’ feet to the fire every single day, hold them accountable, demand transparency, and so on.
The unquestioned loyalty that has developed in large sections of the media, the corporate world, and universities has been created and enforced through a process of intimidation. This has meant that asking questions can invite severe punishment. Under this government, you’re no longer allowed to live as a citizen in a democracy and ask questions. Doing so is severely punished. When this is the case, it ceases to be what any of us would recognize as democratic politics.
Instead, what you’re expected to be is what in Hindi is called a bhakt, a devotee. The term andh bhakt, meaning a blind devotee, refers to blind faith in your leader, which is what has been inculcated. We talk about this less, but we should highlight that a huge amount of taxpayers’ money is used to inculcate this devotion and create a cult around the leader and his followers. Grand spectacles and events are constantly staged to encourage submission rather than foster citizens who are actively engaged in politics.
If you ask questions of the government, you’re immediately branded anti-national, a foreign agent, an infiltrator, or an “urban Naxal,” as he calls them. Most people outside India won’t understand this term, but it basically refers to intellectual leftists. These are all slurs. This comes directly from the prime minister. He used the term “urban Naxal” in his Independence Day speech in August this year to brand people who are asking perfectly legitimate questions of the government.
What is required is that you’ve got to be a fan. You don’t question why an elected prime minister of the world’s largest democracy has not faced an unscripted press conference in 12 years. If you ask that question, you’re anti-national. What you’re expected to do is simply toe the line, say he’s fantastic and the government is doing brilliant work, and shut up for the rest of the time. This is obviously not how democracy functions.
India’s Students Are Demanding Free and Fair Elections, Not Anarchy
In “Cultivating Democracy”and your 2024 essay “Democracy Shouldn’t Be Limited to Elections,” you argue that democracy requires sustained civic participation beyond voting. Could India’s student protests represent a revival of precisely this everyday democratic culture, despite the country’s institutional democratic backsliding?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: Yes, I think democratic backsliding has been noticed by many for years. But the issue of electoral integrity has made it possible to focus everybody’s attention on this particular concern, and people are asking questions. Here, it’s probably worth saying something about these student protests and other protests by young people around the world, especially in the South Asian region, because the government has weaponized these comparisons to discredit the students by saying, “Oh, they’re asking for regime change; they’re calling for anarchy.”
Rather bizarrely, India’s Home Minister, Amit Shah, has been holding rallies across India, trying to save democracy from what he calls anarchy. Now, asking questions is not anarchy. Asking questions or demanding institutional propriety is not anarchy. It is about asking for elections to be made free and fair again. This is also in India’s DNA. It is our legacy from the independence struggle and our legacy of 75 years of practicing democratic politics in a very engaged way.
People want to topple governments through elections. That’s what they want to do. This is not about leaders having to flee the palace or government buildings being raided. This is not the kind of politics that the students, or indeed the opposition political parties or civil society groups, are asking for. They’re asking for free and fair elections. They want the electoral system fixed before the next national election in 2029 so that there can be a fair contest when elections are held. So, that is a classic example of the kind of active citizenship that I write about in Cultivating Democracy.
The Vote Is Sacred Because It Makes Every Indian Equal for One Day
People wait in queues to cast votes at a polling station during the 3rd phase of Lok Sabha polls, in Guwahati, India on May 7, 2024. Photo: Hafiz Ahmed.
Your article “Money and Meaning in Elections” demonstrates that voting carries moral and symbolic significance beyond transactional calculations. How might the controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in India (SIR) affect citizens’ sense of dignity, political belonging, and institutional trust? To what extent does it reflect broader concerns about the erosion of democratic institutions?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: As I was saying, the vote is not just an instrumental way to elect a politician or bring a political party to power in India. It is, of course, that. That is the main purpose of the vote. But what has also emerged in India is that, because of social inequality, which I’ve talked about, and the extreme hierarchy of social status, which is ubiquitous in India, voting carries another significance. In every single setting—whether you go to watch a film, travel on a train, enter a mall, or consider who gets off an aircraft first—some groups assert their status over others. Even people at the bottom of the status hierarchy feel the need to assert their status over somebody else.
In that kind of society, having one day when you can go to a polling station with your electoral photo identity card, stand in a single line where you can’t be asked to give way to someone more important, and be treated exactly the same as everybody else means a lot. People realize that this is their only chance to experience what political equality actually feels like.
That is why, when I wrote the piece you referred to, “Money and Meaning in Elections,” the word money really referred to—and I say this in the piece—all the instrumental aspects of voting. There is a lot of money, a lot of violence, a lot of patronage, and a lot of things that should not be taking place in elections. But what we forget is that, in the Indian case, there is also a lot of meaning.
People say, “When I come out of the polling station, I feel like I’m walking taller.” Or they hold up their fingers, marked with indelible ink, and say, “Look, this mark on everybody’s fingers makes us all equal today.” People say, “The vote is our weapon. The rest of the time, we don’t have the time, we don’t have the capacity, and we don’t have the knowledge to ask questions. But if we think things are not right, the vote is something we always have to topple governments.”
Actually, the anti-incumbency rate in India has been pretty high over the years. People wield that vote very robustly in the Indian context, and we need to understand that. Without understanding it, we won’t understand why electoral malpractice has brought millions of people out onto the streets. And I dare say we will see more, because this is something Indians really care about.
From India to Serbia, Young People Are Reinventing Democratic Participation
Students and citizens protest against corruption and the Serbian government in Novi Sad, Serbia, on February 1, 2025. Photo: Srdjan Randjelovic / Dreamstime.
You have argued that democracies such as Britain and the United States can learn from India’s traditions of active citizenship. Could India’s contemporary youth mobilization offer lessons to democratic movements confronting populism in Europe and America? Conversely, how might transnational far-right networks and political strategies shape the BJP’s responses to domestic dissent?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: The far right has been very well organized. Tommy Robinson, who founded one of the most racist far-right parties in Britain, has been invited to India by the RSS. Right-wing movements around the world are very united. They hold annual global conventions at which India is always represented. These conventions are held in London, Washington, and other parts of the world. So, there is a network for sharing information among these groups.
Progressive movements also have their networks. They have less money and less power at this particular point in time, but I dare say the last month has really changed that scenario. With the results from Serbia, the US midterms, what we saw with students on the streets of Paris, and what we saw this morning with the formation of the new Israeli government, there is a reckoning with what we call right-wing populism.
Populism has also been used in the past to describe leaders who have bypassed institutions to serve the poor directly. But what people are up in arms about with this version of populism is a certain kind of economic arrangement that seems to enrich a few people at the expense of many. It doesn’t create jobs. You cut corporate taxes, but corporations aren’t creating jobs.
People get contracts on the basis of shady deals. At the end of the day, the money that is made is not being channeled back into the economy to create opportunities and dignity for everybody. And the word dignity is critical here. It ties together what we’ve been saying about the vote with what you just asked about these different movements. One reason Indian voters consider their vote and elections sacred is that voting provides a moment of dignity in an otherwise very undignified life.
If you listen to what people were saying during the US midterms, the message that the politicians who won are putting out is not so much about a command economy or socialism. It is about pointing out that everybody has a right to a dignified life. That dignified life is what young people all over the world are demanding, quite rightly. They are pointing to our generation, my generation, and saying that they don’t have the life chances that all of us had: finding jobs, buying new homes, having children, and planning for the future. The state of the climate, the state of the Earth, the planet, is a mess.
So, they’re making very legitimate demands for redistribution so that everybody can have a dignified life. It is really a demand against the acute social inequality that creates this kind of indignity. Because these are young people, because this is a world dominated by social media, and because information flows across the globe, groups all over the world are watching and learning from each other, realizing what to do and what not to do.
Serbia is such an interesting case of students deliberately channeling their energy into an electoral process. It took two years of work to create the student list, identify people who could stand for elections, and work out systems through which consensual decisions could be made. This was reinventing the processes of democratic selection. They did that hard work so that they could then put up candidates who would likely do well. That’s the end product we saw last month in the electoral results.
But it’s true that with Orbán’s defeat and the victory of the student groups in Serbia, there is a new energy that makes it possible not simply to topple governments but also to think about how to do democracy differently.
Again, I’ve mentioned the midterms many times, but because they’ve been on our minds over the last few days, I’ve been listening closely to campaigners, people in the back rooms—not the stars in front of the rallies, but the people standing behind them, standing in the wings—who have been doing years of work on voter registration, turning out the vote, canvassing, getting people out, identifying the new boundary limitations in gerrymandered districts, and making sure people understand how important it is to turn out and vote. This is the kind of hard work of active citizenship between elections that young people are willing to do and are doing. The evidence is there for us to see.
Democracy Needs Vigilance, Patience, Hard Work, and Hope to Flourish
Illustration: Design Rage.
Finally, Professor Banerjee, your scholarship emphasizes that democracy must be continuously cultivated through collective action, solidarity, and everyday citizenship. Can India’s emerging student movement transform opposition to Modi’s governance into an inclusive democratic alternative? What conditions would allow it to challenge authoritarian-populist structures rather than merely secure temporary political concessions?
Professor Mukulika Banerjee: What we’ve been talking about so far is precisely evidence of this kind of active citizenship. I’ll leave you with a small metaphor that might illustrate what we’ve been saying. So far, there has been a complacency that has led to democratic backsliding. We treated democracy like a plant that we bought in a store and put on our windowsill. We said, “Oh, look, now we have democracy. I have a beautiful plant in my room, and of course, it will flourish and flower. I’m going to have this beauty, and I can say I have a beautiful room.”
But if you don’t watch the leaves every day, check how much water there is, or see whether nutrients are required—is it getting too much light? Is it too cold? Is it in a draft?—you neglect the constant vigilance required to nurture and cultivate democracy. That’s the first thing.
We treated democracy like something that would just stay green and flourish without being looked after, as if institutions would simply function on their own. There are leaves, there are roots, and of course, it’ll be okay. But what’s eating at the roots? Is there an infection? Is the leaf turning brown? We didn’t pay attention.
The second thing is that you need patience. If you buy a little rose bush for your windowsill, it’s not going to produce roses immediately. You’ve got to find out when the flowering season is, wait, and look for emerging buds. Then the flowers will emerge when they’re ready. So, there is a huge amount of patience required.
You might be all raring to go and protest, turn out the vote, and get people agitated, but they can only vote when there is an election. So, it requires a huge amount of patience. All of this takes hard work. You can’t say, “Oh, I’m going on vacation for a month. I hope the plant will be here when I come back.” No, it takes that kind of commitment and hard work every single day.
And finally, you don’t buy a plant, put it on your windowsill, and say, “I don’t think it’s ever going to put out any flowers.” You never say that. You say, “No, of course, I’m waiting to see the flowers. Actually, I don’t even know what color the flowers will be, but I’m really looking forward to seeing them.”
So, that element of hope is also a very important part of democratic politics. That’s why I say that, in order to cultivate democracy, you need vigilance, you need patience, you need hard work, and you need hope.
In this commentary, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk examines whether recent electoral defeats of authoritarian populists in the United States, Hungary, Brazil, and Serbia signal an emerging democratic counterwave or merely temporary setbacks for populism. Arguing that Trumpism’s electoral defeat does not eliminate the structural conditions that produced it, Professor Ozturk explores how economic inequality, institutional capture, globalization, and technological concentration continue to undermine democratic legitimacy. Drawing on comparative political economy and Daron Acemoglu’s scholarship, he emphasizes the urgency of rebuilding political representation, shared prosperity, and democratic control over technological change. Moreover, he warns that electoral victories alone cannot secure democratic renewal: without credible economic alternatives, institutional reconstruction, and effective governance, authoritarian populism may return in more resilient forms.
By Ibrahim Ozturk
Can electoral defeats in the United States, Hungary, Brazil and Serbia become a genuine democratic counterwave—or will populism return unless its structural causes are addressed? Donald Trump’s resounding defeat in the November 2026 midterm elections, following electoral breakthroughs against authoritarian populists in Hungary, Brazil and Serbia, and partly in Israel, though with significant uncertainties, may mark the beginning of a democratic counterwave. Yet elections can remove or constrain leaders without eliminating the structural conditions that produced them. Unless democratic governments rebuild political representation, state capacity and shared prosperity, today’s victories may pave the way for tomorrow’s populist return.
The Democratic victory was much more than an ordinary shift in the congressional balance of power. By taking control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate—including victories in states and constituencies Trump had carried comfortably only two years earlier—Democrats delivered the most consequential institutional rebuke to Trump since his return to the White House.
According to Reuters’ detailed account of the results, Democrats secured at least 54 Senate seats and gained at least 30 seats in the House. The electoral shift extended well beyond established Democratic territory, reaching deeply Republican states such as Texas, Kansas and South Carolina.
The table reveals the election’s two-sided character. On the one hand, the scale and geographical spread of the Democratic victory make it impossible to dismiss the result as a routine midterm correction. Trump-backed Republicans lost support almost everywhere, including in regions that had recently seemed beyond the Democrats’ reach. The outcome has restored Congress’s capacity to investigate abuses, resist presidential appointments and prevent the legislature from functioning as an extension of the executive branch.
This institutional dimension is especially important given the severity of America’s democratic deterioration. The V-Dem Democracy Report 2026 recorded a 24 percent decline in the United States’ Liberal Democracy Index during the first year of Trump’s second term, with the country falling from twentieth to fifty-first place globally. V-Dem identified legislative constraints as the most severely damaged component of American democracy and described the speed of executive aggrandizement as unprecedented in modern American history.
Against this background, restoring an independently controlled Congress is not merely a partisan change. It reactivates one of the principal constitutional mechanisms capable of constraining executive power. It may block further democratic erosion and create institutional space for recovery. But this is still a lifeline, not a democratic restoration—and certainly not the end of Trumpism. Trump remains in the White House. The institutional damage inflicted on the civil service, judiciary, regulatory agencies, universities, media and wider public sphere has not been reversed. Nor have the economic and cultural grievances that returned him to power in 2024 disappeared. Congressional control may constrain Trump’s room to maneuver, but it cannot by itself rebuild public trust, reverse inequality, or restore the social foundations of liberal democracy.
The second half of the table is therefore as important as the first. The Democrats’ victory was broad, but support for the Democratic Party remains relatively shallow. The Associated Press Voter Poll found that many voters who supported Democratic congressional candidates remained dissatisfied with the party itself. Roughly one-fifth of Democratic voters held an unfavorable view of the party they had just voted for. Many were not endorsing a clear Democratic program; they were looking for an instrument to restrain Trump and punish the incumbent government.
The crucial fact, therefore, is that many of the citizens who punished Trump in 2026 were the same economically and culturally frustrated voters who had punished Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2024. Their movement between the parties reflects neither ideological conversion nor a stable embrace of liberal democracy. It reflects a volatile electorate that repeatedly votes against governments perceived to have failed on prices, employment, security, public services, and political integrity.
The election’s economic geography reinforces this interpretation. Voters who reported serious hardship from inflation and everyday costs moved decisively toward Democratic candidates—even in Republican strongholds. They blamed Trump’s tariffs, the Iran war and the failure to fulfill his promise to reduce prices. Corruption also mattered, particularly the perception that the presidency was being used to advance Trump’s personal, family and corporate interests. The outcome was consequently an accountability vote with two connected elements: a demand to restrain presidential power and a demand for economic delivery. Concentrating only on the first would be a serious mistake.
Congressional investigations into corruption, conflicts of interest and executive abuses are indispensable. But if Democrats define their victory primarily as an authorization to investigate Trump, they may constrain one president without weakening Trumpism. Investigations can expose abuses; they cannot make housing affordable, create career-building employment, rebuild declining regions or give working people greater influence over technological and economic change.The midterms should therefore be interpreted neither as a final defeat for American populism nor merely as a temporary anti-incumbent swing. They represent a narrow but historic window in which democratic forces can move from anti-Trump resistance to democratic reconstruction.
Whether this opening becomes a lasting realignment will depend on what Democrats do with their new institutional power. If they combine constitutional accountability with a credible programme addressing affordability, inequality, good jobs, regional decline and technological disruption, the election may become the starting point of a more durable democratic counterwave. If they return to technocratic incrementalism or assume that Trump’s personal unpopularity has solved the problem, the same electorate may swing back in 2028.
The central lesson is therefore not that American populism has been defeated. It is that Trump has become electorally vulnerable because he failed to deliver on the grievances that originally brought him back to power. Those grievances remain politically available. The question is now whether democratic government can finally address them before another authoritarian populist does.
Daron Acemoglu is right to warn that the most difficult work begins after the electoral victory. As he argues in What Happened to Liberal Democracy?, liberal democracy prospered when it was associated with shared prosperity, political voice, social mobility and the broad distribution of opportunity. It entered crisis when liberalism detached from these social foundations and became increasingly associated with technocracy, globalization, and the priorities of highly educated metropolitan elites.
If Democrats cannot respond to extreme inequality, the affordability crisis and the disappearance of secure, career-building employment—especially for workers without university degrees—the political pendulum may swing back in 2028. Neither an exclusive reliance on taxes and transfers, nor centrist attachment to the pre-Trump status quo, nor the fashionable expectation that AI-driven “abundance” will automatically resolve distributive conflict offers an adequate response.
This is precisely why the American midterm result deserves greater attention than a conventional anti-incumbent election. It creates an institutional barrier against Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, but it also places Democrats under an obligation to demonstrate that pluralist democracy can govern and deliver. If they use their congressional majority mainly to investigate Trump while failing to articulate a credible economic and social program, they may constrain him temporarily while inadvertently preparing the next Trump—or a younger, more capable successor.
In my ECPS commentary “Trump and the New Capitalism: Old Wine in New Bottle,” I argued that Trumpism 2.0 represents more than nationalist rhetoric or protectionist trade policy. It combines economic nationalism, corporate oligarchy, technological concentration and elements of digital feudalism. State power is not withdrawn from the economy; it is reorganized to serve politically connected corporations, dominant technology platforms and favored economic interests. The 2026 vote has interrupted this project, but it has not dismantled the political economy that sustains it.
The American result forms part of a wider sequence of authoritarian-populist reversals. In Hungary, the Tisza Party ended Viktor Orbán’s sixteen-year rule and secured a constitutional supermajority. According to the detailed 2026 Hungarian election analysis published by the Institut für Europäische Politik, Tisza won 53.29 percent of party-list votes and 138 of the National Assembly’s 199 seats.
In Serbia, the student-backed opposition movement that emerged from protests following the Novi Sad railway-station disaster defeated Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling alliance. Reuters reported that the movement received 52.7 percent of the vote and secured 139 of the 250 parliamentary seats.
In Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, although the narrow margin confirmed that Bolsonarismo remains deeply embedded in Brazilian political and social life. As Professor James N. Green warned in an ECPS interview conducted after the election, the Brazilian far right has lost a battle, not the wider political struggle. It retains conservative congressional support, religious networks, digital mobilization capacity and a substantial electorate.
Israel provides a more qualified case. Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious bloc won only 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, but the process of forming a government remains unresolved. Netanyahu’s parliamentary position has been severely weakened, but it would be premature to describe this as a completed transfer of power.
Taken together, these developments justify speaking cautiously of a democratic counterwave. They show that elections, civic mobilization, coordinated opposition and institutional resistance can still constrain leaders who appeared politically invincible. But they do not demonstrate that authoritarian populism has been ideologically defeated.
In “Populist Attacks on Institutions as a Reaction to Hyper-globalization,” I argued that populist attacks on independent institutions cannot be understood separately from the economic and social dislocations produced by unmanaged globalization. Financial crises, regional decline, inequality, declining social mobility, and the perception that national governments have lost control over economic outcomes generate both demand for populism and the political opportunities populist entrepreneurs exploit.
This argument is consistent with Dani Rodrik’s research on the relationship between globalization and right-wing populism, and with Sergei Guriev and Elias Papaioannou’s extensive study of the political economy of populism. Economic shocks do not translate mechanically into populist politics. They operate through perceptions of status, cultural displacement, political exclusion, and the failure of representative institutions. In “Capitalist Disruptions and the Democratic Retreat: A US–EU–China Comparison,” I developed this argument further by describing a process of authoritarian convergence. Liberal democracies and explicitly authoritarian systems remain different, but widening inequality, technological surveillance, corporate concentration, regulatory capture, and weakened public institutions are narrowing parts of the practical distance between them.The result is a political paradox. Governments remain formally democratic, but citizens increasingly experience economic decisions as matters over which they exercise little meaningful influence. Elections continue, but changing the government does not necessarily alter the underlying distribution of economic power.
The political damage was compounded by the way globalization was governed. Trade integration generated large aggregate gains, but governments too often treated the workers, firms and regions bearing the adjustment costs as if they would automatically move into new and better employment. Autor, Dorn and Hanson’s research on the China shock found that import-exposed local labor markets experienced persistent falls in employment, wages and labor-force participation, while their later work linked greater trade exposure to political polarization. The OECD Employment Outlook 2026 reaches a similar conclusion across advanced economies: the benefits of openness were real, but the losses were geographically concentrated and often endured for years. The resulting backlash was therefore not simply an irrational rejection of trade. It was also a reaction to governments that liberalized markets without constructing adequate mechanisms for regional renewal, worker adjustment, social insurance and political voice.
China’s current growth model has intensified this distributive problem. China is neither the sole cause of Western deindustrialization nor merely an economic threat; its growth has enlarged world trade and accelerated the diffusion of affordable green technologies. Yet weak domestic consumption, state-directed credit, large industrial subsidies, and manufacturing overinvestment now create asymmetric competitive pressure that open market economies cannot ignore. The IMF’s 2025 Article IV consultation warns that export-led adjustment and unwarranted industrial-policy support are producing excess supply and adverse spillovers for trading partners, while the European Commission has documented extensive state-induced distortions and unfair subsidization in strategic sectors. The democratic answer cannot be indiscriminate protectionism, which would raise prices and deepen fragmentation. But passivity would accelerate industrial erosion and feed populist claims that elected governments have surrendered control. A credible response requires rules-based trade defense, reciprocity in market access, coordinated industrial and competition policy, place-based investment and pressure for China to rebalance towards domestic consumption rather than exporting its internal imbalances.
Yet such pressure will be ineffective if exercised through a fragmented, transactional multipolar order in which major powers rely on unilateral tariffs and competing economic blocs. Bringing China closer to fair play requires rebuilding an open, inclusive and enforceable multilateral order, supported by reformed WTO rules on industrial subsidies, state-owned enterprises, excess capacity and reciprocal market access. Trump’s electoral defeat should therefore be understood not only as a setback for authoritarian populism, but also as a strategic opportunity to move beyond unilateral protectionism and toward renewed multilateral order and cooperation. If democratic governments use this opening to construct a fairer international system that reconciles openness with social protection, industrial resilience and democratic accountability, they may simultaneously address China’s distortive practices and the domestic grievances on which Trumpism and related populist movements thrive.
Under these conditions, authoritarian populism becomes a distorted form of democratic protest. Citizens support leaders who promise to recover sovereignty and political control, even when those leaders subsequently use that mandate to dismantle the institutions that make democratic correction possible.
Why Some Populists Lose—and Others Survive Failure
The emerging counterwave supports a first proposition: where electoral competition remains meaningful, authoritarian populists who govern badly may eventually be punished. Populists promise that concentrating authority will enable them to break institutional deadlock and deliver rapid results. Once in office, however, many generate corruption, patronage, inflation, declining services, administrative incompetence, and international isolation. When the discrepancy between rhetoric and performance becomes sufficiently visible, even formerly loyal voters may abandon them.
But this mechanism operates only where opposition forces can organize, voters can obtain independent information, and electoral authorities, courts, and security institutions have not been completely subordinated.My comparative study “Confronting Populist Authoritarians: The Dynamics of Lula’s Success in Brazil and Erdogan’s Survival in Turkey” demonstrated why similar economic and political failures can produce different outcomes. Lula’s broad democratic coalition defeated Bolsonaro, though it could not eliminate Bolsonarismo. In Turkey, Erdogan’s institutional capture, control over resources and capacity to fragment the opposition insulated him from the consequences of economic failure.
This leads to a second and more troubling proposition: where a populist leader has captured the state, failure may produce intensified authoritarianism rather than electoral defeat. In “A Lesson from Turkey: Economic Crises as Steppingstones, but Not Exit Routes for Authoritarian Populists,” I argued that economic crises may help populists enter power without subsequently providing an exit route from populist rule. Once leaders have captured the judiciary, media, bureaucracy, security apparatus, and mechanisms for distributing state resources, poor economic performance ceases to be sufficient to remove them.
Leaders who fear prosecution, loss of wealth or exposure of wrongdoing acquire powerful personal incentives to prevent alternation in power. The more offenses committed in consolidating the regime, the more dangerous surrendering office becomes. The regime’s failures therefore deepen its dependence on repression.Turkey illustrates this danger. Freedom House’s 2026 assessment documents the consolidation of power through constitutional engineering, institutional capture and the imprisonment of opponents, journalists and civil-society representatives.
My more recent analysis, “Stealing from the Future,” shows how such a regime may use fiscal transfers, public procurement, credit and inflation to purchase present political support by transferring the costs to future taxpayers. Economic policy becomes a technology of political survival rather than an instrument of long-term development. Consequently, no mechanical sequence in which the defeats of Trump, Orbán, Bolsonaro or Vučić necessarily predict the fall of Erdogan or Narendra Modi. Democratic openings can spread confidence, but national outcomes depend on the depth of institutional capture, the credibility of opposition forces and whether electoral punishment remains possible.
The Acemoglu Challenge: Redirecting Technological Change
The struggle over artificial intelligence will be critical to whether the American midterm victory develops into a durable democratic realignment. An ECPS long read, “The Economist versus Acemoglu: Who Will Govern the Next World Order?”, argues that the controversy surrounding Acemoglu is not simply a dispute over AI productivity. It concerns who directs technological change, who captures its gains, and whether democracy can discipline concentrations of corporate power that markets have themselves created. Acemoglu, David Autor and Simon Johnson’s proposal for “Building Pro-Worker AI” distinguishes technologies that complement workers and create new human tasks from technologies principally designed to replace labor. Acemoglu’s related intervention in Nature warns against organizing the entire technological agenda around artificial general intelligence and the automation of human capabilities.
If AI intensifies workplace surveillance, displaces labor and concentrates income among a few technology companies, it will aggravate precisely the inequalities and insecurities that nourish authoritarian populism. A democratic strategy must instead use public procurement, research funding, competition policy, worker participation and taxation to redirect innovation toward augmenting human capabilities and creating socially valuable employment.This is where the political meaning of Trump’s midterm defeat will ultimately be determined.
Congressional investigations and institutional checks are necessary, but they cannot substitute for a new governing philosophy centered on productive employment, affordable housing and healthcare, regional regeneration, technological democracy and the reconstruction of worker power.
After Victory Comes Democratic Delivery
Democratic successors must restore legality without producing institutional paralysis. They must dismantle state capture without replacing it with partisan revenge. They must defend pluralism while demonstrating that pluralist democracy can govern, coordinate and deliver. The current electoral reversals are therefore openings rather than conclusions. The V-Dem Democracy Report 2026 finds that nearly three-quarters of the world’s population lives under autocratic rule and that democracy, for the average global citizen, has returned approximately to its 1978 level. Only eighteen countries are currently democratizing, while nearly a quarter of the world’s states are undergoing autocratization.
The American midterm victory is therefore historic, but its meaning remains unsettled. It may mark the beginning of democratic reconstruction. Equally, it may be another swing of the electoral pendulum, driven by an electorate that remains economically insecure, politically unrepresented, and willing to experiment repeatedly with anti-establishment alternatives.
If democratic governments cannot address these structural grievances, authoritarian populism will return—perhaps under younger, more disciplined and more competent leaders who have learned from the failures of Trump, Orbán and Bolsonaro. Winning an election can remove or constrain an authoritarian government. Only democratic delivery can weaken the economic, institutional and cultural conditions that continually reproduce authoritarian populism.
In an interview with the ECPS, Dr. Filip Balunović, Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, examines Serbia’s student-led democratic transformation following the October 2026 elections. Arguing that the Students’ List’s parliamentary victory represents more than regime change, he declares that “the idea of a new society has won.” Dr. Balunović explores how a leaderless movement transformed collective grief into political power through nonviolent resistance, grassroots mobilization, and direct democratic practices. He also analyzes how a left-wing populist strategy challenged Vučić’s authoritarian rule while overcoming ideological and ethnic divisions. Yet he cautions that dismantling entrenched oligarchic networks and sustaining participatory democracy remain crucial challenges for Serbia’s democratic future.
Serbia has witnessed an extraordinary political transformation. What began as student-led protests following the deadly Novi Sad railway station collapse in November 2024 evolved into a nationwide movement challenging Aleksandar Vučić’s populist authoritarianism, institutional capture, and entrenched patronage networks. Through decentralized organization, civil disobedience, and unprecedented civic mobilization, students transformed public indignation into electoral power, securing a parliamentary majority in October 2026 and ending fourteen years of SNS dominance. Yet profound questions remain about democratic institutionalization and the durability of this transformation.
In an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Filip Balunović, Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and Assistant Professor at Singidunum University’s Faculty of Media and Communications, examines the democratic significance of Serbia’s student-led political transformation. Moving beyond conventional interpretations of electoral alternation, Dr. Balunović argues that the movement represents a more fundamental challenge to personalized authoritarianism and established political representation. As he observes, “This is not merely a regime change,” emphasizing that the movement’s unprecedented success demonstrates that “the idea of a new society has won.”
Central to this transformation, Dr. Balunović explains, was the movement’s capacity to turn collective mourning into political agency. Following the Novi Sad tragedy, students transformed grief into nationwide resistance through nonviolent mobilization, university occupations, grassroots engagement, and direct democratic decision-making. Their leaderless organization challenged conventional assumptions about political leadership, demonstrating what he describes as “an enviable level of democratic maturity.”
The movement also reconfigured the boundaries of political contestation. According to Dr. Balunović, “right-wing populism was challenged through a left-wing populist strategy,” as students mobilized citizens across ideological, ethnic, and religious divisions. Unlike established opposition parties, they reached neglected communities and built political trust through participatory practices rather than charismatic leadership. Their achievement, he suggests, extended beyond electoral victory: “The students transformed grief into joy,” cultivating a collective imagination of a different democratic future.
Nevertheless, the transition from mobilization to governance presents formidable challenges. Entrenched oligarchic networks, institutional capture, and the potential reproduction of personalized leadership threaten the durability of democratic change. Dr. Balunović emphasizes that the movement’s direct democratic practices must continue to shape political accountability beyond the elections.
In sum, Serbia’s experience raises broader questions about democratic renewal and anti-authoritarian resistance. While cautioning that “one size doesn’t fit all contexts,” Dr. Balunović suggests that the Serbian experiment could inspire societies confronting similar challenges. Its significance lies not only in defeating an entrenched ruling party but also in demonstrating that democratic alternatives can emerge through collective political practice, civic solidarity, and the willingness to imagine a different society.
Here is our interview with Dr. Filip Balunović, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Serbian Students’ Electoral Victory Goes Beyond Regime Change
Students and citizens protest against corruption and the Serbian government in Novi Sad, Serbia, on February 1, 2025. Photo: Srdjan Randjelovic / Dreamstime.
Dr. Balunović, welcome! In your recent New York Times essay, you framed Serbia’s student movement as a David-and-Goliath confrontation with Aleksandar Vučić’s entrenched political machine. Following the Students’ List’s parliamentary victory on October 25, how do you interpret this outcome? Does it represent a decisive rupture with populist authoritarianism or primarily an electoral defeat for the SNS?
Dr. Filip Balunović: Hopefully, it will be a long-lasting change. When we talk about challenging and contesting authoritarian leaders, we usually focus simply on regime change before elections. However, this is not merely a regime change. What we have witnessed in Serbia and the wider region of Yugoslavia, but also at the European level, is something historic in so many respects. No one expected such an easy victory. The Students’ List actually won an absolute majority in the Serbian Parliament.
Many commentators have noted that this is probably the first time a social movement that decided to run against an authoritarian leader has defeated not only that leader and the corrupt ruling elite but also the opposition. None of the opposition lists actually managed to enter Parliament. The only two lists that succeeded were the so-called Students’ List and the list of the former president, Vučić.
An interesting part of the story is also the way in which they secured this victory. As you mentioned in your introduction, the struggle has lasted for two years. The student movement started as a social actor. Initially, the students mobilized in grief following the deadly collapse at the railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city. But slowly, step by step, they somehow managed to translate this grief into a political force that ultimately defeated the authoritarian ruler. They applied direct democratic methods in their decision-making process and remained committed to them until the very end.
As you probably know, everyone was talking about this leaderless movement. Unlike many other cases, for instance, in Hungary or other countries where a recognizable figure emerged before the wider public, in this case, we had only a student movement and a wave of contestation composed not only of students but also of broader citizens’ initiatives. We can say, therefore, that the idea of a new society has won.
The path that an idea must follow before becoming reality is, of course, a long one. Now that the system has collapsed, we can see that, in the meantime, there have been some arrests and major turbulence in both the political system and society. We can now say that this first, necessary, and inevitable step has been taken. But whether Serbian society is ready to become a true avant-garde in the democratic world, in my view, remains to be seen in the coming months and even years.
Direct Democracy Rebuilt Trust Where Opposition Parties Failed
The Students’ List reportedly secured approximately 53% of the vote and a parliamentary majority, ending fourteen years of SNS dominance. What explains the movement’s ability to achieve what established opposition parties repeatedly failed to accomplish? Was this fundamentally an electoral realignment, a crisis of regime legitimacy, or the culmination of long-term counter-hegemonic mobilization?
Dr. Filip Balunović: All the factors you just mentioned played a role, probably in combination. It’s very difficult, even for me as a researcher of social movements, to say, “Okay, this was the decisive factor, and the others simply followed.”But I would say that 14 years of rule using such techniques was simply too much. The techniques of rule were really cruel—cruel towards the political community, the public, and free opinion. What we saw was an attempt to reinvent the way we think about politics itself.
What the opposition parties failed to understand in the past was that the only way to contest a regime with such strong and powerful propaganda machinery was to really get down to the people, talk to them, and convince them that change was possible. Most people—and this is something the former president championed—had become convinced that more or less all politicians were the same. There was also widespread disappointment with opposition politicians, and a lack of trust in political parties had become omnipresent among the Serbian public over the past decade and a half.
Looking back at this approach to politics, the students had a campaign called “A Student in Every Village.” They reached even the smallest towns and villages in the country, something no opposition actor had ever done. In retrospect, you can see that this was the only way.
If we think in terms of populism, which I assume is what interests you most, I would say that right-wing populism was challenged through a left-wing populist strategy. The ruling SNS was a catch-all interest group. I wouldn’t even call it a party because it was really an interest group in which various actors, individuals, and groups found it in their interest to participate in the regime.
On the other side, the students realized that they needed the widest possible support to overthrow such a regime. You couldn’t achieve this in conventional ideological or political terms. You couldn’t do it through purely left-wing or purely right-wing politics, let alone through classical liberal means.
Even though the demands of the student movement initially, and later of the Students’ List as a political actor, were liberal—they were talking about the rule of law and institutions doing their jobs properly—what was a game changer was the process itself: the direct democratic process. People participated not only in campaigning and, ultimately, voting, but there were also genuine attempts to ask people what they thought and to make sense of the political process before the election.
This is why mobilization was so widespread, both within the country and in the diaspora. Only three years ago, around 30,000 people in the diaspora had registered to vote. This time, the number was above 100,000. The diaspora also played a very important role in motivating people, producing videos in which they said, “Okay, if I travel 1,000 kilometers to vote, why wouldn’t you vote in Serbia if your polling station is just a couple of meters away from your home?”
There was also this populist strategy. If we refer to Laclau and Mouffe’s understanding of populism as a left-wing strategy, which was later applied by the Indignados and Podemos in Spain and Mediterranean Europe, there was this division framed, as I remember it in Spain, as pueblo versus casta—the people against the casta, or the elite. In the Serbian case, it was Serbia versus mafia.
This strategy actually worked. It unified people from across the ideological spectrum. You could find liberals, far-leftists, even extreme right-wingers, and even some people who used to be close to the former president, Vučić. But the line running through this political space and political endeavor was the line dividing society, the state, fair electoral conditions, and the proper way in which a political community should be governed, on the one hand, from the mafia and the corrupt regime, on the other.
Students Overcame Divisions That Theory Has Struggled to Resolve
Students and citizens protest against government corruption in Zrenjanin, Serbia, on January 25, 2026, demanding justice and accountability for the 16 victims of the tragic railway station canopy collapse in Novi Sad. Photo: Dreamstime.
Vučić’s political system combined personalized leadership, electoral competition, patronage networks, media influence, and institutional capture. How would you conceptualize this regime theoretically—as competitive authoritarianism, populist autocracy, or another form of hybrid rule? Which mechanisms proved most vulnerable to sustained civic resistance?
Dr. Filip Balunović: This regime can be described in different terms, and, of course, it contains elements of each of the categories you just mentioned. For years, European scholars have talked about so-called façade democracy, with authoritarian and autocratic characteristics. What we sometimes risk when discussing autocracy—and this was definitely an autocracy, with one dominant figure and everyone else far below him—is underestimating the power of the oligarchy behind the autocratic ruler. So, these elements need to be considered together. Of course, there is right-wing populism, although I’m hesitant to use the term. Populism as a concept was theoretically developed by left-wing authors, and I see it as a political strategy with clear ways of creating divisions and political cleavages.
The Serbian case illustrates what Umberto Eco discusses in relation to eternal fascism: the simplification of syntax and the creation of clear-cut divisions. There is also the Schmittian understanding of politics as a matter of friends and enemies. This is something Vučić mastered throughout his political career, not just over the past 14 years. Whenever he finds himself in trouble, he starts talking about enemies, both domestic and foreign. This was also the case before these elections.
He accused students of being instruments of foreign secret services. Even on election night, without being asked who had won the elections, he raised the question himself: “So, who won the elections in Serbia? The American Deep State.” He was referring to civil society in the United States, the same civil society that, in his words, is working against Trump. This was the framework within which he operated. But it doesn’t come as a surprise. In the 1990s, Vučić was very active in spreading war propaganda within the Milošević regime, and this is something that never stopped.
One of the students’ greatest achievements at the social level—and hopefully this will also translate into the political level—was overcoming the ethnic, national, and religious divisions that are so prevalent and dominant in the Balkans, particularly in the post-Yugoslav region. They did this by integrating, for instance, the Sandžak region, which is predominantly populated by Muslims who, since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, have never felt fully integrated into Serbian society, let alone the Serbian political community.
Students managed to cut across all these divisions. Symbolically—and we know how important symbolism is in political life—they established connections and rebuilt trust between students from other parts of Serbia and those from the Sandžak region. This really resonated with many people.
Interestingly, this did not follow the established theoretical and conceptual approaches to dealing with the past, including everything we have discussed since the 1990s: transitional justice, overcoming ethnic and national divisions, and so on. They didn’t talk much about these issues. They simply did it.
In a way, the practice of the student movement managed to resolve something that theory has struggled to resolve for decades in the Balkans.
Silence Functioned as an Absolute Equalizer
The movement transformed the Novi Sad tragedy into nationwide resistance through university occupations, commemorative silence, road blockades, long-distance marches, and civil disobedience. Which protest tactics were most consequential in undermining Vučić’s political legitimacy, and how did their effectiveness evolve over nearly two years?
Dr. Filip Balunović: From an academic perspective, there have been several waves of contestation and mobilization in Serbia over the past two decades. The student movement belongs to a wave of contestation rooted in grief. In 2023, there were two major mass shootings in Belgrade and its suburbs, including a school shooting in the very heart of Belgrade, when a 13-year-old boy killed his fellow pupils and a security guard at a primary school. Another mass shooting took place the following day in villages near Belgrade.
That was the first time citizens came out, took to the streets, and adopted the tactic of silence. Silence functioned as an absolute equalizer. When you stand together in grief and silence, you feel a sense of unity despite the ideological differences among the people standing in the street. Silence was also one of the main repertoires of action following the collapse of the railway station in Novi Sad. But the difficult part came when those who had remained silent were expected to speak out, and all the differences among them had to be put on the table.
Nonviolent Resistance Became a Cathartic Moment for Serbian Democracy
This will be studied in the literature on social movements for decades to come: how to translate grief into something politically potent. This is a difficult endeavor and a very sensitive issue. Of course, the government made numerous accusations of misusing and politicizing the tragedy. You really need patience, and you need to remain calm. You need very good organization, as well as organizational development, to overcome these challenges. This is what the students managed to achieve by occupying their universities, using sit-ins and occupation tactics as repertoires of action.
The direct democratic decision-making process also functioned as a unifier. Regardless of what students—whether left-wing, right-wing, or liberal—thought about particular political issues, they were united, first, in grief and, second, in accepting the decision-making bodies they had established. This played a crucial role.
I should also mention an earlier wave of contestation in Serbia: the ecological mobilizations against the Rio Tinto project and lithium mining in western Serbia. This mobilization also cut across ideological differences. There was almost absolute unanimity among Serbian citizens in opposing the ecological threats associated with lithium mining, and the government eventually gave up under enormous pressure. So, there were earlier steps that brought us to the point where this kind of trans-ideological mobilization, or populist mobilization in left-wing terms, became possible.
The diffusion of direct democratic decision-making processes from universities to other parts of society also played a crucial role. At some point, the students—who were tired all the time—felt that they needed support. This is why they invited citizens to organize the so-called zborovi, or citizens’ assemblies, at the neighborhood level. These zborovi continued functioning until the very end, and they still function today.
This is indeed a cathartic moment for Serbian democracy. Another important factor, especially in light of what we are now witnessing in France, Albania, other parts of Europe, and elsewhere in the world, is that this was a purely nonviolent movement. There were virtually no incidents—around 90% of those that did occur, including clashes with the police, were either orchestrated by the state or were isolated incidents that took place here and there.
It is really a miracle that such a regime was defeated without a single victim, apart from, unfortunately, the 16 people who died in the collapse of the railway station in Novi Sad. This is really something spectacular, if you ask me.
Leaderless Movement Challenges the Iron Law of Oligarchy
President of the Peoples Republic of China Xi Jinping on an official visit to the Republic of Serbia, at the invitation of President of Republic of Serbia, Belgrade on June 19, 2016. Photo: Golden Brown.
In your New York Times essay, you describe the student-led candidate selection process as an extraordinary experiment in direct democracy. How did decentralized plenums and collective leadership challenge Serbia’s personalized political culture? Can these participatory practices survive the transition from protest mobilization to parliamentary government?
Dr. Filip Balunović: I wish I had a clear answer to that question: how they survived and managed to remain committed to this leaderless logic. Just the other day, I listened to one of the student activists talking about this, and they continue to insist: “We don’t need new leaders.” In the political world, we are conditioned to think that politics without leadership is impossible. But it’s really a miracle that, after two years of the student movement, not a single faction has broken away, even among those who disagreed with some of the decisions made by the plenums. I spoke to many students who said, “We disagreed with a good number of decisions, but we felt good because we knew that the process behind these decisions was the right one.”
They really demonstrated an enviable level of democratic maturity. Vučić attacked them for being inexperienced, claiming that they didn’t know how to run the state. But they demonstrated something else: they were responding—I don’t know whether consciously—to the unfulfilled promises of representative democracy. It was similar to the European revolutions of 1848, which responded to the unfulfilled promises of the French Revolution: “You promised us universal voting rights. You promised us that we would all be able to vote, and you failed.”
In a sense, there is also this alienation of the political elite after every election. Representative democracy makes sense, especially in larger political communities, but it also has many shortcomings. Serbia is not a big state, obviously. The direct democratic method worked, and, importantly, people started believing in it. They became convinced that this was the right way, and I would even dare to say that it was the only way to regain trust and make a political actor, in this case the Students’ List, trustworthy.
This is also why electoral turnout was so high. It was around 70%, something that had never happened before. There was a comparable level on October 5, when Milošević was overthrown, but such high turnout is really rare, even at the global level.
Even now, we are speaking at a moment when we still don’t have names for the ministerial positions. We still don’t know who will become prime minister or who the presidential candidate will be, because the presidential election should, if I’m not mistaken, be called by the end of this month and held by the end of the year. Of course, the public is now wondering about names, but this shift has already taken place. Instead of the 250 candidates on the Students’ List, we could easily have had another 250 names, and I’m certain the outcome would have been the same. This is a true political novelty.
Of course, the inevitable next step is that we will have ministers, a prime minister, and people responsible for different areas. Naturally, the public will discuss these individuals. But these people should remain aware that it’s not about them. There is always a risk here—the iron law of oligarchy. It happens in every organization, let alone a political organization.
But this time, the process behind it is different. It’s not merely an appeal or a slogan: “It’s not about me, it’s about you. You, the people, brought me to this.” No, this is no longer an empty phrase. It’s really the process and the underlying logic that have a great chance of preventing future state officials from behaving as if they’re alone in the world. The student movement will remain and keep an eye on what they do. This time, it will not only be the student movement but the entire public.
The Students’ Experiment Comes Closest to the Ideal of Democracy
In your study “Social Movements as Producers and Receivers of Knowledge,” you conceptualize movements as producers of political knowledge rather than merely vehicles for existing ideas. What new democratic knowledge, organizational practices, and political imaginaries has Serbia’s student movement generated, and how might these reshape representative democracy?
Dr. Filip Balunović: I touched on this earlier, but perhaps I could elaborate. I studied this relationship in my PhD and later in my book, Revival of the Left in the Balkans. I have always been interested in the interaction between ideas and social and political practice, or activism. I always try to identify which theories and concepts resonate with particular social or political movements. But then, of course, there is the Gramscian concept of organic intellectuals. It’s not only about activists or political practitioners taking existing concepts and theoretical insights and applying them to reality. It’s also about creating new ideas and theories through practice itself.
In this specific case, most of the concepts and findings we have come from practice itself. I’m not entirely happy with this because, as a researcher, I believe—perhaps naively—that people tend to read, try to conceptualize reality, engage in some activity, and then attempt to adapt or find a middle ground between theory and practice.
This time, I’m afraid, things were different. Of course, the students were aware of earlier direct democratic practices, both in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. But this political experiment—and this is what I wrote about in my New York Times piece—in which plenums, as direct democratic decision-making bodies, select future MPs, is unprecedented.
The process was really demanding. It lasted over a year. Every faculty suggested two or three names, followed by discussions. Each faculty or university had veto power. Participants presented their arguments about why a particular candidate should not be on the list, followed by further discussion. If no consensus emerged, they voted.
For instance, two prominent figures, both professors, were seen as frontrunners for the Students’ List. One was the rector of the University of Belgrade, and the other was a conservative professor, also from the University of Belgrade. Vučić’s regime focused on these two names because they didn’t know whom else to attack. But what eventually happened was that neither of them appeared on the list.
The point is that you never know—no one actually knows, including the students themselves—what the outcome of the process will be. The outcome is uncertain and does not depend on existing power relations. Of course, if you observe the plenum as an arena, there are inevitably power relations, but these are relatively minor power relations among students.
We want to believe that the strength of the argument wins. We all know that, even in direct democratic processes, this is not always the case. But this is the closest we can get to the ideal of democracy at this moment.
If I were you, the international public, I would really grab some popcorn and watch what happens next. I have no doubt that the student movement and the Students’ List will surprise us again. There are already some names circulating in public: “Okay, this person will be prime minister, this person will be minister of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, etc.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if our guesses turned out to be completely wrong again.
Authenticity and Honesty Became the Students’ Defining Message
Your research on opposition activism and the attention economy examines how movements compete with powerful political organizations for public visibility. How did students overcome Serbia’s pro-government media environment through humor, digital communication, grassroots networks, and direct engagement with citizens? Did their rejection of charismatic leadership become a strategic advantage?
Dr. Filip Balunović: Yes, absolutely. It became a strategic advantage, as we have already discussed. But perhaps, in light of your question, we should focus more specifically on campaigning. Some years ago, I was interested in celebrity activism and how, even in leaderless movements, there is a tendency to bring in celebrities to increase visibility and draw attention to the movement. The student movement had the support of many celebrities, some of whom spoke at protests and rallies, but the students did not rely on them.
The whole movement functioned as something we imagined to be more powerful than it actually was. The students convinced us that their strength was ten times greater than it really was. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The students initially had no power whatsoever. Serbia was a state in which the ruling party governed every single municipality in the country, comparable perhaps only to Belarus. I don’t think we can find a similar example of one party controlling every village in a country, let alone every major city.
What the students achieved was an interesting transformation, particularly when we look at the emotional and affective dimension of the movement. It was a transformation of grief into joy. The movement began with silence and collective grieving, which represented a way of looking into the past. That dimension is still present. On November 1, after the elections, we marked two years since the collapse of the railway station in Novi Sad. Once again, 60,000 people gathered in Novi Sad, and I was there. So that sense of grief remains.
But what the students added was a sense of joy about the possibility of a different future. When you look at people’s reactions on election day and election night, they were genuinely crying. People could hardly believe what had happened. The atmosphere in Belgrade for days after the election was like New Year’s Eve lasting for seven days. Everyone was congratulating one another and celebrating. Of course, this was mainly because of the election results, but the entire atmosphere was remarkable.
The students helped create this atmosphere by making fun of the autocrat. Students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, who had been particularly targeted by the government, produced one-minute videos almost daily, making fun of the autocrat for being alone and having no one who liked him. There was some truth to this because Vučić’s campaign revolved almost entirely around himself and perhaps a few other people.
By contrast, the students’ campaign showed thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people standing behind them. They were innovative and cheerful, but also very serious in certain respects. They combined these elements in a way that ultimately produced the central tone of their message: authenticity and honesty. And that was completely opposite to what Vučić did.
Serbia’s Student Uprising Was No Color Revolution
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić attend a ceremony featuring the national anthems of Russia and Serbia during Putin’s official visit to Belgrade, Serbia, on January 17, 2019. Photo: Ognjen Stevanovic / Dreamstime.
Vučić repeatedly characterized student protests as externally orchestrated destabilization, while protesters emphasized corruption, accountability, and constitutional responsibility. How did competing constructions of “the people,” national sovereignty, and political legitimacy shape this confrontation? Why did the government’s populist counternarratives struggle to contain the movement?
Dr. Filip Balunović: It’s very simple. If there ever was an example of a non-color revolution, this was it. We know that various actors and governments often interfere, engage in lobbying, and try to push one side or another. But in this case, the student movement—and I have written about this elsewhere—was alone in the world until the very end.
The only people standing behind the students were Serbian citizens and perhaps some others who expressed sympathy for their cause. Almost all Western governments, including the European Union, showed no serious signs of support for the student movement for nearly two years.
There were, of course, individual members of the European Parliament who expressed support, and the movement was discussed in the European Parliament. Some politicians here and there also took an interest. But if we look at where power actually resides—Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, the capitals of powerful states and major administrative centers—there was no support.
I know this firsthand. They were hesitant to support the students because they didn’t know what to expect. I remember someone once telling me that Brussels didn’t know whom to call. This reminded me of the famous question attributed to Henry Kissinger: “If I call China, I know the phone number in Beijing. If I call the Soviet Union, I know the phone number in Moscow. But whom should I call when I want to speak to the European Union?” There was a similar dynamic of hesitation in this case.
Meanwhile, Vučić had extraordinarily good relations with President Macron and Chancellor Scholz, who had visited Serbia and was interested in lithium. At the same time, Vučić maintained good relations with Putin, who endorsed him before the elections, as well as with Beijing and the Trump administration. Not to mention, of course, one of his most important allies: Israel. After losing the election, Vučić emphasized Serbia’s special relationship with Israel, particularly regarding the supply of arms to Israel for the genocide, both before and, especially, after the genocide began.
So, the students were indeed left alone, and they made it.
The Post-Vučić Transition Has Already Begun
The electoral victory does not automatically dismantle the institutional networks, patronage relationships, or security structures associated with SNS rule. What immediate reforms are essential to prevent authoritarian continuity beneath democratic alternation? How can the new majority pursue accountability without reproducing selective prosecution or partisan institutional capture?
Dr. Filip Balunović: This is a very difficult question, even for political practitioners, let alone for those of us who mostly engage in theory and empirical research. But the process has already started, even though the new institutions are not yet in place. The parliamentary majority has not yet been constituted, and the government has not yet been elected. In practice, Vučić’s people remain in charge of all the institutions.
Despite this, over the past 10 days, we have witnessed almost daily arrests of high-ranking police officials who now face charges related to violence against students and other criminal acts. The owner of Alta Bank has also been arrested. Only later did we learn—some people knew this before, but I must admit I hadn’t paid much attention to this bank—that virtually all state business transactions went through this one bank. If you pay for electricity, the payment goes through that bank. If you buy a ticket with Air Serbia, it goes through the same bank. The police recently entered the bank and discovered that its owner was allegedly about to physically withdraw nearly 400 million euros. We are still wondering how that could even be possible. He is now in custody and will stand trial.
What I want to say is that, even while Vučić’s people remain in charge, some individuals are already trying to buy themselves legitimacy in the post-Vučić era. It was particularly telling to see Serbian national television, which had been one of the main propaganda channels for a decade and a half, issue a public apology. They openly acknowledged that they were sorry for having misinformed the Serbian public in the past. It’s really interesting to observe what is already happening, even before the new government has taken office.
Serbia’s Democratic Experiment Could Inspire Other Societies
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić attend a welcoming ceremony in Belgrade, Serbia, on October 10, 2017. Photo: Dreamstime.
Finally, your New York Times essay concludes that the students have demonstrated the possibility of another Serbia and another democracy. Looking beyond their electoral victory, what would constitute genuine democratic transformation rather than a change of governing elites? Could Serbia’s experiment in participatory, anti-authoritarian politics offer a transferable model for confronting populist autocracies elsewhere in Europe and beyond?
Dr. Filip Balunović: This is always a good question, but a tricky one at the same time. As we know, one size doesn’t fit all contexts. What is also specific to Serbia is the absence of powerful actors such as trade unions. For instance, when you look at what’s happening in Italy, France, or the UK, you see powerful trade unions capable of mobilizing huge crowds. Serbia didn’t have such actors, which is typical of the post-socialist climate. Trade unions are either discredited or completely co-opted by those in power. So, as to whether this experience is transferable to other contexts, I would say that it could serve, at least partially, as an inspiration.
I keep referring to this as an experiment because voting for the Students’ List was indeed a vote for uncertainty. We still don’t know exactly what to expect. Sometimes, as in life, one should choose to change even when you’re not 100% sure what’s behind the door. But if you don’t feel comfortable on this side of the door, you should open it and try something else.
The main message is that not only we as individuals, but also constituencies and people in general, should dare to try. We should not believe that this is the best our political communities can achieve. Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s also about the new generations, who have zero tolerance and a different attitude towards authority. Maybe they will bring the necessary change not only to Serbia but to other places as well.
Following the October 25, 2026 electoral defeat of Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling coalition, Serbia offers significant lessons for citizens confronting competitive authoritarianism. In an interview with the ECPS, Associate Professor Jelena Lončar of the University of Belgrade examines how student-led protests evolved into nationwide democratic mobilization through nonviolent resistance, cross-class solidarity, decentralized organization, and grassroots election monitoring. She argues that positive messaging, sustained civic engagement, and direct contact with citizens helped overcome authoritarian strategies of protest containment. Yet she cautions that Serbia’s experience cannot simply be replicated elsewhere, given differences in repression and institutional conditions. Ultimately, democratic consolidation requires independent institutions, political pluralism, and continued public scrutiny beyond electoral victory.
Serbia has entered a potentially transformative political moment. What began as student-led protests following the November 2024 Novi Sad railway-station tragedy evolved into a nationwide movement against corruption, institutional capture, and authoritarian governance, culminating in the October 25, 2026 electoral defeat of Aleksandar Vučić’s autocratic ruling coalition. Yet translating electoral victory into democratic consolidation remains a formidable challenge.
In an in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Associate Professor Jelena Lončar of the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade examines how sustained civic mobilization, nonviolent resistance, and grassroots electoral oversight challenged entrenched authoritarian power—and what citizens confronting similar regimes elsewhere might learn from Serbia’s experience. As she emphasizes, “Citizens in other competitive authoritarian regimes could learn a great deal from the student movement.” The most transferable lessons, she argues, include “positive messaging, clear demands, sustained activity across the country, mobilization across social groups, and a commitment to nonviolence.”
For Assoc. Prof. Lončar, Serbia’s experience underscores the democratic potential of political participation beyond established parties and electoral institutions. Neighborhood assemblies, nationwide marches, student blockades, and citizen-led election monitoring helped transform political disillusionment into collective agency. As she observes, “The student movement succeeded in waking citizens up and encouraging them to take responsibility for their communities.”Crucially, these practices challenged not only the ruling coalition but also the political passivity on which authoritarian resilience often depends.
Drawing on her scholarship on competitive authoritarianism, political representation, and the performative dimensions of power, Assoc. Prof. Lončar highlights the significance of solidarity networks and sustained mobilization. “This combination of sustained mobilization and extensive election monitoring helped turn public dissatisfaction into an electoral challenge,” she explains. Yet she cautions against treating Serbia as a universally transferable model: more closed autocracies present different institutional constraints, opportunities for electoral competition, and levels of repression.
The interview also explores the unfinished challenges of democratic transition, including institutional capture, minority representation, gender equality, nationalism, and Serbia’s geopolitical orientation. Assoc. Prof. Lončar warns that replacing incumbents cannot automatically dismantle clientelistic networks or guarantee institutional accountability. As she stresses, “Continued public scrutiny will therefore be essential.”
Serbia’s experience raises a broader comparative question: Can movements that successfully mobilize against authoritarianism translate their moral authority into durable democratic institutions without reproducing the concentration of power they opposed? Assoc. Prof. Lončar’s analysis suggests that the decisive test lies not simply in electoral victory but in institutional pluralism, sustained civic engagement, and the peaceful transfer of power.
Here is our interview with Associate Professor Jelena Lončar, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Citizens’ Renewed Political Engagement Is Essential to Serbia’s Democratic Transition
Students and citizens protest against government corruption in Zrenjanin, Serbia, on January 25, 2026, demanding justice and accountability for the 16 victims of the tragic railway station canopy collapse in Novi Sad. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Lončar, thank you for joining us. Let me begin with Serbia’s historic electoral breakthrough and the challenges of democratic transition. On October 25, the student-backed list secured 141 parliamentary seats, ending 14 years of dominance by Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Yet networks established under Vučić remain deeply embedded in the judiciary, security services, public administration, and media. What are the principal obstacles to translating this electoral victory into genuine democratic transition and transformation? To what extent could institutional capture survive the defeat of the political forces responsible for sustaining it?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: I’d like to start with what has already been achieved before returning to the obstacles. I’d say that citizens who had become very passive and disillusioned with politics have become politically active again. We saw an extraordinary electoral turnout, but a great deal had already happened before election day.
We’ve seen the formation of neighborhood assemblies, a form of democratic innovation in which citizens participate in discussions of local political issues. They met in squares and parks in different neighborhoods to discuss local issues and how to support the student movement. It’s a form of direct democracy.
We’ve also seen hundreds of thousands of citizens supporting students during their protests and marches, alongside widespread grassroots mobilization during the electoral campaign. Citizens spoke to their colleagues and neighbors about the importance of voting, volunteered to monitor elections, and became very active on social media. This is the first time we’ve seen such huge grassroots mobilization, at least in Serbia.
Immediately after the elections, we even saw citizens painting over graffiti and cleaning up public spaces, demonstrating that they care for the public good and symbolically sending a message that they would remain active even after the student-backed list won the elections.
The student movement succeeded in waking citizens up and encouraging them to take responsibility for their communities. This is a prerequisite for democracy. My hope is that they will remain active and scrutinize the work of the new government and other public institutions. Their continued engagement could help prevent another concentration of power.
Grassroots Mobilization Can Help Prevent Another Concentration of Power
Now, as for the obstacles you asked me about, criminal networks retain considerable influence and control important flows of money. We do not yet know what will happen to these networks. The regime treated the state budget as its own private money, and there are indications that substantial sums have left the country in recent days. The incoming government will face serious economic challenges alongside the task of institutional reform.
People loyal to the outgoing regime also remain in the judiciary, police, and security services. Reforming these institutions will take time. The Progressive Party still has loyal media outlets, and watching them in recent days, you would hardly know that anything had changed in the country. They gave the impression that Vučić was about to return to power.
Then there’s also the question of the student-backed list itself. It is not a political party with an established structure or a history of working together. Many of the candidates have only recently met, have never worked together before, and come from different ideological backgrounds. They have no experience in politics. It’s their first time. Maintaining cooperation and unity within the parliamentary group of 140 MPs, who have never worked together, as well as unity with the student movement, which will not be present in the institutions, will be important if they want to carry out substantial reforms.
As I said, so many of these candidates entering public office have very limited experience with parliamentary and administrative procedures. They will need time to learn, develop these relationships, and turn electoral promises into decisions that citizens expect.
The student movement has already demonstrated considerable organizational capacity. But governing and being present in the institutions will bring further responsibilities, including decisions about limited resources, divisive issues, and competing demands. My first hope is that the institutions will perform their constitutional roles, to start with, and then regain citizens’ trust.
Serbia does have professionals with knowledge and experience. They were very much constrained by political control, and I hope that the new government will quickly create conditions in which expertise and institutional independence become essential parts of the transition.
Justice Must Be Based on Evidence, Not Political Retaliation
In the days following Vučić’s defeat, Serbia has witnessed arrests, resignations, renewed corruption investigations, and challenges to politically appointed officials. How can the incoming leadership dismantle patronage networks and restore institutional accountability without reproducing the politicization of state institutions? Where should the boundary lie between transitional justice and political retaliation?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Yes, that is one of the very important questions we face nowadays, even though the student-backed list has not yet taken power. So many crimes and corruption cases have gone uninvestigated for more than a decade, and citizens in Serbia are hungry for justice. Many people also lost their jobs, faced intimidation, and experienced violence because they refused to obey or dared to resist the regime. Their frustration is entirely understandable.
But certainly, this frustration should not become a justification for individuals to draw up lists of those they believe deserve punishment, as we’ve seen, or to treat arrests as achievements in themselves. We need an independent judiciary that investigates cases on the basis of evidence and respects due process.
Losing a public position does not establish criminal guilt, but holding public office should not provide protection from investigations either. Many of the leaders of the previous regime will now be MPs, members of Parliament, but they should still face investigations if they were involved in any illegal activities.
The credibility of the transition will depend on whether citizens perceive the judiciary as actually doing its job. The student movement has demonstrated patience, unlike the citizens. But again, students will not be the ones taking public positions, and we still do not know who those people in the government will be. So many things are still unknown to us.
Citizen Monitoring Was Crucial to Protecting the Electoral Process
Students collect signatures in support of calls for early parliamentary elections in Valjevo, Serbia, on December 28, 2025. Photo: Adam Radosavljevic / Dreamstime.
A firsthand account of the elections describes approximately 50,000 citizens participating in monitoring across some 8,300 polling locations. Although these figures require independent verification, they suggest an extraordinary effort to protect electoral integrity. Does this indicate that democratic change in competitive authoritarian regimes depends not only on winning votes but also on citizens temporarily assuming oversight functions that captured institutions fail to perform?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Absolutely. If there’s one thing we can learn from the Serbian experience, that’s it. Competitive authoritarian regimes hold elections regularly, but those elections are neither free nor fair. Election observation missions have documented numerous irregularities in previous Serbian elections.
I remember the debate last year about whether students should demand elections at all. Many argued that there was little point under the existing conditions, given vote buying, the use of public office and public money during campaigns, multiple voting, pressure on public sector employees, voter intimidation, the use of unofficial copies of electoral registers to track voters on election day and pressure them to vote, and the photographing of ballot papers to prove how someone had voted.
The students’ response was that they could not resolve all these problems until they took power. The only way to do so under the existing conditions was through elections. However, they could do everything possible to prevent serious irregularities on election day. This made monitoring the voting and counting process extremely important. In previous elections, many polling stations had been monitored only by representatives of the ruling party because the opposition lacked the personnel to cover every location. Manipulation was easier in those places.
The scale of citizen involvement helped address this gap. Of course, election monitoring cannot remove every inequality created during a campaign, but it can certainly make manipulation more difficult and help protect the votes that have been cast. In the longer term, oversight responsibilities must be performed by institutions that citizens can trust. But in the recent elections, citizen involvement, alongside a very high turnout, was the most important factor.
The Students Reached Communities That Opposition Parties Could Not
The student-backed list appears to have displaced Serbia’s established opposition as well as defeated Vučić’s ruling coalition. How do you explain the movement’s ability to mobilize constituencies that conventional opposition parties could not reach? Does this represent a renewal of democratic representation, or could its rejection of established political elites generate a different form of anti-establishment populism?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: The regime’s dominance relied heavily on constantly generating fear of enemies, including the opposition. Years of such messaging contributed to deep distrust of opposition parties. A similar strategy was used against civil society. This strongly affected citizens’ trust in the opposition, their perceptions of it, and their willingness to vote for opposition parties.
Some responsibility also lies with the opposition parties themselves. They were fragmented and often more focused on disputes with one another than on challenging the regime. They also lacked sustained work on the ground and, at times, the courage to take political risks. I would therefore see this result as a renewal of democratic representation rather than a rejection of political parties as such.
Given the lack of control over the media, it was essential to reach citizens directly and convince them that the aim was to improve the country rather than destabilize it, as they constantly heard in the media. The students did this through their marches and cycling journeys, conveying strong emotional messages of patriotism, hope, and love. They reached communities that established opposition parties had struggled to engage.
Now the task is to strengthen institutions and internal democracy within political parties. Parties will probably become more prominent again. The students have not established a long-term structure, and their goal is not to compete in future elections. So we will probably see political parties competing in the next elections, but we can also expect new political parties to emerge. Democracy needs organizations through which different interests can be expressed and contested. Distrust of the existing parties should encourage their renewal rather than become a reason to reject political pluralism.
The Students Turned Demands for Justice into Broad Social Solidarity
Students and citizens participate in the “Your Hands Are Bloody” protest, blocking an intersection near Avala in Zrenjanin, Vojvodina, Serbia, on January 25, 2025. Photo: Ivan Pancic / Dreamstime.
The Novi Sad railway-station disaster transformed demands for accountability into a nationwide movement against corruption and institutional capture. How did students successfully connect a specific tragedy to broader grievances while maintaining support across ideological and social divisions? What made this mobilization different from earlier protest waves that Vučić’s government successfully contained?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Positive messaging was important, as was focusing on issues that connected citizens across ideological divides. The students presented the tragedy as a question of responsibility, justice, and the rule of law that concerned everyone. Citizens did not have to agree on every political issue to demand that institutions establish what had happened and hold those responsible to account.
Over the past two years, moral claims have been central to the movement. The students presented themselves as courageous, socially responsible actors defending the rule of law and justice without seeking personal gain. This messaging distinguished them from opposition parties, which were framed as interest-oriented. The students were seen as having no interest in taking power. They only wanted institutions to do their work and the Constitution to be respected.
Their willingness to make sacrifices further reinforced their moral authority and the sense that they were acting on behalf of all citizens and future generations. They justified their demands by emphasizing institutional accountability and consultation with experts. They argued that negotiating away their demands would violate their values and moral principles. Even when invited to discussions with the government or the president, they would say, “But there’s nothing to discuss. We cannot negotiate about the rule of law. What are we going to say? You should respect one law, but not the other? There’s nothing to negotiate about the principles, about the values, about the laws.”
This broad solidarity gave real legitimacy to their actions. Their sense of unity was reinforced by consistent public messaging and deliberate silence about internal disagreements. This did not mean that these differences had disappeared. Rather, the students kept their shared demands at the center of their public activity. Their sustained presence across the country, together with the relationships built during marches and local gatherings, helped turn that message into something citizens could experience directly. This was very different from what we’ve seen in past protests.
Silence Became a Persistent Act of Resistance to Power
In your 2025 study “Performance, Performativity, and Political Power,” you engage with Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault to understand how power is constituted and resistance performed. How might this framework explain the students’ use of silence, university blockades, decentralized plenums, and symbolic actions? Did these practices generate an alternative form of political power capable of challenging Vučić’s personalized authority?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Silence is very important here. Shortly after the tragedy, students began organizing 15-minute silent commemorations outside the faculties, one minute for each victim. After a 16th victim died from injuries, the commemoration was extended to 16 minutes. The ritual was very simple. Participants would gather at a designated location, someone would announce the beginning and end of the silence, and those present would simply stand silently, blocking the street before dispersing. This happened every day, with other citizens also joining the students.
Every day for almost two years, at 11:52, the exact time of the collapse, citizens gathered at intersections and in public squares across Serbia. Their presence interrupted everyday life and made it difficult to push the tragedy out of public view. Silence also became part of larger protests and demonstrations. On New Year’s Eve in December 2024, for instance, thousands gathered in a central Belgrade square for a silent commemoration instead of partying and listening to music. They chose to commemorate the victims together. The silence began at 11:52 p.m., just a few minutes before midnight. You could hear music and fireworks in the distance, and we all knew that this was the regime’s music.
Silent protests have been organized in many countries before, but what stands out in the Serbian case is the centrality and duration of this practice. It remained central throughout the last two years. While in other countries we’ve seen silence used as a brief commemorative moment, here it became the movement’s principal action, organizing political participation and public engagement.
The authorities’ response to the silent blockades was also particularly harsh. There were several reported incidents of cars being driven into protesters. During the protest on March 15 last year, the reported sonic weapon incident also disrupted the evening silent commemoration.
In my research, I have also been interested in what participants created through this repeated practice. Silence kept the victims and the circumstances of their deaths present in public life, resisting attempts to move on without accountability. In this way, they created a public memory, with citizens themselves deciding what would remain in that memory.
Silence also became a persistent act of resistance to power. Citizens continued to occupy public spaces and challenge authority despite intimidation and violence. Standing together, day after day, helped build relationships of solidarity, mutual recognition, and shared responsibility. Participants began to see themselves differently, as citizens with both the capacity and the responsibility to act. This is where I find the question of political subjectivation particularly useful. Through participation, citizens challenged the passive roles assigned to them and experienced their own political agency.
The plenums and university blockades added another dimension. Students made decisions together, debated responsibilities, and sustained the practical work of collective action. In Hannah Arendt’s terms, we can think of power emerging through acting together. This is what Arendt would describe as the power to do, the power to create.
The Foucauldian perspective draws attention to how resistance challenges established relations of power and changes the ways individuals understand themselves. These practices gave the movement an authority grounded in participation and solidarity. They created a basis from which to challenge personalized rule, but translating that authority into accountable institutions now remains a separate task.
Serbia Shows That Authoritarian Incumbents Are Not Impossible to Defeat
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić participates in an SNS political campaign at Hall Čair in Niš, Serbia, on March 30, 2022. Photo: Radule Perisic.
In your research with Dušan Spasojević, particularly “Facing Protests in Serbia: Patterns of New Competitive Authoritarianism” and your study of the 2023 elections, you examine how hybrid regimes adapt to protest through subtle institutional manipulation and selective repression. Why did these mechanisms ultimately fail against the student movement? Does Serbia’s experience challenge existing theories of competitive authoritarian resilience?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: In those two studies, we examined the electoral irregularities I mentioned earlier, as well as the strategies competitive authoritarian regimes use to contain protests. These include strategically ignoring protests rather than banning them, keeping the police out of sight, and constantly producing crises and narratives about vaguely defined international or regional enemies.
Such strategies can be effective when protests remain isolated and participants fail to develop solidarity networks and a collective identity. None of the previous protest waves managed to develop a social movement with a strong collective identity and solidarity, and many began without building on earlier waves.
The student movement made these strategies harder to sustain by maintaining its activities throughout the last two years and reaching citizens across the country. Most previous protests had taken place only in the capital. By contrast, students organized protests across the country and built support among different social groups, which was particularly important. This combination of sustained mobilization and extensive election monitoring helped turn public dissatisfaction into an electoral challenge.
I’d be cautious about treating this as a refutation of theories of authoritarian resilience. These theories help us understand the obstacles the movement faced, but they do not imply that authoritarian incumbents are impossible to defeat. Serbia’s experience shows that demands for justice can mobilize citizens and that protest movements can contribute to electoral change. This is very important to reiterate. Such change requires cooperation, commitment, and a credible prospect of change. However, whether this electoral defeat develops into a long-lasting transformation is something we still need to assess.
The Students’ Demands Offer a Basis for an Inclusive Democratic Project
Vučić’s political discourse frequently relied on claims of popular legitimacy and the portrayal of opponents as threats to national stability. Students, meanwhile, mobilized around demands for accountability and the rejection of corrupt elites. How should we distinguish their competing constructions of “the people”? Can a movement that challenges a populist authoritarian regime through anti-elite discourse avoid reproducing populism’s exclusionary logic?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: I would first distinguish the student movement from the student-backed electoral list. As I said, the students were not on the electoral list, which means they will not be in Parliament or the government. This distinction is important. If we take their stated intentions seriously, the aim is to create conditions for free elections in the next electoral cycle, when political parties can compete fairly.
There’s also a difference between criticizing elites for corruption and claiming that only one movement can legitimately represent all citizens. This is not what the students are claiming. Their demands centered on institutions doing their jobs and rules applying equally to everyone. This offers a basis for an inclusive democratic project.
Still, moral authority should not place anyone above criticism. The student-backed representatives will need to accept disagreement, opposition, and public scrutiny. Their commitment to pluralism will be tested by how they treat those who did not vote for them and how they respond when citizens challenge their decisions. I’m optimistic so far, but we will see.
Gender-Equality Legislation Means Little Without Effective Implementation
Three women hold a rainbow flag bearing the message “Peace and Love” during the Belgrade Pride Parade in Belgrade, Serbia, on September 18, 2016. Photo: Jerome Cid / Dreamstime.
Your article “Autocratic Gender-washing: Gender-Equality Reforms in Serbia” demonstrates how authoritarian governments can instrumentalize women’s representation and gender-equality legislation to cultivate democratic legitimacy while sustaining conservative political agendas. What would distinguish substantive democratization from symbolic reform under Serbia’s incoming leadership? Could the transition expose the limitations of Vučić-era gender-equality policies?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: There needs to be a willingness to implement gender-equality legislation rather than simply adopt it. Having more women in leadership positions or establishing bodies responsible for gender equality really matters. But those bodies need adequate funding, staff, and the authority to carry out their work. That’s what I mean when I say that gender-equality reforms during Vučić’s regime were merely symbolic. The regime would establish a gender-equality institution without providing the funding necessary for it to carry out its work.
The adoption of the gender-equality law under Vučić in 2021 was also presented as evidence of progress, while its implementation remained deeply problematic. The law was not implemented, as its implementation was stopped very soon after it was passed. So, basically, there’s no difference between having the law and not having it if it’s not implemented at all. This gap between formal commitments and everyday practice is very important. Gender analysis in legislative and oversight processes, the use of gender-disaggregated data, and gender-responsive budgeting are all required under the current legislation. These need to become meaningful parts of decision-making, which they have not been so far.
We should assess whether women influence policies. We should also assess spending and how it affects women differently, including women whose interests are rarely represented. It remains to be seen how the new Parliament and government will approach these issues. They will face many competing demands, and gender equality may not be a high priority at the beginning.
That’s precisely why continued pressure from women’s organizations and other civil society actors will matter. A change of government will certainly not guarantee a change in priorities. The new leadership will face many challenges, particularly at the beginning, but the pressure needs to be maintained.
Minority Representation Must Extend Beyond Parliamentary Presence
Your scholarship on political representation and minority rights raises an important question about the inclusiveness of democratic transformation. The student movement united diverse constituencies through broad demands for justice and accountability, but what place do ethnic minorities occupy within its emerging political project? Could an emphasis on national unity reproduce majoritarian assumptions that have historically marginalized minority voices?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: That’s a concern at the moment. Many minority voters supported the student-backed list, as the election results clearly indicate. At the same time, the electoral system provides a lower threshold for minority parties. The three largest minorities—Hungarians, Albanians, and Bosniaks—will have representatives in Parliament following the latest elections. There are no announced plans to change the arrangements for minority parties’ electoral participation. Rather, the aim is to open up opportunities for minority citizens to become more interested in voting for mainstream parties as well. The student movement also addressed this by reaching out to minority citizens, not only majority citizens, which is different from what we’ve seen before.
However, the parliamentary presence of minority parties is only part of the question. Minority representatives will need opportunities to influence decisions, and minority citizens will need to see their concerns taken seriously beyond election campaigns. Because the student-backed list has a very strong majority in Parliament, it will not need to form a coalition to establish a government. This will probably be the first time that minority parties are not part of the governing coalition. That makes the responsibility of the new leadership even more important. They should leave room for the particular experiences of discrimination and exclusion that minorities face.
It remains to be seen how these issues will be addressed once the government is formed. However, some minority parties supported the students during the protests, as did many minority citizens. This gives us reason for optimism about what we can expect from the new government.
Avoiding Kosovo May Preserve Unity but Cannot Replace Political Debate
Photo: Shutterstock.
In your 2023 BIRN interview, following threats over academic cooperation with Kosovo researchers, you warned that elites cultivate fear and deepen ethnic divisions. Does Vučić’s electoral defeat offer an opportunity to challenge the nationalist discourses that enabled such intimidation? Or might the incoming movement’s reluctance to confront Kosovo’s status leave essential foundations of Serbian ethnonationalism untouched?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: The student movement is internally very heterogeneous. We still know relatively little about the positions of the new MPs, and we do not yet know the composition of the government. Those entering office may decide to take greater responsibility for political decisions themselves, relying less on students than they did during the campaign. Once they assume their positions, they may act independently of the students. However, we still do not know their positions on these issues because their names have not yet been announced. Divisions are also possible, both within the student movement and among the newly elected officials.
We remember the broad coalition that came to power after Milošević’s fall in 2000 and how quickly its internal differences became apparent. Once the prime minister and ministers are named, the direction of Serbian foreign policy should become clearer. There’s certainly an opportunity to challenge the intimidation of academics, activists, and others who cooperate across ethnic boundaries. Doing so would require public officials to defend their freedom to work, even when they disagree with their views.
Avoiding the issue of Kosovo may have helped maintain unity during the mobilization process, but it cannot replace a longer-term discussion of nationalism, minority rights, and relationships with neighboring societies. These questions will now come to the forefront, but it will not be the student movement that will have to address them. Rather, the new officials, Parliament, and government will have to confront these challenges.
Solidarity Across Ethnic and Religious Divides Offers a More Inclusive Patriotism
Serbian nationalism has frequently invoked Orthodox Christianity, historical victimhood, Kosovo, and the defense of national sovereignty against perceived Western interference. To what extent has Vučić transformed these narratives into a form of civilizationalist populism? Could the student movement articulate a more inclusive conception of Serbian political identity without alienating nationalist constituencies that contributed to its electoral victory?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Yes, elements of that argument apply, particularly to the final years of Vučić’s rule. It didn’t apply in the first few years, but toward the end of his rule, he increasingly drew on familiar nationalist narratives, presenting Serbia as a defender of sovereignty and traditional values against external pressure.
Orthodox Christianity and conservative morality featured in this discourse, while liberal actors and some Western demands were portrayed as threats to the country. We’ve also seen a rise in anti-gender mobilization, and Kosovo became a symbol of resistance to foreign intervention. At the same time, his use of these narratives was highly pragmatic. He maintained close economic relations with Western partners while cultivating ties with Russia and China. I would therefore be careful about presenting his politics as a consistent civilizational project. These messages also served the more immediate purpose of consolidating power and discrediting opponents.
There is now hope that the new government will articulate a more inclusive understanding of Serbian identity. But I’m not sure it will be able to attract these strongly nationalist constituencies, which will likely remain supportive of Vučić’s party.
What I find more important is the students’ ability to attract minority citizens and groups, as we discussed earlier. There’s something I haven’t mentioned that I consider particularly important: the solidarity shown toward Bosniak students during the marches from Novi Pazar, a town in southern Serbia where Bosniaks constitute the majority.
The Bosniak students from Novi Pazar marched to Belgrade, and many citizens welcomed them along the way. They made efforts to prepare food that the students could eat and learned a great deal about religious and cultural differences. This was a very broad expression of solidarity with minorities, which I find particularly important. It shows that attachment to the country can be expressed through solidarity across ethnic and religious differences. I hope this will become a lasting political approach.
Defeated Authoritarian Leaders Can Retain Influence Through Transnational Alliances
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán meets with Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić during an official visit to Belgrade, Serbia, on September 5, 2016. Photo: Ognjen Stevanovic / Dreamstime.
Only days after their respective electoral defeats, Vučić and former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán publicly reaffirmed their political solidarity, with Vučić declaring, “We will return.” How should we interpret this continuing relationship within the broader transnational networks of populist and illiberal political actors? Can defeated authoritarian leaders retain influence through shared media strategies, ideological alliances, and cross-border political networks?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Authoritarian leaders learn a great deal from each other, and these connections are very strong. We’ve seen Vučić supporting Orbán during the last election campaign in Hungary and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico attending Vučić’s rally during the election campaign in Serbia. Such relationships can help defeated leaders retain visibility, political support, and access to sympathetic audiences.
At the same time, the strengthening of the far right elsewhere in Europe, including Western Europe, could affect developments in Eastern Europe and the possibility of these forces returning to power in countries such as Hungary and Serbia. Much will depend on how much additional influence far-right parties gain in Austria, France, and Germany, as this could have a spillover effect on countries such as Serbia.
Vučić’s party still has a substantial parliamentary presence and loyal media outlets. Its representatives seem confident despite the electoral defeat. Anti-democratic attitudes and populist discourse certainly remain a threat to democratic consolidation. The party may use Parliament to obstruct reforms and its media presence to spread fear and create instability. What makes me somewhat less worried is that much of Vučić’s support rested on clientelistic networks rather than a firm ideological commitment. Those networks may become harder to maintain once access to state resources is reduced.
Much will also depend on how democratic forces address everyday problems, particularly the economy. Authoritarian populist leaders rely on fear, economic hardships, and security crises, all of which could help them regain support. In recent days, we’ve heard Vučić claim that pensions will no longer be paid and that Serbia will soon face electricity cuts. Many citizens believe these warnings, and the incoming government will need to communicate clearly and demonstrate that institutions can meet citizens’ basic needs.
Regional Stability Must Not Justify Support for Autocratization
Vučić maintained relationships with the EU, Russia, and China while benefiting from European concerns about regional stability. The student movement has largely avoided divisive positions on Kosovo, Russia, and European integration. Does this strategic ambiguity facilitate broad democratic mobilization, or could Serbia’s unresolved geopolitical orientation become a major obstacle to democratic consolidation? How should the EU reconsider its longstanding engagement with Balkanstabilitocracies?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Yes, the students’ strategic ambiguity helped them mobilize broad support. This was particularly important because defeating Vučić required such support. That’s why they focused on issues that would bring people together rather than divide them. Citizens with very different foreign policy and ideological views could unite around demands for accountability and functioning institutions. However, the new government will have to be more explicit about its strategic orientation and foreign policy. In my view, a clear pro-European orientation would be important for Serbia’s further democratization.
One source of frustration among citizens in Serbia is that EU support helped sustain Vučić in power. This is what you refer to as stabilitocracy. The EU supported stabilitocrats such as Vučić to ensure regional security and peace in the Balkans. Regional stability certainly matters, but it should not become a justification for supporting autocrats or overlooking autocratization. In the long run, autocratization will also affect stability. This is something we all need to relearn.
The EU needs to engage consistently with questions of electoral integrity, media freedom, and judicial independence, while listening to civil society as well as government officials. Its credibility will depend on whether democratic standards guide its actions, even when they conflict with short-term political or economic interests, such as lithium mining.
Lessons from Serbia for Democratic Movements Elsewhere
University students protest at Beşiktaş Square in Istanbul on March 24, 2025, declaring a boycott in response to the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. Photo: Sadik Gulec.
Serbia’s student movement combined decentralized organization, nonviolent resistance, cross-class mobilization, and extensive election monitoring to challenge entrenched political power. Which elements of this experience might be transferable to movements confronting competitive authoritarianism or autocracies elsewhere, including Turkey, Georgia, or other countries experiencing democratic backsliding? What institutional, cultural, or geopolitical conditions limit the transnational diffusion of Serbia’s example?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: Serbia’s experience shows that protests can contribute to a change of government, and this is not limited to Serbia; Brazil is another example. Citizens in other competitive authoritarian regimes could learn a great deal from the student movement. I would particularly emphasize positive messaging, clear demands, sustained activity across the country, mobilization across social groups, and a commitment to nonviolence, which was particularly important.
Extensive election monitoring also matters, as does drawing international attention to what is happening. I’m referring, for instance, to the students cycling to Strasbourg and Brussels. The involvement of the European Parliament was also important in drawing attention to developments in Serbia.
The relationships created through direct contact were especially important. Marches and visits to smaller communities allowed citizens to meet the students themselves and assess claims about the movement against their own experiences. This made it harder for hostile media narratives to undermine the movement.
However, these approaches cannot simply be transferred everywhere. In more closed autocracies, there may be less space to organize, elections may offer fewer openings, and repression can be more severe. Universities, local networks, and independent civic organizations may also differ in their capacity to sustain mobilization.
European countries outside the EU can sometimes benefit from the attention associated with the accession process and EU scrutiny. However, that attention is useful only if international actors are willing to respond. The Serbian case does offer some of these lessons, but we’ll see.
Serbia’s Democratic Future Depends on Citizens Remaining Politically Active
Finally, Professor Lončar, your work on political representation, authoritarian adaptation, and the performative dimensions of power suggests that democracy involves more than replacing incumbents through elections. What would constitute meaningful democratic consolidation in Serbia over the next four years? Can the student movement transform its moral authority and protest-based legitimacy into pluralistic, accountable institutions without reproducing the personalized power and political exclusions it mobilized against?
Assoc. Prof. Jelena Lončar: That is certainly their goal. My first hope is that institutions will start doing their jobs. An independent judiciary, effective checks and balances, and free media would be important signs of progress. They would also shape how citizens perceive reality and the issues facing society. Many citizens believed what they heard in the media, and media control strongly shaped their perspectives.
An end to smear campaigns against civil society, the survival of civic activism, and opportunities for citizens to participate in decision-making would also be very important. These factors contributed significantly to the success of the student movement, and we should build on these resources and citizens’ willingness to become more active in politics. Citizens should also be able to scrutinize the government without fear for their jobs or safety. However, it is difficult to predict the next four years when we are still absorbing the election results and do not yet know what the new government will look like.
The student-backed candidates will have a strong parliamentary majority, giving them considerable room to act. Much will depend on their internal relationships, and maintaining cooperation could be difficult, as I mentioned earlier. Continued public scrutiny will therefore be essential. One of the clearest measures of success would be whether the next election allows citizens to choose freely and whether those in power accept that they can be replaced.
Brazil’s October 25 presidential runoff delivered a narrow victory for Lula da Silva, but the enduring strength of Bolsonarismo raises profound questions about democratic consolidation. In an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor James N. Green, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History Emeritus at Brown University, examines Lula’s electoral comeback, the institutional resilience of Brazil’s radical right, and the continuing threats of authoritarianism. Warning that “the far right in Brazil has not been defeated. It has merely lost a battle,” Professor Green explores conservative congressional obstruction, electoral delegitimation, religious fundamentalism, and democratic backsliding. Drawing on Brazil’s history of military dictatorship and democratic resistance, he emphasizes the indispensable role of grassroots mobilization, inclusive citizenship, and international solidarity in safeguarding democracy beyond electoral victories.
Brazil’s October 25 presidential runoff delivered a remarkable political reversal, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva securing a historic fourth term after overcoming his first-round deficit against Flávio Bolsonaro. Yet Lula’s narrow victory, with 51.79% of the vote against Bolsonaro’s 48.21%, exposes a fundamental paradox of contemporary Brazilian democracy: electoral resilience coexists with entrenched authoritarian tendencies, institutional polarization, and the enduring political strength of the radical right. Rather than signaling Bolsonarismo’s demise, the election raises profound questions about the fragility of democratic consolidation.
In an extensive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor James N. Green, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History Emeritus at Brown University, draws on his scholarship on military dictatorship, democratic resistance, social movements, and political polarization to assess Brazil’s uncertain democratic future. His central warning is unequivocal: “The far right in Brazil has not been defeated. It has merely lost a battle.”
Professor Green situates Bolsonarismo’s resilience within Brazil’s historically conservative political culture and the institutional strength of Bolsonaro-aligned forces in Congress. Although democratic institutions successfully resisted the attempted coup of 2023, he cautions that authoritarian political currents remain deeply embedded. “They want an authoritarian state,” he warns, emphasizing that some radical-right forces seek to undermine the rule of law and the separation of church and state.
The danger extends beyond electoral competition. Professor Green identifies parliamentary obstruction, potential impeachment initiatives, and the delegitimization of electoral institutions as significant threats to Lula’s presidency. Reflecting on the far right’s allegations of electoral fraud, he warns that such narratives undermine democratic participation itself: “If people don’t believe the system is trustworthy, they’re not going to take the time or make the effort to go out and vote.”
Drawing historical parallels with Brazil’s 1964–1985 military dictatorship, Professor Green underscores the indispensable role of grassroots mobilization and international solidarity in resisting authoritarianism. He argues that the social movements instrumental in Lula’s electoral comeback must remain politically engaged beyond election cycles while preserving their capacity to criticize the government.
The interview also examines the growing influence of conservative evangelical Christianity, the vulnerability of LGBT+ rights, and the transnational connections between Trumpism and Bolsonarismo. For Professor Green, democratic consolidation ultimately depends on inclusive citizenship and institutional accountability. As he emphasizes, “If that society doesn’t protect broad democratic rights for everyone, no one’s rights are guaranteed.”
Looking ahead, Professor Green anticipates mounting confrontation between Lula’s governing coalition and the radical right, warning that the next four years could “further intensify tensions between the left and the right and deepen the country’s polarization.” His assessment reveals why defeating authoritarian populism electorally is not equivalent to overcoming its structural foundations.
Here is our interview with Professor James N. Green, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Grassroots Mobilization Secured Lula’s Victory
Brazilia’s Luiz Inácio Lula is seen during the 2022 election campaign in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on October 20, 2022. Photo: Aline Alcantara.
Professor Green, thank you for joining us. Lula overturned his first-round deficit to defeat Flávio Bolsonaro by 51.79% to 48.21% in the October 25 runoff. What explains this remarkable turnaround? Was it primarily anti-Bolsonaro mobilization, renewed confidence in Lula’s redistributive agenda, or a broader democratic reaction against right-wing populism?
Professor James N. Green: We have to fully understand how polarized Brazilian society is. The elections were close, despite the final victory for President Lula da Silva. In this regard, the coalition that President Lula established sent two messages. The first was a message against the anti-democratic tendencies of the Bolsonaro family, including the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently under house arrest for being involved in an insurrection against the democratic state. The second was a reaction against the threat of eliminating social programs established under Lula’s governments over the years, which have really transformed the lives of ordinary and poor people.
The polls had shown Lula ahead in the first round of the elections, making his campaign overconfident. When the election results were finally determined on October 5, Lula was 1.9% behind Flávio Bolsonaro, causing panic among his supporters.
Three things then happened. First, there were initially spontaneous and later organized national demonstrations throughout the country, with huge mobilizations in the streets in favor of President Lula. Second, a very sophisticated and effective media and social media campaign was launched to encourage people to move beyond their bubbles and zones of comfort and reach out to others. Third, people individually drew up lists of those who had not voted in the first round and whom they could persuade to go to the polls in the second round.
That made the difference. Ten million more people voted for President Lula in the second round than in the first, while four million more voted for Flávio Bolsonaro. Both sides gained, but Lula secured a larger margin, largely because of the mobilization of his base of support to get out the vote.
Lulism Faces an Uncertain Future Beyond Lula
People wait in a long line to receive food donations for lunch on a downtown street in São Paulo, Brazil, during a severe economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on June 2, 2020. Photo: Nelson Antoine.
Lula has secured a historic fourth presidential term, yet his narrow victory raises questions about the durability of Lulism beyond his personal leadership. Should Lulism be understood as a form of inclusive left-wing populism, a pragmatic cross-class coalition, or a distinctive model of social-democratic governance? Can it survive politically beyond Lula himself?
Professor James N. Green: It’s all of the above and it’s a very complex situation. At the moment, the Workers’ Party (PT), founded in 1980, is the largest left-wing party in the world with a positive dynamic. While other left-wing parties around the world are shrinking in size, the Workers’ Party remains strong and was able to pull off this tremendous electoral victory.
Lula is a social democrat because that’s the camp in which he has found himself, in the sense that he is clearly dedicated to uplifting the lives of ordinary working-class people. He’s not an ideologue; he’s a very shrewd and excellent negotiator who builds broad coalitions, and that’s precisely what he’s done. He built a broad center-left coalition in the country, taking the air out of a centrist political party that had been important for many years after the return to democracy: the Brazilian Social Democratic Party. Lula basically absorbed that sector of society into this large coalition, further polarizing the country while carrying out a program of reforms that some people think is not enough.
The far right, however, thinks it’s way too much, alleging that Brazil is now under a dictatorship and that communism could emerge in the immediate future. All of these are exaggerated fears and discourses that are far from reality.
Lula has a big challenge ahead of him. He has not successfully found a political heir, and there will therefore be disputes over the next three years about who will be the candidate of the left in the 2030 elections.
At this point, only days after the final results of the second round of the elections, the strongest candidate is the governor of the state of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, who is part of the Bolsonaro camp. He has the biggest chance of emerging as the leading political force in opposition to Lula’s presidency and of leading the opposition in the 2030 elections.
However, that being said, anything can change in Brazil. It’s a very dynamic country with a very complex history, so it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen in four years when we’re barely getting over the election results and beginning to look at the kind of government the Lula administration will establish for his fourth term in office.
Despite Flávio Bolsonaro’s defeat, nearly half the electorate supported his candidacy, while conservative forces strengthened their congressional position. Does this outcome confirm that Bolsonarismo has evolved into an institutionalized radical-right movement independent of Jair Bolsonaro? What historical and social factors explain its resilience?
Professor James N. Green: In spite of a series of stereotypes portraying Brazil as an open, free, fun-loving country, with its carnival, tropical climate, etc., Brazil has a profoundly conservative political culture. Between 1945 and 1964, an interregnum during which Brazil held democratic elections, although the franchise was still limited, the voting blocs were divided basically into three groups: a third on the right, a third in the center, and a third on the left. And that is basically the situation today.
However, given the way elections work, there is a first round in which anyone can run for president, followed by a second round between the top two candidates. This tends to polarize the electorate between the left and the far right, although there are other candidates and political forces in the center representing that 33%, whose support is not reflected in the final presidential election results.
And so, Lula will have a difficult time in Congress. There are enough votes to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president, although, at this point, there are not enough votes to successfully impeach him. But they will try. The far right will definitely, at some point, try to seize upon a stumble by Lula and draw up impeachment charges against him in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, before taking them to the Senate, where Lula currently has enough support to prevent his removal from office.
The current Congress is very closely linked to Bolsonaro’s political party, the Liberal Party, and the names of political parties in Brazil often have nothing to do with their ideology. I wouldn’t really call his party a liberal party, but that’s the name they’ve taken for themselves. They will therefore have a large bloc, enabling them to push the agenda to the right and block some of the social agenda that Lula will clearly want to carry out in his fourth and final term in office. And so, there’s going to be tremendous tension.
The Bolsonaro forces will continue to have influence as long as Jair Bolsonaro’s family remains politically effective. However, with two of his sons in exile in the United States, claiming that there is a dictatorship in Brazil and that they’re being politically persecuted, the political capital of the Bolsonaro family has weakened.
It’s possible that their support will shrink to a more normal 33% of the population in terms of congressional representation in the future. But at the moment, as you pointed out, they clearly have a hold on the political system, from the right to the far right.
Democratic Institutions Survive, but Authoritarian Threats Persist
Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro poses with anti-riot police agents after cast their ballot in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil on November 29, 2020. Photo: Antonio Scorza.
Drawing on your scholarship on Brazil’s authoritarian past, how should we interpret Lula’s victory in the context of democratic backsliding? Does the electoral defeat of Bolsonarismo demonstrate the resilience of Brazilian democracy, or does its continuing institutional strength suggest that authoritarian tendencies have merely been contained rather than overcome?
Professor James N. Green: I think we have a situation in which democratic institutions have sustained the democratic system so far and managed to fend off an attempted coup d’état in 2023, when Bolsonaro’s forces invaded the seats of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the executive branch of government. That led to the conviction and imprisonment of Jair Bolsonaro, along with the conviction of certain individuals within the armed forces and his political movement who conspired with him to overthrow the government.
But the fact remains that the Bolsonaro forces have not been defeated. They feel very confident, despite having lost this election. They feel a great deal of strength right now, and their anti-democratic sentiments therefore remain a threat to the consolidation of democracy in Brazil. This is the greatest danger because they do not believe in the rule of law. They want an authoritarian state. Some of them want to eliminate the separation of church and state in Brazil and push for a non-secular government, one shaped by religious ideologies.
And so, there are still threats to democracy in the country. Lula has a very strong popular base of support that will sustain him in office, but democratic forces need to remain alert because the far right has not been defeated. It has merely lost a battle.
International Solidarity Remains Vital to Brazilian Democracy
In We Cannot Remain Silent, you document resistance to Brazil’s military dictatorship and the struggle to restore democracy. How does this historical experience illuminate contemporary Bolsonarismo? What similarities and differences do you identify between authoritarian practices under military rule and today’s radical-right populism?
Professor James N. Green: In 1964, the military took power in Brazil, promising to restore democracy at a time when a left-wing populist government was in power and the country was experiencing high inflation and economic problems. They claimed they would basically clean house, get rid of corruption, and then return the government to the civilian population. But they did not do that. They stayed in power for 21 years. And so, the struggle to end the dictatorship and consolidate a democratic regime has been one of the great challenges people have faced over this period.
Many people ask me why I got involved in Brazil. The simple story is that I met a Brazilian exile in Washington, D.C., in 1973. He had been arrested and tortured in 1970 and 1971. His family helped him leave Brazil and come to the United States. Together with other Brazilian exiles and supporters of Brazil, he had organized a movement to denounce torture and repression in the country. This developed into a grassroots democratic movement throughout the United States, in which academics, religious leaders, politicians, people with connections to Brazil, and a scattering of Brazilian exiles organized a very effective campaign to denounce the military regime and expose the human rights abuses committed during its time in power.
This solidarity, this identification with democratic forces in Brazil, was an important element in containing the excesses of the military regime over time. And so, in recent years, as the far right has once again lifted its head and threatened democracy, a very strong international solidarity campaign with Brazil has developed.
I participated in that movement to a certain extent, and we founded the US Network for Democracy in Brazil and the Washington Brazil Office, a nonpartisan NGO based in Washington, D.C., that advocates on issues concerning Brazil and informs the public about the country’s political and social situation.
What’s significant about this new movement is that in 2022, when Jair Bolsonaro realized he was probably going to lose the elections to Lula, he developed a discourse claiming that the elections were fraudulent and that the voting machines could not be trusted. He therefore tried to mobilize sectors of the armed forces to carry out a coup.
In response, both the Biden administration and forces within Congress sent a clear message to the Brazilian military that the United States would not tolerate a coup d’état or interference in the democratic process. This is very significant because, in 1964, the United States supported the military when it came to power and continued supporting the generals for many years. So, this shift in US foreign policy, coupled with clear denunciations in Congress, created a split within the armed forces. One sector refused to join the attempted coup d’état, and the attempt failed.
This international solidarity, documented in my book We Cannot Remain Silent—which takes its title from the first petition circulated in 1970 about the situation in Brazil—illustrates not only the historical experience of the 1970s and 1980s, when people supported democratic forces in Brazil, but also more recent years, when academics, activists, and others have mobilized significantly to denounce threats to democracy and support democratic forces within the country.
I think they’ve been very successful in that regard. My book shows that this solidarity was very important in the past and remains important today. It is one of the bastions for guaranteeing that Brazil remains a democratic country.
Far-Right Resilience Threatens Brazil’s Political Stability
Brazilian National Congress at sunset. Brasília, Federal District, Brazil, August 26, 2018. Photo: Diego Grandi / Dreamstime.
You have previously traced the intensification of Brazilian political polarization to developments beginning during Lula’s first administration. How does this historical trajectory help explain the exceptionally close 2026 election? Has polarization become structurally embedded in Brazilian democracy, extending beyond the personalities of Lula and Bolsonaro?
Professor James N. Green: The situation in Brazil reflects what’s happening worldwide. We’re seeing intense polarization in Europe and certainly in the United States, although we’re soon going to see a resounding defeat for President Trump’s policies in the elections to Congress and for governors and state legislatures in the United States.
This polarization, evident in Brazil, is also occurring across Europe, where the threat of far-right governments coming to power in France, the rise of the pro-fascist right in Germany, and the presence of conservative or semi-fascist governments in other parts of Europe are creating a very alarming situation for people around the world. We see the possibility of the far right consolidating its position in many parts of the world.
In Latin America, for example, most governments now in power are led by elected far-right or right-wing candidates. This is particularly the case in South America. At the moment, only three countries—Uruguay, Mexico, and Brazil—have center-left political parties in power. So, this threat is real. As you point out, the elections were so close that one cannot speak of a defeat of the far right in Brazil, but merely its containment—and an unsuccessful containment in Congress—which raises serious questions about the future.
Further victories by the far right can encourage its forces, whereas defeats, as will take place in the United States, could potentially discourage them. Brazil finds itself in a middle ground between strong far-right support for the opposition and Lula’s important but still narrow victory. This points to a somewhat unstable situation in Brazil, given the continuing strength of the far right.
Congressional Resistance Could Paralyze Lula’s Agenda
Lula enters his fourth term facing a conservative Congress in which Bolsonaro-aligned forces retain substantial influence. Could parliamentary obstruction and institutional confrontation constrain democratic governance even after the presidential defeat of the radical right? How should we distinguish legitimate legislative opposition from practices contributing to democratic backsliding?
Professor James N. Green: The question concerns the proposals that different political forces will put forward in the new Congress. What legislative proposals will they actually present that will affect the people of Brazil? This is especially important in addressing rising inflation, the high cost of living, a large domestic debt, and a government deficit resulting from huge spending on government programs. These problems could cause a very serious economic crisis in the next two or three years, weakening the legitimacy of the Lula government and opening the door, as I mentioned earlier, to possible impeachment proceedings.
So, the question really is whether Lula, together with his allies in Congress, can build a large enough coalition that, while not necessarily agreeing with all the political positions defended by the Workers’ Party and Lula, is nevertheless deeply concerned about holding back democratic backsliding in the country.
In this regard, Lula is currently putting together his new government, which will include members of centrist political parties that did not field a presidential candidate but remained open to supporting either of the two candidates, depending on who won. These parties will likely receive positions in government ministries, where they will be able to appoint their supporters to key political posts and exercise influence over government policy and practice.
Much therefore depends on Lula’s ability to win over potential opponents and bring them into his government. He did this during his last administration, but there was a problem: he recruited members of opposition political parties into his cabinet who served in the government, while their parties did not support the government in Parliament. Therefore, he has made it a condition for inviting people into his government that their parties commit to supporting government policies throughout his administration. Otherwise, they really shouldn’t be serving in the government.
One of Lula’s main challenges is thus to build a broad enough coalition to reduce some of the opposition to his governance while ensuring that these arrangements do not paralyze his ability to carry out his own political agenda over the next four years.
The Far Right Questions Elections Only When It Loses
Flávio Bolsonaro’s refusal to concede immediately and his challenge to electoral procedures have renewed concerns about institutional trust. In light of Brazil’s experience following the 2022 election, how significant are these developments? Can electoral institutions maintain democratic legitimacy when substantial political constituencies question the credibility of election outcomes?
Professor James N. Green: This is very interesting because the right-wing questions election outcomes when it loses, but when it wins, it doesn’t question the voting system. Brazil has an electronic voting system in which voters enter a booth and punch in numbers corresponding to their political party and its candidates. It’s a very efficient system. We know the results within an hour of the polls closing, and the outcomes have never been seriously challenged by legitimate forces. In this most recent election, there were outside international observers, and no one raised any questions about the outcome.
Moreover, no one on the far right questioned the victory of the majority of its supporters in Congress. So, somehow, the voting machines worked when they elected their supporters but didn’t work when they lost the presidential race. This undermines the electoral process and creates a sense of illegitimacy by casting doubt on the country’s existing voting system, which is extremely trustworthy, in my opinion.
This opens the door to a narrative that the elections were stolen, that Flávio Bolsonaro actually won, and that such a shift in voting between the first and second rounds of the election simply wasn’t possible. This narrative will be used to discredit the Lula government by claiming that it’s illegitimate. That, in turn, affects the entire democratic system in the country.
If people don’t believe the system is trustworthy, they’re not going to take the time or make the effort to go out and vote. This is very alarming for those who believe in consolidating democracy in Brazil rather than undermining it, which is what the far right is actually doing when it questions the final election outcome.
Social Movements Remain Essential to Brazilian Democracy
Brazilian women in Campinas, São Paulo, take part in the nationwide #EleNão (Not Him) protests against far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro on September 29, 2018. Photo: Luiz Gustavo Freitas Rossi / Dreamstime.
Your historical research emphasizes the role of organized labor, students, and social movements in Brazil’s democratization. How important were grassroots organizations and renewed voter mobilization in Lula’s second-round recovery? Can this electoral coalition develop into a sustainable social movement capable of challenging Bolsonarismo between elections?
Professor James N. Green: What’s important to understand is that, before the military came to power in 1964, there was an upswell of social movements, especially around issues of land and workers’ rights, which was cut off when the military took power. Between 1968 and 1977, it was virtually impossible to organize a public demonstration against the military regime.
In 1977, students mobilized after some students and workers involved in leafleting in a working-class neighborhood were arrested and tortured. This sparked national demonstrations against their arrest and treatment in prison, opening the door to further mobilizations. The following year, the labor movement went on strike to demand wage increases in response to high inflation. This sparked a resurgence of the labor movement in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, as the country was transitioning to democracy.
These social movements were extremely important in demanding democracy during the late 1970s and 1980s and, after democracy was re-established, in consolidating social rights through the drafting of a new constitution in 1987–88 and the implementation of its best elements to guarantee broader democratic rights for citizens.
For example, before the Constituent Assembly of 1987–88, people who were not literate were not allowed to vote. That changed when literacy requirements were eliminated, along with prohibitions on Marxist and left-wing political parties. These parties were then allowed to field candidates, run for office, and participate in the electoral system.
This represented a very important consolidation of democracy. Similarly, the movements against the Bolsonaro government when it was in power, as well as the movement to defeat Flávio Bolsonaro, were driven in large part by social movements throughout the country. These included rural movements demanding land rights and urban social movements of all kinds, from those addressing homelessness to those seeking to expand democratic rights for different segments of society.
These movements were very important in mobilizing the additional 10 million people who voted in the second round of the elections. I think they will also provide an important base of support for the Lula government while pushing it to the left when it becomes stalemated or struggles to determine its future direction as it tries to implement policies. So, social movements are very much alive and well and remain strong. They will be a very important component in guaranteeing democracy in Brazil over the next four years.
Conservative Evangelicals Sustain Bolsonarismo’s Social Base
Lula’s social-policy credibility appears to have contributed to his runoff comeback, particularly among economically vulnerable voters. Yet Bolsonarismo retains substantial working-class support. How does this apparent contradiction reflect changes in Brazilian class politics? Can redistributive policies alone sustain progressive political identification amid cultural polarization and economic insecurity?
Professor James N. Green:
This is a very important question, as have been all the others. In 1970, if you had asked people about their religious identification, 90% would have said they were Catholic. There were small percentages of Jews, Muslims, people who supported Afro-Brazilian religions, and Protestants, but the country was overwhelmingly Catholic.
Today, 30% of the population consists of evangelical Christians. They’re fundamentalists, and there are tens of thousands of churches. If you go to a working-class neighborhood, you’ll find four or five small churches on every corner, run by pastors from the community who build a sense of belonging and welcome poor and vulnerable people. They offer social networks and connections that help people make contacts, find employment, and resolve problems they might be facing with their families. This has built a very strong base of support for the conservative social, cultural, and political policies promoted by these evangelical Christians. They formed the base of support for the anti-Lula coalition.
Lula had very strong backing from the Catholic Church, particularly its left wing, during the early years of the Workers’ Party’s formation. But that influence declined as the Catholic Church lost ground to evangelical Christians. Lula also lost support among evangelical Christians from working-class and poor families, which reflect his own origins.
So, one of the big challenges over the years has been balancing the defense of a broadly democratic program with efforts to attract evangelical Christians whose ideas and beliefs are not democratic and who don’t believe in an open, democratic society that guarantees rights for everyone.
This is a dilemma that the Workers’ Party has faced. On the one hand, how do we defend our values and our program? On the other, how do we attract people who, for whatever reason, are not aligned with our political worldview?
This has been really difficult. This time around, some evangelical Christian churches backed away from an enthusiastic endorsement of Flávio. I don’t think they mobilized their base of support as effectively as they could have in the second round of the election. To a certain extent, this is one of the reasons why Flávio lost the runoff to Lula, amid an upsurge in support for Lula’s policies and presidency.
So, the challenges remain. There is a hardcore Christian fundamentalist radical-right movement aligned with the far-right parties in the country. They have influence in Congress, where they hold a bloc of votes, and they’re still strong enough both to impose their political program and to block progressive ideas from the left. This will be one of the many difficulties Lula faces over the next four years.
People take part in the celebration of Yemanjá in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil on February 2, 2019. Photo: Ember Stefano | Dreamstime.
Brazil’s LGBT Movement Can Resist Conservative Backlash
In your recent co-authored study,“LGBT+ Policies in Post-Redemocratization Brazil (1985–2025),”you demonstrate the institutional fragility and discontinuity of federal LGBT+ policies. What does Lula’s reelection mean for protecting these rights? Can his administration create durable institutional safeguards against future conservative reversals?
Professor James N. Green: This is a really good question. During the dictatorship, an LGBT movement emerged in Brazil, particularly in São Paulo and other cities, and it faced major challenges during the transition from dictatorship to democracy. But in the 1990s, the movement grew in size, and today, some of the largest pride parades in the world are organized in Brazil. There are probably 250 to 300 pride parades throughout the country commemorating LGBTQ rights.
At the same time, the movement has achieved specific changes in the law, largely through Supreme Court decisions that have broadened democratic rights. These include the rights to have same-sex partners, inherit from their partners, receive Social Security benefits, and obtain some form of legal recognition for relationships that exist beyond the normative standards traditionally established by society.
There are also a significant number of recently elected LGBTQ members of Congress who are very vocal. Erika Hilton, the transgender candidate elected to Congress with the largest number of votes, received 1.5 million votes, the highest number a woman has received in a congressional election. Other important members of Congress have also been elected throughout the country and are defending these rights.
The big challenge will be confronting a conservative Congress that is interested in rolling back some of the democratic achievements secured over the last 30 to 40 years. I think members of the LGBT community will be among the most vulnerable populations.
They’re very organized and highly mobilized, and they played a very important role in mobilizing support for Lula’s victory. So, this will be an ongoing dispute. It won’t be a simple battle; it will be very contentious over the years. But the movement is strong enough and has enough allies to block any serious rollback of its democratic rights in the country and perhaps even expand those rights during the four years of the Lula administration.
Without Universal Democratic Rights, No One’s Rights Are Guaranteed
Your biography of Herbert Daniel and your work on Brazil’s LGBT+ movement demonstrate how struggles against dictatorship became intertwined with demands for broader democratic inclusion. Following the 2026 election, what lessons do these experiences offer for contemporary coalitions defending minority rights, pluralism, and democratic citizenship against exclusionary populism?
Professor James N. Green: The question really is: What kind of democracy do we believe in? And do we really believe in democracy? People who have lived under authoritarian regimes that outlawed political parties, arrested and tortured political opponents, censored the press, and prohibited any kind of public demonstration against the regime come to value and understand, over time, the importance of democracy as a foundation, a baseline of support necessary to carry out any progressive social agenda.
My study of Herbert Daniel, who was involved in the armed struggle against the dictatorship, later came out as a gay man, and played a very important role in the fight to defend people living with HIV and AIDS, illustrates how people within the left eventually came to understand that we might have a long-term fantasy, a dream, or an aspiration for an economically and socially just society. But if that society doesn’t protect broad democratic rights for everyone, no one’s rights are guaranteed. This realization has helped strengthen the LGBT movement and enabled it to defend itself against the onslaught of the far right.
The big challenge over the next four years will be to consolidate that support and protection, along with the legislative and judicial decisions that guarantee democracy is not just for some people in Brazil, but for everyone, and that everyone has access to democratic rights, not just a select few. This commitment was a very significant part of the dynamic of the movement that defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, and it will help consolidate any advances that the Lula administration manages to achieve during what will be a very challenging next four years.
Bolsonaro’s Alignment with Trump Could Weaken His Movement
Supporters of Brazil’s former President (2019–2022) Jair Bolsonaro hold signs during a demonstration in São Paulo, Brazil, on September 7, 2025. Photo: Dreamstime.
You have extensively examined the political connections between Trumpism and Bolsonarismo. How might Flávio Bolsonaro’s defeat reshape this transnational relationship? Could Trump’s political and economic interventions in Brazil unintentionally reinforce Lula’s nationalist appeal while helping sustain the Bolsonaro movement domestically?
Professor James N. Green: In 2025, when Donald Trump was going through his crazy phase of imposing 50% tariffs on countries around the world and then trying to negotiate something, he imposed those tariffs on Brazil, even though the United States has a positive trade balance with the country. The United States doesn’t have a trade deficit with Brazil, so there’s no reason to impose tariffs on Brazilian products entering the United States.
Nevertheless, the tariffs were imposed, and their removal was conditioned on ending the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, who, at the time, was facing charges before the Supreme Court for conspiring to overthrow the government. Lula received a demand that Bolsonaro’s trial be ended and that he be freed in order to eliminate the tariffs. So, already last year, Trump was imposing his political perspective on Brazil, conditioning the removal of high tariffs on freeing one of his allies.
I think the defeat of Flávio Bolsonaro, who immediately traveled to the United States, where he and his brother will now be living outside the law, will weaken them. His brother has certainly been convicted of crimes, and Flávio will likely be convicted of money laundering or other crimes he’s been accused of being involved in, not formally but informally. It’s likely that there will be some indictments in the immediate future.
Their position will be weakened in the United States, and their presence there merely encourages anti-American sentiment. Historically, the United States government has generally supported the wrong side in political battles in Latin America and Brazil. It supported the 1964 coup d’état and the military regime that followed, and it took a long time, until Jimmy Carter’s administration, to begin addressing human rights violations in Brazil and Latin America.
So, every time Trump does something that hurts Brazil, whether through tariffs or attempts to impose his will on the country, there is a strong anti-American backlash. And that helps Lula in the polls. The tariffs the United States has recently imposed on Brazil, which are 37%, are hurting the economy. There’s a strong sentiment that the United States is unjustified in what it’s doing, which gives the Lula administration more room to negotiate or try to change the dynamics of the situation.
The fact that a defeated candidate who claims there was electoral fraud is now in the United States and maintains close contacts with the White House is also unacceptable to some sectors of society that did not necessarily vote enthusiastically for Lula. They find this kind of subservience to the United States unacceptable.
Brazil has a strong sense of its national importance. It knows it’s a large and wealthy country, the eighth-largest economy in the world, with a huge territory and tremendous resources. It’s no longer willing to play a subservient role to the United States. And this will weaken Trump’s ability to impose his will on Brazil, especially if the Democrats win control of the House and perhaps the Senate, delivering a very strong blow to the Trump administration.
So, this is the situation. I think relations between the United States and Brazil will remain tense as long as Trump is in office. But Lula and his foreign ministry are very capable of pushing back and exploring whether they can negotiate tariff agreements and other accommodations with the United States, to the extent possible within this context.
Transnational Civil Society Remains Vital to Democracy
Through your work with the US Network for Democracy in Brazil and the Washington Brazil Office, you have emphasized the importance of international solidarity in defending democratic institutions. How might Lula’s reelection reshape Brazil–US relations under Trump? What role can transnational civil society play when ideological tensions between governments complicate diplomatic cooperation?
Professor James N. Green: What’s been important about the grassroots work of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil and the educational work of the Washington Brazil Office in the nation’s capital, especially in Congress, has been educating people about the situation in Brazil. Unfortunately, very few people know much about the country, its history, culture, and politics. And so, that’s an important element. Over the years, we’ve been very successful in raising awareness among Democratic members of Congress, who have been important allies of the democratic forces in Brazil.
Recently, since Flávio Bolsonaro fled to the United States, members of Congress have asked the Trump administration for clarification about how he was granted a humanitarian visa, what the conditions were, who allowed him into the country, what negotiations took place beforehand, and whether the United States had any involvement in the 2026 elections. Did far-right forces finance Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign in any way? What are those connections?
All these questions will be investigated by the new Congress, especially if the Democrats win both houses. Even if they win only the House, they’ll still be able to pursue these investigations because there’s a large bloc of members of Congress who are aware of the situation in Brazil. Although this won’t be their top priority in the coming period—the main priorities will be addressing the high cost of living and ending the war in Iran—they’ll nevertheless raise these questions and put pressure on the Trump administration to ease up on its offensive behavior toward Brazil, perhaps by lowering tariffs or establishing a more favorable dialogue between the two countries.
Without these allies in Congress, these Democrats who have been willing to stand up and defend democracy in Brazil, we would have seen a much more cynical situation in the country, including the possibility of a coup d’état in 2023. We managed to avert that because of political forces in the White House, Congress, and civil society in the United States.
So, these movements are very important, both within the institutional structures of the United States, particularly Congress, and among civil society organizations in Brazil, which have learned over the last few years how to articulate their demands and concerns internationally in support of democracy and social justice in the country. These forces will need to remain active because, as I said earlier, we live in a very polarized time in which the balance of forces is constantly in dispute.
BRICS Strengthens Brazil’s Autonomy but Creates Contradictions
Lula’s victory preserves Brazil’s commitment to BRICS, closer economic engagement with China, and a more autonomous foreign policy. How might growing US–China competition affect his administration’s domestic political choices? Could Brazil’s pursuit of strategic autonomy strengthen national sovereignty while creating new economic and political vulnerabilities?
Professor James N. Green: Since the 1950s, the Brazilian government has pursued a policy of remaining largely equidistant and neutral between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. Brazil did not want to align itself too closely with either bloc. When the military came to power, it maintained this idea of autonomy on the one hand, while aligning itself very closely with the United States during the early years of military rule on the other. The US government supplied military and economic aid to the military regime to consolidate its hold on power.
This idea that Brazil needs to remain autonomous fits very interestingly with the concept of BRICS, which was developed by an economist to describe emerging nations that investors might want to consider: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and later South Africa. The BRICS coalition has expanded to 20 members, and it’s a very interesting bloc because, economically, it represents an attempt to create a counterweight to the United States in the international arena. The United States really controls the international economic system through the dollarization of the world economy and a series of international institutions, including the World Bank, the IMF, and others, that sustain US economic dominance.
China’s role as a countervailing force in this competition between the United States and the BRICS nations is particularly significant. On the one hand, the United States has depended on China over the years as an industrial manufacturing base for producing cheap consumer goods for the American market. On the other hand, this has contributed to the decline of industrialization in the United States, as many companies moved to China and other countries where they could find cheap labor under authoritarian regimes with no labor organizing or union structures to defend workers’ rights. They could therefore produce goods at very low cost and sell them to consumers in the United States.
Over the years, China has become a very important importer of Brazilian agricultural and mineral products and is now Brazil’s largest trading partner, particularly in agribusiness, cattle, and other exported goods. This has really threatened the United States’ ability to maintain its hegemony and control over Latin American economies, which has become a goal of the Donald Trump administration.
So, BRICS and its efforts represent, on the one hand, a reinforcement of Brazil’s independent foreign policy. On the other hand, they represent a shift away from the United States, partly because tariffs have made many Brazilian goods unprofitable to sell in the American market. Brazil has therefore sought new markets and increased its exports to China and other countries around the world. As a result, China’s influence and importance in Brazil have grown, which has also threatened the United States.
In a way, the Trump administration was hoping that Flávio Bolsonaro, if elected, would somehow block China’s growing influence in Brazil. On the other hand, Flávio Bolsonaro relied heavily on agribusiness to sustain his political base, and that sector was not interested in stopping shipments of soy, meat, or other goods to China because it was making a lot of money from those sales.
And so, there’s a very contradictory situation. Brazil wants to maintain close economic and political relations with the United States while also trying to counterbalance its influence by supporting the BRICS countries.
The irony of all this is that, although some BRICS countries can be defended as democracies that guarantee democratic rights for their citizens, other members of the coalition are far from democratic. Brazil therefore finds itself in a very strange position: as one of the world’s largest democracies, it is allying with authoritarian regimes to participate in a bloc challenging US hegemony.
And so, there are many contradictions in this realignment that I think have yet to play out and will become apparent in the immediate future.
Far-Right Resilience Could Deepen Brazil’s Polarization
Thousands of activists unite in protest for democracy and racial equality and against the Bolsonaro government in São Paulo, Brazil on June 07, 2020. Photo: Alf Ribeiro
And finally, Professor Green, your scholarship demonstrates that Brazil’s democratization has historically depended on sustained popular mobilization rather than electoral change alone. Given Lula’s narrow victory, Bolsonarismo’s resilience, and the conservative congressional balance, what would constitute meaningful democratic progress during his fourth term? Can Brazil move beyond recurring electoral confrontation toward more durable democratic institutions and inclusive citizenship?
Professor James N. Green: The challenge of the next four years is precisely what you’re pointing out. It involves both guaranteeing democratic institutions and continuing the socioeconomic programs of the Lula administration, which have had a very significant impact on sectors of society but face the challenges of huge budget deficits and the difficulty of sustaining social programs without raising taxes on the electoral base that supports them.
So, the challenge for the Workers’ Party will be to find the means to implement a successful social program that consolidates Lula’s legacy across his four terms and the term and a half of his successor, Dilma Rousseff, who was subsequently impeached. This will be the big challenge, and the right wing will be doing everything it can to undermine these programs in order to create the kind of economic and political chaos that would justify its return to power in 2030.
Therefore, the real challenge for social movements that are genuinely committed to democracy will be to support and sustain the progressive elements of Lula da Silva’s current and future government without abandoning their political principles, ideals, and values.
The lesson of the election turnaround was that popular mobilization can guarantee democratic processes, and it’s very important to sustain these mobilizations beyond electoral cycles. In other words, how can social movements be actively involved in building the new government while also feeling free to criticize it when it falls short?
This will be the challenge for social movements: to navigate the very complex political balance between support and criticism, while the far right waits for any missteps by the Lula government to immediately pursue impeachment proceedings against him or limit his political powers through Congress.
So, the challenges facing social movements and democratic forces in the coming period are immense. They won a victory with the electoral defeat of Flávio Bolsonaro, but he has not been definitively defeated.
In my view, the problems of the next four years are going to further intensify tensions between the left and the right and deepen the country’s polarization. This makes it very difficult to know to what extent democracy will be consolidated or weakened by the far right’s offensive against the Lula government, aimed at undermining it and thereby regaining power in 2030.
In an in-depth interview with the ECPS, Dr. Subir Sinha, Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute, examines how India’s emerging Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) is challenging Narendra Modi’s authoritarian-populist hegemony. Situating youth mobilization within broader crises of unemployment, neoliberal restructuring, electoral legitimacy, and Hindu majoritarianism, Dr. Sinha argues that Modi’s strategies for containing generational discontent have begun to unravel. He identifies the CJP as a potential “counter-people” capable of challenging Modi’s construction of political sovereignty through digital resistance, Dalit and Muslim participation, and decentralized mobilization. Drawing comparisons with youth movements in Senegal, Bangladesh, and Serbia, he explores how state repression can undermine political legitimacy and how popular protest might evolve into structural democratic transformation. He emphasizes the importance of translating counter-hegemonic mobilization into legislative power.
India’s emerging youth revolt is exposing the fragility of Narendra Modi’s authoritarian-populist hegemony, challenging not only the government’s developmental promises but also its construction of political legitimacy, popular sovereignty, and Hindu majoritarian identity. In an in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Subir Sinha, Reader in the Theory and Politics of Development, Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute, member of the SOAS Food Studies Centre, and affiliate of the Department of History at SOAS University of London, examines how generational discontent is developing into a potentially transformative counter-hegemonic movement.
Across India, Senegal, Bangladesh, Serbia, Nepal, and France, youth-led protests have challenged corruption, economic insecurity, political exclusion, and established structures of power. Our discussion examines India’s emerging Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement within this comparative framework, exploring why similar generational grievances produce different forms of mobilization, institutional responses, and democratic outcomes. Dr. Sinha’s scholarship on authoritarian populism, political hegemony, and social movements provides valuable insights into these dynamics.
At the center of Dr. Sinha’s analysis is the argument that unemployment, educational injustice, and democratic exclusion have generated a profound crisis of political representation. Observing that Modi’s strategies to absorb popular discontent into authoritarian populism have begun to unravel, he identifies the CJP as potentially “the central mechanism through which a counter-people is being imagined and manifested on the streets.”
This emerging counter-people challenges the ideological foundations of Modiism. Dr. Sinha argues that young protesters are dismantling Modi’s conception of “the people,” creating space for Dalits, Muslims, and economically marginalized citizens within a more inclusive political imagination. Digital mobilization has proved particularly disruptive. According to Dr. Sinha, “the social media game that the BJP had mastered” has slipped from its control, while “the image of a feared and revered leader” has been broken.
State repression, meanwhile, risks further undermining the government’s legitimacy. Dr. Sinha describes how police violence and vigilante attacks have alienated even some longstanding BJP supporters, exposing tensions between coercive authority and democratic consent.
The interview also explores a striking cultural contradiction: Dr. Sinha observes “an increasing feeling that Hinduism is in danger from Hindutva,” suggesting that dissatisfaction with religious majoritarianism may extend beyond conventional opposition constituencies.
Ultimately, Dr. Sinha distinguishes between temporary institutional concessions and enduring structural transformation. Drawing comparative lessons from youth movements worldwide, he argues that meaningful change requires converting popular mobilization into legislative power. The decisive question is whether India’s fragmented movements can construct an inclusive counter-people capable of translating resistance into lasting democratic change.
Here is our interview with Dr. Subir Sinha, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Modi’s Strategy of Neutralizing Youth Anger Has Begun to Unravel
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters celebrates for partys victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, in Guwahati, Assam, India on May 23, 2019. Photo: Talukdar David.
Dr. Sinha, thank you for joining us. Let me begin with India’s Cockroach Janta Party, which emerged from anger over examination irregularities and youth unemployment before expanding into protests over electoral accountability. How do you explain this transformation from sectoral grievances into a broader challenge to Modi’s government? Does it signify an emerging crisis of legitimacy for his authoritarian-populist project?
Dr. Subir Sinha: Many jobs in India, especially in the state sector, as well as admissions to universities, particularly for technical degrees in engineering and medicine, are determined through competitive exams. Over the past 10 years, there have been many instances in which examination papers have been leaked in advance and then sold in the underground market for large sums of money. In other cases, exams are held, but the results are delayed, or the results are declared, but no appointments are made on their basis, even two, three, or four years later.
There were protests over these issues well before the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) took shape. But in most of these cases, particularly in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which are part of the Hindi heartland, where Mr. Modi commands considerable electoral support, student movements have been met with massive repression. There is a term in India called lathi charge, which refers to the police using batons to beat protesters. We have witnessed that, as well as the use of water cannons. Elected politicians regularly threaten that leaders or participants in these movements will find it difficult to obtain employment in the state sector. In some cases, there has been even further state repression, such as the use of bulldozers to demolish the homes of protesters or their leaders. So, this has been a simmering issue for some time.
Now, India has high unemployment among people under 30. Remember, people under 30 make up 52% of the Indian population, and there is a huge amount of underemployment in that age group, affecting something like 25 to 30% of university graduates. On the one hand, we are being told that our growth rate is the highest or second highest in the world—7.8%, according to the Prime Minister. But the employment situation for young people entering the job market, both in terms of examinations and their results, and particularly in terms of underemployment, is very poor.
So, when the Cockroach Janta Party emerged—and we have had very popular Bollywood movies dealing with the question of educated unemployment since the pandemic—it is also worth looking further back historically. Even the movement against Mrs. Gandhi’s Emergency from 1975 to 1977, when she suspended democratic rights and institutions, was led by the so-called unemployed youth. Unemployed young people have historically had considerable potential to force radical political change, and there is a vast reservoir of disappointment and anger among the youth.
Mr. Modi and the BJP’s strategies to neutralize that anger or incorporate it into their own brand of authoritarian populism worked for a while but have now begun to unravel over the last two or three years.
Now, you asked a couple of valid questions: How does this narrow movement concerning employment issues become a broader movement concerning the theft of votes and, effectively, electoral irregularities?
India’s Young People Have Lost Faith in Elections, Media, and Courts
I think the people leading the Cockroach Janta Party realized this fairly early on. Remember, they are highly educated. They have degrees from Boston University in political communications. They themselves come from Dalit backgrounds, among whom Modi also has considerable support. So, they quickly realized that there are three different routes through which governments can be held accountable in a democracy. The famous French historian of democracy, Rosanvallon, argues that for democracy to function well, you need counter-democracy, or outlets for counter-democracy. In other words, beyond the ballot box, how do you keep governments in check within a democratic framework? We have three different ways of doing that.
Obviously, number one is elections. But this is where the issue of the electoral system’s lack of credibility comes in, which is very widespread, including among people who regularly support Modi. That is really quite something, because we are looking at approximately 15%, which would be a conservative estimate. In Delhi, something like 40–50% of voters’ names are missing from the voters’ list, even though they have all the documents normally required to prove citizenship.
Whether they are being targeted or not, by some counts, in some places, 70% of those left off the voters’ list are Muslims. But that’s not all. My sister, for example, in Calcutta, an upper-middle-class woman, is also missing from the list, along with her entire family and her neighbors. This is something really widespread, and we don’t have a full explanation for it.
You may also be aware that Mr. Modi got a law passed last year granting full immunity to any Chief Election Commissioner during and after their tenure in office. At the time of that vote in Parliament, 140 opposition members were suspended.
It’s a very strange situation. That’s the first issue. The elections, the Election Commissioner, and their conduct do not give young people confidence that the electoral and legislative routes can resolve their grievances.
Number two is the media. We have a very high concentration of media ownership. There is a term used in India, Godi media, referring to media that sit in Mr. Modi’s lap. You will find very few voices critical of the government, which is why young people no longer get their news from mainstream media. They have their own sources through YouTube and other platforms.
And finally, the courts. Their attitude toward grievances brought before them for adjudication against Mr. Modi seems to be that they either do not take them seriously or fail to act decisively. For example, it was a Supreme Court justice who called young people “cockroaches,” in response to which this party emerged. Despite mounting evidence of electoral malpractice, if one wants to call it that, or certainly anomalies, the courts have not yet reached any decisive conclusions.
Those are the three routes. Perhaps there is a fourth one, which is popular protest. But now we have the complete criminalization of popular protests and the banning of protests at their historical sites. Young people’s aspirations cannot be pursued through legislative, media, popular protest, or judicial routes, which is why the agitation continues.
The Cockroach Janta Party Is Creating a Counter-People to Challenge Modi
Photo: Screenshot from CJP website.
In your article “Fragile Hegemony: Modi, Social Media, and Competitive Electoral Populism in India,” you emphasize the vulnerability of political dominance to alternative forms of popular mobilization. Does the Cockroach Movement represent the emergence of the “counter-people” you anticipated, capable of challenging Modi’s construction of political legitimacy?
Dr. Subir Sinha: Yes, I do think they represent one of the initiatives to create a counter-people. I should emphasize that, in my understanding of populism, as I argued in that particular article, there is no stable construction of “the people.” Rather, there are competing, overlapping, and sometimes perhaps cooperating mechanisms through which a counter-people can be imagined.
This happens through social movements and different political parties, taking different forms across India’s states. As you know, India has many states and different regional political parties, so the idea of a counter-people will not be uniform across the country.
But I do think the CJP is a very important initiative and perhaps, at the moment, the central mechanism through which a counter-people is being imagined and manifested on the streets.
In relation to the article you just mentioned, their use of social media has been exemplary. Mr. Modi and his ruling party did not really anticipate this and are finding it very difficult to deal with.
India’s Youth Are Dismantling Modi’s Construction of “the People”
In “Modi’s ‘People’ and Populism’s Imagined Communities,” you examine Hindutva’s transformation of the constitutional idea of “We the People” into a majoritarian political identity. Could the Cockroach Movement articulate a more inclusive conception of popular sovereignty, or might its anti-establishment rhetoric reproduce some of the exclusionary tendencies of populism itself?
Dr. Subir Sinha: To answer that question, let us first look at how they dismantled Mr. Modi’s notion of the people and used popular media to do so. This brings us to the question of a new kind of popular sovereignty.
As I said earlier, this particular generation relies primarily on social media for its news. One of the major reasons for Mr. Modi’s success, which I discussed in that 2017 article on fragile hegemony that you mentioned, was that his party was the first to recognize the power of social media. Modi had accounts on Facebook and then Twitter, along with large WhatsApp groups, well before any other political party. They literally had that entire space to themselves.
One of Mr. Modi’s successes has now become one of the reasons for his slight unraveling: the very large number of Indians who have smartphones. India is probably first or second in the world in this regard. It also has one of the largest user bases for many platforms, including WhatsApp, other Meta platforms, and X. These platforms worked very well for Mr. Modi for a long time, particularly for mobilizational purposes. But the Cockroach Janta Party and the country’s youth were born into that ecosystem. They know social media far better than a BJP official in their 50s running the party’s so-called IT cell. The way they used Instagram completely took the BJP by surprise. Secondly, their use of the filthiest abuses directed at Mr. Modi in their posts, songs, and memes dismantled the people–leader relationship on which Mr. Modi’s hegemony had so far rested.
That relationship was based on the idea that Mr. Modi is above politics. There are three or four different ways of portraying him: perhaps as a god, because that comes up very often; as a highly religious person—we have many pictures and video clips showing him worshipping; and as a father figure. During the COVID pandemic, for example, you could see him literally emulating a father figure from a very popular television show, lighting lamps and praying to the gods to save us from COVID. Now, the Cockroach Janta Party’s construction of the counter-people does not rely on these kinds of tropes.
A New Counter-People Could Challenge Modi’s Hindu Majoritarianism
For Modi, obviously, Hindu majoritarianism is central because 80% of the population is Hindu. But within the CJP, you see Muslims among the second-rung leadership, even if not in the top leadership. There is massive participation by Muslims, both in the protests themselves and, interestingly, among those who provide food to protesters for free. They might arrive at protest sites with vans full of food packets to distribute, along with water, soft drinks, fruit, and other things. For those who were excluded from Modi’s conception of the people, this is a good way to reassert themselves, participate in these demonstrations, and signal that they, too, are part of the people. The CJP has been open to their participation.
The second issue—and we don’t talk enough about this—is that the violence associated with Modi, his party, and his political formation has been directed primarily against Muslims, as has been fairly well documented around the world. But the second target of violence by Hindutva groups has been the Dalits. This is a paradoxical relationship because, on the one hand, Dalits have enjoyed more political representation through the Hindu far right than ever before in the country’s history. The mode of incorporation has been to make them legislators or members of Parliament and things like that.
But at the same time, if they step outside certain boundaries—for example, by falling in love with a girl from a so-called upper caste, or even by wearing a turban, riding a motorbike, riding a horse, or keeping a mustache, things supposedly considered transgressive for someone so historically subordinated—there have been numerous incidents of violence against them, especially in Uttar Pradesh, which is the absolute base of the BJP’s power. So, not surprisingly, educated Dalits have been at the forefront of the CJP. A very large section of Dalit youth is no longer happy to be seen simply as Dalits incorporated into Hindutva at a subordinate level, within well-understood and well-specified boundaries.
Then there are very large numbers of young people who are neither Muslim nor Dalit but face very bleak employment prospects. Whenever there is an opening for what might be considered lowly jobs—and I don’t mean to denigrate these jobs; I’m simply making the point that they are not the jobs people aspire to in terms of status or money—such as a railway guard, someone cleaning a railway station, or someone employed at the lowest level of a post office or bank, you will find millions of people applying for tens of jobs, many of them with PhDs. So, you have a very high number of people with higher education degrees and very few jobs available to them.
If you think in terms of the composition of the people, there is a vast reservoir of resentment and aspirations among a restless population—the classic background against which forms of populism emerge. So, there is such a reservoir for the production of a counter-people.
Now, whether or not the CJP will become populist, I’m not the first to say that all Indian politics is, at some level, populist. And that will likely be the case here as well. But there are different ways of being populist. You can be a populist by following the great man and essentially becoming part of an authoritarian-populist definition of the people. But as you saw in Serbia, you can also have a leaderless youth movement in which the idea of the people and that of the leadership are not the same.
As you mentioned regarding political sovereignty, there are different ways of thinking about it. There is the Modi model, where, we are told, the people have vested all their hopes, imaginations, and ways of authorizing power in one man. The other model could be much more decentralized, with far more inclusive leadership. But we are still a fair distance away from the CJP becoming a political party with any electoral footprint. So, at the moment, we are looking at this interesting situation in which they are negotiating their relationship with the established political parties.
Modi’s Image as a Feared and Revered Leader Has Been Broken
Narendra Modi files his nomination papers from the Vadodara Lok Sabha seat in Gujarat amid tight security and supporter turnout. Photo: Nisarg Lakhmani | Dreamstime.
The Cockroach Movement transformed an insulting metaphor into a digitally mediated identity of resistance. Drawing on your research into Modi’s social-media populism, how does this strategy challenge the BJP’s communicative dominance? Can online satire and decentralized mobilization develop into durable counter-hegemonic political organization?
Dr. Subir Sinha: First of all, shortly after the protests emerged and the first few CJP demonstrations took place, abusive memes targeting Mr. Modi began circulating. His party fired the entire so-called IT cell. A very influential man named Amit Malviya, who had been the architect of Modi’s social media policy, was fired, and many of the main influencers were let go.
Obviously, they realized they had made a huge mistake and that young people had left them behind in terms of social media. Mr. Modi, not exactly someone known for having little to say, was completely blindsided by this development. His response was also very ham-handed.
He tried to act cool, introducing a number of memes using Gen Z language, which was also very awkward. Then he tried other things. These days, among right-wing youth in India, especially the religious right, there is something called bhajan clubbing. Bhajan means religious chanting. Basically, people gather in halls and similar venues where religious songs are played with techno music, and they dance. When Mr. Modi attended one of these events to signal, “I’m one of you,” that, too, was very awkward.
So, at the moment, the social media game that the BJP had mastered, with Mr. Modi himself as a central figure, has slipped out of its hands. Anyone who follows him, as I do, can see that almost anything he posts on X or other social media platforms attracts hundreds of abusive responses from very young people. The image of a feared and revered leader, which was very much constructed through social media, has been broken in a way that I cannot see being restored anytime soon.
India’s Jobless Growth Has Created a Massive Reservoir of Discontent
In “Strong Leaders, Authoritarian Populism and Indian Developmentalism,” you connect Modi’s political project to neoliberal restructuring and economic insecurity. To what extent do unemployment, educational competition, and frustrated aspirations explain the current youth mobilization? Has the gap between developmental promises and material opportunities become a structural vulnerability for Modiism?
Dr. Subir Sinha: What we have been seeing in India is effectively jobless growth. In fact, I increasingly feel that the term neoliberalism is somewhat limiting when it comes to understanding what exactly has happened over the last five years. When Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, he had a very neoliberal platform. The state would withdraw from business, businesses would become much more autonomous, and the government would facilitate this process. He even had a slogan, “Ease of Doing Business.”
But over time, other elements have become very powerful. I’m not too sure whether the acute concentration of media ownership in the hands of Mr. Ambani and Mr. Adani, two of the richest people in the world who have backed Mr. Modi, fits that model. In fact, when Mr. Adani bought the NDTV news channel, he even said, “This is a gift for my friend, Mr. Modi,” and things like that. So, while elements of neoliberalism certainly remain, there are many other factors at play.
Take, for example, the huge subsidies. You may know that half of the Indian population receives food subsidies from the government. That is a damning indictment of the current economic model: half the population cannot afford to buy food from the market and has to be provided with considerable amounts of food.
His neoliberal model began to unravel before the 2024 elections. There are several symptoms of this. One is the farmers’ movement. Remember, India remains among the countries with the highest proportions of their populations engaged in agriculture, close to 50%. We have never really completed the agrarian transition, and the so-called agrarian questions remain unresolved.
We also have a situation of highly concentrated employment. This is why large numbers of migrant laborers leave the poorest parts of the country and flock to Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta—well, not so much Calcutta—Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai. In fact, just last week, our Minister for Trade and Commerce, Piyush Goyal, while speaking to investors in Europe, said, “Come to India. Our workers work seven days a week. They don’t complain about hours, and they never ask, ‘Can I get the weekend off?’”
The idea of a hyper-exploited labor force made available to domestic and transnational capital as a main engine of Indian growth has been the definitive feature of Indian neoliberalism. We know that neoliberalism worldwide has depended on the demobilization and demoralization of labor.
From that perspective, this is why we have such a massive reservoir of discontent. Again, one has to go back to the pandemic for insights into what is happening now, because it revealed the extent of the precarity faced by migrant workers. Something like 80% of them either received no wages or experienced wage theft during that period. It also became clear that many people were in very precarious employment in the cities for most of the year but had to return to their villages for part of the year.
Modi’s Neoliberal Model Is Unraveling
So, they are not a working class in the classical sense. They constitute a restless, somewhat footloose population—half-working-class, half-peasant, partly urban, and partly rural. That is the main demographic. Looking around the world, at Brazil, the US, and similar cases, it is not surprising to me that victims of neoliberalism are essentially up for grabs by different political projects.
In some cases, they mobilize on their own. In others, they flock to political parties on the basis of region, caste, or tribal affiliations. In areas where other political parties have done considerable work, they might come forward and become part of those formations. But the CJP is very easy to follow, and they are fun, much as Modi’s campaigns could have been seen as fun at one point. Their campaigns are very catchy, and that poses a major problem for Modi’s particular neoliberal model.
Keep in mind, however, that the CJP itself has not necessarily positioned itself as anti-neoliberal, although it has identified a number of people, such as Adani, Ambani, and others, as being among its targets. We have not yet heard a comprehensive anti-neoliberal program articulated by the CJP, although many of its allies have been campaigning against neoliberalism for quite some time.
Exclusion from Voter Lists Is Becoming Exclusion from Social Welfare
Students participate in a peaceful nighttime protest organized by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in New Delhi, India. Demonstrators sit together on the road, holding placards and posters, chanting slogans, and expressing their demands. Photo: Kamlesh Kumar / Dreamstime.
The Cockroach Movement’s October protests challenged the Election Commission’s voter-list revisions, which critics argue risk disenfranchising eligible citizens. How should we understand this shift from demands for educational fairness to contestation over political citizenship? Does it expose a deeper tension between formal electoral democracy and substantive democratic inclusion?
Dr. Subir Sinha: As I mentioned earlier, there are several paths through which people can voice their grievances. The electoral path, which involves electing representatives to state legislative assemblies or Parliament, is one of the main, commonsensical ways for people to seek redress. But we have had this particular problem with the voter-list revision, which was announced rather hurriedly. The former Chief Election Commissioner, S. Y. Quraishi, who was an exemplary Chief Election Commissioner, has argued that there is no constitutional basis for this exercise. In fact, we still don’t know who authorized it. If you have been following this story, you will know that there are three Election Commissioners: the Chief Election Commissioner and two others. There is controversy over whether the other two were consulted when these decisions were made.
Secondly, because of the particular app that was chosen, it appears that the deletions were directed from New Delhi. By law, these decisions were supposedly to be made at the level of the polling booth and constituency. In fact, a couple of booth-level officers responsible for this process have committed suicide because of the pressures they felt. So, it appears to be a highly centralized process, surrounded by a kind of opacity. You cannot ask questions. The courts respond by saying, “No, this seems okay to us.” And the Election Commissioner has been extremely arrogant in responding to what seemed like relatively reasonable questions from the opposition.
To disenfranchise 15–20% of the population, or to cast doubt on the eligibility of 50% of people, is a huge thing in a democracy. Previously, we had been told that this exercise would have no implications for citizenship or the benefits associated with citizenship, such as social welfare programs. But now some states are saying, “If you’re not on the electoral roll, how can you claim that you are eligible for any of these benefits?” So, what began as a restricted issue of inclusion on the voters’ list has snowballed into exclusions from universal social welfare programs, and that’s a pretty big development.
Moreover, as many people have pointed out, it is not just the deletions. There are also mysterious additions to the electoral roll. Right now, in Uttar Pradesh, six million people have been mysteriously added to the electoral roll. No one knows who these people are. In fact, in the 2024 elections, Mr. Modi ended up with 240 seats, representing a loss of 20% of his seats in Parliament. There is widespread speculation that 60 to 80 of those 240 seats were won through mysterious additions to the number of votes polled. So, at the end of the day, if your figure is X, because the counting does not happen immediately but continues over several days, by the sixth or seventh day, that figure could become X plus 20,000.
We were speaking with the former Chief Election Commissioner, Mr. Quraishi, who said, “Listen, India is a huge country. People might still be standing in line to vote, so we can accept an upward revision of up to 4–5% in the number of votes polled. But an upward revision of 10–15% in the votes polled just seems unbelievable.”
We saw this in Uttar Pradesh and also in Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located. There have been a number of such anomalies, including in the counting of votes. Someone appears to be leading, then the system goes offline—“Oh, there has been a power cut”—and when the system comes back online, the BJP is leading.
So, faith in the electoral system is declining to such an extent that the electoral and legislative pathways for achieving the changes young people want to have become very difficult. That is why the CJP’s list of demands now includes changes to the conduct of the Election Commission and a ban on the government offering post-retirement jobs to Election Commissioners.
India’s Authoritarian Repression Is Losing Its Popular Legitimacy
Protest against the CAA and NRC at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (BAMU), Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India, as students and citizens demonstrate in defense of constitutional rights. Photo: Imran Shaikh.
Recent demonstrations have encountered preventive detentions, restrictions on mobility, and interruptions to communications. In light of your work on authoritarian populism, how should we interpret these responses? Does repression consolidate Modi’s authority by discouraging dissent, or can it inadvertently broaden opposition by exposing the coercive foundations of political dominance?
Dr. Subir Sinha: India leads the world in internet shutdowns. It also leads the world in blocking certain apps, and this is not even a new phenomenon. It used to be restricted to certain places, such as Kashmir and the Indian Northeast, where there have been numerous demonstrations. Mr. Modi then extended these methods to the demonstrations held by farmers during the so-called Farmers’ Movement, as well as to the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2020, which involved large demonstrations around the time of the pandemic. This movement ended with a massive spate of violence in the national capital, in which many Muslims, as well as some Hindus, were killed.
So, these are tried-and-tested methods that Mr. Modi has used. People used to consider such measures justified because Mr. Modi and the media he controls rhetorically labeled protesters as members of the Tukde-Tukde Gang, meaning people who want to dismember the country into tukdes, or pieces; urban Naxals, essentially Maoists living in cities; or, in the case of the farmers’ movement, Khalistanis, associating them with terrorist attempts to create a separate state of Khalistan from Punjab.
At the rhetorical level, they used these descriptors for the movements in ways that effectively, and discursively, authorized violence. If someone is labeled a terrorist, many people would support state violence against them. If you call someone a Maoist, having already claimed that Maoists are waging a civil war in the center of the country, there will obviously be people who say, “Yeah, that’s a good thing.” Similarly, if you refer to protesters as separatists or members of the Tukde-Tukde Gang, you can mobilize a degree of popular authorization for state violence.
Even now, there is a core of Modi supporters who essentially ask, “What is a strong leader for?” In fact, they regard authoritarianism as a positive thing. Let’s not forget that India is the largest market for Mein Kampf in the world. So, there is a streak of authoritarianism, which I discuss in my Strong Leaders paper.
Modi’s Use of Vigilantes Is Deepening Public Anger Against His Government
Many of our nationalist leaders, such as Subhas Chandra Bose, advocated a 20-year period of hard dictatorship. Mrs. Gandhi obviously provided a prior example of this sort of thing. So, authoritarianism is not without popular support. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of Indian independence, one of our leading magazines conducted a survey in which 30% of Indians expressed support for the idea of a limited dictatorship. So, there is some support for authoritarianism in popular perceptions and expectations of political leadership. But that support has diminished considerably, partly because of what we are seeing in the CJP protests. Who are the people out on the streets in Delhi?
There are many different people, but a large proportion are English-speaking, from elite universities, and from the middle and upper-middle classes. In fact, Neha Bora, a left-wing leader of these demonstrations and a PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), has said publicly that both her parents were hardcore BJP supporters and worshippers of Mr. Modi. When she joined the left-wing party, they threatened to disown her. In fact, her mother later joined the demonstrations when protesters were being assaulted. Many people who had never been politically active saw the police brutality in Delhi and decided that they could no longer stand by while young people were being assaulted.
Another thing that has really upset people is that Mr. Modi’s party does not rely solely on the police. It also makes extensive use of vigilantes affiliated with its political formation, who are given police uniforms and clubs with nails sticking out. They enter crowds and beat the hell out of demonstrators. This has been so extensively exposed on social media by the CJP and its affiliated protest organizations that even Modi supporters have become deeply upset.
In my own circle of friends, there are lifelong BJP and RSS supporters who were initially skeptical of the vote-theft allegations. But now they and their entire families have been left off the voters’ list, and they cannot seem to find an easy way to get back onto it. So, they feel that something is wrong.
Any Opposition Coalition in India Must Cross Caste, Class, and Religious Divides
Women from farming families participate in a peaceful protest against India’s farm laws in New Delhi, January 2021. The farmers’ movement drew millions of participants and became one of the largest protest mobilizations in contemporary India. Photo: Dreamstime.
Your research contrasts authoritarian populism with the agrarian populism of India’s farmers’ movement, which secured the withdrawal of the 2020 farm laws. What lessons could the Cockroach Movement draw from that experience? Can students, precarious workers, farmers, and marginalized communities construct a durable coalition across their different economic and political interests?
Dr. Subir Sinha: As I said in my article on the Farmers’ Movement, it was a very significant movement that achieved a very significant victory. It was not a complete victory, and I don’t think that, in this day and age, any opposition movement in India can achieve a complete victory. But the partial victory they achieved was very important because it prevented the complete rollback of the last remaining independence that farmers had. So, the movement was not against capitalist agriculture; it was against neoliberal agriculture, and that distinction is important. In many cases, it was led by very rich farmers, as well as moneylenders and others. So, it was a cross-class movement.
Interestingly, however, it was not a national movement. It was concentrated primarily in the Green Revolution areas: western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab. Some years earlier, farmers from another major Green Revolution rice-producing area in the south, Tamil Nadu, had been coming to Delhi, without much success, to highlight some of their key concerns. The central issue was support prices for agricultural produce: the state should boost prices by procuring produce at a basic minimum price and include more crops, vegetables, and other agricultural products in the list of commodities it would purchase at that minimum price. The mainstream left parties were also quite important in mobilizing farmers, among whom they have always been fairly powerful.
But there are other issues, particularly caste. For example, even in Punjab, there are migrant laborers from my home state of Bihar and elsewhere, many of them Dalit farmers. Would rich farmers agree to an agricultural minimum wage? That wasn’t clear. The rich farmers’ organizations in Punjab were more progressive and more accommodating toward Dalit-caste laborers. But in neighboring Haryana, they were much more conservative. They did not want the farmers’ movement to become a vehicle through which Dalit agricultural workers and small-scale farmers could voice their agenda or in any way threaten the localized hegemony of rich farmers. So, even within the farmers’ movement, there was no genuinely all-India bloc encompassing everyone working in agriculture.
As far as the endurance of a lasting opposition bloc is concerned, all blocs in India have to be cross-caste, cross-class, cross-region, and more or less cross-religion. Now, in Modi’s case, his coalition is cross-region, cross-class, and cross-caste, but it is not cross-religion. He feels that, with 80% of the population being Hindu, he does not need Muslim voters. In fact, you can hear this explicitly in the election speeches of some second-rung BJP leaders, who say, “Muslim voters, we don’t want your vote. We don’t want to do anything for you. You are not our voters.” They believe that this is a way to consolidate the Hindu vote by making it very clear that Muslims are not welcome within that particular coalition.
So, any counter-coalition, apart from incorporating large numbers of Muslims, would also need to chip away at the Hindu constituency, which is the mainstay of the BJP’s electoral coalition. And that can be done on cultural, economic, and political grounds. On political grounds, the question “Where is my right to vote?” is a very strong one. In a slightly less politicized way, there is also the argument that he has had 12 years in power, and he has built railways, roads, and things like that. But now it is time for a change—he has become stale. So, there is nothing particularly political about it. The critique itself is not political. People are simply saying, “Okay, 12 years is quite enough time.”
Hinduism Is Increasingly Seen as Being in Danger from Hindutva
Volunteers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Vijyadashmi festival, a large gathering or annual meeting during Ramanavami a Hindu festival in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh on October 19, 2018. Photo: Pradeep Gaurs.
On the cultural front, things become very interesting because there is an increasing feeling that Hinduism is in danger from Hindutva and from the crassness that has crept into religious practices. These practices are necessary for Mr. Modi to keep unemployed subaltern youth on his side. By this, I mean very vulgar dances at religious festivals; highly hateful songs played during religious festivals, specifically in front of mosques; and large-scale permission given to young people to go on pilgrimages during which they openly consume huge amounts of drugs and destroy public property, vehicles, and other things. Many people feel that this is no way to conduct what was once a low-key and significant annual pilgrimage.
So, there is a question about their hold over the imagination of what Hinduism is. We also saw that the whole Ram Temple construction did not work for them electorally as well as they had hoped. In fact, after that, they lost 20% of their seats. Any counter-coalition, therefore, is going to have to take on certain attributes. For example, I don’t think it can be very strongly anti-Hinduism. It would have to pay some lip service to Hinduism while also saying that, historically, we have lived relatively peacefully. We have had episodes of Hindu–Muslim violence throughout our history, but there has also been coexistence of a far better variety than what we have seen.
So, the deterioration of Hinduism under Hindutva, the breakdown of long-standing relations of coexistence between communities, and the accommodation of caste aspirations in response to the fact that more Dalit people are now much better educated and have their own very strong intellectuals and political formations—all of this creates the possibility for a counter-people to emerge. But there are still certain things that have to be done before such a counter-people can actually emerge.
Senegal’s Counter-Elite Offers Lessons for India’s Youth Movement
Senegal’s youth mobilization helped bring Bassirou Diomaye Faye to power in 2024 through a coalition built around anti-establishment politics and democratic reform. How does this experience compare with India’s Cockroach Movement? What determines whether youth protest develops into an electoral alternative rather than remaining an autonomous pressure movement?
Dr. Subir Sinha: In the case of Senegal, they already had a political party dating back to around 2016. Political protests can be expressed through popular movements, in what we call the social movement form, or through the party form. That is a major difference between the Senegalese movement and the Cockroach Janta Party movement. The Senegalese movement emerged through the party form, and from what I understand, its leadership came from a relatively elite background.
That is one major distinction. In Senegal, you have a counter-elite that has come to power on issues common across the world, particularly corruption and the accountability of officials. But the differences between the two cases are considerable. That is not to say there are no lessons for India. There certainly are, but the major differences concern the size of the country and its cultural heterogeneity.
There is also the structure of Indian federalism, which grants considerable powers to the states while retaining many powers at the center. So, which level of government should your protest address, given the nature of your demands? Does the state government have the power to resolve them, or does that authority rest with the central government?
Then there is the issue of caste, for which I don’t think most countries have anything analogous.
You also have a historical sedimentation of political parties and their supporters. In India’s case, the number of political parties is very, very large.
Finally, returning to the point about social media, I have no personal experience of having been to Ghana or Senegal. But in India, people’s lives are so heavily mediated through mobile phones and social media that this represents another important difference in terms of how you would go about mobilizing people.
Bangladesh’s Youth Movement Shares Troubling Similarities with Modi’s BJP
Bangladesh’s 2024 student uprising began with disputes over public-sector employment quotas before expanding into a challenge to Sheikh Hasina’s regime. What explains the escalation of educational grievances into regime-level opposition? Could India’s current protests follow a comparable trajectory, or do differences in political institutions and opposition organization make such comparisons misleading?
Dr. Subir Sinha: Let me be slightly controversial here. I found a number of aspects of the Bangladeshi movement quite similar to the BJP in 2014. By that, I mean the very large presence of conservative religious figures and the idea that, in Mr. Modi’s case in 2014, India should be a Hindu nation, while in Bangladesh, it should be an Islamic country. In both cases, there was the idea of constitutional change that would essentially entrench religious majoritarianism. There were also major attacks on mainstream media and a reliance on so-called fake history.
Just as Mr. Modi attempted to destroy the image of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s founding Prime Minister, in Bangladesh, there was an attempt to destroy the image of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first Prime Minister. This involved not only his image but also his house and all visible symbols of him in the public sphere.
Now, whether or not this will lead to the changes we are discussing, there are certain variables in Bangladesh that do not exist in the Indian case. There are long-standing disputes between two political families in Bangladesh. In India, by contrast, the dispute is effectively between one party dominated by a family and another dominated by a broad, deeply ideological organization, the RSS. That is a second important difference.
The third point concerns similarities. If you think about Bangladesh and the ways in which it is experiencing what I would call a collapse of the future, two elements come into play. The first is climate change, of which Bangladesh is a particular victim, much more visibly so than India. It affects large numbers of people every year, yet the state does not really have a widespread agenda for their rehabilitation or for restoring their housing, employment, and other necessities. The other element is corruption. In Bangladesh, there is a huge amount of what people refer to as crony capitalism, although I would basically just call it capitalism.
These issues are also becoming part of the conversation in India. The close relations between the ruling party and its cronies are becoming increasingly similar under the Modi government to those under the former government of Sheikh Hasina. So, I would say there is a cancellation of the future, also reflected in high unemployment. In fact, we have a PhD student working on the examinations used to recruit people into public services in Bangladesh.
It is quite interesting to see the similarities, although I don’t think Bangladesh has experienced the same widespread leakage of examination papers or non-declaration of examination results. But you would find that, in youth protests around the world—certainly in the Philippines, Indonesia, Mozambique, Madagascar, and other places—unemployment and corruption are seen as somehow intertwined. Young people’s faith in the political systems governing their countries has rapidly faded.
Their capacities for mobilization and for creating satire through means available to anyone—a mobile phone and a few apps—have created a ubiquity of anger and satire, along with the ability to take political risks. This is common not just to Bangladesh and India, but to all the countries currently experiencing an upsurge of youth activism.
Serbia Shows How Student Movements Can Evolve into Electoral Parties
Serbian students and citizens protest against government corruption following the Novi Sad railway station accident, at Slavija Square in Belgrade, Serbia, on December 22, 2024. Photo: Mirko Kuzmanovic / Dreamstime.
Serbia’s student-led movement has just secured a historic electoral victory after nearly two years of anti-corruption protests. What organizational and political conditions enabled this transition? Could India’s youth movement learn from Serbia’s combination of decentralized mobilization and electoral coordination, or would such a strategy compromise its independence?
Dr. Subir Sinha: There are many lessons to learn from the Serbian example as well. Remember, it was the Novi Sad railway station collapse that essentially took the movement to another level. Before that, anti-mining protests had already been taking place, so the Novi Sad incident was not the beginning of the Serbian movement.
One important difference is that Serbia has a student-list party that includes people who are not politicians and have no background in electoral politics. Large numbers of its members and electoral candidates are academics and members of the university community. So, the involvement of students and the way the movement’s demands have evolved from one issue to another are very important.
Another very important lesson, and one could say the same about Hungary in this regard, is that even political leaders and parties with near-total control of the media can be defeated by popular uprisings that have evolved into electoral parties. That is something that needs to be taken into consideration.
On the other hand, I return to the question of India’s size and the importance of political learning. Authoritarian-populist leaders learn from one another. They learn from what happened in Hungary and Serbia and will therefore recalibrate their strategies in the countries they lead.
Nonviolent Resistance Exposes the Injustice of State Repression
In your essay on Gandhi’s contested legacy, you examine how traditions of nonviolent resistance coexist with the exclusionary politics of contemporary Hindutva. Does the Cockroach Movement represent a revival of Gandhian civil disobedience through new forms of digital and street-level protest? How does it compare with the protest repertoires employed by students in Serbia and Bangladesh?
Dr. Subir Sinha: Gandhi’s legacy is contested, particularly among Dalits. Let’s not forget that many Dalits feel Gandhi did not take Ambedkar, the preeminent intellectual often seen as the main intellectual figure behind the upsurge of Dalit students, seriously. Gandhi is seen as having cheated him on a couple of occasions. He also seems to have prioritized Hindu unity over social and cultural justice for Dalits. That has created a degree of resentment, and these are valid criticisms. So, Dalits have a number of reservations about Gandhi, even as many other parties continue to regard him with reverence. His legacy is therefore not viewed uniformly among today’s protesting youth; perceptions of it are somewhat fragmented.
But when it comes to the strategies and tactics of movements, nonviolence is a very interesting phenomenon. In the Gandhian approach, when police forces or other forces of injustice attempt to suppress protesters through violence, absolute nonviolence somehow creates the perception of a massive gap in power.
On one side is the nonviolent protester, voluntarily allowing their body to be subjected to police violence; on the other are the police and vigilantes, who use extralegal force against protesters. This makes the police forces appear extremely unjust, while the victims appear to be on the side of justice. So, for any government in India, including Mr. Modi’s—which, paradoxically, also wants to be seen as Gandhian—state repression against nonviolent protesters is ill-advised. It will have repercussions, further eroding the government’s legitimacy.
India’s Opposition Must Convert Popular Mobilization into Electoral Power
Finally, Dr. Sinha, your scholarship emphasizes the relationship between political economy, popular mobilization, and competing forms of hegemony. Across India, Senegal, Bangladesh, Serbia, Nepal, and France, youth movements have achieved different degrees of political change. What distinguishes protests that merely replace political elites from those capable of transforming the institutions and inequalities that reproduce authoritarian populism?
Dr. Subir Sinha: That’s a huge question, but in brief, institutional change is more achievable than structural change. Most people would agree, because structural changes go deeper. You could achieve institutional change by changing the leadership of an institution. For example, you could say, “This particular Election Commissioner is corrupt, but let’s get a better one.”You could also change the rules of the game while still remaining within the realm of institutional change. For example, you could say that the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner should involve the Chief Justice of India, as was previously the case, along with the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister. So, you change the rules governing how that person is appointed. You could do that without too much difficulty.
You could also introduce other kinds of institutional changes. There’s an excellent Indian journalist, Ajaz Ashraf, who has compared India’s experience with electronic voting machines with that of Brazil. He has noted that, in the Brazilian EVM system, there is an independent group of verifiers who examine whether the code is functioning properly and things like that. So, you could introduce institutional changes of this kind or modify the rules governing existing institutions.
Now, structural changes are what the BJP is trying to make. For example, if you say that 15–20% of the population is excluded from the electorate, that is a structural issue. They are also looking at a so-called delimitation bill, which would create a massive imbalance between the southern and northern states and basically result in an undefeatable, enduring majority for them. Those would be structural changes.
Now, what movements can do, by putting pressure on the system from the outside, is force, at best, institutional change. Structural change becomes possible only when that movement power is converted into legislative power, because ultimately it is Parliament that has the authority to make fundamental changes. In some cases, Parliament and the state legislatures can also make changes to the Constitution. For that to happen, you need electoral victories. And to achieve those electoral victories, you have to break the current political coalition in power.
Remember, there are two political parties that were previously part of the opposition coalition: Janata Dal (United), from my state of Bihar, and Telugu Desam, from Andhra Pradesh. If these two parties alone were to withdraw their support from Mr. Modi, his government would lose its majority. So, in my view, the strategy should be to work out an electoral coalition that brings together many of these movements, despite their own frictions and problems. If that were possible over the next couple of years, and a counter-people were able to find electoral expression, that is when you could begin to see structural changes with an abiding influence, perhaps even spelling a long-term decline of Hindutva.
In an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Gideon Rahat of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem examines Israel’s democratic prospects ahead of the October 27 elections. He argues that Netanyahu’s departure could enable a redistribution of political power and a return to consensus-based democracy, while warning that deeply personalized parties and weakened institutional checks threaten democratic resilience. Highlighting Netanyahu’s role in legitimizing the religious-nationalist far right, Professor Rahat cautions: “But once you let this genie out of the bottle, which is what Netanyahu did, the genie is here to stay.” Despite these enduring challenges, he sees opportunities for democratic renewal through institutional reform, stronger political parties, and the restoration of checks and balances.
As Israel approaches the October 27 elections, its political landscape remains deeply polarized by Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, the growing influence of the religious-nationalist far right, and the profound consequences of the October 7 attacks and the devastating war in Gaza. Beyond the immediate electoral contest, fundamental questions concern the resilience of democratic institutions, the personalization of political power, and whether a post-Netanyahu government could reverse Israel’s democratic backsliding.
In an extensive interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Gideon Rahat, holder of the Gersten Family Chair in Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, offers a nuanced assessment of these challenges. Drawing on his scholarship on political parties, populism, and democratic institutions, Professor Rahat argues that Netanyahu’s departure could create an opportunity for democratic renewal, although Israel’s deeply personalized party system presents formidable structural obstacles.
Central to his analysis is Netanyahu’s consolidation of political authority and his transformation of Likud. According to Professor Rahat, Netanyahu’s populism combines centralized personalism with an antagonistic division between the supposedly authentic people and institutional elites. Yet his removal could fundamentally alter these dynamics. As Professor Rahat explains, “Netanyahu did not allow anyone around him to grow politically.” Consequently, he argues, no obvious successor possesses the capacity to reproduce Netanyahu’s centralized political infrastructure. His departure could therefore allow political power to be redistributed, potentially facilitating a return to consensus-based democracy.
However, Professor Rahat simultaneously warns that Netanyahu has fundamentally transformed Israel’s political landscape by legitimizing previously marginal ultranationalist forces. Examining the rise of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, he emphasizes the decisive role of political elites in enabling radicalization. Referring to Netanyahu’s political elevation of Ben-Gvir, Professor Rahat observes: “But once you let this genie out of the bottle, which is what Netanyahu did, the genie is here to stay.” This normalization of the far right represents an enduring challenge that may survive Netanyahu’s eventual departure.
The interview also explores the weakening of judicial independence, the marginalization of Arab political parties, and the enduring trauma of October 7. Professor Rahat emphasizes that the erosion of institutional safeguards cannot be reversed through leadership change alone, warning that “a court cannot sustain democracy by itself.” Democratic reconstruction, he argues, requires stronger political parties, institutional reforms, and a broader distribution of political authority.
Moreover, Professor Rahat’s analysis distinguishes between the possibility of ending Netanyahu’s personalized rule and the more demanding task of rebuilding Israeli democracy. His cautiously hopeful conclusion underscores the importance of institutional transformation beyond electoral alternation: “Hopefully, this would allow Israel to return to a more consensus-based form of democracy.”
Here is our interview with Professor Gideon Rahat, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication.
Political Personalization Extends Beyond Netanyahu to the Opposition
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Prague, Czech Republic, on December 5, 2012. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Rahat, thank you for joining us. Let me begin with your research on Likud’s personalization under Netanyahu. In your research with Ofer Kenig, you argue that Likud has transformed from an institutionalized leader party into a personal party under Netanyahu. Has this transformation reached the point where Likud’s political identity, organizational survival, and ideological direction have become inseparable from Netanyahu himself? What would remain of Netanyahuism without Netanyahu?
Professor Gideon Rahat: The party might collapse after Netanyahu, but you have to remember that most of the other relevant parties in Israel are also personal. This means that Likud might survive because it still has a brand name and a platform that could remain after Netanyahu. If Likud and Netanyahu were competing against an institutionalized party, Likud might have collapsed. But there are no such alternatives these days. Israeli politics is very personal—not only when it comes to Netanyahu, but also to the opposition to Netanyahu.
Netanyahu Embraced Populism Amid His Legal Troubles
Your recent research with Tristan Klingelhöfer links centralized party personalism to illiberalism and majoritarian conceptions of democracy. To what extent does Netanyahuism exemplify this relationship? Is Israel experiencing a populist challenge to liberal democracy or a more profound transformation toward personalized authoritarian governance?
Professor Gideon Rahat: No, populism in Israel is clear. I must say that until around 2015, Netanyahu was actually blocking populism in Israeli politics. There were many initiatives that he himself blocked. In 2015, this started to change. In 2019, once he began having problems in court over allegations of corruption, he really changed course and became a populist in a very clear and simple sense: There is me, the person who represents the genuine people, and there are these corrupt elites—the courts, the prosecutors, the media, academia, and everybody else, the usual suspects of any populist regime.
So, it is clearly populism. Of course, in Israel, it is blended with centralized personalism. Netanyahu is at the center; he is the symbol of this populist side. His populism is clear, but he is also allied with other populists, such as Viktor Orbán. He was aligned with Bolsonaro and, of course, with Donald Trump.
Religiosity Matters More Than Ethnicity in Netanyahu’s Support
Election billboards of religious political parties Shas and Otzma Yehudit before Israel’s fourth election in two years in a street of Jerusalem on March 22, 2021. Photo: Gali Estrange.
Likud’s historical populism drew heavily on the resentment of marginalized Mizrahi constituencies toward Ashkenazi political elites. Has Netanyahu successfully transformed these historical grievances into a durable anti-establishment identity, even after decades of Likud dominance? How much of his continuing appeal rests on identity rather than political performance?
Professor Gideon Rahat: It’s clear that Netanyahu and Likud receive more support from Mizrahi Jews than from Ashkenazi Jews, who came from Europe and the West. But I must say that the most important factor is not ethnic background but religiosity. Netanyahu’s supporters tend to be more religious, while Mizrahi Jews tend to be more traditional. They generally occupy a middle ground, whereas Ashkenazi Jews may be either very secular or very religious, like the ultra-Orthodox. Many Mizrahi Jews fall somewhere in between. They are not fully religious, but they are clearly not secular, and Netanyahu enjoys considerable support among them.
However, studies show that the growing Mizrahi middle class, which has emerged through economic and social mobility, tends to be more supportive of the opposition. More educated Mizrahi Jews, particularly those with higher incomes, are more likely to support the opposition than those who are more traditional, poorer, and more dependent on patron-client relationships.
Extreme Personalization Threatens Even Likud’s Survival
In your 2026 articleIs the Party Perspective Over?, you defend the continued analytical centrality of political parties despite increasing personalization. Does Israel’s 2026 election reinforce that argument, or has competition increasingly become a contest between political personalities rather than coherent ideological and organizational alternatives?
Professor Gideon Rahat: If the entire democratic world looked like Israel, I wouldn’t defend the parties. Israel is an extreme case of political personalization. The only comparable case in the democratic world might be Italy. If Israel were the typical case rather than the exception, I wouldn’t argue that parties remain so relevant to politics. But parties are still relevant in most countries, as even very simple examples demonstrate.
Take Austria, for example. Sebastian Kurz was a very strong, highly personalized leader who took over his party. Once he was found to be corrupt, he was gone. In Japan, prime ministers change frequently because of corruption allegations. The party stays, while the leader goes. This is not, of course, the case in Israel. Elsewhere, parties survive their leaders, which demonstrates that they are institutionalized and not dependent on a specific individual. Even some personal parties become less personalized, or perhaps evolve into leader parties, where the leader remains very strong, but the party survives after their departure. The parties associated with the Le Pens in France are an example.
Israel, however, remains an extreme case where political parties come and go. Just two days ago, Benny Gantz, who led one of Israel’s strongest parties four years ago, had to leave because he found that he no longer had sufficient support to pass the electoral threshold. He had only 1% support, while he needed 3.25%. So, it’s about him, not about a political party.
His party, which was highly personalized, will probably disappear into history with him. If you look at Israeli politics, parties are constantly changing, with new parties emerging around specific leaders. Once those leaders leave, their parties disappear. Likud, of course, is a brand name that might survive Netanyahu. But as I said, it would survive because the other parties do not offer comparable alternatives in terms of brand names, not because Likud itself is not a personal party.
Netanyahu Let the Far-Right Genie Out of the Bottle and It Is Here to Stay
Itamar Ben Gvir, speaking in election conference at Ale Zahav in Samaria/Isreal on September 9, 2019. Photo: Barak Shacked.
The political normalization of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich has brought previously marginal ultranationalist currents into the center of government. Has their participation fundamentally radicalized Israeli politics, or does their growing influence reflect a broader ideological shift already underway within Israeli society?
Professor Gideon Rahat: Both are true. First, there has been radicalization in Israel, especially since October 7. October 7 was a traumatic event. Israelis see themselves as having been exposed to this kind of massacre, and this has produced another shift to the right. The first major shift to the right, the first political earthquake, came in 2001, during the Second Intifada, when suicide bombers attacked buses and about 1,000 Israelis were killed. This time, another thousand Israelis were killed in a single day. They could not defend themselves, and this has moved people further to the right.
However, at the end of the day, political elites are more important. If Netanyahu had not allowed Ben-Gvir to enter politics as he did, I’m not sure Ben-Gvir would have become so strong. But Netanyahu did allow him. Ben-Gvir had, if I remember correctly, around 60,000 votes, which was not enough to pass the electoral threshold, and Netanyahu brought him into the Religious Zionism Party. Now Ben-Gvir himself is very strong. So, I think much depends on how political elites shape the political landscape.
This doesn’t mean that people are not extreme, racist, right-wing, or whatever. They are. But elites often have the ability to moderate these forces. People may accept that, even if they are more extreme than their politicians, their leaders must maintain foreign relations and deal with others. They understand that. But once you let this genie out of the bottle, which is what Netanyahu did, the genie is here to stay.
And Ben-Gvir is here to stay, not because he has been particularly successful. He is the Minister of National Security, and if you look at the number of crimes and killings, nothing particularly good is happening. But he doesn’t need success. His rhetoric alone is enough to attract considerable support.
Smotrich, who is supposed to be somewhat less extreme, actually comes from the more extreme wing of religious nationalism, from a historical perspective. He is more extreme in terms of religion, as well as foreign affairs and security.
So, the national religious movement is moving toward the extremes, and this represents a historical transformation. Once upon a time, the national religious movement in Israel was moderate. It was actually part of what was called a historical alliance with the Labor Party. But after 1967, when Israel took control of the territories, the movement gradually changed course. Today, it occupies the most extreme position in the Israeli political system.
Military Service Divides Religious Nationalists and Ultra-Orthodox Jews
How should we analytically distinguish the religious-nationalist radicalism of Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism from the political objectives of ultra-Orthodox parties such as Shas and United Torah Judaism? Are these movements converging around an illiberal conception of the Jewish state, or do their competing interests limit the coherence of the religious right?
Professor Gideon Rahat: The ultra-Orthodox are different. If you look at public opinion in both communities regarding foreign affairs and xenophobia, their views are almost the same. But the main goal of the ultra-Orthodox elite is to isolate their community from the rest of society. They don’t want its members to modernize or move beyond the boundaries of the ultra-Orthodox community.
This creates an important distinction. While the national religious are the avant-garde, seeking to lead the State of Israel toward their goals, the ultra-Orthodox are primarily concerned with their own community.
This difference is particularly evident in attitudes toward military service. The national religious serve in the military and regard it as something very important, even as a form of serving God. The ultra-Orthodox, by contrast, do not want to serve in the military. They claim this is because they spend their days studying the Torah.
The real reason, however, is their fear that military service would expose members of their community to modernism. They would encounter women who do not dress as women do within their own community. In other words, the ultra-Orthodox leadership does not want them to be exposed to the outside world and therefore opposes their military service.
So, military service represents the main cleavage, the central dividing line between the national religious and the ultra-Orthodox.
Netanyahu’s Coalition Vows to Continue Judicial Overhaul if Reelected
Israelis protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s anti-democratic move targeting judiciary in Tel Aviv on March 11, 2023. Photo: Avivi Aharon.
Israel’s judicial overhaul controversy exposed competing understandings of democratic legitimacy: majoritarian sovereignty versus institutional checks and minority protections. Following the October 7 attacks and the Gaza war, has the struggle over judicial independence become secondary to national security, or does it remain the defining conflict over Israel’s democratic future?
Professor Gideon Rahat: It remains a defining conflict because Netanyahu and his coalition want to continue with it, while the opposition remains against it. So, this is a very important issue. What Netanyahu is trying to do, of course, is to reduce the checks and balances on the executive, as other leaders are doing around the world. He is doing this by weakening the courts and confronting the media, academia, and civil society. This is an ongoing process, and members of his coalition are saying that if they win the elections, they will continue with it.
You have to remember that in the previous elections, this judicial coup was not on the agenda. Now, everybody knows about it, and Netanyahu and his coalition are openly saying that they intend to continue with it. This has become a very important part of their agenda.
Israel’s Political Parties No Longer Provide Essential Checks and Balances
Your scholarship demonstrates how personal parties can undermine institutional accountability. To what extent has Netanyahu’s control over Likud facilitated the weakening of democratic checks and balances? Could an electoral defeat reverse these developments, or has democratic backsliding become structurally embedded beyond Netanyahu’s leadership?
Professor Gideon Rahat: On the one hand, Netanyahu has really driven populism, personalism, and the centralization of power. But let’s imagine that he’s no longer there. We still have to remember that political parties in Israel are highly personalized. When parties become highly personalized, they no longer serve as checks and balances; they simply serve their leaders.
This is a problem for democracy, particularly in a system where there are already very few checks and balances. We don’t have federalism or two houses of Congress. We have a highly centralized electoral system with a single nationwide electoral district and very weak legislators. So, when you look at Israel, you see that there are hardly any checks and balances, whereas political parties once played precisely that role.
Returning to a more democratic course would not be easy. Changes would be necessary. But without Netanyahu, I don’t think any single leader would centralize the system to the same extent.
There is also reason for hope. Look at the new Hungarian leader who came to power. He could have become Orbán II, taking all the powers Orbán had accumulated and using them for himself. But instead, he is giving up those powers. So, we can always hope that Israel’s next leader will be generous enough to distribute political power more broadly, allowing checks and balances to be reestablished.
However, political parties in Israel are really in very bad shape. They need to be reconstructed, but you cannot base your entire reform program on political parties alone. You need to consider new reforms, such as giving more power to local governments, perhaps introducing some form of regional government, and developing other creative ideas to ensure that we do not remain in the current situation, with a very strong executive and a relatively strong and courageous court. But a court cannot sustain democracy by itself.
Populism Helps Netanyahu Evade Accountability for October 7
Morning bombing attack on Gaza near the Al-Saraya buildings. Photo: Ahmed Fraije.
The Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks represented an extraordinary failure of Israel’s security establishment. Yet Netanyahu retains a substantial electoral constituency. How do you explain his political resilience despite this failure? Has the resulting insecurity strengthened populist leadership identification rather than weakened it?
Professor Gideon Rahat: It plays into the hands of populism because, according to this narrative, Netanyahu is not to blame. Instead, the blame falls on the deep state—the military leadership, the intelligence services, and all these supposedly horrible forces. Netanyahu, meanwhile, presents himself as the representative of the genuine people, someone who is not to blame.
This is precisely how populism works. It allows leaders to escape blame for failures for which they bear responsibility. Even if we imagine that Netanyahu is not personally to blame, he is still the prime minister and therefore bears responsibility. Yet populism enables leaders to claim credit for what they regard as successes while shifting the blame for their failures onto others.
October 7 Trauma Reinforces Israel’s Zero-Sum View of Palestine
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, involving mass Palestinian civilian casualties, extensive destruction, and accusations of war crimes and genocide, has profoundly damaged its international standing. To what extent have these developments altered Israeli electoral preferences, or has a broad national-security consensus insulated domestic politics from international criticism?
Professor Gideon Rahat: Unfortunately, most Israelis do not see it this way. They regard Israel’s military campaign as a logical consequence of what happened on October 7. They believe that the Palestinians attacked first, that the attacks were particularly cruel, and that Israel’s response was retaliation. This is how they understand the situation. They also do not perceive international criticism in the same way as much of the rest of the world does.
Some international criticism makes more sense than others. For example, when Israelis see demonstrations calling for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” they interpret this as a demand for Israel to disappear. This reinforces the perception of the conflict as a zero-sum game, leaving little room for empathy or sympathy toward the other side.
Even the two-state solution, despite some support for it within Israel, is perceived by many Israelis as a threat to their survival. Israel is still experiencing profound trauma from October 7. For Israelis, this was the most horrific event to happen to Jews since the Second World War.
When you look at the situation from the outside, you might say that around a thousand Israelis were killed, compared with 60,000 or 70,000 Palestinians. Comparing these numbers, you may naturally feel greater sympathy for the Palestinians. But that is not how Israelis see it. Their argument is that there could have been 60,000 Israeli casualties as well if Israel had not responded.
This illustrates the fundamental problem with viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a zero-sum game, in which it is either us or them. If anyone wants to begin addressing the conflict, they must give Israelis the feeling that they can have security even if a Palestinian state is established. Without that sense of security, any solution is a nonstarter.
You also have to remember that this is not the first time Israelis have experienced such fears. There was the second Palestinian uprising in 2001. The Oslo Accords had created an opportunity for the Palestinians to begin building their state, but instead, thousands of Israelis were killed in suicide bombings. Then came the Hamas attack. So, Israelis are afraid, and they believe they have reasons to be afraid. Hamas itself presents the conflict as a zero-sum game.
That is how many Israelis perceive the situation. When you look at the conflict from the outside and argue that these two peoples must come together, you have to understand that both sides have their grievances. Bringing them together is extremely difficult. If you want even to begin that process, you have to think about how to change the perception that this is a zero-sum game.
A Post-Netanyahu Government Could Restore Palestinian Property Protections
The Gaza war and intensified settlement expansion in the West Bank have brought competing visions of sovereignty, annexation, and Palestinian statehood into sharper focus. Has the radical right succeeded in shifting the boundaries of legitimate political debate so far that even a post-Netanyahu government would struggle to reverse these trajectories?
Professor Gideon Rahat: For many years, Israel benefited from two factors. First, the Palestinians themselves were divided between Hamas and the PLO, making negotiations extremely difficult. Even if Israel reached an agreement with the PLO, what would that achieve if Hamas refused to respect it? This division worked to Israel’s advantage.
Second, the Israeli Supreme Court did not allow settlers to take privately owned land, only land that was not privately owned. This provided Israel with some protection against international criticism because the Supreme Court was widely respected. However, once the current government began attacking the Supreme Court and disregarding the principle of private property, Israel became much more exposed to international criticism.
Any government other than the current one would probably return to the previous policy. I don’t think there would necessarily be negotiations over Palestinian statehood, but I believe such a government would respect the previous status quo, under which the private property of Palestinians was not to be touched.
Delegitimizing Arab Parties Undermines Israeli Democracy
Israelis protest in Tel Aviv against Netanyahu’s Judicial Coup in Israel. Photo: Avivi Aharon.
Palestinian Arab citizens constitute roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population, yet their parties face persistent political exclusion. Following the recent controversy over attempts to disqualify Arab-majority electoral lists, does the 2026 election expose a fundamental contradiction between Israel’s Jewish-national identity and its commitment to equal democratic citizenship?
Professor Gideon Rahat: When you look at this issue, you have to remember that the so-called Arab parties are also, in a sense, non-Zionist parties. They do not support the idea that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. However, these parties are not exclusively Arab. Although most of their voters are Arabs, the Communist Party is a Jewish-Arab party. Another party also has a Jewish representative, and there are Arab representatives in Zionist parties as well. So, the situation is not entirely clear-cut.
Nevertheless, you are absolutely right that there is a delegitimization of Arab parties. They are not regarded as legitimate coalition partners, and from my perspective, this is a problem.
Let’s imagine that some of these parties hold positions that are considered illegitimate. That may be the case. But if that is the problem, other parties should make their conditions explicit. They could say, for example, “If Party X from the so-called Arab or non-Zionist camp agrees to certain conditions—one, two, and three—we can cooperate with them.” This would put suspicions of racism aside and make the question one of political opinions and policies. From my point of view, this is what should be done.
On the other hand, you have to understand why some people are suspicious of particular parties. For example, one party has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is a huge movement, encompassing both more moderate elements and others that are openly terrorist. Such connections make some people worry that this party’s ultimate aspiration is a Muslim caliphate rather than the State of Israel.
Then there is the Arab nationalist party, which talks about a state from the river to the sea without any special status for Jews. You have to remember that the State of Israel was established as a safe haven for Jews who had been killed in the Holocaust and persecuted and killed in many other places. The idea was to establish a state for the Jewish people.
So, there is a genuine problem here. Once again, if both sides could show empathy and understand each other’s grievances and the sources of their mutual distrust, there might be opportunities for alliances. My personal view is that such alliances are possible. I don’t see why they should not be.
However, many people carry these feelings and grievances, and after October 7 and everything that has happened since, building a coalition with these parties has become extremely difficult. It is important to distinguish between these particular parties and Arab political participation more generally. Israel has already had a Muslim Arab minister, as well as a Druze minister. Of course, the Druze community is more closely aligned with the state, so the situation is more complex than it might initially appear.
Nevertheless, you are absolutely right that this is a problem. One of the best things that could happen to the State of Israel would be some form of coming together and an effort to build these alliances. Such cooperation would not necessarily have to begin with Arab parties formally joining a coalition. They could remain outside the government and, for example, support a minority government by refraining from voting to bring it down. There are possibilities for cooperation. However, this remains the deepest rift, the most fundamental cleavage in Israeli society: the divide between Jews and Arabs, most of whom are Muslims.
Opposition Fragmentation and Weak Political Parties
Recent polling places Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party in close competition with Likud, while Naftali Bennett and other opposition figures compete for the anti-Netanyahu electorate. Does this fragmentation reflect healthy democratic pluralism, or does the opposition’s dependence on competing political personalities reproduce the very personalization you identify within Likud?
Professor Gideon Rahat: I must say that Likud at least has an established party organization. In the other parties, there is hardly any organizational structure. You could argue that most opposition parties, with the exception of the Democrats, the left-wing Zionist party, are almost entirely personalized parties that would probably not survive beyond their current leaders.
This is a huge problem because, even if we imagine that these leaders would behave differently from Netanyahu, there would still be no party organization capable of serving as a check and balance. Something important is missing in Israeli politics. Political parties and their organizations can play a crucial role in opposing populist forces.
You can see this in Turkey, for example, where opposition parties continue to exist as established organizations even when their leaders change. These parties remain important. In other countries with populist regimes, political parties also play a significant role. In Israel, however, this organizational dimension has become very weak.
We need to reconstruct political parties. Israel used to be what scholars call a “party state.” In the past, 25 percent of the Israeli population belonged to political parties. But these parties have largely collapsed.
Nobody particularly likes political parties, perhaps because they divide society, represent particular interests, and are associated with internal political struggles. Yet if you look at the empirical evidence from around the world, the stronger political parties are—and I mean parties in the plural—the greater the degree of party organization, or “partiness,” and the stronger democracy tends to be.
It is very important to remember the connection between political parties and democracy. You are absolutely right that we need to reconstruct them to sustain democracy in the long run, even if Netanyahu were to allow democracy to flourish.
The Far Right Would Sacrifice Israeli Children for Greater Israel
Campaign signs for the Israeli government “Shas” party head by Arye Deri, depicting Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, prior to the April 2019 elections in Safed, Israel on March 10, 2019. Photo: David Cohen.
Although leading opposition figures promise to restore institutional accountability and reverse some ultranationalist policies, many remain committed to restrictive positions on Palestinian statehood. Would an opposition victory represent genuine democratic renewal, or primarily a change in leadership within an enduring ethnonational and security-oriented political consensus?
Professor Gideon Rahat: I think there would be democratic renewal. Even if the new government included clearly right-wing forces, such as Bennett, Lieberman, and others, it would still be possible to engage in dialogue with them. There would no longer be an automatic veto by the extreme right.
You have to understand that the extreme right’s veto power over Netanyahu’s government extended beyond the Palestinian issue. It even affected negotiations over the Israeli hostages in Gaza. These parties would not allow Netanyahu to reach a deal to bring Israeli citizens home from Gaza. That is before considering all the other issues. They are extremely nationalistic and are prepared to sacrifice not only others but also their own children and their own people for the sake of Greater Israel. That is their vision.
If these forces were no longer part of the government, some progress would be possible. Would the next government establish a Palestinian state? Forget about it. But there would still be opportunities to move forward. Dialogue could resume, and efforts could begin to explore whether the Palestinian Authority, together with whoever governs Gaza, could start building something that might eventually become a state. Perhaps it would not ultimately become a state, but at least the lives of Palestinians could improve to some extent.
Israel’s Fragmented Party System Makes Coalition Outcomes Unpredictable
Recent polls offer conflicting projections, with some indicating a substantial anti-Netanyahu advantage while others suggest a closely balanced parliamentary landscape. Given the 61-seat coalition threshold, the electoral weight of religious parties, and the potential role of Arab parties, which coalition scenarios do you consider most plausible after October 27?
Professor Gideon Rahat: If neither side secures a majority of 61 seats after the elections, everything remains open. Several scenarios are being discussed. One possibility currently under consideration is for the opposition, together with the Arab non-Zionist parties, to first replace the Knesset speaker and then pass legislation that would prevent Netanyahu from returning to power. This could potentially be followed by another election.
There are many possible scenarios, and you can never be certain what will happen after an election. We might even find ourselves with a unity government involving Netanyahu and Eisenkot. You simply cannot know because this is coalition politics. No single party commands a majority, and Israel does not have large parties. According to opinion polls, the largest party is projected to win just 24 of the 120 seats, or 20 percent. That means a coalition must be built.
When you build a coalition, everyone applies pressure, everyone plays chicken with everyone else, and everyone negotiates. The final outcome is impossible to know in advance. It is like cooking: you bring together many different ingredients, and you cannot be sure what the final result will be. So, if you expect the elections to produce a clear answer, I would be surprised.
Netanyahu’s Departure Could Restore Consensus-Based Democracy
And lastly, Professor Rahat, looking beyond October 27, what would constitute the more consequential outcome for Israeli democracy: Netanyahu’s defeat, the exclusion of the religious-nationalist far right from government, or a deeper institutional transformation that restores pluralism and accountability? Are we witnessing the possible end of Netanyahuism, or the consolidation of a political order that may outlast its founder?
Professor Gideon Rahat: If Netanyahu is ousted, there is a good chance for change because there is no single person who could become the next Netanyahu. Netanyahu did not allow anyone around him to grow politically. If he saw someone who might challenge him in any way, that person was pushed out.
As a result, I don’t think there is anyone who could take over the political infrastructure Netanyahu has built and use it in the same way. So, there is a good chance that once he is removed from power, political power will be dispersed and redistributed among different forces. These forces might even have an interest in dispersing power because none of them would want another leader to become the next Netanyahu.
Only someone who imagines himself as Netanyahu’s successor might want to preserve this centralized power structure. But most political leaders understand that they are unlikely to become the next Netanyahu, so it would be better for them to distribute power more broadly.
Hopefully, this would allow Israel to return to a more consensus-based form of democracy. I also hope that the next government will undertake institutional reforms to establish and consolidate this broader distribution of political power.
