Professor Jean-Yves Camus, a leading scholar of the far right and researcher at the Observatory of Political Radicalities at the Jean Jaurès Foundation in Paris, argues that France’s 2026 municipal elections revealed more than the continued advance of the National Rally (RN): they exposed a deeper reconfiguration of the French right. In this interview with ECPS, Professor Camus shows how the RN’s local gains—57 municipalities and over 3,000 council seats—coexist with persistent weakness in major metropolitan centers. More importantly, he underscores that “the boundary between the mainstream and the radical right is blurring locally,” particularly where segments of Les Républicains and RN voters increasingly converge. The interview offers a nuanced account of electoral realignment, selective republican resistance, and the uncertain road to 2027.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at the Observatory of Political Radicalities at the Jean Jaurès Foundation in Paris, underscores that France’s 2026 municipal elections reveal not only the continued advance of the National Rally / Rassemblement National (RN) but, more importantly, a gradual reconfiguration of the right in which the lines separating mainstream conservatism and radical populism are increasingly porous at the local level.
Reflecting on what he calls a “mixed bag” outcome, Professor Camus notes that the RN has achieved “a substantial gain” by winning 57 municipalities and securing over 3,000 council seats, yet “failed in all major cities and metropolises.” This dual pattern—territorial expansion alongside persistent urban resistance—captures the paradox at the heart of contemporary French politics. While the party has consolidated its presence in “small and medium-sized cities”and in economically distressed regions such as Pas-de-Calais and Moselle, it continues to face structural limits in gentrified metropolitan centers like Paris, where “the extreme right is very weak for obvious sociological reasons.”
Yet, the most consequential development, as Professor Camus emphasizes, lies not simply in where the RN wins or loses, but in how it increasingly interacts with the broader right-wing ecosystem. In several regions, particularly along the Mediterranean corridor, “the core voters of the Conservatives… are very close to voters of the National Rally,”facilitating patterns of vote transfer and informal cooperation. This dynamic signals a shift from the once rigid cordon sanitaire toward what Professor Camus describes as a more “selective” Republican front, contingent on local contexts and strategic calculations.
The significance of Éric Ciotti’s victory in Nice further illustrates this transformation. While rooted in the city’s longstanding conservative and post-colonial sociological profile, the result also points to a deeper convergence: “locally… the Republicans and the National Rally have platforms that are very similar.” In this sense, Ciotti’s ascent functions as both a local phenomenon and a symbolic “vitrine,” enabling the RN to present itself as part of a broader conservative continuum rather than an isolated extremist force.
At the national level, however, this convergence remains contested. Professor Camus highlights an unresolved strategic dilemma within Les Républicains, torn between maintaining ideological autonomy and pursuing alignment with the RN. As he cautions, any such coalition would likely be asymmetrical: “the dynamic is on the side of the National Rally… the agenda will be set by the National Rally.”
Taken together, the interview suggests that France is not witnessing a straightforward normalization of the far right, but rather a more complex process of political recomposition. The RN’s rise is embedded in enduring socioeconomic grievances and cultural anxieties, yet its ultimate trajectory will depend on whether the boundaries that once separated it from the mainstream right continue to erode—or are strategically reasserted—in the run-up to 2027.
Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Jean-Yves Camus, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
The RN Has Expanded Locally, but Still Hits a Metropolitan Ceiling
Cyclists and pedestrians take over the Champs-Élysées during Paris Car-Free Day, filling the iconic avenue from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe under a clear sky. Photo: Dreamstime.
Professor Jean-Yves Camus, welcome, and let me start right away with the first question: The 2026 municipal elections seem to have produced a paradoxical outcome: the National Rally / Rassemblement National (RN) expanded its local footprint yet failed to secure the kind of major urban victories that would have symbolized full normalization. How should we interpret this mixed result—does it confirm the RN’s structural implantation, or does it reveal enduring sociological and territorial ceilings?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: You’re right to say that the outcome of this election is very much a mixed bag for the Rassemblement National (RN). On the one hand, they significantly increased the number of seats they gained on city councils—up to more than 3,000. They won 57 cities, which is, of course, a substantial gain compared to the 13 cities they secured in 2020. But they failed in all major cities and metropolises, with very significant losses. They expected to win Toulon and secured 42% in the first round, but ultimately did not win. Due to a consolidation of votes against the National Rally, they were also expected to seize Marseille but did not. Paris remains a territory where the extreme right is very weak, for obvious sociological reasons. It is a gentrified city, which is largely alien to the ideology of the party. So, the cities they seized are small and medium-sized. The largest is Perpignan, which they retained in the first round with just over 50%, but this is the only city with more than 100,000 inhabitants that will be in the hands of the Rassemblement National.
So, I would say there is still significant progress to be made. In view of the presidential election, winning 57 cities is a notable achievement, but when it comes to the presidency, you need votes from the main metropolises. It remains to be seen whether, in a presidential contest, the outcome will be more favorable for the party. Let us remember that city council elections are based on proportional representation, which is not the case for presidential elections. These are local votes that rely heavily on the personality of the candidate for mayor, making this a very different mode of voting, with distinct patterns. Most voters in city council elections focus on very local issues, whereas presidential elections operate on an entirely different level.
What I take from this vote is that the party has expanded its reach to many small cities where it already had a number of strongholds. For example, in the département du Pas-de-Calais, one of the former industrial areas in northern France, they were highly successful and captured more than 10 small cities with populations between 3,000 and 10,000—a significant gain. On the other hand, if you look at a department with a similar sociological profile just north of Pas-de-Calais—the département du Nord, at the border with Belgium—they did not seize any towns, contrary to expectations. This suggests that electoral success depends heavily on how well the local branches of the party are organized, the quality and performance of the candidates, and whether there is genuine local momentum.
They also performed very well in the former industrial area of Lorraine, particularly in the département of Moselle, which borders Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. These are areas where unemployment remains high, where we see multiple generations struggling with long-term economic insecurity, and where many people face difficulties maintaining stable and adequately paid employment. Unsurprisingly, the party performs strongly there. They also did well in the Mediterranean belt, from Perpignan at the Spanish border to Menton at the Italian border—an area where the party has long enjoyed support. However, despite failing to win Toulon or Marseille, they made a very significant gain in Nice, a major city with international appeal.
That said, it was not the Rassemblement National itself that won Nice. Rather, it was a smaller party, Les Républicains, led by Éric Ciotti, now the mayor of Nice, who identifies as a Gaullist and is working toward uniting the right ahead of 2027.
Populism in France Is Deeply Rooted, Not a Temporary Surge
You have long argued that right-wing populist parties must be understood through their specific national histories rather than as a perfectly homogeneous European bloc. In the French case, what do these local election results tell us about the specifically French configuration of populism, nationalism, and anti-elite politics in 2026?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: This situation tells us, first of all, that in most cases the Rassemblement National is still unable to build a coalition with the mainstream conservative right. In many cities, Les Républicains, the mainstream conservatives, remain strong. I think the main outcome of this election is that both Les Républicains on the right and the Socialist Party—the Social Democrats on the left—retain most of their strongholds. They are still the most important and relevant parties at the local level.
The National Rally has two options. The first is that of Marine Le Pen, who said after the vote: “My party is neither left nor right. I want to call on all people, regardless of their political affiliation, to vote for us in 2027. So, not left, not right.” The second option is that of Jordan Bardella, the new president and chairman of the party, who argues that, if they want to win in 2027, they must work toward a coalition of the right. But this coalition of the right is still very much contested from within among mainstream conservatives. Some of them, like Xavier Bertrand, chairman of the northern region of France, or Valérie Pécresse, chairperson of the Île-de-France region, argue that if they ally with the National Rally solely to defeat the left, they will probably lose their specificity. If they enter into a coalition with the National Rally, the policies of the National Rally will prevail, and they will not be able to act as the driving force in recovery.
That is a very wise analysis of the situation. If the conservative right enters into a coalition with the National Rally, the dynamic is on the side of the National Rally. Politically, the agenda will be set by the National Rally—by Le Pen or Bardella—and the conservatives will become a second-ranked partner in the coalition.
Another specificity of France is that it has a populist far-right party that has been above the 10% mark since 1984—over 40 years. Contrary to what many analysts have suggested, this is not a short-term political phenomenon. It is a structural part of political life, both at the local and national levels.
This also means that the French right, which until the 1980s had been divided between a liberal wing and a conservative wing, is now divided into three segments: a liberal, center-right one; a mainstream conservative one; and an identitarian, populist, anti-EU family. This is a major challenge.
Finally, there were elections in Denmark yesterday (March 24, 2026), and the outgoing Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, stated in her acceptance speech that there is a broad consensus on restricting immigration policy in Denmark, which is true. This consensus ranges from the Social Democrats to right-wing populists. In France, however, this is not the case. Immigration and asylum policies remain highly contentious issues, and there is no way the Socialist Party—the Social Democrats—can find common ground even with the mainstream conservative right. Restricting immigration and limiting the rights of asylum seekers is still associated with a small segment of the right wing of the Conservative Party, within Éric Zemmour’s party, which does not perform very well at the local level. Yet this remains central to the ideology of the National Rally. Any coalition, any cohesion of the right for 2027 will therefore have to confront these policy differences on immigration. No agreement, no coordination.
Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen rallied during the meeting for the celebration of May 1, 2011 in Paris, France. Photo: Frederic Legrand
Blocking the RN Remains Possible, but No Longer Automatic
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella framed the elections as evidence of a historic breakthrough, yet the two-round system once again appeared capable of blocking the far right in key urban contests. Does the municipal vote suggest that the so-called “Republican Front” is weakened, resilient, or merely transforming into more selective and local forms?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: The so-called Republican front has become more selective. Obviously, in the southern part of the country, from Perpignan to Menton, the fan base—the core voters of the Conservative Party, the Republicans—are very close to voters of the National Rally. So they tend to transfer their votes to National Rally candidates in the second ballot because they share common ideas: mostly rejection of the left, even when it is moderate, a desire to curb immigration, and a very strong stance against what they call Islamic fundamentalism. Sometimes, the distinction between fighting Islamism and opposing Islam and Muslim immigrants becomes blurred. So, there is considerable cooperation at both the membership level and among voters between the Republicans and the National Rally.
In other cases, such as Toulon, it seems—although it is still too early to say definitively—that one of the reasons why the National Rally did not win is that the local bourgeoisie and business community had concerns about what the city would look like under National Rally governance. This is a very local situation. Toulon was won by the Front National in 1995, and the way the city was governed at the time was widely regarded as dreadful. It was a total failure, both economically and administratively. There may still be lingering negative memories from that period. You must remember that this whole area of France is heavily dependent on foreign investment and tourism, including mass tourism, with foreigners building and buying homes and condominiums, sometimes for retirement and sometimes for vacation. In such a context, how the city is perceived by outsiders—especially from other countries—is extremely important. I believe that the Rassemblement National is still not seen by these foreign investors as a fully normalized party. There remains a fear of what it might do, a fear of the future, and uncertainty about how things would look under its rule.
But this is only one example; Toulon is a very specific case. In Marseille, it was a completely different story. First of all, turnout was much higher in the second round than in the first. Secondly, the candidate from the radical left chose to withdraw, and it appears that a significant portion of his voter base supported the Socialist Party candidate in the second ballot, thereby limiting the National Rally’s chances of winning. This is particularly interesting because voters from the far left seem to have backed the Socialist candidate, despite Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical left La France Insoumise, being highly critical of the Socialist Party.
It, therefore, appears that left-wing voters still seek to block the National Rally from winning their cities. They may not like the Socialist Party—they may view it as too moderate, too pro-business, too pro–free market, and too strict on immigration—but when faced with a choice between the National Rally and the left, they ultimately vote for the left.
There is, therefore, still a possibility that in 2027, if Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen reach the second round, some form of Republican front will re-emerge to block the National Rally from winning the presidency. Why? Because Marine Le Pen remains associated with an embezzlement case involving funds from the European Parliament, and she is expected to stand trial next June. Jordan Bardella, meanwhile, is a 32-year-old, relatively inexperienced politician who has never been a mayor or a member of the National Assembly. He is a Member of the European Parliament but has never served in the National Assembly.
France still sees itself as one of the world’s major powers. It possesses nuclear weapons and plays a role in numerous international negotiations, as seen in both the Ukraine conflict and the Iran–Israel–United States tensions. Many French people may therefore feel that it is somewhat unwise to entrust such responsibility to someone who, while undoubtedly capable, lacks the necessary experience.
In 2017, France elected the youngest president in its history—Emmanuel Macron—who was only 39. By the end of Macron’s second term, many French citizens may feel that he lacked sufficient experience, as he had not been a Member of Parliament and had only briefly served as a minister. He may be seen as one of those figures from the higher administrative elite with limited experience at the grassroots level—someone who had never previously been elected—and that this, in hindsight, may have been a mistake.
Ciotti’s Victory Signals Convergence Between Republicans and the RN
How significant was Éric Ciotti’s victory in Nice for the broader right-wing ecosystem? Should we read it as an isolated local triumph shaped by personal rivalry, or as a more durable sign that the boundary between the mainstream right and the Le Pen camp is continuing to erode?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: There are two different things here. The first is the Nice election, with Éric Ciotti winning over Christian Estrosi, who had the backing of the center-right and President Macron. And then there is what it represents at the national level.
Nice has always been a very peculiar city. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the mayor was Jacques Médecin, who was officially a center-right member of the government but was very close to the local extreme right, even before the Front National was founded in 1972. This has traditionally been a stronghold of the arch-conservative right. That was the situation before World War II, and it remained so afterward. The Gaullist movement was never very strong, especially after 1962, when Algeria was granted independence. A large number of what we call repatriés—repatriated people—settled in the area, and they were strongly opposed to de Gaulle for obvious reasons. They were also very right-wing, particularly on the issue of immigration and the Muslim population. That remains an issue to this day.
In addition, Christian Estrosi performed very poorly. You have probably heard about the many controversies that emerged during the campaign, and there are ongoing inquiries into some of them. So he is partly responsible for his own failure.
So, the election of Éric Ciotti aligns very well with the sociology of this city and with expectations for change. It also reflects the fact that, locally, between Nice and Menton, the Republicans and the National Rally have platforms that are very similar, or at least very close to each other.
At the national level, Ciotti’s party is, in a way, a Gaullist formation. Marine Le Pen and Bardella also refer to General de Gaulle when it comes to the idea of France being independent, both from the United States and from other powers. They claim to be Gaullist in their approach to relations with the European Union and in their economic policy, emphasizing a return to strong industry, and so on.
This movement, when it was launched as a splinter group from the Republicans, was both a personal project of Éric Ciotti—he wanted to achieve something he felt he could not achieve within the Republicans—and a reflection of a broader trend within the Gaullist movement to drift toward a more right-wing stance on immigration and on relations with, especially, Muslim immigration.
This group has captured several cities, such as Montauban, Vierzon, and Sablé-sur-Sarthe. These are medium-sized cities. It can serve as what we call in French a vitrine—a kind of showcase demonstrating that there is an ally which is, in fact, part of the mainstream conservative right and not burdened by the controversies that have surrounded the history of the National Front and the National Rally. So Marine Le Pen and Bardella can say: look, we have mayors from a Gaullist party, which shows that we do not belong to the extreme right. We are simply the real conservative right, while the Republicans are no longer truly conservative because they have governed alongside Macron’s ministers and are, ideologically, closer to the center-left than to traditional right-wing ideas.
Republicans Remain Strong Locally but Divided Nationally
Éric Zemmour’s election campaign, meeting in Cannes,France on January 22, 2022. Photo: Macri Roland.
At the same time, Les Républicains retained or regained a number of municipalities. Do these results indicate that the traditional right still possesses a meaningful territorial base independent of the RN, or is it increasingly being forced into a strategic choice between centrism and nationalist realignment?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: Les Républicains retain a significant base at the local level. The controversy within the Republicans concerns the presidential contest.What we have seen after the city council vote is two leaders from the Republicans, Laurent Wauquiez and Bruno Retailleau, expressing opposing views regarding the presidential election. One explanation is that both of them are, in fact, candidates for the presidency. Retailleau argues that if they retain traditional conservative ideology, and perhaps go a little further on the issue of immigration, they can still win the presidency. Wauquiez, by contrast, argues that if they remain alone as Les Républicains, they will not succeed.
So, he suggests that they already have much in common with the National Rally. What, then, are the differences between them? On this basis, he proposes organizing a primary among all right-wing candidates, from Édouard Philippe on the center-right to the National Rally, to Zemmour’s party and its candidate, who will obviously be Sarah Knafo. They would then rally behind whoever wins the primary election.
Retailleau, however, rejects this approach outright. In other words, he insists that they have nothing in common with Zemmour’s party. So, why hold a primary contest with actors who do not share the same platform and ideology?
In other words, part of the center-right does not want to become hostage to the most right-wing parties in the country, especially since Zemmour’s party stands to the right of the National Rally. Zemmour’s party promotes the idea of the “Great Replacement.” It also advances the view that Islam is not compatible with French citizenship and supports the idea of “remigration,” that is, the compulsory return of all non-European immigrants. This is, therefore, a completely different ideological framework.
My view is that this controversy will continue for many months to come, especially since we do not yet know who the National Rally’s candidate will be. As I mentioned earlier, Marine Le Pen will stand trial on appeal next June, and the outcome will be known then. She may be disqualified from running. If that happens, Bardella will carry the colors of the National Rally. This means that, for the time being, the National Rally faces some difficulty in entering the pre-campaign phase, and this gives the Republicans time to take advantage of the situation and clarify their strategy.
Perceived Cultural Loss, Not Just Reality, Drives RN Support
Muslims demonstrating against Islamophobia outside the Grande Mosquée de Paris, France. Photo: Tom Craig.
Your previous work has emphasized the role of cultural insecurity, as well as socioeconomic dislocation, in shaping support for the populist right. Did these local elections confirm that diagnosis, especially in provincial France and smaller towns where the RN performed more strongly than in metropolitan centers?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: It is absolutely true. When we look at the map of the cities won by the National Rally, what we see are many small and medium-sized cities where there is a strong feeling of cultural loss—a perception that there is more immigration, more mosques being built, and more immigrants and refugees arriving. Many people feel very uneasy about this. It is a perception of insecurity, even in cases where there is no actual crime or insecurity. That is very important to understand.
It is not because you live in a safe city that you do not believe immigration is increasing—10, 20, or even 50 kilometers away in a larger city—and that sooner or later immigrants will come to your own town and change its cultural history, what you consider necessary to be truly French, and what you think is required to live in your community.
I think we still have a problem with immigration from former French colonies, whether from North Africa or West Africa. It is as if we have not fully come to terms with our colonial past, and with the fact that we not only accepted these immigrants but actively encouraged them to come. Large industries and major business interests brought them to this country. So, they deserve recognition for what they contributed and for the role they played in building the country’s industrial base. Yet, they remain disadvantaged, and racism and xenophobia persist.
On the other hand, among native French people—those whose families have lived in the country for generations—especially in today’s unstable international context, there is a growing perception of a clash of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world. This perception plays an important role, particularly along the Mediterranean coast, in shaping support for the National Rally.
The social situation is also very important. As I mentioned earlier, in many parts of France, these areas have been deindustrialized since the late 1970s, and there is no realistic prospect that these jobs will return. You may recall that President Trump, during his campaign in Pittsburgh, told steelworkers that their jobs would come back—but they did not. The same is true in northern France: industrial jobs will not return.
In other words, people feel they have no future, no new forms of employment or specialization for younger generations. There is a strong sense of dispossession, alienation, and abandonment. In some small towns, public services are also disappearing. Public services include the post office, the local school, the railway station—everything that signals the presence of the state. This also includes the presence of police or access to hospitals. Many hospitals have been closing in this country, and when people have to travel an hour to reach emergency care, they understandably feel that the state is no longer taking care of them. So, a protest vote in favor of the National Rally emerges in this context.
Major Cities Favor Stability Over Populist Alternatives
Conversely, how do you explain the RN’s continuing difficulty in major cities? Is this primarily a matter of candidate quality, urban demography, coalition arithmetic, class composition, or the party’s still-incomplete process of dédiabolisation?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: In major cities, you have to remember that most of them, including Paris, have become gentrified. A gentrified city means a high proportion of people with higher education, better-paid jobs, and incomes above the average wage. There is also a tendency to reject extremes and to seek stability.
If you look at cities like Marseille, Paris, Lille, Strasbourg, and so on, there is also a significant share of the population that comes from an immigrant background and who, obviously, do not want to vote for the National Rally. So the conditions are in place to prevent the National Rally from winning in the largest cities, such as Lyon, Paris, and Marseille.
This is not the case in small or medium-sized cities. There, the population is different, often with incomes below the average and facing many difficulties, including in rural areas where the National Rally has made very significant inroads.
Moreover, the organizational apparatus of the major parties still retains some hold over the electorate in major cities, whereas the electorate in small and medium-sized cities and rural areas is much more volatile.
Municipal Results Do Not Predict Presidential Outcomes
Leaflets featuring candidates for the 2024 legislative elections in Versailles, France, on June 28, 2024. Photo: Dreamstime.
Finally, Professor Camus, do these municipal elections offer any reliable indication for the presidential race ahead? More specifically, do they suggest that France is still heading toward a Le Pen– or Bardella-centered contest, or do they reopen the possibility that broader coalitions of the mainstream left, center, and moderate right could yet alter the expected scenario?
Professor Jean-Yves Camus: First of all, in political science, we know that we cannot infer from city council elections what the outcome of a presidential election will be. These are two very different types of elections, not the same mode of scrutiny, and, of course, a very different context—especially in a country like France, where the presidency is very powerful. We are a semi-presidential system.
Second, I would insist that there is still one year to go until the election. The only thing we know for sure is that Emmanuel Macron is not allowed to seek a third term. As for the other contenders, we know quite a few—especially Édouard Philippe, who retained his mayorship of Le Havre last Sunday and is one of the contenders for the center-right—but there are others, and there are many contenders within the Republican Party. We do not yet know who will be the candidate of the Social Democratic left; there may even be several. The only thing we know for sure is that the candidate of the National Rally will be either Le Pen or Bardella, and we know that the candidate of the radical left will be Jean-Luc Mélenchon. So let us wait until we really know who will stand for president, and then look at the first polls.
What the National Rally expects is a second round between Mélenchon and Bardella. Why? Because opinion surveys show that the dédiabolisation of the National Rally has progressed to such an extent that the radical left is now rejected by a higher proportion of voters than Le Pen or Bardella. This is something we would not have said 10 or even 5 years ago. The rejection level of the radical left is around 60%. Fewer than 50% of French people today say that the National Rally is a threat to democracy—49% still see it as such, but that is no longer a majority. So, the hope of the National Rally is a second round between two candidates from the extremes, which would allow it to win.
On the other hand, what I see emerging is what we call the central bloc—that is, Macron’s majority—playing the card of stability: you do not want to vote for one or another extreme, so let us vote for stability.Maybe you do not agree with everything the center-right has done over the past decade, but if you are faced with the National Rally in the second round, please vote for stability—keeping France a democracy and keeping France within the European Union. This kind of strategy may work.
The only problem is that in 2017 and in 2022, the majority of the French did not vote for Macron because they shared his ideas; they voted for him because they rejected Le Pen. And if, in 2027, we again have to vote for a candidate whose policies we do not truly support, only out of rejection of the National Rally, then I would expect very difficult times. Because voting for a president, at least in the French context, should mean supporting his ideology, his project for the country, what he wants to do, and the kind of legislation he wants to pass. If you vote only to avoid what you perceive as a threat, then democracy is not very solid.
Please cite as: ECPS Staff. (2026). “Virtual Workshop Series / Session 14 — From Bots to Ballots: AI, Populism, and the Future of Democratic Participation.” European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). March 24, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00145
Session 14 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series examined how artificial intelligence, algorithmic infrastructures, and digital platforms are reshaping democratic participation in the contemporary era. Bringing together perspectives from political science, communication, cultural heritage, and democratic theory, the panel explored the implications of AI for political legitimacy, collective identity, and the future of “the people” in an increasingly post-digital world. Contributions ranged from public attitudes toward algorithmic governance and the role of ChatGPT in shaping cultural memory to Big Tech’s influence on class consciousness and the fragmentation of digital publics. Together, the presentations and discussions showed that AI is no longer external to democracy, but increasingly constitutive of its communicative, institutional, and symbolic foundations—raising urgent questions about power, accountability, and democratic contestation.
Reported by ECPS Staff
On Thursday, March 19, 2026, the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) convened the fourteenth session of its Virtual Workshop Series, “We, the People” and the Future of Democracy: Interdisciplinary Approaches, under the title “From Bots to Ballots: AI, Populism, and the Future of Democratic Participation.” Bringing together scholars from political science, communication studies, democratic theory, cultural heritage, and digital governance, the session examined one of the most urgent questions of contemporary political life: how artificial intelligence, algorithmic infrastructures, and platform logics are transforming democratic participation, political legitimacy, and the very conditions under which “the people” are constituted. From public attitudes toward algorithmic decision-making and the cultural politics of generative AI to the restructuring of class consciousness and the fragmentation of digital publics, the panel explored the shifting contours of democracy in an increasingly post-digital age.
The participants of the session were introduced by ECPS intern Stella Schade. Chairing the panel, Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo of the Complutense University of Madrid situated the discussion within a broader reflection on the transformation of democracy in the contemporary technological era. As he underscored, democracy has always been shaped by mediations—whether institutional, communicative, or technological—but what distinguishes the present moment is the centrality of digital infrastructures as key mediating forces in the organization of visibility, participation, and power. Algorithms, artificial intelligence systems, and platform architectures, he suggested, have become decisive “bottlenecks” through which political communication and democratic agency are increasingly filtered. In this sense, the session was framed not merely as a discussion of technology, but as an inquiry into the changing nature of democratic life itself.
Under Dr. Gerbaudo’s chairmanship, the panel featured four presentations that illuminated distinct yet interconnected dimensions of this transformation. Presenting a co-authored paper on behalf of his co-authors, Professor Joan Font (IESA-CSIC) examined citizens’ conceptions of democracy in the context of artificial intelligence in public administration and governance, asking who, if anyone, would want an algorithm to govern. Alonso Escamilla (The Catholic University of Ávila), co-authoring with Paula Gonzalo (University of Salamanca), explored how ChatGPT may shape European cultural heritage and its implications for the future of democracy. Aly Hill (University of Utah) turned to the United States to analyze how Big Tech is reshaping white working-class consciousness and reconfiguring populist narratives. Finally, Amina Vatreš (University of Sarajevo) offered a theoretical intervention on “the people” in an algorithmically mediated world, focusing on the interplay between filter bubbles, filter clashes, and populist identity formation.
The session also benefited from the incisive engagement of its discussants, Dr. Jasmin Hasanović (University of Sarajevo) and Dr. Alparslan Akkuş (University of Tübingen). Their interventions not only deepened the theoretical stakes of the presentations but also connected them to wider debates on political legitimacy, technological power, digital capitalism, and democratic fragmentation.
Together, chair, speakers, and discussants produced a rich interdisciplinary exchange that highlighted both the promise and the peril of AI-mediated politics. Session 14 thus offered a compelling inquiry into how democracy is being rearticulated in a world where digital systems no longer merely support political life, but increasingly structure its possibilities.
Democracy, Mediation, and Digital Power
Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo is a sociologist and political theorist at Department of Political Science and Administration and senior researcher in Social Science at Complutense University in Madrid and lead researcher for the After Order project at Alameda Institute.
In his introductory remarks, Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo situates the discussion within his broader scholarly engagement with the transformation of democracy in the contemporary technological era. His intervention underscores the growing entanglement between democratic malaise, the rise of populist movements, and the evolving infrastructures of mediation that shape political life.
Dr. Gerbaudo foregrounds a fundamental paradox at the heart of democratic theory: the tension between the ideal of democracy as the unmediated expression of the popular will and the empirical reality of complex, layered mediations. Drawing implicitly on classical conceptions of direct democracy, he contrasts the normative aspiration for transparency and immediacy with the institutional and technological filters through which political power is necessarily exercised. In this sense, democracy is never purely direct but always structured through channels that organize participation, authority, and legitimacy.
Extending this argument, Dr. Gerbaudo emphasizes that mediation is not a recent development but a constitutive feature of democratic systems across history—from ancient Athens to modern representative regimes. However, what distinguishes the present moment is the centrality of digital technologies as key mediating forces. Algorithms, artificial intelligence, and platform architectures increasingly function as “bottlenecks” and “pivot points,” shaping the distribution of visibility, influence, and ultimately political power.
Crucially, he highlights the hybrid nature of these processes, where human agency and technological systems interact in complex ways. This interplay produces new configurations of power that challenge traditional understandings of democratic participation and representation. By framing the session around these dynamics, Dr. Gerbaudo positions the subsequent presentations as contributions to a broader inquiry into the opportunities and limits of digital democracy in contemporary societies.
Professor Joan Font: “Conceptions of Democracy and Artificial Intelligence in Administration and Government: Who Wants an Algorithm to Govern Us?”
Joan Font is research professor at the Institute of Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC).
In his presentation, Professor Joan Font offers a rigorous empirical examination of public attitudes toward the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in democratic governance. His intervention is situated within the broader framework of the AutoDemo project, a collaborative research initiative aimed at exploring citizens’ preferences regarding democratic procedures and decision-making models in contemporary societies.
Professor Font begins by positioning AI as a critical new dimension in longstanding debates about “which kind of democracy we want.” Rather than treating AI as a purely technical innovation, he integrates it into a normative and empirical inquiry into democratic legitimacy, participation, and authority. The rapid diffusion of AI technologies—particularly within public administration—raises fundamental questions about transparency, accountability, and the locus of decision-making power. Yet, as he notes, systematic knowledge of citizens’ perceptions and preferences in this domain remains limited and fragmented.
To address this gap, the AutoDemo project conducted a large-scale survey of approximately 3,000 respondents in Spain, capturing attitudes toward AI in general, as well as its potential applications in public administration and government. A key contribution of the study lies in its differentiation between varying levels of AI involvement—from low-stakes administrative assistance to high-stakes political decision-making. This nuanced approach allows the authors to move beyond binary or dystopian framings of AI governance and instead map gradations of public support.
The descriptive findings reveal a clear and consistent pattern: respondents are broadly supportive of AI when it is confined to routine administrative tasks, such as improving efficiency or processing information. However, this support declines significantly as AI is envisioned as playing a more direct role in political decision-making. The lowest levels of acceptance are observed in scenarios where AI would oversee or conduct electoral processes, indicating persistent concerns about legitimacy and democratic control. These findings align with comparable studies conducted in other European contexts, suggesting a degree of cross-national consistency.
Moving beyond descriptive analysis, Professor Font employs multivariate regression techniques to identify the key drivers of these attitudes. The results indicate that general attitudes toward AI—such as trust in technology or perceived benefits—constitute the most powerful explanatory factor. In comparison, democratic preferences and broader political attitudes play a more conditional role. Notably, their influence becomes more pronounced in relation to higher levels of AI authority. Individuals with more authoritarian orientations are significantly more likely to support an expanded role for AI in political decision-making, whereas those who favor representative democratic models tend to express greater skepticism.
This stratification underscores a crucial insight: support for AI governance is not merely a function of technological optimism, but is also shaped by underlying normative commitments regarding how democracy should function. In this sense, AI becomes a lens through which broader tensions between competing models of democracy—technocratic, representative, participatory, and authoritarian—are refracted.
Professor Font concludes by emphasizing both the empirical and normative implications of these findings. While AI is not yet a central issue in electoral politics, its growing presence in governance raises the possibility that it may become politically salient in the near future. As such, the question of how citizens perceive and evaluate AI’s role in decision-making warrants sustained scholarly and policy attention. By embedding AI within the broader debate on democratic preferences, the presentation offers a valuable contribution to understanding the evolving relationship between technology and democracy in the digital age.
Alonso Escamilla: “How Does ChatGPT Shape European Cultural Heritage for the Future of Democracy?”
Alonso Escamilla is Manager of European Projects and Research at the Catholic University of Ávila (Spain). For this same institution, he is a PhD Student on Cultural Heritage and Digitalisation and a Member of the Research Group: Territory, History and Digital Cultural Heritage.
In his presentation at Session 14 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series, Alonso Escamilla advances an original and exploratory inquiry into the relationship between artificial intelligence, European cultural heritage, and the future of democracy. His paper situates itself at the intersection of political theory, cultural studies, and digital governance, offering a conceptually rich and methodologically innovative contribution to ongoing debates on the democratic implications of generative AI.
Escamilla begins by establishing a conceptual foundation that links European cultural heritage and democracy through a shared normative architecture. Drawing on UNESCO’s definition, he frames cultural heritage as the legacy of tangible and intangible assets transmitted across generations and preserved for collective benefit. This definition is subsequently expanded through the lens of the European Union, where cultural heritage is understood not only as a repository of memory but also as a strategic resource underpinning economic development, social cohesion, territorial competitiveness, and the consolidation of European values. Democracy, in parallel, is conceptualized as a system grounded in rights, rule of law, and representative institutions, through which citizens’ dignity and public reason are institutionalized.
A key analytical move in Escamilla’s framework is the recognition of cultural heritage as a polysemic concept—simultaneously functioning as identity, memory, symbol, and political resource. This multiplicity, he argues, renders cultural heritage both a site of democratic possibility and a terrain of contestation. In the context of the European Union, where shared identity is continuously negotiated, cultural heritage becomes central to the construction and reproduction of democratic legitimacy.
This conceptual discussion is embedded within a broader historical and geopolitical context. Escamilla highlights a series of crises that have shaped the European project over the past two decades—including the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing war in Ukraine—arguing that these events have placed significant strain on both democratic institutions and cultural narratives. To these pressures is added the accelerating impact of digitalization and artificial intelligence, which introduces new uncertainties regarding the mediation of knowledge, identity, and political participation.
Against this backdrop, Escamilla formulates his central research question: how does ChatGPT conceptualize the role of artificial intelligence in shaping European cultural heritage for the future of democracy? Methodologically, the study adopts an innovative design, treating ChatGPT not merely as a tool but as an object of inquiry. A set of 30 open-ended questions is administered across three levels of complexity—basic, intermediate, and expert—each designed to elicit distinct layers of conceptualization. By structuring the interaction in this way and isolating each level within separate conversational contexts, the study seeks to capture variations in discourse while minimizing contextual bias.
The resulting dataset is subjected to qualitative content analysis, involving thematic coding, identification of discursive patterns, and mapping of conceptual relationships. This approach allows Escamilla to reconstruct the “narrative logic” through which ChatGPT articulates the interplay between cultural heritage, democracy, and artificial intelligence.
The findings reveal a clear stratification in the model’s responses. At the basic level, ChatGPT adopts a pedagogical and normative tone, presenting European cultural heritage as a shared historical legacy, linking it to civic participation, and defining democracy primarily in terms of human rights and the rule of law. These responses reflect dominant institutional discourses, closely aligned with EU policy frameworks and UNESCO definitions.
At the intermediate level, the model’s discourse becomes more analytical and reflexive. Cultural heritage is framed as a resource for critical thinking and democratic literacy, as well as a space—both physical and digital—where citizens negotiate meanings and engage in dialogue. Importantly, ChatGPT begins to conceptualize heritage as dynamic, capable of responding to contemporary challenges and facilitating democratic resilience.
At the expert level, a more critical and ambivalent perspective emerges. Here, ChatGPT articulates both the opportunities and risks associated with AI. On the one hand, AI is portrayed as a powerful tool for enhancing accessibility, inclusivity, and preservation, enabling new forms of cultural production and engagement. On the other hand, significant risks are identified: the privileging of dominant narratives, the reproduction of existing power hierarchies, and the potential for AI to shape—if not determine—how heritage is accessed, interpreted, and transmitted.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the findings is the model’s “performative adaptability.” Escamilla observes that ChatGPT appears to adopt different epistemic identities depending on the level of questioning—ranging from a pedagogical voice at the basic level to a quasi-expert authority at the highest level. This suggests not only responsiveness to input complexity but also an embedded capacity to simulate varying degrees of expertise, raising important questions about epistemic authority in AI-mediated knowledge production.
In the discussion, Escamilla situates these findings within existing literature on cultural heritage policy and digital governance. He notes that the model’s outputs largely reproduce dominant European narratives, reflecting the influence of institutional discourse embedded within training data. While this lends coherence and legitimacy to the responses, it also points to a limitation: alternative or marginalized conceptions of cultural heritage may be underrepresented or excluded.
The analysis of future-oriented responses further underscores the ambivalent role of AI. While its capacity to democratize access and foster inclusion is acknowledged, its potential to distort public discourse, manipulate information, and reshape collective memory raises significant concerns. In particular, the prospect that AI systems might influence not only how heritage is disseminated but also what is deemed worthy of preservation introduces a profound challenge to democratic governance.
Escamilla concludes by emphasizing the bidirectional and evolving relationship between artificial intelligence, cultural heritage, and democracy. AI is not merely a neutral intermediary but an active agent in the production, selection, and transmission of cultural meaning. As such, its growing influence necessitates sustained scholarly attention and critical engagement.
Ultimately, the presentation highlights a central tension: whether artificial intelligence will serve as a tool that enhances democratic participation and cultural pluralism, or as a force that centralizes interpretive authority and constrains diversity. By foregrounding this question, Escamilla’s work contributes significantly to emerging debates on the governance of digital knowledge infrastructures and their implications for democratic futures.
Aly Hill: “The New Elite: How Big Tech is Reshaping White Working-Class Consciousness.”
Aly Hill is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at The University of Utah.
In her presentation, Aly Hill offers a conceptually incisive examination of the evolving relationship between technological governance, populism, and class politics in the contemporary United States. Positioned as a “human-centered” complement to more system-oriented analyses of digital democracy, Hill’s intervention foregrounds the lived and political consequences of technocratic restructuring, particularly as it intersects with the transformation of populist narratives and white working-class consciousness.
Hill’s analysis is anchored in the political developments surrounding the second administration of Donald Trump, with particular attention to the institutional and ideological implications of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative associated with the prominent tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Through this lens, the presentation examines how the increasing alignment between big tech and right-wing political power is reshaping not only governance practices but also the symbolic and material foundations of populist politics.
The presentation begins by situating this shift within a broader historical trajectory of relations between political power and the technology sector. Hill notes that while the contemporary alignment of major technology firms with conservative political actors may appear novel, it is better understood as a function of structural economic incentives rather than ideological realignment. In earlier periods, particularly during the 2000s and early 2010s, big tech was closely associated with liberal, innovation-driven narratives that emphasized democratization, participation, and disruption of traditional power centers. However, as these firms have consolidated economic and infrastructural dominance, their political positioning has increasingly aligned with agendas favoring deregulation, tax reduction, and the minimization of state constraints—policies more closely associated with conservative governance.
This transformation is interpreted not as a departure from prior commitments but as a logical extension of capital-driven interests. Hill highlights how the regulatory environment under successive administrations has played a crucial role in this shift. While earlier administrations pursued antitrust measures and regulatory oversight, more recent policy frameworks—particularly under Trump—have offered incentives conducive to technological expansion, including relaxed environmental regulations affecting data infrastructure and reduced corporate constraints. Within this context, the convergence of political and technological power emerges as both strategic and mutually reinforcing.
At the core of Hill’s argument is the question of how this realignment affects populist discourse, particularly its traditional articulation around the dichotomy of “the people” versus “the elite.” To explore this, she draws on three empirical case studies: the mass dismissal of approximately 140,000 federal employees, the attempted administrative takeover of key government agencies by DOGE, and the deployment of mass communication systems to monitor and manage federal labor. While these cases vary in scope and implementation, they collectively illustrate a broader transformation in the logic of governance.
The first major finding centers on the reconceptualization of governance as an optimization problem rather than a site of political negotiation. Hill argues that the introduction of data-driven managerial frameworks reframes political decision-making in terms of efficiency, performance metrics, and algorithmic calculation. This shift echoes earlier traditions of managerial rationalization, particularly Taylorism, but is now reconfigured through digital infrastructures—a phenomenon she identifies as “digital Taylorism.” In this model, complex political questions are reduced to technical challenges, thereby displacing democratic deliberation with procedural optimization.
The second finding concerns the transformation of state communication. Hill observes that governmental interaction with citizens and employees increasingly mirrors the logic of corporate platform management. The use of standardized, impersonal communication—exemplified by mass emails announcing layoffs or monitoring productivity—reflects a shift toward scalable, automated governance. Importantly, this mode of communication is accompanied by an algorithmic logic that seeks to depoliticize conflict. When errors occur—such as wrongful dismissals—the responsibility is often attributed to technical malfunction or systemic inefficiency, rather than to political decision-making. This displacement of accountability obscures the inherently political nature of these processes, reinforcing the perception of neutrality associated with technological systems.
The third and perhaps most consequential finding addresses the redefinition of workers within this emerging framework. Hill argues that efficiency-driven governance increasingly treats workers as system costs rather than as political subjects. This reclassification has profound implications for populist politics, particularly given that many of those affected by these policies belong to the very constituencies that populist movements claim to represent. In this sense, the presentation identifies a growing disjunction between populist rhetoric and policy outcomes. While populism continues to invoke the grievances of the working class, the implementation of technocratic efficiency measures often undermines the material conditions of these same groups.
Hill further highlights the paradoxical status of technocratic actors within this system. Figures such as Elon Musk, initially positioned as central agents of reform, are themselves subject to the logic of disposability. When their actions generate political friction or undermine narrative coherence, they can be rapidly replaced, reinforcing the primacy of system-level efficiency over individual agency. This dynamic underscores the extent to which authority is shifting away from identifiable elites toward more diffuse, technologically mediated structures of power.
In synthesizing these findings, Hill proposes a significant transformation in the structure of populist discourse. The traditional antagonism between “the people” and “the elite” is increasingly supplanted by a more complex and unstable configuration in which technology itself becomes a focal point of contestation. As citizens encounter the material consequences of algorithmic governance—job loss, surveillance, bureaucratic opacity—they may begin to reorient their grievances toward technological systems rather than conventional political actors. This shift suggests the emergence of a “people versus tech” paradigm, in which the locus of power becomes more difficult to identify and contest.
At the same time, Hill remains attentive to the limits of this transformation. Whether citizens will fully recognize the structural interplay between technological systems and political authority remains an open question. The opacity of algorithmic processes, combined with the enduring appeal of populist narratives, may inhibit the development of a coherent critique. Nevertheless, the presentation underscores the importance of rethinking populism in light of these evolving dynamics, particularly as digital infrastructures become increasingly central to governance.
In conclusion, Aly Hill’s presentation offers a compelling and theoretically grounded account of how technological rationality is reshaping the terrain of democratic politics. By linking empirical developments in US governance to broader conceptual debates on populism, class, and digital power, the study provides valuable insights into the future of democratic contestation. It highlights a critical juncture in which the promises of efficiency and innovation are intertwined with new forms of exclusion, dispossession, and depoliticization—raising fundamental questions about the capacity of democratic systems to adapt to, and regulate, the expanding influence of technology.
Amina Vatreš: “Bubbles, Clashes and Populism: ‘The People’ in an Algorithmically Mediated World.”
Amina Vatreš is a teaching assistant at the Department of Communication Studies/Journalism at the University of Sarajevo – Faculty of Political Sciences.
In her presentation, Amina Vatreš develops a theoretically ambitious and conceptually rich account of the relationship between algorithmic mediation and contemporary populism. Her paper is explicitly framed as a theoretical intervention rather than an empirical study. Its primary objective is to clarify how digital platforms, as socio-technical systems, actively shape the conditions under which collective identities are formed, contested, and destabilized.
Vatreš begins from the premise that digital platforms should not be understood as neutral channels of communication. Rather, they are infrastructures that structure what can be seen, said, and believed. In this way, they participate directly in the production of social reality. This perspective enables her to connect platform logics with the formation of subjectivity and, more specifically, with the articulation of political identities within populist frameworks. At stake, therefore, is not simply the circulation of information, but the deeper question of how “the people” are constructed in digitally mediated environments.
To illustrate this argument, Vatreš offers concrete examples drawn from recent political events. She invites the audience to imagine two users following the same anti-government protests in Sarajevo or the same international conflict, but receiving radically different representations of these events depending on their platform use, prior interactions, and digital networks. One user may encounter content emphasizing governmental responsibility and civic mobilization, while another sees narratives that delegitimize protest and defend authorities. In such instances, she argues, the issue is not merely that users are exposed to different opinions; rather, they inhabit different realities. These realities are produced through algorithmic curation systems that rank, prioritize, and amplify content based on previous behavior and predicted engagement.
This observation leads Vatreš to a larger conceptual claim: contemporary politics unfolds within what she describes as a post-digital environment. In such a setting, technology, communication, and social life are no longer separable domains. Algorithms and users exist in a reciprocal relation: users shape algorithms through their interactions, while algorithms simultaneously shape users’ practices, interpretations, and political orientations. This recursive loop is crucial for understanding the contemporary transformation of populism.
Within this framework, Vatreš introduces the concept of post-digital populism. She defines it as a form of populism in which collective identities are co-produced through the ongoing interaction between users and algorithmic systems. Users, through their clicks, searches, and engagements, effectively train the algorithms, and the algorithms in turn reinforce and amplify the preferences, identities, and affective dispositions that informed those behaviors in the first place. This process is not accidental but rooted in the business logic of digital platforms, which optimize for engagement and thus privilege emotionally charged, polarizing, and identity-affirming content.
A central contribution of the presentation lies in her identification of two key mechanisms through which collective identities are reconfigured in post-digital contexts: filter bubbles and filter clashes. Filter bubbles refer to relatively homogeneous informational spaces produced by personalization and recommendation systems. Within them, users are repeatedly exposed to content that confirms preexisting beliefs, while dissonant viewpoints are minimized. According to Vatreš, this repetition serves to stabilize in-group identification. It strengthens a sense of “us” while constructing a corresponding “them,” often in simplified or distorted terms. In this sense, filter bubbles do not merely isolate; they also consolidate identity through the constant reinforcement of familiar narratives.
Yet Vatreš argues that algorithmic mediation does not operate solely through isolation. It also generates confrontation, and this is where the concept of filter clashes becomes analytically important. Filter clashes occur when antagonistic positions collide across algorithmically curated realities. These are not moments of open dialogue or mutual understanding; rather, they are structured encounters in which users move beyond their own informational environments in order to challenge, confront, or discredit opposing views. These clashes are intensified by algorithms because platforms tend to amplify conflictual and emotionally charged content. Thus, digital mediation not only separates publics but also stages their encounters under conditions that privilege antagonism over deliberation.
From a communication studies perspective, Vatreš insists that the core problem is not simply the absence of constructive dialogue. After all, such dialogue is often limited even in offline or analog contexts. The deeper problem concerns which messages reach users, how those messages are framed, and how they provide justification for particular political demands. What emerges is a fragmented communicative space composed of micro-publics, each structured by its own patterns of visibility, affect, and interpretation.
Here Vatreš introduces an important theoretical insight drawn from Ernesto Laclau’s work on populism. She suggests that the fragmentation of digital publics makes it difficult to create broader “chains of equivalence” through which dispersed grievances might be articulated into a coherent collective project. Although algorithmic environments intensify grievances and facilitate their circulation, they do not necessarily enable their stabilization into durable political meanings. Instead, political affect often remains at the level of reactive polarization. What appears as mobilization may in fact be a simulation of politics—an expression of identity without durable articulation or strategic coherence.
This leads to one of the presentation’s most important conclusions: in algorithmically mediated environments, the “people” do not emerge as a stable political subject. Rather, what one finds is a constant process of mobilization without consolidation. Algorithms generate intensity, accelerate circulation, and produce moments of antagonistic visibility, but they do not provide the conditions for lasting unity. In this sense, populism becomes both effective and fragile. It is effective because it fits the logic of algorithmic systems, simplifying complexity into the stark opposition between “the people” and “the elites.” But it is fragile because it operates within an environment that continuously fragments meaning and reconfigures identity.
Vatreš returns to the Sarajevo protests as an example of this dynamic. What began as collective grief after a tragic accident was quickly transformed into a politically charged event mediated through digital platforms. Competing narratives emerged almost immediately, polarizing public discourse and restructuring the meaning of the protests in real time. Social media did not simply reflect social divisions; it actively organized them, creating the conditions under which different versions of “the people” could emerge, clash, and circulate.
In conclusion, Vatreš argues that the key question in a post-digital world is no longer simply who “the people” are, but how “the people” are produced through the interaction of users, platforms, and algorithmic systems. Algorithms sustain antagonism both by enclosing users within bubbles and by exposing them to conflict through clashes. At the same time, they undermine the stabilization of collective meaning by fragmenting publics and intensifying reactive affect. Populism, in this context, appears both as a strategy of articulation and as a symptom of fragmentation.
Her final argument is particularly striking: algorithms do not produce “the people” as a unified and enduring collective subject. Rather, they create the conditions under which “the people” can continuously emerge and just as continuously dissolve. What remains, therefore, is not a stable democratic collectivity but a shifting field of fragmented, algorithmically mediated identities. In this sense, Vatreš’s presentation offers a compelling theoretical framework for understanding the unstable relationship between digital infrastructures, populist articulation, and democratic subject formation in the contemporary political landscape.
Discussants’ Feedback
Feedback by Assist. Prof. Jasmin Hasanović
Dr. Jasmin Hasanović is an Assistant Professor and researcher at the Department for Political Science at the University of Sarajevo – Faculty of Political Science.
In his role as discussant at Session 14 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series, Dr. Jasmin Hasanović offers a wide-ranging and theoretically grounded set of reflections that both synthesize and critically interrogate the panel’s contributions. His feedback is marked by a consistent effort to situate the presented papers within a broader conceptual shift—from understanding “the digital” as an external domain to recognizing a fully post-digital condition in which technological systems are deeply embedded in the fabric of everyday social and political life.
Dr. Hasanović opens by commending the panel for collectively demonstrating that digital technologies—particularly platforms, algorithms, and artificial intelligence—can no longer be treated as novel or disruptive add-ons to political analysis. Rather, they constitute an integral and normalized dimension of contemporary social reality. This framing establishes the conceptual foundation of his intervention: that political theory must now grapple with a condition in which the boundaries between the technological and the social have effectively dissolved.
Turning first to the presentation by Professor Joan Font, Dr. Hasanović identifies a central theoretical issue raised by the study: the question of political legitimacy in the age of artificial intelligence. While classical political theory has traditionally conceptualized legitimacy in relation to human actors and institutions, the increasing role of algorithmic systems in decision-making processes necessitates a rethinking of this foundational concept. He praises the paper for innovatively linking attitudes toward AI with broader democratic preferences, thereby demonstrating that technological attitudes cannot be analytically separated from underlying normative conceptions of democracy.
However, Dr. Hasanović also identifies several areas requiring further development. Most notably, he calls for a deeper exploration of the finding that individuals with authoritarian orientations tend to exhibit stronger support for AI in political decision-making. Without a substantive theoretical explanation, he argues, such empirical observations remain descriptively interesting but analytically limited. The critical question—why authoritarian or technocratic predispositions correlate with support for AI—remains insufficiently addressed. This omission is particularly consequential given the normative implications: if support for AI aligns with authoritarian tendencies, then AI cannot be regarded as a neutral instrument but must instead be understood as potentially facilitating depoliticization and the concentration of power.
Relatedly, Dr. Hasanović raises concerns about the implicit conceptualization of AI within the study. He suggests that the analysis risks naturalizing the idea of AI as an autonomous political subject, thereby obscuring the human, institutional, and economic structures that underpin algorithmic systems. This critique redirects attention to the political economy of AI: who designs these systems, under what conditions, and for whose benefit. In doing so, Dr. Hasanović underscores that debates about AI’s role in governance cannot be divorced from questions of power, ownership, and capital.
This line of critique leads him to articulate a broader interpretive framework: the future role of AI in politics is inseparable from the capacity of capitalism to adapt and transform. Technological development, he notes, is driven not only by innovation but also by capital investment and, in many cases, military interests. Thus, the question of whether AI will enhance or undermine democratic governance must be situated within this structural context.
In his engagement with Alonso Escamilla’s presentation, Dr. Hasanović shifts focus to the cultural and epistemic dimensions of artificial intelligence. While acknowledging the methodological ingenuity of interrogating ChatGPT as an analytical subject, he suggests that the study would benefit from a comparative perspective. Specifically, he proposes examining how generative AI models conceptualize different cultural heritages in relation to democracy, rather than focusing exclusively on the European case. Such an approach, he argues, would help reveal potential biases embedded within AI systems.
Here, Dr. Hasanović advances a critical argument concerning the Eurocentrism of generative AI. He emphasizes that the dominant training data for models like ChatGPT are heavily skewed toward Western intellectual and cultural traditions. This asymmetry is further compounded by the global division of labor underlying AI production, where data annotation and content moderation are often outsourced to regions such as Africa and Asia under conditions of economic inequality. By invoking the example of companies such as Sama in Kenya, he highlights the often-invisible labor infrastructures that sustain AI systems.
This critique culminates in a broader theoretical point: AI should not be understood as an autonomous or abstract intelligence, but as a socio-technical product shaped by material conditions, labor relations, and global inequalities. In this regard, Dr. Hasanović invokes a Marxian perspective, emphasizing that technologies are “objectified knowledge” produced through human labor. The data that feed AI systems, he notes, are derived from collective social activity—often voluntarily provided by users through digital platforms—yet appropriated within capitalist frameworks for profit generation.
This political economy perspective also informs his engagement with Aly Hill’s presentation, which he identifies as particularly valuable for “humanizing” the discussion of technology. He expresses interest in the possibility of alternative technological paradigms that move beyond capitalist imperatives. This raises a normative and political question that extends beyond the panel: whether it is possible to imagine forms of technology organized around social benefit, communal ownership, or democratic control, rather than profit maximization.
Dr. Hasanović’s comments on Amina Vatreš’s presentation further deepen his theoretical intervention. He strongly endorses her conceptualization of populism as a discursive practice rather than a fixed ideology, aligning it with post-foundational approaches in political theory. He argues that her analysis convincingly demonstrates how algorithmic systems facilitate the partial construction of antagonistic identities—“us” versus “them”—through mechanisms such as filter bubbles and filter clashes.
At the same time, he highlights a crucial limitation identified in her work: the inability of algorithmically mediated environments to stabilize these antagonisms into coherent political subjects. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s theory, Dr. Hasanović emphasizes that the formation of a “people” requires the articulation of diverse demands into a unified chain of equivalence. However, in digital environments characterized by rapid fragmentation and continuous reconfiguration, such stabilization becomes increasingly difficult. As a result, political subjectivities emerge and dissolve in rapid succession, producing a condition of perpetual mobilization without consolidation.
This insight leads Dr. Hasanović to a critical reflection on the limits of contemporary digital activism. While early examples such as Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring suggested that social media could serve as tools for political mobilization, recent developments—such as algorithmic suppression or “shadow banning”—indicate that these platforms are no longer neutral arenas for political engagement. Instead, they are governed by opaque logics that users can neither fully understand nor effectively influence.
In light of these constraints, Dr. Hasanović proposes a shift in analytical and political focus: from engagement withintechnology to engagement over technology. Rather than merely adapting to algorithmic systems, he suggests the need for strategies that seek to intervene in, reshape, or even “untrain” these systems. This raises the possibility of a more active and critical form of technological engagement—one that challenges the structures of algorithmic governance rather than passively reproducing them.
In conclusion, Dr. Hasanović’s feedback provides a unifying and critical perspective on the session’s contributions. By foregrounding the post-digital condition, the political economy of technology, and the limits of algorithmically mediated politics, he not only identifies key theoretical tensions but also points toward new avenues for research and political intervention. His remarks underscore the necessity of rethinking core concepts—such as legitimacy, subjectivity, and collective identity—in light of the profound transformations brought about by digital and algorithmic systems.
Feedback by Dr. Alparslan Akkuş
Dr. Alparslan Akkuş is a Teaching Fellow at the Institute of Political Science, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany.
In his role as discussant, Dr. Alparslan Akkuş offers a reflective and experience-driven intervention that situates the panel’s contributions within a broader historical and technological trajectory. His remarks are characterized by an effort to bridge empirical findings with long-term patterns of technological transformation, emphasizing both the inevitability of artificial intelligence (AI) and its profound implications for political, social, and epistemic structures.
Dr. Akkuş opens his commentary by underscoring the timeliness and importance of the session’s theme, noting that the diverse presentations collectively illuminate multiple dimensions of what he describes as “this AI thing.” Rather than approaching AI as a distant or speculative phenomenon, he firmly situates it within the present, arguing that societies and institutions have already entered a new technological epoch. To illustrate this point, he draws on a personal anecdote from his professional experience in an innovation company in Germany. Recounting a management debate over whether to adopt AI, he invokes a historical analogy from the Ottoman Empire’s delayed adoption of the printing press. For Dr. Akkuş, this example serves as a cautionary tale: resistance to transformative technologies—particularly those central to knowledge production—can have long-term consequences for institutional and societal vitality. The implicit lesson he derives is clear: AI cannot be ignored or postponed; it must be actively engaged and integrated.
This historical framing is further extended through a comparison with the Industrial Revolution. Dr. Akkuş suggests that while earlier technological transformations primarily displaced manual and routine labor, AI represents a qualitatively different shift insofar as it encroaches upon cognitive and creative domains traditionally associated with human agency. This observation introduces a central concern that runs throughout his commentary: the potential reconfiguration of human roles, authority, and autonomy in an AI-driven environment. At the same time, he highlights the risks of bias embedded within such systems, thereby linking technological expansion with normative and political challenges.
Engaging with Professor Joan Font’s presentation, Dr. Akkuş focuses on the ambivalent attitudes of citizens toward AI in governance. He notes that while individuals may accept the use of AI for administrative or technical tasks, they exhibit significant resistance when AI is associated with core political functions such as decision-making or electoral processes. This distinction, he suggests, reveals an important boundary in public trust: AI is tolerated as an instrument but resisted as an authority. Drawing attention to the empirical finding that individuals with more technocratic or authoritarian orientations tend to be more supportive of AI governance, Dr. Akkuş interprets this as indicative of deeper political dispositions. In his reading, critical and reflective citizens are more likely to question the expansion of AI into political domains, whereas those aligned with technocratic or hierarchical frameworks may be more receptive to delegating authority to algorithmic systems.
However, Dr. Akkuş also raises a methodological and contextual concern regarding the generalizability of these findings. He points out that Spain’s political history, which he characterizes as lacking a strong technocratic tradition, may limit the broader applicability of the results. This observation highlights the importance of situating empirical studies within specific historical and institutional contexts, and suggests that the relationship between technocracy and AI acceptance may vary across political systems.
Turning to Alonso Escamilla’s presentation, Dr. Akkuş offers a more normative and critical reflection on the state of European values. While acknowledging the conceptual link between cultural heritage and democratic norms, he expresses skepticism regarding the contemporary vitality of these values. Drawing on his own experiences in Europe, he argues that the foundational democratic principles historically associated with the European project have been significantly eroded, due in part to crises such as migration, the COVID-19 pandemic, and geopolitical tensions. Within this context of perceived decline, he suggests that AI may emerge not merely as a tool but as a potential framework for reconstructing social and political realities. This perspective introduces a provocative dimension to his commentary: that AI could serve as an alternative—or even substitute—for weakened normative structures.
Dr. Akkuş’s engagement with Aly Hill’s presentation shifts the focus to the political economy of technology. He strongly concurs with the argument that the relationship between political actors and major technology companies is fundamentally driven by financial interests. Using the United States as an illustrative case, he describes a dynamic interplay between different forms of capital—particularly the technology and defense sectors—and their influence on political decision-making. His interpretation frames political alignments not primarily in ideological terms, but as outcomes of competing economic interests.
At the same time, Dr. Akkuş extends Hill’s analysis by emphasizing the fluidity and replaceability of both human actors and technological systems within this political-economic landscape. He notes that not only can individuals—such as technocratic elites—be rapidly replaced when they become politically inconvenient, but even major technology companies are subject to similar dynamics. Referring to recent developments in US federal procurement decisions, he highlights how shifts in political authority can reconfigure technological infrastructures, thereby underscoring the contingent and strategic nature of AI deployment in governance.
In his comments on Amina Vatreš’s presentation, Dr. Akkuş engages with the conceptual distinction between “filter bubbles” and “filter clashes.” He identifies this distinction as a valuable contribution that moves beyond the more commonly discussed notion of echo chambers. While echo chambers emphasize the reinforcement of homogeneous viewpoints, the concept of filter clashes introduces a new analytical layer by examining the spaces and mechanisms through which opposing narratives confront one another. Dr. Akkuş interprets this as an important advancement in understanding the dynamics of digital communication, particularly in relation to populism, where antagonistic interactions play a central role.
Beyond his engagement with individual papers, Dr. Akkuş concludes with a broader reflection on the accelerating development of AI technologies. Drawing on his own experience working with large language models, he emphasizes the rapid pace at which these systems learn and evolve. He notes that AI is not only trained through user interaction but also through the involvement of human labor in model development and refinement. This observation reinforces his earlier point about the inevitability of AI’s integration into everyday practices, including academic writing and knowledge production.
Importantly, Dr. Akkuş acknowledges the transformative impact of AI on intellectual labor. He contrasts his previous experience as a journalist—when writing was a wholly human endeavor—with contemporary practices in which tools like ChatGPT are routinely used to generate and refine text. This shift, he suggests, is not merely technical but ontological: it alters the very nature of authorship, creativity, and reality construction. In this sense, AI does not simply assist in communication; it actively shapes the content and form of knowledge itself.
In conclusion, Dr. Akkuş’s feedback offers a multifaceted and thought-provoking perspective that complements the session’s scholarly contributions. By combining historical analogies, empirical observations, and personal experience, he underscores the urgency of engaging with AI as a transformative force. His remarks highlight both the opportunities and the risks associated with this technological shift, while also pointing to the broader structural and normative questions that it raises for democracy, governance, and human agency.
Questions by Participants
The Q&A session of Panel 14 was marked by a set of conceptually rich and forward-looking interventions that deepened the panel’s central concern with the transformation of democracy under conditions of rapid technological change. Participants’ questions coalesced around the ontological, normative, and political implications of artificial intelligence, particularly its status within democratic systems and its role in reshaping power relations.
A central intervention, raised by Dr. Bulent Kenes, crystallized a key theoretical tension: whether artificial intelligence should be conceptualized not merely as a tool or infrastructure, but as a political agent. Building on earlier remarks by Dr. Jasmin Hasanović, who framed AI as a potential “subject,” Kenes sharpened the inquiry by explicitly asking whether AI possesses—or is evolving toward—agentic qualities within political processes. Directed to Professor Joan Font, this question foregrounded the need to interrogate the boundaries between human and non-human actors in governance, as well as the implications of delegating decision-making authority to algorithmic systems.
Expanding the discussion, Dr. Paolo Gerbaudo encouraged participants to reflect on the broader theoretical takeaways of their research in relation to democratic transformation. His intervention connected empirical, conceptual, and normative strands across the panel, inviting speakers to consider how AI-mediated governance, platform power, and algorithmic knowledge production intersect with the rise of populism and evolving forms of political subjectivity. Collectively, the questions underscored a shared concern with the reconfiguration of agency, legitimacy, and public awareness in an increasingly AI-mediated democratic landscape.
Responses
Response by Amina Vatreš
In her response, Amina Vatreš provided a theoretically sophisticated reflection on the phenomenon of AlgoSpeak, situating it firmly within the broader dynamics of algorithmic mediation and post-digital populism. Engaging with the question raised by Dr. Jasmin Hasanović, she argued that AlgoSpeak should not be understood merely as a linguistic workaround designed to evade platform moderation. Rather, it constitutes a revealing symptom of algorithmic power over visibility, communication, and the structuring of public discourse.
Vatreš emphasized that AlgoSpeak emerges from users’ growing awareness that both the content and form of their communication are continuously filtered, ranked, and potentially suppressed by platform algorithms. This awareness, she suggested, marks a fundamental shift: communication is no longer oriented solely toward other users but is increasingly shaped by strategic considerations directed at algorithmic systems themselves. In this sense, digital expression becomes dual-facing—simultaneously social and computational.
Importantly, she linked AlgoSpeak to the production of collective identity, arguing that it illustrates the active role of users in negotiating and adapting to algorithmic constraints. Users are not passive recipients of curated content; rather, they demonstrate agency by modifying language, employing coded expressions, and experimenting with alternative forms of communication. However, this agency remains structurally limited. As Vatreš noted, such practices operate within the very systems they seek to circumvent, rendering them reactive rather than transformative.
Consequently, AlgoSpeak is neither external to the problem nor a solution to it. Instead, it exemplifies the post-digital condition in which algorithmic systems shape not only what is seen but also how individuals speak, express political positions, and construct collective identities. While users may tactically adapt to algorithmic governance, these adaptations do not fundamentally alter the underlying structures of power. In this regard, AlgoSpeak reflects adaptation rather than resistance, underscoring the enduring constraints of platform-mediated communication.
Response by Aly Hill
In her response, Aly Hill offered a reflective and analytically nuanced engagement with broader questions concerning the political economy of digital platforms, the possibilities of resistance, and the evolving nature of political activism in a technologically mediated environment. Her intervention extended her presentation’s central themes by exploring alternative platform architectures and the limits of contemporary digital mobilization.
Hill first addressed the question of whether technology might exist outside the dominant logics of capital-driven platforms. In this context, she introduced a distinction between centralized and decentralized media systems. Decentralized platforms—such as Reddit or emerging alternatives like Bluesky—were presented as potential counter-models to the monopolistic tendencies of large-scale technology companies. These platforms, characterized by community-based moderation and less centralized algorithmic control, may mitigate some of the pathologies associated with mainstream platforms, including content homogenization, harassment, and the concentration of communicative power. However, Hill remained cautious, noting that the structural dominance of major tech actors raises serious doubts about the scalability and transformative potential of such alternatives.
Turning to the question of political activism, Hill reflected on the growing instability of political identities and movements in the digital age. She suggested that while online platforms enable rapid mobilization and broad dissemination of information, they may lack the durability required for sustained political change. Drawing on insights from Zeynep Tufekci’s work, she highlighted the tension between digitally facilitated protest and long-term organizational capacity. While offline, on-the-ground mobilization retains significance—particularly in contexts of internet shutdowns—Hill expressed skepticism about its ability to fully substitute for the reach and immediacy of digital networks.
Ultimately, her response underscored a dual condition: digital platforms remain indispensable for contemporary activism, yet their structural constraints continue to shape—and potentially limit—the prospects for transformative political change.
Response by Alonso Escamilla
In his response, Alonso Escamilla provided a reflective and forward-looking elaboration on his exploratory research, emphasizing both its conceptual scope and its potential for future development. Acknowledging the feedback and critical insights offered by discussants and participants, he framed his study as an initial step—“the tip of the iceberg”—within a broader research agenda aimed at systematically examining the relationship between artificial intelligence, cultural heritage, and democracy.
Escamilla highlighted the importance of comparative analysis as a key direction for future inquiry. He underscored that cultural heritage is not a monolithic category, but rather a multifaceted domain encompassing tangible, intangible, industrial, and increasingly digital forms. Accordingly, he suggested that the relationship between cultural heritage and democratic values may vary significantly across these different dimensions, as well as across regional and cultural contexts. In particular, he emphasized that comparing European cultural heritage with non-European traditions could reveal underlying biases and asymmetries in how democracy is conceptualized and reproduced.
A central theme of his response concerned the role of youth and sectoral diversity in shaping contemporary engagements with cultural heritage. Drawing on his ongoing research, Escamilla noted that different sectors—such as education, youth work, and sports—approach cultural heritage and democratic participation in distinct ways. He pointed to youth organizations as particularly significant actors in preserving civic-oriented values, even as broader European policy frameworks increasingly prioritize competitiveness and strategic preparedness. In this context, he suggested that youth initiatives often act as a form of normative “buffer,” resisting the erosion of participatory and democratic ideals.
Importantly, Escamilla also reflected on the growing entanglement between digital and physical realities. He illustrated how young people integrate traditional, hands-on practices with digital tools such as 3D printing, thereby creating hybrid forms of cultural production. This interplay, he argued, exemplifies how artificial intelligence and digital technologies are not only reshaping cultural heritage but also redefining spatial and social environments—from urban design to everyday practices of self-representation.
In conclusion, Escamilla emphasized that artificial intelligence is no longer a future prospect but an already operative force that is actively transforming both cultural and democratic landscapes. While the same technological tools are globally available, their meanings and effects remain context-dependent, underscoring the need for nuanced and comparative research moving forward.
Response by Professor Joan Font
In his response, Professor Joan Font offered a reflective and methodologically self-critical engagement with the comments raised by participants, while clarifying key conceptual and empirical dimensions of his research on public attitudes toward artificial intelligence in governance.
A central theme of Professor Font’s intervention was the need to more explicitly integrate political theory into empirical research. Responding to remarks by Dr. Hasanović, he acknowledged that while his study implicitly addresses questions of political legitimacy, this foundational concept was not sufficiently foregrounded in the analysis. He identified this as a broader limitation within public opinion research, which often prioritizes operationalization and statistical modeling at the expense of deeper theoretical engagement. Moving forward, he suggested that a more explicit articulation of the relationship between public attitudes and legitimacy would significantly strengthen the analytical framework.
Responding to the question regarding whether artificial intelligence can be conceptualized as a political agent, Professor Font approached the issue with caution. While recognizing that AI increasingly performs functions that resemble decision-making authority, he did not endorse the view of AI as a fully autonomous political agent. Rather, he implied that AI should be understood as part of a continuum of decision-making arrangements shaped by human design, institutional contexts, and political actors. In this sense, AI may exercise delegated or mediated agency, but its authority remains embedded within—and ultimately dependent upon—human-driven structures of governance and accountability. This perspective aligns with his broader emphasis on legitimacy, suggesting that the critical question is not whether AI is an agent in itself, but how its use affects citizens’ perceptions of legitimate political authority.
Professor Font also addressed concerns regarding the conceptualization of artificial intelligence and the categorization of its roles. He recognized that the term “levels of decision-making authority,” employed in his study, may obscure important distinctions between qualitatively different uses of AI—ranging from routine administrative functions to more speculative or high-stakes political applications. While he justified the inclusion of this broad spectrum on the grounds that such uses are either already implemented or actively debated by political actors, he conceded that a more precise conceptual differentiation would enhance clarity and interpretive rigor.
Turning to the empirical findings, Professor Font acknowledged the limitations of survey-based research in establishing causal mechanisms. In particular, he reflected on the observed correlation between support for AI and what he termed “market-driven authoritarianism.” Rather than indicating outright anti-democratic attitudes, he suggested that this orientation may reflect a pragmatic willingness to prioritize efficiency and outcomes over procedural democratic norms—an interpretation that remains tentative but theoretically suggestive.
Finally, addressing questions of external validity, Professor Font noted that while Spain’s limited experience with technocratic governance may constrain generalization, comparative evidence—particularly from Germany—indicates similar attitudinal patterns. This suggests a degree of cross-national applicability, albeit with important contextual caveats.
Conclusion
Session 14 of the ECPS Virtual Workshop Series demonstrated that artificial intelligence can no longer be treated as an external or merely technical supplement to democratic life. Across the presentations and discussions, a shared insight emerged: AI, algorithms, and platform infrastructures are increasingly involved in shaping not only political communication and administrative decision-making, but also cultural memory, class consciousness, and the very conditions under which “the people” can be imagined and articulated.
What made the session especially valuable was its interdisciplinary breadth. Professor Joan Font’s empirical analysis illuminated the normative tensions surrounding algorithmic legitimacy; Alonso Escamilla’s exploratory study revealed the cultural and epistemic implications of generative AI; Aly Hill showed how Big Tech is reconfiguring populist narratives and working-class subjectivities; and Amina Vatreš offered a powerful theoretical account of identity formation in an algorithmically mediated world. The discussants further enriched the exchange by foregrounding the political economy of AI, the erosion of democratic norms, and the structural limits of digital agency.
Taken together, the session suggested that the future of democracy will depend not simply on whether AI is adopted, but on how it is governed, by whom, and in whose interests. If digital systems increasingly structure the horizons of visibility, participation, and legitimacy, then democratic theory and practice must confront the challenge of ensuring that these emerging infrastructures do not deepen depoliticization, fragmentation, and inequality, but instead remain subject to critical scrutiny, public accountability, and democratic contestation.
Dr. Oludele Solaja’s analysis introduces the concept of “Algorithmic Environmental Populism” to illuminate how digital platforms are reshaping the politics of waste across African cities. Moving beyond conventional policy-centered approaches, Dr. Solaja demonstrates how environmental degradation—from plastic pollution to urban flooding—has become a site of algorithmically mediated political contestation. In this emerging landscape, complex ecological crises are reframed into morally charged narratives of blame, privileging visibility, outrage, and immediacy over systemic understanding. By linking populism theory with digital governance and environmental politics, the article offers a novel framework for understanding how platform logics transform ecological grievances into potent political forces. It is an essential contribution to debates on populism, digital media, and environmental governance in the Global South.
Environmental politics is now occurring not only at policy and infrastructure levels, but also through algorithms—from the clogged drains of Lagos to flood-prone Accra to landfills in South Africa. Environmental degradation has become a politically charged phenomenon on social media, and the sensational, outrage-driven, and immediate nature of these platforms has created an environment where narratives of blame outpace formal, institutional action. I refer to this new phenomenon as Algorithmic Environmental Populism, and I argue that digital infrastructure has become paramount in the formation, circulation, and contestation of ecological grievances.
The environmental crisis is no longer merely a management problem but a digitally mediated political language across the African continent, in which grievance, blame, and claims to power or moral legitimacy are performed. Plastic pollution, floods, burning dumpsites, and informal recycling have entered platform ecologies within which, according to a range of criteria, the most intense, visible, and confrontational content receives algorithmic attention. From this combination emerges a condition in which the environmental crisis is abstracted from complex systemic causes and reframed as a direct moral confrontation between “the people” and villains: polluters, corrupt elites, those who ship waste to Africa, and absent governments. In this process, platform algorithms prioritize the most engaging framing rather than the most policy-relevant one (Zeng & Schfer, 2023; Heidenreich et al., 2022).
The concept offers a way of extending understandings of populism and digital media, by foregrounding the environmental as a key site of algorithmically mediated political struggle. Classical theory on populism deals with the ideological construction of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite,’ while the infrastructures through which populist rhetoric is dispersed have been historically overlooked. Algorithmic Environmental Populism instead draws focus to platform logics, showing how they shape the contours and narratives of ecological complaint. By this it builds on research on algorithmic governance, the increasing role of algorithms in policy perception and the legitimacy of state power (Parthasarathy & Rajala, 2023).
In African cities the role of algorithms in producing a political context for waste is further amplified by its material presence on everyday life. Clogged drains, plastic-choked lagoons, burning dump sites and litter, produces and feeds readily available data streams, which produce, or a “condition of constant possibility” for data to be recorded and transmitted, resulting in environmental breakdown becoming rapidly politicisable. Take, for example, Nigeria. When the Lagos State government implemented restrictions on single-use plastics in 2025, environmental considerations took a back seat to narratives of bias, and selective policy enforcement. Viral image of floodwater pouring through plastic-clogged drains fed accusatory commentary that blamed the state, turning environmental degradation into a performance of political betrayal.
Although it is true that a massive volume of plastic waste is annually dumped in Lagos State, these digital conversations tend to flatten the systems behind environmental degradation into morally legible pronouncements of blame and victimhood, which are amplified in the digital domain for emotional impact, rather than for systemic nuance (Couldry & Mejias, 2023).
The significance of such arguments for politics in Africa is that these stories become diagnostically central. In such cases, a multiple-layered system of production, consumption, municipal service provision and global trade are collapsed into stark oppositional narratives because it is the only way in which environmental problems can be successfully broadcast within an algorithmic environment, where visibility takes priority over complexity. As digital media research shows, what gets amplified is content that triggers reactions: outrage, pity, and the assignment of blame.
Similarly, we can observe this in Kenya where political activism is closely tied to moral pronouncements. Though debates exist surrounding extended producer responsibility, green economy initiatives, and refill systems; their manifestation in the digital space, in an effort to capture attention and elicit reaction, tends to focus on “blame-allocation” rather than the mechanics of institutional responsibility between citizens, corporations, and the state. Floods in Kenya’s urban centers of Nairobi and Mombasa provided highly visual and charged contexts to exacerbate these dynamics, producing further blame-oriented discourse regarding governmental incompetence and the inadequacy of infrastructure. In essence, the digitally mediated form of this political problem is not merely transmitting it; it is actively transforming it.
Another significant dimension of the digital landscape is how it also creates new forms of political subjectivity. Waste pickers and scavengers, once entirely invisible components of the informal city, are now visible. They challenge their invisibility through interventions in the digital domain, attempting to recover material flows and claim their political agency. They are now recognized as integral parts of urban recycling systems, while remaining ignored in the policy sphere (Njeru & Ochieng, 2025). Their visibility can be attributed to algorithms that amplify their stories, portraying them as overlooked labor fighting back against systemic neglect. Locally based actions, such as coastal clean-ups by youth groups in Kenya, become symbolical performances. The clean-up has the effect of politicizing the environment, either as an assertion of the citizen’s responsibility, as an attack on state incompetence or as a demonstration of collaborative effort. Environmental activism is transformed into a moral battlefield on the digital platform.
In South Africa we see a similar phenomenon of politically charged, algorithmically amplified resistance to landfill expansion and waste siting decisions. In 2026 protests against landfill development in urban periphery settlements, turned into a national narrative of social and environmental injustice through media mobilization; landfill as a continuance of structural violence through spatial inequalities. The discourse produced and amplified across the networks links contemporary exposure to historical environmental inequities through these landfill developments. Here Algorithmic Environmental Populism and environmental justice are closely interwoven, as the narratives attributed to technology and its governance are interpreted through morally loaded systems of victimhood and violence. The broader implications of Algorithmic Environmental Populism in Africa are that the histories of unequally mediated ecological flows, including plastics, second-hand goods and e-waste that flow into African cities and homes as waste from global consumption and production patterns. Such stories tend to produce a framing where the external imposition of blame arises from deeper historical conditions known as waste colonialism – an unequal world where states and their inhabitants bear uneven burdens of waste (Mah, 2024; Dauvergne, 2022).
This links directly into concepts of waste sovereignty – a state of ownership and control over material waste flows, their meanings and governance. In the digital space, sovereignty can now be enacted through the control of narrative. Those able to frame environmental crises in terms of simple, easily accessible, morally legible oppositions, are gaining political ground regardless of their technical knowledge. Environmental politics of waste is no longer a question of physical waste, or of policy-makers’ actions, but increasingly a matter of the visibility of what it is that matters and to whom it matters, a battle of recognition, and control, within platform governed space.
Therefore, I suggest a three-stage process of digitally mediated waste politics: first, visible urban environmental decay; second, morally legible frames of attribution; and third, algorithmically favored amplification. It is in these stages that complexity is simplified and environmental disaster turns into visible, and therefore governable, political matter.
A certain democratizing aspect is that it allows for participation on new grounds, where citizens, informal waste workers and activist groups can join in debates around the environment on the internet. The downside is that these systems allow for a contraction of discourse: immediate visibility takes the form of sensation and outrage over deliberative engagement, bringing together political mobilization and propaganda (Heidenreich et al., 2022). Consequently, the environment has begun to be spoken of in conflicting terms: critical discourse clashes with simplified frameworks of accusation. A street in Accra that floods, or a dirty drainage canal in Kenya, or a burning landfill in South Africa, are instantly turned into evidence against the state, corporations, or the global system, obscuring underlying complexities.
This new discourse dynamic has major implications for environmental governance. Effectiveness is no longer solely about design and capacity but also about how environmental policies are understood, accepted, and engaged with on line. Municipalities and governments, as well as non-profit organizations need to operate in the digital space to manage the material and political aspects of waste. Scholars of environmental data governance agree that algorithms are key in framing environmental information (Gabrys, 2023). This is also significant for populist politics; waste cannot continue to be seen as an auxiliary or an afterthought. Instead, it has to be seen as a key component of the negotiations around citizenship, inequality, sovereignty and state power; the material traces of society that make social tensions visible and open to struggle. Algorithmic Environmental Populism provides an explanatory frame that connects environmental governance, digital media, and populist politics together, and helps to make sense of the way ecological grievance can be translated into potent political force by means of technologically managed visibility.
In short, the environmental politics of waste in Africa is no longer solely regulated by state and international institutions; its regulation is also about what becomes visible and how, within the spaces that platform logics control. What is now at stake is how we see waste, what we make of it in the discourse we construct, and the meaning that it is given within our digitally mediated attention economies. This transformation is an emblem of a broader shift: authority is no longer held by those who convene political discussions in spaces that are free from the influence of amplification. The management of waste, therefore, involves managing its meaning, a task that in the digital age depends greatly on the very politics of platforms.
References
Couldry, N. & Mejias, U. A. (2023). “Data colonialism and the future of social order.” New Media & Society, 25(4), 945–962.
Dauvergne, P. (2022). “Waste, pollution, and the global plastic crisis.” Global Environmental Politics, 22(1), 1–10.
Gabrys, J. (2023). “Digital waste and environmental data politics.” Information, Communication & Society, 26(9), 1785–1801.
Heidenreich, T., et al. (2022). “Populism and digital media: A comparative perspective.” Political Communication, 39(3), 345–362.
Mah, A. (2024). “Waste colonialism and global inequality.” Nature Sustainability, 7(1), 12–15.
Njeru, J. & Ochieng, C. (2025). “Plastic waste governance and informal economies in Africa.” Environmental Politics, 34(2), 256–275.
Parthasarathy, S. & Rajala, R. (2023). “Algorithmic governance and environmental policy.” Regulation & Governance, 17(4), 987–1003.
Zeng, J. & Schäfer, M. S. (2023). “Conceptualizing algorithmic populism.” New Media & Society, 25(8), 2015–2032.
In this compelling Voice of Youth (VoY) contribution, Emmanouela Papapavlou revisits the enduring moral and political legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in an age of populist authoritarianism, reflecting on the contemporary erosion of empathy, solidarity, and human dignity. Blending personal reflection with normative critique, the piece interrogates how exclusionary attitudes and everyday discrimination have become normalized across societies. It calls for renewed civic courage, emphasizing the role of individuals—especially youth—in resisting injustice and sustaining democratic values. Framed as both a reflection and a call to action, the article underscores that transformative change often begins with principled minorities who refuse to accept injustice as the status quo.
By Emmanouela Papapavlou*
Decades ago, a man stood behind a podium and spoke to a world that was not ready to hear him. He spoke about justice in a time when injustice was normal. He spoke about love in a time when hatred had become routine. He spoke about equality in a society that had learned to live with division. And yet, he spoke anyway. He spoke with a vision that was bigger than the world in front of him.
“I have a dream. I have a dream today. A dream of freedom, a dream of peace, a dream of people walking together, without fear, without hate, without walls in between them. I have a dream that one day, no one will be judged by the color of their skin, but by the kindness in their heart. I have a dream that every child, black or white, rich or poor, will have the same chance to grow, to learn, to dream. I have a dream that love will speak louder than anger, that truth will shine brighter than lies, that hope will be stronger than fear. This dream is not mine. It belongs to everyone who still believes that tomorrow can be better than today. I know the road is long, I know the fight is hard, but I also know that justice always rises, even after the darkest night. So I will keep walking, I will keep believing, I will keep dreaming. These dreams are the beginning of change, and change is the proof that hope is alive. I have a dream, and I will not stop until that dream becomes real.”
Martin Luther King stood on that podium delivering a speech to a world that had grown comfortable with cruelty, a world that had learned to live with hate instead of love.
He knew all those things.
And yet he stood there anyway, standing up for what he believed every person is entitled to: freedom, equality, acceptance, and love, no matter the circumstances.
If you feel something when reading those words, you belong to a community of humans who have risen above the noise of propaganda, power, and profit. You belong to the quiet but powerful group of people who still believe that human rights are not negotiable.
You belong to a community that believes that color, sexuality, ethnicity, or religion do not determine whether a person deserves to be heard, to be accepted, or to be treated as equal.
And let me tell you something, as someone who belongs to that community: it has become incredibly rare.
Today, it is rare to openly stand up for every human being, even the ones you do not know, even when there is nothing to gain from doing so. It is rare to refuse to laugh at the joke made about a woman. Rare to speak up when someone mocks a person of color. Rare to challenge the comment made about someone’s religion, their sexuality, or where they come from.
Somehow, it has become normal to mock people for the very things that make them human. The way they look. The place they were born. The language they speak. The beliefs they hold. And because this behavior has become normal, the people who refuse to participate suddenly appear unusual.
So if you are reading this, and you are someone who stands up for people, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it makes you stand out, then yes, I am talking to you.
You who refuse to shrink your values just to fit in with your age group. You who speak up even when it would be easier to stay quiet. You who defend someone even when it brings you no reward.
You are not naive. You are not unrealistic. You are necessary.
You are part of the reason the world is still capable of changing. Because change has never started with the majority. It has always started with the few people who were willing to look at injustice and say: this is not normal.
People will call you idealistic. They will call you naive. They will call you unrealistic.
But those words are often used by people who have simply grown comfortable with a world that should never have been acceptable in the first place.
Believing in human dignity should not make someone stand out. Defending someone’s humanity should not be controversial. Speaking up for fairness should not be considered radical.
And yet, here we are. So maybe my dream is not just about equality or justice. Maybe my dream is about reaching a world where basic decency is no longer extraordinary. A world where standing up for another human being is not brave, it is simply the standard.
Until that day arrives, the dream still belongs to all of us. And as long as there are people willing to believe in it, to speak for it, and to live by it, hope is still alive.
(*) Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com
In this incisive analysis, Dr. Oludele Solaja interrogates how AI-driven waste governance reproduces global inequalities under the guise of efficiency. Introducing the concept of “algorithmic populism,” the article reveals how technocratic systems, framed as serving the public good, instead concentrate power within elite infrastructures while marginalizing affected communities. Through empirical insights on global plastic flows and case evidence from Nigeria, the article demonstrates how optimization logics perpetuate “plastic colonialism.” It calls for transparency, participatory design, and updated regulatory frameworks to prevent algorithmic governance from entrenching environmental injustice.
Even though the world was debating about a new global plastic treaty and big multinational companies were developing intelligent AI systems for managing worldwide recycling, nothing actually changed the status quo. The Global South remained the global repository for the world’s plastic waste. Far from being an outcome of ignorance or incompetence, the logic behind this persistent pattern of global environmental injustice could be explained by concepts of algorithmic populism. Algorithms designed to optimize global waste flows were simultaneously creating new forms of global environmental governance that duplicated existing power hierarchies, while ostensibly addressing a global waste crisis (Dauvergne, 2018; Brooks et al., 2018; Vinuesa et al., 2020). Algorithmic optimization, not the solution to our waste crisis, increasingly served as the vehicle for reproduction of the system of plastic colonialism in digitally encoded form.
This problem is conceptualized here by the idea of algorithmic populism. Following Mudde’s influential definition of populism as a moralized political logic that differentiates between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite” (Mudde, 2004; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017), algorithmic populism suggests the new logic of governance through which algorithmic systems are promoted as apolitical tools of expertise serving the ‘people,’ yet control and authority are increasingly concentrated within a small technocratic elite (Beer, 2017; Pasquale, 2015). Within this regime of technocratic management, ‘the people’ have been transformed into data points managed through complex computational infrastructure created and controlled by corporate and institutional entities. This structure of governance presents a facade of democratic and technical efficiency while obscuring significant inequalities in the application of decision-making authority.
This pattern reflects a wider contemporary mode of governance. As Michel Foucault noted (1980), modern power structures are built through the creation of regimes of knowledge through which what can be known and what constitutes rational and efficient behavior are determined. Within the sphere of waste governance, algorithmic systems increasingly produce their own authoritative ‘truths’ about the destinations, treatment processes and the comparative economic efficiencies of exporting or receiving waste. These truths, however, are socially embedded, shaped by a global economy in which cost efficiency may easily override concerns about environmental justice (Kitchin, 2017; Pasquale, 2015). Optimization therefore perpetuates, rather than ameliorates, patterns of global inequality.
An example of this dynamic can be observed in patterns of the global plastic waste trade. Despite international regulations such as the Basel Convention high-income countries continued to export large amounts of plastic waste into countries with limited environmental regulations (Jambeck et al., 2015; Geyer et al., 2017). When China banned imports of plastic waste in 2018, global waste flows rerouted themselves to Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, now managed through an array of global optimization, tracking and tracing algorithms that help to streamline and automate logistical operations (Brooks et al., 2018). Optimization algorithms identifying cheap destinations also naturally target locations with weaker regulatory institutions and environmental controls, typically those in the Global South.
The waste trade in Nigeria provides a clear example of this pattern. Nigeria is one of Africa’s most populous nations and one of the continent’s largest consumer markets; the nation has long faced an overwhelming plastic waste problem and is a destination country for enormous quantities of plastic waste generated both within its own borders and abroad (Dauvergne, 2018). The overwhelming majority of the informal waste picking sector in Lagos operates as an unofficial but fundamental component of waste management systems, where pickers sift through landfills and waterways for materials to recycle under dangerous and precariously employed conditions, and these workers remain completely outside decision-making circles regarding new forms of smart and algorithmic waste management (Beer, 2017; Heeks, 2022). Tools and applications developed in distant corporate and institutional settings serve to create a system of waste management that fails to account for the conditions that workers face at local sites of accumulation.
This exclusion is a manifestation of the contradictions inherent in algorithmic populism. In fact, where algorithmic governance is supposed to create more democratic forms of participation, it often works to obscure power asymmetries and lack of participation; indeed, many contemporary populist movements draw power from precisely the perception of exclusion and lack of voice, a problem increasingly amplified in the digital space (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Environmental policy, for instance, increasingly relies on information systems and models that make decision-making opaque to even its most implicated stakeholders (Pasquale, 2015; Kitchin, 2017). As such, efficient algorithmic logic may ultimately consolidate rather than alleviate environmental injustices.
The popular circular economy model is itself a perfect illustration of this contradiction; it seeks to build a system of material flows that aims to minimize waste but ends up facilitating global waste flows through optimized systems that reproduce traditional economic and political hierarchies. As has been shown above, this circular logic simply becomes a circular illusion whereby waste continues to circulate globally in the context of unequal power relations, ultimately continuing to accumulate in the countries with weaker environmental and political infrastructure (Vinuesa et al., 2020; Dauvergne, 2018).
This difference is striking when comparing how these technologies are often experienced in different parts of the world. In Europe, AI applications in waste management are presented as “green” technological innovations, part of broader goals for climate-compatible resource consumption; in many parts of Africa, they function to exacerbate waste problems, through the continued accumulation of waste in landfills and waterscapes and increased precarious work in the informal sector (Brooks et al., 2018). Cost efficiency trumped local realities and environmental justice outcomes in Europe, while for Africa continued accumulation resulted in increased environmental degradation and precarity.
This isn’t just about failing to adequately represent the people; algorithmic populism actively digitizes populism itself. What could and should be debated as political issues around the global distribution of waste, through the processes of debate and consensus-building, are reframed and regulated as technical problems solvable through expert-driven algorithmic intervention, de-politicizing them in the process, and ushering in new forms of technocratic rule (Beer, 2017; Pasquale, 2015). Without checks on their operation, optimization-driven technologies risk legitimating environmental inequality.
There are number of solutions required to solve this problem. First, algorithmic transparency should be a central pillar of future governance of waste. Public access should be required to the decision-making logic behind algorithmic choices, including the factors used to identify destinations for waste streams (Kitchin, 2017; Vinuesa et al., 2020). Second, participatory models should be part of future design and deployment of technology systems. Waste pickers in Nigeria, for example, possess unique on-the-ground knowledge of the complex political and environmental ecology of waste that can help to create truly ‘smart’ systems that are ‘fairly smart’ and beneficial to local contexts (Beer, 2017; Heeks, 2022). Third, international governance frameworks need to adapt to address the reality of algorithmic infrastructure as a central force in shaping the contemporary global waste trade.
Existing conventions that regulate waste flows were written prior to the rise of algorithmic systems, and new regulations and standards must be devised in order to guarantee fairness, accountability and environmental justice in technological governance (Pasquale, 2015; Vinuesa et al., 2020). Lastly, environmental technology governance needs to be de-politicized: algorithmic tools must be reconceptualized not as ‘solutions,’ but as socio-technical systems implicated in patterns of power and exclusion (Foucault, 1980). In the absence of such measures, algorithmic governance may become the ultimate tool for disguising environmental inequality as technological progress.
In conclusion, algorithmic populism reveals how ostensibly neutral technologies can entrench, rather than resolve, global inequalities. By depoliticizing waste governance and privileging efficiency over justice, AI systems risk reproducing plastic colonialism in digital form. Meaningful reform therefore requires transparency, participatory inclusion, and updated global regulatory frameworks. Without such interventions, algorithmic governance will continue to legitimize unequal environmental burdens while masking them as technical necessity and progress.
References
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Brooks, A. L.; Wang, S. & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). “The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade.” Science Advances, 4(6), eaat0131.
Dauvergne, P. (2018). “Why is the global governance of plastic failing the oceans?” Global Environmental Change, 51, 22–31.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Pantheon Books.
Geyer, R.; Jambeck, J. R. & Law, K. L. (2017). “Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made.” Science Advances, 3(7), e1700782.
Heeks, R. (2022). “Artificial intelligence for sustainable development: The new frontier.” Development Informatics Working Paper Series, University of Manchester.
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Kitchin, R. (2017). “Thinking critically about and researching algorithms.” Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 14–29.
Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563.
Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press.
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Environmental crises are increasingly reshaping political conflict across the Global South. In this ECPS commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja examines the rise of climate populism—a political dynamic in which environmental policies and climate transitions are reframed as struggles between “the people” and technocratic or global elites. As governments implement reforms such as energy transitions, subsidy restructuring, and carbon taxation, the economic consequences—particularly rising fuel and food prices—often generate social backlash under conditions of economic insecurity and political distrust. Drawing on examples from Africa and global energy geopolitics, the commentary shows how climate governance, distributive inequality, and populist political narratives increasingly intersect. Dr. Solaja argues that sustainable climate transitions require integrating environmental policy with social protection, economic justice, and inclusive democratic governance.
Environmental crises are reshaping political conflict across the world. As governments pursue climate-related policy reforms—such as energy transitions, carbon taxes, and subsidy restructuring—the economic consequences of environmental policies, particularly rising fuel and food prices, increasingly turn climate governance into a contentious political arena in many countries of the Global South. Under conditions of economic precarity and political distrust, these pressures create fertile ground for climate populism—a phenomenon that scholars are increasingly examining—where environmental crises and climate policies are framed through narratives that pit “the people” against corrupt, technocratic, or global elites.
The escalating confrontation between Iran, Israel, and the United States is demonstrative of how the geopolitics of energy transition increasingly converges with that of global confrontation. As major oil routes like the Strait of Hormuz continue to form the spine of global energy supply, even limited military escalation can prompt volatility that quickly becomes translated into increases in fuel prices and foodstuffs in import-reliant economies of the Global South. Here, economic disruptions tied to energy geopolitics could potentially consolidate populist discourse framing climate policies and energy transitions as “elite” enterprises imposed on “the people” (Lockwood, 2018; Haas, 2023; Marquardt et al., 2022).
The convergence of climate governance, economic vulnerability, and a populist political logic of “the people vs. the elite” explains why climate populism has become a growing trend. Climate populism describes the tendency to frame climate crises and environmental policies as political struggles between “the people” and elites who, for example, design policies without public input and are insulated from the negative effects. This is not necessarily about rejecting climate science. Rather, it reframes climate politics as an economic issue that affects ordinary people who bear the brunt of climate policy costs. Populism, understood as the political logic that divides society into two antagonistic groups—virtuous citizens versus corrupt elites (Mudde, 2004)—is emerging in an environment where structural transformations, such as energy and climate transitions, threaten citizens’ economic security, while political institutions are perceived as either unwilling or unable to protect it.
Climate Policy and the Politics of Energy Prices
The political conflict surrounding climate policy is closely linked to the politics of energy markets. The distribution of energy resources, particularly fossil fuels, is a key element of social welfare policies in many developing economies. Governments have historically relied on fuel subsidies to alleviate the cost of living and gain political legitimacy. Policy changes toward energy subsidies and price reform, typically introduced either due to fiscal pressure or international environmental commitment, can and have become a source of political backlashes, protest and civil disobedience (Cheon et al., 2013). Fuel prices are not simply a policy instrument but an integral part of the political relationship between governments and citizens. Environmental policy reforms now become political rather than apolitical technocratic measures.
Measures aimed at reducing emissions can be translated by elites as policies that hurt the poor while benefiting elites or distant entities in ways that can be exploited to incite resentment by actors such as the state and other institutions. This happens primarily during times when economic fragility and political distrust are widespread. Norris and Inglehart (2019) note that populist politics is particularly suited for instances where cultural or economic marginalization occur due to structural shifts. This is exactly what climate transition brings about as governments overhaul energy systems and regulate the environment to facilitate the transition, creating anxieties and uncertainty which populist politics is able to exploit.
The Climate Populist Framing of “People vs. Elites”
Climate populism specifically arises when the issue of environmental policy becomes an important element of populist narratives of social and economic injustice, where environmental policy reform and climate transition are depicted as an agenda of distant elites. The issue of climate governance often becomes framed in the Global South as a policy of global governance institutions such as UN, multilateral financial institutions and environmental NGOS whose global agenda does not have legitimacy in local context. It also assumes a populist stance where the people are unable to influence the decisions. Importantly, climate populism should not be seen as a rejection of climate science. Climate politics itself may be reframed to represent a struggle for fairness, economic and distributive justice.
While climate populism may not challenge the underlying science behind climate change, the perception that the policy may disproportionately affect vulnerable or working class population may translate into protest action and populist politics. Climate populism in the Global South takes two main forms: i) anti-environmental populism which reject climate policies on grounds of economic harm or political injustice and ii) environmental justice populism where environmental policy is criticized on the basis that it either is insufficient or has distributive inequalities in how it applies costs and benefits across society. Both types draw on populist logic by invoking the idea that climate policies do not benefit ordinary citizens and serve elites instead. The nexus between climate governance and the politicization of economic hardship often characterizes the Global South. Increased food prices, fuel price hikes, and climate shocks can make room for populist claims based on widespread inequality and lack of trust in government.
Africa and the Politics of Climate Economic Discontent
Examples from various African countries illustrate the politics of climate economic hardship. Subsidy reforms and fuel price changes often trigger significant political mobilization. Nigeria provides one of the starkest cases where the 2012 fuel subsidy removal triggered protests known as “Occupy Nigeria” which halted the economy, forcing the government to reverse parts of the reform (Ogunyemi, 2013). In many of these protests, fuel price hikes were perceived as the product of government corruption and elite mismanagement.
Similar cases of mass protests are visible across African countries in countries such as Sudan where rising fuel prices contributed to the collapse of the regime, as well as Kenya and Ghana where fuel price hikes have become recurrent drivers of political dissent. These instances reflect the convergence of energy politics, climate policy, governance and inequality within African countries. The politics of climate transition is therefore fraught with the risk of triggering widespread opposition through populist political rhetoric on matters of economic injustice. Efforts to implement climate policies while simultaneously seeking to maintain economic stability face heightened risks in such countries.
The Global South and the Politics of Environmental Inequality
The emergence of climate populism in the Global South can also be understood through global inequality of climate impact. Countries in the Global South, while least responsible for climate change, suffer disproportionately. These inequities give rise to global justice claims that can easily translate into political discourse in the Global South. Developing countries also have limited resources and institutional capacity to meet global climate policy demands. The push toward global climate mitigation goals coupled with global policy reforms that carry certain conditions attached with funds may increase the perception of external imposition and lack of democratic processes on climate policy making. In this context, climate populism arises out of these dynamics of unequal distribution of climate impacts, risks and responsibilities. In other words, climate policies can become entangled with questions of state sovereignty, national autonomy, and global power relations.
Climate policy reforms must incorporate social protection in order to be politically sustainable. It has been shown that policy changes regarding fuel reforms face much less resistance when they are accompanied by compensating social protection mechanisms such as targeted cash transfers and welfare support programs that benefit the poor (Scurfield, 2003). The inclusion of ordinary citizens in climate governance can also strengthen public buy-in and resilience. Popular engagement can enhance the legitimacy of climate policy and prevent anti-climate populist narratives from gaining traction.
Conclusion
Climate change impacts ecological systems as well as politics. Environmental crises in developing countries where they intersect with the existing lack of equity and institutional capacity provides conditions for populist politics based on the issues of fuel prices, subsidy reform and climate governance. Climate populism therefore indicates the deep distributive inequalities and challenges associated with climate transition. As more governments move towards a transition toward climate smart economies, contests over distribution of costs and benefits associated with reforms will increase. To respond to climate populism, policy actors will need to integrate climate governance with distributive justice, social protection and equitable policy making at all levels. Failure to ensure social fairness of climate transition will also trigger anti-elite populist backlash.
(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria.
References
Cheon, A.; Urpelainen, J. & Lackner, M. (2013). “Why do governments subsidize gasoline consumption? An empirical analysis of global gasoline prices.” Energy Policy, 56, 382–390.
Marquardt, J. (2022). “Climate change and populism.” Environmental Politics, 31(1), 1–23.
Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563.
Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press.
White, J. (2023). “Climate populism: The political consequences of environmental crisis.” London School of Economics Working Paper.
In this long ECPS commentary, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk examines the 2026 US–Israeli strikes on Iran as part of a broader transformation in global power politics rather than an isolated regional conflict. He argues that the confrontation reflects a strategic intersection of energy security, regional military dynamics, and intensifying great-power rivalry, particularly between the United States and China. The crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz—through which a substantial share of global oil flows—demonstrates how military escalation, energy markets, and geopolitical competition are increasingly intertwined. Professor Ozturk suggests that contemporary conflicts are being managed through strategic compartmentalization: limited escalation, selective alliances, and narrative control. In this emerging landscape, regional actors and global powers alike seek to reshape influence within a fragmented and increasingly competitive international order.
By Ibrahim Ozturk
The Israeli-US attack on Iran, at this pivotal moment, is more than just another Middle Eastern conflict or a simple prelude to a new oil shock. It should be seen as part of a broader shift in global power, in which regional conflict, energy security, and great-power rivalry are managed together rather than separately. The aim in this deliberately segmented crisis caused by the last military stand-off with Iran is (i) to weaken Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities to bolster Israel’s regional dominance focused on security; (ii) Washington’s effort to retain strategic control over global energy flows amid rising competition with China; and (iii) in doing so, to keep the conflict politically contained—avoiding the perception of a broader clash of civilizations in the Muslim world, thus preventing them from falling under China’s influence and minimizing the reasons for China’s growing influence in the Global South.
That stance closely aligns with a recent British parliamentary report, which suggests that energy, war, diplomacy, and narrative are no longer separate policy areas. Instead, they are being strategically managed together. The result is a new power dynamic—one that shifts away from crisis management within a liberal international order and toward a more fragmented system characterized by selective coalitions, limited violence, and varying legitimacy.
Beyond Energy and Iran’s Nuclear Capacity
Without any convincing legal justification, UN resolution, or data from American institutions indicating that Iran posed an imminent threat—and launched during ongoing negotiations—these attacks resulted in the “arbitrary” killing of thousands of civilians in Iran, the massacre of schoolchildren, the arbitrary sinking of an unarmed Iranian ship returning from military exercises in India and of a Sri Lankan ship, killing hundreds of soldiers, as well as severe damage to many UNESCO-protected historical monuments in Iran. In such a context, the first and most important task is to correctly situate these attacks by the US–Israel axis.
On February 28, 2026, Israel and the US carried out coordinated strikes on Iran, targeting leadership sites, military forces, and nuclear and ballistic missile infrastructure. The immediate market response was straightforward. After the attacks, global energy markets became extremely volatile, with Brent crude soaring to a peak of $119.50 on March 9, 2026, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatened 20% of global supply. This ‘panic spike’ was followed by a sharp intraday reversal, with prices sliding back toward $90.00 after US officials indicated a quick end to the military operations, ultimately leaving the market stuck in a highly volatile trading range between $85.00 and $105.00 (Figure 1).
The strategic role of the Strait of Hormuz in the global oil supply is beyond discussion. In 2025, nearly 15 million barrels of crude oil per day and about 20 million barrels of total oil transited Hormuz, most of which headed to Asian markets rather than Europe (Figure 2). Any serious disruption, therefore, impacts not just supply but also freight, insurance, and risk premiums across the wider global economy. Therefore, the 2026 assault on Iran has clearly and rightly revived a familiar concern: that the global economy remains vulnerable to disruption at the Strait of Hormuz.
Energy Leverage and the China Factor
The energy dimension gives this compartmentalization broader strategic significance. The IEA reports that China and India together received 44 percent of the crude oil exported through Hormuz in 2025, while Europe accounted for only around 4 percent of those crude flows. The Atlantic Council similarly estimates that roughly 78 percent of Middle Eastern crude exports to China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan passed through the Strait in 2025. A crisis involving Iran and Hormuz is therefore not merely a Middle Eastern problem; it is also a point of pressure on Asian industrial power.
China is particularly vulnerable, though not helpless. The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies estimates that about half of China’s crude imports and roughly one-third of its LNG come from the Middle East. According to comprehensive market monitoring and tanker-tracking data, unofficial Iranian oil flows to China reached an average of approximately 1.38 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2025 (Kpler; Vortexa). While some short-term fluctuations were observed in early 2025, the annual average remained robust, consistently exceeding the 1.3 million marks. Reuters and financial analysts report that China purchased more than 80 percent of Iran’s total shipped crude throughout the year (Reuters; Modern Diplomacy). This volume represents approximately 13.4 percent of China’s total seaborne oil imports, underscoring Iran’s critical, albeit unofficial, role in Beijing’s energy security strategy despite ongoing international sanctions (Energy Policy Research Foundation). In this context, pressure on Iran also indirectly affects a vital part of the Chinese economy. However, the strategic significance should not be overstated. The EIA indicates that China’s crude supply sources are diverse, with Russia and Saudi Arabia remaining its top suppliers in 2024, while the IEA’s Global Energy Review shows China continuing to lead global renewable capacity growth. Blocking Iranian flows can cause friction, uncertainty, and increased costs, but it is unlikely to fundamentally derail China’s rise on its own.
The situation in Venezuela aligns with this perspective. Even before the January 2026 US unilateral and unlawful military strike that led to Nicolás Maduro’s kidnapping, Venezuelan crude oil was not a key element of Chinese energy security. Reuters reported that, in the first half of 2019, China imported around 350,000 barrels of Venezuelan crude daily—about 3.5 percent of its total imports. In 2025, Reuters estimated Chinese imports from Venezuela at approximately 470,000 barrels per day, or roughly 4.5 percent of China’s seaborne crude imports. A later Reuters report stated that Venezuelan supply accounted for only about 4 percent of China’s crude imports. The message is clear: Venezuela has been a useful supplier to China due to its discounts and political convenience, but not a vital part of Chinese energy security. Disrupting one sanctioned supplier may be strategically significant; however, it is not automatically a decisive move.
There is also a broader distribution issue. An oil price spike caused by war would hurt not only Asia but also Europe. The IEA has already warned of renewed volatility in the gas market and ongoing pressure on European competitiveness, while its Electricity 2026 report notes that electricity prices for energy-intensive industries in the European Union remained roughly twice US levels in 2025. In contrast, the EIA indicates that the US has been a net petroleum exporter since 2020, and its world oil transit chokepoints analysis shows that US imports from Persian Gulf countries have decreased significantly over time. The energy situation is real and important—but in the larger power struggle, it appears as a meaningful yet still limited factor rather than a decisive tool of containment.
Despite all these facts and figures, it would be inaccurate to view the current crisis as just a repeat of the 1970s. The main issue is not only scarcity but also how conflict is framed, limited, and strategically handled. The war is better understood as a managed crisis within a larger shift in global order: force is used, but not arbitrarily; escalation is tolerated, but only to a certain extent; legitimacy is not universal but gradually built through temporary alliances and selective diplomatic efforts. In this context, energy is more than just a commodity at risk. It is a vital part of a broader strategic struggle.
Israel’s Security Dilemma and the Logic of Securitization
As R. Gilpin puts it, history suggests that moments of major power shifts or systemic transitions do not simply unsettle small and middle powers; they also redistribute opportunity. Some regional actors use great-power rivalry, imperial retreat, or strategic ambiguity to rise above their original weight—as Piedmont-Sardinia did in the wake of the Crimean War, Meiji Japan under the pressure of Western encroachment, and Ibn Saud amid the collapse of Ottoman authority. Some others, for instance, misread the same fluidity and overreach, as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did in 1990, when a bid for regional expansion triggered the first major post–Cold War crisis and ended in rapid military defeat. In this sense, periods of power transition rarely leave the regional tier untouched: they create openings for some states to rise and traps for others to collapse. Israel’s conduct in the present phase of global power transition suggests that it is trying to exploit precisely such a window—not merely reacting to uncertainty but attempting to convert it into a regional hegemonic opportunity.
As US primacy becomes more contested and the Middle East is reorganized by overlapping energy, security, and corridor politics, Israel appears to be pursuing a dual strategy of expansion through both partnership and coercion. Besides, on the side of deterrence, its aggressive stance on war also reflects Israel’s recognizable security calculation. For years, Iranian missile capabilities, proxy networks, and nuclear advances have been cast in Israeli strategic discourse as existential or near-existential threats. From that vantage point, the February 2026 campaign is intelligible even if it is not thereby rendered lawful or strategically prudent. Once a hostile regime is defined as a total strategic danger, the political threshold for extraordinary measures falls: Preemptive force, regime-degrading strikes, regional militarization, and external coalition-building become easier to justify.
That said, deepening structured cooperation with states can help establish a favorable regional order. In that context, Israel is using punitive military actions against adversaries such as Iran, Syria, Hamas, and allied armed groups to weaken hostile capabilities, restore deterrence, and expand its strategic maneuvering space. This suggests that Israel is acting less like a besieged small state and more like an aspiring regional poweraiming to secure regional dominance before the emerging multipolar order becomes less accommodating. This also explains why the current conflict setup is not just about immediate battlefield outcomes but about shaping the future political landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East.
Rising patterns show that Israel’s Mediterranean strategy is now part of a broader geo-economic vision extending from the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus-Central Asia region to India and Europe. In his February 2026 address to the Knesset, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described India and Israel as sharing “ancient civilizational ties” and called for deeper cooperation through IMEC and I2U2, giving the relationship a geopolitical depth beyond transactional defense ties. This matters because Israel’s partnerships are no longer confined to immediate neighbors; they are increasingly tied to larger corridor projects, technology platforms, and Indo-Middle Eastern alignments. This relationship is anchored in the geopolitical logic of the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), a proposed multimodal route linking India to Europe via the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, with maritime, rail, energy, and digital components converging on Israel’s Mediterranean gateway, and again excluding Turkey. Promoted by its backers as a faster and more resilient alternative to existing routes—and widely read as part of a broader effort to balance China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—IMEC helps explain why India–Israel ties now extend beyond bilateral cooperation into the strategic architecture of an emerging Indo-Mediterranean order.
At the same time, not every actor moving closer to Israel should be labeled as part of an open pro-Israel bloc. Saudi Arabia still publicly conditionally normalizes relations on Palestinian statehood, yet its strategic interests overlap with Israel’s on issues such as containing Iran, protecting energy supplies, and maintaining a favorable regional balance. The new Syrian leadership’s revived US-mediated security talks with Israel present an even clearer example of pragmatic convergence. These are not full alliances, but they do show that Israel is operating in an environment where former or potential adversaries are increasingly involved in patterns of coordination, deconfliction, or selective accommodation. The broader point is that Israel is trying to transform multipolar disorder into a hierarchical regional order: building networks where possible, managing enemies where necessary, and using both cooperation and calibrated force to expand the sphere within which it can act as the dominant regional power.
Strategic Compartmentalization and the Avoidance of a Civilizational Trap
This is where Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis becomes relevant—though not in the crude sense often invoked in moments of war. Huntington argued that post-Cold War conflicts would increasingly follow cultural and religious fault lines. Yet the emerging strategy of Washington and its regional allies is not to embrace such a clash outright, but to instrumentalize its logic selectively while containing its broader consequences.
According to SIPRI, Israel is widely recognized to possess a nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s ongoing presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal, and repeated UN reports under Security Council Resolution 2334 continue to document settlement expansion. At the same time, UN humanitarian reports recorded that, by early December 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported more than 70,000 Palestinians killed, over 170,000 injured, and mass displacement on a devastating scale. Taken together, these facts make any claim that Israeli actions remain firmly within a stable zone of legal and moral legitimacy highly questionable.
Thus, the US-Israeli challenge has never been limited to threat detection alone. It has also involved managing the political fallout from their responses. From Trump’s and Netanyahu’s perspectives, the operation against Iran needed to be framed in a way that preserved as much international legitimacy as possible, even when a clear legal justification was difficult to establish. At the same time, the conflict had to be prevented from escalating into a civilizational clash that could push Muslim-majority societies toward China and expand Beijing’s strategic influence across the Global South. Here, deeper contradictions become unavoidable.
Iran and Hamas are cast as securitized and containable threats, while Gulf monarchies and other Muslim-majority states are engaged through donor diplomacy, regime-security guarantees, and calibrated alliance management. The objective is not simply to fight an adversary, but to prevent the war from consolidating an anti-Western political identity across the broader Muslim world—especially at a moment when parts of the Global South are drifting toward more China-friendly alignments.
This is precisely where the current war differs from a simple Huntingtonian interpretation. The conflict has not been allowed to evolve into a straightforward “West versus Islam” narrative. Instead, much of the diplomatic framework has sought to confine it to a narrower Iran-Hamas security issue. The Council on Foreign Relations noted that the Board of Peace relied heavily on participation from Gulf Arabs and Central Asians, while excluding direct Palestinian political representation at the highest levels of decision-making. Conversely, the UN Human Rights Office sharply criticized this setup as incompatible with a reparative, rights-based approach to reconstruction. From an analytical perspective, however, the main point is not whether the structure is morally convincing. It is that the structure acts as a mechanism of compartmentalization: some actors are isolated as threats to be disarmed or neutralized, while others are kept within a cooperative framework of reconstruction, stabilization, and donor politics.
The regional response confirms that interpretation. In their extraordinary GCC-EU joint statement, Gulf and European ministers condemned Iran’s attacks on GCC states, emphasized that GCC territories had not been used to launch attacks against Iran, invoked self-defense, and highlighted the importance of protecting maritime routes, supply chains, and energy market stability. Meanwhile, Carnegie noted that Gulf monarchies are caught between Iranian escalation and US recklessness, with their main focus on preserving fragile economic and security systems. This is not the language of a unified civilizational bloc; it is the language of regime survival. Nor did the broader Muslim political field unify into a single anti-Western Front. The OIC’s condemnation of Israeli attacks on Iran coexists with muted and ambivalent official Gulf reactions, while AP reporting emphasized elite anger at the US for exposing Gulf states to retaliation without sufficient warning or protection. As a European Council joint statement states, what emerged was fragmentation rather than bloc unity—and that fragmentation was not accidental but part of the crisis’s strategic outcome.
As a conclusion to this part, Gulf monarchies are neither full participants in an anti-Iran crusade nor members of an anti-Western camp. They are defensive actors seeking to preserve commercial credibility, domestic order, and external security amid a war they did not want. That posture is inherently compartmentalizing. It seeks to prevent regional collapse without fully endorsing the strategic logic that produced the crisis in the first place.
Washington’s Domestic Politics and the Uses of External Crisis
The domestic American context also matters, although it should be approached with analytical caution. While the operational details of the strike on Iran are often examined solely from a kinetic perspective, the decision-making process cannot be separated from the Trump administration’s increasing domestic vulnerabilities. The kinetic action serves as the ultimate “escape forward,” where the smoke of external conflict hides the fire of internal issues. Notably, two factors—the recently disclosed Epstein Scandal and the motivations of Trump’s eschatological cabinet—are significant.
A DOJ/FBI memorandum issued in July 2025 stated that investigators found no evidence of a Jeffrey Epstein “client list.” However, in March 2026, the Associated Press reported that newly disclosed files—previously omitted due to an alleged coding error—contained strong allegations involving Donald Trump. While this may not directly confirm a causal link between scandal exposure and war-making, as the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation note, it nonetheless supports a more defensible argument: a scandal-ridden domestic environment can increase the short-term political value of external escalation by diverting scrutiny, reinforcing partisan discipline, and shifting media focus to security rather than accountability.
Beyond the tactical use of distraction, this pressure is increasingly driven by a fundamentalist-Christian elite that has gained unprecedented influence within the cabinet. The appointment of Christian-Zionist ideologues to key bureaucratic positions in the US and diplomatic roles abroad, especially in Israel and the surrounding region, shows that the administration’s foreign policies are being guided by eschatological beliefs. The recent gathering of prominent pastors to “anoint” the President for a perceived war acts as a strategic response to the Epstein disclosures. By portraying the President as a Cyrus-figure—a flawed vessel chosen for divine geopolitical realignment—this faction provides a moral cover that redefines personal scandal as part of spiritual warfare.
In this context, Epstein’s emergence as a posthumous influence agent suggests that the timing of these disclosures may be less coincidental and more coercive. Trapped between the threat of legal disgrace and the demands of his Dominionist base, the President’s move toward external escalation becomes an expected outcome of survival politics. The combination of these allegations with radical religious rhetoric shows that the administration is being pushed into a policy space where aggression is used as the main tool for maintaining domestic stability and ideological legitimacy.
Europe’s Passive Alignment with Trump’s Vision
Europe now appears less as a strategic leader and more as a sign of Western division. Although it remains an important economic player, its geopolitical influence is diminishing. It is a giant in market size, but surprisingly weak in political unity, strategic direction, and external influence. Its direct reliance on Hormuz crude is lower than Asia’s, but it remains highly vulnerable to energy price shocks, industrial setbacks, and alliance pressures. What is especially notable is that Europe has faced the recent escalation in the Middle East while transatlantic relations are already strained. A recent European Parliament study notes that since early 2025, EU-US relations have been increasingly tense over NATO, Greenland, Ukraine, trade, technology, climate, and China, indicating a deeper split in strategic visions across the Atlantic. A recent ECPS Report concurs, finding that the transatlantic relationship has reached a turning point under Trump-era right-wing populism, with erosion in security, trade, international institutions, and democratic norms. In this context, Europe faces the Iran-Israel crisis not with confidence, but amid broader geopolitical confusion.
Yet this is exactly what reveals Europe’s muted stance on Israel. While Washington has become a source of pressure and unpredictability for Europe, the EU has struggled to develop a clear and independent position on Israel. This silence signifies more a weakness than a deliberate strategy: leadership gaps, the lack of a strong, shared perspective within the Union, and the lingering influence of Cold War-era habits of outsourcing hard security to the US. The ECPS volume is especially useful here because it views the current Atlantic crisis not as isolated turbulence but as a systemic shift that requires greater European agency and strategic independence. Europe’s relative passivity, then, should be seen not just as deference but as a sign of unpreparedness: a wealthy political bloc that has yet to turn economic influence into geopolitical power.
Conclusion
The 2026 war with Iran should be seen as more than just a regional military conflict or a temporary energy crisis. It reveals a broader shift in the global order, in which the lines between war, energy security, alliance politics, and narrative control are increasingly blurred. What is emerging isn’t a return to a stable US-centered system, nor a fully developed multipolar balance, but rather a fragmented and coercive landscape. In this environment, major powers, regional players, and smaller states seek to gain advantages through selective alliances, limited escalation, and compartmentalized crisis management. In this context, Israel has acted with unusual clarity, trying to turn global uncertainty into regional dominance through military deterrence, strategic partnerships, and corridor politics. The Gulf monarchies sit at a crucial middle ground, balancing pressure, exposure, and opportunities. Europe, on the other hand, seems less a driver of outcomes than a reflection of Western fatigue—economically significant, politically hesitant, and strategically unprepared for a world where American leadership has become both less dependable and more disruptive.
The deeper significance of this moment lies specifically here. The crisis isn’t just about Iran, or even about the immediate future of the Middle East. It’s about how power is exercised in an era when the liberal language of rules, institutions, and multilateral restraint persists but increasingly lacks the material cohesion or political authority that once sustained it. Strategic compartmentalization has become the preferred way to manage disorder: adversaries are securitized and targeted, partners are reassured and selectively brought in, and broader civilizational escalation is contained rather than solved. This might bring temporary stability, but it does so by reinforcing a new international logic—one characterized by differentiated legitimacy, asymmetrical coercion, and declining normative consistency. The real lesson of the Iran war, then, isn’t just that energy geopolitics has returned, but that it now functions within a more severe and openly hierarchical struggle over who will shape the regional and global order to come.
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Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. (2026, March 1). Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz: Implications for China’s energy security. https://www.oxfordenergy.org/
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Professor Peter W. Klein offers a historically grounded warning against simplistic regime-change narratives in Iran. In this ECPS interview, the Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist and University of British Columbia professor argues that political transformation in Iran may occur, but not in ways the West expects. Drawing on cases such as Hungary in 1956, the Bay of Pigs, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Professor Klein shows how external encouragement of uprising without sustained commitment can produce abandonment, repression, and long-term instability. He stresses that Iran’s history with the United States, the entrenched role of the IRGC, and the country’s internal complexity make any externally driven transition deeply uncertain. At the same time, he warns that escalation could trigger wider regional blowback, making caution, historical memory, and strategic realism indispensable.
Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Peter W. Klein, an Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and full professor at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia, offers a historically grounded and sobering assessment of regime change narratives surrounding Iran. Drawing on decades of reporting from conflict zones and his scholarship on media, power, and political transformation, Professor Klein cautions against simplistic assumptions that authoritarian systems collapse once a single leader is removed. As he puts it bluntly, the notion that eliminating one figure will transform an entire political order is deeply misguided: “Removing one leader—whether it is Khamenei or Maduro—is enough… [that] everything else will somehow fall into place. But Venezuela is not Iran.”
Professor Klein situates the current debate about Iran within a longer historical pattern in US foreign policy: Rhetorical encouragement of uprisings without sustained commitment. Reflecting on historical precedents—from the 1956 Hungarian Revolution to the Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1991 Shiite uprising in Iraq—he identifies a recurring cycle in which external actors implicitly encourage rebellion but fail to provide protection once uprisings occur. Recalling the Hungarian case, he notes that revolutionary hopes were fueled by signals from the West, yet “when the revolution happened… there was no cover.” The consequences were devastating: The uprising was crushed, and reformist leader Imre Nagy was ultimately executed. These experiences, Professor Klein argues, highlight the moral and strategic dilemmas that arise when “the words don’t match the actions.”
This historical lens also informs Professor Klein’s skepticism toward contemporary discussions of regime change in Iran. While acknowledging that dissatisfaction with the Iranian regime is real, he emphasizes the structural and historical constraints shaping political change. Iranian public attitudes toward foreign intervention remain deeply influenced by historical memory—especially the 1953 CIA-backed coup, which continues to generate suspicion toward US rhetoric about liberation and democracy. Even where domestic frustration exists, external calls for uprising may produce the opposite effect. As Professor Klein explains, “many Iranians may resist calls for regime change if those calls come directly from the United States.”
Beyond historical memory, Professor Klein underscores the institutional resilience of the Iranian state, particularly the central role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Far from being an isolated security apparatus, the IRGC is deeply embedded in Iran’s political economy and social fabric. Its integration across military, economic, and political spheres makes the idea of a rapid grassroots overthrow highly improbable. In such contexts, he warns, expectations of swift democratic transition often ignore the realities of authoritarian resilience.
Professor Klein also highlights the dangers of escalation in the broader Middle East. With conflicts already unfolding across Gaza, Lebanon, and other regional arenas, miscalculation could transform localized confrontation into a wider regional war. The stakes, he warns, are immense: “The blowback from a regional conflict would be enormous… the cost of that may simply be too high.”
Ultimately, Professor Klein cautions against confident predictions about Iran’s political future. Transformation may indeed occur, but its direction remains uncertain and may not align with Western expectations. “There may be change,”he concludes, “but it may not be the kind of change that many people in the West would want.”
Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Peter W. Klein, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.
The Perils of Promising Liberation Without Commitment
US President Donald Trump applauds from the White House balcony during a welcoming ceremony for the Washington Nationals baseball team on the South Lawn in Washington, D.C., on November 4, 2019. Photo: Evan El-Amin.
Professor Peter Klein, thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your article published by the New York Times, you invoke historical precedents—from Hungary (1956) and the Bay of Pigs (1961) to the Shiite uprising in Iraq (1991)—to illustrate the dangers of encouraging rebellion without sustained commitment. In your view, what structural patterns recur across these cases that contemporary policymakers still fail to internalize?
Professor Peter W. Klein: When I saw President Trump making more than one plea to the people of Iran, saying this is your opportunity to revolt and overthrow the regime, there wasn’t—at least as far as I could see—an explicit promise of cover and protection, but it was certainly implicit. And it just resonated for me, which is what led me to write that essay in the Times. It resonated on many levels.
Having been raised by Hungarian refugees, I knew what happened in 1956. I didn’t live through it the way my brother did, but I heard many stories—about listening to Radio Free Europe and the encouragement of revolution, and then what happened when the revolution actually occurred. There was no cover. Of course, you understand the political context. It was the height of the Cold War; the two nuclear superpowers were confronting each other. What followed 1956 was a series of conflicts—both hot and cold—between the United States and the USSR.
But the implication at the time was that if you took to the streets and took over your country, you would be protected. That obviously did not happen. Imre Nagy came in, tried to establish a new government, and the effort was crushed. Ultimately, he was executed.
It also resonated for me because of reporting I had done in Iraq. I was there shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein and had been sent to report specifically on the Shia population. In 2003, I think for many American audiences the distinctions between Shias and Sunnis, the Baathist system, the subjugation of the majority population, and the complexities of the relationship with Iran were not widely understood.
I went there with my colleague Bob Simon and producer Tricia Doyle for CBS 60 Minutes. We were trying to find the right way to tell the story. We spoke with a number of people. At one point we interviewed the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, who had come to Iraq and was saying that it was good America was there. But many people in the Shia community told us he did not have much credibility. They suggested that if we really wanted to understand the mood on the street, we should go on a Friday night to the Imam Ali Mosque in the holy city of Najaf and meet a young cleric named Muqtada al-Sadr.
We met with Sadr, and he was very clear. He said, “Saddam was a small serpent; the United States is the big serpent. You should leave. We don’t want you here.” And this view was rooted in history—specifically the events of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, when George H. W. Bush had made a very similar appeal to the Shia population, encouraging them to rise up against Saddam. The message was essentially: this is your opportunity to take over your country. And the Shia did revolt.
But they were crushed—brutally crushed. And the Americans essentially watched. They were observing from aircraft as kerosene was poured on people and they were set on fire. It was horrific violence carried out by Saddam’s forces. The pattern of abandonment and betrayal echoed again and again.
I also grew up in Miami among Cuban exiles, so I was familiar with the history of the Bay of Pigs as well. It’s a pattern that we have seen repeatedly. And that is why I thought the historical resonance was worth highlighting.
Why Removing One Leader Rarely Transforms a State
You suggest that rhetorical support for uprisings can become morally problematic when it is not matched by material backing. From an ethical and strategic standpoint, where should the line be drawn between normative support for democratic movements and irresponsible geopolitical signaling?
Professor Peter W. Klein: Powerful countries are always going to try to shape the world and manipulate it to their needs. That is realpolitik. The challenge is that sometimes the words don’t match the actions.
As we have seen in the examples I noted—and many others—I don’t think the intention was necessarily absent. When Eisenhower sent messages to Hungarians suggesting that they should stand up to the Soviet empire and implying that the United States would have their back, I don’t think Eisenhower had ill intentions. He was expressing rhetoric aligned with American policy. But it’s a little like the dog that catches the car: once the revolution actually begins, the question becomes, what are we going to do now? The reality sets in. Are we really prepared to confront another nuclear power?
The same question applies to Iran. If the Iranian people actually listened and launched a full-scale revolution in their country, it is hard to imagine what exactly would happen. Would the United States really intervene, especially after all the rhetoric that this administration is not about regime change and that regime change is not its intention? In this case, it becomes particularly relevant and important to discuss, because the Trump administration has been quite clear from the beginning that regime change is not its philosophy and that it is highly critical of that approach.
Trump has also pointed to what he considers the example of Maduro—removing a bad actor or despotic leader while leaving the broader infrastructure intact. The idea seems to be that if you remove one person, things will somehow fall back into place. But we have seen the opposite in cases like Iraq. When Saddam was removed and deep de-Baathification dismantled the entire governing infrastructure, the country effectively collapsed.
I was in Iraq recently reporting on corruption there. Corruption is so rampant that people often say something striking: Under Saddam there was one corrupt person you had to pay off, but now there are hundreds—hundreds of hands, hundreds of Saddams. People say they don’t even know how to function in the system anymore. You see half-built buildings everywhere, and the oil infrastructure is a mess. The state simply never rebuilt a functioning system to replace what had been dismantled.
Nation-building is extremely difficult to do from the outside. It’s a bit like building a ship inside a bottle—you are trying to assemble something complex from outside the structure rather than letting it develop organically.
Trump has been advancing this idea that removing one leader—whether it is Khamenei or Maduro—is enough, that eliminating one figure will somehow allow everything else to fall into place. But Venezuela is not Iran. The United States can exert influence in places like Venezuela because of economic and political ties. Iran is probably one of the least likely places where the United States can simply step in and impose that kind of outcome, regardless of removing one leader. So, the philosophy itself seems flawed.
Billboard depicting Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei and Imam Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini on a building wall in Tehran, Iran, April 2018. The portraits honor the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini (Supreme Leader 1979–1989), and his successor Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader 1989–2026), whose images frequently appear in public spaces as symbols of the regime’s ideological authority. Photo: Dreamstime.
Why Regime Change in Iran Is Unlikely to Be Imposed from Outside
Your analysis implies that regime change is rarely a spontaneous outcome of external pressure alone. Based on your research into Iran and past US interventions, what conditions would realistically be required for a regime transition in Iran to succeed without producing state collapse?
Professor Peter W. Klein: I’m not an expert on Iran by any means. I’ve reported on Iran, and I have many friends who are Iranian, including Iranian scholars. So, this is very much a cursory view, and if you have audience members with PhDs in political science, my apologies for simplifying this. But my sense is that the grassroots movement of frustration in Iran is, in many ways, more complex than—I’ll compare it to the Hungarian case, which I know better because I grew up among Hungarians, lived in Hungary, and worked there as a reporter.
In Hungary, in 1956, there was genuine frustration with the centralized system and with many of the issues affecting the country. So, when the United States came in and suggested that Hungarians should move in a certain direction, there wasn’t much resistance to that idea. In fact, there was quite a bit of enthusiasm—people felt it was great that America was encouraging them. The United States was also very effective in its propaganda, presenting itself as a place where the streets were paved with gold.
My father believed much of that. When he came to America, he genuinely thought the streets were paved with gold because that was the image people had been given. But he ultimately became a very patriotic American because much of that promise proved true. He was able to buy a house and build a life in ways that would not have been possible for him in Hungary.
In Iran, however, the situation is far more complicated. There is the historical relationship with the United States—going back to the era of the Shah—as well as US support for Israel and the broader conflict between Iran and Israel. So even if many people are frustrated with the regime, and surveys suggest there is widespread dissatisfaction, the United States is not necessarily the actor they want telling them what to do.
It’s a bit like when I tell my kids to do something. Even if it’s a good idea, they might resist simply because it came from me. In the same way, many Iranians may resist calls for regime change if those calls come directly from the United States.
So, it is a very complicated scenario. As you suggested, regime change generally does not come from outside. It can happen if you bomb a country to smithereens, as happened in Iraq, and remove its leader. By definition, that produces regime change. But it is extremely messy regime change—often unsustainable—and it can take decades to rebuild a functioning state afterward.
The IRGC’s Embedded Power and the Limits of Regime Destabilization
You highlight the enduring memory of the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran as a source of skepticism toward American intentions. To what extent does this historical legacy still shape Iranian public attitudes toward US rhetoric about liberation and democracy?
Professor Peter W. Klein: It is definitely one of those sore points that continues to linger. So, the idea of the United States coming in and lecturing Iran—after having, in some cases, helped create some of the conditions that contributed to the problems they face today, and given the history of US involvement there—carries a lot of weight. This is not some theoretical issue involving something that happened in Argentina or some distant place. It happened in their own country. So, there is a great deal of sensitivity around it, at least from what I can tell from talking to Iranians. It is clear that there are real sensitivities surrounding that history.
You emphasize the institutional strength of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a central obstacle to regime change. How does the IRGC’s political–economic role within Iran complicate external attempts to destabilize the regime?
Professor Peter W. Klein: That’s a tough and a very good question. I think it’s one that people much smarter than me can answer much better than I can. I spent a lot of time dealing with the Rafsanjani regime years ago in Iran, and I got a glimpse of the complexities and the connections between the business elites and the IRGC. Not just the oil industry—although, obviously, the oil industry is huge. There are so many ties there, and of course there is a lot of corruption. So, this is not a stand-alone militia that is independent of the fabric of the country. While there is a lot of frustration with and fear of the IRGC, they are also integrated in many ways. And they are huge—they are powerful. This is not some small force.
Going back to my Hungary example, it required Soviet tanks and Russian soldiers to come in and crush that rebellion. In Iran, however, this is internal. It is an internal security force that is large, powerful, and integrated into many aspects of the economy and society. So again, it makes it very difficult to imagine a grassroots revolution simply changing that regime.
Escalation Risks: How a Localized Strike Could Ignite a Regional War
Photo: Pavel Kusmartsev / Dreamstime.
The current escalation involving US and Israeli strikes against Iranian targets intersects with ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and the broader regional confrontation with Hezbollah. How do you assess the risk that the Iranian theater could evolve into a multi-front regional war?
Professor Peter W. Klein:, That’s the fear that so many people have: where does this go? You think back on how regional or even world wars start—they start small. They begin with some small activity that somehow gets out of control.
I do think that one of the concerns I have is the lack of clear messaging, particularly from the United States. I think Israel’s messaging is quite clear, and their agenda has always been very clear on Iran. The more challenging thing is that the United States’ messaging is very unclear, and part of that may be that Donald Trump and the people around him haven’t aligned their messaging, and Trump himself has been inconsistent in what he has said. In politics and war, messaging is so important. If you are not sending a clear message about what the intention is and where things are going, everyone becomes uneasy. It makes everyone in that region a little bit trigger-happy or gun-shy, depending on which direction they are going in, and it creates the potential for a powder-keg situation.
I’m still hopeful that cooler heads will prevail and that this situation will be quieted down, because I do think that whether some people consciously—or perhaps subconsciously—appreciate it, there is a lot at stake here. This is not, going back to the Venezuela example, one economically powerful country that is somewhat isolated regionally. The implications of what happened in Venezuela carried very little chance of turning into a regional conflict.
Here, however, there is a huge chance of it. So, I’m hoping that the people who are in charge—even including the Israelis—realize that the blowback from a regional conflict would be enormous and that this situation has to be quieted down. As much as there may be aspirations of regime change, the cost of that may simply be too high.
Proxy Networks and the Uncertain Reach of Iran’s Deterrence Strategy
Iran’s strategic influence across the region is often exercised through proxy actors such as Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and Palestinian groups. In your assessment, how central are these networks to Iran’s deterrence strategy, and how might they respond to intensified military pressure?
Professor Peter W. Klein: That dynamic has been around for a long time. So, I don’t know how much Hezbollah or other proxies factor into this particular conflict. I do know that there are heightened concerns. There are heightened concerns in New York City, and there are heightened concerns elsewhere that the actions being taken in Iran could have broader reverberations. I know people who live in Israel, near the border of the West Bank, and there is genuine concern that there may be activities coming from the West Bank similar to October 7.
Do I think that’s going to happen? Probably not. But I don’t live there, and that’s not my world. The fact that people are genuinely concerned about it is telling. There is a sense that it could have implications and blowback in specific areas and communities. But I don’t know how significant that is on the larger scale when it comes to this war.
Talk Is Cheap: The Political Incentives Behind Rhetoric of Liberation
Your article critically examines the recurring rhetoric of liberation and democratic uprising in US foreign policy. Why does this narrative persist despite repeated historical failures, and what political incentives sustain it?
Professor Peter W. Klein: It comes down to the fact that talk is cheap. Whether it’s telling your partner, your kids, your colleagues, or the people of another country, this is what I want to do, this is what the intention is. If you don’t follow through, you lose credibility. But there can still be a short-term gain from saying you should revolt, or we have your back, or we’re going to protect you.
And it’s also a little bit like one of the challenges of politics. Because if Eisenhower did it, or Kennedy did it, or George H.W. Bush did it, that was a long time ago. People ask, what does that have to do with today? What does that have to do with my administration? So, the sins of the country from the past are often forgotten.
They are also sometimes forgotten by the people who are being encouraged to revolt. The Iranians could have learned lessons from the Cubans and the Hungarians, but they didn’t necessarily look at those historical precedents. Instead, they might think: Great, we’ll just revolt—the United States says it has our backs.
But again, talk is cheap. It’s easy to gain short-term political advantage from it and perhaps even hope that the moment never actually arrives. You can present yourself as a powerful leader who believes in freedom, liberty, and democracy—an American apple-pie version of leadership that projects a positive image.
And then the options are: Nothing happens, and you get credit for your rhetoric without having to act; or something happens and you don’t follow through, in which case you pay the short-term political cost; or, in the rare case, you actually back them up.
Militias, Fear, and Control: The Architecture of Authoritarian Survival
Platoon of Iranian army soldiers carrying the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran during the international military competition ARMY-2018 in Pesochnoye, Kostroma Region, Russia, June 2018. Photo: Dreamstime.
You argue that authoritarian regimes rarely collapse easily and often respond to threats with intensified repression. In the Iranian context, what mechanisms of authoritarian resilience make the system particularly difficult to destabilize?
Professor Peter W. Klein: This is where the Revolutionary Guard has an advantage. In many of these authoritarian regimes, they are able to maintain their control for a variety of reasons, including ruling with an iron fist.
I’ll give you just a quick sidebar example that I found interesting. Under Saddam, I think it was his nephew who ran the militia there, and he knew that they needed to put considerable effort, money, time, resources, and human power into building a militia—a state militia that could crush rebellions, especially after there had already been a Shia rebellion. So even the fear of that could be enough. People walking around with guns can be enough—you don’t have to shoot people; the threat alone is often sufficient.
What I found particularly interesting was a videotape I obtained after the fall of Saddam. I got it from the palace in Baghdad, in the Green Zone. I had received a number of videotapes that I started going through, and one of them was the strangest thing. It showed Saddam Hussein shortly before the 2003 invasion, sitting with a group of his ministers. They were examining what looked like toys—things like tacks, slingshots, and Molotov cocktails, essentially very low-level weapons.
So, I sat down with a translator and a couple of other people to understand what the conversation was about and what was going on. No one had seen this footage before. I eventually included it in a documentary that aired on the History Channel, and the New York Times did a big story about it. The Daily Show even did a spoof on it.
But what was interesting—the real insight—was that Saddam was essentially telling the people around him that the Americans might invade in 2003 and that there could be another Shia revolt. He said they needed to get the people on their side, but they didn’t want the population to be armed well enough to challenge the regime. So, the idea was to provide low-level weaponry—Molotov cocktails and slingshots—that civilians could use against other civilians, but that would not be powerful enough to challenge Saddam’s forces.
It was somewhat comical. There is a reason The Daily Show used a clip of it, because it was surreal to see Saddam Hussein, this powerful dictator, discussing what looked like toys. But the conversation itself was very serious. The logic was that the regime’s militia could crush civilians armed with low-level weapons, while loyalist civilians—Baathists—could be mobilized to confront and suppress the Shia. And it really gave some insight, at least for me, into how authoritarian regimes think about structuring military power in order to control the public.
The Devil We Know: The Uncertain Consequences of Regime Collapse
You warn that even a successful uprising could produce internal fragmentation or civil conflict. Looking at cases such as Iraq after 2003 or Afghanistan after 1989, what lessons should policymakers draw about the dangers of post-regime power vacuums?
Professor Peter W. Klein: What we keep doing is going into places that are diverse and complex without fully understanding that diversity and complexity. In Iran, I couldn’t even begin to list all the groups—whether it’s the Baluch or others. There are so many different factions within Iran, and you can easily imagine significant factional violence or strife if the whole country were to collapse.
You saw this in Iraq, and Iraq was, frankly, a much simpler place than Iran. You basically had Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds. There were also Turkmen and a couple of other groups, but you still saw huge strife among these different communities. So, this reflects the argument that sometimes it is the devil we know rather than the devil we don’t know. You might have a strongman who runs a country and keeps some of those factions at bay, and at least you know how to deal with that one leader.
Once things break into factional violence, as we saw in Afghanistan, it becomes extremely difficult to control. This is why every world power ends up struggling in Afghanistan, because it’s like trying to fight a marshmallow—you can’t really knock it out. There are so many different factions, and the enemy becomes very undefined. It has been an endless challenge, whether for the Soviets, the Americans, or others.
I’m not saying that Iran is Afghanistan. Iran is obviously a much more organized and economically developed country in most respects. In some ways, that makes the target clearer. But it is still complicated, and if you got rid of the Revolutionary Guard, I honestly don’t know what would happen in that country.
The Fragmented Media Landscape and the Crisis of Trust
London Newspaper stand refects the diverse range of newspapers and languages of modern London. Photo: Dreamstime.
As an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, how do you see the role of media narratives and digital information flows shaping global perceptions of the Iran conflict and the legitimacy of calls for regime change?
Professor Peter W. Klein:We have a huge responsibility. Consistently some journalists rise to the occasion and do an amazing job, while many journalists don’t. I mean, it was interesting with Venezuela. All of these journalists who couldn’t find Venezuela on a map before suddenly became experts on Venezuela, and that’s just the reality that many journalists are thrown into: You have to quickly figure out and understand a place that you may never have covered before.
I appreciate the challenge that journalists face. As a journalism professor, it’s something we often talk about—the responsibility, not just the basic ethics, but also the implications of what we do. Journalism has become so bifurcated and complicated. It’s not only that newspaper or that newscast anymore. There’s social media, there are bloggers. Some of the most influential people in media are coming from very non-traditional places, whether it’s Joe Rogan with a podcast or late-night comedians who essentially have journalists on their staff digging in and pushing particular perspectives.
So, it has become even more complicated than just the New York Times, Washington Post, or Guardian reporters shaping the narrative. And the other challenge is that you may try to do a really good job, but obviously we don’t have control over the entire media landscape. There are always going to be people who are either getting stories wrong or pushing false narratives, misinformation, or misguided agendas. And I hear it all the time from the public. Just from talking to people at conferences and presentations I do, people are frustrated and confused. Where should I be getting my news? Who can I trust? Who shouldn’t I trust?
And there isn’t a great solution. One of the solutions we often suggest in the academic world is transparency—being transparent about your positionality and transparent about your political affiliations. There is some real value to that. But then all that means is that we end up having an echo chamber, where people go only to others who share the same political views and values they have, and they’re not exposed to opposing opinions.
So, there really isn’t a great solution, unfortunately. But I think just being aware matters. Your question itself has value, because having these open conversations can have some real, real positive impacts.
Change May Come—But Not in the Way the West Expects
And lastly, Professor Klein, looking beyond the immediate crisis, what scenarios do you see as most plausible for the next decade of Iranian politics—gradual reform, intensified authoritarian consolidation, externally triggered conflict, or eventual systemic transformation?
Professor Peter W. Klein: I’m suspicious of anyone who makes predictions, and I will confess that I am a terrible predictor. I thought Barack Obama would never become president, so I’m not a good person to ask. But I can tell you what my hope is. I hope that gradual transformation happens. I do think there are some very serious problems in Iran that need to be addressed, both internally and externally.
Maybe history will show that this particular attack opened the door for change. But the opposite can happen as well—it could move in the opposite direction. So, there may be change, but it may not be the kind of change that many people in the West would want. There could be a doubling down on the nuclear program, proxy wars, and similar policies.
I personally don’t think there is going to be a huge regional conflict. I don’t think this will open the door to World War III. But it is impossible to know for certain, which is why we really need to be very careful. Policymakers certainly need to be cautious, and in academia and journalism we also need to be careful both in making predictions and in explaining and analyzing the situation, because it is so complicated that most people don’t fully understand it, including myself.
Plastic waste has become one of the defining environmental crises of the twenty-first century—but its politics extend far beyond questions of recycling and waste management. In his commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja examines how global plastic trade reflects deep structural inequalities between the Global North and the Global South, where environmental burdens are systematically displaced onto poorer regions. Drawing on insights from political economy and environmental justice scholarship, he introduces the concept of waste sovereignty—the claim that states should exercise political control over transboundary waste flows as part of broader struggles for ecological justice and economic autonomy. By examining global waste markets and emerging regulatory responses, Dr. Solaja highlights how plastic pollution has become a key arena of power, sovereignty, and inequality in global environmental governance.
By Dr. Oludele Solaja*
For decades the plastic waste has been travelling through global trade routes and has ultimately landed on waste pickers and informal sector recyclers in developing countries. Although most of the plastic products are consumed in richer economies, the bulk of waste generated through their consumption processes is handled in countries that lack technical capabilities and facilities to do proper recycling. What seems like a technical issue of dealing with waste is, in fact, tied up to the power politics and global asymmetrical relationship between Global North and South resulting in large transfer of environmental risk and pollution to the poorer world, thereby causing rampant pollution.
The first part of the twenty-first century has undoubtedly been defined by an environmental crisis involving plastics. The production of plastic has rapidly escalated to over 400 million tons of material annually since the late 1970s. Despite this, only countries in the Global South have to manage the overwhelming environmental problems related to the processing of this waste, which is mostly generated by more prosperous countries. The flow of plastic waste to the South is a direct result of the export business where more industrialized countries ship their own plastic waste to developing countries for disposal under the guise of recycling markets. Although these movements often disguise themselves as a technical solution to plastic waste disposal, it’s truly about exporting environmental harms to less equipped regions.
According to many researchers and environmentalists, these movements reflect a “plastic colonialism,” where developing nations bear the burden of ecological unequal exchange. As political economist Dani Rodrik describes “globalization is in conflict with democratic politics. A great tension now exists between deep global economic integration and the conditions of domestic political legitimacy.” Plastic has therefore moved beyond being merely an environmental problem; it has become a symbol of global inequality, giving rise to the emerging political concept of waste sovereignty—the argument that nations should have the right to control the transboundary movement of waste as part of broader struggles for environmental justice and economic autonomy.
The Global Plastic Waste Economy
The world economy of plastic involves intricate networks spanning continents that link production, consumption, and disposal, while producing globally distributed yet inequitable environmental impacts. For a long time, China has been a recipient of bulk quantities of plastic waste exported from the US, Japan, and various European countries; this changed in 2018 when China refused to process contaminated waste products. In turn, the export markets shifted, mainly to Southeast Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.
However, these new arrangements are evidence of weaknesses in our recycling infrastructure. In 2017, research from the journal Science showed that only a mere 9% of all plastic waste has ever been recycled. While the remainder of the waste gets dumped, incinerated, or deposited in natural environments. A study from Nature reveals the sheer amount of plastic pollution in our oceans: “275 million tons of plastic, of 4.8 million tons, are drifting across the world’s seas” (Jambeck et al., 2015). The irony of promoting recycling for plastic waste is clear: the recycling industry relies on disposable structures.
Plastic Colonialism and Environmental Inequality
Political ecology and critical political economy inform the notion of plastic colonialism, illustrating that waste is rarely just a result of technical failures in managing waste disposal; rather it is a consequence of wealth disparities, power imbalances, and weaknesses within governmental infrastructure.
In this light, the flow of global waste represents a process of ecological unequal exchange, where waste generated in richer parts of the world results in environmental degradation predominantly in the poorer regions of the world. Thomas Piketty in his study of political economy confirms the persistence of structural disparities within global politics. Moreover, it has been suggested by scholars like Nancy Fraser that environmental problems frequently entail “expropriation,” where marginalized populations bear the ecological costs of production within a globalized world. Plastic waste is therefore not simply about recycling techniques but a critical political struggle between different parties over an issue of environmental justice and unequal resource distribution.
Waste Sovereignty Theory
In an effort to contextualize these issues, Waste Sovereignty Theory introduces the concept of governing waste as an expression of political and environmental sovereignty. Here, governments seek to reclaim ownership over environmental decision making while rebuffing impositions by international markets which place the burden of ecological costs on them. The theory is best understood through the framework of four interconnected concepts representing how states and communities tackle unequal global waste governance.
Territorial Control: States attempt to regulate and control transboundary movements of waste through bans and regulatory checks, with China’s 2018 plastic waste ban being a prime example.
Economic Transformation: Nations are looking to make waste a resource rather than a burden. The creation of circular economy strategies aims to reintroduce waste as part of the production system.
Environmental Justice: Claims for waste sovereignty are primarily derived from accusations that developing nations bear an unjust ecological burden due to the consumption in wealthier nations. These claims call for a new system of waste trade that prevents the unequal distribution of environmental responsibility.
Political Mobilization: The debate over waste governance is often linked to populist and nationalist narratives, which frame these issues as a struggle against oppressive distant powers and an exploitative system where rich nations offload their environmental burdens.
These four pillars, therefore, show how waste politics has become a political and environmental battlefield.
Global Case Studies
Several of the countries across the world exemplify the increasing power of waste sovereignty politics. In Malaysia, a dramatic increase in exports of plastic waste, recently taking place there, is attracting national concern over pollution. Malaysia’s government is trying to regain control of waste streams via a strategy of inspection and sending of suspect materials back to source countries.
Turkey, along with other European countries, is also now dealing with large shipments of plastic waste from Europe, leading to domestic focus on the issues the trade raises in Turkey, and demands for a more responsible waste trading relationship with European countries.
The management of plastic waste across many African countries, presents a multifaceted problem intimately linked to development, and millions survive by waste picking (Ghana). In Kenya, there is a ban on all single-use plastic bags, and in Nigeria research explores avenues for using waste plastic in sectors like textiles.
They all portray a story of nations attempting to address their domestic plastic pollution concerns, while also attempting to retain some control over imported waste streams.
Waste Politics and Populist Narratives
Waste politics and populist ideas are increasingly interconnected. Waste import debates offer powerful evidence that the world’s powerful global players continue to exploit weaker nations. As demonstrated in Naomi Klein’s analysis of environmental crises, these issues can become a part of a larger critique against neoliberalism; the problem of plastic waste is not just a technological issue but also political as it symbolizes the unequal nature of globalization.
Conclusion
The worldwide crisis in plastics unveils a significant discrepancy between the circular economy strategies proposed by global institutions and the ongoing replication of inequality in the sharing of environmental problems that exists in the global waste trade. Plastic colonialism isn’t just an inability to deal with waste, but a structured reflection of the inequality found within the globe, a growing challenge that has sparked protest across the Global South. Waste Sovereignty theory provides an understanding of such developments by framing waste governance as a battle for environmental justice, political sovereignty, and economic autonomy. The international debate surrounding waste governance is likely to play an integral role in the future of global environmental politics and the path towards establishing a more equal world.
(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria.
References
Brooks, A. L.; Wang, S. & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). “The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade.” Science Advances, 4(6), eaat0131. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131
Fraser, N. (2016). Expropriation and exploitation in racialized capitalism: A reply to Michael Dawson. Critical Historical Studies, 3(1), 163–178. https://doi.org/10.1086/685779
Geyer, R.; Jambeck, J. R. & Law, K. L. (2017). “Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made.” Science, 3(7), e1700782. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700782
Jambeck, J. R.; Geyer, R.; Wilcox, C.; Siegler, T. R.; Perryman, M.; Andrady, A.; Narayan, R.; & Law, K. L. (2015). “Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean.” Nature, 347(6223), 768–771. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1260352
Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.
In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja examines the often-overlooked ecological consequences of modern warfare. Moving beyond traditional analyses focused on military strategy and territorial control, he argues that contemporary conflicts produce long-lasting environmental damage that can destabilize societies for decades. From contaminated farmland and polluted water systems to devastated ecosystems and forced migration, war’s environmental fallout directly undermines human security. Drawing on historical examples such as Agent Orange in Vietnam and the Kuwaiti oil fires during the 1991 Gulf War, the commentary highlights how ecological destruction persists long after hostilities end. Dr. Solaja ultimately calls for stronger international environmental governance and greater integration of environmental protection into global security and peacebuilding frameworks.
By Dr. Oludele Solaja*
Thinking About War in an Ecological Framework
When war is finished in terms of battles, water systems remain polluted, nature destroyed, and infrastructure shattered—and continues to shape the ways in which societies survive and exist. Whereas the majority of scholarly focus concerning warfare centers on issues of military victory, deterring enemies, or controlling territory, the environmental consequences of war can often produce effects that can persist over decades (Lawrence & Stohl, 2019; UNEP, 2009). The current confrontation between the United States, Iran, and Israel, for instance, should be understood not merely as a geopolitical conflict, but as an ecological disaster, as well. The bombing and attack on industrial and energy infrastructure result in more than mere destruction of physical property; these incidents produce ecological disarray, which can lead to widespread contamination of landscape, livelihood and inhabitants, even long after the end of hostilities (Foster et al., 2010; Ide, 2021).
Understanding war in relation to ecology and displacement is one way of looking at the long-term consequences of military combat. Destruction to environment can create instability for societies by contaminating farmland, polluting water sources, or even eliminating the natural resource base required to survive. Therefore modern warfare reaches beyond the battlefield to create different forms of insecurity that may exist in the environment for generations (Nixon, 2011). Hence a sociological study of war, examining both strategic and environmental results of battle, should be adopted in understanding conflict in the 21st century. In an age of increasing environmental crises and security concerns, treating war as an ecological affair can become as significant as viewing it as the domain of military actions (Foster et al., 2010).
Environmental Effects of Modern Warfare
Even though destruction of the environment has historically been a factor of warfare, it often goes overlooked in analyses of security. It can create massive ecological devastation, not just exacerbate humanitarian crises within a warzone, but create an environmental crisis for surrounding regions as well (UNEP, 2009; Lawrence & Stohl, 2019). Aerial bombardment of infrastructure can spread poisons into the air, water sources and natural habitat required for sustenance. Industrial buildings and energy sources—refineries, chemical plants, water treatment plants—are sometimes prime targets. When these sites are destroyed, dangerous pollution can linger in land, air and ground water long after fighting has ended, with effects on human security far reaching (Ide, 2021).
Toxic lands may become unfit for farming and public health will be compromised by contaminants and the food supply jeopardized. It can often take decades to repair the environmental damage so that it may become safely habitated again (UNEP, 2009). Attacks on Iranian oil refineries and petrochemical industries, for example, could cause catastrophic environmental degradation over a wide region of the Middle East, compromising public health and damaging natural ecosystems of the area (Lawrence & Stohl, 2019).
Historical Evidence of Environmental Destruction during War
The long-term humanitarian effects have historically been a characteristic of war-induced ecological damage. Between 1961 and 1971, the US deployed large quantities of Agent Orange across Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Large portions of farmland and forest became useless while their soils were contaminated with toxins. In addition to long-lasting health problems, communities continue to deal with the aftermath of these chemicals (Vo & Ziegler, 2018).
Also, during the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi troops burned hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells in an attempt to deter advancing forces. Large quantities of pollutants were released into the air, and oil slicks devastated marine life (Al-Dabbous & Kumar, 2014). As in Vietnam, long-lasting human security issues and a devastated ecosystem resulted from environmental disaster during wartime. The widespread destruction of natural and manmade landscapes caused during conflict does not end immediately and the need for their repair is a long-term challenge that often prolongs instability within nations affected by war. Such environmental harm frequently unfolds gradually and invisibly, what Nixon describes as “slow violence,” in which ecological destruction continues to affect communities long after the immediate conflict has ended (Nixon, 2011).
War, Environmental Degradation and Human Security
Seeing war as a source of ecological devastation helps to better understand the link between war and human security. Attacks on water systems, farms or factories can harm societies through ecological harm which causes social consequences. An attack on an ecosystem could destroy farms, harm public health through pollution of water sources and prompt migration as farming has no longer become an option. These elements—war, environment, displacement—can therefore be described as having a circular relationship, where destruction to one aspect of existence directly fuels destruction in another.
Rural communities are particularly susceptible, since their entire way of life is contingent on their surrounding environment. Without the existence of healthy ecosystems, a livelihood becomes unsustainable and this leads to forced migration in order to survive (Ide, 2021). Homer-Dixon has emphasized the importance of the environment as the driver of conflict through its impact on resource availability and human security; with widespread ecological destruction during conflict, this connection is intensified, creating an even more dire situation (Homer-Dixon, 1999).
Implications for International Environmental Governance
The ecological devastation that war leaves in its wake makes clear the need for international action to help govern the conduct of war so that environment is not harmed so severely and, hopefully, at all. Although international laws of armed conflict are already in place to help alleviate the harm inflicted upon the environment during war, their enforceability has not been successfully maintained (UNEP, 2009). The long-lasting results of ecological destruction often are not considered and may never be compensated for or rectified in the absence of stronger governance structures.
The establishment of environmental monitoring systems, strict liability laws for states or parties engaged in warfare that are responsible for ecological damage, and inclusion of environmental restoration within peacebuilding initiatives would all serve to diminish the long-term negative effects of war on ecology (Ide, 2021). Making protection of the environment a component of security strategy will make policies aligned with global security concerns, and address issues of ecological sustainability as well.
Conclusion
The conflict with Iran highlights the vast ecological consequences of modern warfare. It is a process that not only brings conflict to lands and peoples, but can reshape entire landscapes. Its consequences, historically in war zones such as Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, show that it can be a far more destructive phenomenon to ecosystems than merely battlefield action, lasting far into the future of human habitation (Vo & Ziegler, 2018; Al-Dabbous & Kumar, 2014). Considering war an ecological threat has made it easier to grasp its entire meaning, and looking at warfare from a strategic and environmental perspective allows for a far greater understanding of warfare itself. In an age of increasing geopolitical turmoil, it may soon become just as significant as military victories, if not more so, to understand the environmental threat war poses.
(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria.
References
Al-Dabbous, A. & Kumar, P. (2014). “Environmental impacts of the Gulf War oil fires.” Environmental Pollution, 189, 59–68.
Foster, J. B., Clark, B., & York, R. (2010). The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. Monthly Review Press.
Homer-Dixon, T. (1999). Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton University Press.
Ide, T. (2021). “Environmental peacebuilding and the impact of war on ecosystems.” Global Environmental Politics, 21(1), 1–12.
Lawrence, M., & Stohl, A. (2019). “The impact of military emissions on climate change and air pollution.” Nature Communications, 10(1), 1–9.
Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press.
UNEP. (2009). Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict: An Inventory and Analysis of International Law. United Nations Environment Programme.
Vo, M., & Ziegler, A. (2018). “Agent Orange and the environmental legacy of the Vietnam War.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 13(2), 1–28.
