Dr. James Loxton argues that today’s democratic backsliding is driven less by authoritarian successor parties than by populist leaders who promise to return power to “the people” but then concentrate it in their own hands. In this ECPS interview, he explains how authoritarian legacies often survive democratization through parties, institutions, networks, and political brands. Yet, looking at Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, and the United States, Dr. Loxton identifies populism as the more significant common thread. He also discusses “authoritarian inheritance,” the appeal of authoritarian nostalgia, and the rise of gray-zone regimes marked by “competitive authoritarianism,” where elections continue but the playing field is “fundamentally uneven and unfair.”
Interview by Selcuk Gultasli
Dr. James Loxton, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney and one of the leading scholars of authoritarianism, democratization, and party politics, argues that the contemporary crisis of democracy cannot be understood simply through the persistence of old authoritarian elites. While much of his influential scholarship has focused on “authoritarian successor parties” and the enduring legacies of dictatorship after democratic transition, Dr. Loxton warns that the principal engine of democratic backsliding today is increasingly populism itself. “When I think about the democratic backsliding occurring across much of the world today,” he tells the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), “I see populism—not authoritarian successor parties—as the more significant common thread.”
In this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Loxton explores why authoritarian actors, institutions, and political cultures so often survive democratization rather than disappear with regime change. Challenging conventional understandings of democratic transition, he argues that most transitions are not revolutionary ruptures in which authoritarian systems are swept away entirely. “It is extremely rare for all aspects of the old regime simply to disappear and be replaced by a completely blank slate,” he explains. Instead, authoritarian legacies persist through constitutions, institutions, party organizations, and political networks that continue operating long after democratization formally occurs.
At the center of Dr. Loxton’s work is the concept of “authoritarian inheritance,” the idea that ties to a former dictatorship can function not only as liabilities but also as electoral assets. “Having roots in a dictatorship can sometimes be as much of an asset as it is a liability for parties operating under democracy,” he argues. In some cases, voters consciously embrace authoritarian legacies because they associate former regimes with “stability,” “order,” or “national strength”. In others, historical memory itself becomes distorted through nostalgia, revisionism, and digital propaganda. Reflecting on cases such as Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the Philippines and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Dr. Loxton warns of the growing appeal of what he calls “authoritarian nostalgia parties,” particularly among younger generations with no lived experience of dictatorship.
Yet Dr. Loxton also draws a crucial distinction between authoritarian successor parties and the broader populist dynamics reshaping democratic politics today. Looking at countries such as Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, and the United States, he argues that the deeper pattern is not simply authoritarian continuity but the rise of leaders who campaign against elites in the name of “the people” and then centralize power once in office. “Populist leaders run for office promising to smash the elites and return power to ‘the people,’” he notes. “Then, once in office, they proceed to concentrate power in their own hands and tilt the political playing field in their favor.”
The interview also explores Dr. Loxton’s reflections on “competitive authoritarianism,” the influential concept developed by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way to describe regimes occupying the gray zone between democracy and dictatorship. For Dr. Loxton, these hybrid systems capture one of the defining political realities of the 21st century: democracies increasingly hollowed out not through military coups, but through elections, populism, institutional manipulation, and the gradual erosion of liberal norms from within.
