On October 23, 2025, Deakin University hosted the International Conference on “Bureaucratic Populism: Military, Judiciary, and Institutional Politics” at Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, in collaboration with the Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalisation, the Deakin Digital Life Lab, POLIS, and the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). The event convened leading scholars from across the globe to examine how unelected state institutions—from militaries to judiciaries—adopt populist idioms to claim legitimacy “in the name of the people.” Opening the conference, Professor Simon Tormey reflected on the indeterminacy of populism as both ideology and style, while Dr. Nicholas Morieson’s keynote advanced a framework distinguishing between populism’s exogenous capture and endogenous discourse. Through three thematic panels, participants explored how bureaucratic, military, and judicial populisms reshape governance, authority, and democratic accountability worldwide.
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Reported by ECPS Staff
On October 23, 2025, scholars, researchers, and practitioners from around the world convened both in person at Deakin Downtown, Melbourne, and online via Zoom for the International Conference on “Bureaucratic Populism: Military, Judiciary, and Institutional Politics.” Jointly organized by Deakin University, the Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalisation, the Deakin Digital Life Lab, POLIS (Politics & International Studies), and the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), the event brought together comparative, theoretical, and empirical perspectives to interrogate the rise of populism within unelected state institutions.
The conference opened with welcoming remarks from Professor Simon Tormey, who acknowledged the Wurundjeri people as the traditional custodians of the land and extended respect to Elders past, present, and emerging. In his opening speech, Professor Tormey reflected on the evolving state of populism research from a political theorist’s perspective, highlighting the fluidity and indeterminacy of the term. He traced conceptual approaches—from Cas Mudde’s ideological framing to Margaret Canovan’s notion of “the people” and Ernesto Laclau’s discourse-based theory—while raising critical questions about the nature of populism in bureaucratic and technocratic settings. Professor Tormey proposed that populism, far from a fixed ideology, operates as a style or mode of political communication that traverses both elected and unelected institutions.
Setting the intellectual tone for the day, Professor Tormey argued that the enduring puzzle in populism studies lies in its conceptual elasticity—its ability to appear simultaneously as a critique of power and a mode of authoritarian legitimation. He invited participants to consider whether bureaucracies and technocracies, often viewed as non-populist domains, might themselves harbor populist impulses—mobilizing claims to “the people” to defend authority, moral order, or institutional sovereignty.
Following the opening address, Dr. Nicholas Morieson delivered the keynote speech, presenting the conference’s concept paper on bureaucratic populism. His framework identified two faces of the phenomenon: exogenous capture, where populist leaders co-opt bureaucratic, judicial, or military institutions to serve partisan ends; and endogenous discourse, where institutions themselves adopt populist rhetoric, positioning their interventions as expressions of popular will against corrupt elites. Dr. Morieson demonstrated how this dual dynamic blurs the boundary between populism and guardianism, enabling unelected institutions to assert custodial power in the name of “the people.”
Through comparative analysis of cases in Brazil, Indonesia, and Pakistan, Dr. Morieson illustrated how militaries and judiciaries invoke democratic legitimacy while constraining popular sovereignty. His address underscored the need for a discourse-centered approach to detect when bureaucratic language shifts from technocratic neutrality to populist moralization—an analytical challenge of growing global relevance.
With panels devoted to bureaucratic, military, and judicial populism, the conference offered a vital forum for exploring how populist logics travel across state institutions and reshape democratic governance. As Professor Tormey aptly noted, the day’s discussions would not only deepen understanding of populism’s multiple faces but also probe one of the most pressing questions of our time: how the very institutions meant to safeguard democracy may increasingly speak—and act—in the name of the people.
Panel 1 – Bureaucratic Populism and its Implications
Paper 1: “No Public Service, No Democracy. Why Populist Administrations are Dismantling the Professional Public Service,” by Mark Duckworth (Co-Director of the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies; a Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation).
Paper 2: “A Different Populism: Anglophone, New World, Frontier,” by Professor Stephen Alomes (Adjunct Associate Professor at RMIT University).
Paper 3: “Compliance and Capture: Bureaucratic Transformation under Populism in India and Hungary,” by Dr. Nicholas Morieson (Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University).
Paper 4: “Survival, Sovereignty and Destiny: Centralized Power in Putin’s Russia Through Bureaucratic Populism,” by Lachlan Dowling (Student at Deakin University).
Paper 5: “Bureaucratic Populism and Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: A Study of Institutional Populism and Hybrid Governance,” by Kashif Hussain (PhD candidate in Peace and Development Studies from the University of New England).
Panel 2 – Military Populism in Comparative Perspective
Paper 1: “The Making of a People’s General: Military Populism and the Discursive Legacy of Soedirman in Indonesia,” by Hasnan Bachtiar (PhD candidate at Deakin University), Azhar Syahida (A Researcher at the Center of Reform on Economics (CORE) Indonesia) & Ahalla Tsauro (PhD student at Université Laval, Canada).
Paper 2: “Military Populism in Egypt, Pakistan, and Thailand: An Empirical Analysis,” by Muhammad Omer (PhD Candidate in Political Science at the Deakin University).
Paper 3: “The Re-Emergence of Military-Populist Governance in Indonesia under Prabowo Subianto,” by Wasisto Raharjo Jati (A Researcher at the Center for Politics within Indonesia’s BRIN (National Research and Innovation Agency) in Jakarta).
Paper 4: “Militarized Populism and the Language of Conflict: A Discourse-Historical Analysis of the India–Pakistan May 2025 Standoff,” by Dr. Waqasia Naeem (Associate Professor in School of English at Minhaj University Lahore).
Paper 5: “Hybrid Regimes and Populist Leaders: A Case Study of Imran Khan’s Trajectory from Parliament to Prison,” by Faiza Idrees (Independent Researcher from Pakistan) & Muhammad Rizwan (PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University).
Panel 3 – Judicial Populism and Competing Narratives of Authority
Paper 1: “How can courts be populist?” by Mátyás Bencze (Former Judge and a Professor of Law at the Universities of Szeged and Győr, Hungary).
Paper 2: “Judging the State of Exception: The Judiciary in the Israeli Populist Project,” by Dr. Elliot Dolan-Evans(Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Monash University).
Paper 3: “Judicial Populism in Pakistan: Discourse and Authority in the Panama Papers Judgments,” by Muhammad Omer (PhD Candidate in Political Science at the Deakin University) & Prof. Ihsan Yilmaz (Research Professor of Political Science and International Relations, and Chair of Islamic Studies at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI), Deakin University).
Paper 4: “Populism and the Noxious Relationship Between Political and Intelligence Elites in Post-Communist Czechia, Slovakia, and Romania,” by Bohuslav Pernica (Lieutenant colonel (ret.), co-editor of the White Paper on Defence, Czechia) & Emilia Șercan (Assistant Professor in the Journalism Department at the University of Bucharest).
Paper 5: “Competing Populisms in Pakistan: Politicians’ Anti-Military Narratives and Bureaucratic Counter-Narratives,” by Zaffar Manzoor (MPhil Scholar at the Department of English Linguistics and Literature, Riphah International University Islamabad, Pakistan) & Dr. Muhammad Shaban Rafi (Professor of English at Riphah International University Lahore, Pakistan).
