Professor Stephan Haggard, one of the world’s leading scholars of democratic backsliding and authoritarianism, argues that the survival of democracy depends not only on constitutional safeguards but also on sustained public commitment to democratic institutions. In this timely ECPS interview, he examines how populism, polarization, judicial erosion, and attacks on electoral integrity are reshaping democratic politics across the globe. Distinguishing between populism as a “thin ideology” and democratic backsliding as an institutional process, Professor Haggard warns that elected leaders increasingly challenge democracy from within. The conversation explores the weakening of horizontal checks, the rise of anti-institutional rhetoric, the diffusion of illiberal strategies across borders, and the growing importance of democratic resilience. As he cautions, democracy faces its greatest danger when populist movements cease to respect rights, the rule of law, and the integrity of elections.
Interview by Selcuk Gultasli
At a time when democratic institutions are under mounting pressure from populist movements, partisan polarization, and growing distrust in public authority, understanding how democracies erode—and how they endure—has become one of the most urgent challenges in political science. Few scholars have contributed more to this debate than Professor Stephan Haggard, Research Professor and Lawrence and Sallye Krause Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Diego. Over a distinguished career spanning comparative politics, political economy, authoritarianism, and democratic governance, Professor Haggard has produced some of the most influential scholarship on democratic transitions, institutional change, and regime durability.
In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Haggard reflects on the relationship between populism, democratic backsliding, judicial erosion, polarization, and the resilience of democratic institutions. Challenging simplistic understandings of democratic decline, he argues that contemporary autocratization increasingly unfolds not through military coups or abrupt regime collapses, but through gradual institutional weakening carried out by elected leaders operating within formally democratic systems.
One of the interview’s central themes is the fragility of democratic institutions when public support begins to erode. As Professor Haggard observes, “courts operate as checks only to the extent that there is support for courts operating as checks,” emphasizing that “democratic institutions survive only when citizens support them.” For him, the durability of democracy ultimately depends not only on constitutional design, but also on the willingness of political actors and citizens alike to defend the norms and institutions that sustain democratic rule.
Throughout the discussion, Professor Haggard distinguishes between populism as a political ideology and democratic backsliding as an institutional process. Drawing on Cas Mudde’s concept of populism as a “thin ideology,” he argues that populism becomes dangerous when commitments to majoritarian rule are accompanied by efforts to weaken rights, judicial independence, oversight of institutions, and other components of liberal democracy. “Populism is a kind of motivating ideology that can drive backsliding,” he explains, while democratic erosion manifests itself through concrete institutional consequences.
The interview also explores the growing challenge posed by anti-institutional rhetoric, attacks on electoral integrity, transnational networks of illiberal cooperation, and the emergence of authoritarian regional organizations that seek to reshape global governance. Particularly striking is Professor Haggard’s candid assessment of the contemporary United States. Reflecting on the resilience of advanced democracies, he acknowledges that he is “beginning to have doubts”about earlier assumptions that consolidated democracies are largely immune from authoritarian drift. Indeed, he remarks that if asked whether the United States remains a democracy, he would “have to scratch [his] head over that question.”
At once sobering and illuminating, this interview offers a powerful examination of the institutional foundations of democracy and the conditions under which they can be preserved—or lost.
