“Illiberal Democracies” in Europe: An Authoritarian Response to the Crisis of Illiberalism |
Our sense in editing this book is that the years since 2014 have shown that, however unpalatable, incoherent, and internally contradictory illiberal democracy may be, it is a political choice that is available at the ballot box in many countries. Examining illiberalism, liberalism, or democracy as static concepts is just as barren an approach as examining them in one country in isolation from their interactions with others. It is above all to the dynamic, comparative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of liberalism and its alternatives that this collection aims to contribute. |
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The Dismantling of the Rule of Law in Poland with Michał Wawrykiewicz |
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The Russian Orthodox Church: Ideology, Politics, and War |
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Daniel Addison on how Brent Bozell's critique of Frank Meyer’s “fusionism” contains resources useful to postliberals |
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Grant A. Silverman on Kanye West's antisemitic outbursts and the broader implications for mainstreaming extremist views |
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Kirsetn Achtelk on the German pro-life movement and the debate over abortion in Germany |
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In The Social Semiotics of Populism, Sebastián Moreno Barreneche acknowledges that populism defies neat definition, in part because the concept is used by different actors to refer to “multiple and disparate manifestations and phenomena from…both the left and the right.” To tackle this problem, Barreneche reconceptualizes populism as “a mode of semiotic production” that divides social space into two groups, 'the People' and 'the Other.' Using examples from Europe, North America, and South America, he demonstrates how populist actors employ semiotic resources, i.e., the creation of meaning through signs and symbols, to achieve their goals.
While the literature on democratic backsliding tends to focus on the impact of economic change, cultural change, and autocratic meddling, David J. Samuels presents a revisionist account of “how democracies die.” Samuels zeroes in on a different cause of backsliding: “the impact of the reconfiguration of global politics after the Cold War and 9/11 on politics [in the United States, European Union, and the Vatican].” He argues that the new international context provides these actors with relatively weaker incentives to stand up for democracy, and therefore democracy is left with “weaker ideational support in the global arena,” which facilitates backsliding.
George Lawson & Ayşe Zarakol outline major sources of contention within the liberal international order. They demonstrate that – despite its claims to “foster egalitarian, meritocratic justice based around universal, ‘rational’ standards” – the liberal international order is, and has been, “premised on ‘irrational’, unjust forms of hierarchical recognition, often organized around group identity.” Lawson and Zarakol trace how ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ of the liberal international order use this fact to level charges of hypocrisy against the status quo. They conclude by noting that this tension may not spell the end of the liberal international order, but it does suggest that a period of contention may extend well into the future.
Using four case studies, the United States, Hungary, El Salvador, and Brazil, Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer et al. detail how supreme and constitutional courts responded to governmental measures to combat Covid-19, identifying the countries in question as those which have recently faced democratic erosion. The case studies demonstrate that populist and illiberal leaders were either constrained by courts or effectively consolidated their “expansion of powers under the conditions of the pandemic.” The authors show that, while courts can work as bulwarks against democratic erosion, they can only do so if they have not already been captured. Building on this fact, Meyer et al. classify court responses to the executive along three lines: deferential, restrictive, and forced capitulation.
Using the reality of global democratic backsliding as a starting point, Daniela Huber and Barbara Pisciotta unpack the nexus of democratic backsliding, populism, and polarization using two case studies: Hungary and Tunisia. They find that polarization, “typically instrumentalized by populists along the socio-cultural axis,” harms social trust and therefore sets the stage for segments of society to accept democratic backsliding. Their findings suggest a causal link between populism and democratic backsliding and are thus a starting point for further analysis.
Márton Gerő et al. challenge the prevailing wisdom that democratic backsliding represses civil society. They instead show that “in countries where democratic backsliding is fairly advanced, the relationship between civil society and the state is more complex.” While acknowledging that close cooperation between state institutions and civil society groups is rare in democratic backsliding countries, the authors demonstrate that the relationships between the two “range from hostility to varying forms and degrees of co-optation.” Using Hungary as an example, they show that changing political opportunity structures affect different elements of civil society – in this case, human rights organizations, environmental organizations, and women’s organizations – differently because the Hungarian government employs sector-specific strategies for each, and therefore elicits different responses from them.
Petra Guasti and Lenka Bustikova provide a granular analysis of Central European illiberalism. Rather than treating it as a uniform phenomenon, they demonstrate that the region has been engulfed in “varieties of illiberal backlash” that produce differing results on issues ranging from abortion rights to LGBTQ+ issues. These different varieties reflect differences in the balance of power between socially conservative advocacy groups and political parties. They also reflect the varying strength of public opinion and “pluralistic moderate confessional political parties,” both of which “dampen the radicalization of parties in power.”
In an attempt to answer the question “why do people believe blatantly inaccurate news headlines?” Laura Faragó et al. conduct a study of Hungarian behavior in light of a flood of disinformation before and after the launching of the war in Ukraine. Their topline finding is that “people with higher analytic thinking were better at discerning disinformation.” However, they also demonstrate how partisanship interacts with cognitive processing: “anti-government voters used their analytic capacities to question both concordant and discordant fake news more than pro-government voters.”
Gianfranco Baldini et al. trace the history and character of the recently empowered Italian party Brothers of Italy (FdI). They show that, in addition to being a populist radical right party, FdI is also a “rooted newcomer,” i.e., a party that can count on pre-existing resources, “building its appeal [using] symbolic elements already familiar to the electorate when the party was formed.” However, the authors show that, in transitioning from opposition to government, the FdI faces significant challenges relating to its ideological profile, which has often fluctuated between exhibiting post-fascist, illiberal, and moderate traits.
Alice Sibley challenges the mainstream notion that the new far right is fascist. She acknowledges that it contains fascistic elements while claiming that it is more accurately typified by its acceptance of liberal values and democracy. What Sibley aims to understand is whether the new far right – in this case, the British far right – is “strategically liberal” or “semi-liberal,” i.e., whether the far right superficially adopts liberalism as a political tactic or whether they genuinely believe in some liberal values. Sibley finds that the new far right is primarily concerned with three themes, Islam, COVID-19, and liberal values, and its opposition or support for liberalism varied depending on the theme at hand, e.g., the far right uses liberal values as a tool to oppose Islam, but sheds this support when discussing other topics.
Lídia Balogh and Tímea Drinóczi survey thirty years of constitutional argumentation and development in Hungary vis-à-vis women’s rights. Using the common refrain that women’s rights have been extensively curtailed since Viktor Orbán’s return to power as a discursive backdrop, Balogh and Drinóczi show that, since the 1990s, “all the key constitutional disputes related to equality between the sexes have been initiated by men claiming instances of discrimination against men, as if women were too privileged in Hungary.” This, paired with an analysis of the Constitutional Court’s “surprisingly poor-quality reasoning in these disputes,” leads Balogh and Drinóczi to claim that, rather than being characteristic of a post-2010 backlash, the poor state of women’s rights has been a “persistent feature” of Hungarian society since the democratic transition in 1989-1990.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz examines the ways in which conspiracy theories influence different forms of civic engagement and democratic participation. Specifically, she explores Irish and Polish movements that endorse vaccination-related conspiracy theories and argues that “in order to shed the negative label of conspiracy theories, such movements engage in the practices of mimesis and mimicry.” Mimesis is a “form of positive appraisal” that involves replicating pre-established forms of social and political organization. Mimicry is more deceptive and involves false imitation in the service of attaining one’s own political goals.
Using Indonesia as a case study, Defbry Margiansyah outlines a theory of how populists use crises to undermine democracy. Using the Covid-19 pandemic – wherein the Indonesian response avoided economic catastrophe while simultaneously repressing activists, civil society, and dissenters of state policies – as a starting point, Margiansyah elaborates on a series of historical economic shocks in Indonesia from post-independence onwards. He finds that “strong and charismatic leaders politicize crises to gain mass support or votes for state-centric populist agendas,” thereby reproducing the politicization of phenomena like economic recession, identity-based polarization, and personalistic leadership and “promoting the political relevance of populist leaders in times of crisis.”
Juliana Gagliardi et al. conduct a qualitative content analysis of three of Brazil's most influential newspapers, O Globo, Folha de S. Paulo, and O Estado de S. Paulo, to demonstrate that regardless of how much former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro lurched towards authoritarianism, for these papers “the prime referential for authoritarianism is not Bolsonaro, but Lula and [his Worker’s Party].”
Ihsan Yilmaz and Nicholas Morieson explore the connections between Islam, populism, and so-called “civilizationalism.” Yilmaz and Morieson demonstrate how Islamist populists deploy discourses centered around the ‘ummah,’ i.e., the entire population of Muslims, as a way of dividing society not only between ‘the people’ and the ‘elites,’ as is typical in populist discourse, but also between ‘ummah’ and non-Ummah. Their findings are supported by two case studies, that of the Turkish Justice and Development Party and the Indonesian Defenders Front.
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For resources on illiberal, populist, and authoritarian trends across the globe, consult our growing Resource Hub aggregating hundreds of published academic articles on illiberalism and other topics relating to illiberal movements. From security and international affairs, to democratic backsliding and public policy, this center of longstanding and recently-published literature continues to document ongoing global trends of growing illiberal movements around the world.
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Illiberalism Studies Program
Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW | Suite 412 | Washington, DC | 20052
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