In this special issue of the Journal of Religion in Europe, contributors examine the connections between religion and populism, taking on thematic subjects as well as investigations into specific case studies. The throughline running through this issue is the “theo-political” character of populism: when populists defend their “people and its identity,” they are rearticulating the religiously-informed “sacredness given to ‘his own people’ that goes hand in hand with the demonization of the ‘others,’ of the ‘outsiders.’” By doing so, populists reverse the trajectory of secularism in the West and recompose societal cleavages along a religious axis. 

Hugo Canihac unpacks a paradox that the European Union faces today: a legal doctrine proclaiming the end of state sovereignty is increasingly being used to defend national sovereignty. Canihac provides a history of the doctrine of Constitutional pluralism, before showing how Hungary and Poland have turned this doctrine, originally crafted to justify the EU as a system in which there is no sovereign, on its head to attack the European Union. The article demonstrates how the doctrine’s liberal and illiberal uses are a stand-in for different conceptions of national, popular and state sovereignty. In so doing, the chapter “questions the often taken-for-granted opposition between ‘sovereignists’ and ‘supranationalists’ in the EU.”

Vít Hloušek and Vratislav Havlík survey the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on Eurosceptic narratives employed by Central European leaders. The authors use a narrative analysis of the Visegrád Four’s government leaders to conclude that “the individual leaders were for the most part unable to create new Eurosceptic narratives.” However, the leaders were able to repurpose old Eurosceptic narratives and tie them to the pandemic. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was particularly proficient at this and consolidated “most of the previous Eurosceptic narratives within his coronavirus rhetoric.”

Sadi Shanaah et al. conduct the first empirical exploration of the socio-demographic and psychological traits of those who support pro-climate and ecofascist extremism, using the United Kingdom as a case study. They trace the similarities and differences between supporters of each type of extremism and conclude that “pro-climate extremist action is associated with both left- and right-wing political ideology,” highlighting the role of social norms, political efficacy, and neuroticism in explaining these ideologies. 

In Capital, Race and Space, Volume II: The Far Right from ‘Post-Fascism’ to Trumpism, Richard Saull offers an international historical sociology of the Western far right from the end of World War II to today. Saull centers the role of uneven and combined development in explaining the evolution and mutations of the ‘post-fascist’ far-right. He demonstrates that the far right was intimately connected to the consolidation of the anti-communist liberal order after 1945 and thereafter formed “an important, if contradictory, element within the neoliberal historical bloc that emerged in the 1980s,” a trajectory which ultimately culminated in the far right becoming the main “ideo-political beneficiary of the 2007-8 neoliberal crisis.”

Julia Sonnevend and Veronika Kövesdi probe Viktor Orbán’s Facebook, demonstrating that the Hungarian Prime Minister’s social media persona is more complex than is often assumed by those who label him a strongman without accounting for his local popularity. The authors show that “Orbán uses his charismatic authority on Facebook to draw the boundaries of the Hungarian nation, presenting himself as the iconic representation of ‘Hungarian-ness,’” a process that requires constant adaptation to the current political situation and to shifts in public opinion. Sonnevend and Kövesdi conclude that Orbán’s image is “a fluid and pragmatic material with only a few core principles.”

In Everyday People: Understanding the Rise of Trump Supporters, Robert Hartmann McNamara provides a comprehensive assessment of Trump supporters including white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, the Christian right, and cult followers. McNamara suggests that Trump’s rise can only be explained as a symptom of a much larger social issue in the United States and that understanding how fear and complacency “causes people to suspend rational thinking and to develop misguided loyalties” is key to comprehending his appeal. 

Ionuț Biliuță details the intricate relationship between the Romanian Orthodox hierarchy and the conflict in Ukraine on various levels including the philanthropic, social, ecclesiological, and political. Biliuță shows that, despite most of the Orthodox bishops in Romania raising concerns about the war, few are ready to condemn the complicity of the Russian Orthodox Church in endorsing the military involvement of Russia in Ukraine. Part of this tendency can be explained by a tension at home – while the Romanian Patriarchate opposes the political instrumentalization of Orthodoxy, a part of the regular and monastic clergy nurtures admiration for Vladimir Putin, as he is seen as the main benefactor of the Orthodox Church worldwide. Even more potent domestically, many Orthodox bishops express a silent political preference for the pro-Russian, ultranationalist Alliance of the Union of Romanians party (AUR). 

Sergio Fabbrini and Tiziano Zgaga investigate how traditionally anti-European Union right-wing parties and leaders reinterpreted their relationship with the EU in the post-Brexit period. The authors call these parties’ attempts to endogenize nationalism in the EU ‘sovereignism,’ and show how right-wing sovereignism criticizes the supranational character and the centralized policy system of the EU, but for different reasons: In Western Europe, this criticism is based more on an economic discourse whereas in Eastern Europe it is based more on a cultural discourse.

Neta Oren examines Israel’s proposed judicial reform, framing it not as a parochial phenomenon but as part of the global “wave” of democratic backsliding that has engulfed countries as diverse as Hungary, Russia, and Turkey. Oren finds that while Israel has indeed democratically regressed, and while the Netanyahu government seeks to implement measures that would further that regression, Israel is faced with several constraints that may temper its backsliding, including a robust democratic sentiment among the public, a series of external conflicts, and its relationship with Western powers, especially the United States. 

Nicholas Lees zeroes in on the role that the G77 – a coalition of global South states in the United Nations General Assembly – plays in international relations. Lees notes that the G77 is dissatisfied with the US-led liberal international order, but challenges the prevailing wisdom that this dissatisfaction stems from the illiberal and undemocratic nature of the G77 states. Instead, Lees shows that these countries are influenced by a common South–South ideology, originating from the shared experience of colonial domination and international peripheralization. Through a series of regression models and qualitative analysis, he therefore shows that “domestic illiberalism is insufficient to explain why they express dissatisfaction with the US-led international order.”

Aram Hur and Andrew Yeo reexamine the East Asian “success stories” of the Third Wave of democratization, using a comparative analysis of Taiwan and South Korea to demonstrate that the illiberal partisan competition one sees in the region today is characteristic of a long-standing democratic stagnation, rather than democratic regress. Hur and Yeo trace these illiberal tendencies to nationalist polarization in the early phase of democratization, arguing that “democratization [that] tends to institutionalize, rather than alleviate, pre-existing nationalist conflicts…seed[s] endemic barriers to the habituation of democratic norms, imposing a ceiling on democratic progress.”