Issue 26 | March 2023 | www.illiberalism.org
Journal of Illiberalism Studies
The latest issue of the Journal of Illiberalism Studies is out now!
Dmitry Ulzaner on identifying and describing the phantasmatic dimension of social conservatism in Russia.
Jason Roberts on Nae Ionescu's Legionary Phenomenon and its intellectual position in relation to the work of Julius Evola and Aleksandr Dugin.
Adam Hanzel and Kiril Avramov on the interplay between Patriarch Kirill’s ideology of “Holy Tradition” and the movement Sorok Sorokov.
Arsenio Cuenca Navarrete on the connections between the Spanish and French far right and the narrowing gap between the moderate right and the extreme right in both countries, creating even more radical hybrids.
László Csaba on the spread of economic illiberalism in the 21st century and the ideational as well as materialistic roots of this trend.
Maria Snegovaya, Mihai Varga, and Julian G. Waller review the Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism.
Publications
John Chrobak on the anti-war stance of the libertarian and American far left and the Rage Against the War Machine demonstration in Washington DC.
Julian G. Waller on the asymmetric dialogue between promoters of illiberalism in Eastern Europe and Anglo-American postliberals.
Stéphane François and Adrien Nonjon on historic Solidarist connections between French far-right and Russian anti-communist movements and their legacies today.
The Propwatch team explores pro-Kremlin media focused on Ukrainian and domestic Russian audiences to identify propaganda devices to maintain widespread domestic support for the invasion of Ukraine.
Aaron Irion on the trend of increasing support among European far-right parties for redistributive politics and the welfare state.
Culture Wars
Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják on the links between popular music and social movements and how the ideological messages of Fidesz are made accessible for different audiences.
Sarah Speck and Paula-Irene Villa on the relationship between academia and politics and the different logics and ideals that regulate them.
Zora Hesová on the variety of conflicts defined in cultural terms that mark the Central European stage of Culture Wars.
Agora
Petra Guasti on technocratic populism in the Czech Republic, anti-populist politics, and populist reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vicent Gozálvez et al. assess the challenges posed to democratic citizenship from authoritarianism, post-democracy, and illiberalism today. The authors claim that moral and civic education has to respond to these challenges and propose a framework of solutions that includes “revitalising a participative and deliberative democracy model, rethinking the basic values in citizens' education, redefining the relation between what is public and what is private, and empowering sensitivity and free creation in the new maker culture.” 

Business and Populism analyzes the relationship between right-wing populism and business, with a focus on business responses to the global populist turn. The authors contend that while populism has been analyzed as a significant challenge to policymaking, mainstream political parties, and even liberal democracy, very little is known about populism’s impact on business. Using empirical studies, this volume answers the question “when posed with populism’s challenge, how does business respond?” It finds that sweeping generalizations can’t be made. In some contexts like Hungary and Poland, populist parties and activists can co-opt rent-seeking businesses, while in other contexts, the relationships remain far more confrontational.  

Hannah S. Chapman et al. unpack the relationship between defining democracy and supporting it. Using global cross-national survey data, the authors demonstrate that how an individual defines democracy has a substantive impact on the level of support they ascribe to it. They find that individuals who define democracy “in terms of elections and the protection of civil liberties and those with greater conceptual complexity” express greater support for the institution. According to Chapman et al., “these results suggest that it is essential to consider divergent conceptualizations of democracy—and how they may vary systematically—when analyzing popular opinions of democracy.”

Using Serbia as a case study, Irena Fiket et al. elucidate how social movements in illiberal democracies responded to the pandemic and governmental responses to it. The authors show that, contrary to expectations, social movements became more militant during this period, particularly vis-à-vis socioeconomic issues. Their findings indicate that social movements in illiberal democracies can exhibit resilience and adaptability under pressure.

Ivan Grek explores why justifications for Russia's invasion of Ukraine sound logical in Russian discourse. He suggests that three illiberal discursive practices – the metaphysical state, right post-colonialism, and Orthodox pan-Slavism – structure Vladimir Putin’s ideology and set the stage for today’s attitudes. Grek argues that throughout the 1990s, illiberal grassroots organizations popularized these discursive practices and then delivered this “ideological modus operandi” to the post-1990s ruling class. In other words, “Putin and his allies engaged with this preexisting illiberal civil society” and ultimately relied on it for support. 

While abortion politics are typically framed as a clash between feminist pro-choice attitudes and religious pro-life ones, Alison Brysk and Rujun Yang suggest that nationalism influences reproductive attitudes as well. Using the 2017 European Values Survey to analyze thirty European countries, they find that “strong ethnonational identity and distrust of foreigners are positively correlated with individuals’ disapproval of abortion.” Moreover, the authors find that these attitudes are stronger among less religious and more liberal individuals, and those in more “modernized” European countries. 

Julian Göpffarth presents a novel account of how illiberal movements use national memory. By drawing on the German far right – which activates distinct “sediments of time” to construct an exclusivist national memory – Göpffarth is able to demonstrate the contradiction between the far right’s desire to construct “a glorified and homogenized nationalist memory” and the reality that illiberal movements cannot rely on linear stories of national greatness. Rather, to garner success illiberal movements must engage with “a complex reality of memories that constantly risks undermining the notion of homogeneity and exclusivity.”

Ryszard Zięba provides a primer on contemporary Polish illiberalism and nationalism. Zięba lays out the actors that embody Polish illiberalism today, primarily the Law and Justice (PiS) party, and the roots of Poland’s illiberal turn, which he traces back to the country’s entrance into the European Union. He also details a myriad of features that characterize Polish illiberalism – the elimination of the separation of powers and the violation of the rule of law; attacks on the free media; control of schooling and higher education; governmental centralization; a tightening of abortion laws; inhumane treatment of immigrants; corruption and nepotism; and the public surveillance and repression of people who criticize the authorities.

Populist Parties and Democratic Resilience: A Cross-National Analysis of Populist Parties’ Impact on Democratic Pluralism in Europe focuses on populist parties as the main agents of populism and examines when these parties turn anti-democratic and when they remain loyal to the democratic system. To explain why some democratic systems have been captured by populists and some have proven resilient, the authors identify the conditions under which populist parties become inimical to political and societal pluralism.

Faced with the challenge of differentiating between valid criticisms of, and an attack on, the independence of the judiciary, Peter Čuroš proposes an original approach to recognizing an attack on the judiciary. His approach looks “for a kernel of judicial independence and finds it in sufficient conditions for a judge’s free and impartial decision.” To demonstrate this approach, Čuroš compares Hungarian and Polish policies towards the judiciary to post-2020 Slovak judicial reform. 

Anne Espeland Berg et al. address a gap in the scholarship on populist radical right parties by looking at their education policies. The authors focus on the salience of education in 15 election manifestos, substantive positions that parties hold, and how far these positions reflect the parties’ core ideologies. Their results show that “education policy is relevant for PRRPs, albeit to varying degrees, and that their policies are informed by their core ideologies.”

Mathias Holst Nicolaisen dissects the tension between the international community and civil society groups that want to shun and marginalize the Danish People’s Party (DPP) on the one hand, and mainstream Danish political parties on the other, who largely treat the DPP as “an ordinary political opponent.” Using process-tracing methods sampling newspaper articles, Nicolaisen demonstrates mainstream parties’ difference in strategy between 1997-2001 – when the DPP was emerging – and 2014-2019, when the main governing parties in Denmark adapted to the DPP’s challenge by “intensifying their co-optation and cooperation strategies, in effect recognizing [DPP’s] policies and rhetoric on immigration.”

Melissa-Ellen Dowling explains how far-right communities share news on social media to promulgate illiberalism. She uncovers the “dominant discursive devices deployed to integrate news media reports into far-right discourses” by applying critical discourse analysis to an original dataset of Australian social media posts. She demonstrates how news sharing in far-right online circles “legitimizes and reifies” far-right ideology by juxtaposing mainstream media news with the validity of far-right grievances. 

István Benczes traces the continuity between the “economic populism” concept that was used to describe Latin American regimes in the past and today’s global populist phenomenon. He finds that the developmental aspect of the first concept remains a key feature of contemporary populism. He approaches the question with a supply-side approach, i.e., by examining what populists actually do in power, rather than in theory. 
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.

Illiberalism Studies Program
Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
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