The causes and consequences of what is often described as “the rise of populism” are matters of deep dispute. But if there is one thing everyone can agree on, it is that populism is primarily an attack on liberalism. As such, a number of avowed liberals have authored books in which they take a long, […]
The People Vs. Democracy?
The election result in Italy, where populists and far-right parties topped the polls, following the twin disasters of Brexit in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s election in the United States, seems certain to harden a common liberal belief: the people brought these calamities on themselves. “Ordinary citizens,” according to this view, are so irrational […]
Can Movement Politics Renew European Democracy?
[clickToTweet tweet=”Young voters, in particular, seem to have less interest in working for traditional parties, which they view as overly bureaucratic, and thus boring. (Jan-Werner Müller)” quote=”Young voters, in particular, seem to have less interest in working for traditional parties, which they view as overly bureaucratic, and thus boring.”] Many people expected the big political […]
How Populists Win When They Lose
Today, it appears that every single election in Europe can be reduced to one central question: “Is it a win or a loss for populism?” Until the Netherlands’ election in March, a populist wave – or, as Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party, put it, a “tsunami” – seemed irresistible. Now, […]
Theresa May’s Other Citizens of Nowhere
British Prime Minister Theresa May has, of her own volition, stripped her Conservative Party of its governing parliamentary majority by calling an early election. If she stays on as prime minister, she will also strip British citizens of the political and economic rights conferred by membership in the European Union. But May’s habit of stripping […]
A Majority Of “Deplorables”?
Barack Obama was right to say that democracy itself was on the ballot in the just-concluded US presidential election. But, with Donald Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton, do we now know for certain that a majority of Americans are anti-democratic? How should Clinton voters relate to Trump’s supporters and to the new administration? Had […]
The Problem With ‘Illiberal Democracy’
Poland’s turn toward authoritarian rule has set off alarm bells across the European Union and within NATO. Since coming to power in October, Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party (PiS) has attacked the country’s Constitutional Court, politicized the judiciary and the civil service, and launched an assault on media pluralism. Critics of the PiS government, […]
Erdoğan And The Paradox Of Populism
The triumph of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey’s first direct presidential election is no surprise. Erdoğan is popular, and, as Prime Minister since 2003, he has been riding a wave of economic success. But he is also a populist, who has steadily tightened his grip on the state and the media, demonizing all critics (including […]
Should Extremist Parties Be Banned?
The Greek government’s crackdown on the country’s far-right Golden Dawn party has revived a vexing question that seemed to have disappeared with the Cold War’s end: Is there a place within liberal democracies for apparently anti-democratic parties? To be sure, liberal democracies have felt threatened since communism collapsed in 1989 – but mostly by foreign […]
Europe’s Political Stress Tests
In recent years, the European Union – or, more accurately, the powerful countries of northern Europe – has been subjecting its weaker members to social and political “stress tests” in the name of fiscal rectitude. As a result, southern Europe and parts of Eastern Europe have become a kind of public-policy laboratory, with experiments producing […]
The Language of Global Protest
The protest movements that have flared up across the West, from Chile to Germany, have remained curiously undefined and under-analyzed. Some speak of them as the greatest global mobilization since 1968 – when enragés in very different countries coalesced around similar concerns. But others insist that there is nothing new here. The Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, […]
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