Petra Guasti
Biographic Data
| ID | 4191634 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Petra Guasti |
| GIVEN NAMES | Petra |
| FAMILY NAME | Guasti |
| SIGNATURE | GUASTI P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7129-1827 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 362 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The Demand and Supply of Pandemic Populism: A Global Overview
This review article provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and populism. We analyse the demand and supply sides of the populist phenomenon during the pandemic. On the demand side, we focus on the interplay between populist attitudes and COVID-19 restrictions by assessing the role of conspiracy theories, social media and alternative news media. On the supply side, we identify similarities and difference…
Illiberal Politics in Europe: Ideology, Policies, and Impact
Our thematic issue focuses on the ideological and discursive foundations, policy outputs, and institutional impact of illiberal parties in Europe. The contributions highlight how illiberal actors reshape democratic institutions, popular attitudes, cultural narratives, and welfare policies. They also consider how illiberal ideas spread through mainstream political discourse. Crucially, the issue explores both the diversity of illiberal ideologies …
Polarization and Democracy in Central Europe
This article examines the dual role of polarization in fostering political mobilization for and against democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Populist movements in this region often drive democratic decline, yet, notable cases, such as electoral victories in Czechia (2021) and Poland (2023), suggest that civil society can counter these trends. Following Schedler (2023), we perceive polarization as a fundamental democratic conflict about democr…
Varieties of Illiberal Backlash in Central Europe
Abortion, same-sex marriage, gender equality, and LGBTQ rights have become hotly contested topics in Central Europe over the past two decades. Abortion rights have been rolled back, and the expansion of LGBTQ rights has been stalled or reversed. What explains the varieties of illiberal backlash in Central Europe? We argue that the extent of backlash reflects the strength of an alliance between socially conservative advocacy groups and political p…
Carl Schmitt and Democratic Backsliding
Carl Schmitt has been an inspiration to theorists and ideologues both on the right and on the left. On the left, for instance, Chantal Mouffe (1997) has been at pains to develop a deradicalized version of Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction to legitimize her agonistic politics of productive and democratic conflict. On the right, conservative voices such as Adrian Vermeule use Schmitt to highlight the limitations of liberalism, proclaim the relevan…
Do Denizens Represent Denizens? A Case of Foreigners’ Council in Frankfurt
This article fills a gap in existing research by focusing on the political representation of denizens—legal residents not holding citizenship of the country and thus generally excluded from legislative politics. The empirical research on the effects of the presence of under-represented groups in representative bodies indicates that “who represents” (descriptive) is as important as “what is being represented” (substantive). In this article, we ana…
The demand side of vaccine politics and pandemic illiberalism
We take the demand-side perspective of Sputnik V, trying to answer why facing vaccine scarcity, some countries opt for Sputnik V, and others do not. To show how the pandemic tests the institutional safeguards and soft guardrails of liberal democracy, we compiled a unique dataset and combined statistical analysis and case studies. While our quantitative analysis shows that the illiberalism of the party in power is the main explanatory factor in th…
Pandemic power grab
Is Covid-19 undermining European democracies? Recent scholarship overlooks the fact that most pandemic-related erosions of democracy can be attributed to illiberal inertia long in place before 2019. Did the democratic decay occur during the pandemic or due to the pandemic? We analyse the extent to which pandemic power grabs succeeded and failed in Europe with special attention to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The executive po…
Mosaic of the contemporary populist radical right: A review essay
Claims of Representation: Between Representation and Democratic Innovations
This article seeks to build a bridge between the empirical scholarship rooted in the traditional theory of political representation and constructivist theory on representation by focusing on the authorization of claims. It seeks to answer how claims can be authorized beyond elections - selecting three democratic innovations and tracing claims through the claim-making process. Different participatory democratic innovations are selected - providing…
The Marginalized Democracies of the World
This introductory article to Democratic Theory' s special issue on the marginalized democracies of the world begins by presenting the lexical method for understanding democracy. It is argued that the lexical method is better than the normative and analytical methods at finding democracies in the world. The argument then turns to demonstrating, mainly through computational research conducted within the Google Books catalog, that an empirically dem…
The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Central and Eastern Europe: The Rise of Autocracy and Democratic Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a new and unparalleled stress-test for the already disrupted liberal-representative, democracies. The challenges cluster around three democratic disfigurations: technocracy, populism, and plebiscitarianism—each have the potential to contribute to democratic decay. Still, they can also trigger pushback against illiberalism mobilizing citizens in defense of democracy, toward democratic resilience. This article looks…
Technocratic Populism à la Française? The Roots and Mechanisms of Emmanuel Macron’s Success
This article focuses on the roots and mechanisms of Macron’s success, arguing that in 2017 two conditions were essential in Macron’s rise—the implosion of the established system of the French Fifth Republic in which the two main parties were alternating in power; and the rise of anti-establishment populist challengers on the right and on the left (cf. Stockemer, 2017; Zulianello, 2020). It was anti-establishment appeal that put Macron on the map,…
Populism in Power and Democracy: Democratic Decay and Resilience in the Czech Republic (2013–2020)
Populism and technocracy reject vertical accountability and horizontal accountability. Populism and technocracy can combine to form ‘technocratic populism.’ The study assesses the extent to which democratic decay can be traced to the actions of technocratic populists as opposed to institutional factors, civil society, fragmentation and polarization. The main findings of this article are that technocratic populism has illiberal tendencies expresse…
A Marriage of Convenience: Responsive Populists and Responsible Experts
This thematic issue, “Varieties of Technocratic Populism around the World,” investigates ideological origins of technocratic populism and situates it among other types of populism. It is composed of 11 articles that bring together 18 scholars from around the world with a wide variety of perspectives. Technocratic populism is an output-oriented populism that directly links voters to leaders via expertise. It emerges as a response to a crisis of go…
In Europe’s Closet: The rights of sexual minorities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
This article explores the mechanisms of accommodation and backlash against a new identity group in the Czech Republic and Slovakia—LGBT. Minority demands spark political backlash because societal consensus lags behind the actual accommodation of sexual minorities. The legal framework of the European Union and international pressure groups further accelerate the process of accommodation and polarisation. Yesterday's accommodation in Western Europe…
Saward’s Concept of the Representative Claim Revisited: An Empirical Perspective
Representation is a process of making, accepting, or rejecting representative claims (Disch, 2015; Saward, 2014). This groundbreaking insight challenged the standard assumption that representative democracy can be reduced to elections and activities of elected representatives (Pitkin, 1967). It broadened the scope of representative democracy to encompass representation activities beyond those authorized by elections, transformed our thinking and …
Rethinking Representation: Representative Claims in Global Perspective
The established notion of political representation is challenged on multiple accounts—theoretically, conceptually, and empirically. The contributions to this thematic issue explore the constructivist turn as the means for rethinking political representation today around the world. The articles included here seek to reconsider representation by theoretically and empirically reassessing how representation is conceptualized, claimed and performed—in…
Claims of Misrepresentation: A Comparison of Germany and Brazil
The system of representative democracy is under considerable strain. Its institutions are struggling to maintain legitimacy, and its elected representatives are failing to keep their monopoly on (formal) political representation. An emerging multitude of (new) claim makers contests the authority of elected representatives as well as the functioning of the existing system of representative democracy by alleging misrepresentation. In this article, …
Europa spielerisch erlernen
The State as a Firm: Understanding the Autocratic Roots of Technocratic Populism
Why, when, and how does populism emerge in a stable democracy? This article investigates the political logic and ideological appeal of a rarely explored form of populism: technocratic populism. Technocratic populism uses the appeal of technical expertise to connect directly with the people, promising to run the state as a firm, while at the same time delegitimizing political opponents and demobilizing the electorate by instilling civic apathy. Te…
Europa spielerisch erlernen: Didaktische Überlegungen und Praxisbeispiele zu EU-Simulationen
The Illiberal Turn or Swerve in Central Europe
Scholars are coming to terms with the fact that something is rotten in the new democracies of Central Europe. The corrosion has multiple symptoms: declining trust in democratic institutions, emboldened uncivil society, the rise of oligarchs and populists as political leaders, assaults on an independent judiciary, the colonization of public administration by political proxies, increased political control over media, civic apathy, nationalistic con…
Judgement without justice: On the efficacy of the European human rights regime
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is widely regarded as the most important human rights court worldwide. This article investigates the extent to which the court addresses cases from countries with the worst human rights performance. Using a new data set on all ECtHR judgments from 1995–2012, the analysis suggests that the ECtHR does not deliver its judgments against members of the Council of Europe with the worst human rights records, bu…
Development of citizen participation in Central and Eastern Europe after the EU enlargement and economic crises
The main focus of this article is the role of organized civil society in facilitating citizen engagement in Central and East European new EU member states after the EU accession and the recent economic crises. Using international comparative methodologies and data this article analyses democratic processes in the new member states focussing on the changes in strengths and weaknesses of citizen engagement. It shows the ways in which the post-enlar…
The State as a Firm: Understanding the Autocratic Roots of Technocratic Populism
Why, when, and how does populism emerge in a stable democracy? This article investigates the political logic and ideological appeal of a rarely explored form of populism: technocratic populism. Technocratic populism uses the appeal of technical expertise to connect directly with the people, promising to run the state as a firm, while at the same time delegitimizing political opponents and demobilizing the electorate by instilling civic apathy. Te…
The Illiberal Turn or Swerve in Central Europe
Scholars are coming to terms with the fact that something is rotten in the new democracies of Central Europe. The corrosion has multiple symptoms: declining trust in democratic institutions, emboldened uncivil society, the rise of oligarchs and populists as political leaders, assaults on an independent judiciary, the colonization of public administration by political proxies, increased political control over media, civic apathy, nationalistic con…
Varieties of Illiberal Backlash in Central Europe
Abortion, same-sex marriage, gender equality, and LGBTQ rights have become hotly contested topics in Central Europe over the past two decades. Abortion rights have been rolled back, and the expansion of LGBTQ rights has been stalled or reversed. What explains the varieties of illiberal backlash in Central Europe? We argue that the extent of backlash reflects the strength of an alliance between socially conservative advocacy groups and political p…
In Europe’s Closet: The rights of sexual minorities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
This article explores the mechanisms of accommodation and backlash against a new identity group in the Czech Republic and Slovakia—LGBT. Minority demands spark political backlash because societal consensus lags behind the actual accommodation of sexual minorities. The legal framework of the European Union and international pressure groups further accelerate the process of accommodation and polarisation. Yesterday's accommodation in Western Europe…
The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Central and Eastern Europe: The Rise of Autocracy and Democratic Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a new and unparalleled stress-test for the already disrupted liberal-representative, democracies. The challenges cluster around three democratic disfigurations: technocracy, populism, and plebiscitarianism—each have the potential to contribute to democratic decay. Still, they can also trigger pushback against illiberalism mobilizing citizens in defense of democracy, toward democratic resilience. This article looks…
Populism in Power and Democracy: Democratic Decay and Resilience in the Czech Republic (2013–2020)
Populism and technocracy reject vertical accountability and horizontal accountability. Populism and technocracy can combine to form ‘technocratic populism.’ The study assesses the extent to which democratic decay can be traced to the actions of technocratic populists as opposed to institutional factors, civil society, fragmentation and polarization. The main findings of this article are that technocratic populism has illiberal tendencies expresse…
Saward’s Concept of the Representative Claim Revisited: An Empirical Perspective
Representation is a process of making, accepting, or rejecting representative claims (Disch, 2015; Saward, 2014). This groundbreaking insight challenged the standard assumption that representative democracy can be reduced to elections and activities of elected representatives (Pitkin, 1967). It broadened the scope of representative democracy to encompass representation activities beyond those authorized by elections, transformed our thinking and …
Pandemic power grab
Is Covid-19 undermining European democracies? Recent scholarship overlooks the fact that most pandemic-related erosions of democracy can be attributed to illiberal inertia long in place before 2019. Did the democratic decay occur during the pandemic or due to the pandemic? We analyse the extent to which pandemic power grabs succeeded and failed in Europe with special attention to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The executive po…
A Marriage of Convenience: Responsive Populists and Responsible Experts
This thematic issue, “Varieties of Technocratic Populism around the World,” investigates ideological origins of technocratic populism and situates it among other types of populism. It is composed of 11 articles that bring together 18 scholars from around the world with a wide variety of perspectives. Technocratic populism is an output-oriented populism that directly links voters to leaders via expertise. It emerges as a response to a crisis of go…
Technocratic Populism à la Française? The Roots and Mechanisms of Emmanuel Macron’s Success
This article focuses on the roots and mechanisms of Macron’s success, arguing that in 2017 two conditions were essential in Macron’s rise—the implosion of the established system of the French Fifth Republic in which the two main parties were alternating in power; and the rise of anti-establishment populist challengers on the right and on the left (cf. Stockemer, 2017; Zulianello, 2020). It was anti-establishment appeal that put Macron on the map,…
Claims of Misrepresentation: A Comparison of Germany and Brazil
The system of representative democracy is under considerable strain. Its institutions are struggling to maintain legitimacy, and its elected representatives are failing to keep their monopoly on (formal) political representation. An emerging multitude of (new) claim makers contests the authority of elected representatives as well as the functioning of the existing system of representative democracy by alleging misrepresentation. In this article, …
The demand side of vaccine politics and pandemic illiberalism
We take the demand-side perspective of Sputnik V, trying to answer why facing vaccine scarcity, some countries opt for Sputnik V, and others do not. To show how the pandemic tests the institutional safeguards and soft guardrails of liberal democracy, we compiled a unique dataset and combined statistical analysis and case studies. While our quantitative analysis shows that the illiberalism of the party in power is the main explanatory factor in th…
Development of citizen participation in Central and Eastern Europe after the EU enlargement and economic crises
The main focus of this article is the role of organized civil society in facilitating citizen engagement in Central and East European new EU member states after the EU accession and the recent economic crises. Using international comparative methodologies and data this article analyses democratic processes in the new member states focussing on the changes in strengths and weaknesses of citizen engagement. It shows the ways in which the post-enlar…
The Marginalized Democracies of the World
This introductory article to Democratic Theory' s special issue on the marginalized democracies of the world begins by presenting the lexical method for understanding democracy. It is argued that the lexical method is better than the normative and analytical methods at finding democracies in the world. The argument then turns to demonstrating, mainly through computational research conducted within the Google Books catalog, that an empirically dem…
Claims of Representation: Between Representation and Democratic Innovations
This article seeks to build a bridge between the empirical scholarship rooted in the traditional theory of political representation and constructivist theory on representation by focusing on the authorization of claims. It seeks to answer how claims can be authorized beyond elections - selecting three democratic innovations and tracing claims through the claim-making process. Different participatory democratic innovations are selected - providing…
Rethinking Representation: Representative Claims in Global Perspective
The established notion of political representation is challenged on multiple accounts—theoretically, conceptually, and empirically. The contributions to this thematic issue explore the constructivist turn as the means for rethinking political representation today around the world. The articles included here seek to reconsider representation by theoretically and empirically reassessing how representation is conceptualized, claimed and performed—in…
Judgement without justice: On the efficacy of the European human rights regime
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is widely regarded as the most important human rights court worldwide. This article investigates the extent to which the court addresses cases from countries with the worst human rights performance. Using a new data set on all ECtHR judgments from 1995–2012, the analysis suggests that the ECtHR does not deliver its judgments against members of the Council of Europe with the worst human rights records, bu…
Introduction – Eu Simulations as a Multi-Dimensional Resource: From teaching and learning tool to research instrument
Simulations, understood as complex role plays, are nowadays widely used in (university) teaching to actively engage students and promote content-specific interactive learning, understanding, and communication. There is a growing debate about the functions and benefits of simulations in the university teaching context. Simulating the EU is not yet as common as simulating the UN, but the use of EU simulations gradually increases. In this paper, we …
Illiberal Politics in Europe: Ideology, Policies, and Impact
Our thematic issue focuses on the ideological and discursive foundations, policy outputs, and institutional impact of illiberal parties in Europe. The contributions highlight how illiberal actors reshape democratic institutions, popular attitudes, cultural narratives, and welfare policies. They also consider how illiberal ideas spread through mainstream political discourse. Crucially, the issue explores both the diversity of illiberal ideologies …
Polarization and Democracy in Central Europe
This article examines the dual role of polarization in fostering political mobilization for and against democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Populist movements in this region often drive democratic decline, yet, notable cases, such as electoral victories in Czechia (2021) and Poland (2023), suggest that civil society can counter these trends. Following Schedler (2023), we perceive polarization as a fundamental democratic conflict about democr…
Introduction – Eu Simulations as a Multi-Dimensional Resource: From teaching and learning tool to research instrument
Simulations, understood as complex role plays, are nowadays widely used in (university) teaching to actively engage students and promote content-specific interactive learning, understanding, and communication. There is a growing debate about the functions and benefits of simulations in the university teaching context. Simulating the EU is not yet as common as simulating the UN, but the use of EU simulations gradually increases. In this paper, we …
Development of citizen participation in Central and Eastern Europe after the EU enlargement and economic crises
The main focus of this article is the role of organized civil society in facilitating citizen engagement in Central and East European new EU member states after the EU accession and the recent economic crises. Using international comparative methodologies and data this article analyses democratic processes in the new member states focussing on the changes in strengths and weaknesses of citizen engagement. It shows the ways in which the post-enlar…
Europa spielerisch erlernen: Didaktische Überlegungen und Praxisbeispiele zu EU-Simulationen
The Illiberal Turn or Swerve in Central Europe
Scholars are coming to terms with the fact that something is rotten in the new democracies of Central Europe. The corrosion has multiple symptoms: declining trust in democratic institutions, emboldened uncivil society, the rise of oligarchs and populists as political leaders, assaults on an independent judiciary, the colonization of public administration by political proxies, increased political control over media, civic apathy, nationalistic con…
Judgement without justice: On the efficacy of the European human rights regime
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is widely regarded as the most important human rights court worldwide. This article investigates the extent to which the court addresses cases from countries with the worst human rights performance. Using a new data set on all ECtHR judgments from 1995–2012, the analysis suggests that the ECtHR does not deliver its judgments against members of the Council of Europe with the worst human rights records, bu…
Europa spielerisch erlernen
The State as a Firm: Understanding the Autocratic Roots of Technocratic Populism
Why, when, and how does populism emerge in a stable democracy? This article investigates the political logic and ideological appeal of a rarely explored form of populism: technocratic populism. Technocratic populism uses the appeal of technical expertise to connect directly with the people, promising to run the state as a firm, while at the same time delegitimizing political opponents and demobilizing the electorate by instilling civic apathy. Te…
Saward’s Concept of the Representative Claim Revisited: An Empirical Perspective
Representation is a process of making, accepting, or rejecting representative claims (Disch, 2015; Saward, 2014). This groundbreaking insight challenged the standard assumption that representative democracy can be reduced to elections and activities of elected representatives (Pitkin, 1967). It broadened the scope of representative democracy to encompass representation activities beyond those authorized by elections, transformed our thinking and …
Rethinking Representation: Representative Claims in Global Perspective
The established notion of political representation is challenged on multiple accounts—theoretically, conceptually, and empirically. The contributions to this thematic issue explore the constructivist turn as the means for rethinking political representation today around the world. The articles included here seek to reconsider representation by theoretically and empirically reassessing how representation is conceptualized, claimed and performed—in…
Claims of Misrepresentation: A Comparison of Germany and Brazil
The system of representative democracy is under considerable strain. Its institutions are struggling to maintain legitimacy, and its elected representatives are failing to keep their monopoly on (formal) political representation. An emerging multitude of (new) claim makers contests the authority of elected representatives as well as the functioning of the existing system of representative democracy by alleging misrepresentation. In this article, …
The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Central and Eastern Europe: The Rise of Autocracy and Democratic Resilience
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a new and unparalleled stress-test for the already disrupted liberal-representative, democracies. The challenges cluster around three democratic disfigurations: technocracy, populism, and plebiscitarianism—each have the potential to contribute to democratic decay. Still, they can also trigger pushback against illiberalism mobilizing citizens in defense of democracy, toward democratic resilience. This article looks…
Technocratic Populism à la Française? The Roots and Mechanisms of Emmanuel Macron’s Success
This article focuses on the roots and mechanisms of Macron’s success, arguing that in 2017 two conditions were essential in Macron’s rise—the implosion of the established system of the French Fifth Republic in which the two main parties were alternating in power; and the rise of anti-establishment populist challengers on the right and on the left (cf. Stockemer, 2017; Zulianello, 2020). It was anti-establishment appeal that put Macron on the map,…
Populism in Power and Democracy: Democratic Decay and Resilience in the Czech Republic (2013–2020)
Populism and technocracy reject vertical accountability and horizontal accountability. Populism and technocracy can combine to form ‘technocratic populism.’ The study assesses the extent to which democratic decay can be traced to the actions of technocratic populists as opposed to institutional factors, civil society, fragmentation and polarization. The main findings of this article are that technocratic populism has illiberal tendencies expresse…
A Marriage of Convenience: Responsive Populists and Responsible Experts
This thematic issue, “Varieties of Technocratic Populism around the World,” investigates ideological origins of technocratic populism and situates it among other types of populism. It is composed of 11 articles that bring together 18 scholars from around the world with a wide variety of perspectives. Technocratic populism is an output-oriented populism that directly links voters to leaders via expertise. It emerges as a response to a crisis of go…
In Europe’s Closet: The rights of sexual minorities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
This article explores the mechanisms of accommodation and backlash against a new identity group in the Czech Republic and Slovakia—LGBT. Minority demands spark political backlash because societal consensus lags behind the actual accommodation of sexual minorities. The legal framework of the European Union and international pressure groups further accelerate the process of accommodation and polarisation. Yesterday's accommodation in Western Europe…
Mosaic of the contemporary populist radical right: A review essay
Claims of Representation: Between Representation and Democratic Innovations
This article seeks to build a bridge between the empirical scholarship rooted in the traditional theory of political representation and constructivist theory on representation by focusing on the authorization of claims. It seeks to answer how claims can be authorized beyond elections - selecting three democratic innovations and tracing claims through the claim-making process. Different participatory democratic innovations are selected - providing…
The Marginalized Democracies of the World
This introductory article to Democratic Theory' s special issue on the marginalized democracies of the world begins by presenting the lexical method for understanding democracy. It is argued that the lexical method is better than the normative and analytical methods at finding democracies in the world. The argument then turns to demonstrating, mainly through computational research conducted within the Google Books catalog, that an empirically dem…
Do Denizens Represent Denizens? A Case of Foreigners’ Council in Frankfurt
This article fills a gap in existing research by focusing on the political representation of denizens—legal residents not holding citizenship of the country and thus generally excluded from legislative politics. The empirical research on the effects of the presence of under-represented groups in representative bodies indicates that “who represents” (descriptive) is as important as “what is being represented” (substantive). In this article, we ana…
The demand side of vaccine politics and pandemic illiberalism
We take the demand-side perspective of Sputnik V, trying to answer why facing vaccine scarcity, some countries opt for Sputnik V, and others do not. To show how the pandemic tests the institutional safeguards and soft guardrails of liberal democracy, we compiled a unique dataset and combined statistical analysis and case studies. While our quantitative analysis shows that the illiberalism of the party in power is the main explanatory factor in th…
Pandemic power grab
Is Covid-19 undermining European democracies? Recent scholarship overlooks the fact that most pandemic-related erosions of democracy can be attributed to illiberal inertia long in place before 2019. Did the democratic decay occur during the pandemic or due to the pandemic? We analyse the extent to which pandemic power grabs succeeded and failed in Europe with special attention to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The executive po…
Varieties of Illiberal Backlash in Central Europe
Abortion, same-sex marriage, gender equality, and LGBTQ rights have become hotly contested topics in Central Europe over the past two decades. Abortion rights have been rolled back, and the expansion of LGBTQ rights has been stalled or reversed. What explains the varieties of illiberal backlash in Central Europe? We argue that the extent of backlash reflects the strength of an alliance between socially conservative advocacy groups and political p…
Carl Schmitt and Democratic Backsliding
Carl Schmitt has been an inspiration to theorists and ideologues both on the right and on the left. On the left, for instance, Chantal Mouffe (1997) has been at pains to develop a deradicalized version of Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction to legitimize her agonistic politics of productive and democratic conflict. On the right, conservative voices such as Adrian Vermeule use Schmitt to highlight the limitations of liberalism, proclaim the relevan…
The Demand and Supply of Pandemic Populism: A Global Overview
This review article provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and populism. We analyse the demand and supply sides of the populist phenomenon during the pandemic. On the demand side, we focus on the interplay between populist attitudes and COVID-19 restrictions by assessing the role of conspiracy theories, social media and alternative news media. On the supply side, we identify similarities and difference…
Illiberal Politics in Europe: Ideology, Policies, and Impact
Our thematic issue focuses on the ideological and discursive foundations, policy outputs, and institutional impact of illiberal parties in Europe. The contributions highlight how illiberal actors reshape democratic institutions, popular attitudes, cultural narratives, and welfare policies. They also consider how illiberal ideas spread through mainstream political discourse. Crucially, the issue explores both the diversity of illiberal ideologies …
Political science (23 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (21 works) · Law (20 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Democracy (15 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (14 works) · Economics (12 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (9 works)