Illiberal Research Articles

European Union Backsliding in the Rule of Law: The Hungarian Case

Hungary has experienced a backslide in its rule of law ever since Viktor Orbán modified its constitution. Orbán, characterized by right-wing populism, has been questioned not only for the way in which he has seized power, but also for the way in which he has favored his close friends and family. Orbán portrays a constitutional vision that has been described as illiberal constitutionalism, which he complements with the idea of an illiberal democracy, where a vision against integration prevails and rather enhances the idea of a national identity opposed to the values of the European Union as an excuse to disregard EU law. The responses of theEuropean Union have varied, from political, judicial and economic sanctions, but seeing themselves trapped by the right to veto sanctions and the requirement of unanimity it would seem that there is no way out of the deterioration of the rule of law. Thus, the article analyzes different solutions, options, and possibilities in the face of the crisis of the rule of law and democracy in Hungary.

Elections and Democracy in Turkey: Reconsidering Competitive Authoritarianism in the Age of Democratic Backsliding

AbstractThis article reflects on the reasons why Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) could still win in the recent 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey despite, among other daunting issues, the deep economic crisis and their unsuccessful handling of the February 2023 earthquake. The article discusses the role of state apparatus and the media under a neopatrimonial system, as well as the role of the EU, which turned Turkey into a rentier state with the refugee deals. The discussion considers whether Turkey could still be seen as a competitive authoritarian regime and points to the difficulties in determining whether regimes such as the Turkish one are competitive authoritarian or not until the election results are seen and the opposition candidates actually win.

The AKP's Syria Policy and the Emergence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey

The turbulence of Turkish domestic politics in 2015–16 coincided with the unraveling of the government’s hyperactive policy in Syria and the expansion of Kurdish forces there under the People’s Defense Units (YPG). This article argues that, since 2016, Turkey’s Syria policy has been transformed into an infinite war against the YPG. This perpetual militarization has created an environment where Turkish domestic politics can be restructured in the name of national security, maximizing presidential power and accelerating the country’s slide toward competitive authoritarianism. This process has also reshaped the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has shifted further toward nationalism and entered into a symbiotic relationship with the military.

Indonesian Job Creation Law: Neoliberal Legality, Authoritarianism and Executive Aggrandizement Under Joko Widodo

Abstract On October 5, 2020, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) passed Law no. 11/2020 on Job Creation (Job Creation Law/JCL) designed to improve Indonesia’s private investment climate. The law changed various legal landscapes that were identified as obstacles to accelerated development and economic growth. However, the Law has sparked widespread protests because it can potentially encourage environmental damage, exacerbate workers’ vulnerability and increase socioeconomic inequality. Describing JCL as a neoliberal legality project, this paper explores the elected executive’s role in mobilizing authoritarian state practices through disciplinary measures that undermine democratic accountabilities. It is argued that the configuration between the pre-existing illiberal democracy and Jokowi’s autocratic tendencies offers predatory business alliances an adequate legal and institutional platform to formulate a neoliberal legal breakthrough while eliminating resistance to them. Through a socio-legal analysis of the three areas targeted by the JCL amendments, we further argue that Jokowi’s success in advocating for his preferred neoliberal agenda hinges on what is called an executive aggrandizement strategy. This is characterized by interventions designed to safeguard the neoliberal legality preferences promoted by the elected executive from the disruption of meaningful checks and balances in the future, thereby deepening the features of authoritarian statecraft. This paper contributes to an advanced understanding of the bleak picture of Indonesian democracy over the past few years by proposing neoliberal legality as one of the ingrained legal characteristics of Jokowi’s authoritarian regime.

Incompatible sovereigns: Populism, democracy and the two peoples

The article aims to investigate the problematic relationship between populism and democracy by comparing the conceptions of ‘the people’ and popular sovereignty which they presuppose. In the first two sections, the populist and the democratic ‘peoples’ are reconstructed, and the unbridgeable gap dividing them is highlighted. The discussion of the democratic people requires a concise analysis of the main contemporary democratic frameworks, including deliberative democracy, ‘neo-Roman’ republicanism, agonistic democracy. The article works out the implications of the incompatibility between the two ‘sovereign peoples’ identified, and concludes that such an incompatibility undercuts the kinship of populism and democracy. While populism is often said to intertwine with democracy in some way, the article argues that it significantly departs from democratic theory and practice, and belongs to a distinct conceptual space. It cannot be made to overlap with ‘illiberal democracy’, a ‘democratic myth’, a crude electoral majoritarianism, nor does it amount to hiding undemocratic policies into properly democratic justifications. The boundary dividing populism and democracy, therefore, starts unfolding at the level of the conception of the people. While democratic theory invariably assumes a people intended as simultaneously heterogeneous and united, populism conceives of the people as a moral whole, internally undifferentiated, whose homogeneity and intrinsic righteousness preclude the task of specifying what popular sovereignty ultimately means. Such specification, on the other hand, is inescapable for any democrat assuming the people as a composite unity. The last section addresses four possible objections to the argument, variously formulated by Ernesto Laclau and by scholars approaching populism from a post-Laclauian or discursive-performative perspective.

András Sajó, Ruling by Cheating: Governance in Illiberal Democracy

András Sajó, Ruling by Cheating: Governance in Illiberal Democracy

Youth political participation and digital movement in Indonesia: the case of #ReformasiDikorupsi and #TolakOmnibusLaw

The younger generations have always been at the forefront of and contributed significantly to social movements that are critical of state policies or respond to socio-political situations. This is also what happened in large movements involving young people in Indonesia, conventionally in the form of demonstrations and digital movements. This study seeks to explore the relationship between youth political participation, digital media, and the development of youth political identity by analyzing young people’s engagement in some of the most significant political protests in Indonesia during the mass protests of #ReformasiDikorupsi, a movement opposing the amendments of several important bills, and #TolakOmnibusLaw, a movement opposing the establishment of a new single bill related to labor and investment, between 2019 and 2020. By analyzing quantitative data through data mining from Twitter from October 2019 to November 2020 with the social network analysis method, this study discusses online youth participation in social movements and the way they shape their political identity. Our research found that young people play an active and central role in building online and offline movements. In particular, the online movement contributes to the growth of the offline protest movement, and vice versa, because of concerns about the practice of illiberal democracy.

The Multidimensional Soft Power of Illiberal States: Russia in the Western Balkans

AbstractThis article aims to make a threefold contribution to the study of soft power. First, considering that the potential of soft power of illiberal states is both underestimated and distorted, this study presents a two-dimensional conceptualization of Russia’s soft power, distinguishing between Russia’s posture toward the liberal international order, and sources of Russia’s foreign policy. Second, it analyzes whether Russian soft power in the Western Balkan countries remains ideologically relevant beyond its hitherto conceptualizations as either the result of its historic cultural ties with the region, or a reflection of Russian foreign policy strategies. Through an analysis of elite discourses and news media as exemplified in speeches, press releases, and interviews, this article locates, challenges, and develops on Russia’s soft power indicators in the Western Balkans. Finally, it contributes to surmounting the residing liberal democratic bias in the study of soft power of illiberal states, showing that not only can they be ideologically attractive but that their scope of influence differs according to the multi-layered nature of soft power.

The Construction of Hegemony in Illiberal Democracies. A Reflection on the Concept of “Organic Intellectual” in Gramsci

La crisis de legitimidad de las democracias representativas y del proyecto de globalización económica ha colocado en el centro del debate público la capacidad de ciertos grupos intelectuales, tradicionales o emergentes, para intervenir en la esfera pública y normalizar o alterar el horizonte establecido de posibilidades políticas y económicas. La popularización de conceptos como “posverdad” guarda relación con una transformación del papel que se había atribuido históricamente a los expertos e intelectuales en los sistemas democráticos y la aparición de nuevas figuras capaces de movilizar la sensibilidad colectiva. En este contexto se está produciendo una inten-sificación de la recepción de la obra de Antonio Gramsci como fuente de utilidades analíticas. Este artículo propone, precisamente, una revisión de la noción de “intelec-tual orgánico” como una herramienta esclarecedora para las tareas contemporáneas de la filosofía política

Theorizing illiberal state feminism: Institutional dilemmas and political parallelism in China's gender governance

Institutionally speaking, state feminism is manifested by a strong women's policy agency (WPA) that facilitates bargaining between women's movements and state bureaucracies. It remains underexplored, however, when state feminism thrives or deteriorates under authoritarianism and what institutional factors account for this. Using China's contemporary gender politics as a case study, this article aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of illiberal state feminism theory and its internal workings. It contends that deep-rooted institutional dilemmas lie at the heart of an illiberal state feminism such as China's, which are expressed in four pairs of contradictions: 1) interest consolidation vs misrepresentation, 2) coalition-building vs repression 3) institutionalization vs bureaucratization, and 4) political integration vs parallelism. These internal contradictions lead to the inevitable segregation and marginalization of illiberal state feminism. This article contributes to the current scholarship on state feminism by dissecting the unintended institutional obstacles faced by a single dominant WPA sponsored by an illiberal state.

‘Illiberal Democracy’ after Post‐Democracy: Revisiting the Case of Hungary

AbstractIn taking stock of the ruling Fidesz party's project of ‘illiberal democracy’ in Hungary, this article first develops considerations based on Claude Lefort's democratic theory for critiquing ‘illiberal democracy’ and post‐democracy alike, situating the former in an early 2010s post‐democratic moment characterised by the emergence of a neoliberal crisis management regime in the Eurozone. ‘Illiberal democracy’ and ‘market‐conforming democracy’ are both problematic from this standpoint insofar as they subordinate the key Lefortian dimension of democratic contestation to either the primacy of the markets or a reified conception of the ‘national interest’ as represented by a single party. The analysis then traces the development of ‘illiberal democracy’ and its construction of key signifiers such as the ‘national interest’ in programmatic speeches made by Viktor Orbán, from its beginnings in the post‐democratic moment to subsequent crisis conjunctures in which it has redefined itself against ever newer threats.

The illiberal model of state capitalism in Poland

Motivation: There is growing awareness that a new model of capitalism is emerging. The 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis was a catalyst for redefining the role of the state in the economy, and as a result state involvement in the economy has been on the rise since then. We can also observe changes in political situation: democracy has been backsliding globally, authoritarian, and populist tendencies are growing. In some countries, those two tendencies are present, and as a result the illiberal model of state capitalism emerged. In recent years, in Poland, state involvement in the economy was growing and authoritarian tendencies were visible. In this context, it is worth asking if there is an illiberal model of state capitalism in Poland?Aim: The aim of the presented paper is to evaluate the political and economic situation in Poland and to check whether there are changes that could be interpreted as building illiberal state capitalism.Results: The results indicate that in Poland many illiberal statist tendencies could be identified.

Nationalism and sport intersection in Hungary: building fences, expanding nationhood

ABSTRACT Since the coming-to-power of the Fidesz-led collation government, right-wing populism has worked to establish an illiberal democracy and to protect national sovereignty in Hungary. Building an illiberal state has been through, in part, some of the mechanics that are associated with necropolitics. Within this context, the government has deployed strategies, including the use of sport, related infrastructure development and national sporting success, to (re)establish criteria for what they imagine Hungarian citizenship to be within and outside the current geographic borders of the state. This article examines the deployment of sport relating to intersecting narratives around right-wing populism and nationhood.

The rule of unreason: Analyzing (anti‐)democratic regression

The rule of unreason: Analyzing (anti‐)democratic regression

The Rhetoric of Illiberal Democracy: Viktor Orbán’s Narratives of National Ascent and a Nation in Peril

AbstractThe rise of illiberalism and nationalism in Hungary is often attributed to Viktor Orbán’s leadership and rhetoric over the past decade. His ideas and words have also reverberated around the globe and served as models for conservative leaders. This article offers a rhetorical analysis with a focus on the role of the intertwining narratives of national ascent and a nation in peril as containers for the ideology of illiberalism. Taking a narrative perspective, it examines the way in which Orbán appeals to Hungarians to embrace nationalist, isolationist, and illiberal approaches to democratic governance. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the rhetoric of illiberalism and the implications for future research into the rhetorics of the newest wave of conservatism spreading throughout the world.

The narratives and aesthetics of the civilizational state in the ‘new’ India

Abstract The term ‘civilizational state’ is used by emerging powers, including India, to mark themselves as distinct from the Westphalian states. This article addresses the following questions: why does India invoke this term despite its association with illiberal states? What ideological foundations and resources inform this narrative? And how does the ‘new’ India envision its role in international politics? Using an interpretive analysis of select texts and imagery, the article delineates the intellectual roots and aesthetic resources deployed by ‘new’ India to bring forth a civilizational state narrative which has become an important tool of power projection at both domestic and international levels. It argues that the recent shift from ‘civilization’ to ‘civilizational state’ draws its intellectual roots from early Hindutva idealogues. It is based on a conflict-ridden/homogenous understanding of civilization, making it ambivalent towards an inclusive/plural civilizational narrative articulated and nurtured by the nationalists. Internationally, the civilizational state narrative is geared towards reinforcing ‘new’ India's claim to be in the league of great powers; projecting itself as a power with a difference. Being the world's largest democracy helps in reinforcing this narrative, but signs of a shift towards a homogenous civilizational narrative will have wider implications for India's role in international politics.

Civilizational exceptionalism in international affairs: making sense of Indian and Turkish claims

Abstract Claims to civilizational exceptionalism have long been part of how states manoeuvre international affairs. While scholarly attention has started to move beyond the civilizational claims of western powers by engaging with those of states beyond the West, few accounts provide in-depth examinations of specific cases or bring these into dialogue with one another. This article offers a comparative analysis of how and why India and Turkey are positioning themselves as civilizational forces in global forums and international cooperation initiatives. Under the Narendra Modi regime, civilizational framings in India have found expression in the seemingly benign discourse of Hindu internationalism. In Turkey, successive governments under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have linked their engagement abroad to the legacies of the Ottoman Empire. While there are clear differences in their respective civilizational antecedents, both countries draw on a combination of moral superiority and responsibility—India as vishwaguru (the world's guru) and Turkey as dünyanın vicdanı (the world's conscience)—as the legitimizing base for their assumed (normative) exceptionalism on the international stage. Overall, we argue that Indian and Turkish claims to civilizational exceptionalism serve two distinct but interrelated political projects: attempts to overcome centuries-long international marginalization, and efforts to buttress competitive authoritarianism domestically.

Beyond technocratic statecraft: contentious politics and Singapore’s third leadership transition

ABSTRACT The bowing out of the designated successor to the leadership of the long-ruling People’s Action Party, Heng Swee Keat, and thus the prime ministership of Singapore in April 2021 led to a sense of political crisis in the illiberal state. This article argues that this troubled third leadership transition was preceded and conditioned by the similarly troubled protracted first leadership transition in the 1980s and 1990s. The technocratic statecraft that framed the first transition is ill-adapted to tackle the new contentious politics that have gathered pace since the 2011 general election, thus engendering the sense of crisis.

Populism in Pakistan: The Exclusionary-Inclusionary Divide in the Politics of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Imran Khan

Prior research on Latin American and European populism has used the inclusionary and exclusionary distinction to differentiate between Left- and Right-wing populism. As Right-wing populists demand exclusion of immigrants and foreigners and Left-wing populists demand inclusion of the lower social class in the political landscape, the former is described as exclusionary and the latter as inclusionary. In this paper, I test this typology, comparing the populism of two political leaders in Pakistan across two different eras: Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during 1967–77 and Imran Khan during 1996–2022. I argue that in the absence of an overarching liberal discourse, the inclusionary-exclusionary distinction has no meaning because populists of illiberal democracies can rely upon a greater ideological malleability, swinging between inclusionary to exclusionary politics in accordance with the demands of the moment.

Singapore’s Grassroots Environmental Movement: Modes of Representation in the Garden City

Singapore’s model of illiberal democracy has translated into a style of environmental governance that scholars describe as ‘authoritarian environmentalism’ (AE) for its top-down, non-participatory nature. AE in Singapore has given rise to a manicured, cosmeticized landscape in which nature is selectively integrated into urbanity to offer outside observers the impression of a ‘Garden City’.
 A gap in the literature exists regarding the response the grassroots environmental movement in Singapore has mounted to AE. This paper contends that the movement seeks to restore individuals’ personal connections to the land, both in its undamaged state and current degradation, in a bid to appreciate nature from whichever baseline one can remember. As a guiding structure, the paper references a framework developed by sociologist Kate O’Neill and identifies local examples of the variables ‘formal representation’ and ‘informal channels’. The former variable refers to movement participation in formal negotiations and policymaking. The latter variable describes solidarity-building with the aim of cultivating an organic, just transition to a green Singapore
 This paper argues that Singapore’s illiberal mode of governance limits the environmental movement’s access to channels of formal representation, compelling it to rely heavily on informal representation to achieve environmental change. This paper recommends a hybrid model of formal and informal representation as key to the success of the movement. For its emphasis on the influence of a country’s political context on its present-day environmental governance, this paper has utility as a reference point for other developmental states which exhibit interventionist, utilitarian policymaking.