Populism Talks

Interview by Selcuk GultasliFive days before Sweden’s September 13 parliamentary election, the country enters the final stretch of the campaign with an unusually fluid electoral landscape. The latest Novus/TV4 poll places the opposition at 50.3 percent and the Tidö parties at 47.9 percent, with the gap still within the statistical margin of error. The Liberals (L) have climbed to 4.3 percent—just above the parliamentary threshold—while other recent polls still place them below it, making their survival one of the most consequential variables in government formation. At the same time, the Social Democrats (S) remain the largest party overall, while the Sweden Democrats (SD) continue to challenge or surpass the Moderates (M) for leadership of the Swedish right. In this interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Niklas Bolin, Professor of Political Science at Mid Sweden University, argues that the most significant transformation of the Sweden Democrats is not necessarily ideological moderation but institutional normalization. As he puts it, “Institutional normalization does not necessarily mean ideological moderation.” A party, he stresses, can become “more professional, more accepted by the other parties, and more integrated into the political mainstream without changing its ideological worldview.”This distinction is crucial for understanding SD’s trajectory. The party has moved from pariah status to substantial policy influence through the Tidö Agreement, while its core populist configuration—people-centrism, anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, and antagonism—has remained resilient. Professor Bolin therefore cautions that the party’s normalization and growing political influence should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that it has “become less populist” or that “its ideology has changed to the same degree.”The interview also explores how SD’s success has reshaped the wider party system. Professor Bolin notes that Swedish migration policy has “clearly moved in a more restrictive direction” and that positions considered controversial 10 or 15 years ago are “today almost political mainstream.” In that sense, he argues, “the Sweden Democrats won an important ideological battle.” Yet this mainstreaming produces a paradox: when other parties adopt similar positions, they both legitimize SD and reduce the salience of issues the party once dominated electorally. Bolin further suggests that SD’s growing success creates a tension between outsider identity and establishment power. The party has benefited from substantial influence without formal governmental responsibility, but “the more successful the party becomes, the more it becomes part of the establishment itself.”Against this backdrop, the 2026 election is about more than which bloc wins. It tests whether Sweden is consolidating a new party system in which the radical right has not merely entered the mainstream, but helped redefine it.Here is our interview with Professor Niklas Bolin, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/prof-...

Interview by Selcuk GultasliIn an interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Howard Lavine, Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and former Director of the Center for the Study of Political Psychology, argues that the Democratic Party’s central challenge is less one of ideological definition than of political branding, economic credibility, and mobilizational energy. His assessment is particularly relevant ahead of the 2026 US midterm elections, as Democrats confront both a weakened but still deeply entrenched Trumpism and the growing influence of figures associated with democratic socialist and economic-populist politics. For Professor Lavine, however, the label itself may be more liability than asset: “The Democrats are making themselves vulnerable to some degree by using the socialist label.”Professor Lavine draws a sharp distinction between the cultural politics underpinning MAGA and the economic terrain on which Democrats may have greater room to rebuild. MAGA, he argues, remains rooted in status threat and “a revanchist impulse to restore the prior order in which white Christian men feel comfortable in their dominant status.” Yet he does not believe racial and cultural identities necessarily foreclose an economic realignment. Swing voters, he stresses, are generally not those most deeply embedded in MAGA ideology. For Democrats, the crucial question is whether they can translate economic-populist appeals into tangible results: “What matters is the economic outcomes.” Policies themselves are comparatively less important because “most people aren’t going to understand what you say. They’re going to understand what’s happening on the ground.”This emphasis on economics also shapes Professor Lavine’s interpretation of the Sanders–AOC–Mamdani current. He resists treating it primarily as an ideological socialist project, describing it instead as an effort to rebrand Democrats as more clearly aligned with working-class interests. Indeed, he argues that “the energy is in economic populism. It’s nowhere else.” At the same time, he warns that invoking socialism risks obscuring that advantage: “Too many people don’t like it; it’s not helping Democrats.”More broadly, Profesor Lavine questions whether ideology itself is what moves most voters. “It’s really not about ideology,” he says of progressive candidates’ recent appeal; what voters are responding to is energy, anger, and a clearer sense of political purpose. In his view, Democrats should therefore move away from cultural issues that animate the academic left and “pivot purely to economics.” The strategic lesson is straightforward: “The more it focuses on economics, the better.” But electoral success ultimately requires more than rhetoric or branding. Once in power, Democrats must demonstrate “what they can do,” and, crucially, “what they can do specifically for the white working class.”Here is our interview with Professor Howard Lavine, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/prof-...

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In an era marked by democratic backsliding, transnational populism, and growing contestation over international norms, the struggle over civic space has become increasingly central to the future of liberal democracy. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde, Assistant Professor in the Department of International Studies at ITAM in Mexico, argues that authoritarian governments do not merely resist particular rights claims; they are deeply concerned with the broader political capacity that autonomous civil society can generate. As she puts it, “Any rights-based mobilization becomes a focal point around which other regime opponents can build networks to resist the regime’s power.” This insight lies at the heart of Dr. Valverde’s analysis of authoritarian opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. Drawing on her Journal of Democracy research with Gino Pauselli, she emphasizes that conservative ideology alone cannot explain authoritarian behavior. Their argument instead identifies a threefold logic: “repression of civil society, opposition to the liberal international order, and the instrumental use of conservative ideology.” For Dr. Valverde, the civil-society mechanism is especially revealing because rights-based mobilization can create organizational capacities that extend well beyond a single policy issue. Hence her conclusion that “both liberal and illiberal networks and governments understand civic space access itself as a strategic asset.” The interview also broadens this argument beyond domestic authoritarianism. International organizations themselves, Dr. Valverde argues, have become arenas of normative competition. Conservative NGOs and governments increasingly use the same institutional channels once associated primarily with progressive advocacy, while seeking to influence judges, commissioners, and policy agendas. What is at stake, she stresses, is “not only outcomes, but also the IO’s function itself.” This process can produce what she calls “neutralization”: weakening an international organization’s capacity to advance norms without formally reversing its previous commitments. These dynamics are closely connected to populism. Dr. Valverde rejects the idea that populists simply learn from autocracies; she instead points to “shared transnational infrastructure” linking conservative and populist actors across borders. She also warns against reducing democracy to electoral legitimacy. Populist leaders, she notes, often reason that “If I won the election, then I represent the people, and if I represent the people, I can do no wrong.” Such logic, she argues, can rapidly undermine checks and balances and weaken non-elected institutions essential to democracy. Taken together, the conversation presents civic space not as a secondary democratic concern, but as a core arena in which authoritarianism, populism, human rights, and international order increasingly intersect.

Here is our interview with Dr. María José Urzúa Valverde, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/dr-va...

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In an era of intensifying geopolitical fragmentation, weakening multilateral institutions, and increasingly transactional diplomacy, authoritarian and populist governments may find themselves unusually well positioned to exploit the emerging international disorder. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Imran Bayoumi, Deputy Director and Resident Fellow with the GeoStrategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, examines how the erosion of the rules-based international order is altering the balance between democratic constraints and authoritarian flexibility. His central argument is not that autocracies are inherently stronger, but that a fragmented system can reward governments able to hedge between competing powers, bypass institutional constraints, and personalize foreign policy. As Bayoumi puts it, authoritarian middle powers “have experience with hedging” and are less constrained by the institutions and alliances that shape the choices of democratic states. The decline of multilateralism is particularly consequential because it lowers the costs of defying established rules. According to Bayoumi, states increasingly feel comfortable “bypassing multilateral bodies,” ignoring treaties and challenging norms because the prospect of meaningful punishment has diminished. Yet he cautions against reducing this transformation simply to populism: “It’s a mix of both things: populism and power.” At the same time, the personalization of diplomacy associated with contemporary populist politics is becoming increasingly significant, as foreign policy becomes more closely tied to leaders themselves rather than institutions and professional bureaucracies. Turkey provides one of the interview’s clearest illustrations of this emerging geopolitical flexibility. Still embedded in NATO and Western institutions, Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has simultaneously cultivated relations across competing geopolitical blocs. Bayoumi describes Turkey as a country that has “managed to play and interact with both realms at the same time.” Populist nationalism, he argues, has been crucial to legitimizing this strategy domestically: “Erdogan has been able to sell this balancing strategy as a way of being able to secure Turkey’s interests first.” The willingness to purchase Russian air-defense systems while remaining within NATO exemplifies how Ankara combines alliance membership with strategic hedging. More broadly, Bayoumi warns that weakening Western alliances and institutional cohesion ultimately benefits revisionist authoritarian powers. “Every action that undermines the strong ties between the United States and its allies is a benefit for them,” he argues, pointing to the growing cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Yet he rejects the idea that authoritarian ascendancy is inevitable. Instead, he calls for “some sort of retooled American leadership” capable of accommodating the growing autonomy of middle powers while rebuilding institutions and democratic cooperation. The challenge, therefore, is not simply to restore the old international order, but to construct a more resilient one capable of reconciling democratic values, strategic power, and an increasingly multipolar world.

Here is our interview with Imran Bayoumi, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/imran...

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Declining birth rates and aging populations are real challenges, but how do they become existential moral panics? In this episode, Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha break down their ground-breaking research connecting populism studies to critical demography. They examine how the radical right links cultural survival directly to biological reproduction, weaponizes statistical shifts, and uses coded language like "demographic winter" to shift political threats from economic dispossession to civilization-level extinction.

Here is our interview with Professor Oscar Mazzoleni and Dr. Klaudia Koxha, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/prof-...

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In an era when democratic backsliding is typically diagnosed through institutional erosion—the weakening of courts, legislatures, electoral safeguards, and checks on executive power—Professor Justin Gest directs attention to a less visible but potentially consequential force: the changing composition of the citizenry itself. Professor and Director of the Public Policy Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and the award-winning author of seven books, including Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Democracy, Professor Gest argues that understanding democratic resilience requires taking demographic change seriously. “What I think has been missing is the human dimension,” he tells the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), emphasizing that democracies “are also highly susceptible to demographic change.”

Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Justin Gest, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/prof-...

Interview by Selcuk GultasliWhat happens when generative AI interacts with the foundational "technologies" of representative democracy? In this episode, political philosopher Professor Danielle Allen (Harvard University) challenges the idea that AI is merely a tech disruption. She unpacks the twin threats facing liberal democracies—informational collapse and extreme power concentration—while laying out a roadmap for democratic renovation grounded in moral vision, civic judgment, and institutional safeguards.Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Danielle Allen, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/prof-...

Interview by Selcuk GultasliFor more than a decade, Hungary occupied a unique place in the comparative study of democratic backsliding. Under Viktor Orbán and Fidesz, it became widely regarded as the paradigmatic example of competitive authoritarianism within the European Union—a political system in which elections continued to exist but were increasingly distorted by constitutional engineering, media capture, economic coercion, and the systematic weakening of institutional checks and balances. Consequently, Hungary became not merely a national case but an international reference point for understanding how democracies erode from within.Yet Hungary’s 2026 election has fundamentally altered that conversation. The defeat of Fidesz after sixteen years in power has transformed the country into one of the most consequential contemporary cases of democratic recovery. In her recent Journal of Democracy article, How Civil Society Defeated Orbán, Dr. Hanna Folsz —an Academy Scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where she will begin her appointment in August 2026 before joining IE University in Madrid as Assistant Professor of Political Science in 2027— argues that this democratic breakthrough cannot be explained solely by leadership change or electoral dynamics. Instead, she offers a broader theoretical argument about the hidden vulnerabilities of competitive authoritarian regimes and the underestimated capacity of civil society to reverse authoritarian consolidation.As Dr. Folsz observes, "Even deeply entrenched competitive authoritarian regimes have vulnerabilities." While Hungary experienced what she describes as "one of the most extensive and severe episodes of de-democratization or authoritarian consolidation in recent decades," the very institutions and strategies that sustained Fidesz ultimately proved insufficient to guarantee permanent rule. Institutional engineering, media dominance, financial asymmetries, and intimidation undoubtedly raised the costs of political competition, yet they could not indefinitely substitute for declining public legitimacy. As she argues, "these authoritarian strategies do not guarantee lasting—everlasting—popularity or staying in office."A central contribution of Dr. Folsz’s research is her reassessment of the role of civil society. Rather than attributing the opposition’s victory primarily to the emergence of the Tisza Party or the leadership of Péter Magyar, she demonstrates how more than 2,500 decentralized "Tisza Islands" transformed latent civic capacity into effective political organization. In her words, "The role of civil society… is absolutely underestimated," while "broad civic mobilization, new and fresh opposition challengers… and a credible alternative to voters are definitely a path to democratic reversal."In this interview, Dr. Folsz examines the mechanisms that enabled Hungary’s democratic breakthrough and explores their broader implications for comparative politics. She discusses the hidden effects of economic coercion, the limits of media capture, the importance of credible political leadership, and the challenges of democratic restoration after authoritarian rule. She also reflects on the responsibilities facing Hungary’s new government, emphasizing that electoral victory is only the beginning: "Changing governments is definitely only a precondition for democratic recovery." Together, these insights offer an important contribution to ongoing debates on populism, democratic resilience, competitive authoritarianism, and the conditions under which entrenched illiberal regimes can ultimately be defeated.Here is the revised version of our interview with Dr. Hanna Folsz, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/dr-fo...

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Modern autocrats don't use tanks to overthrow democracies; they use legal reforms, elections, and institutional maneuvers. In this episode, host Selcuk Gultasli sits down with Notre Dame’s Associate Professor Laura Gamboa to shift the spotlight onto the true defenders of democracy: the opposition. They dissect the mixed signals coming out of Colombia's 2026 presidential election, the double-edged sword of populism, and why waiting until a threat becomes obvious means it's already too late.

Here is the revised version of our interview with Associate Professor Laura Gamboa, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/assoc...

Interview by Selcuk GultasliWhat happens when an autocrat entrenches their power so deeply into the law that following the rules only protects the old regime? Host Selcuk Gultasli sits down with Princeton Professor Kim Lane Scheppele to explore Hungary's high-stakes attempt at democratic restoration. Scheppele breaks down why winning an election is just the first step, why reformers may actually have to break autocratic laws to save democracy, and the three structural repairs needed to stop a new dictatorship from rising in Orbán's place.Here is the revised version of our interview with Professor Kim Lane Scheppele, edited lightly to enhance clarity, readability, and overall flow for publication: https://www.populismstudies.org/prof-...