Democracy cannot really function if it is not liberal

“To protect the future of liberal democracy in Europe, one must first understand its challengers.” So is the motto of AUTHLIB, the project titled ‘Neo-Authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response’, led by the CEU Democracy Institute, funded by the European Union and the UK Innovation and Research, and implemented in cooperation with the Charles University, Sciences Po, Scuola Normale Superiore, SWPS University, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the University of Oxford and the University of Vienna. If you are interested in fresh academic research and policy analysis on matters of illiberalism, populism, authoritarianism, and their implications to liberal democracy in Europe, follow AUTHLIB on social media and at authlib.eu.

Among the challengers to liberal democracy in Europe, we can count populists, autocrats, and the increasingly often mentioned illiberals. But who are they and what is illiberalism? How does it relate to populism? Can illiberals be democrats at all? What are the policy implications of having illiberal politicians, especially of the radical right, in power in the EU? This interview explores these questions with Professor Cas Mudde. It covers various issues at the intersection of academic and policy research on populism, illiberalism, democracy, and the radical right. It discusses whether the growing body of literature on illiberalism addresses something that is fundamentally new on the global political agenda, how this literature relates to academic research on populism, and if illiberalism and democracy is reconcilable against the backdrop of a global trend of autocratization, which many scholars of democracy have noted and which is often attributed to illiberal and populist leaders. Furthermore, the conversation sets out to understand how the recent election outcomes in Slovakia and Poland fit into the aforementioned trend and also predict what is in store for European democracies in the near future as illiberal actors of the radical right are readying themselves for the next European parliamentary elections in June 2024.

Cas Mudde is a professor of international affairs and a distinguished research professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. His academic research agenda centers around the question how liberal democracies can defend themselves against political challenges without undermining their core values. He has published widely on uncivil society, democratization, Euroskepticism, extremism, and the practices of political parties, especially those of far right and populist inclinations.

This interview was conducted as a collaboration between The Review of Democracy and the research consortium "AUTHLIB - Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and the liberal democratic response" by Zsuzsanna Vegh, visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in cooperation with Bálint Mikola, Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute.