Laura Jacobs
Social media play a key role in amplifying populist messages. The resulting misinformation, political polarisation, and the proliferation of hate speech, pose challenges for democracy. Laura Jacobs steps into the populist echo chamber Read more
Mattia Zulianello
Mattia Zulianello and Petra Guasti explore and rebut three die-hard myths about populism. This, they argue, on the one hand guards against overestimating populism as a phenomenon. On the other, it warns that we must not underestimate the political strength of the so-called populist radical right Read more
Jonathan Powell
Observers were quick to call the events on 8 January in Brazil a coup attempt. But Jonathan Powell and Salah Ben Hammou caution against conflating coup advocacy with coup attempts. Authoritarianism scholars should also note that usage of the term 'coup' has historically varied Read more
José J. Sanmartín
José J. Sanmartín explores the significance of last month's midterm elections in the US, detecting deep undercurrents at work in American politics. These, he says, will not only shape the next presidential election campaign. They may also determine the United States’ vision of itself in the longer term Read more
Luca Manucci
Luca Manucci argues that illiberalism and autocratisation have too readily been labelled as ‘populism’, an all-embracing concept which simply helps to provide cover to the neo-fascist cause. This has led to surprise when a politician like Giorgia Meloni, leading a party with neo-fascist roots, reaches the brink of power Read more
Olga Thierbach-McLean
Comparing Donald Trump to Ronald Reagan has become the key trope of the Republican Party’s decline. Trumpism is typically cast as a drastic deviation from the golden standard of US conservatism set by Reagan. But according to Olga Thierbach-McLean, Reagan’s political legacy is the disease rather than the cure Read more
Timothy Hellwig
Timothy Hellwig explores the political crises in three European democracies (France, Italy and the UK) to argue that failures in constitutional design are at the root of their problems. These failures, moreover, are not dissimilar to those experienced in the United States, suggesting this is a current affliction of western democracies Read more
Lasse Thomassen
How should we interpret what happened on 6 January 2021 at the Capitol? Lasse Thomassen argues that, while populists like Trump may threaten democracy, we cannot simply dismiss populism and the populist mob without taking something away from it that we value: its inherent openness Read more
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