Disillusioned with Democracy: A Conceptual Introduction to Illiberalism 

There is one last important point to make: illiberalism is not simply a synonym for all forms of non-liberalism. There are many ways to be non-liberal. Fascism and communism in the past, Islamism based on Sharia law today, and dictatorial/ultra-repressive authoritarian regimes such as China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia are all non-liberal, but do not count as "illiberal". Illiberalism must be understood only as an ideology that looks skeptically at liberalism as it exists today in practice. In fact, illiberalism pushes back against liberalism after having experienced it, and this "post-'' aspect is critical because it explains the disillusion. This means that only countries that have experienced some form of liberalism and of democracy can be considered to have illiberal constituencies, parties, or regimes. 

What sets illiberalism apart from populism? How do the two interact? 

I think the two overlap to a significant degree. They both describe contemporary movements, parties, regimes, and leaders that promote an agenda that I consider illiberal. I belong to the school of thought that considers "populism" to be a discursive frame based on the "us vs. them"dichotomy and not an ideology per se. Here, I side with Paris Aslanidis (2016), who challenges the definition of populism as an ideology, considering that it relies on immediacy and direct communication, deliberately violating conventional rules of polite speech and behavior. 

Finally, illiberalism can also be used to talk about intellectuals or elitist movements that do not share the "us versus them" rhetoric so central to populism.

What are specific countries and examples we should be paying attention to? 

There are several. Central Europe is probably the main playing field of illiberalism, but I would also add the US, because of its strong far-right and conservative constituencies, as well as its leading role in producing conspiracy theories. We also see several European countries, including the Nordic ones long considered immune to any type of illiberal sentiment, and Israel, which is often forgotten although Netanyahu shares similar traits with illiberal leaders (Orban, Duda, Putin, Erdogan, Trump…). A fascinating tension around liberalism that directly impacts our understanding of illiberalism is the discrepancy between philosophical ideals and realities. The core countries embodying liberal democracy - such as the US or, after the Second World War, the countries of Western Europe - have always engaged in practices which question the validity of an all-encompassing liberalism, whether by excluding women, engaging in segregation, or marginalizing minorities. It would be more accurate, therefore, to speak of liberal systems that contain pockets of non-liberal practices.

In the "Global South," there are various case studies to choose from: India, Brazil, the Philippines, or arguably, even South Africa. This allows the connection between scholarship on liberalism and its critics, and the huge postcolonial/decolonial literature that views liberalism as a European product, intimately articulated with non-liberal practices of domination, exclusion, and deculturation. The intuitive conflation of Western/European countries with liberal democracy and modernity/modernization does not leave room for the notion of "multiple modernities" - implying an access to modernity that does not follow one of the entanglement of liberalisms described above. As formulated by Jaeger et al. (quoted in Börzel and Zürn 2020, 13), liberalism has been an "external blueprint" of a political order claiming universal validity.

Copyright: ATTILA KISBENEDEK / AFP