Democracy, Liberalism, and their Opposites

December 15, 2022January 10, 2023

Democracy, Liberalism, and their Opposites

First published in Democracy Paradox, December 15, 2022

Describing Political Systems

Say you want to construct an all-encompassing typology of political systems in the world. Now, since most knowledge is mediated by words, you had better start with establishing a clear vocabulary. Fine, but you are already stumbling upon the unclear and confusing terms used by such well-respected sources as the V-Dem Institute, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House, or in the academe. Here is a sampling of such terms: “flawed democracy” (as if there are democracies that are “flawless”), “electoral democracy” (as if there are democracies without elections), “hybrid regime”, “competitive authoritarianism” or “partly free regime” (as if there are democracies that are half-democratic and half-nondemocratic), and more. Is there a way of avoiding this terminological and notional hullaballoo?

Yes, there is! In fact, only two terms, and their opposites, should suffice to classify all political systems into a small number of categories that are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. This thinking yields two pairs of terms. The first pair includes democracy and its opposite, non-democracy; the second pair consists of liberalism and its own opposite, illiberalism. The next step is to define those terms.

Continue reading Democracy, Liberalism, and their Opposites“

October 30, 2022October 30, 2022

Η δημοκρατική φιλελεύθερη Δύση και οι ΗΠΑ

Δημοσιεύτηκε στην Καθημερινή της Κυριακής, 30 Οκτωβρίου 2022

Υπήρξε μια εποχή, όχι πολύ παλιά, που, έστω στιγμιαία, πιστέψαμε στον ιστορικό θρίαμβο της φιλελεύθερης δημοκρατικής Δύσης απέναντι σε έναν άλλο κόσμο που τον αποτελούσαν μη δημοκρατικές, μη φιλελεύθερες και μη δυτικές κοινωνίες. Λάθος! Πλέον διαπιστώνουμε, όχι δίχως μια γερή δόση φόβου, την αύξηση του αριθμού των χωρών που κυβερνώνται από αυταρχικά καθεστώτα, την αποδυνάμωση των αρχών του φιλελευθερισμού ακόμη και σε χώρες με σημαντική παράδοση σε αυτόν, καθώς και την ολοένα και πιο φανερή τάση ισχυρών μη δυτικών χωρών να συμμαχούν μεταξύ τους με διάφορους τρόπους ενάντια στον δυτικό κόσμο.

September 23, 2022September 25, 2022

Italy, Europe’s political laboratory

Originally published as an op-ed in Greek newspaper Kathimerini, 30 August 2022.

History often plays strange games. Take Italy, for example. Exactly one hundred years after Mussolini’s March on Rome, the so-called Brothers of Italy – a new party with roots in postwar fascism – look set to be the winner of the Italian elections to be held on September 25. In that case, the Brothers will almost certainly form a government with the right-wing parties of Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi. Italy will not suddenly turn fascist, of course. It will however continue to both flounder about in conditions of political instability and fret about its dire economic prospects.

September 23, 2022September 25, 2022

Ιταλία, πολιτικό εργαστήριο της Ευρώπης

Δημοσιεύτηκε στην Καθημερινή της Κυριακής 31 Αυγούστου 2022

Η ιστορία παίζει παράξενα παιχνίδια. Δείτε την Ιταλία. Aκριβώς εκατό χρόνια μετά την περίφημη “πορεία προς τη Ρώμη” του Μουσολίνι, ένα νεότερο κόμμα με ρίζες στον μεταπολεμικό φασισμό, οι λεγόμενοι Αδελφοί Ιταλοί, φαίνεται ότι θα είναι ο νικητής των ιταλικών εκλογών που θα γίνουν στις 25 Σεπτεμβρίου. Στη συνέχεια, είναι σχεδόν βέβαιο ότι οι Αδελφοί θα σχηματίσουν κυβέρνηση με τα επίσης δεξιά κόμματα των Ματέο Σαλβίνι και Σίλβιο Μπερλουσκόνι. Βέβαια, η Ιταλία δεν θα γίνει ξάφνου φασιστική. Θα συνεχίσει ωστόσο να παραδέρνει σε συνθήκες πολιτικής αστάθειας, ατενίζοντας το πολιτικό της μέλλον με τεράστια αβεβαιότητα και ελάχιστη αισιοδοξία.

June 5, 2022June 6, 2022

“Hybrid regimes” is a bad concept

In this blog, I have written several posts on concepts and shown how good concepts work and how bad concepts don’t, often creating such monstrosities as that strange animal, the cat-dog. In this post, I engage once again with bad concepts, now focusing on “hybrid regimes”, a term used by the Economist Intelligence Unit in a way that only creates confusion.

The world of politics is complex, everyone knows that. To make sense of such complexity, we must begin from having solid concepts, and use them as the basic units of our thinking. A concept consists of three parts: a term (or word, or label) that corresponds to some specific meaning that we have in mind, which in turn points to clearly identifiable empirical referents, that is, the phenomena that we observe out there and want to understand and explain.

May 17, 2022May 18, 2022

Populism as democratic illiberalism (and how it fits political systems theory)

The following is the text of a keynote address I gave at the 7^th Prague Populism Conference on May 16, 2022, in Prague, Czech Republic. To my knowledge, this is the first attempt to locate populism within a parsimonious general theory of political systems across time and space. The analysis is based on years of conceptual, theoretical, and comparative empirical research, originally encapsulated in this infographic .

I am happy to be once again in this Prague conference on populism, which by the years has become one of the most important in Europe on the subject. As this is not my first time to participate in this event, I recall some extraordinary thinkers who in previous years shared important ideas about populism in this room. I am humbled. For my more modest part, what I am going to try today to say something that is original, since I have never presented it before, and which I hope, will also appeal to your own interests on the subject of populism. So, the title of my presentation today is “Populism as democratic illiberalism” and my more particular focus will be on how this populism fits a general political systems theory. Ultimately, I am going to present a typology of the universe of political systems in which populism will take its own specific place. Let us then begin from the source of all contention, which is the concept of “populism.”

May 17, 2022May 18, 2022

Political Systems: A Typology

A political system is a particular way is which a polity, or state, is organized and governed. Political systems are distinguished by the different ways they allocate political authority in the interactions that take place within them between the state itself, organized groups in society, and each citizen individually. This infographic presents a typology of all modern political systems, including populism, classified into clearly defined types that are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. It also offers minimal definitions for each type of political system. In May 2022, I presented this typology in a conference on populism in Prague, Czechia, and, if interested, you can read my keynote speech here.

Download typology of political systems

March 30, 2022May 24, 2022

Seven types of Illiberal leaders, and their regimes

According to all indices for measuring its health across the world (including Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and V-Dem Institute), liberal democracy is under threat by illiberal regimes. By “liberal democracy” is meant a form of institutionalized government based on individual freedom and political moderation, safeguarding minority rights, and adhering to the rule of law as expressed primarily in written constitutions. But if liberal democracies are all alike, every foe of liberalism is illiberal in his own way. This infographic shows the global expansion of illiberal rule but also distinguishes among contemporary illiberal leaders by putting their main differences on display. (But if you still look for similarities, did you already notice that all illiberal leaders are men?)

To download the full infographic or print it in high-quality and professional form, click on the button below.

March 27, 2022March 27, 2022

Europe’s most recent great drama and its protagonists

Originally published in Greek by Kathimerini, 27 March 2022.

Until not long ago, Europe seemed to be an ensemble of democratic nations that, for the most part, had embraced liberal democracy. These nations displayed a determination to spread the spirit of Western liberal democracy to neighboring regions, including the Arab world, Islamist Turkey, and nationalist Russia. Recent and dramatic developments, however, have altered all that. The democratic experiment in the Arab world largely failed, Turkey regressed to an increasingly authoritarian form of government, and Russia proved to be a brutal dictatorship. At the same time, Britain’s withdrawal weakened the European Union, while the Trump era clearly showed that America cannot be relied upon as a permanent European ally or be seen as a model for clear-cut liberal democracy. The West became disengaged.

February 28, 2022March 2, 2022

Not all democracies are good; some are bad.

A version of this article was originally published in Greek newspaper Kathimerini on 27 February 2022.

According to the latest annual report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the state of democracy in the world deteriorated last year. The report assesses 167 countries based on 60 unique indicators subdivided into five broad themes: electoral process and political pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture, and civil liberties. According to the report, only 64 countries in the world today have “some form of democracy” and less than half of the world’s population (45.7%) lives in them. Of the 64 countries, only 21 are classified as “full” liberal democracies and these account for 6.4% of the world’s population. And if we isolate the top ten democracies in the world according to the report, we find that the percentage of people lucky enough to live in one of them is dishearteningly small – just 1.2% of the world’s population.