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Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University (USA), French researcher Marlène Laruelle heads up the Study programme on illiberalismwhich she founded, and also runs the website Post-Liberalism.org. Initially a specialist in the ideologies of the Slavic world, former director of theInstitute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the same university, she is currently interested in the rise of populist and illiberal movements in post-Soviet Eurasia, Europe and the United States.
Marlène Laruelle recently published "Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime". (Stanford University Press, 2025) and directed "The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism (Oxford University Press, 2024). In this interview with IHEDN, she explains the concept of illiberalism and analyses the rise of this political trend in democracies.
WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF AN ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY? CAN YOU GIVE SOME CURRENT EXAMPLES, IN EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE?
I will begin by dissociating illiberalism from illiberal democracy. Illiberalism is an ideology that criticises liberalism as a political philosophy or practice and promotes an alternative political project based on five criteria:
- belief in the primacy of executive power and majoritarianism over institutional checks and balances and minority rights;
- defending the sovereignty of the nation-state against supranational institutions and international law;
- call for a realistic and transactional foreign policy in a multipolar world, based on a reading of civilisation ;
- promoting national cultural homogeneity against multiculturalism ;
- preservation of hierarchies and traditional values against left-wing progressivism known as " woke ".
An illiberal political offer can therefore exist in a democratic and liberal context, in so-called hybrid regimes or in authoritarian regimes. The term "illiberal democracy" is used where this ideological content meets a type of so-called hybrid regime. In an illiberal democracy, executive power is concentrated in the hands of the leader, the judiciary and the media have limited autonomy, the discourse of the state is imbued with sovereignist, exclusivist and conservative values (in varying degrees depending on the country), but there is always a political opposition and a civil society, albeit with limited room for manoeuvre, and the party in power can lose elections.
Examples of illiberal democracies include Poland under PiS between 2015 and 2023 (PiS lost the elections and accepted it), Victor Orbán's Hungary (power there is more consolidated than in Poland but Budapest is, for example, in the hands of the opposition), Aleksandar Vučić's Serbia (which is experiencing massive demonstrations), Narendra Modi's India (here too, the opposition still exists and can win, despite the consolidation of power), Benyamin Netanyahu's Israel, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey (the opposition can control the major cities), etc.
Some of these regimes are more authoritarian than others, but the illiberal leader can lose elections, in contrast to authoritarian illiberal regimes where the leader is in office for life, such as Vladimir Putin's Russia. And depending on how you adjust the definition of illiberalism, you can add left-wing authoritarian regimes, such as Nicolás Maduro's Venezuela.
HISTORICALLY, YOU IDENTIFY TWO CENTRAL PREDECESSORS FOR ILLIBERALISM: THE COUNTER-LIGHTS UNTIL THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND THEN THE INTER-WAR PERIOD OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. BUT WHY IS ILLIBERALISM FLOURISHING TODAY?
I believe that its rise can be explained by widespread disillusionment with the liberal model, perceived as technocratic, neo-liberal, disembodied and incapable of responding to the social, economic and cultural crises engendered by globalisation. The rise of illiberalism cannot therefore be reduced to temporary crises or voter manipulation. Rather, it reflects the profound changes in our political and social order, as the liberal model that emerged in the post-war era - the Trente Glorieuses - has been eroded. Neoliberal globalisation has broken the link between growth and equality, leading to a growing gap between urban and rural populations, stagnation of the middle classes and a feeling of dispossession. At the same time, technological change and the concentration of media power have fuelled fragmentation, polarisation and distrust of institutions.
Cultural transformations have also undermined the hegemonic position of liberalism. This is what is known as "liquid modernity", with its shifting values and atomised identities, where progressive victories in favour of minorities are perceived by some as a challenge to the collective order. Moreover, as confidence in democratic institutions erodes, younger generations no longer spontaneously lean towards liberalism, but express a preference for strong leadership and more direct, even authoritarian, forms of governance.
The rise of illiberalism is therefore structurally rooted in socio-economic inequality, cultural disarray, institutional dysfunction and the exhaustion of liberalism's claim to cultural hegemony. This gap between the promises of liberalism and the reality of the situation is prompting citizens to seek alternatives that promise authority, sovereignty, cultural homogeneity and a return to control.
ONE OF ITS DRIVING FORCES IS THE CHALLENGE TO THE "META-IDEOLOGY" OF THE WESTERN WORLD. ULTIMATELY, DON'T WESTERN ILLIBERAL LEADERS RUN THE RISK OF WEAKENING THE COUNTRIES THEY GOVERN?
I think it's more complicated than that. Western countries have been weakened, both internally in terms of social cohesion and externally in terms of the West's place on the world stage, whatever the ideological orientation of their politicians.
We are in a period of interregnum in terms of political models and global balances. It is debatable whether, for example, Donald Trump is weakening the United States or simply transforming it. I'm leaning towards the second view: American society was in deep trouble on many fronts even under the Democrats (global health crisis, financial bubbles in real estate and education, impoverishment of the middle classes, institutional racism even in Democratic states, mistrust of institutions, culture wars, etc.), and the United States' status as a great power was being challenged in every case. Donald Trump is not creating these problems, he is the product of them.
Of course, the risk of undermining democracy is real, but the social contract of Western societies offered by liberalism was already well tainted even before the illiberal wave. What is fascinating is that the challenge to the "meta-ideology" of the Western world is no longer coming solely from countries whose identity has been precisely to be on the periphery of the Western world (Russia, Turkey, etc.) or to be outside it (China), but from within. In this respect, Trump's second victory is impressive, because it is the country that was the herald of liberalism that seems to be moving away from it.
CURRENT RESEARCH SEEMS TO SHOW THAT ILLIBERALISM GRADUALLY LEADS TO AUTHORITARIANISM. IS THIS INEVITABLE? WHAT SAFEGUARDS COULD PREVENT THIS?
The slide from illiberalism to authoritarianism is well documented: weakening of institutions, concentration of power, increasing repression of dissident voices, gradual transition to personalised rule, etc. The longer the leader remains in power, the greater his ability to dismantle the various forms of resistance. The longer the leader remains in power, the greater his ability to dismantle the various forms of resistance.
But this is not inevitable. Poland after 2023 shows that the illiberal dynamic can be reversed, but not back to square one: institutions transformed by years of illiberal rule and a much more polarised society have to be managed. The case of Giorgia Meloni's Italy also shows that a leader who can be defined as illiberal in many respects can function without dramatically transforming the institutions and while remaining within the liberal European framework.
A lot depends on democratic resilience: civil society, independent media, legal mobilisations, and above all other political offerings. In my view, the core of a solution to illiberalism is for those who identify as liberals to be able to do the right thing. mea culpa of what has "gone wrong" in the practice of liberalism as it exists on a daily basis, and that they thoroughly renew their political arguments in order to be credible again.
YOU WRITE THAT THE CONCEPT OF ILLIBERALISM OFFERS A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING SOCIETAL CHANGE. IN WHAT WAY?
The concept of illiberalism allows us to move away from the simplistic divide between the 'good' democratic liberalism that everyone should support and the 'bad' liberalism that everyone should support. versus "The concept of illiberalism allows us to put the liberalism in which we live, its limits and its flaws, back at the centre of our questioning. The concept of illiberalism allows us to put the liberalism in which we live, its limits and flaws, back at the centre of our questioning, and to consider illiberal political offers in a continuum with it.
Many governments that refer to liberalism are moving away from it in some of their public policies on issues such as refugees, immigration, counter-terrorism and sometimes freedom of expression.... because the liberal model is exhausted. The conceptual framework offered by illiberalism makes it possible to understand that the cultural hegemony of liberalism as the central referent of our societies has come to an end: the ideological battle has been reopened, liberalism will have to reinvent itself if it wants to win again, and it will have to listen to the messages sent by "illiberals" on both the right and the left on a certain number of social and cultural demands.
