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“Illiberalism” has assumed an invigorated if unanticipated significance in the 21st century. Aspects of illiberalism populate not only states long known as indifferent to such principles as personal liberty, human equality and the rule of law but have expanded in “liberal” democracies as their rulers employ purportedly “illiberal” practices more frequently than in the recent past. Indeed, the term “illiberal” seems to have lost its negative aura in the context of state action. We contend that illiberalism represents either an opposition to procedural democratic norms—as disruptive illiberalism—or an ideological struggle—termed ideological illiberalism. We first discuss the term as used in the vast literature on regime types in the debate on authoritarian/democratic hybrid-regimes. We then turn to the key puzzle in what one may call “illiberalism studies”: the rise of illiberal practices and policies in liberal democracies. To inform our analysis empirically, we investigate the ways in which illiberal arguments and institutions (notably camps) were deployed historically and in immigration policy. We conclude with an example of illiberal policy from modern day Hungary.

Drawing on the literature of post-politics and post-democracy, the literature of neoliberalism as mode of governance and the study of the city of Valencia's long-standing emphasis on the development of prestige mega-projects of iconic architecture as a means to achieve economic regeneration and urban revitalisation, this paper evaluates the social and economic effects of urban mega-projects and analyses them as conduits of neoliberal globalisation and de-politicisation of the public sphere. On the one hand, an urban policy based on the use of mega-projects represents a turn from welfarism to entrepreneurialism which, beyond the evident urban transformation and re-imaging, results in an increase in social inequality, the creation of precarious jobs, and an underinvestment in social services. On the other hand, the mechanisms used to implement mega-projects – including both exceptionality measures and privatisation of management through the creation of semi-public delivery bodies – result in a lack of transparency and democratic control, which in turn lead to more authoritative and privatised forms of decision-making. Moreover, mega-projects – through their focus on expertise and technocracy and a populist politics and discourse constructed around them – play a crucial role in the erosion of democracy and the establishment of a consensual politics where ideological struggle does not exist.

Globalization pressures result in a new ideological conflict among Europeans. We use detailed items from the Eurobarometer survey on issues of immigration and European integration that measure the ideological perspective underpinning positions toward the EU. This provides a fine-grained analysis of the ideologies underlying the poles of the new globalization-centered conflict line, which we define as cosmopolitan and communitarian. Our results show that, next to socio-demographic characteristics, subjective measurements have a considerable additional power in explaining the divide among Europeans along the communitarian–cosmopolitan dimension. Subjective deprivation, evaluation of globalization as a threat, and (sub)national and supranational identities play an important role in dividing Europeans into groups of winners and losers of globalization in both Western and Central and Eastern European countries. At the country level, the national degree of globalization is associated positively with the communitarian pole and negatively with the cosmopolitan pole in all EU countries.

Democracies today remain in a potent and protracted recession, and they have retreated from the ideological struggle against autocracy. We can renew the world's democratic momentum through power, performance, and legitimacy. Democracies must generate economic prosperity and opportunity while containing corruption, crime, and abuses of power, to reinvigorate support for democracy across regions and generations. Liberal democracies cannot be weak or retreat; they must exert their power to safeguard free and fair elections, independent media, and the rule of law. Nowhere in the world where dictatorships repress rights, censor information, and propagate disinformation can democracy be secure. Every defense of democracy is a source of inspiration and instruction. We must get serious again about promoting the values, experiences, requirements, and institutions of democracy. And we must do so on the scale, with the scope and ease of access in many languages, required to save it.

This article explores the value of Stuart Hall’s approach to conjunctural analysis for examining the complex relations between ideology and planning. By ‘thinking conjuncturally’, we explore planning as a site where multiple social, economic and political forces coalesce; ideology is one of these forces whose role and influence must be tracked alongside others. To illustrate this, we draw on recent and ongoing planning reforms in England and their relationship with housing development. Highlighting the faltering role of a particular ideological formation in ‘suturing together contradictory lines of argument and emotional investments’ around housing and planning, this article draws attention to planning as a space where ideological struggle takes place within the frame of a broader, contingent cultural hegemony. This struggle may help to reaffirm that hegemony, but it can also open space for alternative visions to be articulated, with potential to transform dominant logics of planning, and reveal routes to practical and progressive action.

Although ideological polarization can create problems for governability and democratic stability, this article argues that it also has beneficial effects in new democracies. By clarifying the political alternatives, polarization creates strong links between parties and voters, and thereby instills accountability mechanisms that force parties to remain responsive to evolving voter preferences. A comparative historical analysis of six South American cases demonstrates that the vast differences in the quality of representation in the 1980s, immediately after many countries in the region returned to democracy, were rooted in an early bifurcation of party systems in the first half of the twentieth century: while prolonged periods of ideological conflict occurred in some countries during this period, polarization was aborted by various means in others. By showing that ideological moderation may help formal democracies survive, but that aborting conflict in the long run severely hampers key aspects of the quality of democracy, this study suggests a revision of conventional views regarding ideological polarization.

Scholarship on oversight of the bureaucracy typically conceives of legislatures as unitary actors. But most oversight is conducted by individual legislators who contact agencies directly. I acquire the correspondence logs of 16 bureaucratic agencies and re-evaluate the conventional proposition that ideological disagreement drives oversight. I identify the effect of this disagreement by exploiting the transition from George Bush to Barack Obama, which shifted the ideological orientation of agencies through turnover in agency personnel. Contrary to existing research, I find ideological conflict has a negligible effect on oversight, whereas committee roles and narrow district interests are primary drivers. The findings may indicate that absent incentives induced by public auditing, legislator behavior is driven by policy valence concerns rather than ideology. The results further suggest collective action in Congress may pose greater obstacles to bureaucratic oversight than previously thought.

This article examines the Anti-Extradition Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement and uses claim making and claim transformation as a window to look at ideological struggle in Hong Kong. The analysis recounts the emergence of a specific configuration of movement claims: the supplementation of the moderate “Five Demands” with the abstract slogan “Revolution of Our Times” and other, more radical demands. The development of the configuration is explained by the strategic interactions among movement actors, the state, and perceived political opportunities. The configuration is also treated as symptomatic of the situation in which “One Country, Two Systems” has lost its legitimacy and independence remains a perceived impossibility.

Generations of democratic theorists argue that democratic systems should present citizens with clear and distinct electoral choices. Responsible party theorists further argued that political participation increases with greater ideological conflict between competing electoral options. Empirical evidence on this question, however, remains deeply ambiguous. This article introduces new joint estimates of citizen preferences and the campaign platforms chosen by pairs of candidates in U.S. House and Senate races. The results show that increasing levels of ideological conflict reduce voter turnout, and are robust across a wide range of empirical specifications. Furthermore, the findings provide no support for existing accounts that emphasize how ideology or partisanship explains the relationship between ideological conflict and turnout. Instead, I find that increasing levels of candidate divergence reduce turnout primarily among citizens with lower levels of political sophistication. These findings provide the strongest evidence to date for how mass political behavior is conditioned by electoral choice.

This paper examines how empathy is constructed, mobilised, and contested in political discourse on housing, using Poland as a strategic case to explore broader mechanisms of affective governance. Drawing on a critical realist framework, Critical Discourse Analysis, and insights from social empathy theory, affect studies, and critical housing research, the paper analyses how political actors use empathy to legitimise policies, assign moral value, and frame housing tenure in terms of responsibility or failure. The study draws on a cross-party housing debate held before Poland’s 2023 parliamentary elections, supplemented by media statements from 2023–2025. It identifies four recurring patterns: (1) withholding empathy from those who deviate from the ownership norm, (2) conditional distribution of empathy, (3) selective recognition of structural barriers, and (4) empathy as a site of ideological struggle. These patterns reflect broader ideological logics and institutional constraints. The paper contributes to housing studies by offering an affect-sensitive framework for understanding how emotional discourse shapes responses to housing inequality.