Illiberal democracy: conceptual and normative issues

The theory and practice of illiberalism is evolving into a composite ideology designed for our democratic age. This ideology purports to offer a new model for the social and political order without breaking free from the master legitimating frame of our age: popular sovereignty as the ultimate source of state authority (Smilova 2021). Exploiting its normative appeal, contemporary illiberalism builds on the democratic ideal yet stretches it to the extreme. Because it is growing within a democratic framework, it is particularly dangerous: its subversive potential may be realized to the full. It is only under the attractive democratic mantle that the erosion of liberal democratic values and institutions may go unnoticed long enough to achieve illiberalism’s ultimate goals: the substitution of liberal rights and freedoms with illiberal values. This happens through the cooptation of liberal institutions, meant to safeguard those rights and freedoms. Viktor Orbán's step-by-step dismantling of the liberal-democratic order in Hungary through careful constitutional engineering, for example, seems to follow a consciously developed ideological script to use the legitimacy and efficiency of these institutions to spread illiberal values and practices. It is tempting to respond to the dangers of illiberalism that claims to be democratic by altogether denying its democratic character. This is the route taken by scholars who deny that illiberal regimes could be democracies in any sense – for them the concept 'illiberal democracy' not only is not useful analytically, but is also incoherent. It may even be a pernicious (for democracy) oxymoron. The proposed paper will first provide a critical analysis of the debates on the ‘illiberal democracy’ concept, spurred by the alarming growth of ‘democratic illiberalism’. It will then demonstrate the dangers of ‘definitional fiat’: the conceptual victory of those denying the illiberal democracy concept is unlikely to win the substantive battle over the attractiveness of a particular political regime. Rather, definitional victories may make it more likely that illiberalism's opponents lose the long-term political battle with illiberal populists.