Introduction: Populists, Democratic Backsliding, and Public Administration

Liberal democracy is at risk. Its ascent since the SecondWorldWar has recently come to a halt. Once considered to be the only political game in town, the fate of liberal democracy is growing more uncertain as actual and aspiring authoritarians have begun to undermine its hallmark institutions. Political pluralism, separation of powers, and rule of law are increasingly called into question. The “end of history,” implying the exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism (Fukuyama 1989; 2006), has failed to come closer in recent years. Instead, liberal democracy is contested as it has not been since 1945. Two trends contribute to liberal democracy’s current stagnation. On the one hand, many authoritarian regimes – China above all, but also many Middle Eastern and African states – have not faltered, as modernization theories once predicted. Rather, they have proven resilient, even in the face of external and internal pressure. On the other hand, many democracies, both old and new, have seen authoritarian backlashes. While almost complete collapses of democracy, such as in Venezuela, remain exceptions, governments in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, and Poland have implemented far-reaching illiberal reforms – hollowing out their democratic institutions. Even the United States, one of the most robust liberal democracies, has witnessed authoritarian dynamics with President Trump. In many other Western states, too, liberal democracy is under siege, as authoritarianminded parties shift political discourses and thereby influence policies, or even enter government and implement illiberal reforms. Many of these current processes of liberal-democratic backsliding are driven by populism. A rather controversial term in political practice, populism can be understood as “a thin-centred ideology that