Budapest, Hungary

Populism

Challengers of liberal democracy: Anti-democratic movements and populism

Are anti-democratic parties a new phenomenon? What is populism exactly? Is there a global crisis of liberal democracy, and if yes, what caused the populist backlash? Where does liberal democracy end and illiberalism begin? Our section aims to understand and analyze the recent, worldwide upsurge of populist movements.



Section topics:
Introduction to political regime types
During the first session we will look at the broad picture of different types of political systems. The first session’s major goal is to distinguish democracies from non-democratic regimes and to agree to a working definition of populism, as it is highly contested in the current state of the art literature. The session will take place as a seminar.

The crisis of liberalism?
The second session examines the concept of political liberalism from a political philosophy angle. In order to understand the current upsurge of illiberalism, first we need to look at the concept of liberalism itself. The session will consist of a seminar (and a debate?) about what may have caused the crisis of liberalism.

The demand-side of populism
The third session will change the unit of analysis and instead of looking at political actors providing the supply-side of populism, it will focus on the electorate. Who are the populist voters and why do they support these parties?

Analyzing the demand-side with the toolkit of econometrics
In the last sessions, we will use the methodology of econometrics to put the theories of the third session into practice. The goal is to indentify significant variables that may have pushed the American voters towards supporting Donald Trump in the 2016 elections.

Course leader

Rajk László College for Advanced Studies is a self-governing student organization, an educational institute and a living community of the active members.

Fee info

EUR 130: Our fees are based on the standard Erasmus+ categorization.

170 Euro for Group 1 countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Lichtenstein, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom

150 Euro for Group 2 countries: Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey

130 Euro for Group 3 countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR of Macedonia, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia