Open Access Journal

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Concept and Varieties of Illiberalism

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Abstract:  This article discusses various conceptualizations of illiberalism and adopts a definition that equates the concept with the negation of three liberal democratic principles: limited power, a neutral state, and an open society. The second part of the article explores the implications of this definitional strategy for empirical research, describes the relationship between populism, authoritarianism, and illiberalism, and identifies nine distinct routes to illiberalism: authoritarian, traditionalist, religious, libertarian, nativist-nationalist, populist, paternalist, materialist-technocratic, and left-wing.

Keywords:  authoritarianism; illiberalism; liberal democracy; open society; populism; state neutrality

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.8521


© Zsolt Enyedi. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.