The Illiberal Challenge: (Re)Conceptualizing Political Communication in Times of Normative Instability[1]
Václav Štětka, Loughborough University
Sabina Mihelj, Loughborough University
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-98560-1, PDF
Political communication scholarship has always had a normative orientation; from its very beginnings as a distinct field, it was closely tied to the political ideals and norms of democratic politics, and its research agenda was guided by the normative challenges faced by modern democracies, ranging from political participation to disinformation and polarization (cf. Knüpfer et al., 2024). For a long time, these normative underpinnings were taken for granted; while scholars may have disagreed over the relative merits of different models of democratic communication, or questioned the extent to which specific communication actors, structures and processes fulfilled democratic obligations, they shared a belief in democratic ideals as something worth defending.
Importantly, most political communication scholars – and certainly those who shaped the mainstream debates in the field – could also safely assume that the societies they worked in largely shared this broad normative orientation. This is no longer the case. Along with gender studies specialists and critical race theorists, political communication researchers are increasingly becoming targets of politically motivated attacks that question the very rationale of the field.
As the normative assumptions of the field are being questioned, it is also becoming clear that the prevailing conceptual frameworks are of limited use when seeking to understand the role of media in contemporary attacks on democracy. This is not only because these concepts were developed to make sense of political communication in societies committed to democracy, but also because they were mostly applied to a rather narrow range of countries concentrated in the Global North (for a recent discussion of efforts to ‘de-westernize’ political communication research see e.g., Badr, 2023; Mitchelstein, 2023; Neyazi, 2023). For a while, the successive waves of democratization that swept through Southern and then Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of the Middle East, made it seem as if the very same conceptual frameworks could be extended globally, with the normative ideals of democratic communication developed in the West serving as yardsticks to measure the relative progress of countries from around the globe on the path of democratization.
The political developments of the past decade, however, have challenged the tacit teleological, west-centered assumptions that envisaged a global convergence towards models and ideals of media and politics prevailing in Western democracies. Several reports have documented the declining quality of democracy world-wide, detailing a global surge of extremism and authoritarianism, curbing of minority rights, attacks on media and free speech, and weakening of the rule of law (see e.g., Nord et al., 2024; Freedom House, 2024; EIU, 2023). The much-anticipated “super-election year” of 2024 deepened these trends, bringing the historic victories of far-right parties such as the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in the Austrian Parliamentary Election or the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in regional elections in Thuringia, and culminating in the triumphant return of Donald Trump into the White House.
While political communication scholarship studying the contemporary challenges to democracy has flourished, we argue that its dominant theoretical apparatus remains ill-equipped to grasp the nature and depth of recent transformations. By and large, scholars have sought to make sense of contemporary developments either by reversing the democratization theory framework and focusing on developments variously described as democratic “erosion”, “backsliding”, “deterioration” or “deconsolidation” (e.g. Bennett and Kneuer, 2024; Wright et al., 2024) or by turning to theories of populism, typically conceptualized as a distinct political style, ideology, discourse, or a type of political communication centered on the opposition between “the people” and “the elite” (e.g. Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; de Vreese et al., 2018).
Although very valuable in their own right, neither of these conceptual perspectives can offer an integrated framework that can capture the full range of ideological and institutional dimensions of contemporary challenges faced by many democratic societies and their media, as well as account for the dynamic, unstable character of societies and media affected by these challenges. To help build such a framework, we turn instead to debates on illiberalism and develop the concept of the illiberal public sphere, drawing on arguments and empirical research presented in our recent book (Štětka & Mihelj, 2024).
From Populism and Democratic Deconsolidation to Illiberalism
It is important to acknowledge that both conceptual approaches centered on populism and those focused on democratic deconsolidation tackle important weaknesses of earlier frameworks. Research that foregrounds democratic deconsolidation dispenses with the teleological assumptions of democratization theory, and instead acknowledges that the trajectory of progression of public communication from authoritarian to democratic models is neither linear nor unidirectional. Work anchored in theories of populism, on the other hand, breaks with the habit of reducing threats to democracy to external actors, and instead acknowledges the internal contradictions of (liberal) democracy that can fuel disenchantment with political participation and representative democracy.
However, as instrumental as these concepts have undoubtedly been for the development of the field, helping illuminate the seismic shifts in political and media systems and discourses in Western democracies over the previous two decades, we believe that they are no longer sufficient to account for the full range of challenges and the extent of changes evident in political communication processes and structures. To put it differently, while populism and democratic deconsolidation may have offered adequate ways for theorizing the early stages of disrupted relations between media, citizens, and democratic institutions, these changes have – at least in some countries – opened doors for developments that present a more palpable and more urgent threat for democracy. We therefore need a more elaborated conceptual framework, which can capture what comes after (certain kinds of) populist politicians rise to positions of power, and specifically after they start using their leverage to undermine democratic institutions, including independent media. A key building block of such a framework, we argue, is the concept of illiberalism.
The rise of illiberalism has recently started attracting attention in political sciences, but also sociology and international relations, among others (Sajó et al., 2021; Laruelle, 2022; Guasti & Bustikova, 2023; Laruelle, 2024; Enyedi, 2024). Described as a “backlash against today’s liberalism” and promoting a model of society governed by majority rule and underpinned by ethno-nationalist ideals and traditional cultural hierarchies (Laruelle 2022: 305), illiberalism is clearly distinguished from populism in its explicitly antagonistic stance towards the liberal foundations of modern democracy. Illiberal leaders often proudly advocate for the gradual decoupling of democracy from constitutional liberalism – and for the establishment of what the Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán called “illiberal democracy” (Orbán, 2014). While nominally still professing commitment to democracy, and even referring to liberal democratic values – such as freedom of speech – illiberal actors seek to advance this decoupling by introducing a set of practices and institutional arrangements that can ultimately open doors to authoritarianism, with democratic institutions reduced to a mere façade for an autocratic regime.
Contrary to that, populism does not inherently present a danger to democracy; as various authors pointed out, the relationship between populism and democracy is ambiguous, with populist movements potentially having a corrective effect on democracy (Ruth-Lovell & Grahn, 2023; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2012), for example by mobilizing marginalized groups and encouraging debates on taboo topics (cf. Laclau, 2005). As Larry Diamond argues, while populist politics “is always dancing with the devil”, not all populism is necessarily “bad”; it starts becoming a threat to democracy only when it becomes culturally exclusionary, anti-pluralistic, or when it displays an appetite for restricting minority rights and civic freedoms (Diamond, 2017).
There are three distinctive features that make illiberalism particularly well suited to advance current theorizing on the role of media and communication in the crisis of liberal democracy Štětka & Mihelj, 2024, 27-30). First, illiberalism is not a direct opposite of liberalism; rather, it is paradoxically both dependent on, and fundamentally opposed to it – it erodes the foundations of democratic institutions and values by relying on the very institutions and values it seeks to undermine. In many ways, then, illiberalism feeds on the internal contradictions of liberal democracy, including the tension between popular rule and the protection of individual right and liberties; and between inequalities generated by a liberal market economy and the commitment to the equality of votes and rights of citizens. Second, illiberalism is both an ideology – characterized, as noted earlier, by support for majority rule, ethno-nationalism, and cultural traditionalism – and a set of practices and institutional arrangements guided by this ideology. Third, illiberalism is never static; it is dynamic and persistently challenges the liberal status quo.
Apart from conceptual reasons, there is also a normative argument against conflating populism and illiberalism, and for prioritizing the latter when it comes to research analyzing the crisis of democracy, particularly from far-right movements and actors. As Brown and Mondon (2021) observed in their analysis of The Guardian’s investigative series “New populism” in 2018, the indiscriminate use of the concept of populism might end up euphemizing and trivializing much more problematic phenomena such as racism, islamophobia, or the far right in general, and ultimately contributes to their mainstreaming. In a similar vein, labelling unequivocally illiberal actors as merely populist – even if they utilize populist communication strategies, as many indeed do – might not only lead to missing some of the key aspects of their ideological convictions and governance practices, but potentially also risks downplaying the level of danger they represent for liberal democracy.
The Illiberal Public Sphere: A Communication Perspective on the Rise of Illiberalism
To grasp the communicative aspects of illiberalism and establish an original and comprehensive framework for analyzing its dual nature in the communication domain – namely, as an ideology as well as a set of practices and systemic arrangements affecting media and journalism at the institutional level – we introduce the concept of the illiberal public sphere. The concept builds on the works of various scholars who have challenged the notion of the “classical” Habermasian model of the liberal, bourgeois public sphere (Habermas, 1962/1989) being the only public sphere possible, pointing out that it is overtly hegemonic and oblivious to the existence of alternative types of publics, especially from subordinated social groups (Negt & Kluge, 1972/1993; Fraser, 1990), though not necessarily liberal or progressive ones (Downey & Fenton, 2003; Korstenbroek, 2022). Further inspiration comes from authors who have described the existence of a public sphere beyond the perimeters of a democratic political system, including in authoritarian countries (Dukalskis, 2017; Lei, 2017; Finkel, 2007).
Following these lines of thought, we define the illiberal public sphere (hereafter IPS) as “a communicative space comprising both traditional and new media that promote and amplify illiberal actors, views, and attitudes” (Štětka & Mihelj, 2024: 31). The IPS is explicitly positioned against the liberal public sphere, and gradually colonizes institutions that have previously served as its cornerstones (such as public service media), which the IPS seeks to displace. There is a diverse range of actors which the IPS relies upon – far-right and ethno-nationalist political leaders, parties and movements; corporate and religious figures and organizations; legacy news media (which are often controlled by oligarchs or government’s cronies) pursuing illiberal agendas; conspiracy news websites, social media channels, and other ‘alternative’ outlets spreading illiberal narratives.
Most importantly, we envisage the IPS as dynamic, and progressively changing its scope and relative strength vis-à-vis its liberal counterpart. In order to capture this fluidity, we identify three ideal-typical stages in the evolution of the IPS, which are distinguished from each other by several main features, including the media forms and outlets that support it; the key political and cultural actors involved in it; the nature of media policies and regulation; and the nature of media ownership and independence.
In the first, incipient stage, the IPS is fragmented, limited in its scope and reach, and found mainly on the fringes of both the political and media systems. Among the key actors in this stage are minor oppositional parties, fringe political and social movements, organizations & NGOs; with regards to allied media as active instruments of the IPS, these consist mainly of “alternative” or hyper-partisan and conspiracy outlets without mass range. The incipient stage of IPS is currently present in most Western democracies, where it often overlaps with far-right political and information scene.
During the second, ascendant stage, the illiberal political actors have managed to grab power, even if only temporarily, and the IPS has colonized some mainstream channels (typically including public service media, wherever the illiberal parties managed to get a hold of the government). This phase is further characterized by changes to legislative system enabling government capture of media regulatory bodies, as well as by mainstreaming of illiberal narratives and normalization of illiberal values, which takes place simultaneously with active undermining of liberal values and increasing hostility towards journalists and free media. A country with an ascendant IPS is strongly polarized along the liberal/illiberal axis, with only few – if any – relevant news media to be found in or close to the political centre of the media landscape, which is being hollowed out. This is a situation that we observe perhaps most vividly in the contemporary U.S., but it is also present in other countries where liberal and illiberal forces have been locked in a seesaw battle through consecutive election cycles, including Poland, Slovenia, or Brazil.
In the final, hegemonic stage, the IPS dominates, while the liberal public sphere is in retreat, and its media operate mostly online. Illiberal actors are entrenched in positions of power, usually exceeding one election cycle. Majority of mainstream media as well as many cultural institutions (museums, educational system, or even the academia) are colonized and subject to illiberal policies. Illiberal narratives prevail in the public domain, without being effectively challenged. As examples of this stage might serve India under Narendra Modi (2014- ) or Serbia under Aleksandar Vučić (2014- ); Hungary under Viktor Orbán (2010- ) comes close as well, although the recent rise of the opposition movement, challenging the government party’s seemingly unshakable position, suggests that the liberal public sphere is perhaps stronger than what would appear just a few years ago.
Drawing on empirical research, we also show that these three stages coincide with important differences in audience attitudes and habits, including different patterns of news consumption, different political and cultural attitudes, different perceptions of media trust and trustworthiness, differences in the extent of mainstreaming of illiberal values and narratives, and in the extent of exposure to mis- and disinformation
Implications for Political Communication Research
We believe that the conceptual framework outlined here offers significant benefits for political communication research in times of normative instability. First, it forces the field to acknowledge the existence of diverse normative models of public communication and, specifically, diverse normative models of the public sphere, of which only some are compatible with democratic politics. Second, it offers a framework for empirical analysis of actual articulations of these different normative models in specific socio-cultural contexts. Third, it helps move the debate beyond the exclusive focus on digital media – indeed, as we show in our empirical investigation, social media can act both as vectors of illiberalism and as sources of resistance, depending on how advanced the illiberal public sphere is in a particular context (Štětka & Mihelj, 2024, 153-179). Fourth, it enables us to capture both systemic and cultural aspects of communication and investigate how systemic changes at the level of institutional structures and policies interact with shifts in audience practices, attitudes, and cultural values and narratives. Fifth, it allows for a longitudinal perspective on the changes in media and political systems, offering a tool for analyzing changes over time, without prejudging the direction or final destination of these changes. And finally, it provides a conceptual tool for assessing and comparing the relative development of the illiberal public sphere in different countries, thereby also offering a basis for identifying key factors that can accelerate, obstruct, or reverse the rise of the illiberal public sphere.
In sum, the kind of research that the IPS framework enables can help put the field of political communication in a better position to respond to the challenge of normative instability – not simply by taking a normative stance, but rather by conducting research that puts our own normative assumptions to test, examines them side by side with competing normative ideals, and gathers empirical evidence of the key drivers, manifestations and consequences of the declining appeal of liberal democracy in the sphere of communication.
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Václav Štětka is Reader in Comparative Political Communication at Loughborough University, where he has been working since 2016. His research interests encompass political communication in the digital environment, the impact of mis/disinformation, or the relationship between media and democracy. He was Principal Investigator of the ESCR-funded project The Illiberal Turn: News Consumption, Polarization and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (2019–2022, with Sabina Mihelj as Co-I), and of the project PANCOPOP – Pandemic Communication in Times of Populism (2022-2024, with Sabina Mihelj as Lead Principal Investigator). His latest book is titled The Illiberal Public Sphere. Media in Polarized Societies (Palgrave, 2024, with Sabina Mihelj).
Sabina Mihelj is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis at Loughborough University. Her research examines the interaction between media, politics and culture, especially in the context of semi-democratic, authoritarian and post-authoritarian countries. She was Lead Principal Investigator on the project PANCOPOP – Pandemic Communication in Times of Populism, funded through the Transatlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (2022-2024), and has recently started a new project that investigates how disinformation travels across cultural and linguistic boundaries, funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her latest book is titled The Illiberal Public Sphere. Media in Polarized Societies (Palgrave, 2024, with Václav Štětka).
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