Is Right-Wing Populism Threatening Democracy?

4. Oktober 2026Rainer Bauböck on why illiberal populism fails the global challenges ahead

Liberal democracy is in global recession — fewer than half of humanity now lives under liberal democratic rule.

In this short from the Futures of Difference workshop at Schloss Ringberg, political theorist Rainer Bauböck examines why the populist alternative, built on the fantasy of an undifferentiated people represented by a single leader, cannot address the crises that define our era: climate change, global inequality, and the breakdown of international order.

Bauböck’s analysis connects to one of the central questions explored across the Futures of Difference platform: how can societies that are deeply divided along lines of interest, ideology, and identity govern themselves in ways that are both democratic and responsive to difference? His call for innovative democratic forms resonates throughout the series.

“What is the most important thing to bear in mind when imagining or thinking about futures of social difference?”

Foremost in my mind when thinking about the future of social differences is how complex and large societies can politically cope with these differences. Our societies are characterized by deep divides along the lines of different interests, ideologies and identities. And there is an answer how politically this can be held together. And the answer to this is liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy is the idea that in spite of all their differences, or maybe because of them, people can be treated as equal citizens and represented in collective decision-making about their future. We have to hold fast to that idea, but there is an alternative vision of democracy gaining ground today around the world. Liberal democracy is under attack and in global recession.

Fewer and fewer people in the world live under liberal democratic regimes. It’s no longer the majority of humanity. What’s the alternative vision? The alternative vision is that democracy consists in a united society that is not socially differentiated and that is represented by a populist leader that has a mandate to speak on behalf of everybody and can decide for them.

This is not what we think liberal democracy is about. And the big danger for the future is that this illiberal version of democracy has no plausible answer to the big global challenges that humanity is facing in the future. Think about climate change. Think about the huge global disparities and inequalities between the global South and the global North.

Think about the new forms of aggressive geopolitics where states again attack each other in order to gain territory. The international order is breaking down in front of our eyes and these regimes are promoting that kind of deterioration. So what we have to do today is to think how to defend liberal democracy as the better model that allows us to cope with differences for a long term future, but also how to develop it, how to find newer innovative forms of democracy that bring citizens back into the fold that create a new public sphere in which they can deliberate about that future.

Published by Futures of Difference
Futures of Difference is produced by Steven Vertovec at the Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science (formerly the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity).