News from the AUTHLIB Consortium
March 2025
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
over the past quarter, the AUTHLIB (Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response) consortium made further strides in mapping and analyzing illiberalism across Europe. The Sciences Po team developed further a new and innovative text-classification model combining human and AI coding to refine its study of illiberal speech acts, while the Oxford team made progress in the research on emotional and rhetorical appeals through text analysis and experiments. The CEU team focused on understanding the historical embeddings of illiberalism and the development of a visualization tool to map findings. Meanwhile, the Scuola Normale Superiore team conducted in-depth interviews with key illiberal actors in order to shed light on their transnational cooperation. AUTHLIB also organized academic and policy discussions: it launched its new AUTHLIB Seminars series and hosted a panel on foreign information manipulation. On March 31 and April 1, the consortium gathers with political philosophers at a two-day workshop in Budapest to discuss the normative limits of safeguarding democracy.
Learn more about our research agenda, events, and publications from the past three months below.
Upcoming and Recent Events
All our public events are recorded and the videos are available on AUTHLIB’s YouTube channel.
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From Christian Democracy to Christian Autocracy
AUTHLIB Public Lecture
The public lecture of Professor Jan-Werner Müller (Princeton University) revisits three distinct strategies through which political thinkers tried to reconcile religion, in particular Catholicism, and modern democracy. It will cover the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; it will also suggest that the twenty-first century has seen the emergence of two strands of thought that might resemble elements of those older strategies: Christian identitarian populism and soft versions of integralism.
The talk will offer a number of reasons as to why these new strands of thought in fact betray the proper traditions of Christian Democracy.
Register to follow online
Defending Liberalism – Normative Boundaries of Safeguarding Democracy
AUTHLIB Workshop
This two-day workshop investigates the sources and implications of the normative divergence from the model of liberal democracy in Europe. It is based on the premise that liberal democracy faces not one ideological challenge but many. Against that background, it carefully and systematically explores the varieties of illiberalism and their appeal, in their contemporary forms and historical appearances, in opposition and in power, in the domestic political arena and at the level of international networks.
The workshop will host lectures by a number of distinguished political philosophers and will focus on the normative boundaries of interventions aiming to safeguard the liberal order. To close the conference Jan-Werner Müller from Princeton University will give a public lecture.
Find out more details
Combating Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference in the Digital Age: The Role of the EU
AUTHLIB Panel Discussion
Foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) is a growing threat to democracies worldwide, with social media platforms as prime battlegrounds. In Europe, domestic and foreign malign actors engage in information operations aimed at undermining trust in institutions, influencing elections, and polarizing societies. The rapid spread of manipulated content, AI-generated fake news, and state-sponsored propaganda has been exacerbated by the digital ecosystem’s algorithms, which prioritize engagement over accuracy.
In this rapidly changing environment, what is the role of the EU? How can it increase transparency, accountability, and resilience against information manipulation?
Watch the discussion
Publications
Javier Milei’s First Year: A populist outsider turned practical operator?
It has been a year since Javier Milei became president of Argentina. His eccentric demeanor, colorful past, and rhetorical skills made him famous during his presidential campaign. Some even said he was a combination of a preacher and a rock star. After taking office, he became a global star. The anniversary is an ideal opportunity to take a closer look at his first year in office. Jaroslav Bílek (Charles University) takes stock on the AUTHLIB Blog.
Read more
Mass Persuasion and Systemic Disinformation in Democratic and Non-Democratic Contexts
Péter Krekó‘s AUTHLIB Working Paper, “Brainwashing of the People, by the People, with the People: Mass Persuasion and Systemic Disinformation in Democratic and non-Democratic contexts”, examines the evolution of mass persuasion and disinformation in both democratic and autocratic contexts, challenging traditional paradigms of information control.
Modern “spin dictatorships” prioritize manipulating information over violence, using social media, AI, and surveillance to manufacture consent. The study highlights the diminishing relevance of the democracy-autocracy divide as both systems increasingly adopt similar tools of disinformation, polarization, and media manipulation. The tools of information manipulation and distortion that “spin dictators” use are spreading all over the democratic world. Psychological factors like system justification, moral emotions, and informational helplessness make societies susceptible to manipulation, while tribal myths and symbolic politics foster in-group cohesion. Non-systemic drivers, including leader charisma and “politicotainment,” enhance the appeal of disinformation.
The paper argues for rethinking outdated concepts of propaganda, advocating for pluralistic media, digital literacy, and interventions addressing the psychological roots of disinformation to safeguard democratic values in a post-truth era.
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Legislative Capture in Hungary: Well-Managed Autocratization
Zsolt Enyedi (Central European University, Austria), and Bálint Mikola (CEU Democracy Institute, Hungary) published an article titled “Legislative Capture in Hungary: Well-Managed Autocratization” in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The article benefitted from research conducted in the framework of AUTHLIB and is available open access until April 21, 2025.
ABSTRACT
We discuss the case of Hungary’s rapid democratic backsliding under Viktor Orbán as an example of legislative capture. We show that, despite relatively unfavorable conditions for autocratization, Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party have supervised a well-crafted project of institutional transformation and a comprehensive regrouping of financial resources, all of which have led to an effective and stable concentration of power. This power concentration has its limits, given the country’s membership in the European Union, resistance by parts of the judiciary, media initiatives focused on corruption, and local opposition victories; but the national government’s room for maneuver has increased every year since 2010. We provide an overview of the changes that facilitated democratic erosion and an inventory of the actors that still retain a capacity to hinder further autocratization.
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The project “AUTHLIB – Neo-Authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response” is funded by the European Union and the UK Research and Innovation. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or UK Research and Innovation. Neither the European Union nor the UK Research and Innovation can be held responsible for them.
