On European Populism and Democracy

Ivan Krastev speaks about the relationship between democracy and populism, arguing the latter is the outcome not of the failure of the democratization of European societies but of its success. He further discusses the unintended consequences of the five revolutions that have shaped the current state of democracy in the post-WWII West. Looking to Central Europe, Krastev argues that at the core of the populists’ claim to legitimacy is a revision of the legacy of 1989 — these nationalists see the fall of communism as a “revolution betrayed” by cosmopolitan intellectuals. In successfully excluding anticapitalist discourse, the latter liberals opened space for political mobilization around identity issues that fueled the rise of populism.

Speaker: Ivan Krastev is a political scientist, the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, and a permanent fellow at the IWM (Institute of Human Sciences) in Vienna. He is also a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, and was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times (2015-2021).