politicalsciencenow.com
Populists in Opposition: A Neglected Threat to Liberal Democracy?
Populists in Opposition: A Neglected Threat to Liberal Democracy? By Sarah L. de Lange and Larissa Böckmann, University of Amsterdam When the impact of populism on liberal democracy is examined, the focus often is on populists in power. After all, when in office, populists have the possibility to change legislation, thereby negatively affecting individual freedoms and rights, and to transform the political system, often toward democratic decline and illiberalism (Pappas 2019; Ruth-Lovell and Grahn 2023).1 Far less attention has been devoted to populist parties in opposition, even though this is the position in which populists find themselves most frequently.2 Prominent examples of Western European populist parties with a decades-long position in opposition include the
