Distinctions With a Difference: Illiberalism and Authoritarianism in Scholarly Study
| Published date | 01 May 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299231159253 |
| Author | Julian G Waller |
| Date | 01 May 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299231159253
Political Studies Review
2024, Vol. 22(2) 365 –386
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299231159253
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Distinctions With a
Difference: Illiberalism
and Authoritarianism
in Scholarly Study
Julian G Waller
Abstract
Comparative social science concepts such as “illiberalism” and “authoritarianism” are increasingly
common terms of art used in academic and policy debates, yet usage patterns and their substantive
meaning vary widely across publications and authors. This article presents parsimonious “best-
use” conceptualizations of both constructs, underlining the limitations of current, often widely
disparate practices. In doing so, it outlines the reasons why this state of affairs is analytically
unnecessary, leading to both conceptual stretching and terminological confusion. Illiberalism can
most fruitfully be conceptualized positively and ideationally, capturing a distinct form of ideological
reaction against hegemonic liberalism, experienced largely over the last several decades, with
a variety of case-specific elements. This definition sits in partial contradistinction with other,
sometimes-associated concepts such as anti-liberalism, populism, or conservatism and is not
associated with regime-type definitionally. Authoritarianism, meanwhile, is most parsimoniously
treated as a residual categorization of political regime vis-a-vis the concept of electoral democracy,
which accords with the goals for which most scholars deploy it.
Keywords
authoritarianism, illiberalism, ideologies
Accepted: 4 February 2023
Introduction
The global return of unsettling political and ideological ferment has been a key touch-
stone concern of scholars and political observers over the last two decades. From the rise
of authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia as geopolitical antagonists to the mod-
ern liberal global order, to notable political divergence from expected trajectories in the
European Union’s (EU) central and eastern states, to internal popular dissent with the
status quo in core Western states such as France, the United Kingdom, and the United
The George Washington University, Department of Political Science, Washington, DC, USA
Corresponding author:
Julian G Waller, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
Email: julianwaller@gmail.com
1159253PSW0010.1177/14789299231159253Political Studies ReviewWaller
research-article2023
Article
366Political Studies Review 22(2)
States—the breakdown of ideological boundaries and the collapse of expectations set
during the early post-Cold War period are evident to many analysts across widely differ-
ing perspectives (Fukuyama, 2018; Kubicek, 2022; Owen, 2022).
Many scholarly accounts writing on the current era rely on certain terminological and
conceptual constructs, both to categorize and to understand this outbreak of ideational
discontent and difference. Key among them include the terms “authoritarian(ism)” and
“illiberal(ism),” which are increasingly used as mots du jour in both academic research
and the policy-oriented press. Sampling academic publications from just the 2018–2022
period, a huge swathe of research output using one or both terms ranges from a conserva-
tive 1400 to upward of 61,000 items.1 While the former category label of authoritarianism
has a long pedigree that reaches into the Interwar Era of the 1920s–1930s, if not before,
illiberalism is a relative neologism, appearing conceptually in political science and related
social science disciplines only in the 2000s.2 The goal of this article is to render both
concepts legible, and in doing so, broadly capture the state of the field. In addition, it
seeks to be helpful to future scholarship - especially as more researchers engage with
these conceptual tools beyond their original points of development in the wide span of
academic work on the subject.
Situating the Conceptual Problem Set
While other related terms, such as “populism,” have a considerable academic vintage and
a history of a vibrant exchange over conceptual definitions, categorization, and subclas-
sification, illiberalism and authoritarianism are less well-equipped in certain ways
(Berezin, 2019; Dix, 1985; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013, 2017). This is not for lack of
trying. Illiberalism, by far the most recent of these conceptual tools, has seen new aca-
demic literature develop, seeking to grapple with its usage, but remains not fully settled
in even its basic definitional contours (Drinóczi and Bień-Kacała, 2021; Kauth and King,
2020; Laruelle, 2021; Sajó et al., 2021). That illiberalism is sometimes meant more as a
pejorative than as a scholarly concept unto itself further complicates matters (Laruelle,
2022: 2). Concerns about pejorative usage are important, as there is a major distinction
between descriptive word choice and conceptual usage, as the latter engages at the onto-
logical level and asserts the existence of a patterned phenomenon, rather than just a gen-
eral manner of speaking or intended normative implication (Goertz, 2006).
Meanwhile, the term authoritarianism, while originating from a far broader and older
academic oeuvre, suffers rather from being applied to a huge and diverse set of political
systems, behaviors, and attitudes that make a parsimonious conceptualization unwieldy
and easily misapplied (Adorno et al., 1993; Ahram and Goode, 2016; Friedrich and
Brzezinski, 1965; Glasius, 2018). In this way, authoritarianism is subject to a history of
conceptual stretching and divergent application that has left the core framework more
contested than it probably should be. Its role as a pejorative is also notable, although the
current literature is more mature in providing a baseline set of expectations that undergird
the concept, at least in political science.
It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a full genealogy of these terms, but it
remains clear that both illiberalism and authoritarianism are deemed to be of increasing
conceptual relevance for modern scholarship as well as sometimes frustratingly applied
to contemporary academic and policy debates (Glasius, 2018; Waller, 2022). Confusion
and misapplication remain real dangers as well as the tendency to collect the terms
together in an interchangeable manner (Dimitrijevic, 2021; Morlino, 2021; Smilova,
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