IPSA Roundtable: Resisting Autocratisation in Polarised Societies

Abstract

Former IPSA Executive Committee member Emilia Palonen will chair the IPSA roundtable Resisting Autocratization in Polarised Societies on Thursday, 28 August 2025. The discussion will address contemporary populism, polarization, and autocratization in Europe, following the main theme of the 2025 IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Seoul. Bringing together leading experts, the panel will examine emerging trends of autocratization in countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, and Spain. The roundtable also marks the publication of Birth and Death of Liberal Democracy in Hungary: Populist Logic of Polarisation as Hegemony, authored by Emilia Palonen. This open-access volume was published in July 2025 by Helsinki University Press as part of the Finnish Political Science Association’s Pro et Contra series. The book on Hungary will be introduced by series editor Taru Haapala (Autonomous University of Madrid), along with HEPP research group members Alexander Alekseev and Szilvia Horváth (University of Helsinki), and Professor Emeritus Kari Palonen (University of Jyväskylä). The discussion will then broaden the themes to a European and global context, featuring Emilia Palonen (chair), Oscar Mazzoleni (University of Lausanne), Jose Olivas Osuna (UNED/LSE), Ruzha Smilova (Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”), and Sabine Volk (University of Tübingen). The panelists will address key questions such as: What are the chances of liberal and parliamentary democracy in the 2020s and beyond as pressure builds up from the hegemonizing new right? How could we assess the connections between the populist logic of political argumentation and rhetoric and tactics of the far right in Europe? https://www.ipsa.org/na/news/ipsa-2025-ecpr-general-conference-thessaloniki