The EU in an Age of Populism and Multi-Ordering: Supranational Responses and Institutional Adaptation

This paper examines why the European Union (EU) has responded to growing internal and external populist pressures within an increasingly multi-ordered global environment. While existing scholarship has extensively analysed populism as a domestic political phenomenon, less attention has been devoted to why international organizations themselves respond institutionally to populist contestation. Addressing this gap, the paper shifts the analytical focus from populist actors to institutional adaptation, treating the EU simultaneously as a target of populist challenge and an agent of liberal resilience. Focusing on the period 2014–2024, a decade marked by overlapping crises and the consolidation of populist actors within EU decision-making arenas, the paper argues that populist contestation has become a structural feature of EU governance, rather than an episodic disruption. This has generated conflicting demands for deeper supranational integration and renewed national sovereignty, tensions further intensified by world multi-ordering, in which liberal norms coexist and compete with alternative governance models that populist actors selectively instrumentalize. The paper advances three core claims. First, heightened levels of populist contestation and systemic stress are associated with increased institutional adaptation by non-majoritarian EU bodies, particularly the European Commission. Second, the EU’s shift from teleological liberal integrationism towards pragmatic, resilience-oriented governance enhances crisis-management capacity but risks diluting its normative appeal. Third, ‘world multi-ordering’ amplifies populist pressure by enabling actors to legitimize illiberal practices through reference to competing international norms. Methodologically, the paper employs a qualitative comparative design combining process tracing, content analysis, and elite interviews. It analyses two cases: the EU’s response to democratic backsliding through Article 7 procedures, and EU foreign and security policy responses in the context of the war in Ukraine. By linking EU studies with broader debates on international organizations in crisis, the paper contributes to understanding how populism reshapes institutional resilience and authority in 21st-century global governance.