Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: Negotiating Contrasting Illiberalisms

With the global rise and subsequent institutionalisation of illiberal parties and movements, the liberal status quo has moved from being simply contested to under sustained threat. From Hungary to Poland to the US to India to Israel (Börzel, 2015; Buzogány, 2017; Rogenhofer and Panievsky, 2020; Varshney, Ayyangar and Swaminathan, 2021), illiberal parties have moved from opposition to government. Further, liberal parties have also transitioned or been captured by illiberal movements, creating a democratic recession, with a declining number and quality of democracies (Nord et al., 2025). While the impact on party systems and governance is well documented, less exists on the conditions under which illiberal parties and regimes collaborate. Extant literature emphasises autocratic learning or the creation of 'Autocracy Inc.' to support regime survival (Hall and Ambrosio, 2017; Waller, 2021; Applebaum, 2024). Yet, as the number of illiberal regimes increases, the structural conditions supporting illiberal cooperation also change with new pressures, ideologies, and conflicts. How do illiberal regimes and actors respond to global crises and navigate potential ideological, economic, and socio-cultural differences? Understanding the capacity of illiberal actors to adapt and cooperate is essential as these parties and regimes form key players in their regions. This Workshop seeks to bring together interdisciplinary scholars researching illiberal regimes, parties, and governance from a range of perspectives to highlight the conditions under which they are able to navigate their often-conflicting policy priorities, narratives, cultural, and state building projects to collaborate (or not) with other illiberal actors or with conflicting regime types.

Applebaum, A. (2024) Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. New York: Doubleday. Börzel, T.A. (2015) ‘The noble west and the dirty rest? Western democracy promoters and illiberal regional powers’, Democratization, 22(3), pp. 519–535. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2014.1000312. Buzogány, A. (2017) ‘Illiberal Democracy in Hungary: Authoritarian Diffusion or Domestic Causation?’, Democratization, 24(7), pp. 1307–1325. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2017.1328676. Hall, S.G.F. and Ambrosio, T. (2017) ‘Authoritarian learning: a conceptual overview’, East European Politics, 33(2), pp. 143–161. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2017.1307826. Nord, M. et al. (2025) Democracy Report 2025: 25 Years of Autocratization - Democracy Trumped? University of Gothenburg: V-Dem Institute. Available at: https://v-dem.net/documents/61/v-dem-dr__2025_lowres_v2.pdf (Accessed: 12 September 2025). Rogenhofer, J.M. and Panievsky, A. (2020) ‘Antidemocratic populism in power: comparing Erdoğan’s Turkey with Modi’s India and Netanyahu’s Israel’, Democratization, 27(8), pp. 1394–1412. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2020.1795135. Varshney, A., Ayyangar, S. and Swaminathan, S. (2021) ‘Populism and Hindu Nationalism in India’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 56(2), pp. 197–222. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-021-09335-8. Waller, J.G. (2021) ‘Mimicking the Mad Printer: Legislating Illiberalism in Post-Soviet Eurasia’, Problems of Post-Communism, pp. 1–16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1960863.

1: Under what conditions can illiberal regimes successfully collaborate internationally?
2: Under what conditions are illiberal parties able to build transnational coalitions?
3: How do illiberal actors bridge entrenched cultural differences and contrasting visions to forge alliances abroad?
4: Why are some Illiberal actors more capable of building durable coalitions than others?
5: Under what conditions are illiberal actors able to learn from their counterparts abroad?

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