The Journal of Illiberalism Studies

The Journal of Illiberalism Studies (JIS) is a biannual journal published by the Illiberalism Studies Program at The George Washington University.

JIS aims to provide an intellectual space for critical analyses of the concept of illiberalism and its derivates. The objective in setting up this new journal is to fill a gap in current academic debates regarding the treatment of the still understudied concept of illiberalism and make a contribution to its relevance for political philosophy, political science, sociology, media studies, IR, and cultural anthropology. For a definition of illiberalism, see here.

JIS is double-blinded peer-reviewed and available in Open Access. Each article is published individually as soon as it is accepted under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0). This means that all content is freely available without charge to readers. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

JIS publishes research articles, book reviews and discussions, and symposiums. For shorter pieces, blogs, op-eds in need of a quick turnout, please contact us at illibstudies@gwu.edu for our online publications.

JIS is committed to equity. We encourage authors to be sensitive to their own epistemic practices, including as reflected in their citations’ gender balance and representation of scholarship by authors from the country or countries under study.

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Current and Previous Issues

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Chief Editor:

Marlene Laruelle, The George Washington University, USA

Assistant Editors:

Christopher A. Ellison and John Chrobak, The George Washington University, USA

Editorial Board

Valentine Behr profile
CESSP, France

Valentin Behr

Valentin Behr holds a PhD in political science from the University of Strasbourg (2017). He is a CNRS research fellow at the CESSP- Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

Valentin Behr holds a PhD in political science from the University of Strasbourg (2017). He is a CNRS research fellow at the CESSP- Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He was a research fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study in 2021‒2022. His research topics include history and memory politics, the sociology of political elites, the sociology of intellectuals, and the history of ideas. His work now focuses on the production and circulation of conservative (especially illiberal) ideas, in Europe and between Europe and the United States. His latest publications include the book Science du passé, politique du présent. La politique historique en Pologne (éditions du Croquant, 2023) ; and the special issue “The shaping power of anti-liberal ideas”, European Politics and Society, 2021 (edited with Ramona Coman and Jan Beyer).
Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria

Ivan Krastev

Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna.

Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group and member of the Board of Directors of GLOBSEC. He was a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times (2015-2021). Ivan Krastev is the author of "Is it Tomorrow, Yet? How the Pandemic Changes Europe" (Allen Lane, 2020); The Light that Failed: A Reckoning (Allen Lane, 2019), co-authored with Stephen Holmes - won the 30th Annual Lionel Gelber Prize; “After Europe” (UPenn Press, 2017); “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest” (UPenn Press, 2014) and “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders?” (TED Books, 2013). Ivan Krastev is the winner of the Jean Améry Prize for European Essay Writing 2020.
Takis Pappas 2
University of Helsinki, Finland

Takis Pappas

Takis S. Pappas (PhD, Yale) is a docent, visiting professor, and researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Takis S. Pappas (PhD, Yale) is a docent, visiting professor, and researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Formerly a professor of comparative politics at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece, he has also held teaching and research appointments at the universities of Strasbourg, Oslo, Freiburg, Luxembourg, Central European University, European University Institute, Yale, and Princeton. Besides dozens of articles in top academic journals, he has authored Making Party Democracy in Greece (Macmillan 1999), The Charismatic Party: PASOK, Papandreou, Power (2009, in Greek), Populism and Crisis Politics in Greece (Palgrave 2014), On the Tightrope: National Crises and Brinkmanship in Greece from Trikoupis to Tsipras (2017, in Greek), Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2019), and co-edited European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession (ECPR Press, 2015). He is a regular columnist in major Greek newspaper Kathimerini, has produced a TED-Ed video on populism, and maintains the blog http://www.pappaspopulism.com. His new and forthcoming work is about the future of liberal democracy, particularly in Europe.
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Gulnaz Sibgatullina

Gulnaz Sibgatullina (Ph.D., Leiden University) is an Assistant Professor for Illiberal Regimes in the Department of History, European Studies, and Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

Gulnaz Sibgatullina (Ph.D., Leiden University) is an Assistant Professor for Illiberal Regimes in the Department of History, European Studies, and Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on Islam in Europe, contemporary Islamic thought, state-church relations, and minority issues in Russia. In addition to these areas of expertise, she also has a keen interest in cultural illiberalism, sociology of religion and religious language, as well as translation studies.
Loughborough University, United Kingdom

Sabina Mihelj

Sabina Mihelj is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis in the School of Social Sciences, Loughborough University.

Sabina Mihelj is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis in the School of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. Sabina’s research focuses on the comparative study of media cultures across both traditional and new media, with a focus on nationalism, identity, memory, and Eastern and Central Europe. She has written extensively on the relationship between mass communication and cultural identity, on comparative media research, and on the role of media and popular culture in the Cold War.

Her latest book is entitled From Media Systems to Media Cultures: Understanding Socialist Television (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Sabina’s research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Norwegian Research Council, and the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. She is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, and sits on the editorial boards of several international media and cultural analysis journals. Over her time at Loughborough, Sabina served as Programme Director for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in communication and media studies. She currently acts as School lead for Loughborough’s REF2021 submission to the D34 panel, and leads the Media, Memory and History strand of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture.

IERES/UVA

Maria Snegovaya

Maria Snegovaya (PhD, Columbia University) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CERES, a Senior Fellow with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a Fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University.

Maria Snegovaya (PhD, Columbia University) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CERES, a Senior Fellow with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a Fellow at the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University. The key focus of her research is democratic backsliding and re-autocratization in postcommunist Europe and the tactics used by Russian actors and proxies who circulate disinformation to exploit these dynamics in the region. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with multiple U.S. research centers and think tanks. She is the author of When Left Moves Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe (Oxford University Press, 2024).
CERI, France

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot works at the Centre for Studies in International Relations (CERI)-Sciences Po and served as its Director from 2000 to 2008.

Christophe Jaffrelot works at the Centre for Studies in International Relations (CERI)-Sciences Po and served as its Director from 2000 to 2008. He is currently a senior research fellow at CNRS and a professor at Sciences Po. He is also a visiting professor at the India Institute, King’s College London, and has taught at Columbia University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, the Université de Montréal, and as a Global Scholar at Princeton University. Since 2008, he has been a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His last book, co-authored with Pratinav Anil, is India’s First Disctatorship. The Emergency, 1975-77, London, Hurst, 2020 and his forthcoming book is Modi’s India. Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2021.
University of Kent, United Kingdom

Adrian Pabst

Adrian Pabst is an academic and author who has written extensively about constructive alternatives to liberalism that draw on philosophy, ethics and anthropology.

Adrian Pabst is an academic and author who has written extensively about constructive alternatives to liberalism that draw on philosophy, ethics and anthropology. He is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and holds visiting appointments in France and Australia. His latest books are Postliberal Politics (2021) and The Constitution of Political Economy (2023). A New Statesman columnist, he writes frequently for both the UK and the international press, including The Critic, Prospect and Le Figaro.
Free University, Berlin, Germany

Mihai Varga

Mihai Varga is a senior research fellow in sociology at the Eastern Europe Institute, Freie Universität Berlin.

Mihai Varga is a senior research fellow in sociology at the Eastern Europe Institute, Freie Universität Berlin. He was a Max Weber Fellow in 2011-2012 and holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (2011). His research focuses on market reforms and their political-economic consequences. He has published on World Bank-inspired reforms, trade unions responses to worker protests and austerity, and on the rise of right-wing forces preceding or following the financial crisis of 2007–8.