Understanding the Three Stages of the Illiberal Public Sphere

The next speakers in this ECREA 2024 session are Sabina Mihelj and Václav Štětka, presenting a new framework for the understanding of current trends towards illiberalism. This focus on illiberalism follows the dismissal of the concept of populism as ill-defined; illiberalism is instead marking a grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism, and communication is a central element in its rise – indeed, there is a need to better investigate the illiberal public sphere.

There are three constitutive features here: the paradoxical emergence of and dependence of illiberalism on liberal democratic institutions and values, and their championing of liberal values such as free speech in pursuit of hate speech and other dysfunctions; the dual nature of illiberalism as an ideology and a set of practices and institutional arrangements; and the understanding of illiberalism as a dynamic and disruptive force, undermining democratic structures and processes.

Some of this is similar to our definition of populism: both rely on a paradoxical relationship with democracy. However, populism is considerably more disparate at an ideological level; populism can even act as a corrective rather than a threat to democracy, mobilising marginalised populations in pursuit of prosocial change. To avoid this confusion, populism can be understood as a specific political strategy, discourse, or style that can be adopted by a wide range of actors, while illiberalism describes a specific category of such actors.

The illiberal public sphere is a communicative space for traditional and new media that promote and amplify illiberal actors and attitudes, then; it is dependent on the conventional public sphere while also seeking to displace it.

There are three broad stages in the development of this illiberal public sphere: its incipient stage, where it remains fragmented and on the fringes of both political and media systems, mainly involves minor oppositional parties, fringe movements, cultural organisations, and NGOs, and must operate under media policies and regulations that ensure independence from government; the ascendant stage, where it has colonised some mainstream channels, including even public-service media, sees illiberal actors rise to power and enact changes to regulatory environments that enable government capture, which also enables the mainstreaming of illiberal narratives; and the hegemonic stage, where the illiberal public sphere dominates, the liberal public sphere is pushed to retreat into online spaces, illiberal actors are entrenched in power, and their narratives are no longer effectively challenged.

Polarisation of the media landscape and audience attitudes, mainstreaming and normalisation of illiberal attitudes, changes to media trust, and a shifting role of digital media (from supporting illiberal enablers to enabling liberal resistance) all play a part in these transitional dynamics. Such developments might be assessed by mapping the ideological positioning as well as anti- or pro-government stance of media outlets in a given country; changes in their positions on this matrix point to dynamics in the development of the illiberal public sphere.