Illiberalism and Democracy: The Populist Challenge to Transatlantic Relations

The election of the paradigmatic populist Donald Trump to his second term as president of the United States raises serious questions, not only for transatlantic relations but also for the democratic values supposedly shared by the United States and much of Europe. The new Trump administration has not only upended normal diplomatic relations with many European countries and the European Union (EU) – particularly over trade tariffs, its commitment to NATO and its support for Ukraine – but has sought to interfere in internal political debates, and even to call into question democratic procedures, as we saw in the case of Romania. This chapter will seek to understand these developments by exploring the central tension between populism and democracy. While populists claim to speak directly on behalf of the ‘people’ and against the ‘elites’, their understanding of the people is a homogeneous one that excludes not only the elites but also minorities. Moreover, populism proposes an authoritarian model of politics that endangers pluralism, the rule of law, judicial independence and the intermediary procedures and institutions of liberal democracy. Recent and ongoing tensions in transatlantic relations must be seen in the context of a global right-wing populist assault on liberal democratic norms and values. Keywords: democracy; illiberalism; populism; security; transatlantic relations; Trumpism