![Liberalism Is Not Quite Dead Yet with Jan-Werner Müller [PODCAST]](https://4liberty.eu/phidroav/2025/09/Jan-Werner-Muller-4-1024x1024.jpg "Liberalism Is Not Quite Dead Yet with Jan-Werner Müller [PODCAST]")
What is the secret of the populist narrative? Why should we shy away from liberal nostalgia? And what are some of the sources of hope for the future? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Jan-Werner Müller, a Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences and a Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He works mainly in democratic theory and the history of modern political thought. He also has research interests in the relationship between architecture and politics, as well as the normative implications of the current structural transformations of the public sphere.
Leszek Jazdzewski (LJ): It was already 10 years ago that we met in Łódź, Poland, at the Freedom Games festival. It was only the second edition, which was devoted to the financial crisis and its consequences for democracy within the EU. Ahead of the 12th edition, during which we shall meet again, how has your thinking about democracy and populism changed since then, if at all?
Jan-Werner Müller (JWM): This might sound a little bit abstract, but it does actually have consequences for how we think about certain developments globally, and in Europe in particular. I used to be more willing to draw a very sharp line between liberalism and democracy. And I was quite willing to go along with what has become a very popular term in describing certain regimes, namely the notion of ‘illiberal democracy.’
However, it occurred to me at a certain point that it was, actually, highly problematic to describe regimes in which fundamental rights, which were primarily – not only, but primarily – communicative democratic rights, free assembly, free speech and others, where those were being attacked by governments. That does not mean that there is no distinction between liberalism and democracy. I think we will not do ourselves a favor if we now roll the entirety of liberalism into democracy and pretend that everything is one thing.
Nevertheless, I thought it was important to insist that figures like, most obviously, Viktor Orban in Hungary, who was proud to be called an ‘illiberal Democrat,’ that they were not just attacking liberalism, and that we should not leave them with democracy as a concept and a value, despite the so-called ‘global democratic recession’ since about 2005 or so.
Nevertheless, everybody still wants to be called a ‘Democrat’ – in fact, even the regime in Beijing wants to be called a ‘democracy’. Therefore, both philosophically and politically, in terms of how we talk and who gets to call themselves a Democrat, it really matters how we parcel up democracy and liberalism.
As such, this has, basically, changed in my thinking, and I hope that this somewhat different perspective might help to illuminate some of the developments that we are witnessing in our world today.
LJ: I am really impressed by how you avoid the cliches of wishing for having had more gatekeepers or of reminiscing about the ‘good old times’ for liberal democracy 20 years ago. You are, actually, quite critical of those who are on the liberal side who are looking down on the people and democratic processes. Instead, you seem to argue that we cannot simply come back in time and that we should try to embrace democracy as it is. However, at the same time, you are not trying to be too understanding when it comes to President Donald Trump and other populists. How do you reconcile these two approaches?
JWM: After 2016 or so, many liberals engaged in very ostentatious self-criticism. And they said, ‘Oh, we made all these mistakes. We look down on people. Thus, we must show some remorse.’ That was problematic for a number of reasons.
Number one, with all due respect, some of what Trump has done, what he has said, and what some of his supporters have done and said is (and now let me to use the word that nobody’s allowed to use anymore) deplorable. It is important to say that and not to mince words, and not to pretend.
Moreover, what may be less obvious, Hillary Clinton in her infamous speech that everybody always goes back to (in which she was actually right to say ‘deplorable’) she said something that was deeply problematic. Namely, she also said that certain citizens are simply ‘irredeemable’ – and that is a profoundly undemocratic sentiment. It is true, of course, empirically, that plenty of people very often do not really change their minds about their commitments. However, to simply say these people are lost and we have to give up on them, and they should ideally be cast out forever is incompatible with a basic democratic view.
Secondly, I always thought there was something peculiar, or dialectic, about a certain type of liberal self-criticism – even though, on many levels, it seemed the right thing to do, because everybody’s in favor of self-criticism. However, there was a twist to certain forms of this self-criticism, because it did assume, sometimes in a very narcissistic way, that it is all about liberals, all the time. And, with all due respect, that is not necessarily always the case. This led to some pretty serious misjudgments in some cases – including wrongheaded concessions on questions of policy, and sometimes also on questions of values.
LJ: Liberals are not very good at identity politics. Without trying to beat nationalists at their own game, will liberalism be able to build its own source of identity politics (or, at least, politics with a strong communitarian emotion)?
JWM: I would say two things. One is that, personally, I think that many observers draw the line between identity politics and whatever the other one is supposed to be, namely more materialistic politics, a little bit too neatly. They are too willing to imagine a golden age when politics was supposedly easier, because it was all about finding compromise around a certain issue – like, for instance, higher wages.
These are quite problematic assumptions, because if we look back on the 20th century, material demands were usually also bound up with other kinds of demands. It was never just about higher wages – it was also about a certain recognition, a certain respect for the working class, to put it very bluntly and crudely.
Secondly, it is actually not so obvious that material conflicts can easily be resolved. Of course, under conditions where everybody assumes that the cake is growing, then yes, but we have to be careful in terms of what we assume by way of background. Nevertheless, nowadays, people tend to assume that the cake is shrinking – surveys show that very large majorities are absolutely convinced that their kids are going to be worse off. This belief changes the game in many ways. That is an important thing to bear in mind.
Liberals should have no problem with what is occasionally proposed by (very broadly speaking) communitarian thinkers. Some of the people who, nowadays, call themselves post-liberals have policy ideas (like national strategies for industrial policy) which one might debate, one might find useful or not. If you go in that direction, I do not think this is the end of liberalism – unless you have a super libertarian or neoliberal understanding of the term. All that can be debated. Nevertheless, none of these proposals amount to any magic solutions.
All these ideas are perfectly imaginable but, quite frankly, they are not always terribly new. We tend to forget that we had a wide-ranging debate between liberals and communitarians in the 1980s and into the 1990s. This, however, is also somewhat different from other self-declared post-liberals who really are anti-liberals – and they are not just talking about an industrial strategy that makes us more resilient. It may or may not bring back some jobs that went elsewhere, but they really have a different agenda. This is why it is important to see where the line is drawn and not to make too many concessions that ultimately compromise the ideals of freedom quite seriously.
LJ: Is it possible to create a political community when basically everything is brought down to the polarization of either populism or reduced to anti-populism? To disagree on very fundamental issues which are supposed to be connecting us and still be a liberal democracy?
JWM: One factor that is always worth mentioning is that polarization is real. It has been a very successful strategy, usually employed by the right wing or even far-right populists who have figured out that if you convince people that everything is at stake, they will lose everything. Then, you get them to a point where they know that their own side is actually sometimes acting in a pretty anti-democratic way, but they are willing to look the other way and to condone this kind of behavior.
This a mechanism that really does exist – and scientists have shown it very clearly, with many examples. It is also very difficult to defeat. The good news, if any, is that this is clearly an elite-driven development. Especially in the United States, it has been shown very clearly that, actually, polarization is much more an elite phenomenon than anything on the ground. Of course, we have plenty of anecdotes you know about what people you know think sometimes and how much they hate the other side. However, on the whole, it is much more a top-down phenomenon.
Therefore, although we should still talk more with our fellow citizens, and engage with them, the real crucial variable is the elite behavior. A such, it is important to start with an empirically accurate picture of what is actually going on and where the most important interlocutors and relevant political actors are actually located.
LJ: It seems that the more divided a society is, the more liberals lose. What political strategy should be applied to address this problem?
JWM: There are plenty of contexts in which, in a broader sense, liberals do actually hold on to an image of politics where they claim to be really very eager to work with the other side. Let us look, for example, at the number of democratic leaders in the United States who are still saying that the ideal scenario is bipartisanship and that they want to so solve problems together.
It is pretty clear that there is nothing wrong with that sentiment as such, although it is somewhat peculiar, because it is also perfectly fine to point out that democracy is about conflict. This is not in and of itself bad. We are in this together, partly because we are committed to resolving conflicts in a peaceful way with a view to always being able to mobilize different majorities the next time around.
This may seem very basic, but it is curious how often people still think that democracy is about consensus, and that if we could all come together, then things would be so much better. People do hold on to this other strategy in a profoundly asymmetric situation given the existing polarization. In this context, if one party has really gone to an extreme and has turned itself into a far-right ah entity, then you are bound to lose, because you are playing one game, and the other side is playing a completely different game. As such, it is unlikely to be a very successful strategy.
Nevertheless, there is still plenty of leeway for what you emphasize as you try to talk to people and how you frame what you are trying to talk about. There are plenty of empirical examples of the phenomenon of center-right parties running after the far right, feeling compelled to make refugees and immigrants the number one issue, when actually it could be shown very clearly that this did not happen to be the number one issue people cared about – and that in reality, it was the far right’s attempt to make it the number one issue. Some people (for instance, the Bavarian Christian Democrats) found it out the hard way. In a perverse way, in a sense, these people want to keep it going as an issue. They are not necessarily interested in finding the right policies.
LJ: Should liberals incorporate some of the right-wing nationalist ideas for the whole system to be working smoothly? Or, maybe, we should treat their ideology as our enemy and fight it until the last breath to beat it and protect democracy from Trumpism and the likes?
JWM: We should not think of the people who hold certain views as enemies – they are political adversaries. As such, we should not play the game that many of them are playing, which is to say that the other side is an existential threat and that they should be cast out. It is important to avoid this kind of symmetry.
We should think of policies that make it easier for people to engage and feel at home in their own societies – and I think nobody in their right mind is against that. It is rather a question of how one does that exactly, when, at the same time, you have forms of capitalism which constantly undermine that. Apart from that, I do not see anything that is either morally attractive or that any of these people have come up with fantastic policy ideas here in the United States.
When some of these ideas are implemented, it turns out they are not actually very popular. It is not that the people all want this. And, finally, they get the leader who raises prices for everything through stupid taxes, or tariffs, which everybody ends up de facto paying as a tax equivalent. When they see what happens in terms of deportations, it turns out that, maybe, some minorities who enjoy watching certain forms of cruelty accepted, are actually like this.
In that sense, it is very important not to fall into the trap of thinking that people are really mobilized around this bottom-up development. Some are, there is no question about it, and I am not denying that. This, however, is not really the silent majority. Finally, it is impossible to sustain. In that sense, one should not make any preemptive concessions and say that the world is different now. Of course, we can debate the pros and cons of globalization or free movement in the European Union, or other things. This, however, is not really democracy to begin with.
Furthermore, it is very important not to adopt certain framings simply uncritically from the other side when, again, on this occasion (never mind the morality questions), it turns out that they do not really have huge majorities behind them. This, of course, is very problematic, because the usual pushback is that this shows the complacency of the liberals. Of course, there are plenty of reasons to rethink certain policy positions. However, if anything, I think it has gone to the other extreme – if you adopt this defeatist attitude, you basically make all these concessions without even looking very carefully into whether these turn out to be popular, and far too willing to morally compromise in ways which are unacceptable.
LJ: Looking at these processes of today, do you think that it’s just another phase of democracy morphing into something new (perhaps not meritocratic, maybe not even liberal)? Is democracy worth defending if it is not liberal? And does fighting populism mean that we are trying to swim against the tide, and we are bound to lose because the society changed so much since the 1960s?
JWM: Generally, I do not make predictions – especially not about the future, as I am not really in a good position to diagnose any trends. Clearly, we are witnessing some crucial structural transformations, especially yet another structural transformation of the public sphere in regard to how we communicate and relate to each other.
Undoubtedly, there is a lot going on, which we have not yet really understood at all. At the same time, it is easy to fall into a certain determinism, which can be very negative in a certain way, but which also gives people a sort of perverse comfort based on a belief that ‘I know that everything is going to hell, but at least I know what is going on.’
This has happened, virtually, with every media revolution. Therefore, it is important to understand what this means for democracy and where there are some variables and points where one could really still make collectively binding decisions on how certain things can or cannot be run. In this sense, the challenge is real, but the outcome is not preordained. This is why I would warn against a certain kind of golden ageism, because that is also tempting. Again, this gives us a certain perverse comfort that we feel uniquely sorry for ourselves.
I am not saying that our problems are not real. The point is simply to keep things in a historical perspective, while, at the same time, try to see what is the challenge we face today, as it is really new and unique. Therefore, we need to try to understand it from the inside.
LJ: How to keep the liberal values, defend those values and not necessarily defend the status quo and the recipe?
JWM: It might sound very banal, but it is worth saying because it is very often overlooked. There has been a tendency to say, ‘Oh, look, people are turning away from democracy, from liberalism, from all these things.’ There is very little evidence for that. Yes, we talked about how top-down polarization is a winning strategy. That is real. In this sense, yes, you can find moments when people are saying, ‘My side winning is more important than certain values.’ That can happen. This, however, is not the same as a comprehensive shift in mentalities.
Once you are in that conversation, you realize that, actually, people very often do not believe in fundamentally different values. They are dissatisfied with the status quo, but once you actually get talking, you realize that you are not talking to somebody who is anti-democracy. You are talking to somebody who thinks that the current system is failing. And then, you are already far, far beyond a situation in which you might see each other as political adversaries or even, God forbid, enemies – because you are talking about how to realize certain values.
This realization, of course, does not mean that there is not going to be a conflict. Somebody might still claim that their preferred understanding of democracy is close borders all the time. This is, of course, where things get difficult.
Nevertheless, there is much more to be talked about when we realize that it is very difficult to have those conversations with most people – again, leaving aside very mobilized extremist minorities (and they do exist! Trump, for example, has become a personality cult). But that is not everybody, these are not majorities.
So, if you are looking for something uplifting, this is the best I can do in terms of something that I think we sometimes underestimate as the sheer possibility of finding out that, actually, values are not fundamental. There are disagreements about their realization, to some degree, but, at the same time, there is, actually, a fair bit of common ground about dissatisfaction with how our systems are currently realizing them.
Jan-Werner Müller will be a guest at the upcoming edition of the Freedom Games, a festival of ideas organized at the Expo Hall in Łódź, Poland, on October 24-26, 2025. Find out more: www.igrzyskawolnosci.pl/event/freedom-games-2025
This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with Movimento Liberal Social and Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.