A Compass for Illiberalism Research

Illiberalism is not an ideology; it is a complex social, political, legal, and mental phenomenon that is characterized by the absence of the systemic and interrelated components of liberalism. It became an important contemporary issue with its coming to power in an increasing number of seemingly democratic countries. Its academic study has to account for the impact of illiberal practices that mock, capture, and subvert the vocabulary and frames that are routinely used to narrate the meaning and terms of human existence in interconnected spheres. As such, illiberalism calls for posing research questions and building frames of analysis across disciplines from the start. A discussion of a future research agenda on illiberalism must start with remarks on liberalism and the conceptual problems it raises. Next, it has to untangle its subject from antiliberalism, so that research on ideas aligns with research on illiberal practices. Thereafter the chapter explores avenues for future research in several interrelated areas in the social sciences to equip scholarship for studying the condition of unfreedom in a world “after liberty.”