ABSTRACT
This chapter sheds light on illiberalism and its relationship to national sovereignty through drawing a comparison with liberalism’s relationship to national sovereignty. The immediate political context of the liberal regime today is typically the sovereign nation state. Equally, the immediate political context of the illiberal regime – in whose perspective liberal values are secondary and in at least some measure dispensable – is also the sovereign nation state. This is no coincidence. Liberalism and illiberalism alike identify sovereignty and nationalism as important enabling conditions, and there is sufficient overlap in the manner in which and the consequences with which those enabling conditions operate in these ostensibly contrasting regimes that there is inevitable seepage from one to the other. Illiberalism, then, should be considered as the shadow and temptation of liberalism, as much as its normative inverse and a reaction against it. The chapter concludes by assessing and comparing the apparently rising prospects of populist illiberalism today in both Central European and Western European states, keeping that close relationship with the liberal alternative in mind.
