Hollowing out the state: the return of corporatism to European politics

One of the results of the recent illiberal turn in European politics has been growing state capture that leads to the breakdown of the supervisory institutions of democracy. In this blog, Roch Dunin-Wasowicz (LSE) argues that some of Europe's authoritarian populists have succeeded, or are planning to, take control of both public and private media, as well as civil society, academic and state-adjacent sectors of the economy. This return of corporatism to European politics is one of the symptoms of the breakdown of substantive democracy on the continent.