Independent think tanks across Europe keep asking the same question: how do we respond to the illiberal surge without simply reacting to its latest provocation? Part of the answer is that we already know a great deal. A substantial, rigorous body of European research now exists on how radical-right and illiberal actors operate — how they organise, finance themselves, capture institutions, and reshape public discourse. The problem is less a knowledge deficit than a use deficit.

One recent project makes the point especially well. AUTHLIB — Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and the liberal democratic response, a Horizon Europe project coordinated by the CEU Democracy Institute, spent three years mapping illiberal movements across seven focus countries — Austria, Czechia, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy and Poland. It closed in January 2026 with a final conference fittingly titled Mapping the Illiberal Challenge, and it leaves behind an open library of papers and resources and, crucially, a comprehensive list of recommendations. This article offers a brief overview of its most important findings, inviting readers to go to the source.

A diagnosis, and a set of remedies

AUTHLIB’s central insight is that illiberalism in Europe is gradual, adaptive and increasingly networked — not a single movement but a varied field of traditionalist-religious, xenophobic-populist and non-populist right-wing actors, each mobilising different constituencies. Its second insight is even more useful for practitioners: because illiberalism advances through slow, cumulative processes that reshape discourse and institutions, the democratic response must be equally sustained and strategic, not merely defensive.

The most important findings

• Illiberalism is no longer a fringe. The cordon sanitaire is eroding, and the political centre is drifting rightward as mainstream conservatives adopt illiberal frames to compete for voters — normalising radical-right agendas even where those parties remain in opposition.
• The movement is transnational. An “Illiberal International” now exchanges strategy and legitimacy across borders. Think tanks such as Mathias Corvinus Collegium and Ordo Iuris act as “intellectual clearing houses,” translating American culture-war tactics into European legal language — sovereignty, national identity, subsidiarity.
• It builds a parallel ecosystem, not just a party. A “new wave” of illiberal institutions relies on an endowment model — large state-asset transfers rather than annual grants — to secure permanent financial independence, then “recruits” by creating parallel universities, bar associations and media regulators that manufacture their own “academic capital.” Note: It remains to be seen whether this model will survive the post-Orban era, as the former Hungarian PM invested the most in creating and maintaining these networks. 
• Culture and policy are weaponised gradually. Elite replacement in museums, theatres, and universities; single-textbook school systems; and “re-canonised” national culture reproduce illiberal narratives across generations.
• Welfare is used to buy loyalty. “Paradigmatic” reforms — child benefits, lower pension ages, family subsidies — are targeted at “deserving” native insiders while excluding immigrants and the poor, building durable electoral coalitions.
• Inequality is both cause and consequence. Illiberal leaders campaign on economic grievance but, across 120 countries, systematically worsen inequality — using culture-war issues to mask an economic agenda that rewards (new, emerging) elites, feeding a vicious feedback loop of resentment and demand for “strong” leadership.
• Fiction and rural spending are strategic tools. Far-right narratives travel through novels and popular culture, bypassing gatekeepers with “plausible deniability,” while targeted rural spending — as with Hungary’s Village Program — rewards loyal settlements, mobilises supporters, demobilises opponents and entrenches local clientelist networks.

On the response side, AUTHLIB is equally concrete. Its recommendations cluster around five moves: 1. Safeguarding and reforming institutions (judicial independence, media pluralism, conflict-of-interest rules); 2. Reclaiming democratic narratives by arguing that pluralism and checks are preconditions for popular sovereignty, not obstacles to it, and refusing to mimic far-right rhetoric as a plausible strategy; 3. Addressing the demand side through poverty alleviation and regional investment; 4. Building civic and digital literacy; and 5. Coordinating transnationally, including far greater transparency about the funding streams behind illiberal think tanks.

Why this matters for think tanks and policy institutes

For the think tank and policy-research community, AUTHLIB is both a mirror and a toolkit. It is a mirror because the illiberal playbook it documents is, in part, an institutional one: the other side has understood the strategic value of think tanks, ideologue-influencers, endowments and knowledge production, and has invested accordingly. Independent institutes are therefore not neutral bystanders in this contest but direct competitors for intellectual authority and public trust. It is a toolkit because the findings translate immediately into a research and advocacy agenda: tracing illiberal funding networks, monitoring the erosion of the cordon sanitaire, testing which counter-narratives resonate, and building the “counter-publics” the project calls for. Perhaps most valuably, AUTHLIB models what usable scholarship looks like: rigorous comparative research that ends not in another warning, but in an actionable list. The material is open and ready to be picked up.

Conclusion

The lesson is not that pro-democratic actors in Europe need more ‘wake-up’ calls about the rising power of the radical right, but that they need to put into practice serious, evidence-based knowledge of how illiberalism works to counter it. Projects like AUTHLIB have done the diagnostic work and drafted the prescriptions. The task now falls to think tanks, policy institutes and other organisations, along with their funders, to use them: to move democratic strategy from reaction to design. The research is on the shelves. Using it is the first act of resilience.

Based on a summary of the AUTHLIB project’s published papers (CEU Democracy Institute, Horizon Europe). For the full body of research, see the project resource library and the CEU Democracy Institute project page.

This paper was drafted with the help of three AI systems: NotebookLM, Claude and ChatGPT. These were used to create summaries of all AUTHLIB papers and reports and for language editing.

Goran Buldioski is a Senior Adviser at the On Think Tanks.

This article is part of Democracy under Pressure, a collaborative initiative by the European Policy Centre and On Think Tanks (OTT), supported by the Network of European Foundations. The initiative brings together think tank leaders across Europe to strengthen collaboration and develop practical responses to the challenges facing democratic, liberal and plural institutions. Explore the project page for more insights, meeting summaries and publications.

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