Ford School faculty have been among the experts helping the public make sense of some of the key questions about political developments in DC: What actions are the new Administration taking? What do these actions mean for various stakeholders? What steps might come next among the complex set of players in our political system? How can we put the Administration's actions in historical and international context?
Four faculty members share their expertise with State & Hill readers on four pressing topics, as of March 2025: tariffs, executive action, state capacity, and populist far-right expansions in established democracies.
By Charlotte Cavaillé, assistant professor of public policy
A large and growing number of voters have found in political figures like Trump, Meloni, Orban, and Le Pen a home to express their grievances over the state of the economy, their own socioeconomic status, and immigration control.
These political leaders tend to share a set of policy goals, from closed borders and immigration control to economic nationalism and welfare chauvinism. They present themselves as crusaders against what they argue is the cultural hegemony of “looney lefty liberal” values. They also share a personalistic style of politics. Finally, while they accept a bare-bones version of majoritarian democracy, they reject liberal democracy (in the philosophical sense), which includes an independent judiciary and media, constitutional rights for minorities, and a strong legislative branch buttressed by a professional state bureaucracy.
In that sense, President Trump’s success is not unique and belongs to the post-Great Recession wave of populist far-right (PFR) expansion in established democracies.
What happens when a PFR leader gains control of the executive branch through democratic means? Institutions matter.
In countries with parliamentary systems with proportional representation, where no single party controls the legislative branch and coalition governments are the norm, the PFR’s success can provide the impulse for the formation of a new conservative coalition that merges traditional conservatism with an anti-immigration agenda. Let's call this the Meloni scenario.
Where electoral rule is similar to that found in the U.S. (one seat per district and a plurality rule), PFR candidates’ electoral success tends to be limited until their vote share is large enough to replace the mainstream conservative party. In this scenario, the legislative branch is dramatically weakened, and PFR leaders can use their access to the executive branch to consolidate their power and change institutions for personal (material and/or ideological) gains. Let's call this the Orban scenario.
The U.S. seems to be in an Orban scenario.
Like Orban, Trump and his team are moving quickly to undermine or capture federal courts. Like Orban, they have engaged in mass firing of civil servants, gutting the bureaucracy, and putting an end to agency independence. "
Charlotte Cavaillé
Like Orban, they have used state funds to weaken potential sources of opposition, especially universities. Finally, like Orban, they have created strawman accusations (e.g., DEI and antisemitism) to frame some as deviating from shared American values of tolerance and meritocracy. This mode of justification is made powerful by the fact that it is rooted in real grievances and concerns.
But the U.S. is not Hungary, so Orban’s success is unlikely to be replicated as such in the United States. Why? Federalism (the complex structure by which every area is governed by a state as well as the federal government) is the answer. First, because of federalism, it is really hard to impose any coherent project; Trump will succeed in some areas and not others, and there will be no clean slate like in Hungary. Second, the opposition is sustained by the ability to organize at lower levels of government, something that does not exist in Hungary. Third, it is hard to modify the U.S. Constitution, partly because of federalism; in other words, unlike Orban, Trump will have a hard time turning this country into a “legal” autocracy. Fourth, because federalism imposes many delays, this leaves time for a very potent backlash channel to be activated, namely a recession and usually disengaged voters showing up at the voting booth and casting their vote against the incumbent party.
While the U.S. is not Hungary, and no two countries are the same, the parallels are striking. Let’s hope the Republican leadership, faced with voter discontent, helps put the Meloni scenario back on the table.
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