The people vs. the academy: Populist leaders and the erosion of academic freedom (1900–2020)

Abstract

Populist leadership has become an increasingly salient force in global politics, raising concerns about its consequences for democratic institutions and the autonomy of knowledge production. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the impact of populist leadership on academic freedom across 60 countries from 1900 to 2020. Using the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) and data on populist leaders, it employs cross‑national time‑series analyses to test whether populist governance erodes intellectual autonomy. The results show that populist leaders—regardless of ideological orientation—significantly reduce academic freedom, though the deterioration is more pronounced under right‑wing variants. Disaggregated analyses reveal that all five dimensions of academic freedom decline during populist rule, with freedom of academic and cultural expression experiencing the steepest contraction. These effects persist even after accounting for economic development, education, and democracy. The findings suggest that right‑wing populists, driven by nationalist and moral‑conservative ideologies rooted in social and cultural control, curtail academic freedom through direct political intervention, whereas left‑wing populists, motivated by redistributive ideologies grounded in socio‑economic agendas, constrain it more subtly by incorporating universities into state bureaucratic structures and aligning them with government policy priorities. Given these findings, policies should prioritize strengthening legal protections, institutional safeguards, and international monitoring to preserve academic autonomy against the political and institutional encroachments of populist leaders.