In this policy brief, human rights and criminal lawyer Mikołaj Pietrzak argues that Poland's ruling party is implementing a programme of deep constitutional, social, and political change, including limitations on the role of the judiciary, which poses a threat to the constitutionally enshrined separation of powers in the fledgling democracy.

In this policy brief, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser takes a comparative approach to challenge the conventional wisdom that populism, by virtue of its ambivalent relationship with constitutionalism, represents a threat to democracy.

One of the driving principles behind the contemporary populist vision of democracy is to no longer respect legal boundaries and constitutional constraints to the so-called ‘will of the people’.

Through analysis of the contemporary Italian political situation, this policy brief addresses a number of critical constitutional strains caused by populism, including:

In this policy brief, Cas Mudde of the University of Georgia sets out a definition for populism and argues that, contrary to claims by the Tea Party and other populist movements around the world, populism is in fact theoretically opposed to constitutionalism. He reasons that, while populism is essentially democratic, by adopting a form of extreme majoritarianism, it is contrary to the limits placed on both popular sovereignty and majority rule that are integral to constitutional principles.