Does populism influence academic freedom? A cross-national study of Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

• In Event: Examining internationalization and regionalization in higher education

Proposal

Recent attacks on academic freedom across the world have garnered attention of both researchers and the general public (Douglass, 2021; Ginsburg, 2022; Lerch et al., n.d.). In Hungary, Viktor Orban has waged a long-lasting campaign against the Central European University, a U.S.-chartered institution (Corbett & Gordon, 2018). In Russia, universities have dismissed academics who criticize Vladimir Putin’s regime (Chirikov & Fedyukin, 2021). These attacks have occurred as the governments in these countries turned more populist. In fact, scholars discuss the rise of populism as one potential reason for curtailment of academic freedoms across the world (Reyes-Galindo, 2023; Väliverronen & Saikkonen, 2021).

Why might populist leaders be keen on restricting academic freedom? Politicians use a variety of means available to them to garner more power (Parsons, 1963). During the so-called “post-truth era,” politicians increasingly resort to lies and exaggerations for electoral gain (Davis, 2017). This bombastic and often untruthful rhetoric is especially characteristic of populist leaders (Viviani, 2017). These politicians might see scholars as a threat, because academics have an ability and expertise to point out those lies, thus potentially delegitimizing leaders’ authority (Gibbs, 2019). Additionally, under populist rule, the public itself becomes more polarized and starts seeing academics as an elite, ivory-tower group that is out-of-touch with reality and the problems of “common people” (Roberts, 2022; Viviani, 2017). Moreover, because university faculty tend to have a certain degree of freedom regarding how they design curriculum and the topics they discuss in classrooms, they are often perceived as a group trying to perpetuate a specific liberal agenda onto young impressionable minds, which causes consternation on behalf of the leaders and the general public (Burmila, 2021). While some case studies propose that there is a relationship between populism and academic freedom (Reyes-Galindo, 2023; Väliverronen & Saikkonen, 2021), to the best of our knowledge, no study has examined this relationship empirically while tracking changes in populism and academic freedom over time across multiple contexts. Given the literature above, we hypothesize the following:

H1: An increase in populism is associated with a decrease in academic freedom.

To test our hypothesis, we employ over-time variation in academic freedom and populism. We collect our academic freedom measures, as well as our control variables, from the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) dataset. To test the robustness of our results, we employ several measures of academic freedom as our dependent variables. First, we use a general measure, called the Academic Freedom Index. This measure is formed using a Bayesian factor analysis model that incorporates the following indicators: freedom to research and teach (“To what extent are scholars free to develop and pursue their own research and teaching agendas without interference?”); freedom of academic exchange and dissemination (“To what extent are scholars free to exchange and communicate research ideas and findings?”); institutional autonomy (“To what extent do universities exercise institutional autonomy in practice?”); campus integrity (“To what extent are campuses free from politically motivated surveillance or security infringements?”); and freedom of academic and cultural expression (“Is there academic freedom and freedom of cultural expression related to political issues?”). In order to examine whether populism might exert a particularly strong influence on specific dimensions of academic freedom, we also analyze each of these subcomponents as separate dependent variables. We also examine another dependent variable based on V-DEM’s “academics as critics” measure, which is an additional indicator not incorporated in the overall index (“To what extent do scholars and university students publicly criticize government policies?”). To garner answers to the questions above that form our dependent variables, V-DEM uses a pool of country experts, typically 5 experts per country-year observation.

Regarding our independent variable, populism, we use a measure produced by Grzymala-Busse and McFaul (2020). This measure captures the vote share received by a populist party or candidate in a given country in a given year. The dataset includes countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and spans years 1916 to 2019. In this dataset, a party or a politician is defined as populist if they make claims that 1) the elite is corrupt and fails to represent the people and 2) if the party and/or the politician claims to represent the people or the nation rather than a narrow interest of some group.

We also control for country-level characteristics, including the strength of democracy, GDP per capita, population, total number of universities, and the average level of education among citizens. To examine our hypothesis, we use regression models with country and year fixed effects. We also make sure that multicollinearity is not affecting our results by conducting a VIF test, the results of which indicate that our VIF indicators are all within an acceptable range.

Our results show that an increase in the percentage of populist vote is associated with a decrease in the overall academic freedom index and every subcomponent of it, as well as “academics as critics” indicator. Thus, our hypothesis is supported.

By the time of the annual meeting, we plan to include a few additional control variables in our analyses, such as whether the country is affected by conflict and the level of liberalism (distinct from democracy). We also plan to examine another independent variable, whether the country is run by a populist leader (in addition to percentage of votes that populist parties garnered that we currently examine).

Our results are highly relevant to the present moment in history and the conference theme. With more populist leaders coming to power, our findings provide longitudinal, cross-national evidence to support international declarations about the importance of protecting academic freedom. Attacks on academic freedom can make academics less willing and able to push back against the misinformation propagated by populist leaders and parties, thus causing a feedback loop between decreases in academic freedom and increases in populism.

Authors

• Volha Chykina, University of Richmond

• Frank Fernandez, University of Florida