Anthoula Malkopoulou

Anthoula Malkopoulou is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, specialised in democratic thought, conceptual history, the ethics of voting, populism and responses to extremism. She is the author of The History of Compulsory Voting in Europe (2015) and co-editor of Militant Democracy and its Critics (2019), Her forthcoming book Theories of Democratic Self-Defence won the 2022 York Political Theory Manuscript Award.

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I work as Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at Uppsala University since January 2022 (Docent, 2018). In 2020-21, I held the same position at Lund University, from where I am on part-time leave in 2022.

I graduated from the University of Jyväskylä in 2011. From 2012 until 2019, I worked in Uppsala as Researcher and Adjunct Lecturer, and was awarded several fellowships, including the Seeger Fellowship at Princeton University (2019) and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (2014-16). I have been a Visiting Professor in Adelaide, Helsinki, Dublin, Athens, Rome, Berlin, serve as steering group member of the ECPR Standing Group on Political Concepts and as member of the editorial team of Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory.

My main fields of research are contemporary democratic theory, history of political thought, constitutional theory and discourse analysis. I am especially interested in political representation, populism, parliamentarism, and voting rights and have published extensively on compulsory voting, and responses to far-right parties.

My publications include The History of Compulsory Voting in Europe (Routledge, 2015), Militant Democracy and its Critics (ed., 2019), Equality and Representation (ed., 2018) and Rhetoric, Politics and Conceptual Change (ed., 2011). I have also published numerous papers, among them “Three Models of Democratic Self-defense” (Political Studies, 2018) and “The Politics of Voter Presence” (International Political Science Review, 2020).

My forthcoming book on varieties of democratic self-defence is under contract with Oxford University Press.

I currently work on four research projects:

Dilemmas of Democratic Self-Defence in European Public Broadcasting, funded by the Swedish Research Council (2021-23)

Populism and Democratic Defence in Europe, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (2020-23)

Democratic Self-defense: The Social Model, funded by the MM Wallenberg Foundation (2019-22)

Contributivism, funded by the Swedish Research Council (2019-23).

I am available for public commentary on topics related to Democracy, Populism, Participation, Parties, and South Europe.

For more info and updates, check my personal website.

My main research areas are democratic self-defence and militant democracy, the theory of representative institutions such as compulsory voting, sortition and the ancient practice of ostracism, and related issues in democratic theory, political ethics, and rhetoric.

In 2015, I published my first monograph combining political thought and voting ethics, The History of Compulsory Voting in Europe: Democracy's Duty? (Routledge). The book examines the contemporary discourse on mandatory voting in light of relevant debates in 19th and 20th century France, and argues that high voter turnout has been historically seen, among other, as an institutional barrier to extremist parties. You can read a book review here.

My upcoming book is a study of contemporary democratic theory and extremism. Titled Theories of Democratic Self-Defence, it focuses on the norms of exclusion, toleration and integration that drive the primary approaches to dealing with far-right parties. The book is under contract with Oxford University Press and has been awarded the York Political Theory Manuscript Workshop Award in 2022.

I have also published peer-reviewed articles in political-science journals (International Political Science Review, Political Studies, Comparative European Politics, Australian Journal of Political Science, Acta Politica), political-theory journals (Constellations, Redescriptions, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy), journals of history of ideas (History of European Ideas, History of Political Thought) and law journals (European Constitutional Law Review).

I have co-edited the following volumes: Militant Democracy and its Critics (with Alexander Kirshner, 2019), Equal Representation (with Lisa Hill, 2016), and Rhetoric, Politics and Conceptual Change (with Kari Palonen, 2011).