How to Use illiberal in a Sentence

illiberal

adjective
  • The one problem with illiberal democracy is that there is no such thing.
    — Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, 23 Mar. 2021
  • That kind of state control may be over, even in illiberal Hungary.
    — Jason Farago, New York Times, 11 Jan. 2024
  • These are the sorts of illiberal ideas that have risen in popularity.
    — Richard K. Sherwin, Baltimore Sun, 19 Jan. 2024
  • The message was that being illiberal wouldn’t pay, and it was supposed to force other holdouts to come along.
    — Yoram Hazony, WSJ, 4 Aug. 2017
  • When illiberal forces are on the march, the education system is always in their sights.
    — Ruth Ben-Ghiat, CNN, 14 Oct. 2021
  • The question of whether India will be an illiberal great power thus remains open.
    — Ashley J. Tellis, Foreign Affairs, 17 June 2025
  • In the meantime, Xi has steered the country in even more illiberal direction.
    — Laignee Barron / Hong Kong, Time, 4 June 2019
  • Democrats and progressives slammed the move as inhumane and illiberal.
    — Matthew Continetti, National Review, 24 Apr. 2021
  • But, often, the trend was driven by a shift toward illiberal democracy.
    — Max Fisher, BostonGlobe.com, 16 Nov. 2021
  • Hungary remains a democracy in name, but an illiberal one in substance.
    — Alejandro Reyes, Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2026
  • At best, PiS’s illiberal reforms might be reversed by the next party that wins an election.
    — The Economist, 21 Apr. 2018
  • Saudi Arabia will not be the first illiberal regime to host the IGF.
    — Justin Ling, WIRED, 11 Oct. 2023
  • The consensus is that American politics was far more illiberal in our past than in our present.
    — Ezra Klein, Vox, 11 Dec. 2018
  • He was drawn to leaders across the world intent on centralizing power in new, illiberal models.
    — New York Times, 8 June 2021
  • But many of those worried over the state of campuses are almost resigned to the idea that the forces of illiberal intolerance have won.
    — Stuart Taylor Jr. and Edward Yingling, WSJ, 17 Oct. 2021
  • This coalition ran the gamut from the libertarian to the deeply illiberal, but its factions had enough in common for the top brass to keep things moving along.
    — The Economist, 19 Apr. 2018
  • This liberal Xanadu goes on to become a great kingdom and turns distinctly illiberal.
    — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 31 Jan. 2023
  • Obviously the fight is far from over; lots of illiberal Republicans won this week.
    — Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 12 Nov. 2022
  • An illiberal Israel would also become a pariah state.
    — Ilan Z. Baron, Foreign Affairs, 12 Aug. 2024
  • The future may see the rise of a conservative illiberal democracy.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 29 Oct. 2011
  • French sometimes points out, accurately but not germanely, that the British had been illiberal, too.
    — Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2025
  • Nevadans, the operative said, have not been immune to the illiberal rhetoric that has captured so many Americans.
    — Sue Halpern, The New Yorker, 20 Sep. 2022
  • America is often illiberal and reflexive at the moment, so Facebook and its users are, too.
    — The Editors, National Review, 6 May 2021
  • In the Western World, illiberal democracy and far-right nationalism are again on the rise.
    — Lincoln Michel, GQ, 17 Feb. 2018
  • The public deserves assurances that these abuses of power, and the equally illiberal means by which they were countered, will never happen again.
    — Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 18 Sep. 2021
  • But the road to the dismantling of this illiberal, anti-science, racist, and now antisemitic ideology promises to be long and hard.
    — Richard T. Bosshardt, National Review, 17 Apr. 2024
  • Her retrospective comes at a moment when an onslaught of illiberal forces in the big world dwarfs intellectual wrangles in the little one of art.
    — The New Yorker, 22 May 2017
  • In this light, illiberal governance offers advantages in the race to decarbonize.
    — William Burke-White, Time, 20 Nov. 2025
  • Warnings of a crisis of liberalism have become commonplace, as it is assailed by an illiberal right on the one side and a socialist left on the other.
    — Patrick Iber, The New Republic, 17 Dec. 2019
  • That’s why Fehér calls Orbán’s politics not illiberal, the word used by the prime minister, but post-fascist.
    — Isaac Stanley-Becker, The Atlantic, 10 Apr. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'illiberal.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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