The anti-establishment paradox: What America’s midterm revolt reveals about Sri Lanka’s NPP

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake with US President Donald Trump during the special dinner reception hosted by the latter at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel, for the heads of state who had arrived in New York to participate in the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025

From Washington to Colombo, movements elected to overturn the political establishment face a fundamental contradiction: the powers they once condemned become the instruments through which they govern. Their lasting significance depends not simply on how they exercise authority, but on whether they are willing to constrain it

Political movements rarely discover the deepest contradictions of their revolutions while fighting for power. Those contradictions emerge after victory, when the institutions they promised to transform become the instruments through which they govern. The electorate united by rejection of the old establishment begins to divide over what should replace it, while political authority once condemned as excessive becomes increasingly convenient to those who inherit it. The defining challenge of an anti-establishment Government is therefore not merely retaining public support, but overcoming the institutional incentives that can turn yesterday’s reformers into custodians of the system they opposed.

America’s November 2026 midterm elections expose the fragility of political mandates built around dissatisfaction. Democrats have secured control of both chambers of Congress, overturning Republican dominance through victories extending into traditionally conservative states, including Texas, Kansas and South Carolina. Two years after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, voters have fundamentally altered the balance of political power in Washington. Frustration over living costs, the war with Iran and presidential authority contributed to the reversal. Yet its significance extends beyond Trump’s political fortunes. It demonstrates how electoral coalitions assembled around dissatisfaction can weaken when governing exposes the competing expectations beneath them.

For Sri Lanka, the comparison raises a more consequential question. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) Government emerged from the economic catastrophe of 2022 promising not merely different political leadership, but a transformation of the structures associated with corruption, impunity and economic mismanagement. Its historic mandate represented a profound rejection of conventional politics. Two years later, the challenge is whether that rejection can produce enduring institutional change, or whether the practical demands of governing will gradually reconcile reformers to the powers they once sought to dismantle.

Trump and Dissanayake are not ideological equivalents. One leads a conservative nationalist movement in the world’s largest economy; the other heads a left-leaning coalition governing a heavily indebted developing state. Their circumstances and constitutional systems differ fundamentally. What connects them is a structural dilemma: anti-establishment movements can acquire extraordinary electoral authority without acquiring an equally coherent mandate over how that authority should be exercised.

The electoral mandate that conceals its contradictions

The NPP’s November 2024 parliamentary victory transformed Sri Lanka’s political landscape. Having secured just three seats in 2020, it won 159 of Parliament’s 225 seats four years later, attracting 6.86 million votes and 61.56% of valid ballots. Yet the scale of this victory concealed the diversity of the electorate behind it. Economically distressed households, professionals demanding competent administration, younger voters seeking opportunity and citizens determined to prevent the return of political figures associated with the crisis converged around a common rejection of the established order.

Their agreement about what had failed did not necessarily constitute agreement about what should follow. Fiscal consolidation, taxation, public-sector reform and redistribution impose different burdens on different constituencies. Electoral movements can unite voters by postponing these disagreements; Governments must eventually confront them.

This distinction between a negative electoral consensus and a positive governing settlement explains an important vulnerability of anti-establishment politics. The former identifies what voters collectively reject; the latter requires Governments to reconcile competing interests. Political scientist V.O. Key’s work on retrospective voting provides a useful framework: citizens assess incumbents partly through their experience of Government rather than their initial ideological commitments. Once elected, reformist movements gradually lose the ability to define themselves through their predecessors’ failures.

Sri Lanka’s May 2025 local elections illustrated the conditional nature of electoral support. The NPP remained the leading political force, securing 4,503,930 votes and 43.26% of valid ballots, compared with 61.56% in the preceding parliamentary election. Differences in turnout, candidates and electoral incentives prevent the results from being treated as a direct measure of declining national support. Nevertheless, the extraordinary parliamentary coalition was not automatically reproducible.

America’s midterms reveal a related mechanism. Trump’s 2024 coalition combined committed ideological supporters with voters motivated by inflation, immigration and dissatisfaction with the previous administration. The Democratic advance does not establish a permanent ideological realignment. It demonstrates that coalitions formed through shared grievances remain vulnerable when governing outcomes fail to reconcile competing expectations.

When economic recovery fails to restore political confidence

Economic conditions expose these contradictions with particular force. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted immediately before the American midterms found that 48% of registered voters identified living costs as their principal electoral concern, compared with 26% citing democratic norms and 13% immigration. Nearly half reported that their household finances had deteriorated since Trump’s return. Even amid disputes concerning presidential authority and foreign policy, material insecurity remained central to electoral judgment.

Sri Lanka faces a different but equally revealing problem. The World Bank’s October 2026 Sri Lanka Development Update reports economic growth of 4.7% during the first half of the year, with real GDP returning to pre-crisis levels. Growth is projected at 4.4% for 2026, reflecting macroeconomic stabilisation, fiscal consolidation and recovering economic activity. These are consequential achievements following the sovereign default and economic dislocation of 2022.

Yet the same assessment estimates poverty at 16.9% in 2025, substantially above pre-crisis levels. Household incomes and labour-market conditions have recovered more slowly than aggregate output, while renewed inflationary pressures have weakened purchasing power.

This produces a recovery–legitimacy gap: the distance between improvements Governments demonstrate statistically and progress citizens experience materially. Governments measure recovery through growth, fiscal performance and debt sustainability; households experience it through wages, prices, employment and financial security. Both assessments can be accurate simultaneously, but political legitimacy increasingly depends on whether aggregate recovery translates into visible improvements in daily life.

Verité Research’s July 2026 Mood of the Nation survey illustrates this divergence. Government approval stood at approximately 50%, down from 65% in February. The proportion believing economic conditions were improving fell from 64% to 42%, while 56% described current conditions as poor. These findings do not establish an inevitable electoral trajectory, but demonstrate that macroeconomic improvement need not produce equivalent political confidence.

The NPP inherited exceptional fiscal constraints, and abandoning stabilisation for immediate popularity could undermine recovery itself. Nevertheless, economic inheritance cannot indefinitely determine political accountability. As Governments remain in office, citizens increasingly judge them through present conditions rather than the failures of previous administrations. Stabilisation may restore financial credibility; durable legitimacy requires productive employment, rising real incomes and economic opportunity.

The institutional inheritance trap

The deeper contradiction concerns political authority itself. Anti-establishment movements gain legitimacy by condemning executive overreach, political privilege and institutions vulnerable to manipulation. Once elected, they inherit those same constitutional and administrative powers. Authority previously portrayed as an obstacle to democracy becomes a convenient instrument for implementing the Government’s program.

This is the institutional inheritance trap: Governments elected to constrain political power may discover that retaining inherited authority makes governing easier than reforming it.

The mechanism is not necessarily personal hypocrisy. It is an institutional incentive. Centralised authority can accelerate decisions, reduce bargaining costs and facilitate reforms that fragmented institutions might obstruct. Governments confronting economic crises may reasonably conclude that dismantling executive powers before establishing viable alternatives could generate instability.

Yet this creates a dilemma. If concentrated authority is continually justified by the need to complete reforms, the promised transformation can become dependent on preserving precisely the powers it was intended to restrict. Temporary necessity risks evolving into permanent political convenience.

Sri Lanka’s executive presidency illustrates this tension. The NPP’s 2024 manifesto promised a new constitution and abolition of the executive presidential system. The Government has reaffirmed that commitment, with Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya explaining that constitutional reform requires examining existing proposals, developing a new constitutional framework and undertaking public consultation. Nevertheless, abolition remains unrealised, and a definitive timetable has not been publicly established.

In September 2026, Parliament passed the 22nd Amendment by 158 votes to 63, increasing the retirement ages of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges and expanding the latter court. The amendment demonstrated the Government’s capacity to advance constitutional legislation, although it did not address the abolition of executive presidential authority.

Constitutional transformation undeniably requires careful design, including decisions concerning parliamentary stability, devolution and electoral representation. Delay does not itself establish abandoned intentions. The relevant distinction is whether postponement is accompanied by a credible process, transparent milestones and meaningful public scrutiny, or whether continued possession of executive authority gradually becomes an end in itself.

The NPP’s record also resists simplistic declarations of institutional failure. The Proceeds of Crime Act, amendments to the National Audit Act and repeal of statutory entitlements for former presidents represent concrete reforms. Their enduring significance, however, depends on consistent enforcement and institutions capable of holding officeholders accountable irrespective of political affiliation.

Counterterrorism legislation presents a more contested test. The Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, gazetted in September 2026 as a proposed replacement for the Prevention of Terrorism Act, contains certain procedural improvements. However, the Centre for Policy Alternatives has argued that provisions involving executive detention, broad definitions and restrictions on fundamental freedoms risk perpetuating weaknesses of the previous framework.

The disagreement concerns whether legislative reform meaningfully constrains coercive authority or merely modifies the procedures through which inherited powers operate. Changing officeholders alters who possesses authority; transforming institutions determines how that authority can be exercised, challenged and restrained.

Why America’s constitutional system changes the calculation

The American comparison becomes most instructive through the differences between the two constitutional systems.

The United States allows voters to redistribute legislative authority without removing the president. Democratic control of Congress will constrain aspects of Trump’s legislative agenda and strengthen opportunities for congressional oversight when the newly elected Congress convenes in January 2027. The president retains substantial executive authority, including veto powers, but must operate alongside a separately elected legislature controlled by political opponents.

Sri Lanka possesses no equivalent nationwide congressional midterm mechanism. Its presidential and parliamentary mandates operate through different electoral arrangements, making judicial independence, parliamentary scrutiny, autonomous commissions and public auditing particularly important between national elections.

Neither arrangement guarantees accountability. Divided Government can produce legislative paralysis, while concentrated parliamentary authority can facilitate necessary reforms. The distinction is that the two constitutional systems distribute incentives for institutional restraint differently.

In America, an electoral reversal can introduce additional checks on executive power during a presidential term. In Sri Lanka, where the NPP commands a two-thirds parliamentary majority, the Government’s capacity to implement reform is accompanied by greater responsibility for establishing safeguards that restrain its own authority.

This produces the article’s central constitutional paradox: the parliamentary strength that makes systemic reform achievable can simultaneously reduce the political pressure to undertake it. The more effectively a governing coalition consolidates authority, the less immediately necessary institutional self-restraint may appear.

The distinction is therefore between reforms Governments can implement because they possess concentrated power and reforms that prevent future Governments from exercising that power arbitrarily. The former strengthens governing capacity; the latter strengthens the constitutional order.

The danger of political dissatisfaction without an alternative

A further difference concerns Opposition politics. America’s two-party competition provided dissatisfied voters with an established electoral vehicle capable of assuming congressional control. Sri Lanka’s opposition remains fragmented, with prominent parties carrying associations with previous administrations and facing difficulties establishing a convincing alternative program.

Consequently, dissatisfaction with the Government need not translate into support for its opponents. Where citizens remain unconvinced by available alternatives, disillusionment may instead manifest through abstention, political disengagement or declining confidence in representative institutions.

This matters particularly for the NPP because its original mandate emerged from a broader crisis of confidence in conventional politics. If expectations of institutional transformation remain unmet, the consequences could extend beyond one administration’s popularity to public confidence in democratic change itself.

The real test of political transformation

America’s midterms do not predict Sri Lanka’s political future. The countries possess fundamentally different political institutions, and the NPP retains substantial public support alongside identifiable economic and legislative achievements. The comparison instead illuminates a broader democratic problem: movements elected through rejection must eventually convert that rejection into a governing settlement capable of surviving changes in political leadership.

For Sri Lanka, economic recovery and institutional transformation are inseparable. Recovery without enforceable accountability risks preserving vulnerabilities associated with previous failures, while constitutional reform without improvements in livelihoods risks disappointing citizens whose demands for political change emerged from economic insecurity.

The lasting significance of the NPP’s mandate should therefore be measured through more than electoral dominance, economic indicators or the personal integrity of present officeholders. It depends on whether institutional safeguards become sufficiently independent to restrain Governments that may not share the reformist commitments of those who established them.

The fundamental contradiction confronting anti-establishment Governments is that electoral victory transfers the very powers reformers once condemned. Their most enduring achievement would be to establish a political order in which accountability no longer depends on the character or intentions of those exercising authority.

Sri Lanka’s transformation will ultimately be measured not by how decisively the NPP displaced the previous establishment, but by how much less power any future establishment will be able to abuse.

(The author is an International Relations student at Monash University whose writing explores politics, governance, and international affairs)