Far‐right parties gain in electoral support across the globe. Studies describe this phenomenon either as a cultural backlash or as a reaction to growing economic inequality. The economic inequality perspective suggests that the transforming workforce in post‐industrial societies gives rise to economic insecurity among those who feel left behind. In contrast, the cultural backlash thesis argues that the increasing support for far‐right parties represents a rejection of values such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. More recent scholarship sought to show how economic and cultural factors combined increase the support for the far right. Most of these studies investigate public opinion polls, voting behaviour, and voters´ socio‐economic contexts. This paper reviews these studies and argues that the way in which far‐right political parties construct an interconnection of economic and cultural ideas in discourse is largely neglected in the existing body of literature. The paper concludes that the concept of economic nationalism captures how these two components are intertwined; economic nationalist discourse in far‐right political manifestos and speeches provides a more complete comprehension how public opinion is being shaped. This contribution offers a starting point for future studies to examine how cultural values, such as nationalism, reconstruct and influence articulation of economic policy.

Economic policymaking shifted away from neoliberal ideals towards ‘crisis’ Keynesianism during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a comparative process tracing approach to examine how political and economic actors in Britain, Germany and the USA attempt to legitimise a potential return to neoliberalism to voters. We show that pro-neoliberal actors discursively construct a ‘crisis’ of COVID-Keynesianism by associating it with rising inflation and ‘unsustainable’ levels of government spending. Whilst emphasising key neoliberal policies of maintaining low inflation and fiscal conservativism to establish a return to ‘normal’ neoliberal policymaking. Therefore, we explain how the neoliberal policy paradigm reasserts itself when challenged.

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How and to what extent does far-right populism impact the nation-specific implementation of neoliberal policymaking? While scholarship convincingly demonstrated the importance of ideas and the political agents propagating neoliberal ideas in policy paradigmatic shifts, there is little investigation of the role that far-right populists play in economic policy change. Exploring the ideational power and impact of far-right populism in neoliberal policymaking provides an important insight into how neoliberal political economies enact nationalist cultural exclusion. The paper traces the process through which the Austrian Freedom Party’s ideational trajectory evolved in post-war Austria and how it impacted the political mainstream. The analysis draws from the party’s discourse in manifestos, interviews, and other publications in the period 1956–2006. The results show how the specific far-right populist actor, the Austrian Freedom Party, played a significant role in rendering neoliberal ideas viable as policy option early on and ultimately constructing the neoliberal exclusionary state. By empirically showcasing how political actors from the fringes of the political spectrum can impact economic policy change, this presents an important contribution to the study of paradigm shifts, which predominantly focused on major national political actors. In light of the recent rise of far-right populism in Europe and beyond, this raises important questions for the continuity and change of the global paradigmatic dominance of neoliberalism.