The Global Economics of European Populism: Growth Regimes and Party System Change in Europe (TheGovernment and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2017)

Abstract

The expanding literature on growth regimes has recently been applied to explain the growth of populist movements across the OECD. Such applications posit a stand-off between debtors and creditors as the core conflict that generates populism. While insightful, the theory has problems explaining why, in some European countries, such movements pre-date both the global financial crisis and the austerity measures that followed, factors that are commonly seen as causing the rise of populism. This article takes a different tack. It derives shifts in both political parties and party systems from the growth regime framework. In doing so it seeks to explain the evolution of the cartel form of party that dominated the political systems of Europe from the late 1990s through to the current period and why that form proved unable to respond meaningfully to both the financial crisis and the political crisis that followed it.

Beyond economic insecurity and cultural backlash: Economic nationalism and the rise of the far right

“…The view that populist movements arise from factors concerning a countries´political economy is also supported by Hopkin and Blyth (2018), who study the rise of the populism across all OECD countries. They show how European populism, including right-wing populism, is a reaction to the neoliberal growth model by analysing party positions, electoral performance, and patterns of economic growth and income distribution.…”

“…Depending on how market economies distribute income, wealth, and risk certain populist movements are more or less successful. The authors thus argue that “populist forces, in their different guises, share the ambition to use government to respond to popular demands, through economic and social policies to protect the population, or part of it, from the inequality and insecurity generated by markets” (Hopkin & Blyth, : 16).…”

“…The longest standing scholarly explanation for this phenomenon is that economic insecurity fosters the electorate's political resentment and thus urges them to elect far‐right parties. These insecurities stem from economic crisis (Kriesi & Pappas, ), structural economic changes such as the rise of new technologies, new economic regulations, de‐industrialisation, and the transformation “traditional” class positions and their power (Bell, ; Lipset, ), economic shocks caused through further integration of the world economy (Ballard‐Rosa, Malik, Rickard, & Scheve, ), or a country's status as either creditor or debtor (Hopkin & Blyth, ). Thus, this explanatory strand sees economic grievances, insecurities, and inequalities as main cause for rising support of these parties.…”

The Political Economy of Populism

“…From the mid-1940s, however, the relationship changed, and the correlation became negative. In political science, this is explained by the changing "growth regimes" (Hopkin and Blyth, 2019). Hopkin and Blyth (2019, p. 194) argue that "the macroeconomic regime that governed the markets of the advanced capitalist democracies from the end of the Second World War until the mid-1970s produced a growth model that was particularly favorable to labor."…”

Crisis Neoliberal, Políticas Del Desconcierto y Autoritarismos Populistas

“…Las consecuencias de la depresión post2007 han provocado un gran estrés en las economías, pero también en las sociedades y estructuras políticas. El anterior sistema de partidos y de instituciones no ha gestionado bien esta larga crisis (Hopkin & Blyth, 2018) que ha empobrecido gran parte de la población. Ello ofrece una oportunidad histórica a nuevos movimientos sociales y liderazgos políticos que han irrumpido con fuerza generando respuestas crecientemente iliberales (Rodrik, 2012 y 2018) y fuera del marco tradicional.…”