The Global Political Economy of Right-wing Populism: Deconstructing the Paradox

ABSTRACT

The rise of right-wing populism should be studied as a truly global phenomenon. Domestic and regional contexts are obviously crucial, yet a narrow focus on the domestic realm fails to capture some of the key constituents and paradoxical features of the rise and resilience of right-wing populist projects around the world. Therefore, right-wing populism and the way its contradictions are ‘managed’ ought to be understood within the context of mutual interactions between: 1) an economy-identity nexus and 2) a domestic-foreign policy nexus. A critical review of six controversial aspects of right-wing populism in the global North and global South is used to substantiate this main argument.

KEYWORDS:

• right-wing populism
• inequality
• left-wing populism
• economic grievances
• cultural backlash

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Berk Emre Çelik, Simay Küçükkolbaşı and Hande Özkayağan for their able assistance. We also thank the referees and editors of the journal for their valuable comments and excellent suggestions.

Notes

¹ The illustrative examples in this article exclude far-right parties in established democracies, although they are ideologically part of the same family and exert a deep impact on the strategies of centre-right parties in their domestic politics, swinging the political pendulum towards the right.

² ‘Performance legitimacy’ is related to the competence of the illiberal-authoritarian governments to ensure “economic growth, national accomplishments in science and technology, military achievements, or successful public-infrastructure projects” (Foa 2018, 136-7).

³ Turkey transitioned to a Russian-style hyper-presidential system with a referendum in 2017, which resulted in over-accumulation of political power and further weakening of institutional checks and balances. The erosion of the rule of law, dismantling of independent regulatory institutions and failure to transition from a construction-based extractive growth model to high-technology production conditioned the institutional aspects of the recent economic crisis in the country. For details, see Öniş (2019) and Kutlay (2019).

⁴ An alternative strand of literature criticises the “economic grievances” argument by advancing the hypothesis that right-wing populism should best be understood as a “cultural backlash” against post-materialist values, that is, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism (Inglehart and Norris 2017). Gidron and Hall (2017) also frame populism as a “social integration problem”.

⁵ The Gini coefficient is a single number that takes a value between 0 and 1 – the higher the value, the greater the degree of income inequality.

⁶ In the European context, migration rather than inequality has been the main driver that has fuelled the rise of far-right parties (Eichengreen 2018, 135-40).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ziya Öniş

Ziya Öniş is Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of International Relations at Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Mustafa Kutlay

Mustafa Kutlay is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London, United Kingdom. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @mmkutlay