Over the past three decades, there has been a much-discussed surge in support for populist figures, movements and parties in many European countries. This new form of political mobilization is anti-pluralist and anti-establishment in nature – that is, it tends to juxtapose a supposedly ‘pure’ people against a corrupt elite – and its adherents have a preference for direct over representative democracy. Beyond these few common traits, however, populist parties vary substantially in ideological terms. They range from radical left parties (like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain) to parties that are centrist, or at least claim to be (like ANO in the Czech Republic), to far-right parties (like the Freedom Party in Austria, Fidesz in Hungary, and the Rassemblement National – formerly the Front National – in France).
Numerous studies have sought to explain the electoral support for such parties, the ideological differences between them, and their impact upon policies and public discourse. However, most such studies have focused on a single country or – if they have gone beyond a single country – on either left- or right-wing populism but not both. They have typically assumed more or less uniform causation across different economic and political contexts. Only recently, and with limited success, have scholars sought to explain the substantial geographical variation in populism in Europe – that is, to answer the question of why different kinds of populist parties emerge in different places at different times.
This paper presents a theory of populism that can accommodate these differences. It argues that populism is a reaction to the distributional conflicts resulting from what has been called the ‘deconsolidation of the nation-state’. In particular, populism can be seen as a consequence of the accelerated economic, cultural and political integration that has taken place internationally since the 1990s, a process known as ‘hyperglobalization’. Within the European Union, this deep integration has gone substantially further than in the rest of the world.
By distinguishing between two elements of hyperglobalization – on the one hand the cross-border movement of goods and capital, and on the other the cross-border movement of people – the paper also argues that populist protest takes a form that depends on the particular kind of shock produced by hyperglobalization in each country or setting.
This argument, building on one first proposed by the trade economist Dani Rodrik, explains why right-wing populism has emerged in some countries in Europe while left-wing populism has predominated in others. When a shock from hyperglobalization manifests itself in the movement of people (i.e. as an immigration shock), right-wing populism tends to emerge. When such a shock manifests itself in the movement of goods and capital (for example, as a ‘sudden stop’ in foreign investment, as occurred in much of southern Europe during the eurozone crisis in 2010), left-wing populism tends to emerge. To take into account the impacts of different kinds of ‘shock’, the paper focuses on the consequences of economic openness, as well as on the combined effects of migration and welfare state generosity, on the rise of the populist vote.
The paper begins with an overview and critique of the existing literature. It then lays out the comparative argument – discussing basic features of labour markets, welfare states and growth models, all of which help to determine the vulnerabilities of individual European countries to the varying effects of hyperglobalization. Based on the differences in political and economic models that the paper highlights, it is possible to begin to explain the heterogeneity of populism in Europe – and thus to make sense of much of the political upheaval that has affected the continent during the past decade.
