This work examines the electoral successes of anti-system forces in the rich democracies. It explains the rise of anti-system politicians and parties in terms of two separate but closely related developments: the rise of economic inequality and insecurity over the last four decades, and the failure of technocratic elites to address them.
This work examines the electoral successes of anti-system forces in the rich democracies. It explains the rise of anti-system politicians and parties in terms of two separate but closely related developments: the rise of economic inequality and insecurity over the last four decades, and the failure of technocratic elites to address them.
Zugriffsoptionen:
Die folgenden Links führen aus den jeweiligen lokalen Bibliotheken zum Volltext:
The vote for Brexit is not an isolated event, but part of a wave of populist, anti-elite revolts: a new 'anti-system' politics Western democracies are experiencing, shaking the existing consensus around economic integration, free markets and liberal values. This wave takes a variety of forms, but has in common a robust, even violent, rejection of the mainstream political elites and their values, and a demand for governments to act on the sources of social and economic distress and inequality. This article views Brexit as a part of this new anti-system politics, a reaction to the decline in ideological competition in democracies and the increasing impotence of politicians to address the upheavals wrought by global free market capitalism. This reaction has become particularly acute after the financial crisis of the late 2000s, which affected Britain disproportionately, and the failure of austerity policies to revive growth, crystallising the ineffectiveness of existing policies to deal with economic stagnation and cultural change. This policy failure is compounded by a perceived refusal of politicians to engage with the broader public and a lack of real choice between the mainstream political parties. The article will present evidence that a failed policy consensus, a rise in inequality and a decline in the representativeness of political elites, rather than a resurgence of intolerance or xenophobia, are the principal causes of the Brexit vote.
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.
[T]he financial crisis can be best understood as the final catastrophic stage of a process of dismantling the protective institutions that made Western European capitalism politically sustainable …
The recent rise of populism is a culmination of long-term trends. As the established parties converged on economic orthodoxies, they lost their hold on changing electorate.
In this introduction to the special issue "The New Politics of Inequality in Europe," recent literature on income inequality in the advanced democracies is summarized. It is argued that dominant accounts are too heavily focused on the United States, whereas the experience of Western European countries has been neglected. Although income inequality has risen nearly everywhere in the rich industrial democracies since the end of the 1970s, it has done so from different starting points, at different rates, and for reasons connected to different mechanisms and different parts of the distribution. Extending the analysis to Western Europe enables us to understand these variations more fully.
Since 1970 the United Kingdom, like the United States, has developed a "winner-take-all" political economy characterized by widening inequality and spectacular income growth at the top of the distribution. However, Britain's centralized executive branch and relatively insulated policymaking process are less amenable to the kind of "organized combat" that Hacker and Pierson describe for the United States. Britain's winner-take-all politics is better explained by the rise of political ideas favoring unfettered markets that, over time, produce a self-perpetuating structural advantage for the richest. That advantage is, in turn, justified and sustained by reference to the same ideas. Inequality growth in the United Kingdom has been primarily driven by the financialization of the economy that began under the Thatcher government and continued under New Labour. The survival of pro-finance policies through the financial crisis provides further evidence that lobbying by a weakened City of London was less decisive in shaping policy than the financial sector's continuing structural advantage and the tenacity of its supporting political consensus.