The Economics of European Populism: Growth Regimes and Party System Change

• In Event: ‘Populism in Europe’ or ‘Populism and Europe’? Causes and Consequences

Abstract

Recent work in comparative and international political economy has rediscovered the importance of distinct ‘growth models’ and forged a link between the rise and decline of specific macroeconomic regimes/growth models and attendant forms of politics, specifically, the rise of populism across the globe in recent years. In this paper, we more fully explore the link between populism and growth regimes. We argue that populism as a political movement in Europe did not start with the 2007-8 crisis, but had been growing continuously since at least the 1980s in the form of Green Parties, various National Fronts, and an assortment of so-called Progress Parties. Second, we claim that populism, in the form of a political claim that only the ‘big man’ can look out for the ‘little guy,’ is not really the phenomenon Europe is experiencing. Instead, drawing on earlier work that we have both authored on the shift from parties of mass-integration to catch all to cartel parties, we show that there is a link between the evolution of growth regimes and changes in European party systems. Specifically, we will argue that the 1945-1977 growth regime co-evolved with a particular type of party and party system, one that turned mass parties of integration into catch-all parties of electoral competition and public good provision. We then argue that developments in the post 1977 growth regime caused these party forms to become mal-adapted to their new environment, and as the new growth regime evolved it demanded further changes in party form in order to survive, the optimal form before the financial crisis being the emergence of cartel parties. We specify the causal logic behind these claims and use that to more fully explain the rise of populism in Europe in several contemporary cases. In short, rather, than see the new politics of populism as solely related to post-financial crisis adjustment, we extend this argument and see populism in Europe as an instance of party system transformation driven by the rise of anti-system parties claiming to challenge the neoliberal cartel.

Authors

• Jonathan Hopkin, London School of Economics

• Mark Blyth, Brown University