Populists in Power: Rightwing Populism and Development Policy in Europe

• In Event: The Economy as a New Issue? A New Look at the Economic Policy Dimension

Abstract

The rise of so-called populist movements and parties around the globe has recently become a central topic of poltical science, and is the theme of the 2019 APSA annual meeting. Current research debates what populism means, who, if anyone, should be called „populist“, if and how contemporary populism is related to historical populism, who supports populism and votes for populist parties, and what are reasons fort hat behaviour.
Less research is devoted to the question what populists do if they are in power. A considerable amount of studies has analyzed policies of populist presidents in Latin America, but very few research has studied right-wing populist governing in Western Europe. As the APSA theme statement formulates: „Specialists in political economy, public policy, and public administration all find their standard models challenged by the actions of many new populist governments“.
But what do populist do when they govern? Current research provides no settled answers yet.

In recent years, right wing populist parties have been quite successful in Western Europe. In Denmark (Danish People‘s Party), Germany (AFD), France (FN/RN), Sweden (Sweden Democrats) and the Netherlands (PVV), right wing populist parties are in the parliaments, in Italy (M5Strelle/LEGA since May 2018), Austria (ÖVP/FPÖ since December 2017, also between 2000 and 2005, when FPÖ split), Norway (Conservative Party/Progress Party since 2013, with Liberal Party since January 2018), and Finland (True Finns since 2015), right wing populists are in several coalition governments.

The paper first, briefly discusses the concepts of populism and right wing populism and introduces right wing populists in Western Europe.
Second, the positions of populists parties on development policy as an examplary policy field are analyzed, based on party manifestos and public statements.
And third, and most important, policy actions of governing populist parties in Norway, Finland, Austria, and Italy are compared.


The question „What governments do, why they do it, and what difference it makes“ (Thomas Dye) is a classical question of policy analysis. Especially the relevance of parties is still debated. Do parties matter? Does it make a difference, when populists govern, or are structural factors or path dependency more relevant? In order to contribute to this debate, my paper wants to analyze and compare populist development policies in Western Europe.

Author

• Wolfgang Muno, Rostock University