Plutocrats & Plebs: The Elite Affinities of Right-Wing Populism in Developed Democracies

• In Event: Contesting the people: Inclusion and exclusion in populism

Abstract

Christopher Rovira Kaltwasser (2012) argues for a ‘minimal approach’ that views populism as an ambivalence: depending on the context, it can be left-leaning or right-leaning; it can be a ‘defect’ of democracy or an uprising of radical democratic participation.1 Taking Kaltwasser’s insights as a point of departure, this interdisciplinary paper seeks to draw from the fields of political theory and political economy to explore the rise of right-leaning populist politics in present-day developed democracies, with the following questions and concerns guiding this exploration:
(1) How may contemporary shifts in the structure and form of the international political economy help to explain the rise of right-leaning populist movements in developed democracies?
(2) How are these right-leaning populist leaders rhetorically, discursively, and ideologically consolidating their movements, and what policy-making interests do they pursue while in office?
(3) Are these populists/populisms something new, or are they elite-driven politics by another name?

Providing answers to these questions, this paper argues that contrary to Canovan’s assertion that populism moves against power structures, contemporary populisms are actually moving to cement elite power structures; contrary to Kaltwasser’s view that that the affinity between neoliberalism and neopopulism is losing its relevance, the two are more intertwined than ever before; and despite the arguments of Aslanidis (2015),4 ideology is central to this interconnected and symbiotic relationship. Putting forth an original theory to capture this dynamic, this paper refers to these right-leaning and elite-friendly forms of contemporary populism as signifying the growing power of ‘Plutocratic-Populism’.

Author

• Kevin D Redmond, University of Massachusetts Amherst