In a detailed study, the researchers take close look at the rise of populism across Europe and the United States. They follow the political theorist Cas Mudde in defining populists has sharing three key characteristics. They are anti-establishment, having faith in “plain talkers” and “ordinary people” as opposed to the “corrupt establishment” of business, government, academia, and media. They are authoritarian, favoring strong leaders over democratic institutions and traditions. They are nativist, putting their nation first. [...]
But that’s not the story Inglehart and Norris advance. They argue that populism is the result of a burgeoning cultural backlash against modern values of globalism, multicultural tolerance, and openness to diversity. Echoing themes political theorist Benjamin Barber outlined three decades ago in his 1992 Atlantic story “Jihad versus McWorld,” this is a cultural recoil against the “cosmopolitan” globalist one-two punch of “open societies” and “open borders.” [...]
While populist parties get somewhat more support from the white working class, they do not draw much from other hard-hit groups, especially those in urban areas. Indeed, support for populism is much stronger among relatively more affluent and educated groups, particularly the petite bourgeoisie of small business owners (which Marx long ago predicted). [...]
Support for populism is concentrated among white people, older people, men, religious people, and the less educated—groups that feel most threatened by the shift to more open cosmopolitan values. “[T]he combination of several standard demographic and social controls (age, sex, education, religiosity and ethnic minority status) with cultural values can provide the most useful explanation for European support for populist parties,” they write.
No comments:
Post a Comment