Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau claim that “populism is not an ideology or a political regime and cannot be attributed to a specific programme. It is compatible with different forms of government. It is a way of doing politics which can take various forms, depending on the time and the place. It emerges when one aims at building a new subject of collective action – the people – capable of reconfiguring a social order experienced as unfair.” [...]
Moreover, Mouffe sees this emergence of populist parties as a reaction to ‘post-politics’, i.e. the blurring of the traditional political frontiers between right and left and the embrace of the idea that “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) to the neo-liberal world.
The spread of free trade, a product of post-war globalisation, was encouraged as a way to prevent future wars and keep the peace. Michael Hirsch, a former national editor for Politico Magazine, points out the fact that it made conditions more equal between countries, but at the cost of creating more inequality within countries. “In the aggregate global trade does bring growth – but in the richer countries, that growth has been largely captured by elites and white-collar workers, and it often comes at the expense of people who actually make the things that get traded.” [...]
The predominance of neo-liberal ideology has contributed to a situation in which the left and the right are divided primarily over the question of culture. Analysing campaign and survey data at the London School of Economics and Political Science, researcher Sara Hobolt found that the divide between the winners and losers of globalisation was a key driver of the vote in the Brexit referendum. Concerns about immigration and the loss of a distinct national identity were issues that clearly split the Leave and Remain camps in Britain. [...]
To save the EU from the growing political anger of the Europeans and to avoid the contagion of Euroscepticism, politicians will need to address current economic and political challenges, trying to reconcile radically different views on the appropriate scope and depth of integration across and within member states.
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