Tag: Populism

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Forthcoming book: The Conservative Challenge to Globalization: Anglo-American Perspectives

Ray Kiely (r.kiely@qmul.ac.uk) is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London, UK. His books include The Neoliberal Paradox (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) and The Conservative Challenge to Globalization (Agenda Publishing, 2020).

This book examines the rise of conservative movements, and above all ideas, which in some respects challenge, but also possibly reinforce, neoliberal globalization. These include challenges to liberal cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, migration, and free trade, political correctness and the so-called liberal metropolitan elite. Conservatives and right wing populist support protectionism (and/or simultaneously the extension of free trade), ethnonationalism, closed borders, and nativism among ‘ordinary people’ and ‘middle Americans’ amongst smug liberalism. The book recognizes the power of some of the conservative critique, especially around liberal elitism, but suggests that the rise and resurgence of what Nancy Fraser has called reactionary neoliberalism, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, and is both repellent and dangerous.

The book is published by Columbia University Press: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-conservative-challenge-to-globalization/9781788210973

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Current research: Assessing Conservative Populism

By Ray Kiely

Ray Kiely (r.kiely@qmul.ac.uk) is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London, UK. His books include The Neoliberal Paradox (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) and The Conservative Challenge to Globalization (Agenda Publishing, 2020).

“Assessing Conservative Populism: A New Double Movement or Neoliberal Populism?” published online first Development and Change on 4 February 2020

https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12567

This article examines the populist turn through the lens of changing social policy by relating this to the question of whether or not conservative and far right populism represent a break from, or a new mutation of, neoliberalism. Does this shift represent a conservative Polanyian double movement, or a mutation and extension of neoliberalism? This question is examined through a brief account of neoliberalism’s failures, both before and after 2008, and how conservative populism challenged it, particularly around the question of liberal social policy. In then defining and discussing neoliberalism, the article shows how conservative populism in some respects challenges it, through its focus on re-politicization in the face of technocratic and economistic de-politicization and disenchantment. But the article then demonstrates important similarities and continuities in both neoliberal theory and populist practice.

The article can be found at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dech.12567

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Current research: Conservatism, neoliberalism and resentment in Trumpland

By Ray Kiely

Ray Kiely is a professor of International Politics at the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London.

“Conservatism, neoliberalism and resentment in Trumpland: The ‘betrayal’ and ‘reconstruction’ of the United States” published online first Geoforum on 14 February 2020

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.02.002

This paper examines the relationship of the Trump presidency to both American conservatism and neoliberalism, and then uses this discussion to focus on the questions of populism and authoritarianism. It does so through a focus on the populist idea that America has been betrayed, and examines the similarities and differences between neoliberals and paleoconservatives over how the republican ideal can be revived through the promise of Making America Great Again. The paper thus explores how both theories explain this notion of betrayal and how they both promise the reconstruction of a betrayed nation. In doing so however, the article explores the tensions within and between the two theories and suggests that in the area where there is significant difference, namely (neoliberal) globalisation and (paleoconservative) anti-globalisation, these tensions are played out in specific ways, and specifically between populist promise and corporate reality. Ii is this tension which goes to the heart of the nature of both Trump’s authoritarianism and his populism, and the paper concludes that while the contemporary American populist moment is in some respect a backlash against neoliberal globalization, it is less a wholesale break from neoliberalism and more a shift to a renewed form of right wing neoliberal populism.

The article can be found at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718520300385