Populism and the manufactured crisis of British neoliberalism: the case of Brexit

Using the case of Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union, James Wood and Valentina Ausserladscheider challenge prevailing accounts explaining populism as political response to neoliberalism’s negative impact on voters. Using a descriptive analysis, they explain how the antagonistic ‘people’ vs. ‘elite’ relationship at the core of populism has been mobilised by opposing British political actors as a discursive frame to generate voter support for their own policies

COVID-Keynesianism was a short-term crisis management tactic. Neoliberal policymaking is back

When major economies adopted Keynesian policies to deal with the COVID pandemic, the move was hailed as a ­reorientation of economic policymaking around a new policy paradigm. However, James Wood, Valentina Ausserladscheider, and Matthew Sparkes argue that rather than marking a permanent shift away from neoliberalism, Keynesian-style policies may have been a temporary form of economic crisis management, and neoliberal economic ideas have become re-established post-COVID

Constructing a neoliberal exclusionary state: the role of far-right populism in economic policy change in post-war Austria

Acknowledgements: I thank Tiago Moreira Ramalho, James D.G. Wood, and Thomas Jeffrey Miley for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this paper as well as Jeremy Green and Colin Hay for their feedback on the initial chapter of my Ph.D. thesis, on which this paper is based.Funder: University of ViennaAbstractHow and to what extent does far-right populism impact the nation-specific implementation of neoliberal policymaking? While scholarship convincingly demonstrated the importance of ideas and the political agents propagating neoliberal ideas in policy paradigmatic shifts, there is little investigation of the role that far-right populists play in economic policy change. Exploring the ideational power and impact of far-right populism in neoliberal policymaking provides an important insight into how neoliberal political economies enact nationalist cultural exclusion. The paper traces the process through which the Austrian Freedom Party’s ideational trajectory evolved in post-war Austria and how it impacted the political mainstream. The analysis draws from the party’s discourse in manifestos, interviews, and other publications in the period 1956–2006. The results show how the specific far-right populist actor, the Austrian Freedom Party, played a significant role in rendering neoliberal ideas viable as policy option early on and ultimately constructing the neoliberal exclusionary state. By empirically showcasing how political actors from the fringes of the political spectrum can impact economic policy change, this presents an important contribution to the study of paradigm shifts, which predominantly focused on major national political actors. In light of the recent rise of far-right populism in Europe and beyond, this raises important questions for the continuity and change of the global paradigmatic dominance of neoliberalism.</jats:p

From Economic Neoliberalism to Economic Nationalism: Ideational Change in the Economic Programme of the Austrian Freedom Party 1956-2017

In recent years, the far-right nationalist Austrian Freedom Party, much like other far-right parties, has undergone a shift in their economic programme from relative economic openness to ideas of renationalising industries, disenfranchising multinational corporations, and restricting international financial market exchange. Prevailing accounts predominantly focus on the nationalist and nativist nature of far-right parties due to their perceived threat to the foundations of liberal democracies. These accounts therefore grappled with explaining the far right´s electoral success. The categorisation of ‘far right’ thus led to a black-boxing of the role, content, and change of the far right´s economic ideas, neglecting their importance in legitimising the far right´s nationalist and nativist core. This thesis explores how the Austrian Freedom Party, which once presented the beacon of neoliberal economic ideas and was instrumental to the implementation of the neoliberal economic policy paradigm in Austria, has shifted to criticise its own legacy. Drawing from insights of constructivist accounts, I trace the evolution of the Austrian Freedom Party´s economic discourse from its foundation in 1956 until their governmental participation in 2017. Guided by the question of how specific sets of economic ideas become dominant, I make the case that the Austrian Freedom Party´s economic ideas are central to legitimising, framing, and narrating their far-right nationalist agenda. The in-depth analysis of the Austrian Freedom Party´s economic discourse sheds new light on the way in which far-right parties´ cultural and nationalist positions are closely intertwined with economic ideas that reflect and mediate the political economic institutional context. This challenges dominant accounts describing a cultural backlash against cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism in explaining the rise of the far right. This thesis thereby contributes to literature identifying voters´ economic insecurities as major cause for the rise of the far right by showing how far-right politicians discursively engage with voters´ perceived socio-economic insecurities.Cambridge Political Economy Trust & Funds for Graduate Wome