Explaining the Populist Right in the Neoliberal West

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an excellent paper on right wing populism that summarises the current discussions in Western sociology and political science (mainly) and makes the case that we need more complexity and a variety of perspectives in our considerations of whether this is a phenomenon driven by economics or culture. We need both, is the conclusion, based on a rich discussion of the literature in these two disciplines. 

This is a very professional paper that could be published right away. My effort here is only to provoke and let the author think one more time about concepts and methods and look a bit at different literature with the aim of producing a more original, interdisciplinary, and path-pointing paper. My objective is intellectual and interdisciplinary enrichment, not further professional strengthening.

I note that the literature on which this is based has a narrow echo-chamber quality. It is entirely located within West European (and to some extent American) sociology and political science. All work discussed is based on quantitative surveys, too. My claim is that the end of the road is reached here, new studies in this vein will not much contribute to breaking through the culture-economics bipolarity but rather replicate it.

This has two aspects: the first is regional. Why not at least draw on, or show awareness of, the by now extensive literature on worldwide developments in the rise of the populist right? Two journals have dedicated recent theme sections and series of articles to it, the Journal of Peasant Studies and the Journal of Agrarian Change. Widely known authors such as Walden Bello (2019) and Henry Bernstein (2021) have contributed, apart from more specialist authors. The idea that developments in Brazil, the Philippines, India etc have no relevance for the development of the populist right in the global north does not conform to the author's own embrace of Sheri Berman's plea for more complexity and inclusion of a "variety of perspectives" at the end of this manuscript. Exactly similar conceptual and methodological dillema's play themselves out in the Global South literature. They have one disadvantage and one advantage over West European researchers: fewer reliable data series, but more ethnography. I note that ethnographic works have also contributed strongly to the American discussion. At least a nod to the existence of these discussions/approaches would break through the Euro-centric loneliness of the sociological/political science discussion that this article sadly fully replicates.

Even Central and Eastern Europe are relegated out off bounds, with the deeply mistaken and lazy argument that political right wing developments there are due to the fact that party systems are "not yet consolidated"(after 35 years). My answer would be that the populist right everywhere in CEE has helped to firmly consolidate party systems that are in fact much more stable by now than in Western Europe (also by excluding democratic competition within and between parties, of course, but that's exactly part of the program). Orban is now the longest sitting leader of government in Europe. I note that Chantal Mouffe's work on populism (not at all discussed here, perhaps because it is about left wing populism) suffers from a similar badly argued marginalisation of CEE. This is all the more frustrating since post-socialist Europe has been the best illustration on the continent of  widespread "fear of falling", dispossession and disenfranchisement of working class populations that imagined themselves to be middle class. Anthropological authors like Don Kalb (2023) argue therefore that CEE has been one 'avant garde' case of right wing populist development on the continent, along with France and the Netherlands. Also in CEE and in the European South a larger involvement of anthropologists and therefore more ethnographic work ("variety of perspectives").

I emphasise ethnographic work in anthropology here not only because it is routinely ignored by European sociologists and political scientists but also because it comes close in its micro and 'emplaced' orientation on specific populations and places in what is to me the most interesting part of this manuscript: the discussion of the work of Oesch, Kurer, and Broz, which descends from national survey averages to particular occupations. Their discovery of the 'factors' of hierarchy, status anxiety, and nostalgia is precisely what anthropologists of Europe have been finding and discussing in their ethnographies of the new Right. Kalb 2023 (Journal of Agrarian Change) gives a succinct discussion of a good part of this literature. The recent collection with the title "Deservingness" (Tosic and Streinzer 2022) could of interest too.

Apart from replicating the West-Eurocentrism and survey-infatuation of sociology and political science, this manuscript also suffers from the very weak critique on basic concepts that is common in positivist circles. In particular, the author seems to believe that the economics-culture divide is a real rather than a nominal issue. An anthropologist would respond that economics is very cultural and much of culture is about economics (provisioning for social reproduction). The author describes by the end of the paper that not individuals but communities (like in anthropology) might be the requisite units of analysis. That is an important insight: she/he is right, the literature agrees that abandoned 'provincial' spaces and their lower educated inhabitants are the locus classicus of right wing populist developments. They explain at least 70% of the phenomenon in all countries, both for the petty entrepreneurs and the lower educated working classes that are involved, as the recent 'revolutionary' electoral outcome in the Dutch provincial elections again shows (a new small party, BBB - Boeren Burger Beweging/farmer citizen movement - in one go by far the largest party in the Senate). The author duly notes that most right wing populist parties have rejected welfare retrenchment for the deserving (national socialism), but their economic claims go much further: they want full reinstatement of social status, including flourishing communities and decent secure jobs within a globalised economy that over time destroys it. Why is that 'cultural' and not 'economic'? There is only one reason: the capitalist state is not set up for such radical communitarian economic reversals. So what is left looks like 'culture' and 'identity' even while it is about 'harder' economics than most economics.

The trouble with analysing right wing populism is that the phenomenon itself rejects the liberalism that is embodied in such liberal separations as the separation between economics and culture. Another reason to look more carefully at the comparative anthropology of the populist right, in Europe and worldwide, anthropology being less an inheritor of liberal modernist conceptual baggage. 

 

 

Author Response

This is a brilliant review, criticizing the "echo-chamber" quality of the narrowly "Western" focus of this paper; and suggesting that the "economics-culture" binary may be self made, given the (quantitative, Large-N) naure of much (not all) of the work synthesized in the paper, and that it might disappear from an anthropological-ethnographic perspective. I have little to add to both critiques, except that they ring true. See endnotes 1, 2, and 25-7 in response. Also see the added last paragraph in the conclusion (pp.32-3), and the new reference to Kalb (2023) (as suggested). Strikingly, Kalb and I come to very similar conclusions, though from very different starting points, which suggests that we both may have got it right, at least to a degree.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear colleague, 

Thank you very much for this manucript.I can tell you worked very hard in crafting it. Please find attached  my comments and suggestions to make it stronger.

Sincerely

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. Specify "aim, research question, argument and method. approach". See my revised and expanded outlook on p.5-6; and expanded conclusion, pp.32-33.
2. "what benefits does the cleavage theory...have over other approaches". The problem is that there is no real alternative to it in the political party system literature. But it is often inconsistently used (e.g., with respect to the number of cleavage axes: in the Lipset-Rokkan tradition, it is always two, economic and cultural, and this I try to correct).
3. "so many direct quotations". True, and I tried to reduce a bit, but this is part of the synthetic nature of the text. "Own words" is no good option if the ideas are from others.
4. "the puzzle remains". Yes, it does. But see the added last paragraph in the text (p.32-3).
5. "West is a very contested term". See endnote 1.
6. The other smaller objections have been considered.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear colleague, 

Thank you very much for your revised article and responding to my comments. In my opinion it's quite ready to go! 

Best Regards, 

Author Response

thanks!