Category Archives: Populism

Nov 27th 2021

IF YOU WANT to understand how Asias view of the world order has changed, consider the remarks of Lee Hsien Loong, Singapores prime minister. Asked recently if China was rising and the United States was declining, he replied in a qualified way: If you take a long view, you really have to bet on America recovering from whatever things it does to itself. Across the region firms and politicians are adapting to a new geopolitical reality, as was evident at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore last week.

Designed to be more useful than Davos, less Utopian than COP26 and less wooden than Chinas Boao forum, the summit convenes some of the figures who built Sino-American links over the past decades, and bosses and investors responsible for over $20trn of market value. Amid hygienically controlled flesh-pressing, and relentless nasal swabbing, you could get a sense of the tensions between the worlds two biggest economies. It was clear that calls to divide them into two camps are wildly unrealistic.

Asia matters because of its size, with 36% of the worlds GDP, 31% of its stockmarket capitalisation, and 11% of the sales of S&P 500 firms. The region is likely to grow faster than the rest of the world. It is also where the struggle between America and China is played out overtly, with the two systems competing side by side. China dominates trade. Of the 20 major Asian economies, 15 have China as their largest goods-trading partner. Yet most countries also rely on America. In many cases it is their defence partner and the dollar is the currency in which most Asian trade and capital flows take place (in contrast to Europe, which has the euro).

The regions balancing act has got harder as America and China have turned inward, partly in response to the perceived shortcomings of freewheeling global capitalism. A widely held view is that Americas system of government has been permanently impaired by cronyism and populism. As a result its promises are taken less seriously. Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said America would launch a new Asian economic framework in 2022 (it has not joined CPTPP, a regional free-trade deal). Her proposal was greeted only politely, given the Biden administrations protectionism and the risk that Donald Trump wins the election in 2024.

China has also become unpredictable. Most executives and officials are sanguine about the crisis at Evergrande, a property firm. They believe that Chinas technocrats are in control and can avoid a systemic financial crisis. Many sympathise with Chinas antitrust crackdown on big tech. But there is deep unease at Xi Jinpings totalitarian impulses and his broader assault on business. Whereas before, well-connected foreigners would have been given reassurances by Chinas economic reformers in private meetings, now they have to make do with stilted video calls monitored by the Communist Party. Ties are fraying even within companies. One founder of an Asian firm with a Chinese parent company has not met the owners for two years. Few expect China to reopen its borders until after the Party Congress in late 2022, and even then only if the population has been re-jabbed with better vaccines.

One response to estrangement is separation. Americas Trumpian right and progressive left would like their country to be more self-sufficient, while Mr Xis dual-circulation campaign is aimed at producing more goods at home. There are some signs on the ground of Asias investment patterns shifting and becoming less centred on greater China. Indias biggest business, Tata Group, is investing in electric vehicles and battery production at home. On November 9th TSMC, the worlds largest semiconductor company, said it would build a new plant in Japan in co-operation with Sony. Most banks are wary of expanding in turbulent Hong Kong.

But the overall picture is still one of intense interdependency. China has 75% of global battery manufacturing capacity. Even after its new investments, TSMC will have over 80% of its plant in Taiwan, which China claims as its territory. The impossibility of Asia decoupling from China is brought home by a tech boss who reckons 80% of goods sold on South-East Asias booming e-commerce platforms are from the Middle Kingdom. Were multinational firms to spend as they are today, they would need 16 years to replace the cumulative stock of cross-border investment in Asia. Even if they could, few firms want to exit Chinas economy.

As you might expect, most firms want to be geopolitical hybrids that hedge their bets. Singapores firms lead the way. DBS Bank has a third of its deposits in dollars and is expanding in India and China. Temasek and GIC, two sovereign-wealth funds, have about a third of their combined assets in America and a fifth in China. SGX, the exchange, is integrated with Western markets but makes a fifth or so of its business from Chinese investors. American and Chinese firms are adopting Singapore-style dexterity. TikTok, an app owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm, has an army of staff in Singapore: the idea is to show that it is independent of the Chinese state. Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, has just visited Hong Kong and said he was not swayed by geopolitical winds: the bank has boosted its exposure to greater China by 9% since 2019, to $26.5bn. On November 24th he apologised for joking that the bank would outlast the Chinese Communist Party.

If the worst relations between China and America for decades have not prompted decoupling in Asia, what might? The confrontation could yet escalate but both sides seem keen to avoid that for now. Wang Qishan, Chinas vice-president, declared that isolation leads to backwardness. Regulatory and technological shifts could eventually end American dominance in finance and drag Asia more firmly into Chinas orbit. One boss reckons the opening of Chinas capital markets will ultimately be as consequential in finance as its membership of the World Trade Organisation in 2001 was for trade. But for now investors and firmsand Singaporean prime ministersface years of carefully straddling the divide.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "In the flesh"

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Decoupling is the last thing on business leaders minds - The Economist

Ideology that favors state intervention to protect the domestic economy

Economic nationalism, also called economic patriotism and economic populism, is an ideology that favors state interventionism over other market mechanisms, with policies such as domestic control of the economy, labor, and capital formation, including if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labor, goods and capital.[1] The core belief of economic nationalism is that the economy should serve nationalist goals.[2]

Economic nationalists oppose globalization or at least question the benefits of unrestricted free trade, favoring protectionism. To economic nationalists, markets are to be subordinate to the state, and should serve the interests of the state (such as providing national security and accumulating military power). The doctrine of mercantilism is a prominent variant of economic nationalism.[3] Economic nationalists tend to see international trade as zero-sum, where the goal is to derive relative gains (as opposed to mutual gains).[1]

Economic nationalism tends to emphasize industrialization (and often aids industries with state support), due to beliefs that industry has positive spillover effects on the rest of the economy, enhances the self-sufficiency and political autonomy of the country, and is a crucial aspect in building military power.[1]

While the coining of the term "economic patriotism" has been attributed to French parliamentarian Bernard Carayon,[4][5] there is evidence that the phrase has been in use since earlier.[6] In an early instance of its use, William Safire in 1985, in defending President Reagan's proposal of the Strategic Defense Initiative missile defense system, wrote, "Our common denominator is nationalism both a military and economic patriotism which inclines us to the side of pervasive national defense."[7]

In the mid-to-late 1800s, Italian economic thinkers began to gravitate towards the theories of Fredrich List. Led by Italian economists like Alessandro Rossi, policies favoring protectionism gained momentum. The Italian government had previously been ignoring Italian industry in favor of trade with France. The Italian government seemed content to watch other European powers modernize and gain influence through their colonies.[8] Various groups began to put pressure on the Italian government, from textile to ceramic manufacturers, and although the Italian government imposed tariffs the industrialists felt that it was not enough. The push for industrialization and protectionism quickly spun Italy into an economic crisis in 1887, exposing Italian industrial woes.[8]

The Austro-Hungarian empires ethnic diversity made it an unusual case of the rise of European nationalism.[9] The fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while mostly caused by the empire's defeat in World War I, was also caused by the lack of economic and political integration between Austrians and Slavs.[9] Though Hungary relied on Austria economically, as it provided a market for Hungary's agriculture production, there was a deep social and economic rift between the Austrians and Slavic people, who actively boycotted and protested Austrian rule in favor of more autonomy in the Balkans.[9] Regions within the empire began using forms of price discrimination to strengthen national economies. As a result, intra-empire trade began to fail. Grain prices fluctuated throughout the empire after the 1880s into World War I, however an ethnic breakdown of the empire showed that grain trade between two predominantly Austrian territories, or two predominantly Slavic territories, led to a gradual decrease in grain prices from the 1870s up to World War I.[9] This was mainly due to the increased presence of railroads in the late 1800s. The only trade pairing that did not observe decreasing grain prices were two territories of varying nationality. Overall, grain prices were cheaper, and the price gap was smaller, when the two territories trading more closely resembled each other ethnically and linguistically.[9]

At the Financial Conference on Inflation in September 1974, one topic of discussion was the gradual dissolution of economic barriers to the movement of goods, people and services across borders in the post World War II era. According to William E. Simon, who was United States Treasury Secretary at that time, there was concern that inflation would motivate economic nationalism: "This has had enormously beneficial effect; Now, however, there is some danger that inflation may drive countries in economic nationalism."[10]

The philosophical foundations of economic nationalism are difficult to trace due to the ideology's lengthy history and its unique appeal to different types of groups. The four general pillars come from its political, cultural, economic, and social roots.[11] Though details surrounding these four pillars may differ depending on a nation's status, generally a nation's own status and economic stability takes precedence over another. During the late-19th and early-20th century this meant an emphasis on protectionism, increased role of the government, and even colonialism, as it was a means of modifying an occupied country's culture and creed.[11][8]

In both Germany and Italy, Fredrich List played a role in the rise in economic nationalism during the 1800s. List brought elements of economic theory and national identity together, as he postulated that an individual's quality of life was in correlation with the success of their country and was a well-known proponent of tariffs in the United States.[8][12] List's ideas on economics and nationalism directly challenged the economic theories of Adam Smith, as List felt that Smith reduced the role of national identity too much and favored of a globalized approach which ignored certain complexities of political life.[8]

As a policy is a deliberate system of principles to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes, the following list of would be examples of an economic nationalistic policy, where there is consistent and rational doctrine associated with each individual protectionist measure:

The reason for a policy of economic protectionism in the cases above varied from bid to bid. In the case of Mittal's bid for Arcelor, the primary concerns involved job security for the Arcelor employees based in France and Luxembourg. The cases of French Suez and Spanish Endesa involved the desire for respective European governments to create a 'national champion' capable of competing at both a European and global level. Both the French and US government used national security as the reason for opposing takeovers of Danone, Unocal, and the bid by DP World for 6 US ports. In none of the examples given above was the original bid deemed to be against the interests of competition. In many cases the shareholders supported the foreign bid. For instance in France after the bid for Suez by Enel was counteracted by the French public energy and gas company Gaz De France the shareholders of Suez complained and the unions of Gaz De France were in an uproar because of the privatization of their jobs.

More recently, the economic policies advocated by Steve Bannon in the wake of the 2016 United States presidential election have been considered by some scholars and political commentators[which?] as a (partial) return to the economic nationalism of the Theodore Roosevelt Era.[21][22]

The modern phenomenon of the European Union has in part led to a recent resurgence of economic nationalism.[23] Western Europe as a whole has become more economically globalized since the end of World War II, embracing economic integration and introducing the euro.[24] This did lead to positive economic impacts, such as steady wage increases. However, from the 1990s through the Great Recession, there has been an increasing distrust in this globalized system. With rising income inequalities and little protection against natural economic occurrences[which?], many Europeans have begun to embrace economic nationalism.[23] This is because modern European nationalists see their nation's economy becoming generally more globalized at the expense of one's own economic status.[23] Globalization, like the type one can observe in the European Union, is easy to oppose as it creates winners and losers. Those who lose their jobs due to globalization are more likely to be drawn to parties espousing economic nationalism.[23]

Although some European nations were impacted differently, nations that saw an increased exposure to the China trade stock did move significantly further right politically and generally supported more nationalist and protectionist policies.[23] Even industries which did not see increased exposure to the China trade shock generally shifted towards right wing policies. This shows that, while some voters shifted their political support due to their worsening economic conditions, many voters shifted to right-wing policy due to a community-wide reaction from the China trade shock.[23] Though the shock took place in the 1980s, its economic effects still impact the European electorate today. In particular, the Brexit vote showed the impact this shock had on the electorate, as regions which were most impacted by the China trade shock were still economically weak (in terms of GDP per capita) in comparison to other regions like London, even over a decade later. There is a strong positive correlation in regions most impacted by the China trade shock and an increase in votes to leave the European Union.[23]

Immigration plays a large part in the policy of modern economic nationalists. With a considerable influx of immigration, particularly from parts of eastern Europe and the Middle East, those who gravitate towards economic nationalism find that their national identity and culture has been deluded by increased immigration. Though studies have shown marginal improvements to both native employment and wages when put in competition with immigrants.[23]

The impact of Europe's move towards a globalized economy has led to the passing nationalist policy and the support of right-leaning parties. The impact of this shift has been relatively negative in the case of Britain. Despite not being a full member of the European Union, Brexit caused a decrease in output from 1.7 to 2.5 percent.[25] Compared to other countries that maintained their place in the European Union, the UK has significantly suffered due to its exit from the European Union. Not only in terms of short-term GDP loss, but also in consumer confidence between both firms and households, despite the natural macroeconomic uncertainties that come with a drastic economic change only accounted for 20 percent of the nation's drop in output.[25]

Consumer preference for local goods gives local producers monopoly power, affording them the ability to lift prices to extract greater profits. Firms that produce locally produced goods can charge a premium for that good. Consumers who favor products by local producers may end up being exploited by profit-maximizing local producers.[26] For example; a protectionist policy in America placed tariffs on foreign cars, giving local producers (Ford and GM market) market power that allowed them to raise the price of cars, which negatively affected American consumers who faced fewer choices and higher prices.[27] Locally produced goods can attract a premium if consumers show a preference towards it, so firms have an incentive to pass foreign goods off as local goods if foreign goods have cheaper costs of production than local goods.[26]

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Economic nationalism - Wikipedia

According to a study published in the journal Electoral Studies, citizens with higher trait narcissism are more likely to support people-centrism, a dimension of populism. However, people who score higher on Machiavellianism and psychopathy are less likely to support populist attitudes.

Populism has been widely conceptualized as a dangerous ideology that threatens democracy. Some studies have suggested that populist leaders have darker personalities, scoring higher on the Dark Triad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and subclinical psychopathy. A new study led by Carol Galais and Guillem Rico aimed to investigate whether citizens who support populist attitudes have similar anti-social personalities.

The researchers considered two distinct aspects of populism people-centrism and anti-elitism. People-centrist attitudes maintain that the people should be the focus of political decision-making. Anti-elitism focuses on denouncing the power of the elites who are believed to be corrupt and self-serving. Galais and Rico proposed that these dimensions of populism may be differentially related to the dark personality traits.

An online survey was distributed among 3,031 adults in Spain a country with populist parties at both the far left and far right of the political spectrum. The surveys included a measure of populism, which included subscales for anti-elitism (e.g., The government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves) and people-centrism (e.g., The will of the people should be the highest principle in this countrys politics). The questionnaires also included assessments of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and left-right ideological orientation.

After controlling for age, sex, and ideology, it was revealed that all three of the dark personality traits were negatively related to populism. That is, people who scored higher in narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy were less likely to hold populist beliefs. There was, however, one exception. While narcissism was unrelated to anti-elitism, the trait was positively related to people-centrism people with higher narcissism were more likely to endorse people-centrist attitudes. Interestingly, the two other dark personality traits were negatively related to both anti-elitism and people-centrism.

The link between narcissism and the people-centric dimension of populism may reflect the inflated ego and feelings of superiority that characterize narcissism. These personality traits might promote overconfidence in ones political skills and feelings of entitlement to a role in politics.

The study authors say it may seem surprising that the dark traits are, for the most part, negatively related to populism, given that previous studies have suggested that people with populist beliefs tend to be more disagreeable. But the findings highlight the fact that populism is distinct from other traits with which it is correlated. Populism is intrinsic to a belief in democracy, the authors point out, and support for populist ideas does not necessarily mean support for populist parties.

Resuming the debate about the virtues and dangers of populism, we can add the following to the existing findings: populist citizens are not undesirable dinner guests. Quite the contrary: they have notably low levels of Machiavellianism and psychopathy, Galais and Rico say.

The study, An unjustified bad reputation? The Dark Triad and support for populism, was authored by Carol Galais and Guillem Rico.

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Individuals with narcissistic tendencies are more likely ...

Hundreds of millions of people have real grievances, justifiable fears and understandable confusion Image Credit: Mohammed Nahas/Gulf News

While anti-vaxxers continue to clash with police in various European cities, a whole media discourse has been formulated around the political leanings of these angry crowds, describing them in matter-of-fact terms as conspiracy theorists, populists and right-wing fanatics.

While it is true that populist, right-wing movements throughout Europe and elsewhere have actively exploited the anger, confusion and lack of trust in governments for years, it is still necessary to understand the roots of the mistrust, as opposed to readily contributing to the stifling division.

A Gallup poll, published in 2013, revealed the extent of mistrust that Americans, for example, have in their own government, and the decline of that trust when compared to the previous year. According to the poll, only 10% of Americans trusted their elected Congress, only 19% trusted the countrys health system, 22% had trust in big business and 23% in news media.

This crisis in democracy took place years before Donald Trump even considered running for presidency, years before the violent storming of the US Congress, and long before the COVID pandemic inspired resentment and conspiracies.

The trend of lack of trust continues unabated to this day, though Trump is no longer the president. In fact, it is a phenomenon that has afflicted most Western societies, though to varying degrees.

It may seem irrational that millions of people refuse to take the Covid-19 vaccine, a potentially life-saving medicine required in order for collective immunity to be achieved.

But the problem exceeds that of seemingly crazy, fanatic, conspiracy theorist and, for good measure, also racist multitudes, simply refusing to save their own lives or the lives of loved ones, out of sheer ignorance and mere stupidity.

There are other issues that deserve to be considered, too. Lack of trust is an accumulative process, resulting from long experience and a prevailing conclusion that Western governments represent the interests of the rich and powerful, not the poor and vulnerable. That cannot be wished away as a result of a supposedly scathing editorial written by establishment newspapers such as The New York Times or The Washington Post.

The inequality gap

The inequality gap in the United States, for example, has been constantly widening in recent years. A 2017 study by the Boston Consulting Group concluded that, by 2021, nearly 70% of the USs wealth would be concentrated in the hands of millionaires and billionaires. Can we truly blame a poor, working-class American for mistrusting a government that has engendered this kind of inequality?

Liberal political parties, whether the Democrats in the US, or the Parti Socialiste in France, or the Partito Democratico in Italy have, in fact, orchestrated much of this inequality and the subsequent mistrust and resentment harboured by millions of their citizens.

Their politicians and news media insist on a reductionist reading of the rise of populism in their societies, simply because they want to maintain the self-serving status quo.

The so-called moderates are the ones who are mostly articulating the political discourse of the time, simply because an authentic, grass roots-propelled political left is almost completely absent from the scene.

The resultant vacuum has rendered entire communities, people with real grievances, vulnerable to far-right opportunists, the likes of Marine Le Pen in France, Trump in the US and Matteo Salvini in Italy.

The above are self-serving politicians with disturbing political ideas, often chauvinistic ideologies and, of course, personal ambitions. With no one else challenging mainstream politicians and corporate media, they are often welcomed as liberators, draining the swamps of Washington and wherever else political elitism exists.

Some of us may avoid this uncomfortable discussion altogether, probably out of fear of being branded as belonging to the wrong crowd or, possibly, as a result of our insistence on understanding the world from our own limited ideological vantage points. But, by doing so, we are failing at truly analysing the roots of the current political mayhem.

Economic and class divisions

True, there have been attempts in mainstream media to offer a third way of thinking on the subject, but most of these ideas remain limited in their scope and context, and often bashful in their language. For example, a recent New York Times article linked the anti-vaccination movement to the COVID cultural war in Europe, but hardly delved deep enough into the economic and class component of that division.

While the vaxxers and the anti-vaxxers may carry on to mobilise around whatever system of beliefs they hold dear, it is not the responsibility of the intellectual to follow the diktats of superficial identity politics. What is required is a true understanding of the roots behind these cultural and political phenomena, with the hope of engaging and fixing as opposed to simply condemning the other side.

The late Italian anti-fascist intellectual, Antonio Gramsci, had written about the intellectuals error of judging without truly understanding, feeling and being impassioned. According to him, no knowledge is possible without feeling the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and therefore explaining and justifying them in the particular historical situation.

There are hundreds of millions of people with real grievances, justifiable fears and understandable confusion. If we do not engage with all people on an equal footing for the betterment of humankind, they are left to seek answers from the prophets of doom far-right chauvinists and conspiracy theorists. This cannot possibly be the only option.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and editor. He is the author of five books.

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Elitism is not the answer to populism - Gulf News

You will not go wrong if you assume that Republican politicians oppose President BidenJoe BidenRittenhouse says Biden defamed his character when linking him to white supremacists Man accused of threatening Congress sentenced to 19 months in prison 91 House Dems call on Senate to expand immigration protections in Biden spending bill MOREs Infrastructure and Build Back Better programs because wealthy people and corporations want cheap labor. Rank and file Republicans, largely working people on the other hand, are happy to have some leverage and to see their wages going up. What Republican politicians hide from these working class voters behind attacks on minorities and conspiracy theories is the GOPs unrelenting efforts to keep labor cheap, the very antithesis of the kind of economic populism working Americans want.

This is not new. Republican leaders during the Great Depression opposed all the key Democratic programs that still help ordinary people like Social Security, unemployment insurance, government employment programs, investments in dams and public works, efforts to bolster farm prices and a minimum wage. They opposed these programs on the grounds that they would be inflationary, run up the debt, and be socialistic, the same arguments they use against Bidens programs today. The Consumer Price Index had fallen more 30 percent from 1929 to 1933 and unemployment stood at 25 percent but Republican saw inflation around the corner because they understood that the wealthy and corporations would have to pay workers more if joblessness dropped and people had a safety net to fall back on. When Republican leaders today say that Bidens Infrastructure and Build Back Better programs will cause inflation and increase the debt, they are making the same argument for the same hidden reasons.

A question today is whether there are reasons to believe Republican claims about the dangers of inflation and debt that have been wrong for so many decades. Real U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be over $23 trillion in 2021. Over the next ten years it will total close to $300 trillion if real GDP grows at 2.5 percent a year and there is just a modest amount of inflation.

President Bidens $1.8 trillion Build Back Better program, a ten-year program to pay for things like better and less expensive health care and help for families with children, will be only 0.6 percent of this roughly $300 trillion.

Even if Bidens programs cost $4 trillion as some are saying, $4 trillion is only 1.3 percent of GDP for those 10 years, 0.13 percent each year. That amount of additional government spending is dwarfed by private spending and cannot possibly lead to the terrifying inflation Republicans would have Americans fear.

It is also clear that Bidens programs will add little to government debt. Much if not all of the $1.8 trillion or $4 trillion is not additional spending. It would be paid for by taxes on people earning more than $400,000 a year and on corporations that pay less in taxes now than they paid a few decades ago.

Raising taxes toward earlier levels on people and corporations who can afford it shifts money that would have been spent by the wealthy to middle class and low-income people. It will add little to total spending that might otherwise push inflation up a little. What a better safety net does is empower workers and make it harder to find cheap labor.

Americans nevertheless are right to ask why prices have risen significantly in the last year. Its because of bottlenecks related to COVID-19, the rapid reopening of the economy, and the reluctance of workers to return to old jobs that paid poorly. Gasoline prices are up sharply because Americans are driving again instead of staying at home, and OPEC joined by Russia has refused to increase supply. The price of natural gas is up because drilling and fracking dropped sharply during COVID-19 and fuel price increases also show up in electric bills.

Surging demand for imported goods is another reason for higher prices. Consumers are spending money they saved when millions stayed home during the epidemic. Demand for computer chips has outstripped supply raising prices of automobiles, appliances, phones, and

electronics and pushing buyers to bid up prices for used cars. It will take time for new chip factories to be built in the U.S. and overseas.

Back in the early 1970s, OPEC raised oil prices from about $3 a barrel to $9 and then to $12. It was a shock and American homeowners reacted by insulating their homes. This caused the price of insulation to soar. Impatient people called for price controls, but makers of insulation added capacity and, in a year or two the price of insulation dropped back because Owens Corning and other makers brought on new plants.

Free-market adjustments to deal with bottlenecks will take place with chips and other things that are in short supply, but they will take time. Republican politicians want Americans to be angry at government for these COVID-related price increases because that might help them torpedo Bidens programs that will improve the position of workers and trim the sails of wealthy titans. The virus kept people home and closed big sectors of the economy. Now entertainment, hospitality, day care, schools, and travel are coming back, but working people are reluctant to return to their old jobs at old wage levels. Rising wages are a good thing, but not for people who want cheap labor to do the laundry, mind the children and take care of grandparents.

The economic rebound and shifts in patterns of spending are clogging ports and driving up the costs of sea freight and trucking. Driving a truck is a hard job and it has gotten harder with delays at ports and inland terminals. Turnover among drivers was a serious problem before COVID but now drivers have employment options and might get paid sick leave and other benefits from Bidens programs. That is generally a good thing, but Republicans who want cheap and meek labor are trying to convince voters that it is inflationary and socialistic.

The big question relating to inflation going forward is whether employers can pass on higher costs in the form of higher prices. If most cannot, the share of income going to workers will move back up toward the fairer levels of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. My bet is that competition will prevent further sharp price increases once things have settled down and Biden will try to use government to encourage more of this price-limiting competition, for example in health care. Republicans, true to form since the Great Depression will try to prevent government from weighing in on the side of working people by convincing voters that everything government does is inflationary and corrupt. This is the battle between Democrats and Republicans now underway, better wages and working conditions versus cheap labor. The stuff about inflation and debt, socialism and conspiracies is a smokescreen. Biden and the Democrats are the economic populists.

Paul A. London, Ph.D., was a senior policy adviser and deputy undersecretary of Commerce for Economics and Statistics in the 1990s, a deputy assistant administrator at the Federal Energy Administration and Energy Department, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A legislative assistant to Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.) in the 1970s, he was a foreign service officer in Paris and Vietnam and is the author of two books, including The Competition Solution: The Bipartisan Secret Behind American Prosperity (2005).

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Who are the populists? | TheHill - The Hill

BRUSSELS (Reuters) A greater number of countries are sliding towards authoritarianism, while the number of established democracies under threat has never been so high, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said on Monday.

Populist politics, the use of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to silence critics, a tendency of countries to mimic the anti-democratic behaviour of others, and disinformation used to divide societies are mainly to blame, the Stockholm-based intergovernmental organisation said in a report.

More countries than ever are suffering from democratic erosion, IDEA said in its 2021 study on the state of democracy, relying on data compiled since 1975.

The number of countries undergoing democratic backsliding has never been as high, it said, referring to the regressive turn in areas including checks on government and judicial independence, as well as media freedom and human rights.

Afghanistan, which was taken over by Taliban militants in August after international troops withdrew, is the most dramatic case this year, while Myanmars Feb. 1 coup marked the collapse of a fragile democracy. Other examples include Mali, which has suffered two coups since 2020, and Tunisia, where the president has dissolved parliament and assumed emergency powers.

Large democracies such as Brazil and the United States have seen presidents question the validity of election results, while India has witnessed the prosecution of groups of people critical of government policies.

Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Serbia are the European countries with the greatest declines in democracy. Turkey has seen one of the largest declines between 2010 and 2020.

In fact, 70 per cent of the global population now live either in non-democratic regimes or in democratically backsliding countries, the report said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in authoritarian behaviour by governments. The study said that there was no evidence that authoritarian regimes were better at fighting the pandemic, despite Chinese state media reports to the contrary.

The pandemic provides additional tools and justification for repressive tactics and silencing of dissent in countries as diverse as Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the report said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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Democracy Slipping Away In More Nations Than Ever. Populism, Silencing Dissent With COVID, Disinformation To Blame, Says 34 Nation Intl. Institute -...

In The Great Recoil, Paolo Gerbaudo argues that the left needs to speak to peoples fears and connect them to hope.

Bookedis a series of interviews about new books. In this edition, Sarah Jaffe talks to Paolo Gerbaudo, the author ofThe Great Recoil: Politics After Populism and Pandemic(Verso).

The 2008 financial meltdown and the global economic crisis that followed put thousands of cracks into what Mark Fisher called capitalist realismthe idea that its easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The neoliberal era appeared to be at its end. But it staggered on; the next decade saw most Western states respond with the typical neoliberal playbook.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has made it even easier to imagine the end of the world, and the response of those same states has been quite different. Is neoliberalism actually ending? And what comes next? Political theorist Paolo Gerbaudo explores those questions in his new book, The Great Recoil: Politics After Populism and Pandemic. We sat down recently to discuss the book, the class composition of the new politics, whether the left should embrace the nation, and more.

Sarah Jaffe: Give us a quick rundown on the argument of the book.

Paolo Gerbaudo: In the aftermath of the 2010swhich were dominated by populist insurgencies of all kindsand the COVID-19 crisis, the rules of political discourse and policymaking have changed. We are in a new ideological era beyond neoliberalism, which has lasted for forty years. Capitalism itself is changing its logic. Politics, both right-wing and left-wing, is dealing with new social demands that are different from those dominant in the neoliberal era.

Jaffe: Before we get beyond neoliberalism, can you explain it?

Gerbaudo: Neoliberalism is an economic and political doctrine that centers around the view of the market as superior to the state. It advocates minimal intervention on the states part except for defense, policing, and creating and regulating markets. Its both a coercive state and a regulatory state.

For many years, neoliberalism was the dominant ideology, permeating the entire political space. While its rise is associated with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, many of its ideastrickle-down economics, privatization, and so forthalso infected the center-left, through figures like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and Gerhard Schrder, in the 1990s and early 2000s. That was the crystallization of this neoliberal consensus.

Jaffe: You write that the populist outbursts of the last ten years or so have been the dialectical negation of neoliberalism, and that the rise of right and left populism acts as an antithesis to neoliberalism.

Gerbaudo: The so-called populist decade of the 2010s was a breeding ground for a new left and a new right. The new right is a nationalist rightDonald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Matteo Salvinithat attacks neoliberalism mainly on its cultural premises, and partly on the front of global trade, but with no reference whatsoever to redistribution or social protection. I call it propertarian protectionism: what they want to defend is the nation and property. The nation is the bulwark of property.

On the left, neoliberalism is attacked mainly on its economic premises. Security is framed not in the sense of coercive security but in the sense of social security, environmental security, and addressing the angst many people feel. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says her job is safeguarding people; Germanys Social Democratic Party uses the slogan social and secure.

Jaffe: You write that neoliberalism targeted peoples desires, while the emerging post-neoliberal formation targets their fears. That dovetails with my argument about work; the neoliberal model is that you should love your job (as opposed to Fordism, which didnt expect you to love work at all), but now were hearing about a great resignation and labor shortages. Do you have any thoughts on what a post-neoliberal work ethic will be?

Gerbaudo: Under neoliberalism, debates on labor, work, and the economy in general were framed in terms of competitive upward social mobility and meritocracy. [Politicians] targeted the upper strata of the middle class, who were ambitious and hoped that they would become entrepreneurs. And this became a model for the lower-class strata.

Jaffe: Like Uber: Be your own boss!

Gerbaudo: Entrepreneurship is very much about individual desire and solving your problems individually. Hobbes and other political theorists argue that politics is based on desire and love. But it is also based on negative emotions: fear and anger. Progressives tend to think that negative emotions are reactionarythat negative sentiments fuel divisive and incendiary politics.

That amounts to frowning on the fearful, something that only people who have no reason to be afraid because they are sheltered by their own wealth or job securitycan afford. Other people have good reasons to be fearful. General prospects for social mobility have declined; we have precarious generations in a condition of almost ontological insecurity. They have a different mentality. This has been exploited by the right, which speaks to this fear of decline and channels it by blaming migrants.

In the book I want to rescue the ideas of protection, security, and safety, which I dont think are naturally reactionary political instincts. At times of decline, at times of environmental threat, its only normal that people would have reasons to be afraid. A leftist politics needs to speak to that fear and connect it with hope.

Jaffe: Can you expand on your idea that sovereignty, protection, and control are the key signifiers of this moment?

Gerbaudo: On the right, sovereignty means national independence, strong borders, and anti-migration. Its often connected with a chauvinistic narrative of foreign forces, most notably immigrants, interfering with national sovereignty. Its a defense of territory.

On the left, this term is mobilized to speak to a sense of a loss of political control. Globalization has gutted the mechanisms through which people usually assert a collective will. The state has gotten rid of industrial policy. Decisions on economic policy are being outsourced to technocrats and lobby groups. This sovereignty discourse is a yearning for a return of political power, which runs counter to the neoliberal rollback of the state.

Sovereignty branches out into two other terms: protection, which is the purpose of sovereignty, and control, which is the means of sovereignty. Politics, before anything else, is about guaranteeing the conditions for the survival and health of a political community.

Protection is an idea that looks conservative, but theres plenty of discourse around it on the left. Social protection. Social safety nets. Environmental protection. Protection of minorities. Safe spaces. There are social vulnerabilities that need to be collectively safeguarded or addressed. Protection on the right speaks to protecting national identity or protecting the opportunity of the people. These solutions speak to the same basic social angst.

On the right, control is individual; its about property and defending ones own space, and it is articulated at a national level through a politics of territorial control and power. Think about policing, about COVID-19 policies, and how we articulate different visions of what state control over people should be. Take vaccine passes. Some consider such state control illegitimate. Others say that, in emergency circumstances, it is only natural for the state to assert control on an individual level.

Jaffe: The right has ideas about what should be done with immigrants; they mostly want to keep them beaten down and ensure they have very few rights in order to exploit them. You dont say as much in the book about how the left should talk about the free movement of people.

Gerbaudo: The lefts position should be that the way the right has used immigration as a safety valve to unleash anger and fear is unacceptable. Recently Ive done studies on the populist right and their online communication, and I saw how obsessively they targeted the issue, and how rewarding emotionally it is for them to make that issue much bigger than it is.

The left needs to rethink the way immigration is understood and talked about. What certain people, including sectors of the working class, mainly resent about immigration is that they perceive that it is not connected with community desires or community solidarity. Lets take the case of Britain, Polish immigration, and the Brexit referendum. It was not so much the fact of Polish immigration that led people to develop this anti-immigration sentiment, but rather that it happened in a neoliberalized job market, where many of the social protections, mechanisms, and institutions created by the labor movement were severely weakened.

The left should accept that migration is a reality and the result of capitalist inequalities. People are not moving because they are happy to go to rainier and colder countries, but because wage differentials pushed them to do that. Or escaping from torture, violence, and war forced them to do that.

Jaffe: Escaping from floods and fires and other climate catastrophes.

Gerbaudo: Some sovereigntists go to the extreme of saying that you have no responsibility beyond the citizens from your own political community. Thats ludicrous. People, regardless of which country theyre citizens of, have duties to uphold human rights.

But its important to note that immigrants are not people who are moving across borders. They move to a country and stay there. People like Ilhan Omar, who are refugees, are not citizens of nowhere, to use Theresa Mays slogan.

In Barcelona, Mayor Ada Colau uses the term vecinos, or neighbors, which is a category that doesnt just include citizens but also residents, including migrants for whom citizenship should be easier to obtain. The left response to the right discourse should break apart this idea that migrants are citizens of nowhere. No, they are people who are part of the country.

Jaffe: Its right-wing policies that keep them unrooted: guest-worker programs and all of the various ways that the right keeps people from assimilating and then blames them for not assimilating.

Gerbaudo: The right always counters any attempt to integrate people, whether its by lengthening the timeline for obtaining citizenship, or by making it more difficult for people to get the right to vote. The best measure of integration is whether people feel that they have a stake in their community, that they have a say in its decisions, and that they are accepted. The right consciously cultivates a more unwelcoming terrain, in which it breeds.

Jaffe: The question of the state is one that the populist moment, and the left in particular, really hasnt dealt with. In this book, you are in essence arguing that we have to think seriously about the state.

Gerbaudo: Theres clear proof that the dismantling of social security has led to the state engaging in more coercive security and policing. Clinton is the most infamous example; he perhaps did more than Reagan to do away with social welfare, and under his administrations incarceration rates skyrocketed.

Jaffe: And border controls increased.

Gerbaudo: In many countries, the United States most prominently, you saw social spendingexcluding pensions, which have ballooned for demographic reasonsgoing down, and security spending going up. Defense spending, obviously, went up enormously during the War on Terror.

What that tells you is that, in a society that doesnt provide everyone a lifeline, order will be maintained at the point of a truncheon. Theres a tradeoff between social security and police security.

Jaffe: Some people use the shorthand that neoliberalism is about a smaller state, so others respond that we just need a bigger state. Thats not a sufficient argument, as you lay out.

Gerbaudo: Due to neoliberalism, generally, public spending has gone down. Certain areas of state spending have been particularly sacrificed: education, social welfare, and infrastructure. Yet as Grace Blakeley rightly cautions in the latest issue of Tribune, social spending is not socialism. Social spending can simply subsidize corporations or ramp up the military, or it can create a corporatist state.

In the United States, social spending peaked in the 1960s, and then it went down steeply in the 1970s and onward. Which is why now you go to the United States to see the past, while in the past, you were going to the United States to see the future. You see infrastructure so rusty, subways past their due dates, bridges collapsing.

Infrastructure is important for social purposes. Not only because it creates lots of jobs, but also because it is the policy means through which we can address climate change: electricity, charging stations, the grid, production of food. Because of the climate emergency, the 2020s are likely to be years of big state spending. This is a change in conditions from the neoliberal era. The question for the left is how to direct it toward progressive ends.

Jaffe: During Occupy Wall Street and the movements of the squares across Europe and in Egypt and elsewhere, we saw people reclaiming public space, public political togethernessthe opposite of what neoliberalism told us to do for so long. This year, after the killing of George Floyd, and the Kill the Bill marches in the United Kingdom, there was a return to that reclamation of public space after wed all been forced inside.

Gerbaudo: This resurgence of the identity of the peoplean inclusive identity of collectivitywas characteristic of Occupy Wall Street and other movements of 2011 and the following years. There was also a reclaiming of popular sovereignty, the sense that the people have the power, that ordinary people have a say in things. That demonstrated itself in direct democracy, in assemblies; it was also an assertion that the people need to use the state.

What was surprising, if you look at the official declarations of the Occupy Wall Street assembly, was that even though the tactics were anarchist in many respects, like occupation and consensus-based decision making, the discourse was also neo-statist. People were talking about the need for a just government, which set them apart from the anti-globalization movement of the 2000s, which said that society needs to do it, because the state cannot do itbecause of globalization the state doesnt have any power anymore. After the 2008 financial crisis, there was a realization that the state has powerit bails out companies and pumps out all this money through quantitative easing programsand that therefore an active citizenry needs to occupy the state as well. The Sanders and Corbyn movements were logical extensions of that.

Jaffe: Anti-vaxxers and anti-mask protesters are also reclaiming space after isolation. In an anti-science and violent way, but there is something in common there.

Gerbaudo: The anti-vaxxer movement bespeaks a sense of a lack of control, which is also present in many other conspiracy theories. In a society in which people have lost control over many thingsover the home theyre renting, their job where they could get laid off at any minute, a chaotic environment, their locality, the things they consumethe last thing they can control is their body. They take their body as a territory to be defended against external agents that are seen as dangerous. It is an imaginary solution to real problems.

Jaffe: It makes me think of Greg Grandins book, The End of the Myth, and the American idea that freedom is the freedom to oppress. You would see this in the early anti-lockdown protestspeople with signs that said, I want a haircut. It was not just that they wanted to be free, but that they demanded people be there to serve them.

Gerbaudo: Its also about protecting property. In a situation in which upward social mobility has become more difficult to attain, we hear more defenses of the propertied classes from attempts to redistribute wealth.

Jaffe: Some people on the left will argue that we have to only talk about bread-and-butter issues and not get trapped in the culture wars. But then you can end up just capitulating to cultural conservatism, which is never just cultural. Take the Texas abortion ban. If people in Texas cannot get an abortion, it will be a very real material, physical, and, yes, economic thing that happens to them.

Gerbaudo: How does the left regain footing in sectors of the working class that have moved over to right-wing populists? Some people argue that the left needs to adopt cultural conservatism. That is wrong politically and analytically. It presumes that the reason why working-class voters, especially peripheral working-class voters, moved over to the right is because of cultural issues. We know that in the 1960s and 70s, many rural working-class people were culturally conservative. Yet they voted for the left nonetheless, because of the social and economic promises that the left made. And since the left delivered on those promises, these voters didnt prioritize cultural issues.

A left that is socially liberal and takes strong stances on serious issues yet reneges on economic demands will only be seen as hypocritical, especially by voters who are not that into progressive cultural views. So you need to win voters over on the economic side, on economic policymaking, while abiding by a progressive vision on civil rights and social issues.

Jaffe: This is a good moment to bring up the new class fractions that you write about. Theres a bunch of people in the United States who love to talk about the PMC, but you make the point that managers and professionals are actually worlds apart.

Gerbaudo: Ultimately, managers and professionals have different class interests, though they work in the same companies sometimes, or may share similar income levels. Professionals are, on average, lower paid. There are a lot of professionals that are poorgraduates without a future. They are part of a squeezed middle class, and they are not on the housing ladder. A degree doesnt guarantee you a bourgeois condition.

With managers, there are different power relations going on. Managers make decisions about tasks, about working conditions, about the mission and purpose of the company. Professionals are subjugated to these decisions. Managerialism has gutted workers control over the firm and working conditions by weakening firms and by diminishing workplace democracy. This situation is particularly acute for professionals.

The left these days is a coalition of middle class and working class, but it always has been. In the 1950s and 60s, even Communist parties didnt have just the working-class vote; they also had some of the middle-class vote. The question is how to build a coalition across the middle class and working class.

Jaffe: You write about the split between the old industrial working class, which has been more attracted to the right, and service and care workers, who are much more progressive. My reporting bears out that even industrial workers are largely split on racial lines.

Gerbaudo: There has been a recent reorientation of electoral campaigning around working-class voters; in the neoliberal era the middle class was seen as the decisive electorate. The first place Trump visited after his election was a factory. Biden now is doing the same. Hes visiting factory after factory in Rust Belt states. Hes getting photographed with big Mack trucks.

Globalization does not just mean that a global market has been created and therefore national economies have lost some of their unity and internal coordination. It also means that theres been a counter-distribution of economic power. Theres been a dispersion [of where production is located] not just between countries, but also within them.

Thats why blue-collar workers are now more associated with conservative views: they are industrial workers living in more peripheral areas, and they feel threatened because manufacturing is particularly vulnerable to international competition, much more than the service economy, which is, by its nature, more localized and face-to-face.

Jaffe: Zooming back out from the local to the national, people talk about reclaiming a kind of progressive patriotism, and you write about the necessity for a politics of place on the left. But, of course, those politics are very different depending on where you are. Are there lessons in the politics of place and nation from countries that have had to fight anticolonial struggles?

Gerbaudo: It is really tricky terrain in the United Kingdom or the United States or France or any European nation with an imperialist past. Belonging needs to be accepted as part of politics, as part of democracy. Democracies are locally rooted, and they are nationally rooted, because of history, because of language, and because the state and institutional apparatuses are defined on a national basis. The demos is defined by the topos. Its not defined by the ethnos, as would be the right-wing view, but by the place of residence.

Patriotism, in the broad sense of belonging and identification with a place and with a nation, is already in many progressive movements. Think about the new municipal socialism. It is a municipal patriotism, often infused with a sense of belonging and pride in your city. Like Barcelona, for its tradition of struggle, for example, or Madrid, or London; there is this sense of, Im a Londoner, Im proud of being here; I identify with my neighborhood, with my city.

The same thing needs to be accepted at a national level. In Latin America, its clear where progressive movements have mobilized a sense of pride and a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a culture. Like Per Libre, they often carry the name of the country. Many political theorists have evidence that one of the failures of socialist movements was that they didnt manage to process the fact of the nation.

In the new discourse of socialism, people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are articulating a different view of patriotism. Omar has been really clear on this, with the message, Im patriotic, Im a U.S. citizen, and because Im a refugee Im a quintessential U.S. citizen.

I think reclaiming the nation as an open, inclusive, and hospitable community is the right answer to discourses that cast the nation as exclusive, jealously territorial, and aggressive.

Jaffe: You note that international institutions have not actually solved any of the problems of nationalism. How should we understand internationalism now?

Gerbaudo: Internationalism, as it was already understood in the socialist movement, is true to the term inter-nations. It creates a fraternity of nations. Nations have existed historically only for a limited amount of time and will at some point, perhaps, expire. But in the short and medium term, nations are, as sociological research demonstrates, still a very important unit of attachment for people. A unit of solidarity.

That raises many questions with regard to migration and climate change. During the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, many countries took the stance that they didnt want migrants because there was no space for them, or because people didnt want them. But some countries not led by left governmentslike Germanytook a very different strategy. They hosted a million Syrian refugees, and part of the discourse was, We Germans are proud to host these people, especially because of our past. That was extremely divisive in Germany, but the majority of Germans accepted it.

In the 2020s, with the climate crisis, this needs to be the guiding vision. There needs to be an acknowledgment of the fact that people still see the nation-state as the most legitimate political institution of all the available ones, more so than supranational forms of organization. At the same time, we must promote the vision of a nation as an inclusive and open form of organization in which the immigrant is the quintessential member of the community because they are intentionally part of it.

Jaffe: The word care has come up a lot because of the pandemic. Do you have any thoughts on care as a newly emerging signifier, which has maybe gained ground since you finished writing this book?

Gerbaudo: Biden has made care an infrastructure issue as part of his program. A society of care must be a key pillar in the social-protectionist vision of the left. A fundamental component of a sense of social security and a sense of safety in the community has to do with the perception that you will not be left alone. Many people are afraid because theyve been abandoned by the state, theyve been abandoned by politics.

Jaffe: Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls it organized abandonment.

Gerbaudo: People are more inclined now to accept state intervention in new areas. A Gallup poll found that 57 percent of Americans say that the state should intervene more to solve issues.

Thats the best antidote to the chauvinist and divisive discourse of the right. If people feel abandoned, they are more likely to see a reality populated by threats. And it is easier to play the fear card with an older population. That is why social care and healthcare need to be prominent features of a left policy platform.

Paolo Gerbaudois a sociologist and political theorist based at Kings College London where he acts as Director of the Centre for Digital Culture. He is the author ofTweets and the Streets,The Mask and the FlagandThe Digital Party in addition to The Great Recoil. He has written for theNew Statesman,the Guardian, and other publications.

Sarah Jaffe is a reporting fellow at Type Media Center and the author of Work Wont Love You Back and Necessary Trouble. She is the co-host of Dissents Belabored podcast and a member of the editorial board.

Continued here:

The Politics of Protection - Dissent

Cong should not give up against right wing populism: Manish Tewari

New Delhi: Amid debate on Hinduism and Hindutva in the party since former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid wrote a book, Anandpur Sahib MP Manish Tewari on Friday said that the Congress should not give up against right wing populism and stick to its core ideology.

Earlier, he had said that the party should not get involved in Hindutva debate which is miles away from the principal ideology of the Congress.

In a series of tweets, Tewari said, Congress may be on the wrong side of the cultural wars as are most liberal and progressive parties around the world because of the rise of right wing populism. That does not mean we should give up our core convictions. RSS-Jana Sangh- BJP were on the wrong side of Cultural wars at end of 2nd World War for close to seven decades.

However they did not give up their core ideals. I urge my fellow Congress persons to read or re-read Discovery of India & Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru for he drew/delineated ideological fault lines clearly, he added.

The Congress leader said that Gandhian Humanism & Nehruvian Pluralism were two distinct strands that ran through ideological ethos of pre-Independence Congress and after Gandhis assassination in January 1948, Nehru rightly consolidated his line of strict separation of church and state.

It allowed India to heal in the wake of a blood stained partition on religious lines while Pakistan went to the dogs. In a multi religious, multi ethnic nation allowing any religion to be at centre stage of politics for an interminably long period of time notwithstanding current majoritarianism will exacerbate civilisational grievances that stretch back into millennia. It represents anti-thesis of modern Constitutional nation state ideal that Nehru-Ambedkar- Maulana Azad and millions of other patriots sacrificed their entire lives for.

On Wednesday, Tewari had said, Congress philosophically should not indulge in this debate which is miles away from its core ideology.

He emphasised that the party should stick to its core ideology and should not deviate from it as the party leaders in the past tried to toe a soft-Hindutva line to counter the BJP.

Those people who believe in Liberalism and Secularism should be in the party, otherwise if you want religion to be part of politics then you should be in the right wing parties not Congress, which believes in secularism, he said.

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Cong should not give up against right wing populism: Manish Tewari - Mangalorean.com

Dear students, faculty and staff,

As a reminder, the first edition of The Roundtable will take place virtually on Thursday, Dec. 2, from 2-3 p.m. This edition of The Roundtable, which is co-sponsored by the UIC Department of Political Science, will focus on the dangers of populism, featuring Fiona Hill, PhD, Robert Bosch Senior Fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Fiona Hill served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council from 2017-2019. Katharine Floros, PhD, UIC Political Science faculty member, will moderate the discussion and Q&A. To learn more about Fiona Hill watch this brief PBS video.

Advanced registration is required. The Zoom connection information will be emailed to all registered participants the morning of Thursday, Dec. 2. Please register no later than Wednesday, Dec. 1.

I look forward to joining you at The Roundtable for an engaging conversation on Dec. 2!

Sincerely,

Javier ReyesProvost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

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Reminder: The Roundtable: A Conversation with Fiona Hill on the Dangers of Populism - UIC Today

Ruth Patrick, Rosalie Warnock, Aaron Reeves, Kitty Stewart, Kate Andersen and Mary Reader discuss why the benefit cap was introduced in the first place, its symbolic status within anti-welfare thinking, and the very real harm the policy is causing.

The memoirs of former politicians and their associates always try to make headlines with scandalous anecdotes or crucial but little known events in the hope that this will help shift copies. This is not always easy, as David Cameron found out. But it was always going to be a more difficult task for Lord David Freud, a relatively unknown Conservative Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, who crossed benches after losing faith in New Labour.

Freud has been on the welfare reform scene for many years. A former banker, he caused controversy when he dismissed the rise in demand for food banks as being due to them being a free good (with thus potentially endless demand). As the author of the influential 2007 Freud Report, he is also one of the key architects of the UKs shift to a work-first, outcomes-based approach to welfare reform, as well as being a key proponent of processes of benefit simplification the forerunner to Universal Credit.

However, in his latest intervention, he has set out what many of us have long suspected: that the introduction of the benefit cap was always about politics and populism and never about policy or cost savings. Freud reports in his memoirs that George Osbornes chief of staff Rupert Harrison told him in 2010 that:I know it doesnt make much in the way of savings but when we tested the policy it polled off the charts. Weve never had such a popular policy.

This admission is startling in that it is both shocking and resolutely unsurprising.The 2013 introduction of a cap on the total income families could receive through social security was a policy decision that was unprecedented in the lengths it went to to sever the relationship between needs and entitlement in our social security system. It shored up flimsy but persistent distinctions between welfare dependents and hard working families. Originally 26,000 per year (or 18,200 for single adults with no children), in 2016 the cap was further lowered to 23,000 for families in London and 20,000 for families outside London (and lower still for single adults with no children). As of February 2021, 83% of households subject to the benefit cap included children.

The policy consistently polls well in public attitude surveys and became almost emblematic of the Conservative Governments approach to welfare reform legitimising and normalising what has been describedas a machine of anti-welfare commonsense. The benefit cap did a lot of heavy lifting here: it embedded and extended this new anti-welfare commonsense and crowded out space for oppositional voices. Such was the popularity of the policy that, for many years, the Labour Party did not have a consistent policy position on it. Even under Jeremy Corbyns supposedly radical leadership, there was internal reluctance to speak out and against the cap.

That the benefit cap is a popular and populist policy itself speaks to the distance British society has travelled over the last 40 years. Social security is today routinely regarded as part of the problem rather than as a force for social good. Back in the 1980s, Thatchers Government considered introducing a similar cap. They pulled back from implementing it, however, as they feared it would be politically and electorally impossible. Not so now.

The fact that the Cameron Government introduced a policy considered too radical by Thatcherites not to save money or to support transitions into paid-employment (the professed goals of the policy) but to embed and extend their electoral popularity, should disturb us all. But it becomes even more shocking when we actually look at the impacts of the policy. This is the focus of our ongoing large-scale research programme, Benefits Changes and Larger Families, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Our research demonstrates the harms that the benefit cap is causing larger families in particular (which we class as those with three or more children). Through quantitative analysis, we show the negative mental health impacts it causes. This is reinforced by evidence from our qualitative research, which walks alongside families as they live with and experience the benefit cap. Noor, a father of three, told us the impact the cap had on his mental health:

Obviously both my wife and I are stressed by the situation, our mental health is all over the placewe are struggling, we have been struggling.

Our emerging qualitative findings also highlight just how often families are going without basic essentials because of the cap. Children unable to get new shoes when their feet grow. Mothers skipping meals so they can feed their children. And whole families going year after year without a trip to the seaside or even less likely a holiday. As Lucy, who is subject to the cap puts it:

I would like to like once [in] a while like to, you know, treat my children. Of course I alwaysI have clothes for them anyway cos I normally, if theyre running low I buy clothes for them or I used to always like borrowing money but now I dont, because I know that if I keep asking my mum I know I have to pay her back in the future. So I try andput myself into a budget, like if I know that my son or my daughter needs shoes I will say, OK, I need to think of shoes and clothes for them before I think of food, because I always think of their care.

Freud himself now opposes the policy. He used a recent statement in the House of Lords to call on the current chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to get: rid of the excrescences such as the two-child policy and the benefit cap.

Our research programme is not alone in finding that the benefit cap causes real and significant harm (see, for example here and here). The fact that, as David Freud has now argued, this policy is the result of politicking, rather than efforts to save money or promote labour market outcomes, may make it even harder to challenge: evidence of its ineffectiveness might not be enough to change minds. Even if it is hard to shift the political dial on the benefit cap, we must still try to influence policymaking as well as wider public and popular narratives about social security. This should be part of a wider effort to move to a place where a policy that caps families incomes and pushes many deeper into poverty is no longer a vote winner, but rather seen for what it really is: a divisive attack on the very fabric of a just and compassionate society.

______________________

Note: The project on which the above draws has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation.

About the Authors

Ruth Patrickis Lecturer in Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York.

Rosalie Warnock is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary, University of London.

Aaron Reevesis Associate Professor of Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford.

Kitty Stewartis Associate Professor of Social Policy Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the LSE.

Kate Andersen is Research Associate at the University of York.

Mary Readeris a Research Officer at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics.

Photo by Nico Smit on Unsplash.

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When the cap really doesn't fit: populist policymaking and the benefit cap - British Politics and Policy at LSE