“Build a wall”. “Tax a shed”. “Fix a debt limit”. The constructive and destructive potential of populist anti-statism and “naïve” statism

Patrick Dunleavy

Policy Studies, 2018, vol. 39, issue 3, 310-333

Abstract: Populist surges, movements and parties often centre around radically simplifying policy proposals, sometimes anti-statist in intent (e.g. fix a limit to state borrowing in cash terms), and at other times pushing naïve statist solutions (e.g. build a giant wall to keep out migrants; or tax companies' activities in a given shed, not their profits). Most liberal political science condemns the crudity and often unrestrained vigour of populist “solutions”. But on occasion, they can have value in counteracting the increasing complexities that elites often build into public policies. Two case studies show populist pressure for simplification working effectively in one instance – the “tax shaming” campaign against multinationals avoiding corporation taxes; and engendering only disorder in another instance – the effort to enforce national debt limits in nominal terms in the USA.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2018.1475639 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:39:y:2018:i:3:p:310-333

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2018.1475639

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().