The anti-democratic logic of right-wing populism and neoliberal market-fundamentalism

Walter Ötsch and Stephan Pühringer

No Ök-48, Working Paper Serie des Instituts für Ökonomie from Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung (HfGG), Institut für Ökonomie

Abstract: The paper compares neoliberal market-fundamentalism and right-wing populism on the basis of its core patterns of thinking and reasoning. Based on an analysis of the work of important founders of market fundamental economic thinking (particularly Mises, and Hayek) and the arguments brought forward by leading right-wing populist we find highlight conceptual resemblances of these two approaches: Both show a world that is split into only two countervailing parts. Right-wing populism shows a society split into two groups, fighting against each other. In a similar vein, neoliberal market-fundamentalism shows only two possible countervailing economic and societal orders. Thus, we develop a scheme of the similar dual social worlds of right-wing-populism and market-fundamentalism and offer some examples in the history of the Republican Party, where these concepts mutually reinforced each other or served as a gateway for each other. The main conclusion of the paper is that neoliberal market-fundamentalism and right-wing populism can be perceived as two mutually reinforcing and radicalizing threats to democracy in the 21st century.

Keywords: Right-wing populism; market-fundamentalism; inner images; Donald Trump; patterns of thinking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 A14 B41 B59 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-hpe, nep-pke and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/197221/1/oek48.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:cuswps:oek48

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Serie des Instituts für Ökonomie from Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung (HfGG), Institut für Ökonomie
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().