Populism Essay

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Essay Title: How can the rise in populism in Europe and the US be explained, and what are the political and economic consequences likely to be? Recently, support for populism has been rising heavily in the US and in Europe. There are many reasons for the rise of populism and it has resulted in and will continue to result in significant political and economic consequences. However, before we discuss the impacts of populism and how it developed, populism must first be defined. It has various meanings and, therefore, is a contested term. The definition that is used in this essay is a definition invented by political scientist Cas Mudde and presents populism as an ideology that “considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous …show more content…

This could also lead to stricter immigration policies being devised which bring western civilization back to before neoliberalism was implemented. Beauchamp supports this view by stating that poverty in the minds of white Americans is associated with blackness. This explains the political consequence: Voter racism pushes both parties in the United States significantly to the right on economic issues (Beauchamp, 2017; P8). Tannsjo states that there is an obvious problem with the broad use of the term ‘populist’ as there are very little similarities between the ideology of the right-wing and left-wing politicians. This already shows how there is a polarization between the two sides of the political spectrum. Tannjo believes that both the right and left have identified the economic problems such as inequality and unemployment correctly. However, he mentions the likely political conflict between the traditional left-wing and right-wing solutions to these economic problems. There is already polarization, and this speculated political conflict between the two sides is likely to create even more polarization. This supports my view that populism is slowing down the progress of the western civilization. This polarization between the two sides presents a general consequence of populism. The polarization leaves room on the political spectrum for more political dimensions to be born and this shows how people crave for new political dimensions to be created. Archibugi and Cellini believe that the liberal democracies should start to rethink their economic systems and the instruments they can employ in case of severe crises, both at national and international level. They believe it is necessary to re-think the history of the 1930s when liberal democracies managed to survive only when governments introduced major plans of job creation and income support policies (Archibugi &

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