Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism

Abstract

Cultural backlash is a leader in a crowded field of research on the origins and implications of populist politics in western societies. Among many contributions, the book especially adds value for scholars of international affairs in three main areas. First, by conceptually differentiating between authoritarian populism and the populist radical right, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart imbue both concepts with more analytical purchase. Second, their exhaustive, multimethod analysis of the drivers of such politics will advance debates on their causes. Third, their finding that the origins of authoritarian populist politics reside primarily within authoritarian values, which are more strongly associated with age cohort than other variables, suggests ways in which societies may engage constructively with such politics. Norris and Inglehart use a minimal definition of populism as a ‘style of rhetoric reflecting first-order principles about who should rule’, which hold that legitimate power rests with ‘the people not the elites’ (p. 4). From that definition they move on to focus on authoritarian populism, which they argue is the predominant trend in the current populist wave. The general theory at the heart of the book is that this trend results from an ‘authoritarian reflex’ (p. 450) triggered by a ‘silent revolution in cultural values’ (p. 14). These new values differ significantly from socially conservative values that were pre-eminent in western societies into the middle of the twentieth century. While Norris and Inglehart devote significant attention to the proximate roles of economic grievances and pressure from immigration, as well as the effect of different political regimes on the relative success of populist parties, their key insight is that authoritarian populism is a cultural phenomenon, better predicted by age cohort than by political or economic conditions.