Populism and the welfare state

Abstract

Populism should be defined as a set of ideas that not only portrays society as divided between ‘the corrupt elite’ and ‘the pure people’ but also defends popular sovereignty at any cost. Conceived in this way, there is no straightforward relationship between populism and the welfare state. In this contribution we explore this relationship in detail. In the first part of our contribution we explain that, at a theoretical level, populism is prone to putting the welfare state under stress. Given that populist forces seek to (re)define who belongs to the political community, they challenge the existing interpretations about who should have social rights and who should pay for them. However, as we will argue in the second part of this contribution, populism practically never arises in its pure form, since it usually appears attached to other ideologies, which are crucial for developing political projects that are attractive to larger sections of the electorate. This is why, then, we focus on analysing two paradigmatic instances of populism in the contemporary world – inclusionary populism and exclusionary populism – in order to show the different approaches towards the welfare state that each of these subtypes of populism tend to support. Finally, we close our contribution by advancing some ideas about the future of the welfare state, which is under threat not only because of austerity and welfare retrenchment, but also due to the rise of populist forces of different kinds that seek to transform existing democratic institutions and procedures