Abstract
Jan-Werner Müller’s analysis of ‘authoritarian populism’ represents a highly limited approach to the issue that is typical of many mainstream approaches within populism studies and liberal-democratic constitutional theory. Through a critique of Müller, the article develops an account of the historical emergence of authoritarian populism as a ‘long counter-revolution of the radical right’ against the values and institutions of the social-democratic welfare state. Focussing on the USA and UK, the article shows how, rather than being a novel phenomenon emerging from the fringes in the 1980s and 1990s, authoritarian populism emerges from the middle of the twentieth century as a highly successful form of hegemonic struggle over the Republican and Conservative parties and over American and British societies. The political success of a highly contradictory ideological framework of the radical right has helped to largely normalise a language, rhetoric and imaginary of authoritarian populism and place it at the centre of contemporary politics and culture. By largely ignoring such a development, and the highly contingent nature of North Atlantic ‘democracy’, theorists and commentators like Müller fail to grasp the depth of the current authoritarian populist threat and offer only liberal-democratic mythology in response to the ranting and chanting of ‘fake news’.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
References
Andrews, S. (2017) Hegemony, mass media and cultural studies. Rowman and Littlefield.
Betz, H. (1994) Radical right-wing populism. Macmillan.
Betz, H. (2021) Forty years of radical right-wing populism. In G. Doval and G. Souroujon (eds.) Global resurgence of the right: Conceptual and regional perspectives. Routledge.
Bonefeld, W. (2017) The strong state and the free economy. Rowman and Littlefield International.
Brown, W. (2015) Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Zone Books.
Brown, W. (2019) In the ruins of Neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press.
Butler, J. (2004) Precarious life. Verso.
Canovan, M. (1981) Populism. Junction Books.
Crouch, C. (2004) Post-democracy. Polity.
Crouch, C. (2020) Post-democracy after the crises. Polity.
D’Eramo, M. (2017) Populism. New Left Review 103: 129–137.
Drolet, J. and Williams, M. (2022) From critique to reaction: The new right, critical theory and international relations. Journal of International Political Theory 18(1): 23–45.
Edgar, D. (1986) The free or the good. In R. Levitas (ed.) The ideology of the new right. Polity.
Finchelstein, F. (2017) From Fascism to populism in History. University of California Press.
Formisano, R. (2012) The tea party. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Fraser, N. (2017) From progressive neoliberalism to Trump - and beyond. Foreign Affairs, Winter 1(4): 46–64.
Gamble, A. (1988) The free economy and the strong state. Macmillan.
Gill, S. and Cutler, A. (eds.) (2014) New constitutionalism and world order. Cambridge University Press.
Geoghegan, P. (2020) Democracy for sale. Head of Zeus.
Hall, S. (1988) The hard road to renewal. Verso.
Himmelstein, J. (1990) To the right. University of California Press.
Jansen, R. (2011) Populist mobilisation: A new theoretical approach to populism. Sociological Theory 29(2): 75–96.
Jones, P. (2020) Critical theory and demagogic populism. Manchester University Press.
Kaltwasser, C., et al. (2017) Populism: An overview of the concept and state of the art, Oxford Handbook on Populism. Oxford University Press.
Kazin, M. (2017) The populist persuasion. Cornell University Press.
Kochi, T. (2019) Global justice and social conflict. Routledge.
Lessig, L. (2013) “Institutional corruption” defined. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 41(3): 553–555.
Laclau, E. (2018) On populist reason. Verso.
Lowndes, J. (2008) From the new deal to the new right. Yale University Press.
Macpherson, C. (1977) The life and times of liberal democracy. Oxford University Press.
Mann, M. (2013) The sources of social power, Vol. 4: Globalizations, 1945–2011. Cambridge University Press.
Mair, P. (2013) Ruling the void. Verso.
Mills, C. (1997) The racial contract. Cornell University Press.
Moffitt, B. (2016) The global rise of populism. Stanford University Press.
Mouffe, C. (2019) For a left populism. Verso.
Mudde, C. (2019) The far right today. Polity.
Mudde, C. and Kaltwasser, C. (2017) Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Müller, J. (2008) Constitutional patriotism. Princeton University Press.
Müller, J. (2011) Contesting democracy. Yale University Press.
Müller, J. (2016) What is populism?. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Müller, J. (2021) Democracy rules. Penguin.
Nash, G. (1976) The conservative intellectual movement in America. Basic Books.
Neocleous, M. (2014) War power, police power. Edinburgh University Press.
Pelinka, A. (2013) Right-wing populism: Concept and typology. In R. Wodak, M. Khosravinik and B. Mral (eds.) Right-wing populism in Europe: Politics and discourse. Bloomsbury Academic.
Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the 21st century, Goldhammer, A. tr. Harvard University Press.
Poulantzas, N. (1980) State, power, socialism, Camiller, P. tr. Verso.
Rancière, J. (2006) Hatred of democracy, Corcoran, S. tr. Verso.
Robinson, W. (2014) Global capitalism and the crisis of humanity. Cambridge University Press.
Rydgren, J. (2007) The sociology of the radical right. Annual Review of Sociology 33: 241–262.
Saull, R. (2018) Racism and far right imaginaries within neo-liberal political economy. New Political Economy 23(5): 588–608.
Scheuerman, W. (2019) Donald Trump meets Carl Schmitt. Philosophy and Social Criticism 45(9–10): 1170–1185.
Stavrakakis, Y. and Jäger, A. (2018) Accomplishments and limitations of the “New” mainstream in contemporary populism studies. European Journal of Social Theory 21(4): 547–565.
Streeck, W. (2014) Buying time: The delayed crisis of democratic capitalism, tr. Patrick Camiller. Verso.
Taggart, P. (2000) Populism. Open University Press.
Traverso, E. (2019) The new faces of Fascism. Verso.
Urbinati, N. (2019) Me the people. Harvard University Press.
Wallerstein, I. (2007) World systems analysis: An introduction. Duke University Press.
Wodak, R. (2020) The politics of fear. Sage.
Zuboff, S. (2019) The age of surveillance capitalism. Profile Books.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the comments of the two anonymous reviewers and the editorial support of the CPT team.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Kochi, T. Authoritarian Populism, Democracy and the Long Counter-Revolution of the Radical Right. Contemp Polit Theory 22, 439–459 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00611-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00611-3