Reclaiming Populism. Eric Protzer

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Dedication

      Dedicated to

      Dr. Taeko (Hoshi) Summerville and Jeanine McMurtrie

Reclaiming Populism

      How Economic Fairness Can Win Back Disenchanted Voters

      Eric Protzer

      Paul Summerville

      polity

      Copyright © Eric Protzer and Paul Summerville 2022

      The right of Eric Protzer and Paul Summerville to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      First published in 2022 by Polity Press

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      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4813-2

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Protzer, Eric, author. | Summerville, Paul, author.

      Title: Reclaiming populism : how economic fairness can win back disenchanted voters / Eric Protzer, Paul Summerville.

      Description: Cambridge ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Why unfairness, not inequality, is driving the populist upsurge, and what to do about it”-- Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2021016430 (print) | LCCN 2021016431 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509548118 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509548125 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509548132 (epub) | ISBN 9781509550364 (pdf)

      Subjects: LCSH: Income distribution--Political aspects--United States. | Populism--United States. | United States--Economic conditions--21st century. | United States--Politics and government--2009-2017. | United States--Politics and government--2017-

      Classification: LCC HC106.84 .P77 2021 (print) | LCC HC106.84 (ebook) | DDC 320.56/620973--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016430 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021016431

      The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

      Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

      For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

Foreword

      Enthusiasm for illiberal populist ideas is at fever pitch in nations like the United States and the United Kingdom, and democracy is under threat in a host of other developed countries. Never has it been more important for liberal thinkers from the political mainstream to correctly diagnose what drives this generational challenge and devise corresponding policy prescriptions. With that goal in mind, Reclaiming Populism argues that vulnerability to the most severe forms of populism observed in the rich world today can be explained by economic unfairness, where citizens do not get the opportunities and outcomes they believe they deserve. The book then offers concrete direction on how policymakers can identify and rectify sources of economic unfairness in their respective countries, whether they wish to guard against illiberal politics or simply make the lives of their citizens more just.

Crucially, our thesis strongly departs from conventional economic explanations for contemporary rich-world populism. The typical arguments suggest that economic loss or income inequality help to explain the populist backlash. We contend instead that populism is a consequence of more sophisticated forms of economic injustice. Reclaiming Populism holds that it matters both why individual citizens get the economic outcomes they do and whether those outcomes are fairly deserved. From this perspective, an economy is fair when each citizen has a real chance at success and when rewards are approximately meritocratic. We make this case not only by referencing existing academic research, but also by showing that low social mobility – an important type of economic unfairness, in which citizens’ earnings are deeply influenced by how wealthy their parents were – correlates with indicators of mass support for populism in a variety of settings.

      Reclaiming Populism is divided into five chapters. The book exposes the most prominent theories for populism as insufficient or plainly wrong; details why biological and cultural evolution has led citizens across the developed world to especially value fairness; shows how economic unfairness is the necessary condition for contemporary populism in high-income countries; presents a framework of equal opportunity and fair unequal outcomes as policy inputs to economic fairness; and, finally, proposes a diagnostic process to identify binding constraints to economic fairness based on methodology originally developed by Harvard University’s Growth Lab.

We received vital help and feedback from many colleagues and friends. We want to thank three in particular. Ron Rogowski gave especially helpful insight on our quantitative work linking social mobility to populism, and on the broad organization of the book’s ideas. Rod Tiffen suggested that we specify fair unequal outcomes as a category of vital policy inputs in order to differentiate them from inequality which arises from cheating or rent seeking, an innovation that permits a cleaner discussion of the idea of fairness. Our editor George Owers from Polity suggested, among other important things, that our original working title “Defeating Populism” was imprecise because we argue that populism stems from genuine grievances over economic unfairness. We consequently shifted the book’s framing toward the current title, Reclaiming Populism.

      Our book has been written on the shoulders of many others alive and dead. We are most grateful