March of the Populists - May 29, 2006
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Populist rebellion against globalisation is going global. Dubbed as 'Economic Patriotism" by French President Dominiquue de Villepin, this populist phenomena has become a movement which is spreading beyond its Latin roots. Economies from Asia to Eastern Europe are turning inward amidst rising worries over jobs and inequality.
From Chavez and Putin’s moves to nationalise energy resources, from India’s new rural employment programme to Germany’s “rich-people
tax” and China’ abolition of Agriculture tax levies – a ‘populist zeitgeist” is dawning. In Asia, campaigns to guarantee jobs or redistribute
income have become multi-billion dollar affairs. Growing income inequalities and a looming job crisis is replacing fast growth with an egalitarian impulse.
According the Mohammad Yunus, founder of a microlending bank in Bangladesh, the problem for Asian governments today is that the villages are watching television. Expectations have been raised and the increased sensitivities of the have-nots have created
populism as a rising defensive response to popular unrest.
With populism filtering in
political mainstream in Western Europe, centrist
parties have taking up the causes of opposing immigration and blurring of national identities, earlier reserved for a few fringe parties. Cas Mudde of Antwerp University argues that the new “populist style” embodies a loss of faith in the elite, a decline in party loyalty and a media tendency to flock to charismatic outsiders. This anti-Anglo-Saxon
sentiment has paralysed the political reforms agenda of these economies. Most economists agree the measures being proposed are inefficient and ineffective. This reflects in the recent protests France and India against flexibility of hiring and firing workers and reservations respectively.
As Mudde puts it, populism is permanent and is a result of widespread insecurity. Ironically, though Chavez’ populist sentiment is being accepted globally, it seems to adversely affecting his allies in the region.
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