PSCI 360
Right-Wing Populism Spring 2022
Division II
This is not the current course catalog

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously declared “the end of history”. From now on only liberal democracy, free market capitalism, and global integration had a future. Everything else–including political ideology, nationalism, conservative religion, and sovereignty–was consigned to the ash heap. Thirty years later the future looks seriously derailed. A right-wing populism marked by Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, and a host of ‘far-right’ political movements in the very heartland of democratic globalizing capitalism has shaken liberal certainties. This course is an investigation into contemporary right-wing populism in Europe and North America in its social, economic, and political context. We will discuss theories of right-wing populism’s appeal from both Left and Right perspectives. We will also investigate cases of right-wing populism including France’s National Rally and the Eric Zemmour phenomenon, Sweden’s Sweden Democrats, Hungary’s Fidesz, Poland’s Law and Justice Party, and Trumpism, the alt-right and QAnon. Finally we will entertain right-wing populism as both a cause and a symptom of a crisis in liberal democracy.