How the Eurozone shapes populism: a comparative political economy approach

Abstract

The rise of populist parties is a defining feature of political change in the advanced capitalist countries. Whereas a large body of research explores populist parties in domestic politics, we know little about how populist parties of right and left have responded to the transformation of the transnational Eurozone regime. In this paper, we show how the diverse exposure to the costs and benefits of EMU can explain their EU-level economic policy positions and thereby create opportunities for populist alliances across the left-right divide. In the debtor countries of Southern Europe, populist parties of both right and left have resisted demands for neoliberal reform during the Euro crisis while supporting fiscal risk-sharing arrangements during the COVID-19 pandemic, making populist left-right coalitions possible. In the creditor countries of Northern Europe, by contrast, populist right and left parties have been fundamentally divided throughout. Based on case study analyses of Germany and Italy, the most prominent creditor and debtor countries, our findings suggest that populist parties may only find common ground when ‘Brussels’ interferes in domestic policy-making autonomy by imposing neoliberal reform.