Why Is Economic Populism Supported By Those Who Loathe Political Populism?

The Economist, perhaps more than any other magazine or newspaper, has outlined the dangers of populism in recent years.In the past month alone, headlines on its website have included: “Why cosying up to populists rarely ends well for moderates, ” “Populists fall short of expectations in the European election, ” and “Populism and polarization threaten Latin America. ” The populist style of politics, which seeks to pit “ordinary people” against “elites,” is rightly anathema to a magazine rooted historically in a classical liberal worldview.It ’s therefore surprising that the magazine’s Charlemagne column has endorsed a populist as the next president of the European Commission. On Tuesday, a piece entitled “Why Margrethe Vestager ticks all the boxes, ” backed the current competition commissioner for the presidential role. It described her as having “applied both a liberal sense of consumer rights and an interventionist commitment to defending the little guy to the task of regulating technology giants.”Make no mistake: on economic issues, Vestager is a populist in the truest sense of the word. A new paper,Antitrust Without Romanceby Dr. Thibault Schrepel (an assistant professor of antitrust at Utrecht University), documents this by analyzing her speeches and comparing them with previous commissioners. He shows clearly how populism and the moralization of antitrust and competition policy has accelerated in recent years in the EU, with Vestager in th...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs