Fatalism, Authoritarianism and Clumsy Solutions: A Cultural Theory of Populism

The return of (authoritarian) populism has undermined democratic governance around the world. Yet the study of populism appears to have reached an impasse. It has been argued that this impasse can be overcome by bringing together key findings from the study of populism with theories developed in other fields. This article sets out the contributions that the cultural theory pioneered by anthropologist Douglas can make to the analysis of populism’s resurgence. First, it shows that cultural theory’s notion of fatalism appears to capture the social and economic causes of the demand for populism, as well as the supply of populism. The latter is exemplified by an analysis of U.S. President Trump’s leadership. Thereafter, the article argues that cultural theory’s ‘clumsy solutions’ hypothesis can explain when and why public policies increase fatalism. This argument is illustrated for several of the governance failures that have increased support for populism. Thus, the article proposes that cultural theory can provide a missing conceptual link between the governance failures that have boosted populism and the various social and economic factors that have also been linked to populism’s resurgence.