The Political Economy of Extremism

There is continuing acceptance that the One Nation phenomenon remains a significant local response to a global problem – the adoption by national polities of internationally-oriented economic policy ‘reforms’ which are despised by populations. The dismantling of public responsibility for social and economic development has emerged as a cause of internal disaffection with conventional forms of politics. This paper attempts to separate the anti-liberal from the illiberal aspects of the responses to internationalisation and de-politicisation. It suggests that there have always been intellectually respectable anti-liberal traditions of analysis and that One Nation has tapped into some of these strands of analytical opinion. The lesson for mainstream parties is that they continue to insist on the inevitability of globalisation, and to risk further societal discontent and intolerance, only by ignoring the real alternative approaches to the responsibilities and possibilities of politics that have long been available.