Public Choice Populism - A Manifesto, Part 1
An Introduction to My Vision for a Libertarian-Populist Alliance
Like many libertarians, the ascension of Donald Trump to the head of Republican politics worried me. The continued failure of libertarianism to “catch on” as a popular movement on the right, and the ascent of what has broadly been called “right wing populism,” gave me much distress. Surely, with Neoconservatism and Evangelical Conservatism’s crash-and-burn at the end of George W Bush’s administration, there was no credible alternative. After all, what did the Neocon-Evangelical fusionism bring? Deeply unpopular wars in the Middle East as a means to fulfil biblical prophecy. An intrusive national security state that spies on its own citizens. Hysterical preachers condemning sexual minorities just before their own unbiblical sex lives were plastered all over the news. Attempts to teach Creationism in science classrooms. Bailouts of the financial sector that caused outrage on both the left and the right (in the form of Occupy and the Tea Party respectively). These things drove Americans to vote for Barack Obama and his promise of “change,” yet as it became increasingly clear that the promised change would be drastically underdelivered upon and that the American government would grow even more authoritarian during his administration, libertarians saw (or at least wanted to believe in) an opportunity – a Libertarian Moment – in which we would become the dominant force on the right and ascend to power as dissatisfaction grew with the left’s increasing ideological extremism and authoritarian behaviour.
This did not happen. The Neocons and Evangelicons may have been bloodstained by war and humiliated by their own failures, but libertarians did not get the opportunity to fill the gap they left behind. Instead, the gap was filled by what initially appeared to be a non-ideological grab-bag of (sometimes justified) grievances tied together with fiery rhetoric and strong personalities, and often lacking in nuance. When Trump emerged as the standard bearer of this grab-bag, my worry intensified – whilst he was much more tolerant of sexual minorities and noticeably more secular than George W Bush, his more-heat-than-light rhetoric combined with some of his policy stances made him resemble the walking amalgam of every one of Richard Nixon’s mistakes.
Yet as he began to govern, and as right-populist movements arose or were energized across the Americas and Europe, my worries began to fade. Trump delivered several policy reforms and outcomes libertarians have been fighting for. He cut taxes and regulations. He delivered criminal justice reform (quite surprisingly given his campaign rhetoric) and restored due process protections for the accused in college Title IX proceedings. He may have given lip service to the religious right, but it was mere lip service. He entered office accepting of same-sex marriage rights, he appointed the first ever openly gay person to a US cabinet position (Richard Grenell), his first confirmed Supreme Court justice (Neil Gorsuch) regularly ruled in favour of the rights of sexual minorities and the reasoning behind these rulings has successfully been used against racially discriminatory “affirmative action” policies, and he launched an international campaign to encourage more countries to repeal laws against homosexuality. Most laudable, however, is the fact that he didn’t get the US involved into any more wars (unlike Nobel-Peace-Prize-laureate Obama). He even managed to get several Arab states to normalize relationships with Israel. Additionally, even where he was less libertarian than what libertarians would generally like, he was not nearly as bad as feared. On trade policy, he mostly used tariffs and other similar measures as negotiating tactics to get better trade deals, and his proposed immigration reforms amounted to merely the same kind of policy that Australia, Canada and New Zealand have embraced for decades.
I do not believe these pleasant surprises are mere good luck. Nor do I now believe that the grievances driving “right wing populism” are a disconnected grab-bag. Indeed, not only should libertarians treat these grievances sympathetically, but libertarians have a special opportunity to energize the libertarian movement with populist energy (and the electoral success of Javier Milei in Argentina makes it clear that populist energy can elevate libertarians into power). We do this by providing a coherent intellectual framework for all of the grievances held by the right wing populists using a well-known school of libertarian economic thought - Public Choice Theory. This manifesto will outline the basics of this project, which I call Public Choice Populism.
Firstly, I shall define my terms. In Parts 2 and 3, I shall proceed to explain the grievances of right wing populists, how these grievances interrelate, and how they are to be understood through the lens of Public Choice Theory. In Part 4, I shall conclude with some strategies for politically operationalizing Public Choice Populism.
The two critical terms which must be defined are “Public Choice” and “Populism.” Public Choice, or Public Choice Theory, is the economic analysis of political actors, be they politicians, voters, political parties or public servants. The defining characteristic of Public Choice is that it applies the exact same assumptions economists routinely make about market actors to political actors – classical Public Choice presumes political actors to be rationally self-interested. Public Choice analyses that follow on from information economics and behavioural economics presume political actors are equally prone to imperfect information and cognitive biases as all other human beings. Politicians and public servants are not benevolent omniscient angels – they are human. Consequently they care for their own interests, their own enrichment and their own job security just as much as anyone else. They’re just as fallible and just as selfish as the CEO or the shopkeeper.
Populism, on the other hand, is neither an economic theory nor a political ideology. Rather, it is a style of political rhetoric. Marxists, Fascists, Classical Liberals, Social Democrats and Social Conservatives have all made populist appeals at some point. This doesn’t mean populism is empty rhetoric however – the rhetoric may or may not be an accurate description of the societal context in which the rhetoric is used. Populism is a rhetoric that advances a model of society in which a powerful yet small elite is described as exploiting or oppressing or unjustly dominating the average, typical or everyday person. It derives its power by appealing to our democratic and egalitarian values.
It is my contention that not only are the grievances of right wing populism valid and that the invocation of populist rhetoric is justified in this situation, but that the grievances of right wing populists are a logically cohesive set of complaints that are perfectly explicable with Public Choice Theory. Right wing populists protest things ranging from unregulated immigration to misandrist feminism in video games, from ESG investing strategies to critical race theory in classrooms, from highly interventionist foreign policy decisions to Drag Queen Story Hour, from draconian COVID lockdowns to the European Union, and from the latest Star Wars product to the “gender affirmative” or “Dutch protocol” models of treatment for minors with gender dysphoria. However there is a common denominator here that unites the Canadian Freedom Convoy, the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement, the Brexit movement, the Yellow Vest protests in France, the America First Movement (a.k.a. “MAGA”), Javier Milei’s coalition in Argentina, and all of their fellow travellers. The core of their grievances can be accurately summarized as follows:
“Societies across the world are becoming increasingly dominated by an increasingly unaccountable (whether to voters or markets) credentialist, metropolitan academic-bureaucratic-cronyistic-cultural-managerial-political-professional caste that has been radicalized into (or at least opportunistically uses) ‘woke’ ideology and believes itself to be morally and intellectually superior to the masses yet exists because of and is dependent upon government lawmaking and largesse.”
In simpler language, it is a story of productive lower-to-middle classes subsidizing unproductive members of the middle-to-upper classes. It is a story of the left becoming dominated by the university-educated middle-to-upper classes and abandoning the working classes when not using them as human shields. It is a story of conflict between a Brahmin Left and a Merchant Right. It is a story of contemporary society’s rent-seekers and pork-barrelers versus everyone else.
Keep following Dr Casino for part 2, coming soon…