CITYPERC Workshop - The Economic Project of the Far Right

‘Erratic’ is the label often attached to the far right's economic agenda. The Guardian calls Giorgia Meloni a “shapeshifter”, Dutch media call the Party for Freedom “inconsistent” and Adam Tooze warns of “sane washing” Donald Trump’s economic policy program.

While much of the far right's rhetoric does appear fragmented and contradictory, the diagnosis of “insanity” may obscure deeper analysis. If the far-right agenda is merely erratic, it becomes harder to explore critical questions: Cui bono? What are the alignments between the far right and economic elites? And how might economic policy evolve under far-right governance?

Existing scholarship has largely focused on the economic roots of far-right voting (e.g., Hopkin and Blyth 2019; Hopkin 2020), but the economic policy agendas of far-right parties have received less attention. Where there has been research on the latter, scholars continue to disagree whether the far-right project is a continuation of neoliberalism (Slobodian 2025), or an insurgency against the neoliberal and globalist orthodoxy. Thus, more work needs to be done to conceptualise far-right economic policy, make sense of its goals and to situate it vis-à-vis the known set of pre-, inter- and post-war economic policies.

This workshop aims to develop such conceptualisations by collating insights into the economic dimensions of far-right policy from different economic areas (e.g., finance, industry, tech, welfare, or state interventionism in a wider sense) and different economies. It seeks to explore the far-rights’ economic policy orientation, alliances with economic actors, and it’s positioning vis-à-vis known economic policy projects.

Programme:

10:30 to 11:30 Social Policy under the Far Right

Dorothee Bohle and Lina Ehrich, University of Vienna: The political economy of higher education reforms under the far right Orbán regime

Philip Rathgeb, University of Edinburgh: How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA

11:30 to 12:00 Coffee break

12:00 to 13:00 Industrial Policy under the Far Right

Pálma Polyák, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies: Sacrifice Zones: How Europe’s Electric Vehicle Transition Relies on Coercive Zoning on Its Semi-Periphery

Photis Lysandrou, City, University of London: The rationale behind Trump's weaponisation of US tariffs

13:00 to 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 to 15:30 Finance under the Far Right

Théo Bourgeron, University of Edinburgh: Coalescing Declining and Rising Sectors: An Exploration of Rassemblement National's Links With Businesses

Inga Rademacher, City, University of London: The far right and finance: How asset manager capitalism underwrote the varieties of financial nationalism

Pedro Perfeito da Silva, University of Exeter: Brazil above everything? How the far-right fuelled dollarisation

15:30 to 16:00 Coffee break

16:00 to 17:30 Voters, businesses, social blocs?

Daniel Kinderman (University of Delaware): Business and the Trump-MAGA Project to Remake American Capitalism

Alen Toplisek, University of Derby: Votes or donor links? Explaining the economic policy agenda of Reform UK

Vladimir Bortun, Oxford University: Men of the people, but which men and which people? The social bloc of Reform UK

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