Political Economy of the US and British Populism: Comparative Analysis of Social Origins and Structural Consequenses

The purpose of the following research is to identify the nature and the origins of the phenomenon of populism and to examine its effect on the political rhetoric of both United States of America and the United Kingdom in the 21st century. The paper builds its understanding of the given political sentiment on the works of Mudde (2007), who has identified the most popular and widely known definition of populism, and Weber (1978), who was the first to doubt the phenomenon’s uniformity, while analyzing plebiscitary leadership. The research endorses the idea that populism is a product of globalization. Consequently, its nature is largely determined by common factors of economic and social interconnectedness. Moreover, based on the existing literature and construction of new data correlations the work will attempt to make a comparative analysis of the origin of populism referring to two country case studies. This is intended in order to prove that despite similar nature, populism in the US is a product of the government agenda, whereas in the UK it is determined to the largest extent by the outcome of citizen’s economic and social concerns of increased immigration from the EU. The conclusions will be made by utilizing different methods, such as qualitative and quantitative, micro and macro levels of analysis in order to make the research trustworthy and not one-sided. The implications of the study are expected to be important for the academic community, as the following approach to populism has not yet been widely covered in the modern literature and can be insightful in strengthening already existing conclusions.