A Europeanisation of American politics?

Abstract

This article investigates how the Populist Radical Right (PRR) in the United States has, under the leadership of Donald Trump, reshaped the Republican party and American Politics more broadly. With a platform built on anti-immigrant nativism (“Build the wall”), anti-elite populism (“Drain the swamp”) and authoritarian rhetoric (“The election was stolen”), “Trumpism” neatly matches the definition of the PRR, observed in Europe. Based on evidence gathered from survey data and over a dozen elite interviews with American political and civil society leaders, this article explores common features between Trumpism and Europe’s PRR as well as breaks and continuities with America’s own traditions of populism, nativism, and authoritarianism. Overall, rather than an Americanisation of global politics, this article finds evidence for a Europeanisation of American politics as faith-based culture wars are replaced by a new brand of nativist right-wing identity politics.