Catherine Fieschi

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Catherine Fieschi is a French-British political analyst, academic, and author whose work focuses on how culture and society intersect with politics and economics. She is the founding director of international advisory and research company Counterpoint... [1] [2] [3] Fieschi's work has been credited with conceptualising a "new vision of populism as an ideology". [4]

Contents

Education

Born in Senegal in a family of French diplomats, Fieschi attended secondary schools in France, Italy and the United States before studying at McGill University in Canada. She completed a Ph.D analysing the rise of the French far right in the context of wider European politics in 2000. [5]

Career

In 2005, as director of the University of Nottingham's Centre for the Study of European Governance (CSEG), she wrote a series of articles for Prospect magazine, going on to become a contributing editor, writing on European and UK politics. [6]

In 2005 Fieschi joined the UK think tank Demos, becoming director in 2008.

Between 2009 and 2011 Fieschi was director of research at The British Council, leading the organisation's in-house think tank Counterpoint. In 2011, she led the transformation of Counterpoint into an independent research group (and community interest company) focused on helping decision-makers in business and policy to understand "the cultural factors behind financial, political and security risks to understand the threats and opportunities facing their companies" [7] and organisations more broadly. [8]

Fieschi returned to academia for a number of months from late 2019 to establish the Global Policy Institute at Queen Mary University of London. [9]

Approach and expertise

Fieschi is a comparative analyst: she specialises in using comparative methods to contextualise political, social and cultural dynamics. She has also used psychoanalytic approaches to explore the relationships between individuals, power and institutions in democracies and the implications for political mobilisation and political outcomes [10]

Fieschi published a first book on populism in 2004, [11] but in 2019 Fieschi's work gained greater prominence with the publication of her book ‘Populocracy: The Tyranny of Authenticity and the Rise of Populism'. [12] The book received widespread attention, including in the Financial Times, which highlighted how Fieschi combines "conceptual analysis with real examples to chart the historic evolution of populism.". [13] A review of the book by Ben Margulies of the London School of Economics complemented Fieschi's "novel theoretical contributions" as "a welcome addition to the literature on the subject." [4] A review of the Book in the International Spectator remarked that Fieschi was "one of the prominent scholars in the field of populism studies in the past twenty years". [14]

Work on the politics of integration and multiculturalism

Fieschi has also written on various forms of radicalism, and multiculturalism. In February 2020 she published a report with Brookings on Islam, secularism and populist politics in France [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Populism</span> Political philosophy

Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed in the late 19th century and has been applied to various politicians, parties and movements since that time, often as a pejorative. Within political science and other social sciences, several different definitions of populism have been employed, with some scholars proposing that the term be rejected altogether.

An illiberal democracy describes a governing system that hides its "nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures". There is a lack of consensus among experts about the exact definition of illiberal democracy or whether it even exists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Right-wing populism</span> Combination of right-wing politics and populist themes

Right-wing populism, also called national populism and right-wing nationalism, is a political ideology that combines right-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric employs anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking to or for the "common people". Recurring themes of right-wing populists include neo-nationalism, social conservatism, economic nationalism and fiscal conservatism. Frequently, they aim to defend a national culture, identity, and economy against perceived attacks by outsiders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberal democracy</span> Political ideology and form of government

Liberal democracy or western democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under a representative democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of expansion in the second half of the 20th century, liberal democracy became a prevalent political system in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Left-wing populism</span> Political ideology that combines left-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes

Left-wing populism, also called social populism, is a political ideology that combines left-wing politics with populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric often consists of anti-elitism, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking for the "common people". Recurring themes for left-wing populists include economic democracy, social justice, and scepticism of globalization. Socialist theory plays a lesser role than in traditional left-wing ideologies.

Neo-nationalism, or new nationalism, is an ideology and political movement built on the basic characteristics of classical nationalism. It developed to its final form by applying elements with reactionary character generated as a reaction to the political, economic and socio-cultural changes that came with globalization during the second wave of globalization in the 1980s.

Alessandro Ferrara is an Italian philosopher, currently professor of political philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and former president of the Italian Association for Political Philosophy. He also teaches legal theory at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.

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In political science, the terms radical right and populist right have been used to refer to the range of nationalist, right-wing to far-right parties that have grown in support since the late 1970s in Europe. Populist right groups have shared a number of causes, which typically include opposition to globalisation and immigration, criticism of multiculturalism, and opposition to the European Union.

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Yaprak Gürsoy is Professor of European Politics and the Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at the London School of Economics. Prior to joining the LSE she was a Senior Lecturer and the Undergraduate Programme Director of Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham. She previously worked as an associate professor in the Department of International Relations at the Istanbul Bilgi University and a senior member of the St Antony's College, Oxford University. Professor Gürsoy is also co-founder and co-convenor of The Turkish Politics Specialist Group of PSA.

John Bew is Professor in History and Foreign Policy at King's College London and from 2013 to 2014 held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center.

Michael R. Strain is an American economist. He is currently the Director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, and a columnist for Project Syndicate. Strain's research focuses on labor economics, macroeconomics, public finance, and social policy.

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Populism exists in Europe.

Techno-populism is either a populism in favor of technocracy or a populism concerning certain technology – usually information technology – or any populist ideology conversed using digital media. It can be employed by single politicians or whole political movements respectively. Neighboring terms used in a similar way are technocratic populism, technological populism and cyber-populism. Italy’s Five Star Movement and France’s La République En Marche! have been described as technopopulist political movements.

<i>Twilight of Democracy</i> 2020 book by Anne Applebaum

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism is a 2020 book by Anne Applebaum that discusses democratic decline and the rise of right-wing populist politics with authoritarian tendencies, with three main case studies: Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The book also includes a discussion of Hungary.

Populism in the United States reaches back to the Presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s and to the People's Party in the 1890s. It has made a resurgence in modern-day politics in not only the United States but also democracies around the world. Populism is an approach to politics which views "the people" as being opposed to "the elite" and is often used as a synonym of anti-establishment; as an ideology, it transcends the typical divisions of left and right and has become more prevalent in the US with the rise of disenfranchisement and apathy toward the establishment. The definition of populism is a complex one as due to its mercurial nature; it has been defined by many different scholars with different focuses, including political, economic, social, and discursive features. Populism is often split into two variants in the US, one with a focus on culture and the other that focuses on economics.

References

  1. ↑ Fieschi, Catherine (September 18, 2019). Populocracy: The Tyranny of Authenticity and the Rise of Populism. Agenda Publishing. ISBN   9781788210249 – via Columbia University Press.
  2. ↑ "Catherine Fieschi is Counterpoint's Founder and Director". Counterpoint.
  3. ↑ "Catherine Fieschi - NEXTEUK". www.qmul.ac.uk.
  4. 1 2 "Book Review: Populocracy: The Tyranny of Authenticity and the Rise of Populism by Catherine Fieschi". May 4, 2020.
  5. ↑ "Index Catalog // eScholarship@McGill". escholarship.mcgill.ca.
  6. ↑ "Catherine Fieschi, Author at Prospect Magazine". Prospect Magazine.
  7. ↑ Chynoweth, Carly. "Beware of culture shock" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  8. ↑ "Projects". Counterpoint.
  9. ↑ "PR - Queen Mary welcomes inaugural Director of its Global Policy Institute - Queen Mary University of London". www.qmul.ac.uk.
  10. ↑ https://www.bpc.org.uk/download/1112/NA-30-Spring-2020_WEB.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  11. ↑ Fieschi, Catherine (September 4, 2004). Fascism, Populism and the French Fifth Republic: In the Shadow of Democracy. Manchester University Press. ISBN   9780719062094 – via Google Books.
  12. ↑ Fieschi, Catherine (September 8, 2019). Populocracy: The Tyranny of Authenticity and the Rise of Populism. Agenda Publishing. ISBN   9781788210249 – via Columbia University Press.
  13. ↑ Hall, Ben (July 15, 2019). "Populocracy: The Tyranny of Authenticity and the Rise of Populism, by Catherine Fieschi". Financial Times (Book review).
  14. ↑ Padoan, Enrico (2020). "Populocracy : The tyranny of authenticity and the rise of populism". The International Spectator. 55 (4): 140–142. doi:10.1080/03932729.2020.1825283. S2CID   227033191.
  15. ↑ Fieschi, Catherine (February 28, 2020). "Muslims and the secular city: How right-wing populists shape the French debate over Islam".
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