Gladden Pappin (HT: Ananth) has a very good essay which examines the forces facing American Right today, especially in the context of the rise of populist right-wing ideologies.
He points to an interesting feature of modern democracy,
In his 2006 book A World beyond Politics?, Pierre Manent distinguishes “several broad categories of separation” that characterize modern democracy: “separation of professions, or, division of labor; separation of powers; separation of church and state; separation of civil society and the state; separation between represented and representative; separation of facts and values, or science and life.”These separations have been the engine on which liberal democracy runs, economically, politically, and socially. By its own admission, liberalism sought to separate matters that had historically been combined. The division of labor would allow for the maximization of profit. The separation of powers would allow modern states to retain power while not succumbing to tyranny. The separation of church and state would free churches to preach the Gospel while allowing the state to focus on civil goals. Civil society would flourish without the state’s interference. Representative government would secure the benefits of democracy without the need for direct democracy. And finally, a science free to pursue knowledge as it understands it would be wholly beneficial to mankind.
He argues that western democracies are facing a reaction against these separations, or more specifically "excessive separations".
Many economic enterprises have become unmoored from their countries of origin, and have become global behemoths beholden to no one. The separation of professions has led beyond the optimization provided by the division of labor to phenomena like those noted in small print on the back of the iPhone: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” The vulnerability of pharmaceutical supply chains under globalization has now been made painfully clear in the reaction to the coronavirus outbreak. In the United States, the separation of powers often seems to have led to administrative inefficiencies and political deadlock. The separation of church and state has steadily pushed churches out of public life, to a degree that would have surprised Americans of the nineteenth through even the mid-twentieth century. Meanwhile, the marvels produced by science and engineering in the twentieth century seem destined to be overshadowed by the monstrosities of a new biopolitical tyranny coming, like eugenics the last time, in the guise of humanitarianism. Finally, the separation of represented and representative seems to have grown, as representatives become captured by financial interests and corporate pressure.
The conventional wisdom on right and left, even liberals and conservatives cannot explain these trends. For example, as Lee Drutman found,
What propelled Trump to victory was his three-to-one win over Clinton among populist voters—those liberal (i.e., Left) on economic issues and conservative on social questions and matters of identity. Most strikingly, populists made up 28.9 percent of the American electorate in 2016, whereas libertarian voters—those conservative on economics and Left or liberal on social questions—were only 3.8 percent of the electorate.
This about the emergence of modern conservativism in the US,
The American Right incorporated economic neoliberalism on socially conservative terms, by appealing to the American tradition of self-reliance and independence—what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the doctrine of self-interest well understood”- albeit under the banner of “fusionism” ... By the presidency of Ronald Reagan, that movement was consolidated, and the Republican Party had become the socially conservative, economically neoliberal party... Tocqueville was correct when he observed that America was a society full of associations, with citizens constantly forming new groups to push for political and social changes of every variety. Over the second half of the twentieth century, however, many of these associations changed from organic expressions of citizen concern to large foundations which advanced the agendas of their donors. On the right, this change meant that conservative think tanks, activist groups, and the like adopted an almost universally libertarian viewpoint—as the donors endowing these foundations held libertarian views on economics...
As American conservatives drew on nineteenth-century formulations of English liberalism, they became ever more hostile to and skeptical of the state. In a stereotypical rendering of history according to this viewpoint, the United States was a libertarian paradise till the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (or perhaps Woodrow Wilson), whose dramatic expansion of the federal government destroyed traditional American liberties and accordingly set back American economic progress. The reality is rather different, as the United States adopted a model of state-led industrialization very early in the nineteenth century, in keeping with the ideas of Alexander Hamilton. Yet as the importance of military-industrial competition with the Soviet Union faded, conservative think tanks’ commitment to libertarian economics only grew stronger. The end of the Cold War and the success of Bill Clinton’s neoliberal presidency—during which he incorporated welfare reform, free trade, and stricter criminal justice policies into the Democratic platform—convinced libertarians and neoliberals on the right and left that their moment was at hand. The Republican Party came to power in the U.S. Congress in the 1994 elections on a mission to slash government spending and welfare benefits... During this period, the United States conceived of a future economy that would combine the monetization of internet technology and a transition from heavy manufacturing employment to a service-sector economy (hospitality, etc.). With a few exceptions, American conservatives had little or nothing to say about this change, even as the manufacturing core of the American economy was hollowed out. Fusionist conservatives had outsourced the economic portion of their thinking to libertarians.
This has had its consequences,
In the absence of an economic policy that would help middle- and working-class Americans, however, conservatives’ insistence on conserving traditional family structures became hollow and moralistic. Many otherwise socially conservative black and Hispanic voters have avoided the Republican Party for precisely this reason. But socially conservative white voters, even those whom Republican economic policies do not help, have stayed with the party in the hopes that Republican presidents would appoint socially conservative judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts... The situation that Trump entered in 2015 and 2016, then, was one in which the Republican Party was largely stuck on the playbook it had fashioned in the 1970s and 1980s—a narrative of entrepreneurial risk and triumph that bore little resemblance to the highly financialized capitalism of the twenty-first century, now driven by the relentless minimizing of domestic labor costs and the substitution of an internet-based, financial, and service-sector economy for the old manufacturing economy.
While the conservatives have traditionally been anti-statist, with deep scepticism of the federal government in particular, the liberals have viewed the state as a keeper of peace and preserver of individual liberties.
Pappin talks about a new right, which is "morally right-wing and economically statist",
A correction in the direction of the state is needed... According to a major March 2019 survey of U.S. adults, pluralities of respondents favor increased federal spending in almost every category: education, veterans benefits, rebuilding highways and bridges, Medicare, environmental protection, health care, scientific research, Social Security, assistance to the needy, domestic anti-terrorism, military defense, and assistance to the needy in the world... Trump’s victory additionally suggests that there is a majority of Americans who favor increased state intervention to align economic production with the national interest, and who favor an end to the increasingly punitive and destabilizing form of cultural progressivism dominant at present, and a correction in favor of the family...
Twentieth-century conservatives’ devotion to unregulated markets and libertarianism has now contributed to a series of financial crises, the loss of U.S. manufacturing, and a completely demoralized society... For years, the Right has had no guiding ideology, while the Left had Marxism and the center has had liberal capitalism. When the Right thinks of itself only within the existing frameworks of conservatism, it merely defends the neoliberal economic system whose distortions are now being exposed.
He points to two areas of ideological focus for the new right,
If we consider the policy areas that can and should drive political change in the United States, two areas stand out for the new American Right: family policy and industrial policy. On the first, merely speaking about the cultural pressures that families face, as American conservatives have typically done, is not enough. Too many families cannot afford children, and all the factors hindering the choice to raise children are only becoming exacerbated in the post-Covid-19 world... In the fall 2019 American Affairs, I outlined what a FamilyPay proposal should look like in the United States, centered on an annual $6,500 benefit for married couples with one child, $11,500 for two, and so on... Related to the goal of supporting the family, consider the question of decency laws that could restrict the distribution of pornography... The second area of advance in conservative thinking concerns industrial policy. In the United States, industrial policy largely disappeared from public discourse after the end of the Cold War and the worldwide trend toward liberalization. During that time, though, the United States arguably implemented a different kind of industrial policy—of moving labor offshore and transitioning to a digital and service-sector economy... The coronavirus crisis has also highlighted American dependence on Chinese-manufactured pharmaceuticals and medical equipment; the pressing need for an American industrial policy can no longer be ignored.
... majority or potentially majority constituencies across the West want their nations to be integral wholes: to have control over their borders, an economy put in the service of the common good, the ability to raise successful families, and the capacity to maintain their strategic advantage in the face of rising adversaries... At some point along the way, an enterprising right-wing party realizes that liberalism has become an exhausted ideology—exhausted because it is incapable of clearly articulating what the common good is, and incapable of inspiring the loyalty and shared sacrifice that nation-states require to function... Everywhere that the Right is successful, it is shifting toward a postliberal political stance to reintegrate society, economy, and the state. To do so, it must begin with a base of socially conservative voters, since voters split more strongly on social issues than on economic ones. Instead of trying to turn these voters into economic liberals, the Right should give them what they want: an economy oriented toward the nation by employing the means of state, and a society that is supportive of family life.
... politics and the state must reassert themselves against the attempt to dissolve them into markets and a borderless globalism. That will require the Right to become more corporatist in its approach to directing business activity in the national interests, and more integralist in its view of the link between government and the common good... Whatever word we use to label it, the policies of the next Right are already in evidence: it will use the power of the state to coordinate business and industrial enterprises toward the common goods of peace and strength, while pursuing macroeconomic policies that shore up the cultural base required for any functioning polity.
He points out that the same coalition or perspective underpins the support for populists in Europe, including the Brexit.
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