Populism and the Economics of Antitrust
GAICIL Insights
Antitrust populism, the chapter argues, is one of the essential facets of economic populism. It examines how political and economic populism intertwine, how antitrust populism displays the traits of economic populism, and the risks it poses to institutions and internal checks.
It also assesses the link between unfair competition and trade. The prediction that antitrust populism will keep shaping enforcement is worth weighing as governments turn their attention to AI.
Abstract
Economic populism is multi-faceted but includes, as one of its essential facets, antitrust populism which stands for the populist use of competition rules and enforcement for politically-motivated reasons. Why is antitrust important for the understanding of populism? Reversely, why is populism an unavoidable feature which helps us better understanding the development of antitrust enforcement in the US and also helps us shedding insightful lights onto the European competition practice? Delving into the intricacies of populism, economics and antitrust shall help us better grasp the important relationship, yet overlooked, between the populism and antitrust. In this Chapter, I will discuss the extent to which political and economic populisms are intertwined (I), and the extent to which the general characteristics of economic populism (II) are illustrated in the current antitrust populism (III). Then, I demonstrate the risks entailed by the revival of antitrust populism, particularly on institutional structures and weakening of internal checks. I finally assess the legitimacy of the relationship between unfair competition and trade (IV). Antitrust populism appears to have fundamentally shaped antitrust history and is predicted to persist in its influence in enforcing antitrust and in fueling general (economic) populism in societies.1
Takeaway
“Antitrust populism appears to have fundamentally shaped antitrust history and is predicted to persist in its influence in enforcing antitrust and in fueling general (economic) populism in societies.”
Quoted verbatim from the author’s abstract.
Notes
- Aurelien Portuese, Populism and the Economics of Antitrust, in The Palgrave Handbook of Populism 227 (Michael Oswald ed., Palgrave Macmillan 2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80803-7_13. Abstract quoted verbatim from the publisher’s page, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-80803-7_13. ↩
Cite as: Aurelien Portuese, Populism and the Economics of Antitrust, in The Palgrave Handbook of Populism 227 (Michael Oswald ed., Palgrave Macmillan 2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80803-7_13
Header image: Reichstag Plenarsaal des Bundestags.jpg by Photo: Andreas Praefcke, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
