It is identity, stupid! What Emerging Markets Teach about Trump and Populism

Instead of assuming that the current wave of populism stems from backlash against economic globalisation, the book investigates how material and symbolic factors interact with each other in advanced industrial democracies and emerging powers to generate the political movements that brought politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi inIndia, and Donald Trump in the United States into power.

So, more than discontent with the redistributive effects of economic globalisation, the rise of Bolsonaro, Modi, and their populist counterparts in the Global North – particularly Trump in the United States – results from the mobilisation of specific ethnic, racial, and religious segments with the aim of changing longstanding narratives of national identity. The transformation of what it means to be Brazilian, Indian, and American, in turn, empowers certain social groups and economic sectors over others.