Mark Blyth
William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
December 11, 2025 — 4:10 pmAlumni House, Toll Room — UC Berkeley Campus
About this lecture Contemporary populism is almost everywhere; a right wing phenomena that focuses on a politics of white working class grievance. A set of grievances that are to be addressed, when in power, with policies of expulsion, exclusion, and … Continued
Alumni House, Toll Room - UC Berkeley Campus Berkeley Graduate Lectures [email protected] false MM/DD/YYYYAbout this lecture
Contemporary populism is almost everywhere; a right wing phenomena that focuses on a politics of white working class grievance. A set of grievances that are to be addressed, when in power, with policies of expulsion, exclusion, and domination. Attempts by liberal states to deal with such movements paradoxically rely on a similar politics of exclusion, such as building so-called firewalls against the right, which are themselves deeply anti-democratic. Given that these grievances are based on real social and economic problems that have blighted working class communities across the world, can a liberal polity address such grievances in a more positive way? Or must it, to protect itself, similarly exclude and dominate such parties, movements and such grievances?
About Mark Blyth
Mark Blyth is the William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and the Director of the Rhodes Centre for International Economics and Finance. He is the author many award-winning books including, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (New York: Oxford University Press 2015), Angrynomics (New York: Columbia University Press 2020), Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation (Oxford University Press 2022), and Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers, which was a Financial Times “Book of the Summer 2025.” He writes about the politics of growth, distribution and decarbonization and why people continue to believe dubious economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary.