Faculty Writing: On Authoritarian Liberalism and Neofeudalism
To many on the center-left, the election of Emmanuel Macron to the presidency of France looked like a salutary exception to the new Trumpist norm. However, as Ajay Singh Chaudhary notes in his piece In the Court of the Centrist King: Emmanuel Macron and Authoritarian Liberalism, published by Political Research Associates, President Macron was quick to lay out a program of “severe transformations to the French state and society: breaking labor and enacting economic “reforms”; decreasing the number of parliamentarians; minimizing legislation and legislative oversight; and making permanent aspects of the constitutional ‘state of emergency.'” As Ajay asks, “If Macron is the defender of a broadly liberal dream, why do his policies look less like support for a multicultural, egalitarian liberal republic and instead, as Nancy MacLean recently wrote of midcentury American libertarians, more like “protecting capitalism from democracy?”