Deindustrialization and the Populist Challenge: Comparing East and West

This seminar will present a theoretical argument for the impact of economic globalization on deindustrialized regions in particular, and the ways in which those regions account for a significant portion of populist backlash. It will then report on one ongoing research examining four rust-belt regions: Tolyatti in Russia; Katowice in Poland; Tyneside in the UK; and Cleveland in the US. These settings are quite different: Soviet-era industrialization followed by “shock therapy” in the “emerging markets” of Poland and Russia; prolonged deindustrialization in the “advanced capitalism” of the UK and US.