Postliberalism – a New Ideology? : A morphological analysis of postliberalism

Sammanfattning: This study examines the emerging movement that has been described as ‘postliberalism’ which criticises the state of liberalism and seeks a different alternative. Postliberals have shown some prominence in the US and UK, as seen with Marco Rubio, the ‘Blue Labour’ faction in the UK, and even recognition from Viktor Orbán. Many different political ideologies and concepts have been used to describe this movement, such as conservatism, communitarianism and even integralism. This study set out to answer this ambiguity by asking if postliberalism is a sui generis ideology. To answer this, three different books from postliberals have been chosen to be analysed using Michael Freeden’s morphological analysis of ideologies. Freeden argues that ideologies are a constellation of political concepts that provide definitions and answers to political questions, such as ‘what is justice’ or ‘how should we manage resources’. The results show that, like other ideologies, postliberalism also shares some core concepts, namely community and the common good. Yet, even though postliberalism has some conceptual capacity to provide answers, it is logically disunited. Moreover, the core concept of community is extremely similar to communitarianism and other concepts present in conservatism. The author concludes that because of the resemblance of its core concepts to concepts from other ideologies, postliberalism is not unique enough to be an ideology on its own.