Citation

Speed E, Mannion R. Int. J. Health Policy Manag. 2017; 6(5): 249-251.

Affiliation

Health Services Management Center, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Kerman University of Medical Sciences and Health)

DOI

10.15171/ijhpm.2017.19

PMID

28812811

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed the rise of populism and populist leaders, movements and policies in many pluralist liberal democracies, with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump the two most recent high profile examples of this backlash against established political elites and the institutions that support them. This new populism is underpinned by a post-truth politics which is using social media as a mouthpiece for 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' with the intention of inciting fear and hatred of 'the other' and thereby helping to justify discriminatory health policies for marginalised groups. In this article, we explore what is meant by populism and highlight some of the challenges for health and health policy posed by the new wave of post-truth populism.

© 2017 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Language: en

Keywords

Health Policy; Liberal Democracy; Populism; Post-truth Politics