When we examine the global political landscape, the far-right is clearly in a less favourable situation than it was prior to the pandemic. Trump lost the presidency, and it is difficult to see Bolsonaro being re-elected. Key far-right parties in Europe – such as the Lega and AfD – have dipped in the polls and establishment parties have reclaimed some lost ground. Putin is facing increasing discontent and Erdoğan has been battling a series of crises. And yet it would be premature to talk of the far-right as such being in crisis. The pandemic is not over, and mainstream politicians may yet face public anger and scrutiny, as demonstrated by the CDU’s terrible results at the latest regional elections in Southwest Germany. While bankers and investors may stomach an increase in public debt, most states’ finances do not allow for a return to Keynesianism or debt-financed consumerism. It is on the whole unclear how the establishment could hold the ground against the far-right in the longer term.

At the same time, if we scrutinise the record of far-right governments, we do not only see ‘blundering, uncoordinated and poorly run series of initiatives, policies and programmes’ (see Appadurai’s essay). While we certainly see chaos and struggle (for control of key institutions and levers), we also find efforts to innovate: if not to resolve, then to at least address the contradictions of neoliberal globalisation. And if Italian Fascism and German Nazism offered models for authoritarian rulers in Europe (during the Second World War) and South America (after the war), we should expect to see contemporary and future far-right organisations drawing on (if not emulating) governmental strategies being pioneered in front of our eyes. Putin’s and Erdoğan’s military ventures and symbolic efforts to tap into colonial forms of nostalgia are obviously important in this regard, as highlighted by Modi’s recent military venture in Kashmir.

But as important as the appeal of militarism may be, the contemporary global conjuncture is also powerfully shaped by economic rivalry between countries as well as between emergent regional blocs under hyper-neoliberalised conditions. In such an environment far-right governments have spent considerable energy on mobilising economic reserves, while decreasing expenditure on social welfare, health and education – and this without losing substantial support or seeing the fracturing of the alliances that brought them to power. If we examine the core of Trump’s, Johnson’s or Orbán’s economic strategy, these converge on entrenching cut-throat competition as the new norm by enforcing a strict work ethic and reconfiguring the polity around notions of deservingness and citizens’ obligations. To make this palatable, they offer protections and certain privileges for those willing to work hard, while reserving shame and punishment for ‘free-riders’ who live off taxes paid by ‘good’ compatriots. There are other alternatives (such as recourse to racism and homophobia), but the undoing of egalitarian citizenship has been one of the key innovations of contemporary far-right politics.

Just as anthropologists had been at the forefront of examining in situ the rise of far-right movements (see Kalb’s essay), we should also study what they do when they ascend to power (and manage to stay there) and how people respond to their signature undertakings. Although the study of far-right governance has thus far been the privileged domain of political science, the latter is on a path of reproducing earlier mistakes that led it to miss the great political story of the 21st century: the collapse of the global liberal settlement. The discipline remains largely wedded to the study of institutions, leaving aside the study of people’s daily lives (including their efforts to secure a livelihood, a future, a home and community) and the strategic deployment of state power to create solid social foundations for right-wing authoritarian rule. This presents anthropology with the opportunity to study far-right rulers’ strategic efforts to engineer deep-seated social transformations in a way as to keep diverse constituencies on its side – efforts that, borrowing from Gramsci, we could call ‘transformism’.

Far-right transformism does not always point in trivial directions, and this opens new vistas for the analysis of contemporary authoritarianism. To give an example, let me briefly allude to the Hungarian government’s workfare programme, which has become the cornerstone of rural poverty governance. The regime’s social policy is commonly inscribed within a broader authoritarian neoliberal trend. Ethnographically informed studies of Hungary’s workfare scheme, however, reveal the need to nuance this interpretation. Hungary’s authoritarian rulers have stripped the poor of their social rights, but at the same time they have redrawn the boundaries of citizenship in such a way as to preserve a degree of material protection and symbolic recognition – the ‘luxury’ of combining low-paid work and family life, together with a modicum of social recognition – for those willing to perform community work. At least as far as the countryside is concerned, the government’s answer to the dislocations caused by neoliberalisation has not been to mould the rural poor into productive citizens through techniques of neoliberal governmentality, but rather to insert them into patron–client relationships with local father figures who have the authority to supervise and direct their behaviour. This ‘illiberal paternalism’ (my term) constitutes an innovation that has allowed the far-right to simultaneously achieve several key goals: to re-establish control over ‘workshy’ surplus populations; to keep others in ‘normal’ employment by stigmatising welfare; and to recruit welfare claimants as political clients.

Empirically informed analyses of far-right transformism could allow anthropology to highlight not only how the far-right emerges from a global, scaled, social and historical field of forces (see Kalb), but also how it acts on this field, labouring to create new social relations (or even social formations) that advance its economic goals, legitimise its rule and cement its advances by transforming key socio-geographic spaces into its political heartland. Such strategic efforts are, of course, not destined to succeed – but that only makes their study all the more urgent and exciting.

当我们审视全球政治格局时，极右翼的处境显然不如大流行前。特朗普失去了总统，很难看到Bolsonaro被重新选举。欧洲主要的极右翼政党——例如 Lega 和 AfD——已经在民意调查中下滑，而建制派政党已经收复了一些失地。普京正面临越来越多的不满，埃尔多安一直在与一系列危机作斗争。然而，现在谈论极右翼正处于危机之中还为时过早。大流行尚未结束，主流政客可能仍会面临公众的愤怒和审查，正如基民盟在德国西南部最近的地区选举中糟糕的结果所证明的那样。虽然银行家和投资者可能会忍受公共债务的增加，大多数州的财政不允许回归凯恩斯主义或债务融资的消费主义。总体而言，从长远来看，该机构如何能够与极右翼抗衡，目前尚不清楚。

与此同时，如果我们仔细审视极右翼政府的记录，我们不仅会看到“一系列举措、政策和计划的失误、不协调和运行不善”（见阿帕杜赖的文章）。虽然我们确实看到了混乱和斗争（为了控制关键机构和杠杆），但我们也发现了创新的努力：如果不能解决，那么至少要解决新自由主义全球化的矛盾。如果意大利法西斯主义和德国纳粹主义为欧洲（二战期间）和南美洲（战后）的威权统治者提供了榜样，我们应该期待当代和未来的极右组织借鉴（如果不是效仿）政府在我们眼前开创的战略。

但与军国主义的吸引力一样重要的是，当代全球形势也受到国家之间以及超新自由化条件下新兴区域集团之间的经济竞争的有力影响。在这样的环境下，极右翼政府花费了大量精力来调动经济储备，同时减少社会福利、健康和教育方面的支出——而这并没有失去实质性的支持，也没有看到使他们掌权的联盟破裂。如果我们审视特朗普、约翰逊或欧尔班经济战略的核心，就会发现通过执行严格的职业道德和围绕应得和公民义务的概念重新配置政体，将根深蒂固的残酷竞争作为新规范。为了让这个好吃，他们为那些愿意努力工作的人提供保护和某些特权，同时为那些靠“好”同胞缴纳的税款生活的“搭便车者”保留耻辱和惩罚。还有其他选择（例如诉诸种族主义和仇视同性恋），但废除平等公民权一直是当代极右翼政治的关键创新之一。

正如人类学家一直站在原位检查的最前沿极右翼运动的兴起（参见卡尔布的文章），我们还应该研究他们上台时的行为（并设法留在那里）以及人们如何回应他们的标志性承诺。尽管迄今为止，极右翼治理研究一直是政治科学的特权领域，但后者正在重蹈覆辙，导致其错过了 21 世纪的伟大政治故事：全球自由主义解决方案的崩溃. 这门学科在很大程度上仍然与制度研究相结合，撇开人们日常生活的研究（包括他们为确保生计、未来、家庭和社区所做的努力）和国家权力的战略部署，为权利创造坚实的社会基础。 -翼专制统治。

极右翼变革主义并不总是指向微不足道的方向，这为分析当代威权主义开辟了新的前景。举个例子，让我简单地提到匈牙利政府的工作福利计划，它已经成为农村贫困治理的基石。该政权的社会政策通常被纳入更广泛的威权新自由主义趋势。然而，对匈牙利工作福利计划的人种学知情研究揭示了对这种解释进行细微差别的必要性。匈牙利的专制统治者剥夺了穷人的社会权利，但同时他们重新划定了公民的界限，以保留一定程度的物质保护和象征性认可——结合低收入工作的“奢侈品”和家庭生活，再加上一点社会认可——对于那些愿意从事社区工作的人。至少就农村而言，政府对新自由主义化造成的混乱的回应并不是通过新自由主义的治理技术将农村穷人塑造成有生产力的公民，而是将他们插入与当地父亲人物的赞助人关系中谁有权监督和指导他们的行为。这种“不自由的家长式作风”（我的术语）构成了一种创新，它使极右翼同时实现了几个关键目标：重新建立对“劳作”过剩人口的控制；通过污名化福利使他人保持“正常”就业；并招募福利申请人作为政治客户。至少就农村而言，政府对新自由主义化造成的混乱的回应并不是通过新自由主义的治理技术将农村穷人塑造成有生产力的公民，而是将他们插入与当地父亲人物的赞助人关系中谁有权监督和指导他们的行为。这种“不自由的家长式作风”（我的术语）构成了一项创新，它使极右翼同时实现了几个关键目标：重新建立对“劳作”过剩人口的控制；通过污名化福利使他人保持“正常”就业；并招募福利申请人作为政治客户。至少就农村而言，政府对新自由主义化造成的混乱的回应并不是通过新自由主义的治理技术将农村穷人塑造成有生产力的公民，而是将他们插入与当地父亲人物的赞助人关系中谁有权监督和指导他们的行为。这种“不自由的家长式作风”（我的术语）构成了一种创新，它使极右翼同时实现了几个关键目标：重新建立对“劳作”过剩人口的控制；通过污名化福利使他人保持“正常”就业；并招募福利申请人作为政治客户。政府对新自由主义化造成的混乱的回应并不是通过新自由主义的治理技术将农村穷人塑造成有生产力的公民，而是将他们插入与有权监督和指导他们行为的当地父亲人物的赞助人-客户关系中. 这种“不自由的家长式作风”（我的术语）构成了一种创新，它使极右翼同时实现了几个关键目标：重新建立对“劳作”过剩人口的控制；通过污名化福利使他人保持“正常”就业；并招募福利申请人作为政治客户。政府对新自由主义化造成的混乱的回应并不是通过新自由主义的治理技术将农村穷人塑造成有生产力的公民，而是将他们插入与有权监督和指导他们行为的当地父亲人物的赞助人-客户关系中. 这种“不自由的家长式作风”（我的术语）构成了一种创新，它使极右翼同时实现了几个关键目标：重新建立对“劳作”过剩人口的控制；通过污名化福利使他人保持“正常”就业；并招募福利申请人作为政治客户。这种“不自由的家长式作风”（我的术语）构成了一项创新，它使极右翼同时实现了几个关键目标：重新建立对“劳作”过剩人口的控制；通过污名化福利使他人保持“正常”就业；并招募福利申请人作为政治客户。这种“不自由的家长式作风”（我的术语）构成了一种创新，它使极右翼同时实现了几个关键目标：重新建立对“劳作”过剩人口的控制；通过污名化福利使他人保持“正常”就业；并招募福利申请人作为政治客户。

对极右翼变革主义的实证分析可以让人类学不仅强调极右翼如何从全球、规模化、社会和历史的力量领域中出现（见 Kalb），而且还强调它如何在这一领域发挥作用，努力创造新的社会关系（甚至社会形态）通过将关键的社会地理空间转变为其政治中心地带来推进其经济目标、使其统治合法化并巩固其进步。当然，这样的战略努力注定不会成功——但这只会让他们的研究更加紧迫和令人兴奋。