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European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession

ECPR Press

Populism in Europe During Crisis: An Introduction

Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis S. Pappas

Populism and the crisis

This volume aspires to be the first large-scale comparative work on the impact of the early twenty-first century's Great Recession on European populism. At a time when the former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti appealed to electorates to avoid 'a return to populism', the French President Francois Hollande warned against 'dangerous populist excesses', and former European Union (EU) President Herman van Rompuy sent alarming messages about the 'winds of populism' threatening Europe, we propose an assessment of whether, and to what extent, populism has interacted with the crisis. Furthermore, distinguishing between the economic and the political aspects of the crisis, and remaining sensitive to the timing of events in each of our country cases, we attempt to assess the different effects of the crisis on populism at both a national and EU level. Finally, we hope to be in a position to offer a theoretically robust and dynamic evaluation of contemporary European populism.

In the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in September 2008, populist arguments have been made in political discourse throughout Europe, and populist short-cut solutions have been proposed. As austerity became the new policy norm, economic and social inequalities grew larger, and as European integration appeared to many constituencies as a hopeless project, newly emergent populist leaders rose in some countries to defend the powerless people against sinister elites including politicians (both at national and the EU levels), bankers and industrialists – in short, the powerful and the wealthy. In some countries, formerly mainstream political formations went into decline, some irreversibly, and new populist parties appeared, some of which skyrocketed to electoral success.

The economic crisis included three intertwined dimensions (Shambaugh 2012): First, a competitiveness crisis, which caused the slowing down of economic growth in most of Europe; second, a banking crisis, due to undercapitalisation of banks and their consequent lack of liquidity/solvency; and, third, a sovereign debt crisis, especially in countries that could no longer fund public debt on their own because of rising bond yields. To be sure, the economic crisis was not uniform in terms of its causes, manifestations and outcomes. Not all European countries endured all three dimensions, nor was the crisis felt in the same way throughout the continent. A few countries (most notably Norway and Switzerland), did not really experience a crisis at all, while others were spared some of its dimensions. For those countries faced with an excessive sovereign debt, the problem became the most acute. Unable to refinance their respective governments' debts, some of them (including the herein examined Greece, Hungary and Ireland) had to be bailed out by the IMF or by the so-called 'Troika' (consisting of EU, ECB and IMF).

Although the crisis initially appeared as a purely economic one, it also had important political consequences. However, one has to distinguish between degrees of political and social disturbances. In most countries, the crisis led to the punishment of incumbent governments – a phenomenon widely observed across Europe. Only in very few countries (most notably Germany and Sweden) incumbents were able to maintain their position. In several countries, new political actors emerged forcefully during the crisis on both the radical right and the radical left (e.g. SYRIZA in Greece or the True Finns in Finland), while already established parties of the radical right were reinforced (e.g. FN in France). In addition, some countries saw the rise of new populist contenders rallying against the old political order (e.g. Beppe Grillo's M5S in Italy, or Jon Gnarr's 'Best Party' in Iceland). Everywhere, the crisis contributed to the erosion of existing party systems. In the countries hardest hit, the economic crisis developed into a deep political crisis. In some countries, it gave rise to intense social unrest, including mass mobilisation and the occasional use of street violence, and even led to the rise of political extremism on both the right and the left (most ominously in Greece and Hungary). In other countries, it caused tectonic changes in the established party system architecture (as, for instance, in Italy and Ireland) and even party system collapse (most obviously in the case of Greece).

We should not forget, however, that populism has not been the unique product of the Great Recession in Europe (Kriesi 2014). In Western Europe, the rise of populism has been a long-term process that has already been well underway at the time of the intervention of the Great Recession. This process has, for some time, been driven by the malfunctioning of representative democracy, especially by the deficiencies of the party system, the main intermediary system linking the citizens to political decision-making (see Mair 2002). These deficiencies of representative democracy, in turn, have different origins, depending on the countries we are looking at. In Western Europe, mainstream political parties have been less and less able to mobilise the voters: indicators are declining party membership and party identification, declining voter turnout, increasing volatility of the vote and declining shares of voters who choose the mainstream parties. Mair (2009) attributed this erosion of the mainstream parties' representation function to the increasing tension between 'responsibility' and 'responsiveness', i.e. the tension between the parties' role as representatives of the national citizen publics, and their role as governments being responsible to a range of domestic, inter- and supranational stakeholders. According to this view, the lack of responsiveness of the mainstream parties to specific new demands from society provided new challengers who appeal to the unrepresented demands arising from socio-economic change with the opportunity to mobilise successfully.

In particular, the lack of responsiveness of established parties to the plight of the 'globalisation losers' provided a chance for their mobilisation by the new populist right. As Kriesi et al. (2006, 2008, 2012) have argued, globalisation has transformed the basis of politics in Western Europe by giving rise to what they have called a new 'integration-demarcation' cleavage: processes of increasing economic, cultural and political competition linked to globalisation created latent structural potentials of globalisation 'winners' and 'losers'. According to their analyses, the mobilisation of the group of 'losers' by parties of the new populist right and by transformed established parties of the liberal and conservative right has provided the key impetus for the transformation of the party systems in the six West European countries they had studied. As they also showed, the success of the new challengers was mainly due to their appeal to the cultural anxieties of the 'losers', which, given the 'losers" heterogeneous economic interests, provided the least common denominator for their mobilisation. The long-term tide of populism was, in other words, not driven in the first place by economic, but by cultural motives. It is an open question to be analysed by the contributors of this volume whether the Great Recession has added economic fuel to the cultural fire.

For different reasons, Central and East European party systems have also been characterised by a considerable estrangement between the citizens and the established political elites long before the economic crisis intervened. In Central and Eastern Europe, party systems have not yet produced stable mainstream parties that reliably represent their constituencies: in contrast to the party systems of Western Europe, the party systems in Central and Eastern Europe have never been institutionalised to the same extent. In other words, in this part of Europe, parties have not yet developed stable roots in society, their organisation has been unstable, and they are hardly considered legitimate by the citizens of their countries. The most important empirical evidence for the lack of institutionalisation of these party systems comes from Powell, and Tucker (2014), who show that the very high level of volatility in these systems since the democratic transition has above all been due to the entry and exit of parties, and not to switches between established parties.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the low level of institutionalisation of the party systems has provided a general opportunity for the rise of new populist challengers. This opportunity became all the more important, given the widespread dissatisfaction of the Central and Eastern European publics with their political elites. The high costs of economic transition and the low level of political and administrative performance have contributed to the constitution of anti-elitist sentiments which provide a general breeding ground for populist challengers. Thus, a strong majority in all Central and Eastern European EU member states perceives public officials as acting in a corrupt manner when exercising their power. The levels of public distrust in political authorities are especially high in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and Slovakia. Across Central and Eastern Europe, there is a deep-seated disenchantment of citizens with democratic politics, which is, as Linde (2012) shows, largely explained by perceptions of corruption and feelings of unfair treatment by authorities. As a result of this particular combination of circumstances, 'centrist' populist mobilisation, i.e. a 'pure' version of populism that is reduced to anti-establishment posture without any other ideological element (Ucen 2007: 54a), has characterised Central and Eastern Europe already before the crisis. These 'centrist-populist' parties have 'largely arisen as a reaction to the general disappointment of East European electorates with mainstream parties and the high cost of economic reforms' (Pop-Eleches 2010: 232).

The most general question we try to answer in this volume is whether and to what extent the Great Recession has served to enhance these overall trends and contributed to the general ascendancy of populism across Europe. At the outset of our endeavour our hunch is similar to that of the politicians we cited at the beginning of this introduction: whether of a rightist, leftist or centrist hew, represented by old as well as brand new parties, we expect populism in its many manifestations to have been a beneficiary of crisis at the expense of liberal democracy as it developed during the long postwar decades.

Definitions

Of course, populism needs clear defining. Remaining fully aware of the term's slippery nature, the contributors to this book rely on well-tested concepts of populism. We define populism as an 'ideology' that splits society into two antagonistic camps, the virtuous people and some corrupt establishment, effectively pitting one against the other (Canovan 1999: 3; Laclau 1977: 172–3; Mudde 2004: 543; Wiles 1969: 166). More specifically, following Mudde (2004: 543), we conceive of populism as an ideology which 'considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups – 'the pure people' versus the 'corrupt elite', and which argues that politics should be an expression of the 'volonté générale' (general will) of the people'. This definition includes:

— the existence of two homogenous groups – 'the people' and 'the elite';

— the antagonistic relationship between the two;

— the idea of popular sovereignty; and

— a 'Manichean outlook' that combines the positive valorisation of 'the people' with the denigration of 'the elite'.

As has been pointed out by Stanley (2008) and Stanley and Ucen (2008), this conceptual core is distinct, but 'thin', in the sense established by Freeden (1998: 750) of an ideology unable 'to provide a reasonably broad, if not comprehensive, range of answers to the political questions that societies generate'. Populism's 'thinness' is a product of the vagueness and plasticity of its core concepts, which allows it to be combined with a variety of 'thick' ideologies, such as conservatism or socialism, that add more specific content to it. As Stanley and Ucen (2008: 8) observe:

Conceiving of populism as a thin ideology resolves the persistent problem of how to account for the variety of political content associated with manifestations of populism whilst simultaneously positing a set of common elements, but it also illustrates the dependent relationship of populism on 'fuller' ideologies that project a more detailed set of answers to key political questions.

For populists, 'the people' is paramount and whatever their specific view of the people, they share a 'monolithic' conception of the people. As Canovan (2002: 34) points out, the concept of the people is always conceived as a homogenous category, a unity, a corporate body capable of having common interests and a common will – a 'volonté générale'. All populists also share the notion of the people as sovereign, and all of them deplore that democracy is not working because the sovereignty of the people has been eroded and is threatened with being ever-further eroded. In addition to this conceptual core notion and depending on the 'thick' ideology with which the 'thin' ideology of populism is combined, 'the people' may also be conceived as 'the nation' (right-wing populism) or as the 'common man', the 'little guys', the 'poor', the '99 per cent' or the 'exploited' (left-wing populism).

The monolithic conception of the people as a homogenous unity not only implies the antagonism between the people and the elites, but also opens the possibility of the 'exclusion of others' – nonelite groups who do not belong to 'the people'. Depending on the 'thick' ideology that is complementing the thin populist core, specific groups of 'others' may be singled out as scapegoats who, in addition to or in combination with the elites, are to be blamed for the predicament of 'the people'. Examples of groups excluded by right-wing populists comprise all kinds of ethnic minorities (e.g. Roma or Jews), immigrants and the undeserving beneficiaries of the welfare state (those who benefit from social security without having contributed to it).

While populism is 'a shadow cast by democracy' (Canovan 1999: 3) and populists see themselves as true democrats, it is important to keep in mind that their 'thin' ideology implies quite a specific 'illiberal vision of democracy' (Pappas 2013, 2014b). We can identify three illiberal components of the populist vision of democracy: it takes 'government by the people' literally and rejects liberal checks and balances (the 'constitutionalist dimension of democracy' in the terms used by Mény and Surel 2002); it is hostile to intermediaries between the people and the decision-makers, especially to political parties (Pasquino 2008: 21), and pleads for a more direct linkage of the masses to the elites (Taggart 2002: 67); and it is also illiberal because of its monolithic (or unanimous), and, we should add, predetermined conception of the will of the people, which leaves no room for pluralism or deliberation (Mastropaolo 2008: 34f.; Urbinati 2014: 132ff.).

Populism as an ideology manifests itself in specific discursive patterns for identifying foes and solidifying the community of friends. Jagers and Walgrave (2007) and Hawkins (2009) have introduced the conception of populism as a discursive pattern or political communication style. This notion does not add another theoretical element to the definition of populism, but it is very helpful for attempts to operationalise populist ideology. Populist ideology becomes visible in the political communication strategies or discursive patterns of the populist actors. Conceiving of populism as a communication style is complementary to the definition of populism as an ideology. The populist communication style puts an emphasis on the fundamental role of the people, claims that the people have been betrayed by those in charge, i.e. the elites are accused of abusing their position of power, and that the primacy of the people has to be restored (Mény and Surel 2002: 11f.). Several authors have usefully proposed indices to operationalise populism based on an analysis of its core themes as they appear in both the political discourse and the political literature of populist parties (such as party manifestos, speeches or press releases) (see Aslanidis 2014, Bruhn 2012, March 2012, Rooduijn et al. 2014, Rooduijn and Pauwels 2011, Pauwels 2011b).

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Excerpted from European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession by Hanspeter Kriesi, Takis S. Pappas. Copyright © 2015 Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis S. Pappas. Excerpted by permission of ECPR Press.
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