Reading Populism

[Smokeandsteam]

Leaving this here. I don’t know much about the book or, shamefully, much more than vagaries about the Preston model. But I’m keen to safety collecting examples of what left populism might look like...

 

[dilberto]

Left wing populism is economic and materialist in its nature while today's populist issues are cultural and the elitism which populism is reacting against is the lefts' own cultural extremism (woke culture) which has become the orthodoxy of the western political class, mainstream media and state and business institutions and which itself is a product of progressive materialism.

The left's populism would simply be an attempt to use their still unproven and in the eyes of many discredited economic theories to try to distract those alienated by the left's own woke extremism from what the left consider to be dangerous cultural populism.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Left wing populism is economic and materialist in its nature while today's populist issues are cultural and the elitism which populism is reacting against is the lefts' own cultural extremism (woke culture) which has become the orthodoxy of the western political class, mainstream media and state and business institutions and which itself is a product of progressive materialism. Aspirants and liberal social movements also adopt it: either because they grasp that the lingo is necessary if they want an entry ticket and how to get a hearing under the existing order.

The left's populism would simply be an attempt to use their still unproven and in the eyes of many discredited economic theories to try to distract those alienated by the left's own woke extremism from what the left consider to be dangerous cultural populism.

First, your attachment of the concept of ‘woke’ to left wing politics is miles off the mark. Woke culture is used by the elite to a) attempt to embed itself into new or growing demographic markets that are forming or which it wants to form and b) commodify culture.

It’s also the default narrative of the Professional Middle Class and used to solidify and protect its position, extend its societal hegemony and to keep their world sealed off from those outside of the codes.

Aspirants and liberal social movements also adopt it: either because they grasp that the lingo is necessary if they want an entry ticket into the PMC or because they learn it’s how to get a hearing under the existing order.

Secondly, if you don’t understand how the material/economic and the cultural have a dialectic relationship then you aren’t going see where you are going wrong here. A brief glance at the history of the 20th century would have you deleting your comment in embarrassment

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Hopefully you can all read this (well, the 3 followers of the thread anyway). From one of the authors of the The Rise of the Right, Simon Winlow. Excellent stuff:

Why the Left Must Change: Right-Wing Populism in Context

In recent years right-wing populism has risen significantly across the west. In 2017, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, came very close to winning the French presidential election. She eventually lost out to Emanuel Macron, a man dedicated

www.academia.edu

 

[yield]

An article recommended The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America by Lawrence Goodwyn? Any read it?

 

[redsquirrel]

An article recommended The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America by Lawrence Goodwyn? Any read it?

Nope, sorry yield.

 

[redsquirrel]

With one thing and another I’ve made slow going with the Broder. Hopefully reviewing it will help me get on with it.

So Broder comes at the current state of (populist) politics in Italy from looking at some key developments from the 1990 to the present. Chapters 1 and 2 look at the changes in the political situation since the collapse of the establishment parties of the First Republic. This collapse is traced back to a number of factors

The end of the First Republic was no single event – and was shaped by the frailties that had long built up in the Christian-Democratic-dominated state that emerged from World War II. The death of this order in the early 1990s married such developments as the Communist Party’s self-dissolution, the felling of the Socialists and Christian Democrats by anti-corruption magistrates, the acceleration of European integration, and the rise of Berlusconism. But as the old party containers collapsed, the Italian political system would have to be founded on new bases – and the forms it took showed just how far the ties between parties and society had weakened. This laid the basis for a new series of political forces – including a radicalised right, breaking from the Christian-Democratic past.

The focus of chapter 1 is the rise of right wing parties, the Lega Nord and Berlusconi, outlining how both used the corruption scandals which undermined the old centre-left and centre-right parties to build populist right wing bases. There is a summary of the Lega Nord’s beginning and political journey which is useful in showing the changes and continuities in its politics, providing a better understanding of the party.

The second concentrates of the folding of the Italian Communist Party and the space that allowed populist parties to exploit. There is a summary of the history of the party and it’s successors from the post war period to the present day. The shape of this collapse is probably familiar to most, paralleling that across the west, but the degree of the collapse is probably even greater - possibly a factor in the greater support for populism in Italy than elsewhere in western Europe.

As someone who is not that familiar with Italian history these chapter’s were useful. However, there is a too much focus on political parties, a greater focus on the actions of the working class would have helped. There is some good data in Chp 2 showing the distribution of voters in 2018. Admittedly social class definitions have their problems but it is striking to see how the unemployed and blue collar workers overwhelming backed M5S. The PD doing better with self-employed, while-collar workers and pensioners.

The best section of the 1st two chapters is the one outlining how the EU has been a tool for the liberalism of the economy and creating of debt. The turnabout of some former PCI figures from their recognition of the EU as a capitalist club to its promotion is disgusting if not really shocking.

Where in the 1970s the Communist Napolitano pointed to the dangers that the currency union posed to working-class living standards, two decades later he ardently defended the sacrifices that blue-collar Italy would have to make in the name of loyalty to the European project. However intransigently Italy’s technocratic elites hold to such dogmas, the consequences have proven nothing short of disastrous, for working-class living standards, for growth, and for Italians’ connections to their own democratic institutions. As we shall see, in the eurozone era Italy has not only suffered protracted economic woes, but its population has passed from being among the most Euro-federalist countries to among the Eurosceptic. Polls in 2018 showed that the Italian population is even more unhappy with the EU than the Britons who voted for Brexit30 – and it blames the centre-left for its “troubles. As Napolitano’s own trajectory shows, the left’s journey from PCI to PD was, indeed, far more than a name change.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Good stuff redsquirrel I enjoyed reading that and look forward to further posts.

Im hoping the book will go into some details about how/why - and the processes by which - areas which had previously been communist/socialist strongholds shifted (like in France) towards the right? I’m guessing the decomposition of the CP is one reason for this but there will undoubtedly be a more complex set of factors underlying these shifts.

 

[redsquirrel]

Chapter 3 is entitled A Country for Old Men and is definitely the best chapter in the whole book. It breaks out of the focus on party politics and takes a wider view of society. There are some pretty shocking stats in there on 28.9% of those aged 20-34 are NEETs, (EU average is 16.5%), emigration from Italy has been ~250-300k a year, and almost 2 million people emigrated from the south. And then there is the levels of flexibility

A series of reforms have made short-term contracts the norm – with the effect that since 2000 the proportion of young workers hired on term-limited contracts has soared from 26 per cent to 67 per cent of the total.

This flexibility has been implemented by local capital working hand-in-hand with the EU via their approved technocrats, such as Monti.

“ECB demands ranged from ‘the full liberalisation of local public services’ – including ‘large-scale privatisations’ – to measures ‘significantly reducing the cost of public employees, by strengthening turnover rules and, if necessary, by reducing wages.’16 This was twinned with moves to cut back sector-level collective bargaining (forcing unions to make deals firm-by-firm, and thus weakening their collective power) and automatic mechanisms which would cut public spending in case of ‘slippages’ from deficit targets.

And then you have this excellent quote

Defending his record in a 2014 address in Paris, Monti quoted US founding father Alexander Hamilton to insist on the supremacy of expertise over democratic politics. As he put it
"when occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection."
In fact, he and his ministers had never been appointed by the Italian people as guardians of their interests: his was a cabinet of unelected technocrats whose parliamentary backing depended on parties that had hitherto stood as bitter opponents.

Afterwards of course the technocrats were expelled by the pro-EU centrist populists led by Renzi, who carried on with the same practical policies.

The result of the above is that rather than euroscepticism being being most prevalent among the old, as in the UK, it is actually the young that are eurosceptic, at the same time they have less engagement with political parties and trade unions. This frustration with society and lack of connection to political groups embedded in the wider society makes people prime targets for the populists - perhaps especially the blank slate populism of M5S.

 

[Flavour]

Agree with all of that pretty much redsquirrel and particularly the importance of the Euro and its impoverishment of Italian society as largely to blame for euroscepticism among the young, who, almost without exception, earn significantly less money than their parents' generation and have no hope of buying property or feeling economically stable enough to have children.

The demographic collapse has been somewhat tempered by the arrival of lots of migrants (including from within the EU, mainly Romania). In fact the only reason Italy's population is still roughly where it was 10 years ago, around 60 million, is because of the arrival of migrants. The old baby boomer generation are dying off now and even they had relatively few kids (this more because of liberation from Catholicism, women's liberation) and this current generation even less.

It would be my contention that the massive numbers of people who emigrate from Italy also contribute to the decline of centre-left parties, as the emigrants are often liberal-leaning.

The fact is that the Communists once opposed the Euro, then they turned into the PD and are the biggest Europhiles going. And everyone knows, knows, that the Euro is shit and has harmed the economy of Italy enormously over the last 20 years. But who is saying that to the people? Lega. The Eurosceptics. Combined with the massive increase in "visible migrants" over the last 10 years (which scares the olders into voting far-right more than the youngers, who are, despite being generally eurosceptic, much less openly racist than the older generations, in line with most European countries) ... it's kind of obvious why the far-right are in the ascendent. The left have abandoned the field of play, in terms of party politics. The closest thing to a left-populist anti-EU party is the M5S, and it doesn't take more than 5 minutes of reading to realize how non-left they are. But that's where there has been, and a lot of people have voted for them who share the general discontent with economy/society. They have generally done much better in the South because the far-right parties (Lega in particular, who were Lega Nord, i.e. Northern League, who were openly racist to "Southeners" until very recently), being white supremacists, think of the South as being racially inferior.

Sadly, the Lega is now making inroads in the South too.

It does not bode well.

 

[redsquirrel]

The demographic collapse has been somewhat tempered by the arrival of lots of migrants (including from within the EU, mainly Romania). In fact the only reason Italy's population is still roughly where it was 10 years ago, around 60 million, is because of the arrival of migrants. The old baby boomer generation are dying off now and even they had relatively few kids (this more because of liberation from Catholicism, women's liberation) and this current generation even less.

There are some nice bits in Broder's book about the attempts of the parties to try and deal with this

In autumn 2016 the PD-led government proclaimed a so-called Fertility Day, in a bid to highlight this issue. It issued a series of advertisements that combined public-health messages about the harmful effects of substance abuse with rather cruder exhortations for couples to stop ‘waiting for the stork’ and ‘get moving’. In July 2017 Patrizia Prestipino, a member of the PD’s national leadership, called for ‘support for mothers’ to avoid the ‘extinction’ of the ‘Italian race’.

Sadly Broder does not say whether these measures caught on with the Italian populace.

The fact is that the Communists once opposed the Euro, then they turned into the PD and are the biggest Europhiles going. And everyone knows, knows, that the Euro is shit and has harmed the economy of Italy enormously over the last 20 years. But who is saying that to the people? Lega. The Eurosceptics. Combined with the massive increase in "visible migrants" over the last 10 year... it's kind of obvious why the far-right are in the ascendent. The left have abandoned the field of play, in terms of party politics. The closest thing to a left-populist anti-EU party is the M5S, and it doesn't take more than 5 minutes of reading to realize how non-left they are. But that's where there has been, and a lot of people have voted for them who share the general discontent with economy/society. They have generally done much better in the South because the far-right parties (Lega in particular, who were Lega Nord, i.e. Northern League, who were openly racist to "Southeners" until very recently), being white supremacists, think of the South as being racially inferior.

Chapters 4 & 5, on M5S and the Lega respectively, go into this, and make many of the same points. I'll post of a summary of both either today or over the weekend.

 

[redsquirrel]

One thing I missed in my summary of chapter 3 was Broder's point of how the total lack of investment in infrastructure by the Italian government, enforced by the EU flexibility strategies, has also fed into the huge rise in youth unemployment and decline of job security.

 

[Flavour]

One thing I missed in my summary of chapter 3 was Broder's point of how the total lack of investment in infrastructure by the Italian government, enforced by the EU flexibility strategies, has also fed into the huge rise in youth unemployment and decline of job security.

You can add to that the constantly declining investment in education, which is well below the EU average in terms of GDP and has been cut relentlessly as part of post-2008 austerity ... not that this has necessarily had an impact on employment, but on alienation certainly.

 

[redsquirrel]

Chapter 4 concentrates on the rise of M5S, the opening paragraph gives a good summary of the chapter
(I'm going to break this summary into two posts, the first takes us up to the 2013 elections when M5S really came onto the scene).

...The destruction of the First Republic did not enhance democratic engagement, but rather accelerated the colonisation of public life by elites whose power was rooted in other fields, from press barons to judges and technocrats. Combined with the consolidation of the Maastricht order, the effect was that the range of decisions subject to popular control narrowed at the same time as the forms of politics became more vertical and less based on mass participation. Yet, even as the focus of public debate turned away from questions of social redistribution, the material effects of political decisions were nonetheless apparent in the declining living standards of the popular classes. Already visible from the early 1990s, this narrowing of democratic and economic choice reached its culmination in the era of the 2008 crisis, as a cabinet of unelected technocrats implemented austerity measures with the support of both the main centre-left and centre-right parties. This dramatised both the crisis of representation and the social majority’s feeling of powerlessness to alter their condition.

There is proposal that the volatility of Italy's party political system is caused by the breakdown of the old class-political alliances. That on the (centre-)right the owners of SMEs were increasingly forced (Broder's word not mine) out of the dominant bloc represented by the Christian Democrats, by the integration of Europe.

While the rise of a debt-centric economy benefited financial interests and those collecting rents, this intensified splits within the dominant bloc, which was unable to cohere its fragmented interests around the European project and the politics of monetary stability. On this reading, the specifically European dimension of this turmoil meant that the voter revolt expressed in the Lega and the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement; M5S) emerged not in opposition to neoliberalism but on the ground of national sovereignty.

Broder notes that the populism of M5S and Lega (originally) assembled a different definition of 'the people', M5S the (more southern) excluded and Lega (more northern) those that had once been in the dominant bloc but have now been excluded/marginalised. The voter make up of M5S backs this up with the party not only attracting former PD voters but also drawing in some former DC voters (18% of those that voted DC in 1987 voted M5S in 2018).

There is a very important point that Broder makes that although M5S (and we could say the same about Lega) is populist and anti-establishment it is not anti-systematic

Its opposition to the hegemonic order is limited to the terrain of representation – the forms of politics itself, rather than the wider organisation of society.

I think that is something that could be said of many, most(?) of today's populisms.

There is then a section on the building of M5S and Grillo and Casaleggio's actions. I'm going to skip summarising quite a lot of this as while it is interesting it has been written about elsewhere and is less relevant to the wider analysis of populism. What is important is how M5S's populism is targeted to society, it is perhaps the 'purest' example of populism not targeted to the 'left' or 'right'.

For M5S, the fundamental clash is not between classes, between North and South, or even between Italy and the European Union, but rather between the citizen and politics as a whole

(In practice of course the actions of the EU meant that the populism of M5S was inevitably drawn into opposition to the EU).

[pre-M5S movements] did not impose any powerful positive agenda of their own, but rather internalised the left’s loss of grand strategic visions. Under the Second Republic, the radical left instead turned to extra-institutional politics, for instance in the creation of social centres (occupied spaces, often in disused buildings), anti-redevelopment campaigns, or activism focused on alternative lifestyles.

And M5S can be contrasted to the 'left'-populisms of Podemos or Syriza

A response not only to post-2008 austerity but a quarter century of political and economic volatility, M5S never adopted the message of left-populist parties such as Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece, promising a break with neoliberalism.
...
Quite different was the Italian case. Mario Monti’s administration clearly played into the hands of M5S’s argument that politics had grown apart from citizen control, given both the manner of its formation (as a deal lined up by the president under the pressure of the bond markets and ECB) and its parliamentary basis (backed by both main parties).
...
It seemed that after a quarter century of economic stagnation and privatizations, most Italians saw post-2008 austerity measures with a sense of grim inevitability, rather than as something which a different government might reverse. Indeed, revealing its own anti-political mores, M5S’s hostility was far more directed against ‘the parties’ (and especially the PD) than the Monti cabinet itself.

This 'pure populism' meant that despite it's often contradictory position and statements and rather insipid set of policies allowed M5S to strike a chord with the electorate

M5S did freely denounce a host of institutions, from banks to (‘current’) European Union rules, political parties, trade unions, and media. Yet, at the same time, it could maintain its own unity precisely with a rhetorical focus on its own nonpolitical character.

The results of the 2013 election were excellent for M5S it secured a large block of votes that meant that neither the centre-left or centre-right blocs could get a majority and then the PD decided to shut it out and instead former a government with support from Berlusconi's party. Obviously this was absolute gravy to M5S which could make hay without having to actually be involving in governing (something that it has been shown to be very bad at). The other consequence of this political manoeuvring was that it allowed Renzi to make his move.

 

[redsquirrel]

2nd part of chapter 4

So Renzi made use of Berlusconi losing control of his own party to push the PD even more into the centre and casting himself as a populist - the 'demolition man' sweeping away the old elites

In the bid for centrist votes, the ‘demolition man’ persona was allied to a confrontation with his own base, indeed mounting free-marketeer reforms that even Berlusconi would have balked at. The removal of Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute (thus allowing employers to sack staff at will), the Good School reform (making educators’ employment status more precarious), and the introduction of l’alternanza scuola-lavoro (compulsory unpaid internships for high-school students) all set the PD on the war-path against the unions on whose support it had once relied.

Despite his seizure of the PD and support inside the parliament Renzi's support outside was always rather weak, PD lost the 2016 Rome mayoral elections to M5S

Maps of the results showed only the very smartest central neighbourhoods in PD red – once the colour of the workers’ movement – whereas the old proletarian neighbourhoods as well as the city periphery were a sea of M5S yellow.

then came the referendum on the government, in which Renzi (stupidly) insisted that he would resign if the vote was NO. The result was that a NO vote was supported by not only populists like M5S and the Lega but also Renzi's enemies in the PD and the National Italian Partisans’ Association. But M5S led the charge - with the result that M5S were the victors when the NO vote took 59% of the vote. Again the strength of populism within the young can be seen with 70% of 25-34 year old voting NO.

While the blank slate approach of M5S worked well while they were on the outside (they secured 33% of the vote in the 2018 GE) once they got into government the contradictions and lack of any positive vision, as well as lack of organisation, allowed them to be quickly out manoeuvred by the Lega.


I'll try and finish off the book this week.

 

[redsquirrel]

Final chapter is on the Lega.

One important thing to note is that much of the Lega’s growth is it’s takeover of the right wing block vote, in a similar manner to the FN in France. (I want to do some cross-county comparisons in a later post)

Salvini’s success owes much more to a radicalisation of existing right-wing voters, and collapsing turnout for his rivals. In southern towns, where only five years ago its leaders defined the locals as terroni, the Lega has won over the historic Catholic-conservative vote, moreover converting former Berlusconian and postfascist officials into its own cadres.

(Also worth noting since the publication of this book of the growth of the FdI at the expense of the Lega.)

In 2018 the Lega make a serious break-through, edging out Forza Italia to become the largest party on the right. Ironically this break-through can after a period of trouble for the Lega, it took just 4.3% of the vote in the 2013 GE. But exploiting the space on the centre-right that had opened up due to Berlusconi’s political and legal troubles Salvini moved from the Lega Nord to make the Lega a national party.

In the north the Lega was already challenging/overtaking FI by 2014/2015. In the south the path to becoming the largest section of the centrodestra bloc was slower but Salvini made connections with former FI/CD local political bosses providing a base. The growth of the Lega was aided by the growth of M5S with the Lega taking votes from FI and other right parties rather than converting left wing voters. However, with left wing voters defecting to M5S the end result was to benefit Lega, in both regional and national elections. Salvini making use of immigration and the EU as tools to nationalise the Lega.

So the 2018 elections were not only a competition between left and right but also pro-Eu liberalism (FI and PD) and eurosceptic populism (Lega and M5S), and with the latter being the winner.{QUOTE]As in the 2013 contest, and indeed the political revolution of 1994, in the 2018 general election Italians dealt an enormous blow to the previously dominant parties. But this did not make clear what kind of change they wanted. In the first election of the Second Republic it had been the forces of the right that exploited the anti-corruption mood, stopping the ex-Communist PDS in its tracks, whereas in the 2013 contest the M5S was the only truly dynamic force. This time, two different radicalisms had each benefited at the expense of those parties that conceived themselves as more moderate and centrist.[/QUOTE]

This set the stage for the coalition government between M5S and Lega, despite the differing policies and social bases of the two parties. And while M5S never really managed to construct a coherent platform within government the Lega did. This led to Lega very quickly outmanovering M5S, with Salvini acting as a (the?) major mouthpiece of the government from his position as Interior Minister and all other parties afraid to go to the polls with Lega’s growing support.

And it was post-2018 that the Lega started to take M5S votes. {QUOTE]“As we have noted, only a tiny proportion of left-wing voters had switched to Salvini’s party in the 2018 general election: only 2 per cent of 2013 PD voters did so, and the M5S was by far the stronger force among the social categories traditionally associated with the Socialist and Communist left. Yet after the government actually took form – and the M5S began to become a loyal accomplice to the Lega – it also became apparent that the ‘neither left nor right’ party could itself serve as a kind of gateway drug.
…..
In the local elections held on 10 and 24 June 2018 the M5S had already begun to stand down some of its own candidates, in favour of the Lega.[\QUOTE]
This out-flanking of course continued until 2019 when Salvini felt he had enough public support and called time on the coalition with M5S, perhaps underestimating the survival instincts of politicians the populist M5S which had grown on the back of the actions of the anti-populist PD was now willing to go into government with it (and even Renzi).

I’m then going to quote most of the final paragraph of the section as it gives an excellent summary

“As we have described in this book, the suddenness of this breakthrough is not itself surprising, amid the wider climate of volatility – the advances for the Five Star Movement in the great turnover election of 2013, or indeed Berlusconi at the dawn of the Second Republic, were just as impressive. But herein lies a danger for the Lega. In Susanna Turco’s words, the new arrivals in Lega ranks ‘seem rather like a wave like that of the Forza Italia in 1994, the stunning success that then develops into an organised force’.20 A harsh nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment do seem, for now, to provide a glue for the Lega’s different souls. Yet the Lega has always also fought for a certain set of material demands, and its balancing act between contradictory and often evasive positions on the eurozone, on public spending and on welfare is far from guaranteed to last. In his first year and a half in government, Salvini appeared as if all-powerful, even while maintaining an oppositional stance. What remains to be seen is whether he can consolidate his new base – and turn the radical right as the main force in the land.

 

[redsquirrel]

Also not directly about populism but the third of the Perry Anderson pieces butchersapron linked to here has some useful quotes re populism in relation to the EU

Of necessity, the premise of both is the passivity of the population below the political class and its adherents. Has the course of events since the global nancial crisis of 2008 seriously shaken this? With the exception of Britain, it would be dicult to hold that it has had any sustained or consequential eect. Of the populist revolts in Southern Europe, Syriza – a fully establishment party once Tsipras signed up to the conditions of the Troika – gained less than a quarter of the vote in the European elections of 2019, before being routed at the national election in Greece shortly aerwards. In Italy, M5S scored just 17 per cent in the European elections, before joining its hitherto execrated adversary the Democratic Party in a coalition in Rome. In Spain, Podemos took 10 per cent in the European polls, before joining the Socialist Party in an unsteady minority government in Madrid. Of the populist revolts on the right, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National achieved less than a quarter of the vote in those European elections, Salvini’s Lega Nord just over a third. To the east, the parties led by Kaczyński and Orbán are still in a class by themselves, capturing respectively 45 and 53 per cent of votes in the Euro-elections, though each lost the mayoralty of his capital city to a mainstream liberal opponent, Law and Justice also falling short of a majority in the upper chamber of the Sejm, but narrowly retaining the Polish presidency.

Viewed soberly: nowhere do prospects look particularly favourable to populist forces in Europe, of whatever complexion. Where they remain outsiders in the political system, the risk they represent to it tends to strengthen the status quo. Where they enter the political system, as supports or partners of the establishment, they tend to become assimilated to the dominant consensus. The fears on which they play, while oen radical in form, easily become conservative in eect where issues of identity or immigration arise. Overarching them is the reality that the centrist bloc of opinion encompassing moderate conservatives, temperate liberals, pragmatic social democrats and self-satised Greens – acronymically in Brussels, the EPP, RE, S&D and Greens/EFA – is much larger than its opponents on right or le, and remains overwhelmingly dominant in the Union. In the spreadeagled, distended space of today’s Europe, control of the media landscape and lavish funding from the Commission make this force fully as capable, to use Michael Mann’s phrasing, of outanking symptoms of disgruntlement from below as its homologues in India, China or America. It would take another and altogether more seismic 2008 to shake these political co- ordinates.

Common to this range of opinion is the rejection of the idea that the future of the Union lies in a federalist superstate, accompanied by the belief in a powerful forward motion that is still at work in the EU. The Covid package is not a prodrome of the United States of Europe to which Helmut Kohl looked forward on the morrow of Maastricht. Nor has it resolved the tensions and incongruities of the Union. For Majone, these require its conversion into a true confederation along Swiss lines, though one limited to foreign and security policy. For his compatriot Fabbrini, unlike him a paladin of the ‘European values’ proclaimed by Brussels, more is needed: division of the Union into a single economic community covering the whole of continental Europe, and a separate political union (not a state) of federal character, grouping only those countries prepared to accept a common currency, scal authority and budgetary policy, a common security and military system, border control and immigration policy, even if retaining domestic versions of some of these attributes. Majone admits his proposal is not currently feasible, while Fabbrini puts his hopes – shades of van Middelaar – in a ‘coup’, along the lines of that carried out by the American founders. Bickerton, by contrast, simply registers the paradox of further integration without signicant supranational advance, while van Middelaar concedes that Macron’s announcement of France’s return to planning, which was followed by Germany, sets the course for a new European dirigisme to which even the Netherlands will have to adapt.

What these diering prospects – coming from writers convinced that the ideas of Monnet and Hallstein, Delors or Kohl are dead – overlook is the cumulative direction and impact of successive advances towards closer union, which are not in any simple way under the control of the powers steering the European Council. From the beginning there have always been signicant forces with another agenda, committed to federal union, who have been entrenched in the Commission and the Court of Justice, and latterly too in the Central Bank and the Parliament. They have never achieved their goal. But nor, since the defeat of the European Defence Community in 1954, has incremental progress towards that end ever been stopped or reversed. Is it credible that it has now reached its limit?

It does not take a great deal of imagination to wonder how faithful Middelaar and others who have generally agreed with him – his teacher Frank Ankersmit might be a case in point – would remain to their traditional preferences if geopolitical conditions change. In 2018, observing the way the US and China were wrenching themselves away from the world order that took shape aer the Cold War ended, van Middelaar asked himself what place Europe might occupy in the ensuing disorder. His answer was quite modest. ‘The EU is an experiment in multilateralism on a continental scale,’ he wrote, ‘born to break power politics, but not to make power politics.’ In that faint note of exogenous resignation, might there lie the germ of some endogenous adaptation to come, as steps towards yet closer union inch forward to meet mounting challenges from the superpowers of America and Asia? Or is the current formula of the EU – dilute sovereignty without meaningful democracy, compulsory unanimity without participant equality, cult of free markets without care of free trade – likely all the same to last indenitely?

 

[redsquirrel]

To follow up on a couple of points made by Broder and Anderson.

So looking at the share of the vote the right-wing, and populist radical right share of that vote, have been taking over the last decade or so

France	Year	Right bloc	FN/RN share of right vote
(1st round of presidential elections)	2007	46%	25%
	2012	41%	39%
	2017	46%	48%

Italy	Year	Right bloc	L/LN (FdI) share of right vote
	2008	46.8%	17.7% (0%)
	2013	27.6%	14.8% (7.1%)
	2018	37.0%	37.8% (11.8%)

So you have a similar pattern in both countries with populist radical right parties forcing eating into the vote of traditional right parties (and latest data indicate that this process is continuing). (In Italy's case I'd be interested in seeing where the growing FdI vote is coming from, I suspect a lot of it was FI->L(N)->FdI but there could be a direct movement between FI and FdI.)

If anyone has data for other countries please add it.

Second, I think a point made both by Broder and Anderson, that populist parties within the EU can be anti-EU but are effectively trapped into opposing any leaving of the block, is correct. In the short term that ensures the EU is not going anywhere but what it means to the to the EU longer term I'm not sure. As outlined in Andseron's piece the idea that the EU can reform, or even really change direction, is a nonsense. At the same time anti-EU populism is not going anywhere, even if it is limited to minorities/plurarities.

 

[hipipol]

Wow, not one First Principles derived ANYTHING - all referencing some one else's work, then defining position by degree of opposition - there are no empirically derived constants in Political Theory - the dancing on a pin within the spotlight beam is not true thought. merely annotated regurgitation - no better than then any drug addled twat at Delphi. Savonarola, the Boxer Rebllion et al fall outside of these defs - are they mere dreams? Romanticising is a bigger driver that PoliTricks care to admit

 

[Shechemite]

Yeah

 

[redsquirrel]

Considering how the some predicted covid would halt/stop populism I thought it might be worthwhile looking at the fortunes of populist parties 1 year on

France
The battle here is clearly shaping up as technocratic liberalism vs radical right populism, and while I do not think the 2nd round polling can be considered that accurate a prediction this far out from the election, every poll has shown Le Pen improving on her 2nd round showing from 2017. Also worth noting that Le Pen has a 32% approval rating, above that of the leaders of the PS and LR.

Italy
Again the left vs right dynamic has been undermined, it is as much about populist vs anti-populist. The big gainers this parliament have been the FdI, probably now the third largest party in Italy, and certainly larger than FI


As Flavour predicted on the Italy thread the FdI have benefitted from the installation of Monti. It would be interesting to know where those voters are coming from as the Lega vote has held steady and the FI vote perhaps slightly increased, while the PD vote has dropped. This could be another gateway effect, where FI previously fed into Lega, you know have FI feeding to Lega, which in turn feeds to FdI. Regardless the right populists remain the ones to beat.

Austria
the FPO have not made a large gains off the back of COVID but they have not gone backwardss, the situation is largely pretty similar to that at the 2019 election with the FPO a clear third place

Sweden
Here COVID did hurt the populist Swedish Democrats, with a big COVID boost for the Social Democrats. However, it is worth noting prior to COVID the SwDs actually led in the polls at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020. They've lost that movement but are still polling slightly ahead of where they finished in 2018.

Germany
COVID did give the CDU a huge boost, one that lasted for some time, but now the situation is not that different from Feb 2020. CDU leading, with Greens in 2nd, SPD continuing its longer term decline (though with a short term rise in the polls since Jan 2021).

Comparing against 2017 the Greens have gained significantly, not only at the expanse of the SDP but it is likely there is also some movement from the CDU to the Greens. There are some that have called the German Greens left populists but I think that is totally wrong. They are absolutely not populists but part of the technocratic side, and the fact that they are getting CDU votes shows that they are not particularity left (centre-left sure). The AfD might have lost a little support but is hardly dying, and another grand coalition where the partners change but the politics don't is not going to kill it off.

Spain
Vox still the 3rd party and COVID has done nothing halt them. The PP might have had a COVID related boost, taking voters from Vox, last year but that has not only worn off but Vox have seem to gained support since the beginning of this year (currently polling about 2% above their 2017 vote)

 

[redsquirrel]

Still some way out from the next election (2023) but the Finn Party (True Finns, PS in poll below) are polling ahead of the SDP.

PS-ID: 22%
SDP-S&D: 20% (-1)
Kok-EPP: 16%
Kesk-RE: 11% (-1)
Vihr-G/EFA: 10%
Vas-LEFT: 8% (+1)
SFP-RE: 4%
KD-EPP: 4%
Liik~NI: 3%

The initial covid bounce for the SPD having worn off and the PS being the beneficiaries.

 

[Shechemite]

ID is ‘identity and democracy’?

eta 5 seconds google and I’ve answered my own question (yes) - not for the first time here.

 

[hitmouse]

Considering how the some predicted covid would halt/stop populism I thought it might be worthwhile looking at the fortunes of populist parties 1 year on

Posted about this elsewhere, and don't know much about it, but Castillo in Peru sounds like he might be a fit for the P-word.
Positive take from Jacobin:

With Pedro Castillo, Peru Has a Chance to Vanquish Fujimorismo

Fujimorismo is the glue holding together right-wing politics in Peru. In the second round of the country's elections, trade unionist Pedro Castillo has the potential to destroy it. But he’ll have to unite the Left first.

jacobinmag.com

Less positive take:

Who is Peru’s Frontrunner Pedro Castillo?

The little-known candidate, branded as a leftist, emerged as the victor of Peru’s first round election. But his leftism is a façade for the reactionary Right.

nacla.org

 

[redsquirrel]

ID is ‘identity and democracy’?

eta 5 seconds google and I’ve answered my own question (yes) - not for the first time here.

Yes, sorry should have been clear Europe Elects (that I took the info from) gives each parties European Parliament grouping as well (or for those countries not in the EU, the grouping that best 'matches' the part).

 

[Shechemite]

Didn’t the ID grouping put out a statement recently about unifying around ‘Atlanticism’ and ‘opposition to antisemitism’. Can see both of those points going down badly on the (even further) far right

 

[Shechemite]

Has anyone written anything about the ESL stuff and it’s implications for populism?

 

[redsquirrel]

Piece from David Broder on latest developments for Five Star
All very sordid, but somewhat predictable, the lack of any coherence in M5S has been clear from the start

Italy's techno-populist Five Star Movement (M5S) was first created in 2009, promising to put citizens back in control of politics. Key to this vision was its Rousseau online voting platform, in which M5S's registered supporters voted on key proposals, with MPs compelled to follow the majority line. As internet use became the norm in late-2000s Italy, Rousseau founder Gianroberto Casaleggio proclaimed that Italians no longer needed politicians or parliament, when they could take part in online referendums instead.
......
Last Friday (23 April) brought a new low point as the owner of Rousseau – Casaleggio's son, Davide – quit M5S, taking with him not only its online voting platform but also its official blog and its claimed 190,000 registered supporters' contact details.

The deeper split was political, in particular reflecting moves to make former premier Giuseppe Conte the party’s leader, which would have required a vote on Rousseau. Since M5S has no structures allowing any kind of public discussion or reckoning with its failures other than splits, it has for years veered erratically from one position to another, with supporters voting by huge margins (what Italians call "Bulgarian majorities") for opposite ends of a question.

Grillo's destabilising influence was well illustrated on 19 April, as he posted a video responding to news of a police investigation of his 20-year-old-son, Ciro, for involvement in an alleged 2019 gang rape in Sardinia. In a furious, expletive-laden rant, the 72-year-old Grillo – the historic leader of the largest party in the Italian parliament – attacked the teenage victim for her delay in going to the police, mocking her for having "gone kitesurfing first". This Monday, it was reported that Grillo had hired a private detective to look into the 19-year-old complainant's private life.

Conte's public interventions since he was forced from the prime minister's office in February have broadly laid the base for the M5S's reinvention as a centre-left and green force. Over the rest of Draghi's premiership, likely lasting till elections that must be held by spring 2023, Conte will surely be able to corner some Recovery Fund spending for M5S-associated projects and stake out his own political identity. Rather more difficult are his plans to impose order on M5S itself.

 

[redsquirrel]

New book on France politics and the anti-populist politics that Macron represents have come about

This book analyses the French political crisis, which has entered its most acute phase in more than thirty years with the break-up of traditional left and right social blocs. Governing parties have distanced themselves from the working classes, leaving behind on the one hand craftsmen, shop owners and small entrepreneurs disappointed by the timidity of the reforms of the neoliberal right and, on the other hand, workers and employees hostile to the neoliberal and pro-European integration orientation of the Socialist Party. The presidency of François Hollande was less an anomaly than the definitive failure of attempts to reconcile the social base of the left with the so-called modernisation of the French model. The project, based on the pursuit of neoliberal reforms, did not die with Hollande’s failure; it was taken up and radicalised by his successor, Emmanuel Macron. This project needs a social base, the bourgeois bloc, designed to overcome the right–left divide by a new alliance between the middle and upper classes. But this, as we have seen recently on the streets of Paris and elsewhere, is a precarious process.

Anyone read it?

 

[redsquirrel]

A piece by Yascha Mounk - smug liberalism is spades.

We Might Have Reached Peak Populism​

If the picture looked almost unremittingly bleak a few years ago, now distinct patches of hope are on the horizon.

Feeling optimistic about the state of American politics is hard. The country is deeply polarized. Much of the debate consists of name-calling and demonization. Dissatisfied with a strategy of maximal obstructionism in Congress, Republicans in state houses are trying to make subverting the outcome of the next election easier.

But we can’t forget how much worse things could be right now—and what a major achievement it was for Joe Biden to have defeated Donald Trump. America booted an authoritarian populist from office in a free and fair election at the conclusion of his first term.

For those who are interested in the fate of liberal democracy around the world, that triumph raises a key question: Was Trump’s loss an aberration owed to specifically American factors? Or did it portend the beginning of a more difficult period for authoritarian populists around the world—one in which they might be held accountable for their many mistakes and misdeeds?

You could make the case for a pessimistic answer. In some countries, such as the Philippines, authoritarian leaders remain highly popular among voters. In others, such as Peru, the populist wave is just now coming ashore. And even in the United States, it is plausible that extremist leaders who have recently been ousted may soon stage a comeback—Trump is widely believed to be interested in running for the presidency in 2024, and the Republican Party seems to be growing more extreme by the day.

But you could also make the case for optimism. Recent developments in Europe and Latin America suggest that some of the populists and antidemocratic leaders who have dominated the political landscape for the past decade might finally be encountering serious trouble. If the picture looked almost unremittingly bleak a few years ago, now distinct patches of hope are on the horizon.

Take Germany. When the far-right Alternative for Germany first presented itself in national elections, in 2013, it fell just short of the 5 percent of the national vote it required to enter Parliament. Four years later, the party more than doubled its support, taking 13 percent of the national vote. If that rate of growth were to continue, the AfD would become the country’s largest party in elections this fall.

But as they say in financial markets, assuming that past performance is indicative of future results is a mistake. Far from continuing its rapid rise, the AfD is now losing popular support for the first time in its short history. Some polls suggest that the party may fall back to single-digit support in the September election. Even after Angela Merkel, Germany’s long-serving head of government, leaves office, there is little immediate reason to fear for the stability of German democracy.

The situation in neighboring France looks more precarious. Like his three predecessors, President Emmanuel Macron has quickly become unpopular, and the country’s traditional parties are sad shadows of their former selves. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, who has long aspired to step into the void, should be in a strong position: Only about 52 percent of French voters prefer Macron to Le Pen, according to some recent polls.

Yet recent regional elections—widely seen as a preview of next year’s presidential race—have suggested that her position is weaker than many feared. Le Pen failed to win power in a single region, and the traditional parties, whose death has so often been prognosticated, were the ones that showed surprising signs of electoral resilience. For now, the defensive bulwark against Le Pen seems to be holding.

Other long-established democracies in Western and Northern Europe have also seen populists lose momentum. Sizable populist movements won parliamentary seats in Denmark, Sweden, Greece, and the Netherlands. In all of these countries, these movements will likely remain part of politics for the foreseeable future. But in all of them, they have also, for now, ceased to grow.

Extremist leaders remain in power in some of the world’s most populous democracies. But even some of those strongmen are now starting to face a real reversal of fortune.

Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain known for his extremist rhetoric and open nostalgia for Brazil’s departed military dictatorship, unexpectedly assumed the country’s presidency in 2019. But he is now in deep political trouble. Lacking loyal allies in the country’s Congress, Bolsonaro has so far proved unable to concentrate power and, thanks to his disastrous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, his popularity has plummeted. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president better known simply as Lula, is likely to beat Bolsonaro in an upcoming election.

Extremist politicians in other Latin American countries are also doing poorly. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist, won Mexico’s presidencyby making big promises about economic redistribution and an end to corruption. Even before the coronavirus hit, his government had failed to deliver. Then his mishandling of the pandemic—a deadly mix of complacency and denialism that was strikingly similar to that of López Obrador’s nominal ideological adversaries, Trump and Bolsonaro—further dented his popularity. In congressional elections in 2018, López Obrador’s party won a crushing majority. In elections last month, it bled nearly 20 percent of its support. While López Obrador’s party retains a nominal majority in Congress thanks to the support of two smaller allies, his ability to pass controversial legislation has been significantly curtailed.

Even some authoritarian populists who had long since seemed to consolidate their power now face some difficulty. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has recently suffered painful setbacks in important state elections. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan has grown highly unpopular amid a deep financial crisis. Though both are likely to remain in the saddle for the foreseeable future, their electoral stars are not shining quite as brightly as they did a few years ago.

Perhaps the most interesting case is that of Hungary, a country that, despite its relatively small population, holds special significance for scholars of authoritarian populism. Before Viktor Orbán concentrated immense power in his own hands, many political scientists thought that Hungary’s democratic institutions had “consolidated,” meaning that they should have been able to weather serious crises without much damage. But because of Orbán’s assault on independent institutions, Freedom House, the prodemocracy NGO, has found that the country is no longer fully free—a historic first for a member state of the European Union.

But now, the opposition is finally getting its act together. After years during which Orbán’s control over the media, judiciary, and electoral commission left him with little effective resistance, opinion polls for next year’s parliamentary elections suggest that a broad ideological alliance is running neck and neck with his ruling party. If the united opposition ekes out a majority despite competing on an uneven playing field, the moment will be decisive for Hungarian democracy: Orbán will need to decide whether to ignore the outcome of the election, turning himself into an outright dictator, or give up the office on which he seemed to have such a firm hold just a few months ago.

It is far too early to declare that we have reached “peak populism.”

The coming years could well turn out to be even worse for liberal democracies around the world. By 2025, France and the United States might plausibly be ruled by Le Pen and Trump (or one of his family members), respectively. Modi and Erdoǧan will likely still be in office. Countries that are now governed by moderates could have new populist leaders of their own. This is hardly the time to stop sounding the alarm.

And yet, there is, for the first time in years, real evidence for the more optimistic scenario.

At the beginning of the populist rise, a new crop of political leaders made huge promises to voters and lacked a record on which they could be judged. But after winning power, they have largely failed to live up to their promises and bungled the handling of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Voters in many countries have thus started to grow disenchanted. Though populists usually retain a fervent following, their ability to build support from a broad cross section of voters seems to be rapidly fading in many countries.

The ability of mainstream parties to compete with populists has also improved. In many places, traditional parties had failed to realize how angry their own voters had become, and to what extent their policies were out of keeping with the preferences of the majority. Some have since corrected course, showing that they can beat populists at the ballot box if they steadfastly oppose extremism and take the grievances of ordinary voters seriously.

In a joke beloved by the writer David Foster Wallace, an old fish greets two young fish. “How’s the water this morning?” he asks them. Once the young fish are out of the old fish’s earshot, they turn to the other. “What the hell is water?” one asks. The moral of the joke is obvious: We often become so accustomed to our environment that we start to take it for granted.

The rules and norms that sustain liberal democracies are similar. In good times, most voters don’t care about who sits on the electoral commission or regulates the media. But when authoritarian leaders stack those institutions with loyalists, banning popular candidates or shutting down independent television stations, voters start to pay attention.

In many countries around the world, the past few years have been a crash course in the importance of the water we’re swimming in. And though the future remains highly uncertain, we have good reason to hope that people are more willing to fight for its preservation. Authoritarian populists remain a serious threat to the future of liberal democracy around the world. But the democratic fight back has begun in earnest.