Populism Rising

Sheri Berman, "How Serious Is Europe’s Anti-Democratic Threat?"

With right-wing populist parties expected to make sizable gains in European elections this year, many commentators have been sounding the alarm about threats to democracy across the region. But whether these fears are warranted is a complicated and highly contingent question.

NEW YORK – With 65 countries holding elections and more voters than ever going to the polls, 2024 has been called the “year of democracy.” Yet optimism about democracy is hard to find. Some democracies that emerged during the late twentieth century slid back toward autocracy, and many commentators worry about the future of democracy in places where it has long been taken for granted. In particular, surging support for right-wing populism in Western Europe has raised fears across the continent.

Right-wing populist forces have indeed enjoyed remarkable success in recent years. In 2022, the Brothers of Italy became the largest party in Italy, elevating its leader, Giorgia Meloni, to the premiership. The Sweden Democrats have become the country’s second-largest party and now have a dominant position in the right-wing government. In France, National Rally’s Marine Le Pen achieved her best result yet in the 2022 presidential election. Then, in 2023, Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom won a resounding victory in the Netherlands’ general election, and the Finns Party placed second in the Finnish elections, joining the new government.

Now, 2024 is shaping up to be another banner year for right-wing populism in Europe. After languishing for many years, Portugal’s Chega recently quadrupled its previous parliamentary seat count to become the country’s third-largest party. And right-wing populists are expected to make sweeping gains in the European Parliament elections this June, and in the Austrian elections in the fall.

But most worrying of all is the growing popularity of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a racist, anti-democratic party with ties to neo-Nazi organizations. AfD politicians have downplayed the Holocaust, expressed support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, advocated abolishing the European Union, and are accused of encouraging violence. Yet the AfD is currently Germany’s second-most popular party, putting it on track to win several upcoming regional elections.

One way to understand European populists’ electoral gains is to focus on economic grievances. From this perspective, the increase in support for populist parties reflects the growing insecurity, inequality, and alienation generated by contemporary capitalism. Another explanation focuses on social and cultural grievances: right-wing populists are capitalizing on a racist, nativist backlash against growing diversity and the erosion of “traditional” values.

But while there is something to both explanations, they are not sufficient to explain populism’s appeal. Populism does seem to flourish in bad economic times, as it did after the 2008 financial crisis. But, across countries, the correlation between economic problems and populist support is not very strong. For example, Iceland and Ireland suffered greatly during the 2008 crisis, yet support for populism remained low in both countries. Moreover, there is evidence that partisanship shapes voters’ views of the economy as much as views of the economy influence voters’ choice of which parties to support. 

Nor is there much cross-national correlation between levels of racism or xenophobia and populism’s success in a given country. Some countries with low levels of racism and xenophobia, like Sweden, have large populist parties, whereas some countries with higher levels of racism and xenophobia, like Ireland and Portugal, do not. And, as a general matter, while support for right-wing populism has grown. racism and xenophobia have declined in almost all Western societies over the past few decades,

THE GERMAN PROBLEM

For a full understanding of populism, then, we should pay attention to something stressed by populists themselves. Populists purport to be against an “establishment” that neither represents nor responds to “the people,” and it is indeed true that when people feel unrepresented, support for anti-establishment parties grows.

Recent developments in Germany illustrate this dynamic. The AfD was founded in 2013 – just after the euro crisis – by former members of the mainstream Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who opposed both the euro and then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s eurozone policies. But when the 2015-16 refugee crisis hit Europe, it dramatically raised the salience of immigration and created an incentive for the AfD to change course. The party’s new strategy would be to attract voters whose views on immigration diverged from those of the mainstream parties. While the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens had long been associated with liberal immigration policies, the CDU, under Merkel, had also moved in a more liberal direction on the issue.

By 2017, the AfD had become a party fully focused on immigration, crime, terrorism, and other “threats” that could easily be blamed on migrants. Initially, its voters were disproportionately older, less educated, located primarily in the country’s east, and expressed feelings of abandonment by mainstream parties. In recent years, however, its support has expanded to Western Germany and to other demographic groups, owing largely to two related factors.

The first factor is the unpopularity of the current governing coalition – led by the SPD, in partnership with the Greens and the economically liberal Free Democrats. Less than 20% of German voters are now satisfied with the coalition’s performance, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s disapproval rating has reached 73% (compared to 54% for US President Joe Biden). The AfD has benefited disproportionately, partly because it opposes the Greens’ climate policies, which have become a growing source of voter resentment in the face of higher energy costs and a broader economic downturn.

Moreover, the economic downturn – and accompanying fears of looming social-spending cuts – has coincided with rising immigration, which polls consistently show is a top concern for voters. Since many Germans associate high immigration, which has reached levels not seen since 2016, with the previous CDU-led government’s policies, and since the current government is seen as vacillating and ineffective on the issue, the AfD again has benefited. As with other right-wing populist parties, it owes its newfound popularity to a general dissatisfaction with mainstream parties, and to the increased salience of an issue that those parties seem unable or unwilling to address.

ASSESSING THE THREAT

Still, the surge in support for right-wing populism in Western Europe does not mean democracy is threatened across the region. Work by scholars and organizations studying democracy – including Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the V-Dem Institute – make this clear. Rather than presaging the return of fascism, as many commentators feared, most West European right-wing populist parties have moderated over time. They have distanced themselves from their extremist – sometimes even neo-fascist – roots, replaced explicitly racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric for more critiques of immigration focused on a lack of assimilation and threats to the welfare state, and proclaimed a commitment to democracy. National Rally, the Sweden Democrats, and the Brothers of Italy all reflect this trend.

Of course, as the AfD shows, not all right-wing populist parties have traveled this route. Nonetheless, the trend is noteworthy, and offers a sign of democracy’s resilience in Europe. This point is worth stressing, especially given the massive economic and other challenges that Western Europe has had to confront over the past generation.

The moderation of the far right and the resilience of democracy in Western Europe is even more noteworthy given developments in the United States. The Republican Party has gone in the opposite direction from most of its Western European counterparts, transforming itself from a conservative party into a radical far-right one. The same academic assessments that find resiliency in Western European democracies reveal that the quality of American democracy is indeed declining, raising justified concerns about its future.

But this is not to suggest that Europeans can afford to be complacent about populism. The US makes clear that extremism can transform a party quickly and degrade democracy even in places where its enduring stability has long been taken for granted. Should Donald Trump win the 2024 election, for example, America’s democracy is not the only one that will suffer. Trump would again encourage extremists in Europe and elsewhere to push the limits further and undermine the international alliances and institutions upon which European and global stability have long depended. Growing support for right-wing populists in Western Europe may not be an existential crisis for democracy currently, but it is a warning that must be taken seriously.

The author sure hates Trump and the common working man (aka - "The Threat"), doesn't she!