Archive / Magazine / Politics / Populism / Debate | 22/10/2007

Populism in Europe

A new brand of populism has emerged in the eastern European states of the EU in recent years and has even penetrated their governing parties. In the past twenty years western Europe has also experienced its own brand of populism. How dangerous is populism today?

Populism is often used as a generic term to bring a wide range of political tendencies in East-Central Europe such as the Kaczyński brothers' right-wing conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland or the Slovak left-wing populist Smer led by Robert Fico under one umbrella.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, President of Front National
Photo: AP

It is also used to describe some west European political movements. The Austrian Jörg Haider, for example, is characterized as a right-wing populist, while the term is also applied to parties like the Belgian extreme right-wing Vlaams Belang, its French counterpart Front National, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and even the former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi and his party Forza Italia.

The sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf warned in summer 2007 against using the term populism too casually: "The accusation of populism may be populist in itself, a demagogic substitute for real arguments," he wrote in an article for the European Revue Transit.

Despite these reservations, the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev argued in the same magazine that the term is worth analysing: "Only a vague and ill-defined concept such as 'populism' can enable one to grasp and reflect on the radical transformation of politics underway in many places around the world."

Differentiation from Others

Although populism in western and eastern Europe is different and exists in both right-wing and left-wing forms, all of these different varieties also share common features.

According to Krastev populist politicians respond to public insecurities by attacking established elites: "At heart, the defining feature of populism is the view that society falls into two homogenous and antagonistic groups: 'the people as such' and 'the corrupt elite'." This is compounded by a tendency for people to define themselves through differentiation from others, often using nationalistic, xenophobic or racist notions. Populists criticize the model of representative democracy and advocate direct popular participation in politics, for example through referendums.

What all populists also have in common is that they offer simple solutions to complex problems. "Populism is simple, democracy is complex: that is ultimately perhaps the most important difference between the two ways of relating to the people," Ralf Dahrendorf believes.

Fear of Change

The form that a populist movement takes is determined by local and historical circumstances. In the year 2000, for example, the EU was particularly concerned about the participation in government of the Austrian Freedom Party under Jörg Haider, which continued until 2002 and in some cases led to other EU members imposing sanctions on Austria.

In an article for the magazine Osteuropa published at the end of 2006, the German Poland specialist Klaus Bachmann saw the rise of modern west European populism as a reaction to 1968: "In western Europe, the rapid change in values brought about a counter-reaction that quickly took on a political form and established its own institutions. ... Against this, populist parties like the Front National and the Vlaams Blok provided a rallying point for all those who felt that the changes had gone too fast and too far."

A further source of uncertainty that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century was globalization. When the Belgian Vlaams Belang made significant gains in the municipal elections in October 2006, Maurice Ulrich commented in the French newspaper L'Humanité of 9 October 2006: "This result demonstrates the gravity of the political crisis that is striking Europe today. ... It is the absence of perspectives, of real alternatives to the politics in practice, the impression that left and right are alike, that make it easy for demagogues, feed the far-right, populism and hatred in France as in Belgium, as in Europe."

Switzerland: A Pragmatic Brand of Populism

In Switzerland it is the highly successful Swiss People's Party, whose 2007 election campaign led by Christoph Blocher made headlines, that is accused of populism. Joseph Hanimann analysed the political style of the SVP in the German Süddeutsche Zeitung of 9 October 2007 as a special case of European populism. "Unlike Le Pen's Front National in France or the northern Italian or Flemish regionalists, the Polish nationalists or Haider's liberal patriots and other fundamentalist European movements against globalisation, the SVP has no need for aggressive slogans, deliberate provocations or sacred principles."

Precisely for this reason, Hanimann contends, it could provide a role model for other populists. The danger, he asserts, lies in a populism "that no longer waves it arms, goes red in the face or speaks loudly but instead looks the world calmly in the face, draws lines and calculates who will logically end up on which side of the line."

The Communist Legacy

For Austrian populists, too, this drawing of boundaries, the rejection of those who are different or who are perceived as foreign or alien has a major role to play. But who precisely is perceived as "the other" varies from one country to another. Klaus Bachmann explains: "Whereas Jean-Marie Le Pen, Philip Dewinter, Pim Fortuyn, and Jörg Haider pronounced immigrants to be a threat, and promised to protect society from them, Kaczyński and his party PiS declared that the Germans, Russians and those who supposedly worked for them in Poland were enemies." In other east European countries militant populist rhetoric is also directed at established minorities: In Slovakia the left-wing populist party Smer has entered into a governing coalition with the right-wing extremist SNS and since then has being stirring up conflicts with the Hungarian minority. In Bulgaria populists engage in polemics against the Roma.

Out of this form of demarcation there emerges a nationalist populism, which is also directed against the EU and its elites. "As long as EU membership remained only a goal, it had a disciplining effect on the region's political elites," the Czech political scientist Jiři Pehe wrote for Project Syndicate in 2005. After accession, however, "the way was free for politicians with a simple message: our countries have had enough of Western tutelage and belt-tightening."As Czech President Klaus put it, the Czech Republic could "dissolve in the EU like a sugar cube in a cup of coffee."

Observers cite these fears as an explanation for the particularly harsh rhetoric of east European populists. The French political scientist Jacques Rupnik wrote in 2006, also for Project Syndicate: "It is here where the legacy of communist political culture is mostly keenly felt: an opponent is not someone with whom you argue or negotiate, but an enemy that you must destroy."

More Patriotism or More Participation for Citizens?

Despite these differences populism is now perceived as a pan-European phenomenon. Yet political scientists and journalists give very different answers to the question of how populism may be halted.

One view is that established parties should put the issues raised by populists on their own agendas and thus undermine populist movements. According, for example, to Sylvain Besson writing in Le Temps on 12 June 2007, this approach paid off in the recent parliamentary elections. The Front National had a relatively weak showing, because Nicolas Sarkozy took over Jean-Marie Le Pen's favourite themes: "delinquency, immigration and national identity." "This is an important lesson for other European countries, which are all confronted with more or less virulent forms or populism."

This strategy may also be seen as a threat to democracy, however. If the issues espoused by populists become established in the democratic mainstream, values like equality, protection of minorities and free speech are at stake, runs the counterargument. "We must…look for a new way to convince our societies of the deceitfulness of populism," the Polish journalist Adam Michnik asserted in the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hirlap on 5 October 2006. There can be only one answer to the populists' hostility towards elites, he continued: "The task of convincing people of this can only be undertaken by intellectuals."

"A clever mix of direct participation by citizens could help," Werner A. Perger proposed on 18 January 2007 in Die Zeit as a further answer to populism: "From time to time one hears... quiet voices calling for the opening of the parties, for an ear open to the grassroots. In truth this would make sense."

The Polarisation of Society

Some observers even believe populism may bring about its own destruction. "Populism owes its existence to dissatisfaction, but it is unable to offer real solutions for real problems," Giorgio Venturi noted in the Internet magazine Le Taurillon on 21 January 2007. Once populists come to power their "previously touted truths are exposed as lies. In this way populism collapses."

This optimism is not shared by the British political scientist Paul Taggart, who gives a gloomy prognosis. He told the Polish newspaper Przekroj on 26 May 2006: "Populists destroy democracy by suppressing debate. Representative democracy is based on pluralism, but when a populist walks on to the political stage, he polarises opinion. The remaining parties start to define themselves in terms of the populist, and pluralism disappears."

Meike Dülffer

Meike Dülffer was an editor for euro|topics. She studied Slavic studies, Eastern European History and Politics. She trained as a journalist at Berliner Zeitung before ...
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