Toru Yoshida: The Current State and Future of European Populism

2024/11/20

It has been a long time since the rise of populism was first pointed out. In Europe, populist forces of both the left and right have come to occupy positions in coalition governments in countries such as Norway, Finland, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Poland*1. Since the beginning of this year, the far-right Freedom Party in the Netherlands has joined a coalition government, and in the Austrian parliamentary elections, the Freedom Party, which is positioned within the lineage of neo-Nazis, won its largest number of seats ever.

While the rise of populist forces was feared in the 2010s, following Brexit and the birth of the Trump administration, populist forces on both the left and right have come to win about 30% of the vote in various countries, and populist governments have now become the "new normal." It has also been noted that in these countries, judicial independence, freedom of the press, and policy efficiency are declining, and it is known that this undermines the potential of the political system known as liberal democracy*2. Since the aforementioned countries adopt proportional representation systems, it is easier for populist forces to participate in coalition governments and for policies to be moderated. However, a key focus moving forward will be whether they can seize power in countries with majoritarian systems, such as France. In France, populists from both extremes (La France Insoumise and the National Rally) together hold about one-third of the seats. It is predicted that established parties in various countries will continue to be forced into unnatural alliances to exclude populists from both extremes, as seen in Angela Merkel's grand coalition government in Germany (2013–2021) and the current Barnier administration in France.

However, if asked what populism specifically refers to, it is not easy to give a straightforward answer. Both the left and right share a dislike for globalization; the former dislikes economic globalization (free trade and financial capitalism), while the latter dislikes social globalization (immigration). In recent years, it has been suggested that a conflict axis between GAL (Green-Alternative-Libertarian) and TAN (Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist) has emerged*3. Nevertheless, it is difficult to find a definition for populism beyond its claim to be "anti-elite" or "anti-establishment." In Japan, it is often used synonymously with terms like "demagoguery" or "anti-intellectualism," but what makes it difficult to understand is that, unlike liberalism or social democracy, the parties and politicians called populists do not describe themselves as such. In other words, the terms populism and populist are themselves labels for politics deemed undesirable by political, economic, and cultural elites, and they do not inherently possess an essential or systematic meaning.

Looking back at history, the word and concept of populism have been used periodically. At the end of the 19th century, the People's Party (commonly known as the Populist Party) in the United States was its namesake. In the post-war period, McCarthyism and Poujadism (an anti-tax movement in France) were cited, and in modern times, neoliberal reform-oriented politics such as Thatcherism and Koizumi politics have been regarded as populism*4. In that process, Maoism and Castroism have also been categorized as populism. The reason such a wide variety of things are summarized as populism is simply because these politics do not fit into the political matrices we are familiar with (capitalism vs. socialism, conservative vs. liberal).

There is no doubt that economic recession has influenced the rise of populist politics, and the rise in the 2010s shows traces of the Eurozone crisis. However, we should recall that when the word populism circulated in the past, it corresponded to structural turning points of the era. The end of the 19th century was an era of full-scale takeoff from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy, and the post-war period saw the progress of urbanization and the shift toward service industries. The 1990s saw the deepening of European integration, and since the 21st century, there has been further development of the digital economy and global population movement at the highest levels since the war. Amidst these transformations, modern populist politics has grown by gathering support from people who find these changes undesirable. This also means that the relative wealth and stability of the post-war era are being lost.

The three appearances of populist politics teach us that we are in a period of great transition and standing at a political and economic crossroads for developed nations.

*1 Anchal Vohra, "A Far-Right Takeover of Europe Is Underway". Foreign Policy, March 14, 2024.

*2 Toru Yoshida and Hidekuni Washida, "Populists in Power: Examining the Impact on Governance under Democracy and Its Conditions," in Authoritarianism and Populism, edited by Tomohiko Uyama, Hakusuisha, forthcoming.

*3 Hooghe, L, et al., "Field of Education and Political Behavior: Predicting GAL/TAN Voting". American Political Science Review. Published online 2024.

*4 Hideo Otake, Japanese-Style Populism, Chuko Shinsho, 2003.