The Ghost of Populism Roams Europe

Notes internacionals CIDOB, núm. 85

Populism is less a doctrine (although it is based on certain ideological premises) than a political style. If “populism” is one of the most polyvalent and imprecise terms in political science and, colloquially, usually carries a negative charge that complicates its characterisation, it is a phenomenon that is both real and definable with relative precision, and about which an abundant and often refined academic literature is available. The current generalisation of the phenomenon throughout Europe is led, of course, by the radical right wing, but has a growing incidence in the moderate right and even in a part of the centre-left. Taking into account that a specific populism of the radical left also exists, it is, in summary, an extremely transversal political style.

The Causes of Populism

The current surge of populism has much to do with the frightening economic crisis that erupted in the United States in 2007 and reached the EU in 2008, as well as with the inflexible neoliberal solutions of the “troika” (the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission). The above-mentioned policies are exacting harsh social consequences on the south and east of Europe, sharply aggravating inequality and poverty, while also contributing to a worrying hollowing out of democracy itself. Thus, the rigid orthodoxy of focussing on deficit control and austerity at any cost has widened the gap between the privileged elite and the rest of the population as never before. In the current EU framework, the winners are few and the losers many: it is in these waters that the populists fish with growing success. So, the growth of populism follows from deep social frustration and the growing delegitimisation of representative democracy: if inequality increases and the Central European Bank (an institution of total opacity which accounts to no one) is the real European sovereign, then the ground on which protest grows is fertile. Naturally, for the neoliberals, any criticism of their policies -from whichever ideological quarter- is disqualified as “populist” by definition, in this way they trivialise the concept to serve their own interests.

The rolling back of democracy, both national and European, is particularly grievous because of the hegemony of irresponsible technocratic elites who make and unmake it to their taste: forcing government changes in Greece (from George Papandreou to Lucas Papademos) and Italy (from Silvio Berlusconi to Mario Monti) and impeding referendums on the economic policies insisted on by the “troika” (Greece), all of which is a clear sign of the devaluation of democratic mechanisms.

It is true that the populists, with their expeditious, unviable and even unjust solutions, oversimplify, but in their confusion they detect some real problems and reflect the weaknesses of the EU. Indeed, European integration is currently suffering a triple impasse: economic, political and cultural. And while all the dimensions of the problem are not addressed simultaneously, blockage and frustration are guaranteed. That is to say, without restoring strict economic regulation of the markets and equitable social redistribution, without the full democratisation of incomprehensible, distant and opaque European Union institutions, and without managing to forge a minimum European collective conscience among its citizens, the panorama will only get worse.

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