ON BEHALF OF PEOPLE

According to the Global Peace Index for 2018, which determines the level of security of living in 163 countries, Europe remains the most peaceful region in the world. Twenty of the thirty countries topping the list are European. However, the level of peace in this region has seriously deteriorated over the past three years.

Frequent terrorist attacks in European cities, an unprecedented influx of refugees and economic instability contributed to the growing sense of social insecurity, which have likely increased the attractiveness of populist parties.

The number of Europeans under the governments with at least one populist official increased from 12.5 million in 1998 to 170 million in 2018. According to the study conducted by the Guardian, over the same period, the number of Europeans voting for populist parties has increased from 7% to more than 25%.

Technology, not ideology

Populism (from the Latin populus meaning the people) is a communication strategy, a technology for gaining the support of the masses, not ideology. Therefore, it can be anything – left, right, centrist, authoritarian, and so on.

The success of politicians with populist slogans is largely due to their ability to convince the audience that it does not belong to traditional political system, the 'corrupt' political or financial elite, be it local or global. On the contrary, populists present themselves as defenders of the rights of the ordinary people, who came to denounce inhuman plans of the establishment. Appealing to popular emotions rather than rational judgment, exploiting legitimate and reasonable claims of the population against the authorities, they manipulate the public mood in order to achieve their goals.

The following four are the most common populist techniques: 1. interpretation of complex problems in layman terms. 2. positioning oneself as a representative of the lower classes fighting with the establishment. 3. skilful convincing of people that they know better than people themselves know what they need. 4. promising to lead the country "on behalf of the people", which should eventually lead to a better future.

End of national sovereignty

There is still no consensus on what prompted the growth of populism in Europe, but this is definitely a signal warning of the malfunctioning of representative democracy.

Surely, the reasons are very complex and reflect complicated relationships within respective societies, on the one hand, and the political and financial elites, on the other.

Perhaps, this began with gradual erosion of the political boundaries between the centre-right and the centre-left who have dominated Europe for a long time and equally felt that there was no alternative to neoliberal globalisation.

The role of parliaments and institutions that allow citizens to influence political decisions has gradually decreased. The founding idea of the democratic ideal, popular sovereignty, has been rejected. Today, when the politicians talk about democracy, they actually mean only the right to participate in elections and the protection of human rights.

The role of finance capital is growing steadily, leading to an exponential increase in inequality. Not only the working class but also a major part of the middle class is losing revenues.

Researchers believe that the serious cuts in human rights that followed the tightening of security rules after the attacks of September 11, 2001, helped the radicals, in a wave of criticism of the authorities, to increase significantly the number of their supporters.

These events were followed by the break out of the global economic crisis in 2008, which had lasted in Europe for five years. It caused high unemployment, lower incomes and poverty in most European countries. After multibillion-dollar injections from the EU, Greece may have coped with the economic crisis, but youth unemployment still exceeds 39%. In Spain, the youth unemployment rate is 33.4%. And so on.

The most serious blow to the confidence of voters in the centrist parties was the immigrant crisis, triggered by the open door policy announced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015.

Populist traditions

Although the rapid growth of populist sentiments in post-war Europe has been observed since the end of the 1990s, they had existed to various extent even before.

Austrian Federation of Independents (VdU) founded in 1949 is considered the very first party with populist slogans, which was mostly made up of liberals and former Nazis. In 1956, Anton Reinthaller, the former member of NSDAP and SS, used VdU to found the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which with varying success had a permanent representation in the Austrian parliament. In 2017, with 26.5% of the votes, FPÖentered the coalition government with the Austrian People’s Party.

Until 2000, parties with populist slogans participated in the power structures of only three countries, namely Switzerland, Austria and Italy. However, since the beginning of the 2000s, they began to receive increasing popular support in other countries.

In 2002, it took Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing radical politician, just a month to found a party and win the elections to the Rotterdam City Hall. After another two months, he might have expected success in the national elections but was shot short before the event.

In the same year, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the French nationalist National Front, qualified for the second round of presidential elections and received 17.8% of the votes. Fifteen years later, this success was repeated by his daughter Marin, but now with 33.9%.

Since 2015, Alexis Tsipras, the head of the Coalition of Radical Left SYRIZA, has been the Prime Minister of Greece. In all four countries of the Visegrad Group (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) populist parties are in the lead, trying to weaken the judiciary and civil institutions in their countries. In Italy, the right-wing radical party Liga Nord and the left radical Movement of Five Stars have formed a rather unusual alliance.

Increasing voter support for populist parties forces centrists to form coalition governments with them, as is the case, for example, in Scandinavia.

Traditional parties have become so unpopular that people reject their policies, and this creates a vacuum into which populist parties rush. Neither the economic recovery, the reduction of unemployment in Europe, nor a significant reduction in the number of immigrants have made populist slogans less attractive.

If economic growth were decisive in Poland, whose development rates were among the highest in Europe between 1989 and 2015, the populist Law and Justice Party would never have become the dominant political power in the country.

The unemployment rate in the Czech Republic is 2.3%, which is the lowest in the EU. Last year, the Czech economy grew by 4.3%, which is significantly higher than the average for the EU. Fortunately, the immigration crisis bypassed the Czech Republic. But last year in general elections, populist parties scored more than 40%, which is ten times more than in 1998.

On the other hand, it would be wrong to assume that the populist ideas of the last twenty years only gain supporters. On the flip side we have untrustworthy populists making compromises just to become one of the parties in coalition governments.

For example, the Finnish nationalist party True Finns, which received 17.5% of the votes in 2015, joined the coalition government, but this led to its split in two parties, which now have the support of only 10% and 1.5% of voters, respectively. The rating of the Greek ruling radical left party SYRIZA has also decreased from 33% to 25%.

What is the public demand?

It seemed that quite recently a method to fight populist parties was found, which required only an asymmetrical response, namely the nomination of completely new people, who had mastered the style of public policy, correspond to the demands of modern society, and were capable of finding new approaches while maintaining position that is more centrist.

Politicians of this new format are French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Austrian Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

But now we have the protests of the yellow vests in France, demanding the resignation of the president, as the ability of Macron to meet the public demands is questioned.

It is assumed that the current crisis of party systems is very similar to the period between the First and Second World Wars, when social democratic, communist and national-patriotic slogans dominated the political arena. At that time, it was due to the transition to an industrial society.

Perhaps we now are witnessing the birth of a new society, the so-called information society. Perhaps the yellow vests movement, self-generated through social networks and without prominent leaders, is one of the symptoms of this ongoing process.