Character Jean-Marie Le Pena, who died at the age of 96, recalls that the populism of the far right had existed in European politics since the emergence of liberal democracy after planet War II. Le Pen – first elected to the French Parliament in 1956 – did not scope the level of influence his daughter enjoys today. And that's due to the fact that The golden age of European democracy The request for populists was limited.
In fresh years, dynamics has changed rapidly. National populists won elections not only in Central and east Europe but besides in Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and France. And since the White home Donald Trump returned, they seem to dominate the political scenery of the western planet at least for a while.
What went wrong?
Each writer has his own list of people or causes liable for getting populists to power. any point to capitalism, neoliberalism, migration or globalisation. Others accuse China, Russia, the United States or the European Union. There are besides liberal politicians – centre-left and centre-right – who are blamed for adopting populism. any say Margaret Thatcher is to blame; others say Tony Blair is to blame. any people think Gerhard Schröder or Angela Merkel, others Nicolas Sarkozy or Emmanuel Macron.
One could exchange further, but it is better to quote the thesis presented by the populist researcher, Casa Muddy. Mudde stated that request for populist politicians is expanding with the erosion of democracy. "Populism is fundamentally a non-liberal democratic consequence to undemocratic liberalism," he said in 1 of the series of yearly lectures commemorating Leonard Schapiro, delivered in 2019, published later in the letter "The Government and Opposition".
Almost half of respondents in fresh test Ipsos KnowledgePanel expressed discontent with the functioning of democracy in their countries. In another reliable survey More than 60% of the questions admitted that they "do not trust" democratically elected members of their country's government and parliament. Numerous another studies confirm the designation of the shaky state of democracy and highlightThat populists exploit this weakness.
It is not that the fresh generation of populist leaders is characterized by any inherent skill or charisma greater than their predecessors had. Matteo Salvini is no more capable than Umbert Bossi; Geert Wilders lacks the charisma of Pima Fortuna; Marine Le Pen is no better talker than her father, and Herbert Kickl There are no local roots like Jörg Haider. (By his way, Kickl at the beginning of his career was Haider's ghostwriter.)
Today's populist success results from distortions of liberal democracy, by which voters turn to non-liberal, undemocratic alternatives. So the question must be answered urgently: how do we recover these bitter voters?
Liberals would be expected to admit their mistakes and start working on restoring assurance in democracy, thus reducing the request for populism. Unfortunately, that is not the case. any liberals argue that the best antidote to populism is the liberal version of populism. The second part claims that the bastion protecting against populist posttruth will supply technocracy. Both camps run vigorous public campaigns aimed at populist parties and their leaders. This results in mediocre results at best – which is not hard to understand.
Individual politicians or parties can be compromised and removed from power. However, this does not in any way reduce their request for populism. As long as democracy persists, another populists will simply appear in the place of Le Pen, Wilders or Kaczyński. The nonsubjective of liberal policy should so be to reduce request for populism alternatively than just push distant circumstantial individuals or their parties.
The technological solutions proposed by the anti-Populist camp are suitable for applicable problems specified as financial instability, budget deficits or wellness crises. However, Technocracy has small to do with democracy due to the fact that it narrows the function of parliaments, limits the participation of citizens and citizens in decision-making and does not advance transparency of power. And since democracy must be both effective and representative, entrusting decision-making to unelected democratic experts or institutions only frustrates citizens, especially in hard times. What is the point of popular ballot at the ballot boxes if decisions are inactive part of technocrats, courts or banks?
Fighting populism is an even worse strategy, due to the fact that it legitimises lawlessness, demagoguery and racism. The concept of "liberal populism" is fundamentally incorrect, as populism represents everything that intellectual founders of liberalism opposed. Liberal, who takes over the rhetoric and populist tactics, ceases to be liberal – and period.
In 2021, researchers asked Europeans for an opinion on reducing the number of parliamentarians in their countries and replacing them with artificial intelligence with data on citizens and citizens. Interestingly, half the respondents, especially the younger ones, She expressed her enthusiasm for this idea. It is hard to say whether this shows trust in AI or deficiency of assurance in the political class. In any case, the consequence underlines the request for democratic reforms beyond the conventional domains of elections, parliaments, constitutions and parties.
The national framework in which democracy operates does not adhere to the global, digital context of communication and transactional connections. In addition, as it turned out, democracy does not follow behind a planet moving at net speed, 24 hours a day.
The populists, as part of their effort to "repair" democracy, propose dismantling the regulation of law, the tripartition of power, independent media and number rights. This kind of autocracy under a different description only, which is mistakenly signed as "non-liberal democracy", allows decisions to be made without public consultation or parliamentary debate. But fast decisions do not always turn out to be wise or right – this explains why autocracy frequently falls. Moreover, the sovereign tendencies of populists argue with the transnational connectivity that the net allows.
Liberals rightly criticize populists for breaking conventional pillars of democratic order. However, this criticism frequently turns towards nostalgia behind the past era in which political parties grew out of civilian society, parliaments were for real public debate, and ministers trusted and experienced officials. Today, informal networks have power, which have raised capital for the digital revolution, and they treat voters as consumers. In the meantime, the states exercise strong power over migrants and people from susceptible groups, but prove helpless towards global corporations controlling communications, finances and labour flows.
In this context, concepts specified as social contract and national interest have become almost virtual. Democratic institutions find it hard to mediate conflicts or scope reasonable compromises because, how wrote Sigismund Bauman, sovereignty and power separate from the territorial politics of the national state. Just callback the weak and uncertain reactions of liberal European governments to Elon Musk's provocations.
Clock tips can't be undone, digital revolution and artificial intelligence will push forward. Democracy must so adapt to a planet where people think, desire and relate differently to each another than in its golden age a fewer decades ago. There is no ready model of democratic transformation, but we must have the courage to experiment. Can anyone name any crucial reforms of the democratic strategy introduced since the creation of the Web more than 30 years ago?
Companies have adapted to the digital age, as well as organised crime, while democracy has stuck in the corset better suited to the Alexis de Tocqueville era. It is time to research fresh forms of e-democracy, giving power to average citizens. Adopt multi-level management, forcing the state to share resources and decision-making with both local and transnational actors. Non-formal networks can be attributed to the provision of public goods.
There is no experimentation without risk. But if, by introducing innovation, we keep liberal values, we have a chance to find a way out of the populist maze.
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Jan Zielonka is simply a prof. of political discipline and global relations at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari and the University of Oxford. He cooperates with the EMC. His latest book is named A Lost Future and How to Recover It (Post Factum, Warsaw 2023).
Article published in stock Social Europe. In English she translated Aleksandra Paszkowska.
