ABSTRACT
Introduction Chapter 2 in this book considered the histories of populism, pointing to its reappearance in Europe of today, generating a new series of challenges about how to conceptualise the political landscape. In this chapter, this investigation is continued, placing populism in its relationship with the democratic system(s). The rise of political parties labelled as ‘populist’ in various European countries – testified by their spectacular scores in national and European elections – is often presented by mainstream media (i.e. magazines and daily newspapers, such as The Economist, The Financial Times, Le Monde, El Pais, La Repubblica), mainstream politicians1 and a significant number of scholars (Held 1996: 63-64; Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008: 22) as ‘a threat’ to democracy or ‘the democratic system’ of the EU and Europe – the two entities, one political and one geographical, frequently overlapping. As a matter of fact, parties or forces labelled as ‘populist’ accept representative democracy and its tools (elections, voting) and conduct electoral battles using strong verbal violence, but rejecting physical violence. Their position towards ‘the political system’ is different from that of the neo-fascists and neoNazi parties and movements whose open or hidden aim is the ‘regime change’. As demonstrated in Chapter 3 of this book, neither neo-fascists nor neo-Nazis can be defined as populists. While they are considered a ‘threat to democracy’, the so-called ‘populist’ forces and parties present themselves as democrats – in fact, as the only ‘true democrats’ that are able to give voice to the real needs of the people. They consider the ruling political class as betrayers of the people, having placed their private interests to the forefront. If this can appear as a ‘populist argument’, it is a matter of fact that, in most European countries, the divide between voters and their representatives is constantly growing. The declining voters’ participation in elections – even if not alarming – is a sign of the malfunctioning of democracy in today’s Europe (Delwit 2013). The erosion is especially remarkable in the European elections: in 2014, the percentage of Europeans that voted has only reached the majority in five member states (plus Luxemburg and Belgium, where voting is compulsory). In the other twenty-one member states, voters have been
a minority: the lowest scores were in Slovenia, with 21 per cent, Czech Republic, with 19.5 per cent, and Slovakia, with 13 per cent. In big countries such as France and United Kingdom, voters were a minority: 43 per cent and 36 per cent respectively.2 Another indicator of the European democratic malfunctioning is testified by the presence of consociation governments where parties of the right and the left govern together, as was the case in Greece both before and after the electoral victory of Syriza; in Italy during the period of Mario Monti’s government between 2011 and 2013; and now (2015) in Germany. These coalitions, by their nature, invalidate the normal democratic dialectic between political alternatives, but even when there is an alternating of power between mainstream right and social democratic parties, the present dynamics – namely, the limited sovereignty in terms of national budgets, because of the rules imposed by the European Union, especially in the Eurozone – bring to an alternating in power without a real alternative. The so-called ‘populists’ have different responses to the malfunctioning of democracy in Europe, according to the variety of ideologies and political cultures the various ‘populist’ groups represent. The responses are, in fact, an important element of distinction between the ‘national populists’ and other forms, such as the Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo. ‘National populists’ are, as Taguieff (1990) defined them, right-wing, neo-fascist and rural-populist parties that have gone through a process of ‘modernisation’, abandoning extremism and violence; they focus on identity issues. ‘National populists’ are in favour of a return to the nation states, recovering sovereignty before supranational institutions, such as the European Union. Their idea of sovereignty is linked to the reconstruction of a ‘homogenous nation’, de facto based on ethnicity; consequently, they want to give priority to the ‘nationals’ against migrants. Other forces that are labelled as ‘populist’, such as the Italian Five Star Movement, are in favour of recovering the sovereignty of the people through a different form of democracy, the ‘participatory democracy’ – the people who wish to become citizens, instead of a passive entity (Spinelli 2014). This complex scenario cannot be reduced to a dichotomist approach opposing populism versus democracy. The question posed by various scholars – if populism is a threat or a challenge/corrective for the democratic system (Bryder 2009; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013) – is a pertinent one when taking into consideration the dysfunction of democracy in Europe. Do ‘populists’ represent a threat to democracy or are they, on the contrary, a challenge that ‘repoliticizes and brings revival to dull and stagnant discourse of the mainstream parties’ (Bryder 2009)? As a matter of fact, many Italian scholars (Biorcio and Natale 2013; Orazi and Socci 2014; Spinelli 2014) suggest that the good electoral scores of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement have been functional for a healthier democracy, forcing elites to open up party competition and to broaden their political agenda. A few French scholars – for example, Jacques Sapir3 and Michel Onfray4 – have (finally) reached the opinion that some national populist parties – such as the National Front – despite the worrying risks represented by their xenophobic (and
even racist) discourses, have raised a major issue: the nature of ‘sovereignty’ in Europe as regards the global economy and the powers of a supranational institution such as the European Union. In fact, the idea that populism is a challenge to democracy that may have positive effects is not new. For Canovan (1999), populism’s function is to redeem representative democracy. As discussed in the second chapter of this book, Ernesto Laclau considers populism in light of the concept of hegemony, which is the essence of political competition: populism can be the right or the left, presenting different constructions of the people competing in the aim of gaining hegemony. When there is a threat or challenge to democracy, populist forces raise major issues around the notion of democracy and, eventually, its metamorphoses or ‘anamorphosis’5 (deformed democracy) in the neo-liberal era, under the pressure of the neo-liberal economic global system and the European Union. This chapter analyses, first, the possible ‘threats’ that various forms of populism represent for democracy, introducing the issue of ‘extreme’ nationalism or ethno-nationalism, which characterises the national populists. Second, we address the concept of ‘illiberal democracy’ developed by Fareed Zakaria. After exploring the differences between liberal democracy and illiberal democracy, the chapter considers the relationship between democracy and national sovereignty in respect to the triumph of the neo-liberal economic dogmas and the supranational construction of the EU. Finally, we look at the structural economic, social and political changes that are at the core of the competing mainstream and populist discourses, introducing the concept of post-democracy, as it has been developed by various scholars, focusing especially on the work of two sociologists, Colin Crouch and Luciano Gallino, whose analyses converge in several points.
