Marlene Wind, professor and Director of CEP at Department of Political Science and professor at iCourts Center for International Courts, University of Copenhagen

Can populism be overcome? Reflections in the run up to the European elections

Useful info: Some may have heard of the event that made me famous (at least in Spain!): My meeting with Puigdemont in

Copenhagen 2018!

06-06-2019 2

By new book (so far) only in Spanish, Polity Press will publish it in English as well

06-06-2019 3

What is Tribalization?• Building new walls through

cultural exclusion and ‘identitypolitics’

• Extreme case: Balkanization

• Using culture as a weapon to mobilize against ‘the other’

• ‘When dialouge is moved from the political to the cultural sphere, the discussion closes’

• I compare Catalan separatists, the extreme brexiteers and illiberalismin some Central- and Eastern European countries

06-06-2019 4

Todays talk• The paradox

• The EU has become increasingly popular among Europeans after Brexit but we also have a rise in populist parties (who want to transform – maybe destroy - the EU from within) – how do we make sense of this?

• My normative take away:

• The EU has to provide more leadership on values to combat populism

• People are increasingly confused about what democracy is and should be. The EU will have to act as it preaches on values and democracy!

06-06-2019 5

After Brexit and Trump – most analysts thought that ‘this was the end of the West as we know it’ (EX: Appelbaum Washington Post, March

2016)

06-06-2019 6

The domino effect that never happened

• Brexit negotiations has been a scare example to Europeans

• To this comes 30 years of lies and scaremongering about the EU In the UK

• Citizens of EU27 have grown more and more fond of the EU - >

• And EU sceptics now want to stay (even in the euro)

• Salvini, Le Pen, AfD maybe Orban -> want to change Europe from within

06-06-2019 7

Populists play on the well-known ‘elite/EU - vs. people theme’

06-06-2019 8

A (small?) majority of Brits seems to have regretted their leavevote (March 2019)

06-06-2019 9

And now the Brexit Party with Nigel Farage hits 34% of the votes

• Mandates:

• Brexit Party 27

• Labour 14

• Libdem 12

• Tory 7

• NOTHING SUGGESTS THAT UK PARTICIPATING IN THE EP ELECTIONS WILL CHANGE BREXIT

06-06-2019 10

BUT: Brexit made Europeans love the EU Development in views from 2007 to 2018

06-06-2019 11

How the Europeans feel about the Union – by country

06-06-2019 12

Leaveing the EU?

06-06-2019 13

Brexit have made people reflect on what it means to be a sovereign state in the 21st century

Do you want to be a:

‘Rule-maker’ or ‘rule´-taker’?

No matter what arrangement the UK gets with the EU post-Brexit (if it happens!)

They will become a ‘rule-taker’

Lesson learned: Hard to ‘take back control’ if you are alone in a globalized world

06-06-2019 14

This may be good – but not everything in Europe is good!

• Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump was both caused by a rise in populism but has also spurred it (Matthijs Rooduijn, University of

Amsterdam)

• A new narrative: “the elite misjudged (and no longer understand) the people” ->

• Has this narrative almost legitimized populism?

06-06-2019 15

Living with populism in Europe

• The number of Europeans living under governments with a populists in cabinet has increased 13-fold

• 1998 12,500,517

• 2018 170,244,766

06-06-2019 16

Professor Cas Mudde - Why the rise and why now?

• The great recession (financial

crisis), which created a few strong

left populist parties in the south,

• the so-called refugee crisis, was a

catalyst for right-wing populists,

• and finally the transformation of

non-populist parties into populist

parties – notably Fidesz (Hungary)

and PiS (Poland)

• Wind: They inspired and

legitimized populism by not beingchallenged?

06-06-2019 17

Many mainstream parties took the populist rhetoric on boardand invited them into government (or parliamentry safety net)

06-06-2019 18

Lets first define populism

• Populists champion the ordinary person against ‘the elite’ or vested interests

• But research shows that populists in power often subvert democratic norms, by corruption and by undermining the media, judiciary and minority rights.

• While the EU as an institution cannot easily counter this at the national level, has it done enough to defend its own liberal values?

06-06-2019 19

Populist solutions?

06-06-2019 20

How will populism influence European Elections? Research shows that Europeans DO speak about and prioritize

many of the same issues

• (ECFR data):

• Climate

• Migration

• Tax fraud

• Access to jobs (for the younger generation)

• Corruption

• But also huge concern about the protection of European values and populism

06-06-2019 21

The Parliaments estimated distribution of seats after the Elections (without the Brits!)

06-06-2019 22

Estimation, February 2019 (without the UK)

Voter Turnout in European democracies

06-06-2019 23

Populist vote share in EU

06-06-2019 24

Problem: Populism has made Europeans less sure of what it takes to be a democracy: ‘the elite-people’ divide have put referenda and unlimited majorites at the centre as democracy’s main components

06-06-2019 25

But democracy is MORE than referenda and majorities - > it is also rule of law and minority rights – and insisting on these as European values is where the EU could make a difference

06-06-2019 26

The scaling of democracy model (MW)

06-06-2019 27

Critique: Because the EU has not insisted on its own values we today have two types (at least) of democracy – that some consider equally legitimate……But are they?

• A liberal democracy is a representative democracy with protection for individual liberty and property by rule of law.

• And some kind of

• Illiberal democracy which has weak or no limits on the power of the elected representatives to rule as they please.

06-06-2019 28

According to V-dem (Gothenburg, Freedom House, Venice Commission and many others)

• Democracy in Europe is in decline, even by the more conventional measure.

• When weighted by population, the trend is again much more apparent. By the latter measure, the level of democracy in Europe has fallen back forty years, to where it was in 1978

• (S. Lindberg 2018).

06-06-2019 29

Advice: Backsliding of democracy in some European countries should not be ignored but acted on if the EU wants to counter populism• The Commission and the European

parliament has been in dialogue with for instance Poland and Hungary for years

• Infringements procedures (ECJ cases)

• Art. 7 (Commission and Parliament)

• Proposal of linking structural funds to a binding rule of law monitoring mechanism

• BUT WHERE IS THE COUNCIL?

06-06-2019 30

The EU as such will have to act as its preaching in rule of law matters, if it convinsingly wants to fight populism

• We cannot critize Russia, Turkey and others in our foreign policies, if we are afraid to defend our own values

• Demand that countries sign up to a common European prosecutor and rule of law monitoring to receive EU funds

• Show the electorate that the EU is a community of values and of democracies

06-06-2019 31

Will this not be seen as the EU elite/Brussels bubble picking on the people?• Sure – it will be exploited by populist

politicians

• But what is left of our Common Union if we do not insist on – as a minimum to have:

• Independent and impartial courts

• Free and critical press, freedom of expression

• An independent (EU) prosecutor to fight state corruption (and EU funds)

• Academic freedom and freedom of NGO’s to operate without restrictions?

06-06-2019 32

Europe – is a shrinking continent. We have to sticktogether – also when in comes to defending our basic democratic values. Will be even have liberal democarcyin our region in 2050 and beyond if we are only 8% and cease to stand up for them now?

05-01-2017 33

06-06-2019 34

Thanks

06-06-2019 35

Populism in Europe is on the rise – how do we explain it – and can our own lack of willingness to defend liberal democracy explain parts of it?

• Although it is commonly assumed that democratic backsliding starts with electoral problems, other political elements—such as the infringement of individual rights and the freedom of expression—are at the core of Europe’s democratic woes.

06-06-2019 36