|
The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy
Frank Decker
|
The rise of right-wing populism marks a trend towards
a plebiscitary transformation of democratic politics.
As government offers ever less clear-cut choices to the
electorate, parties concentrate on "selling" decision-makers.
But the emphasis on majority endorsement of leaders can
come to legitimize authoritarian government, reducing
the space for democratic deliberation and cutting minority
rights.
|
There is currently a wave of interest in populism and populist
politics. This is the result in particular of the spread of
a new type of political party which first emerged in the 1980s
and was soon characterized by the term „right-wing populism“.
Apart from a few exceptions, there are right-wing populist parties
today in all Western democracies. Many have now established
themselves in the party system of their country
and are winning double-digit percentages of the vote in elections.
In some countries, the right-wing populists have even managed
to establish themselves in national government.
After some delay, political scientists began to study right-wing
populist phenomena intensively in the 1990s. There are now numerous
comparative international studies which analyze the emergence
of the new parties and attempt to explain the diverging results
in the various countries (for example, Betz 1994; Kitschelt
and McGann 1995; Betz and Immerfall 1998; Decker 2000). There
is general agreement that this is a "multi-factorial"
phenomenon, which cannot be traced to any single cause.
Observers at first expected that right-wing populism would
be only a short-lived phenomenon,
and that sooner or later the parties would disappear.
This optimism has long faded, and it is now acknowledged that
the right-wing populist parties have established a solid base and must be expected to continue
to exist in the future. However, there is still no consensus
about what consequences this will have, or about how populism
should be assessed from the point of view of democratic „health“.
Whereas some see it as embodying a basic democratic impulse
with its criticism of the distortions of the political system,
others point to the dangers that populist phenomena can pose directly
or indirectly for the development of democracy. The problem
is that at this general level both sides are right. From a democratic
point of view, the ambivalence is already apparent in the term
populism. Its root is the
Latin word populus („the people“), which exhibits a clear link with
the democratic idea. Where there is democracy, in other words, there is always
populism (Canovan 1999). On the other hand, the suffix "ism“ signals an ideological
potentiation, in contrast to the moderate character of today’s democracies. By exaggerating the democratic
element and mobilizing it against the constraints introduced
into democratic systems by constitutional principles, populism
moves at least potentially into the proximity of opponents of the system.
Promoting or threatening democracy?
The new right-wing populism in conflict
Which of the two interpretations applies to right-wing populism? In order to be able
to answer this question it is necessary to distinguish between
words and deeds in populist politics. Though something may in
itself seem undemocratic – the ideological contents of right-wing
populism, or its agitational forms – it can help to promote
or stabilize democracy as a consequence of the confrontation
with other agents and ideas. The emergence of populist parties
and movements is not necessarily a sign of democratic instability.
Even in the case of groupings with clearly hostile intentions
it could promote the systems integrational capability, if the reasons for their protests are taken
up and in this way a new political balance is established. Obviously
there are populist moments in today’s society, when the system is threatening
to rigidify, when the establishment lacks imagination, when
there is a need for renewal, times in which such movements and
energies have their positive historical function (Puhle 1986, 32). The new right-wing
populism is no exception. By giving a voice to protest, it ensures
that a matter is resolved within the system, and discontent
does not feed into darker channels of violence and sectarianism.[1] Second,
it forces the established political forces to address problems that had
obviously been neglected, and which drove the voters to the newcomers in the first place.
Self-confident democracies therefore have no need to fear populism
(Probst 2001).
Political action becomes more responsive and at the same
time more irresponsible.
However, two objections can be raised against this optimistic
view. In the first place, there seems to be an underlying assumption
that, once they have fulfilled their function, the populist
movements will simply disappear, sooner or later.
In the case of the new right-wing parties this has obviously
not been the case. On the contrary: the populists have proved
to be stable and are even attracting more voters in some cases.
For the moderate right wing this means that
in future it will have to
take these bothersome competitors into account when
it comes to forming coalitions, if it does not wish permanently to lose its ability to achieve
majorities over left-wing parties (Decker 2002). Right-wing populists have become
„acceptable and have even participated in government in
a number of countries (Austria, Portugal, Netherlands)
or have even come to power (Italy).[2]
Where the parties lost support it was often the result of internal
quarrels which ruined the public image of the right-wing populists
(examples are the National Front of Le Pen in France, which
had to cope in 1999 with the defection of the Mégret wing, or
the Danish Progress Party, which in the 1980s had to fight off
the power demands of its founder Mogens Glistrup). Alternatively,
the parties fell victim to the government responsibility they
had taken upon themselves. An anti-establishment attitude is
a key element of populism, and a massive loss of credibility
threatens if the party itself becomes part of the establishment.
This fate has been shared recently by the Freedom Party of Austria,
the List Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands and – on a smaller scale
– the Schill Party in the Land of Hamburg in Germany.
In Italy it seems that the three-way coalition of Forza Italia,
the Northern League and the National Alliance has managed the
tricky transition from anti-institutionalism to responsible
government. Admittedly, this exception can be understood only
by taking into consideration the complete turmoil of the Italian
political system in the 1990s. However, apart from the cases
mentioned, the right-wing populists remain the classic “pretenders“,
and, given the concrete problems facing governments today, they
should have adequate opportunity to maintain this stance in
future. For other political parties this may be a depressing
thought, because the populists mostly propose “solutions“ barely
worthy of the name (Sturm 2000). However, if the challengers
manage to overcome their organizational
problems and to repress ideological contradictions,
it would be extremely surprising if they could be made to disappear
simply through the actions of their political opponents.
The second objection relates to the longer-term institutional
implications of right-wing populism, which are – to put it mildly – problematic because they could contribute to the hollowing out of the democratic
substance of the constitutional state. The newly established
parties are trendsetters in a development which could be termed
the „plebiscitary transformation“ of the political
process. Classic intermediary institutions such as parliaments
and political parties lose importance and are replaced or overshadowed
by direct links between the government and the electorate. The
new populist parties are a symptom of this development, however,
not the cause. To be sure, they have pushed this change
more energetically than the established parties. It is characteristic,
for example, that some of their representatives exhibit clear parallels with
the American parties in their approaches to electioneering,
which embody the plebiscitary model in its purest form (for
example, Forza Italia, the
Freedom Party). In addition,
right-wing populists almost all favor the increased use of methods
of direct participation in the democratic process in order to limit the power of
representative institutions. These efforts should not, however,
obscure the underlying causes of the transformation, which lie in the system
and are related to the functioning of democracy itself.
Constitutional versus populist democracy
As a real political system existing in large parts of the world,
democracy represents a synthesis of two normative principles:
the sovereignty of the people (which could also be viewed as
the democratic principle in the narrow sense), and the constitutional
basis of the state. The two exist in an uneasy but complementary
relationship. While the democratic principle postulates a form
of government in which power is always exercised in the name
of the people, or at least a majority of the people, the constitutional
state is a response to the paradox that such a democracy could
use democratic means to abolish itself (if the people so decided).
The structures of the constitutional state therefore aim at
strengthening democracy by limiting the scope of its sovereignty.
They ensure that the rulers chosen by the people are controlled
in the way they exercise power and they define an area of protected
rights which cannot be impinged upon by any democratic majority
– however large it may be. This is institutionally guaranteed
by various checks and balances in respect of the exercise
of power, and the principle of the constitutional state finds
its most visible expression in the processes of judicial review.
The constitution imposes external limitations on the scope
of democratic power, but the principle of the sovereignty of
the people is also subject to immanent barriers. Even if only
for reasons of size, democratic systems can
tackle the problem of government only by means of representation. Rule by the
people therefore does not mean that the people carry out government
business themselves, but that they delegate specific people
or groups of people to exercise the powers of government in
their name and in their interests.
The consequence of this is that the rule of the many is replaced
by the rule of the few. Viewed realistically, it is not possible
to imagine a democracy without chosen leadership personnel who
carry out the leadership functions and enjoy the appropriate
privileges of power. The question is, whether that is how things
should be. “Are elites and ruling minorities a necessary
(or even unnecessary) evil, or are they an essential and useful
factor?“ (Sartori 1992, 173)
In the normative democracy discussion 173). In the normative-democracy
debate there is still no consensus on this point.
The populist–plebiscitary view of democracy favors the
decision rather than patient negotiations. Preference is given
to expression of the view of the majority rather than the existing
variety of interests, so it is based on exclusion and has a
polarizing effect.
The fundamental controversy between the constitutional and
„populist“ views of democracy
is thus also reflected in the interpretation of the principle
of the sovereignty of the people (Mény and Surel 2002; Taggart 2002). Some
would prefer to see government power in the hands of a suitably qualified leadership group which exercised
its responsibility for the people without responding to every
changing mood of the general public; others argue that the people
should be given the greatest possible influence on politics,
because only then would it be possible to achieve the greatest
possible degree of conformity between rulers and ruled. The
representative view of democracy coincides with the constitutional
one in the emphasis it places on the deliberative character
of the political decision-making process; it therefore tends
to be inclusive, aiming to take account of the widest possible
range of interests. The populist–plebiscitary view
of democracy favors the decision rather than patient negotiations.
Preference is given to expression of the view of the majority
rather than the existing variety of interests, so it is based
on exclusion and has a polarizing effect. This explains the
need for homogeneous identity constructions, and the efforts
to present the people as a supposed unity, not only internally,
against the ruling elites, but also externally, to distinguish
it
from other peoples and nations. It shows that populism is essentially
an anti-pluralist (or anti-liberal) ideology (Rosenberger 2001,
106 f.).
The plebiscitary transformation of the political
process, which has already been mentioned, must be seen against
the background of a development which in the past has increasingly
shifted the weight from the populist to the constitutional–representative
view of democracy. The main reason for this is the growing complexity
of the business of government. On the one hand, the problems
which have to be solved are more complicated and more urgent,
although the capacity of the state to handle them has not grown
correspondingly. On the other hand, in the course of social
differentiation there are growing numbers of interested parties
wishing to have a voice in decision-making processes. In order
to be able to cope organizationally with this growing complexity,
more and more government business is being transferred to specialized
“policy
networks“, in which the experts and representatives of
special interests largely have the field to
themselves. At the same time, social relationships are increasingly
becoming the subject of legislation, which strengthens the influence
of bureaucracy and the legal system and thus also contributes
to a tendency to devalue the democratically based organs of
government (Papadopoulos 2002).
The implications of these developments for democracy are worrying,
because to the extent that the decision-making processes on
complicated matters are more inclusive, consensual and output-oriented,
they become increasingly difficult for the general public to
understand. Margaret Canovan (2002, 25 ff.) refers here to a
“democratic paradox“, to which
populism represents a reaction. With its radical simplifications
it transmits a feeling of accessibility and transparency which
has obviously been lost in
democratic reality. The counter-movement is by no means limited
to the right-wing populist challengers. Supported by the transformation
of the media,
it is increasingly impacting on the entire spectrum of electoral
politics, and the logic of presentation is thus becoming more and
more distant
from real decision-making processes (Korte and Hirscher 2000). Politics
is becoming more introverted and at the same time more extroverted.
The division of the two spheres raises difficult questions
for the legitimization of the democratic system. One could accept
that, as a result of “media
democracy“, the public presentation of politics is increasingly
subjected to its own laws and has less and less to do with the
contents of decisions. But the
problems begin when the logic of presentation gains the upper
hand, and begins to affect
the substance of the
decisions being made. When, as we see in election campaigns,
with increasing frequency, politicians not only allow themselves
to be influenced by public moods, but also actively generate
and influence these moods themselves, then the plebiscitary
speech threatens to be degraded to populist genuflection or
the politics of symbols. Political action becomes more responsive
and at the same time more irresponsible.[3] Populism therefore places the legitimization of
democracy under pressure from the output-side, too.
The changing face of party competition
Nowhere is the change in democratic politics clearer than in
the structure and function of party competition. As intermediary
institutions par excellence, political parties form the
link between the constitutional and plebiscitary components
of democracy. On the one hand, these are de facto organs of
state, which recruit almost all the political personnel and
occupy all key positions of the system of government. On the
other hand, as social groups and organs for the formulation
of opinion,
parties are the natural addressees of electoral policy. According to Peter Mair
(2002), it was the combination of social segmentation and ideological
polarization which in the past ensured the democratic functionality
of party competition and thus also formed a safeguard against
populism. The European mass integration parties were representative in that they formed
a clearly outlined political identity. They stood for the interests
and value systems of certain sections of the population and
were firmly rooted in their social milieu. For party competition,
this had contradictory consequences. On the one hand, even though
competing, the parties were safe in the knowledge that they
could each rely on their own loyal supporters and thus on a reliable share of the
vote. On the other hand, the ideological–programmatic divide
between the parties made sure that party competition still played
a key steering role. The allocation of political responsibility,
without which a democratic election would not be possible, was
ensured because it did indeed make a difference which party
was in government.
As the major ideological differences have faded and identification with
a party has gradually lost its social foundations, the nature
of party competition has changed fundamentally. Today the competition
is fiercer,
because the parties are competing for the favors of an electorate
which is increasingly prepared to switch sides, and which often
no longer feels bound by sociological or ideological loyalties.
However, in parallel – and this is only an apparent
contradiction – the real basis for party competition is disappearing.
As the scope for national policy-making becomes smaller in an
age of globalization, the desire to gain the maximum number
of votes forces
politicians to pursue virtually the same goals and to offer the same solutions. But in order to
succeed in elections, it is still essential to establish distinguishing features
of some kind. The parties face the choice between highlighting
differences in the details of the solutions they propose, with
the risk that the electorate will not understand them or will
simply be bored, or deliberately depoliticizing the electorate
by switching to a strategy of personalization and
symbolic action, making the people the central point
of reference in their rhetoric.[4] It
almost goes
without saying that the latter option is more attractive
in
today’s media society. This is also a result of the
nature of presentation, particularly on television, which has
a natural affinity for populist forms of address (Decker 2000,
324 ff.). For politicians it can therefore be rewarding
to “give populism a try“, when they want to broaden
their electoral appeal. In this way, they also have the opportunity
to emancipate themselves from „their“ party. The plebiscitary
transformation is therefore also reflected in the internal workings
of the political parties, which become increasingly top-heavy
in their structures and in which all other goals become secondary
to the electoral function (Panebianco 1988, 264 f.).
One could accept that, as a result of "media democracy",
the public presentation of politics is increasingly subjected
to its own laws and has less and less to do with the contents
of decisions. But the
problems begin when the logic of presentation gains the upper
hand, and begins to affect
the substance of decisions being made.
The transformation of party democracy would seem to have other
populist consequences. It ensures that political parties are the prime target of public
criticism. The anti-party attitude can look back on a long intellectual
tradition in Western democracies, but only in exceptional
situations has this led to anti-party parties being set up.
With the new right-wing populism, however,
the exception has become the rule and the criticism of parties has become
an increasingly important mobilization issue. The fact that this
seed falls on fertile ground in parts of the electorate is a
consequence of the contradictory role which political parties play in democracy today. On the one
hand, they have weakened their ties to specific social groups,
so that if the voters are dissatisfied they are more liable
to change sides, abstain or otherwise express
their objections, and the willingness to participate sinks (declining
memberships,
lower turnouts at elections). On the other hand, the weakening of social ties
has not led to a corresponding loss of political
power for the parties at the level of government. On the contrary,
because their social basis has crumbled, the parties have done
all they can to fortify their positions
in the state
wherever possible. This lands them in a hopeless dilemma as
far as legitimization is concerned: „As the different faces
of the party become more autonomous of one another,
and as the party leaderships increasingly turn towards the state
for their resources, the relevance of linkages which are based
on trust, accountability and, above all, representation, tends
to become eroded, both inside and outside the parties. Thus
while the parties may become more privileged, they also become
more remote. It is this particular combination of developments
that may well have provided the basis for the increasingly widespread
anti-party sentiment which now characterizes mass politics in
Western democracies“ (Mair 1994, 18
f.)
Counter-strategies in constitutional states
Populism as a feature of
political systems
is characterized by two faces. On the one hand, it describes
a plebiscitary extension of electoral politics, which can be
traced back to the change in importance of party politics and affects the entire
political spectrum. On the other hand, it is a protest phenomenon,
giving rise to „anti-party
parties“
which campaign against the consequences of the party-ruled state. In both
cases, of course, it is interesting to consider possible counter-strategies.
If the diagnosis presented here is correct, the main problem
lies in the fact that the plebiscitary and the consensual legitimization strategies
of the democratic constitutional state are drifting apart.
Party competition as a criterion for electoral decisions is
increasingly becoming a fiction, whereas the populist aberrations
it gives rise to are also affecting the substance of material
politics. One answer to this problem could be to take
some plebiscitary elements out of the electoral sphere and to
relocate them in the consensual area of the system of government.
For Germany, for example, this could involve the careful introduction
at the Federal level of instruments of direct legislation which
are already used locally and regionally (Decker 2001). Along
the same lines, recent research recommends participation in
the form of an associative or network democracy, with gradations
depending on the subject matter or the geographical area affected.
The intention is to strengthen the deliberative elements in
the decision-making process (Abromeit 2002, 100 ff.).
The introduction of new forms of democracy does not, of course,
mean that party competition would be completely stripped of
its electoral function, not least because it must remain possible
to get rid of an incompetent or corrupt government. For the
formulation of the contents of policy, on the other hand, it
would be better to peg back the elements of majority-led democracy
and to direct the focus of democratization onto the consensual
decision-making mechanisms, which would have to be opened up to new forms of participation
and made more responsive. The changing conditions of government
today mean that democratic politics require more consensus,
not less. Therefore there is a growing need to gain legitimization
for decision-making processes
by linking decision-making as closely as possible to those directly
affected.
The implication of this is that populism poses the greatest
threat when it undermines the existing consensual elements of
the political system. In other words, the more plebiscitary
tendencies become established, the more important it becomes
to have provisions to protect the liberties of the constitutional
state (Dahrendorf 2002). As long as right-wing populist movements
remain in opposition and only appear as protest parties, they
will probably not pose a threat to the constitutional order.
The situation becomes worrying when they acquire the power to
govern and actively implement their ideas on plebiscitary democracy.
The experience with right-wing populist parties sharing power
in Austria or forming a government in Italy show that these
worries are by no means groundless (Rusconi 2002; Rosenberger
2001). Nor can they be calmed by hopes that once the right-wing
populists are in government they will inevitably fail, even
though this was indeed the case in Austria and the Netherlands.
A look at Latin America or Eastern Europe clearly shows that
it is often only a short step from a populist democracy to quasi-democratic
authoritarianism. This may not for the moment be the fate of
the mature democratic states. But they should nevertheless take
seriously the threats posed by populism, and take precautionary
steps now against a plebiscitary transformation of their system
of government.
References
Abromeit, Heidrun (2002), Wozu braucht man Demokratie? Die
postnationale Herausforderung der Demokratietheorie, Opladen.
Betz, Hans-Georg
(1994), Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe,
New York.
Betz, Hans-Georg, and Stefan Immerfall (eds) (1998), The
New Politics of the Right. Neo-Populist Parties and Movements
in Established Democracies, New York.
Canovan, Margaret (1999), „Trust the People! Populism
and the Two Faces of Democracy“, Political Studies 47
(1), pp. 2–16.
Canovan, Margaret (2002), „Taking Politics to the People. Populism
and the Identity of Democracy“, in Mény and Surel (2002), pp.
25–44.
Dahrendorf, Ralf (2002), Die Krisen
der Demokratie. Ein Gespräch mit Antonio Polito, Munich.
Decker, Frank (2000), Parteien unter Druck. Der neue Rechtspopulismus
in den westlichen Demokratien, Opladen.
Decker, Frank (2001), „Das Kreuz mit der direkten Demokratie“,
Berliner Republik 3 (4), pp. 52–62.
Decker, Frank (2002), „Rechtspopulismus in Europa. Ein unaufhaltsamer
Trend?“, MUT. Forum für Kultur, Politik und Geschichte,
no. 422, pp. 46–52.
Kitschelt, Herbert, and Anthony McGann (1995), The Radical
Right in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis, Ann Arbor.
Koopmans, Ruud,
1995, ARuud (1995), „A Burning Question. Explaining
the Rise of Racist and Extreme Right Violence in Western Europe“,
Berlin (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, FS III 95-101).
Korte, Karl-Rudolf, and Gerhard Hirscher (eds) (2000), Darstellungspolitik
oder Entscheidungspolitik? Über den Wandel von Politikstilen
in westlichen Demokratien, Munich.
Mair, Peter (1994), „Party Organizations: From Civil Society
to the State“, in Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair (eds), How Parties
Organize, London–Thousand Oaks–New Delhi,
pp. 1–22.
Mair, Peter (2002), „Populist Democracy vs. Party Democracy“, in
Mény and Surel (2002), pp. 81–98.
Mény, Yves, and Yves Surel (eds) (2002), Democracy and the
Populist Challenge, Houndmills–New York.
Mény, Yves
/ Yves Surel, 2002, The Yves, and Yves Surel (2002), „The Constitutive Ambiguity
of Populism“<, in Mény and Surel (2002), pp. 1–21.
Panebianco, Angelo (1988), Political
Parties. Organization and Power, Cambridge.
Papadopoulos, Yannis
(2002), „Populism,
the Democratic Question, and Contemporary Governance“,
in Mény and Surel (2002), pp. 45–61.
Probst, Lothar (2001), "Demokratie braucht Populismus", Frankfurter
Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (2 December 2001), p.
13.
Puhle, Hans-Jürgen (1986), „Was ist Populismus?“, in Helmut Dubiel (ed.),
Populismus und Aufklärung, Frankfurt a.M., pp. 12–32.
Rosenberger, Sieglinde Katharina (2001), „Demokratie und/versus Populismus“, in Andrei
Markovits and Sieglinde Katharina Rosenberger
(eds), Demokratie. Modus und Telos, Vienna, pp. 101–16.
Rusconi, Gian Enrico
(2000), „Berlusconismo. Neuer Faschismus
oder demokratischer Populismus?“, Blätter für deutsche und
internationale Politik 47 (8), pp. 973–80.
Sartori, Giovanni
(1992), Demokratietheorie, Darmstadt
Sturm, Roland
(2000), „Das Urteil steht vor dem Argument“,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung <(23 February 2000), p. 11.
Taggart, Paul (2002), „Populism and the Pathology of Representative Politics“<,
in Mény and Surel (2002), pp. 62–80.
[1]
Comparative investigations in Europe indicate that the two
forms of protest are to some extent interchangeable: the number
of violent crimes with links to right-wing extremism are particularly
high in countries in which the new right-wing parties have
remained weak (such as Germany), whereas in other
cases the willingness to use violence has obviously been restrained by the success of such parties
(for
example, in France and Denmark). Cf. Koopmans 1995.
|
Frank Decker *1964;
Professor of Political Science, University
of Bonn;
frank.decker@uni-bonn.de
|
|