The Economist February 3rd 2018 BriefingEuropean populism 1912 try as a fairly conventional conservative
party around the turn of the century. But
partly under pressure from Jobbik, an ex-
treme right-wing party founded in 2003,
and increasingly citing “the will of the peo-
ple”, Mr Orban has taken to demonising
immigrants and minorities (particularly
Muslims), attacking the judiciary and dis-
enfranchising sources of dissent. He is de-
manding that, at the parliamentary elec-
tion to be held in April, the voters give him
a mandate to take on George Soros, the
Hungarian-born, America-based billion-
aire who founded the Central European
University in Budapest and who, Mr Or-
bán claims, has a secret plan to flood the
country with Muslims.
Most political scientists now consider
Fidesz a full-blown populist outfit. Else-
where the entangling of mainstream par-
ties with populist policies and the populist
style takes place in subtler ways. The op-
tions open to Sweden’s Moderates illus-
trate the dynamics at play.
The slow growth of the SDhas not been
enough for it to form a government, as Fi-
desz, Syriza, a far-left party in Greece, and
the Law and Justice party in Poland have
done. But by 2014 it was big enough to
make it hard for the established parties to
form stable centre-left or centre-right co-
alitions, as was long their wont.
The Moderates might have joined a
stodgily broad government of the centre
right and left. Such governments have be-
come much more common across the con-
tinent as the growth of populist parties,
along with wider political fragmentation,
has made more ideologically coherent co-
alitions harder to pull off. Today Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands and Spain offer va-
riations on this muddled-middle theme,
some of them formal coalitions, some
looser toleration agreements. Such ar-
rangements are unappealing forambitious
politicians. They also pep up populist rhet-
oric by proving that the political class is in-
deed all in it together.
The other two options available to the
Moderates were to co-optthe populists or
to try to steal their voters. Last March Anna
Kinberg Batra, Mr Reinfeldt’s successor as
leader, leant towards co-option, announc-
ing that after next September’s election she
might try to form a government with SD
support. This prompted furious arguments
which led to her resignation. Ulf Kristers-
son, the new leader, moved the party to-
wards option two: “In Sweden we speak
Swedish,” he declared pointedly in his
Christmas message. But an SD-backed
Moderate government is still possible.
Such possibilities do more than any-
thing to normalise parties like SD. Austria,
Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, the
Netherlands and Norway have all now
seen mainstream parties govern with the
formal or informal support of populist par-
ties. In Slovakia a government led by the
centre left has a similar arrangement. The
number of European governments with
populists in their cabinets has risen from
seven to 14 since 2000. Their ranks may
soon be joined by the Czech Republic and
Denmark, where the centre-right Venstre
party says it might invite the right-populist
Danish People’s Party (DPP), now propping
it up in government, to become a full
partner after the next election, which has
to be held by July 2019.
The left is looking at new alliances, too.
Last year, for the first time, Germany’s So-
cial Democrats (SPD) went into a general
election without ruling out a coalition
with Die Linke, a left-populist party de-
scended from the East German commu-
nists. Similarly, Spain’s centre-left Social-
ists have flirted with a deal with Podemos,
a movement which grew out of anti-aus-
terity street protests.
This all suggests the populist tide will
continue to rise. Through analysing 296
post-1945 European elections, Joost van
Spanje of the University of Amsterdam
has found that, in general, welcoming for-
merly ostracised parties into the main-
stream tends not to reduce their support.The sincerest flattery
Going hand in hand with normalisation-
by-coalition—in part its cause and in part its
effect—is a growing professionalism and a
professed moderation among the popu-
lists. In their early days they were often
closely associated with frank racism, as
with the anti-Semitism of the FNin the
days of Ms Le Pen’s father; such sentiments
are now increasingly kept at arms length
(though in the case of Mr Orbán’s attacks
on Mr Soros not very convincingly). They
were also chaotic and split-prone. Some,
like the UKIndependence Party (UKIP), still
are. Others, tasting or scenting power, have
been getting their act together. The FPÖ in
Austria is an example. It was shambolic
during its previous turn in government,
from 2000 to 2007, but it returned to minis-
terial power last December with a more so-
ber image, having made efforts to distance
itself from the right-wing Austrian social
networks known as “fraternities”. “I ex-pect the FPÖto be much more disciplined
and effective this time,” says Mr Mudde.
Part of this sprucing up involves tailor-
ing policies to broaden support, which
normally comes from the working class.
While voters for Podemos, M5Sand Syriza
tend to be more educated than average,
and also younger, the best predictor of sup-
port for the right-populists ofthe north is
usually how early an individual left formal
schooling. Winning over more bourgeois
voters means tempering their message in
some ways. Thus theFPÖis less stridently
anti-EUthan it was. The same is true of the
FN—which now presents itself as a
staunchly pro-Israel bulwark against Is-
lamism—the Danish DPPand the AfD.
Another part is experience gained in
state governments and running munici-
palities like Wels, near Linz; subnational
politics offers a good way to gain accept-
ability. City government in the north of Ita-
ly hashelped the populists ofthe Northern
League; in Spain mayors allied to Podemos
in Madrid and Barcelona have given the
party a stronger national profile. But local
power is not always a plus. Corruption
scandals and piles of rubbish in the streets
of Rome under mayor Virginia Raggi have
damaged M5S.
Austria’s new government also exem-
plifies the second sort of populist-main-
stream accommodation: copying the pop-
ulists’ ideas. In the election campaign the
established Austrian People’s Party
(ÖVP)—now the senior party in the co-
alition—shamelessly ripped offFPÖpoli-
cies, such as a burqa ban and reduced so-
cial-security rights for migrants. A cartoon
in the Kurier, a newspaper, showed Heinz-
Christian Strache, the FPÖ’s leader, naked
in a police station: “They took everything!”
This “contagion”, as political scientists
put it, is visible across the continent. Mark
Rutte, the liberal-conservative Dutch
prime minister, haspioneered a style of
politics he distinguishes from “the wrong
kind of populism”. Before last year’s elec-
tion his party, pressed by the PVVand the
Forum for Democracy, a new nationalist-
populist party, ran dog-whistle adverts in
newspapers telling foreigners to “behaveChanging fortunes?Sources: National polls; The Economist *”Do you approve/disapprove of the National Front?”, % replying approveVoting intention, selected European populist parties, %2009 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 180102030405060National Front*
(France)FPÖ (Austria)AfD (Germany)Five Star
Movement
(Italy)UKIP
(Britain)Podemos
(Spain)Sweden
DemocratsFidesz (Hungary)PVV (Netherlands)