The EconomistAugust 3rd 2019 International 512 Next, ungovernability can mean that
governments fail to pass basic laws on
which the operations of the state depend.
Spain’s could not pass a budget this year,
triggering the election in April. Italy did
pass its budget for 2019, but by busting the
financial limits imposed by the eu, though
confrontation has so far been avoided.
Broken by Brexit
Britain has seen an unprecedented failure:
a thrice-repeated defeat by huge margins in
the House of Commons on the most impor-
tant issue of the day, Brexit. Had this hap-
pened at any other time, the government
would have resigned, precipitating an elec-
tion. As it was, the defeats triggered a con-
test for leadership of the Conservative
Party, resulting in a government which ex-
pects to crash out of the eu without an
agreement, pitted against a parliament de-
termined to prevent such a thing happen-
ing (see Britain section). This is an extraor-
dinary turn of events in a system which is
not supposed to permit divided govern-
ment. If Britain is sliding towards ungover-
nability will depend on whether it does
crash out and what happens at the expected
early election. At the moment, with a one-
or two-seat majority, the government is
running on fumes.
But the home of failure to pass mean-
ingful laws is the United States, where both
Republicans and Democrats have given up
on passing legislation until after the presi-
dential election of 2020. This continues a
long-standing failure. Appropriation (bud-
get) bills routinely fail to be approved on
time. Between 2016 and 2018, Republicans
controlled both branches of government
but failed in their main legislative goal, to
repeal the Affordable Care Act (“Obama-
care”), and did not try to win approval for a
promised deal to improve America’s crum-
bling infrastructure. America is not ungo-
vernable in most senses of the term but its
legislature and executive are locked into
paralysis.
A third aspect of ungovernability is the
systematic corruption of constitutional
norms, making political processes haphaz-
ard or arbitrary. This does not always make
countries ungovernable. Sometimes, as re-
cently in Hungary, for example, it does the
opposite, increasing state power at the ex-
pense of democratic checks and balances.
But the undermining of norms can also
hamper decision-making, as in Britain.
There, cabinet responsibility and party dis-
cipline have broken down, ministers break
the ministerial code of conduct and tradi-
tions of parliamentary procedure, such as
holding a Queen’s Speech to outline legis-
lative proposals, are ignored.
America is not quite as bad. But Presi-
dent Donald Trump shut down the federal
government twice in a year—compared
with once in Barack Obama’s eight years.The second Trump shutdown, in 2018-19,
was the longest in history. Mr Trump has
flouted Congress over a tax law and urged
his administration to resist Congressional
requests for information. The former Brit-
ish ambassador to Washington called his
administration dysfunctional, unpredict-
able, faction-riven, diplomatically clumsy
and inept. And that is the view of America’s
friends. America’s political system is not
designed to operate smoothly. But it is be-
coming dysfunctional in ways the framers
never envisaged.
Western countries are not ungovern-
able in the sense of paralysed by riots or cri-
ses. They have not lost control of the
streets. Nor are they Congo. But their gov-
ernments are riven by disputes and are too
weak to implement big reforms—to pen-
sions, say, or social care. They are not im-
possible to govern in the sense of chaotic or
anarchic but more than a few are ungov-
ernable in the sense that their govern-
ments cannot do anything of importance.
Lastly, the past year has seen a return to
the streets of mass demonstrations. In
France, the gilets jaunes(yellow jackets), a
populist grassroots movement, have
blocked roads and staged some of the most
violent demonstrations the country has
seen since 1968. In Britain campaigners
against Brexit claimed 1m people joined a
demonstration in London in March 2019,
which would make it one of Britain’s larg-
est-ever rallies. Prague has seen the largest
demonstrations since the Velvet revolu-
tion of 1989. And there have been smaller
anti-government rallies in Spain, Serbia,
Hungary and Slovakia in 2018-19.
The nature of these demonstrations,
however, is a reminder of what today’s un-
governability is not. It is not mob rule. No
one is burning down the presidential pal-
ace or executing the king. Protests in West-
ern capitals have mostly been placid com-
pared with the 1960s and 1970s. During
riots after the assassination of Martin Lu-
ther King in 1968, machineguns were post-
ed on the steps of the Capitol.
That point of comparison suggests anodd feature of contemporary politics: it
turns the experience of the 1970s upside
down. Then, inflation was rampant, unem-
ployment high and strikes common. There
were riots and assassinations and, in
America, conscription into an unpopular
war. Yet, with exceptions such as the Wa-
tergate scandal, the business of govern-
ment continued to rumble along. Within a
couple of years of the riots in 1968, Richard
Nixon had set up the Environmental Pro-
tection Agency; de Gaulle won a legislative
election just after the Paris événements.
Paul Keating, later Australia’s prime minis-
ter, said of his country’s government in the
1980s that “the dogs may bark but the cara-
van moves on” (ie, the government kept go-
ing, critics notwithstanding). Now, mat-
ters seem to be reversed. Inflation is tamed,
unemployment is low and wages are inch-
ing up. But governments are stalemated.
Compared with the 1970s, societies are less
disorderly but politics is more so.
Perhaps this will prove short-lived.
Maybe politicians are just facing a temp-
orary double-whammy of unpopularity.
Voters are not giving them credit for eco-
nomic recovery and are angry about the
costs of austerity. If so, governments might
one day reap electoral rewards and normal
governance will resume.The party’s over
But longer-term trends seem against that,
notably the secular decline of large politi-
cal parties which has gone furthest in Eu-
rope (see chart). At their height, the two
largest parties in Britain, Spain and Ger-
many were winning 80-90% of the vote.
Now, they are down to two-thirds or less.
In 1960, 15% of electorates in western
Europe were affiliated with a party. Now
the share is below 5%. Britain’s two big par-
ties were once the largest civic organisa-
tions in the country. Now their combined
membership is less than that of the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds.
Membership of unions and churches
has fallen, marginalising the institutions
that buttressed the centre-left and centre-
right, respectively. And, except in America,
voters are more fickle. Alessandro Chiara-
monte of the University of Florence and
Vincenzo Emanuele of Luiss University in
Rome found that 8% of European voters
changed their votes between national elec-
tions in 1946-68; in 1969-91, 9% did so; in
1992-2015, 13% changed their minds.
Everywhere, parties are finding it hard-
er to recruit and retain members and to
mobilise voters. Parties are the organising
forces of parliamentary democracy. They
pick candidates, approve manifestos and
get out the vote. Coalitions usually revolve
around one large party. If parties continue
to decline, political systems are likely to
become at least more fluid, and at worst
harder to govern. 7Two bad?Source:NationalstatisticsCombined vote share of main two parties
in general elections, %02550751001980 85 90 95 2000 05 10 15 19SpainGermanyAustraliaNetherlandsSweden