Check-in with Nic - Part 2, the European side

REMINDER OF THE PREVIOUS INTRO:  

If you know Nic at all, you probably understand that he's a walking encyclopedia for both relevant and irrelevant information spanning all sorts of subjects.  It's been just about a year since I spoke with him for this blog and there have been quite a few developments relating to his field(s) of expertise (particularly international relations) which I wanted to get his feedback on since people on both sides of the world have been asking.  

I also wanted to give him an opportunity to check-in on a personal level, but he is far less analytical on that topic.

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Alex:  Can you tell me about what's happening in Europe?  We've been asked by folks how Geert Wilders' victory in the Dutch election last November has affected our outlook and we know there's a trend towards the right in Europe, but is any of it actually changing your lens regarding our move?

Nic:  There are a number of things that I think I need to explain first for American readers.  Ten or twenty years ago, the norm in European politics was to not include the right-wing populist parties in coalition governance regardless of how many seats they received.  Right-wing coalitions typically had enough to govern without the farthest right populists participating, so they would include all the other parties except those.  In some instances, such as Germany, the conservative party (Christian Democrats) would win the largest share and the conservative radicals would win a small number, but the party with the largest share wouldn't have enough seats to govern on their own.  They would then form an alliance with the center left party (Social Democrats) and would form what's called a grand coalition.  The grand coalition governments were common in Europe 10-20 years ago in part because there was a norm to never include the far right wing in government.

Alex:  What about the left-wing populists?

Nic:  They were sometimes included but more traditionally excluded.  That norm was broken this cycle in Spain because it was a narrow election between the left and the right, evenly split but the left had slightly more and the opportunity to form a government.  They were able to do by bringing in the left-wing populist, independence-oriented parties, which pissed off everyone else.  But generally, Europe has seen the right-wing, anti-establishment nationalism as the bigger threat because of Europe's history with fascism.  So it's been taboo, it's been off the table.

Some things have changed in the last 10 years or so.  First, these parties went from winning 5%-20% to winning 10%-25%, which isn't a lot but in some countries the legal threshold for holding seats in parliament has been 5% or 7% or 10% so they've just passed beyond that.  Now, they're permanent fixtures in the legislative bodies.  

Like with the Electoral College in the US, it's not fundamentally a problem for American democracy in and of itself but it becomes a problem when the shift in demographics advantages the rural white conservatives against the urban areas in a way that happens to align with political parties.  When the cities are almost exclusively Democrat and your rural areas are almost exclusively Republican with a system that advantages one over the other, it creates an incentive to exploit aspects of the system.  Europe doesn't have the clearcut alignment of ideological, regional, and demographic factors in the US that incentivizes one party to play by the rules and the other not to.

Circling back, Europe now has the right-wing populists winning enough votes to hold seats in parliament.  This could be because we're further away from WWII than we were 20 years ago and we have generational turnover.  More young people now never talked to their relatives who experienced the war, it's not part of their upbringing in some way.  Maybe there are other factors, but these parties are gaining ground and they've become normalized, it's no longer taboo and norms are being broken.  

Those parties are being welcomed into government, but almost always in non-ruling positions.  In some cases, the right-wing radicals entering governments where they are a minority party in a coalition.  And in some places where there are a huge number of different parties, like in The Netherlands with Geert Wilders, sometimes they are winning 20%-25% of the vote which is enough to be the largest party.  But Geert Wilders isn't our Prime Minister.  And he won't be our PM because people don't like him, because 75% of the country still voted against him.  He gets to be in government, but he doesn't get to be PM.  This was part of the deal with the center right parties.  They said "Okay, but you're anathema to our democracy so you don't get to actually set the agenda if you wan't a majority in the government.  You need our support and we're going to moderate this."  

So, we in NL have a relatively conservative cabinet with Wilders in it.  And in the Dutch and American media, we're hearing how dangerous and unprecedented it is that these people are getting a voice in government because the European model has been to exclude them fully from political life.  We can argue about whether this is a good or bad thing.  I've actually always been of the mind that exclusion is a bad thing because the worldview of these people is that they're being repressed by the establishment.  Giving them a seat or two undermines their case.  In the US, these voices have not been repressed, but in Europe they have actively been excluded which supports their argument.  

The rise of right-wing populism in Europe has not actually led to a right-wing populist leader taking charge of the country.  We can look at Meloni in Italy, but she's not governing as a right-wing.  She's actually governing as a pro-EU, pro-European cooperation, pro-Ukraine establishment conservative.  Like Wilders, whose platform sounds like "expand Obamacare, cut clean energy subsidies, cut pay for bureaucrats, increase free childcare" so as an American it's hard to get worked up about that.  

Really, the rise of right-wing populism is coming at the expense of right-wing establishment parties, so it's not a rise of conservatism but it's the bleeding of support from the center right to the far right.  I've seen many make the case that this is driven by the exclusion I'm talking about, that because you've excluded the far right and the establishment conservatives form coalitions towards the left, it makes conservatives feel like their party is selling out and is now insufficiently conservative.  It puts on a rightward pressure and if the party isn't validating that then it builds into the sense of being repressed.  If those people don't have a home in the center-right, then they start voting further right which means the collapse of the center.

Did I answer the question sufficiently?

Alex:  You always do.