Politics

Are Traditional European Political Parties Relics of the Past?

Politics in the European region has alternated between periods of relatively steady progress where the grande idée of the major political parties have informed and provided a vision for Europe and periods of fragmentation when Europe has seemed rudderless. The ideas of democracy, the welfare state, a common identity, market, money and even a common defence have defined the European project.

From the start, the dominant political formations were present and active in the construction of the European Community. Schuman, de Gasperi, Adenauer and Bech were Christian Democrats. Spinelli, Socialist and then Communist. Spaak and Mansholt fell under the Socialist/Labour umbrella. With them, there were of course also some men of state without notable party affiliation, like Monet and Beyen.

Of course, not all the adherents to these major parties and political tendencies supported the Union. Gaullists, close to the Christian Democrats, ideologically opposed it for a time – as did the Communists. But it’s undoubted that, in the post-war, these parties and their leaders set the stage for what we’ve inherited as the European Union.

A History of Political and Ideological Activism

There have been constant threads in the ideological landscape of Europe for several centuries. These have defined the political parties which have permeated our political space up until today. Today, however, these threads are beginning to come unravelled.

Political parties as we know them originated in popular associations at the time of the French revolution, developing throughout Europe in the 19th century. These graduated from the political formations of the middle ages like the Guelphs and Ghibellines. At the time, party affiliation was determined by one’s lord and sponsor – if the lord switched loyalties, the lieges obediently followed – or the guilds, precursors to labour unions and craft unions.

The original parties were often social institutions in addition to purely political clubs. They had community meeting halls, enduring fixtures where social gatherings, as well as political ones, took place. The early 20th century parties of the left were very anchored in community affairs, developing community savings, lending institutions and other social services. These could serve to help pay for medical care in the case of an emergency for one of their members or for burial expenses to assist a poor family in need. Their help, when it existed, was often the only social safety-net available.

While Guelphs and Ghibellines set imperial supporters against papal supporters, 19th and 20th-century politics followed along the fault lines of the French revolution opposing social to free market, capital to labour, conservative to modernising, and religious to secular interests. It is the breakdown of this order that this article will explore.

Hippolyte Lecomte, Rohan Road combat, 29 July 1830.
Hippolyte Lecomte, Rohan Road combat, 29 July 1830.

Breakdown: Coming Soon to Political Parties Near You?

What used to be a stable political vista, at least looking to Western Europe, has radically changed. In the past, Socialists and Communists vied for the working class vote; Christian Democrats, Gaullist, nationalist and agricultural parties for the middle class and bourgeois votes; and free-market liberals for big capital and modernizing elements. Now, however, this delicate system of voting distribution has broken down. An unrecognizable variety of new players, at least in name, have emerged.

The phenomenon of new, usually smaller, insurgent parties representing particular interests is hardly new. Poujadisme, radical libertarians (embodied first and foremost by the Italian Partito Radicale), and anarchists will be recalled, among many others. In the modern era, however, insurgent formations have begun to replace the major parties. This is something entirely new.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron is head of a political party entirely of his own making, En Marche, which didn’t exist before 2016 when at their head a year later he won the Presidency and then put together a parliamentary majority. That same election saw the seemingly unassailable parties of the French left replaced in large part by La France Insoumise, a formation like En Marche created from whole cloth by Jean-Luc Melenchon, previously a socialist party cadre.

In Italy, current President Mattarella, previously a Christian Democrat three-time minister and Deputy Prime Minister, now presides over a peculiar government coalition together with an independent, post-ideological Prime Minister plucked from a legal academic career. The coalition brings together the traditional centre-left formation, Partito Democratico, and a novel actor in Italian historical politics, the 5 Star Movement. This ten-year-old reform movement oscillates between leftist and populist ideological positions. Previously, the 5 Star Movement formed a coalition government with the League, a regional party with far-right ideology.

Green parties, now legion in northern Europe, were perhaps the first manifestation of this phenomenon of fragmentation and reconfiguration in Europe. Many are already well established and have participated in coalition governments as junior partners. Particular national models like the Red-Green Party in Denmark also encompass the old traditions with the new.

In Greece and Spain, new formations have fused parties on the left: Syriza and Podemos, respectively. Both have participated in government, with Syriza at the head of the Greek government during the difficult period of the financial collapse. On the centre-right, the two countries have also seen new developments: New Democracy and Ciudadanos.

New parties like Vox in Spain have also formed on the far right, but here the political tradition is one that was suppressed rather than newly formed. Other parties expressing populist views to the right of the political spectrum, like the National Rally in France, the Freedom Party in Austria and the Netherlands, Interest and Vlaamse Belaang in Belgium, AdF in Germany and National People’s Party in Denmark, have presented a traditional political message and ideology dressed up in more modern clothing. These parties appear to represent a continuity of older political traditions that had whittled down after the war.

Even in a modified “winner take all” system like the UK which discourages small parties, UKIP has expanded the array of party choices.

(From left to right) Matteo Salvini, Harald Vilimsky, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Frauke Petry greet supporters at a conference of European far right wing parties on January 21, 2017 in Koblenz (Getty).
From left to right: Matteo Salvini, Harald Vilimsky, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Frauke Petry greet supporters at a conference of European far right-wing parties on January 21, 2017 in Koblenz (Getty).

A Different Picture in the East

What in the West has been referred to as the traditional left, right, liberal and Christian political orientation was never the uniquely dominant configuration in Eastern Europe. Suppression of pre-war political formations in the East, where few countries had enduring democratic traditions, left the slate clean when these countries transitioned in 1989-1992 to democratic systems. What parties there were previously were often organized around ethnic and national interests, with agrarian parties playing an important role alongside more familiar communist and socialist formations.

During the Communist period, political parties not allied to the Communist Party were forbidden and suppressed. When finally open to diverse party formation after the political revolutions of 1989-1992, the Eastern European populations were largely sceptical of politics and ill-informed both in terms of party ideologies and practice. Parties rose and fell in function of personalities, funding and other factors more than ideological ones.

This has stabilized in recent years but with dominant parties Fidesz in Hungary, or Law and Justice in Poland, unrecognizable in Western terms. For example, while Fidesz is included in the conservative European People’s Party in the European Parliament, an alliance of traditional Christian Democrat and conservative parties, tensions exist and their affiliation has questioned by many, leading to the party’s suspension within the alliance.

Having taken a completely different route towards development, and much more recently than Western Europe, it is not surprising that these parties do not seem to manifest the same evolutionary path as those in the West.

What’s Happening?

Political scientists have made extensive studies of European political party programs going back to the early 1950s. A clear pattern of convergence in the party programs appears, with the more radical and extreme positions converging to gradually become more centrist.

Speculation exists that there may be a dialectic occurring whereby extreme platforms, unsuccessful once a party gets to power – either because they are unable to be implemented or because they fail once tried – lead to moderation in a future time. This moderation, in turn, leads to dissatisfaction and re-radicalisation or to new parties or leaders taking up the cudgel. Such a pendulum is, however, difficult to demonstrate looking at the existing data. What is clear is that very few radical programs have been successfully implemented for long.

With very few exceptions, radical political reforms in Western Europe have been somewhat moribund, especially touching on economic and social aspects. This has been an enormous frustration to many of the supporters of traditional parties both on the left and right. Nationalisations of major French industries did occur under the Presidency of Francois Mitterrand and the Socialist ascendancy in the 1980s. But these were quickly unwound. Similarly, earlier British nationalisations were reversed under Margret Thatcher and many social programs unwound but a backlash soon occurred and an attempt made to restore some of the programs.

Dozens of services were delegated to the private sector as part of Margaret Thatcher's privatisation drive in the 1980s and 90s
Dozens of services were delegated to the private sector as part of Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation drive in the 1980s and 90s

Another explanation other than the political dialectic between right and left progressing to its own destruction can be offered. The economic context in which economic and social policies are being put forward is one of globalisation and a relative decline in Europe’s importance as an economic leader. The ball has been passed to the USA and China, both of whom have embraced savage capitalism at least in the economic sphere and dominate the competition.

With the exception of the UK, such an extreme capitalist program is distasteful to much of continental Europe remaining in the EU. These countries, by and large, – and the EU’s structure can but reflect this – prefer a more socially responsible economy with greater equality and one where the environmental and social price is weighed in the balance with growth and competition.

The successful achievement of these goals in the economic sphere, always difficult given internal opposition, becomes practically impossible once the international economic environment in which the EU must operate is taken into consideration. Politically disappointed voters are left to complain and look elsewhere. But the solution is in a stronger EU, not in reconfigured national politics, as repeated failures at the national level have shown.

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