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Populism and Democracy in Europe (LECONTE: UNDERSTANDING EUROSCEPTICISM…

- - - - Katz & Mair: 'cartel party thesis': shift to the strengthening the governmental role to the detriment of the representation function
      - Kriesi: deeper structural roots of the erosion of the repres. function related to two major challenges of contemporary democracy
        
        1) INCREASED IMPORTANCE OF THE EUROPEAN AND GLOBAL LEVEL in contemporary multilevel governance structures, reinforced and "decisively shaped" by...
        
        empowerment of the executive branch to the detriment of parliament, reinforcing the governing function
        
        European level decision-making led to longer, less transparent chains of delegation, reducing the accountability of the political decision-makers -> tension between role as representatives of the national citizen publics and role as responsible governments
        
        Increasing divorce between 'front-stage' and 'back-stage' politics at the national level (reinforcement of representation in the administrative channel ('non-majoritarian' forms) to the detriment of the electoral channel)
        
        ... 2) Increasing MEDIATISATION OF POLITICS
        
        ..shifting balance of party functions by
        
        reducing the role of party apparatus
        
        linking leaders more directly to the voters
        
        enhancing the personalisation of political leadership
        
        fostering the 'depoliticisation' of the party base
        
        'self-mediatisation of politics', i.e. the self-initiated stage-management of politics by means of strategic communication in an effort to master the new rules that govern access to the public sphere (professionalisation of internal and external communication)
        
        direct communication between leaders and public audience contributes to the personalisation of power, since the success of the party increasingly depends on the communication qualities of its leaders -> personalised leadership becomes part of politics-as-usual as opposed to only populist parties
        
        Meny & Surel: charisma plays an increasingly important role, not only in politics, but also in economics and religion
        
        Also reinforces the uncoupling of front-stage and back-stage politics
        
        The on-going 'back-stage' policy-making processes generally too numerous, complex and techinal for the limited scope of public attention and for detailed public scrutiny (also the need to protect the negotiators' room for manoeuvre)
        
        Journalists' practices in a professionalised and commercialised media system tend to focus on the political contect at the detriment of the policies' substantive content
        
        'depolitication' of politics -> either becoming a technocratic exercise or a largely symbolic contest between figureheads (Mair: reinforced by convergence of parties that habitually govern in ideological terms)
        
        Development of new forms of communication resulting from new media (internet and social media)
        
        New forms of campaigning allowing for closer interaction
        
        A powerful tool for populist challengers seeking to mobilise outside of the established channels of political communication
        
        'media logic'
  - - - The low level of political and administrative performance contributes to the constitution of anti-elitist sentiments; especially in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and Slovakia; also feeling of unfair treatment by public authorities
      - -> large numbers of dissatisfied democrats in CEE become particularly conducive to populist mobilisation
      - Ucen: rise of a new 'centrist populism', often becoming the strongest force in parliament in first-ever elections -> newness as an asset and allowing to claim to fight a corrupt regime
        
        'non-radical challengers mobilizing disappointed electorates against under-performing and morally failing (ALL) established parties'
        
        'a moderate manifestation of populist ideology, only lightly attached to thicker ideologies, primarily indulging in the critique of the establishment'
    - - The party systems have not yet produced mainstream parties adequately representing their constituencies, thus suffering from a low level of institutionalisation
      - Mainwaring: 'is one in which actors develop expectations and behaviour based on the premise that the fundamental contours and rules of party competition and behaviour will prevail into the foreseeable future', four conditions for a party system to be institutionalised:
      - 1) the stability in the rules and nature of party competition: configuration does not constantly change, no new challengers at every election, low volatility
      - 2) the parties have stable roots in society, allowing them to structure the preferences of their voters
      - 3) the parties are considered to be legitimate by the major political actors
      - 4) party organisations are not subordinate to the interests of ambitious leaders but inquire an independent status and value
      - --> CEE: high level of volatility, no stable roots (yet) in society, hardly considered legitimate by the citizens, organisations tend to be unstable
      - Volatility since the democratic transition above all due to the entry and exit of parties instead of switches between established ones
  - - - Kriesi: may be of transitory nature, but excessively static: three forms of the rise of 'protest populism'
        
        1) The rise of new challengers in the party system
        
        Populism can be easily combined with different 'thick' ideologies
        (Mudde) which elaborate the common core of the 'sovereign people' in various ways, speaking to the grievances of a specific part of the population taken to be the whole
        
        May be the driving forces of restructuration and realignment of the party system, leading to the challengers entering or supporting governments, as has happened in WE
        
        Kriesi: right-wing populist parties spearheading the nationalist reaction to economic, cultural and political processes of denationalisation do not only articulate a populist challenge to the mainstream but also a new structural conflict of globalisation 'losers' and 'winners' (in defence of national identity and political community, nation-state)
        
        Consequences of denationalisation may also be pursued by left-wing populist challengers, more likely to frame conflicts in socio-economic terms (as opposed to political and cultural dimensions) (in defence of the national welfare state and economic privileges of domestic sectors of the economy)
        
        2) The radical rejection of the party system as such
        
        Rosanvallon: three characteristic traits of populism as anti-politics
        
        stigmatisation of the governing authorities
        
        the total rejection of politics, an apocalyptic vision not involving constructive criticism
        
        the criminalisation or ridiculing of the essence of power
        
        Examples: Jon Gnarr's 'best party' in Iceland, M5S of Beppe Grillo (25,5% of the vote in 2013 nat. elections and refusing to cooperate with any of the mainstream parties, although the rejection still takes place in the electoral channel, Grillo maintaining that M5S mobilises for a fundamental political renewal)
        
        As representatives get elected, these groups may be transformed into regular parties even when keeping some of the populist characteristics
        
        3) The expansion of conflict beyond the party system
        
        Schattschneider: public protest designed to unleash a public debate, to draw the attention of the public to the grievances of the actors in question, to create controversy, and to obtain the support of the public for the actors' concerns
        
        Protest mobilisation increasingly conventional: 'movement societies' in which it is no longer used as a last resort only but ever more frequently to represent a wider range of claims
        
        Social movement organisations become more like interest groups; strong social movements tend to spawn new political organisations -> tend to institutionalise (the major party families existing today have come out of the social movements of the past!) (most recently the Green parties came out of the new social movements of the 1970s)
        
        Mazzoleni: populist challengers can generally rely on some sort of 'media complicity'; under conditions of mediatisation, news coverage yields to general popular tastes; successful challengers are attractive for the media because of their news value (extreme, charismatic, outsiders, resentful)
  - - - erosion of the representative function
      - decline of parties as intermediaries: membership and identification, voter turnout, increasing volatility
      - -> a largely neutral and non-partisan system of governance appealing to a mass electorate whose relations with the gov are no longer mediated by traditional political parties
    - - positive valorisation of 'the people' combined with the denigration of 'the elite'
      - Canovan: people as a unity capable of having common interests and a common will
      - Meny & Surel: three conceptions of 'the people': a political one (sovereign), a cultural one (nation) and an economic one (class)
      - Pappas: 'democratic illiberalism'
        
        'government by the people' literally, checks and balances on the popular will rejected (rule of law, divison of power, minor. rights)
        
        monolithic conception of the people (popular majority always right)
        
        hostility to the 'aristocratic element' of representative democracy
        
        against all intermediaries between the people and the decision-makers -> a more direct linkage of masses to elites
        
        politics escaped popular control which must be restored
        
        introduction of a 'charismatic leader': an outsider and a new challenger incarnating demands of 'the people', promise of transparency
        
        a strong anti-institutional impulse
    - - the populist ideology manifests itself in the political communication strategies of populist leaders
- - - - 1) prompting the main reforms helping to democratize the EU
        
        new standards in terms of transparency, information and communication (a more proactive strategy)
        
        in the 1990s the extension of EPs powers (democratic deficit)
        
        ECJ case law -> guarantee the protection of fundamental rights by referring to gen.principles of EC law and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights
      - 2) questioning inefficient status quos and raised the issue of the limits of integration
        
        'frozen' policy choices (CAP)
        
        new forms of governance, e.g. the OMC, prompted discussions on the limits of integration
      - 3) what should be the role of politics and political conflict in a political system that, in its very essence, relies on relatively de-politicsed and consensual interactions?
        
        stressed the limits of a purely functionalist type of legitimacy (assuming popular consent would come gradually)
        
        main cause of the democratic deficit: lack of political conflict; lack of gov-opposition nexus
        
        existence of conflicting views not to be seen as a weakness -> the open-ended, disputed nature of the EU could enhance its legitimacy and facilitate its acceptance at member state level
    - - Principle of supranationalism: to advocates, a general interest can be defined that is more than the mere addition of national interests; most Eurosceptics understand the EU's legitimacy as relying exclusively on the states
      - The core positions of soft Eurosceptics on EU institutional issues (Thatcher): opposition to a 'European super-state', a strict limitation of the Commission's powers (from proactive leadership to a more defensive strategy: reform of working methods, lower profile as agenda-setter and guardian of the treaty, renationalization tendencies), and an emphasis on the European Council; the weakening of the historic Community method -> a 'fair return' versus the principle of 'dissymmetric concessions', OMC ('best practices')
    - - Role in the international relations: many Eurosceptics argue that EU is too 'inward-looking; left-wing emphasizing the impact of protectionism on dev. countries, right-wing the openness to global trade (without developing a political self-understanding in terms of IR)
      - For advocates of a political union, the EU has a specific contribution to make in the stabilization of the international system
    - - Double-edged impact of integration; a key role in processes of democratic transition in southern and eastern Europe
      - On the other hand, indirect adverse impacts: waning of the opposition at the domestic level, disempowerment of democratic counter-weighs (trade unions), reducing the range of policies available to governments
      - -> blurring the differences between left and right, reinforcing public perceptions of the political elites' lack of manoeuvre in the face of global challenges
      - exacerbating perceptions of a growing distance between party leaderships, intermediate levels and regional party organizations
      - 'administrative fusion' of national institutions with EU and member state ones -> increasing complexity, less transparency and less accountability
      - challenging mechanisms of redistribution and collective solidarity (free movement of capital on taxation policy)
    - - EP: limited ability to engage in party networking at the EU level; Commission and Council: limited influence (hard Eurosceptics rarely represented in governments) + COREPER preparing most of Council's work
      - Eurosceptic factions within mainstream incumbent parties, Eurosceptics as coalition partners, governing parties toughening stances in fear of strong Eurosceptic opposition in domestic politics
      - Provisions on treaty reform: single government's power to block negotiations
      - Pressure for national referenda since 1990s to legitimize reforms: beyond the problems of low levels of information and plebiscitary use of referenda, 1) tend to be biased in favour of 'No' campaigners, 2) in this respect, EU citizens have very unequal voting rights, 3) there is a discordance; large segments of voters defeat institutional reforms to express dissatisfaction with the content of EU policies or opposition to further EU integration
  - - - Concerns over the impact of European integration on national sovereignty and identity
    - - Denounces EU 'interference' in normative issues
    - - Rooted in a broader hostility towards Europe as a continent and in distrust towards the societal models and institutions of European countries
    - - Scepticism as to the gains derived from EU membership at individual or country level; cost-benefit calculations
    - - SEA in 1986, completing the common market, consensual mut entailing "seeds of future contestation": extension of QMV, enlarged scope of EEC powers, enhanced role for the Commission
      - After, division of elites over 1) the extent of the internal market regulation and 2) the transformation of the EEC into a political union (Thatcher Bruges 1988)
      - Maastricht Treaty (1991): symbolic transformation into EU; although not federalist in essence, several provisions eliciting opposition: EMU, ECB, cooperation in JHA, EU citizenship
      - .. illustrated the reservations of a majority of govs with regards to the extension of EU powers, elevating subsidiarity as the overarching principle
      - End of Cold War: had been a decisive stimulus for western European unification; EEC was seen as a bulwark against communism
    - - early 1950s, political Euroscepticism a mainstream view among national political elites
      - Then, dampened by 1) less supranationality among EEC institutions compared to ECSC, 2) absence of major institutional reforms, 3) relative stability of domestic party systems
    - - Following treaties extending to policy areas linked to national sovereignty: cooperation in internal affairs (Amsterdam 1997), CFSP completemented by ESDP (Nice 2001)
      - 'Constitutionalization process' proved highly divisive; EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (drafted 2000) and the Constitutional Treaty (2002-03)
  - - - 1) the context, timetable and modalities of countries' accession processes
      - 2) collective utilitarian assessments of countries' EU membership
      - 3) the perceived fit or misfit between the EU and national institutions
      - 4) references to 'Europe' in nation-building processes
      - 5) understandings of national identity
  - - - Support for the general idea of European unification
      - Support for the EU membership of one's country
      - Support for a tightly integrated, supranational institutional system
    - - Support for EC membership was more volatile and more affected by periods of recession; decline in public support for EC/EU membership started before the debates on the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty (in late 1991); ratification process highlighting the emergence of a gap between public and political elites (referenda results)
      - Strong affective support for unification (throughout the Cold War) did not equate with comparable levels of support for political integration and for strong supranational institutions
    - - As a protest-based phenomenon: the 'sanction effect', anti-elitist attitudes, alienation from and dissatisfaction with politics
      - The filters of domestic politics (& national institutions) and macroeconomic conditions play a role, although evaluations of the EU per se, of its current direction and its core policies are crucial dimensions of popular Euroscepticism
      - The No/Yes cleavage in recent referenda did not simply overlap a cleavage between integration's 'winners' and 'losers'
      - Socio-economic concerns exarcebated by interlinked developments: enlargement to poorer countries and economic globalization
        
        1) fears of increased competition for dom. labour markets, 2) concerns over reduced comparative advantage for one's country, 3) concerns over redistributive consequences of a new country's accession
        
        Perceptions of global processes of trade liberalization
      - Identity concerns
        
        Extension of EU power in identity-related areas (welfare state, education, culture); national sovereignty (smaller member states where enlargement conjures up perceptions of being marginalized)
        
        (Hostility towards) immigration and multiculturalism; increasingly polarized public debates on immigration
        
        Exclusive understanding of national identity and lack of identification with Europe
      - Distrust of EU institutions
  - - - Collective perceptions of the EU are influenced by different temporalities: that of accession processes but also countries' relationships with 'Europe' in the course of history
      - From a spatial point of view, perceptions are not only influenced by a national context, but also by regional factors and global trends
- - - - free, equal, secret ballots not only the core of but democracy itself (Schumpeter); "vertical accountability" between the governed and those who govern through periodical elections
    - - add the spheres of rule of law and horizontal accountability; if and only if free elections are embedded in the guaranteed human and civil rights and in checks and balances can democratic elections be democratically meaningful; "constitutional democracy"
    - - add the output dimension; public goods, fairness in the distribution of basic goods, income, social security, and life chances; the need to avoid extreme inequalities; provision of primary and social goods at the core of democracy
  - - - "Objective indicators": Democracy Barometer, 100 indicators with more sensitivity towards variance in the 30 "best" democracies, three core functions (freedom, equality, power control) or nine core functions allowing for identification of both holistic and partial trends from 1990 onward; overall DB index does not support the crisis hypothesis (some countries with positive, some with negative trends)
      - Expert assessments (Freedom House, Polity): virtually no variance for the top 50 democracies over the past three decades
      - The quality of representation increased (women and ethnic or sexual minorities), but the quality of presentation declined due to higher social selectivity (lower social classes increasingly abstain from political participation)
    - - Eurobarometer: since 1973, democratic satisfaction has been stable though aggregate indices do not register internal shifts; diminished confidence in the core institutions while confidence in non-majoritarian ones remains high
      - Gap between the low trust in parties and the yet rather high voter turnout in WE
    - - Exogenous challenges transformed into internal structural
        
        1) financial capitalism as a challenge to democracy
        
        2) globalization as a challenge to the democratic nation-state
        
        3) socio-economic inequality as a challenge to the democratic principle of equality
        
        4) too much participation leading to overly demands and to an overload of the state
        
        5) cultural diversity as a challenge to the political community
      - Two possible consequences: conducive to democracy, transforming external challenges in reforms; alternatively, challenges are not handled productively, e.g. social uprooting of parties, increasing dominance of markets over politics
      - Impact on partial regimes:
        
        Electoral regime: a moderate (WE) or a drastic (EE) decline in voter turnout, increased selectivity in terms of social class; higher inequality of cognitive resources and politcal knowledge
        
        Civil rights: compared to the 1960s, improved considerably
        
        Political rights: traditional catch-all parties in decline while specialized or populist parties have emerged; catch-all mobilized the lower class voters better, less conventional forms of participation unable to stop this political exclusion
        
        Horiz. accountability: a weakening of national parliaments due to globalization and transnationalization strengthening the executive
        
        Effective power to govern: what governments gained vis-a-vis parliaments they have lost to the markets, central banks and global economic actors
- - - - Minimal (connected) winning coalitions
      - Minority governments ('negative parliamentarism: govs do not need to undergo an investiture vote; 'contract parliamentarism')
      - Oversized or surplus majority coalitions
  - - - A hypothetical minimum job description
        
        effectively mediating between citizens and a state
        
        facilitating the formation of governments that produce (ideally) relatively coordinated and coherent policy responses to perceived and real problems
        
        structuring an array of choices available to voters at parliamentary and local elections, rendering them competitive
        
        recruiting, selecting, socializing and providing material and ideological support to candidates and elected politicians
        
        representing socially/culturally significant interests while aggregating their sometimes contradictory preferences
    - - 1) how long the country has been democratic
      - 2) an electoral system that is not stacked against small parties
      - 3) the extent to which parliament has much purchase on policy
  - - - plurality/majority: single-member constituencies or districts with the candidate who gets a majority or a plurality (first-past-the-post) getting elected
      - proportional, PR: multi-member constituencies so that the number of seats a party gets in the legislature reflects more its share of the vote; list PR (close or open), mixed systems (two votes) or single transferable vote
      - important factors threshold, district magnitude and the mathematical formula
    - - 1) accuracy of representation of voters, 2) socio-demographic representation in parliament, 3) personal accountability of MPs to constituents, 4) maximizing of participation opportunities for voters
      - 5) cohesive and disciplined parties, 6) stable effective government, 7) identifiability of government options and 8) opportunities for voters to eject governments from office
  - - - polarized pluralist model (Mediterranean): state and parties involved, little sense of an objective common good, politically active consume heavily slanted serious newspapers while majority television
      - democratic corporatist model (Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia): extensive state intervention to facilitate representation and reconciliation of different interests and viewpoints, a framework of shared prof. norms, serious news produced for and consumed by all
      - liberal model (UK, USA): state less involved especially in print media, journalists more invested in playing the watch-dog role than representing interest groups/ideologies; many still read papers but rely on television for news
- - - - 1) Increasing vertical and horizontal fragmentation of the state apparatus
      - 2) The strengthening of the core executive and the 'presidentialization' of democratic politics (growth of the state, weakening of cleavage politics, increasing role of the media in national political processes, strengthening of party leaders vis-a-vis their parties; appeal of leaders become more decisive in election campaigns)
      - institutional fragmentation is not equal to the fragmentation of political power
      - parliaments remain powerful veto players; to some extent, such changes are reversible
      - -> two trajectories, majoritarian system: need to defend power and autonomy, consensual: increasingly prominent role as negotiator in chief to widen them
      - Political systems
        
        Presidential
        
        Parliamentary
        
        Semi-presidential
      - Europeanization inducing de-parliamentarization?
      - governance =
      - continuum from consensual to majoritarian systems
  - - - Dissatisfied democrats
        
        deride parties for stifling public engagement with politics and call for more radical forms of participatory democracy; participatory linkage
        
        middle-class educated individuals with access to political information; people whose expectations have increased the most
      - Stealth democrats
        
        little innate interest in politics, deride party conflict, susceptible to the populist demagoguery and fringe movements; representative linkage
        
        Referring to research in the US; 'the last this people want is to be more involved in political decision-making'; but do expect intermediary actors to represent them effectively (decline of mass parties?)
      - Interest groups and social movements challenging the parties? Articulation and aggregation of interests -> the latter task has to be taken by parties competing for elective office, although incresingly challenging (catch-all strategies, social changes generating incompatible demands, new issue cleavages)
      - Representative linkage not only about articulation and aggregation of interests but also about the key democratic objective of popular choice and control over government where parties should be central as long as they ensure a connection between the competing programmes and policy outputs (Schnattschneider 1942)
      - Challenge of personalised politics in which the primary focus is the individual politician
        
        the electoral process -> leader-centred election campaigning and media coverage much in evidence across WE; leader effects on voters do appear to be significant or increasing (less constrained by party loyalties, freer to base voting decisions on personal and political qualities of the leading candidates), further encouraging party strategies to focus campaigns on leaders
        
        the party &
        
        the executive of the state -> enhanced leadership power and autonomy evident in a variety of developments
        
        Short-term contingent factors, but also underlying longterm factors
        
        Eastern Europe: more to do with enduring influence of recent traditions of strong leadership and failure of new parties to institutionalize
        
        Western Europe: 1) internationalization of political decision-making, 2) growth and complexity of the state (seeking enhanced 'steering capacity'), 3) changing structure of mass communications (a two-way process) and 4) erosion of traditional social cleavage politics (weakening of trad. links between mass parties and their bases of social group support)
  - - - Two positions adopted by scholars: 1) Rokkanian 'sociological' approach: continued relevance of social structural factors such as class, religion and territory on voting behaviour, although with some weakening
      - 2) dealignment as a consequence of a process of 'modernization' having led to 'cognitive mobilization' of the population and the 'individualization' of political behaviour; role of 'values' and policy issues (valence concerns)
  - - - 1) European citizens becoming increasingly disengaged from civic affairs as indicated by falling electoral turnout and eroding grassroots party membership
      - The alternative risk is that 2) citizens are intensely involved but in ways which may potentially destabilize the state and undermine democratically elected authorities
      - Almond and Verba: The Civic Culture (1963, 1980)
      - Series of well-known findings established by the literature about the distribution and causes of mass activism:
        
        1) Political participation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, with acts differing in the demands they placed upon citizens and their modes of engagement
        
        2) Voting turnout was the only mode of political participation involving a majority of citizens, and it was distinctive since it only required minimal investment of time, skills, and money
        
        3) Beyond this, only a minority of population were engaged in the more demanding forms of 'conventional' participation, including campaigning and party work, contacting officials and community organizing
        
        4) Protest politics, exemplified by involvement in demonstrations, petitions and political strikes, and regarded as another distinct form of activism, was similarly confined to small elites
        
        5) In explaining who became active, the 'baseline model' developed by Almond and Verba (1963) and Verba and Nie (1972) suggested that social structural resources played a significant role, notably the distribution of educational qualifications, income, and occupational status, along with the related demographic factors of sex, age, and ethnicity/race
        
        6) Cultural attitudes and social psychological predispositions, closely related to socio-economic status and education, were also important for motivating engagement; participation was greatest among those who felt informed, interested and efficacious, who cared strongly about the outcome, who had a sense of party identification, and who felt a sense of duty to participate in civic affairs
      - ... Increasingly recognized that 'context matters', with individual citizens embedded within specific mezzo-level informal institutions as well as being nested within the even broader environment set by the formal state institutions and the social context within each nation