Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises

Manuela Caiani, Paolo Graziano, Manuela Caiani, Paolo Graziano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000372052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Populism is booming across all the nuances of the political spectrum. It occupies relevant positions in national parliaments, in governmental coalitions with mainstream parties or as successful challengers of the political status quo. This volume sheds new light on the topic from different methodological and theoretical angles and offers evidence from a variety of cases on the 'why' and 'how' questions on populism's emergence and consolidation in Europe over the past 30 years.

The volume, composed of eight chapters, investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the various crises, disentangling the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in various European countries. More specifically, the volume aims are to:

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• promote critical discussion on the concept of populism, reflecting on its conceptual 'usability' beyond the traditional party families to which it is usually related;

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• use a preliminary theoretical clarification to shed new light on the different ways in which populism has been articulated in the various European countries (either in Continental and Southern Europe, or in the lesser known and studied East-Central countries) since the economic crisis, which has acted as an external shock for many party systems, either giving birth to new political actors or consolidating existing ones;

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• investigate the connections between populism and the national contextual political and cultural specificities that can determine the development of different types of populisms across countries, elaborating on different 'configurations' of triggering conditions for populism and reflecting on the limitations of a discrete conceptualisation of the phenomenon.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

National past and populism: the re-elaboration of fascism and its impact on right-wing populism in Western Europe

Daniele Caramani and Luca Manucci

ABSTRACT

The electoral performance of right-wing populism depends on the type of re-elaboration of countries’ national past and their collective memories. Complementing socio-economic and political-institutional factors, the article analyses cultural opportunity structures. Given the link between fascist and populist visions of power, it shows that different collective memories of the fascist past and World War II open up or close down the space for right-wing populist parties. Theoretically, the typology includes four types of re-elaboration: culpabilisation, victimisation, heroisation and cancellation. Results of a comparative analysis of eight West European countries based on a novel measurement method point to (1) culpabilisation and heroisation as types of re-elaboration limiting right-wing populist parties’ electoral performance, (2) cancellation as a type having an undetermined effect, and (3) victimisation as a type triggering the success of right-wing populist parties.

The success of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 federal elections came as a shock to many. Germany is a country that dealt critically with its past and developed a political culture making it unthinkable that right-wing populist discourses and parties would establish themselves. The stigma attached to positions even vaguely reminiscent of a traumatic past had kept right-wing populism at the fringes of the public sphere for decades.

The burden of the past is often evoked to explain the absence in some countries of right-wing populism in both academic and in media outlets.¹ Many scholars mention the fascist legacy as a factor linked to the success of right-wing populist parties (Betz 1988; Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Mudde 2007; Rovira Kaltwasser 2015). However, in comparative research such explanations are only mentioned in passing and quickly abandoned in favour of political-institutional and socio-economic ones. At the same time, the rich historical research on collective memories does not make the link with party politics, focusing mostly on country-specific historical case studies or binary comparisons – often with Germany (Art 2006; Berger 2002; Deighton 2002; Östling 2011; Rousso 1990).

This article connects, comparatively, the legacy of the fascist past and World War II with the success of right-wing populist parties. To what extent does the type of memory and collective re-elaboration of the fascist past block or trigger right-wing populism in different countries? Do certain types of re-elaboration hinder the success of such parties or, conversely, provide a more fertile ground? The article argues that collective memories create more or less favourable ‘cultural opportunity structures’ for this party family.²

The goal of the article is to test the plausibility of this hypothesis in a bivariate way using eight West European countries: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. The theoretical argument relies on a new typology of re-elaboration (culpabilisation, victimisation, heroisation and cancellation). Methodologically, it uses an ‘in-depth expert survey’ (of scientific literature) to classify countries’ memories, striking the balance between thick case-oriented historical data and analytical relationships.

The article starts by outlining the theoretical argument about the impact of the re-elaboration of national pasts on the electoral performance of right-wing populism. It then presents the typology of re-elaborations and formulates hypotheses about the link between each type and right-wing populism. This is followed by the research design, case selection and operationalisation, and the plausibility test. The conclusion discusses the recent fading of memories.

Towards cultural explanations of right-wing populism

As a thin ideology, populism is based on people-centrism and anti-elitism. Populist democracy is illiberal and advocates the putative will of the sovereign people unconstrained by procedures, checks and balances, and distortions by intermediary actors. Furthermore, populism has a homogenous and non-pluralistic vision of the people, which leads to distrust of parties as carriers of particularistic interests against the common good. The embodiment of people’s will is based on plebiscitarian mobilisation. As a thick ideology, right-wing populism is characterised by nativism and an exclusionary definition of the ‘other’.³ Following this definition, various studies have analysed the conditions under which right-wing populism emerges and varies across countries based on structures of opportunities.

The more or less successful populist mobilisation in different countries has so far been exclusively linked to the interaction of socio-economic factors (demand side) with political-institutional opportunity structures (supply side). On institutional opportunity structures, research has mainly analysed the openness of the electoral system operationalised through its proportionality.⁴ On political opportunity structures, the literature has looked at the electoral strategies of established parties (Arzheimer and Carter 2006). This kind of opportunity structure is based on the strategic interactions between parties and focuses on the changing space of competition (Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Kriesi et al. 2012).

In contrast to socio-economic and political-institutional explanations, cultural explanations have received less attention in comparative research. Although many have noted the relevance of cultural factors such as collective memories of traumatic past events for the study of populism, comparative research has not pursued what seems a promising approach. The in-depth research on different types of re-elaboration is found more prominently among historians.⁵ The goal of this article is to bridge comparative empirical research that does not include cultural factors with research that does but not comparatively.

The argument about the stigmatisation of right-wing populist positions has been advanced almost exclusively in relation to Germany. Authors mention the role of the Nazi period and the legacy of the Nazi regime on the emergence of extreme-right parties (Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Tarchi 2002). Others have addressed the impossibility of de-criminalising the Nazi past as a factor explaining the lack of success of right-wing populists (Betz 1988). The ‘handicap’ of the right set by the restrictions arising from the historical burden that weighs on Germany’s political culture – the shadow of the Nazi past and the deep stigma attached to right-wing extremism in Germany – also recurs in the literature (Art 2006; Decker 2008).⁶

Hence, as a complement to political-institutional and socio-economic opportunity structures, this article introduces cultural opportunity structures, i.e. what is taboo or socially acceptable based on the re-elaboration of the past. We focus on the restrictions of the ideological space that make it harder for specific parties to succeed, created by a specific relationship with the past, making the ‘authoritarian’ end of the cultural axis a ‘no go area’ (Figure 1).⁷

Figure 1.The restrictive role of memory on the space of electoral competition.

Crucially, the re-elaboration of the past is not th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Understanding varieties of populism in times of crises
• 1 National past and populism: the re-elaboration of fascism and its impact on right-wing populism in Western Europe
• 2 Populism in election times: a comparative analysis of 11 countries in Western Europe
• 3 Shooting the fox? UKIP’s populism in the post-Brexit era
• 4 How to stay populist? The Front National and the changing French party system
• 5 Beyond left and right: the eclectic populism of the Five Star Movement
• 6 Economic crisis and the variety of populist response: evidence from Greece, Portugal and Spain
• 7 Assessing the diversity of anti-establishment and populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe
• Index