Populism in Europe During Crisis: An Introduction

Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis S. Pappas

Populism and the crisis

This volume aspires to be the first large-scale comparative work on the impact of the early twenty-first century's Great Recession on European populism. At a time when the former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti appealed to electorates to avoid 'a return to populism', the French President Francois Hollande warned against 'dangerous populist excesses', and former European Union (EU) President Herman van Rompuy sent alarming messages about the 'winds of populism' threatening Europe, we propose an assessment of whether, and to what extent, populism has interacted with the crisis. Furthermore, distinguishing between the economic and the political aspects of the crisis, and remaining sensitive to the timing of events in each of our country cases, we attempt to assess the different effects of the crisis on populism at both a national and EU level. Finally, we hope to be in a position to offer a theoretically robust and dynamic evaluation of contemporary European populism.

In the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in September 2008, populist arguments have been made in political discourse throughout Europe, and populist short-cut solutions have been proposed. As austerity became the new policy norm, economic and social inequalities grew larger, and as European integration appeared to many constituencies as a hopeless project, newly emergent populist leaders rose in some countries to defend the powerless people against sinister elites including politicians (both at national and the EU levels), bankers and industrialists – in short, the powerful and the wealthy. In some countries, formerly mainstream political formations went into decline, some irreversibly, and new populist parties appeared, some of which skyrocketed to electoral success.

The economic crisis included three intertwined dimensions (Shambaugh 2012): First, a competitiveness crisis, which caused the slowing down of economic growth in most of Europe; second, a banking crisis, due to undercapitalisation of banks and their consequent lack of liquidity/solvency; and, third, a sovereign debt crisis, especially in countries that could no longer fund public debt on their own because of rising bond yields. To be sure, the economic crisis was not uniform in terms of its causes, manifestations and outcomes. Not all European countries endured all three dimensions, nor was the crisis felt in the same way throughout the continent. A few countries (most notably Norway and Switzerland), did not really experience a crisis at all, while others were spared some of its dimensions. For those countries faced with an excessive sovereign debt, the problem became the most acute. Unable to refinance their respective governments' debts, some of them (including the herein examined Greece, Hungary and Ireland) had to be bailed out by the IMF or by the so-called 'Troika' (consisting of EU, ECB and IMF).

Although the crisis initially appeared as a purely economic one, it also had important political consequences. However, one has to distinguish between degrees of political and social disturbances. In most countries, the crisis led to the punishment of incumbent governments – a phenomenon widely observed across Europe. Only in very few countries (most notably Germany and Sweden) incumbents were able to maintain their position. In several countries, new political actors emerged forcefully during the crisis on both the radical right and the radical left (e.g. SYRIZA in Greece or the True Finns in Finland), while already established parties of the radical right were reinforced (e.g. FN in France). In addition, some countries saw the rise of new populist contenders rallying against the old political order (e.g. Beppe Grillo's M5S in Italy, or Jon Gnarr's 'Best Party' in Iceland). Everywhere, the crisis contributed to the erosion of existing party systems. In the countries hardest hit, the economic crisis developed into a deep political crisis. In some countries, it gave rise to intense social unrest, including mass mobilisation and the occasional use of street violence, and even led to the rise of political extremism on both the right and the left (most ominously in Greece and Hungary). In other countries, it caused tectonic changes in the established party system architecture (as, for instance, in Italy and Ireland) and even party system collapse (most obviously in the case of Greece).

We should not forget, however, that populism has not been the unique product of the Great Recession in Europe (Kriesi 2014). In Western Europe, the rise of populism has been a long-term process that has already been well underway at the time of the...