By Thibault Muzergues, February 27, 2024
If one is to believe European pundits commenting the latest polls, Europe is on the brink of catastrophe. With support for right-wing parties running high in many countries, some have concluded that the upcoming European elections, due to take place between June 6 and 9 this year, will see a fundamental shift to the (far-) right, jeopardizing the European experiment.
Yet portraying this as a dangerous moment for Europe or democracy is misleading – intellectually lazy at best and dishonest at worst.
It’s almost certain that the European Parliament will tilt to the right: European public opinion has shifted to more conservative positions over the past five years, and as dissatisfaction grows over the consequences of the EU’s Green Deal on crucial sectors of the continent’s activity (namely – its farming), this long-term tendency will probably be amplified come election day. Indeed, recent polling tends to show that Liberals, Greens and Social Democrats would lose seats in the coming European elections, while the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) would maintain its dominant position and would be flanked by much stronger alternatives on the right, namely the populist Identity and Democracy (ID) and the more moderate (though clearly conservative) European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
However, just because Europe may shift to the right does not necessarily mean that it is in any peril – even though there will clearly be consequences in terms of policy. The fact is both democracy and the European Union are much more secure today on the old continent than they were five years ago, when populists were scoring major electoral victories across Europe (not least in Italy, the continent’s third-largest country and economy), Britain was about to leave the European Union, and even mainstream politicians were starting to adopt populist postures in Austria, France, and the United Kingdom.
The revolutionary moment that fuelled this populist upheaval has receded, at least in Europe. Most (though not all) populist leaders elected in the late 2010s – in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, and Greece, among others – have now been democratically voted out of office. However, that doesn’t mean that they have disappeared: populist parties still run double-digits in the polls, but they cannot win elections any more on their own. Meanwhile, leaders who flirted with populism during the same period have agreed to take a much less disruptive position (some would say, even mainstream), if only to gain access to power.
Nobody fits this description better than Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who has proven to be far less extreme that her opponents feared. In truth Meloni, like many Italian politicians before her, is pioneering a new sort of politics, which I have branded post-populism. She is not alone – like her, numerous parties previously on the far-right have decided to work with the system rather than against it (the Sweden Democrats and the Finns Party come to mind). Meanwhile, mainstream centre-right parties have abandoned the centrism that characterized their positioning in the high tide of the populist moment to espouse more clearly conservative positions (think of the post-Merkel German Christian Democratic Union, for example). As a result, the divide between populists and elites, which has characterized the populist age in Europe has receded, to a more classical left-right divide.
Right or left, post-populism does not mean a return to the politics of old – of before the populist explosion of the 2010s. Rather, its essence lies in a mixture of policies that would have been considered disruptive a decade ago (for example, on immigration, values and international trade). It is also marked by a renewed respect for European institutions, including the European Union (with whom Meloni actually seeks co-operation, not conflict), NATO, and the transatlantic alliance. In fact, unlike their populist counterparts who flirted with Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Communist Party (and sometimes both), the post-populists have clearly taken up the mantle of defenders of the West – both as an alliance and as a concept, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
These post-populists, both at the centre and further to the right, are expected to make gains in the upcoming European elections. In the meantime, some politicians currently associated with the far right are toying with the idea of going mainstream. For instance, Dutch politician Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen both recently distanced themselves from their most disruptive ID colleagues in the Alternative für Deutschland (who were recently caught in private meetings proposing to deport migrants as well as “non-assimilated” German citizens). However, it’s not yet clear whether their sudden desires for moderation indicate a true Damascene conversion or rather a tactical retreat for the sake of electoral expediency.
“Revolution, like Reformation, begins in utopia and finishes in orthodoxy,” wrote the late American historian Eugen in his book The Hollow Years. And indeed, the populist revolt of the 2010s in Europe started with a radical critique of representative democracy and the promise of a fundamental change in public policy. After the major upheavals of the early 2020s, namely COVID-19, the January 6 attacks on the US Capitol, Brexit and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more politicians on the right are offering voters a clear post-populist platform. This move towards post-populism is a way to exercise power in a traditional fashion, respecting the institutions and the rule of law.
This is of course not to say that populism itself has been defeated – it remains strong in many countries. In Germany and Austria, for instance, unreformed populists are enjoying rising support thanks to a deep confidence crisis that is gripping both countries. Elsewhere, populists remain popular, and can even put pressure on moderates by scoring big in elections. But they can no longer gain power alone. Despite this uneasy cohabitation between populists and post-populists, the trend towards post-populism remains one of the defining features of this important election year across Europe.
This might lead an observer from the Americas to wonder when post-populism will cross the Atlantic. In many ways, it is already there – on the left with Joe Biden’s current centrist agenda (in contrast with Bernie Sanders’ left-wing populism, or the promise of a real Democrat counter-revolution at the beginning of Biden’s term, which didn’t materialize). There are also signs of its emergence on the right, with Pierre Poilievre’s rebranding of his party as “Common Sense Conservatives,” or with Nikki Haley’s candidacy in the Republican primaries in the US. In both cases, their political platforms do not seek a return to the policies and attitudes that defined the mainstream before the populist outburst of the 2010s. Rather, they are a mix of policies that were considered taboo a decade ago and others much more classical, notably (but not only) a strong foreign policy. The trend, however, is generally not as powerful in the Americas as in Europe: in the United States, the Republican Party is still very much the party of Donald Trump, as the first primaries have shown, while much of Latin America is still coming to terms with a massive wave of disruption due to a general dissatisfaction with the way democracy functions, disappointing economic performance, and the continued rise of criminal gangs.
Or course, post-populism may very well grow in popularity in the Americas, with Canada leading the way in the next federal election. But just like in Europe, populism and post-populism are cohabiting and fighting it out in the Americas to achieve dominance over the political scene. The tide of history seems to favour the post-populists in Europe, but not yet (or at least not decisively) in the Americas. It is up to politicians in the Americas to show the way and sell a different future to their citizens.
Thibault Muzergues is a French political analyst in European affairs and author of Post-populisme (Editions de l’Observatoire, 2024)
