Over for Trump: the end of populism?

The AfD argues, the League is weakening, the FPÖ has suffered an electoral debacle – and now the leading figure of the populists must leave the White House. Will politics return to peace with Trump’s election?

Donald Trump has been a role model and inspiration for right-wing populists in Europe. Italian Lega boss Matteo Salvini dreamed of an “international front” with Trump, the British Boris Johnson and others. AfD chief Jörg Meuthen applauded Trump, as did France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has courted them all for a movement that is expected to overthrow the EU’s alleged “elite project” in the 2019 European elections.

Nothing came from the mighty alliance. And the Trump figurehead suffered a defeat in the US election. Are European populists running out of air too? Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier insisted in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on Monday for a return to common sense and trust in democracy. Former EU Council President Donald Tusk tweeted: “Trump’s defeat could be the beginning of the end of the triumph of right-wing populism in Europe too.”

“Weakness at a very high level”

In fact, Salvini, Meuthen and associates have been weakening for months. The Italian League is no longer in government and polls dropped from 40 to 23 percent, in Austria the FPÖ flew out of the coalition with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and suffered an electoral debacle in Vienna in October. The AfD is engaged in trench warfare.

However, it’s too early for a swan song for the European right, believes Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “They are weakening to a very high level,” says the scientist who, together with Manuel Funke and Moritz Schularick, has just presented a study on the historical ups and downs of populist governments and their economic policies. “It’s not a phenomenon that will go away quickly.”

Populists suffer from Corona

For the moment, the European populist parties seem to suffer mainly from the Crown. A global YouGov poll this summer showed a sharp decline in populist trends in many countries. These included Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, France, and Italy. Experts explain the trend with the pandemic, which is attracting everyone’s attention.

The crisis was the hour of the executive: the state ordered, the state distributed billions. Rulers and their institutions have experienced a miraculous rebirth in some places. Chancellor Angela Merkel saw with the CDU / CSU in polls an increase from 26% in February to 35% of the vote and more.

It is true that criticism of state intervention and government by ordinance has grown. Only the populist parties barely benefited from the polls. Your problems of migration, Islam and skepticism towards the state were in the shadows. The little caregiver’s approach versus that of the corrupt power elite has done little about a virus that can affect everyone.

Through the ongoing crisis

Where populists were in power, they often went through the pandemic in a rolling course. Not only did Trump have a mixed record with high death rates and confusing politics, his British ally Johnson also looked like a determined man. “The reaction of populists in India, England, the United States, Poland and Hungary hasn’t been particularly convincing,” says Trebesch, an expert at IfW.

Trump did surprisingly well in the election, but it wasn’t enough. Your European colleagues will therefore lack an important ally in the future. This hits Johnson particularly hard. The current US president has always celebrated Brexit and lured it with a “huge trade deal” between the US and Britain, better than any deal with the EU. EU Democrat friend Joe Biden is far more skeptical of Johnson’s policies.

With Trump, the European right has lost a symbolic figure

Trump’s defeat will also reorganize the debate in the media, expects Dutch populism expert Cas Mudde, who teaches in the United States. “Everyone will write about the ‘end of populism’, which is likely to push right-wing issues and parties out of the news.”

The European right has therefore lost a symbolic figure, a political ally in the White House, its issues are overlapping and risk losing the authority to interpret. Yet experts expect Salvini, Le Pen and associates to continue to be expected. Because?

For one thing, their original themes have not disappeared. Le Pen, for example, again refers to radical Islamism and immigration after the attacks in France in recent weeks. She has a more reserved tone than before, which seems useful to her. The polls see the right-wing populist go head-to-head with President Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the 2022 presidential election. Incidentally, Salvini’s League is still the strongest party in Italian polls, with 23-25 ​​percent . Orbán is already firmly in the saddle in Hungary.

“The virus is like a volcano”

On the other hand, the crown’s economic crisis could rekindle anger against traditional parties. “The virus is like a volcano,” warns sociologist Matthijs Rooduijn of the University of Amsterdam in the Guardian. “It hit populism hard, but it will leave fertile ground for the future.”

Kiel researcher Trebesch agrees. If the pandemic turns into a social and economic crisis, “the populists may have a push again”: then the story of the people versus the elite would reignite the blame that the establishment had failed. “Populism needs fertile ground. And that’s still there,” says Trebesch. Populists offer a friend-enemy scheme, a sense of belonging, emotions, not just political content.

In terms of economic policy, the 50 populist presidents and prime ministers examined in his study have been surprisingly unsuccessful since 1900 – after 15 years, per capita economic power was more than 10% lower than in comparable scenarios.

Yet it has been shown that countries that once brought populist politicians to power do so again. See, for example, Italy, where, after Silvio Berlusconi, Salvini also grew up. Trebesch sees this “serial nature of populism” as the study’s most surprising result. “Overall, the populists have survived.”