The force of populists and their opponents ' weaknesses

A year ago, in March 2017, I wondered about this title: “Did the populist wave reach its peak in Europe? There was one question, and today we have the answer: No.

Asking such a question was not absurd at the time, after the defeat of the extreme right in Austrian presidential elections, and the anti-model that was becoming Brex in the United Kingdom, and especially Donald Trump's presidency, which was originally perceived as an amplification of European populism. It's an American research center, the Carnegie Foundation, which has developed this concept of populism peak, an analog with the oil pit, that is, the moment it peaked, oil consumption, or populism, will fall.

The hypothet of a “population” seemed to have gained true legitimacy after the Dutch elections, where Geert Wilders took less than expected, and especially after Emmanuel Macron won against Marine Le Pen in France, in a confrontation dominated much by the European issue.

Illusion

Since then, it has been necessary to remake the question: elections after elections, forces labeled populist, yet very different and not consistent among them have not ceased to strengthen. In Austria, where they already belong to the ruling coalition between the right and the extreme right. In Germany, where the alternative party für Deutschland ( The AfD has recorded a spectacular progress in Bundestag, forcing the two major parties into a new major coalition, which no one at first wanted. Or in the Czech Republic, where new President Milos Zaman is described as the Czech “rumpi”.

Italy demonstrated on 4 March that the idea of this peak was an illusion, dipped the eurozone's third economy into a political crisis and the European Union, in one of its periods of uncertainty, when one of its key members fluctuates. Stood up in her country, Marine Le Penn was partly comforted Sunday evening when she wrote in Twitter that Brussels must have had a bad night.

This new wave of results in favour of forces that can be defined as antisystem, in majority but not always anti-European, allows us to learn some lessons.

The British and American example has no impact on electors who react on the basis of national concerns.

Political management efficiency has a limited impact on elective decisions in this historic period, as shown by the five Star Movement record results, despite catastrophic management that Rome's mayor makes -- or otherwise -- Germany's good economic management, which did not prevent the AfD from ensuring a good result.

The identity issue remains a fundamental element in fears and motivations of an important part of voters, since the rise of Matteo Salvin in Italy or AfD are directly related to the immigration problem.

The West of European democracy, the central phenomenon of French elections in 2017, is confirmed in Germany and Italy, where the Democratic Party of Matteo Renzi fell under 20 %s of the vote.

Even on the right, traditional patriarchs are struggling, as is true of the Italian Berluscon Forza, preceded by the ally of the extreme right, Lega, or French Republicans, who were excluded from the second round of presidential elections last year.

From all of this, we can conclude that we are faced with a “French intervention”, marked by Emmanuel Macron's choice, especially his triumph in the June parliamentary elections, rather than the dawn of a liberal spring (in the political sense of the term) European.

Perhaps we should overturn our view, as French sociologist Alain Touraine did in his book on Macron. Sociologist says it wasn't Macron that “destroyed” the political system of old parties in France, but that this system was on the verge of explosion from the inside, and Macron was the first to smell it. He realized that voters had to offer a different offer, with the risk of letting antisystem forces go free.

The second French presidential election run by Macron and Le Pen actually proposed a new offer on both sides, which allowed the first to win by convincing the disappointmentrs of the left and right, willing to give a chance, but also those who just wanted to put obstacles in the way of the extreme right.

This scenario was not produced in other European countries, where the first part of the equation - the weakening of old parties, especially for the left Social Democrats who are paying allegiance to the Orthodoxity of the market economy and the inability to find a solution - to increase marginalisation among some of the workers.

The Triple Challenge

The lack of renewed political bid has weakened old parties. These are today unable to respond to the triple challenge of Europe's role in the coming new phase of globalisation, of technological transformation that will shake the country's work world, and the challenge of migration, real or fiction, perceived by some Europeans as a threat to their identity. / Source Obs ʹworld.al