On Extremism and Democracy in Europe

Cas Mudde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317222217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

On Extremism and Democracy in Europe is a collection of short and accessible essays on the far right, populism, Euroscepticism, and liberal democracy by one of the leading academic and public voices today. It includes both sober, fact-based analysis of the often sensationalized "rise of the far right" in Europe as well as passionate defence of the fundamental values of liberal democracy. Sometimes counter-intuitive and always thought-provoking, Mudde argues that the true challenge to liberal democracy comes from the political elites at the centre of the political systems rather than from the political challengers at the political margins. Pushing to go beyond the simplistic opposition of extremism and democracy, which is much clearer in theory than in practice, he accentuates the internal dangers of liberal democracy without ignoring the external threats. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in European politics, extremism and/or current affairs more generally.

Part I
The far right

1
The populist radical right

A pathological normalcy

Today the politics of the radical right is the politics of frustration – the sour impotence of those who find themselves unable to understand, let alone command, the complex mass society that is the polity today.¹

The quote above could have been from any recent book on the contemporary radical right, but actually dates from 1962, and summarizes the famed American sociologist Daniel Bell’s assessment of the US radical right in the 1950s. It is typical of a variety of dominant positions in the academic debate on the populist radical right, which might be referred to as the ‘normal pathology thesis.’ This thesis holds that the radical right constitutes a pathology in post-war western society and that its success is to be explained by crisis. Authors working within this paradigm often consider the radical right in psychological terms and regularly use medical and psychological concepts to define and explain it.

However, the normal pathology thesis cannot withstand empirical testing: far from being an aberration, the attitudes and ideological features of the populist radical right are fairly widespread in contemporary European societies. Instead of being understood as a normal pathology, the contemporary populist radical right needs to be seen as a pathological normalcy. This change of perspective has important consequences for how we should study and understand the contemporary populist radical right.

The normal pathology thesis explained

According to most scholarship on the populist radical right, radicalism in general and extremism in particular are based upon values that are fundamentally opposed to those of (western) democracy. In his political– historical study of political extremism, the German political scientist Uwe Backes defines extremism as antithetical to democracy.² However, it would be more accurate to describe radicalism as democratic, but anti-liberal-democratic.³ Consequently, both extremism and radicalism challenge the fundamental values of contemporary western societies.

Much scholarship on the ‘far’ (i.e. extreme and radical) right goes beyond the ideological opposition between radicalism and democracy and considers the far right (in its various permutations) in psychological terms, mostly as a pathology of modern society. The most influential studies in this tradition are the psychoanalytical analyses of fascism, such as Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and Theodor W. Adorno and his collaborators’ The Authoritarian Personality (1950). Given that research on the post-war radical right was heavily influenced by studies of historical fascism, it comes as no surprise that the pathology approach also dominates that field.

This is particularly the case with early scholarship on the post-war American radical right. Bell’s classic article ‘The Dispossessed’ provides an analysis of the ‘psychological stock-in-trade’ of the radical right, rather than its ideology, and is filled with references to pathologies such as paranoia and conspiracy thinking.⁴ Similarly, the progressive US American historian Richard Hofstadter argued that the radical right ‘stands psychologically outside the frame of normal democratic politics.’⁵

Many studies of the contemporary radical right in Europe have followed suit. References to paranoia and other psychological disorders abound in politically inspired studies that unfortunately still occupy a prominent position in the field (particularly in Germany and France). Even in serious research populist radical right parties and their supporters are often perceived in terms of a normal pathology.⁶

The German social scientists Erwin Scheuch and Hans Klingemann developed a ‘theory of rightwing radicalism in western industrial societies’ in the late 1960s, which is still one of the most ambitious and comprehensive attempts at explaining the political success of radical right parties in postwar Europe – notably Germany – to date.⁷ In short, they hold that populist radical right values are alien to western democratic values, but that a small potential exists for them in all western societies; hence, they are a ‘normal pathology.’ Within this paradigm, support for populist radical right parties is based on ‘structurally determined pathologies.’

Normal pathology and academic research

The normal pathology paradigm has had profound effects on the academic study of the populist radical right. In its most extreme form, scholars study the phenomenon in isolation from mainstream democratic politics, i.e. without using mainstream concepts and theories. According to this approach, the populist radical right is a pathology and can only be explained outside of the normal. In most cases, this decision is as much political as it is methodological: to use mainstream concepts and theories, the researchers argue, is to legitimize the populist radical right.

This extreme interpretation was particularly prevalent in the study of the populist radical right in France, Germany and the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s. Many authors would focus almost exclusively on the populist radical right’s connection to pre-war fascism and Nazism. The assumption was that the post-war populist radical right had to be understood as a remnant of the past, not a consequence of contemporary developments.

The more moderate form has always dominated studies of the electoral success of the populist radical right, and has become popular through the works of scholars who integrated insights from the study of political parties (most notably the Greens). This school of studies employs mainstream concepts and theories, but still perceives the populist radical right as an anomaly of contemporary western democracies.

The key puzzle in the normal pathology paradigm is the question as to why popular demand for populist radical right politics exists. Two general answers are offered – protest and support – though both are based upon a similar assumption: that under ‘normal’ circumstances the demand for populist radical right politics comes from only a tiny part of the population. Hence, the search was on for those abnormal circumstances in which populist radical right attitudes spread. Most scholars find the answer in modern interpretations of the classic modernization thesis.

Almost all major versions of the normal pathology thesis refer to some form of crisis linked to modernization and its consequences: globalization, the post-Fordist economy, postindustrial society. The idea is always the same: society is transforming fundamentally and rapidly, leading to a division between (self-perceived) winners and losers, and the latter will vote for the populist radical right out of protest (anger and frustration) or support (intellectual rigidity). Under conditions of massive societal change, the ‘losers of modernization’ vote for populist radical right parties.

In this approach, populist radical right parties – and political actors in general – hardly play a role. The only internal (f)actor that is sometimes included is charismatic leadership. This derives from the famous German sociologist Max Weber’s theory of charismatic leadership, although few authors refer explicitly to Weber, and is in full accordance with the pathology thesis. As in ‘normal’ politics, voting should be rational, based on ideology, or at least identity (cleavage), and not on an irrational bond with an individual.

In short, studies applying the normal pathology thesis tend to approach the populist radical right from the perspective of either fascism (extreme) or crisis (moderate). The prime focus is on explaining demand, which under ‘normal’ conditions is supposed to be low. The supply-side of politics is almost completely ignored, as is the role of the populist radical right itself. When internal supply does enter the equation, it is in the form of charismatic leadership, again perceived as a pathological remnant of a dark past.

The normal pathology thesis assessed

But is the ideological core of the populist radical right – defined as a combination of nativism, authoritarianism and populism – indeed at odds with the basic values of western societies? And are populist radical right values really shared by only a tiny minority of the European population?

The ideological

The key feature of the populist radical right ideology is nativism: an ideology which holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (‘the nation’) and that non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening to the nation-state’s homogeneity. Nativist thinking has a long history in western societies, notably in the US, with movements like the Know Nothings dating back to the early nineteenth century.

Historically and ideologically, nativism is closely linked to the idea of the nation-state, a nationalist construction that has become a cornerstone of European and global politics. The idea of the nation-state holds that each nation should have its own state and, although this is often left implicit, each state should have its own, single nation. Various European constitutions stipulate that their state is linked to one specific nation; for example, the Slovak preamble starts with ‘We, the Slovak nation,’ while article 4.1 of the Romanian constitution states that ‘the foundation of the state is based on the unity of the Romanian people.’ The idea of national self-determination is even enshrined in Chapter 1, article 1 of the United Nations Charter, which explicitly calls for respect for the ‘self-determination of peoples.’

This is not to claim that all references to national self-determination are necessarily expressions of nativism. For example, article 1 of the Constitution of Ireland states:

The Irish nation hereby affirms its inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions.

However, further articles express a fairly open attitude to non-natives, including ‘the firm will of the Irish Nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland, in all the diversity of their identities and traditions’ (article 3).

But even where European states are not nativist, they will use ‘banal nationalism,’ a term used by the British sociologist Michael Billig to refer to everyday ‘ideological habits which enable the established nations of the West to be reproduced.’⁸ Citizens in western countries are daily reminded of their ‘national identity’ through a plethora of more and less subtle hints, ranging from the celebration of Independence Day, through the name of media outlets (e.g. Irish Times, British Broadcasting Corporation, Hrvatska Radio Televizija), to history education in schools. Although banal reminders, they are based on the constituting idea of the nation-state.

Authoritarianism, the belief in a strictly ordered society in which infringements of authority are to be punished severely, is not exclusive to the core of populist radical right ideology. Most notably, ‘love and respect for authority,’ a euphemistic description of authoritarianism, is considered to be a core staple of conservatism. Moreover, authoritarianism is a key aspect of both secular and religious thinking, ranging from (proto-)liberals like Thomas Hobbes to socialists like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and from Roman Catholicism to Orthodox Christianity.

The third and final feature is populism, here defined as a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite.’ It argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale, i.e. the general will of the people. While the populist ideology has much deeper roots in the US than in (Western) Europe, key elements are clearly linked to fundamental values of western societies in general.

Democracy has a redemptive and a pragmatic side: the former emphasizes the idea (l) of vox populi vox dei – or ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ – the latter the importance of institutions. As the British political theorist Margaret Canovan has argued, ‘inherent in modern democracy, in tension with its pragmatic face, is faith in secular redemption: the promise of a better world through action by the sovereign people.’⁹ Populism builds upon this ‘democratic promise.’ Interpreting ‘the people’ as a homogenous moral entity, populists argue that the common sense of the people should always take precedence and cannot be curtailed by ‘undemocratic’ institutional constraints such as constitutional protection of minorities.

Populism’s anti-establishment sentiments are closely connected to broadly shared beliefs in western societies. These range from Lord Acton’s famous adagio ‘power corrupts’ to the negative image of humanity so essential to Christianity (e.g. in the Original Sin). Indeed, the fact that Evangelical Christianity plays a much greater role in US culture and politics than in Europe might be part of the explanation of the broader and deeper anti-establishment sentiments in that country. Moreover, whereas the process of democratization and state formation in much of Western Europe was more elite-driven, based upon a strong central authority and an elitist distrust of the people, in the US the same processes were driven, at least in the dominant national narrative, by ‘We, the People of the United States,’ and by a distrust in central government shared by both the masses and the elites, including the Founding Fathers.

The attitudinal

Although nativism is not the same as racism, cross-national surveys such as the Eurobarometer provide ample evidence of extreme nativist attitudes in Europe.¹⁰ For example, Eurobarometer 47.1 (1997) found that ‘only one in three of those interviewed said they felt they were ‘not at all racist.’ One in three declared themselves ‘a little racist’ and one third openly expressed ‘quite or very racist feelings.’

More concretely, 65 per cent of the EU-15 people agree with the statement, ‘Our country has reached its limits; if there were to be more people belonging to these minority groups we would have problems.’¹¹ Almost two-thirds believ...