Parties on the extreme ends of the political spectrum – along with anti-establishment candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders – are moving into the political mainstream in democracies in the United States, Europe, and parts of Latin America. These formerly fringe parties or political outsiders are promising to better fulfill the social contract – that is, providing citizens with security and economic well-being in exchange for relinquishing some power to the state – than their establishment political rivals.
Economic well-being has diminished significantly in the U.S. and Europe since the financial crisis eight years ago. A Gallup poll from 2012 shows between 2008 and 2011, net well-being around the world dropped, and “the global economic crisis that began in 2008 is a prime suspect,” wrote Gallup’s Gale Muller and Julie Ray.
In Latin America, populism has been a perennial problem, especially in fledgling democracies where institutions are weak. But since the mid-2011 commodity prices collapse, economies and general well-being have taken a hit. Director of the International Monetary Fund’s Western Hemisphere Department, Alejandro Werner, notes, “The decline in commodity prices since mid-2011 has weighed down growth in many South American economies that had previously reached full employment or had even become slightly overheated. Meanwhile, weak global growth held back activity in other parts of the region, including those economies with close trade links to the U.S., such as Mexico and Central America.”
These macroeconomic events are swinging the political pendulum in the U.S., Europe, and many Latin American countries more forcefully toward the fringe.
The phenomenon is nowhere more apparent than in the current U.S. presidential race. In a recent Foreign Affairs article on the American political system, Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University, writes, “The common theme that has made him [Trump] attractive to so many Republican primary voters is one that he shares to some extent with Sanders: an economic nationalist agenda designed to protect and restore the jobs of American workers.”
In Europe, there is a flattening out of the middle, with a spike in support for far-left and far-right political parties. The result of last month’s Brexit referendum was a huge win for the far-right United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Other fringe parties – such as France’s National Front (FN) and the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) – are now calling for their own referenda on European Union (EU) membership.
“Euro-skepticism has been increasing more generally across Europe, along with disenchantment with national political elites,” explains Boston University professor Vivien Schmidt, who is also the founding director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe.
The Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, and the security crisis (that is the heightened threat of terrorist attacks on the continent) all contribute to a loss of trust in mainstream parties and the “steady rise” of populist parties across Europe, says Schmidt.
In Latin America, weak political institutions and a history of political corruption led to the success of many fringe parties, well before the global economic downturn.
Larry Diamond, a leading democracy scholar and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and at FSI, explains, “As traditional bases of support wither amid corruption scandals and civic disillusionment, voters become more attracted to populist outsiders or more extreme voices from the left and right, heightening political instability and polarization and making it more difficult to govern democratically.”
This process led to the Venezuelan election in 1999 of left-wing populist Hugo Chavez, says Diamond, and to other left populists in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua – all who have eroded aspects of the democratic process, including current Bolivian President Evo Morales.
In Peru – a country hit hard by economic diminution following the mid-2011 commodity prices collapse – Diamond notes, “The extremely narrow margin by which a right-wing authoritarian populist – Keiko Fujimori (daughter of the former dictator, Alberto Fujimori) – lost the [2016 presidential election] in Peru testifies to the continuing fragility of democracy in a number of countries [in Latin America].”
The problem with the global response to the violation of the social contract and worsening economic situations is that “populist demagogues […] scapegoat immigrants and excoriate the political elites without offering any workable solutions of their own,” says Schmidt.
States will continue to lose legitimacy and societies will continue to fight for change until citizens believe their leaders are upholding their end of the social contract by providing security and economic well-being.
Kaitlin Lavinder is a reporter at The Cipher Brief.
