Published under the title “Dealing with modern illiberal democracies: From vintage electoral autocracy to today’s jumble of populism with nativism” in Arne Muis and Lars van Troost (eds), Will Human Rights Survive Illiberal Democracy? (Amsterdam: Amnesty International Strategic Studies, 2018), pp. 25-30.
“In the beginning was the Word,” proclaims the Gospel of John, and we should probably take that statement more seriously than we often do. Especially when the talk is about nothing less than the future of contemporary liberal democracy. For, if you really agree with me that liberal democratic politics is currently at risk, and must be rescued, we have first to agree on the nature of the threat to our democracies before we are in a position to propose solutions. As is often the case, then, we must begin by revisiting some of the wisdom received at more politically innocent times.
Today, when various pundits talk about the perils of contemporary liberal democracy, a reference is often made to the “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” a long, richly-textured essay written by liberal author and journalist Fareed Zakaria and published in Foreign Affairs twenty-two years ago, in 1997. That piece has resurfaced with a new force in our own days when another muddy term, populism, also became in vogue. Although the latter word never appears in Zakaria’s essay, many today believe that that author foresaw the rise of populism, and even suggested best practices for dealing with it. This is a mistaken belief for the simple reason that neither Zakaria’s apprehensive approach to illiberalism, nor the real-world cases he used to exemplify his concerns, bear any resemblance with our own concern with modern-day populism.
In fact, Zakaria provides no definition in his essay of what he means by “illiberal democracy.” He takes issue with “democratically elected regimes … [which] are routinely ignoring constitutional limits of their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms” (p22). To illustrate his point, he refers to a vast array of such regimes in many corners of the globe. He writes: “Naturally there is a spectrum of illiberal democracy, ranging from modest offenders like Argentina to near-tyrannies like Kazakhstan and Belarus, with countries like Romania and Bangladesh in between” (p23). And what are the criteria Zakaria uses for case selection? He simply uses the rankings for political and civil liberties in the Freedom House annual surveys, which he considers to “correspond roughly with democracy and constitutional liberalism” (p23). Then, he concluded: “Of the countries that lie between confirmed dictatorship and consolidated democracy, 50 percent do better on political liberties than on civil ones. In other words, half of the ‘democratizing’ countries in the world today are illiberal democracies” (pp23-4).
What lay between democracy and dictatorship around the time (1997) that Zakaria wrote about his illiberal democracies? Well, by and large, there lay countries with political systems characterized by vintage autocracy but intent on experimenting with electoral politics. Let us have a somewhat closer look at them beginning from nominally democratic Sierra Leone, a small Western African state torn for many years by civil war and which, right in 1997, experienced an army coup led by General Johnny Paul Koroma, who promptly suspended the constitution and established a military junta. Or take Ethiopia, another African state, which had its first multiparty election in 1995 but, only three years later, was led into war with Eritrea over border disputes. Or, now moving to Asia, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, at a time when new prime minister Nawaz Sharif amended the constitution to eliminate several checks and balances before problems with India escalated in 1998 with both countries conducting nuclear tests. Or think of Iran, a state dominated by a clerical oligarchy in which the ultimate state and juridical authority rests with a supreme leader (who, since 1989, is Ali Khamenei). In 1997, reformist Mohammad Khatami was elected new president of Iran only to soon be faced with the reaction of the conservative clergy. Or the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, established in 1994 as a five-year interim body before further negotiations took place between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for a final settlement. There was only one single election for president and the legislature that took place in 1996; all other planned future elections were deferred following civil violence. Or the Philippines, which, under the presidency of Fidel Valdez Ramos, still tried to achieve national reconciliation after the civil war and political tumult of the previous administration led by Corazon Aquino. Although Ramos was successful in ending the long civil war in 1996, his administration also introduced the death penalty and in addition to many other violations of liberal principles. Or Haiti, an island nation in the Caribbean with a recent history of military coups, state corruption, and violent crime, where, in the presidential elections of 1995 René Préval won the presidency with 88 percent of the popular vote but with voter turnout just 27.8 percent. Or post-Soviet Russia, where Boris Yeltsin was elected president in 1991. That was a decade marked by corruption, a major constitution crisis, and economic collapse due to the fall in commodity prices. In 1998, the government defaulted on its debts and was rescued by the IMF and other international lenders.
As it should be clear by now, the major concern for Zakaria and other pundits, academics and policy-makers in last two decades was about how to convert regimes standing undecidedly between autocracy and democracy into full democracies. But this is not necessarily today’s concern, especially in current European politics which the rest of this essay is going to focus on . Instead, what we find unsettling is how our well-established contemporary democracies may turn from liberal into illiberal ones. To understand the difference by example, just fast-forward from the late twentieth century and the cases mentioned in Zakaria’s essay to our own days and contemporary Hungary, which suggests a quite different understanding of the term “illiberal democracy.”
Here’s a country that, after the collapse of Communism in 1989, became fully democratic and, under successive governments, initially followed a liberal political course at a pace similar to other Western European nations. How things change. Today Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister and leader of the Fidesz party, currently into his second consecutive term in office, has decided to further distance his country from the liberal values shared by most EU nations. He first swept into power with an electoral victory in April 2010, which, thanks to the peculiarities of Hungary’s electoral system, gave him a two-thirds supermajority in parliament (Fidesz, together with the smaller Christian Democratic People’s Party serving as minor coalition partner, secured 52.7% of the national vote and 263 of the 386 seats in the parliament). Since then, Orbán has rewritten the Constitution and curtailed old checks and balances with no concern for the opposition’s objections; purged the bureaucracy of non-loyalists and staffed independent institutions with his party supporters; lowered the retirement age of judges in order to facilitate the entry of his own appointees; nationalized private pensions; boosted nationalism by granting citizenship, together with voting rights, to ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states; restricted media freedoms; and attacked civil society organizations, often denouncing them as foreign agents. In early 2014, his government raided NGOs that received funds from Norway, accusing one group, Okotars, of channeling money to members of an opposition party. Even more recently, Orbán’s government turned against refugees and even passed a law that threatens to close an internationally-reputed university founded by George Soros, a Hungarian-American liberal philanthropist.
In contemporary European politics, Hungary is perhaps the foremost experiment of democratic illiberalism from above, currently unfolding by intent and design. Think of Orbán’s much-noted speech in July 2014 in Transylvania, in which, after having first disparaged the “failed liberal western system,” he announced his intention to organize Hungary as “a work-based society that … undertakes the odium of stating that it is not liberal in character.” Citing Russia, China, and Turkey as examples of successful states, he said that he planned to replace welfare society with a “workfare” system, by this meaning a centrally controlled state able to confront multinational companies, such as banks and energy firms, and thus escape from “debt slavery” and the possibility that Hungary becomes a “colony” of the EU. To achieve such a goal, he explained further, “we must break with liberal principles and methods of social organization, and in general with the liberal understanding of society.” And, in even more detail, “the Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals but a community that must be organized, reinforced and in fact constructed. And so, in this sense the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom, and I could list a few more, but it does not make this ideology the central element of state organization, but instead includes a different, special, national approach.”
Evidently, then, the meaning and political significance of “democratic illiberalism” today is quite different than it used to be twenty years ago for Zakaria and his intellectual cohort. For, quite simply, our democratic illiberalism is no other that populism itself – so that the two terms can be used synonymously while also serving as antonyms to liberal democracy. The chief implication under this view is that, while populism is democratic by definitional fiat, it bespeaks a conception of democracy that is openly hostile to liberal principles. Populism, in other words, is the idea of a certain democracy in which illiberalism trumps liberalism.
What does “liberalism” involve and what does “illiberalism?” In nutshell form, a political liberal is someone (or some political party) who abides by each and all of the following three principles: First, the acknowledgement that modern society is divided by many, and most often crosscutting, cleavages; second, the need to strive to bridge those cleavages by promoting political moderation, consensus, and negotiated agreements; and, third, a commitment to the rule of law and the protection of minority rights as the best means to attain political liberalism. In sharp contrast, illiberal politicians, or parties, consider society to be divided by one single cleavage ostensibly dividing the ordinary people from some “establishment;” hence, such leaders encourage polarization and political adversity while rejecting compromise; and, finally, based on the belief that they represent the greater and best part of “the people,” illiberal leaders dismiss minorities and disregard institutional legality, while favoring majoritarianism.
With this, almost intuitively simple, distinction in mind, it is easy to see that Hungary has not been alone in Europe in promoting an illiberal version of democracy. Who has forgotten Silvio Berlusconi, a media magnate who, in the aftermath of Italy’s old party system collapse in 1994, founded Forza Italia (later renamed the The People of Freedom, PdL), a populist party that dominated Italian politics for many years on a largely illiberal agenda. The 2000s, too, became marked by several instances of populist emergence in Central and Eastern Europe, besides Hungary. The most important case was Slovakia, where Robert Fico, founder in 1999 of the populist Direction-Social Democracy (Smer-SD), won the national elections of 2006 and formed a coalition government with Vladimír Mečiar’s also populist People’s Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS). In 2012, Fico’s party won 44.4 per cent of the votes and, with an absolute majority of seats, formed the first single-party government in Slovakia since 1993.
The 2010s saw the rise of both left-wing and right-wing populisms in Europe. In Greece, first, the fiscal and economic crisis that began in 2010 and the subsequent collapse in the 2012 elections of that country’s old party system, eventually led in January 2015 to the electoral victory of populist Coalition of Radical Left (Syriza), which promptly formed a coalition government with nationalist populist Independent Greeks (ANEL). Similarly, in Spain, left populist Podemos (We Can), emerged early in 2014 and grew into the third largest party in Spanish politics. Meanwhile in Eastern Europe, the Polish Law and Justice (PiS), founded in 2001 by the Kaczynski brothers and having already enjoyed a brief spell in power (2005-2007) swept back into power in 2015 with a majority of seats and formed a government that is currently trying to steer Poland into an illiberal direction. The new government has already weakened the Constitutional Tribunal by invalidating the choice of five judges by the previous parliament, tries to bring the public media under its direct control, has proposed constitutional reforms allowing the president the rights to pass laws by decree, and rallies against immigrants and other social minorities.
There are at least three conclusions to be drawn at this point from the foregoing concise analysis of populist forces in modern Europe. Firstly, populist parties have emerged most prominently in the southern and eastern countries in the continent. Those countries are relatively recent recruits to representative parliamentary democracy, present lower rates of political institutionalization than their western and northern counterparts, and have party systems that are prone to collapse (as it happened in Italy in 1994 and Greece in 2012) or major realignments (as in Spain, Hungary and Poland). Secondly, most of those populist parties have waged impressive electoral victories that, in several cases, not only brought them to power, but also enabled them to stay in office for long terms. In some cases (most notably, Greece and Hungary), populism has contaminated the major opposition parties as well, thus transforming those polities into what I have previously referred to as “populist democracies” (Pappas 2014). Thirdly, populism grows strong on both the right (Hungary, Poland, Italy) and the left (Greece, Spain, Slovakia). Even more interestingly, as the recent Greek experience has shown, there is a peculiar ideological and political osmosis between left-wing and right-wing populisms, which may facilitate intimate strategic alliances and, occasionally, government coalitions.
But populism-qua-democratic illiberalism should not be confused, as so often happens, with another distinct contemporary phenomenon, nativism. Unlike populist parties, which, as already said, display two characteristics, democracy and illiberalism, nativist parties represent right-wing conservative ideas – the defense of law and order, as well what has been termed “welfare chauvinism” – while being fully committed to parliamentary democracy and constitutional legality. Such parties are concentrated in the most politically liberal, economically affluent, and, at least until recently, socio-culturally homogenous states – Austria, Finland, France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and, of late, Germany. The point I want to drive home is this: Since nativist parties represent quite different dangers for liberal democracy than populist parties, politicians and policy makers must understand their difference and treat each set of parties differently. Let me explain what I mean by using the recent examples of three important nativist parties, the British UK Independence Party (UKIP), the French National Front (Front National, FN) and the German Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD).
The UKIP was founded in 1993, but remained in relative political obscurity until, under the flamboyant leadership of Nigel Farage, it became the most vocal advocate of anti-immigration and anti-EU policies, calling for both a ban on immigration (which, according to Farage, was “the biggest single issue” in the country) and an exit from the EU (which became the really big single issue during the 2016 referendum). A classical right-wing conservative party intended to restore “Britishness” against the dual threats of Islamization and “EU supra-nationalism, it became the champion of monocultural British nationalism. In the 2014 European Parliament elections, UKIP received 27.5% of the votes, the largest percentage of any British party. In the general election of 2015, UKIP won 12.6% of the total and replaced the Liberal Democrats as the third most popular party. And then came the 2016 referendum of the UK’s continued membership in the EU, in which UKIP led successfully the “Leave EU” campaign emphasizing the negative impact of immigration on local communities and public services. After winning the referendum, and achieving Brexit, Farage, stating that his political ambitions “had been achieved,” promptly resigned as UKIP leader, upon which party factionalism broke loose. In the 2017 UK general elections, UKIP’s vote fell below two percent, also failing to gain any parliamentary seats.
The French National Front thrived for many years on its opposition to both France’s membership in the EU and free migration, especially from Muslim countries. Since the election of Marine Le Pen as party leader in 2011, the popularity of the FN grew fast. In the French municipal elections of 2014, the party won mayoralties in several towns and cities, while in the 2015 elections for the European Parliament it created a political sensation by winning 25% of the total vote, thus sending shock waves to both the French and the broader European public opinion. Le Pen’s electoral successes were however halted in the 2017 French presidential elections in which the FN was resoundingly defeated in the second round of voting by rival Emmanuel Macron. In the more recent parliamentary elections, the FN, now also suffering the demobilization of its voting base, was just able to garner 13% of the general vote. How were the FN’s political and electoral fortunes so swiftly and so dramatically reversed? To be sure, the answer is to be found in the equally dramatic emergence of Macron as a national leader who is both pro-EU and pro-immigration – in short, the perfect anti-Le Pen. Often described in the Press as a “Europhile” and “federalist,” he convincingly embraced the EU project and advocated further European integration. Like Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, he also supported an open-door policy towards refugees from the Middle East and stood firm on his advocacy for a multicultural society, tolerant towards immigrants, and intent on respecting the rights of minorities.
The German AfD was founded in 2013 upon a right-wing conservative platform, which was meant to halt immigration in Germany, oppose Islam as un-German, set against further European unification and promote the dissolution of the Eurozone. The new party won 4.7% in the 2013 federal elections and, in 2014, made a stronger showing with 7.1% in the elections for the European Parliament. In the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis, during which the number of people coming to Germany from the Middle East increased by the hundreds of thousands, the AfD morphed into a typical anti-immigration nativist party. Since then, and against a backdrop of continuous power struggles within it, one is possible to watch the party’s ups and downs in public opinion and the polls in close connection with the refugee issue in Germany. Indeed, during 2016, as the migrant debate had become the dominant national issue, the AfD saw its electoral strength rise to near 20 percent in several key states, including Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt. Yet, at the time of its party’s conference in April 2017, as the immigration issue was not any longer in the news headlines, AfD’s support dipped into the single digits (7 percent), and remained at such low levels even when campaigning began in the summer of 2017. It picked up again after the only televised debate between Ms. Merkel and Mr. Schulz focused heavily on the immigration issue revealing the similarities in both parties’ position – after which the AfD became able to win in the September 2017 federal elections a handsome 12.6 percent. Only one day after that, Frauke Petry, one of AfD’s co-founders and high-profile leader, announced her decision not to participate in the party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag for, as she said, the AfD “could not offer a credible platform.” It remains to be seen, therefore, what will be the future of this nativist party whose survival depends on one single policy issue, anti-immigration, while it also suffers from inadequate leadership and incessant infighting.
The foregoing examples of nativist parties and their recent histories have important lessons to teach us. Since those are issue-based parties, they depend on how the other political forces in their respective political system face up to their challenge. There are two possible outcomes, none of which is really advantageous for the nativists. If they win an electoral outcome which is favorable to their issue platform, as it happened in the case of the UKIP, they automatically lose their raison d’être and undergo rapid decline. More often, though, as shown by the cases of both the French FN and the German AfD, nativist parties come up against massive domestic opposition by liberal forces with opposing political agendas on the key issues of immigration and European integration. In such instances, the nativists, some occasional successes apart, are defeated in elections and enter a situation of soul-searching, internal infighting and, most likely, eventual dissolution.
Things however are not so facile with populism. As the flipside and negation of political liberalism, modern populism is by far a most menacing challenger for liberal democracy. As empirical research shows, it thrives where political institutions – especially the rule of law and safeguards for minority rights – are weak and where polarization and majoritarian tendencies are strong. In such environments, populist parties can be expected to win power via the ballot box and even to win re-election. Populism is so threatening because it has a contagious quality – the appearance and rise of a populist party will predictably push a country’s other parties in a populist direction – and because populism can lead to the decay of liberal institutions and the consolidation of illiberal polities. Liberal politicians and policy makers, beware.
