The electoral eruption of anti-European Union populism is a reflection of structural flaws in that body but does not represent a fatal political blow, according to Stanford scholars.

In the May 25 elections for the European Parliament, anti-immigration parties won 140 of the 751 seats, well short of control, but enough to rattle supporters of the EU, which has 28 member nations. In Britain, Denmark, France and Greece, the political fringe vote totals stunned the political establishments.

Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama said the rise of extremism and anti-elitism is not surprising in the wake of the 2008 economic downturn and subsequent high levels of unemployment throughout Europe. In one sense, the EU elites have themselves to blame, he said.

"The elites who designed the EU and the eurozone failed in a major way," he said. "There was a structural flaw in the design of the euro (monetary union absent fiscal union, and the method of disciplining countries once in the zone)," said Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and Research Afflilate at The Europe Center.

Some have argued that the European Union should adopt a form of fiscal union because without one, decisions about taxes and spending remain at the national level.

As Fukuyama points out, this becomes a problem, as in the case of a debt-ridden Greece, which he believes should not have qualified for EU membership in the first place. In fact, he said, it would have been better for Greece itself to leave the euro at the outset of the 2008 crisis.

Still, Fukuyama said the big picture behind the recent election is clear – it was a confluence of issues and timing.

"It is a bit like an off-year election in the U.S., where activists are more likely to vote than ordinary citizens," he said.

Fukuyama believes the EU will survive this electoral crisis. "I think the EU will be resilient. It has weathered other rejections in the past. The costs of really exiting the EU are too high in the end, and the elites will adjust, having been given this message," he said.

Meanwhile, the populist parties in the different countries are not unified or intent on building coalitions with each other.

"Other than being anti-EU, most of them have little in common," Fukuyama said. "They differ with regard to specific positions on immigration, economic policy, and they respond to different social bases."

Ongoing anger

Dan Edelstein, a professor of French, said the largest factor for success by extremist candidates was "ongoing anger toward the austerity policy imposed by the EU," primarily by Germany.

Edelstein estimates that a large majority of French voters are still generally supportive of the EU. For the time being, the anti-EU faction does not have a majority, though they now have much more representation in the European Parliament.

Edelstein noted existing strains among the anti-EU parties – for example, the UK Independence Party in Britain has stated that it would not form an alliance with the National Front party in France.

Immigration remains a thorny issue for some Europeans, Edelstein said.

"'Immigration' in most European political debates, tends to be a synonym for 'Islam.' While there are some countries, such as Britain, that are primarily worried about the economic costs of immigration, in most continental European countries, the fears are cultural," he said.

As Edelstein put it, Muslims are perceived as a "demographic threat" to white or Christian Europe. However, he is optimistic in the long run.

"It seems a little early to be writing the obituary of the EU. Should economic conditions improve over the next few years, as they are predicted to, we will likely see this high-water mark of populist anger recede," said Edelstein.

Cécile Alduy, an associate professor of French, writes in the May 28 issue of The Nation about how the ultra-right-wing National Front came in first place in France's election.

"This outcome was also the logical conclusion of a string of political betrayals, scandals and mismanagement that were only compounded by the persistent economic and social morass that has plunged France into perpetual gloom," she wrote.

Historian J.P. Daughton said that like elsewhere in the world, immigration often becomes a contentious issue in Europe in times of economic difficulties.  

"High unemployment and painful austerity measures in many parts of Europe have led extremist parties to blame immigrants for taking jobs and sapping already limited social programs," he said.

Anti-immigration rhetoric plays particularly well in EU elections, Daughton said. "Extremist parties portray European integration as a threat not only to national sovereignty, but also to national identity.

Edelstein, Alduy and Daughton are all Faculty Affiliates of The Europe Center.

Wake-up call

Russell A. Berman, a professor of German studies and comparative literature, said many Europeans perceive the EU as "somehow impenetrable, far from the civic politics of the nation states."

As a result, people resent regulations issued by an "intangible bureaucracy," and have come to believe that the European Parliament has not grappled with major issues such as mustering a coherent foreign policy voice, he said.

"The EU can be great on details but pretty weak on the big picture," said Berman, who is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Faculty Affiliate of The Europe Center. "It is this discrepancy that feeds the dissatisfaction."

Yet he points out that the extremist vote surged in only 14 nations of the EU – in the other 14, there was "negligible extremism," as he describes it.

"We're a long way from talking about a fatal blow, but the vote is indeed a wake-up call to the centrists that they have to make a better case for Europe," Berman said.

 

This summer Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is welcoming new leadership to oversee the growth and development of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD), one of the Center's principal research programs examining contemporary issues of political development in the Arab world.

Lisa Blaydes, assistant professor of political science at Stanford, will assume the role of faculty co-director, working together with CDDRL Director Larry Diamond to help shape the program's research agenda. Blaydes will be joined by Hesham Sallam, currently a CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow completing his Ph.D. in government at Georgetown University. He will serve as the program's new associate director, assuming operational management and developing the program's research initiatives and activities at Stanford and throughout the Arab world, in partnership with the faculty co-directors. Sallam is also joining CDDRL as a research associate. In that capacity he will produce research and publications on questions related to political and economic reform in the Arab World.

Sallam is replacing ARD's founding director Lina Khatib, who left CDDRL last year to assume directorship of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace's Middle East office in Beirut.

"We are very excited to have Hesham Sallam assuming this leadership role in the ARD program, and joining the research staff of CDDRL,” said Diamond. “Hesham is not only a superb scholar of Arab politics and political economy, but has also been deeply engaged in analytic and public policy debates about the future of the region. His deep knowledge and broad credibility in the field will be strong and immediate assets to the program, and will help us build on the strong foundation laid by our founding program leader, Lina Khatib."

“I am extremely delighted to join the CDDRL and FSI family,” said Sallam. “I look forward to working closely with the Stanford community, faculty, students, and staff, to expand interdisciplinary discussions of Arab politics and society on campus.”

“By enhancing its intellectual engagement with scholars and activists in Arab world, ARD will continue to nuance our understanding of conflicts over political, social and economic rights in the region by supporting critical scholarship and by developing innovative research agendas,” he said.

Sallam’s dissertation examines how Islamist movements have impacted the politics of economic reform in Egypt before and after the Arab uprisings in 2011. His previous research has received the support of the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council. Sallam also serves as co-editor of the Jadaliyya, a leading online magazine, which invites critical debate and analysis of current events in the Arab world from academics, activists and journalists. 

Diamond expressed great enthusiasm over the addition of Lisa Blaydes to the program’s faculty leadership. “Over the past several years, Lisa has rapidly emerged as one of the most original and influential scholars of politics and social change in the Arab world,” he said. “She brings to the program intense intellectual curiosity, scholarly distinction and a keen interest in advancing social science studies of the Arab world."

Blaydes, a specialist in comparative politics and politics in the Middle East, recently published the book, Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt, which examines the complex relationships among regimes, rent-seeking elites and citizens fostered by authoritarian elections.

“The Arab world is at a critical juncture,” said Blaydes. “Although mass protests have transformed public political consciousness, the long-term impact of the protest movement on more concrete forms of power has yet to be determined. Policy-relevant scholarly research such as that conducted by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy may help us to identify pathways to political reform.”

Blaydes and Sallam, together with Diamond, participated in the most recent ARD Program conference on political change in the Arab world. Held in collaboration with the Center for Research on Globalization and Democratic Governance at Koc University in Turkey, the conference brought together leaders in policy, academia and government to address issues of violence and government transitions in the region following continuous civil unrest and political uncertainty.

Founded in 2010 with annual support from the Moulay Hicham Foundation, CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Democracy aims to be a hub for intellectual capital about issues related to good governance, social change and political reform in the region, producing rigorous and policy-relevant academic research. Conferences and seminars in the U.S. and the Arab world provide innovative forums for academics and policy-makers to advance new ideas and approaches to the most pressing issues facing the region today.

For more information on the Program on Arab Reform and Development, please visit: http://arabreform.stanford.edu/. 

CDDRL Director Larry Diamond addresses concerns of an intensifying democratic recession in a piece in The Atlantic. Despite recent turmoil in Ukraine and democratic breakdowns in Thailand and Turkey, among others, Diamond emphasizes the critical role economic development, globalization and the growth of civil society will play in the long-run inducement of democratic change worldwide.

In a recent report, CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow Amr Adly, with the support of the Center for International Private Enterprise, provides insight on post-revolution entrepreneurship in Egypt and Tunisia. He suggests that in order to advance their economies, governments must carry out comprehensive reforms that provide greater accessibility to formal institutional structures for the broadest base of private sector enterprises, namely, small business owners, rural enterprises, and female entrepreneurs.