Fading Trust in Leaders Fuels Europe's Populist Surge

 

"BERLIN -- Antiestablishment populism is on the rise in Europe, fueled not just by migration and economic and security fears, but also by a deeper trend: eroding confidence in governments' ability to overcome those challenges.

In Germany on Sunday, the far-right AfD and a new far-left populist party obtained almost half the votes cast in the eastern state of Thuringia, and together also took more than 40% in neighboring Saxony.

In Thuringia, the AfD finished first, the first time a far-right movement has won a state election in postwar Germany.

In France, a legislative election that returned a hung parliament and gave the far-right National Rally almost a quarter of all seats -- up sharply from the prior election -- has yet to yield a government two months later.

A litany of crises, from immigration to inflation and the conflict in Ukraine, has helped populists notch electoral wins from Italy to the Netherlands and from Sweden to Finland in recent years. For some pollsters and analysts, however, crises are nothing new. What is new is voters' crumbling confidence that elected governments can solve them.

"Crises are normally good for governments," said Manfred Gullner, head of the Forsa polling group. "Voters rally around the flag. It happened after 9/11, after the financial crisis, even under Covid initially. Not today. Crises are piling up and support for the governments is at the bottom."

In a Forsa survey of German voters published last week, 54% of respondents said they didn't trust any party to solve the country's problems. Only 16% said they trusted the government.

Another survey of voters in France, Germany, Italy and Poland published by Sciences Po, a Paris-based university, this year showed 60% of respondents had no trust in political institutions. The same proportion said democracy wasn't working.

For Gullner, the rise of populist and upstart parties is the tip of an iceberg of disaffection, the submerged part is abstention. In Saxony and Thuringia, the share of non-voters has risen by 26% and 56%, respectively, since the first post-reunification election of 1990, he said.

Political indecision can be self-perpetuating. As voters lose trust in governments, they turn to populists and punish establishment parties, resulting in increasingly fractured parliaments. This, in turn, generates unwieldy and often indecisive coalitions that struggle to govern.

Herfried Munkler, one of Germany's leading political scientists, thinks the lack of trust in government is partly the product of strident populist rhetoric, whose alarmism creates a sense of urgency of which no government can ever get ahead.

"It could be that we are reaching the limits of political compromise," Munkler said. "That's not a good sign because this could push a majority of voters to call for a strong man or a strong woman. One who wouldn't compromise but just decide."" [1]

The US is the same. The catastrophic decisions of Western leaders have led to a crisis of confidence, paralyzing any possibility of course correction.

1. World News: Fading Trust in Leaders Fuels Europe's Populist Surge. Bertrand, Benoit.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 03 Sep 2024: A.9.