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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a professor of politics at Princeton University. His most recent book is ‘Democracy Rules’
In the ever proliferating “crisis of democracy” diagnoses, policy challenges usually take pride of place — from migration to the economic turmoil wrought by globalisation. Generally neglected is the role of a seemingly old-fashioned institution: the political party. To the extent that there’s any discussion, supposedly more participatory movements — as pioneered by French President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche, for instance — are touted as a remedy for the decline of traditional parties.
Yet what often end up as vehicles for charismatic leaders are likely to have bad effects on democracy as a whole. This month, the pernicious consequences of Donald Trump’s iron grip on the US Republicans are on full display; Macron struggles to find a successor for a movement tailored to himself; while in Germany, the just-founded Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — also focused on one figure — is likely to fragment further an already complicated political landscape. Such movements fail to fulfil the essential functions of parties: to provide consistent programmes over time, and to restrain a leader when necessary.
In some party systems, even those with proportional representation, two large “people’s parties” used to win more than 90 per cent of the vote. Since the 1990s, new players focusing on topics such as the environment or the rights of sexual minorities have appeared on the scene, and citizens have become more volatile in their preferences. Membership of traditional parties has declined, but in the past decade young people have rushed to join radical leftist groupings such as France Unbowed (La France Insoumise), Podemos in Spain and Momentum in the UK. This membership, though, was not rooted in stable milieus and, most tellingly, new movements such as En Marche allowed what they called “adherents” to belong to other parties at the same time.
Nothing will bring back a more predictable world in which parties were mostly just fighting over socio-economic issues. Fragmentation — the Dutch lower chamber has 15 different parties, for instance — will continue. This makes political life more difficult. But for every complaint about political chaos, there’s a voice that registers increased satisfaction with previously unrecognised interests and identities now being represented. Anyone who wishes to go back to the supposedly simpler life of the 1950s probably did not live through it.
With more issues in play, it has become easier to combine nominally leftwing and rightwing ideas, or to promise to transcend the left-right cleavage altogether. Wagenknecht, after years of agitation against her own leftist party for being soft on migration, has founded an “alliance” that, in the name of “reason and justice”, seeks to offer a “respectable” option for those so far voting for the far right.
The problem is not that such novel policy combinations are incoherent, let alone illegitimate. One of democracy’s promises is precisely the freedom to innovate. But movements founded by charismatic figures can become more like personality cults, lacking the benefits that proper parties confer on democracy. Parties offer long-term programmes, which makes it bearable to lose an election; one can always try again to persuade people at the polls. A single person — a man in his seventies, let’s say — has a very different time horizon. Trump could not simply lose in 2020 and entrust his ideas to a capable ideological heir. That was one reason he incited an insurrection.
Movements often end up controlled by the charismatic founder, irrespective of ideological orientation and the leader’s level of narcissism. Members of France Unbowed are about as powerless as those of what is now called Renaissance (the successor to Macron’s En Marche) and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. Wagenknecht’s new members (she has limited the number to 450 so far) will probably have little say in setting long-term goals. Legitimate internal opposition to the leadership is also lacking. In the extreme case of Dutch far-right populist Geert Wilders, the party features precisely one member: Wilders himself.
Dire consequences for democracy result. No Republican could restrain Trump after his 2020 loss, and it seems no one can in 2024, either. No one could keep a check on Austrian conservative Sebastian Kurz, once seen as a model for Europe’s centre-right, after he subordinated a traditional Christian-democratic party to himself. French democracy appears at the mercy of Macron’s whims (in a curious parallel to Le Pen, who was anointed by her father, Macron appears to have installed a replica of himself, the 34-year-old Gabriel Attal, as prime minister). As a result, many democracies today combine high levels of partisanship and polarisation with hollowed-out parties.
What is to be done? Regulation can make a difference. A one-man party like that of Wilders would not be legal in Germany. Citizens are not powerless. Those willing to engage in new movements can demand proper structures for debate and decision-making. Such processes can be annoying: Oscar Wilde quipped that the problem with socialism was that it took up too many evenings. But democracy’s promise has never been that everything is quick, easy and done by dinnertime.
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