Close your eyes to travel to the past. To the optimistic years that go from 1989 to 1995. That period that opens with the fall of the Berlin Wall and continues with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the revolutions in Eastern Europe, the end of apartheid in South Africa or the agreements of Oslo between Israel and Palestine..., all amidst promises of prosperity from a globalization in which the free market was going to make wars obsolete.
The message that best captures that moment of euphoria managed alone by the United States was written by a political scientist from Stanford. In The End of History and the Last Man, an article as ambitious as it was misinterpreted, Francis Fukuyama announced the advent of a golden age of liberal democracy. With communism fallen, he reasoned, the liberal order had a clear path to multiply.
Thirty years later, events have evolved very differently. The 2000s saw the emergence of a generation of authoritarian leaders (FT columnist Gideon Rachman called them “strongmen”). They were conservative politicians who despised democratic rules and created a cult of the boss around them. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and later Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi or, the most popular of all, Donald Trump.
The arrival of Donald Trump to the White House in 2016 was the first warning that politics had entered the era of chaos. That anti-democratic temptations would make their home at the top of the world power that was supposed to ensure the spread of liberal democracy in the world was not in any script.
Since that day, the elections have reinforced their capacity to destabilize and surprise. The last two examples (the victory of Javier Milei in Argentina and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands) are an example of this.
In 2024, almost half of the world's population in 70 countries will vote. There will be presidential elections in medium powers such as India, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia or Russia (no surprise here for obvious reasons). There will be elections in conflict zones like Taiwan (January 14). A reinforcement of the independentists would raise the temperature in the Strait of Formosa several degrees.
However, it will be the US presidential elections in November and the European Parliament elections in June that will measure the health of democracy.
If the judges let him, Trump is looking forward to a second term in the presidency, in an appointment to which Joe Biden goes tired and with the polls going down. With a Trump victory, the US could withdraw from NATO, leave Europe alone in the defense of Ukraine and resume relations with Vladimir Putin, a man for whom he has a soft spot. He could abandon climate change negotiations. And, in domestic politics, Trump talks openly about imprisoning his opponents.
How did Trump become president in 2016? Why does the far right govern in Italy, shape policies in Sweden and Finland, aspire to do so in the Netherlands and continue to grow in France and Germany?
A first answer is immigration. The wave of 2015 in Europe already showed its corrosive nature in the Eastern countries and Germany. The one that is now underway has forced the tightening of migration policy in the European Union. Two governments as different as those of France and the United Kingdom are on a tightrope over the immigration issue. And, in both cases, the extreme right has been decisive in the new legislation.
The war in Ukraine has also stirred the fears of the European population. Insecurity always blows in favor of strong men.
But if you look for the explanation in economics, you won't be wrong either. There is nothing worse for governments than not meeting the expectations created. And, since the 2008 financial crisis, the recovery has not had the vigor that the economy had before 2000 and, what is worse, the growth is not shared among everyone.
The accusing finger points to the competition of China, an unexpected guest that globalization has turned into a superpower. But not only that. Automation has also destroyed well-paid jobs. And we have learned a bitter lesson: the glorious decades of post-war Europe, in a young continent with a monopoly on industrial knowledge, are not going to be repeated.
In The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, Martin Wolf, editor of the Financial Times, explains that this disappointment has delegitimized the liberal system. When people see their economic status threatened, political loyalty disappears and cultural factors come into play that become more important: race or religion.
Western democracies are the result of reforms promoted in the social democratic years by a coalition between the most educated professional classes and workers. Today the left thinks more about the former (which Thomas Piketty calls the Brahmin left) and less about the latter, some of whom now vote for the extreme right.
The far right is today the most dynamic force in Europe. Meloni, who has governed Italy since 2022, has been key in its normalization. Once he accepted the EU's economic rules and assumed the Atlanticist policy towards Ukraine, he became “one of us.”
The European moderate right is today prone to cooperating with the extreme right and does not hesitate to adopt its political agenda. It is a temptation within each country (France, Spain, Germany), but also for those who aspire to one day govern Europe, such as Manfred Weber, president of the European People's Party.
The possibility of seeing the extreme right (or some ministers) in the government of Europe is plausible. And its implications are clear. It would weaken support for Ukraine against Russia. Hungarian Viktor Orbán, a pro-Russian and authoritarian leader who aspires to change the EU from within, thinks that time is on his side. He would change climate policy: reverse agriculture and reduce the pace of decarbonization.
And it would also pose a threat to individual rights. Poland, before the liberal Donald Tusk formed a government, and Hungary are countries in which the rights of women and other groups have been restricted (along the lines of Russia). The possibility of this policy making its way will depend on whether Donald Trump wins in the US. In that case, seen as the worst scenario by analysts, the masks of the European extreme right will fall.
liberal democracy
