Some powerful images of European politics
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and when I recently came across a study by Lewis Dijkstra, Hugo Poelman and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose that showed the vote for anti-EU parties across 63,000 electoral districts I was blown away. Never before have I seen such a detailed map of the rise of populism in Europe. But before we get there, some background.
As we all know, anti-EU sentiment has risen since the Global Financial Crisis. It is generally considered a backlash of the people left behind with lower education and lower incomes against the elites in Brussels and their national capitals. Interestingly, though, as the chart below shows, scepticism about the EU has not increased in every country. In Germany, Denmark, Sweden or Finland, more people have a favourable view of the EU in 2018 than in 2004. Yet, in all of these countries, there has been a large and growing minority of voters who elected anti-EU populist parties like the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany. In a sense, this is good news because it implies that in these countries there is an upper limit of the vote share that these anti-EU parties can get. However, anti-EU parties also exploit anti-establishment sentiment in general and as we have seen in the UK, a topic that was largely irrelevant only a few years ago, like the country’s membership in the EU, can suddenly become the one and only topic that matters and tear a country apart politically.
Share of population that tends not to trust the EU
Source: Dijkstra et al. (2019).
The analysis of Dijkstra and his colleagues shows that some of the common tropes about voters for anti-EU parties are simply not true. There is no evidence that older people vote against the EU. Instead, in economically declining areas of Europe, the older and richer people tend to be more pro-EU. Instead, the main drivers for the anti-EU vote is a lack of education and a lack of employment opportunities. If there is no hope to get a job or if people tend to lack the skills necessary for today’s modern economy, they will flock towards populist and anti-EU parties.
This is good news in some sense because it shows that there is a way to condemn populist parties in Europe to the history books once more. If governments across Europe can increase fiscal spending to train low-skilled workers and engage in industrial policies targeted to create jobs in areas of structural decline, then there is a realistic chance that the rise of populism won’t lead to another catastrophe like in the first half of the 20th century. I know, industrial policies and targeted government intervention to create jobs have fallen into disrepute over the last forty years as the neoliberal economic consensus has become the dominant economic policy approach across the world, but if even the intellectuals in the Republican Party can warm up to those ideas, then I think we should give it a try in the generally more progressive countries across Europe.
Until then, let’s have a look at the trouble Europe is in its full glory. Here is the best picture of the rise of populism I have ever seen for your viewing pleasure.
Minimum vote share for parties opposed or strongly opposed to EU integration
Source: Dijkstra et al. (2019).