Populism and the Decline of Social Democracy

Sheri Berman, Maria Snegovaya

Journal of Democracy, Volume 30, Number 3, July 2019, pp. 5-19 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0038

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/729165

Access provided at 8 Aug 2019 20:54 GMT with no institutional affiliation

 Populism and The Decline
of Social Democracy
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya

Sheri Berman is professor of political science at Barnard College.

Her works include Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From
the Ancien Régime to the Present Day (2019) and The Primacy of
Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth
Century (2006). Maria Snegovaya is postdoctoral associate at the
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland and ad-
junct fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and at the
Free Russia Foundation.

Across Europe, traditional parties of the left seem to be in terminal

decline. In Western Europe, support for social-democratic and socialist
parties sank to insignificance in the 2017 French and Dutch elections.
In the 2018 German parliamentary elections, the once-mighty Social
Democratic Party (SPD) received its lowest vote share since the end of
the Weimar Republic, and in Scandinavia, long the redoubt of social de-
mocracy, center-left parties struggle to maintain 25 to 30 percent of the
vote. The situation in Central and Eastern Europe is even grimmer. In
Hungary, the Socialist Party (MSzP), initially one of the strongest post-
transition parties, garnered only 12 percent of the vote in April 2018
elections for the National Assembly. In Poland, the social-democratic
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) is no longer represented in parliament,
and in the Czech Republic just 7 percent of voters opted for the center-
left Social Democratic Party (CSSD) in 2017 parliamentary elections.
The trend continued in May 2019 elections to the 751-member European
Parliament, where the center-left Socialists and Democrats bloc lost 38
of the 191 seats that it had carried in 2014.
Despite the Europe-wide nature of this trend, most explanations of
the left’s problems focus on idiosyncratic region-specific factors. For
example, many analyses of diminishing support for leftist parties in
Western Europe emphasize changing class and value structures. The de-
cline of West European manufacturing during the late twentieth century

Journal of Democracy Volume 30, Number 3 July 2019

© 2019 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press
6 Journal of Democracy

weakened the working class and unions, shrinking the left’s traditional
voting base and reducing the heft of the organizations that had been its
most important affiliates. During the same period, postmaterialist val-
ues such as self-expression, environmentalism, cosmopolitanism, sexual
freedom, and gender equality took on a new prominence in Western
societies. Voters holding such values considered themselves to be on the
left, but they differed from longtime leftist voters who remained wedded
to national identities, prioritized law and order, and favored growth over
environmental protection. The divisions between “new” and “old” left
voters rendered socialist and social-democratic parties conflicted and
confused.
For postcommunist Eastern Europe, a popular explanation of the
left’s demise emphasizes anti-incumbent bias. In this view, disenchant-
ed voters without strong party identifications simply punished incum-
bents by kicking them out of office. This resulted in power alternation
between slow and fast reformers, represented by (more or less) reformed
ex-communist successor parties and the democratic center-right opposi-
tion, respectively. Other accounts attribute falling support for the left
to weak party organization, internal conflicts, and corruption scandals.1
While all these factors are worth considering, they alone cannot ex-
plain the left’s decline. Since this trend is not limited to Western or
Eastern Europe, or even to Europe at all, the explanation must involve
something broader than regional-level developments.
We argue that there is indeed a common factor underlying the decline
of the left in Europe and in other parts of the world: namely, the left’s
shift to the center on economic issues, and in particular its acceptance of
“neoliberal” reforms such as privatization of parts of the public sector,
cuts to taxes and the welfare state, and deregulation of the business and
financial sectors. Although this shift made some sense in the short term,
over the long term it had deleterious, perhaps even fatal, consequences.
It watered down the left’s distinctive historical profile; rendered social-
ist and social-democratic parties unable to take advantage of widespread
discontent over the fallout from neoliberal reforms and the 2008 finan-
cial crisis; created incentives for parties to emphasize cultural and social
rather than economic or class appeals; and undermined the representa-
tive nature of democracy. The shift in the left’s economic profile, in
short, deserves center stage in any account of its decline. Moreover,
this shift and its consequences have been crucial to the rise of a nativist,
populist right and to the broader problems facing democracy today in
Western and Eastern Europe, as well as other parts of the world.
Capitalism, or rather a backlash against it, is the reason for the mod-
ern left’s existence. When capitalism emerged in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, it led to unprecedented economic growth and in-
novation—but also to dramatic economic inequality and insecurity, as
well as immense social disruption. In response, an international socialist
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya 7

movement emerged, with Marxism as its ideological lodestar. By the

late nineteenth century, this movement had fractured due to differing
views on how to deal with capitalism’s development. In contrast to the
mid-century predictions of Karl Marx, capitalism was not collapsing.
Some on the left thus argued that rather than waiting for history to run its
course, leftists should form a revolutionary vanguard that would act to
bring about capitalism’s demise. Russia’s Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)
was the most important advocate of this position, and his followers be-
came communists.
Another faction instead argued that reforming capitalism was both
possible and desirable. They contended that the left should focus not on
transcending capitalism, but rather on ensuring that its immense produc-
tive capacity would serve progressive rather than destructive ends. Ger-
man political thinker Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) was the most influ-
ential advocate of this view, and his followers became social democrats.
This social-democratic outlook was optimistic, even idealistic. Un-
like communists and other socialists, social democrats argued that nei-
ther a violent revolution nor the collapse of capitalism was necessary
to bring about a better future. Instead, they argued for the “primacy of
politics”2: Human beings, acting collectively, could use the power of the
democratic state to create a better world.
Through the interwar years, the left’s communist and social-democratic
factions struggled for dominance, while also competing against the myri-
ad other political forces (liberals, fascists, conservatives, anarchists) that
vied for supremacy in Europe. With a few exceptions, however—commu-
nists ruled briefly in Hungary, and social democrats enjoyed exceptional
political success in Scandinavia—neither group was able to dominate the
left or capture political power in Europe. This changed after 1945. Com-
munists took power in Eastern Europe, and social democracy came to
dominate the West European left and exerted a decisive influence on the
shape of the region’s postwar order.

The West European Story

The experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when capital-
ism’s failures produced social chaos and fueled support for left-wing
(communist) and right-wing (fascist) extremism, had a deep impact
on political mentalities in Western Europe. After World War II, actors
across the political spectrum recognized that ensuring democratic suc-
cess and social stability required dealing with the downsides of capital-
ism. During the postwar period, accordingly, West European nations
constructed a new order designed to ensure economic growth while at
the same time protecting societies from capitalism’s dangerous conse-
quences. This order represented a decisive break with the past: After
1945 West European governments, rather than limiting themselves to
8 Journal of Democracy

the role of economic “night watchmen,” sought to act as guardians of so-

ciety and promoters of social stability. Capitalism remained, but it was
capitalism of a very different type than had existed before the war—it
was tempered and limited by the power of democratic governments. Cit-
izens were promised protection from economic dislocation and suffer-
ing, creating the sort of “positive-sum” politics that enables democracy
to flourish. This was precisely the approach that social democrats had
advocated since the early twentieth century, but it took the tragedies of
the 1930s and 1940s for their views to gain broad acceptance.
The thirty years after 1945 were Western Europe’s fastest period
of growth ever, and democracy consolidated across the region for the
first time in its history.3 Yet despite this impressive record, the social-
democratic consensus eventually frayed. On the left, the very success
of the postwar order led many to forget that reforms, while important,
were simply a means to an end—that end being taming capitalism and
reconciling it with democracy and social stability. Many on the left grew
content with managing the existing order, forgetting that capitalism was
constantly evolving and inherently dangerous. Others, disappointed that
the prospect of a postcapitalist future had vanished and bored by what
they saw as the banality and materialism of the postwar order, stopped
focusing on capitalism entirely. Instead, they turned their attention to in-
tellectual currents such as postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism,
and postcolonialism that were cultural rather than economic in nature.
During the last decades of the twentieth century, the left devoted little
strategic thought to the changing nature of capitalism.
The consequences of this became clear by the 1970s, when a noxious
mix of inflation and unemployment hit the West. During the previous
decades, a free-market right had been organizing and thinking about
what it viewed as the drawbacks of the postwar social-democratic order.
When the crisis hit, this free-market right was ready with explanations
as well as solutions. This, combined with the left’s inability to credibly
propose an alternate path, helped the neoliberal right to gain ideological
dominance with its argument that “there was no alternative,” as Mar-
garet Thatcher put it, to freeing markets and paring back the role of the
state.

The Rise of the Neoliberal Consensus

So in a dramatic reversal of the postwar pattern in which a social-
democratic consensus came to dominate the mainstream left and right,
by the late twentieth century a neoliberal consensus dominated both in-
stead. Tony Blair’s “New Labour” in the United Kingdom, Bill Clin-
ton’s “New Democrats” in the United States, and Gerhard Schröder’s
SPD in Germany largely accepted neoliberal policies and the idea that
government’s ability to shape economic and social development was
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya 9

limited. Social democrats, in other words, ceased presenting themselves

as wary overlords of capitalism, cognizant of the need to protect soci-
ety from its downsides, and instead increasingly presented their mission
in technocratic, efficiency terms. This was accompanied by a shift in
the left’s leadership toward highly educated elites whose preferences on
many issues diverged from those of traditional left-wing voters.4
While the left’s economic shift may have made sense in the short
term—almost all mainstream economists supported the new policies,
and growth did recover after the slowdown of the late 1970s and early
1980s—its long-term consequences were profound. Most obviously,
it represented a transformation of the left’s longstanding profile, even
its identity, which had been rooted in the backlash against capitalism.
The left’s success—indeed, Western Europe’s success—after 1945 was
predicated upon the assertion that the democratic state could temper or
even eliminate capitalism’s dangerous consequences and promote both
growth and equality. Having abandoned this view, the traditional left
was poorly positioned to capture the resentment and anger that mate-
rialized when the weakening of the postwar social-democratic order
produced its inevitable fallout: dramatic economic inequality and inse-
curity, as well as immense social disruption. The 2008 financial crisis
aggravated these trends, sharpening popular frustration with neoliberal-
ism and the elites and parties that had embraced it.
With the traditional left no longer able to capture growing popu-
lar discontent, a golden opportunity arose for an enterprising political
force. This force turned out to be populism.
Most European right-wing populist parties have their roots in the late
1970s and 1980s, but when they emerged on the scene almost all had
conservative economic profiles. Social democracy’s economic shift,
along with growing discontent generated by the fallout from neoliberal
policies and then the 2008 financial crash and ensuing Eurozone crisis,
created strong incentives for these parties to shift course.
Perhaps the earliest and most successful transformation of this kind
occurred in France: Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front originally es-
poused neoliberal policies including low taxes and a small state. Indeed,
Le Pen once boasted that he had adopted the principles of Reaganom-
ics and Thatcherism before they became fashionable.5 But under the
leadership of his daughter Marine Le Pen (who took over in 2011) the
party shifted to advocating protectionism, an interventionist state, and a
strong social safety net. The Austrian Freedom Party underwent a simi-
lar change. Originally a home for free-market liberals as well as former
Nazis, this party later embraced “welfare chauvinism” (an approach that
emphasizes limiting the welfare state’s benefits to native-born citizens).
In Denmark, the antistatist, antitax Progress Party of the 1970s splin-
tered and was eclipsed by a faction that became the pro–welfare-state
Danish People’s Party. Alternative for Germany began as a middle-class
10 Journal of Democracy

conservative party opposed to the euro common currency and to EU

bailouts of Southern Europe, but by the time of its entry into parliament
in 2017 it had morphed into a right-wing nationalist party accepting so-
cial protection “for Germans.” The U.K. Independence Party and Italy’s
Lega also started off with conservative economic profiles, but shifted to
the left in recent years. And during the 2018 parliamentary election in
Sweden, the populist, nativist, right-wing Sweden Democrats claimed
that they, rather than the Social Democrats, were the true defenders of
the Swedish welfare state.6
In addition to providing populists with an opportunity to cap-
ture growing economic discontent, the left’s economic shift served to
heighten the salience of social and cultural grievances. As left and right
converged on questions of economic policy, politicizing noneconomic
issues became, in the words of one cross-national study, an attractive
“survival strategy,” insofar as “shifting competition to a new issue do-
main allows parties to better distinguish themselves from one another
and thereby avoid losing voters to indifference.” These dynamics also
“incentivize new parties to emerge and compete on non-economic is-
sues.” Similarly, with fewer differences between the traditional left and
right on matters of economic policy, voters had reason to pay more at-
tention to noneconomic factors.7
Shifting the main axis of political competition from economic to so-
cial issues benefits the populist right more than the traditional left. His-
torically, at least, the left benefits most when class identities are strong
and dissatisfaction with market outcomes is high. In addition, the voting
base of leftist parties is more diverse than that of the right (in terms of
ethnicity, religion, and sexual identity) and is also divided between a
“new” or postmaterialist left and an “old” left that remains wedded to
traditional social norms. So when political competition centers on so-
cial issues, it becomes harder for social-democratic parties to build and
maintain broad, cohesive electoral coalitions.
The populist right’s appeal, on the other hand, was limited before its
economic change of course. Voters from less privileged socioeconomic
backgrounds, such as workers and those with low levels of education,
have always been conservative on social and cultural issues; they also,
however, have left-wing economic preferences. As long as right-wing
populists advocated conservative economic policies (and flirted openly
with fascism, which was universally rejected by European voters), vot-
ers with left-wing economic preferences would face tradeoffs voting for
them. But once right-wing populists shifted course, voters with conser-
vative social views and left-wing economic preferences no longer had to
choose between them when deciding how to vote.
Scholars and commentators accordingly have long recognized that
right-wing parties try, particularly during difficult economic times, to
direct the public’s attention to social issues and identities, as opposed to
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya 11

economic issues and class identities. As one study put it, as inequality
grew, right-wing parties increasingly sought “to draw voter attention
away from interests to values.”8 Right-wing populist voters are united
in their social and cultural views, and electorates associate populist par-
ties with issues such as immigration, law and order, and so on. (In the
parlance of political science, populist parties “own” these issues.) When
it comes to economic views, however, right-wing populist voters are di-
vided—for example, between workers and small-business owners—and
so it is in the interest of populist parties to keep social rather than eco-
nomic issues at the top of the political agenda. As one study put it, “radi-
cal right parties employ” different strategies with regard to economic
and noneconomic issues: “they compete on non-economic issues, while
blurring their stances on economic issues.”9 And so given the course
shifts by the center-left and populist right, it is not surprising that over
the past years many voters who in an earlier era would have voted for
the former began voting for the latter.10
The West European left’s economic shift not only had major conse-
quences at home; it also influenced the evolution of the left in postcom-
munist Eastern Europe. To gain legitimacy, many East European leftist
parties modeled themselves after their West European counterparts—
and by the late twentieth century, this meant adopting neoliberal policies
and portraying themselves as parties of technocrats and pragmatists. In
addition to providing a particular model of how a modern leftist party
should look, the West European left supported the neoliberal consensus
dominant in the international institutions that were key to shaping East-
ern Europe’s transition from communism to capitalist democracy. Be-
cause East European countries were saddled with debt and eager to join
the European Union, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the EU
had enormous influence over them.11 In some of these countries, parties
of the left embraced the reforms promoted by international institutions
even more fully than did parties of the right (being more likely, for ex-
ample, to adhere to fiscal austerity and tighter budget constraints).12 As
in Western Europe, this had tragic consequences.

The East European Story

As in the West, the acceptance of neoliberal policies by much of the
left in Eastern Europe initially made sense. It enabled these parties to
distance themselves from the communist past and to signal that they
embraced the Western economic consensus and were committed to join-
ing the EU.13 Given the overwhelming rejection of communism and the
strong support for joining Europe among East European publics, this re-
branding was critical in the short term in enabling parties of the left to
maintain support. Over the longer term, however, this strategy contained
the seeds of its own destruction.
12 Journal of Democracy

The transition out of communism in Eastern Europe created winners

and losers. As in Western Europe, the losers were concentrated within
the left’s “natural” constituencies: the low-skilled and less educated,
the elderly, and residents of rural and peripheral areas.14 Where parties
of the left were associated with neoliberal reforms during and after the
transition, their support dwindled among those who lost out in these
reforms, creating an opening for the populist right.
These trends have been particularly evident in Hungary and Poland.
After 1989 the former Hungarian communist party rapidly rebranded
itself as a social-democratic party (the MSzP), adopting a pro-European
stance and accepting the neoliberal policies advocated by the IMF and
the EU.15 After entering into a governing coalition with the liberal Al-
liance of Free Democrats in 1994, the party implemented further neo-
liberal reforms—most notably the austerity-oriented 1995 Bokros Pack-
age, which entailed devaluing Hungary’s currency and reducing social
benefits and real wages. Discontent with the fallout from these policies
cost the MSzP much of its popularity, and in 1998 elections it lost its
status as the largest parliamentary party.
Out of government, the MSzP reoriented itself once more, promising
that if it returned to power it would increase social spending. When a
governing coalition with the MSzP as its major partner was formed fol-
lowing the next elections in 2002, the party began borrowing to fund the
promised expenditures. It made an even stronger showing in 2006, this
time with promises to keep social expenditures high, but by this point
the debt incurred as a result of this spending had brought Hungary into
conflict with EU stability criteria. The MSzP-led government was thus
forced to backtrack and implement austerity measures, including hikes
in gas and electricity prices and in taxes.
Analysis of individual polling data by Maria Snegovaya shows that
each round of austerity diminished the MSzP’s popularity among voters.
A new austerity package was announced in June 2006, and support for
the party dropped by 12 points between May and August of that year.
Thus, even before the September 2006 leak of a tape in which the MSzP
prime minister admitted that he had lied about the economic difficulties
facing Hungary and before Hungarians began to suffer from the fallout
of the 2008 financial crisis, the MSzP’s poll numbers had fallen dramat-
ically. Meanwhile, support for Fidesz (a right-populist party) and later
for the extreme-right Jobbik party was increasing. Both parties attacked
the MSzP and promised to promote social justice, provide “honest jobs
and honest wages,” and stand up for the interests of “the people.”16 By
the 2010s, a majority of blue-collar workers supported Fidesz and Job-
bik.17 In interviews, some workers seemed to be ashamed to admit that
they voted for the MSzP, as the party had completely discredited itself
in their eyes by its support for neoliberal economic policies and its en-
tanglement in various corruption scandals.18
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya 13

The Polish left followed a similar trajectory. Like the MSzP, the
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD)—the successor of the Polish commu-
nist party—was initially supported by workers, pensioners, and some
members of the middle class. Also like the MSzP, the SLD, after coming
to power in 1993 in coalition with the agrarian Polish People’s Party,
agreed to a mass-privatization scheme, deregulation, strict fiscal and
budgetary policies, and the opening of the Polish economy to foreign
investors. After a poor showing in the 1997 legislative elections, the
party shifted course, promising to increase support for those suffering
as a result of economic change. This helped the SLD to return to power
after the 2001 elections in coalition with Labor Union and the Polish
People’s Party.
But with Poland on the threshold of joining the EU, the need to meet
the accession criteria forced the new government to enact further neo-
liberal reforms, including large tax increases and cuts in social benefits
(the total planned spending in the 2002 state budget was nearly 20 per-
cent lower than in the previous year). These moves caused a rapid drop
in support for the new government. Between November 2001, when the
cuts were announced, and December 2002, the SLD’s poll numbers fell
by 20 percentage points. Soon after, as in Hungary, corruption scandals
erupted, heightening popular disgust with the government. When ad-
ditional austerity measures were introduced at the end of 2003, the left
was pummeled, and the SLD received only 11.3 percent of the vote in
the 2005 legislative elections. Over the following years, many former
SLD supporters turned to the populist right-wing Law and Justice party.
This party criticized the nature of Poland’s transition in general and the
consequences of neoliberal policies in particular, promising to protect
those “left behind” in the new Poland.

Preempting the Populist Right?

In some Central European countries, leftist parties stuck with more
protectionist economic policies, regained the support of blue-collar vot-
ers, and thereby left less of an opening for the populist right. In Slo-
vakia, after the Party of the Democratic Left (SD¼) participated in the
neoliberal reform process and subsequently collapsed, another left-wing
party moved in to capitalize on popular dissatisfaction. Smer, under the
leadership of Robert Fico, presented itself as the protector of “ordinary
Slovaks” against social injustices committed by the previous govern-
ment, employers who failed to pay wages on time, and Roma who were
allegedly stealing from farmers.19 This profile enabled Smer to hold on
to traditionally left-leaning voters and to keep traditional “left” issues
such as poverty and social justice at the forefront of voters’ minds. Smer
incorporated SD¼ in 2005, and the resulting Smer-SD also proposed
adjusting Slovakia’s flat-rate value-added tax (VAT) to set an increased
14 Journal of Democracy

rate for the wealthy. After a strong performance in the 2006 parliamen-
tary election enabled his party to form a governing coalition, Fico con-
tinued to attack neoliberalism while adopting redistributionist policies,
including changes in the labor code, modifications to the flat tax en-
acted by the previous government, the abolition of doctors’ fees, and
the provision of additional payments to pensioners and to new parents.20
Combining left-leaning economic policies with moderate nationalism
enabled Smer to secure a dominant position in parliament for much of
the following decade.
Experimental work by Maria Snegovaya further demonstrates that
the ability of right-wing populists to present themselves as champions
of the welfare state has contributed to their success in Eastern Europe. In
surveys stipulating that parties of the left embraced promarket policies,
blue-collar and lower–middle-class voters said that they would choose
the populist right in the next election as long as it promised greater so-
cial protection. Without such promises, anti-immigrant appeals were not
enough to cause these voters to shift support to the populist right.
As in Western Europe, the left’s rightward shift on economic policy
not only created a political opportunity for the populist right, but also
produced electoral dynamics that encouraged divisive social and cultur-
al appeals. As one study put it, in East European countries where parties
of the left embraced neoliberal reforms, politicians unable to mobilize
their supporters on the basis of economic-policy disagreements had “in-
centives to construct a single powerful socio-cultural divide on which
to display meaningful programmatic differences and employ those to
attract voters.”21

Implications for the Left and for Democracy

The decline of the center-left is one of the most consequential trends
of recent decades. Although many factors have contributed to this de-
cline, we believe that the left’s economic shift was paramount.
First, this was not merely a shift in policies but a dramatic change in
the left’s profile, even its identity. From the late nineteenth through the
late twentieth century, the distinguishing feature of the social-democratic
left was its insistence—in contrast to communists, liberals, and others—
that it was possible to use the democratic state to mitigate or even elimi-
nate capitalism’s most destructive effects. This social-democratic view
was also, of course, the basis of the postwar order upon which successful
democracy was finally built in Western Europe after 1945. The social-
democratic left’s economic course shift during the late twentieth century
entailed a significant watering down of what had made it distinctive and
appealing. And so once the negative economic and social consequences of
neoliberal policies became clear, many voters decided that there was little
reason to vote for the left at all.
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya 15

Second, focusing on the left’s economic shift helps us to understand

why leftist parties have been having trouble in Western and Eastern Eu-
rope, as well as in regions such as Latin America. As Kenneth Roberts
argues, populist movements were particularly likely to emerge in coun-
tries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, where neoliberal reforms
were implemented in a “‘bait and switch’ manner—that is, by govern-
ments led by established center-left or populist parties.” In such cases,
those “left behind” by the reforms could no longer look to traditional
leftist parties to address their grievances and so turned to antisystem
parties and protests instead.22
Third, the political space opened up by the left’s economic transfor-
mation helps to explain the rise of populism. In Western Europe, estab-
lished parties on the far right with conservative or libertarian economic
profiles transformed themselves into defenders of interventionist states
and social safety nets, thereby taking advantage of the backlash against
globalization and austerity to expand their appeal. In Eastern Europe,
populists explicitly appealed to voters “left behind” by economic change
and by the policies that parties of the left had implemented.
The left’s economic shift likely also helped to fuel populism by rais-
ing the profile of social and cultural issues. With less to distinguish
mainstream parties from one another economically, party leaders as
well as voters had greater incentives to focus on other differences. But
shifting the main axis of debate to social and cultural issues helps the
right rather than the mainstream left. The latter historically has done
best when it is able to champion class and economic grievances, and
it is more divided internally on social and cultural questions, while the
populist right’s appeal is based mainly on its “ownership” of social and
cultural issues—the right benefits when economic issues are less promi-
nent in political debate.
The growing prominence of social and cultural issues is also key to
many of the broader problems now facing democracies in Europe and
beyond. These issues touch on questions of morality and identity. They
often have an “either/or” or “zero-sum” nature, and tend to be difficult
subjects for negotiation. By contrast, questions about the distribution of
economic resources—the main axis of party competition for much of the
postwar era—are more amenable to the compromise and bargaining that
lie at the heart of democracy.
Finally, the left’s rightward shift may have created an opening for
new challenges to liberal-democratic norms. During the postwar period,
those who felt “left behind” could find a champion in social-democratic
or center-left parties committed to the liberal-democratic rules of the
game. When such parties began abandoning this role, the resulting vac-
uum caused problems for liberal democracy. One of the most important
roles that parties play in democracy is providing citizens with an institu-
tionalized voice. But if traditional parties stop fulfilling this representa-
16 Journal of Democracy

tive function, voters who believe their interests, demands, and prefer-
ences are being consistently ignored may become susceptible to appeals
made by parties that question the legitimacy of liberal democracy itself.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to decouple democracy’s current malaise
from a crisis of representation, and it is difficult to decouple this crisis of
representation from the decline of the social-democratic or center left.

Looking to the Future

What does the future hold for the left and democracy? Can “new left”
parties take over the role played by social-democratic and center-left
parties during the postwar decades? In Germany, the Green Party—per-
haps the oldest “new left” party in Europe—has recently overtaken the
SPD in opinion polls. But this party, like its counterparts elsewhere,
distinguishes itself primarily by its “left-wing” views on noneconomic
issues such as the environment and immigration, rather than by a consis-
tently left-wing economic program. This explains why the Greens have
been able to ally at the state level with the center-right Christian Demo-
cratic Union and the liberal Free Democratic Party. Such “new left”
parties appeal primarily to highly educated, professional, cosmopolitan
urban dwellers, and they are poorly positioned to capture support from
those who feel economically “left behind.” Partly for this reason, it is
unclear whether these parties can garner enough support (in proportion-
al-representation systems) to anchor strong coalition governments on
the democratic left, much less form such governments on their own.
It is also unclear what the consequences for democracy will be if politi-
cal competition comes to be even more sharply focused on the social and
cultural issues often prioritized by “new left” and populist-right parties. In
Eastern Europe, the “natural” constituency for “new left” parties is much
smaller than in the West, which makes it even less likely that these parties
can replace the “old left” electorally or as an anchor for democracy.
Is it possible, then, for “old left” parties to reinvent themselves? Just
as an economic shift was the primary factor in the left’s demise, so too
will such a shift be needed if the left is to revive its political fortunes. As
noted above, voters who favor left-wing economic policies are divided
on social issues; as long as political competition focuses on such issues,
these voters will be split among the old left, the populist right, and (in
Western Europe) the new or Green left. On the other hand, populist-right
voters are united in their views on social issues, but divided in their
economic views (the same is true to a large degree of Green voters). If
competition focuses on social issues, these parties remain united, but if
it focuses on economic issues, they will face difficult choices. To move
forward, in short, the traditional left must diminish the salience of social
issues and identities and increase the salience of economic issues and
class identities in political competition.23
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya 17

One place where this seems at least partially to have occurred is Por-
tugal. After the 2015 election a Socialist government came to power in
Portugal, supported by the Communists and two other small left-wing
parties. Although these parties differed in important ways and had previ-
ously been unable to form a coalition, they agreed on one priority: end-
ing the punishing austerity program implemented by the previous cen-
ter-right government. Over the preceding years the Portuguese economy
had shrunk, unemployment and poverty had risen, and young people had
been leaving the country in droves. The Socialist government immedi-
ately reversed many of the policies that had hit the working and middle
classes particularly hard, including cutbacks in wages, pensions, and
social-security payments. The turnaround was remarkable: Once catego-
rized as an economic basket case on par with Greece and Italy, Portugal
became Europe’s success story, with growth recovering and the budget
deficit dropping dramatically (the current deficit of 0.5 percent of GDP
is the lowest recorded in Portugal in 45 years).24 As the New York Times
put it, “At a time of mounting uncertainty in Europe, Portugal has defied
critics who have insisted on austerity as the answer to the Continent’s
economic and financial crisis.”25
If leftist parties are to undergo a political revitalization, they will
need once again to offer voters a clear picture of what they stand for.
In Portugal, because the Socialists came to power with the help of other
leftist parties rather than as part of a grand coalition, they were able to
highlight the differences between the left and right on economic issues.
This reminded voters that democracy offers clear choices and helped
maintain economic issues as the main axis of political competition.
Success both for the left and for democracy will also require injecting
optimism back into politics. Portugal’s Socialist prime minister António
Costa and his allies have stressed the left’s rejection of the idea that the
fate of citizens or of their country is out of their hands. As Costa put it,
his government’s program was designed to make clear that “there is an
alternative to ‘There is no alternative.’” In a speech to the European Par-
liament, he reminded his colleagues that “What sets democratic politics
apart from populism is that democratic politics does not tap into fears.
. . . Democratic politics feels people’s problems, combating fears and
angst and give[s] hope back to people in their future.” Hope is what will
restore people’s “trust in democratic institutions and . . . belief in the
European Union.”26
If the left can once again offer distinctive and convincing economic
policies that promote greater opportunities for all, the appeal of divisive
social and cultural messages will diminish. This will decrease support
for populist parties (or provide an incentive for such parties to moder-
ate their positions), and politics will become less polarized and less of a
zero-sum game. These are the necessary conditions for democracy once
again to thrive.
18 Journal of Democracy

NOTES

1. Grigore Pop-Eleches, “Throwing Out the Bums: Protest Voting and Unorthodox
Parties after Communism,” World Politics 62 (April 2010): 221–60; Anna Grzymala-
Busse, “Hoist on Their Own Petards? The Reinvention and Collapse of Authoritarian Suc-
cessor Parties,” Party Politics, online 8 November 2017; Margit Tavits, Post-Communist
Democracies and Party Organization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

2. Sheri Berman, The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Eu-
rope’s Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Berman, “Un-
heralded Battle: Capitalism, the Left, Social Democracy, and Democratic Socialism,” Dis-
sent, Winter 2009.

3. Sheri Berman, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to
the Present Day (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), chapter 14.

4. Stephanie L. Mudge, Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neo-

liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018); and Mark Bovens and Anchrit
Wille, Diploma Democracy: The Rise of Political Meritocracy (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2017).

5. Jean-Marie Le Pen, L’Espoir (Paris: Editions Albatros, 1989).

6. Alexandre Afonso and Line Rennwald, “Scoial Class and the Changing Welfare
State Agenda of Radical Right Parties in Europe,” in Philip Manow, Bruno Palier, and
Hanna Schwander, Welfare Democracies and Party Politics: Explaining Electoral Dy-
namics in Times of Changing Welfare Capitalism (New York: Oxford, 2018).

7. Dalston Ward et al., “How Economic Integration Affects Party Issue Emphases,”
Comparative Political Studies 48, no. 10 (September 2015): 1233, 1235. Also Nils D.
Steiner and Christian W. Martin, “Economic Integration, Party Polarisation and Electoral
Turnout,” West European Politics 35, no. 2 (2012): 238–65; Dennis Spies, “Explaining
Working-Class Support for Extreme Right Parties: A Party Competition Approach,” Acta
Politica 48 (July 2013): 296–325; and Elisabeth Carter, The Extreme Right in Western
Europe: Success or Failure? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

8. Margit Tavits and Natalia Letki, “From Values to Interests? The Evolution of Party
Competition in New Democracies,” Journal of Politics 76 (January 2014): 246; and John
D. Huber, Exclusion by Elections: Inequality, Ethnic Identity, and Democracy (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2017).

9. Jan Rovny, “Where Do Radical Right Parties Stand? Position Blurring in Multidi-
mensional Competition,” European Political Science Review 5 (March 2013): 1–26.

10. Eelco Harteveld, “Winning the ‘Losers’ but Losing the ‘Winners’? The Electoral
Consequences of the Radical Right Moving to the Economic Left,” Electoral Studies 44
(December 2016), 225–34; Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, “The Vulnerable Populist Right Par-
ties: No Economic Realignment Fuelling Their Electoral Success,” European Journal of
Political Research 44 (May 2005): 465–92; and Jens Rydgren, ed., Class Politics and the
Radical Right (New York: Routledge, 2013).

11. Hilary Appel and Mitchell A. Orenstein, From Triumph to Crisis: Neoliberal
Economic Reform in Postcommunist Countries (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2018); Randall W. Stone, Lending Credibility: The International Monetary Fund and the
Post-Communist Transition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Grzegorz Eki-
ert, Jan Kubik, and Milada Anna Vachudova, “Democracy in the Post-Communist World:
An Unending Quest?” East European Politics and Societies 21 (February 2007): 7–30;
Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier, eds., The Europeanization of Central and
Eastern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); Grigore Pop-Eleches, From Eco-
Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya 19

nomic Crisis to Reform: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2009).

12. Margit Tavits and Natalia Letki, “When Left Is Right: Party Ideology and Policy
in Post-Communist Europe,” American Political Science Review 103 (November 2009):
555–69.

13. Grzymala-Busse, “Hoist on Their Own Petards?”; Grzymala-Busse, “The Program-

matic Turnaround of Communist Successor Parties in East Central Europe, 1989–1998,”
Communist and Post-Communist Studies 35 (March 2002): 51–66.

14. Joshua A. Tucker, Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia
and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999 (New York: Cambridge University Press), 2006.

15. Daniel F. Ziblatt, “The Adaptation of Ex-Communist Parties to Post-Communist

East Central Europe: A Comparative Study of the East German and Hungarian Ex-Com-
munist Parties,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31 (June 1998): 119–37.

16. Maria Snegovaya, “Ex-Communist Party Choices and the Electoral Success of the
Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2018).

17. Oddbjørn Knutsen, “Social Structure, Social Coalitions and Party Choice in Hun-
gary,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 46 (March 2013): 32. Snegovaya, “Ex-
Communist Party Choices.”

18. Eszter Bartha and András Tóth, “Munkásfiatalok az újkapitalizmusban” [Workers

in new capitalism], Educatio 26, no. 1 (2017): 75–86.

19. Brian Fabo, “Rediscovering Inequality and Class Analysis in Post-1989 Slovakia,”
East European Politics and Societies 29 (August 2015): 595.

20. Kevin Deegan-Krause and Tim Haughton, “The 2010 Parliamentary Elections in
Slovakia,” Electoral Studies 31 (March 2012): 222–25.

21. Herbert Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representa-

tion, and Inter-Party Cooperation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 267;
and Milada Anna Vachudova, “From Competition to Polarization in Central Europe: How
Populists Change Party Systems and Change the EU,” Polity, forthcoming.

22. Kenneth M. Roberts, “Populism, Political Mobilizations, and Crises of Political

Representation,” in Carlos de la Torre, ed., The Promise and Perils of Populism: Global
Perspectives (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 152.

23. Spies, “Explaining Working-Class Support”; and Winston Chou et al., “The Il-
lusion of Radical Right Partisan Stability: How Party Positioning Affects Radical Right
Voting in Germany” (working paper, Princeton University, 2018).

24. Peter Wise, “Portugal Posts Lowest Budget Deficit in 45 Years of Democracy,”
Financial Times, 26 March 2019.

25. Liz Alderman, “Portugal Dared to Cast Aside Austerity. It’s Having a Major Re-
vival,” New York Times, 22 July 2018.

26. “Social Democracy Is Floundering Everywhere in Europe, Except Portugal,” Econ-

omist, 14 April 2018; Jon Stone, “Reject Austerity to Defeat Populism, Portugal’s Social-
ist Prime Minister António Costa Tells EU,” Independent, 14 March 2018.