The disinterested observer might be perplexed by the righteous posing of political leaders in democracies and be left wondering just exactly what is this precious bundle of “values” to which authoritarians are a threat.
Few of us would emigrate to North Korea, Iran, or Afghanistan. But the lack of human, civil, and political rights in those close-to-totalitarian states should not obscure the gap between the idealised version of democracy and the reality.
Our political elites are now declaring that the disruptive and populist parties are a threat to democracy. Ironically, this is because these parties are garnering an ever-bigger share of the popular vote in democratic elections. Somehow, finding electoral success in a democracy is a threat to democracy. There is an asinine quality to this circular argument. It might be a called a democracy, but apparently the people are wrong and the elites are always right.
In the UK election this year, Labour got around a third of the vote and secured a massive majority in Parliament. Having gathered almost exactly the same share of vote in the election for the National Assembly in France, the National Rally (Rassemblement National) is excluded from government. Similarly, in Australia in 2022, Labor’s primary vote was 32.5%, a third roughly, but it achieved a majority of parliamentary seats. The Coalition, on the other hand, gained 35.7% of the primary vote and lost government.
The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is currently polling around 17% nationally in Germany and secured around a third of the vote in the recent Thuringia (34%) and Saxony (31%) state elections, but will be excluded from government in both. Moreover, even with substantial electoral support the AfD has been found to be “a suspected threat to democracy” by a German court. Are those who voted for the AfD also threats to democracy?
Since World War II, seven American presidential elections have been won by a candidate who received less than 50% of the popular vote. In their victories, George W. Bush and Donald Trump actually received less of the popular vote than their opponents.
If those numbers were all our disinterested observer knew about democracy, they would likely conclude these political systems aren’t in the same category. If told that, theoretically, these are examples of an ideal based on popular sovereignty, equal representation, and one-vote-one-value, they might demur. It cannot be assumed, they might conclude, that a “so-called” democratic process will always deliver equivalent outcomes.
The machinations of President Emmanuel Macron and the lengths he has been prepared to go to in order to obstruct the will of the people is astonishing. Because the ‘right wing’ (a wholly inadequate descriptor for current times) National Rally secured 31.4% of the vote in the elections for the European Parliament, crushing Macron’s centrist coalition, he called a snap national election to, as he said, show “confidence in our democracy, in letting the sovereign people have their say”. It seemed like an autocrat giving the people a chance to get it right this time.
The voters still got it wrong in Macron’s opinion, by again rejecting the centrists and giving an increased share of the vote to National Rally (37.1%). The ‘left wing’ coalition, the New Popular Front, only acquired 26.3% in the second round, but now has the largest number of seats in the National Assembly.
Macron has further thwarted the democratic process by appointing a prime minister from the least successful party in the election, Les Républicains (6.2%). Bizarrely, in an attempt to keep the left out of power Macron has compromised with the right despite the fact that keeping the right out of government was the reason he called the unnecessary election.
Ah, democracy.
During the reign of the coalition headed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Germany has seen an upsurge in support for the AfD and it is now the second most popular party after the Christian Democrats. The results in the Thuringia and Saxony state elections were a shock to Scholz who subsequently said, “All democratic parties are now called upon to form stable governments without right-wing extremists”. Given Germany’s history, the concern is understandable. However, as Scholz’s party, the Social Democrats, only received 6.2% and 7.6% in Thuringia and Saxony respectively, it is hard to argue he has any popular democratic mandate to seek the exclusion of the AfD from government.
In America, President Joe Biden has consistently declared his predecessor a threat to democracy, and with some justification after January 2021. Nevertheless, the polls show electoral support for Donald Trump steady at nearly 50% and most experts thought that before Biden withdrew from the presidential race Trump was favoured to beat him. Would a Trump victory at the polls be undemocratic? Are half of American voters illegitimately exercising their political rights?
In the instances of the UK, France, and Germany in Europe, and in America, the amount of popular support a party or candidate attracts in a democratic election is not necessarily related to the power they will have, or to perceptions of their legitimacy. In fact, even relatively popular rising parties are regarded as somehow illegitimate by those who have traditionally dominated the political scene in those states.
These efforts to halt the rise of unorthodox, disruptive, or illiberal parties by attempting to disenfranchise their supporters are more likely to encourage than douse their aspirations. Suggesting that the disgruntled and the disadvantaged are victims of demagoguery and populism doesn’t address the sources of their disaffection with liberal democracy, or deal with the dissatisfaction and dissent they express about the performance of the traditional parties.
If the traditional parties, that are now lamenting the popularity of formerly marginalised political programs, were to focus more on equality, access to justice, protection of privacy, consumer rights, and the effective delivery of health, education, and other services, they might see their political fortunes restored.
Copyright Mike Scrafton. This article may be reproduced under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence for non-commercial purposes, and providing that work is not altered, only redistributed, and the original author is credited. Please see the Cross-post and re-use policy for more information.
Also published in John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations.