Via the BBC: Voters steer Europe to the right
Far-right and anti-immigration parties also made gains, as turnout figures plunged to 43% – the lowest since direct elections began 30 years ago. have nowhere near the data need to come close to reaching such a conclusion.The UK Labour Party, Germany’s Social Democrats and France’s Socialist Party were heading for historic defeats.
The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) looks set to continue to hold power in the parliament.
What I have found interesting about these elections is some of the reactions/interpretations that I have been reading as folks on this side of the pond seek to interpret the results in fairly simplistic terms that attempt to make sweeping statements about European politics.
For example, in today’s OC Register (Conservatives win EU Parliament voting:
Conservatives scored victories in some of Europe’s largest economies Sunday as voters punished left-leaning parties in European Parliament elections in France, Germany and other nations.Some right-leaning parties said the results vindicated their reluctance to spend more on company bailouts and fiscal stimulus to combat the global economic crisis.
This appears to be a fairly typical line of thinking. However, trying to read too much into one election is always problematic. These results have more to do with a melange of domestic politics than they do with some sweeping repudiation of a specific ideological strain of thought. Some of these trends, such at the UK case, are long-standing and not especially surprising. Also, US readers need to be careful about assuming that all political parties fit neatly into an American version of left/right. Further, I would expect that in many cases parties in power are being punished at the polls at the first chance that voters have been able to cast ballots since the global economic crisis hit. As such, the idea that these elections necessarily tell us anything about shifts in European ideological views is dubious.
For example, I have to take exception with the following conclusion drawn by Michael van der Galien over the weekend:
European voters realize that not American capitalism, nor free markets, but progressive, leftist policies are to blame for today’s severe economic crisis. Capitalism and free markets were declared dead alright, but not by voters but by journalists, most of whom are socialists.
If anything, it is problematic to severely dichotomize policy in that way. Beyond that, we are talking about one election for a body that is unique in its scope and limited in its policymaking powers–facts which by themselves make it difficult to draw any sweeping conclusions. While it is possible to argue that the above postulated storyline about ideology is correct, the fact of the matter is that we have nowhere near the data needed to come close to reaching such a conclusion.
Getting back to the issue of whether the election equals a repudiation of government involvement in the economy/massive spending in the context of the financial crisis isn’t paying attention to what “conservative”/”center-right” politicians have done in Europe of late.
By way of concluding, it is worth noting that it wasn’t just right-ish parties that made gains (back to the BBC piece):
Greens also made gains – the Green-European Freedom Alliance bloc has so far taken 50 seats, compared with 43 in the last assembly.Sweden’s Pirate Party, which wants to legalise internet file sharing, won 7% of the national vote and one of the country’s 18 seats in the European Parliament.
James Joyner has a write-up on the elections over at the New Atlanticist, which includes a graphic of the projected coalitional breakdown of the EU Parliament post-election as well as some useful linkage.
He points to a Times of London piece that I think has a more intersting and useful analysis than the left/right stuff noted above: European elections: extremist and fringe parties are the big winners:
Extremist and fringe parties were the beneficiaries as voters across Europe deserted mainstream parties or stayed at home in protest at the state of their economies.
In regards to a point I made above, the piece states
Governing parties generally suffered but this trend was bucked in Italy, where Silvio Berlusconi’s Party of Freedom was heading for gains, and in France, where Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP recovered dramatically from a poor showing in 2004.
and
Countries that have borne the brunt of the recession experienced the biggest shake-ups
On balance, that is what one ought to expect in the current economic climate.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
The reality is that voters tend to punish the folks in power in bad times, especially if they look hapless in the process (and the disheveled Gordon Brown looks pretty hapless in the best of times). Republicans hammered in November, British Labor hammered in local and European elections, left punished across Europe (with Italy’s center right being one of the few exceptions to the losses).
There’s some type of equilibrium that has to be reachieved on occasion.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
It is worth noting that many of the “conservative” parties that gained votes and seats are in favor of more, not less, government intervention in the economy (national government, not EU, that is).
And of the mainstream “conservatives” in the EPP, many are well to the left of US Republicans. Some of them are probably even left of Obama. The UK Conservatives (who are nowadays pretty similar to US Republicans) can’t crow too much about their plurality of votes and seats, as they won less than 30% of the vote and only very slightly more than in 2004.
Also, the biggest gainer in the UK was the Green party, despite all the hoopla around the UKIP (which actually did not gain much) and the BNP (which also did not gain much in votes, with its seat breakthrough more a product of the low turnout). Greens did pretty well in several countries and the “libertarian” Pirate Party in Sweden has already said it will caucus with the Green group in the Euro Parl.
Basically, this all just supports Steven’s argument that to view this election–or European party politics more generally–through the standard US media tunnel vision is vastly simplistic.
June 9th, 2009 at 1:28 am
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