Le Pen’s defeat in France aside, assess populism case by case

It’s no surprise that critics of Donald Trump and of the Brexit voters are rejoicing at Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the French presidential election. A triumph for Marine Le Pen and her virulently anti-American Front National genuinely would have been a disaster.

The Daily Beast now also reassures us that “the populist wave crashing across the world has come to a halt in France.”  A bit less bombastically, the Washington Post reports that “with (the) Le Pen defeat, Europe’s far-right surge stalls.”  

{mosads}One could argue as well that the May 7 legislative elections in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein confirmed a positive trend. The right-wing populists of Alternative für Deutschland garnered less than 6 percent of the vote, about what polls had been predicting, barely squeaking into the Schleswig-Holstein parliament.

Still, we should be cautious about drawing too many broad conclusions from these positive results. Analysts over-generalized in predicting a populist electoral wave in Western countries. However, the broad economic, political, and societal trends that have worked to the benefit of populist parties have not suddenly disappeared. It’s just that those trends seem to play out differently depending on context. One should assess the prospects for populist success on a country-by-country basis, sometimes even region-by-region within countries.

Americans, don’t look to the British elections for a referendum on Trump https://t.co/NSZ8ODNYVZ pic.twitter.com/OScyOBVtm7

— USA Social (@USA_Sociall) May 9, 2017

There is reason for optimism about Germany, where the Sept. 24 federal parliament election looks like the usual competition between the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the long-standing parties of the mainstream moderate right and moderate left.  (My money is on Angela Merkel, especially given the poor results for the Social Democrats in the elections in Schleswig-Holstein, where they had been governing since 2012.)

On the other hand, things in Italy, one of the largest EU countries, don’t look good. Parliamentary elections must take place by February 2018. Polls show the radical tecno-populist 5 Star Movement is running neck-and-neck at around 30 percent with the governing Democrats, a party of the moderate left, roughly comparable to the socialist, social-democratic, and labor parties in the rest of Western Europe.

The Northern League, another populist party that can sound like the Front National with a regionalist spin, is nipping at the heels of Forza Italia, the more conventional center-right party of Silvio Berlusconi, who is trying for a political comeback. (They are at around 12-13 percent.) Projections for the Chamber of Deputies vote indicate no clear paths to a governing majority.

Le Pen’s National Front party will change name after French election loss https://t.co/NfP7ckRPgO pic.twitter.com/irMLHyp6Qw

— The Hill (@thehill) May 7, 2017

Turning back to France, one should remember too that Macron’s success in the presidential vote does not mean he necessarily will have a supportive majority in the French legislature, to be elected in two rounds on June 11 and 18. True, the French electoral system is designed to ensure governability. Holding legislative elections right on the heels of presidential balloting, for example, is intended to provide a governing majority for the president’s party. But it’s not clear the electoral system will work as intended this time around.

That’s because the French party system is changing. (Some might say deteriorating.) Since 1981, France has had something close to a two-party system, with alternation between the moderate right heirs to De Gaulle and the Socialists, now firmly on the moderate left.  

The two-round system for electing legislators, one from each of 577 districts for the National Assembly elections, has favored the two biggest parties, the Gaullists and the Socialists. It is usually their candidates who have made it into the second round run-offs. The system has made it difficult for upstart parties to gain much of a voice in the National Assembly. (The Front National, though it is the preferred party of 20-25 percent of French voters, only has two of the 577 seats at present.) But France now is moving from a basically two-party system to more of a three- or four-party system.

Trump calls to congratulate France’s Macron after election victory over Le Pen https://t.co/nSd77MBjF1 pic.twitter.com/cI9FZNuZzY

— The Hill (@thehill) May 8, 2017

The first round of this year’s presidential balloting was frankly a debacle for both of the traditional main parties, especially the Socialists, while in second-round balloting Le Pen demonstrated the ability to pick up some votes from outside her own party. And Macron’s En Marche! movement will be a major player in the legislative elections, even though it is still a work in progress in terms of structure and organization.

It is very difficult to make solid predictions regarding the French legislative elections. Based on the presidential voting, district-by-district, one projection has the legislative candidates of Macron’s En Marche! making it into the second-round run-off in 425 of 577 districts. According to this projection, Front National candidates would make it into 295 run-offs, with supporters of left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 237, and Gaullist or other center-right candidates in 227. And the number of three-way run-offs, possible if a third candidate gets more than 12.5 percent of the vote in the first round, could be unusually high.  

In presidential balloting, some Gaullist and Mélenchon voters, estimated at 20 percent and 7 percent, respectively, did swing to Le Pen in the second round. A similar trend could complicate things for pro-Macron candidates in some legislative run-offs against Front National candidates.  In sum, a highly complex scenario.

Whatever does happen in the legislative elections, it is unquestionable that Macron won the presidency in part because of the idiosyncratic French electoral system. Given our own idiosyncratic political and electoral system, we in the U.S. should be careful of trying to draw lessons from the French case, or any of the other European cases, regarding what might happen to American populism.

It is tempting for some to cast Macron as a French version of Barack Obama or to treat Macron’s victory as “another rebuke” to Donald Trump. But Macron’s success derived from some very specifically French realities and the concerns of French voters regarding the fate of their own country. Just as the outcome of the elections in the U.S. between now and November 2020 will reflect perceptions of reality on Main Street, not on the Champs-Elysées.

Eric R. Terzuolo’s assignments as a Foreign Service Officer included a tour of duty at the US Embassy in Paris. Since 2010, he has been on contract to the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute, responsible for West European area studies.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.