Proportional systems give a louder legislative voice to parties like the AfD and Vox winner-takes-all systems keep them quiet.įor example, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), despite winning more than 12% of the vote, secured only one seat in Parliament in the 2015 general election. It is often said that majoritarian electoral systems – as in the US and UK – help to shut extreme views out, while proportional systems – more common in Europe – welcome them in. Why did Europe largely avoid the sort of populism that took root in the US and UK in 2016? And why are populist parties now steadily marching into the mainstream across the continent? Neo-Nazi groups are growing in Austria.Īnd in Spain, the center-left coalition looks set to crumble after elections this weekend, paving the way for the far-right Vox party to enter government for the first time as part of a coalition. Far-right parties are propping up coalitions in Finland and Sweden. In France, the perma-threat of a Marine Le Pen presidency grows with every protest against Macron’s government, whether over police violence or pension reform. The AfD recently won a district council election for the first time, with more victories expected to follow.

Italy’s government under Giorgia Meloni is further to the right than at any point since the rule of Mussolini.

The far right is on the march across the continent. Voters in European nations largely toed the line. The story of that period was the so-called populist “wave” cresting early, and not sweeping much away. The billionaire tycoon Andrej Babis gained power that same year – but told CNN at the time he was more like the Czech Michael Bloomberg than the Czech Donald Trump. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged to third place in the 2017 federal elections. There were outliers: Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland and Viktor Orban in Hungary continued to shape their nations in their populist parties’ image. Mario Draghi, the technocrat par excellence, slid seamlessly from the European Central Bank to Italy’s premiership. Angela Merkel’s resignation passed without populist fanfare and delivered a moderate successor. In the five years from 2016, French centrism spurted out a new political party led by Emmanuel Macron that quelled the National Front. Brussels had fretted about a “Brexit domino effect.” In reality, the opposite came to be. Long-held grievances in the United Kingdom and United States fueled Brexit and took Donald Trump to the White House, but Europe – seeming at times to look aghast across the Channel and Atlantic – appeared largely immune. While the Anglosphere was wracked by a burst of populism in 2016, most European countries proved remarkably resilient.

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