EU: Populists, greens and the new map of European politics

‘Peak populism’ and the ‘green wave‘ was how many observers summarised the outcome of the recent European Parliament elections. Green parties will have 69 seats in the new parliament, up from 51 in the last, while right-wing populists increased their vote share to 25 per cent from 20 per cent last time. As is the case in many national parliaments, a critical consequence of this rise of green and populist parties is that for the first time since direct elections to the European Parliament began in 1979, traditional centre-right and centre-left parties will no longer have a majority in it.

How can we understand these trends? Although right-populist and green parties are often considered polar opposites, they are similar in that both are what political scientists refer to as ‘niche parties’: they draw their strength from their association with a particular issue—immigration and environmentalism, respectively. Perhaps for this reason, most explanations for their rise focus almost exclusively on structural trends which have purportedly propelled these issues to the forefront of political competition.

Green party advance, it is argued, is thus best understood as a consequence of the growth of post-materialist values, which emphasise self-expression and quality-of-life issues, such as the environment, over economic and physical security, while populism’s success reflects the surge in immigration—or, rather, voters’ backlash against it. Yet, while seemingly intuitive, such explanations are at best the beginning of the story of the rise of green and populist parties, not its end.

Read more at: Populists, greens and the new map of European politics • Social Europe

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