THE HAGUE — Even before Andrej Babi?, the anti-establishment millionaire candidate of the ANO party, declared victory in the Czech parliamentary elections this past weekend, 2017 was widely seen as the year Europe succumbed to populism.
“You could say these are the quarterfinals,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in March before facing voters. “The half finals are in France, in April and May — and September in Germany we have the finals.”
Rutte might well have been describing the fate of one of the world’s oldest modern political traditions. Less publicized than the rise of populism, but no less relevant, is the near collapse of a number of mainstream social democratic parties, political entities that since World War II have both kept the balance in national parliaments and are collectively responsible for a much of the social welfare policies that make European states such enviable places to live.
In five major national elections held since March, the traditional social democratic parties have collectively lost a total of 368 seats. All are parties that ruled (in some cases as junior coalition partners) their countries in the last election cycle — and many times before that.
“How many wake-up calls do we need?” warned Sergei Stanishev, president of the Party of European Socialists, in an open letter published by POLITICO last December. “Are we sleeping so soundly that the alarm keeps ringing and ringing, but we don’t stir?”
Comparing seats in neighboring parliaments is an imprecise exercise given both the varying sizes of the chambers — the Dutch Tweede Kamer seats 150 deputies, for example, while the German Bundestag seats 709 — and the fact not all social democratic parties are alike. However, 10 months into 2017, once-mainstream social democratic or labor parties now collectively occupy fewer than 15 percent of the seats in Dutch, French, German, Austrian and Czech lower houses of government. At the beginning of the year , roughly 35 percent of lawmakers in those same countries had represented mainstream social democratic parties.
Experts say that the decline is more than just the result of synchronized cyclical losses.
“The history of social democracy of the past 15 years has been a history of steady decline.” said Philippe Marlière of University College London at a political symposium in Athens last year. “The structural decline is due to the deep transformation of the traditional constituencies of social democracy: blue collar workers, white collar workers and employees.”
If the disappearance of the traditional working class — whose unionized members were steadfast labor voters — is one cause, another is the rightward drift of many of these parties beginning in the late 1990s under national leaders like Gerhard Schröder in Germany and Tony Blair in the United Kingdom. It’s a shift that in many countries endures.
Founded in 1863, the German SPD is one of the continent’s oldest and arguably most important social democratic parties. Yet it drew a mere 20.5 percent of voter support in September’s elections, less than at any point since it started running in national elections again following WWII.
Similar to other political landscapes of its neighbors, German politics offers progressive voters a number of choices, including the Left party and the Green party — the latter which is poised to assume the junior coalition role in the new government. Once-mainstream social democratic parties will face an uphill battle getting back their majorities, say experts.
Here in the Netherlands, there are three progressive parties who welcomed disenfranchised labor voters. That’s not counting all those voters who forego social democratic parties to give the populist candidate a try.
In the Czech Republic, meanwhile, the Social Democratic Party, known by its Czech acronyms ?SSD, lost 35 of its 50 seats, a shattering result. The party that put up more prime ministers than any other since the country was formed at the beginning of 1993 is now tied for fifth place in parliament.
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Social Democrats Across Europe Face Collapsing Support originally appeared on usnews.com
