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Populism, the ‘people’ and the illusion of democracy – The Front National and UKIP in a comparative context

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French Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

The 2014 European elections confirmed the prominence in the media of what is commonly called the far right. While parties such as the Front National and UKIP were successful in the elections, their performance has since been exaggerated and they have benefited from a disproportionate coverage. Aiding their apparently ‘irresistible rise’, their normalisation was greatly facilitated by their description as ‘populist’ parties. However, while this term ‘populism’ has been almost universally accepted in the media, it remains a hotly debated concept on the academic circuit, and its careless use could in fact prove counterproductive in the assessment of the current state of democracy in Europe. Instead of focusing on the reasons behind the rise of these parties, similarities and differences already widely covered in the literature, this article hypothesises that a skewed and disproportionate coverage of the European elections in particular, and the ‘rise’ of ‘right-wing populism’ in general, have prevented a thorough democratic discussion from taking place and impeded the possibility of other political alternatives.

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Notes

  1. For definitions of terms such as extreme right and radical right see Mondon (2013).

  2. The exceptions to this may be the short-lived Narodnichestvo movement that emerged in Russia in the late nineteenth century and the American populist movement of the same period. However, they were hardly coherent movements, and their ideological distinctiveness, particularly in the American case, is often difficult to sustain (see Kazin, 1995; Venturi, 2001).

  3. For example, Libération’s front page after the first round of the local elections carried the headline ‘fear over our towns’ (peur sur les villes).

  4. However, negative coverage can be positive in the long run and can in fact participate in the normalisation of the party if the negative element targeted is referred to as ‘an accident’, as is commonly the case with racist comments from party members. Often, such ‘incidents’ are twisted to benefit the far right as the focus is quickly moved from the shocking comment or event (often an overtly racist one), to the reaction of party leaders – be it the denunciation of the incident or the minimisation of the impact – instead of a scrutiny of the damage done. For two examples among many, see Le Monde and AFP (2014) and Mason (2013). In both cases, the parties are allowed to give their own account of the event and deflect the seriousness of the ‘accusations’, rather than face external scrutiny. On many other occasions, the ‘perpetrators’ themselves are given ample media opportunities to defend themselves and claim that they are not racist/sexist/homophobic, leaving analysis in the background.

  5. For Dunaway et al (2010), ‘even when an issue is not a daily and immediate concern, constant media attention primes issue awareness by making it more accessible in the mind or by increasing the issue’s perceived importance’.

  6. Surel and Mény have also noted that the ‘constitutionalist dimension of democracy [has become] so developed that some believe it jeopardises the very existence of democracy itself – that is people’s democracy’ (Mény and Surel, 2002).

  7. Muxel (2007) stresses rightly that abstention is not mere apathy as it regroups both those who, by opting out of voting, opt out of politics as whole, and those who opt out of voting as a political act.

  8. For Muxel (2007), they are part of the first group of abstainers who accept their exclusion from politics and the political, because of their individual situation, but also for a feeling of incompetence. However, they hold a deeper resentment towards society as it is.

  9. Abstainers are often considered as lazy, bad citizens, disrespectful of the rights so painfully gained by our ancestors and so on. In 2002, Norris described voting as ‘the lifeblood of representative democracy’, insinuating thereby that abstention would risk the death of democracy.

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  1. Department of PoLIS, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    Aurelien Mondon

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Mondon, A. Populism, the ‘people’ and the illusion of democracy – The Front National and UKIP in a comparative context. Fr Polit 13, 141–156 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2015.6

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