The End of Politics and the Rise of the Radical Right
Mouffe, Chantal
In many European countries, far-right political parties have made important gains. During the past year, elections in France, Belgium, Austria, and Italy have shown the extreme...
...Here too, empowerment of the myriad of self-organized groups that constitute civil society is seen as the answer to the growing inability of political institutions to deal with contemporary complexity...
...Without coming to terms with the roots of popular antagonism, no one will be able to reverse the trend...
...The accepted wisdom is that in the context of European integration, there is no alternative to a monetary policy of franc fort and that the defense of a strong currency must take precedence over the problem of unemployment Several political analysts see those transformations as a confirmation of the "end of politics" thesis...
...A Crisis of Representation In my view, recent elections in France, in May for the presidency and in June at the local level, though they did not confirm all of Todd's predictions, argue in favor of his analysis...
...Such a class does not possess a collective consciousness, but its conditions of existence are very similar...
...The End of Politics...
...On the other side, the strong showing in the first round of the presidential elections by "anti-establishment" parties of both right and left (their added votes amounted to 37 percent) are a sign of growing disaffection from the traditional parties...
...They are the expression of antagonisms that need to be given a political outlet within a democratic project...
...The objective is to allow for a real democratic confrontation about political values, phrased in terms of conflicting interpretations of a shared democratic tradition...
...We are on the verge of another great advance, both technological and political...
...To be sure, compromises are possible...
...While society has discarded hierarchy, certainty, and homogeneity to become a "hypermarket society," driven by individualism and egalitarianism, they have not been following suit...
...This situation progressively eroded due to the loss of influence of both the church and the Communists, and the political panorama was profoundly transformed after the Socialist party (PS) came to power in 1981...
...democracy's triumph in the next century can be guaranteed...
...If this framework does not exist, the transformation of antagonism into agonism will be blocked...
...When political lines become blurred, the dynamics of politics FALL • 1995 • 501 Rise of the Radical Right is obstructed and the constitution of distinctive political identities is hindered...
...This approach is nicely exemplified by Martin Jacques, one of the founders of Demos, a new British think tank, and previously editor o fMarxism Today, who celebrates the "end of politics...
...In those conditions, the opponent can only be envisaged as an enemy to be destroyed and not as an adversary whose rights must be respected...
...it requires putting into question many received ideas...
...When, after a brief attempt to implement radical policies, the Socialists decided to limit themselves to measures aimed a making capitalism more humane, the "Jacobin" model of politics was officially buried...
...To come to accept the position of the adversary is to undergo a radical change in political identity...
...We will fight against her ideas but we will not put into question her right to defend them...
...In all these cases, it is important to realize that one of the reasons for the growth of the radical right is the lack of political representation given by the main parties to an important sector of the popular classes whose demands they consider retrograde...
...Since there is no alternative to the dominant economic model, this problem is best tackled without reference to outdated ideologies...
...Hence the disaffection of the public and its distrust of politicians...
...If one takes into account what he calls the "anthropological" dimension of the social structure, that is, the large number of marriages between blue-collar workers and low-level white-collar workers, one must acknowledge the existence of a "popular" class, distinct from the middle class and not "excluded...
...These demands cannot be dismissed as archaic relics soon to be replaced by modern postconventional identities...
...We will not be able to counter the right if we do not challenge the basic assumptions of the consensus approach...
...If the "nationalism of exclusion" advocated by Le Pen is the only ideology in which they can recognize their concerns, it is likely that they will increasingly give their allegiance to the National Front...
...Deprived of its organizing principle by the decline of the working class, left politics especially has lost its bearings...
...Their incapacity to understand the rise of the extreme right is also due to their inadequate grasp of the construction of political identities...
...Since 1946—but, of course, it goes back much further—French political life had been strongly polarized between antagonistic forces...
...An adversary is a legitimate enemy, an enemy with whom we have in common a shared adhesion to the ethico-political principles of democracy...
...A new type of middle-class voter, for whom ideFALL • 1995 • 499 Rise of the Radical Right ology has become irrelevant, has been created through the homogenizing influence of the media...
...She or he has no stable allegiances and does not identify with any party...
...But there is no reason to believe that this is an irreversible process and still less that it is something to be celebrated...
...This category of the adversary does not eliminate antagonism, though, and it should be distinguished from the liberal notion of the competitor with which it is sometimes identified...
...But these institutions are the embodiment of "ethico-political" values, and there will always be disagreement concerning the interpretation of those values...
...participation declines...
...A pluralistic democratic order supposes that the opponent is not an enemy to be destroyed but an adversary whose existence is legitimate and must be tolerated...
...Breaking with the symbolic representation of society as an organic body, democratic society makes room for the expression of conflicting interests and values...
...But our disagreement concerning their meaning and implementation is not one that can be resolved through rational agreement, hence the antagonistic element in the relation...
...Contrary to the liberal model of "deliberative democracy," according to which decisions on matters of common concern should result from free and unconstrained public discussion, this model of "agonistic pluralism" stresses that the aim of democratic institutions is not to eliminate antagonism or to relegate it to the sphere of the private (in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere...
...There is no contradiction here: consensus is needed on the institutions that are constitutive of democracy...
...She or he acts in the political arena as a consumer in a shopping center, trying different products, picking one or the other according to changing moods...
...Hence they are susceptible to a politics that offers simplistic solutions...
...It now takes place in thousands of groups in civil society and is focused on a variety of issues related to the individual...
...To be sure, there has been a decline in the number of traditional workers, and nobody believes any more in the privileged role of the proletariat...
...He argues that the political system should adapt to the 498 • DISSENT Rise of the Radical Right new "pick-and-choose society" by playing a less important role...
...But they should be seen as temporary respites in an ongoing confrontation, not as the main aim of the democratic struggle...
...the only exceptions are a small elite of very rich, on one side, and those who are "excluded," on the other...
...In their view, there is nothing to worry about...
...France and the "Republic of the Center" The case of France illustrates my argument...
...This is what the struggle between left and right should be about...
...Whatever their differences, these diverse perspectives share the assumption that the disappearance of class identities and the end of the bipolar system of confrontation have rendered conventional politics obsolete...
...500 • DISSENT Rise of the Radical Right It seems legitimate therefore to affirm that France is witnessing a crisis of representation in which many popular demands cannot find channels of expression within the traditional political system...
...Democracy as Agonistic Pluralism If both political elites and mainstream political scientists have such difficulty coming to terms with the current situation, it is not only because they are blind to the problems of the popular sectors...
...To be sure, this is not an easy task...
...During the past year, elections in France, Belgium, Austria, and Italy have shown the extreme right consolidating its grip and steadily attracting new voters...
...Indeed, one of the main problems nowadays is that the left's acceptance of pluralism and liberal democratic institutions has been accompanied by the mistaken belief that this meant abandoning any attempt to offer an alternative to the present hegemonic order...
...Todd claims that this group represents 50 percent to 55 percent of the population and that its behavior explains the instability in French politics in the last two decades...
...After having made possible Mitterrand's victory in 1981, its members became disillusioned with the Socialists...
...The main problem of European politics resides in the incapacity of the established political forces to provide an adequate vocabulary for the new antagonisms that have emerged in the last decades...
...Such volatile behavior explains the swings in electoral results that France has recently witnessed...
...But the fact that increasing sectors of the population are becoming permanently unemployed is perceived more as a problem to be solved than as an indication that something is basically flawed in the political consensus...
...Since their demands are perceived as backward and nationalistic, they receive little echo among the main parties...
...By assuming that this resistance to (what they see as) a necessary phase of modernization is temporary and ultimately retrograde, the main parties are making a dangerous bet...
...it is concerned with the formation of a "we" as opposed to a "them...
...But this is to miss a crucial point about the integrative effects of conflict in modern democracy...
...The blurring of the line between left and right is a step toward a more mature society...
...It is to provide democratic channels of expression for the legitimate forms of antagonism...
...It has been unable to make the necessary adjustments, and the whole dynamic of the political system has been thrown into disarray...
...83, January-February 1995) Emmanuel Todd argues that, far from having disappeared, the polarization of the social structure between people and elites still provides the key to understanding French politics...
...Alas, the result is not a more mature, reconciled society without sharp divisions but the growth of other types of collective identities around religion, nationalism, or ethnicity...
...To be sure, the language in which these demands are articulated is xenophobic and unacceptable in a pluralist democracy...
...Jacques urges us, however, not to envisage such a transformation in a negative way...
...The current disaffection with politics and political parties is undeniable, and so to a certain extent is the blurring of the left/right distinction...
...These are people who voted against the Maastricht Treaty in 1993...
...The left-right distinction is now irrelevant since it was anchored in a social bipolarity that has ceased to exist...
...The dramatic decline in the role of the state has been accompanied by an erosion in the power and importance of all political parties...
...This bland consensus at the center has created a political vacuum that has facilitated the growth of the extreme right...
...But this does not mean that the working class does not exist or that the idea of the "people" has become obsolete...
...But, given the lack of an alternative discourse, there is a real danger that it will be seen by many people as the only language in which their problems can be expressed...
...The Centrality of Politics Politics aims at the creation of unity in a context of conflict and diversity...
...According to this perspective, the cycle of confrontational politics dominant in the West since the French Revolution has come to an end...
...Conventional parties and politicians have failed to adapt to the changes in society and have become irrelevant to people's identities and priorities...
...Since its creation in 1972, the National Front has progressed steadily and it is now firmly established in the French political system...
...Such a "consensus" approach is, in my view, profoundly inadequate, and its likely consequences very dangerous...
...It indicates a deepening of the democratic process, and it should not be resisted but celebrated...
...In a recent article in Le Debat (No...
...The novelty of democratic politics is not the overcoming of this we/them opposition but the different way in which it is established...
...its legitimacy can only be put into question by "unreasonable" elements...
...they are part of the process of politics...
...A similar vision of a "post-political" era is found in France in many quarters, some of them influenced by a philosophical tendency that praises "postmodern individualism!' Those "new democratic individualists" (like Gilles Lipovetsky) see the current retreat from public concerns and the increasing priority accorded to private goals as positive effects of the pluralist ethos...
...To begin with, the second ballot between Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac was a straight left-right confrontation, which clearly indicates that such a division is still a significant ground for political allegiance...
...According to Todd, the vision of a society of the center without ideology, whose main social problem is exclusion, does not correspond to the facts...
...To be sure, everything is far from perfect in this liberal world, and there is much soul-searching about the phenomenon of "exclusion" affecting the homeless, the unemployed, and the very poor...
...In this new situation, the old left-right rhetoric constitutes an obstacle to the modernization of the political system and the creation of a new form of democratic politics...
...q 502 • DISSENT...
...Similar tendencies exist in several European countries where the development of an exclusionist nationalism is also linked to the economic transformations that have dislocated the established way of life of many groups and created a profound crisis of identity...
...It is clear that an increasing number of people feel that their concerns are not taken into account by the PS and the center right...
...A vibrant democratic life requires real debate about possible alternatives...
...Hence the urge of many Socialist parties to locate themselves at the center...
...Consensus is indeed necessary, but it must be accompanied by dissent...
...and today they constitute a sector without adequate political representation...
...The importance of the Catholic church on one side and of the Communist party on the other created a clear dividing line between left and right...
...They present the French situation as the consequence of the decline of the working class and the emergence of a vast middle class...
...This has to do mainly with a deficit of representation and not with new patterns of voting behavior...
...Liberal democratic capitalism has imposed itself as the only rational solution to the problem of organizing modern societies...
...To go on pretending that it only represents a volatile protest vote without any serious basis is incredibly shortsighted...
...Instead of relinquishing them as outdated, we should redefine those categories...
...Its members certainly do not feel part of the "center...
...Consensus finally reigns with respect to the basic institutions of liberal society, and the lack of any legitimate alternative to the present order means that it will not be challenged...
...Aware of the precariousness of their employment, they are hostile to European integration and to the generalization of free trade...
...Since then a politics of the center has been implemented, and among both conservative and socialist elites, there is a broad consensus about economic strategy...
...Today, the majority of people in advanced industrial societies belong to the middle classes...
...If we add to this the increasing discredit of the traditional political class under the impact of repeated cases of corruption, the picture does not look good for democratic politics...
...Those identities endanger democracy because they are articulated around ethnic, nationalist, or religious issues...
...they scorn the "alarmists" who make comparisons with the situation in the 1930s...
...The central problem for French politics is to fmd a political outlet for this sociological left whose anti-elitist and anticonsensus behavior could be channeled in unexpected directions...
...Once it is acknowledged that this type of agonistic pluralism is constitutive of modern democracy, we can understand why democracy cannot survive without collective identities formed around clearly differentiated positions...
...In Todd's view, it has now become necessary to distinguish between the "political left" usually identified with the PS—despite the fact that it basically represents the interests of the middle classes—and the "sociological left" defined by the popular classes...
...We can indeed agree on the importance of "liberty and equality for all," while disagreeing sharply about their meaning and the way they should be implemented...
...What is really at stake in this crisis is the globalization of the economy and its impact on the popular sectors...
...There were really two "peoples," opposing each other without any space for compromise, let alone consensus...
...It will even be a better type of democracy, one of "dialogue" rather than confrontation...
...The 15 percent vote for Jean-Marie le Pen in the May elections, the strength of the candidates in the local elections and, more important perhaps, the fact that this vote came from a predominantly popular and young electorate is an indication that the National Front is managing to win over a sector of the population whose demands have been ignored by the "consensus of the center...
...The globalization of the economy and the revolution in communications have established, they say, the conditions for the universalization of the Western liberal democratic model...
...One of the most important challenges for democratic politics today is to provide a political vocabulary for articulating the demands of groups exposed to the dislocating effects of globalization...
...But not confronting this challenge would mean renouncing the political struggle and abandoning the popular sector to the extreme right...
...This is precisely the function of the left/right distinction: it is the way in which legitimate conflict is given form and institutionalized...
...However, this prevalent interpretation is now being challenged...
...Instead of concluding that party politics has become irrelevant, we must redraw the lines of a confrontational politics in a way that will bring a new vitality to democracy...
...Nowadays it is urgent to reestablish the centrality of politics by drawing new political lines capable of giving a real impulse to democracy...
...As we have seen, the existence of such a void, in many countries, has provided the terrain where the extreme right works to create new political identities...
...Hence the importance of distinguishing between two types of political relations: one of antagonism between enemies, and one that I will call agonism between adversaries...
...The current absence of such lines is not an indication of progress, but the symptom of a void, a democratic deficit...
...Politics, he wrote in a programmatic article in the Sunday Times (July 18, 1993), has lost its collective dimension and its polarized nature...
...The specificity of democracy today lies in the legitimation of conflict and the refusal to suppress it through the imposition of an authoritarian order...
...But many people dismiss these warnings...
...Examined from the point of view of the rise of the radical right, the elections are particularly revealing...
...Despite Chirac's attempt—following a strategy inspired by Todd—to rally the popular classes, his gains among traditional left-wing voters were limited...
...Disaffection towards political parties sets in...
...We need to grasp the role that antagonism plays in modern democratic politics...
...Moreover, this is not a politics that can be stopped through juridical condemnation or moral denunciation...
...This new social structure has made possible the creation of a broad consensus and established the conditions for a "deliberative democracy" in which different groups, instead of fighting to impose their interests, will participate in a free and unconstrained public discussion about all matters of common concern...
...To believe that the main contemporary problem concerns those who are excluded from the productive process is to overlook the situation of employed workers whose working conditions are extremely difficult today, who suffer directly from the profound transformations of the world economy...
...they take for granted the stability of democratic institutions...
...The result is the growing incapacity to address the real issues of society...
...The writers who put forward these views affirm that today the main cleavages are not social but cultural...
Vol. 42 • September 1995 • No. 4
