Angel Rivero // The future of centre-right parties in Europe: the challenge of Populism

CEPS SEMINAR SERIES IN ETHICS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Angel Rivero (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Abstract:
“Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire capitalism” Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, London: Routledge, 2001, p. 18.
The end of the first decade of the 20th century was marked by the crisis of the social democratic parties in Europe. At that time, the economic crisis unleashed in 2008 did not mean an increase in support for these parties, because in many parts of Europe the workers, their traditional voters, found refuge in centre right parties, because they were seen as superior in managing the economy; or in populist parties that sought to combat unemployment by blaming cosmopolitanism. The former promised to fix the economy, the latter promised to restore the safe world of post-war Europe by stopping deindustrialization; by closing borders; by implementing economic protectionism; by deploying anti-immigration policies; and by leaving the European Union.
However, while much attention has been paid to the crisis of social democracy and the rise of populism in Europe, much less has been studied about the slow-motion crisis of the European centre-right parties. Apart from the books by Tim Bale and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (eds.), Riding the Populist Wave. Europe’s Mainstream Right in Crisis (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2021); and Ángel Rivero and Edurne Uriarte (coords.), The future of the centre-right in Europe (Madrid, Tecnos, 2022) little or nothing has been said about the circumstance of the crisis that these parties are going through in many European societies.
In this seminar I would like to explain how the parties of the centre right have been fundamental in the construction of European democracy in the second post-war period. In the case of Western European parties, the centre right designed the architecture of their democracies by guaranteeing peace, freedom, well-being and prosperity for long decades. Though often forgotten, the European model of freedom and welfare was the work of centre right parties in Germany, Italy, and France. In Great Britain, the exception, it was created by Labour in 1945, with the great electoral victory of Clement Attlee, but immediately afterwards it was managed by the British Conservative party, which endorsed the welfare state and ruled most of the remainder of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Contrary to common opinion the post-war consensus in Europa was the work of the centre right and encapsulated the modern liberal, Christian democratic and One Nation conservatism ideal of an integrated and free society.
In the case of the southwestern European democracies, Portugal and Spain, the centre right parties were also crucial in the construction of their democracies and in the development of their mechanisms of social integration. In Portugal, without the political action of the PDS and the CDS, the triumph of a revolution with totalitarian overtones would have been somewhat feasible and, without a doubt, it was during the governments of the Portuguese centre right when the 1976 Constitution was reformed in a democratic sense, eliminating the military tutelage over the executive and the legislature, and later restoring economic freedom.
In Spain, the process of transition to democracy was led by the centre right, the UCD, and its political heritage ended up being integrated into the Popular Party in 1990 under the leadership of José María Aznar. Since then, the PP has alternately been in the government or led the opposition.
In this seminar I will show that the golden age of the European centre right parties were the years between 1945 and 1975, years in which the model that combined liberal democracy and the social market economy created a free and integrated society.
However, with the oil crisis of the 1970s, the model entered in crisis because its economic foundations broke. As I will show, just as in 1945 it had been the parties of the centre right that had led the political organization of Europe providing security, freedom and well-being, again in the crisis of the 1970s, it is the parties of the centre right that led the response to the crisis of the welfare state.
This response was the so-called “new right” of Margaret Thatcher who sought to end not only the economic dysfunction of the welfare state but also the social ills associated with it. In the centre right tradition, the state had a subsidiary function in the organization of society. This meant that a healthy society is one that is capable of self-organization but that, given the complexity of modern societies, the State must intervene in a subsidiary way in everything that society cannot do on its own.
In other words, State intervention is good if it serves the purpose of creating a society of independent and responsible individuals; but it is bad if that threshold is exceeded and the society that is created is made dependent on the State. It is this state-dependent, passive, and irresponsible society that Margaret Thatcher called socialism.
The centre-right parties, in general, tried to combine their social market economy model with the imperative to restore social responsibility. In more individualistic societies, such as the British, the success of this model was attested to in the fact that it ended up dragging the Labour Party into a “Third Way” which in practice meant the total abandonment of socialism and reconciliation with liberalism. In Germany and Spain similar movements took place within the centre-right parties but also by the social democrats.
In general, this political vision has been derogatorily called “neo-liberalism” although no one among those who defended it identifies with this label. And although nobody likes the label, it can be used to name a new political and social consensus that lasted the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. That is to say, the time that goes from the collapse of socialism 1989-1991 to the financial crisis of 2008, twenty years of liberal hegemony in the political and economic spheres.
Well then, the root of the still present crisis of social democracy is found in the fact that the parties of this obedience are too tied to the globalizing ideal of neoliberalism; but the root of the crisis of the centre right parties is also linked to this same circumstance.
If the social democratic parties saw that their voters sought protection in nationalist, sovereigntist parties that blamed globalization and capitalism for their ills, the centre right parties have been losing voters as their political space has fragmented and been divided among a multitude of parties located on the right. Of course, this circumstance is different in each of the Western European countries, but in the seminar, I will show that there is a common pattern that allows us to speak of a crisis of the centre right.
My purpose will be to detect the reasons for this crisis and venture the way in which the centre right parties could, as Bale and Rovira say, ride the populist wave.