In this volume deriving from a conference held at the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome in 2015, an international group of historians and social scientists explores the nature of populist political movements in contemporary Austria, Germany, and Italy. The relevance of the topic is evident in view of the recent electoral advances of these movements and their fundamental challenge to the existing party systems. The comparison between the countries chosen is described as fruitful due to their geographic proximity and extensive interaction, on the one hand, and their societal and political differences, on the other.
The volume is divided into three main sections. The first section examines historical perspectives and transformation processes. Michael Gehler outlines the divergent paths toward European integration taken by the three countries. Following this historical introduction, several authors discuss the prevalent definitions of populism. Karin Priester develops a typology of populist parties, with a particular focus on right-wing populism. She describes the latter as a phenomenon that—apart from two short-lived predecessors in France and Italy—emerged in the 1970s and was reinforced by a wave of new parties in the 1990s. Priester divides these parties into an ethnonational or ethnoregional subgroup, on the one hand, and a national-liberal subgroup, on the other. They should be distinguished from the traditional political right because they have abandoned ideological cohesion in favor of eclecticism.
Koen Abts and Rudi Laermans define populism as a thin-centered ideology or representation of sociopolitical space that advocates the sovereign rule of the people as a homogeneous body and sees an antagonistic relationship between the common people and societal elites. Populists view democracy as the power of the people and favor its direct over its representational expressions. The people, in turn, are understood as a homogeneous body that can express a volonté générale in Rousseauian terms. Depending on their ideological superstructure, populist movements define peoplehood along social or ethnocultural lines. This diversity underscores the thin-centered nature of populism, which can affiliate with a wide diversity of existing ideological traditions. Maurizio Cau argues that this populist drive challenges the European system of constitutions, consisting of historical experiences, doctrines, and organizational practices that were created to limit power through legal and procedural boundaries. Günther Pallaver shows how populist attitudes also surface in both tabloid and elite media.
The populist wave did not only express itself in the emergence of new parties but also in the transformation of existing ones. Established right-wing parties, such as the Austrian Freedom Party or the Swiss People's Party, adopted a more populist orientation. Some contributors disagree about the extent to which influential governing parties such as the Hungarian Fidesz can be subsumed under the category of populism. The researchers also delineate the diverse responses of the political mainstream to the new challengers. In countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands, the established parties accept populists as legitimate political contenders and occasionally cooperate with them. In countries such as France and Belgium, in contrast, any cooperation is shunned. These diverting positions also represent divergent interpretations of democracy, which alternatively view this political system as a set of procedures organizing the struggle for political influence or as a set of values and principles.
The subsequent section traces different expressions of populism in Austria, Germany, and Italy. By examining political parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party, the Northern League, and the Alternative for Germany, as well as political personalities such as Silvio Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini, the authors examine a wide spectrum of potentially populist political actors. They highlight how the political crisis of 1992–93, which shattered the existing Italian party system, formed a central precondition for the success of Berlusconi's political project. The centrist turn of former neo-fascist leader Gianfranco Fini, in contrast, prevented (or just delayed?) the emergence of a comprehensive right-wing party comparable to the French Front National. Finally, the authors also illuminate the role of Angela Merkel and Romano Prodi as mainstream counterweights to populist agitation, ascribing the former's political successes and the latter's ultimate failure to the differing political systems and cultures in their respective countries.
The final section analyzes the response of established political parties to the populist challenge. While conservative and liberal parties vacillated between demarcation from and collaboration with the new competitors, Social Democrats faced the challenge of losing important segments of their traditional working-class supporters to parties they found impossible with which to cooperate. Appealing to a very different electorate, some Green parties, in contrast, successfully presented themselves as the natural opposition to right-wing populism.
Populism, Populists, and the Crisis of Political Parties familiarizes an international readership with recent changes in Austrian, German, and Italian politics. In spite of occasional repetitions, especially in the theoretical sections, the authors present a multifaceted analysis of an important political phenomenon. Minor linguistic limitations are outweighed by thorough familiarity with local conditions, whereby the delineation of Italian developments proves especially informative. Laudably for a conference publication, Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka even provides a substantive conclusion. As a consequence, the volume helps to fill a conspicuous gap, especially in historical literature.
