Back to a responsible responsiveness? The crisis and challenges facing European political elites: the 2017 Peter Mair Lecture

ABSTRACT

In his later writings, Peter Mair elaborated on the deficit of responsiveness showed by «mainstream» political elites, vis-à-vis the extremely responsive (but largely irresponsible) attitudes of a number of new challengers and populist leaders. This concern was expressed by Mair, in his posthumous volume Ruling the void, with the notion of the «withdrawal of the elites». This article moves from these concerned considerations, confirming that in the delicate scenario of the European Union, responsible domestic politicians still seem to be significantly distant from the positions of the general public. Actually, the difficulties of the elites to act responsibly became more and more evident in the past few years, when the consequence of the great recession have amplified popular mistrust and pushed representative politicians (even those belonging to traditional and Pro-Europeanist parties) to negative evaluations about policy coordination in the EU and a possible reduction of domestic sovereignty. Using fresh data about the attitudes of politicians and mass public, the article discusses the nature of such a difficult situation for large strata of the European domestic political elites, elaborating in the final part a few conditions to build a new phase of elite sustainability in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• political elites
• responsiveness
• responsibility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Luca Verzichelli Professor of political science at the University of Siena, where he teaches Global Comparative Politics and Italian Politics. Studies in Heidelberg, Essex University and Columbia University of New York. Visiting Scholar at the universities of Jena, Granada, Oxford, Montreal and at the Australian National University in Canberra. He has extensively published in the fields of Comparative Political Institutions and Political Elites.

ORCID

Luca Verzichelli http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8159-5215

Notes

1 This assertion is not grounded on a rigorous set of indicators: it is an opinion based on the observation of the electoral results in the past few years: all the populist parties listed in the appendix of Ruling the void have grown. The party system fragmentation is clearly increased and those governing parties that can be considered sovereignist or populist have radicalized their positions. This is the lesson of recent general elections in the Netherlands, Bulgaria, UK, Germany, Czech Republic (2017), Sweden, Hungary, and Italy (2018).

2 Once again, the Italian case can be pointed here as an experiment of possible convergence on between populist parties (in government between June 2018 and August 2019) and the opposition parties about basic rules of the democratic games. A minor but significant example is one of the first measures promoted by the new parliament: the abolition of the «life annuity» obtained by former MPs, independent of the payment of a pension scheme contribution.

3 According to the Eurobarometer 189 (fieldwork: March 2018), a majority of EU public opinion tends not to trust the EU: indeed, 48% of the EU citizens do not trust the EU, while the rate of positive feeling is 42%. The quote of uncertain citizens is 10%.

4 I have developed more elaborated analyses on this point in National Elites and EU economic governance: the art of cherry-picking solidarity (with Francesco Marangoni), EUvision Focus, 2018. http://www.euvisions.eu/national-governance-solidarity/