Towards a Populist Local Democracy? The Consequences of Populist Radical Right Local Government Leadership in Western Europe

ABSTRACT

A crisis of representation has precipitated a surge in support for populist radical right (PRR) parties that challenge the existing model of representative democracy. Simultaneously, institutional reforms across Western Europe have sought to improve the input-legitimacy of local democracy with a proliferation of direct and participatory democratic methods. This paper investigates the extent to which PRR parties advance a populist democratic agenda when in leadership of the executive at the local level of government. Previous work on the subject of PRR parties in power has neglected the sub-national perspective, despite the increasing congruence between populist demands for a more direct linkage of politics to the people and this institutional environment. An exploration of three cases of PRR party-led local government in Italy, Austria and Switzerland enables a comparison of their governing behaviour, its ideological content and democratic consequences, through qualitative content analysis of referendums, policies and council resolutions. This paper finds they do little to promote popular sovereignty through participatory forms of governance at the expense of representative democracy in local government. However, when in local government environments with higher executive autonomy, PRR parties emphasise a more direct (plebiscitarian) linkage between the executive and the ‘people’, who are increasingly represented in nativist terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• radical right
• local government
• patterns of democracy
• direct democracy

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Fred Paxton is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute, Florence. His research concerns populist radical right parties in government, with a particular focus on their activities at sub-national levels of government. Email: [email protected] Twitter:@fredpaxton.

Notes

1 The idea of PRR parties using local government as a laboratory for policy experimentation is a common trope in press coverage (examples include: Kapeller, 2016; Chrisafis, 2015; Chassany, 2017).

2 The strongest advocacy for participatory politics originated from New Left and green party supporters with a grounding in post-materialist values (Inglehart, 1977, 1990); right-wing populists of the ‘silent counter-revolution’ rather desire more effective and responsive leadership, at least in part due to a more authoritarian set of values (Ignazi, 1992; Mudde, 2004, p. 558; Taggart, 2004).

3 In contrast, populist left parties are more likely to distinguish ‘the people’ based on class (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013), while a ‘purely populist’ party like the Five Star Movement has attempted to create a homogenous entity without any qualifications (Manucci & Amsler, 2018).

4 For a rare example of a study that focuses on the influence of structural factors on populist parties in government, see: Zaslove (2012).

5 It should be noted that the level of dissatisfaction with local representative democracy, as measured through for instance local electoral turnout and trust in local government (John, 2001; Le Galès, 2002), in fact varies greatly across Europe.

6 Local government output-legitimacy, on the other hand, has been addressed through administrative reforms to improve the efficacy of policy-outcomes via municipal amalgamations, decentralisation of power and other reforms labelled as ‘New Public Management’ (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992).

7 The interest groups variable used by Lijphart (2012) is excluded from this study due to the minimal amount of evidence available for this activity in governance of small and medium-sized cities.

8 The other variables used by Lijphart (2012) but excluded from this study as unhelpful are: unicameral vs. bicameral legislature, the flexibility of the constitution, the presence of judicial review, and the independence of the central bank.

9 Such a dissolution actually occurred in Padua in October 2016: a rare event in local Italian politics.

10 In Wels, there are separate mayoral and council elections, the latter from which members of the executive are then proportionately drawn. In Thun, the executive and council are proportionately allocated through separate elections.

11 Such referendums have famously led to the banning of cars from the city centre in several major Italian cities (Bobbio, 2005, p. 44).

12 The merger of small municipalities has been an important subject in plans to improve local government service delivery and output-legitimacy, and requires a referendum in Italy (Hulst & Montfort, 2007; Swianiewicz, 2010).

13 Other smaller scale examples of participatory governance initiatives in Wels include a (currently inactive) internet application ‘Mach Mit’ and a security consultation held in a local sauna (Nowak, 2017).

14 According to the amendment, the objectives set by the executive in Thun would no longer require approval by the Legislative Body but just submission for information. Similar constitutional reforms were proposed, and passed, in 2005 and 2001.

15 The ordinances that specify the security threat posed by migrants are prohibitions on prostitution (PP Apr. 2014; Feb. 2015) and vehicles for sleeping (PP Jul. 2015), and ones that legislate for health checks on arrivals from Africa (PP Nov. 2014) and hygiene checks on municipal housing (PP 2015).

16 An ‘anti-face-veiling act’ was later passed by the national government in October 2017.

17 Changes in the relations between the Wels local government and the Austrian federal government following the ascension to national power of the FPÖ after the 2018 Federal Election lie beyond the timescale of this study.