Not without irony, Gideon Rachman, the internationalist of the Financial Times, affirms that although it was the French who invented the right-left division (our parliamentary practice, for example, is French, the fractions are placed to the left or right of the speaker ), in the recent election, precisely, the two candidates for the singular French presidency reject this division. Rachman situates the narrative of the dispute between globalists and nationalists. In fact, those are the terms used by Marine Le Pen, the ultra-nationalist, to attack Emmanuel Macron, a promoter of greater European integration. Le Pen’s speech is framed in terms similar to those of Trump, those who supported Brexit and the ideas of political theorists of the Putin regime. The idea that the nation and national culture are in danger due to the power gained by international institutions prevails among anti-system platforms in the world.
Both candidates do not lead the traditional parties, the Republicans, from the moderate right, and the Socialists, were both beaten in the presidential election, although they are the ones in charge of governing most of the cities and regions. The first round votes were 28% for the centrist Macron, 23% for the right-wing radical Le Pen and 22% for the left-wing radical Mélenchon. The result largely corresponds to the explanation for the growth of anti-system candidates offered by the Complutense University professor Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, in the recent text “El Desorden Politico”. His thesis, like that of most political scientists, is that electoral phenomena, which favor extreme political options, are neither solely nor mainly the result of economic factors, such as inequality or the 2008 crisis, but of the lack of intermediaries, such as the media and the parties, between the candidates and the voters.
The anti-system vote shows the opinion that a part of the population has that societies have taken a wrong course. In France, for example, 72% consider that their generation will live worse off than their parents and 79% of people support the phrase “traditional political parties don’t care what people like me think”. Sánchez-Cuenca shows how the voters of the radical right-wing options in Western Europe are people with a low educational level, with manual jobs, who live in medium or small communities. Their reasons for voting are more ideological than economic, in defense of national identity and against migration. According to a survey by Ipsos France, the majority vote for Le Pen was among people aged 50 to 60, among those who did not complete high school, among those who earned 1,250 euros per month and those who live in towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. . The radical left, on the other hand, has appeared almost exclusively in southern European countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Greece), in addition to Ireland, where the historic Sinn Féin has been strengthened. His voters tend to be educated young people who have not found adequate job options, yes, especially after the financial crisis of 2008. Mélenchon, for example, won more votes than the others among those under 35, among the unemployed and he almost equals Macron among those with university educations and in the cities.
Sánchez-Cuenca is relatively optimistic about what is going to happen in Western Europe, pointing out that in reality the radical options do not maintain their levels of support, there is high volatility in the vote. That a balance will be found. She warns that social democracy is experiencing a paradoxical situation, its electoral support is decreasing, it barely exceeds 20%, but at the same time it is the option that has given government stability in countries like Spain, Portugal and Germany. For now, the accounts give Macron a 9-point lead over Le Pen, but again, the French radical right managed to be in the final stretch of the presidency.
Twitter: @vidallerenas
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A graduate in Economics from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), he has a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Management from the University of Essex, United Kingdom, and a Ph.D. in Public Administration and Management from the University of York.