EUの政党政治状況の激変 － 中道安定から分裂状況へ
ヨーロッパの政治において、長年、中道左派、中道右派が支配的であったという
状況がいまや激変しているという記事である。
この最初の契機は、ギリシア、アイルランド、ポルトガルを襲った経済危機であり、
そしてそれを解決するためにとられたユーロ首脳部の「ベイルアウト＋超緊縮政策」であった。
この政策は、一方でユーロの大銀行を救済し、負担を当該国民に負担を転嫁することを意味する
ものであった（１つの事例でいえば、巨額のギリシア不良国債
を保有するドイチェ・バンクから、トロイカがギリシア政府に資金を貸し付けることで、
ギリシア政府が、国債を買い戻す。そのことで、債権債務関係はトロイカとギリシアの関係に
転嫁した。そしてトロイカはギリシア政府に資金供与の見返りに超緊縮政策を強要した。このことで
過酷なリストラがギリシア国民を襲うことになった）。
ユーロ危機として知られるこの問題は、EU圏内に、反EU,ナショナリズムの台頭をもたらす
重要な契機となった。南欧では、極左（これはファッシズムによる独裁政治体制が
４０年ほどまでまで支配的であったことにより極右ではなく極左に向かった）、そのほかの
地域では極右（フランスのナショナル・フロンはその代表）が大きく勢力を拡大することに
なったのである。このことが象徴的に表れたのは２０１４年５月の欧州議会選挙での大量の
反EU議員の選出であった。
２番目の契機はいうまでもなく、難民の大量流入危機である。これはそれまでのメルケルを
中心としていたEUの統治状況を激変させ、いまやどの国もナショナリズム的視点、反イスラム的
視点を強力に推進させることになっている。
その結果、EUのあらゆる国において、中道左派、中道右派の伝統的政党がおどろくほどの
選挙における大敗を喫してきており、連立でも安定した政権を組閣することが困難な
状況に陥っている。スウェーデンすらそうであり、ドイツも来年の総選挙ではかなりの
変化が予想されている。
つまりEUの統治システムは「政治的統合」どころか、「政治的分裂」状況にすでに
陥ってしまっている。「団結」と叫んでも、メンバー国は自国の政治的分裂状況の
ことで頭がいっぱいである。
なお東欧圏では、より伝統的な保守主義、それにカトリックの影響などによる専制的
政治状況が支配的になっている（ポーランドやハンガリー）。
＊＊＊
EUは、それまでの経済的統合から大きく政治的統合に踏み入れることで、結果的にいまの
混沌とした状況に対処するガバナビリティを喪失しているように思われる。東欧圏を
勢力圏に組み入れたこと（NATOのことも考える必要がある）なども、市場経済的視点では
とどまらない、一種の地政学的魂胆が見え隠れしている問題である。いたずらに図体を
拡大し続けた結果、巨大化した恐竜のようになり、内部的崩壊を処するすべを知らずに
いまの状況に追い込まれているように思われる。
（EUのほとんどのメンバー国で安定した政府を樹立できない状況が続出している。しかも
その大きな原因は反EUを掲げる政党の台頭によるところが大きい。その集合体であるEU
なわけだが、これでは統一のとれた政策を遂行することができない。目にするのは、
ブリュッセルの官僚機構のトップの姿であるが、かれらに本当の政治的権限がある
わけではない。）
メンバー国ではないトルコに媚を売る一方で、ユーロ・メンバー国であるギリシアを
隷属国家状況におく（昨年７月に生じ、その状況はいまも変わらない）という現状は、
どうみても正常な組織のとる姿ではない。
＊＊＊
そしてイギリス。この国はEUにとどまるか、離脱するかをめぐり、１年３６５日、飽きもせずに
というか、この話題で持ち切りである。いずれにせよ、１歩も２歩もしりぞいてEUを
みている（メンバー国ではあるが、とるスタンスはメンバー国のものではない）。
＊＊＊
Why is support for Europe's mainstream political parties on the wane?
Fractured parliaments, unstable coalitions and divided governments are the new normal, at a time when Europe least needs them
AfD supporters in Raguhn, Germany, march against Angela Merkel’s refugee policy amid increasingly unstable political landscapes in Europe. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Jon Henley European affairs correspondent
@jonhenley
Tuesday 29 March 2016 08.53 BST
•
Just when Europe needed it least, a string of confusing and inconclusive elections this year – from Spain and Ireland to Slovakia and Portugal – has produced fractured parliaments, improbable and unstable coalitions, and weaker, more divided governments.
As countries struggle to shake off the eurozone’s financial crisis, migration and Islamist terror are overtaking the economy as most voters’ main concerns, magnifying deeper social changes that have seen support for mainstream parties plunge and anti-austerity, anti-EU or anti-immigrant populism surge across the continent.
Results from Germany’s March 13 regional polls, in which both Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Social Democrat “grand coalition” partners lost votes to liberals, Greens and above all the anti-immigrant AfD, suggest that even in Europe’s powerhouse, the federal elections of 2017 will mark an end to a culture of political stability that has lasted since the second world war.
“What we’re seeing is a growing fragmentation of the vote, on the left and on the right,” said Simon Hix, professor of European and comparative politics at the London School of Economics (LSE). “The mainstream parties of the centre-left and centre-right that could once rely on 40% of the vote are now reduced to 20 or 25%. It’s happening everywhere, and it can be massively problematic.”
In Slovakia, parliamentary elections on 6 March returned eight wildly different parties to parliament, including two from the far right. Prime minister Robert Fico and his centre-left Smer-SD party technically won, with 28% of the vote, but lost their majority.
After 10 days of negotiations, Fico cobbled together a shaky new coalition with the small right wing Slovak National party, the centre-right liberals and a party representing Slovakia’s Hungarian minority. But all were fiercely antagonistic during the election campaign and the new government looks riven with rivalries and disagreements.
Spain, meanwhile, whose voting system was designed after its return to democracy in the 1970s to deliver strong majorities and a stable two-party system, remains without a government nearly three months after it went to the polls on 20 December.
The ruling centre-right People’s party finished first on 29% – 16 points down on its 2011 score – while its traditional rivals, the centre-left PSOE, managed just 22%.
Two newcomers, the leftist populists of Podemos and the liberal reformists of Ciudadanos, polled 21% and 14%, producing a perfect political stalemate and leaving fresh elections in June as the most likely outcome.
Following inconclusive elections on 4 October, Portugal is now governed by a novel and fragile leftist alliance – the first since it became a democratic country four decades ago – of socialists, communists, greens and the left bloc that narrowly toppled a conservative minority government of just 11 days’ standing in a dramatic parliamentary vote.
Ireland’s elections on 26 February also followed the general direction, after prime minister Enda Kenny’s outgoing coalition lost its parliamentary majority as voters made their anti-austerity feelings clear.
The most obvious option might be a grand centrist coalition of Kenny’s Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – except that the two parties have been rivals since the 1920s.
Fianna Fáil celebrates election results in Ireland. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
These most recent elections are not the only evidence of a fractured political landscape: Belgium’s present precarious administration, often referred to as “the kamikaze coalition”, was so difficult to assemble it was not sworn in for 138 days after elections in May 2014; in Sweden and Denmark, fraught minority cabinets survive at the whim of anti-immigration populists who hold the balance of power.
If there is another economic crash, Europe’s far right is ready for it
Owen Jones
Read more
Upcoming votes are unlikely to be any different. Besides Germany’s federal elections next year, polls in the Netherlands suggest that in the next parliamentary elections due in March 2017, the three traditional parties of Dutch government – the socialist PvdA, Christian democrat CDA and liberal VVD – will struggle to reach 40% of the popular vote between them. That is roughly the same share that any one of those parties might have expected to win on their own just a few years ago.
Analysts note that economic upheaval has long been known to erode consensus politics. A study of 800 elections over the past 140 years by Munich’s IFO institute found last year that, historically, “policy uncertainty rises strongly after financial crises, as government majorities shrink and polarisation rises”.
After a crisis, the study’s authors wrote, “voters seem particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of the extreme right, which often attributes blame to minorities or foreigners”.
On average, the study’s authors found, far-right parties increased their vote share by 30% in the five years following a financial crisis.
That has certainly been the case in western Europe and Scandinavia, where fragmentation is driving the rapid rise of radical anti-EU, anti-immigrant parties such as Marine Le Pen’s Front National, the Danish People’s party and Germany’s AfD (Alternative für Deutschland).
Anti-immigration, anti-liberal: meet Sweden’s far-right future – video
In central and eastern Europe, more old-style nationalist, authoritarian, sometimes religious but essentially ultraconservative parties such as Poland’s Law and Justice and Hungary’s Fidesz have been propelled to power.
In the southern European countries hardest hit by the economic downturn – Spain, Portugal and Greece – post-2008 polarisation has largely favoured the far left rather than the far right, due essentially to their relatively recent experience of fascist rule.
But the result is nonetheless the same: across a continent, mainstream parties and alliances that once dominated national politics are in headlong retreat, making coalition-forming harder – even in countries long used to coalition government – and producing weak, potentially short-lived governments.
'Like a poison': how anti-immigrant Pegida is dividing Dresden
Read more
Into this already unsettled picture has erupted the largest wave of refugees since the second world war, dramatically exacerbating a trend towards fragmentation that is now evident almost everywhere (although masked in Britain by a first-past-the-post electoral system which, unlike the proportional representation systems on much of the continent, makes it very difficult for smaller parties to break through nationally).
Political fragmentation matters because the flimsy governments and splintered legislatures that often result can make it far harder for countries to adopt tough domestic reforms or accept socially controversial policies – such as accepting large numbers of refugees.
Internationally, too, challenging but increasingly necessary reforms – to the eurozone’s rules, for example, or the EU’s asylum policy – become correspondingly more problematic.
“I see two possible scenarios,” Hix said. “Either Europe’s mainstream parties get used to this new world and start thinking seriously about ways to build entirely new kinds of broad-based coalitions.
“Or they don’t, in which case the outcome could be real political crisis, and even ungovernability.”
Podemos celebrate the results in Spain’s general elections in December. Photograph: Adolfo Lujan/Demotix/Corbis
ヨーロッパの政治において、長年、中道左派、中道右派が支配的であったという
状況がいまや激変しているという記事である。
この最初の契機は、ギリシア、アイルランド、ポルトガルを襲った経済危機であり、
そしてそれを解決するためにとられたユーロ首脳部の「ベイルアウト＋超緊縮政策」であった。
この政策は、一方でユーロの大銀行を救済し、負担を当該国民に負担を転嫁することを意味する
ものであった（１つの事例でいえば、巨額のギリシア不良国債
を保有するドイチェ・バンクから、トロイカがギリシア政府に資金を貸し付けることで、
ギリシア政府が、国債を買い戻す。そのことで、債権債務関係はトロイカとギリシアの関係に
転嫁した。そしてトロイカはギリシア政府に資金供与の見返りに超緊縮政策を強要した。このことで
過酷なリストラがギリシア国民を襲うことになった）。
ユーロ危機として知られるこの問題は、EU圏内に、反EU,ナショナリズムの台頭をもたらす
重要な契機となった。南欧では、極左（これはファッシズムによる独裁政治体制が
４０年ほどまでまで支配的であったことにより極右ではなく極左に向かった）、そのほかの
地域では極右（フランスのナショナル・フロンはその代表）が大きく勢力を拡大することに
なったのである。このことが象徴的に表れたのは２０１４年５月の欧州議会選挙での大量の
反EU議員の選出であった。
２番目の契機はいうまでもなく、難民の大量流入危機である。これはそれまでのメルケルを
中心としていたEUの統治状況を激変させ、いまやどの国もナショナリズム的視点、反イスラム的
視点を強力に推進させることになっている。
その結果、EUのあらゆる国において、中道左派、中道右派の伝統的政党がおどろくほどの
選挙における大敗を喫してきており、連立でも安定した政権を組閣することが困難な
状況に陥っている。スウェーデンすらそうであり、ドイツも来年の総選挙ではかなりの
変化が予想されている。
つまりEUの統治システムは「政治的統合」どころか、「政治的分裂」状況にすでに
陥ってしまっている。「団結」と叫んでも、メンバー国は自国の政治的分裂状況の
ことで頭がいっぱいである。
なお東欧圏では、より伝統的な保守主義、それにカトリックの影響などによる専制的
政治状況が支配的になっている（ポーランドやハンガリー）。
＊＊＊
EUは、それまでの経済的統合から大きく政治的統合に踏み入れることで、結果的にいまの
混沌とした状況に対処するガバナビリティを喪失しているように思われる。東欧圏を
勢力圏に組み入れたこと（NATOのことも考える必要がある）なども、市場経済的視点では
とどまらない、一種の地政学的魂胆が見え隠れしている問題である。いたずらに図体を
拡大し続けた結果、巨大化した恐竜のようになり、内部的崩壊を処するすべを知らずに
いまの状況に追い込まれているように思われる。
（EUのほとんどのメンバー国で安定した政府を樹立できない状況が続出している。しかも
その大きな原因は反EUを掲げる政党の台頭によるところが大きい。その集合体であるEU
なわけだが、これでは統一のとれた政策を遂行することができない。目にするのは、
ブリュッセルの官僚機構のトップの姿であるが、かれらに本当の政治的権限がある
わけではない。）
メンバー国ではないトルコに媚を売る一方で、ユーロ・メンバー国であるギリシアを
隷属国家状況におく（昨年７月に生じ、その状況はいまも変わらない）という現状は、
どうみても正常な組織のとる姿ではない。
＊＊＊
そしてイギリス。この国はEUにとどまるか、離脱するかをめぐり、１年３６５日、飽きもせずに
というか、この話題で持ち切りである。いずれにせよ、１歩も２歩もしりぞいてEUを
みている（メンバー国ではあるが、とるスタンスはメンバー国のものではない）。
＊＊＊
Why is support for Europe's mainstream political parties on the wane?
Fractured parliaments, unstable coalitions and divided governments are the new normal, at a time when Europe least needs them
AfD supporters in Raguhn, Germany, march against Angela Merkel’s refugee policy amid increasingly unstable political landscapes in Europe. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Jon Henley European affairs correspondent
@jonhenley
Tuesday 29 March 2016 08.53 BST
•
Just when Europe needed it least, a string of confusing and inconclusive elections this year – from Spain and Ireland to Slovakia and Portugal – has produced fractured parliaments, improbable and unstable coalitions, and weaker, more divided governments.
As countries struggle to shake off the eurozone’s financial crisis, migration and Islamist terror are overtaking the economy as most voters’ main concerns, magnifying deeper social changes that have seen support for mainstream parties plunge and anti-austerity, anti-EU or anti-immigrant populism surge across the continent.
Results from Germany’s March 13 regional polls, in which both Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Social Democrat “grand coalition” partners lost votes to liberals, Greens and above all the anti-immigrant AfD, suggest that even in Europe’s powerhouse, the federal elections of 2017 will mark an end to a culture of political stability that has lasted since the second world war.
“What we’re seeing is a growing fragmentation of the vote, on the left and on the right,” said Simon Hix, professor of European and comparative politics at the London School of Economics (LSE). “The mainstream parties of the centre-left and centre-right that could once rely on 40% of the vote are now reduced to 20 or 25%. It’s happening everywhere, and it can be massively problematic.”
In Slovakia, parliamentary elections on 6 March returned eight wildly different parties to parliament, including two from the far right. Prime minister Robert Fico and his centre-left Smer-SD party technically won, with 28% of the vote, but lost their majority.
After 10 days of negotiations, Fico cobbled together a shaky new coalition with the small right wing Slovak National party, the centre-right liberals and a party representing Slovakia’s Hungarian minority. But all were fiercely antagonistic during the election campaign and the new government looks riven with rivalries and disagreements.
Spain, meanwhile, whose voting system was designed after its return to democracy in the 1970s to deliver strong majorities and a stable two-party system, remains without a government nearly three months after it went to the polls on 20 December.
The ruling centre-right People’s party finished first on 29% – 16 points down on its 2011 score – while its traditional rivals, the centre-left PSOE, managed just 22%.
Two newcomers, the leftist populists of Podemos and the liberal reformists of Ciudadanos, polled 21% and 14%, producing a perfect political stalemate and leaving fresh elections in June as the most likely outcome.
Following inconclusive elections on 4 October, Portugal is now governed by a novel and fragile leftist alliance – the first since it became a democratic country four decades ago – of socialists, communists, greens and the left bloc that narrowly toppled a conservative minority government of just 11 days’ standing in a dramatic parliamentary vote.
Ireland’s elections on 26 February also followed the general direction, after prime minister Enda Kenny’s outgoing coalition lost its parliamentary majority as voters made their anti-austerity feelings clear.
The most obvious option might be a grand centrist coalition of Kenny’s Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – except that the two parties have been rivals since the 1920s.
Fianna Fáil celebrates election results in Ireland. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
These most recent elections are not the only evidence of a fractured political landscape: Belgium’s present precarious administration, often referred to as “the kamikaze coalition”, was so difficult to assemble it was not sworn in for 138 days after elections in May 2014; in Sweden and Denmark, fraught minority cabinets survive at the whim of anti-immigration populists who hold the balance of power.
If there is another economic crash, Europe’s far right is ready for it
Owen Jones
Read more
Upcoming votes are unlikely to be any different. Besides Germany’s federal elections next year, polls in the Netherlands suggest that in the next parliamentary elections due in March 2017, the three traditional parties of Dutch government – the socialist PvdA, Christian democrat CDA and liberal VVD – will struggle to reach 40% of the popular vote between them. That is roughly the same share that any one of those parties might have expected to win on their own just a few years ago.
Analysts note that economic upheaval has long been known to erode consensus politics. A study of 800 elections over the past 140 years by Munich’s IFO institute found last year that, historically, “policy uncertainty rises strongly after financial crises, as government majorities shrink and polarisation rises”.
After a crisis, the study’s authors wrote, “voters seem particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of the extreme right, which often attributes blame to minorities or foreigners”.
On average, the study’s authors found, far-right parties increased their vote share by 30% in the five years following a financial crisis.
That has certainly been the case in western Europe and Scandinavia, where fragmentation is driving the rapid rise of radical anti-EU, anti-immigrant parties such as Marine Le Pen’s Front National, the Danish People’s party and Germany’s AfD (Alternative für Deutschland).
Anti-immigration, anti-liberal: meet Sweden’s far-right future – video
In central and eastern Europe, more old-style nationalist, authoritarian, sometimes religious but essentially ultraconservative parties such as Poland’s Law and Justice and Hungary’s Fidesz have been propelled to power.
In the southern European countries hardest hit by the economic downturn – Spain, Portugal and Greece – post-2008 polarisation has largely favoured the far left rather than the far right, due essentially to their relatively recent experience of fascist rule.
But the result is nonetheless the same: across a continent, mainstream parties and alliances that once dominated national politics are in headlong retreat, making coalition-forming harder – even in countries long used to coalition government – and producing weak, potentially short-lived governments.
'Like a poison': how anti-immigrant Pegida is dividing Dresden
Read more
Into this already unsettled picture has erupted the largest wave of refugees since the second world war, dramatically exacerbating a trend towards fragmentation that is now evident almost everywhere (although masked in Britain by a first-past-the-post electoral system which, unlike the proportional representation systems on much of the continent, makes it very difficult for smaller parties to break through nationally).
Political fragmentation matters because the flimsy governments and splintered legislatures that often result can make it far harder for countries to adopt tough domestic reforms or accept socially controversial policies – such as accepting large numbers of refugees.
Internationally, too, challenging but increasingly necessary reforms – to the eurozone’s rules, for example, or the EU’s asylum policy – become correspondingly more problematic.
“I see two possible scenarios,” Hix said. “Either Europe’s mainstream parties get used to this new world and start thinking seriously about ways to build entirely new kinds of broad-based coalitions.
“Or they don’t, in which case the outcome could be real political crisis, and even ungovernability.”
Podemos celebrate the results in Spain’s general elections in December. Photograph: Adolfo Lujan/Demotix/Corbis
