Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Populism is now more popular than liberty with European voters: Study
Populism is now more popular than liberty with European voters: Study
Apr 8, 2025 4:47 AM

How popular is populism in Europe? A new study reveals that populist parties have displaced traditional advocates of liberty among European voters. It also reveals the nations where populism attracts the greatest support.

The information is found in the 2017 “Authoritarian Populism Index,” released by the Swedish libertarian think tank Timbro, along with the European Policy Information Center.

The report refers to the philosophy of limited government, free markets, and respect for individual rights as “Liberalism,” in the European sense. In the United States, this is sometimes described as “classical liberalism.” And it has been outpaced by populism, the report states.

“Authoritarian-Populism has overtaken Liberalism and has now established itself as the third ideological force in European politics, behind Conservatism/Christian Democracy and Social Democracy,” according to the study’s authors.

Researchers studied political parties espousing a populist message in all 33 nations ranked “free” by Freedom House. That includes all 28 present members of the European Union, as well as Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, and Switzerland.

They found that populist parties have nearly doubled their support over the last 20 manding the votes of 55.8 million people, or 17.5 percent of voters. They also hold 1,342 of the 7,843 parliament seats available in the countries surveyed.

Parties advocating Liberalism have remained static at 12 percent support since 1997.

Timbro studied both “right-wing” and “left-wing” populist movements. Right-wing populism, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Front, may focus on ethnic or migration issues, while left-wing populism attacks corporate power. Yet both varieties seek to increase government economic intervention, wealth redistribution, and barriers to international trade.

Populist parties receive the greatest percentage of the vote in Hungary (65.2%), Poland (46.4%), Greece (45.1%), Switzerland (30.8%), Italy (28.2%), Cyprus (25.7%), Austria (24%), Spain (21.2%), and Denmark (21.2%).

Are supporters of liberty “populist”?

There are two phenomena in the report worth noting. First, the support for radical left-wing parties have fallen by two-thirds since 1980, according to Timbro. One suspects that the former radicals have simply rebranded themselves as populists.

Second, the report’s definition of populism offers hope and a roadmap forward. Timbro defines populist parties by six markers:

1) the self-image that they are in conflict with a corrupt and crony elite; 2) a lack of patience with the rule of law; 3) a demand for direct democracy; 4) the pursuit of a more powerful state through police and military on the right and nationalisation of banks and big corporations on the left; 5) highly critical of the EU, immigration, globalisation, free trade and NATO; 6) the use of revolutionary language and promises of dramatic change.

By those criteria, supporters of liberty would score 50 percent on the populist scale.

We certainly see ourselves as “in conflict with a corrupt, crony elite.” Cronyism is fueled by large, remote government. The more taxpayer funds, contracts, and favors government has to distribute – and the more taxes, regulations, and sanctions it can impose – the greater the penchant for graft, bribery, and corruption. Classical liberalism would avoid this pitfall by constraining the state within strictly delimited boundaries.

Free marketeers are “highly critical” of the EU – and rightly so – with its tens of thousands of regulations, 18 percent tariffs on imported food, and an often imperious advocacy of an “ever-closer union.”

The rhetoric of classical liberals should not be considered revolutionary. It is rooted in the reality of human nature as described by revelation and manifest throughout history. Their proposals should be based in reality, with a strong infusion of prudence. But if the modern transatlantic sphere were to embrace a classical liberal outlook, it would experience “dramatic change.”

Liberty recognizes two of the main driving forces of the populist explosion: cronyism and global governance. And it prescribes the right cure. To prevail, its adherents must offer a different narrative than the shrill, envy-filled braying of homegrown demagogues. They must show the superiority of their prescriptions.

In a word, they pete.

The report concludes that “left- and right-wing anti-establishment parties are here to stay. Whether or not their authoritarian and illiberal ideas will spread too remains an open question.”

That question hinges on the whether advocates of liberty will make a case for the views that have laid the bedrock upon which every other ideology contends.

Ehrmann. This photo has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Mugabe: Rotten from the Start
An interesting article in the Los Angeles Times detailing how badly wrong Robert Mugabe’s supporters in the West have been from the very beginning (requires “free” registration; may I suggest BugMeNot?): From the beginning of his political career, Mugabe was not just a Marxist but one who repeatedly made clear his intention to run Zimbabwe as an authoritarian, one-party state. Characteristic of this historical revisionism is former Newsweek southern Africa correspondent Joshua Hammer, writing recently in the liberal Washington Monthly...
Faith, Funding, and Substance Abuse
Why might there be “increasing participation by religious organizations in offering substance abuse treatment funded by federal government vouchers”? Perhaps because, at least in part, “A program’s faith element relates to the people they serve and the type of help they provide, as programs with more explicit and mandatory faith-related elements are likely to be substance-abuse programs.” Thus, the more explicitly faith-filled substance abuse programs will increasingly face a special temptation to take federal funds for such purposes. And this...
Reinhold Niebuhr, the Ecumenical Movement, and a Global Government
Perhaps not from its inception, but certainly in the post-WWII era, the global Christian ecumenical movement, as represented by groups like the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, has been increasingly dominated by Marxist economics, liberation theology, and transformationalist ethics. Much of this was mediated through the influence and work of Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr in part observed the reality that since there was no single government above nation-states which could restrict...
One More Reason the Government Shouldn’t Subsidize Ethanol
Excerpts from Clifford Krauss’ article in the New York Times (cross-posted at )… The ethanol boom of recent years — which spurred a frenzy of distillery construction, record corn prices, rising food prices and hopes of a new future for rural America — may be fading. Only last year, farmers here spoke of a biofuel gold rush, and they rejoiced as prices for ethanol and the corn used to produce it set records. panies and farm cooperatives have built so...
Two Perspectives on Climate Change
These two brief essays provide a good juxtaposition of two perspectives that view immediate and mandated action to reduce carbon emissions as either morally obligatory or imprudent. For the former, see Vaclav Havel’s, “Our Moral Footprint,” which states rhetorically, “It is also obvious from published research that human activity is a cause of change; we just don’t know how big its contribution is. Is it necessary to know that to the last percentage point, though? By waiting for incontrovertible precision,...
Patterson Stops Too Short In Jena Six New York Times Piece
Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology at Harvard University, penned a challenging piece on Jena 6 and our current racial tensions. I have learned much from Patterson over the years. For example, he was the first person to help me realize that we often confuse issues of race and class in America by assuming the race as the single variable accounting for the cyclical plight of poor blacks. In a September 30th New York Times op-ed piece Patterson rightly says that...
Pentecostalism, Poverty, and the Global South
Related to last week’s post about Reformed education and Pentecostalism, I point you to this post by Rod Dreher, who discusses his interview with Josiah Idowu-Fearon, the Anglican Archbishop of Kaduna state in Nigeria. Dreher relates the following: Pentecostalism is growing like wildfire, but there’s less to it than you might think. He said that in many cases, people are drawn to the emotional experience, and can tell you exactly when they gave their life to Jesus — but can’t...
The Uniqueness of Christian Ecology – Abundance
"Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?" [John 6:9] Among all the many good things going on last weekend in Boise, I (and a few others) noticed something a bit disconcerting. The way many of the topics were covered shows how prone Christians are to being consumed by doom and gloom messages of scarcity and lack and overpopulation and an "ever smaller earth." While it’s...
C.S. Lewis vs. Sigmund Freud
Awhile back, I finished reading Armand Nicholi’s book, The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. Dr. Nicholi is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard and has taught a seminar on Freud & Lewis at Harvard for the past 35 years. The course eventually led to this book and a PBS series by the same name. The book is an interesting read for anyone modestly interested in one or...
GodblogCon 2007
The Acton Institute is a sponsor of this year’s Godblogcon, a conference that “will equip you with a working knowledge of new media technologies and its impact on society, empowering your ministry to employ quickly and easily new media technologies to engage culture for the cause of Christ.” GodblogCon 2007 will be in Las Vegas on November 8-9. Blogging luminaries like Joe Carter, La Shawn Barber, and Al Mohler will be speaking, and the conference will also be a part...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved