Europe as a region has 1.7 million troops, and the second highest level of regional defence spending in the world. Yet it lacks the capacity to manage and coordinate these forces as a whole.

As the Irish European Council presidency draws to a close at the end of June, all eyes are on the big ticket items the Irish Government pledged to address: substantive progress on economic governance and banking union; jobs, growth and the single market; the Multiannual Financial Framework; EU-US free trade; fisheries and agriculture reform and a host of others. Somewhat overlooked has been the issue of security and defence. The Irish presidency has worked tremendously hard to contribute to a positive momentum in the run-up to the dedicated European Council discussion on security and defence at the December 2013 summit. The prevailing mood in advance of that discussion seems to be one of anticipation tempered by apprehension.

Credit: The Council of the European Union

The anticipation is generated by the fact that major forces seem to be converging which make substantive decisions on security and defence a necessity. First, European defence budgets are under pressure as never before and member states are desperately seeking means by which they can maintain military capacity at reduced overall cost. Pooling and sharing between EU partners appears a no-brainer in this regard; whether it is an Anglo-French agreement to share an aircraft carrier so as to maintain their global strategic reach or whether it is a Belgian-Dutch agreement to base a Belgian helicopter and crew on a Dutch naval vessel to combat narco-trafficking in the Caribbean. Second, if jobs and growth are an overriding European priority, the defence sector (already employing 600,000) has tremendous potential; whether it is from the ‘prime’ multinational behemoth EADS or the tiny Reamda based in Tralee, County Kerry. Thirdly, the world is changing and for arguably the first time in two generations, Europe is going to have to supply its own security and will have to make a much larger contribution to international security. Europe’s decades’ long dependence on the United States is ending – it may end with a bang or a whimper – but it is ending. Long after the end of the Cold War, Europe still depended on the US to address security crises in the Balkans, in Libya and most recently in Mali. Even with 1.7 million troops and with the second highest regional defence spending in the world, Europe does not have the basic capacity to manage and to direct even comparatively small-scale military operations. Gaping holes exist in European air, land and sea forces which make even apparently modest military missions problematic.

The apprehension in advance of the summit is based on the fear that the Heads of Government will roll up to their December meeting with a set of pre-cooked summit conclusions liberally dressed with high-minded generalities and garnished with platitudes but devoid of protein. Worse still, they might well then depart with no intention of discussing security and defence for another five years.

The Irish EU Council presidency has worked seriously to focus minds and to direct attention to the challenges ahead. Three ‘baskets’ of issues are due to be discussed in December: the effectiveness, visibility and impact of the EU’s security and defence policy; the development of civilian and military capabilities in support of that policy; and the strengthening of Europe’s defence industrial base. In each basket a range of EU, national and independent actors are compiling reports, papers, reviews and analyses all of which need to be digested and synthesised in advance of the summit. Over the last few months, the Irish presidency has hosted the standard complement of meetings of EU foreign, security and defence bodies in Dublin. They have also, however, run two dedicated seminars: the first in February on inter-institutional cooperation in crisis management and the second in May dedicated to the defence agenda of the December summit. These seminars were serious and substantive attempts to put shape on Europe’s defence agenda and they feed directly into forthcoming ministerial meetings over the next six months. Nonetheless, the outstanding question remains the same: Does there exist the political will necessary to take serious decisions on European security and defence? Can Europe’s ‘shameful incapacity’ be successfully addressed?

The experience of the Irish presidency has raised again an intriguing set of institutional questions. Security and defence is an odd fish in the EU sea. The policy area is directed (ostensibly) by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and it has its own dedicated planning and management infrastructure within the EEAS including the Military Committee and the Military Staff Committee to which the member states send their military representatives. At the same time, however, there is no ministerial council of defence ministers in the same way that there are councils for other EU policy areas from fisheries to finance. The logic here is that the High Representative’s job description directly encompasses EU security and defence and that she then works with her EEAS staff and national foreign ministers in the Foreign Affairs Council to determine the Union’s foreign, security and defence policy and reports directly thereon to the European Council. On might reasonably think that national defence ministries – the very people that need to develop, mobilise and account for security and defence nationally – should be directly plugged into EU policy and decision making? Perhaps that might be a modest line item for discussion at the December summit?

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Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

This article was first published by europedebate.ie.

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About the Author

Ben Tonra – University College Dublin
Ben Tonra is Jean Monnet Professor of European Foreign, Security and Defence Policy and Associate Professor of International Relations at the University College Dublin (UCD) School of Politics and International Relations. Tonra is a graduate of the University of Limerick and was awarded his PhD from the University of Dublin, Trinity College. Tonra’s research interests are concerned with EU security and defense, Irish foreign policy and international relations theory.

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The eurozone crisis of the past half-decade has seen huge volatility in the market for government bonds, with the heavily indebted countries on the eurozone’s periphery facing relatively high rates. One side effect of this volatility, writes

Yields for German government bonds reached record lows in recent months. The downturn in yields has now lasted since the start of the Great Recession, apart from a short disruption in the first half of 2011, and this has affected bills and bonds over all maturities (as shown in Figure 1 below). Papers with short maturities have partly reached negative yields. Having these low yields for such a long time have made a sizable relief for the public budget in Germany. This relief has been especially pronounced for the federal government which is responsible for roughly one half of Germany’s public debt. The gains of the federal government may be especially pronounced, since the bonds that they hold may function as a “safe haven” in Europe’s debt crisis. Other German public debtors, like the Länder and communities, are benefiting from low yields, too, but to a somewhat smaller extent.

Figure 1: Yield Curve for German Federal Government Bonds

Source: Thomsen Reuters Datastream.

Quantifying the level of relief for the federal government from these lower rates is only possible with some strict assumptions, since bond yields depend on several impact factors. However, one may argue that the ten years before the crisis were rather “normal” with respect to interest rates and business cycle movements. Accordingly, the mean interest rates from that period can be used as a benchmark. A calculation for all bills and bonds that have been issued since 2009 shows that current interest payments in 2012 were lower by roughly €10 billion than in the benchmark scenario (in the benchmark scenario bills and bonds accrue interest according to their mean interest rates from 1999-2008). It can be expected that the relief for the federal budget will increase to €13 billion this year. Summing up all the gains that are due to lower interest rates for federal government bonds and bills issued between 2009 and 2013, gives the sizable figure of roughly €80 billion.

The decline of bond yields is mainly driven by the low business cycle dynamics in the euro area and the interest rate policy of the European Central Bank (it can be assumed that bond markets in the euro area are highly integrated and therefore German bond yields should depend on euro area macro data). A model that mimics bond yields in the years 1999-2008 and that controls for business cycle conditions and for ECB interest rates also shows a substantial drop in bond yields during the Great Recession and the debt crisis. However, since 2011 actual bond yields and those predicted by the model differ remarkably. This difference can be interpreted as the gains that the German federal government has experienced due to the “safe haven” effect. They would presumably not exist if other countries were not in trouble. The same calculation as above but with interest rates stemming from the model instead of historical mean values shows that almost €2 billion €10 billion interest reduction in 2012 has been due to the “safe haven” effect. In 2013 the corresponding figure increases to roughly €3 billion.

Interestingly, the result of the model also fits French bond yields in recent years. Note that French and German bond yields were almost identical before 2008. It seems that the relation between French bond yields and euro area macro data has been changed by neither the Great Recession nor the debt crisis. This means that there is no particular additional risk premium, as is the case for Italy, and no “safe haven” effect like for Germany, as can be seen in Figure 2. The comparison between French and German bond yields show that the “safe haven” effect increased during 2011 when rumors about a break–up of the euro area became more intense. Finally, close to the announcement of the open market transactions program by the ECB, spreads between French and German bonds shrank but did not vanish. The French budget is benefiting from low bond yields, too, but without the “safe haven” effects that Germany currently enjoys.

Figure 2: Bond yields (5 years maturity)

Source: Thomsen Reuters Datastream

The overall-effect on the public budget in Germany will further grow in the coming years. The ECB has just lowered its main interest rates (to 0.5 per cent), which are also relevant for the pricing of bonds, and there are still several billions worth of federal government bonds with maturities of five to thirty years that were issued before the current low yield period and that will soon be replaced. An overall benefit of more than €100 billion may be the case. (Note that these figures do not include effects that are due to debt that is hold by the Länder and communities. Both have benefited from lower interest rates in recent years, too, but not at the same scale as the federal government.) However, sooner or later the turnaround in bond yields will come. Thus, the gains from these low interest rates should not be taken as a signal to boost public debt in Germany. These gains are one-offs, rather than a structural improvement of the budget. Accordingly, the current excellent German budget figures should be interpreted with some care.

From a European perspective, it might be argued that these remarkable one-offs are benefits that the German government have experienced due to the debt crisis and that it would be reasonable to spend this amount for support of those countries in the euro area that are most affected by the debt crisis. However, one might also argue that only those benefits should be counted that are due to the “safe haven” effect since countries like France are benefiting from effects that are due to the ECB policy as well. The “safe haven” effect is only a fractional amount and is comparatively low given the financial needs of the distressed countries. Finally, benefits due to low government bond yields should not be the basis to calculate the commitment Germany is willing to make in the debt crisis.

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About the author 

Jens Boysen-Hogrefe – Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Jens Boysen-Hogrefe is a research fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). His research interests include fiscal and monetary policy, financial markets ad business cycle forecasts. He is member of the “Arbeitskreis Steuerschätzungen”, a council of experts that makes official tax projections for the German government, and a regular participant of the “Gemeinschaftsdiagnose”, a working group of economic research institutes that provides a benchmark business cycle forecast for the German government.

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In recent weeks the UK’s membership of the EU has been an issue of intense controversy for Britain’s ruling Conservative Party. 

Last week might fairly be described as less-than-perfect for the Conservative party and their EU policy: a well-backed amendment to the Queen’s speech, sniping from both sides over the direction of travel and even the recently-reinstated Conservative MP Nadine Dorries – who one might have expected to be more circumspect – wondering aloud about running on a joint Conservative-UKIP ticket. All of this looks very much like a party in disarray. However, it is much more emblematic of a party undergoing a long-term shift in its position.

In the 1990s, when the European issue was last so prominent, the Conservatives were a more balanced party in terms of having a significant body of pro-EU members, many of whom had been personally involved in taking the UK into the EEC in 1973. The debate then was thus between pros and antis, the latter mobilised as much by their idealisation of Thatcher as any particular personal views on European integration. As time progressed, the pro-EU element became more and more marginalised, as the elder figures retired or died and local branches selected more and more sceptics to contest seats. This became particularly apparent at the 2010 general election, when there was a big turnover of MPs, and the entry into Parliament of significant numbers of backbenchers with both visceral views on European integration and a propensity to rebel against the whip. As a result, the Tories now find that their EU policy is being contested between antis and pragmatists, the latter holding the senior positions. Indeed, this is the root of the matter: David Cameron has no EU policy to speak of, but rather a series of pragmatic holding positions.

Credit: Rachel Clare Hobday (CC BY 2.0)

Understood as such, we can see how Cameron’s assorted pronouncements are a reflection of internal party dynamics and his need to maintain some semblance of unity, rather than any intrinsic feature of the integration process. Hence the dropping of the referendum he offered on Lisbon when in opposition; the convoluted Europe Act to cover treaty reforms that (at the time) seemed very unlikely; the farcical run-in to his January speech, which ultimately moved his position to saying he would press for a renegotiation. Even last week’s publication of a draft bill is nothing more than a bare minimum to not become completely out-flanked by the backbenches. In none of this has there been any debate about the nature of the Union, nor the impact of the Eurozone crisis on governance structures, nor even possible future avenues for a post-withdrawal relationship with the rest of the continent.

The underlying problem for Cameron is that a sizeable part of his parliamentary party will not be happy with anything less than withdrawal from the EU: there is no trust in any declaration of future intentions. Added to this over the previous year is the sense that the sceptics have the advantage, that their course is right and that their leader is biddable, which he is to an appreciable degree. Thus the sceptics will continue to push and Cameron will continue to make minimal concessions – even though his political instincts tell him that leaving the Union is not a good policy option.

In all of this, UKIP will continue to benefit by drawing in disaffected Conservatives, albeit voters rather than parliamentarians. Indeed, I would argue that UKIP is at the limits of what a party of protest can achieve, which might take the edge off their perceived challenge to the Tories in the coming two years before the general election. However, if there is one thing that we can learn from this, then it is that Europe truly is a defining issue for the Conservatives, for them to come back to it after such a long struggle during the 1990s. The problem is that they cannot agree on how it defines them and answers are unlikely to be forthcoming anytime soon.

This article was originally posted on our sister site, British Politics and Policy at LSE.

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About the author

Simon Usherwood – University of Surrey
Dr Simon Usherwood is Senior Lecturer in Politics and Deputy Head of the School of Politics, University of Surrey. After study at the College of Europe and the LSE’s European Institute, his work has focused on euroscepticism, both in the UK and more widely across the EU. He is coordinator of the UACES Collaborative research Network on Euroscepticism and co-author of The European Union: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2007).

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With declining birth rates and an ageing population, Europe is facing the threat of a demographic decline by the middle of the century. Facing similar challenges, the US has recently moved to reform its immigration policies, thus allowing greater numbers of migrants to encourage growth.

‘Now is the time’ hammered out President Obama in his January speech on immigration reform. Time has come to act upon migration as a golden opportunity for US economic recovery. Time has come for migration to benefit the American society as a whole. The reform should ‘provide more ladders of opportunity to those who are willing to work hard to make it into the middle class’.

This ‘common-sense’ reform includes a facilitated access to citizenship for US Green Card holders and the regularisation of undocumented migrants under a number of conditions. The assumptions of the Obama administration are that migrants’ consumption boosts the economy and creates jobs. According to the Migration Policy Institute, in the 1990s, half of the growth in the US came from new immigrants. Migrants are a boon for an ageing society like the US, and a growing birth rate constitutes a safety net for future pensioners and for the long term sustainability for Medicare reform.

Credit: J Aaron Faar (Creative Commons: BY)

This bold US agenda is at odds with Europe’s restrictive migration policies. Europe is stuck in a narrative of ‘now is the time of crisis’, where electoral short-termism comes first over what should be an essential migration strategy to meet Europe’s growth objectives. Rather, the crisis is a handy scapegoat for restraining migration. While the US blueprint plans to staple a US green card to foreign graduates who get their diploma in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the UK government is clamping down on overseas students by restricting their access to the UK labour market. In Spain, a promised land for many Latin Americans in the last decade, unprecedented unemployment rates have led 800,000 migrants to return home since 2011. Around 120,000 Spanish people have also decided to emigrate.

Yet, like the US, Europe is facing similar economic and demographic challenges. In many crucial sectors of the economy, European businesses have problems recruiting doctors, nurses, IT specialists and engineers. According to the Migration Observatory, two third of care assistants in London are migrants. In Spain, migrants have contributed to 30 per cent of GDP-growth in the past 15 years. Europe is also an ageing continent, where migrants will be key to the preservation of welfare states. By 2050, there will be only two active citizens per retiree, down from four to one today. This is unsustainable.

Joel Fetzer has recently shown that European public opinion is not more opposed to migration than in the US. So what can explain the blindness of European governments and the lack of ambitious policies?

First, unlike in the US where the ‘melting pot’ is constitutive of nation building, Europe’s migration history is multiple and as diverse as 27 narratives. Second, the European single market is disconnected from migration policies. If much has been achieved on intra-European migration, ambitious labour migration policies for non-EU nationals are now lacking. So far, the European consensus has built around an image of ‘Fortress Europe’. Except for relatively liberal asylum policies, the focus has been on securing the EU’s external borders and organising the return of irregular migrants.

Little has been achieved on labour migration. The European Blue Card, modelled on the US Green Card and adopted in 2009, falls short of high-skilled migrants’ expectations. Not only are a recognised diploma and three years of professional experience required, but the prospective migrant also needs to earn 1.5 times the member states’ annual average gross salary. Unlike the US, citizenship is also not guaranteed as it depends on EU member states’ good will. The UK, Ireland and Denmark have also opted-out of the scheme. It is no wonder that Europe is no longer attractive to many. High-skilled migrants from Northern Africa and Middle East prefer to try their luck in the US, Canada or the Gulf countries. In 2010 a CADMUS research report confirmed that around 80 per cent of Egyptians who had migrated to an OECD country in 2008 were living either in the US or in Canada.

The threat of an ageing Europe, waning worldwide competitiveness and poor innovation levels should act as a wake-up call for European politicians, businesses and universities who should not shirk their responsibilities. More knowledge on the benefits of migration should be spread around Europe. Lampedusa, near Sicily is the most beautiful beach only for Europeans, not for those dying to reach it as refugees from Northern Africa. The stakes are high for Europe’s future.

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About the author

Sarah Wolff – Queen Mary, University of London
Sarah Wolff is a Lecturer in Public Policy, at Queen Mary, University of London.  She is also Senior Research Associate Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for International Relations. Her research focuses on Justice and Home Affairs cooperation between the EU and its Mediterranean neighbours. Her most recent book is The Mediterranean Dimension of the European Union’s Internal Security (Palgrave, 2012).

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What effect does religion have on democratic attitudes?

Does religiosity hinder or enhance democratic attitudes? Results from the current literature are mixed. Starting with Adorno et al.’s (1950) theory of the authoritarian personality, which suggested a psychoanalytical connection between tendencies toward religious and undemocratic attitudes, many scholars have argued that religion has the effect of challenging democratic values and socialisation. Much of this literature has contrasted religion and democracy as systems of belief and has focused on the challenge religious extremism and loyalties pose for democratic institutions, showing that religiosity is associated with political intolerance and other non-democratic norms. Additionally, democratic values are argued to stress universality, striving for global implementation of civil rights for every person, whereas the religious public typically considers itself as superior to other groups, and usually entitled to more rights than others.

Credit: Rich Tea (CC BY 2.0)

However, at the same time religiosity was found to have a positive impact on democratic norms and values. Evidence shows that churches hold great potential for deliberative democracy, as religious activity leads to the development of civic skills and civic norms, and provides organisational and philosophical bases for a wide range of social movements. In fact, church attendance is found to increase electoral turnout, party membership, protest activism, and support for democracy. Accordingly, empirical and theoretical scholars alike increasingly note the “political ambivalence of religion”; that is, the fact that it can be either a source of undemocratic values or a contributor to the development of democratic skills.

These contradictory findings can be reconciled when considering the multifaceted nature of religiosity. The literature views religion as involving three dimensions – belief, behaviour, and belonging. The belief component encompasses an understanding of the divine and humanity’s relationship to it, and may refer to belief in God, heaven, hell, life after death, or tendencies of people to characterise themselves as religious. The behaviour component consists of two factors: the social practice of religion, involving participation in organised religious communities and attendance at places of worship, and private practice such as prayer. Belonging consists of denominational affiliation, that is, identification with a particular organised denomination and/or a religious movement, and private practice, such as prayer or the reading of sacred texts. The belonging component includes identification with a specific denomination and trends within a denomination.

Accordingly, our research argues that religious beliefs, such as the belief in God, heaven, and life after death, and social religious activities, such as attendance at places of worship and participation in organised religious communities, often have contrasting effects on democratic attitudes and norms. First, religious belief is positively associated with conservative-traditional values and negatively associated with openness to change values across religions and contexts. In contrast democratisation is positively related to openness to change, emphasising independent thought, universalism, natural rights, and equality, but negatively related to values such as conformity, tradition, and security. This makes for an inherent and systematic value conflict between the religious and democratic values systems. At the same time, social involvement in places of worship leads to the development of civic skills and norms as well as political efficacy, positively affects electoral turnout, party membership, protest activism, and involvement in other civic organisations, and thus holds great potential for deliberative democracy. Further, the religious social institution makes for an active minority group which benefits from the democratic framework, consequently mobilising overall support for a democratic regime.

Indeed, using heteroskedastic maximum likelihood models and data from the fourth wave of the World Values Survey for forty-five democratic countries, we start by showing that as a belief system, religiosity generates abstract opposition to democracy, while increasing ambivalence towards democratic principles; however, the social-behavioural aspect of religiosity leads to greater endorsement of the democratic system and generates stronger support for democracy. Theoretically, this work argues that different mediating mechanisms underlie the differential effects that the two dimensions of religiosity have on attitudes towards democracy. While religious belief is associated with traditional values and an emphasis on material and physical security that generates opposition to democracy, religious social behaviour improves social capital in the form of institutional trust and political engagement, which have positive effects on support for democracy.

In a second study, we used multilevel path analysis models and data from fifty-four countries from Waves 4 and 5 of the World Values Survey to directly test the mechanisms hypothesised to underlie the differential effects of religious belief and behaviour on abstract support for democracy. Consistent with the expectations in our earlier article, we find that the negative effect of religious belief on democratic attitudes is to a large extent mediated by personal values, and the effect of social religious behaviour is mediated by the generation of social capital in the form of political involvement and trust in institutions. These results are robust across a variety of religious traditions and contextual effects, and thus make a convincing case that the psychological mechanisms underlying the effects of religious belief and social religious behaviour on democratic attitudes extend above and beyond a specific political context.

Still, while these two studies confirm that religiosity affects democratic support through values, involvement, and trust in democratic institutions, it could be argued that democratic norms and attitudes increase the likelihood of political participation via places of worship, and not the other way around. Therefore, an experimental test will help improve our understanding of the nature of the relationship between the two dimensions of religiosity and democratic attitudes, and establish their causal effect.

To test the causal effect of religious belief and religious social behaviour on abstract support for democracy, our third study builds on an experimental priming framework. A priming framework suggests that a subject’s exposure to certain cues increases the accessibility of related objects in their memory, consciously or unconsciously. Thus, even relatively subtle religious cues can activate religious beliefs or values and experiences, which, in turn, can affect political cognition. Using a comparative experiment among Turkish Muslims and Israeli Jews, we find that priming religious belief led to a lower degree of abstract support for democracy among respondents, while a religious social behaviour prime led to an increase in abstract support for democracy when compared to the no-prime group.

Together, these three studies confirm that different dimensions of religiosity have differential causal effects via different psychological mechanisms on democratic attitudes. While religious belief undermines democracy by leading to more conservative values, social religious behaviour boosts democratic attitudes by fostering trust in institutions and engagement in politics. Our findings therefore suggest that it is not religious belief and religious behaviour in and of themselves that affect democratic attitudes, but the values and behaviours they teach to the religious individual. This is an optimistic finding in the sense that it leaves room for interventions, and particularly for educating people about democratic norms and for attenuating the value conflict underlying the non-democratic proclivities often reported for the devout.

For a longer discussion of the topic covered in this article see:

Ben-Nun Bloom, Pazit and Arikan, Gizem. (2013). Religion and Democratic Attitudes: A Cross-National Test of the Mediating Mechanisms. British Journal of Political Science. 43(2):375-397.

Ben-Nun Bloom, Pazit and Arikan, Gizem. (2012). The Differential Effect of Religious Belief and Religious Social Behavior on Opinion and Ambivalence in Democratic Attitudes. Political Behavior 34(2):249-276.

Ben-Nun Bloom, Pazit and Arikan, Gizem. (Forthcoming). Priming Religious Belief and Religious Social Behavior Affects Support for Democracy. International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

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About the author

Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom – Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Pazit Ben-Nun Bloom is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her research examines the role of morality, religiosity, and values in political behaviour. Her broad research interests are in political psychology, comparative political behaviour and political methodology.

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Gizem Arikan – Yasar University
Gizem Arikan is Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations at Yasar University, Izmir, Turkey. Her research focuses on the effect of political culture and values on public opinion and policy. She also conducts research on religiosity and attitudes toward democracy.

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Sweden is one of only a handful of EU countries which are not members of NATO.

Defence policy is currently the object of a heated public debate in Sweden. In most of Europe today, defence policy is not a topic of much concern, let alone national debate. So, why in Sweden – and why now?

This unusual debate began in late December of last year when the Chief of Swedish Defence, General Sverker Göransson, stated in a widely-circulated interview that if Sweden were to be attacked, it would only be able to defend itself for one week before requiring foreign assistance. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen later added that although Sweden is NATO’s most active and most capable partner, it could not count on assistance in the event of an attack, since the Alliance Article 5 security guarantee only extends to members of NATO, an organisation that Sweden refuses to join. Sweden’s Defence Minister Karin Enström stated in a later interview, however, that Sweden could rely on the EU for assistance since the Lisbon Treaty provides a solidarity clause, article 42.7, obligating EU member states to assist fellow EU members in case of catastrophic events or attacks.

Swedish Navy officer during exercise (Credit: Michael Sandberg, CC BY 2.0)

The debate escalated when, on 22 April, the Swedish morning daily Svenska Dagbladet reported that Russian nuclear-capable bomber aircraft had launched a night mock attack against assumed targets in Stockholm and Southern Sweden several weeks earlier during the Easter weekend. Not only was this information kept secret by the Swedish military, but of even greater concern was the fact that no Swedish fighter jets were available to respond that night due to overtime restrictions on pilots and lack of funding. NATO, in contrast, scrambled its stand-by air policing unit in Lithuania and trailed the Russian bombers over the Baltic Sea as they returned to base.

News of the Russian mock attack and lackluster Swedish response led to outrage among the Swedish public and commentators, and bewilderment among international defence analysts. In response, the Swedish military and government played down the event, stating that Russian aircraft never actually entered the country’s air space. Indeed, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt commented that “We don’t react to everything, we’re not up in the air for everything and we shouldn’t be”. He later added that there was no factual basis to the claim that the Russian aircraft were actually conducting a mock attack on Sweden.

Swedish Defence Policy and NATO

This series of events has left many wondering, both in Sweden and abroad, what Sweden’s defence policy actually consists of. What is the state of Sweden’s defence? Does Sweden really believe the EU is a military alliance? Why does Sweden refuse to join NATO? These are all good questions, some of which are echoed in other European countries as well.

For those who have not closely studied Swedish defence policy over the past two decades, here is a brief history. During the Cold War, Sweden pursued a combination of a relatively strong territorial defence and an activist foreign policy of non-alignment aimed at reducing tensions between the Superpowers. This official policy of “armed neutrality” was complemented by secret bilateral cooperation with the United States and select NATO countries that would guarantee Western support in case of a war with the Soviet Union. A few years after the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the EU, declared that there were no regional military threats to the country, took a strategic time out, and rapidly dismantled its territorial defence organisation to focus exclusively on international operations led by NATO and the EU.

The Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 rattled people in many countries, including Sweden. With no territorial defence to speak of, but still determined to stay outside NATO, the Swedish government unilaterally issued a solidarity declaration in 2009 in regard to its Nordic neighbors and other EU members. This declaration spells out that Sweden will support these countries in case of disaster or armed attack and that Sweden in turn expects similar support if affected by disaster or attack. With limited military resources and with conscription officially abolished in 2010, this unilateral Swedish solidarity declaration was received with skepticism if not down-right ridicule by fellow Nordic and Baltic countries that quite frankly didn’t know what to make of it.

However, while Swedish defence policy has been the object of criticism and some ridicule at home and around the Baltic Sea, it has been lauded by military experts and government officials in Washington and Brussels as a leading example of the effective transformation of national defence and a model of military professionalism. In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the Swedish armed forces have been transformed from a massive, but rather poorly-trained and poorly-equipped conscript-based territorial defence force to a small, professional and technologically-advanced military focused on expeditionary operations in coalition with others.

Indeed, over the past 15 years, the Swedish military has gained increasing international respect for its ability to deploy well-equipped, well trained, technologically advanced and mature soldiers in complete units that can effectively integrate with US, NATO and European forces in operations from Central Asia to Central Africa. The Swedish Air Force is rated among the very best in the world, and its contribution to the Libya operation, as well as its decision to invest in heavy airlift and modern helicopters, are much appreciated. The Swedish Navy has in turn demonstrated that it can participate in and lead international flotillas in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and has proven its unrivalled submarine capability by successfully attacking and “sinking” U.S. aircraft carriers undetected in extended war games in the Pacific Ocean.

One explanation for this apparent disconnect between local perceptions and those in Washington and Brussels, is that Sweden’s security policy was traditionally composed of two equal parts: an inward-looking defence policy focused on defending the country against Soviet invasion, and an outward-looking foreign policy aimed at building relationships with the US and other powers. With the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the threat of invasion, I argue, defence policy became completely subordinate to foreign policy. When foreign policy influence is at stake, participating in international operations or exercises is far more important than patrolling the skies over Sweden, despite the government’s repeated promise to ensure the sovereignty of the whole country, at all times. In fact, the reason that no Swedish fighters were on stand-by that Easter weekend was because crews and planes had already been stretched to their (overtime) limit following Swedish commitments to participate in and prepare for advanced combat training exercises with US and NATO air forces.

This Swedish form of post-Cold War foreign policy-led defence rests on the analysis that Russia is no longer and will no longer pose a military threat to the Nordic-Baltic region of Europe for the foreseeable future. Sweden’s Nordic and Baltic neighbours are less willing than Sweden to embrace that analysis to the full extent that Sweden has, but the view that Russia does not and will not pose a direct military threat to Northwestern Europe is widely shared by well-respected analysts and government officials in not only the US, but also across most of Europe.

Of course, all of this would not matter so very much if Sweden simply joined NATO, an unwillingness that may seem puzzling to outsiders. It is rooted in a domestic context in which the myth of Sweden’s golden post-war years of economic prosperity and international moral standing has become closely tied to the myth of armed neutrality, in which Sweden alone stands between the East and the West, an upholder of world peace. So far, neither of the two big political parties, the Moderate party or the Social Democrats, have been willing to challenge these myths. Not surprisingly, opinion polls remain solidly against NATO membership. Moreover, Sweden’s Cold War history of successfully seeking security through secret bilateral cooperation with the US and some European NATO countries also helps to explain why Sweden’s leading political parties remain comfortable with this arrangement today, as they seek security through informal bilateral ties to the US and other European countries via the EU, rather than official membership in NATO.

However, the recent defence debate has not only outraged the Swedish public and been an international embarrassment for the country, but has also demonstrated the perils of conducting defence policy that lacks broad public support and understanding. Hopefully, these events will force Sweden’s leading political parties to engage – finally – in an open debate on Swedish defence policy in general and on the pros and cons of joining NATO in particular. From the perspective of this author, such a debate is much overdue and of absolute necessity for any country that takes its security and defence policy seriously.

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Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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About the author

Jan Joel Andersson – Swedish Institute of International Affairs
Dr. Jan Joel Andersson is Senior Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm and Dragas Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Studies at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, USA.

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2. Sweden has reformed its welfare state to deliver both efficiency and equity – the UK should learn from its example.
3. The ‘Norwegian model’ would be a poor alternative to EU membership for the UK.

One year on from his election to the French Presidency, François Hollande now faces criticism from all corners over his handling of the economy and apparent failures to address France’s structural weaknesses.

The recent celebration of the first anniversary of François Hollande’s election has come across as a nightmare for the French president. His government is caught in a spiral of skyfalling ratings, dismal economic results and mounting pressure from Brussels and Berlin. On Wednesday May 15^th France officially slipped into recession; on the same day Hollande visited the European Commission, a coincidence that sounded like a double admission of weakness. The change he promised for France one year ago has not happened, and he is no longer seen as the flag bearer for a different Europe.

Is that to say that the successor of Nicolas Sarkozy has had it all wrong for one year and has not yet drawn any lessons from this failure? Are depictions of him as a poor leader justified?

Credit: Parti socialiste (Creative Commons BY NC ND)

Hollande’s biggest mistake might have been to trumpet the return of growth during the presidential campaign, and to conceal the need for reforms behind a mere commitment to fiscal discipline. By doing so, candidate Hollande did not engage with French voters about the profound imbalances that have crippled the country’s performance for more than a decade.

As I argue in my extensive Policy Network study, France has been suffering from five structural weaknesses, which the financial and debt crises have only exacerbated: falling competitiveness, unsustainable public spending, labour market polarisation, low social mobility and a general lack of trust. For fear of political storms, governments have taken the (bad) habit of addressing these problems on a piece-meal basis. Although it would be unfair to say that nothing has changed in France for 15 years, policy-making has often only brought about greater complexity with limited impact on structural problems.

A careful look at what Hollande has been doing during his first year in office, however, shows that part of the criticism against him is misplaced. Significant decisions and reforms have been undertaken. Firstly, the competitiveness gap was addressed by a large tax credit on social contributions expected to bring down labour costs. Secondly, the Parliament endorsed an agreement crafted by social partners for a labour market reform that will give companies more flexibility and more incentives to create permanent jobs. Thirdly, the education reform seeks to address entrenched school inequalities and to improve pupils’ performance. Finally, a public investment bank is now operational and will support SMEs and cutting-edge sectors at a moment when private banks are giving priority to improving their balance sheets.

Of course, this can be seen as a slow start and Hollande’s reformism comes across as somewhat improvised and difficult to read. Further decisions have been announced such as a new pension reform and welfare spending rationalisation, while the government is firmly committed to prioritising education and investment. These moves are likely to be opposed by conservative trade unions and radical groups and parties standing to the left of the PS. Nevertheless, neither Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nor the centre-right UMP offer a credible alternative at the moment. The political pressure comes rather from Marine Le Pen, who would eliminate Hollande and qualify for the second round if the presidential election took place today, a traumatising scenario which the French Left experienced in 2002.

As I argue in my paper, Hollande should seize the opportunity to spell out a clearer and bolder vision of how France will match economic prosperity with social justice in the 21^st century. This vision should translate in a reform of the French social model, which should not be seen as a concession to financial markets or external pressures, but rather as a way to advance social justice in a globalised economy.

From an insurance system relying on social contributions paid by employers and employees, the French social model has evolved into a mixed regime also relying on taxes and disbursing universal benefits. This development made it possible to cover new social risks such as poverty, long-term joblessness, and the loss of autonomy. Yet, the burden of social protection is still overwhelmingly borne by the business sector, and benefits do not always go to those most in need. Shifting resolutely the financing of the welfare state from contributions to taxes, and capping the level of pensions, family and unemployment benefits for high-earners, would both reduce labour costs and respond to criteria of fairness.

For this transition to succeed, Hollande probably needs to step-up his crisis-mode communication and to streamline governmental work along strategic priorities. Arguably, the left-wing majority spent too much political capital on – given the context – secondary issues such as same-sex marriage. The president should explain how France will be able to cope with globalisation and European integration in the next decades, while upholding living standards and a strong sense of social justice. He must convince that structural reforms and left-wing values can be reconciled. This requires taking on vested interests in his electorate, hence distributional conflicts are set to heat up. Yet, this approach is the only way to confront widespread anxiety about the country’s predicament and to combat the image of a “directionless muddler”.

Good news recently came from Brussels and might give him a hand. The two additional years granted by EU Commissioner Rehn to reach the three percent deficit target sounded like a victory for a Hollande, who relentlessly repeated that fiscal consolidation without growth was like pouring water in a leaking bucket. Nevertheless, this concession came with conditions of reforms. Only if he succeeds will credibility and trust return, not only in France but at an EU level. His proposals for a reoriented Europe, paying more attention to social imbalances and fixing the design flaws of the Eurozone, will be taken more seriously only if he is convincing that he can steer his country out of a depressive spiral.

Readers may be interested in the upcoming LSE Event, ‘France’s place in Europe – One year into the Socialist Presidency’ on 5 June with Jean-François Copé. Click here for more information. 

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Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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About the author

Renaud Thillaye – Policy Network
Renaud Thillaye is senior researcher at Policy Network. He writes on EU affairs and French politics. He is the author of the Policy Network paper Francois Hollande after one year.

Related posts:

1. In the face of on-going recession and deepening unemployment in France, François Hollande’s commitment to deficit reduction may soon put him at odds with voters.
2. François Hollande is by no means certain to win the French Presidential election. He may yet fall foul of France’s well-known ‘Frontrunner Syndrome’, as Sarkozy’s fightback begins
3. François Hollande’s strong support among the young and middle-aged as well as the working class indicates that he will be the next President of the French Republic.

In The Great Convergence, Kishore Mahbubani reflects on the shifting world order, the future of international organisations, and the prospects for progress on key global issues. 

The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World. Kishore Mahbubani. Public Affairs. January 2013.

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In The Great Convergence, Kishore Mahbubani attempts a manifesto on the future of world politics. Singapore’s former UN ambassador proposes a “theory of one world”, urging leaders to acknowledge converging global interests and values and to embrace a more multilateral world order. He argues that US and European dominance of international affairs must abate as new powers rise and outlines major trends, risks, and opportunities.

Mahbubani’s perspective on the changing configuration of world power and the future of international organizations is timely and provocative. But for most readers – already thoroughly steeped in globalization jargon and familiar with the most obvious political, economic, and technological trends – Mahbubani’s reflections are old hat. This lack of originality and a lack of balance undermine the work, for this reviewer at least.

Mahbubani opens with an optimistic review of human development. He proclaims the birth of “a new global civilization”, citing “fewer wars and combat deaths”, a “steady decline in absolute poverty and its effects”, “a more educated world population”, and “more people joining the middle class”. He observes “increasingly common patterns of behavior among policymaking elites” informed by common “acceptance of the frameworks of modern science, reliance on logical reasoning, embrace of free-market economics, transformation of the social contract between ruler and ruled, and increased focus on multilateralism”.

This rosy assessment counters the pervasive gloom-and-doomism that belies the record of human progress since World War II. Yet Mahbubani’s confident predictions of enduring peace and prosperity – “wars among major powers have become a sunset industry”  – may downplay risks of resurgent nationalism, populism, or resource scarcity. Similarly, his contention that governments around the world are “converging on a certain set of norms on how to create better societies” minimizes world powers’ divergent views on individual rights, political freedom, and the economic role of the state.

Despite his uplifting point of departure, Mahbubani proceeds to bemoan the insular priorities of contemporary politicians, whose focus on short term national interest prevents policymaking in the global interest. They lack, he proposes, the necessary intellectual framework. To fill this gap, he offers a “theory of one world” defined by “four key pillars of convergence — environmental, economic, technological, and aspirational — that are driving humanity to acknowledge that we live in one world.”

This thin theory amounts to little more than a standard description of globalization. Beyond proposing to enhance the authority and legitimacy of international organizations, Mahbubani neglects to describe how policymakers could be induced to take the long, global view in the face of competing immediate national priorities. For example: he implores, “The minds of leading policymakers must focus on the single global economy as the first priority.” But how? Does he expect politicians to be so moved by his exhortations that they will neglect the immediate interests of domestic constituencies that empower them?

This crucial missing link never materializes. Instead, Mahbubani wastes pages on Tom Friedman-esque banalities about globalization. He notes the spread of market-based economic ideology, intensifying interdependence and cultural convergence as a function of “cell phones, computers, and aircraft,” that “we all live together in a small global village,” that global challenges require global solutions. Such truisms consume an appalling share of the reader’s time. The Davos set has recited the same cliches at conferences and university speeches for more than a decade, yet the tired narrative is presented with the airs of a visionary navigating intellectual terra incognita.

The latter half of the volume, a critique of US and European foreign policy and a rundown of pressing global issues, is more effective. Mahbubani observes that increased economic and political empowerment of historically marginalized states and societies will make unabashed North Atlantic domination of the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank untenable. He argues that the United States would better pursue its interests by enhancing, rather than undermining, international institutions like the UN and the ICC. He details a provocative proposal for reform of the UN Security Council, where he represented Singapore.

Mahbubani’s digest of key global issues includes the rise of China and India, US-China relations, Asian maritime disputes, interreligious and sectarian conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the global environmental crisis. It is hardly an innovative list, but the reflections are timely, provocative, and well informed.

Throughout, Mahbubani’s kid-glove treatment of China hurts the volume’s credibility. While he unsparingly attacks US policymakers for jealously guarding national sovereignty, their relentless pursuit of national interest, and their inconsistent record on human rights, he fails to acknowledge that China’s record is worse in all three categories. His decision not to criticize Chinese authoritarianism and assess its implications for the future of human freedom reflects either a deliberate lack of balance or a blasé attitude toward individual rights. Singapore’s diplomats are famous for shrewdly balancing complex relationships with the US and China. Such balance is absent here. Mahbubani has gone out of his way to present a narrative sympathetic to the Chinese leadership, it is clear to this reviewer.

Mahbubani’s reflections on the shifting world order, the future of international organizations, and the prospects for progress on key global issues are relevant and provocative. But their discussion constitutes a small share of an unbalanced, repetitive volume that rehashes establishment views on globalization without breaking new ground. For readers with limited time, a few reviews will more than suffice.

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Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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About the author

Jonathan Ossoff
Jonathan Ossoff is an MSc candidate in International Political Economy at the London School of Economics. He previously served for five years as a foreign affairs and defense aide for the United States Congress. He holds a Bachelor of Science of Foreign Service degree from Georgetown University.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: After the Spring: Economic Transitions in the Arab World
2. Book Review: The End of the West: the Once and Future Europe
3. Book Review: The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics

Political Parties in Palestine is an up-to-date elucidation of the Palestinian political landscape, aiming to offer vital background information on movements such as Hamas and Fatah, as well as smaller political factions that have defined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades but, due to lack of available information, have not been subject to academic scrutiny.

Political Parties in Palestine: Leadership and Thought. Michael Bröning. Palgrave Macmillan. January 2013.

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The product of a 12 month project at the Friedrich Ebert Siftung’s East Jerusalem office, Michael Bröning’s study of Palestinian political factions provides a contemporary and complete overview of six political parties currently represented in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). While Yezid Sayigh’s Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement 1949-1993 provides a historical account of Palestinian political life, and detailed case studies such as Khaled Hroub’s Hamas: Political Thought and Practice charts the development of individual political organisations, the existing literature on the Palestinian political system has failed to comprehensively document Palestinian political factions in their own right. This shortcoming is indeed significant in a system that is characterized by “the history of political factionalism” (p. 1).

Bröning offers several explanations for this “blind spot” in the exiting literature, including the fact that many of these political movements are now, or have been historically, viewed as terrorist groups by Israel and most western governments. He also suggests that the organisations’ identification as “movements” and “liberation fronts” rather than “parties” is an indicator of their self-perceptions and a reflection of the inadequacies of the political system in which they operate. In other words, these labels illustrate and explain the organisations’ incomplete transition into clearly defined political parties and obfuscate their policy positions. Bröning also acknowledges the disadvantages of excluding other political actors from his study, such as Islamic Jihad, which rejected the electoral process, or the Palestinian Democratic Union, which failed to win a seat in the 2006 PLC election. However, he asserts that this study nonetheless illuminates the political influence of lesser-known factions and offers new insights into the ideological ambiguities, changes, and continuities of the Palestinian political discourse.

The subsequent chapters focus on individual PLC factions: Hamas, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), The Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DLFP). Each chapter contains a historical overview, biographies of leading personalities, interviews with influential party members and excerpts from key programmatic documents. Particularly helpful in these chapters are the organisational charts of each movement’s complex decision-making structures.

Bröning identifies three phases of Palestinian nationalism: pan-Arabism, the primacy of Fatah, and the “rise of Hamas.” This present phase constitutes the period since Hamas’s 2006 PLC election victory and the ensuing political polarization between the secular Fatah and religious Hamas. The Hamas chapter discusses not only the movement’s impact on Palestinian political institutions, but the influence of its electoral victory on Hamas’s own internal discourse. This chapter suggests an internal split between the movement’s military and political wings as well as within the organisation’s geographically fragmented leadership, a common trope in recent case studies about Hamas. Excerpts from programmatic documents allow readers to glimpse the evolution of the movement’s official policy positions on such key issues as prospects for peace with Israel, economic development, and the movement’s vision of state-society relations. Bröning selected excerpts from Hamas’s oft-criticized 1988 charter, the election program of its 2006 Change and Reform electoral list, the program of the 2007 National Unity Government, and the 2011-2012 Gaza Ministry of Planning development plan, which the he translated from the original Arabic. Arguably, however, the most interesting and insightful component of this chapter is the section of interviews with party decision-makers. These interviews illustrate the diversity of opinion within the organisation on such topics as Palestinian national unity, the role of women in the party, and the movement’s political identity.

The PNI, the youngest faction covered in this text, was formed in 2002 by former PPP member Mustafa Barghouthi, Haider Abdel-Shafi, Ibrahim Dakkak and prominent Palestinian academic Edward Said, at the height of the second intifada (popular uprising).  This chapter highlights the party’s origins in the leadership of the communist PPP and acknowledges its failure to either supplant or unite the Palestinian left, which, is severely fragmented. The author identifies several noteworthy attributes of this understudied, albeit ideologically influential movement. These characteristics include the personal charisma of Barghouthi, the party’s pragmatic economic platform, and its emphasis on non-violent resistance and civil disobedience as a means of achieving political objectives.  Barghouthi, who is one of two PNI leaders interviewed in this chapter, emphasises the movement’s unique position as the first party to implement such non-violent methods of resistance. He notes, “I think our non-violent approach is succeeding and has become the main form of struggle in Palestine today” (p.133). While other factions such as Hamas and the DFLP assert the legitimacy violent resistance against the Israeli occupation, interviews in these chapters indicated that they also recognise the potential efficacy of peaceful resistance.

Bröning’s study illustrates the ideological and programmatic consistencies (and inconsistencies) of Palestinian political factions and provides useful insight into several understudied groups. However, structurally, this book would have benefited from a brief summary chapter or individual chapter conclusions, as the text’s abrupt ending nearly takes away from the otherwise excellent historical analyses and rich primary source material. Additionally, since Bröning does not analyse any of the political documents in depth (which is not the purpose of this study), an appendix containing the full text of the previously un-translated documents would also have been useful for readers who wish to examine them independently.

This study acknowledges the crippling limitations that the Israeli occupation places on Palestinian politics, yet robs the Palestinian actors of neither agency nor accountability. The political events that followed its publication – most notably, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s April 2013 resignation – only highlight its timeliness, rather than render it dated. Bröning’s book is an unquestionably important contribution to the study of Palestinian politics, and a must-read for anyone who hopes to better understand both intra-Palestinian political dynamics, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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About the author

Ilana Rothkopf
Ilana Rothkopf completed an MSc in International Relations at the LSE in 2012, and holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Middle East studies from McGill University. Her research interests include foreign policy analysis, religion and international relations, political identity and the Middle East.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Political Parties in Britain
2. Book Review: Political leadership in France: From Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas Sarkozy by John Gaffney
3. Book Review: New Challenger Parties in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis

Charlie Beckett

In the not so distant past if we were discussing political communications trends we might talk about Facebook and Barack Obama, or Twitter and #IagreewithNick’. Today I want to look at Nigel Farage and the George and Dragon pub. [You can see the slides for this talk here]

Mine’s a pint of euro-scepticism

There are thousands of media scholars out there analysing Occupy Wall Street and the impact of social media, but instead of always studying the formally avant-garde, marginal and the aberrant, perhaps we should also be looking at how the populist disrupters have stormed the mainstream with quite conventional tactics. The latter have been much more successful politically and are indicative of a wider series of trends around political communications. We are now in a digital environment of networked information flows. Yet despite – or because of this – the analogue and the authentic are more important than ever.

This is the big question:

Is this what happens to political communications when your economy is collapsing and the democratic system is seen as both out of touch and ineffective at delivering material security and political accountability?

My answer is ‘Yes’, but only if the system and circumstances allow it. The interesting outcome is not whether Nigel Farage will become Prime Minister but what impact UKIP might have on UK politics and, from my media centric point of view, what impact he – and others like Boris Johnson – are having on political communications.

[One interesting side-bar question related to this is 'where are the left populists?’ Who is the next Red Ken? Why does being the Official Opposition preclude populism? Blue Labour and Maurice Glasman have not anything like Farage’s impact - yet]

How Does It Happen?

In the case of UKIP, we know that the main issues that provoke this kind of populist movement are material: immigration, economic crisis (unemployment, income falls, household inflation, housing etc), crime and the power of the European Union. We also know who they are. They are generally, older, male, working and lower middle class, previously Tory-voting. But they are much more than a niche.

Beyond these issue-related concerns, the potential for this kind of populist political insurgency is enhanced by familiar political structural trends in the UK: the decline of parties, the dilution of tribalism, increased scepticism about authority and the growth of more diverse identity and special interest politics. As we will see, criticism of the incoherence of their support missed the point that this is a coalition of imagined as well as real anxieties.

I can see that the electoral maths still favours a conservative response in the short-term for the three main leaders. All the debate about the reaction to UKIP has been in terms of how the major parties might respond tactically. But more generally, this kind of populist surge should be taken seriously for (at least) three reasons:

1. It is indicative that something is wrong with the system: so many people feel hostility to a political structure and a public sphere that fails to address their concerns, let alone deal with them.
2. It has the potential to shift policy outcomes: the other parties will feel obliged to react to the popularity of UKIP and the overall tenor of debate will be re-framed, to the exclusion of some other under-recognised demographics.
3. It has the potential to exacerbate potentially damaging structural trends towards democratic malfunctioning: it’s quite possible that the other parties will actually retreat from the policy spheres that UKIP addresses and also fail to learn the lessons of citizen engagement.

So that is the political context but what is the significance for political communications?

First we should recognise that the conventional model of British liberal democracy and political communications is in the process of structural reorientation. The traditional idea was that the news media as fourth estate helped the flow of information from the governed and government – it created a space for deliberation that informed policy-making in a linear, predictable way. Those relationships are now in an unstable, networked relationship.

The internet as catalyst through social media and networked digital communications has created far more flows of information and deliberation that are less subject to control. This does not mean that populist movements are always born out of digital communications. The Five Star movement and Beppe Grillo were certainly facilitated by his blog and their use of social media to message and to mobilise, but the key to his success was physical demonstrations and success at elections. What gave Five Star impact on public consciousness was not its networked nature, but its charismatic leader who personified an alternative to the way politics is done in Italy. Nigel Farage is an English version of Grillo. Though as we shall see, with significant differences. Not least that he and UKIP are largely non digital.

Secondly, for Farage and Grillo to be successful they have to look and sound different. This is partly about what they talk about, but it is also down to NOT being like the Others. The professionalization of political public relations and its thorough-going domination of processes of policy generation, executive operation and electoral campaigning has created a corporately-staffed and corporate culture. This goes back many decades but has now reached its generational apogee with a PM from public relations. The recent coverage of Cameron’s ‘chumocracy’ reinforces this, because it’s true.

The other factor is the personalisation of political discourse – this is partly about presidential politics – emotional engagement – symbolism – but also by public who stress the perceived values not policies or class allegiances of the people or parties they vote for. Both mass and social media place high value on visual cues, key phrases, personality and appearance. Yet, the politicians are not actually very good at this kind of politics because they don’t accept the logic that the medium is the message. Farage does. What you see is what you get.

Let’s put this in a wider context of how people are now bombarded with the corporatisation of political ideology put into a personalised framework.

Ideology Goes Corporate

Let’s have a look at a couple of videos.

Levi’s Go Forth: This is clearly a film that seeks to take various visual tropes of youthful ‘counter-culture’ and appropriate them for clothing marketing. Note the number of views (3 million plus).

This version of the video [Go Forth Satire] makes this critique explicit. Note the number of views (a few thousand).

This jeans video in its commercial form is more political than any party political broadcast or NGO advertisement – although of course it seeks to de-politicise the very imagery and language it deploys. It is not surprising, therefore, that our research shows that the public are now universally sceptical of political or ethical marketing because it has become more like the commercial marketing that has, in turn, assimilated the personal and political communications space. The public are now in what my colleague Lilie Chouliaraki calls ‘ironic spectators’ in a ‘post humanitarian’ communications environment.

The Professionalization of political PR has got to such as thorough-going point that the public is unable to distinguish between commercial and civic communications. This is not just about politicians ‘lying’. Though Nick Clegg has found out that taking a principled position that you don’t believe in is not a thing that builds confidence. And his so-called apology actually only worked because it was satirised – humour made it more human than the original calculated communication.

Out Of Touch?

It is not simply about being ‘out of touch’. As political journalist Steve Richards has pointed out, politicians are in fact ‘neurotically’ obsessed with keeping constantly in touch through focus groups and opinion polls. Instead, the problem might be better understood as about the distance and detachment of politicians from the discourse itself. Mrs Thatcher was a great example of a politician who could be manipulated in presentational terms – the voice lowered, the hair style softened, the phrasing tightened up – but in the end it was her ability to project her personality of ideological self-confidence and her political aggression on policy issues and ideological conflicts that won people over.

One response to this growing sense of ‘discourse distance’ has been the personalisation of political discourse both by politicians and public. The public want politicians who represent their feelings and instincts about ideology – not someone who represents a policy manifesto. Again historic social trends such as education, feminism, and individualism, have fostered this trend towards the personalisation of politics but both modern mass media and the development of social media have accelerated it, too. As we know politicians in the UK have been most successful when they respond to this: Thatcher, Blair  - and less successful when they can’t: Major and Brown.

Yet the paradox of contemporary political communication is that the professionalization of personalisation is counter-productive. In an age of scepticism the one value that the voters want – authenticity – is rendered undeliverable by a professional political class that seek to secure their power with risk-averse, non-interactive communication.

This is a message that even Conservatives think is a problem:

“I am afraid the Ukip leader has a style and a manner of speaking that connects with ordinary mortals much better than professional politicians.

“He is unafraid to be filmed with a pint of beer and a cigarette in his hand when all of our media training tells us to eschew either image.

“He also uses soundbites that appeal to Conservatives. I suspect many are unrehearsed – again something professionals are trained never to do.

“You and George [Osborne], in particular, have been portrayed as public school toffs.

“You have to work out how to be one of us without affectation or silly gimmicks and to speak the language of Joe Public.”

-Keith Mitchell MP, Frmr leader Oxon County Council, Daily Telegraph May 8th 2013

But can Osborne and Cameron change? The reality is that they are detached so how can they argue the opposite? That’s why Cameron and Clarke both made irretrievable mistakes by calling UKIP ‘clowns’ and ‘fruitcakes’. Ironically , it was – for once – what they really think about these people.

That is why Farage works. His policies are incoherent but he has the personal ability to embody people’s personal anxieties – on immigration, Europe, bankers, Etonians, corruption, etc. This is particularly impressive when you think that he is a private school educated city trader who is married to a German.

He is also (almost) totally analogue. He succeeds by being on TV and radio a lot as well as in newspapers. He is probably more successful because although he is an MEP, his party is firmly outside the mainstream. Of course, his popularity may well change as he and his party come under scrutiny. He does not seem to have a strategy for converting the protest vote into sustainable support. However, protest is becoming a permanent part of the British electoral make-up. UKIP does represent such a sizeable chunk of unrepresented public opinion that he remains a real challenge to the other parties and how they communicate.

How To Re-Connect?

So how to re-connect politics? The wonderful play This House at the National Theatre is about another pre-Thatcherite age when it was taken for granted that politicians spoke on behalf of their tribes of supporters. The disconnect that has followed has still not been factored into the make-up of the politicians, the parties and their communications systems. At the same time, the political class is made up of an ever-narrower group of people in terms of educational, personal and professional background.

As I suggested earlier, perhaps the main parties don’t want to change. The Conservatives are anxious not to get dragged further down a euro-sceptical road while Labour and the Lib Dems are uncomfortable at the anti-immigration agenda. None of them have an economic answer that does not involve more pain and the perception that they are serving the interest of either a rich elite or ‘scroungers’. Electorally it makes more sense in the short-term for the main parties to hope UKIP blows over and its voters return to the mainstream when faced with choosing a government not a council or MEP. This ignores the lessons of political communications that Farages teaches.

Networked Politics

Our research shows that politicians are now exploring new ways that combine the use of mass mainstream media and more personalised social networks. As Labour MP Stella Creasy has shown, these networks are useful catalysts for specific campaigns and overall provide new – albeit unrepresentative – channels for feedback and some limited debate. However, social media is not enough. Mainstream media is still the primary driver of political content on social media as well as the dominant provider of political information and influence to the public. The parties can use social media partly to realign their conversations with the public but in the end they must address their failure to take on board what they are hearing and their reluctance to engage with the debates and discourse. They must change who they are as well as how they communicate.

In this sense, it is a question of responding to wider shifts in the media environment – and the changing public attitudes to ideological communication – ideas such as that people assume interactivity, they expect transparency and they prefer open, sharable, social content. Mainstream legacy media is still the dominant force – it allowed UKIP and Farage to emerge – but it is within a communications and social context that makes political communications more complex and uncertain than ever before. Unless you have your values embodied in your communications – like Farage – and can claim genuine not fake authenticity then you will struggle to convince.

This article was a presentation to the British Government@LSE research seminar on May 8th 2013 and was originally published on Charlie Beckett’s POLIS blog.

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Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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About the Author

Charlie Beckett – Polis, LSE
Charlie Beckett is director of Polis, in the department of media and communications at the London School of Economics. He has 20 years of experience with LWT, BBC and ITN’s Channel 4 News. He broadcasts and writes regularly on media and political affairs and is the author of SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World (Blackwell, 2008). He teaches at the LSE and LCC. He tweets at @charliebeckett.

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