Can Movement Politics Renew European Democracy?

They are personality driven, which has neither made them more democratic nor inclusive.

- Jan-Werner Mueller

MANY PEOPLE expected the big political story of 2017 to be about the triumph of populism in Europe. But things didn’t turn out that way. Instead, the biggest story was about self-styled “movements” upending or replacing traditional political parties.

Consider French President Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche, which swept the French presidential and parliamentary elections this past spring. Or consider how, at the end of the year, 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz became Chancellor of Austria after refashioning the conservative Austrian People’s Party (övp) into a movement called “The Sebastian Kurz list—The New People’s Party.”

Across the European continent, more voters have come to see traditional political parties as self-interested and power-hungry. In the developing world, too, parties with well-established pedigrees, such as the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, are now widely regarded as corrupt. In many cases, traditional parties have become what political scientists call “cartels”: they use state resources to remain in power, and, regardless of their policy differences, they often work together to keep out challengers.

Young voters, in particular, seem to have less interest in working for traditional parties, which they view as overly bureaucratic, and thus boring. One is reminded of Oscar Wilde’s famous quip about the problem with socialism: it takes up too many evenings. Not surprisingly, then, the most innovative political experiments in Europe in recent years have emerged from street protests and mass assemblies that eschewed hierarchical forms of organisation.