Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

Conclusion 223
in Western democracies that may generate new forms of structural opposition
is the new democratic Leviathan itself’ and noted that even ‘in highconsensus
European systems’, many young people, intellectuals and academics
found it ‘too remote and bureaucratized, too addicted to bargaining and
compromise, too much an instrument of political elites and technicians
with whom they feel slight identification’. If that then translated into support
for the Left movements of the late 1960s, in the ensuing decades, popular
discontent with the democratic Leviathan has been channelled into support
for populist movements of both the Right and Left. As we have seen in
this volume, this phenomenon has reached new heights in the latter years
of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first.
In terms of the prospects for research, the events of the last fifteen years
offer us a number of new and interesting opportunities in the study of populism.
For example, for the first time, at different levels of government and in
different Western European states, we have gained important empirical
information about how populists behave both when in power and when in
coalition with conventional parties. As noted in the introduction, the experiences
of the FPÖ in Austria, the LPF in Holland and the Lega Nord in Italy
have provided some answers to the question of how populists fare when in
government. Similarly, in the case of the FPÖ, and soon in that of the Front
National, we can test the conditions under which charismatic populist leadership
can be successfully passed on or seized. There are also numerous
contexts where we are now seeing what the long-term effects of the cordon
sanitaire on populist parties might be. Moreover, we are witnessing a wide
range of mainstream political leaders borrowing from the populist repertoire
and the impact this is having both on parties and public perceptions
of politics. It remains to be seen what the effects of ‘the populist Zeitgeist’
will be on Western European democracy, however the evidence of this book
is that in the twenty-first century, there exist better conditions for the emergence
and success of populism than ever before.