The mutating left of Western Europe and the illiberal states of Central and Eastern Europe

Last week, Brookings published a suite of 20+ “Democracy & Disorder” papers covering democracy issues around the globe and implications for geopolitics and international order. Given the troubled state of Europe and the West these days, a number of them focused on the Old Continent. I co-authored two of them.

Célia Belin and I have followed up our March 2018 American Interest piece on the “Macronification” of Europe with a paper on how "the challenges of globalization, identity, democracy, and the governance of the European Union have weakened social democratic political parties over the past 20 years.” In the second half of the paper, we categorize political parties on or stemming from the left in Western Europe into four categories “based on radical versus mainstream ideology and experimental versus traditional methods” - the Established Left of the classic center-left social democrats (but also including Germany’s rising Greens, on the more experimental side), the Radical Left which yielded Syriza’s revolt in Greece four years ago, the Experimental Left which includes Italy’s Five Star Movement, now governing in coalition with the far-right League, and the Extreme Center embodied in Emmanuel Macron. We recommend U.S. policymakers do more to engage to the European left on Russia and understand its approach to sovereignty and that the American left engage its transatlantic counterpart.

We published another long-in-the-works report the same day, on “The anatomy of illiberal states,” analyzing the tools that illiberal leaders of NATO and EU member states have used to erode checks and balances on their power, which I co-authored with Alina Polyakova and Torrey Taussig plus Kemal Kirişci, Amanda Sloat, James Kirchick, Melissa Hooper, Norman Eisen, and Andrew Kenealy, who wrote case studies on Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Our many recommendations boil down to a tougher but not carrot-free approach for the U.S. Congress and executive branch, key actors in the European Union, and NATO to member governments which have damaged their countries’ democracies.

I encourage you to check out the reports, hope you find them interesting/useful, and welcome your thoughts.

Welcome / Reflections on the Election in France

Welcome to my new website. I'm Ted Reinert, I'm a 34-year-old American living in northern Virginia, and I spend much of my time thinking about politics in wider Europe, in my own country, and around the world. I'm planning to use this space to promote my published writings and offer some additional longer-than-140-character commentary, largely on matters of international affairs and politics, but occasionally on some of my other interests like cinema and travel (though I love Twitter as a news source and way of sharing good journalism and more). Since I was last active on my Blogspot site The Penguin Revolutions, I've been working as program officer at the Transatlantic Academy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, a heavily editorial role working with brilliant fellows on topics like liberal order, religion, Russia, and Germany. I've written and presented some of my own commentary in recent years - most recently on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to the Trump White House (on Al Jazeera, which can be seen here and here, and on the Academy website) - but am planning more of this going forward as the Academy closes its doors - journalism was my first career and I love writing.

Five years ago, living in Brussels and working as a researcher at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I visited the northern French metropolis of Lille on a day trip for the second round of the French presidential election, and blogged about it. Sharply critical of Germany's reticence to take steps that might actually solve the euro crisis, I welcomed François Hollande's victory (as did hundred of people on Lille's Place du General de Gaulle), while keeping my eye on the long campaign in my own country, which thankfully resulted in Barack Obama's reelection. In my view, Obama remains the smartest, wisest, and most inspiring political leader of our time, prudent with restraint in foreign policy and successful domestically despite scorched-earth opposition. Hollande, for his part, wasn't so bad. But vexing problems of providing good stable, jobs amidst technological change and global competition continue to haunt the United States and Europe alike, and so do the old xenophobic nationalist demons. Illiberalism has been on the march since May 2012 - Vladimir Putin tightening authoritarianism in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan doing the same in Turkey, Viktor Orban consolidating "illiberal democracy" in Hungary, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's coup and crackdown in Egypt, continued carnage in Syria, the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Poland's fall to a vengeful Law and Justice Party, the victory of the mendacious Brexiteers, and the tragic twists that unbelievably brought us U.S. President Donald Trump. Against all this, Merkel's frustrating inflexibility in the management of the common European currency doesn't seem so bad. (Although it too is dangerous. I'm worried about Italy). 

France has averted a catastrophe far right vs. far left runoff with the first round first-place finish of Emmanuel Macron (an alumnus of the German Marshall Fund's Marshall Memorial Fellowship program, by the way, and we're very proud). Macron waved the flag of the European Union, and it helped him to victory. The dike has continued to hold against the far right in continental Western Europe, as Sylvie Kauffmann points out - perhaps the post-World War II wariness of nationalism is stronger there, perhaps the politicians of the center right have simply been more principled there than in the United States and United Kingdom. The defeat of Marine Le Pen is highly likely - and France doesn't have an electoral college to get in the way - but one can't be too complacent. Nor, in defeat, will she be spent as a political force. 

But a President Macron would have his work cut out for him, governing without an established party behind him, and challenging the German position on the euro to try to rebalance the European Union economy - in a German election year. On that note, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis's account of his dealings with Minister Macron two years ago is interesting. 

Thanks for reading.