Extremists and the Swedish Election

Extremists and the Swedish Election

Yascha Mounk: Extremists and the Swedish Election

Yesterday, for the first time in the postwar era, far-right extremists garnered enough votes to enter Sweden?s parliament. Even in troubled times, this is shocking news.

Of course, it has been painfully obvious for months that 2010 would be the year of right-wing demagogues. In the spring, we saw burqa-banning and record levels of Muslim-hating in countries like France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Over the summer, we stared at our newspapers in horror as we read about tea-partying, ?Ground-Zero-Mosque?-hyperventilating, and Koran-burning close to home. It should not come as a surprise that the beginning of fall is now bringing us more of the disgusting same.

Except for the location, that is. Sweden? The promised land for progressives and social democrats? That beautiful, boring paradise, the proud parent of a social security net that does not hinder economic dynamism, the model of gender equality, social mobility, and public education? Yes. The real Sweden has rudely despoiled the mythical ?Swedeland,? as the political philosopher Jerry Cohen used to call this beloved fantasy of ours.

It is a painful realization, but also a salutary one. For it forces us to face the fact that far-right extremism has no in-built limits. It is fast spreading, uninhibited by national borders. (Ironic, that.) It is gathering force, with no guarantee that it will stop at a safe level?at a threshold of representation in parliament that would ensure that moderate, stable coalition governments will be able to take office.

The Swedish shock, then, might help us to debate how to deal with extremists with the requisite urgency. Our debates will need to be multifaceted. We will have to take into account local factors, such as different political traditions, different patterns of immigration and different economic woes. We will have to discuss a vast array of questions from educational reform via political rhetoric all the way to foreign policy. For now, I just want to call to our attention one strategic question of particular importance?especially as Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden, weighs his options for the immediate future.

Reinfeldt?s center-right ?Moderate Party? has actually increased its share of the vote. But because of the triumph of the far-right ?Sweden Democrats,? his coalition no longer has a majority in parliament. This leaves Reinfeldt with two options. He could form a centrist government by attracting the support of a center-left party (either the Social Democrats or the smaller Green Party). Or he could allow the Sweden Democrats to tolerate a center-right government.

This is just a particular instance of a situation that, with the rise of extremist parties, has become common in Europe?s parliamentary democracies. (If the Republicans should win the Senate by few votes this November, they will be faced with a similar question: rely on the votes of a Christine O?Donnell or a Joe Miller, or reach across the aisle to moderate Democrats?) The question seems to have an easy answer. Surely right-wing moderates should prefer to govern with left-wing moderates rather than with dangerous and destructive extremists?

Distasteful as I find the Sweden Democrats (and Christine O?Donnell, for that matter), I am not sure that this self-righteous answer is helpful. Rather, I fear that we may be faced with a genuine strategic, and moral, dilemma. There are two options, and both are equally unpalatable.

On the one hand, we could speak our hearts: ?Let?s not allow extremist parties to share in government. Let?s not even talk to their leaders. The last thing we want is for them to become respectable.? We can call this the quarantine route.

This position is admirable. But it involves serious risks. For a start, it allows extremist parties to claim that the political and media establishment persecutes them. In these days of genuine ire against all elites, this is an unparalleled electoral trump card, however implausible it may sound to us.

There are also real risks to the integrity of the democratic process. For parliamentary democracies to work, voters must have a real choice between different potential governments, with different potential policies at stake. In particular, voters must be able to throw an unpopular government out without causing a deep political crisis. But this gets increasingly difficult if moderate right-wing parties enter into a coalition with moderate left-wing parties to keep the extremists out. At the next elections, the choice will no longer be between a democratic government and a democratic opposition. Rather, it will be between a democratic government and an extremist opposition. Given the unpopularity of most governments these days, that prospect should give us pause.

The alternative to the quarantine route is to invite extremists into the inner sanctum of our democracies. This option has real strategic appeal. Make them share in the responsibilities of government. Expose their lack of a positive vision, and their internal disagreements. Rob them of their status as maverick insurgents. With a little luck, the population will soon see these charlatans for who they really are. Call this the disenchantment route.

The problem with the disenchantment route is that, with a little bad luck, it can allow extremists to dominate and transform our countries. As we have recently seen in Italy, coalition governments quickly become hostage to the demands of their most extreme members. Populist parties even have an interest in ratcheting up their rhetoric: the more they ask of center-right parties, the more press they get. Worse, it actually is true in this (though not in most) contexts that all press is likely to be good press. Either the moderate coalition partners will refuse populist demands and look obstructionist. Or they will give in to such demands and allow the extremists to be the driving force in the coalition.

This is also likely to have terrible effects on public discourse. Xenophobic prejudices, long taboo, become the new normal. They influence an ever-greater portion of the population. Politicians, no longer in a position to ?refine and enlarge the public views,? as James Madison wrote in the tenth Federalist Paper, merely compete in playing to them in the most ruthless manner possible.

The disenchantment route, then, is unpalatable and dangerous. Nonetheless, it is not clear to me that the quarantine route will fare any better.

During his re-election campaign, Reinfeldt ruled out all forms of cooperation with the Sweden Democrats. He seems likely to keep his promise. This makes him a decent man, a democrat with whom I disagree on certain issues, but whose political integrity I can admire. Yet the fact that our beloved Sweden is governed by a man of Swedelandish decency is cold comfort. In Swedeland, the necessity to govern with extremists would never arise. In Sweden and other European countries experiencing an onslaught of far-right populists, I am not so sure.