The New Old European Politics
Richard Gowan*
In the early 1930s, the liberal Parisian critic Albert Thibaudet concluded that, since 1789, his country had been defined by conflict between “an old France and a new”**. This struggle was carried on through more specific battles between left and right, Catholicism and secularism and industrialism and agriculture. Seventy years later we can add another division to this list: that between “non” and “oui” voters on the European constitution.
Observing the campaign that culminated in the constitution’s defeat in France, it was hard to miss the historical nature of the debate. This was partly a matter of personalities. In contrast to the relatively young Dutch politicians granted a few days of international fame as they stumbled to defeat, many of the key French players were of a considerable vintage. If Jacques Chirac has been in politics for forty years, his recurrent nemesis Jean-Marie Le Pen was a nationally-known (and widely reviled) figure in the later 1950s.
But it was not only the debaters who had a particular pedigree: it was their arguments. The rhetoric of the French campaign harked back to struggles Thibaudet cited: both sides appealed to the values of the Republic as well as those of the Union. It was, therefore, ironic that one of the few real winners from the whole debacle was Dominique de Villepin, new prime minister and long-time admirer of Napoleon. Here was a familiar tale: the French attempted a revolution and found themselves led by a Bonapartist.
It has thus been rather easy for external commentators to treat events in France in Rumsfeldian terms: Old Europe behaving in an old-fashioned way. On this occasion, Thibaudet’s “old France” was a curious coupling of left and right – the “new France” a troubled amalgam of genuine reformers and pragmatists. More broadly, the course of the campaign appeared to confirm the fears of liberal French political theorists regarding the emergence of “a generalized anti-liberal atmosphere” as the national milieu***.
In this context, many have responded to the “non” vote with simplistic arguments that France is simply stuck in the past, unable to accept modernity, and so on ad nauseam. This explains away the vote as a national phenomenon (similar excuses can be found for events in the Netherlands). Pro-Europeans have certainly been ineffective in explaining the benefits of their cause, yes, but the real problem was domestic malaise – not the EU!
Using this logic, commentators have underlined the divisions between electorate and elite in the French body politic, dwelling on the perceived paralysis and corruption of the latter. Such divisions were repeated – even exacerbated - in the Netherlands, where an alliance of all mainstream parties in favour of the constitution faced public rejection. On these terms the “no” votes were protests rooted in alienation, not real political choices.
These analyses permit a good deal of lamenting, some of it justified, concerning the separation of peoples from politics. Political scientists and speech-writers have become sufficiently well-versed in the “democratic deficit” to see its curse at work here. But all this scapegoating misses the basic truths revealed over the last week:
1. French and Dutch voters did not display “alienation” in these campaigns, but an unexpected degree of engagement with what was at stake: commentaries on the constitution dominated French best-seller lists, and the Dutch turn-out of 62% was almost double that which officials had been predicting just months previously.
2. Attempts to distinguish between domestic politics and European politics in deciding the votes are increasingly meaningless: such distinctions may be comforting, but they avoid the fact that French and Dutch voters saw clear links between the levels of politics. The voter makes more holistic choices than the political commentator (“oui” ou “non”), and the latter cannot always disaggregate them into insignificance.
What the referendums actually demonstrated was the convergence of European and domestic politics. In both France and the Netherlands, old divisions between left and right seemed confused: the French socialist party and unions split over the constitution. The political language of socialism vs. capitalism, long fading into anachronism, was reinvented as “social Europe” vs. “global Europe”, the “French model” vs. “the Anglo-Saxon model” and “Oui” vs. “Non”. Politicians and voters realigned along these new lines, reinterpreting their values and interests according to this new dichotomy.
This realignment must not be underestimated. It is not enough to imagine that confused electorates, unhappy with their elites, opted for protest votes alone. Rather, these votes represent the reality that the EU is no longer simply a project to be explained to its citizens – what it stands for has become essentially political, a subject for ideological choices. The Financial Times argues that governments should use public information campaigns to present the EU “in a factual way”, but politics is not just a factual business****.
Instead of being sold on the basis of the facts, the EU is likely to become more politicised in the future – not least because of the precedent for plebiscites now established. Eventually, we may see current party divisions in EU member-states redrawn as politicians and voters are increasingly associated with their attitudes to, and behaviour in, Europe. The combat between “old France and the new” and similar democratic divisions elsewhere have simply transmogrified to reflect new political circumstances.
What is to be done? Better political arguments for Europe are certainly necessary. But so is a certain realism: a recognition that, just as the combat between political parties need not tear apart states, so clashes over Europe need not be excessively destructive. Albert Thibaudet observed that France’s tribulations had resulted in “a system of a league of ideas, established on the bases of tolerance and cooperation analogous to those of a true League of Nations.” He was too optimistic – both in terms of French domestic tolerance (found wanting under Vichy) and the League. But if the EU, now a rather more successful organisation than the League ever was, is to prosper, it should heed Thibaudet’s prescription: in spite of our divisions and defeats, remain calm.
June 2005
*Writing in a personal capacity. Mr Gowan was formerly Europe Programme Researcher at The Foreign Policy Centre, London.
NOTES:
**For Thibaudet, see Richard Gowan, “Raymond Aron, the history of ideas and the idea of France”, European Journal of Political Theory 2/4 (2003).
***See Jeremy Jennings, “Introduction: Raymond Aron and the fate of French liberalism”, EJPT as above.
****Editorial: “Stop lying about the European Union”, Financial Times, 4/5/05.
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