The Decline of the People’s Party, Fast and Slow

Abstract

Abstract The final chapter centres on the developments of the people’s parties in the 1990s. In this decade, several trends that had started earlier came together and brought the slumbering crisis of the people’s party into full light. One was the decline in membership numbers, which culminated this decade in a real haemorrhage in support. A second was that these parties now started to show a serious decline in voters. A third was the trend of party leaders to emphasize their governing capacities and qualities over anything else, stressed in particular during the acceleration of European integration (and the external constraint of the euro), but also in the boost of neo-liberalist policy proposals and reforms. And, finally, party leaders built on previous attempts to open their parties to people beyond their traditional membership base by inventing new initiatives to connect their parties to society, which further undermined their organizational capacity. All together, despite great optimism about the future of democracy that marked the start of this decade, there were growing concerns about the prospects of the people’s parties themselves—and the fate of democracy at large. This chapter provides a window on the decline of the people’s party and its various consequences, such as the breakthrough of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Jörg Haider in Austria, and Marine Le Pen in France.