In 2024, the world will witness pivotal elections, including those for the European Parliament in June. With political populism, polarisation and turmoil stemming from crises like the Russian-Ukraine war, the stakes for democracies around the world are high.
Hence, this year’s Annual Lecture hosted by the European Parliament’s Panel for the Future on Science and Technology (STOA) on 24 January 2024 poses the question: How can we make democracy work for everyone?
To explore this question, we interviewed keynote speaker Michael Bruter, Professor of Political Science and European Politics at the London School of Economics and grantee of the European Research Council. His cutting-edge research has not only shaped our understanding of the intricate dynamics within democratic systems, but has also illuminated the paths toward inclusive and sustainable democratic practices.
Can science and technology help to counteract the rise of populists and anti-democratic currents within the EU?
Michael Bruter: In a nutshell, no they can’t, or at least not on their own. I think that there is a naïve tendency amongst social and political elites to think that people do the wrong thing because they “don’t know” – that perception is mistaken. People know and somehow, this is not the reason why they support parties or ideas many of us disapprove of.
First, we need to remember the basis of democracy: the vote of someone like you or I who are arguably very knowledgeable about many issues we study every day in our work is worth neither more nor less than the vote than the voice of someone who would choose to roll a dice on what they support: one person, one vote, universally.
Second, we know from experience that knowledge doesn’t affect populist support in multiple ways. For example, when an extremist leader is convicted of some major crime, the strength of their support doesn’t go down, not because their supporters do not believe it but precisely because they already knew and were supporting the extremist despite all the bad things they may think about them. We never gain anything by assuming that the people we do not agree with are ignorant or stupid, we must instead make the effort of trying to see the world from their eyes in order to understand what has gone wrong and what we can do about it.
So where does this populist support come from? There are essentially two key reasons which I mention in the keynote lecture.
The first is that citizens have outgrown their democracies. What this means is that democratic systems were designed to perform specific functions, to give the people power in a certain and specific way based on representation and policy influence. However, an increasing proportion of citizens – and notably a very high proportion among some under-represented categories such as young people, citizens living with disabilities etc – want democracy to fulfil other functions which our systems are not equipped to deliver for now.
In other words, democratic institutions are “fixed” but democratic principles mean that how citizens want to use their democratic power is ever-changing. We thus need, somehow, to find ways of adapting institutional settings, making them more reactive, more adaptive without making them less stable or transparent. It is a very difficult task (and one which is unfortunately not at all resolved by the avenues many systems are currently exploring such as deliberative democracy, e-voting, postal voting, etc) but it is not an impossible one.
The second issue is that many people have become hopeless. This means that they somehow think: “things are so bad that they can’t get it worse any way” and that is a very dangerous feeling because it precisely unleashes potentially disruptive or even destructive behaviours. What we find in our research is that people can accept difficult or unfair situations for themselves but the moment they start feeling that the generation of their children and grandchildren will likely live less well than they have, we are in very dangerous territory.
Some people say that they don’t feel included enough in the democratic process. How can technologies facilitate better democratic inclusion across generations?
Michael Bruter: Again, they can’t on their own or even as a principal solution. This represents a misconception of the problem, the idea that somehow it would take too much of an effort for people to participate in democracy or that they want democracy to be more of an extension of their everyday lives, making voting for Parliament more like voting in the X factor.
It is not the case that people do not vote because it is too much of an effort. They do not vote because they think it doesn’t make a difference, or worse, that elites and institutions will misunderstand what they tried to say in their vote and use it to legitimise things that they do not agree with.
Moreover, underrepresented categories are even keener on experiencing the “real thing” when participating in democracy. For instance, our research shows that first time voters are even less likely to use postal or remote voting than any other category. If they vote, they really want the “true” polling station experience.
Conversely, many democracies try to encourage citizens with disabilities – notably hidden disabilities – to use remote e-voting or postal voting or helpers, but our research suggests that this is not what many citizens with hidden disabilities want. They don’t want to be second class citizens who just “can” vote. Instead, they want their electoral experience to be truly equivalent to that of citizens who do not face the same hurdles as them.
It doesn’t mean that remote voting options should not also be offered, but just that technology is not a replacement to more fundamental solutions to what the problems actually are. A big value of voting is the societal connection we feel. Notably asking people to vote from home leaves them far more dissatisfied and far less efficacious than going to a polling station.
What can the EU do to increase voter turnout and political participation in general, particularly among societal groups that historically tend to abstain from voting in European elections (e.g. socioeconomically deprived individuals)?
Michael Bruter: I think that too often, European Parliament elections have been conceived as “second class” elections. By contrast, many local elections across countries are used as test labs for democratic innovation, and in my view, the European Parliament elections could be used to promote new, more innovative forms of electoral democracy which can ensure that new democratic functions are included. The idea is that European Parliament elections could – and in my view should – become a form of “better” democracy compared to national settings.
This is a realistic possibility because in a way, European Parliament elections can escape certain national rigidities and also because there is a shared consciousness that turnout in European elections is not sufficient, and that something needs and can be done.
At the moment, my team and I are working with the European Commission’s DG Just and the network of EU Election Management Bodies. We look for best practice across countries and also insights from our own research, notably when it comes to specific populations, such as first-time voters, citizens with hidden disabilities, questions of e-voting and the use of technology, remote voting, etc.
I would say that regardless of how things are done, it is essential that academics work together on those issues with those who organise elections, because both sides of the picture are equally necessary and complementary when it comes to correctly identifying the problems and potential solutions. For instance, science has long shown that 90% of what we think and do in life is in fact subconscious, so in our case, we include our knowledge of subconscious effects (i.e. citizens can say they want something and its implementation can lead to catastrophic effects in practice).
Research indicates that there are generational and educational variations in the perception of what it means to be European. How can we foster a strong and inclusive European identity that transcends diverse backgrounds?
Michael Bruter: To put it bluntly, it is neither a power nor a prerogative of institutions to determine how people feel or should feel. Research on European identity was my first love in a way. My first book, “Citizens of Europe” in 2005 was almost wholly dedicated to understanding some of the complexities that pertain to European identity and what it means to different people. One of the key take out findings is that being European can mean very different things to different people and any attempt to impose to people what it should or should not mean to them to be a European, would be destined to terrible failure and counter-productive reactions.
By contrast, what we could and should do is to understand how citizens feel, how important Europeanness can be to them and the main ways in which various individuals can inhabit that identity and bring it to life.
From that point of view, we have disastrous historical examples of misconceptions. For instance, in the UK, political parties and the media alike grossly misunderstood the hearts and minds of the British people: they thought that the Brexit referendum would be a fight between “rational” remain and “emotional” leave. This was as wrong as it could get and as we know from our research, over a third of the British people had tears in their eyes on Referendum night on 23 June 2016 (whether happy or sad ones).
Many people we interviewed in our fieldwork – particularly young ones, told us that they felt that Brexit was robbing them of part of their identity and shrinking their world to an island, which is the reason why there was never any convergence between Brexiteers and Remainers even years after the referendum.
European identity has in fact become an evidence to many Europeans, a part of what they are, not something external to them and which they support for pragmatic reasons.
Being European: it’s about everyday life.
When we ask European citizens what being European means to them, their answers fit neither the descriptions of Eurosceptic (bureaucracy, corruption, attack on sovereignty etc) nor the description of many pro-Europeans (peace, consumer, environment protection, etc). Instead, the two main answers correspond to being able to cross borders without any physical disruption and having Euros in their back pockets, in other words, what European integration has changed to our everyday life.
We also know that European identity can vary according to such things as education (but typically not wealth), European experience, and age. As early as 2012, well before media or parties got interested in such a rift, my research was showing that there was a major intergenerational gap in terms of perceptions of Europeanness and European identity.
Generational gaps
For instance, when asking the British people to compare the EU to a painting, the top answer of those aged 45 and over was Picasso’s beautiful but rather terrifying Guernica, whilst the top answer among those aged under 45 was a dance by Matisse. When we asked them to compare the EU to a human trait, the top answer amongst the over-45 was stupidity and the top answer amongst the under-45 was intelligence! Furthermore, using panel study data, we also find that the Euro crisis resulted in a significant decline in European identity among older citizens but in fact an increase in European identity amongst under 35s.
Finally, we need to understand what European identity means in practice. Feeling European doesn’t mean that you will suddenly support everything EU institutions will decide, this would be ridiculous.
On the contrary, it means that you will judge European decisions as “internal”, the same way you would judge decisions made by your own government, agreeing or disagreeing with them a lot more strongly.
And that leads to my final point on this. I think that citizens have outgrown the EU: they have internalised a very real European identity and as a result their demands are far more radical when it comes to making the EU more democratic and enabling them to choose their future or punish whatever and whoever has disappointed them.
Member States can’t have it both ways: they have kept significant control of European integration so far, but citizens simply don’t consider that their governments are legitimate instead of them. EU decision making has become far too important, they now want to have far more direct control of it, some real alternatives to choose from, and some real ways to change course when they are not happy with what has been delivered.
To make European identity more inclusive, the EU has to become even more democratic, invent news ways of giving citizens power – all citizens universally and directly, not through limited consultations, citizens assemblies that only bring together a few hundreds or even thousands of people or better communication – real democratic control, there is no other option.
