The threat to global centrist politics

Is the world headed for another round of ideological wars?

The election results in two very different countries over the past few days offer some clues on an unlikely common theme: the future of global centrist politics based on a broad consensus.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won a landslide victory in Turkey this week. His populist appeal seems to have survived despite a fragile economy. Stephen Harper earlier lost power in Canada to Justin Trudeau. Both Erdoğan and Harper—despite their differences—have been outsiders who challenged the consensus politics of their respective countries.

There are similar examples elsewhere in the world. Alexis Tsipras got a fresh mandate from Greek voters in September to take on the continental financial establishment. Viktor Orbán in Hungary is another outsider who recently took a tough stance on the refugees pouring into his country. Matteo Renzi in Italy is also a bit of a maverick prime minister.

In Asia, think of leaders such as Joko Widodo in Indonesia or Shinzo Abe in Japan. And then there is Narendra Modi in India, very self-consciously an outsider.

These are elected leaders. Also look at the advances made by the National Front in France or Podemos in Spain in local elections—two very different ideologies but having an outsider mentality in common. Add to that the election of the Marxist Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party in the UK. Or the initial momentum of Donald Trump on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side of the US presidential primaries.

What binds all these strands together? The Great Moderation in economics had been accompanied by a Great Moderation in politics. There was a basic continuity in policy. That also increased the chances of global coordination since leaders were essentially pursuing their respective national interest from a common ground.

The emergence of the consensus is worth recounting. The years immediately after the end of World War II saw the rise of a social democratic consensus that brought parties across the ideological spectrum together. Many shared power in grand alliances in Europe in a bid to avoid the brutal divisiveness that plunged Europe into slaughter during the war. This was the era when the great sociologist Daniel Bell wrote about the end of ideology.

The economic stress of the 1970s shattered this social democratic consensus. That was the period when Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Ronald Reagan in the US, Deng Xiaoping in China and Mikhail Gorbachev in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shook their respective elites.

The end of communism may not have led to the end of history. But global politics once again moved towards a consensus based on market economics combined with US geopolitical power. If the 1950s saw conservative parties make their peace with social democratic policies, then the 1990s saw social democratic parties embrace market economics.

Is the post-1990 consensus being challenged now with the rise of politicians who do not come from within the established system of political bargaining? Some global thinkers had predicted after 2008 that the crisis would come in three stages: a financial crisis followed by an economic crisis followed by a political crisis. Is that moment approaching?

The consensus after 1990 did serve the world well. But the advances made by maverick politicians over the past few years show that this consensus could be under stress. It is almost impossible to forecast whether the world is headed for another round of ideological wars, such as the one during the Thatcherite era in the UK, when the Labour Party responded to her new policies by swinging to the extreme left under Michael Foot.

The cracks in the centrist core could be a source of worry if extreme politics takes over. Things need not fall apart when the centre does not hold. But they could lose direction.