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Anna Tsai H1910427

Compare the similarity and differences of populism in Europe and Taiwan

Populism up-springs in the early 21st century all over the world, and we can see from the

recent significant political development such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as

U.S. president, and populist parties like French National (FN), United Kingdom Independence

Party (UKIP), and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have gained great popularity. Populism

doesn’t just pop up now, but constantly rise since 1990s, and “populist parties have tripled

their vote in Europe over the past 20 years. They are in government in 11 European countries.

More than a quarter of Europeans voted populist in their last elections” (Matthijs Rooduijn).

Some may attribute the rising of populism directly to economic inequality, however,

“populism is an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two

homogeneous and antagonist groups, ‘the pure people’, and ‘the corrupt elite’, and which

argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people” (Cas Mudde 35).

From the definition we can see some important viewpoints. The first is populists don’t

consider the country consists of people embracing different kinds of value, but pursue the

same interest as the whole. The second is the supporters of populist parties have similar

sentiments that either they ordinary (pure) people have been betrayed by the corrupt elite, or

being left behind by progressive cultural tides. In addition, “populism can be left or right

depending on the host ideology of the populist actor” (Trentino), and today more left-wing in

the South especially in Latin America, president like Chavez in Venezuela, who is a

charismatic leader railing against the predatory political elite. Populist parties in the North

Europe and America have more radical right or even far right wing. It is hard to classify what

populism in different countries all have in common, for countries hold diverse historical
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background and each political party has its own rules and system, but they share the same

idea that people as a collective obtain one will. The following, I will mainly focus more on

right-wing populist parties, and raise some cases in Europe and America. Analyzing how do

the populist parties in these countries gain their popularity, what kind of ideology they possess,

and finally apply them on the case in Taiwan.

Populism develops rapidly among these 20 years, but not yet reaches to its peak. What

triggers the development of populism could attribute to the following events and issues. In

2008, Europe and the US were shaken by financial crisis, leading to high unemployment and

economic insecurity. “Euro zone has a direct first order effect on frustration of citizens with

European institutions and traditional parties associated with them, and such a frustration

pushed voters to support populist platforms” (Guiso). Eurozone is one of the reasons that

triggered anti-EU, because the members are tightly tied to one another, the influence brought

by financial crisis among the region is much more serious for using the common currency.

Greece adopted Euro as its currency in 2011. At first, Greece also benefits from Euro, but the

economic foundation of Greece is too vulnerable; therefore, the small fluent of the currency

will bring great impact on Greece. During the recession, Greece’s bond market finally

collapsed, and led to the debt crisis. After that, from 2010 to 2018, “the EU provides

eight-year €289 billion bailout programme to Greece, the largest rescue in financial history”

(The Spectators). Not only Greece, the so-called PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) in

Southern Europe all have their debt crisis since their economy is not as strong as big countries

such as Germany among Eurozone. The crisis not only has an impact on Southern European

countries, but also all the other countries in Eurozone, for all the member countries need to

burden the result being carried out. Due to the mass unemployment, limited job opportunity,

and the declining social spending by government, we can see the rise of Euroscepticism with

the declining trust to European political institutions. EU is a successful supranational

institution in maintaining peace, and enlarging Eastern Europe into the EU’s democratic

model. However, the economic crisis disclosed the disadvantages of the economic community,

for the countries joining during 2004-2017 are all poorer than the EU average with unstable

economy. “Europeans appear dissatisfied with local and EU politicians and institutions. This

distrusts fuels—and in turn is reinforced by—the rise of political extremism” (Yann Algan).

Rising economic insecurity, increases in unemployment rates, and the declining trust of

political institutions lead to the gaining supportive for the populist or anti-establishment

parties. The problems mentioned above, the populist parties usually intend to stir up people’s

xenophobia, blaming “Others” for taking away job opportunities or even country from “Us”.

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was established in 2013. AfD is Euroscepticism, anti-Euro,

anti-immigrant, and opposed to German’s supportive of Southern European countries

economy. When it comes to refugee crisis in 2015, Merkel held a welcoming attitude, and

many Germans were also open-minded then, but things changed when they found that the

number of refugee is more than they had expected. People started to feel insecurity of the new

comer in Germany, especially the immigrant are mostly young men from Muslim-majority

countries. The issue of refugee gave AfD an opportunity to push them forward; they stirred up

xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment, and said that they will take country and people back,

which declared that they are on the same side of “the people”. They are “not afraid to speak

out about issues of social cohesion and identity. The AfD saw a surge in voter support.

Immigration was foremost on voter’s minds” (Jeffrey Gedmin). Especially having direct and

strong slogan like“Der Islam gehoert nicht zu Deutschland.” (Islam doesn’t belong in

Germany). AfD simplified the solution and blamed others (immigration) as the reason of the

problem. We can see many populist parties using the same way－simple and strong slogan, to

fuel people’s anger, and therefore gaining their vote. In 2017, “AfD entered the national

parliament, obtaining 12.6 percent of the vote and 92 seats in the Bundestag, becomes the
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third-largest party” (Jeffrey Gedmin). As in Britain, United Kingdom Independence Party

(UKIP) plays a crucial role of triggering the rise of populism. Nigel Farage, who was a leader

of UKIP and Brexit campaign, put two elements on the table: sovereignty and immigration,

along with people’s concern about employment and economic problem in general,

successfully raise people’s support towards Brexit campaign. Additionally, Nigel Farage also

used simple and strong words, “We want our country back” and “Take back control” as their

campaign slogan. Compare to other European countries which have the same problem of

immigration, anti-Islam doesn’t seems to a factors of people voting for Brexit, but for the

freely move of European citizen. In the referendum, there are “nearly 50% of citizens stated

this, while 30% recognized that immigration would be a decisive factor in their vote” (Pol

Morillas). Except for the economy and sovereignty problem, cultural backlash is one of the

most important factors that we cannot ignore which inspires the rise of populism. Cultural

backlash “emphasizes that populist support can be explained primarily as a psychological

phenomenon, reflecting a nostalgic reaction among older sectors of the electorate seeking a

bulwark against long-term process of value change” (Ronald F. Inglehart). The Brexit

campaign harked back nostalgically to a “golden time” of England, when they hadn’t entered

the EU. The society was mainly composed of Anglo-Saxon, providing well-paid and secure

jobs for unionized manual workers, and remained a strong economy and military power

leading the Commonwealth. The similar message that populism try to convey to the people is

returning to the past glories of the country, and the step back of globalization and international

institution. Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” bring his populist supporters back to

the time when the U.S. president still hold the dominant power among all the western

countries and external threats such as terrorism won’t easily break into America. “The

Public Religion Research Institute revealed that 51 percent of the U.S. population felt that the

American way of life and culture had changed for the worse since the 1950s. Similarly, in
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2012, 43 percent of the British population thought that Great Britain had become worse since

Queen Elizabeth II’s accession 60 years earlier” (Edoardo Campanella) From the research, we

can actually see that there are people have the feeling that yesterday is associated with

progress. People believe that populist parties will bring them back to the past glories, and

their country will be great again. Donald also blamed the Islamic and Mexican for the source

of the crime from America, and the solution to the problem is making America less diverse,

which is stopping immigration from getting cross America’s border. Building walls between

the borders may sound ridiculous, but that is the classic example of simplifying the issue and

gives the people the simplest solution to deal with the problem that people are afraid of. To

the problem such as economic inequality, country insecurity, European populist parties and

Trump have something in similar, which is blaming immigration for the cause of the problem

they’re facing. We can see the rise of progressive values support the cultural backlash thesis.

“During the last half century in Western societies, there are growing support in public opinion

for post-materialist over traditional values, and by the organizational expression of these

values in the late-twentieth century through the rise of new cultural issues, social movements,

and political parties” (Ronald F. Inglehart). There is cultural shift in the new decade, the

younger generation and the college educated asks for a more conclusive and diverse society,

which protect the right of LGBT and refugees, and hold an open-minded towards

multicultural. The younger generation put more focus on issues which receive less care by the

traditional society, such as environmental issue and humanitarian assistance. The traditional

values are mostly hold by older generation, less educated sector, and those people gradually

lose their control to the traditional society, with the feeling of being left behind. To sum up, it

will never be the single factor that inspires the rise of populism, but we can conclude that in

the recent decade, the reason can mainly contribute to financial crisis in2008, refugee crisis in

2015, and the cultural backlash. We analyzed some representative examples such as the rise of
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populist parties in Germany and England, and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president.

In 2019, the election of Han Kuo-yu as Kaohsiung mayor is seen as the fastest rising of

populism in Taiwan politics, and the trend has cover the whole Taiwan. The following, we’re

going to talk about what is the similarity and differences of populism in the previous cases

and in Taiwan.

In Taiwan, the thriving of populist politics due to the collective sentiments of groups of

people feeling left behind by the pro-reform movements. In these two years, Taiwan

government started to push reformist policies such as pension reform, new energy policy due

to the awareness of environmental protection, and legalizing same-sex marriage. The older

generation found the opinion for post-materialist is against their traditional values, and even

harm the development of economy in Taiwan. Supporters who are anti-reform tend to be

attracted by simple and strong slogan－Make fortune, which is repeatedly mentioned by Han

Kuo-Yu’s mayoral campaign in 2018 and his election as presidential candidate in 2020. To get

rich, Han’s campaign made an illusion that connecting with China could offer an easy

solution to the frustration of “the common people.” Taiwan’s politics is two-party system,

with pro-China party KMT and pro-US party DPP, and the good or bad relationship between

Taiwan and China depends on who is the ruling party. Taiwan’s economy relies heavily on

China, which is the top trading partner of Taiwan. Taiwan is an export-dependent country, it

accounts for 60 percent of the GDP, and among the 60 percent, China accounts for 40 percent.

People are afraid that the worsen of the relationship between China and Taiwan will bring

Taiwan’s economy to a very bad situation, and the populist candidate Han Kuo-Yu use

people’s fear of this to gain his popularity. Although Han is the member of KMT, he claimed

that he didn’t get support from the party, and labeled himself as shumin (the common people)

from the corrupt elite in the ruling party DPP. The previous presidents in Taiwan all have

pretty educational background; however, Han doesn’t perceive the same educational
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background as them, so he labeled them as corrupted elite, and they put Taiwan’s economy

into bad condition. At the same time, he strengthen his relationship with the grassroots

(middle or middle-low income), and keep shaping himself as the representative of the

ordinary people. If there is anyone who against his words, the one must be the corrupt elite

who doesn’t know the life of ordinary people. Han therefore separated Taiwan’s society into

two homogeneous and antagonist groups, and what he had done exactly meet Cas Mudde’s

definition of populist. Besides, just like the nostalgia that Trump brought, Han also harkens

back nostalgically to a glorious time of Taiwan, when there is no progressive movement, and

people who are willing to work could “get rich”. The cultural backlash seems could be

applied to Taiwan’s populism; however, the supporters of Han have never been the dominant

group of Taiwan, and there is no refugees crisis or the experience of terrorist because of the

geographical and historic differences. The trend of populism doesn’t just pop up during the

time of Han’s appear, but right before that, there was already some protests asking the

established elite to listen to “the people”, for people have no trust to the established system

and government. Han Kuo-yu won the seat of Kaohsiung mayor by his attractive

characteristics of populist, but he fail to win the election of president by the same strategy.

The first reason is that he announced to be the candidate of president, while he is still the

mayor of Kaohsiung; therefore, he lost his trust among younger generation, for them found

him dishonest and irresponsible. The second reason must be Hong Kong’s event. China has

put their control towards Taiwan for a long time, and wants to unify Taiwan with military

force or put One Country, Two Systems on Taiwan. Taiwan’s people, mostly younger

generation are afraid that if the pro-China party win, Taiwan will lost its democracy. By

raising the issue of sovereignty and identity, President Tsai Ing-wen often remind people of

the protests in Hong Kong and the threats of China. Tsai also divides the society into two

groups, pro-Taiwan or pro-China. With the help of social media, Tsai spread the message
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online quickly, and collaborated with YouTuber to gain popularity from younger generation

and asked everyone go vote. She conveyed a message that the vote is not for the candidate

herself, but more for Taiwan’s democracy; therefore, Tsai won 8.17 million votes and

becomes the president who get the most voting in Taiwan’s history. Han’s fail in the

presidential election doesn’t mean the downfall of populism in Taiwan, for a new populist

party－Taiwan People's Party becomes the third largest party in the congress. As a new party

just established at the end of 2019, Taiwan People's Party also gain its popularity by social

media and criticizing the corrupted KMT and DPP, and label them as the third party of Taiwan,

which separated them from the corrupted elite. Taiwan People's Party is led by Taipei’s mayor

Ko We-Je, and he is labeled who represents the people and is different from the traditional

party in Taiwan, and people who vote for the party is mainly because of the leader, but not for

the party. In the future, we’re not sure about how much influence the party will bring to

Taiwan, but we can know that the trend of populism won’t fade away that quickly.
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Works Cited
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