Abstract
Rural politics, protest and its relationship with political parties is one of the more under-researched areas of political science. The diversity of issues, approaches to politics and ideological variation associated with the rural world creates a general incoherence that makes it difficult to conceptualize the whole. The same issue can be understood differently in different states and within states, as variations in rural economic, social and political relations influence responses. This book explores how contemporary rural society has protested and interacted with national politics, and the emergence of populist parties in the countryside in response. It provides a vital contribution to the study of populism, protest, rural politics and the consequences of neo-liberal policies on society.
Strijker, Voerman and Terluin argue that contemporary rural protest and the emergence of populism in the countryside are a global phenomenon, which has served as the canary in the mine, foreshadowing the rise of protest, unrest and populism in urban areas. They argue that rural protest has been driven by the breakdown of the post-war consensus and the subsequent imposition of neo-liberalism onto the rural world. The consequences of neo-liberalism on the countryside serve as an early warning to the wider world. The book is divided into three parts: firstly exploring the nature of rural protests and the relationship between protests and parties, before looking at populism and rural populism, and then populist parties in the countryside and at a national level.
The range of cases is commendable: Western Europe (Britain, France, the Netherlands and Austria), Eastern Europe (Poland), Scandinavia (Finland) and Australia, foregrounding the variation in experience. This is a strength and weakness: The breadth and variety of rural protest movements and parties is demonstrated to full effect, but this also weakens the book’s coherence as each case is looked at in insolation. Britain, France, Australia and the Netherlands are covered in multiple chapters providing a more rounded picture than those states with only a single chapter. However, the authors of these chapters – Ben Stanley on Poland, Ann-Cathrine Jungar on Finland and Franz Seifert on Austria – provide excellent analyses of their respective cases.
Michael Woods’ attempts to place rural protests into a historical context develop a conceptual framework for rural protest and to apply it comparatively to Britain, Australia and France. However, France is almost an afterthought in this chapter, weakening the effect of the comparison. Strijker and Terluin analyse the shift in rural protest in the Netherlands from sector-based protests to a wider defence of rural identity and asking if they have developed into political parties. Distinguishing between anti-modernist, direct activist, progressive coalitions and non-farmer coalitions they observe that only in the case of anti-modernist farmers has a party emerged, in all other cases, the interests articulated have been absorbed and represented by existing parties. Ivan Bruneau examines the Confédération Paysanne deftly combining macro analysis of rural protest in France with a micro study of activists in the Southern department of Aveyron. Franz Seifert analyses the way in which incumbent rural powerholders in Austria have sought to exclude challengers, and this theme is continued in Darren Halpin’s analysis of Australia.
De Lange and Rooduijn develop the link between protest and populism by exploring the nature of support for populist parties in Western and Eastern Europe. They move on to discuss rural populism as a specific form of populism but staying within the established frameworks for conceptualizing populism.
The final section discusses populist political movements and the countryside. Ben Stanley examines the rise and fall of Self-Defence (2001–2011), looking at its relations with other parties and the nature of regional support for the movement. Here the three-way contest between rural populists, the rural mainstream and national populists is seen most clearly. In contrast to the failure of Self-Defence, Ann-Cathrine Jungar charts the successful transformation of the Finnish Rural Party into the True Finns as an example of a rural party transforming itself into a national populist movement. The book concludes with three chapters looking at the attempts in France and the Netherlands by populist movements to expand their supporter base into the countryside.
The book adopts a variety of methodological approaches and perspectives, ranging from the more descriptive accounts of Britain to Ivan Bruneau’s excellent analysis based on activist interviews, to more statistical approaches. This is both a strength and a source of frustration to the reader, as we do not have comparable accounts of activists in states other than France.
One continuity that does emerge is how the political and social institutions that served as the bridge between state and rural society as the post-war consensus were captured by a powerful stratum of rural society that became hegemonic and closed to outsiders. Yet as neo-liberalism dislocated rural society, the old institutions proved ineffective in defending rural interests. However, they have steadfastly defended their place in the political hierarchy. The response of the rural hegemons to dissent is: ‘initial ridicule, rejection and marginalisation of dissenters is followed by an uncredited emulation of their concepts and practices’ (p. 130). For the new movements’ anger is not just against policies but the system and their exclusion from it.
The historical aspect of rural populism is under-developed; it appears in some chapters, notably Lucardie and Vorman’s, but elsewhere it is strikingly absent and the wider history of rural populism and protest is unexplored. Contemporary protests build on long traditions of dissent in the countryside (Narkiewicz, 1976; Paxton, 1997). Exploring this would have given the book more depth and helped contextualized rural dissent.
Theoretically, the book is heavily dependent upon Cas Mudde’s work. The literature on rural populism is limited and there was an opportunity to go beyond Mudde in exploring rural populism and its relationship to the social structure of the countryside. The problems with using ideological thinness and the deployment of a discourse of pure against the corrupt (Mudde, 2000) to define rural parties as populist is that it ignores the impact of the social structure of the countryside, and its peripheral position nationally, has upon parties’ strategies. The heterogeneity of rural society means that developed policy and ideology is divisive and potentially limits support (Wright, 1964; Varley, 2010). Rural politicians have always been aware of this problem (Madgearu, 1924: 67) and the ‘absence’ of ideology is a conscious strategic response. Similarly, the deployment of the pure people against the corrupt centre is a response to the peripheral position of the countryside. By using this definition of populism, it inevitably encompasses almost all rural parties and leads to misclassification of parties as populist, for example, the inter-war Polish and Romanian agrarians. The distinction between radical and moderate rural politics could have been drawn out further alongside alternative strategies adopted by rural parties such as office-seeking (Batory and Sitter, 2004). This is important because the four-way battle in the countryside between rural and national parties, radical and mainstream is clear. We observe parties seeking to remain the true voice of the countryside, others that seek to transcend their rural origins and become national (Jungar on the True Finns), national parties that have long taken rural voters for granted, or populist movements seeking to expand into the countryside (Ivaldi and Gombin on Front National).
Despite the limits, this book is a significant and vital contribution to the study of rural politics and populism. Although the book concludes with the view that rural populism is declining as a political force, the book amply demonstrates that it remains part of modern politics and the variety of forms, approaches and success shows that there is scope for more study of this under-researched area of political life.