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European democracy after Paris

Ironically, as political distrust and dissatisfaction are at all-time highs in Europe, the vast majority of people are still willing to give unprecedented powers to the leaders they don’t like or trust.

By Cas Mudde
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Tributes to the victims in Republic Square. Demotix/ Nesrine Cheikh Ali. All rights reserved.Like many people I spent the evening of the Paris attacks, as well as the weekend, in a haze of shock and sadness. I was shocked by the atrocities, annoyed by the social media posts about the alleged selective sympathy (which was upsetting their selective sympathy), but mostly I was worried about the inevitable overreaction by France and other European Union (EU) member states.

I had never believed that there was a fundamental ideological difference between the western states that opposed the Iraq invasion and those that supported it. Countries like Belgium and France just had made a different strategic calculation and had hidden that under a more popular liberal democratic veneer.

As I hoped that France would follow Norway after Breivik rather than the US after 9/11, I knew they would have the same knee-jerk response as the Americans, egged on by hysterical masses and opportunistic elites. Still, I hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0