Comparative Collapsonomics

European Electoral Politics and the Financial Crisis

Justin Pickard – Futurist, Gonzo Ethnographer – @justinpickard

 Welcome to
Black Swan Country

Photo by xlibber
 'Since New Year's Day [2011], we've seen the unraveling of a pan-regional
power structure akin to the collapse of the old Soviet Bloc, and now a sequence
of epic disasters culminating in the triple whammy of once-in-a-millennium
earthquake, giant tsunami, and the possibility of multiple nuclear meltdowns in
northern Japan.'

– Scott Smith, 'The Future is Here Today, and it's Superdense'

Photo by ecstaticist
 Collapsonomics?

'the study of economic and state systems at the

edge of their normal social and economic function,
including preventative measures to avoid
destructive feedback loops and vicious cycles.'

Photo by Sean Wallis – The Institute for Collapsonomics

Copyright World Economic Forum
 Iceland and Ireland
Small, Windswept Island Nations with Big Fragile Banks
 'These corporate spaces are still pockmarked by
industry, which in the context resembles a series of
scattered ornaments, accidental or otherwise,
creating a landscape which gets ever stranger
the closer you get to the centre of it ...'

– Owen Hatherley
(on the Dublin Docklands)
Photo by briansuda
 Iceland, 2007/2009
Emergence of a loose,
grassroots alliance of
reformist MPs under Major losses for the conservative
the banner of the Independence Party – leading party
Citizen's Movement in the previous government

Significant seat
Citizen's Movement
gains for the
Left-Green Movement
Left-Green *Social Democrats
Alliance Progressive Party
Liberal Party
*Independence Party

Elimination of the libertarian,

eurosceptic Liberal Party
 Ireland, 2007/2011
Substantial boost in the number
of Sinn Fein, New Vision, ULA
and non-party TDs

United Left Alliance

Sinn Féin
New Vision
*Green Party
Labour
*Fianna Fáil
Progressive Democrats
Fine Gail
Independents

Near-total obliteration of Fianna Fáil; Ireland's dominant party, and leader of the previous government
– widely perceived as having exacerbated the banking crisis
'What Ireland has rejected is (…) much clearer than what Ireland wants. The
big winners were Enda Kenny's Fine Gael, which scooped more seats than
ever before, although they received only 36% of the vote, rather less than
their strongest past showings. Despite a good campaign, the lack of
universal enthusiasm for Fine Gael is not hard to understand. Economic
questions are the only questions that count in a country where a fifth of
national income has just disappeared in a baffling burst of smoke from the
blazing banks (…)

Fianna Fáil has been deservedly eaten after the savage turn of the Celtic
tiger that it rode for so long, but power has now passed to another party
forged in the struggle for national sovereignty, which also has precious few
plans for rescuing economic sovereignty today. The people who have said
what they do not want have not been offered a clear alternative. It may not
be long before they are once again scratching their heads, and asking – who
elected the bankers?

– Guardian Editorial, 'Irish elections: a vote cast in anger', 28/02/2011

Post-Crisis Elections
First Attempts at a General Taxonomy
 Anti-incumbency sentiments
●Hypothesis: in the first election after a crisis event, the vote flees away from
the parties previously in government

● The vote flees equally in all directions, both left and right

● Iceland 2009 saw an aggregate swing of 9.9% away from the ruling parties
(Independence -12.9% / SDA +3%)

● In Ireland 2011, the equivalent shift was 27.1% (FF -24.1% / Greens -2.9%)

● Greece 2009: 8.38% swing away from the governing NDP

 High churn
●Hypothesis: as a corollary of anti-incumbency sentiment, post-crisis politics
also produces a substantial level of churn

● Both at the level of party leadership ... and party existence ...

● Iceland 2009 sees new leaders for 3/4 returned parties; eliminates the
Liberal Party; and sees the birth of a grassroots political force (the Citizen's
Movement)

●Ireland 2011 – 3/5 new party leaders since 2007; demise of the Progressive
Democrats and the Greens; birth of the ULA, and a substantial boost in the
number of Independent TDs (from 5 to 13)
 Turnout holds steady
●It may seem logical to presume that the dissatisfaction of post-crisis politics
would have resulted in a disengaged electorate and, as such, a much-reduced
election turnout

●In practice, however, dissatisfaction with politicians doesn't manifest as

dissatisfaction with the political process – instead, the desire to 'punish' those
responsible took precedence, resulting in a relatively consistent turnout

● Ireland 2011: 70.1% (up from 67%)

● Iceland 2009: 85.1% (up from 83.6%)

● Greece 2009: 70.9% (down from 74.1%)

 New political axes: a model

Diagram by Nate Silver

 Trending left; independently-minded
● Borrowing from Nate Silver's ideological/institutional axes for front-runners
in the US GOP primaries, the trend in Ireland and Iceland was not a simple
swing to the left, but a swing left-&-down, toward the bottom of the chart
● Iceland 2009
● Left-Green Alliance (secular, eco-socialist, eurosceptic – 21.7%, +7.4%)
● Citizen's Movement (grassroots, reformist, anti-establishment – 7.2%, +7.2%)
● Progressive Party (liberal, agrarian – 14.8%, +3.1%)
● Social Democratic Alliance (social democracy, pro-european – 29.8%, +3%)

● Ireland 2011
● Labour Party (social democracy – 19.4%, +9.3%)
● Sinn Fein (left-wing nationalism, republicanism – 9.9%, +3%)
● United Left Alliance (anti-capitalism, trade unionism – 2.6%, +2.6%)
● New Vision (grassroots, reformist, anti-establishment – 1.1%, +1.1%)

● Greece 2009
● Ecologist Greens (social progressivism, green – 2.5%, +1.5%)
In post-crisis politics, outsiders > insiders

Luke 'Ming'
Flanagan, TD
 In post-crisis politics, outsiders > insiders

Birgitta
Jónsdóttir, MP
In post-crisis politics, outsiders > insiders

Jón Gnarr
 Apparent retrograde motion
●'Apparent retrograde motion is the motion of a planetary body in a direction
opposite to that of other bodies within its system as observed from a
particular vantage point.' (Wikipedia)

● In both nations, the governments returned by post-crisis elections belie the

true scale of the ideological shift

●Iceland's electorate turfed the conservatives out of government, replacing

their Independent/SDA coalition with a leftist government of social
democrats and eco-socialists

●Ireland roundly rejected both parties of their FF/Green government,

returning a 'grand coalition' of Labour (centre-left) and Fine Gail (centre-right)

●Hypothesis: the 'outsider' candidates – the Gnarrs, Flanagans, and

Jónsdóttirs – are closer to the actual preferences of a post-crisis electorate
 What Now?
Conclusions; Questions; How to Move Forward
 Concluding Questions
● What does a resilient electoral system look like?

● If a diversity of voices aids systemic resilience, how can we undercut or

circumvent the professionalization of European politics?

●How durable are these left-outsider realignments? How specific to the

context of small states in Northern Europe?

● Assuming Brown's bail-outs and stimulus packages saved us from the rawest
of collapse scenarios, but failed to fix any of the underlying weaknesses of the
system, what happens when the second 'dip' discredits the next set of
governing parties? Once they're cast into the wasteland, following the
footprints of their predecessors, who do we have left?

●What can the emergence of 'celebrity economists' in Ireland tell us about

the role of the expert in a post-collapse environment?