DONALD WHO?:

 In the Czech Republic the right-wing blowhard Prime Minister Andrej Babis recently lost narrowly against a coalition of center-left and center-right parties. Babis -- who explicitly modeled himself on Donald Trump to the point of producing his own trucker hat with a slogan of "Strong Czechia" -- tried to win by whipping up deranged anti-immigrant xenophobia, but his feckless governance and manifest corruption helped bring him down. It was more support for democracy in general and a reaction against a spectacularly crooked far-right demagogue than a surge for the center-left Pirate Party that finished him. Nevertheless, it still counts as a move away from the right.

All these countries have their own national peculiarities, and of course I am no expert. But one can still point to two developments that have undoubtedly had a powerful effect in every European country: the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. As I have previously written, after the financial crisis, Europe suffered under hegemonic austerity politics that created an economic lost decade. The U.S. did quite badly after the crisis economically, but Europe did far, far worse -- the eurozone grew about half as much as America, and countries like Greece and Spain suffered a Great Depression-scale catastrophe. That was fuel for the far right: One study of over 800 elections found that after such a crisis, far-right parties surge in popularity by 30 percent. "After a crisis, voters seem to be particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of the extreme right, which often attributes blame to minorities or foreigners," write authors Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch. Studies of Greece and the U.K. found austerity directly causes increases in right-wing sentiment.

However, the pandemic seems to have cracked the austerian consensus. Countries were simply forced to borrow and spend hugely to keep their economies on ice during the pandemic, and later the European Union created a giant investment and stimulus fund to help kick-start economic recovery. Now, despite some early snags in vaccine distribution, Europe's superior welfare states have allowed every Western European country to far surpass the U.S. in vaccination, and most of Eastern Europe is catching up fast.

After 2008, a crisis afflicting all of Europe was catastrophically mishandled, and problems were unfairly pinned on helpless scapegoats like Greece. The result was economic disaster, political chaos, and a rise in right-wing extremism. But in 2020, a similarly-broad crisis was approached with a reasonable amount of continent-wide solidarity. Every country in the E.U. got at least modest help, helping to discredit the nationalist xenophobia of right-wing parties.

Has Central Europe's populist wave crashed? Although populist politicians have been riding high in recent years, this week, two prominent populist prime ministers suddenly fell from power. The billionaire populist who revolutionized Czech politics, Andrej Babiš, lost his bid for reelection on October 8 and 9 after the Pandora Papers revealed that he used a series of secretive shell companies to buy luxury real estate in France. In neighboring Austria, the populist-leaning Sebastian Kurz abruptly announced that he was stepping down on October 9 after prosecutors raided his offices in a bribery probe. Suddenly, two key Central European populists were gone.

And just as suddenly, analysts began to question whether Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the self-styled guru of Europe's national populist right and future CPAC host, might not survive a tough re-election battle in 2022 against a newly united opposition. Orbán joined Babiš on the campaign trail in the last days of September, touting their populist alliance, to no effect. Meanwhile, in Germany, the far right AfD party experienced disappointing results in September's parliamentary elections, losing 11 of their 93 Bundestag seats.

It's too soon to say that populist leaders are receding as suddenly as they rushed into power in many Central European capitals, but the populist wave has hit some shoals. A combination of corruption scandals, united opposition, and recovering European economies seem to be causing more voters to return to the political center.

Tweet   @brothersjudd