TAlmost everything has been said about the reasons why the National Rally emerged as the big winner in the last European elections and is now leading the way in the polls for the French legislative elections.
The discredit and lack of confidence from which the political class suffers in public opinion can be analyzed in the terms that economists use to describe what they call a “tragedy of the commons”, that is to say the results of the overexploitation of a common resource when economic agents are in competition for access to this resource.
A well-known example is the overexploitation of fishery rents in certain places: each fisherman has an (individual) interest in taking as many fish as possible, but in doing so he contributes to reducing this rent, which harms the entire fishing community, because the resource does not have time to regenerate. This situation is a form of social dilemma: private interest and collective interest do not coincide.
Trust is an essential element of living together
Let us now proceed by analogy. The fragmentation of the political spectrum is generally accompanied by virulent criticism addressed by opposition parties to the policies pursued by the executive power, whatever it may be, but with one thing in common: the accusation of being “outside ground”, incompetent, of not understanding the aspirations of the “people”, of never doing anything of what he had announced, or even of being in the pay of various interest groups.
The rights of oppositions to be heard are obviously an essential ingredient in the normal functioning of a democracy. However, there is a perverse effect. As long as the criticisms of one and the other concern political orientations and are not intended to disqualify the other, there is no reason why citizens’ trust in their political personnel should erode.
However, if this is the case, it is a safe bet, and this is already being observed, that the waterers are getting watered. The trust placed by citizens in their representatives is like the fishing income: a common resource that no political party can appropriate. Trust is an essential element of living together and social cohesion.
The governance of Switzerland and Germany
Drawing on this resource by systematically discrediting the action of those in charge then reduces general confidence in the political world as a whole, with the doubtless exception of those who have never governed and are considered “outside the system”. “. This is all the more true since oppositions are fragmented and therefore prone to one-upmanship and executive power is highly concentrated, consequently aggregating all discontent.
You have 40.91% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.