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Plutocratic leadership in the electoral arena: three Mitteleuropean cases of personal wealth in politics

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Two of the most consequential trends in European politics over the past decade have been the rise of populism and the progressive personalization of elections. The present article seeks to link them by focusing on a third phenomenon: the entry of plutocrats (individuals with systemically relevant material resources, who can afford to finance their own campaigns and parties) into direct political competition. The phenomenon is analyzed with reference to the literature on new and entrepreneurial parties, stressing the strategic freedom financial independence affords. The weakening of the traditional mediation function of political parties is identified as the initial structural shock allowing for plutocratic entry. Plutocratic politicians’ activities are studied with regard to party organization, ideological stance, communication style, and institutionalization chances. The theoretical framework is developed inductively from a close contextual analysis of three Mitteleuropean cases: Frank Stronach and Team Stronach in Austria, Andrej Babiš and ANO in the Czech Republic, and Christoph Blocher and the SVP in Switzerland.

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Notes

  1. I reserve the task of developing a formal model of this plutocratic entry choice problem as a future extension of the present research project.

  2. One of the few exceptions is Heinisch and Saxonberg’s contribution to the handbook on political populism (Heinisch et al. 2017), which discusses two of the three cases examined here. While I agree with much of their analysis, I remain unconvinced by their claim that by necessity an “entrepreneurial populist” must be a representative of the “radical center.” I think a much more definitional characteristic is freedom of maneuver, both organizational and ideological.

  3. A parallel strategy for observing the phenomenon of plutocratic entry “at the edges” of the political system, pursued as part of the broader research project, involves different types of elections below the national party leadership level (for instance, ‘overseas’ seats in the Italian and French parliament). In such elections, structural constraints pertaining to the costs of electoral campaigns in such vast districts, together with lesser political salience, favor plutocratic candidate selection even by mainstream parties.

  4. The actual micro-level mechanics of party creation/takeover are not the focus of the present study. In a related work in progress, I investigate (through a series of participant interviews) to what extent the penetration of U.S.-based political consultant companies in European politics has modified the calculus of participation, reducing the barriers to entry of actors with sufficient means to acquire an out-of-the-box campaign and party structure (see 'The plutocratic difference' section, above). The general point I endeavor to make for present purposes is that the bottom-line advantage of plutocratic entry is (to a certain extent) the removal from organization-building of the resource constraints that lead other parties to bargain on policy with special interests in exchange for funding. Hence, by comparison, plutocratic organizational creation can become a ‘pure’ logistics problem, benefiting from the ideological freedom of not having to accommodate the preferences of corps intermédiaires. Clearly, the nature and extent of voter mobilization in these endeavors will vary, based on the influence of the pre-existing political system and its culture, but this plutocratic advantage should hold ceteris paribus.

  5. On the link between public office and business success, see the recent study by Szakonyi (2018).

  6. His daughter, Belinda, who succeeded him at the helm of Magna International, was herself involved in Canadian politics, as an MP elected in 2004 with the mainstream-right opposition Conservative Party, then crossing the floor to become a cabinet minister in the Liberal minority government in 2005, then re-elected once more with the Liberals, now in opposition, in 2006–2008.

  7. As a point of comparison, Donald Trump was a decade younger when he entered the presidential race, and Silvio Berlusconi was more than 20 years younger when he created Forza Italia.

  8. All such calculations performed by the author on the basis of data from Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/) and the OECD (https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm).

  9. A group that comprises less than 500 people throughout Europe, a continent with more than 500 million inhabitants.

  10. Although the provenance of the initial capital that enabled the acquisition has remained secret, and a matter of intense political controversy.

  11. In the intervening half-decade, his financial prospects have increased even more spectacularly: in late 2017, his net worth was estimated at around US$4bn. Babiš is often chided with faint praise as the second-wealthiest man in the Czech Republic, well behind investment and insurance tycoon Petr Kellner. The Czech Republic in general has comparatively low levels of income inequality (its Gini index in the first half of this decade hovered around 26%, one of the world’s lowest). In 2016, it numbered three other billionaires apart from Babiš and Kellner: their combined wealth was approximately equal to 4.8% of the country’s GDP.

  12. Switzerland has had historically high Gini index levels among Western countries (World Bank data available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI). In 2016, Forbes counted 32 billionaires with Swiss nationality, whose combined wealth exceeded 16% of the country’s GDP.

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  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali, Università di Bologna, Strada Maggiore 45, 40125, Bologna, Italy

    M. F. N. Giglioli

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Giglioli, M.F.N. Plutocratic leadership in the electoral arena: three Mitteleuropean cases of personal wealth in politics. Comp Eur Polit 18, 309–329 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-019-00187-0

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