Breaking the circle

Exit Berlusconi. The last government leader among the PIIGS — a charming acronym invented by the Anglophone media for European countries which fail to live up to economic standards — has finally succumbed to the only law that that he has been unable to subvert: the law of the markets.

To date, this same law has already claimed the heads of Ireland’s Brian Cowen, Portugal’s José Sócrates, Greece’s George Papandreou and Spain’s José Luis Zapatero. The Spanish Prime Minister, who has decided not to run for a second term, will remain in power until 20 November elections that his Socialist Party will probably lose. He thereafter plans to leave politics.

As unrelenting as a law of nature, the debt crisis has swept away governments that have been too weak to resist its onset. The governments are weak, because they have been forced to face the crisis alone: we have seen how solidarity between eurozone partners is only triggered when the survival of the single currency — that is to say everyone’s vital interest — is under threat.

They are weak, because they have been forced to adopt virtually non-negotiable budgetary adjustments dictated by international institutions (the IMF and the EU). They are weak, because they have been deprived of the support of populations, which did not elect them to cut back on social services. Finally, they are weak because they have been unable to admit the truth, which is that in response to market attacks the best they can do is attempt to limit the damage.

As a result, these government’s have been deprived of room for manoeuvre; their role in this time of crisis, has been restricted to applying decisions taken elsewhere and managing day-to-day business. Differences and divisions that were significant in “pre-crisis” politics have been wiped away, while politicians appear incapable of proposing — or even imagining — solutions that go beyond standard orthodoxies.

In the meantime, disoriented citizens have become sceptical about the capacity of politics to respond to problems to the point where its legitimacy is continually being eroded, and technocracy appears to be a more effective option.

That said, politicians still benefit from democratic legitimacy. The problem is that the issues they are supposed to address extend beyond the framework of national sovereignty, which is the foundation and the limit of their field of action.

As for supranational organisations like the EU, they could intervene more effectively on these issues, were it not for their lack of democratic legitimacy. Nation states are, not without justification, reluctant to let go of their prerogatives. And were it not for the crisis that Europe is currently experiencing, no one would have even have thought of breaking free of this circle.

Translated from French by Mark McGovern