Something has happened to Christian democracy in Europe. It has slipped at speed from an unchallenged position as the model for the future of European centre-right politics, into an abyss from which it may not be able to emerge. Helmut Kohl's downfall is a huge blow to the CDU in Germany. It has caused humiliation and embarrassment on a scale which is difficult for outsiders to appreciate. Like the 13th chime on a clock, it raises doubts about all that went before. Everything will have to be re-examined-every part of the organisation, every approach to policy and, above all, the philosophy of the cause.
Still more interesting is the light it casts on the entire Europapolitik of the centre right, and the feedback into other EU member states. For German Christian democracy as epitomised by Helmut Kohl had taken an explicit leadership role across Europe.
The strategic plan was straightforward. The strength of the CDU machine in Germany, coupled with generous state financing of political parties (and associated organisations), would allow, first, the integration of centre-right political parties into a movement informed and led by the principles of Christian democracy, and then the building of a pan-European Europ?ische Volkspartei or European People's Party (EPP) with European-wide party lists for European elections. It would gradually subsume traditional national political parties.
German numerical and organisational strength was important to this task. In the European parliament, for example, Christian Democrats from Germany formed the largest bloc in an EPP group numbering 201 by 1999.
Kohl in person was also a crucial part of the dynamic of European integration. The Kohl-Mitterrand-Delors alliance was at the heart of Emu. And throughout the 1990s, Kohl exercised hegemony not only within the CDU fraction, but also, through it and its Benelux allies, he usually had a decisive say in European legislative positions adopted by the centre right in the European parliament.
Organisationally, therefore, Christian democracy seemed unstoppable. Helmut Kohl adopted a policy of inclusion: British and Scandinavian conservatives were to be made welcome and encouraged to join even if they were not wholly reliable supporters of European integration. Forza Italia was ingested too, provoking protests from some more squeamish members. Party discipline was applied through control of the party list. German colleagues bemused by British independence would react with astonishment to the idea that they might challenge Kohl's line. "He is our leader: we must follow him," one told me earnestly, while another pointed out that Kohl's control of the party lists made dissent unwise.
Italy, Belgium and the rise of Partyocracy
While Christian democracy began its organisational advance across Europe, there were signs that all was not well in its heartlands. Christian democracy had flourished in Italy, where Alcide de Gasperi brought together catholic action groups, students, academics and members of the former Partito Popolare Italiano to build a transition from fascism to democracy. By creating a synthesis of different social strata he aimed to counter a united left with strong communist influence.
Italy has laboured under a variety of testing problems: the fascist experience, organised crime, direct church interventions in the political debates of the day, a large communist party, a large state sector and left-wing terrorism. Not all Italy's problems arose from its party system.
Yet the 1990s collapse of Christian democracy, and its evaporation out of Italian politics in a sea of corruption, does seem to have some links with the more general problem of Christian democracy in Europe.
One of these elements is the invasion of the party machine into excessive areas of social life: a danger arising from the pillared structures of some Christian democratic parties, where the party has a network of organisations, from savings banks to newspapers. This in itself may be unexceptionable, but it becomes problematic when combined with party control of public institutions. If technocrats and civil servants are appointed under party patronage, the opportunities for sharing out the spoils become only too apparent.
The Belgian political scientist, Lieven De Winter, has been one of the most astute identifiers of the problems which have caused Christian democracy to come crashing down in its heartlands. His analysis of "partyocracy" refers to the degeneration of party government into something illegitimate. First identified in Italy, it can now be seen in Belgium and, finally, in Germany.
Belgium, the Italy of the north, saw a high post-war presence of Christian Democrats in government coalitions. It shared certain factors with Italy, identified by De Winter as "ungovernability, instability, corruption, crime, clientelism and lack of legitimacy of the system." But which is cause and which is effect? It is notable that the two systems both saw Christian democratic mass parties in power for long periods, and both saw the apparent consequences of partyocracy.
Placed in permanent power, politicians began to stop competing on policies-which the shifting balance of coalitions meant that they could not deliver in any case-and began to compete on patronage instead, which they were certain of being able to provide under the "share of the spoils" system by which many positions in the public sector (civil service, radio and television channels, police and judiciary) were politically controlled. The result was a huge class of politically dependent civil servants, from judges to school caretakers. Putting it bluntly, there was an exchange of favours for votes. Public resources were used by political leaders for private purposes.
In Italy and Belgium, the problem of partyocracy went hand in hand with growing budget deficits, failing enterprises which required ever-larger subsidies, and a civil service which was arrogant, over-staffed and incompetent. The rise of the examining magistrates then exposed interlocking networks of corruption. In Italy, financial malpractice seemed out of control, while in Belgium the inability of a tainted police and judicial system to solve child murders brought a despairing population into the streets in October 1996. By 1999, leading newspapers were declaring that the Dehaene government was not fit to hold office.
Nothing like this was visible in Germany. Yet it is now clear that the attempts to hide private financial contributions on top of generous state party support may have been an attempt to increase party leader control, and reward support and loyalty. Disclosures suggest that secret service funds were also channelled to the CDU; and from there onwards to friendly parties in other EU countries, in particular Spain, where there seemed to be a need to consolidate political parties like the Partido Popular on the Christian democrat model.
In Germany, rather, Christian democracy seemed to offer an enviable model. Apparently reconciling the interests of capital with a role for trades unions, it seemed both to exclude the extreme parties of left and right and to provide an environment for economic success. The consensus seemed to suit the country; and responsible behaviour by the main economic actors-in this respect, notably different from Italy and Belgium-provided stable and predictable economic outcomes.
Although coalitions were a fact of life, the market-liberal Free Democrats proved undemanding partners for the CDU. Indeed, the organisational strength and coherence of the CDU made it ideal for German politics. By contrast with the fragmented French right, in which Christian democracy had never been dominant, there seemed to be no contest. Any criticism of Kohl's sometimes heavy-handed dispatch of party opponents or excessive insistence on toeing the party line inside the CDU-and there was little criticism of these, at least in public-seemed outweighed by the cohesive presence of the centre right in government.
Economics against Christian democracy
The triumph of reunification made opposition to Kohl even weaker. Yet the strains were becoming apparent towards the end of his 16 years in government. One fault line was economic. From about 1996, German business opinion began to become concerned about the extent of German budget transfers to support further European integration. When nervously questioned on this score, at an international Christian democrat meeting, Kohl roared that Germany had always been prepared to spend heavily on European integration and would continue to do so. But back home, his rather cavalier preparedness to sign the cheques became a minority view.
In Germany, economics was beginning to part company with Christian democracy. Once it became clear that the euro would not, in fact, prove stronger than the deutschemark, it became necessary to establish precisely why. The German economist Otmar Issing, from his roost at the European Central Bank, began to press home a single message: absence of structural reform in Germany's labour market and in the pension and welfare systems; the continuation of bank rather than equity capital; stock markets too small and illiquid by comparison with the world leaders; a conservative and heavily regulated retail sector. This appreciation-that Ludwig Erhard's mighty export machine based on a strong currency, quality, productivity and performance must be adapted if its performance was to be extended into the information economy-proved difficult for Kohl and for some in his party to accept.
Most difficult, and still unresolved, is the problem of the social model. Co-determination in larger companies makes restructuring difficult, although not impossible. Giving workers (and behind them, unions) pseudo-democratic rights to co-determine the future of enterprises is fine in periods of structural stability and steady growth, but much more difficult when structural reforms, transfers of business or complete company redesign are needed. This is because the social model envisages the profit-share being taken in kind-in shorter hours or expanded benefits-while the new global business model contemplates transferable skills, discontinuity, mobility and transferability of investment, assets and labour.
Christian democracy is challenged by change in another part of this nexus of solidarity: secularisation. Christian democracy has been inspired by Roman catholic leaders and social doctrines, from the nature and value of work, and its place in the context of society, through subsidiarity as a means of handling the allocation of authority at particular hierarchical levels in an organised system. Christian democracy was catholic in Italy; in Belgium, as Paul Lucardie has noted, "a catholic worker would join a catholic trade union, read a catholic newspaper, send his children to a catholic school and vote for the catholic Christelijke Volkspartij/Parti Social Chr?tien." In Germany, although never so "pillarised," the overwhelming number of CDU members at the time of its postwar establishment were catholics. Even by 1969, protestants, who made up half the population of the Federal Republic, amounted to less than a quarter of CDU membership.
What comes after Christian democracy?
The third challenge to Christian democracy is perhaps the most fundamental and the most difficult. Can it outgrow its roots in the cold war? To some extent, Christian democracy was an artificial construct, a post-war manufacture invented by and capturing the high ideals of the founders of the EU itself. They were determined to rebuild European politics free of the taint of national socialism and of a compromised model of conservative and business interests which lacked the moral and religious strength to cope with the fascist challenge.
The Osterreichische Volkspartei or Austrian People's Party is very much in this tradition. It has shared with its Christian democrat partners a historical lack of a distinctive ideology, and it has participated in coalitions in much the same way as its Italian and Belgian counterparts did. It was dissatisfaction with the sterility and immovability of Austrian politics which seems to have led its leaders, when the opportunity arose, to seek to escape the embrace of Victor Klima's socialists and start afresh in an alliance with the Freedom Party.
The scale of outrage which the move has generated throws into sharp relief the difficulty the centre-right faces in moving from Christian democracy to a model more economically liberal and global, secularised and Anglo-Saxon. Coincidentally, just as the scale of the crisis in the CDU was becoming visible, the danger of moving back towards more traditional, nationalistic conservatism was also roaring into view.
If the dissolution of Christian democracy will unleash old demons-if racism and xenophobia are lurking under the surface of continental European politics-then perhaps it must be rebuilt. Perhaps the manifold shortcomings of the Italian or Belgian models, which seemed to make the countries themselves almost non-viable, were in fact better than the unspeakable alternative.
That would be a dispiriting conclusion. At least in conceptual terms the implosion of Christian democracy does suggest a new model. Such a model would pick up the strands of market liberalism which are now the European and international norm in the work of the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD and, most recently, the European Central Bank, and build these into the philosophy of centre-right parties which are also following the prevailing trend towards secularisation of social organisation in Europe.
What of the moral dimension? The politics of the European centre right dare not leave a void which might be filled by anti-foreigner prejudice. Yet social solidarity can thrive in more liberal economies, as Gordon Brown never tires of arguing. The Anglo-Saxon economies are scarcely riven by racial tension. Even the US has managed to make progress in the past 30 years against a background which, in the 1960s, seemed most unpromising.
The sharper lines of economic liberalism and conservatism can replace the centrist shades of Christian democracy. But their advocates will need to be at their most persuasive if that void is to be filled.
