Populists like Trump and Farage don't seem to fit in well on a left-right scale, instead they fit nicely on the GAL-TAN scale, so how come their opposites on GAL-TAN don't seem to be doing well?
The current political and news climate seems perfect for green parties, so why are they struggling so much? Except for in Germany many greens across the democratic world are underperforming given how often climate change comes up, and given that social issues are becoming a more divisive political fault line than before. There seems to be environmental disasters on the news quite often and since the mid 10’s immigration has been more or less the most salient political issue. As politics seem to drift towards being more about cultural and social values than economic policy a party which stands up against climate change and is socially liberal should be placed to do very well one would think.
The most common way of differentiating between parties is to class them as left wing or right wing as economic issues has historically been the most important in politics across democracies, but there are other ways of organising parties.
For example, one of the more well-known alternatives to the right-left scale is the GAL-TAN scale which has social values as its dominant fault line. The opposing poles on the GAL-TAN scale are the socially liberal GAL which is made up of Green, Alternative, and Liberal and the socially conservative pole is made up of Traditional, Authoritarian, and Nationalist. The GAL-TAN scale is hardly perfect, I think for many authoritarian and nationalist have some strong negative connotations, but it can be useful for thinking of politics in a different way. An argument could be made that GAL-TAN is a more relevant scale in the 21st century. Issues like Brexit, defunding the police, and EU bonds for example fit well on the GAL-TAN scale.
Why is it then that green parties aren’t more important given that they are ideal champions for the GAL side of the spectrum? My theory is that social issues appear to be more important than they really are. I explained in my last post that social media has changed the way information spreads and have created incentives for producing more incendiary rhetoric, which you can read here if that sounds interesting, but I believe most voters aren’t engaged enough in politics to follow the debate on the internet where most of the highly controversial social issues which map well on the GAL-TAN scale are discussed. The question then, is why have so-called right wing populist parties and movements done so well?
It’s hard to reconcile the fact that champions for the TAN side like President Trump and Nigel Farage have been so politically successful when their counterparts on the GAL side haven’t. Perhaps it’s because green parties have been poor at campaigning and getting media attention, or maybe the GAL-TAN scale isn’t as relevant is it can appear at first glance. Either way, I expect we’ll be seeing more of the GAL-TAN scale and green parties in the decade ahead. Economic issues have been the dominant political cleavage since Marx’ time, time will tell if it remains so.
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Written by Karl Johansson
Cover Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels