![\"EU](\"\/pardeeschool\/files\/2016\/06\/EU-Flag.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nVivien Schmidt<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Professor of International Relations and Political Science<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently published an Op-Ed examining how European progressives can combat the recent rise of populism across the region.<\/span><\/p>\n Schmidt’s Op-Ed, entitled “How Do Progressives Fight Back Against Populism?<\/a>” was published on April 12, 2017 by\u00a0Social Europe<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n From the text of the article:<\/p>\n In recent years, the European Union has suffered through a cascading set of crises, including the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, the security crisis, and Brexit. But rather than bringing the EU together, with concerted responses that would demonstrate its common values on its 60th<\/sup> anniversary, these crises have revealed cross cutting divisions among member states. What\u2019s more, they have been accompanied by major crises of politics and democracy for the EU as well as its member states.<\/p>\n At EU level, questions are increasingly raised not only about the (lack of) effectiveness in solving the various crises but also democratic legitimacy. The causes are EU governance processes characterized by the predominance of closed-door political bargains by leaders in the Council and by a preponderance of technocratic decisions by EU officials in the Commission and the European Central Bank, without significant oversight by the European Parliament. At national level, concerns focus on the ways in which the EU\u2019s very existence has diminished elected governments\u2019 authority and control over growing numbers of policies for which they had traditionally been alone responsible, often making it difficult for them to fulfill their electoral promises or respond to their voters\u2019 concerns and expectations.<\/p>\n The result has been increasing political disaffection and discontent across European countries, with a growing Euroskepticism that has fueled the rise of populist parties on the political extremes. In a world in which citizens have become increasingly dissatisfied with current economics, politics, and society, populist politicians have been able to find the words to channel their anger. Using rhetorical strategies and \u2018uncivil\u2019 language in a \u2018post-truth\u2019 environment that rejects experts and the mainstream media, they have reshaped the political landscape by framing the debates in fresh ways while using new and old media to their advantage as they upend conventional politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Prof. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Boston University.\u00a0Her research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory.\u00a0She has published ten books, over 100 scholarly journal articles or chapters in books, and numerous policy briefs and comments, most recently on the Eurozone crisis.\u00a0 Her current work focuses on democratic legitimacy in Europe, with a special focus on the challenges resulting from the Eurozone crisis, and on methodological theory, in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). You can learn more about her <\/span>here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prof. Vivien Schmidt discusses how European progressives can combat the recent rise of populism across the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8410],"tags":[9860,8859,9853,10140,10139,4076],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28083,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28082\/revisions\/28083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}