Europe’s Leadership Famine: Portraits of Defiance and Decay, 1950–2022

This iconoclastic book asks why European citizens so dislike their elected representatives. Politicians, the author contends, used to be chosen for their ability to expound nationalist ideals that stirred the masses. Today, the challenges of wrestling with globalization, European integration, climate change, and migration favor mediocre and mendacious managers who inspire no one. Yet this romantic notion that the primary job of modern political leaders is to spout nationalist rhetoric not only seems archaic but also leads the author to some odd judgments. Were postwar luminaries, such as the Belgian socialist leader Paul-Henri Spaak and Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, really towering figures compared with whom former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is but a self-righteous naive who underestimated Russian President Vladimir Putin? Are overtly populist leaders such as former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi well-intentioned people who fell just short of the standard set by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom the author hails as the “most successful” European politician of the post–Cold War period? Such conclusions are not just unpersuasive but troubling for those who believe politicians should support impartial democratic institutions and sustainable gains in public welfare. In this way, the book captures and embodies the type of unreasonable expectations that fuel cynicism about political leadership and spur the corresponding desire for authoritarian alternatives.