What Makes Politicians Popular?
How competence has become a secondary concern for French voters.
When I was in graduate school, one of my professors used to claim that French presidents are remembered for the first part of their term because the second half is mostly devoted to preparing for re-election. At the time, François Hollande was halfway through his mandate, which was largely focused on passing a law granting same-sex couples the right to marry. Under this assumption, François Hollande would have been remembered as the gay rights president, but in fact he became most notorious as the French president caught having an affair while riding a three-wheeled scooter that was pretended to be used to buy croissants. François Hollande ended his presidency as the most unpopular French president of the Fifth Republic and even had to renounce his candidacy for another term. Social conservatives resented his legalization of gay marriage, and economists deplored his failure to reduce unemployment. A decade later, his popularity has soared, placing him among the most popular political figures.
The popularity trajectory of François Hollande is quite intriguing; how could he be so disliked during his presidency and so popular afterwards? Of course, people judge former presidents in a different manner, but a meaningful difference would suggest political amnesia, or perhaps voters just become more forgiving with time. As France's legislative elections come to an end, the current assembly could be dominated by extremists, a scenario that could undermine the country's prosperity. This unique situation of political uncertainty was particularly marked by a polarization of voting preferences from the hard left to the hard right, revealing how fractured French politics is, but also raising interesting questions about how these parties established their popularity and how likely it is to last if they govern the nation.
Historically, when we look at the most famous leaders associated with politics, many of them were involved in leading major social changes, such as Nelson Mandela, known for his role in ending apartheid, Mahatma Gandhi for achieving Indian independence, or Abraham Lincoln for ending slavery in America. Because many factors come into play, it's difficult to say whether their success in leading these movements can be attributed to outrageous brilliance, or whether it was more a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Nevertheless, there is good reason to believe that talent played a decisive role in popularizing their cause and putting it into practice.
Nowadays, modern politicians are less prone to skyrocketing popularity, while most of them experience a rapid decline in popularity after being elected. If we consider the actual popularity ratings of world leaders, only a few exceed the symbolic level of fifty percent approval, such as figures like Narendra Modi (India), Andrés Manuel López (Mexico), and Javier Milei (Argentina). However, their high popularity remains controversial, as they are regularly criticized for being divisive figures who embrace populism and for exhibiting traits associated with the cult of personality. Clearly, these forms of criticism should be contextualized according to the country's economic development and history, but in the long run, popularity built on emotional appeal can only survive in periods of strong economic growth or when important electoral promises are fulfilled.
A more controversial case is that of Nayib Bukele (President of El Salvador), known as “the world's coolest dictator”, who was democratically re-elected with 85% of votes, an almost unprecedented approval rate. Nayib Bukele's story is, to say the least, unexpected for a populist leader. Before entering politics, he quickly realized the value of using social media while his opponents were still engaging in old-fashioned politics. It was a strategy that paid off, allowing him to win his first presidential election. Once in power, he made a series of high-risk decisions, such as adopting Bitcoin as legal tender and massively investing government funds in the currency. He also organized a self-coup by letting the army infiltrate the Legislative Assembly to influence the approval of a loan needed to purchase military equipment to expand his draconian anti-gang measures. Against all expectations, the money invested in Bitcoin yielded some returns, and his ruthless plan to eradicate crime proved to be a huge success. El Salvador went from being the most dangerous country in the world to the safest in Latin America. This was the major social change for which Salvadorans elected him, but these advances came at the expense of an autocratic leader who undermined democratic institutions and forcibly changed the constitution in order to remain elected. It may be too early to tell whether Nayib Bukele is a benevolent dictator – his early successes resemble more of a gamble – but he undeniably has enough talent to win an election and advance his political agenda.
More advanced democracies are generally less likely to benefit from populism because, compared to developing countries, achieving the next major improvement is less of a low-hanging fruit. Instead, concerns revolve around complex issues related to purchasing power, demographic decline, or inequality that are less likely to be solved by arbitrary decisions. To understand the rise of extremist parties in France, we need to contextualize the historical trend of electing technocrats from the elite school system. A method that proved reliable for filtering candidates by competence, while reducing the risk of electing someone who could make risky decisions – apart from surprising the whole country with a snap parliamentary vote. For many French voters, the ongoing expectation in electing technocrats was mainly to stimulate economic growth, a tedious task in which many have failed to deliver impressive results. The succession of unsatisfactory political leaders has slowly eroded trust in institutions and given more power to extremists who fuel the desire for renewal. France and, more broadly, Western democracies are similarly affected by a growing willingness to trade incremental improvement for major change, even at the expense of stability. As a result, the promise of radical change is more than ever a lucrative strategy for extremists to gain popularity – at least in the short term. François Hollande's slogan for his presidential candidacy was “Le Changement C'est Maintenant” (Change is Now). Now his second wind of popularity may be due to nostalgia for his modest promises of change – the French are now looking for bigger and riskier ones.