Feb 15th 2007
From The Economist print edition
The debate over climate change has opened a cultural rift in Europe about politicians' personal behaviour
THE European Commission's recent proposals to limit car pollution, and the climate-change debate in general, are revealing a cultural divide in Europe: nothing less than a continental rift over what really constitutes political leadership.
The northern view (for want of a better term that embraces the Swedish and the Dutch) is that the responsibility to set a good example is part of a politician's job. If a new leader decides to change his party's policy to make it greener, as David Cameron did with Britain's Conservatives, it is incumbent on him to be seen going to work on a bicycle (even if a car is following with all his papers). Equally, if the European Commission wants to legislate to reduce car emissions, the commissioner responsible must promise to swap his gas-guzzling Mercedes for a puny Toyota Prius—even if that offends Germany's mighty car lobby. He and the commission must, after all, set an example.
This holds even though the environment commissioner himself is Greek, not Swedish or Dutch. He is supposed to take on the ethical and moral characteristics of his portfolio. He inherits, as it were, the view from Europe's Protestant north that personal behaviour is central to political leadership.
In contrast, the southern (or Mediterranean) view is that public authorities should make and enforce the law, but not otherwise nag on about personal behaviour. Hence, the French left has always rejected criticism of champagne socialism (gauche-caviar) on the ground that what matters are the policies, not the lifestyles, of Socialist leaders. Italians similarly shrug off the personal shenanigans of politicians that would surely precipitate resignations in shame north of the Alps.
This is not purely a southern phenomenon. A perfect example came recently from Britain. When the prime minister, Tony Blair, was asked if he was willing to forgo long-haul travel to reduce his carbon footprint, he explicitly contrasted personal behaviour with the framework of public policy, and argued for the supremacy of the latter. “I personally think”, he said, coming over all Mediterranean, “[it is] a bit impractical actually to expect people to do that [ie, give up exotic holidays]. I think that what we need to do is to look at how you make air travel more energy-efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy.” Public authorities should set the rules that shape consumers' choices but, within the law, consumers should be free to do whatever they like. The southern view is less concerned about leading by example.
Well, reply northerners, that's not surprising, for they're all crooks. And it is true that, in general, standards of public probity are higher the farther north you go. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that all politicians would lead by example if only the climate in which they operated were like Sweden's. Different attitudes to personal morality in politics are rooted in social and even religious differences, which may soon become starker.
This debate is really about a broader question: how much do leaders owe voters, beyond their best political judgment? Southerners (and Mr Blair) may answer: not much. Northerners think that leaders must not only say the right things, but do them as well. Or, as a Conservative environmental spokesman put it, speaking of Mr Blair, “he can expect nothing at all from the electorate unless he himself does what he knows is right.”
Climate change is a tough case because it covers two distinct forms of behaviour: legal v illegal (dumping toxic waste, killing whales) and ethical v unethical (not wasting food or energy). Northern Europeans say that this is precisely why the power of example matters, for they see legal and ethical behaviour as part of a continuum. Southerners reply that social pressure is more effective than political pressure at influencing unethical behaviour, and that politicians ought to restrict themselves to law-making, where they will have more impact than they ever could as individual consumers.
For God and morality
These differences also have religious roots that are not easy to pull up. It is no coincidence that a map of north and south follows the contours of Protestant and Catholic Europe. Protestantism's fundamental insight is that the relationship between the believer and God matters above all. Catholics, in contrast, hold that the relationship between believer and church is almost as important, and that the church, with its dogmas and rituals, acts as intermediary between its members and God. There may be a connection between these beliefs and the mindsets which hold, in one part of Europe, that what matters is the personal example of politicians and, in another, that it is the laws they pass.
More immediately, the living memory of dictatorship weighs upon half of Europe and separates it from the rest. The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, who is Portuguese, talks of chafing as a boy under the Salazar regime, when he was not permitted to buy the records and books he wanted. When countries of “old Europe” were gung-ho to say governments should make a lot of noise about a common European culture, it was the young Hungarian culture minister who said, no, we shouldn't do that: propagating official culture was something the communists did.
Both communist and fascist governments not only passed restrictive laws, but also sought to dictate what was acceptable within the law. The implicit thinking was, to borrow a slogan from T.H.White's novel “The Sword in the Stone”, that “Whatever is Not Forbidden is Compulsory”. People who had to endure claims of this sort might be forgiven for taking a jaundiced view of politicians who nag voters about private behaviour that is perfectly legal.
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