The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is scheduled to begin on October 16, 2022. Its outcomes will determine the country’s trajectory for years to come. Join APARC’s China Program for an expert panel covering the Congresses’ context, coverage, and policy implications for the future. This panel discussion will provide expert analyses of what was expected, what was unexpected, how the policies announced may play out over the coming years, and some lesser-covered policy changes that may herald implications for China and the world.
Speakers
Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, he was engagement director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, where he researched China’s political environment with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party of China and its impact on foreign companies and investors. Prior to working at The Conference Board, Blanchette was the assistant director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.
Emily Feng is NPR’s Beijing correspondent. Feng joined NPR in 2019. She roves around China, through its big cities and small villages, reporting on social trends as well as economic and political news coming out of Beijing. Feng contributes to NPR’s news magazines, newscasts, podcasts, and digital platforms. Emily is the recipient of the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award for excellence in coverage of the Asia-Pacific region.
Qingguo Jia is professor of the School of International Studies of Peking University. Currently, he is a Payne Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1988. He is a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He is vice president of the China American Studies Association，vice president of the China Association for International Studies, and vice president of the China Japanese Studies Association. He has published extensively on US-China relations, relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan and Chinese foreign policy.
Alice L. Miller is a historian and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2001 to 2018, she was editor and contributor to Hoover’sChina Leadership Monitor.
Rebecca was a 2017-18 Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, as well as a Dissertation Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences. She studies international political economy with a focus on regulation, trade, and the role of international institutions. Rebecca is working on a book project that explores the origins of health and safety regulations. She develops a theory specifying the conditions under which firms are able to use health and safety regulations in order to block international competition. The theory produces the surprising conclusion that innovative firms benefit from and actively seek regulations that rule some of their own products unsafe. Rebecca has received funding from the Horowitz Foundation and Stanford’s Europe Center. She also received a Stanford Graduate Research Opportunity Grant. She holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her undergraduate degree is from Princeton University, where she majored in politics and graduated summa cum laude and phi beta kappa.
President Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping last week at Mar-a-Lago for their first meeting which set out to address economic, trade and security challenges shared between the two countries. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) experts offered analysis of the summit to various media outlets.
In advance of the summit, Donald K. Emmerson, an FSI senior fellow emeritus and director of the Southeast Asia Program, wrote a commentary piece urging the two leaders to prioritize the territorial disputes in the South China Sea in their discussions. He also suggested they consider the idea of additional “cooperative missions” among China, the United States and other countries in that maritime area.
“A consensus to discuss the idea at that summit may be unreachable,” Emmerson recognized in The Diplomat Magazine. “But merely proposing it should trigger some reactions, pro or con. The airing of the idea would at least incentivize attention to the need for joint activities based on international law and discourage complacency in the face of unilateral coercion in violation of international law.”
Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow in Shorenstein APARC’s Korea Program, spoke to the Boston Herald about U.S. policy toward North Korea and a potential role for China in pressuring North Korea to hold talks about denuclearization. She addressed the purported reports that the National Security Council is considering as options placing nuclear weapons in South Korea and forcibly removing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un from power.
“The two options have been on the long list of possible options for a long time and they have generally been found to have far too many downsides,” Stephens said in the interview.
Writing for Tokyo Business Today, Daniel Sneider, the associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC, offered an assessment of the summit. He argued that two events - the U.S. airstrike on an airbase in Syria following the regime's chemical weapons attack and the leaked reports about tensions between White House staff - shifted the summit agenda and sidelined, at least for now, talk of a trade war between China and the United States.
“Instead of a bang, the Mar-a-Lago summit ended with a whimper,” Sneider wrote in the analysis piece (available in English and Japanese). “On the economy, the summit conversation was remarkably business-as-usual, with President Trump calling for China to ‘level the playing field’ and a vague commitment to speed up the pace of trade talks. When it came to North Korea…the two leaders reiterated long-standing goals of denuclearization but ‘there was no kind of a package arrangement discussed to resolve this.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping upon his arrival on April 6, 2017, to West Palm Beach, Florida.
This is the second meeting of the workshop series on Civility, Cruelty, Truth. A one-day event hosted by the Stanford Humanities Center, the workshop will explore the genealogies, promises, and limits of civic virtue—at the heart of which is the city, the classical polis, itself— as a universal ideal. European in its moral contours, constituted by a deep fascination with the rule of law, borders, and security, at once coercive and oblique in whom it excludes and includes, how it punishes and protects, the city held out the promise of a humane center for ethical and sovereign life, one upon which anticolonial struggles against European empires too were first conceived and mounted. This workshop will examine the ambiguous foundations and resolutions of that vision in Asia, Europe, and the fatal waters in between; a vision that has come to be marked today by extreme violence and tragic displacements, and which now presses new questions against the very limit of modern political imagination.
Student Assistant: Ahoo Najafian (Department of Religious Studies)
Schedule (coming soon)
Co-sponsored by the Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, The Europe Center, The France- Stanford Center for interdisciplinary Studies, Program in Global Justice, McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford Global Studies, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford Humanities Center, Center for South Asia
Based on first-hand participant-observation, this talk will examine the culture, politics, and spatiality of the Sunflower Movement. Taiwan's most significant social movement in decades, the Sunflower Movement not only blocked the passage of a major trade deal with China, but reshaped popular discourse and redirected Taiwan's political and cultural trajectory. It re-energized student and civil society, precipitated the historic defeat of the KMT in the 2014 local elections, and prefigured the DPP's strong position coming into the 2016 presidential and legislative election season.
The primary spatial tactic of the Sunflowers-- occupation of a government building-- was so successful that a series of protests in the summer of 2015 by high school students was partly conceived and represented as a "second Sunflower Movement". These students, protesting "China-centric" curriculum changes, attempted to occupy the Ministry of Education building. Thwarted by police, these students settled for the front courtyard, where a Sunflower-style pattern of encampments and performances emerged. While this movement did not galvanize the wider public as dramatically as its predecessor, it did demonstrate the staying power of the Sunflower Movement and its occupation tactics for an even younger cohort of activists.
The Sunflower Movement showed that contingent, street-level, grassroots action can have a major impact on Taiwan's cross-Strait policies, and inspired and trained a new generation of youth activists. But with the likely 2016 presidential win of the DPP, which has attempted to draw support from student activists while presenting a less radical vision to mainstream voters, what's in store for the future of Taiwanese student and civic activism? And with strong evidence of growing Taiwanese national identification and pro-independence sentiment, particularly among youth, what's in store for the future of Taiwan's political culture?
Speaker Bio
Ian Rowen in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower Student Movement protest.
Ian Rowen is PhD Candidate in Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and recent Visiting Fellow at the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan, Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, and Fudan University. He participated in both the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements and has written about them for The Journal of Asian Studies, The Guardian, and The BBC (Chinese), among other outlets. He has also published about Asian politics and protest in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (forthcoming) and the Annals of Tourism Research. His PhD research, funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, has focused on the political geography of tourism and protest in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is widely regarded as the economic component of the US strategy of “rebalance” to Asia. As a major trading partner of many of the founding members, Taiwan has obvious economic and security interests at stake and is therefore seeking to join the TPP in the next round. But an overlooked aspect of the TPP for Taiwan is its potential impact on sovereignty. Trade agreements provide a revealing window into the evolving conceptions of modern sovereignty. The way Taiwan’s unique form of statehood and international status is defined in trade agreements could strengthen its position under international law and contribute to its national security. This talk will consider how Taiwan was defined as a sui generis legal entity in its application to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and as a party to the Cross-Straits Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), with lessons for future negotiations to join the TPP.
Speaker Bio
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Joseph Yen-ching Chao is an Executive Officer in the Department of International Cooperation and Economic Affairs. A member of Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) diplomatic corps since 2005, he has previously served as a German-language interpreter for the Presidential Office, an officer in the Department of Treaty and Legal Affairs, and as a deputy secretary of Taiwan’s permanent mission to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He holds an LL.M. from Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg and a Doctor juris from Albert-Ludwige University, Frieberg, Germany. Dr. Chao is in residence at Stanford from May-July 2015, where his research examines Taiwan’s prospects for entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Japan must transform its economy in a way that mirrors the innovation ethos in places like Silicon Valley and Stanford University, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday during a speech on campus.
As an example of how to encourage such creativity, Abe hailed a new partnership starting this fall with Stanford that will train the next generation of biomedical experts. In doing so, he urged a "fundamental change" in how Japanese society views the process of innovation, from how ideas originate to competition in the marketplace.
Japan Biodesign will be launched in collaboration with the Stanford Biodesign program and five higher education and research institutions in Japan. Faculty members will work together to create new interdisciplinary systems based on Stanford Biodesign. Stanford leaders will train and mentor their Japanese colleagues.
Abe, who is the first Japanese prime minister to visit Stanford, marveled at how the tech sector in the United States has "consistently evolved at top speed."
He said, "I want the best and brightest Japanese talent" to learn about Silicon Valley.
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The Japanese leader also announced more plans to connect Japanese companies, employees and networking events with Silicon Valley and places like Stanford. He said it was important for the participants to emerge "reborn" with a well-honed sense of how to succeed in a highly competitive global marketplace.
Abe shared the Bing Concert Hall stage with Stanford President John Hennessy and George Shultz, the former U.S. Secretary of State and distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution. Abe's talk, titled "Innovation, Japan and Silicon Valley Symposium," included an introduction and remarks by Hennessy and Shultz. The event drew a full house of invited guests and members of the Stanford community.
"It is a great honor" to be at Stanford, Abe said in beginning his remarks.
He noted that Japan is revisiting its regulatory and tax systems in order to encourage more economic dynamism and competition. "The Japanese people will benefit from innovation," he said.
The challenge, he acknowledged, has been the slow pace of innovation in Japan. Today, however, the Internet economy and big data are creating "enormous changes" in his country's economic approach, he said. "We have to catch up, or otherwise Japan will lose vitality," Abe added.
Cultural connections
In his introduction of Abe, Hennessy chronicled Stanford's long history and friendship with Japan and its people.
Japan, he said, is home to more Stanford alumni than any other Asian country, and when the university's doors first opened in 1891, the pioneer class included a Japanese student. Currently, 139 students from Japan are enrolled at Stanford.
Hennessey described Abe as focused on revitalizing Japan's economy and stewarding it toward a greater global role.
Shultz, who knew Abe's parents, shared recollections of poignant moments between Abe's politically prominent family and his own.
Abe joined a roundtable discussion after his speech with Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Stanford Board of Trustees Chair Steve Denning; Stanford School of Medicine Dean Lloyd Minor; Stanford political science Professor Emeritus Daniel Okimoto; Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang; and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, among other scholars and dignitaries. He also met with Stanford students before leaving campus.
Afterward, McFaul wrote in an email, "I think it is fantastic that Prime Minister Abe came to Stanford and Silicon Valley after his very successful visit to Washington. He demonstrated that deepening U.S.-Japanese relations requires not only strong government-to-government ties, but also deepening ties between our societies, including educational institutions like Stanford."
Abe's state visit to the United States this week included the first address by a Japanese leader to a joint session of Congress. Abe served as prime minister of Japan in 2006-07 and returned to the position in 2012.
'Working together'
On Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said after a meeting with Abe that the two countries had made progress in trade talks on a massive 12-nation trade deal that would open markets around the Pacific Rim to U.S. exports. Both nations face domestic political obstacles to concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
"This agreement would expand the coverage of the free trade agreements for both Japan and the U.S. substantially," said Stanford economist Takeo Hoshi, director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in an interview. "The U.S. and Japan have been working together to maintain peace and sustain economic growth in the Pacific Asia."
Hoshi said that Abe's visit to the Silicon Valley confirms that Japan is serious about transforming its economy from one based on exports to one focused on innovations.
"Going forward, we can learn a lot from Japanese experience and their reform attempts," said Hoshi, who is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute.
Founded in 2001, Stanford Biodesign has pioneered a new training methodology in which interdisciplinary teams of engineers and physicians go through a rigorous process of carefully characterizing unsolved clinical needs before jumping to technology solutions.
For the Japan Biodesign program, the bulk of the educational activities will take place at the campuses of the partner Japanese universities.
Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks at Stanford about innovation in Japan and Silicon Valley. He was also joined on stage by Stanford President John Hennessy and George Shultz, the former U.S. Secretary of State and a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution (below).
A pioneering textual analysis of French political speeches led by Stanford Professor of French Cécile Alduy reveals how Marine Le Pen, leader of France's surging far-right National Front, has made extremism palatable in a land of republican values.
French politician Marine Le Pen carried her father's right-wing fringe political party to first place in the country's latest elections for European Parliament.
Stanford scholar Cécile Alduy says Le Pen's success at the helm of France's right-wing National Front can be attributed to a combination of sophisticated rebranding and skillfully crafted moderate rhetoric that sells a conservative agenda that borders on extreme.
An associate professor of French at Stanford and a faculty affiliate of The Europe Center, Alduy conducted a qualitative and quantitative analysis of more than 500 speeches by Marine Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to find out what has made their party surge in the polls.
Alduy's word-for-word analysis of National Front political speeches, published in the bookMarine Le Pen prise aux mots: Décryptage du nouveau discours frontiste (Seuil, 2015) has become a flashpoint of political discourse in France.
The resulting research is the first study of Marine Le Pen's discourse, the first to compile a corpus of this magnitude of political speeches by a French political organization.
After sifting through the data and performing extensive close readings of the corpus, Alduy found that the stylistic polish of Marine Le Pen's language conceals ideological and mythological structures that have traditionally disturbed French voters. Her research reveals how radical views can be cloaked in soothing speech.
"Marine Le Pen's language is full of ambiguities, double meanings, silences and allusions," Alduy said.
This diagram shows the spatial lay out of Marine Le Pen's discursive universe. Using factorial analysis in Hyperbase, one can create a "map" of all the most used words and how they correlate to one another: the closer they are spatially, the stronger their correlation, or how often they appear together.
Courtesy of Cécile Alduy
This diagram shows the spatial lay out of Marine Le Pen's discursive universe. Using factorial analysis in Hyperbase, one can create a "map" of all the most used words and how they correlate to one another: the closer they are spatially, the stronger their correlation, or how often they appear together. Image Courtesy of Cécile Alduy
But in terms of political agenda and ideological content, Alduy said the continuity between the younger and elder Le Pen is striking. "What is different is the words and phrases she uses to express the same agenda," Alduy said.
Alduy, whose research centers on the history and mythology of national and ethnic identities since the European Renaissance, conducted the research with the help of Stanford graduate and undergraduate students and with communication consultant Stéphane Wahnich. Academic technology specialist Michael Widner of Stanford Libraries and the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, provided technical expertise throughout and trained students in the art of indexing the database.
With a grant from Stanford's Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Alduy and her team transcribed and analyzed more than 500 speeches by Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen dating from 1987 to 2013.
Alduy's team used text analysis software such as Hyperbase or Voyant Tools to measure precisely how Marine's language differs from that of Jean-Marie.
They found, for example, that Marine Le Pen used the word "immigrants" 40 times in speeches, compared to 330 times for Jean-Marie, or 0.6 percent versus 1.9 percent, respectively. Instead, she used the more impersonal "immigration" or "migration policy" to discuss the issue and present this hot-topic issue as a matter of abstract economic policy rather than an ideological anti-immigration stance.
While Jean-Marie paired "immigrants" or "immigration" with words like "danger," "threat" or "loss," yielding phrases that scapegoat or even demonize France's large immigrant population, Marine used more technocratic pairings such as "protection," "cost," "euro" or "pay."
The effect, Alduy contended, is a repositioning of immigration from the racial and cultural problem Jean-Marie claimed it was to an economic one. Yet the actual policy agenda changed little from father to daughter, Alduy observed.
New language, same story
Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the National Front in 1972 to unite under the same political banner several extremist groups, from royalists to conservative Catholics nostalgic of the Vichy régime and the colonial Empire.
Since 1987 and his polemical statement about the Holocaust being a "detail" in the history of World War II, Jean-Marie has employed shock value to get media coverage. When asked about his daughter's new "normalization" strategy, which smoothes out the old xenophobic rhetoric in favor of a mainstream lingua, he routinely declares: "Nobody cares about a nice National Front."
But the party polled in the low double digits until Marine Le Pen took the helm in 2011. As she rose in the polls, Alduy began studying her speeches to understand what powered the politician's steady ascent.
In May 2014, Le Pen's National Front stunned the French political establishment by pulling 25 percent of the vote in European parliamentary elections, becoming the top French vote-getter in a multiparty system. President François Hollande's Socialists came in third. Last month, the party equaled that percentage in elections for local councilors. Such results make Marine Le Pen a credible contender for France's presidency as the country looks ahead to its 2017 presidential cycle.
To demonstrate how Marine Le Pen's language presents formerly unpopular ideas in a new light, Alduy pointed to the party's policy of préférence nationale (national preference,) the cornerstone of its platform since the late 1970s. This policy would give priority for jobs, social services and benefits to French citizens, and would strip from children of legally resident noncitizens the family benefits now available to all children in France.
As touted by Jean-Marie Le Pen, however, Alduy noted, "The phrase préférence nationale has negative connotations in the French mind."
"'Preference' sounds arbitrary, potentially unfair, and goes against the republican principle of equality in the eye of the law," Alduy noted. "So Marine Le Pen has renamed this measure priorité nationale (national priority) or even sometimes patriotisme social (social patriotism). Both new phrases sound positive and don't evoke discrimination as the former did.
"'Priority' evokes action, responsibility, leadership – all the qualities one would like an effective chief executive to embody," Alduy said. "Patriotism is a noncontroversial word that can rally across the political spectrum. Who wants to be called anti-patriotic by opposing 'social patriotism'? Yet both phrases refer to exactly the same measures."
In the same vein, Alduy observed, Marine Le Pen eschews the word "race" while her father stated unequivocally "races are unequal."
"Instead," Alduy said, "Marine Le Pen explains that 'cultures,' 'civilizations' and 'nations' have a right to remain separate and different, or else risk disappearing, overwhelmed by hordes of outsiders with a different, incompatible culture.
"The word 'race' has disappeared, but the same peoples are the target of this fear of the other."
Listening between the lines
Alduy's findings hint at ways voters everywhere can critically evaluate political thought and make sound political decisions in times of stress.
She observed that other far-right European movements, such as Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, have similarly rebranded themselves to expand their base.
"Like the National Front, the Party for Freedom now adopts the posture of a champion of Western liberal values and the defense of 'minorities' – gays and women – against the alleged homophobia and misogyny of Islam," Alduy said. "Yet the Party for Freedom is a typical xenophobic, far-right, anti-immigration, anti-Europe party in every other respect.
"I hope that people will start to pay attention to the meaning of words in political speeches and in the media."
In 2015-16, Alduy said, she hopes to convey to students the nuances of political code words such as laïcité (secularism), "the Republic" or "immigration" in a Stanford course titled How to Think About the Charlie Hebdo Attacks: Political, Social and Literary Contexts.
"We all have to be careful and listen to what is left between the lines," Alduy said.
"When we hear someone speak about equality or democracy, we have to pay attention not just to what we want to hear, or to what we assume these words mean, but to decipher what they mean in the context of this speaker's worldview.
"The positive or negative connotations of certain words can mislead us to think that we share the same definition of them with the politicians that use them to gain our vote."
Marine Le Pen prise aux mots is currently available only in French. Analyses and graphs taken from the book are available in English on the website www.decodingmarinelepen.stanford.edu.
Media Contact
Corrie Goldman, director of humanities communication: (650) 724-8156, corrieg@stanford.edu
France's far-right National Front politician Marine Le Pen hugs her father, Jean Marie le Pen, after her May Day 2012 speech in Paris. The younger Le Pen's meteoric rise in French politics has captured the attention of Stanford scholar Cécile Alduy, who has analyzed the differences between her speeches and those of her more polarizing father.
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Over the past year and more, Taiwan’s political elite has been deadlocked over the question of deepening economic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This controversial issue has led to a standoff between the executive and legislative branches, sparked a frenzy of social activism and a student occupation of the legislature, and contributed to President Ma Ying-jeou’s deep unpopularity.
This conference will bring together specialists from Taiwan, the U.S., and elsewhere in Asia to examine the sources and implications of this political polarization in comparative perspective. It will include a special case study of the Trade in Services Agreement with China that triggered this past year’s protests, as well as a more general overview of the politics of trade liberalization in Taiwan, prospects for Taiwan’s integration into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other regional trade agreements, and a consideration of the implications for Taiwan’s long-term democratic future.
Conference speakers will include: Chung-shu Wu, the president of the Chung-hwa Institute of Economic Research (CIER) in Taipei; Steve Chan of the University of Colorado; Roselyn Hsueh of Temple University; Yun-han Chu, the president of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation; and Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Panels will examine the following questions:
1. What are the sources and implications of political polarization in Taiwan, and how have these changed in recent years?
2. How does Taiwan’s recent experience compare to political polarization in other countries in Asia (e.g. South Korea, Thailand) and elsewhere (the US)?
3. To what extent does the latest political deadlock in Taiwan reflect concern over the specific issue of trade with the People’s Republic of China, versus a deeper, systemic set of problems with Taiwan’s democracy?
4. How are globalization and trade liberalization reshaping Taiwan’s domestic political economy, and what are the prospects for forging a stronger pro-trade coalition in Taiwan that transcends the current partisan divide?
The conference will take place October 17-18 in the Bechtel Conference Room in Encina Hall at Stanford University. It is free and open to the public.
The electoral eruption of anti-European Union populism is a reflection of structural flaws in that body but does not represent a fatal political blow, according to Stanford scholars.
In the May 25 elections for the European Parliament, anti-immigration parties won 140 of the 751 seats, well short of control, but enough to rattle supporters of the EU, which has 28 member nations. In Britain, Denmark, France and Greece, the political fringe vote totals stunned the political establishments.
Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama said the rise of extremism and anti-elitism is not surprising in the wake of the 2008 economic downturn and subsequent high levels of unemployment throughout Europe. In one sense, the EU elites have themselves to blame, he said.
Some have argued that the European Union should adopt a form of fiscal union because without one, decisions about taxes and spending remain at the national level.
As Fukuyama points out, this becomes a problem, as in the case of a debt-ridden Greece, which he believes should not have qualified for EU membership in the first place. In fact, he said, it would have been better for Greece itself to leave the euro at the outset of the 2008 crisis.
Still, Fukuyama said the big picture behind the recent election is clear – it was a confluence of issues and timing.
"It is a bit like an off-year election in the U.S., where activists are more likely to vote than ordinary citizens," he said.
Fukuyama believes the EU will survive this electoral crisis. "I think the EU will be resilient. It has weathered other rejections in the past. The costs of really exiting the EU are too high in the end, and the elites will adjust, having been given this message," he said.
Meanwhile, the populist parties in the different countries are not unified or intent on building coalitions with each other.
"Other than being anti-EU, most of them have little in common," Fukuyama said. "They differ with regard to specific positions on immigration, economic policy, and they respond to different social bases."
Ongoing anger
Dan Edelstein, a professor of French, said the largest factor for success by extremist candidates was "ongoing anger toward the austerity policy imposed by the EU," primarily by Germany.
Edelstein estimates that a large majority of French voters are still generally supportive of the EU. For the time being, the anti-EU faction does not have a majority, though they now have much more representation in the European Parliament.
Edelstein noted existing strains among the anti-EU parties – for example, the UK Independence Party in Britain has stated that it would not form an alliance with the National Front party in France.
Immigration remains a thorny issue for some Europeans, Edelstein said.
"'Immigration' in most European political debates, tends to be a synonym for 'Islam.' While there are some countries, such as Britain, that are primarily worried about the economic costs of immigration, in most continental European countries, the fears are cultural," he said.
As Edelstein put it, Muslims are perceived as a "demographic threat" to white or Christian Europe. However, he is optimistic in the long run.
"It seems a little early to be writing the obituary of the EU. Should economic conditions improve over the next few years, as they are predicted to, we will likely see this high-water mark of populist anger recede," said Edelstein.
Cécile Alduy, an associate professor of French, writes in the May 28 issue of The Nation about how the ultra-right-wing National Front came in first place in France's election.
"This outcome was also the logical conclusion of a string of political betrayals, scandals and mismanagement that were only compounded by the persistent economic and social morass that has plunged France into perpetual gloom," she wrote.
Historian J.P. Daughton said that like elsewhere in the world, immigration often becomes a contentious issue in Europe in times of economic difficulties.
"High unemployment and painful austerity measures in many parts of Europe have led extremist parties to blame immigrants for taking jobs and sapping already limited social programs," he said.
Anti-immigration rhetoric plays particularly well in EU elections, Daughton said. "Extremist parties portray European integration as a threat not only to national sovereignty, but also to national identity.
Edelstein, Alduy and Daughton are all Faculty Affiliates of The Europe Center.
Wake-up call
Russell A. Berman, a professor of German studies and comparative literature, said many Europeans perceive the EU as "somehow impenetrable, far from the civic politics of the nation states."
As a result, people resent regulations issued by an "intangible bureaucracy," and have come to believe that the European Parliament has not grappled with major issues such as mustering a coherent foreign policy voice, he said.
"The EU can be great on details but pretty weak on the big picture," said Berman, who is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Faculty Affiliate of The Europe Center. "It is this discrepancy that feeds the dissatisfaction."
Yet he points out that the extremist vote surged in only 14 nations of the EU – in the other 14, there was "negligible extremism," as he describes it.
"We're a long way from talking about a fatal blow, but the vote is indeed a wake-up call to the centrists that they have to make a better case for Europe," Berman said.
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A man walks past a board displaying provisional results of the European Parliament election at the EU Parliament in Brussels May 25, 2014.
Ian Rowen in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower Student Movement protest.
This diagram shows the spatial lay out of Marine Le Pen's discursive universe. Using factorial analysis in Hyperbase, one can create a "map" of all the most used words and how they correlate to one another: the closer they are spatially, the stronger their correlation, or how often they appear together.
