After its triumphant rise in the mid-twentieth century, Christian democracy experienced a decline in popularity in the late 1960s, one of the largest in its history. In the 1960s, the Vatican stopped providing any advice to voters, distancing itself from influencing Christian parties, which became completely independent of the Church’s position.
The electoral failures of the Christian Democrats in the 1980s were partially compensated for after the fall of socialism in 1989, when the Christian Democratic “expansion to the East” took place. Christian democratic parties emerged in Central Europe and the post-Soviet states. They gained considerable weight in the Baltic States, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. At the same time, the first Christian Democratic Party (UCDP) in Ukraine was founded.
However, in the 1990s, Christian democrats in Western Europe, except for Germany, suffered such serious electoral losses that the world began to talk about the global “decline” of Christian democracy. In Europe, Christian Democrats lost ground in Belgium and Sweden and reduced their political representation in the Netherlands.
Christian democrats in Latin America, particularly in Chile and Venezuela, have also lost their positions of authority. The Christian Democratic presidents in Chile in the 1990s, Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, did not change the neoliberal economic model adopted during the Pinochet years, which led to a noticeable disappointment of voters. In the 1990s, Rafael Caldera, a longtime leader of Venezuelan social Christians, again became president of Venezuela, but as a candidate from a different coalition, and this political success was short-lived and ended in the victory of his ideological opponents, the socialists. Similar to the events in Europe, Latin American Christian Democrats also faced a transformation of the population’s attitude toward Christian political values in the course of the processes of modernization, secularization, and individualization that were influential in Latin America. Political values based on Christianity no longer resonated with large groups of society.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, not only Christian Democrats, but also their ideological allies, the conservatives, saw a decline in support. As political history shows, Christian democrats and conservatives have many common positions on social and political life. Usually, in countries with strong Christian democratic positions, conservative electorate votes for Christian democratic parties. In countries with a dominant conservative party, Christian voters tend to support the conservatives instead of creating a separate Christian democratic party that would compete for the same electorate. In the twenty-first century, however, parties inspired by Western European Christianity have begun to gain less support. The Italian Christian Democrats, after more than half a century of rule, lost power in the early 1990s, and in Germany, the CDU/CSU coalition lost power to the Social Democrats in 2021.
Obviously, the main reasons for such challenges for Christian democrats are the growing conformism and pragmatism in their political practice. These are the reasons for the weakening of Christian democracy in the world, as identified by such well-known researchers of this topic as Edward Lynch and Scott Mainwaring. In particular, as Edward Lynch noted, “Christian Democrats have not succeeded in utilizing their potential because they have retreated from their own ideological principles.” And Scott Mainwaring notes that “demo-Christian parties have become less idealistic and consistent in their programmatic attitudes in order to become more pragmatic in order to expand their ranks of supporters. However, this inevitably led to the loss of the nuclear electorate, for whom Christian values and morality were not an empty sound. In the twenty-first century, the political practice of Christian democratic parties is characterized by much more conformism and political pragmatism and much less religious values.
As the experience of European and Latin American Christian democracies shows, Christian democratic parties succeed when they consistently adhere to their own principles and programmatic foundations based on Christian values and the ethics of the Gospel. When Christian Democrats waged an uncompromising fight against corruption, the mafia, and monopoly, and successfully solved socioeconomic problems, their rating was high. At the same time, the conditional “decline” of Christian democracy primarily affects voters who fall victim to leftist populism and false political ideologies.
The Christian Social Union, which has been in power in Bavaria for more than half a century, remains an example of the most successful and longest-lasting Christian democratic project. The CSU effectively ensures the economic and social development of citizens and makes a significant contribution to the revival of the European Christian democratic movement. Today, it is one of the most successful examples in the world of implementing the theory of the international Christian democratic movement, because for more than 50 years, the residents of democratic Bavaria have never doubted the effectiveness of the Christian Social Union and have supported them in every election. Modern Bavaria is not much bigger than an average Ukrainian region, but its GDP is almost five times higher than the GDP of the whole of Ukraine, which is evidence of a well-chosen economic course based on Christian democratic principles.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk