WHEN Enda Kenny, the new Irish prime minister, pleaded at a European Union summit last month for more lenient bail-out terms, his fellow leaders derided one of his arguments: that he had been overwhelmingly elected on a promise to get a better deal for his country. So what? We all have elections, they said.

In a club of 27 democracies, with an endless succession of national and regional ballots, electoral calculations inevitably colour decision-making. Yet domestic politics is now proving particularly debilitating to governments, whether conservative or socialist, northern or southern, creditor or debtor.

A fortnight after Mr Kenny's appeal, another EU summit was overshadowed by the resignation of José Sócrates, Portugal's Socialist prime minister, who had failed to get his latest austerity plan through parliament. Two days later Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, so powerful in bending Europe to her will over the euro crisis, was weakened by two state elections. Her main European ally, Nicolas Sarkozy of France, was humbled in local elections on the same day.

Several others are weak as well. In the Mediterranean the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has just appeared in court for the first of several legal cases that threaten to undermine his leadership. Spain's José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is hugely unpopular at home. In northern Europe, Danish, Dutch and Swedish anti-immigrant parties have new political clout. In Finland the True Finns party may do well in the April 17th election. And in Brussels a caretaker prime minister has run Belgium desultorily since an election in June 2010—beating all records for government paralysis. These days, in short, summits are like a mad hospital ward, filled with the broken-limbed, straitjacketed and terminally ill. No wonder EU leaders are struggling to cure the sovereign-debt crisis.

Take the summit on March 24th-25th, billed as the moment when the EU would finalise its “comprehensive” response to the woes of the euro zone. Domestic upheavals once again prevented united and convincing action. One reason was the political meltdown in Portugal. Many are urging Mr Sócrates to apply for a bail-out, but he prefers to limp on to the election, in May or June. He is keen to avoid a return to the IMF-imposed strictures in the 1970s and 1980s, still remembered in a famous protest song. “There is no power that can bend the IMF,” it goes.

But a second difficulty was Mrs Merkel's decision to reopen the deal struck just days earlier by finance ministers on how to fund a permanent rescue mechanism for the euro zone. Worried that Germany would have to pay in too much capital in 2013, a federal election year, Mrs Merkel secured a deal to build up the fund more gradually, over five years instead of two. What if the fund lacks the money to save a country in need? Never mind, said the leaders, we'll think of some way of making up the money.

The third obstacle was placed by Finland, which is blocking any agreement on boosting today's underpowered temporary fund. Helsinki does not want to take on any additional burden before April 17th. A change would require a recall of parliament, now in recess, and boost the True Finns, who are riding a wave of anger over the euro-zone bail-outs.

Conflicting national interests have always dogged the EU. Even so, Euro-optimists say, it has been able to take far-reaching, even unpopular, decisions in times of need. It has gone further in toughening budgetary rules and integrating economic policies than anyone thought possible a year ago. True enough. Yet despite all that, the EU has not done enough to quell the markets.

So why are Europe's leaders so debilitated? To some extent, political fatigue has set in. Mr Berlusconi is in his third stint as prime minister; Mr Sócrates and Mrs Merkel have been in office for six years. The economic crisis has also battered both those who are having to take harsh austerity measures and those having to lend them money. But deeper forces are also at work. Traditional parties have weakened with the decline of class-based politics. On the left, changing economic and social structures have shrunk the old working class. On the right, typically dominated by Christian Democrats, religious influence has waned and the anti-communist rationale disappeared with the Berlin Wall. Some voters sense the powerlessness of national leaders before problems like climate change and the financial crisis. Others demand protection from global economic forces and immigration. Fragmentation and disillusion create space for narrower groups, be they Greens, regional parties or a ragbag of anti-immigrant, anti-EU and far-right parties.

In short, stable majorities are harder to establish (a coalition even runs Britain, where the first-past-the-post system is designed for single-party government). And once in power, notes Peter Mair of the European University Institute in Florence, governments lose popularity more quickly, not least because they are constrained by decisions taken in Brussels. “The mass party is dead, and parties no longer command the loyalty of their followers,” he says. “This leads to what Italians call immobilismo.”

Real leaders, please

The answer is not to bemoan national politics, but to enhance democracy. In Europe the Brussels institutions could be made more relevant to voters, for instance by strengthening the influence of national parliaments over EU decisions. At home leaders must learn that voters are less tribal, more critical and better able to sniff out hypocrisy. That is a good thing, and places a bigger premium on sound leadership, credibility, conviction and serious argument. If Mr Sarkozy were less mercurial, Mrs Merkel less prone to panic, Mr Zapatero more convincing and Mr Berlusconi less of a buffoon, Europe would be less handicapped.





Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne