Abstract
Radical left parties – particularly their involvement in government either as full coalition partners or support parties to minority social democratic administrations – have not received as much attention as their counterparts on the far right of the political spectrum or, indeed, the Greens. This interview-based study, which focuses on the calculations made by left parties with a chance of getting involved in governing, suggests that this needs to change. It argues that, whatever the origins of these left parties, such calculations can fruitfully be explored by characterising them – just as we have begun to characterise the calculations of Green and radical right parties – as the kind of trade-offs between policy, office and votes that more mainstream political actors have been making ever since democracy was established in Europe. Similarly, other factors that impact on the calculations made by radical left parties thinking about government are unlikely to be exclusive to them. They include a history of coalition building at the subnational level, the views of trade unions, personal relationships with other party leaders, and finally their reading of how government involvement has impacted on their counterparts in other countries.
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Notes
Adams et al do not rigorously delineate the difference between ‘mainstream’ and ‘niche’ parties but they clearly assume (and find) that the ‘noncentrist’ ideology which seems to be the key to their implicit definition of niche parties gives rise to the contrasts in behaviour that we note here.
At the height of a budget crisis in October 1997, the Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, apparently offered Rifondazione Comunista cabinet seats if it would accept the measures over which it was threatening to bring down his minority government. Since the PRC could only have accepted the deal had it been willing to sacrifice its credibility completely, it would be stretching things to call it a serious offer. As for leaving mid-term, this was what the French PCF famously did in 1984, but this was before 1989. The MDC or Mouvement des citoyens left Jospin's Gauche plurielle coalition after 3 years, but it was less a left party than a left-nationalist vehicle for its ambitious leader, Jean-Pierre Chevènement.
In Greece, Synaspismos saw one of its component parts, the more orthodox KKE, leave after 1990, never to return, but survived on its own.
Note that, up until the early 1980s, Vasemmistoliitto's predecessor, SKDL, had been in some of the ‘popular front’ surplus majority coalitions that commonly governed Finland during the cold war – though not without the intra-party tensions between communist hardliners and left-libertarians that have continued to beset it since its refoundation in 1991.
In 1989–1990 Synaspismos/KKE were in two extremely short-lived coalitions, the first ‘a government of katharsis’ with the conservatives that excluded a badly discredited PASOK, the second ‘an ecumenical government’ that saw the socialists join a three-way administration (see Pridham and Verney, 1991).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the referees for their comments on an earlier version and to acknowledge that funding for this research was kindly provided by a Joint Activities Grant from the British Academy.
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Appendix
Appendix
Selected left party project interviews
Cyprus Stavros Evagorou, Progressive Party of Working people (AKEL) Central Committee secretary for economic and social affairs, Nicosia, 4 May 2004 Yiannakis Colocassides, AKEL CC secretary for party education, Nicosia, 5 May 2004 Nicos Katsourides, AKEL parliamentary leader, editor of party newspaper and CC member, Nicosia, 5 May 2004 Andros Kiprianou, AKEL CC secretary for internal party affairs, MP, Nicosia, 4 May 2004 Vera Polycarpou, international secretary of AKEL, Nicosia, 4 December 2003 Venizelos Zanetos, AKEL CC secretary for party organisation, 4 May 2004
Denmark Jens Andersen, assistant to the General Secretary of the Socialist People's Party (SF), Copenhagen, 6 June 2005 Trine Bendix, ex-Vice Chair of SF, Copenhagen, 21 June 2005 Miriam Feilberg, International Committee, SF, Nicosia, 5 December 2003 and Copenhagen, 20 June 2005 (interviewed twice) Steen Gade, MP from 1981 to 99, full-time SF cadre, Copenhagen, 20 June 2005 Holger Nielsen, Chairman of SF (1991–2005), Copenhagen, 21 June 2005 Pia Olsen, SF Party Board member, Copenhagen, 21 June 2005
Finland Paavo Arhinmaki, Chair Left Youth, member of Left Alliance (VAS) Board, Helsinki, 6 September 2004 Pekka Hynonen, VAS international secretary, Nicosia, 6 December 2003 and Helsinki, 6 September 2004 (interviewed twice) Jarmo Linden, policy advisor to VAS government ministers, Chair of committee drafting 2007 VAS party programme, Helsinki, 6 September 2004 Outi Ojala, MP, member of VAS Board, Helsinki, 8 September 2004 Suvi-Anne Siimes, MP, Leader of VAS, Helsinki, 7 September 2004 Minna Sirnio, MP, deputy leader of VAS, 7 September 2004
Ireland Peter Connell, formerly of Dublin Regional Council, Democratic Left (DL), Dublin, 5 August 2003 Deirdre O’Connell, formerly Chair of Dublin South-Central DL, Dublin, 6 August 2003 Paddy Gillan, formerly editor of DL: party journal, Dublin, 7 August 2003
Norway Audun Lysbakken, Deputy Leader, Socialist Left Party (SV), Oslo, 4 April 2006 Jan-Egil Nyland, career civil servant (non-party), Oslo, 4 April 2006 Dag Seierstad member of SV leadership, Nicosia, 5 December 2003 Bard-Vegar Solhjell, former SV party secretary, Oslo, 4 April 2006 Inga Marte Thorkildsen, MP, Oslo, 3 April 2006
Sweden Hans Arvidsson, party worker for Left Party (V), Stockholm, 29 April 2003 Ulla Hoffman, MP and acting joint leader of V, Stockholm, 29 April 2003 Ann-Marie Ogalde, international secretary of V, Nicosia, 7 December 2003 Gudrun Schyman, then leader of V, Stockholm, 29 August 2001 Pernilla Zethraeus, Party Secretary of V, Stockholm, 29 April 2003
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Bale, T., Dunphy, R. In from the cold? Left parties and government involvement since 1989. Comp Eur Polit 9, 269–291 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2010.12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2010.12