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Podemos and the New Political Cycle pp 201–226Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Radical Left Populism from the Margins to the Mainstream: A Comparison of Syriza and Podemos

Abstract

In our chapter, we focus our analysis on what we consider the two paradigmatic cases of this new left-wing populism in today’s Europe: Syriza and Podemos. We highlight their discursive strategies and ideologico-political development, as well as the transformations they have undergone since they established themselves as “key players” in the political scenes of Greece and Spain. First, we will briefly clarify our theoretical understanding and methodological approach of populist politics, drawing on the tradition of discourse theory. Second, we will chart the basic similarities and differences among the two aforementioned parties, focusing especially on the way they construct the popular subject (“the people”) and its political enemy (“the establishment,” la casta, etc.). Third, we will try to shed light on the development of these parties as they consolidated their position and came closer to power (Syriza gained power in January 2015, while Podemos has now established itself as the third major party in Spain). Overall, through this comparison we seek to offer constructive insights into the specificities and varieties of left-wing populism in today’s Europe, but also to investigate a rather under-researched aspect of this field, namely the transformation of left-wing populism as it moved from the margins of the political system to the mainstream and from there to power.

Keywords

  • Podemos
  • Syriza
  • Left-wing Populism
  • Aforementioned Parties
  • Tsipras

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note how Cas Mudde fails to recognize Bernie Sanders as a populist exactly on the grounds that “the main division in Sanders’ discourse is one of interests, i.e. of class struggle, not morality” (Mudde 2016).

  2. 2.

    On the notion of “post-democracy” and “post-politics,” which captures features of the Spanish “1978 regime,” but also the late metapolitefsi era in Greece, as outlined in the following, see Crouch 2004; Mouffe 2005.

  3. 3.

    Metapolitefsi is a word used in Greek to signify both the moment of the fall of the seven-year military dictatorship and the transition to democracy in 1974, but also the whole era that was initiated at that moment.

  4. 4.

    For an earlier, critical account of “technopopulism” in contemporary parties, see Lipow and Seyd 1995.

  5. 5.

    http://www.syriza.gr/page/video.html [in Greek].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Alexandros Kioupkiolis & Giorgos Katsambekis

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  1. Alexandros Kioupkiolis
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  2. Giorgos Katsambekis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Óscar García Agustín

  2. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA

    Marco Briziarelli

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Kioupkiolis, A., Katsambekis, G. (2018). Radical Left Populism from the Margins to the Mainstream: A Comparison of Syriza and Podemos. In: García Agustín, Ó., Briziarelli, M. (eds) Podemos and the New Political Cycle. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63432-6_9

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