Left-wing populism? In Europe? Yes, please!
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Left‑wing populism? In Europe? Yes, please! Giorgos Venizelos1
© European Consortium for Political Research 2020
Book reviewed: The Populist Radical Left in Europe Giorgos Katsambekis and Alexandros Kioupkiolis (eds) (Oxford Routledge/Taylor and Francis, 2019), 216 pp. ISBN: 9781138744806 For years, the study of populism has been subject to scholars of the radical right. Taking a look at public and expert discourse, this has resulted in the conflation of populism with other phenomena such as nationalism, the extreme right or even demagogy. The title of this volume, edited by Giorgos Katsambekis and Alexandros Kioupkiolis, serves in restoring the status of left-wing populism and, in doing so, fills a significant gap in the existing research on the Populist Radical Left (PRL). The number of cases included in this volume illustrates a large pool of PRL parties in Europe. This in itself renders PRL as a relevant area of focus for both researchers and pundits. The volume addresses a variety of issues and concerns, at both the theoretical and the empirical levels. These include the distinct trajectories of populist parties; the challenges they face; the changes they undergo once they enter institutions; their varying degrees of radicalisation and moderation; their relationship with democracy; their programmatic positions on socio-economic and cultural issues; and their stances on the EU. As the reader will discover, PRL parties are not homogenous. They are movement-based and bottom-up experiments, some of which are deeply rooted in digitally oriented forms of organisation (Kioupkiolis, chapter 8). They are top-down leader-centric projects, representing diverse degrees of radicalisation and moderation, as well as populist and leftist components. All these different features depend on context-sensitive reasons such as the national framework, the political arena in which they operate and the degree of power they have. The volume includes well-studied cases of left-wing populism such as those of Syriza in Greece (Katsambekis, Chapter 1) and Podemos in Spain (Kioupkiolis, Chapter 2). These chapters advance knowledge of these case studies by focusing * Giorgos Venizelos [email protected] 1
Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy Vol.:(0123456789)
G. Venizelos
on the trajectories these parties followed in their ascent to power and the setbacks they experienced due to their institutionalisation. The volume also includes ‘fresh cases’ including the ‘left-wing patriot’ Mélenchon in France (chapter 4) and Jeremy Corbyn and ‘his’ Momentum movement in the UK (Maiguashca and Dean, chapter 7). With respect to Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, Philippe Marlière advances the discussion on populism and ‘the nation’ by drawing on French Republican tradition and what he calls ‘staunch patriotism’. In chapter 3, Toplišek moves beyond the standard geographical focus on western, central and southern European regions and informs the reader about the under-researched case of the Slovenian Left
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