Radical-Left Populism during the Great Recession: Podemos and Its Competition with the Established Radical Left

Abstract

The 2008 Great Recession has altered party allegiances in many countries. This has been very visible in some of the countries hardest hit by the crisis, such as Spain. The Spanish case stands out as the only one in which a fully newly created radical-left populist party, Podemos, has attracted sizeable support. Its success is more intriguing given its capacity to attract many former supporters of the established radical left, Izquierda Unida. This article analyses what factors explain the support for the new radical-left populist party Podemos, identifying the individual-level features that lead voters to support it rather than an already established anti-austerity radical-left party. As the results show, Podemos supporters do not correspond to the conventional descriptions of populist voters, the losers of 'globalisation' and the economic crisis. Instead, a combination of elementsprotest, anti-mainstream sentiment and unfulfilled expectations -distinguishes Podemos supporters from the established radical-left electorate.

To whom are “the people” opposed? Conceptualizing and measuring citizens’ populist attitudes as a multidimensional construct

“…Anti-establishment populist attitudes may also involve the people's opposition to non-political elites, most saliently the economic elites that are assumed to hinder the ordinary people's well-being (Ramiro 2017). Leftwing populist parties, for example, argue that social resources should be accessible to everyone in need.…”

Contesting Actually Existing Austerity

“…Throughout the post-2008 period austerity has been critiqued on multiple grounds, including that it is not achieving its stated aims (Guajardo et al 2014); that it is a fundamentally flawed idea that will necessarily worsen the problems that it is supposed to solve (Konzelmann 2014); that it is having devastating effects on public health (Karanikolos et al 2013, Legido-Quigley et al 2013; that it entrenches gender inequalities and disproportionately affects already disadvantaged groups of women (Griffin 2015, Montgomerie andTepe-Belfrage 2016); and even that it constitutes the end of democratic capitalism because capitalism no longer provides enough for enough people to sustain it democratically (Schäfer and Streeck 2013, Streeck 2014. Political contestation of austerity has taken many forms in this period, including the 15M, or Indignados, protests in Spain in 2011 (Hughes 2011, Castañeda 2012; an increase in various forms of anti-austerity social movement activity across Europe (Della Porta 2015, Giugni and Grasso 2015, Bailey et al 2016Flesher Fominaya 2017, Hayes 2017; the rise of new anti-austerity parties in Greece and Spain (Kioupkiolis 2016, Ramiro andGomez 2016); and the relative success of the Labour Party on an anti-austerity platform in the 2017 UK General Election (Berry 2017).…”

Podemos and the Five Stars Movement: Divergent trajectories in a similar crisis

“…The unexpected success of the Five Stars Movement (M5S) in the 2013 Italian legislative elections and the impressive result of Podemos in the 2014 European elections drew the attention of European public opinion to a different type of anti-establishment party, one that cannot be identified with the radical right party family. The flourishing literature on Podemos (Kioupkiolis, 2016;Martín, 2015;Orriols & Cordero, 2016;Ramiro & Gomez, 2017;Rodríguez-Teruel, Barrio & Barberà, 2016;Ruiz Jiménez, González-Fernández & Jiménez Sánchez, 2015) and on M5S (Biorcio, 2015;Biorcio & Natale, 2013;Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2013;Corbetta & Gualmini, 2013: Maggini, 2013Mosca, 2014;Salvati, 2016;Tronconi, 2015) is mainly not comparative (Vittori, 2017a), and addresses different aspects of the parties: the political conditions within which these two movements have arisen, their respective ideologies, the reason behind their electoral breakthroughs and their relative electorates. Less attention has been given thus far to the organization of both parties (for exceptions, see Rodríguez-Teruel et al, 2016;Vignati, 2015).…”