Austerity-driven left challengers displaced collapsing social democratic parties across Europe

Evidence

In Greece, a radical left coalition, Syriza, overtook the collapsing social democratic party and became the second largest political force in the country during the 2012 national election. In Spain, Podemos (“We Can”), a new political formation, gestated in 2012 and 2013 in the classrooms of Madrid’s Complutense University, officially turned into a political party in March 2014, with the explicit goal of carrying the Indignados’s legacy into the electoral arena. It scored a surprising 8 percent in the 2014 European elections and enjoyed steady growth until the year 2016. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 96

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Center-left parties’ embrace of austerity fueled the European populist upsurge — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 111; Radical left parties can collapse mainstream social democrats to near extinction — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 168; Europe’s Social Democrats and Christian Democrats embraced austerity as crisis policy — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 168 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Center-left parties’ embrace of austerity fueled the European populist upsurge #corroborates (0.90) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 111
• Radical left parties can collapse mainstream social democrats to near extinction #corroborates (0.85) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 168
• Europe’s Social Democrats and Christian Democrats embraced austerity as crisis policy #expands (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 168
• Post-2008 austerity discredited center-left parties and radicalized a generation into populism #corroborates (0.82) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 25
• A left-populist’s trajectory depends on the fate of its social democratic rival #expands (0.80) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 299
• Establishment center-left parties can collapse from dominance to irrelevance in years. #corroborates (0.75) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 169