Establishment center-left parties can collapse from dominance to irrelevance in years.
Evidence
Evangelos Venizelos, the recently elected leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), rallied his troops. Two months later, the results were plain: his party suffered a humiliating defeat in that general election, falling from 44 to 13 percent of vote share, losing 119 out of its 160 seats. … By January 2015, it had plummeted to under 5 percent of the vote share. Within six years, a proud center-left party in an abidingly stable party system, constructed after a democratic transition, had become virtually irrelevant. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 169
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The Right’s rise depends structurally on the Left’s failure in power.; Early popular support for a party can erode completely over decades — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 142; The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- The Right’s rise depends structurally on the Left’s failure in power.
#expands(0.85) - Early popular support for a party can erode completely over decades
#corroborates(0.80) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 142 - Class-based interest parties collapse when their class bases dissolve
#expands(0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 754 - The left’s defeat may have been a slow disintegration rather than a battle
#corroborates(0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 276