Populist-left politics emerged amid party decline and labor movement collapse

Evidence

The left’s populist episode ran across two interlocking time-lines, punctuated by different, but related, crises. The first timeline corresponds to the 2008 crash, which disturbed and, in certain instances, demolished the established party systems across the West and its periphery. From there, an economic crisis thus morphed into a political crisis. The second covers the older erosion and eventual implosion of party democracy across the Atlantic since the mid-1970s, in which parties hemorrhaged members, formed cartels with other parties, or steadily forfeited their powers of state. For the left, this transition from mass to cartel parties was laden with ambiguity. On the one hand, it generated real opportunities for radicals to soak up and appeal to disaffected voters who could no longer voice their discontent within established political parties. Yet it also heavily constrained the space in which left-wing politics itself could take place. The social landscape sculpted by neoliberal reforms meant not just a disaffection from traditional parties but a retreat from the public sphere altogether, with the new medium of the internet now serving as a repository for the resulting anger and alienation. Left populists were tasked with mobilizing these now profoundly demobilized societies. More dramatically, they now were forced to build a left without a muscular labor movement. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 15

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the cartel-party thesis (Katz & Mair) and the ‘movement without muscle’ problem discussed in Spain and Mair’s work; relates to Lo’s own earlier chapters on mass party erosion. — connects to: Left populism helped destroy post-politics yet failed to restore mass politics — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 345; Post-2008 left populism failed from being either too left-wing or too populist — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 31; Center-left parties lost their social bases and legitimacy, creating the vacuum populism filled. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 28 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: The claim that left populists had to mobilize ‘profoundly demobilized societies’ without a labor movement deserves testing against cases like Sanders, Corbyn, Mélenchon — did any achieve genuine demobilization reversal?

Broader Connections

• Center-left parties lost their social bases and legitimacy, creating the vacuum populism filled. #corroborates (0.82) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 28
• Left populism helped destroy post-politics yet failed to restore mass politics #expands (0.75) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 345
• Post-2008 left populism failed from being either too left-wing or too populist #qualifies (0.72) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 31