The changes and challenges of the Left in contemporary Europe - An introduction
The changes and challenges of the Left in contemporary Europe - An introduction

Author(s): Irena Ristić
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Political Philosophy, Politics and society, Sociology of Politics
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: Left; crisis; change; critical mass; internationalization
Summary/Abstract: Left-wing parties in Europe have been faced by a crisis for more than three decades. What in the 1970s started as a challenge by conservative political elites to the post-war constellation characterized by a welfare state and an institutionally regulated market, was, from 1989 onward, strengthened by the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent acceleration of economic globalization throughout the 1990s. Most social democratic parties in Europe did not only fail to question this emerging model of deregulated capitalism, but also went so far as to embrace it, thus triggering a ground-breaking ideological, political and also structural shift in themselves. The consequence was a loss of their traditional constituency, which, to a not insignificant extent, turned to right-wing populist parties. New Left movements, challengers of the established social democratic parties, started once again after the global economic crisis to garner support in countries in which economic deprivation had hit hardest, mostly in Southern Europe. Their examples showed that there is not only a strong need, but also a huge demand, for leftist policies. But being scattered between different countries, these movements also showed that without a united, transnational and solidary front of leftist movements throughout Europe, the chances of achieving a sustainable impact and paradigm shift of the dominating economic model will remain low.

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