Emergent anti-establishment political parties in Europe: exploring lessons from Southern Europe

Abstract

The political landscape in Europe has changed significantly in recent years. The emergence of populisms is a development that has been reactivated from 2008, when the effects of the financial crisis started to be noticed by European citizens. The crisis leads to the growth of abstention, exploding parliamentary fragmentation and the proliferation of new political forces, notably those expressing anti-party, extreme right-wing or even racist positions. The nature of these new political parties has crystallised in different ways depending not only in the region, but also in the country. Therefore, the profiles of the various populist movements in Europe are fundamentally distinct. They differ not only in their messages and their political affiliations, but also between countries from Southern and Northern Europe. We can point out two different fundamental issues, somehow linked between each other, around which populist parties in Europe have reacted and consolidated within the electorates: the economic crisis and immigration. We have found out that traditional populist parties in Northern Europe have mainly reacted to immigration, as a threat to their nations and traditional cultures, and also against the already overwhelmed labour markets. In the South political parties in general, but those emergent forces in particular with the exception of Golden Dawn, demonstrates a high degree of openness with regard to immigration. In Spain, Greece and Italy, new political parties started to stand against the traditional political elite, referred as the “caste” by their leaders, which has been accused of being the very responsible for the financial crisis and the worst and most dramatic effects towards regular population. Maybe that is the reason why we have already seen incumbent punishment, that seems to have become the hallmark of crisis elections in Southern Europe.