Movement Parties against Austerity: the case of Syriza

During austerity policies inflicted during the last few years and the cycle of protest against them, a new wave of parties emerged in Southern Europe that was fueled by social movements. The stunning electoral success of parties like SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) in Italy challenged expectations of an increasing separation of movement and party politics in social movement studies, as well as anticipation of a decline of the radical left in studies of political parties. Departing from the volume by della Porta, Fernandez, Kouki and Mosca, Movement Parties Against Austerity (2016), this paper engages first in the conceptualization of the ‘movement- party’ as a way to shed light to these topical and undertheorized sociopolitical phenomena. Adopting a relational and dynamic approach, this term bridges concepts and theories developed in two separate fields of research (studies in social movements and political parties) enabling us to unravel the complex and contingent dynamics emerging in the space in-between party and protest politics. In doing so, the aim is to explore changing boundaries, exclusions and inclusions in an era of broader ongoing social and political transformations. In the second part of the paper, we shift our attention to Syriza as a ‘movement-party’, which represents a vantage point from which to explore this emerging and still unexplored relationship between institutional and contentious actors in Europe. On the one hand, we look at the recent anti-austerity mobilizations in Greece as part of broader dynamics developed between collective mobilization and electoral politics in the country since the end of Civil War (1949); on the other hand, and departing from extended empirical research, we look at the origins of Syriza, its choices in terms of organizational and action repertoires, as well as its framing during the current critical juncture (2008-2015).