The Cartelization of SYRIZA and Podemos

This paper aims at investigating two recently emerged, in terms of governmental power, southern european political parties of the so-called "New Radical Left”, namely SYRIZA (Greece) and Podemos (Spain). The parties’ relationship both with government and the state will be examined through cartel party theory; a theory that until now has been mostly employed to study parties of traditional bipartisanship. Given this, this research examines the question of what extent of their cartelization is and the differentiation parameter for this extent between the two parties. While liberal democracies face multiple challenges, revisiting the party system can provide us with essential insights for this stuctural feature of modern politics. Party-state relations and the cartelization of the political system are key aspects of the contemporary discussion about the crisis of democracy. Shedding light upon the current structure, role and functioning of political parties can open up new perspectives in that ongoing discussion. As of that, the methodological approach was to examine the structure and functions of these two parties, adopting a qualitative approach. It was examined the extent of their cartelization through indicators of cartel party; descriptive statistics tools were used at this point. The explanatory cause for the different extent of cartelization (the differentiation parameter) was attained though the Most Similar System Design (MSSD) comparative study method through hypotheses formulation; the hypotheses made on the basis of parties’ history and political choices. Both parties are cartelized, but to a different extent. The explanation for this differentiation lies in the parties’ different extent of cooperation with social democracy.