European left-wing populism and the radicalisation of (liberal) democracy: a comparative analysis of the French, Greek and Spanish cases

This paper aims to examine the relationship of contemporary European left-wing populism to (liberal) democracy, and the alternatives they propose to it, based on a comparative analysis between three cases: La France insoumise (LFI) in France (2017–2022), Podemos in Spain (2014–2022), and Syriza in Greece (2015–2019). Instead of the term ‘illiberal democracy’, which is often used to discredit a political movement, I favour the term of ‘radical democracy’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) in an attempt to take seriously the proposals made by these different political parties. I am interested in the period following the 2007–2008 economic and financial crisis which was characterised by the imposition of austerity policies throughout the European continent. This period has been identified as a new step towards the intensification of the ‘post-democratic’ era theorised by Colin Crouch (2000). The paper is structured around three research questions: (1) understanding if left-wing populism proposes a real alternative model to liberal democracy or simple adjustments to it, (2) analysing against whom the ‘radical democracy’ is built, (3) comparing the ‘radicality’ of the democratic agenda of these three to understand whether the practice of power by some of these parties (Podemos and Syriza) mean that their ambition to ‘democratise democracy’ is/was put aside. I rely on different data (leaders’ writings and public speeches and party manifestos), and conduct qualitative and quantitative text analyses of their discourses. In a first (theoretical) step, I argue that it would be inaccurate to drastically contrast radical democracy with liberal democracy as none of them challenges representative institutions, free and fair elections to elect representatives, the primacy of the value of equality and liberty, protection of the minorities, popular sovereignty, political participation of the citizens, and pluralism. In a second (empirical) step, I show that for European left-wing populism, popular sovereignty is exercised both directly (social movements, referenda) and indirectly (representative institutions). There is no single alternative model to liberal democracy, as there are great variations between parties depending on national contexts and histories. However, there are also coherences: for all these parties, popular sovereignty has been stolen by the national elites (e.g. political establishment, economic elites) and supranational bodies (e.g. the so-called Troika). The radicality of the proposals decreases once the parties are in power, and sometimes they turn into mere mechanisms of deliberative or participatory democracy with a ‘very punctual’ and ‘exclusively consultative’ character which do not allow for a real impact on public decisions (Sintomer and Saint-Upéry 2019).