The organizational evolution of left populism in power: The process of institutionalization of Podemos

The paper is inserted in the analytical framework which focuses on the effects of populist forces participation in governments. It aims to contribute to the scientific debate analyzing the left-wing populists in power in Europe. This phenomenon has gained greater prominence within scholarly and academic analyzes, although it does not still correspond with the importance that some of these forces currently hold in their respective countries. More specifically, the research question is about investigating what happens to an outsider force when it comes to government from the point of view of its organizational structure. One of the most exemplary case is undoubtedly 'Podemos': the party founded in 2014 that since January 2020 has been part of the Sánchez II coalition government in Spain. A left-wing populist force is an interesting object of study because it presents alternative and innovative forms of organization compared to the traditional party system. Organizational forms that develop as a response to social demands for participation and representation of new cleavages ignored or weakly assimilated by European liberal democracies. The adaptation of these new organizational forms to the functions of government, the entry of the 'new' into the traditional structure, is of fundamental interest if one wishes to analyze not only the change in the party system, but the very evolution of European democracies. Podemos is particularly interesting because once in government it showed institutionalization drives that changed its genetic organizational nature. The construction of a descriptive paradigm of this evolution, which will be also applicable to similar case studies, it is one of the main objectives of the research. The analysis of organization was carried out by comparing the different congress documents and official organizational documents of Podemos. The content analysis of these documents was implemented by the use of the Nvivo software and through semi-structured interviews conducted between May and November 2022 with leading members of the party and Spanish government.