From Decline to Resilience: Social Democratic Parties in Greece and Turkey

The paper challenges the perceived inevitability of the peripheral decline of social democratic parties (SDPs) by presenting new evidence. To address this issue, we compare the most striking case of social democratic decline -PASOK in Greece- with the most notable case of resilience - CHP in Turkey- in Southern Europe. By adopting the critique of the Third Way approach, we present three key findings. First, we argue that the Third Way is politically costly in the long term, particularly during economic crises. Second, we demonstrate that while PASOK’s neoliberal transformation hindered it from capitalizing on growing social protests during the crisis, CHP’s shift towards traditional social democracy boosted its electoral appeal. Finally, we contend that shifting from the Third Way back to traditional social democracy offers the most viable path for SDPs to recover from their peripheral decline.