Cooperation, Segmentation, Mutual Confrontation: Strategies of the Centre-Left and (Radical) Left in Right-Wing Populist Environment.

In Central European countries, left-wing parties have been struggling for years: their electoral support is dwindling, they are usually in opposition, and in some cases they have even lost the parliamentary representation. Public sentiment and political debate are shifting to the right of the political spectrum, which is reflected in the content of successive election campaigns and the popularity of anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic and populist narratives. In these unfavourable political conditions, centre-left parties and the so-called radical left (which is sometimes radical only in a contextual, not in an objective sense) are taking different positions in their mutual relations. The presentation aims to compare the programmatic, organisational and electoral strategies of Central European parties from two left-wing ideological families and to identify the logic behind the strategies of cooperation, neutrality or hostility.