Abstract
Whereas across Western Europe, the salience of an emerging cultural cleavage has triggered the rise of right-wing populist parties that focus on immigration, in Greece the salience of the materialist cleavage exacerbated by the country’s severe and protracted economic crisis gave rise to populist forces of both the right and the left.
Highlights
The eurozone crisis has become associated with the rise of populism across Europe as it has coincided with increasing electoral support for political actors who seek to return politics back to ‘the people’
In Western Europe, the populist actors that enjoyed increasing electoral support came from the right of the political spectrum
Predominantly in Southern Europe where economic cleavages remain salient, successful populist forces have originated from the left of the political spectrum
Summary
The eurozone crisis has become associated with the rise of populism across Europe as it has coincided with increasing electoral support for political actors who seek to return politics back to ‘the people’. In Western Europe, the populist actors that enjoyed increasing electoral support came from the right of the political spectrum These are parties that define the people on the basis of an ingroup/out-group dimension, and emphasise the need to ‘take back control’ and restore national sovereignty. Examples abound: the French Rassemblement National (RN – formerly Front National), the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Sweden Democrats (SD) and the Danish People’s Party (DF) have all fared well electorally in their respective arenas What these parties have in common beyond their immigration skepticism is their conscious effort to distance themselves from the violence, fascism and extremism that defined the far right in the past in order to broaden their electoral appeal. To present a brief theoretical discussion of populism and place Greece within this framework; second, to focus on the rise of the Golden Dawn, which is one of the few European – and the only Western European – extreme rightwing parties to enjoy parliamentary representation; and third, to place this phenomenon within an explanatory framework that extends beyond the economic crisis to the role of state institutions and governance
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