Times of Crisis : Success or Decline of the Left

Abstract

The crisis that especially since the 2008 has shown the deep weakness of the capitalistic economic model induces to reflect on the role of the radical left parties and on their capacity to propose alternative policies, interpreting the citizens’ demands. Starting from these premises this article analyses three parties of the radical left party family- United Left, Left Freedom and Ecology and Syriza- that act respectively in Spain, Italy and Greece, three of the European democracies most affected by the social consequences of the crisis. The article proposes a diachronic comparison of the three parties’ policy pro-posals, organizational model and strategies in order to explain their greater or lesser ability to attract con-sensus in the last years.