What’s left of the populist radical left? SYRIZA and Die Linke compared

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the discursive articulations of populism with egalitarianism in the parties of the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) and the German The Left Party (Die Linke). I draw on tools of political discourse analysis and use a discursive-analytical perspective to develop an analytical framework for examining egalitarianism and populism as separate yet interconnected concepts in the examined cases. My data is drawn from speeches and interviews of each party’s leadership during the national and European Parliament elections from 2009 to 2019. The aim is to make an argument for the analytical utility of ‘the elite’ term and its importance within each party’s socio-political context to separate egalitarian from populist elements in each party’s discourse and offer a renewed understanding of the distinction between egalitarianism and populism as two concepts that are often conflated in radical left parties. The analysis showed that there was a distinction between egalitarian and populist discursive elements in both parties’ discourses, with each party employing them on different levels depending on their respective contexts.