Suchergebnisse

1. Introduction -- 2. The communist dilemma -- 3. Political parties and European integration -- 4. The Greek case : the KKE and European integration -- 5. The Cypriot case : AKEL and European integration -- 6. The Italian case : Rifondazione Comunista and European integration -- 7. Comparative findings -- 8. Epilogue : on the present and future of European communism.

European Integration and the Communist Dilemma assesses the response of communist parties to European integration using three contrasting and comparatively significant case studies from Greece, Cyprus and Italy. These parties, in common with other radical parties in Europe, face a continuing strategic dilemma with regard to Europe through which larger questions about communist ideology and identity can be illuminated.

The relationship between the European radical left and democracy has come into attention due to the electoral surges of some such parties and their participation in government. Its scrutiny, however, remains ambivalent, at a time contemporary democracies are experiencing historic disruptions affecting how people engage with parties. This study offers an organisational perspective of the European radical left in order to map out and elaborate on patterns of democratic practice in this party family, as measured against a broadly liberal benchmark. Using a modified version of the internal party democracy (IPD) index developed by Rahat and Shapira (2017), the study compares fifteen parliamentary radical left parties (RLPs) from eleven European countries – Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain – across the dimensions of participation, representation, competition, responsiveness and transparency. Specifically, the study outlines patterns across the IPD dimensions and investigates the extent of variation within the party family, juxtaposing it against ideological and structural distinctions among RLPs.

Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

This essay considers the levels of support, the ideological-political spectrum and the electoral possibilities for European radical left parties, with reference to the social and political context of the 2019 European elections. At EU Parliament level this is mainly expressed through
the United European Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group. Reviewing the contours of the elections, the aim is to invite reflection on the short-term conjuncture and its effects on the radical left (e.g. the effects of Brexit, the rise in importance of environmental issues, the defeat of
Syriza), but also to historicise the dynamics internal to this political grouping. More long-term structural issues include both systemic mechanisms and the variation in national circumstances, both of which necessarily delimit socialist strategy. The overarching question concerns the prospects
for establishing an EU-wide counter-hegemony from the left.

We know a lot about the essence of the ideology factor in parties' trajectories but remarkably little of how and why this is expressed and translated into the theoretical building blocks that rationalize it. This article takes up this forgotten issue, attempts to locate the concept of party ideology development, clarify its usefulness in the understanding of the relationship between parties and ideologies, outline an effective measurement process and, in doing so, shed light on avenues of research in the comparative study of party politics that so far remain unutilized. The main argument is that although party ideology development has evaded scholarly attention, it remains a germane concept through which we can further disentangle forms of ideological expression. Systematically integrating the development of ideology into the study of party politics can add to our corpus of knowledge about how and why parties adapt and differ between them and can have implications for democratic theory. Adapted from the source document.

This article seeks to contribute to the study of party-based Europeanisation. More specifically, I explore, effectively in a theoretical manner, a new avenue of research in the study of the impact of European integration on national political parties, by focusing on the potential role of parties' transnational affiliations. I do so in an attempt to eliminate or decrease existing theoretical ambiguities and deficiencies that can be thought to lead to a narrow conceptual and empirical focus, when it comes to research on this subject. This narrowness is owed to the omission, by the extant literature, of the potential instrumentality of transnational affiliations in changing, adjusting or reconfirming national political parties' ideological profiles. By extending discussions of party-based Europeanisation, through incorporating the extant argument about instrumentality into the analysis of parties' transnational affiliations, I illustrate that the spectrum of the impact of European integration on national political parties can be wider than conceded so far.