Abstract
Parties to the left of social democracy, or, as they are now known, parties of the radical left, have by and large been neglected in the comparative literature on European party politics after 1989. This was only to be expected, since the end of the Cold War seemed to mark the beginning of the end for European communists. Over the past 20 years they have had to confront electoral decline, ideological re-adjustment, fundamental strategic dilemmas and organizational change. Despite ‘decline and mutation’, not only have these parties survived, but new parties have emerged and many left parties have entered government, coming ‘in from the cold’. Twenty years on, a new research agenda is emerging with radical left parties at its core, which is pan-European and comparative and looks at how these parties have evolved in response to the post-1989 challenges.
Left Parties in National Governments makes a valuable contribution to this up-and-coming research agenda. It is the first comparative study of Western European left parties’ participation in coalition governments of the centre-left, their performance in government and its follow-up: When do radical left parties enter government? What have they achieved when they have done so? Did government participation benefit them in electoral terms? Were they themselves changed as a result of becoming ‘coalitionable’? These are the key questions addressed in this volume.
The introductory chapter sets out the state of the literature on left parties, arguing that while green, extreme right and left parties have all undergone transitions from ‘outsider’ to ‘insider’ in West European party systems, in many cases becoming partners in coalition governments, left parties’ strategic choices have been much less the object of research when compared to those confronting the other two party families. The volume employs Müller and Strøm’s policy-office-votes framework to provide a theoretical perspective on why and under what conditions left parties enter governments. The authors point out that while the framework applies to all parties, the left parties’ position towards parliamentary democracy is historically more sceptical and thus they tend to favour policy over office or votes more than other party families. Entering the office/votes game can be expected to de-radicalize them, undermine their electoral appeal and test their internal cohesion.
The main body of the volume incorporates country chapters that fall under three categories: left parties that have participated in government coalitions (Norway, France, Italy, Finland), others that have provided external support for centre-left governments (Spain, Sweden, Denmark) and others that have as yet not taken the plunge (Germany, The Netherlands). The case selection is highly appropriate as it incorporates parties that have been studied very little, such as the Norwegian case, cases of historically very successful left parties – such as the Finnish, Italian and French – and cases of very successful new parties such as the German Die Linke. Although in some of the country chapters there is a great deal of description and little reference to the theoretical framework, one finds the analysis of the political context/constraints, the historical background and programmatic evolution of each party, the dynamics of left parties’ government participation, and electoral prospects very useful.
The findings, summarized in the concluding chapter, are genuinely novel and to some extent counter-intuitive, particularly the claim that the ideological distance between left parties and their social democratic partners seems not to significantly change when left parties join government coalitions. Left parties’ participation in government mainly seems to depend on contextual factors, in particular party system dynamics. Actors are also crucial: the willingness of social democrats to include left parties in government coalitions is decisive. When left parties do join government, it is difficult to discern the promotion of any coherent agenda other than holding back the retrenchment of the welfare state. When they exit government or abandon external support they invariably suffer electoral losses, and more so when they have not managed to demarcate their own contribution or draw the red lines clearly. When again in opposition left parties ‘re-ideologize’ and internal factional policy disputes re-emerge. The intensity of those processes is appealed to in support of one of the main points made in this volume: that despite government participation parties of the radical left remain more policy-seeking than other parties.
While this is indeed an impressive pioneering study of the participation of left parties in government there are a few weaknesses. It would have been interesting to know a bit more about left parties’ performance while in government as well as other aspects of the impact of government participation upon them beyond the ideological level; in particular, did they undergo internal organizational changes and did the experience have an impact on their broader strategic orientations? Furthermore, while one of the central findings is that left parties are and remain more policy-seeking than other parties this is not explained: Is this the outcome of path dependence or can it be attributed to internal organizational constraints? The implications of the findings for the broader literature on party politics and coalition-formation are also under-explored. Do they tell us something about Müller and Strøm’s framework and, more broadly, what we know about parties’ coalition behaviour? These might well be further avenues this volume opens up for research.
All things considered, this is a volume that will be highly appreciated by party scholars, comparativists, students of the politics of the left and interested observers as it remedies a gross omission in the literature with regard to the study of West European left parties post-1989 and situates the study of those parties in the comparative party and broader political science literature. Using Müller and Strøm’s framework, it treats the coalition behaviour of the parties of the radical left in the same terms as that of any other party family, adding to similar volumes that exist for green and extreme right parties. It provides a valuable addition to the literature on coalition-formation, looking at the much neglected left flank. More broadly, it sheds light on how the left is responding, or not, to the challenges of the twenty-first century.