Populism in Power from the Left: Impact on Welfare State Development in Southern Europe

After the outbreak of the global financial crisis (GFC), a joint crisis of neoliberalism and political representation led to the rise of European challenger parties from the left. In the Southern region, these actors were characterized by marked populist traits from a discursive and ideational perspective, they presented themselves as alternatives to the “old left”, and were able to reach influential policy-making positions both at the legislative and executive level. The dissertation addresses two research questions: what have been the social policy positions by populist parties from the left, before reaching power and once in power; and what explanatory factors account for similarities and differences across time and across cases. The selected case studies include SYRIZA in Greece, the Five Star Movement in Italy, Podemos in Spain and one non-populist case, the Left Bloc in Portugal, with the objective of adding further variation and corroboration in the analysis of the relationship between left populism and welfare. Methodologically, the dissertation relies on a qualitative research design that combines qualitative text analysis of electoral manifestos and programmatic documents, with elite and expert semi-structured interviews. The analysis covers the period between the outbreak of the global financial crisis and the legislature during which the four parties were in a position of direct policy influence over the content of the adopted reforms. The empirical research found similarities and differences across cases as well as diachronic variations in the social policy preferences, which derive from a combination of multiple explanatory factors. The latter include country-specific policy legacies, party competition and coalitional dynamics, specificities in the parties’ trajectories and ideological stances. The four parties shared a propensity for income maintenance measures and (re)regulation of work, with highly inclusionary stances towards labour market outsiders, and varying interpretations of the post-industrial shift. The similarities found between the four cases suggest that populism from the left in Greece, Italy and Spain acted as a functional equivalent of the “new left” movement. The direct influence of these parties over the welfare policy agenda led, albeit with limitations, to the strengthening of poverty alleviation and employment regulation mechanisms, while reducing the pro-insider bias of Southern European welfare states.