Political parties are alleged to be turning their backs to civil
society; they are said to discourage the active participation of
their members and to distance themselves from the privileged
relations to affiliated social organisations they once prized.
Instead, parties are broadly believed to be directing their efforts
towards capturing government office and the resources that come
with it, neglecting linkage to their social roots. Transformations
of the Radical Left in Southern Europe questions this widely shared
view. Exploring the social linkage strategies of the most relevant
radical left parties in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus
in depth, this book demonstrates that the members of the European
radical left party family continue to prioritise social linkage,
despite their increasingly office-seeking orientation. Between the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the current economic crisis
they have been tirelessly experimenting with diverse new forms of
party organisation that have enabled them to return to their social
roots. The main lesson drawn from the studies in this book is that
party ideology and a party's position in the national political
arena go a long way towards explaining the extent to which
political parties prioritise social linkage. This book was
published as a special issue of South European Society and
Politics.
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