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Job insecurity is a pervasive phenomenon whose effects on support for different parties have attracted increasing attention in the literature. A growing body of research has assessed the relationship between job insecurity and the success of radical parties in Western democracies, but results are still inconclusive due to the complex nature of this independent variable. This article contributes new evidence to the current debates on this topic by analyzing how both objective labour market status and perceived job insecurity are associated with the vote for radical right and radical left parties. Our findings, based on four original surveys conducted in France, Germany, Greece and Spain, suggest that perceived job insecurity is generally associated with greater support for the radical left, but not for the radical right. In contrast, we find the relationship between objective labour market status and support for radical parties to be more ambiguous (and, in most cases, statistically non-significant). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most striking political developments occurring during the Great Recession has been the growth of the radical left in some European countries. Though the literature is far from conclusive, it has generally been argued that the economy is not a main reason driving people's support for non-mainstream parties (particularly the Greens and the radical right). In this article, we contend that this is not the case for radical left parties (RLPs), which despite pursuing other agendas do still compete very strongly on economic issues. Using individual-level data for 56 elections taking place between 1996 and 2016 in 15 European countries, we find a positive effect of unemployment on support for RLPs, and only very weak evidence that this effect depends on voters' ideology or whether the mainstream (Social Democrats) left is in office. We conclude that unemployment enables the radical left to increase its support regardless of the political context but does not significantly change by itself the ideological makeup of its electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 Great Recession has altered party allegiances in many countries. This has been very visible in some of the countries hardest hit by the crisis, such as Spain. The Spanish case stands out as the only one in which a fully newly created radical-left populist party, Podemos, has attracted sizeable support. Its success is more intriguing given its capacity to attract many former supporters of the established radical left, Izquierda Unida. This article analyses what factors explain the support for the new radical-left populist party Podemos, identifying the individual-level features that lead voters to support it rather than an already established anti-austerity radical-left party. As the results show, Podemos supporters do not correspond to the conventional descriptions of populist voters, the losers of 'globalisation' and the economic crisis. Instead, a combination of elements - protest, anti-mainstream sentiment and unfulfilled expectations - distinguishes Podemos supporters from the established radical-left electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical left parties (RLPs) are diverse and several RLP subtypes have been distinguished in the literature. However, the degree to which these subtypes are linked to significantly different policy proposals has not been analysed, and little is known about whether subtypes are associated with differences in their respective voters’ characteristics. This article analyses the policy positions of RLPs across a number of issues, using manifesto and expert survey data, allowing insights into the differentiation between types of RLPs. RLPs differ in the extent to which they adopt New Politics issues, and the article proposes a classification of Traditional and New Left RLPs. Using cross-national survey data from the European Election Studies series and multilevel multinomial models, the article examines the ideological, policy and social differences in the electorates of the various types of RLPs. It finds socio-demographic and attitudinal differences between the voters of Traditional and New Left RLPs that are consistent with the programmatic differences of the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Radical left parties (RLP) have been significant actors in many Western European party systems since the expansion of mass democracy. In some cases, they have been very relevant forces in terms of popular support. Despite this fact, they have not received a great deal of attention in past decades from a comparative perspective. Through examination of the role of an important set of factors, this article provides, for the first time, a cross-national empirical account of the variation in voting for RLPs across Western Europe, based on individual-level data. It evaluates the effect of key socio-demographic and attitudinal individual-level variables on the RLP vote. The findings point to the continuing relevance of some social and political factors traditionally associated with votes for RLPs, and to the relevance of attitudinal variables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reacting to a profound electoral and organisational crisis, in the mid-1980s the Communist Party of Spain initiated a process of party change which envisioned empowering members in decision-making processes and establishing closer and wider relations with civil society. Party change eventually led to the creation of a new organisation, United Left. This article gives an account of the design and implementation of participatory and environmental linkages by the Spanish United Left and evaluates their specific outputs. We show that United Left's strategies aimed at reinvigorating linkage have had very limited success, failing to stabilise the party's electoral fortunes, to reconnect with society and to expand its membership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]