Title: Populism, representation and democracy: the case of the Spanish political organization Podemos (original) (raw)
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Podemos, the upheaval of Spanish politics and the challenge of populism
The rise of Podemos, a political force that is ideologically and organizationally new, has shaken Spanish politics. Only three years old, and taking advantage of the dual economic and political crisis, it has managed to put an end to the two-party political system, while becoming a source of inspiration (or grounds for concern) outside of Spain. The aim of this paper is to analyse the origins of Podemos, its main characteristics (its ideology, its organization and its social bases) and the impact it has had on Spanish politics.
Podemos and the New Political Cycle. Left-Wing Populism and Anti-Establishment Politics.
Podemos and the New Political Cycle. Left-Wing Populism and Anti-Establishment Politics., 2018
This edited volume explores the context in which the Spanish party Podemos operates as both an agent and product of political cycles. It provides an account of the party’s genealogy, ideological environment and relation to other political initiatives in Latin America and Western Europe. The contributors address the multiples dynamics generated by Podemos as a new party developed out of the economic crisis, the structural crisis concerning social democracy and the incarnation of the welfare state project, and, more generally, out of the Left. It will appeal to upper-level students and scholars interested in Spanish politics, history, culture and sociology.
Podemos: the ambiguous promises of left-wing populism in contemporary Spain
The paper inquires critically into Podemos as an instance of left-wing populism in contemporary European politics, putting forward four claims and a major thesis. First, Podemos was started as an original endeavour to ally in a hybrid mix two divergent approaches to democratic politics: the horizontal, open and networked mobilizations of the multitude, and the vertical, hierarchical, formal and representative structures of party formations, on the other. Such an amalgam might serve to combine the virtues of different models of democracy. Second, Podemos’ populism exemplifies a creative version of a ‘politics of the common’, but the terms of the ‘common sense’ are inflected in the direction of social rights, inclusion and egalitarian democracy. Third, Podemos illustrates a unique ‘reflexivity’ in the pursuit of populism. The party leadership has taken its cues from E. Laclau’s hegemonic theory of populism and implements it in its political strategy. Fourth, since the autumn of 2014, Podemos has arguably seen the gradual preponderance of a vertical, ‘hegemonic’ logic, reflecting a particular reading of populist theory which is prevalent among the party’s leadership. The broader thesis is that a dualist politics, which welds together horizontalism and verticalism in a conflictual bind, is a prima facie plausible strategy for renewing democracy in the present critical context. But a political organization like Podemos will be able to redeem its democratic promises as long as it maintains a constructive balance between these two political logics, avoiding the reassertion of centralized leadership and the suppression of pluralism which are typical of the populist tradition.
The normalization of left populism? The paradigmatic case of Podemos
European Politics and Society, 2022
After a hopeful electoral debut, left populism in Europe has undergone relative normalization. While the literature on new parties might regard the persistence of left populist forces as a success, we deem instead that such an outcome should be considered against the backdrop of the initial left populist hypothesis. Based on a discussion of the existing literature and ten semi-structured interviews with party members, this paper analyses the case of Podemos in Spain as a proxy to assess the fortunes of left populism in Europe at large. We describe its political trajectory and explain its failure to go mainstream by reference to the interplay between, at a macro level, the structure of political opportunities and, at a meso level, its interpretation of the populist strategy. In particular, we focus on the paradoxical effects of the representative void, on the specific and unfavorable mutations of the populist moment in Spain for Podemos, and its own organizational and strategic shortcomings.
Spanish populism from the far right to the emergence of Podemos
Populist Political Communication in Europe
Introduction There is a lack of systematic research on populism and populist political communication in Spain, consisting as it does of mainly descriptive and case study work. This state of research contrasts to the greater body of work carried out in the Latin American context. The absence of a developed corpus of theoretical and empirical research leads us to argue that caution should be exercised in assessing and classifying populism and populist communication in the Spanish context at this stage. However, the evidence that we have been able to collect from published research, survey data, media accounts, and interviews with political actors allows us to present what we hope is a useful review of the state of political populism scholarship regarding Spain.
Podemos’ shift of the political landscape in Spain: the emancipation of the ‘demos’.
This article highlights one salient creative discursive feature of Podemos and then indicates how this party made a Gramscian interpretation of the crisis in Spain as a 'regime crisis' and translated its transformative power into a new party that advocates and contributes to establishing a deliberative democracy in Spain, for the participation and the emancipation of the demos. We finish the article with a call on Podemos to revitalize the European Left in an era of rightwing (neoliberal) dominance and authority. We draw, in part, on an earlier article, in which we analysed the discourse of 15M or The Indignados as it was constructed by citizens around the country and which serves as a strong basis for the orientation of Podemos.
Exam paper. Populism, performance and affect. Mario Panadero García and Anders Hansen
Populism, performance and affect. The study of Ciudadanos and Podemos populist trades., 2018
Spain was highly affected by the 2008 global financial crisis, which had dreadful and devastating consequences for the population. The political and the social scene was in constant change. The agitation provoked a drastic rise in social movements in the country (Vicenç Navarro, 2013). The two-party political system active in Spain during its democratic period couldn’t resist this agitational climate and deep suffering that was changing the political climate for the first time since the end of the dictatorship in 1978. Therefore, this time the demonstrations and social anger provoked a breakdown in Spanish politics and gave birth to new political parties which tried to attract all the discontent and skeptical voters. The first one of them was Podemos, born directly from the 15-M movement and founded in January 2014 by a group of left-wing scholars. As kind of response to it, the Catalonian platform founded in 2006 Ciudadanos burst strongly in the political scene as right-wing alternative to Podemos, presenting themselves as “the sensible change”. (Orriols and Cordero, 2016). Both parties quickly changed completely the Spanish political landscape. In the 2015 general elections Podemos and Ciudadanos achieved 42 and 40 seats in the Parliament and occupied most of the media attention (La Información, 2015). Both parties and specially their leaders: Pablo Iglesias in Podemos and Albert Rivera in Ciudadanos can be defined as populist (Mudde, 2004). In this paper we will aim to analyze their populist discourse through specific fragments and literature which define this label, in the context of the rise of populist parties in the European politics. However, we will light the peculiarity of this case of populism, since these political actors lack the typical bad manners, bad behavior, trickster traits and colorful language that are common among the most well-known populist politicians like Trump, Hugo Chávez and Poujade (Willefordd, 1969). Despite this change of the political Spanish landscape since the birth of these two parties, the discontent of the people towards the political elites is still ongoing, and the climate of twitching and polarized attitude among the Spanish citizens is maybe even in its highest level since the beginning of the financial crisis. This situation, along with the Catalonian crisis in the last two years has facilitated the growth of VOX, a far-right party which is getting stronger every day. Former research from Catherine MacMillan have argued that the leader of Podemos is a charismatic leader (MacMillan, 2017). His appearance makes him populistic, a revolutionary, a man of the people, a godlike persona and carnivalesque (MacMillan, 2017). MacMillan in her paper also argues that Podemos have trades of populism, which shown by Cash Mudde´s research, such as his populist zeitgeist (Macmillan, 2017) (Mudde, 2004). We will therefore be using MacMillan research for a criticism towards her argumentation of Pablo Iglesias charismatic trades and we will also be criticizing her description of Podemos political strategies as carnivalistic. Although we agree with her on the line that Podemos is populist political party and uses populist rhetoric which can be supported by Cas Mudde´s Research and his theories. We will also try to explain how this populist discourse lacked the traditional trickster behavior could be the reason of the failure of Podemos and Ciudadanos in their aim of attracting the discontent citizens. We will also try to answer the question about if there is any reason which explains that this isolated case of populism has been born specifically in Spain, and if this fact has anything to do with the Spanish political and historical background.
Revista Internacional de Sociología, 2018
Los debates sobre la relación entre populismo y democracia son cada vez más frecuentes en la literatura. Ciertos autores consideran que existe una relación virtuosa entre ambos fenómenos, mientras otros definen la relación entre populismo y democracia como ambigua, y una tercera corriente ve el populismo como una amenaza para la democracia. En este artículo analizo tres libros que son ejemplos paradigmáticos de las mencionadas corrientes y sostengo la siguiente postura: el populismo es compatible con la democracia y refuerza su dimensión participativa, pero el populismo presenta ciertas tensiones con el pluralismo político. Además, el análisis realizado en el presente artículo sugiere que la relación entre populismo y democracia adopta formas específicas en cada caso, y se necesita investigación comparada sistemática sobre actores populistas y no populistas para identificar mejor las características distintivas del populismo.
A Spanish “Yes, We Can!” Against the two-Party System: the Development of Political Party Podemos
Annals of the Croatian Political Science Association, 2016
For decades, Spanish politics has revolved around two major parties, which have divided up power between the two of them in most institutions since 1982. They are the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the People's Party (the conservative PP). In recent years, their hegemony has suffered as a result of, above all, the economic crisis that has beleaguered the country since 2007 and generated a high rate of unemployment (25%), which surpasses 50 percent among Spanish youth. As a result, protests against Spain's ruling class (spearheaded by the 2011 “indignados” [the outraged] movement and significant protests in other sectors of society) have become widespread. Nonetheless, until quite recently no political party capable of articulating that citizen indignation had arisen. The results of the May 2014 European Elections, as well as opinion polls published afterward, indicate that party may be Podemos [literally, “We can”], which came on the scene in March 2014, earned 8 percent of the vote in the aforementioned elections and, since then, has continued its marked upward climb in the polls. In fact, the most recent polls show that Podemos enjoys levels of support near those of the PP and the PSOE (with each one near 25 percent). Podemos features a bottom-up party structure, as seen in citizen associations connected through a series of “Circles” (local assemblies) which make decisions through voting. On the same token, decisions and nominations are also made through an online voting process, which led to the selection of the party's leader, Pablo Iglesias. But, at the same time, in the party's genesis and its success we also find a top-down strategy: Iglesias's front-and-center position as a guest on several national television programs, which transformed him into a well-known person throughout the country. This circumstance has benefited Podemos by allowing the party to combine its assembly model with a hyper-leadership structure represented by Iglesias. In this paper we propose an analysis of the internal functioning of the party and its structural make-up in terms of two electoral processes: the 2014 European Elections, when Podemos was still an unknown; and the internal elections process developed by Podemos in October and November 2014, which defined its organizational structure and the leadership of Pablo Iglesias. The proposed methodology will consist of: 1) a descriptive analysis of the development of both campaigns, based on available information in the media; 2) an analysis centered on the presence of Podemos in social networks and the mainstream media, in addition to electoral results and polls; and 3) a qualitative study of the internal structure of the party and its internet-based mobilization strategies, through in-depth interviews with leaders and supporters of Podemos. The analysis will attempt to determine: the party's decision-making process, along with the type of relationships established between leaders and supporters; to what extent the Internet is used as a primary tool for organization, mobilization and political propaganda; and the extent of the clash or harmony between the party's opposed dynamics: on one hand, the bottom-up structure of the citizen assemblies and, on the other, the top-down structure inferred from Pablo Iglesias's hyper-leadership and the media presence of the party's principal leaders.
Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2023
Podemos’ initial left populist strategy and electoral success have been the subject of much academic debate. However, amid the party’s rapidly declining numbers at the polls, scholarly attention towards the Spanish party has been on the wane. Based on a discussion of the existing literature and a mixture of qualitative methods, this paper attempts to capture the distinctive features of the early populist gamble and two internal elements that progressively short-circuited it. The first is related to the cultural elitism of Podemos’ leadership, a phenomenon observed especially within the faction of Íñigo Errejón, former number 2 of the party. The intellectualist distinction of many of its members proved to be a repressive instance that jeopardised the populist practice. The second is instead the return to a radical left fold, which is instead to be attributed to Podemos’ former leader Pablo Iglesias and his successor Ione Belarra. Party factionalism, strong leftist symbolism and the promotion of identity politics stand here among the most visible factors that negated the initial transversal approach. In different ways, those elements re-established the previous symbolic space that Podemos’ populism had been trying to supersede and sabotage the possibility of securing a broad and durable popular identity.