Europe and the Left: Resisting the

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CHALLENGES TO DEMOCRACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
SERIES EDITOR: HANSPETER KRIESI

Europe and the Left

Resisting the Populist Tide
Edited by
James L. Newell
Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

Series Editor
Hanspeter Kriesi
Department of Political and Social Science
European University Institute
San Domenico Di Fiesole, Firenze, Italy
Democracy faces substantial challenges as we move into the 21st Century.
The West faces malaise; multi-level governance structures pose demo-
cratic challenges; and the path of democratization rarely runs smoothly.
This series examines democracy across the full range of these contempo-
rary conditions. It publishes innovative research on established democ-
racies, democratizing polities and democracy in multi-level governance
structures. The series seeks to break down artificial divisions between
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cation, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and
political economy.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14889
 James L. Newell
Editor

Europe and the Left

Resisting the Populist Tide
Editor
James L. Newell
Manchester, UK

Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

ISBN 978-3-030-54540-6 ISBN 978-3-030-54541-3 (eBook)
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 Preface

The idea for this book came to me while I was employed as a ‘visiting
scientist’ at the University of Turin between February and May 2019.
As a UK and EU citizen whose political sympathies are firmly on the
left and who is also strongly opposed to Brexit, I wanted to explore the
links between progressive politics and European integration. The Euro-
pean Parliament elections were due to be held in May, and colleagues
in the University’s Department of Culture, Politics and Society were
gearing up to study the campaigns of the parties and the behaviour of
voters. Media commentary was dominated by the suggestion that the
nationalist, populist right would make significant advances at the elec-
tions and that Europe itself would figure more highly than in the past in
the various national contests. I therefore decided to produce this volume
whose purpose is to explore what the European elections have to tell
us about what the mainstream left in Europe is doing to pursue a left-
wing integration agenda as a means of countering the growth of right-
wing populism. It has been made possible thanks to the timely submis-
sions of the volume’s contributors and to the staff at Palgrave, especially
Ambra Finotello, Anne-Kathrin Birchley-Brun and Arun Kumar. Thanks
are also due to Giuliano Bobba and Antonella Seddone for making avail-
able most of the data on which the country chapters are based and
to Franca Roncarolo and Luigi Ceccarini. They persuaded the Univer-
sity of Turin and the University of Urbino to have me as a visitor in
2019 and therefore helped to mobilise the resources in terms of time

v
vi PREFACE

and money without which this volume would not have been possible.
Finally, participants in the June 2019 conference, ‘The Crisis of Euro-
pean Social Democracy: Causes and Consequences in an Age of Political
Uncertainty’ held at the University of Genoa, gave me important insights.
They would not have been able to do this had it not been for the hard
work of Mara Morini, Antonella Seddone and Davide Vampa in organ-
ising the conference, which was sponsored by the UK Political Studies
Association’s Italian Politics Specialist Group and the Aston Centre for
Europe.

Manchester, UK James L. Newell

 Contents

1 Introduction 1
James L. Newell

Part I The Challenges

2 Social Democracy and Euroscepticism: The Integration

Trap 19
Michael Holmes and Knut Roder

3 The Left’s Divided Constituency and the Construction

of a Unifying Narrative 43
Gianfranco Pasquino and Marco Valbruzzi

4 The European Institutions and Their Communication

Deficits 73
Marinella Belluati

5 The Party of European Socialists and Its Problems 93

Luke March

vii
viii CONTENTS

Part II The Campaigns

6 Germany and the Sozialdemokratische Partei

Deutschlands 123
Matthias Scantamburlo and Ed Turner

7 The French Socialist Party in the 2019 European

Elections 145
Jocelyn Evans and Gilles Ivaldi

8 The Firm Europhilia of the Italian Democratic Party 167

Giuliano Bobba and Antonella Seddone

9 The UK and the Labour Party 189

Eric Shaw

10 Spain and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español 211

Carolina Plaza-Colodro and Luis Ramiro

11 Greece and the Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima 235

Dimitris Tsarouhas

12 Conclusion 253
James L. Newell

Index 265
 Notes on Contributors

Marinella Belluati is Associate Professor at the University of Turin

where she teaches Sociology of Media and Media Analysis. Since 2017,
she has been coordinator of the Master’s Degree course ‘Public and Polit-
ical Communication’. She is deputy director of De Europa. European and
Global Studies Journal (http://www.deeuropa.unito.it/). She is coordi-
nator of the Jean Monnet module, ‘Communicating Europe: Institutions,
Representations and Public Opinion (CoEur) 2019–2021’ (http://www.
coeur.unito.it/it).
Giuliano Bobba is Assistant Professor at the University of Turin and
Affiliate at the Collegio Carlo Alberto. His research interests focus in
particular on populism and political communication. Recently, he has
published articles in the International Journal of Press/Politics, PLOS
ONE, European Political Science and Journalism.
Jocelyn Evans is Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds. His
main research interests include electoral behaviour in France and Europe,
and the radical right. He is author of The 2017 French Presidential Elec-
tions. A political Reformation? (2018), with Gilles Ivaldi, and editor of
the French Politics, Society and Culture series with Palgrave Macmillan.
Michael Holmes is Senior Lecturer in European Politics at Liverpool
Hope University and Visiting Professor at ESPOL in Lille. He is also
Director of the Lille-Liverpool European Institute. He has published

ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

extensively on left-wing parties and European integration and on Ireland

and the EU.
Gilles Ivaldi is CNRS researcher in politics at CEVIPOF (Sciences-Po)
in Paris. His main research interests include French politics, elections and
the comparative study of populism. He has recently published De Le Pen à
Trump : le défi populiste (2019) and The 2017 French Presidential Elections.
A political Reformation? (2018), with Jocelyn Evans.
Luke March is Professor of Post-Soviet and Comparative Politics at the
University of Edinburgh. His main research interests include Russian poli-
tics, Russian nationalism and foreign policy, the radical and centre-left in
Europe, and populism. His most recent book (with Richard Dunphy) is
The European Left Party (Manchester University Press, 2019).
James L. Newell is former Professor of Politics at the University of
Salford. His recent books include Silvio Berlusconi: A Study in Failure
(2019) and Corruption in Contemporary Politics: A New Travel Guide
(2019) (both with Manchester University Press). He is founder and
co-editor of the quarterly journal, Contemporary Italian Politics.
Gianfranco Pasquino is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the
University of Bologna and Fellow of the Accademia dei Lincei. Co-
editor of The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics (2015), his most recent
books are Minima Politica. Sei lezioni di Democrazia (2020) and Italian
Democracy. How It Works (2020).
Carolina Plaza-Colodro has a Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from the
University of Salamanca, Spain. Her research is focused on the transfor-
mations triggered by the Great Recession in Southern European party
systems. Her most recent works, which explore the influence of populism
on both the demand and the supply side of electoral competition in Spain,
have been published in West European Politics and Electoral Studies.
Luis Ramiro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political
Science at UNED, Spain. His research centres on parties and political
behaviour. His most recent works, focused on the vote for radical-left
parties, political attitudes and parties’ organisational innovations, have
been published in West European Politics, Party Politics, Political Studies
and European Political Science Review.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

Knut Roder is Principal Lecturer and Head of Politics at Sheffield

Hallam University. His research interests include politics and the polit-
ical economy of the European Union, political parties and policy-making
processes. His books include The European Left and the Financial Crisis
(2019) and The Left and the European Constitution (2012) (both co-
edited with Michael Holmes); Social Democracy and Labour Market Policy
(2003); The Missing Linke? Restraint and Realignment in the German
Left, 2005–2017 (2017).
Matthias Scantamburlo is Postdoctoral Researcher at Aston University
and team member of the Regional Manifestos Project. His research inter-
ests include territorial politics and electoral competition in multi-level
settings. He is currently working with a project on the challenges of
German social democracy, funded by the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD).
Antonella Seddone is Assistant Professor at the University of Turin.
Her main research interests focus on political parties and their organisa-
tion; primary elections, and political communication. Her recent publi-
cations include articles appearing in Regional & Federal Studies, the
International Journal of Press/Politics, Parliamentary Affairs and Acta
Politica.
Eric Shaw is Honourary Research Fellow in the Division of History and
Politics, University of Stirling. He has written very extensively on the
Labour Party. His most recent works include The Strange Death of Labour
Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) and The People’s Flag and the
Union Jack (Biteback, 2019), both with Gerry Hassan.
Dimitris Tsarouhas is Associate Professor in the Department of Inter-
national Relations, Bilkent University, Turkey. He has published exten-
sively on social democracy in Greece and Europe. He has been a Jean
Monnet Chair and Visiting Fellow at Bilgi University, Turkey, George-
town University, USA, and Queen Mary College, University of London,
UK.
Ed Turner is Reader in Politics at Aston University and Co-Director
of the Aston Centre for Europe. He has published widely on issues in
German politics, especially political parties and federalism. He is currently
conducting a project on the challenges of contemporary German social
democracy, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Marco Valbruzzi is Assistant Professor at the University of Naples

Federico II and Adjunct Instructor at the Gonzaga University in Florence.
Since 2017, he has also been the coordinator of the Electoral research unit
of the Carlo Cattaneo Institute Research Foundation. He has co-edited
(with R. Vignati) Il vicolo cieco. Le elezioni del 4 marzo 2018 (Il Mulino,
2018). His most recent book, with G. Pasquino, is A Changing Republic.
Politics and Democracy in Italy (Epoké, 2015).
 Abbreviations

AES Alternative Economic Strategy

AfD Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland)
ALDE Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
AWOL Absent Without Leave
BNG Galician Nationalist Bloc (Bloque Nacionalista Galego)
BSP Belgian Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste belge / Belgische Socialis-
tische Partij )
CDU Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union)
CETA Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
CiU Convergence and Union (Convergència i Unió)
CSPEC Confederation of Socialist Parties of the European Community
CSU Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union)
CSV Christian Social People’s Party (Chrëschtlech Sozial Vollekspartei)
DC Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana)
DG Directorate-General
DiEM25 Democracy in Europe Movement 2025
DIMAR Democratic Left (Δημoκρατ ικ ή Aρισ τ ερ ά)
DK Democratic Coalition (Demokratikus Koalíció)
DS Left Democrats (Democratici di Sinistra)
DUP Democratic Unionist Party
EA Basque Solidarity (Eusko Alkartasuna)
EACEA Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency
EAJ/PNV Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido
Nacionalista Vasco)
EC European Community
ECB European Central Bank

xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS

ECJ European Court of Justice

ECR European Conservatives and Reformists
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
ECT European Constitutional Treaty
EDC European Defence Community
EEC European Economic Community
EELV Europe Ecology—the Greens (Europe Ecologie Les Verts )
EFA European Free Alliance
EFD Europe of Freedom and Democracy
EGP European Green Party
EHBildu Basque Country Unite (Euskal Herria Bildu)
EL Party of the European Left
EMS European Monetary System
EMU Economic and Monetary Union
EP European Parliament
EPP European People’s Party
ERC Republican Left of Catalonia (Esquerra Republicana de
Catalunya)
ETUC European Trade Union Confederation
EU European Union
FdI Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia)
FDP Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei)
FI Forza Italia
FN National Front (Front national )
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GDR German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische
Republik)
GUE/NGL Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green
Left
IMF International Monetary Fund
ISF Solidarity tax on wealth (Impôt de solidarité sur la fortune)
IU United Left (Izquierda Unida)
KDNP Christian Democratic People’s Party (Kereszténydemokrata
Néppárt )
KIDISO Democrats and Socialists’ Movement (Kίνημα ημoκρατών και
oσιαλιστών)
KINAL Movement for Change (Kίνημα Aλλαγ ής )
LeU Free and Equal (Liberi e Uguali)
LFI La France Insoumise
LGBT+ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender plus
LR The Republicans (Les Républicains )
LREM La République en Marche!
 ABBREVIATIONS xv

LSAP Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (Lëtzebuerger Sozialistesch

Aarbechterpartei)
M5s Five-star Movement (Movimento Cinque Stelle)
MDC Movement of Citizens (Mouvement des Citoyens )
MEP Member of the European Parliament
MoDEM Democratic Movement (Mouvement Démocrate)
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
NI Non-Inscrits
NPS New Socialist Party (Nouveau Parti Socialiste)
ÖDP Ecological Democratic Party (Ökologisch-Demokratische Partei)
PASOK Panhellenic Socialist Movement (ανελλήνιo oσιαλιστικó
Kίνημα)
PCF French Communist Party (Parti communiste français )
PCI Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano)
PCP Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Português )
PD Democratic Party (Partito Democratico)
PDeCAT Catalan European Democratic Party (Partit Demòcrata Europeu
Català)
PDS Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della
Sinistra)
PES Party of European Socialists
PP People’s Party (Partido Popular)
PPI Italian People’s Party (Partito Popolare Italiano)
PS (France) Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste)
PS (Portugal) Socialist Party (Partido Socialista)
PSD Social Democratic Party (Romania) (Partidul Social Democrat )
PSDI Italian Democratic Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Democratico
Italiano)
PSI Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano)
PSOE Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero
Español )
PvdA Labour Party (Netherlands) (Partij van de Arbeid)
RE Renew Europe
RN National Rally (Rassemblement National )
SAP Swedish Social Democratic Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska
arbetareparti)
S&D Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
SDP Social Democratic Party of Finland (Suomen sosialidemokraat-
tinen puolue)
SEA Single European Act
SFIO French Section of the Workers’ International (Section française
de l’Internationale ouvrière)
xvi ABBREVIATIONS

Smer-SD Direction—Social Democracy (Smer—sociálna demokracia)

SOC Socialist Group
SPD Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands )
SPÖ Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei
Österreichs )
TNP Transnational party
TUC Trade Union Congress
UK United Kingdom
UKIP United Kingdom Independence Party
UMP Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un mouvement
populaire)
US United States
WiO Spring (Wiosna)
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 European social-democratic parties in 2018–2019 (left-right

and international dimensions) (Note Question for the
Left-Right scale = ‘Parties can be classified by their current
stance on economic issues such as privatization, taxes,
regulation, government spending, and the welfare state.
Those on the economic left want government to play an
active role in the economy. Those on the economic right
favour a reduced role for government. Where would you
place each party on the following scale?’; Question for
the Nationalism-Multilateralism scale = ‘Where do parties
currently stand on nationalism versus multilateralism? Those
favouring multilateralism seek to respect international
treaties, engage with United Nations agencies, and
collaborate with regional organizations like the EU, OAS,
AU, ASEAN, and OSCE. Those favouring nationalism
reject these ideas. Where would you place each party on the
following scale?’ Source Authors’ own compilation based on
data from Norris [2020]) 46

xvii
xviii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.2 European social-democratic parties in 2018–2019 (left-right

and EU integration dimension) (Note Question for the
parties on the Anti/Pro-EU scale = ‘Some parties are
strongly in favour of the EU and European integration,
while others are strongly opposed to the EU and European
integration. Please tick the box that best describes each
party’s position on the EU and European integration [0
= Strongly opposed to the EU - 10 = Strongly in favour
of the EU]’. Question for the voters on the Anti-Pro-EU
scale = ‘Some say European unification should be pushed
further. Others say it has already gone too far. What is your
opinion? Please indicate your views using a scale from 0
to 10, where 0 means unification “has already gone too
far” and 10 means it “should be pushed further”. What
number on this scale best describes your position?’ For the
Left-Right scale, see note to Fig. 3.1. Source Authors’ own
compilation based on data from Norris [2020], Schmitt
et al. [2019], and Meijers and Zaslove [2020]) 47
Fig. 3.3 Position of European social-democratic parties,
social-democratic voters and the median voter in the
EU-28 countries (left-right and progressive-conservative
dimensions) (Note Question for the parties on the
Progressive-Conservative scale = ‘Parties can also be
classified by their current social values. Those with liberal
values favour expanded personal freedoms, for example,
on abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and democratic
participation. Those with conservative values reject these
ideas in favour of order, tradition and stability, believing
that government should be a firm moral authority on social
and cultural issues. Where would you place each party
on the following scale?’ Question for the voters on the
Progressive-Conservative scale = ‘Now I would like you
to tell me your views on various issues [same-sex marriage
and civil liberties]. For each issue, we will present you
with two opposite statements and we will ask your opinion
about these two statements. We would like to ask you to
position yourself on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means
that you “fully agree with the statement at the top” and
10 means that you “fully agree with the statement at the
bottom”’. For the Left-Right scale, see note to Fig. 3.1.
Source Authors’ own compilation based on data from
Norris [2020] and Schmitt et al. [2019]) 49
 LIST OF FIGURES xix

Fig. 3.4 Positions of European social-democratic parties and voters

on the process of EU integration in 2019, by country (Note
Question 1 [social-democratic party position] = ‘Where
would you place the following parties on this scale, where
0 means “already gone too far” and 10 means “should
be pushed further”?’, Question 2 [social-democratic party
voters’ positions] = ‘Some say European unification should
be pushed further. Others say it has already gone too far.
What is your opinion? Please indicate your views using a
scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means unification “has already
gone too far” and 10 means it “should be pushed further”.
What number on this scale best describes your position?’
Source Authors’ own compilation based on data from
Schmitt et al. [2019]) 51
Fig. 3.5 Positions of European social-democratic parties between
1999 and 2019, by country (Note We rescaled the original
CHES [1–7] measure of European integration on a new
scale from 0 to 10. For the wording of the questions, see
note to Fig. 3.2. Source Authors’ own compilation based
on data from Schmitt et al. [2019] and Meijers and Zaslove
[2020]) 53
Fig. 3.6 Positions of European social-democratic parties and voters
on the process of EU integration in 2019 (mean values)
(Note Question for voters and parties: ‘Some say European
unification should be pushed further. Others say it has
already gone too far. What is your opinion? Please indicate
your views using a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means
unification “has already gone too far” and 10 means it
“should be pushed further”. What number on this scale
best describes your position? And about where would
you place the following parties on the same scale?’ Source
Authors’ own compilation based on data from Schmitt
et al. [2019]) 54
Fig. 3.7 Salience of European integration in the manifestoes of the
EU social-democratic parties, by decade (Note Salience
is calculated as the sum of both positive [‘per108’]
and negative [‘per110’] statements towards European
integration [as a percentage of the total number of
quasi-sentences]. Source Authors’ own compilation based
on data from the Comparative Manifesto Project Volkens
et al. [2019]) 55
xx LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.8 Positions of the social-democratic parties in the EU towards

European integration, by decade (Source Authors’ own
compilation based on data from the Comparative Manifesto
Project Volkens et al. [2019]) 57
Fig. 3.9 The electoral trajectory of social-democratic parties in
Europe from 1900 to 2019, by decade (total share of valid
votes) (Note Only democratic periods (and elections) are
included in the analysis. Source Authors’ own compilation
based on data from ParlGov database Döring and Manow
[2019]) 58
Fig. 3.10 Vote-share of European social-democratic parties in
national elections since 1900, by decade and region (Note
Northern Europe = Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland,
Norway, Sweden, UK; Continental Europe = Austria,
Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands,
Switzerland; Southern Europe = Cyprus, Greece, Italy,
Malta, Portugal, Spain; Central and Eastern Europe =
Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. Source
Authors’ own compilation based on data from ParlGov
database Döring and Manow [2019]) 59
Fig. 3.11 Vote-share of social-democratic parties in European
Parliament elections 1979–2019 (Source Authors’ own
compilation based on data from ParlGov database Döring
and Manow [2019]) 60
Fig. 3.12 Electorate of the social-democratic parties in the 2019
European elections, by social class (Note Question = ‘If
you were asked to choose one of these five names for your
social class, which would you say you belong to - the
working class, the lower middle class, the middle class, the
upper middle class or the upper class?’ Source Authors’ own
compilation based on data from Schmitt et al. [2019]) 62
Fig. 3.13 Citizens’ views on EU integration (2019), by social class
(Note For the wording of the questions, see Note to
Figs. 3.2 and 3.12. Source Authors’ own compilation based
on data from Schmitt et al. [2019]) 63
Fig. 3.14 Electorate of the social-democratic parties in the 2019
European elections, by level of education (Note Question =
‘How old were you when you stopped full-time education?’
[Low = 15 years old and less; Medium = 16–19 years
old; High = 20 years old or more]. Source Authors’ own
compilation based on data from Schmitt et al. [2019]) 64
 LIST OF FIGURES xxi

Fig. 3.15 Composition of the main Italian left-wing parties

1968–2018, by level of education (Note For a more
detailed scrutiny of the relationship between education
and voting behaviour in Italy, see Corbetta and Ceccarini
[2010]. Source Authors’ own compilation based on data
from Itanes [1968–2018]) 65
Fig. 6.1 Share of the vote won by the SPD 1979–2017 (European
and Federal elections) (Source Bundeswahlleiter) 126
Fig. 7.1 Salience of federalism to mainstream and challenger
parties in France (2008–2019) (Source Rohrschneider and
Whitefield Expert Survey Trend File [2019]) 152
Fig. 7.2 Party positions on European market integration among
governing and challenger parties in France (2008–2019)
(Source Rohrschneider and Whitefield Expert Survey Trend
File [2019]) 153
Fig. 7.3 European and legislative results for the PS (1979–2019) 157
Fig. 7.4 Maps of 2019 Euro election results for leftist lists and the
governing Renaissance list by department 158
Fig. 7.5 Mean positions of party electorates on Europe (Source EES
2019) 161
Fig. 7.6 Mean positions on the effects of European integration
(Source SCoRE survey, wave 2) 162
Fig. 8.1 In general, does the European Union conjure up for you a
very positive, fairly positive, neutral, fairly negative or very
negative image? (Source Eurobarometer) 173
Fig. 8.2 Taking everything into consideration, would you say that
Italy has on balance benefited or not from being a member
of the EU? (Source Eurobarometer) 175
Fig. 8.3 Trend data of the PD’s Facebook activity during the
election campaign (27 April–26 May 2019) (Source ITEM
2019) 181
Fig. 10.1 Parties’ general orientations towards the EU (1999–2017)
(Source Authors’ elaboration of data from the Chapel Hill
Expert Survey [CHES]) 214
Fig. 10.2 Changes in vote between the April and May 2019 general
and EP elections, and between the 2014 and 2019 EP
elections (Source Authors’ elaboration) 221
Fig. 10.3 Word cloud of PSOE’s Facebook posts about Europe
(Source Author’s elaboration) 225
xxii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 10.4 Spanish citizens’ general attitudes towards the EU

(2006–2017) (Note The vertical axis of the graph on the
left-hand side represents degree of trust in the EP and
support for, or opposition to, European unification, both
on a 10-point scale. In the graph on the right-hand side,
the vertical axis shows the percentages of those who say
they are satisfied with the way democracy works in the EU
and who consider the situation of the European economy
to be good. Source Authors’ elaboration of data from
Eurobarometer and European Social Survey [ESS]) 227
Fig. 10.5 Spanish citizens’ attitudes towards the main EU policies
(2006–2017) (Note Percentages of respondents in favour
of: the single currency; a common EU foreign policy; a
common security and defence policy; further enlargement
of the EU to include other countries in future years. Source
Authors’ elaboration of Eurobarometer data) 228
 List of Tables

Table 5.1 Centre-left European parliamentary results 1979–2019 102

Table 5.2 PES policy priorities, 2009–2019 EP elections 104
Table 5.3 The PES’ emergent anti-neoliberalism 110
Table 6.1 Results of the 2019 European Parliament elections in
Germany 129
Table 6.2 Germany could better face the future outside the EU 137
Table 6.3 Trust in the EU 137
Table 6.4 QA11 What does the EU personally represent for you? 138
Table 6.5 QA5 In your opinion, what are the two most important
problems facing the EU now? 139
Table 8.1 2019 European Parliament election in Italy 170
Table 8.2 I would like to ask you a question about how much trust
you have in certain media and institutions. For each of
the following media and institutions, please tell me if you
tend to trust it or tend not to trust it. The European
Union (%) 176
Table 8.3 How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in
the EU? (%) 176
Table 8.4 Please tell me how attached you feel to the European
Union (%) 177
Table 8.5 For each of the following statements, please tell me to
what extent it corresponds or not to your own opinion:
You feel you are a citizen of the EU (%) 177
Table 8.6 What do you think are the two most important issues
facing the EU at the moment? (%) 178

xxiii
xxiv LIST OF TABLES

Table 8.7 Distribution of topics in the PD manifesto 180

Table 8.8 Facebook posts with EU focus and average engagement
level 182
Table 8.9 Facebook posts with EU focus and their content and
average engagement level 182
Table 8.10 Facebook posts with EU focus and reference to EU values
and average engagement level 183
Table 8.11 Facebook posts with EU focus and topics and average
engagement level 184
Table 10.1 Electoral results, November 2019 general elections 217
Table 10.2 Election results: May 2019 EP elections, and April 2019
and November 2019 general elections 219
Table 10.3 Opinions on EU among PSOE voters and among Spanish
citizens generally 231
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

James L. Newell

Mainstream parties of the left have been in a state of continuing if uneven

decline throughout Europe for the past four decades (Ignazi 2017) and
most of the explanations that have been advanced to account for the
malaise are widely understood and accepted. On the ‘demand’ side of
politics, they have to do with the declining political significance of tradi-
tional social cleavages such as class (Mair 1984, 1998), this in turn due to
a wide range of economic, social and political changes having to do with
rising living-standards, lifestyle changes and the way in which people relate
to political parties. On the supply side of politics they have to do with the
mediatisation and personalisation of campaigning; the rise of cartel parties
(Katz and Mair 1995) and the decline of parties of mass integration;
the decline of ideology, and change in the ways parties relate to voters
(Manin 1997). More recently, the way in which globalisation has deprived
national governments of many of their powers to shape public policy and
under-pinned the emergence of the neoliberal consensus has rendered
parties of the left vulnerable, in the face of the Great Recession, to the
loss of large numbers of their former natural supporters to populist parties
of the right. Unable to offer to the so-called losers of globalisation (Kriesi

J. L. Newell (B)
Manchester, UK

© The Author(s) 2021 1

J. L. Newell (ed.), Europe and the Left,
Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54541-3_1
2 J. L. NEWELL

et al. 2006)—economically insecure and uncomfortable with the cultural

effects of globalisation especially mass migration—proposals significantly
different to those of their conservative rivals, parties of the left have lost
out to new outsider parties and political entrepreneurs claiming a unique
affinity with ordinary people and their concerns. Less well understood is
how the parties of the left have been reacting to these difficulties in terms
of organisation, policy reappraisals and communication strategies.
In the initial months of 2019, the European elections of May of that
year appeared to offer a unique opportunity to explore these matters, as
they looked set to become the most significant in the EU’s history both
for the future of the EU itself and for the internal politics of the EU
member states. On the one hand, thanks to the EU’s legitimacy crisis,
arising from the politics of austerity and migration and the consequent
growth of populist parties, these parties looked set to achieve significant
advances in the elections and so raise significantly the profile of Euroscep-
tical actors within the parliament and the institutions of the EU itself.
On the other hand, the elections seemed set to break new ground. In
the past, they had been considered second-order national elections (Reif
and Schmitt 1980)—with domestic policy issues occupying the highest
profile in campaigns and voters using the elections as an opportunity to
cast protest votes against national incumbents. It seemed likely that for
the first time, Europe itself would feature highly in the campaign in many
member states—revealing that if in the past European integration had not
gone far enough to figure highly in member states’ election campaigns,
now it had not gone far enough to prevent it doing so: a point to which
we shall return.
In many respects, therefore, it seemed that the 2019 elections offered
European parties of the left significant opportunities to attempt to mount
a comeback. For with the EU itself occupying a high profile, and with
campaigns progressively polarised around the new cleavage dividing anti-
system, anti-Euro ‘sovereigntist’ forces from traditional, pro-European,
pro-Euro parties, there was an opportunity for the mainstream left to
recapture some of the themes of its heyday in the early post-war years.
Then, its raison d’être was a fight for the rights of working people built
around a commitment to the mixed economy, strong trade unions, market
regulation, the welfare state and Keynesian economic management. Of
course, all or most of this has disappeared thanks to the economic,
social and political processes described above. Moreover, the left finds
itself confronted with a divided constituency consisting of the winners
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

and losers of globalisation. However, an increasingly influential strand of

thinking on the left argues that the solution to these problems lies in the
direction of seeking to recreate the old Keynesian agenda (or something
similar) at European level through demands for further integration and the
democratisation of EU institutions themselves. For example, in The Global-
ization Backlash, published not long before the elections, Colin Crouch
makes the point that ‘globalization has come for many to mean the loss,
not just of individual jobs, but of entire long established industries and
the communities and ways of life associated with them’ (2018: 1). That
is, for many, an increasingly interdependent world represents a loss of
control over the circumstances of their own lives. However, as Crouch
goes on to note, ‘[w]e can only gain a measure of control over a world
of increasing interdependence by growing identities, as well as institu-
tions of democracy and governance that can themselves reach beyond
the nation state’ (2018: 3). In other words, if globalisation has drained
power away from national governments, and if its economic and cultural
consequences have led traditional supporters of the left into the arms of
the nationalist right, then the response of the left must be to seek inter-
national collaboration and the pooling of national sovereignty that can
allow us to establish democratic governance structures beyond the nation
state. The European elections saw the appearance of a new transnational
party whose raison d’être was to offer just such an agenda: European
Spring, led by the former Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis and his
Democracy in Europe 2025 (DiEM25) movement. Its message was that
while the EU had been an exceptional achievement, ‘bringing together
in peace European peoples … across a continent that was, not long ago,
home to murderous chauvinism, racism and barbarity’,1 it had also made
it possible for international capital to impose austerity, this thanks to the
undemocratic way in which it was constituted. Consequently, the nation-
alist right had gained traction thanks to a lack of accountability in Europe,
seeming to present citizens with two equally unpalatable options: either a
retreat behind national borders, or surrender to an unaccountable Brus-
sels. Therefore, according to European Spring, the EU would, in the long
run, either democratise or disintegrate.
I have elsewhere (Newell 2019) referred to the perspective exempli-
fied by Crouch and European Spring as ‘critical Europeanism’. It is one

1 Manifesto of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). Available at

https://diem25.org/manifesto-long/.
4 J. L. NEWELL

that is shared by other writers (among which one may include Hilary
Wainwright (2018), Ania Skrzypek (2013), and Cäcilie Schildberg et al.
(2014)) and organisations (including the think tanks, Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, Social Europe
and others). In the UK, it is a perspective exemplified by the grass-
roots organisation, ‘Another Europe is Possible’. Formed in February
2016 ‘to campaign for a Remain position in the EU referendum from
a specifically left, progressive perspective’, it now campaigns for the UK’s
re-entry into the EU, which it sees as requiring ‘radical and far-reaching
reform, breaking with austerity economics and pioneering a radically new
development strategy’.2
The suggestion that, for the left, the way back to electoral health lies
in a project for European integration and democratisation strikes me as
a persuasive one for several reasons. First, it provides an answer to the
fundamental question, ‘If (thanks to the collapse of the Berlin Wall)
communism appears to be fatally wounded, and if (thanks to globali-
sation) social democracy is in crisis, then what does it mean to be on
the left in the early twenty-first century?’ The question is a fundamental
one because you cannot achieve anything unless you first have a clear
idea of what it is you want to achieve. There are several aspects to the
answer. First, recognition that national communities can only assert regu-
lation of the processes of globalisation by pooling national sovereignty
speaks to the traditional internationalist, cosmopolitan agendas of the
European socialist parties since their founding in the nineteenth/early
twentieth centuries. Ever since Marx and Engels elaborated their theories,
internationalism, or international solidarity, has been a defining feature
of what it means to be on the left. In an early statement of the thesis
of economic globalisation, the 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party
argued that ‘[m]odern industry [had] established the world market, for
which the discovery of America paved the way’; for ‘[t]he need of a
constantly expanding market for its products [had chased] the bour-
geoisie over the entire surface of the globe’, so that ‘[i]n place of the
old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we [had] intercourse
in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations’. Consequently,
the revolutionary abolition of private property would not be possible in

2 https://www.anothereurope.org/about/.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

one country alone. For, as Engels put it—in ‘The Principles of Commu-
nism’ written a few months prior to publication of the Manifesto—‘big
industry [had] already brought all the peoples of the Earth … into such
close relation with one another that none [was] independent of what
happen[ed] to the others’.3 It seemed to follow from this that efforts to
bring about the workers’ emancipation would have to be organised inter-
nationally and that workers’ parties would have to oppose wars between
capitalist states. Such wars, in the words of the resolution adopted at the
seventh International Socialist Congress in 1907, were ‘favoured by the
national prejudices … systematically cultivated … in the interest of the
ruling classes for the purpose of distracting the proletarian masses from
their own class tasks as well as from their duties of international solidar-
ity’.4 Famously, the Second International disintegrated as its constituent
parties found it impossible to maintain a united front against the outbreak
of World War I. However, the tradition of international solidarity lingers
on in the opposition of parties of the left—as a general rule—to racism
and xenophobia, and—again, as a general rule—in their positive attitudes
to cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism.
Second, if to be on the left means to embrace the principle of equality
(Bobbio 1994), then the left-wing project is a project of empowerment
and therefore democratisation. Working-class movements of the early
nineteenth century, such as the Chartists, were movements that sought
to extend to workers the franchise that had been won by manufacturers,
as well as guarantees on equality before the law, freedom of speech and
freedom of assembly, the absence of which had until then hampered the
development of their organisations. In this sense, a project for a fully
integrated, democratic Europe is merely a twenty-first-century example—
an extension to the international plane—of demands parties of the left
have always made. As is frequently argued on the left, the shortcomings
in terms of accountability in EU policy-making provide inroads for the
undue influence of multinational corporations and the powerful such that
it is inevitably driven by big business and its interests against those of ordi-
nary people. Indeed, it was precisely this argument that lay at the heart of

3 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf.
4 https://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1907/militarism.
htm.
6 J. L. NEWELL

the support a minority on the left lent to the Leave side in the UK Brexit
referendum, their suggestion being that

While there have been idealists involved and progressive laws made along
the way, at its core [the EU] is undemocratic and distant, a threat to all
those living in its shadow. However sweet the propaganda, it is a tool for
multinationals, another part of the globalisation process. (King 2015)

While (for a whole host of reasons there is not the space to go into here)
left-wing Eurosceptics tend to see a democratic EU as unrealisable, we
should perhaps avoid confusing ‘difficult’ with ‘impossible’. No doubt
many sympathisers of the Chartists saw their suffrage demands as unrealis-
able. In 1839, their petition, though three miles long and with 1,280,000
signatures, was rejected out of hand by parliament by 235 votes to 46.
However, by the middle of the next century their demands were normal
and accepted parts of the political architecture of democratic countries
everywhere.
Third, ‘critical Europeanism’ represents a natural extension of the
traditional social-democratic project. That is, if social democracy is the
promise to extend principles of equality from the political to the economic
and social spheres, then it is a project for the extension of rights. This
is, ultimately, what political conflict is all about, its outcomes being to
shift the patterns of rights and obligations recognised in societies.5 And
since patterns of rights and obligations, once shifted, tend to be long
lasting (as they become part of a new normal, taken-for-granted, state of
affairs), so political struggle, including struggle over (in)equality is, ulti-
mately, a struggle for hegemony. As countries have competed for inward
investment, what might be called the ‘social-democratic hegemony’ of the
initial post-war years has been rolled back. Spearheaded initially by the
advent of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the West, neoliberal
globalisation has since eroded or threatened large numbers of the rights
previously fought for and won by social democrats, especially in the field

5 Conflicts over rights, in turn, are conducted by reference to the principle of justice:
to treat the same things in the same way and different things differently. For example, the
arguments leading up to passage of the Cirinnà law in Italy in 2016, giving LGBT+ people
some of the partnership rights already enjoyed by heterosexual couples (Ozzano 2020),
revolved around the question of whether sexuality was a relevant criterion of difference
in the conferral of partnership rights. For the Catholic Church it was; for the LGBT+
community it was not.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

of welfare, seen as too expensive for states looking to court multinationals.

This again suggests that the social-democratic project to have a chance of
revival needs to become a fully international one, based on the collabo-
ration of national parties in pursuit of rights to be established across, and
above the level of the nation state. In other words, it suggests the need
to acknowledge that the nation state, having once been a vehicle for the
pursuit of progressive agendas, has now become a fetter upon it.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the field of immigration where large-
scale population movements, refugee crises and so on have given rise to
welfare chauvinism6 in which social-democratic politicians have on occa-
sion been complicit. Their argument has been that migration has been
inimical to the social-democratic project because the welfare state has
been a national construction, ‘drawing on the solidarity with one another
that members of a nation feel’ (Crouch 2018: 5), and therefore one
dependent on societies remaining ethnically and culturally homogeneous.
An alternative way of looking at the problem, one more consistent with
the internationalism at the heart of what it means to be on the left, is
to suggest that welfare states have been built on a series of citizenship
rights which, in the face of globalisation-induced flows of mass migration,
now need to become universal rights. There is nothing altruistic about
this. It rests on the recognition that population movements are likely to
increase, not decrease in the coming years, and on the simple point that
security (used here in its broad meaning) is a public good. It can only be
provided to some if it is provided to all. Again, this points in the direc-
tion of seeking to gain control of the processes of globalisation by going
beyond the nation state and seeking to develop forms of collaboration
and supranational integration above it.
Such a project seems timely. The coronavirus outbreak which threatens
to bring in its wake a recession even deeper than that of the 1930s has
thrown a spotlight on the limitations of purely national responses and the
dangers of a lack of international coordination. As borders one after the
other were closed down, it became apparent not only that the closures
were futile once transmission of the virus had begun but that they could

6 Actually, racism and xenophobia have not emerged in recent years thanks to migrant
crises and the rise of right-wing populism but predated them, being bound up with nation
states and the controls on population movements they exert by means of the passport
system. As Lavenex (2018: 1) points out, ‘[I]t is only because the world is organized into
sovereign states that international migration becomes an issue that needs to be governed’.
8 J. L. NEWELL

make a bad situation worse by interrupting aid and disrupting business

(Calder 2020). It became apparent that, given hyper-interconnectivity,
for there to be an effective response to the virus, there needed to be far
greater cross-national equality in terms of access to basic health care.7
It became apparent, in Europe, that social distancing and closing down
economic activities would add massively to the public debt. With some
countries worse affected than others, this led to calls for the mutualisation
of debt at EU level through the issuing of European recovery bonds. The
situation was not unlike the one that had come about with the sovereign
debt crisis eight years previously. Then, the idea of mutualisation had been
strongly resisted by some member states. Then, resistance to austerity in
the debtor countries and popular resentment against financial aid pack-
ages in the creditor countries had appeared to put the European project
itself at risk. With deepening divisions between countries like the Nether-
lands and Italy over the recovery bonds, Europe seemed to be facing the
same paradox it had earlier faced. This was that the absence of European-
wide fiscal solidarity provided the basis in countries such as Italy for
the sovereigntist and chauvinist forces which in other countries, such as
the Netherlands, made it difficult if not impossible for the member-state
governments to embrace the principle of European-wide fiscal solidarity
in the first place. The governments of countries such as Germany and the
Netherlands were terrified of what agreeing to the bonds would do for
support for the populist sovereigntists, which, in other countries, such as
Italy, were likely to gain a fillip from a failure to agree to the bonds. It was
hard, then, to avoid the impression that Europe stood at a crossroads and
would in the long run either democratise and further integrate, or else
fall victim to the nationalist right and, after Brexit, further dis integrate.
The coronavirus outbreak appeared, then, to be reiterating the point
made by the Eurozone crisis. This is that monetary integration needs
to embrace fiscal policy as well if economic downturns are not to lead
to austerity and to put the governance structures of the Union itself
under strain. In 2008, because of monetary union, the governments of
the Eurozone countries had been unable to respond to the fallout from
the financial crash by using interest- or exchange-rate adjustments, and
neither did they have much room for deficit spending. This was espe-
cially problematic for those Eurozone countries with high levels of public

7 Ben Chu, Newsnight, BB2, 24 January 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epi

sode/m000dlbv/newsnight-24012020.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

indebtedness, such as Greece. Lower tax receipts and increased calls on

public spending created increasing pressure on the public debt, along with
increased interest rates in order to finance it, as it grew increasingly risky—
with the prospect that rising interest rates might bring about that very
un-sustainability that was driving rates up in the first place. Since it was
not possible for Greece to respond by devaluing the currency, the only
measures available for addressing what had become a sovereign debt crisis
were the acceptance of international bailouts along with public spending
cuts.
Had integration—in accordance with the tenets of ‘functional spillover’
(Haas 1958)—gone beyond monetary policy to embrace fiscal policy as
well, it would have been possible to avoid austerity. An EU-wide system
of taxation, with the EU as a whole taking over responsibility for the
indebted countries’ liabilities, would have made possible, between the
economically prosperous and less prosperous regions of the Union, the
resource transfers that happen as a matter of course between more and
less prosperous regions within individual nation states. The reason such
arrangements had not been put in place was essentially political: the need
to get them approved through the Union’s weakly supranational gover-
nance structures and the difficulties of doing this given that the structures
are dominated by governments each of which is sensitive to the pressures
exerted on it by its own national electorate. As a result, the sovereign debt
crisis was a crisis for Europe as a whole.
Inter-governmentalism is advantageous to international capital because
it obstructs the adoption of measures (e.g. a European-wide tax regime
ending the freedom of multinationals to channel profits through states
where taxes are lowest) that would restrict its freedom in the inter-
ests of addressing power disparities. It also enables political choices (e.g.
austerity) to be presented as technical necessities (required to ensure the
stability of public finances and the Eurozone). Thus it is that organisations
like DiEM25 and others argue that to be on the left in the early twenty-
first century is to be committed to a project of transnational democracy.
They see this as a means of controlling internationally mobile capital; of
making possible alternatives to austerity in the face of economic down-
turns, and of avoiding, in such cases, the centrifugal pulls of national
chauvinism (which has also been fuelled by—and, so far rendered vain
efforts to find an EU-wide solution for—the international migrant crisis).
The purpose of this volume, then, is to explore what the 2019 Euro-
pean elections have to tell us about the extent to which the European
10 J. L. NEWELL

socialist and social-democratic parties are giving voice to this left-wing

integrationist agenda. The questions it seeks to throw light on are
twofold: Is the agenda being given a higher profile than in the past and
with what consequences in terms of electoral performances? On the other
hand, how are the parties coping with the various obstacles in the way
of effective pursuit of this agenda, and what is their relative significance?
The parties would appear to face at least four such obstacles.
Internally, they face the obstacle of growing Euroscepticism within
their own ranks (Hickson et al. 2019; De Luca 2019). While media atten-
tion has largely focussed on the growth of Euroscepticism in political
parties of the radical right, there is also growing scepticism on the left.
This is not just confined to the radical left but is also, increasingly, to be
found in social-democratic circles. As the chapter by Holmes and Roder
makes clear, the history of social democracy’s relationship with Euro-
pean integration is by no means straightforward. At least since the 1970s,
however, social democracy has generally been pro-European, especially in
the context of more free-market domestic policy agendas and the chal-
lenges of globalisation; but with the perception of increased economic
liberalism within the EU, even some on the centre left have became more
receptive to Euroscepticism, and this has been especially pronounced since
the Great Recession.
Externally, there is the obstacle from the social democrats’ former
supporters among the socially conservative ‘precariat’ (Rovny 2018)
whose outlooks are national and protectionist rather than international
and cosmopolitan. The challenge for the parties of the left is to construct
a narrative that enables them to bridge the divide between the two groups
of their potential and actual supporters. A narrative is a story which, by
telling people who they are and how they came to be where they are,
creates common values; reinforces identity (against the ‘other’); lays out
objectives, and identifies end states (Laity 2018). Umberto Bossi had a
narrative revolving around hard-working northern Italians, Padania, and
secession from Roma ladrona. Berlusconi in 1994 had a narrative based
on the virtues of a civil society under attack from the left, and the realisa-
tion of a second Italian miracle. The Five-star Movement has a narrative
based on the themes of direct democracy and the mainstream party elites’
dishonesty and unresponsiveness to ordinary citizens. Matteo Salvini has a
narrative based on the cultural and economic threats, from migration and
the EU, to ordinary Italians’ ways of life. Narratives are important because
they move people in a way that purely rational, scientific discourse—based
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

on appeals to sound empirical evidence combined with logical argu-

ment—does not and cannot. People believe them to be true because they
want them to be true. Without narratives—involving emotional resonance
and moral authority as well as rational persuasion—we find it difficult to
make sense of the world and our place in it. Arguably, therefore, much
of the explanation for the mainstream left’s electoral difficulties of recent
years has to do with the way in which the end of the Keynesian consensus,
the collapse of the Berlin wall, the rise of neo-liberalism and the ‘end of
ideology’ deprived it of its traditional narratives. Consequently, it has to
recreate them, with European integration offering a potentially fruitful
base on which to do so. So the question is, How well are the main-
stream parties of the left, and their transnational representatives, especially
the Party of European Socialists (PES), actually managing to construct
and communicate a genuine and effective narrative around their political
project?
Institutionally, there is the obstacle posed by the EU itself and its
preferred styles of communication. Communication constructs identity
and so a style of communication that is purely technical and that fails to
capture popular imaginations is unlikely to be helpful. So the questions
that need addressing are: To what extent has Europe’s own commu-
nication in recent years, in the period leading up to, and during, the
2019 election campaign, assisted or obstructed a left-wing pro-integration
agenda? What have the parties themselves been seeking to do to shape this
communication to their needs? The limits on the role of the European
Parliament and the lack of a genuine European political space or demos
have hitherto conspired to lend a predominantly ‘technical’ and inter-
governmental hue to the messages coming out of the EU institutions,
at the expense of those reflecting an awareness of the sense of a common
European identity. However, recent years have seen four important devel-
opments. They are, the decline in the drive towards institutional reform
spearheaded by the Commission; the shift in power between EU insti-
tutions in favour of the parliament; the growing awareness of European
citizens (with the single currency, freedom of movement and so on) of the
significance of the EU in their everyday lives; the decline of the so-called
permissive consensus (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970; Hooge and Marks
2009). All these have led to a growing awareness on the part of represen-
tatives of EU institutions of the significance of political communication
for the success of policy-making (Belluati and Caraffini 2015).
12 J. L. NEWELL

Finally, there are organisational obstacles created by the parties them-

selves and the difficulties they face in cooperating and pooling sovereignty
within the framework of the PES and the other transnational organisa-
tions of the left. Given that the transnational European parties, unlike
their national counterparts, have no responsibility for sustaining in office
a parliamentary executive, they have throughout their history tended to
be weak and undisciplined entities—some would say more or less empty
vessels in which cooperation has been difficult, a consistent disappoint-
ment, with few developmental prospects (Dunphy and March 2019).
On the other hand, given that they do seek to coordinate the activity
of their members, they may be considered nascent parties intimately
bound up with the emergence of the European Parliament as a signif-
icant EU actor. Moreover, two developments made it seem reasonable
to think that the PES would be more effective in 2019 as compared
to past elections in ensuring a profile for a unified, distinctly European,
agenda in the national-level campaigns of its component parties. The first
was the fact that media attention in the period leading up to the 2019
elections focussed on the possibility that the social democrats and the
European People’s Party would lose their combined majority in the Euro-
pean Parliament for the first time in its history. The second was the fact
that European Parliament elections have since the Lisbon Treaty acquired
an influencing if not determining role in the choice of president of the
European Commission. The challenge for the research, then, was to assess
the extent to which the expectation was borne out empirically.
In short, the volume revolves around two sets of questions. First, what
do the European elections suggest about the extent to which the main-
stream parties of the left are attempting to deal with their decline through
an increased, common, emphasis on the project for a more integrated,
‘social Europe’ as opposed to an emphasis on the more ‘traditional’,
domestically focussed, issues? The period since the Great Recession has
seen a heightened profile of Europe in domestic politics. It has seen
heightened polarisation around the issue of Europe. Especially in the
countries of the Eurozone, media discussion of the domestic implications
of EU decision-making can influence the climate of opinion regardless
of the actions of domestic party actors themselves. Given all of this, we
would expect the social democrats among such actors to seek to reassert
control over the conditions of opinion formation through a renewed
emphasis on integration (as well as its benefits and its potential as a source
of identities to rival national, exclusionary identities) in opposition to their
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

populist and Eurosceptical adversaries. Hence the two questions driving

the volume: To what extent do the campaigns waged by these parties
bear out this expectation? Second, how well are the parties coping with
the internal and external, institutional and political obstacles in the way
of pursuit of this agenda?
Given these concerns, the remainder of the volume is divided into
two sections where the first consists of four chapters each devoted to
an historical account, and an evaluation of the significance for the Euro-
pean socialist project, of the problems/issues/concerns outlined above.
They are: (1) growing Euroscepticism in the ranks of the socialists/social
democrats themselves; (2) the construction of a narrative capable of
bringing unity to a divided target constituency vulnerable to the appeals
of populist and nationalist adversaries; (3) EU institutions’ own commu-
nications; (4) the organisational strengths and weaknesses of the PES
itself.
In the light of these four sets of issues, the six chapters of part II of
the volume describe, explain and evaluate the 2019 European election
campaigns conducted by PES member parties in France, Italy, Germany,
the UK, Spain and Greece. They seek, by comparison with the parties’
campaigns at past European elections, to throw light on the extent to
which in 2019 they heightened their emphasis on social Europe and
renewed European integration. The countries were chosen to reflect the
need to include the most significant member states in terms of size and
to include a sufficiently wide range of countries to make possible the
investigation of relevant comparisons and contrasts.
It turned out in the end that the social democrats were unable to
reverse their long-term decline at the 2019 European Parliament elec-
tions. The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats ended up
with 38 seats fewer than the number they had had at the end of the
outgoing parliament: 147 as opposed to 185. On the other hand, right-
wing populist parties did less well than many had feared, and with climate
change having everywhere acquired increased salience, Green parties, as
well as other parties with EU integration agendas to tackle the issue, saw
significant advances. For example, the Greens-European Free Alliance saw
its seat share increase from 52 to 70. Once again, the election campaign
featured a televised debate between the Spitzenkandidaten. The Euro-
peanisation of domestic public spheres if not yet the Europeanisation of
national media (involving a focus on the same issues at the same time with
the same frames of interpretation) was reflected in an increase in turnout,
14 J. L. NEWELL

which at 51% was the highest for twenty years. As signs of encourage-
ment for a left-wing integration project, these were all small—but they
were signs nonetheless. The combined health and economic crisis created
by the coronavirus outbreak eight months later suggested that without
such a project, or something similar, the EU might lose its already fragile
legitimacy, thus putting its very survival at risk.

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 PART I

The Challenges
 CHAPTER 2

Social Democracy and Euroscepticism: The

Integration Trap

Michael Holmes and Knut Roder

Social Democracy and European Integration

Social democrats were the original Eurosceptics. When the integration
project first emerged in the 1950s, social democratic parties in several
countries—both in the original six member states and in others that
initially chose to remain outside the new organisation—were at the fore-
front of opposition. Other parties were perhaps more outspoken in their
criticism, but the scepticism evident in social democracy was arguably
more significant because social democracy emerged in the post-war era
as a powerful parliamentary and governmental force in almost all Western
European democracies.
This chapter analyses the development of European social democra-
cy’s relationship with integration. The relationship between these two

M. Holmes (B)
European School of Politics (ESPOL), Lille, France
e-mail: michael.holmes@univ-catholille.fr
K. Roder
Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

© The Author(s) 2021 19

J. L. Newell (ed.), Europe and the Left,
Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54541-3_2
20 M. HOLMES AND K. RODER

transformative projects has gone through several phases. Of course, while

European integration is a relatively uniform construction, social democ-
racy in Europe is far more variegated, with different stories in different
countries. Nonetheless, we argue that there are identifiable phases in the
relationship between social democracy and European integration, and we
use these to analyse the trajectory of Euroscepticism in social democracy.
These phases reflect the interplay of three features. First, there is the
ideological and political evolution of social democracy in the post-war
era. It evolved from a relatively marginal force, ‘seldom in control of the
government machine’ before 1945 (Sassoon 2014: xi), to enjoy a ‘golden
age’ (Sejersted 2011: 184) of political and policy influence in the 1950s
and 1960s. This was followed by a decline in influence and support and
a consequent attempt at redefinition and renewal by social democrats
(Gillespie and Paterson 1993). However, the centre-left continued to
struggle. Occasional sightings of a ‘magical return’ of social democracy
(Cuperus and Kandel 1998) proved illusory. Instead, the language ranges
from ‘retreat’ (Callaghan 2000) to ‘crisis’ (Scharpf 1991) to ‘death’
(Lavelle 2008) of social democracy.
Second, there is the evolution of the European integration project. It
has enlarged from the initial six member states to the 27 remaining in the
EU after Brexit in 2020 (see, for instance, Ikonomou, Andry and Bieberg
2017). This expansion contributed to adjustments of the institutional
structure, with a deepening of the powers allocated to EU-level insti-
tutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament
(see, for instance, Hodson and Petersen 2017). In addition, integration
has also been extended to new policy domains, such as regional and social
programmes, environmental activities and foreign and security policy (see,
for instance, Wallace et al. 2014).
We argue that underpinning both is the pattern of development of
the post-war political economy in Europe. There have been two distinct
models. Through the 1950s and 1960s, there was a consensus based on a
significant degree of government intervention in socio-economic affairs,
particularly through the construction of welfare states. This was closely
aligned to social democratic ideals, and social democratic parties were
able to pursue their programmes without significant challenge from the
European level. It could be argued that social democracy was trying to
transform capitalism, and that the European integration project was not
seen as an obstacle to that.
 2 SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND EUROSCEPTICISM … 21

However, in the 1970s that model began to stall, and a new neoliberal
consensus emerged as the dominant paradigm. In this period, capitalism
transformed social democracy, and the EU played a role in that. The
Union was strongly influenced by neoliberal ideas in key policy areas.
This had a profound effect on social democracy, with Lavelle arguing,
‘social democrats have embraced neo-liberal policies since at least the
1980s’ (2008: 9). Finally, we argue that the dominance of this neolib-
eral consensus was fractured by the financial crisis of 2008. But instead
of revitalising social democracy, the crisis seems to have accelerated its
decline.
These developments have shaped the Eurosceptic dimension of social
democracy. On the one hand, social democrats have always espoused
an internationalist vision and have for the most part accepted working
within a capitalist framework. Crouch described social democracy as a
way of ‘making capitalism fit for society’ (2013), which sought ‘to recon-
cile socialist ideas with democratic politics in a capitalist world’ (Keman
2017: 3) and which ‘traditionally insisted on the need to use democracy
to address capitalism’s negative consequences’ (Berman 2020). On the
other hand, some social democrats have regarded European integration
as a limiting factor—be that real or potential—in achieving their preferred
policy goals.
This chapter discusses four periods in the relationship between social
democracy and European integration. There was a hesitant period in the
1950s and 1960s, where some major social democratic parties were uncer-
tain about the benefits of integration and where Eurosceptic opinions
were quite prevalent. This gave way to a period of social democratic
support for integration in the 1970s and 1980s, with Euroscepticism
becoming marginalised. As neoliberalism took hold in the 1990s and
2000s, Eurosceptic opinions began to re-emerge, though the dominant
social democratic stance remained pro-European. Finally, the period from
the financial crisis in 2008 has seen further strengthening of social demo-
cratic Euroscepticism, though still within a context of pro-Europeanism.
We identify two main sources of social democratic Euroscepticism.
First, there is an ideological dimension. While social democracy has always
accommodated itself to capitalism, the degree of that accommodation
varies. Some have accepted a tight embrace; others have sought a more
arms-length relationship. This is reflected in perspectives on European
integration. Second, there is a national dimension. This produces different
social democracies that are specific to their national political and economic
22 M. HOLMES AND K. RODER

setting. Again, this impacts on perspectives on European integration.

Social democrats in some countries see an EU which could enhance their
social provisions, others see the Union as weakening or undermining their
achievements.
In overall terms, integration has proven to be something of a trap for
social democracy. The integrationist principles of international coopera-
tion, of promotion of peace, of democratic politics, of mutual develop-
ment, of shared values are ones that are intrinsic to social democracy.
However, the EU is also a fundamentally economic project, which has
advanced a very specific model of capitalist development. For a time,
social democracy could accommodate itself to that, particularly when inte-
gration did not impinge too much on social policies or when it helped
to advance them. But the EU is increasingly seen as a constraint on
social programmes rather than a facilitator of them. This has brought the
Eurosceptic elements in social democracy back to the fore.

Approaching an Integrated Europe

Post-war Western Europe gave rise to two major political developments.
First, social democracy became a mainstream political and economic
movement. Second, European integration was established, starting from
the Coal and Steel Community of the 1950s and evolving into the EEC
and beyond. Both developments reflected a desire for new forms of
cooperative politics, and they shared an internationalist outlook. Social
democrats were certainly not against the principle of European integra-
tion, and some played leading roles in the establishment of the ECSC and
the EEC. Notably, Paul-Henri Spaak of the Belgian Socialists, Guy Mollet
of the SFIO in France and Sicco Mansholt of the Dutch PvdA were very
influential figures in these founding years.
However, there were two limiting factors. First, many social democrats
were more interested in having power and pursuing policies in the
national sphere than at the European level. This is evident from the choice
of ministries in coalition governments in the six founder member states
in the 1950s. Social democrats frequently took on roles such as Finance,
Economic Affairs, Social Security, Public Works and Labour,1 but were

1 In the Willem Drees governments in the Netherlands from 1948 to 1958, the PvdA
held areas such as Finance, Social Affairs, Reconstruction and Housing, and Agriculture
(which included food supplies). In Italy, the PSDI featured in a number of coalitions in
Another random document with
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XVI.

Heinäkuun 22 p.

Tänään haudattiin rouva Nurhonen. Olimme Raivan kanssa

osanottajina surusaatossa, ja ajoimme samalla hevosella.

Kaikki sukulaiset olivat haudalla. Me seisoimme loitompana, mutta

ei huomaamattomina. Kun hauta oli umpeen luotu, laskin minäkin
kummulle pienen seppeleen "kahdelta entiseltä palvelijalta". Aijoin
heti tämän jälkeen poistua läheisyydestä, mutta Asplund saapui
luokseni ja puserti kauvan kättäni. Kaikki muutkin, John ja Selim
Nurhosen minulle tuntemattomat rouvatkin, tulivat tervehtimään ja
kiittämään. Kohtaus oli liikuttava, enkä minä voinut kieltääntyä
Asplundin kutsusta saapua illalla suruhuoneelle teelle. Me menimme
sinne molemmat.

Paitsi meitä, olivat ainoastaan omaiset koolla. Vastaanottomme oli

ystävällinen, Asplundin kohdalta suorastaan sydämellinen.

— Meistä kaikista oli kovin hauskaa nähdä teidän vainajalle

osoittavan viimeisen kunnioituksenne, sanoi hän. Anteeksi
antaminen on kaunis teko.
 Selitin ettei suinkaan meillä ollut vainajalle mitään anteeksi
annettavaa.

— Niin, vastasi Asplund, me toisethan sitä aikanamme välit

sotkimme, hän oli vaan asiain keskustana. Mutta mekin toivomme
samalla kertaa entisten suhteitten unohdusta.

Tunsin itseni hellämieliseksi, enkä voinut mitään vastata. Aivan

pakostakin muistui mieleeni viimeinen yhdessäoloni Asplundin
kanssa, päivänä jälkeen osakeyhtiön kokouksen. Hän oli silloinkin
samalla lailla sovinnollinen, melkein kuin tunnonvaivoissa oleva.

Minä olin mennyt hänen luoksensa ja loukatun uhkamielisesti

ilmoittanut en enää päivääkään olevani toimessani. Hän koetteli
minua tyynnyttää, ja selitti uuden kokouksen pitämisen olevan
välttämättömän. Mutta minä olin päätöksessäni horjumaton ja toimin
kuin unissani. Tarjosin kaikki osakkeeni heille samallaisilla
maksuehdoilla kuin Helanderin osakkeet olimme ostaneet. Hän
kieltääntyi ja sanoi ettei tarkoituksensa ole ollut tällä tavalla työtäni
liikkeessä palkita. Minä uhkasin, jos he eivät tarjoukseeni suostu,
myödä ne vaikka Koskiselle. Ja perääntymätön kun tällä kertaa olin,
annoinkin ne Helanderin jälkeen kaupunkiin tulleelle asianajajalle
myötäväksi, jolta Nurhoset ne esittämilläni ehdoilla sitten ostivat. Itse
en tämän päivän jälkeen ottanut osaa liikkeen hoitoon. Kaupungissa
viivyin vaan pari viikkoa asiaini järjestelyä varten, pysytellen erilläni
kaikista tuttavistani. Ja minä lähdinkin kuin pakoon pujahtava
pahantekijä, ensin kuitenkin pistäännyttyäni Löfbergilässä ja
Raivassa hyvästillä, mutta heillekään lähtöpäivääni sanomatta. Se
olikin viimeinen kerta kuin täti Löfbergiä tapasin.

Täti ei silloin ollenkaan ollut entinen leikillinen talon emäntä, vaan

valittava ja nuhteleva.
 — Täällä väsytään kaikkeen kohottavampaan ja takerrutaan
pikkuasioihin ja tehdään niistä suuria, vieläpä ihmisten
elinkysymyksiä, sanoi hän. Mokomistakin. Niinkuin ei nyt täällä olisi
alaa vaikka kenelle. Mutta pikkukaupunki on pikkukaupunki
itsekkäine luonteineen, ja se turmelee kaikki, jotka sen helmaan
antautuvat.

Hyvästellessä sanoi hän:

— Pysykää te luonteeltanne nuorena, niin kaikki muu käy hyvin.

Minä ainakaan en aijo vanheta, väsyä enkä kyllästyä.

Ja aivan sama tunne, jonka usein olin tässä talossa saanut, valtasi
minut nytkin. Tunsin itsessäni syyllisyyttä asiain menoon. Mutta minä
kiirehdin lähtöäni.

Raivassa sen sijaan oli käyntini vain hätäinen pistäytyminen.

Pelkäsin joutuvani avomieliseksi, ja jätin hyvästini hämmästyneinä
lähtöpäivääni kysyvälle talonväelle. En sanonut sitä tietäväni, sillä
tahdoin luopua entisyydestäni kuin ei sitä olisi ollutkaan.

Mutta jo seuraavana päivänä minä lähdin. Ja kun kaupunki lakkasi

näkymästä, purskahdin äänekkääseen itkuun kuin pikku lapsi. Itkin
kauvan, kyynelten aivan virtanaan vuotaessa.

*****

— Olemme ihmetelleet, sanoi Asplund tänään, ettet ole käynyt

entistä taloasi katsomassa kun paikkakunnalla kerran olet oleksinut.
Jos minä olisin kaupungissa ollut, olisin käynyt sinua tapaamassa.

Selitin monasti käyntiä ajatelleeni, mutta on se juuri hänen

poissaolonsa takia jäänyt tekemättä.
 Asplund kertoili kaikista asioista peittelemättömästi ja avonaisesti.
Monta vaikeutta oli heillä ollut voitettavana, vallankin ensi aikoina,
mutta sitten kun lasten kengät kuluivat, on kaikki taas mennyt
säännöllistä menoaan. Hänkin on luovuttanut osan osakkeistaan
Nurhosille, joten veljekset nyt suurimmaksi osaksi omistavat liikkeen
kokonaan.

— Rouva vainajan toiveet ovat siis toteutuneet, sanoin.

— Ovat kyllä. Ei hänellä paljoa ajettavia asioita maailmassa

ollutkaan, siksi kai hänen pyyteensä toteutuivatkin. Kun siinä ei vaan
olisi tapahtunut vääryyttä muita kohtaan.

— Hm, vastasin. Eiköhän kaikki ihmiset maailmassa lopullisesti

toimi enemmän tai vähemmän itsekkäästi, niin ettei jonkun pienempi
onnistuminen ollenkaan tarvitse tuottaa omantunnon vaivoja toisille.

Hän ei vastannut siitä asiasta, vaan jatkoi hetken perästä.

— Kovin minua kuitenkin ovat vaivanneet ne vanhat asiat,

vallankin se Nurhosen poikamainen äänestys silloin
kokouksessamme. Vaikka erimielisyyttä olikin, olisin sentään eronkin
toivonut tapahtuvan sovinnossa ja ilman katkeruutta. Ilman sinua ja
Helanderia emme aikanaan kuitenkaan olisi minnekään päässeet.
Olen monasti ajatellut teidän kenties olleen niinä erimielisyyksien
aikana oikeassakin.

Pyysin ettemme niistä enää puhuisi ja niin siirtyi keskustelumme

kaupungin muihin asioihin. Asplund on luopunut myöskin
sanomalehden toimittajan tehtävistä. Kolmatta lehteä ei ole
perustettu, eikä entinen persoonallinen puoluejako enää
sellaisenaan olemassa.
 — Uudet yleisemmät puoluesuunnat ovat täälläkin muodostuneet,
sanoi hän. Se vanha juomakauppakysymys on jo monta vuotta ollut
ratkaistuna. Paria vuotta myöhemmin olivat kaikki yksimielisiä
siirtämään oikeudet yhtiölle.

Kysyin eikö ollut ikävää jättää vaikutustaan sanomalehtimiehenä?

— Ei ollenkaan, vastasi hän. Minulle on tullut uusi vaikutuspiiri,

kiitollisempi ja vastaanottavampi. Tarkoitan näitä, sanoi hän, sivellen
vieressään seisovan poikansa hiuksia. Pienet voimani uhraan minä
nyt etupäässä näitten kasvatukseen. Uudessa polvessa ovat
suurimmat toiveet ihanteittansa onnistumiselle.

Illalla kävimme kauppaakin katsomassa. Kaikki ulkonainen oli

pääasiassa entisellään. Pulpetti, jonka ääressä monena vuotena olin
istunut, oli entisellä paikallaan konttorissa. Siinä istui nyt vaan toinen
mies, John Nurhonen.

Kaikkia näitä vanhoja tuttuja esineitä katsellessani, en pysynyt

tyynenä, vaan muutuin alakuloiseksi. Tunsin taas uudestaan saman
raskaan tunteen, joka aina valtaa minut kun huomaan kuinka
toimeton ja tarpeeton ihminen minä maailmassa olen.

Aivan kuin aatokseni aavistaen, sanoi Asplund:

— Muuta sinäkin takaisin vanhaan asuinkaupunkiisi. Koskisen liike

olisi luullakseni ostettavissa.

Minä aivan kuin heräsin mietteistäni.

— Toivoisitko sinä sitä? kysyin.

— Toivoisin, ainakin minä tekisin sen, vastasi hän.

 Ja nyt täällä kotona istuissani ja pikku Ainon pöydälleni jättämiä
metsän kukkia katsellessani, huomaan todellakin mieliväni näin
tehdä.
XVII.

Heinäkuun 30 p.

Kun selailen näitä päiväkirjamuistelmiani, joita aikani kuluksi olen

paperille kirjoitellut, huomaan tulleeni siihen aikaan, josta elämäni
viimeinen kymmenvuotinen, yksitoikkoisen tasanen taival alkaa.
Minun on siis aika lopettaa muistelmat.

Ja minä teenkin niin. Minä alan taas elää.

Olen ostanut Koskisen kaupan ja mennyt kihloihin Hilma Raivan

kanssa.

Minulle alkaa uusi elämä. Tunnen sen verissäni ja jäsenissäni.

Mieleni on kevyt ja toivehikas kuin nuorukaisella. Jäseniäni ei kolota,
eikä tauteja tunnu ruumiissani. Olen kuin uusi ihminen.

Elämäni siirtyi keväästä suoraan syksyyn. Nyt alkaa minun kesäni.

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