Book Review: Paolo Chiocchetti, The Radical Left Party Family in Western Europe, 1989–2015
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Author | Davide Vittori |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917717444 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsEurope |
Book Reviews 671
only for specialists but also for a wider gen-
eral audience.
Jorge Valderas
(University of York)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917718669
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The Radical Left Party Family in Western
Europe, 1989–2015 by Paolo Chiocchetti.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. 244pp., £90.00 (h/b),
ISBN 9781138656185
The aim of the book by Paolo Chiocchetti is to
evaluate the evolution of the radical left parties
(RLPs) in Europe since the end of the Cold War.
Partially in contrast with some part of the litera-
ture, Chiocchetti is sceptical about the possibil-
ity of encapsulating different programmatic and
organisational trajectories within a defined (rad-
ical left) party family. Nonetheless, he identifies
three common denominators at the systemic
level, which frame the experience of this family:
‘the triple crisis of communism, of the Fordist
social model, and of neoliberalism’ (p. 3).
Using both qualitative and quantitative meth-
odological tools, the author combines a medium-
N analysis across 17 West European countries
from 1914 to 1988 (chapter 2) and from 1989 to
2015 (chapter 3) and a small-N in-depth com-
parison of three case studies focusing on
Germany, Italy and France (chapters 4–6).
The attempt to ‘measure’ radical left parties’
trends taking into consideration their electoral,
parliamentary, governmental and membership
‘strengths’ is very ambitious. Nonetheless, the
operationalisation of the ‘overall strength’ seems
to underestimate some relevant aspects such as
the role of electoral laws and the Sartorian con-
cept of relevance in the electoral and parliamen-
tarian outcomes. More importantly, it seems that
the ‘societal strength’ deserves a greater focus on
those crucial aspects – finance, communication
and civil society – which are included in the
small-N cases (pp. 88, 127, 166) but excluded in
the methodological introduction (chapter 1).
The analysis of the cross-national trends in
both pre- and post-Cold War contexts is accu-
rate and, mostly, it is matched with an insightful
historical contextualisation, which frames the
strategies of RLPs vis-à-vis the most relevant
international events. The empirical chapters on
the three case studies denote an extensive
knowledge of RLPs as well as of the three polit-
ical systems in terms of electoral competition
and of the internal dynamics between tradi-
tional and non-mainstream parties.
Contrary to its historical factionalism, what
emerges in the book is that the radical left was
able, in some cases, to regroup successfully (in
the German case, but only partially in the Italian
and French cases), providing a ‘modernized
ideology, a pluralist organization and the will-
ingness to reward potential partners with ade-
quate resources and visibility’ (p. 218).
However, according to Chiocchetti, the
overall balance of power is still unfavourable
for RLPs in Europe, despite the success of par-
ties such as Syriza in Greece or Podemos in
Spain. Finally, the insertion of several summa-
ries at the beginning, the end and in the middle
of some chapters complicates the overall flu-
ency of the book.
Davide Vittori
(LUISS Guido Carli, Rome)
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917717444
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The Americas
What’s Wrong with the First Amendment
by Steven H Shiffrin. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016. 225pp., £64.95 (h/b), ISBN
9781107160965
In the era of ‘fake news’, populism, growing lev-
els of hate speech and easier-than-ever access to
online pornography, Steven H Shiffrin’s What’s
Wrong with the First Amendment offers a power-
ful challenge to free speech absolutism. In Part I
(chapters 1–7), Shiffrin offers an elegant and
sophisticated analysis of how the US First
Amendment, and the way the Supreme Court has
interpreted it over time, have allowed various
forms of harmful speech, including racist speech,
speech that undermines citizens’ privacy or right
to fair trial, pornographic speech and speech that
depicts animal cruelty.
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