Commissioned Book Review: Marina Prentoulis, Left Populism in Europe: Lessons from Jeremy Corbyn to Podemos
| Author | Lasse Thomassen |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221075923 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Review |
Political Studies Review
2023, Vol. 21(1) NP29 –NP30
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1075923PSW0010.1177/14789299221075923Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2022
Commissioned Book Review
Left Populism in Europe: Lessons from
Jeremy Corbyn to Podemos by Marina
Prentoulis. London: Pluto Press, 2021 192
pp., £16.99, ISBN: 9780745337630.
As both proponents (Chantal Mouffe) and crit-
ics (Éric Fassin) of left populism have noted, we
live in a populist moment. This is also Marina
Prentoulis’ starting point in this new book on
Left Populism in Europe. She characterises the
populist moment in terms of a crisis of neoliber-
alism as evidenced by the financial crisis of
2007–2008, and in terms of a crisis of political
representation. Populists – including left popu-
lists – intervene into this ‘moment’ when the
legitimacy of existing economic and political
institutions are being questioned. The question
is what distinguishes left populism in this con-
text. That is the topic of an emerging academic
literature of which this book is one of the most
recent and finest examples.
Prentoulis does not provide a theory of pop-
ulism, but she draws on Ernesto Laclau’s and
Chantal Mouffe’s works on populism. She
therefore takes populism to be a particular way
of articulating ideological content, which can
be of many kinds, right or left. According to
this approach, a populist discourse articulates a
people by gathering together otherwise uncon-
nected demands against the system; the people
takes the form of the chain of equivalence
between these demands, and the chain of
equivalence is represented by a so-called empty
signifier (a leader, an image of the people, etc.),
and the people is articulated as divided from an
antagonistic enemy (‘the system’, the estab-
lishment, etc.). This is a highly abstract and
formal definition of populism, but Prentoulis
manages to make it very concrete through the
three case studies she presents: SYRIZA in
Greece, (Unidas) Podemos in Spain and Jeremy
Corbyn/Momentum in the United Kingdom.
What emerges is a careful assessment of pop-
ulism as a strategy for the European left, with
the emphasis on these three countries (Greece,
Spain, and the United Kingdom).
Prentoulis assesses the success of the three
left populist movements, but most of all she
spells out what it means to use a left populist
strategy for a number issues, such as the organ-
isational structure of parties, the relationship
between parties and movements, political pro-
grammes, and nation-state sovereignty. This is
the most path-breaking aspect of the book. She
is able to make this assessment with the advan-
tage of hindsight: there is a sense in which the
populist moment may be waning, at least inso-
far as left populism is concerned. SYRIZA is
out of government since 2019; Unidas Podemos
is part of a coalition government in Spain, but
have left behind much of their earlier populist
discourse; and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has
transformed into a more traditional catch-all
party under Keir Starmer. While we may ask if
the populist moment has passed, Prentoulis’
analysis is still highly relevant for the future of
the Left because she connects populist dis-
course to a number of other issues such as
organisational structure.
The book is structured both historically and
thematically. It starts by placing contemporary
European left populism in the context of the
global financial crisis and the weakening legiti-
macy of representative institutions. It then con-
nects the financial crisis to the subsequent
austerity policies of many governments. This is
the context of the emergence of the movements
of the squares in 2011, in particular in Spain and
Greece. Prentoulis shows how those move-
ments opened up a new political space by artic-
ulating an antagonism between the people and
the establishment. In Spain and Greece, left
populist parties shifted that discourse from the
squares and into the political institutions. This
then leads Prentoulis to consider the organisa-
tional structure of these new parties – SYRIZA
and Podemos, but also Momentum within the
Labour Party – and the way in which the parties
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