Socio-political developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots anti-austerity campaign: towards national parliaments and local spaces

Abstract

This article investigates the socio-political developments in Greece and Spain in the wake of the grassroots anti-austerity campaign from 2011 on, which have unfolded towards national parliaments and local spaces. It does so by analysing the institutionalisation of the populist radical Left as compared with the local-oriented agency of social movements in these two countries. It argues that these alternative approaches to social change and emancipation illustrate the contending paradigms of contemporary political thought reflecting upon collective movements, political action, and social transformation: the vertical politics of hegemony and the horizontal politics of the multitude. It firstly introduces these contending theoretical paradigms and then analyses the political trajectory of Podemos and SYRIZA from the squares to national parliaments vis-à-vis the radical agency of social movements transforming and generating socio-spatial entanglements at the local level. Lastly, the article puts forward theoretical possibilities for an alternative conceptualisation of grassroots radical agency and democratic politics in present times, seeking to reconcile the absolute democratic politics of the multitude with the broad counter-hegemonic revolutionary project.

Keywords

• anti-austerity movement
• populist radical Left
• social movements
• multitude
• hegemony