This is the first book in either English or German to analyse the development of Germany's newest political party, the Left Party. It compares and contrasts the party's development with that of Germany's most well-known outsider party - the Greens. It also analyses the party's performance in office in two eastern German Länder.

Hudson explores the development of communists and other left forces, charting their survival and renewal after 1989. She shows how an open and democratic form of socialism has emerged which embraces environmental, gender and anti-war politics.

Germany remains a leader in Europe, as demonstrated by its influential role in the on-going policy challenges in response to the post 2008 financial and economic crises. Rarely does the composition of a national government matter as much as Germany’s did following the 2009 Bundestag election. This volume, which brings together established and up-and coming academics from both sides of the Atlantic, delves into the dynamics and consequences surrounding this fateful election: How successful was Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership of the Grand Coalition and what does her new partnership with the Free Democrats auger? In the face economic crisis, why did German voters empower a center-right market-liberal coalition? Why did the SPD, one of the oldest and most distinguished parties in the world self-destruct and what are the chances that it will recover? The chapters go beyond the contemporary situation and provide deeper analyses of the long-term decline of the catchall parties, structural changes in the party system, electoral behavior, the evolution of perceptions of gender in campaigns, and the use of new social media in German politics.

The German Left and the Weimar Republic illuminates the history of the political left by presenting a wide range of documents on various aspects of socialist and communist activity in Germany. Separate chapters deal with the policy of Social Democracy in and out of government, the attempts of the Communist Party to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and then later to oppose it. Later chapters move away from the political scene to treat the attitudes of the parties to key social issues, in particular questions of gender and sexuality. The book concludes with a presentation of documents on various groups of socialist and communist dissidents. Many of the documents are made accessible for the first time, and each chapter begins with an original introduction indicating the current state of research.

Building on a comprehensive theoretical framework that draws on discursive and ideational approaches to populism, this volume offers a comparative mapping of the Populist Radical Left in contemporary Europe. It explores the novel discursive, political and organisational features of several political actors, as well as the conditions of their emergence and success, while being alert to the role of relevant social movements. Chapters feature case studies of the Greek party Syriza, the Spanish Podemos, the German Die Linke, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and France Insoumise, the Dutch Socialist Party and the Slovenian Levica. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour in the UK and ‘Momentum’, the movement that supports him is also examined. A separate chapter is devoted to recent grassroots social movements that can be seen as instances of progressive populism, such as the ‘squares movement’ in Spain and Greece. This book fills a crucial gap in the literature on radical left politics and populism in Europe, contributing to the rapidly burgeoning field of populism studies.

What has happened to the European radical left after the collapse of the USSR? How has it reacted, reformed, even revived? This new volume is one of the first to provide an overview of the main developments in contemporary European radical left parties (those defining themselves as to the left of, and not merely on the left of social democracy), which are now an increasingly visible phenomenon in European party politics. Unlike many of the existing studies it focuses on communist and non-communist parties, addresses their non-parliamentary and international activity, and takes a pan-European perspective, focusing on both Eastern and Western Europe. March focuses on key contemporary left parties, the nature of their radicalism and their ideological and strategic positions, and overall, addresses their current dynamics and immediate electoral prospects. The book argues that radical left parties are still afflicted by existential crises about the nature of ‘socialism’, and the future of communist parties in particular is under threat. The most successful left parties are no longer extremist, but present themselves as defending values and policies that social democrats have allegedly abandoned, focus on pragmatism rather than ideology and increasingly orientate themselves towards government. Providing a significant contribution to existing literature in the field, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, political parties and radical politics.