In this blog, the political, and especially the electoral arena is seen through the lenses of an economist, as a market, where there is an ideological demand and an offer that corresponds – or not – to the what the public requires. As most people - even those uninterested in politics - will know, generally what we define as right and left wing, is delineated as follows: right wingers are fiscally liberal – nominally favour lower rates of taxation and are opposed to a large intervening “nanny-state”, whilst remaining sceptical towards what is deemed as social “progression”, in the historicist meaning of the word; on the other hand, left-wing parties are socialist and collectivist in the economic sphere, whilst being promoters of societal changes, given that traditional norms and structures are perceived as institutionally of the right and serving the “oppressor” class. Being “far-right/left”, merely implies pushing these stances to their logical conclusion and moving away from...
In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, it became evident, even beyond the realm of the academic discipline of Political Behaviour that the socio-economic landscapes across Europe having undergone significant shifts, required a move away from the “catch-all” paradigm of the party system, which was prevalent throughout the 20-th century, especially after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. To summarize, political scientists have delineated the history of party politics – mostly in the West where elections and democratic considerations apply – into different eras, in order to describe the nature and ideological content of political parties that competed in the electoral arena. Thus, in the early 20-th century the political arena was characterized by “mass” parties who were dubbed as such, due to their intent in mobilizing masses of the electorate in order to achieve political power, mostly appealing to a certain socio-economic class in the material sense. In concrete terms...