ABSTRACT
After the financial crisis and the square movements in the early 2010s, we have seen the emergence of a new kind of political parties: movement parties. These contemporary movement parties include SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the Left in Slovenia and Alternativet in Denmark. This chapter starts by distinguishing these parties from earlier movement parties, and explaining how the new movement parties address issues raised in the critical literature on social movements and political parties. We then explain the social and political context for the emergence of contemporary movement parties. We argue that the emergence and continual existence of movement parties should be viewed through two tensions: between horizontality and verticality, and between civil society and state. We also argue that the question of representation is central to understanding both the attraction and the limitations of contemporary movement parties. While movement parties are often grouped together by laypersons and academics alike, there are important differences between them. We therefore examine three contemporary movement parties in more depth, showing similarities and differences between them: SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and the Labour Party under Corbyn in the UK.
