Stavrakakis, Yannis, and Giorgos Katsambekis. "Left-wing populism in the European periphery: the case of SYRIZA". Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol.19, No.2 (2014): 119-142.

Stavrakakis, Yannis, and Giorgos Katsambekis. "Left-wing populism in the European periphery: the case of SYRIZA". Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol.19, No.2 (2014): 119-142.

• In general elections in Greece in May and June 2012, the Coalition of the Radical Left [SYRIZA] jumped from under 5% of the vote to around 30%, with its leader, Alexis Tsipras being elected Prime Minister. Media and academia have painted the victim as an outcome of rising populism which threatens the European project (119-120).
• There a source mine provided of work on populism and conflict definitions of page 121 to page 123.
• Greece has seen a variety of populist movement since the restoration of democracy in 1974. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement [PASOK] successfully employed populism in the late 1970s and early 1980s to win major elections, positioning itself in opposition to the political and economic inequalities which had plagued Greece since the end of the civil war. PASOK deradicalized during the 1980s, with its leadership shifting into main-stream liberalism by the 1990s, and even accepting neoliberal policies by the 2000s (124).
• Right-wing populism in Greece was sparked by the Simitis government's decision to remove religion from Greek identity cards in 2000, which prompted a campaign against this move by Archbishop Christodoulos, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church. The movement consolidated into LAOS, led by Giorgos Karatzaferis, a extreme right-wing movement. It collapsed in 2008, after support neoliberal austerity policies (124-125).
• SYRIZA was borne out of the panic and rapidly deteriorating economic conditions in Greece following the 2008 financial collapse and draconian austerity measured imposed on Greece during bailout negotiations with the IMF, EU, and European Central Bank. Whereas other parties accepted austerity, SYRIZA openly challenge it and consistently organized with protesters and other anti-austerity groups (125-126).
• The authors have chosen to define 'populism' using the criteria developed by Dr. Ernesto Luclau and others at the Essex School of political science thought. It requires that 'the people' must be a reference point, and that they be rhetorically framed in an antagonistic relationship with 'the elite' (122). SYRIZA certainly fits this definition of populism (133).
• Prior to the economic crisis, SYRIZA did not refer to its supporters as 'the people', instead broadly identifying society or specific constituencies, like youth. After the 2008 financial crisis, however, SYRIZA began to claim that it spoke as the representative of 'the people'. The word 'λαός' ['the people'], increased in use from a marginal term to being present in almost every speak by the 2012 election (127).
• The rhetoric employed by SYRIZA during the 2012 election campaign clearly demonstrates a rhetorical divide and a deep antagonism between 'the people' and 'the elites' or 'the establishment'. SYRIZA is presented as a representative of the popular will, fighting against decisions made by an elitist minority in cahoots with foreign powers and international organizations (129-132).
• European political discourse has been gradually growing more and more critical of 'populism' and more willing to use the term, which had previously been restricted to the far-right (133). Groups which oppose austerity measures are labeled as 'populist' in an effort to associate them with the violent and anti-democratic tendencies of the extreme right (133-134).
• These comparisons of far-right and far-left populism ignore the many distinctions between the conceptions of 'the people' and the strategies of the different groups. The suggestion that the authoritarian and racist populism of Golden Dawn is anything like the inclusive and participatory populism of SYRIZA is fallacious (135).
• Current discussions of populism are overly concerned with the European examples, which tend to exist only on the far right. Looking at populist movements elsewhere, particularly in Latin America, could provide a much more well-rounded research agenda and make populism into a general analytical category not restricted to the far right-wing (136-137).
• The author also questions the inclusion of many radical nationalist, racist, or neo-nazi groups in the category of 'populist', since they lack many key characteristics of other populist groups. Namely, instead of direct resentment against elites, they antagonize marginalized social groups (137).