1.1 A gradual rise to power

14Before the First World War, European Social Democracy could be viewed as an archipelago. Karl Marx could indeed talk of a spectre haunting Europe in the mid-19th century (Marx, 1848), but until the end of the century, European social democratic parties remained very geographically confined, and therefore electorally confined, in a Europe whose progress along the path towards democracy was slow.

15Social democratic parties only participated in national elections within a democratic framework in eight States and the average result was modest. In the 1870s, the German social democrats (Table 19, in appendix) achieved an average result of a little under 7%. In the following decade, our analysis broadens to incorporate three States, achieving a collected score of 4.5%. And in the closing decade of the century, we can witness an expansion both in terms of the number of cases and the result: a little below 10% on average in eight countries (Table 1). As Bartolini observed (2000: 79), in this sequence, developments and growth rates are low. To be sure, this is a combined result. And within this group, two very dominant parties provoke admiration and fear in equal measure, not to mention regular scrutiny: the German and Austro-Hungarian social democratic parties (Table 9). Before the 20th century had even begun, these two parties dominated the political landscape in terms of organisation, culture and politics. To be sure, they were active in two crucial States. Yet, for all that, these two large social democratic parties represent isolated cases. Nevertheless, their prospects were already apparent. And this “extraordinary rise of socialist labour parties since the 1880s” could already feed “marvellous hope, of the historic inevitability of their triumph” (Hobsbawm, 1989: 118).

16The dawn of the 20th century saw a dual shift within the social democratic family: an extension in the number of States affected by democratisation and, at the same time, the emergence of parties worthy of the name. This translated, inter alia, into a marked increase in election results. From the first decade of the century, the social democrats achieved a combined score of 15.2% in eleven States (Table 1). In light of these observations, it thus seems mistaken to me to trace the ‘emergence’ of European Social Democracy back to just after 1918 (Benedetto, Hix & Mastrorocco, 2020: 20).

17In the second decade, naturally very affected by the First World War, social democrats settled at 20.5% in fourteen countries and even 21.3% if we include Estonia (Table 16, in appendix).

1.2 A ceiling reached since the interwar period

18In the interwar period, one can observe how Social Democracy significantly increased its electoral low water. From the 1920’s onward, it stood at 26.6% in the Europe of 15 and 23.4% on average in twenty States (Table 1). The progression thus involves performance and coverage at the same time. As Moschonas underscores, this decade for Social Democracy was thus a lot more than “a decade of organizational and electoral stabilization” (Moschonas, 2018: 524). In the 1930’s, Social Democracy achieved, so to speak, the low-water mark which was to be its ceiling in the Europe of 15: 30%.

19This was not exactly the pinnacle, which was achieved in the Europe of 15 in the 1950’s and 1960’s. However, the margin is very small. In contrast, if we take into consideration an analysis of all the States in question, the differential is more pronounced. However, it must be assessed in light of the social democrats’ failure to lay down strong roots in Eastern European States, a factor which no longer featured in calculations until democratisation at the end of the century. Seen through this lens, one can therefore take two views: our proposal which highlights a type of ceiling reached in the 1930’s in a context characterised by certain democratic contractions or one which believes that the electoral golden age occurred in the 1960’s (Benedetto, Hix & Mastrorocco, 2020; Escalona, 2018). Formally speaking, in the Europe of 15, it was indeed in the 1950’s and 1960’s that the electoral summit was reached. That being said, it is also important to observe that a voting ceiling calculated as a ten-year average was already reached in several States: Denmark (Table 15, in appendix), Finland (Table 17, in appendix) and Switzerland (Table 39, in appendix). In Belgium, it had even already been reached in the 1920’s (Table 10, in appendix)! In the 1960’s, the summit was reached in three places: Ireland (Table 23, in appendix), Luxembourg (Table 27, in appendix) and Sweden (Table 38, in appendix). As for the 1950’s, a ceiling was reached in Norway (Table 30, in appendix).

1.3 Stabilisation for forty years

20In the aftermath of the Second World War, average performance stabilised at around 30% of votes and rose to a little under 31% in the 50’s and 60’s, a pinnacle in the Europe of 15.

21From the 1940’s to 1970’s, the overall score is rather stable: 29.7 to 30.9% of the votes in the Europe of 15 and 29.8% to 31.6% in all States concerned with parliamentary democracy (sixteen in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s and twenty in the 1970’s).

1.4 From erosion to definite decline

22The start of the 1980’s marked an unmistakeable dip in the Europe of 15. The average score achieved by European social democrats in this category went below the 29% bar. This overall slump in the group continued in the 1990’s (28.4%) and in the first decade of the 21st century (26.9%). The second decade of the 21^st century bore witness to a spectacular drop: 5.5 average percentage points (- 20.1% of votes). With 21.4% of the votes, the overall result for social democrats in the Europe of the 15 found itself at exactly the same level as it had done a century earlier (Table 1).

23The slumps noted in the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s in the Europe of 15 are, seen more broadly, offset by the development of southern socialism. With the exception of Cyprus (Table 13, in appendix), socialist parties in southern Europe made notable progress in the phase of democratic consolidation and afterwards. Socialist parties in that region have regularly been the main party in the political system (Delwit, 2007). This performance of Latin socialism in the polls allowed the family of social democrats, which had spread to include these countries, to remain at around 30%: 29.8% in the 1980’s, 30.3% in the 1990’s and 30.2% in the 2000’s. In contrast, the aggregation with the overall results of the social democratic parties in central and Eastern Europe leads us to far lower average scores: 25.9% in the 1990’s and 27.2% the following decade.

24Looking back at these observations, the decline of European Social Democracy can be examined in a more clear-cut way in the 2010’s if we include the socialist parties from southern Europe: 22.5% (- 6.5 percentage points and 22.3% of the votes compared with the previous decade) and it appears very substantial taking into account all States: 4.6 percentage points compared with the previous decade (- 17.1% of the votes).

25Seen over a long period of time, the contemporary politico-electoral decline of European Social Democracy is thus, without a doubt, corroborated. In the 2010’s, this is striking. The average score achieved by social democrats stood at just roughly 80% of what it had achieved a decade earlier, 70% of what was sometimes referred to as its glory days or golden age in the 1960’s and 1970’s (Bergougnioux & Manin, 1989; Merkel, 1989). The overall result for European social democrats scarcely exceeded roughly one fifth of the electorate voting validly.

Table 1. Evolution of Social-Democratic Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

	Europe 15	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 20	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 32	Number of countries taken into account
1870-1879	7.0	1	7.0	1	7.0	1
1880-1889	4.5	3	4.5	3	4.5	3
1890-1899	9.6	8	9.6	8	9.6	8
1900-1909	15.2	11	15.2	11	15.2	11
1910-1919	20.5	14	20.5	14	21.3	15
1920-1929	26.6	15	26.1	16	23.4	20
1930-1939	29.9	14	28.9	16	25.2	20
1940-1949	29.7	15	31.6	16	31.6	16
1950-1959	30.9	15	31.6	16	31.6	16
1960-1969	30.9	15	31.4	16	31.4	16
1970-1979	29.4	15	29.8	20	29.8	20
1980-1989	28.9	15	30.3	20	30.3	20
1990-1999	28.4	15	30.2	20	25.9	31
2000-2009	26.9	15	29.1	20	27.2	32
2010-2019	21.4	15	22.6	20	22.3	32

Table 1. Evolution of Social-Democratic Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

26Analysing the results of socialist dissent during the same period does not change the general outline highlighted here. On the whole, European Social Democracy has scarcely been affected by large-scale dissent, other than by the birth of the communist movement after the First World War, of course.

27The number of States affected is very small (Table 2). At best, the average percentage on just two occurrences stood at 6.9%. In contemporary times, the level of performance stood at between 1.2 and 1.8% in a limited number of States: four in the Europe of 15, six in the Europe of 20 and ten in the Europe of 32. This level is therefore lower than that attained in the 1940’s, 1950’s or 1960’s.

Table 2. Evolution of other Social Democratic Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

	Europe 15	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 20	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 32	Number of countries taken into account
1910-1919	0.6	4	0.6	4	0.6	4
1920-1929	0.3	4	0.3	4	3.1	5
1930-1939			0.3	1	2.0	2
1940-1949	1.7	2	1.7	2	1.7	2
1950-1959	0.7	1	6.9	2	6.9	2
1960-1969	2.0	2	2.0	2	2.0	2
1970-1979	4.1	4	3.3	6	3.3	6
1980-1989	1.3	6	1.0	8	1.0	8
1990-1999	0.5	5	0.7	6	0.7	9
2000-2009	1.2	3	1.2	4	1.1	7
2010-2019	1.8	4	1.3	6	1.2	10

Table 2. Evolution of other Social Democratic Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

28And what about the main competitors of Social Democracy on the class cleavge? From the end of the First World War until the fall of the communist systems, the radical left was chiefly embodied by the communist family. After emerging slowly in the polls between the two World Wars, the communist family chalked up its best overall performance in the wake of the Second World War. In thirteen States of the Europe of 15, European communism achieved an average score of 11.4% in the 1940’s, 8.6% in the 1950’s and 9% in the 1960’s (Table 3).

29In the 1970’s, the voting average was greater in the Europe of 20 given the fact that several States in Southern Europe had made the transition to democracy. In several cases, the communist parties were consistently important in electoral, political and trade union terms Greece (Table 20, in appendix), Portugal (Table 32, in appendix) and Spain (Table 37, in appendix). In Cyprus, the party is extremely strong (Table 13, in appendix).

30The 1980’s revealed an overall decline. The communist parties lost between 15 and 22% of their electorate over the course of a decade. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the disappearance of the Soviet Union in summer 1991 appeared to sound the death knell for the communist family and more broadly the spectre of the left to the left of Social Democracy. In the 1990’s and 2000’s, communists only managed 5% in the Europe of 15 (average score in fourteen States) and 7.9% in the Europe of 20 (average score in eighteen States).

31However, and contrary to what we discovered about Social Democracy; the contemporary period records a ripple for the parties of the radical European left. Average performances were better than previous ones, irrespective of the groups of States in question. In the Europe of 20, the average result even stood at 10.8% (average score in eighteen States). In the 2010’s, the radical left parties embarked upon very different ideological paths. It was not just that they appeared unaffected by the marked decline of the social democratic parties. They also benefited in part, as we can see in Greece, in the Netherlands (Table 29, in appendix) or in France (Table 18, in appendix).

32

Table 3. Evolution of Radical Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

	Europe 15	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 20	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 32	Number of countries taken into account
1910-1919	1.0	3	1.0	3	1.0	3
1920-1929	3.2	13	3.2	14	3.5	15
1930-1939	4.4	13	4.5	15	4.9	16
1940-1949	11.4	14	11.4	14	11.4	14
1950-1959	8.6	14	8.8	15	8.8	15
1960-1969	9.0	14	10.6	16	10.6	16
1970-1979	8.7	15	11.3	19	11.3	19
1980-1989	6.7	15	8.9	19	8.5	19
1990-1999	5.6	14	7.9	18	6.7	26
2000-2009	5.7	15	7.9	19	6.7	26
2010-2019	6.4	14	10.8	18	8.2	26

Table 3. Evolution of Radical Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

33By aggregating the three categories of political players European Social Democracy, social-democrat dissidence and those on the radical left the electoral pathway of the socio-economic left is very close to the one which is pinpointed as being the only European Social Democracy. The four timeframes highlighted here can be clearly located. Nevertheless, there are some discrepancies.

34On average over ten years, performances reached their peak in the 1940’s. In this way, the exit from the Second World War marked the true apogee of the European left parties. Later on, the situation stabilised. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, things slumped in a way which becomes clearer when one looks beyond the prism of European Social Democracy. Moreover, the average percentage observed in the last decade was the weakest since the 1920’s in the Europe of 15 (See Table 4).

35

Table 4. Evolution of Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

	Europe 15	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 20	Number of countries taken into account	Europe 32	Number of countries taken into account
1870-1879	7.0	1	7.0	1	7.0	1
1880-1889	4.5	3	4.5	3	4.5	3
1890-1899	9.6	8	9.6	8	9.6	8
1900-1909	15.2	11	15.2	11	15.2	11
1910-1919	21.1	14	21.1	14	21.9	15
1920-1929	29.8	15	27.5	17	25.5	21
1930-1939	34.0	14	30.9	17	27.7	21
1940-1949	40.5	15	41.7	16	41.7	16
1950-1959	39.0	15	38.4	17	38.4	17
1960-1969	39.4	15	37.4	18	37.4	18
1970-1979	38.9	15	41.4	20	41.4	20
1980-1989	36.0	15	39.1	20	37.3	20
1990-1999	33.8	15	37.5	20	31.5	31
2000-2009	32.7	15	36.8	20	32.8	32
2010-2019	27.8	15	32.7	20	29.3	32

Table 4. Evolution of Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe (ten-year average)

2.1 Electoral dynamics in the six categories

43A comparative analysis of the six groups reveals dissimilarities: one can observe that the peak in electoral influence for social democrats was effectively already achieved in the Nordic group of social democrats in the 1930’s (Table 5). The period of stabilisation after the war was already happening in the light of a dip in the polls. One can also note, as a counter-current to the pinnacle reached by the Swedish social democrats, that signs of erosion were already appearing in the 1960’s: the electoral average for social democratic parties in this group fell by 3.1 percentage points compared with the previous decade. When one considers this in hindsight, one is struck by this fact. In the 2010’s, the average score of the Nordic social democratic parties 22.5% settled at just 61.3% of their maximum score achieved in the polls (36.7%).

44The electoral dynamics underpinning German-speaking Social Democracy can be broken down in a different way. The peak was achieved far later in the day than it was in the other categories. This dimension is partially linked to the interruption of democracy in Germany and Austria in 1933 and 1935 respectively until the emergence from the Second World War. The percentage notched up following the first global conflict was already impressive 32.0% and the rest in the in the 1920’s. Following the Second World War, however, these performances were surpassed. In this group of social democratic parties, a maximum was achieved in the 1970’s (39.4%), far later, therefore, than for the first group. During this decade, Willy Brandt and Bruno Kreisky served, alongside Olof Palme (1976), as the key spokespeople for European Social Democracy. The average result for the SPÖ stood at 50% (Table 9, in appendix) and that of the SPD at 44.2% (Table 19, in appendix). In Switzerland, by contrast, the peak had already been achieved in the 1930’s. In the 1980’s, the movement was reversed in notable fashion (- 4.4 percentage points compared with the previous decade). And, in spite of the SPD coming back into favour at the end of the 1990’s, the decline continued. In the 2010’s, German-speaking Social Democracy dropped 7 percentage points compared with the first decade of the 21st century and 17.3% compared with the 1970’s. In forty years, the average drop was of 45% of the electoral base in the 1970’s. This collapse is illustrated by the lowest score achieved by the German and Austrian social democrats in the last election of the 2010’s: 20.5% for the SPD (2017) and 21.2% for the SPÖ (2019).

45In the Benelux states, the voting curve looks different to what we have seen in the first two categories. Socialists in Belgium, the Netherlands and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg increased their votes uninterrupted from the end of the 19th century until the 1950’s, when the average electoral peak occurred: 33.2%. From this time, one could witness a slump which was briefly interrupted in the 1980’s. Having passed the threshold of 30% in the 1970’s, the Benelux socialists dipped on average below 25% in the 1990’s and, in the last decade, 20%. Of the six categories with which we are concerned, the worst average score was reached in the 2010’s. This critical situation is best embodied by the Dutch Labour Party (PVDA), which got everyone talking with its score of 5.7% in the 2017 legislative elections.

46In Great Britain and Ireland, voting dynamics reveal a bumpier curve. Social democrats did increasingly well in the polls until the 1960’s: an average result of 30% was achieved in that decade. After this, things dipped a little, until average results slipped below 20% in the 1980’s, a decade in which the British Labour Party lost members of its own party who broke away to form the social democratic party (SDP), which joined forces with the liberals (Delwit, 1995). After hitting this electoral low point (Table 40, in appendix), things improved markedly in the 1980’s. In the 21st century, overall performance declined once again. Parties based on the Anglo-Saxon model hit an electoral low water mark which was one of the lowest in their electoral history.

47For a fully working comparison, analysing Latin socialism can only truly operate from the 1970’s onwards. Previously, data only concerned France over the entire period and Italy, on an ongoing basis, after 1945, and, in part, Malta. The democratisation of the Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Cypriot political systems changed the overall dynamics of the European social democratic family. The majority of socialist parties in these States, exactly as with France and Italy, made similar progress in the 1980’s and, for some, in the 1990’s and 2000’s (Moschonas, 2011: 62). The average electoral peak for socialism in Southern Europe occurred in this way in the 2000’s: 33%. Examined as part of an overall assessment, this movement of Southern socialism had the effect of making up for the erosion and slumps in other categories experienced by the social democratic family. A contrario, in the 2010’s, as we saw, a significant decline was underway. It was symbolised by the catastrophic decline of the Greek socialists, the woeful score achieved by the French socialists in 2017, and the sharp reversal of fortunes for the Spanish socialists.

48In Central, Eastern and Baltic Europe, it is more difficult to measure how a political family evolves, as it is true that the space and time needed to assess such evolutions is far too short. What is more, the number of instances taken into consideration changes during this period. In general terms, the social democratic left made little impact in the first decade after the fall of the communist systems. In many countries, the socialist parties were viewed as being part and parcel of the ‘left’, i.e., the former communist parties (De Waele, 1999). This fantasy was, incidentally, based on the fact that several social democratic parties were, entirely or in part, the heirs apparent to the former communist parties: in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and, de facto, in Romania. The average result of the socialist and social democratic parties surged in the 2000’s. But this pattern was soon broken. In Central, Eastern and Baltic Europe, the situation of the social democratic family became ‘balkanised’. In voting terms, the situation got a lot worse for some parties, as witnessed in Poland (SLD, Table 31, in appendix), in the Czech Republic (CSSD, Table 14, in appendix), in Slovenia (SD, Table 36, in appendix), in Lithuania (LSDP, Table 26, in appendix) or in Hungary (MSZP, Table 21, in appendix). In Bulgaria, the fall of the BSP was not as steep but its decline was no less marked (Table 11). In contrast, some social democratic parties bounced back in the polls in this period, as seen in Slovakia (SMER, Table 35, in appendix), Romania (PSD, Table 33, in appendix), Croatia (SDP, Table 12, in appendix) or Latvia (Harmony, Table 25, in appendix), even if the SMER and the PSD found themselves in a less favourable situation as the curtain came down on the 2010’s.

49

Table 5. Evolution Social Democratic Parties’ electoral results in Europe by category (ten-year average)

	Alemannic Social Democracy	Social Democracy in the BENELUX	Social Democracy in Nordic Countries	Anglo-Saxon Social-democracy	Southern Socialism	Social Democracy in the ECEC
1870-1879	7.0
1880-1889	8.9	0.9	3.8
1890-1899	15.8	10.1	5.2		7.1
1900-1909	18.7	17.2	15.5	3.5	13.4
1910-1919	27.6	18.8	24.4	3.6	21.3	33.3
1920-1929	29.9	24.4	29.7	22.1	20.6	12.4
1930-1939	29.9	27.5	36.7	21.1	21.2	10.7
1940-1949	32.6	28.4	34.6	29.6	30.1
1950-1959	33.4	33.2	34.8	28.6	25.0
1960-1969	35.9	30.1	34.2	30.4	23.9
1970-1979	39.4	26.8	31.1	25.9	27.2
1980-1989	35.0	28.9	30.4	19.3	32.1
1990-1999	31.7	24.5	30.8	27.0	32.5	18.1
2000-2009	29.1	23.5	29.3	23.6	33.0	23.9
2010-2019	22.1	18.3	22.5	23.2	24.6	21.8

Table 5. Evolution Social Democratic Parties’ electoral results in Europe by category (ten-year average)

50What can be said about rivalry between organisations on the radical left in the six categories?

51In German-speaking countries, this has always been contained, other than in the interwar period in Germany. Until 1933, the KPD progressively made its mark as an extremely powerful party, both at the polls and within society (Evans, 2003). In the three countries, electoral progress remained modest as the Second World War came to an end. And, over time, the influence wielded by communism became weaker, or even marginal. In Switzerland and Austria, this observation remains valid. In Germany, the reunification process led to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) taking a seat at the political table, before becoming part of Die Linke. Die Linke polled well in the 2009, 2013 and 2017 elections (Table 20, appendix), but it’s a very unbalanced picture we see when it comes to its uptake: the party’s performance is consistent in the six Eastern Laender, but weak in the Laender located in what was the Federal Republic of Germany. The fact remains that after the second Schröder government (2002-2005), the SPD witnessed a new left-wing competitor establish itself and challenge it in trade union circles and at the polls, with a certain degree of success.

52In Benelux countries, the radical left established itself in a limited, but not marginal, fashion. In Belgium (Delwit, 2018) and in the Netherlands, the communist parties have been textbook examples of content format. In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the weight of the KPL was more convincing, in particular in the South of the country around the iron and steel basins. Nevertheless, leaving aside the period after the Second World War, overall polling performances were moderate: between 4 and 7% of votes. In the 1980’s, the communist parties declined considerably in the three countries. In the Netherlands, the CPN even scuppered its chances by incorporating GreenLeft (Voerman & Lucardie, 2016). In this decade and even more so in the 1990’s, the overall result was at its lowest.

53Since then, and in contrast with the dynamics at play within the leadership of the social democratic parties in these countries, the radical left rediscovered a new political and electoral vigour. This process operated primarily through the distinct groupings of the historical communist parties: the Labour party in Belgium (PTB-PVDA) (Delwit, 2014; Goovaerts, Kern, van Haute & MarIen, 2020), the Socialist Party (SP) (Voerman, 2012) and The Left in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. In this way, the average result in the 2010’s rose to 6.7% as compared with 5.1% in the 2000’s and 2.3% in the 1990’s.

54In Northern Europe, the communist parties only made a very small dent in the strength and reach of the powerful social democratic structures in Sweden, Norway and Denmark before 1945. Following the Second World War, the overall power of the communist groupings nevertheless grew in this group. This can for one thing be linked to the new importance of the Finnish communists and, to a lesser extent, Icelandic communists, but also a level reached by the Swedish communists. The average score achieved by radical left parties thus stood within a range of between 9.6% and 12.7% (Table 6) for four decades. As was the case for almost all communist parties, the 1980’s saw a marked decline, in particular in the leadership of the Finnish communists. However, this period was also involved the redesigning of the Nordic radical left parties which, very often, include many aspects of the libertarian left (Gomez, Morales & Ramiro, 2016) and have a socio-economic profile which is less markedly on the left than in the past (Fagerholm, 2017: 27). Here, the Red-Green Alliance in Denmark or the Left-Green Movement in Iceland spring to mind in particular. But this also concerns the shifts in the former communist parties in Finland and Sweden which have become, respectively, the Left Alliance (VAS) and the party of the Left (V). These transformations have given results which contrast in part but have stuck to the electoral low water mark of the Nordic radical left of around 9% over the last three decades, even as the social democratic parties in these States were undergoing a very pronounced decline.

55In Great Britain and Ireland, it’s never been a consistent story in the polls for radical left parties. The communist party of Great Britain proved influential in some working-class sectors through the intermediary of trade union branches or in the university sphere, but it never overcame the difficulty of competing in a first-past-the-post system (Salles, 1977). In Ireland, the national question not only put the brakes on the radical left but also the social democratic left, which was historically weak in this State. As we observed in the preamble, Sinn Fein may have a seat in the European United Left/Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament, but its identity relationship refers first and foremost to the matter of the full reunification of Ireland.

56It is in Southern Europe that the radical left has historically enjoyed the most success. In France and Italy, communist parties have long outperformed their socialist rivals within the left-wing spectrum (Lazar, 1992). When Cyprus became a democracy, the same rules applied, as indeed they do today. And in the first phase of democratisation in Greece, Spain or Portugal, the communist parties in these States notched up decent scores, albeit far below what they were initially expecting. In the 1980’s, the average score for radical left groupings rose again to 20% of the electorate (Table 6). The collapse of communist systems affected all communist parties. In Italy, the communist party overwhelmingly mutated into a group which today is vaguely social democratic in nature, the Democratic Party. In France, the communist party has been wiped off the national political landscape, only demonstrating a certain consistency at municipal level (Delwit, 2014B). The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) has also become a shadow of what it was until the beginning of the 1980’s. For their part, the Greek (KKE) and Portuguese (PCP) communist parties remain community niche parties with a societal and electoral reach far smaller than the one they enjoyed in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Only the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) in Cyprus has remained a party with a strong presence on the island, still beating the socialist party (EDEK).

57For all that, this landscape now only takes in part of the various parties on the radical European left. Indeed, many movements have arisen over the course of the last decade. Sometimes, such movements have failed to make an impact. In Italy, the spectre of the radical left is now a field of ruins (Table 24, in appendix). In contrast, things have been shaken up considerably in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain, occasionally to spectacular effect, with the deployment of new players (Escalona, 2018b); Unsubmissive France (FI), the Left (BE) (Lisi, 2013), Syriza and Podemos, respectively. It is too early to assess how long this will last. One might note that, against the backdrop of the major contraction of socialist groupings, the radical left in Southern Europe has made significant progress and, from the 2010’s, secured, as a ten-year average, 20% of the electorate.

58In Central and Eastern Europe and Baltic Europe, the electoral and political influence of parties on the radical left is very weak. In the first phase of the transition to democracy, just two parties demonstrated a relevant result, the Slovak communist party (KSS) and the Bohemian-Moravian communist party (KSCM). The KSS foundered in obscurity and, currently, the KSCM has lost much of its influence. Recently, a new party, dubbed the Left, came into being in Slovenia, growing out of a merger between the Party for Sustainable Development of Slovenia (TRS) and Initiative for Democratic Socialism (IDS). In the most recent election, this party managed 5% of the votes. These few elements of the archipelago do not allow the radical left from Central, Eastern and Baltic Europe to make a strong impact on the polls and make up for losses on the side of the social democrats. The two left-wing families have tended to shed their electoral weight over the course of the last decade.

59

Table 6. Evolution of Radical Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe by category (ten-year average)

1870-1879	Radical Left in Alemannic countries	Radical Left in Benelux countries	Radical Left in Nordic countries	Radical Left in Anglo-Saxon countries	Radical Left In Southern Europe countries	Radical left in Eastern and Central Europe
1910-1919		1.9	0.1
1920-1929	3.8	1.6	3.4	0.3	6.0	8.1
1930-1939	5.5	3.7	4.3	0.2	8.7	10.3
1940-1949	4.5	10.1	12.7	0.4	26.2
1950-1959	2.7	4.9	10.3	0.2	19.4
1960-1969	1.8	7.3	9.6	0.2	23.4
1970-1979	1.3	4.9	11.3	0.6	23.2
1980-1989	0.8	3.1	8.5	1.8	18.6	0.0
1990-1999	1.8	2.3	8.4	3.6	14.0	3.5
2000-2009	3.3	5.1	9.1	0.8	13.0	3.4
2010-2019	3.7	6.7	8.7	0.7	19.9	2.3

Table 6. Evolution of Radical Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe by category (ten-year average)

60In the end, an analysis of how the socio-economic left has evolved in our various categories confirms, in four out of five analysable cases, the existence of a bell curve over a long period. For all that, the timeframe which leads to a peak before declining differs from category to category. For the German-speaking Left, the peak was reached in the 1970’s with an overall result of around 41% (Table 7). Since then, we have witnessed an abrupt decline. The overall score in the 2010’s is fifteen percentage points below this result (- 37.5% of the votes). In Nordic countries, the total of the votes on the left reached its maximum in the 1940’s. From the 1950’s, a decline began which went on for half a century and deepened strikingly in the 2010’s, when the result stood at only 66% of the electoral peak. In the Benelux states and Anglo-Saxon democracies, the peak in the curve occurred in the 1940’s and 1950’s respectively. Later, there was a trend towards erosion, but this did not happen in a linear fashion. The worst overall performance in Anglo-Saxon countries was thus achieved in the 1980’s.

61In this table, the prevailing configuration in Southern European countries is singular. The overall result over the last four decades has remained relatively stable. In the 2010’s, an erosive movement could nevertheless be detected but it was far more restrained than it was for the other four categories. This singularity illustrates how salient the left-right opposition remains in Southern European countries.

Table 7. Evolution of aggregate Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe by category (ten-year average)

	Alemannic Left	Left in Benelux	Nordic countries Left	Anglo-Saxon Left	Southern Europe Left	Left in the ECEC
1870-1879	7.0
1880-1889	8.9	0.9	3.8
1890-1899	15.8	10.1	5.2		7.1
1900-1909	18.7	17.2	15.5	3.5	13.4
1910-1919	29.4	19.5	24.4	3.6	21.8	33.3
1920-1929	35.2	26.0	31.8	22.5	20.1	16.6
1930-1939	35.4	31.2	40.1	21.3	20.6	14.2
1940-1949	37.1	38.6	47.3	30.6	47.6
1950-1959	36.1	38.2	45.1	28.7	36.7
1960-1969	37.8	37.4	43.9	30.5	33.4
1970-1979	40.8	34.7	42.5	26.5	48.1
1980-1989	35.9	32.4	39.6	21.1	48.2
1990-1999	33.6	26.8	39.3	28.8	45.0	20.7
2000-2009	32.3	28.6	38.4	24.4	44.6	26.2
2010-2019	25.8	25.1	31.2	24.3	42.4	23.7

Table 7. Evolution of aggregate Left Parties’ electoral results in Europe by category (ten-year average)

62As for the issue with which we are concerned, this singularity also points to an aspect of the contemporary electoral crisis rocking European Social Democracy. Not only did it experience a rapid decline in the 2010’s, its clout in the socio-economic left was diminished. The configuration in Southern Europe is the most emblematic, but the contemporary movement in the Benelux countries and Nordic States is also striking. Although it is also on the way in German-speaking countries, it is less pronounced. It is only the Anglo-Saxon and Central, Eastern and Baltic European configurations which avoid this observation. If we take the last election to date in the 2010’s, the social democratic party was outperformed by a radical left grouping on no fewer than six occurrences: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Iceland and the Netherlands (Table 8).

Table 8. Evolution of the weight Social Democratic Parties in the total of Left electoral results by category (ten-year average)

	Weight of Alemannic Social Democracy in the Left	Weight of Benelux Social Democracy in the Left	Weight of the Nordic Social Democracy in the Left	Weight of the Anglo-Saxon Social Democracy in the Left	Weight of Southern Social Democracy in the Left	Weight of CEEC Social Democracy in the Left
1870-1879	100.0
1880-1889	100.0	100.0	100.0
1890-1899	100.0	100.0	100.0		100.0
1900-1909	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
1910-1919	93.8	96.8	99.9	98.6	97.5	100.0
1920-1929	84.9	93.8	93.5	98.6	102.6	74.9
1930-1939	84.5	88.1	91.4	99.2	103.2	75.5
1940-1949	87.8	73.7	73.2	96.5	63.3
1950-1959	92.6	87.1	77.2	99.7	68.0
1960-1969	95.1	80.4	78.1	99.6	71.5
1970-1979	96.6	77.1	73.3	97.9	56.5
1980-1989	97.4	89.1	76.7	91.3	66.5
1990-1999	94.5	91.3	78.5	93.7	72.2	87.4
2000-2009	89.9	82.3	76.4	96.9	73.9	91.3
2010-2019	85.5	73.2	72.2	95.5	58.1	92.1

Table 8. Evolution of the weight Social Democratic Parties in the total of Left electoral results by category (ten-year average)