The European left: Democracy and sovereignty in Italy, Spain, and Portugal

Abstract

This dissertation is focused on the praxis of a group of European left parties in the 1990s and 2000s. This study proposes an original contribution to the investigation of the role of the ideas of democracy and sovereignty in the praxis of communist parties from Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and the Euro-parliamentary group GUE/NGL. The PRC, the PCE/IU, and the PCP alongside the GUE/NGL and the PEL constitutes the subjects of the European left in this dissertation. Based on an exclusive documental collection, interviews, and literature, this dissertation adopts a multimethod approach to discuss theoretical perspectives on the concepts of sovereignty and democracy in the European relation of political forces. The contemporary history of the European left is analysed in order to observe how these political parties were able to develop a transnational cooperation around the GUE/NGL after a succession of defeats, which indicates that ideological transformations preceded the praxis in the 1990s. In relation to the development of the EU, subaltern and late integration marked the ways Italy, Spain, and Portugal composed the single market. As argued by the main literature in the field, the European left is understood as a synthesis of multiple forces and an instance of cooperation in the European Union, what is not an excess of pragmatism in opposition to their theory, but to their constitutive praxis. From a Gramscian perspective, it is suggested that the lack of a hegemonic project was substituted by a neo-Keynesian approach at the national and transnational levels, and therefore universal democracy became the central strategy of the radical and the European left as part of a limited notion of the sovereignty of the capitalist state. Some radicalism was present when the 2008 crisis erupted in Europe, however the analysis of the praxis of these left-wing forces in the 2000s suggests that the institutional approach and the lack of a consistent strategy prevented the emergence of radical democratic transformations.