The Impact of the Economic Crisis on South European Democracies

There are few doubts that a democratic regime can be deeply affected by economic crisis. This was so with reference to the great economic crises of the twentieth century, but it is also for the real estate and fiscal crises of 2008. What are the political consequences of this Great Recession? Are limited or profound and serious? And what are the mechanisms at work that help to explain those consequences? The introduction emphasizes the channels of expression (election, protest, interests) that are affected by the crisis in democracies of South Europe. In Chapter 1 we addressing the theoretical problem of how to define the impact of the economic crisis on the dimensions of participation and competition. In Chapter 2 the attention is directed to the analysis of all the relevant dimensions of party systems. In Chapter 3 the focus is on the notion of neo-populism as a key to understand these new actors of South European policy. The Chapter 4 starts with an analysis of the crisis of interest intermediation as a factor of weakness in the management of the crisis and it has favored the diffusion of the social and political protest. The final chapter summarizes the empirical results emerging from research: the partial reshaping of cleavages and the relevance of the establishment vs. anti-establishment cleavage for the emergence and success of the neo-populist parties.