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European Integration and the Economic Crisis: The Changing Positions of Left Parties in Spain and Italy

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Anti-Europeanism

Abstract

Historically leftist parties did not have a uniform position toward the EU: on the one hand, the radical left parties (RLPs) were critical toward the neoliberal character of the integration process; on the other hand, social democratic parties (SDPs) generally showed a Europhile attitude similar to other mainstream forces. This chapter aims at answering one main question: eight years after the eruption of the crisis, to what extent do the two party families hold divergent positions toward the EU? In order to answer these questions, we propose a binary comparison between Italy and Spain taking into consideration parties that belong to both party families: the PSOE and the PD for the social democratic parties and IU-Podemos and PRC-SEL for the RLPs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    PSOE, Partido Popular (PP) and the Greens—along with other regionalist parties, Convergència i Unió, Partido Nacionalista Vasco and Coalición Canaria—campaigned for the ‘YES’ to the European Constitution; IU, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, the Catalan Greens and other regionalist and niche parties for the NO. The participation was 42.32%; the YES won with 81.65%. The NO voters were 18.35%.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Valeria Tarditi

  2. Università Luiss, Rome, Italy

    Davide Vittori

Authors
  1. Valeria Tarditi
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  2. Davide Vittori
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Valeria Tarditi or Davide Vittori .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The European College of Parma Foundation, Parma, Italy

    Marco Baldassari

  2. Department of Law, Politics and International Studies, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Emanuele Castelli

  3. Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Matteo Truffelli

  4. Center for Studies in European and International Affairs, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Giovanni Vezzani

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Tarditi, V., Vittori, D. (2020). European Integration and the Economic Crisis: The Changing Positions of Left Parties in Spain and Italy. In: Baldassari, M., Castelli, E., Truffelli, M., Vezzani, G. (eds) Anti-Europeanism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24428-6_7

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