Europe: When the Unthinkable Becomes Possible, Geopolitical Diary – STRATFOR Global Intelligence, 03 December.
Europe’s economic crisis is slowly but steadily eroding the political systems of many countries on the Continent. New actors are emerging and threatening the supremacy of the traditional players. Alliances and events that seemed impossible only a few years ago are now being openly discussed across Europe. On Dec. 3, for example, Sweden announced it would hold early elections, partially because of political moves from the far right. In Spain, the ruling center-right party is openly discussing the possibility of entering an alliance with its traditional center-left rivals to prevent a protest party from taking over. Key members of the European Union, including Sweden, Spain, the United Kingdom and possibly Greece, will hold elections in 2015. In most cases, these countries will see outcomes nobody would have thought possible in 2008.
Sweden
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced the snap elections after his center-left government lost a budget vote less than three months after coming to power. Lofven’s announcement was precipitated by a decision by the far-right Sweden Democrats party to support the opposition during a budget vote. Sweden’s early elections, the first for the country in almost 60 years, will be held March 22, with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats likely playing a central role. In Sweden’s parliamentary elections in September, no coalition managed to form a majority government, but the elections were marked by the strong performance of the far-right party, which received 12.9 percent of the vote, up from 5.7 percent in 2010, when it entered parliament for the first time.
[…]Greece
Greece offers an example of what Spanish politics could look like in the future. Like Spain, Greece had a relatively stable two-party system that saw the center-right and the center-left alternate periods in power. But the economic crisis led to the rapid rise of the left-wing Syriza party, which opposes the EU austerity measures supported by the mainstream parties. In 2012, it took two elections for the mainstream parties to form an alliance to keep Syriza at bay. In Greece, where political rivalries are old and deep, such an alliance would have seemed impossible before the crisis.
[…]“Europe: When the Unthinkable Becomes Possible is republished with permission of Stratfor.”
Relevant posts:
- Glover, B. & Richards-Shubik, S. (2014) “Contagion in the European sovereign debt crisis“, VoxEU Organisation, 12 November.
- Verney, S., Bosco, A. & Lobo, M. C. (Eds.) (2014) “Southern Europe and the Financial Earthquake – Coping with the First Phase of the International Crisis“, South European Society and Politics, Routledge Publications, October.
- Varoufakis, Y. (2014) “Why is Europe Not ‘Coming Together’ in Response to the Euro Crisis?”, Yanis Varoufakis Blog: thoughts for the post-2008 world, 29 August.