Greece has voted for a new politics, not just a new party

Prior to the financial crisis of 2008, anyone familiar with the Greek nation and its politics would have been surprised by the events of Sunday night. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras addressed a crowd of thousands who had gathered in central Athens to celebrate his party's general election victory. The new Greek Prime Minister—state educated, young and not related to previous prime ministers—is unlike any of his predecessors. His party is a coalition of the radical left, that was born as a fringe party six years ago.

“The Greek people gave us a clear, indisputable mandate to end austerity,” said Tsipras. But despite the fact Syriza is the outright winner, it didn’t quite manage to get the seats it needed to form a majority government (increasing its share of the vote from 4.6 per cent in 2009, to more than 36 per cent now.) Yesterday we learned that it would form a coalition with the populist right, anti-austerity party Independent Greeks.

Analysts rightly point out that the parties will be uneasy bedfellows. Syriza comes from a breakaway faction of the traditional communist party, and is itself a coalition of smaller entities that range from the centre-left to anarchism. The Independent Greeks on the other hand broke away from the centre-right party New Democracy when it signed up to austerity after its election in 2012.

The differences between the two are significant. While they share an aim to end austerity, the Independent Greeks don’t share Syriza’s liberal approach to immigration, gay rights, religion and other issues. More specifically, Syriza is a pro-immigration party that aims to decriminalise drugs and adopt a liberal approach to policing in general, something the Independent Greeks are unlikely to feel comfortable with.

Is this a sign of growing desperation by Syriza? The differences might not be significant while Syriza is negotiating Greece’s debt with the country’s lenders, but that’s only part of its plans. Syriza wants to introduce citizenship for the children of migrants (currently not considered Greek citizens even if they are born in the country), while the Independent Greeks are against.

Has Syriza’s desire for power led them to sacrifice a big chunk of their agenda? No. Syriza has opted to rely on the votes of centre-left parties Pasok (13 seats) and To Potami (17 seats), in order to pass progressive social reforms—while there is no formal deal with these parties, neither is likely to block such policies. For instance, the immigration bill mentioned above is a PASOK initiative. Similar bills that New Democracy was uninterested in could bridge differences between Syriza and parties of the opposition. The Independent Greeks on the other hand will support Syriza's economic policies, according to the deal they reached yesterday. It’s a fine balance to strike but not if we look into how Syriza works as a party.

Unlike most mainstream parties in Europe, Syriza does not have a top-down party organisation. Its various factions decide on policies by consensus. Syriza holds at least one annual conference that decides on everything the party’s position will entail, but their current approach hasn’t diverged significantly from the party’s founding document that includes its own analysis of the crisis, and its solution as depicted in policies Syriza is looking to adopt.

A similar approach has been adopted by Podemos in Spain. Most policy lines are decided with a majority of 70 to 80 per cent (as officials from the party have told me in recent days.) The party’s culture is based around this consensus-building mentality, which is an apt form for the post-ideological parties taking hold of European politics, such as Podemos.

Syriza and Podemos have found in each other a European counterpart to further their aim of ending austerity and, to put it bluntly, stick it to Germany. Both parties share the loose factions mentality and desire to do politics in a different way. Despite their strictly democratic and horizontal structures, they also share a characteristic that’s becoming very rare in politics; a charismatic leader that can be a face of the new left. The two men seem to have a very strong personal relationship as well, evident by the presence of Iglesias in Tsipras’ final rally before the elections, in which the leader of the Spanish “rebels” addressed the crowd in Greek and and ended his talk with “Syriza, Podemos, venceremos” (we will overcome).

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Is this enough to allow Syriza to change everything in Greece and boost Podemos into taking power in Spain? The question is difficult to answer. But at the heart of both is more than debt re-negotiation and the end of austerity. These parties emerge when the rest of the political system is deemed corrupt and beyond redemption. And their main focus, contrary to what the international analysis would have you believe, is to restore social justice on a micro level.

Police violence, an out-of-control banking sector, business tycoons used to getting their way despite everything; these are just a few of the issues both parties are looking to tackle. Their message seems to be working, even countering the attempts by Greece’s outgoing government to “terrorise” citizens over the state of the economy. It’s not too bold to claim that what was once a weakness, has now become a strength for these parties.

To understand what’s happening, we need to stop looking at individuals within the parties. We will increasingly see similar loose coalitions taking over European politics, with every faction integral to how the party behaves, even if some factions defy the official party line on some issues. Their emergence clearly highlights the need for a new way of doing politics, not just new parties. According to research we have undertaken for precariouseurope.com, the trend for horizontal, loose formations that transcend the traditional left-right divide, is strong everywhere, we just don’t have strong examples yet to highlight individual cases. In this, Greece and Spain are leading the way, but if they are even only slightly successful in achieving change in their respective countries, it's clear that this this new style is starting to spread across Europe.