The Left-wing Populist Revolt in Europe: SYRIZA in Power
The Left-wing Populist Revolt in Europe: SYRIZA in Power

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, we examine the political discourse articulated by SYRIZA in power (2015-17) through Laclau’s theory and the approach of Populismus, and we utilize the lexicometric tool of the Populismus Observatory to search the frequently used words in Alexis Tsipras’s discourse. Populismus is a research project and an open access web-based Observatory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (School of Political Science) that analyzes populism through a discursive methodological framework. The simple lexicometric analysis can help us sketch a statistical outline of the discourse, followed by theoretical scrutiny. Our aim is to find out if SYRIZA transformed its rhetoric after the conquest of power (January 2015) and which central signifiers it tends to use and avoid. Furthermore, we argue that the concept of “crypto-colonialism” can explain the dominance of egalitarian populism in the Greek politics but we question the use of the term for any inclusionary populist case. Moreover, we underline the failure of SYRIZA to fulfill the popular demands and we seek out the reasons for this fiasco. Finally, we try to answer to the following question: Does the case of SYRIZA prove that populism fails wherever it comes from (right or left)?

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