Pasokification is the decline of centre-left, social-democratic political parties in European and other Western countries during the 2010s, often accompanied by the rise of nationalist, left-wing and right-wing populist alternatives.[1] [2] In Europe, the share of votes for centre-left parties was at its 70-year lowest in 2015.[3]
The term originates from the Greek party PASOK, which saw a declining share of the vote in national elections — from 43.9% in 2009 to 13.2% in May 2012, to 12.3% in June 2012 and 4.7% in 2015 — due to its poor handling of the Greek government-debt crisis and implementation of harsh austerity measures.[4] [5] Simultaneously, the left-wing anti-austerity Syriza party saw a growth in vote share and influence.[6] Since PASOK's decline, the term has been applied to similar declines for other social-democratic and Third Way parties.
In the early 2020s, the Social Democratic Party of Germany won the 2021 German federal election, and the Labour Party, and PASOK-KINAL performed well in the polls for the 2024 United Kingdom and 2023 Greek elections respectively, leading to discussions about the possibility of "de-Pasokification",[7] "reverse Pasokification", "Kinalification."[8]
The Social Democratic Party of Austria lost 5.7 percentage points in the 2019 Austrian legislative election, resulting in a share of 21.2%, the party's worst election result since World War II. In the same election, the conservative Austrian People's Party gained 6 percentage points, with a share of 37.5%, its best since 2002.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party lost 12.2 percentage points and fell from 80 to 43 seats in the April 2021 Bulgarian parliamentary election. In the July 2021 Bulgarian parliamentary election the party lost another 1.6 percentage points, returning to parliament with just 36 seats. In the November 2021 Bulgarian general election, the BSP lost a further 3.27 percentage points and returned to parliament with 26 seats, their worst result since democratic reforms; however, the party joined the new coalition government.
The Social Democratic Party of Croatia had in the 2019 European Parliament election (18.7%) their worst EP election result, in the 2020 parliamentary election (24.9%) their worst parliamentary election result since 2003 and in the first round of the 2019–20 presidential election they had their worst result since 2000 but in the end they won the second round.
The Czech Social Democratic Party lost much of its support in the 2017 Czech legislative election, falling from 50 in the previous general election to just 15 seats out of 200. They did even worse in 2021, with its vote share falling below the 5% threshold required for representation in the legislature. KSČM also fell below the threshold in 2021.Meanwhile, ANO 2011 gained 31 seats, and the Civic Democratic Party gained 9 seats in 2017.
The Socialist Party's decline since its victory in the 2012 presidential election has been described as an example of Pasokification.[9] By 2016, then-President François Hollande's approval rating was just 4%, and he became the first President in the history of the Fifth Republic not to run for re-election. In the 2017 presidential election, Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon suffered an historically poor result, placing fifth with 6.4% of the vote. In the 2017 legislative election a month later, the Socialist Party suffered the worst losses of any party, falling from 280 to 30 seats. The Socialist-led centre-left faction received 9.5% of the vote during the first round and only 45 seats overall.[10] In the 2019 European elections, the PS allied with a number of minor centre-left parties, but still placed only sixth. It became the smallest party to win seats, receiving 6.2% of the vote. It was surpassed by both Europe Ecology – The Greens and the left-wing populist La France Insoumise. In the 2022 French presidential election, Socialist Party candidate, Anne Hidalgo, received only 1.7% of the vote. In the legislative elections, the country's leftist forces combined into one electoral unit called NUPES, anticipating fallout from poor results in the years prior.
In the 2024 snap French legislative elections - called by Emmanuel Macron due to strong French far-right results in the 2024 European Parliament elections - NUPES was abandoned due to differences on foreign policy triggered by the Israeli invasion of Gaza.[11] A new similar alliance called the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) manifested comprising the main leftist parties in France, with the distinction that they did not declare a Prime Ministerial candidate.[12] While NFP did not win a majority, they surprisingly emerged as the single biggest party, having employed an informal cooperation agreement with Macron's renamed Renaissance party to defeat the apparently ascendant far-right. As of writing, Gabriel Attal of Renaissance remains interim Prime Minister, partly due to NFP's remaining internal divisions, and possibly also due to high levels of security around the Paris Olympics.
The Social Democratic Party of Finland began to lose votes in 2007 (3.03%) and achieved their worst results to date in 2011 (19.10%) and 2015 (16.51%). Although they managed to become the strongest force in 2019 for the first time in a decade, they also had their second worst success in their history, with just under 18%. Despite an increase in the vote share in 2023, the party lost power to a coalition of the NCP and Finns. Additionally, on the municipal level, the SDP have been declining for decades. The SDP used to be the party with the most seats of representation in the council as well as the top vote share from the 1950s to 2000, however following the 2008 municipal elections, the National Coalition Party became the strongest in terms of the vote share and the Centre Party has had the most individual representatives, partly due to dominance in agrarian and rural based municipalities. Additionally, the general decline of SDP's vote share in municipal elections can perhaps be explained by the overall decline of the number of municipalities from roughly 600 in the 1940s to about 500 in 1970 and the mid 300s in the early 2000s.[13] [14] [15]
The Åland Social Democrats halved their voting rates between 2011 and 2019.
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) has been cited as an example of Pasokification. Its popularity has waned since the late 2000s, particularly in the 2009 federal election, when it recorded its worst result since before the Second World War. The SPD's post-2005 decline has been attributed to its decision to enter into grand coalitions with its traditional rival, the conservative Christian Democratic Union. Despite a small recovery in 2013/14, the SPD's decline continued through the late 2010s, winning just 20.5% of the vote in the 2017 federal election.[9] Similarly poor results have been recorded in local and state elections across the country.[16] The SPD won just 15.8% of the vote in the 2019 European Parliament election in Germany, falling to third place in a national election for the first time in its history. This decline was somewhat halted however as the SPD won the most seats in the 2021 federal election with 25.7% of the vote (although this was the smallest vote share of a first-placed party in an election in the post-war period). The 2021 election also brought with it a much higher vote share for the Green party, and resulted in a left-liberal traffic-light coalition (SPD-GRÜNE-FDP) taking power.
Since the formation of the coalition government, Opinion polling for the next German federal election has shown the SPD polling at record lows, with polls in 2024 showing the SPD at between 15% to 16%.
PASOK was once the dominant centre-left party in Greece. PASOK received just 4.8% and 6.3% of the vote in the 2015 January and September Greek legislative elections respectively, due to its enforcement of harsh austerity measures in the wake of the European debt crisis, which, along with the ensuing Great Recession, led to massive social unrest and economic collapse, with much of its former electorate going to the anti-austerity Syriza. Following a series of austerity and bailout packages, implemented despite rejection in the 2015 Greek bailout referendum, resulting in several splits within the party, Syriza was defeated in the 2019 legislative election while the social democratic alliance Movement for Change (KINAL, which includes PASOK and minor centre-left movements) rebounded to 8.1% and gained 22 seats.
The Hungarian Socialist Party lost significant support in the 2010 Hungarian parliamentary election after a series of corruption scandals affected Ferenc Gyurcsány's government. This resulted in a loss of 133 seats, falling from 192 to 59 seats. It suffered defeat again in the 2014 and 2018 parliamentary elections, falling from 29 to 16 seats in the latter. These election losses culminated in the rise of the right-wing Fidesz–KDNP alliance.
The Social Democratic Alliance (SDA) was formed in 1999 to unite the fragmented Icelandic left-wing. In its first decade it established itself as the second-strongest force behind the right-wing Independence Party, debuting at 26.8% in 1999 and improving to 31.0% in 2003. The SDA became the largest party in the country in the 2009 election with 29.8%. However, it suffered a major defeat in the 2013 election with 12.9%. They were reduced to just 5.7% in 2016, becoming the smallest of seven parties in parliament, and were surpassed by the Left-Green Movement as the strongest left-wing party in Iceland. This was the worst ever result for the SDA or its predecessor party the Social Democratic Party since they first ran for election in August 1916, when they won 6.8%. The SDA achieved a minor recovery in the 2017 election with 12.1%, though they remained a minor force behind the Left-Greens, whose leader Katrín Jakobsdóttir went on to become Prime Minister. However, this recovery was short-lived, with the party winning 9.9% in 2021.
The Labour Party received 6.6% of the vote in the 2016 Irish general election and fell from 33 to 7 seats, down from 19.5% in the 2011 general election.[17] This fell further to 4.4% in the 2020 general election—their worst result since 1987—while the left wing nationalist Sinn Féin had its best result since 1922.[18]
The Democratic Party (PD) started to lose support by the late 2000s in the Po Valley. The first election in which the Democratic Party lost to a more radical party was the 2010 Venetian regional election (20.34% of the vote, compared to the 35.16% obtained by Lega Nord). The party's 18.8% vote share in the 2018 Italian general election meant it lost 185 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 58 seats in the Senate,[19] falling from the largest to the third-largest faction in the Italian parliament. This was particularly dramatic considering that the party received more than 40% of vote just four year prior, in the 2014 European Parliament election in Italy, and is commonly attributed to its enforcement of austerity measures, a poor economic recovery and a failed attempt to move towards a two-party system in the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum. However, the party still came in second place in the popular vote[20] and entered government in September 2019 with the Five Star Movement after the collapse of the previous Conte I Cabinet. After the collapse of the second Conte government in January 2021, the PD joined the new government of national unity led by Mario Draghi, former director of the European Central Bank. After the latter's crisis in summer 2022 and the general elections in October (which saw a landslide victory for right-wing parties), the Democratic Party returned to opposition but still remained the second most voted party.
The Social Democratic Party of Lithuania received 9.59% of the vote in the 2020 Lithuanian parliamentary election, down from 15.04% in 2016 and 18.37% in 2012.
The Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party (LSAP) received 20.2% of the vote in the 2013 Luxembourg general election, their lowest support since the 1931 general election. This decreased further to 17.60% in the 2018 general election, ranking third for number of seats for the first time since 1999. However, the LSAP has been part of Luxembourg's coalition governments since the 2013 election.
The social-democratic Labour Party received 5.7% of the vote in the 2017 Dutch general election, down from 24.8% in the 2012 general election.[9] This remained unchanged at the 2021 election.
Before the 1997 parliamentary elections, Labour Party (Ap) leader Thorbjørn Jagland infamously promised that if, should his party get less than 36,9% of the votes, his government would step down.[21] The final results gave Ap merely 35,0%, and paved the way for a centrist minority government. This coalition government fell in March 2000 after a vote of no confidence, whereafter Ap again formed a government supported by the Centre Party and the Socialist Left Party. This government only lasted until the 2001 elections however, when they lost it to the same centrist coalition. In this election, Ap got only 24.3% of the votes, their worst electoral result since 1924.
Support for the party soon rebounded slightly, but has been steadily declining since the 2013 election. Despite their victory in the 2021 Norwegian parliamentary election, where they scored 26,3% of the votes, the party lost a seat and were briefly in third-place behind the Conservative Party and the Centre Party in pre-election polls. After forming a minority government with the Centre Party in October 2021, the support for Ap has dropped drastically in the polls, scoring as low as 15,5% in March 2023.[22] Parallel to this drop in support, the Norwegian radical left, represented by the Red Party and Socialist Left Party has seen increased support in the polls.[23] The Red Party also managed to break the electoral threshold of 4% for the first time since its formation in the 2021 elections, gaining 8 mandates in the Storting.
The 2023 local elections was the first local or national election since 1924 in which Ap was not the largest party in Norway.[24] Before the elections, Ap held the mayoralty in 37 out of the 50 most populous municipalities, a number which fell to 6 in the aftermath of the election.[25] They lost the governing mayors in Oslo and Bergen, as well as the mayors in major municipalities like Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Drammen and Fredrikstad. They also lost the mayoralty in the traditional Labour stronghold of Sarpsborg, an office held by Ap since 1913.[26]
The Democratic Left Alliance became only third during the rise of the liberal Civic Platform since 2003 following the Rywin affair. In 2015 they only got 7.55% and lost all seats but returned into the Sejm in 2019 and did not enter the government until 2023 when New Left (merger of Spring and the Democratic Left Alliance) entered Tusk's third cabinet as a junior coalition partner.
The 2015 Spanish general election produced the worst results for the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) since the Spanish transition to democracy in the 1970s, as the party received 22% of the vote, losing support to Unidas Podemos. The PSOE returned to government following the 2018 vote of no confidence in the government of Mariano Rajoy and, in the April 2019 general election, became the largest party since 2008 and obtained its best result since 2011 with 28.7% of the vote. The party lost support in the November election, but increased their vote share to 31.7% in 2023.
The Swedish Social Democratic Party averaged 45.3% of the votes in half of all general elections between the mid-1930s and mid-1980s, making it one of the most successful political parties in the history of the liberal democratic world.[27] In the 1968 election, the Social Democrats even won an outright majority with 50,12% of the votes. In the late 1990s, the party began to receive just under 40% of the votes. After the 2010 Swedish general election, their vote share dramatically declined, some of these votes being lost to the right-wing populist party Sweden Democrats.[28] [29] [30] In the 2018 general election, the Social Democrats' only received 28.3% of the votes, its lowest level since 1908.
See also: Politics of Scotland. England (and national Westminster)
In 2015, the national Labour Party elected Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. Corbyn's leadership has been characterized as more left-wing than that of his predecessors of the New Labour era.[31] In 2017, Labour stalled their long decline by increasing their vote share for the first time since 2001, seemingly challenging the conception that a more radical leadership would be highly unsuccessful in elections.[32]
However, the 2019 general election resulted in a catastrophic defeat in which the governing Conservative Party — led by Boris Johnson — won many long-held Labour seats in the party's traditional English and Welsh heartlands (sometimes described as the 'Red Wall'). Brexit and the unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn were listed as reasons for the defeat in subsequent polling.[33]
Corbyn was succeeded as party leader in April 2020 by Keir Starmer.[34] In May 2021, Starmer failed to improve on the party's fortunes in a 'bumper' set of local and devolved parliamentary elections (taking place due to Mayoral and local races being postponed due to COVID-19 in 2020). Among the failures was another loss in the 'Red Wall' Hartlepool by-election for the Westminster parliament to the Conservative candidate by nearly 7,000 votes. Hartlepool had previously been held by Labour under Corbyn twice in 2017 and 2019, considered low points for Labour. The Conservative victory has largely been attributed to large numbers of former Brexit Party and UKIP supporters switching to the Conservatives - rather than the 'successor' to the Brexit Party, the 'Reform' party - as well as many Labour supporters supporting third-party or independent candidates.[35]
Following a scandal known as 'Partygate' as well as a range of sleaze scandals, Boris Johnson stepped down as Prime Minister in 2022, marking the first UK government crisis of 2022. He was succeeded by Liz Truss who won out in a crowded field to succeed Johnson. Truss's libertarian economic policy set out in the September 2022 mini-budget was perceived to be quite radical. The budget was widely attributed as the cause for a subsequent significant rise in mortgage rates, and caused Liz Truss to leave her post after just 49 days in office. By this time, Labour had overtaken the Conservatives in polling quite dramatically,[36] but this did not lead to an immediate election.
Truss's successor and main competitor in the previous leadership election, Rishi Sunak, was selected by the 1922 Committee as Prime Minister and held out until July 2024 to call the by-then expected election, in which Labour were anticipated to win a very large majority. In that 2024 General Election, Labour did not significantly increase their vote share across the country as a whole, but they benefitted from two unusual factors which played in their favour: 1. more conservative stances from some Labour politicians relocated the vote towards rural and town areas which Labour struggled in beforehand, slightly increasing their vote share, 2. Nigel Farage rejoined and led the Reform Party, which subsequently won 14.2% (but just 5 seats) of the vote nationally (concentrated in rural and coastal areas), gifting many previously uncompetitive seats to Labour in England due to the SMDP electoral system. The result was a significant Labour Parliamentary victory all three British nations, winning 411 seats (63.23%), while the Conservatives held just 123 seats (18.2%).
While Labour currently hold a very large majority in Parliament, this does not mean that they are electorally secure or that they are immune from Pasokification in future. Labour won just 33.7% of votes in the 2024 election, while the Liberal Democrats won 12.2% (and won 72 seats), the Greens won 6.7% (and won 4 seats) and a range of Independent candidates won rhetorically significant races against Labour candidates. This included the victory of 4 candidates who campaigned heavily around the Israeli invasion of Gaza and Palestinian solidarity. The most notable of these was Shockat Adam, who unseated senior Labour spokesperson Jonathan Ashworth. Additionally, Wes Streeting was nearly unseated by Independent candidate Leane Mohamad, Independent Ahmed Yakoob won a significant vote share against now Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, and LSE economist Faiza Shaheen - who was previously a Labour candidate but was controversially deselected at the last minute - won a similar number of votes against Iain Duncan Smith as an Independent candidate to the 'parachuted-in' Labour candidate Shama Tatler. Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the Labour Party, also won a significant victory against the opposing Labour candidate in Islington North. It has been floated that a group containing these five Independents could form in order to deploy a stronger voice in Parliament. During the King's Speech, the SNP also tabled an amendment demanding Labour repeal the two-child benefit cap (a policy widely acknowledged to be inevitable under a Labour government, but not included in initial proposals). Starmer's whipping team made this an unprecedented three-line whip and withdrew the whip from 7 elected Labour MPs who were associated with the left of the party. It has been theorised that this group could also comprise a left-wing nucleus of opposition against Labour.
Scotland
Scottish Labour held the majority of Scotland's Westminster seats from the 1964 United Kingdom general election until the 2015 United Kingdom general election in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party (SNP) won 56 of the 59 available seats. The SNP then fell to 35 seats at the 2017 general election in Scotland and rose to 48 in the 2019 general election in Scotland. Scottish Labour had lost support since the creation of the Scottish Parliament. The party got 33.6% of the votes in the 1999 Scottish Parliament election and 19.1% of the votes in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. This allowed the SNP to overtake Scottish Labour by 2015. Labour won the majority of Scottish Westminster seats in 2024, winning 35% of the vote compared to the SNP's 30%.[37]
Wales
Pasokification has not taken place in Wales, where Welsh Labour have consistently held the Welsh devolved government derived from the Senedd (Welsh Assembly/Parliament) from when it was first established in 1999. It is practically impossible for any one party to win an outright majority in the Welsh electoral system - a combination of SMDP and an adjusted regional list vote known as AMS. However, Welsh Labour have won a working-majority (30/60 seats) a number of times, including in the May 2021 Senedd elections where their English and Scottish equivalents underperformed in local and national elections.[38] Though Welsh Labour has successfully retained control of the devolved administration, the share of Labour seats from Wales in the Westminster House of Commons has slightly declined since 1945. Labour lost some vote share in Wales in 2024, but gained 9 seats, mostly due to the Conservative-Reform split.[39]
Northern Ireland
The Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland consistently lost votes between 1998 and 2022.
Non-standard territories
The Manx Labour Party has been in decline since 2001, and even lost their representation in the House of Keys in 2016. It gained two seats in the 2021 elections. Most candidates on the Isle of Man are Independents.
Gibraltar has not undergone a process of Pasokification. The long-term alliance of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party and the Gibraltar Liberal Party has persisted since 2003. The GSLP was only founded in 1980, making it a relatively young social democratic party in Western Europe.
Few overseas British territories have active social democratic or labour movements. This may be because there are few distinct social cleavages among islanders for them to campaign on.
The Israeli Labor Party and its predecessor Mapai were dominant in Israeli politics from the founding of the nation in 1948 to 1977. Since then, its popularity has been gradually decreasing, especially since the start of the 21st century. In the 2020 election the party only gained 3 seats as part of Labor-Gesher-Meretz coalition, being in acute danger of altogether disappearing, but slightly rebounded and got 7 seats in the 2021 election, which allowed it to join the multi-party government.
In 2022, the party barely passed the electoral threshold of 3.25% and gained 4 seats.
The party would be Dissolved by 2024.
The social-democratic Sri Lanka Freedom Party lost the 2015 Sri Lankan presidential election to party defector Maithripala Sirisena, who campaigned on a broad alliance led by the United National Party against the decade-long rule of the Freedom Party's leader Mahinda Rajapaksa, who faced allegations of corruption and nepotism. The following 2015 Sri Lankan parliamentary election saw the formation of a national government, which soon faced major infighting. Rajapaksa went on to form a new party, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), and successfully contested several local government elections. gaining 40.47% of the votes; the Sri Lanka Freedom Party only gained 12.10%, while the United National Party gained 29.42%.
The SLPP nominated Rajapaksa's younger brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa for the 2019 Sri Lankan presidential election, who gained 52.25% against the United National Party candidate Sajith Premadasa (who gained 41.99%). Gotabaya Rajapaksa contested on a pro-nationalistic, economic development and national security platform. Sri Lanka Freedom Party had hoped to have its own candidate for the presidential election, but eventually opted to support the SLPP.[40]
South Africa is considered a dominant-party state, with the center-left African National Congress providing all of South Africa's presidents since 1994. However, the ANC's electoral majority has declined consistently since 2004, and in the 2021 local elections, its share of the national vote dropped below 50% for the first time ever.[41] The party has been embroiled in a number of controversies, particularly relating to widespread allegations of political corruption among its members. Following the 2024 general election, the ANC lost its majority in parliament for the first time in South Africa's democratic history. It still remains the largest party, with under 41% of the vote.[42] The party also lost its majority in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Gauteng and Northern Cape.
Following the pink tide, where left wing and center-left wing parties In Latin America were successful, a conservative wave happened from mid-2010s to the early 2020s as a direct reaction to the pink tide. Although the extent to which the Latin American leftist parties which have also suffered setbacks are located in the social democratic tradition is contested.[43]