Manuel Cervera-Marzal is a sociologist at Liège University (Belgium).
In July’s French elections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise yet again beat expectations. Its focus on leader and program have proven to be an electoral asset, but its top-heavy structure risks undermining its longer-term sustainability.
This week, French writer Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In an interview, she explains how her class background and the reality of class divides shape her writing.
In Sunday’s election, France’s neoliberalized Socialist Party slumped to a pathetic 2 percent support. Yet the overall left-wing vote increased — all thanks to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, whose transformative program inspired millions.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has long sought to rally blue-collar voters he labels “fed up, not fascists.” Yet his movement has faced an uphill battle countering disaffection with politics — and the growing media dominance of far-right talking points.
Upon its creation in 2014, Podemos insisted it was nothing like the political parties that had long dominated Spain. Today, Pablo Iglesias’s party looks like an ever-more institutionalized force — yet one whose activists continue to see themselves as belonging to a “social movement” from below.