Articles

Paradoxically both leading parties of Canada — Liberal and Conservative — can consider themselves “winners” in the 43rd Canadian general election: the Liberals remained the ruling party, while the Conservatives signifi cantly increased their representation in the House of Commons. At the same time, almost all parties in Canada feel like losers, as no one has fully achieved their goals. The 2019 election showed a continuing (if not intensifying) rift and confrontation between the eastern provinces that vote mostly for Liberals (along with British Columbia), and predominantly Conservative-supporting western Canada. The 2019 election again brought to the forefront of public debate the question of the principles of Canada’s electoral system — single-member plurality voting (“first-past-the-post”), now almost 150 years in use — and the prospects for reforming it to refl ect greater proportionality. It can be assumed that the elections of 2019 in Canada will be followed by a rather long “respite,” during which the Liberal minority government will be forced to cooperate with the offi cial opposition and with other political parties to pass the necessary bills. It will take a long time for the Сonservative Party to mobilize its forces in order to more successfully challenge the ruling Liberals in the next election.

This article provides a comparative analysis of the strategic attitudes of modern radical left parties towards participation in government. Using the example of two radical left parties — the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) and the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), which were major parties in the coalition governments in Cyprus (2008–2013) and Greece (2015–2019), respectively — the author examines the factors that led them to government participation and analyzes their experience and subsequent political fates after the end of their term in offi ce. The study shows that the experience of government participation by radical left parties in terms of their electoral results and political achievements can be ranked from negative to catastrophic. The real infl uence of the radical left parties on the government policy was minimal; at best they managed to achieve only moderate social democratic reforms, while any truly radical transformation of society was negated. The radical left parties have not yet resolved the issue of how to implement their declared anti-neoliberal program, taking into account not only the balance of forces within a country, but also the need to overcome the restrictions imposed by the complex institutional frameworks of the European Union, the Eurozone and the WTO.