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Book Review: Steven H Shiffrin, What’s Wrong with the First Amendment

The aim of the book by Paolo Chiocchetti is to evaluate the evolution of the radical left parties (RLPs) in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Partially in contrast with some part of the literature, Chiocchetti is sceptical about the possibility of encapsulating different programmatic and organisational trajectories within a defined (radical left) party family. Nonetheless, he identifies three common denominators at the systemic level, which frame the experience of this family: ‘the triple crisis of communism, of the Fordist social model, and of neoliberalism’ (p. 3). Using both qualitative and quantitative methodological tools, the author combines a mediumN analysis across 17 West European countries from 1914 to 1988 (chapter 2) and from 1989 to 2015 (chapter 3) and a small-N in-depth comparison of three case studies focusing on Germany, Italy and France (chapters 4–6). The attempt to ‘measure’ radical left parties’ trends taking into consideration their electoral, parliamentary, governmental and membership ‘strengths’ is very ambitious. Nonetheless, the operationalisation of the ‘overall strength’ seems to underestimate some relevant aspects such as the role of electoral laws and the Sartorian concept of relevance in the electoral and parliamentarian outcomes. More importantly, it seems that the ‘societal strength’ deserves a greater focus on those crucial aspects – finance, communication and civil society – which are included in the small-N cases (pp. 88, 127, 166) but excluded in the methodological introduction (chapter 1). The analysis of the cross-national trends in both preand post-Cold War contexts is accurate and, mostly, it is matched with an insightful historical contextualisation, which frames the strategies of RLPs vis-à-vis the most relevant international events. The empirical chapters on the three case studies denote an extensive knowledge of RLPs as well as of the three political systems in terms of electoral competition and of the internal dynamics between traditional and non-mainstream parties. Contrary to its historical factionalism, what emerges in the book is that the radical left was able, in some cases, to regroup successfully (in the German case, but only partially in the Italian and French cases), providing a ‘modernized ideology, a pluralist organization and the willingness to reward potential partners with adequate resources and visibility’ (p. 218). However, according to Chiocchetti, the overall balance of power is still unfavourable for RLPs in Europe, despite the success of parties such as Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain. Finally, the insertion of several summaries at the beginning, the end and in the middle of some chapters complicates the overall fluency of the book.