During the campaign, most candidates advocated a “return to real social democracy” and the working class. Unfortunately, with the exception of Karolina Leaković — who called for a Jeremy Corbyn–like turn in the party, but won less than 1 percent in the first round of voting — these were empty populist slogans. And members, well aware that their party has become a social-democratic formation in name only, seemed to see the rhetoric as just that.
The SDP, though one of Croatia’s two major parties since Yugoslavia’s collapse, has largely spent its life in opposition. Only when the HDZ is experiencing great inter-party crisis has the SDP been able to take over.
Historically, the party, a successor to the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH), found support in the industrial centers and ethnically mixed regions. During the war in the 1990s, however, the party’s power collapsed, violence and deindustrialization eroding its former strongholds. [...]
Rightward-moving electoral alliances have been underpinned by a deep commitment to Third Way policies. During a recent stint in power, from 2011 to 2015, the party busied itself not with fighting for workers’ rights but with weakening labor law and pushing privatization. This experience turned the last remnants of the party’s working-class base against it. The party now relies on voters in the most economically developed regions and the most educated segments of the population.
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