Anti-Establishment Parties in Government SYRIZA-ANEL Policy-Making Match between the Radical Left and the Radical Right

Anti-establishment parties with either a left-wing or a right-wing ideological slant have been entering contemporary European Democracies with sizeable vote shares. During the Great Recession, the Greek party system could be perceived as a relevant case-study for the formation and breakthrough of anti-establishment parties. Given the fact that two deeply ideologically diverging anti-establishment parties, the Coalition of the Radical Left - Social Unionist Front (SYRIZA) and the populist radical right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL), came to power, forming a coalition government from early 2015 to January 2019, the primary goal of this article is to enquire into 'supplyside' parameters, exploring potential associations along a range of programmatic stances and policy dimensions that effectuated the SYRIZA-ANEL alliance. Using the Comparative Manifesto Project and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey datasets from 2012 to 2017, our findings confirm beyond the expected programmatic differences the existence of a converging policymaking basis between SYRIZA and ANEL which goes beyond the 'pro-Memorandum vs. anti-Memorandum' divide.