They came after us: mainstream left’s response to the rise of the populist radical right in Romania and Bulgaria

The electoral success of the populist radical right has posed a significant challenge to the mainstream left over the past few decades. Drawing on qualitative case studies and semi-structured interviews to party elites and experts, the paper shows that the Bulgarian Socialist Party and Romania's Social Democratic Party have adopted, respectively, a positive and negative strategy of engagement vis-à-vis the populist radical after 2020. Such divergence is determined by the socialists’ organisational and programmatic evolution, their international positioning (most notably in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine) and the willingness of other parties to isolate the populist radical right.