Anarchy in Iceland? The global left, pirates and socialists in post-crash Icelandic politics

ABSTRACT

The historically stable Icelandic political party system has been uprooted since the 2008 financial crisis. In this paper, we explore to what extent the global left movement of anarchists and socialists has manifested in Icelandic politics in this period. We provide a historical overview, starting with the 2008 financial crisis which brought to power the first entirely left-wing government in the country's history, but also gave birth to numerous new political parties that alternately united and divided socialists, anarchists and reformers. The Pirate Party spearheaded this movement from the 2013 elections, but internal disputes have plagued the party in recent years, and both they and the Left Greens now have a fresh challenge from the left: the Socialist Party. We conclude that the current prospects for a united uprising of these movements are dim, although history suggests that they can work together when focusing on common goals of political reform.

KEYWORDS:

• Iceland
• Left Green Movement
• Pirate party
• anarchism
• socialism
• global left

Disclosure statement

One of the authors, Viktor Orri Valgarðsson, is at the time of writing and publication of this article a registered member of both the Pirate Party and the Social Democratic Alliance in Iceland.

ORCID

Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4478-4890

Viktor Orri Valgarðsson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2891-7489

Notes

1 We are very thankful to Gallup in Iceland for providing us with access to this data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir

Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir is Associate Professor, Faculty of Political Science at the University of Iceland. Ómarsdóttir was a member of the Left Green Movement until 2017 and served on the party's governing council from 2006 to 2010.

Viktor Orri Valgarðsson

Viktor Orri Valgarðsson is a Teaching Fellow in Quantitative Comparative Politics at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University and holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Southampton. Valgarðsson served on the board of the Movement in 2013, has been a member of the Pirate Party – Iceland since its founding in 2012 and was a candidate for the party in the 2016 elections, taking a seat in parliament as deputy member from December 2016 to March 2017.