Election posters of Alexander Van der Bellen (right) and Norbert Hofer, two successful alternative candidates in Austria's presidential elections earlier in 2016. Credit: Ronald Zak/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.For the past five decades, European politics has been characterised by a simple paradigm: alternating power between two large blocs. Usually, this includes a Christian-democratic centre-right group and a social-democratic centre-left one — with a substantially smaller liberal party often playing kingmaker between the two.
The domination of continental politics by these two political families has been such that, in the mid-2000s, it was very difficult for a party to imagine itself as a party-in-power if it did not belong to — and have the support of — one of the two major European political families.
