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Graphic 1. “Little” and “no trust” in institutions. Source: Own elaboration based on data from CIS.
Political polarization between the two mainstream parties, the success of a “revisionist” view on the country’s past and a spectacular drop in the respect and trust felt towards the political elites by the general public are the three main factors that explain the erosion of the “traditional” transition myth. The founding narrative of the Spanish democracy is not only affected by increasing criticism of the way democratization was pursued in Spain (ideological moderation, cross-party consensus seeking and delegation of decision making to selected party representatives), but also by the critics of the alleged result (the dominant role the two mainstream parties played in public life).
In the following section, and after illustrating the effect of the economic crisis for the Spanish party system, I will explore whether this evolution gives way to any of the “Second Transition”-propositions presented above.
3. PARTY SYSTEM AND STRUCTURE OF PARTY COMPETITION
Up to 2008, and against the European trend, the two mainstream parties managed to increase their weight in the Congreso de los Diputados, Spain’s parliament, producing an ever more concentrated party system at the national level. While third party competition was minimized thanks to a polarization strategy between PSOE and PP in the decade before the 2008 crisis, Mariano Rajoy benefitted from the U-turn Socialist PM Zapatero performed in austerity policies during his second term in office in a 2011 snap election. At that time, with unemployment already close to 4.5 million people, Conservatives and Socialist still managed to secure a 73 per cent share of the vote. The PP dominated the political landscape at a regional level. Twelve of the 17 regional heads of government were party members.
However, as the new government’s structural reforms (see next section) did not show immediate effect, with the number of unemployed rising well above the 5 million threshold, and the governing party facing severe allegations of corruption and illegal financing, support for Rajoy and his party declined drastically in the December 2015 election. As almost 3.5 million voters turned its back on the PP, the party’s share of the vote fell from 44,6 per cent to 28,7, losing 63 MPs and in consequence its absolute majority in parliament. Thanks to an ambiguous position regarding post-electoral coalitions with populist and nationalist forces, and a too aggressive candidate, the Socialist managed to underbid their 2011 result, already the worst since 1977. The party declined by six percentage points in the vote share to 22, losing twenty of its 110 seats in parliament. Two newcomers were the winners of the election. Pablo Iglesias’s Podemos party secured over a fifth of the vote share and 69 MPs (regional electoral alliances included), although a success had been expected due to its (then surprising) achievement in the elections to the European Parliament the year before. Albert Rivera, the dominant figure in the Ciudadanos (“citizens”) party, even showed signs of disappointment as the first post-election polls indicated 40 seats in parliament and fourteen per cent of the vote.
The result of the 2015 elections altered the structure of the party system (see Table 2). While both fragmentation and volatility rose sharply compared to the previous vote, electoral concentration – which still stood at the 1977-2008 average in 2011 – fell by fourteen percentage points. As Podemos defends policy positions left of the PSOE in both the economic and center-periphery cleavage, polarization increased. The 10-month political gridlock caused by the three runner-ups’ unwillingness to help PP-candidate Mariano Rajoy into office as well as their incapability to form an alternative government, does not seem to have changed this new pattern.
Table 2. The Spanish party system, pre- and post-crisis. Source: Delgado Sotillos/López Nieto (2012) [1977-2008], own calculations [2011-2016]. 1Number of parties 2ENP, Laakso&Taagpepera 3Net gains/losses of all parties, 4Vote share of the two biggest parties, in percentage points.
Remarkable low volatility in the 2015-16 comparison indicates a temporary stabilization of an effective three-and-a half party system.
When taking into account the structure of party competition, however, a different picture emerges. Peter Mair’s (2014, pp. 286-292) concept looks at three factors linked to the way parties compete for government office (see Table 3).
| Structure of Competition is | ||
| Closed | Open | |
| Pattern of alternation in government | Wholesale alternation or nonalternation | Partial alternation |
| Types of governing formulas | Familiar | Innovative |
| Access to government office | Restricted to few parties | Open to many parties |
| Examples | United KingdomNew Zealand, to mid-1990sJapan, 1955-1993Ireland, 1948-1989 | The NetherlandsDenmarkNewly emerging partysystems |
Table 3. Structure of party competition and the pattern of alternation in government. Source: Mair (2014), p. 291.
In all three categories, the “traditional” closed mode of Spanish party competition prevails during the last decade. Alternation in government follows the wholesale (2011) or nonalternation pattern (in 2015 and 2016). Governing formulas are (still) the absolute majority government (2011) or minority government with temporal third-party support in the legislative area (2015 and 2016). The fact that since 2016 Rajoy’s government has not only depended on one or more nationalist parties for legislative support, but as well on a nationwide formation like Cuidadanos does not meet the requirement of an “innovative” formula. Ultimately, access to government office still is limited to just two parties (PSOE and PP).
In a first conclusion, the Spanish case seems to constitute an example of a changed party system structure induced by electoral change, while both do not affect the structure of competition for government, which has remained intact since 1982. While questioning if one could speak of any systemic effect under these circumstances at all, Mair explains this possible outcome with the choices of party elites, party strategy, and the effect a closed competition structure itself has for electoral alignments. This last factor seems to especially play an important role in the Spanish case, as voters expressed their attachment for the established party system at the very moment that a major shift in the pattern of formation of government had seemed possible.
4. INSTITUTIONAL AND POLICY REFORM
As mentioned above, by institutional reform I understand any modification within the polity dimension of the Spanish democracy, i. e. the change of rules and norms that function as the basis for public institutions and which in turn require a mandate from policy makers to be implemented. When the (political) consequences of the economic crisis began to kick in, Lamo de Espinosa (2011, 62), taking up the public debate in Spain at that time, outlined the need for institutional reform in four areas: (1) Political parties, (2) lower house of Parliament, (3) Justice system, and (4) State of the autonomies.
1. Against the backdrop of numerous corruption cases, political parties were confronted by demands for transparency measures. Lawmakers reacted and the party law was changed in 2012 and 2015. In the new regime, parties have less state money to spend on electoral propaganda, corporate donations are prohibited, foundations linked to parties face stricter scrutinizing, and parties themselves – and not only single party members – are subject to criminal law when found guilty of wrongdoing. However, these new stipulations seem not to have lived up to the debate about political parties in the public and academia. There is consensus that political parties exercise too much control over administration and the intermediate system. Detractors of the transition even state that the dominant role of party elites during the transition granted them a status in public life that prevented the development of a fully functioning civil society. To strengthen intra-party
