https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9494-4621
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ABSTRACT
This article looks at the development of Southern European party systems between the moment of their independence (Malta and Cyprus) and democratisation (Portugal, Greece and Spain) and before the beginning of 2012, at the highest point of the global financial and economic crisis. In particular, it constitutes the first attempt since Morlino's path-breaking study, published 20 years ago, to try to understand why some Southern European party systems institutionalised. Departing from Casal Bértoa's [2012. Parties, regime and cleavages: Explaining party system institutionalization in East Central Europe. East European Politics, 28(4), 452–472] work on the sources of party system institutionalisation in East Central Europe, the current article examines, looking at four different periods (i.e. infancy, Cold War, twentieth century and economic crisis), the causes of institutionalisation in five Southern European party systems across time. The most important finding is that the sources explaining variation in the level of institutionalisation of young party systems are the same no matter the time (one, two, three decades) or space (post-communist or post-authoritarian Europe) taken into consideration. Thus, party systems characterised by electoral disproportionality, legislative concentration, cleavage cumulation and, to a lesser extent, parliamentarism as well as institutionalised political parties score significantly higher in terms of institutionalisation than more fractionalized, proportional, organisationally less rooted, semi-presidential, and socio-politically cross-cut party systems.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, the participants of a workshop ‘in honour of Peter Mair by his former PhD students’, held at the European University Institute (Florence) between the 26th and 27th of February 2013 as well as two anonymous reviews for their value comments and suggestions on previous versions of this article.
Notes
1 Even if it managed to contest its first national parliamentary elections in 2008, only two years after its foundation, it did not present any candidates in 2001, making its electoral breakthrough only in December 2015 (Rodriguez-Teruel & Barrio, Citation2016).
2 In fact, and as has been mentioned elsewhere (De Sio & Legnante, Citation2010; Lewis-Beck & Nadeau, Citation2012), the crisis did not really appear to affect electoral results in Southern European countries before 2012.
3 Following a MSSD, and given the necessity to control for as many explanatory factors as possible, Italy has not been included in the analysis. Its historical background (i.e. Fascist regime, WWII, foreign occupation, presence of the Vatican), the time of its democratic transition (i.e. the beginning of Huntington’s ‘Second Wave’), the length of its democratic experience (i.e. almost double), the degree of cabinet instability and institutional change (e.g. the electoral system), its regional structure and geographical (North vs. South) differences, as well as its condition as a founding member of the EU, clearly make the country different enough from the rest of the Southern European countries to justify its exclusion. Moreover, the fact that in the period under study (1964–2011), and in clear contrast with the other five countries here examined, Italy experienced two totally different party systems (i.e. before and after 1994), make it impossible (both methodologically and empirically) to apply the type of MSSD comparison undertaken in the article.
4 Other indicators have been: percentage of new parties, candidate party switching, organisational affiliation strategies, percentage of independent candidates, etc.
5 100 = total alternation; 0 = no alternation.
6 Two-bloc party systems may take place in both limited (e.g. Albania, Macedonia) and extreme pluralist (e.g. Italy) contexts.
7 The Czech Republic and Poland until 2006 could be considered their main reflection in the real world.
8 Had there been any years between elections or cabinet changes, all the three components of iPSI would have received a score of 100.
9 Had cabinet changes taken place during the same year, the average scores of the three different sub-indicators would then be considered (Casal Bértoa & Enyedi, Citation2016).
10 It is important to note here that only countries and periods with a score of 2 or less in the Freedom House political and civil liberties index (2012) are included in the analysis.
11 It is important to note here that while iPSI can go from 0 to 100, it tends to range only from 70 to 99. In this context, a disparity of 5 (e.g. between Portugal and Malta) or 10 (e.g. between Cyprus and Spain) points constitutes a great difference in terms of systemic institutionalisation.
12 While the first one was formed by SYN, ND and PASOK (Clive, Citation1990), the second included the last two parties plus LAOS (Mavrogordatos and Mylonas, Citation2012).
13 Please note that the small PPM only participated in government as part of AD, contributing only one minister to Balsemão’s (1981–1983) cabinet. Other (already defunct) parties with parliamentary representation excluded from participating in the executive were UDP, PRD and PSN.
14 From July 1976 until October 1995, up to 5 different combinations of parties (i.e. socialists alone; socialists and Christian-democrats; liberal-conservatives and Christian-democrats; liberal-conservatives, Christian-democrats and monarchists; liberal-conservatives alone) can be distinguished.
15 Some of them (e.g. EDI, LP, Epalxi) even managed to share government responsibilities just a few months after their formation.
16 The same argument can be sustained in relation to Portugal and Spain.
17 Following Casal Bértoa and Mair, and in order to control for time, Table C compares Southern European party systems in their ‘infancy’ (Citation2012, p. 105).
18 ‘Relevant’ parties are defined here as all those receiving more than 10 per cent of the vote at the last legislative elections (Mainwaring & Scully, Citation1995). Reducing the ‘relevance’ threshold (for instance to 3 per cent) produces very similar results. Data available from the author upon request.
19 The IPS ‘weights and “rewards” the electoral achievement of parties in a sequence of elections’ through the progressive enhancement of the proportion of the total vote for political parties in a given election over time (Lewis, Citation2006, pp. 574–575).
20 In contrast to Mainwaring and Scully’s (Citation1995) ‘party age’, Lewis’ (Citation2006) IPS index allows us to include a higher number of relevant parties (see list of party acronyms).
21 Greece, with a third relevant party/coalition (KKE/SYN) at the extreme-left of the political spectrum during all its recent democratic history, closely follows the same logic.
22 It is important to note here that the use of average scores for the whole period does not undermine the reliability of our analysis as none of the electoral systems analysed have suffered what Lijphart called ‘significant changes’ (Citation1994).
23 Because we are mostly interested here in the direction of change, Figure uses z-scores rather than ‘raw’ scores. For a distinction between the two and an explanation of how they are calculated, please see Casal Bértoa and Enyedi (Citation2016).
24 Spain is a constitutional monarchy. The same could be said of Malta between 21 September 1964 (independence day) and 13 December 1974, when the country became a Republic.
25 PSD gave its support (reluctantly) to CDS’ founder Freitas do Amaral, but only at a later stage (Jalali, Citation2007, p. 243).
26 Religion and centre-periphery for Cyprus, religion and economy for the rest (McAllister and White, Citation2007; Lijphart, Citation1999, pp. 80–81).