Book contents
- Riding the Populist Wave
- Riding the Populist Wave
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Figures and Tables
- Preface
- 1 The Mainstream Right in Western Europe: Caught between the Silent Revolution and Silent Counter-Revolution
- 2 The Demand Side: Profiling the Electorate of the Mainstream Right in Western Europe since the 2000s
- 3 The Supply Side: Mainstream Right Party Policy Positions in a Changing Political Space in Western Europe
- 4 Austria: Tracing the Christian Democrats’ Adaptation to the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 5 France: Party System Change and the Demise of the Post-Gaullist Right
- 6 Germany: How the Christian Democrats Manage to Adapt to the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 7 Italy: The Mainstream Right and its Allies, 1994–2018
- 8 The Netherlands: How the Mainstream Right Normalized the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 9 Spain: The Development and Decline of the Popular Party
- 10 Sweden: The Difficult Adaptation of the Moderates to the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 11 The United Kingdom: The Conservatives and their Competitors in the post-Thatcher Era
- 12 The Mainstream Right in Western Europe in the Twenty-First Century
- References
- Index
9 - Spain: The Development and Decline of the Popular Party
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 August 2021
- Riding the Populist Wave
- Riding the Populist Wave
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Figures and Tables
- Preface
- 1 The Mainstream Right in Western Europe: Caught between the Silent Revolution and Silent Counter-Revolution
- 2 The Demand Side: Profiling the Electorate of the Mainstream Right in Western Europe since the 2000s
- 3 The Supply Side: Mainstream Right Party Policy Positions in a Changing Political Space in Western Europe
- 4 Austria: Tracing the Christian Democrats’ Adaptation to the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 5 France: Party System Change and the Demise of the Post-Gaullist Right
- 6 Germany: How the Christian Democrats Manage to Adapt to the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 7 Italy: The Mainstream Right and its Allies, 1994–2018
- 8 The Netherlands: How the Mainstream Right Normalized the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 9 Spain: The Development and Decline of the Popular Party
- 10 Sweden: The Difficult Adaptation of the Moderates to the Silent Counter-Revolution
- 11 The United Kingdom: The Conservatives and their Competitors in the post-Thatcher Era
- 12 The Mainstream Right in Western Europe in the Twenty-First Century
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter analyses Spain’s mainstream conservative party, the Popular Party (PP). Of the two revolutions analysed in the book – the silent and silent counter-revolutions – the Popular Party only confronted the former for several decades. In general, it adapted to a more liberal society by moderating to capture centrist voters in the 1990s without losing far right voters, thereby remaining hegemonic on the right. Midway through the subsequent decade, Spain’s two main parties, the Socialist PSOE and PP, moved further apart on post-materialist and centre–periphery issues. Today, PP is severely weakened and ideologically sandwiched between two right-wing party challengers, the more centrist Citizens and the far right Vox. This political fragmentation is due to a favourable opportunity structure for the rise of new parties after 2010 – related to the Great Recession, political corruption and the push for independence in Catalonia. In this context, PP was unable to retain its diverse electorate. It now confronts dilemmas similar to those of many of its European counterparts, and the party’s initial response to the rise of Vox was to move rightward and accommodate it as an ally.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Riding the Populist WaveEurope's Mainstream Right in Crisis, pp. 216 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
- 4
- Cited by