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Volatile Parties and Stable Voters in Spain &*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Samuel H. Barnes ,
Peter McDonough  and
Antonio López Pina
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Extract

‘GOVERNMENTAL INSTABILITY: ITS CAUSES AND CURE’ HAS stimulated a growth industry in political science. Conferences, projects and published and unpublished works attest to its attraction as a research topic as well as its centrality for the democratic process. The volatility of electorates ranks high among the presumed causes of instability. The inability of cabinets to maintain legislative majorities, often attributed to the fickle nature of mass publics, is said to lead to ineffective government. Lack of effectiveness, in turn, results in voter disaffection, loss of legitimacy and increased volatility.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1986 , pp. 56 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1986

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References

1 Huntington, Samuel, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968.Google Scholar

2 Przeworski, Adam, ‘Institutionalization of Voting Patterns, or Is Mobilization the Source of Decay?’, American Political Science Review, 69, 1975, pp. 49–67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid, table 3, p. 59.

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6 Ibid.

7 On changes in several party systems see: Baker, Kendall, Dalton, Russell and Hildebrandt, Kai, Germany Transformed, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1981 Google Scholar; Andeweg, Rudy B., Dutch Voters Adrift, Leyden, privately printed, 1982 Google Scholar; and the essays in Dalton, Russell, Flanagan, Scott C. and Beck, Paul Men (eds), Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies, Princeton University Press, 1984 Google Scholar.

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11 See Ronald Inglehart, op. cit. and Dalton, Russell, ‘Cognitive Mobilization and Partisan Dealignment in Advanced Industrial Democracies’, Journal of Politics, 46, 1984, pp. 264–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The future of party government is the subject of a large programme of research and publication of the European University Institute under the direction of Rudolf Wildenmann.

13 Pedersen, N. Mogens, ‘The Dynamics of European Party Systems: Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility’, European Journal of Political Research, 7, pp. 1–26; and ‘Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility in European Party Systems, 1948–1977CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Explorations in Explanation’, in Daalder, Hans and Mair, Peter (eds), Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change, Beverly Has, Sage, 1983, pp. 29–66.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 Maravall, José María, La política de la transicián, 2nd ed., Madrid, Taurus, 1984 Google Scholar; Gunther, Richard, Sani, Giacomo and Shabad, Goldie, Spain After Franco: The Making of a Competitive Party System, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985 Google Scholar.

16 Juan Linz, ‘The Party System of Spain: Past and Future’ in Lipset and Rokkan op. cit.

17 Mujal‐Leán, Eusebio, Communism and Political Change in Spain, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1983 Google Scholar.

18 The importance of this underground may be limited. One scholar wryly observes that ‘the activities of the Communists were more obvious among prison inmates than among the population as a whole’ ( Cotarelo, Ramon García, ‘The Crisis of Political Parties in Spain’, European Journal of Political Research, 9, 1981, pp. 215–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

19 Peter McDonough, Samuel H. Barnes and Antonio Lápez Pina, ‘Economic Policy and Public Opinion in Spain’, American Journal of Political Science, 30, forthcoming.

20 For a breakdown of the party backgrounds of the UCD parliamentary group in 1977 see Maravall, op. cit., 1984, p. 26. Christian Democrats, liberals, social democrats, regionalists and independents were all represented! Against this background, the troubles of the UCD acquire a different perspective.

21 Villar, Gregorio Gámara, Nacional‐catolicismo y escuela: la socializacián política del franquismo, 1936–1951, Madrid, Editorial Hespkia, 1984.Google Scholar

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24 Marshall, T.H., Class, Citizenship, and Social Development, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1964 Google Scholar.

25 The development of partisan loyalties in Spain is treated in greater detail in Barnes, Samuel H., McDonough, Peter and Lápez Pina, Antonio, ‘The Development of Partisanship in New Democracies: the Case of Spain’, American Journal of Political Science, 29 Google Scholar, forthcoming.

26 We are aware of extensive debate as to the role of popular forces in hastening the dismantling of the Franco regime, and we do not wish to detract from their influence (see Maravall, José María, Dictatorship and Political Dissent: Workers and Students in Franco’s Spain, London, Tavistock, 1978 Google Scholar). But mass pressures seem to have played only a small role in shaping the transition to the new regime.

27 McDonough, Peter, Barnes, Samuel H. and Lápez Pina, Antonio, ‘Authority and Association: Spanish Democracy in Comparative Perspective’, Journal of Politics, 46, 1984, pp. 652–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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29 Schmitter, Philippe C., ‘Still the Century of Corporatism’, in Pike, F. and Stritch, T. (eds), The New Corporatism, University of Notre Dame Press Google Scholar.

30 Compare the structure of organizations in Spain with those for Norway as depicted in Olsen, Johan P., Organized Democracy: Political Institutions in a Welfare State — the Cnse of Norway, Bergen, Universitetsforlaget, 1983 Google Scholar.

31 In 1978, a year with no national elections in Spain, 78% of the sample followed political news on radio or television ‘regularly’ or ‘sometimes’; the percentage for the US in the same year, a year without a presidential election, was 69% watching television programmes about the campaign and 46% listening to radio. American data are from Miller, Warren E., Miller, Arthur and Schneider, Edward J., American Nation Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952–1978, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press Google Scholar.

32 For a comparison see Merritt, R.L. and Merritt, Anna, Public Opinion in Occupied Germany, 1970 Google Scholar and Public Opinion in Semi‐Sovereign Germany, 1981, both Urbana, III., University of Illinois Press;Google Scholar Conradt, David P., ‘West Germany; a Remade Political Culture?’, Comparative Political Studies, 7, 1974, pp. 230–36Google Scholar and ‘Changing German Political Culture’ in Gabriel Almond, A. and Verba, Sidney (eds), The Civic Culture Revisited, Boston, Littlejohn, 1980 Google Scholar; Baker, Kendall, ‘The Acquisition of Partisanship in Germany’, American Journal of Political Science, 1974, pp. 568–82;Google Scholar Kendall Baker, Russell Dalton and Kai Hildebrandt, op. cit.

33 Surveys carried out by DATA, SA are summarized in several volumes sponsored by the Fundacián Foessa, 1981, 1984. Another extensive source of survey data is research of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociolágicas and its predecessor, the Instituto de la Opinián Páblica, which has been published in numerous works (for an introduction see Antonio Lápez Pina and Eduardo Aranguren, L., La cultura política de la España de Franco, Madrid, Taurus, 1976;Google Scholar Nicolás, Juan Díez, Los Españoks y la opinián páblica, Madrid, Editora Nacional, 1976;Google Scholar Lápez Pintor, R., La opinián páblica española: Del franquismo a la democracia, Madrid, CIS, 1982.Google Scholar

34 Data are drawn from interviews conducted in June 1978 with 3,004, from December 1979 through February 1980 with 3,014, and in October—November 1984 with 2,994 respondents, aged 16 years and older, in the national territory of Spain. The population is stratified by region and province; within the latter, sampling points are selected with probabilities proportional to population size. Within sampling points, quota sampling is used to obtain a representative sample by age and sex. The first two surveys incorporate a panel, with a cross section added to the second wave to compensate for respondent mortality. The second wave included 1,470 valid interviews from the first wave; thus panel mortality is 51%. The first two surveys were executed by Consulta and the third by Emopáblica, both of Madrid.

35 Barnes, McDonough and Lápez Pina, op. cit. See footnote 25.

36 For a multivariate analysis of the effects of these and other factors on partisanship, see McDonough, Barnes and Lápez Pina, op. cit., 1984. See footnote 27.

37 Barne, Samuel H.s, Kaase, Max et al., Political Action, Beverly Hills, Sage, 1979 Google Scholar. Respondents were asked whether they considered themselves very, somewhat, a little, or not at all religious.

38 This compares with 76% with a preference (67% with the same preference) in a seven‐year American panel and 72% with a preference at both times in a four‐month German panel. See Norpoth, Helmuth, ‘Party Identification in West Germany: Tracing an Elusive Concept’, Comparative Political Studies, 11, 1978, pp. 36–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Fear of expressing political sentiments was often cited as a reason for the large number of non‐responses to party identification and other political questions in Italy and Germany in the postwar period. That problem seems not to exist in Spain: witness the willingness to express opinions of leaders and the fact that the PCE had a larger ratio of identifiers to voters than the ‘safer’ parties of the Right.

40 Four surveys from 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1979 reported in the Foessa series (1982, p. 189) show remarkably similar distributions. Only the slightly lower percentages on the Left differ from our three sets of results. Foessa, Fundacián, Informe socialágico sobre el cambio político en España, 1975–1983, Madrid, Euramérica, 1981 Google Scholar.

41 This compares well with correlations of 0.35 for the US, 0.40 for Germany, and 0.65 for the Netherlands (from panel studies that build on the eight‐nation surveys in those three countries).

42 These conclusions are based on Left = 1–3; Centre = 4–7; Right = 8–10.

43 Sani, Giacomo, ‘Partiti e atteggiamenti di massa in Spagna e Italia, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 11, 1981, pp. 235–280;Google Scholar Giacomo Sani and Giovanni Sartori, ‘Polarization, Fragmentation, and Competition in Western Democracies’, in Daalder, Hans and Mair, Peter (eds), Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change, Beverly Hills, Sage, 1983, pp. 307–40Google Scholar.