Government-Opposition in Southern European Countries during the Economic Crisis

Great Recession, Great Cooperation?

Elisabetta Giorgi, Catherine Moury

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138086630
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317407324
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Globalizzazione

As a result of the financial crisis, opposition parties have had to choose between the need to cooperate with the majority in order to contribute to necessary socio-economic changes, and the opportunity to stress their adversarial position vis-à-vis governments taking radical and unpopular measures.

This book examines how opposition parties address this dilemma. It relies on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the behaviour of the opposition parties in parliament, in light of the socio-economic issues that have arisen in recent years. It focuses in particular on the impact that the economic malaise has had on the government-opposition dynamics in the four southern European democracies most acutely hit by the crisis: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as in the European Parliament. Each chapter utilizes a combination of empirical data analysis and qualitative process-tracking to understand the opposition parties' complicated choice between supporting and dissenting.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies.

Introduction: Conflict and Consensus in Parliament during the Economic Crisis

CATHERINE MOURY and ELISABETTA DE GIORGI

Since the onset of the economic crisis, parties in parliament (especially those in opposition) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperate with the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by a weakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily reelected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? The present contribution introduces a collection of works exploring this dilemma in southern European countries, by examining the opposition behaviour in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain; and in the European Parliament.

Introduction

The international financial crisis has hit Europe, especially its ‘periphery’, remarkably hard, and has had deep consequences at the economic and political levels. A series of works have explored and explained the public policy reforms undertaken;¹ others have examined the electoral costs of such a difficult situation.² An important aspect that has not been addressed in the literature so far is the impact of the crisis on the level of consensus in parliament. This is striking, given its importance in empirical terms: the lack of cooperation between parliamentary party groups and the government has significant consequences in terms of bills’ passage and legitimacy, and even in terms of government survival. Theoretically, the question is also interesting: parties in parliament (especially those in opposition) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperate with the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by a weakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily re-elected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? This is a crucial question, for which there is no easy or intuitive answer.

The present contribution introduces a collection of works exploring this dilemma in southern European countries, by examining the opposition behaviour in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. In so doing, we shall try to understand not only what kind of impact the crisis has had on the level of consensus in parliament in the four countries mentioned, but also whether differences are observable across cases. We choose also to focus on the European Parliament (EP). Although there is not a clear government–opposition division across the EP, studies have shown that MPs behave differently when their national party is ‘in government’ in the EU Council and Commission (Hix, Noury, & Roland, 2006). This is particularly true for very relevant legislation or political deals that Council or Commission leaders pressure their members of the EP (MEPs) to support. Thus, like their counterparts in national parliaments, MEPs have found themselves under two contrasting pressures induced by the crisis: a pressure for cohesion, caused by the same sense of responsibility and state of emergency felt by the national opposition parties; and a pressure for fragmentation across party groups and countries. Therefore, we intend to explore the effects of the financial crisis in both a national and a supranational context.

Consensus, the Crisis and the Opposition’s Choice

The degree of consensus in parliament is the result of two contrasting pressures. One comes from the need of opposition parties to mark their position as distinct from that of other parties. This is a pressure towards conflict, which pushes political parties to signal their distance from the government’s policy positions. The other is a force towards cooperation that comes from the need of government to ensure large support for their policies, echoed by the opposition’s wish to take part in the decision-making and influence policy decisions. In sum, consensus in parliament is the result of the balance between a tendency towards conflict and another towards cooperation. As a rule, the latter prevails: at national level, an extremely high level of consensus in the lawmaking process has been found in almost all the European parliamentary democracies (Andeweg, De Winter, & Müller, 2008; Christiansen & Damgaard, 2008; Cowley & Stuart, 2005; Giuliani, 2008; Kaiser, 2008; M újica & Sánchez-Cuenca, 2006). This is true to such an extent that parties generally are ‘in opposition, in the sense of being out of government, but not necessarily in disagreement on a continuing basis with government’ (Norton, 2008, p. 241). At supranational level, within the EP, a similar pressure to choose between conflict and cooperation across parties is visible. On the one hand, MEPs have incentives to act cohesively to maximise their chances of being influential, or simply to pass legislation as often an absolute majority is required. On the other, party lines, nationalities and government–opposition dynamics are drivers of conflict. As observed in national parliaments, however, cooperation prevails in the EP: on average, about two-thirds of legislation is passed with the consensus of a ‘grand coalition’ composed of the European Popular Party (EPP), the Party of European Socialists (PES), and the Liberals.³

With the financial crisis, the opposition parties’ usual dilemma between conflict and cooperation has become particularly intricate. At the national level, the difficulty of borrowing for most European countries –and for some, the conditions of the loan set by the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission (EC) –forces governments to make radical changes in their policies, notably in areas such as taxation, pensions, labour policy, and the like. Austerity measures are by their very nature unpopular and, as stated by classical economic voting theory, in bad economic times voters are much more likely to withdraw their support for the government (Healy & Lenz, 2013; Lewis-Beck, 1988). This ‘golden rule’ has not been disproved by the current crisis: in 2011 we witnessed the fall of the incumbents in all the main countries of southern Europe.⁴ As noted by Bosco and Verney, governments are always ‘wrong’ in these critical situations.

The economic storm that has broken out in Southern Europe has shown that when incumbents are ‘responsible’ –abiding by the agreements with the external actors –they end up neglecting their voters’ demands … On the other hand, when incumbents avoid being ‘responsible’ and/or try to be primarily responsive to their voters, they lose international credibility, with dangerous consequences for the management of national sovereign debt and hence for the economic health of the country. (Bosco & Verney, 2012, p. 133)

These two extremes are well-represented by the cases of Zapatero’s government in Spain, on the one hand, and that led by Berlusconi in Italy, on the other. The first fell because his voters felt betrayed, while the second had to resign because he had not acted responsibly enough to ensure the required financial stability for his country. The political opportunities of opposition parties in such a critical scenario are thus conflicting: they have a choice between the need to cooperate with the majority to influence the direction of far-reaching socio-economic changes in order to overcome the crisis, and the chance to weaken a fragile government even further and possibly get into power if elections are held. While the executive has to act responsibly, deepening the tension between its representative and governing function in favour of the latter (Mair, 2011), the opposition parties can often grant themselves the luxury not to.

A similar reasoning can be made at the supranational level. On the one hand, the decisions taken at the EU level following the crisis are urgent, extremely relevant and are the result of difficult negotiations between the member states, so that the MEPs are inclined to act consensually for their country’s sake. In addition, many of these decisions have been passed at intergovernmental level, out of the traditional legislative procedure. As the literature shows, in many cases the EP has acted as a competence maximiser (Farrell & Héritier, 2007; H éritier, Moury, Bischoff, & Bergström, 2013; Moury, 2007), that is, it aims to maximise its influence on the decision-making process. All these factors have encouraged the EP to act cohesively, in order to ensure a quick and safe passage of these measures and/or increase its influence on them. But on the other hand, the crisis has also generated a strong pressure towards conflict. First, socio-economic measures and reforms taken in response to the crisis are very ideological and entail considerable delegation at the EU level. As a consequence, they are likely to split the EP across party lines (left/right and pro/anti-EU integration). Second, the recent socio-economic measures entail very different costs and benefits for the different member states according to whether they are creditors or lenders, or whether they belong to the eurozone or not. This would also promote new divisions within the EP along geographical lines. As a consequence, we expect the dilemma between conflict and cooperation also to be relevant within the EP.

Preliminary Research Hypotheses

Little is said in the existing literature about the possible conduct of parliamentary parties given such an extreme quandary. Traditionally, consensus in parliament has been thought to be affected by the characteristics of the political system in which the opposition parties operate, such as the type of government, type of parties and party competition and institutional resources (Duverger, 1951; Oberreuter, 1975; Pulzer, 1987; Sartori, 1966). Typologies of opposition based on the mentioned systemic factors are still functional and effective, yet they rely on models based on an ideal image of democracy that still exists in theory, but no longer corresponds to the actual performance of political actors (Andeweg et al., 2008; Cowley & Stuart, 2005; Giuliani, 2008; Kaiser, 2008; Mújica & Sánchez-Cuenca, 2006). Consensus in parliament has been proved to be affected also by non-systemic variables such as the preferences of the political actors, the characteristics of the legislation to be approved and, in particular, the policy area involved (De Giorgi, 2011; Green-Pedersen, 2007; Jenkins, 2010; Rose, 1984; Tsebelis, 2002).

What is particularly relevant in our case is that the opposition parties’ behaviour in parliament has been proved to be more adversarial on economic and social policies, as parties are expected to represent different socio-economic interests, while the highest level of consensus is usually found on matters of national interest commonly affecting the whole electorate, such as foreign affairs and defence (Rose, 1984). The idea that ‘policy determines politics’, that the nature of issues entails distinct patterns of cooperation and conflict (Lowi, 1972; Wilson, 1980), points to the relevance of issue-voting, which has an established tradition among scholars of decision-making and roll-call voting (Clausen, 1973; Erikson, 1978; Francis, 1967; Kuklinski, 1978; Miller & Stokes, 1963). Furthermore, the saliency that parties give to different issues has an impact on their voting behaviour in parliament (Carammia & De Giorgi, 2011; Mújica & Sánchez-Cuenca, 2006; Stecker, 2011): low issue salience suggests lack of attention from the public, hence less incentive for political parties to compete. By contrast, the more a party (and its electorate) assigns relevance to an issue, the more costly it will be to behave consensually. Although the legislation presented by the governments to save their country from the worst effects of the financial crisis might be considered as related to national interests, it is also clearly related to socioeconomic issues and innately salient. Hence, we expect the level of consensus between the government and opposition parties to decrease as the number of socio-economic and salient policies discussed in parliament increases.

Moreover, as pointed out in the existing literature, the nature of parties constitutes a crucial variable that also explains the behaviour of the opposition in parliament (Duverger, 1951; Flanagan, 2001; Sartori, 1966). In particular, we expect to find a significant difference between the so-called radical parties –that is, parties proposing extreme societal changes which are usually permanently in opposition –and the mainstream parties, with a more moderate stance, which usually alternate in government. We expect this difference between permanent and alternative opposition to play a crucial role in the choice either to support or to oppose the economic measures proposed by the governments. As a result, we expect to have two kinds of opposition:⁵ that of the mainstream parties –that is, parties with government aspirations, which are waiting to be called to replace the government in office in the near future –will behave in a more cooperative way; while that of the parties permanently excluded from power will radicalise their positions in the legislative arena even further.

In a similar vein, scholars have already worked on the impact of Euroscepticism –and conversely of pro-European attitudes –on the government–opposition dynamics and party competition at national level (Hooghe, Marks, & Wilson, 2004; Sitter, 2001, 2002; Szczerbiak & Taggart, 2003) and on the voting behaviour in the EP (Hix, Noury, & Roland, 2007). In normal times ‘virtually every policy area is now affected to a greater or lesser extent by the EU … National elections are still contested on the basis of policy choices, but policy choices are largely decided in Brussels’ (Bulmer & Radaelli, 2004, pp. 2–3). In this period of crisis, this dynamic has been stressed even further. Since the outbreak of the crisis, the EU has acquired a key influence in socio-economic policy areas and has started recommending the measures that are to be approved by the national governments. This has happened in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, where countries and banks were bailed out and the international lenders –the ECB, IMF and the EC –set conditions for the loan; but also in Italy and more recently in Cyprus. Recommendations tend towards an extremely quick reduction of public debt or deficit, but also indicate a whole series of structural reforms. Even in countries that have not been bailed out, the influence of the EC on the budget draft is undoubtedly substantial. Thus, a clear trend has been registered: an increase in the European influence over (or even a Europeanisation of) the usually controversial sectors of social and economic policy. Given this, we expect the traditionally pro-European parties to be more likely to cooperate than before on socio-economic measures, because they follow the EU recommendations/orders. Alternatively, we expect the Eurosceptic parties to have less incentive than before to collaborate when the EU influences legislation.

Thus, although we expect a general decrease in the level of consensus after the onset of the crisis (due to the rising number of salient and socio-economic policy decisions), we expect the net impact of the crisis on the opposition parties’ behaviour to vary significantly from one party to another. Since the onset of the crisis, the mainstream and pro-European parties, which usually alternate in government, are expected to behave more consensually than they would have done for similar policies in other circumstances. We expect the contrary to be true for the radical parties. Obviously, these two hypotheses are closely related, as parties that are permanently out of government tend to be more Eurosceptic (Sitter, 2001; Taggart, 1998).⁶

While the first hypotheses apply to both national and European legislative arenas, an additional hypothesis relates to the shift in time in the national context. As stated above, austerity measures are by their nature unpopular and so it is the government that has to implement them. In other words, during the financial crisis the major opposition parties have a better chance of replacing the incumbents in the case of new elections. This idea is consistent with the literature that economic and financial crises tend to lead to government instability and termination (Browne, Frendreis, & Gleiber, 1986).⁷ The current crisis is no exception. On the contrary, it has been the rule in nearly all the elections in southern Europe since 2011 to punish the incumbent. Of all the national elections held in the last two years in the four countries under analysis, j...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Conflict and Consensus in Parliament during the Economic Crisis
• 2. Government–Opposition Dynamics during the Economic Crisis in Greece
• 3. From a Technocratic Solution to a Fragile Grand Coalition: The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Parliamentary Government in Italy
• 4. Incumbents, Opposition and International Lenders: Gov erning Portugal in Times of Crisis
• 5. Government–Opposition Dynamics in Spain under the Pressure of Economic Collapse and the Debt Crisis
• 6. An Emerging Divide? Assessing the Impact of the Euro Crisis on the Voting Alignments of the European Parliament
• 7. Conclusions: Great Recession, Great Cooperation?
• Index