03 December 2012

FT: Outlook mixed for Europe's party politics

By picking Pier Luigi Bersani as the centre-left Democratic party's candidate for premier, Italian voters have challenged the notion that the eurozone crisis is uprooting the established party political systems of southern Europe.

With opinion polls estimating the Democratic party’s national support at 30 per cent, far ahead of its rivals, it seems that Mr Bersani is well-placed to become prime minister of a left-leaning coalition government after parliamentary elections expected in March.

Both in Italy and across the Mediterranean, however, the outlook for the traditional parties is more mixed than Mr Bersani’s success implies... Greece offers the clearest example of the collapse of the established order. Until the 2009 debt crisis, politics had been controlled since the end of military rule in 1974 by two parties: conservative New Democracy and socialist Pasok. But in a general election six months ago, the combined vote of these two parties was barely 42 per cent.

The party systems constructed in Spain and Portugal after the democratic transitions of the 1970s are, for the moment, holding up better than in Greece. At national level – though not at regional level in Spain – the contest is largely between one big party on the right and one on the left. Change is blocked by the highly centralised nature of these parties and by the power of party leaderships to hand-pick candidates at election time, with no input from ordinary party members or voters.

Yet there are shades of difference between Spain and Portugal. Whilst the popularity ratings of Mariano Rajoy, the centre-right prime minister, are in free fall, Spanish citizens evince no more liking for Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, leader of the Socialist opposition. Even among his own party’s voters, there is a striking absence of faith that Mr Rubalcaba would govern Spain more effectively than Mr Rajoy.

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