How socialist parties in opposition faced the(ir) crisis
in Spain and Portugal (2011-2015)
Paper to be presented at the 2017 General Conference Oslo, 6 – 9 September 2017
Anna Bosco, University of Trieste
Elisabetta De Giorgi, FCSH - NOVA University of Lisbon
(FIRST DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT CITE)
Introduction
As we write, in Portugal the first socialist minority government supported by radical left parties is concluding its second year in office. In Spain, on the contrary, the socialists are in opposition and have been undergoing, for some years now, one of the deepest political crisis in their recent history. Looking at the two parties ten years ago nobody, we argue, could have predicted their situation today. What happened in the meantime? Of course, the economic crisis played a crucial role, but that alone cannot explain such a marked difference in the fate of the two parties that ruled their respective countries for two legislatures, from 2004-2005 onward, and, in the case of the Spanish socialists, seemed destined to great successes.
The severe financial and debt crisis that hit the Eurozone from 2008 had a destabilising impact on the political systems of Southern Europe. Governments were ousted from power, critical elections questioned the bipolar structure of many party systems, and new political actors challenged the traditional political game. While these events have been addressed in several works, less attention has been devoted to the experience of former incumbent parties turned opposition during the economic blizzard. In Southern Europe, the 2011-2015 period was characterised by economic recession, popular protest against the austerity policies imposed by the EU (and by the Troika in bailed-out member states), and steady erosion of support for the government parties (Bosco and Verney, 2016). We might think that such a situation, by discrediting the incumbents, would have been favourable to the opposition parties, helping them to increase their voting intentions and facilitating their triumphal return to government at the successive elections. But this was not the case of the socialists neither in Spain nor in Portugal, although the elections held in 2015 opened very different political scenarios for the two parties.
from old and new competitors and underwent internal conflicts and leadership changes. At the end of 2015 new general elections were held in both countries resulting in yet another unsatisfactory outcome for the socialists, defeated again by the incumbent centre-right parties. Nonetheless, their electoral results were substantially different. On the one hand, the PS managed to secure a disappointing 32.3 per cent of votes, that is, 4.2 points (and 12 seats) more than in the disastrous 2011 election (De Giorgi and Santana-Pereira, 2016); on the other hand, the PSOE performed even worse than in 2011 by losing more than 6 points, from 28.8 to 22.1 per cent of votes (Simón, 2016). So, although the return of the PS to government in Portugal was all but triumphal – and certainly also due the combination of a series of post-electoral factors, such as the success of the radical left parties and their availability to negotiate an agreement with the Socialist Party for the first time in history (Lisi, 2016) –, the PSOE situation was irrevocably worse as the defeat opened up a long period of internal fight on the best strategy to follow in the competitive arena emerged after the election.
What can explain the divergent outcomes of the PSOE and PS, given the remarkable number of common points of departure? Both parties dealt with the start of the international financial crisis as incumbents, lost office amid the 2011 debt turmoil, had to adapt to the role of main opposition actors in a hostile political and economic scenario. Given these shared experiences, we wonder which factors have contributed to the different directions the two parties have taken since the 2015 elections. The aim of this work is consequently to compare the performance and evolution of the PSOE and the PS between 2011 and 2015 to understand the reasons of their different political destiny.
In order to do that, we argue it is important to take into account two types of factors: first, the distinctive constraints faced by the PS and PSOE during the 2011-2015 period, probably their most difficult term in opposition ever; and second, the two parties' internal spheres. In particular, we identified three types of constraints that might have affected the opposition role played by the PS and PSOE between 2011 and 2015 in different ways. These are related, respectively, to (1) the economic recession and its most immediate consequences; (2) the competitive scenario and its stability or transformation; and (3) the (more or less) declining level of confidence in political institutions expressed by the Spanish and Portuguese citizens. Furthermore, we argue that the way the PS and PSOE dealt with their specific opposition constraints depended on the internal 'organisational face' of each party, namely the possible presence of internal conflicts and leadership challenges. Therefore, the paper will first examine the opposition constraints in the two cases and then turn to the analysis of the internal spheres of the two parties.
The Economic Gap
In the years preceding the beginning of the crisis (2008) Spain and Portugal had experienced opposite paths, respectively characterised by sustained growth and job creation versus anaemic growth and steady unemployment. Between 2002 (the year the euro was introduced in everyday life) and 2008, in fact, the Spanish GDP had grown by 21 per cent (Figure 1), while the unemployment rate had declined from 11.5 to 8.2 per cent in 2007, reaching its lowest level in twenty years (Figures 2 - Employment rate). The positive picture was completed by a relatively small public debt and even a government surplus in the years 2005-2007. This economic miracle, however, rested on the feet of clay of a construction-sector bubble. As jobs, taxes and banks were extremely dependent on the real-estate market, the credit crunch related to the international financial crisis had huge consequences: between 2008 and 2013 the Spanish economy shrunk by 11 per cent, while unemployment jumped to 26.1 per cent. Unemployment was particularly dramatic among those under 25, with a peak of 55.5 per cent in 2013.
In contrast to Spain, after the boom of the 1990s, Portugal was characterised by weaker economic growth, rising unemployment and regular notifications of excessive deficit from Brussels. In the 2002-2008 period, Portuguese GDP increased by only 6 per cent, while the unemployment rate rose from 6.2 to 8.8 per cent. When the international crisis hit the country, its economy shrunk by 9 per cent between 2008 and 2013, thus ending the decade well below the starting point. Furthermore, unemployment continued to rise, reaching the peak of 16.4 per cent in 2013 (38.1 per cent among the younger). In the absence of a real-estate bubble, the Portuguese economic crisis, which started at the beginning of 2010, has been interpreted in various ways: as the effect of a decade-long economic downturn combined with mounting public debt; as the consequence of a badly designed European common currency together with the lack of specific fiscal policy mechanisms at EU-level; and finally, as the result of the global financial crisis that led to a sudden slump in growth. However, it is important to stress that the perils of anaemic economic growth, high unemployment and large fiscal deficits had been warned well before the international financial crisis outbreak (Blanchard, 2007).
[FIGURE 1 AND 2 ABOUT HERE]
measures (Rodríguez Zapatero, 2013). Fiscal restraint generated an uninterrupted erosion of the PSOE’s electoral support and a growing perception among the voters that the conservative People’s Party (Partido Popular, PP) was more capable of managing the crisis than the PSOE. From 2010 onward, therefore, the socialist government lost popularity, suffered a bad defeat at the local and regional elections in May 2011 (Barreiro and Sánchez-Cuenca, 2012) and was severely contested by the so-called 15-M movement, that occupied the main squares of Spain for several weeks since 15 May 2011 (Calvo et al., 2011). In a situation of rapid deterioration of the economic and social climate, Zapatero decided to call early elections, ending his second term in November 2011 instead of Spring 2012. The decision, however, did not save the PSOE from a dramatic defeat. In November, in fact, the PP won the election and Mariano Rajoy became the new PM with an absolute majority of seats.
In Portugal, both economic and political actors had favoured fiscal expansion until 2009. But in October, the just re-elected socialist government informed the EU about a new projection of a 5.9 per cent public deficit. The European Council urged the country to rapidly engage in policies aimed at medium-term fiscal consolidation (European Council, 2009) and the 2010 budget – the first to be approved by the new socialist minority government – represented a first message for the markets and the EU leaders, in March 2010. In addition, just a few days after the budget’s approval the socialists asked for the parliament’s support for the Growth and Stability Programme 2010-2013, which was undoubtedly an austerity policy package composed of a wide set of hard fiscal measures. As the government did not rely on an absolute majority in parliament, it needed the support of another parliamentary party group to approve the programme. In that occasion, as in many others in the successive months, the centre-right PSD (Social Democratic Party) decided to abstain from voting and the package was approved. This cycle eventually came to an end in March 2011, when Sócrates apparently negotiated a fourth austerity package with the EU behind the opposition’s and the President’s back. The PSD voted against it and Sócrates decided to resign immediately.
The caretaker government eventually asked for the bailout on April 6 and a memorandum of understanding was signed by the lenders1 and the mainstream parties – the PS, PSD, and the conservative
CDS-PP – in May 2011: a signal that no matter which government would come out from the election, it would inevitably be constrained to the agreed commitments (De Giorgi et al., 2015). At the legislative election held in June 2011, the centre-right coalition composed of the PSD and CDS-PP obtained the absolute majority and Pedro Passos Coelho, the PSD leader, became the new PM. Once in opposition, at least in the first few years, the socialists were considered co-responsible for the bad economic situation of their respective countries and, somehow, also for the austerity measures that the new governments started to approve and implement. Thus, despite the unpopular decisions taken by the centre-right cabinets in both countries, neither the PS nor the PSOE seemed, at first, able to regain support. As we will see in the next section, the trend started to change between late 2012 and 2013 for the PS, while in the case of the PSOE it worsened until 2015.
Nonetheless, neither of the two parties managed to completely recover from the dramatic losses experienced in 2011. This depended on their previous government terms – characterised by the outbreak of the economic crisis – but also on the recovery of both economies from 2014 onward, when the legislative terms were expiring and new elections were approaching.
During the four years in office the conservative government led by the Spanish PP (Partido Popular) was able to take advantage of the international factors that had been missing in the preceding term, such as the quantitative easing and low interest rates promoted by the ECB, the weakening of the euro, and the lower prices for oil. As a consequence, in 2014 Eurostat registered a positive growth for the first time after the dramatic double-dip recession of the preceding years. Unemployment also declined in 2014 and 2015. After having rescued the banking sector with European aid in 2012, thus fixing a major problem, the PP was able to exploit the new economic situation, characterised by the rise of exports and external demand, to downsize the budget deficit and implemented fiscal reforms (Chislett, 2016). Thus the improvement of the Spanish economy boosted the 'success' narrative used by Rajoy during the 2015 campaign undermining the message of the socialists on persisting social inequalities and widespread PP corruption.
Similarly, Portugal ended its adjustment programme in May 2014 and, unlike Greece, did not need a second bailout. In 2014, for the first time since 2011, the GDP growth was positive (even if still weak) and the unemployment rate had fallen from its peak, 16.4, to a more sustainable 13.3 (De Giorgi and Santana Pereira, 2016). Even more importantly in political terms, according to a survey conducted in mid-2015 the 73 per cent of the Portuguese citizens judged the centre right government's performance as good or very good and the 48 per cent believed that the incumbent centre right coalition had managed the economy better or much better than the PS between 2008-2011 (Belchior and Correia, 2015). All this contributed to the poor result of the socialist also in Portugal.
The different economic evolution of the two Iberian countries between 2004-2005 and 2011 set a first relevant difference in the impact of the economic recession on the PSOE and PS, that we call the economic gap. In Spain, where the economy had been booming during the first socialist term (2004-2008), the hard landing of the real-estate market and the soaring of unemployment caused a stronger feeling of disappointment and disillusion towards the PSOE during its second term in office. In Portugal, where a sluggish economy had characterised the first socialist term (2005-2009), the PS did not fail as much the expectations of its supporters. Therefore, although the PS eventually had to sign a bailout programme (together with the other two mainstream parties, the PSD and CDS-PP), which the PSOE was able to avoid, the political consequences of the economic crisis turned out to be more daunting for the PSOE than for the PS. As we will see in detail in the next paragraph, the latter was able to recover more quickly from the 2011 defeat, while the PSOE lost more permanent support among its disillusioned voters.
The party systems of Spain and Portugal until 2011 had been characterised by remarkable stability. In both countries, two mainstream parties had alternated in office for about three decades, forming either minority or majority single-party governments. Both Spain and Portugal have been multi-party systems characterised by rather stable effective numbers of parliamentary parties (ENPP), with two major mainstream parties alternating in office. In Spain, after the collapse of the party that had led the transition to democracy and ruled the country until 1982 (Unión de Centro Democrático, UCD), the same two parties, PSOE and PP (named Alianza Popular until 1989), alternated in power without interruption. A force of the radical left - the communist party until 1986, the coalition Izquierda Unida (IU, United Left) thereafter - was the only other state-wide party until the 2008 election, when the centrist UPyD (Union, Progress and Democracy) gained one seat in parliament. Despite the parliamentary presence of a variable number of regional parties, vote concentration around the PSOE and PP reached its historical highest level in 2008 (83,8%), to decline to 73,4% in the 2011 election. In Portugal, the four parties emerged in the first democratic elections (1976) still constitute the core of the party system: the PS, the centre right Social Democratic Party (PSD), the conservative Democratic and Social Centre - People’s Party (CDS-PP) and the Communist Party (PCP). The only relevant novelty in the political scenario is represented by the Left Bloc (BE), a radical left party that emerged in 1999 and, as we will better see below, still has a significant number of representatives in the National Assembly. Since 2009, though, the electoral support for the mainstream PS and PSD slowly started to decline, with the two parties together unable to reach the usual threshold of 70 per cent of votes. This result was replicated in the subsequent election, in 2011, with the two parties unable to reach again the 70 per cent threshold, and the PSD needing to form a coalition with the conservative CDS-PP to secure an absolute majority. As we will see, between 2011 and 2015 many political events concurred to alter this stable – although already slightly changing – scenario, notably in Spain.
The legislative terms started in 2011 ended in both Portugal and Spain in late 2015, with the general elections held, respectively, in October and December. But, as we anticipated, the two socialist parties faced these elections starting from very different conditions. As shown in figures 3 and 4 in fact, voting intentions for the two parties in the 2011-2015 period diverged substantially. On the one side, the Portuguese PS started rising again in the voting intentions a few months after its electoral defeat and overcame the PSD at the end of 2012, remaining the first party ever since. Moreover, the PS won the EP election in May 20142, with a
larger percentage than the centre-right coalition formed by the PSD and CDS. On the other side, in Spain the PSOE was not able to overcome the PP despite the significant decline suffered by the latter. Thus, after a first phase in which support for the socialists stagnated or just slightly rose, from Spring 2013 to July 2015 the
2 Although with quite a disappointing result compared to what expected, which brought to the leadership questioning
PSOE's voting intentions declined markedly and the party proved unable to overcome even its meagre 2011 result.
[FIGURE 3 AND 4 ABOUT HERE]
Let’s see more in detail what changed in the competitive landscapes of the two countries, that might help explain the different electoral outcomes for the two socialist parties in 2015. Since 1977 only two times has the PSOE passed from office to opposition: in 1996, after Felipe González had uninterruptedly run the country for 14 years, and in 2011, after Zapatero had been PM for two terms. In both cases, the governing experiences had ended with the socialist incumbents widely discredited, the call for early elections, and a severe crisis that split the party when it came to choosing the new candidate for PM and the new secretary general (Bosco 2013). The following opposition experiences, instead, showed two relevant differences. The first feature that distinguished the 2011-15 period from the 1996-2004 opposition phase was the unability of the PSOE to (re)gain votes when the incumbent PP lost popularity. Between 2011 and 2015 support for both the ruling PP and the opposition PSOE steeply declined (Figure 3), while between 1996 and 2004 the support for the two parties had revealed divergent trends, as it usually happens in a bipolar system. We argue that the disruption of the pattern of alternating support was caused by the distrust both parties gained for their management of the economic crisis and the corruption scandals that have emerged after 2012, as we will see in the next section.
In brief, since 2011 the PSOE has faced a radically new, and more complex, competitive arena. In the old party system, the socialist leadership knew how to compete: former socialists who had abstained were the target of re-mobilisation drives, while the call for the voto útil (useful vote) against the right-wing PP, had helped the PSOE to limit the losses to IU on its left flank (Bosco 2009). After 2014, however, the PSOE faced new challengers both on the left (Podemos, IU) and on the centre-right side (Ciudadanos, PP) of the political spectrum.
In Portugal, the competitive scenario since 2011 has been remarkably different. As we know, the PS was clearly defeated at the 2011 election, obtaining 28 per cent of votes – a loss of more than eight points in relation to their 2009 result –, while the winner was no doubt the PSD, gaining 39 per cent of votes. Nonetheless, after the traditional honeymoon period, the support for the new government dealing with the consequences of the economic crisis and the conditions set in the memorandum signed with the troika
started to decline, while that for the PS began to rise again. As we can observe in Figure 4, according to the polls the voting intentions moved back in favour of the PS in late 2012, i.e. only 15 months after the dramatic defeat of 2011. That positive trend kept going until the 2014 European election, where the governing parties got a very poor result by losing together more than 22 points as compared to their 2011 score. The PS, on the other side, gained 3.4 points, an outcome that was considered very disappointing though, given the data on the voting intentions recorded until that time. Despite the non-exciting result, unlike the PSOE in Spain, the PS was no doubt the winner of the European election in Portugal. And, after the appointment of António Costa as new candidate for PM and party leader, its support started to rise again, reaching an average of 37 per cent points (De Giorgi and Santana-Pereira, 2016). These values started to change only in September 2015 when voting intentions for the PSD/CDS-PP coalition reached almost 40 per cent in several polls and a considerable downward trend in the voting intentions for the PS was registered, with the party ending the campaign with an estimated result of 32 per cent (exactly what it got at the actual legislative election, in the end).
In short, the Portuguese bipolar system has not been significantly affected by the consequences of the great recession, as the destinies of the two main parties remained strictly connected. The PS was capable of gaining votes when the incumbent PSD declined and, what is more important, Portugal didn’t see the emergence of any new challenger, neither on the left nor on the right of the political spectrum. The competitors of the PS remained the traditional ones, that is, the BE and the PCP, that were able to channel the discontent of the citizens during the austerity period and challenged the socialists at the election from the usual left side.
Portugal, the party system has maintained its previous format and dynamics. Consequently, the PSOE and PS faced very different competitive constraints and opportunities. We consider this competitive gap one of the main reasons for the divergent trajectories experienced by the PS and PSOE after 2015.
The trust gap
During the years of the economic recession, political institutions such as national governments, parliaments and political parties, as well as supranational institutions such as the European Union have been the object of increasing distrust and disillusionment among the Spanish and Portuguese citizens. Also in this context, however, the two countries show some significant differences that might contribute to the understanding of the different performance of the two socialist parties.
In Spain, the economic crisis has greatly discredited the traditional parties. Voters blamed the incumbents not only for the economic pain they had to experience, but also because they felt the electoral promises made by the PSOE and the PP were neglected once in office. In addition, the corruption scandals that emerged both at the national and regional level have widened the breach between the traditionally dominant parties and the electorate. Economic hard times have lowered the voters' tolerance towards the political parties’ corruption and their inability to keep their electoral promises, fuelling disillusionment with the mainstream parties. Corruption, in particular, has affected both the PP and the PSOE as well as a number of regional parties. However, it hit the PP particularly hard, to such an extent that the PM Rajoy had to publicly ask for forgiveness for the cases in which his party got involved, in October 2014. Thus, it is not surprising that, according to Transparency International, 83 per cent of Spaniards felt that political parties were corrupt or extremely corrupt, in 2013 (www. transparency. org). The economic consequences of the austerity measures, the broken electoral promises and the scandals taking place at both national and regional level led to growing distrust of political parties. The more political elites were perceived as responsive to either their own personal interests or the EU partners (or both) rather than to the citizens' demands, the more the governing parties lost support and potential voters (Torcal 2014).
the attention from the government's scandal on the "golden visa" programme. But, in any case, it contributed to the fall of the PS popularity among the Portuguese citizens.
By the end of 2014, in both countries the level of trust in national parties, governments and parliaments – that we generally call institutional trust– were not only lower than a decade before (in 2004), but also lower than the EU average: something that had not often occurred in the past. This shared trend, however, hides a noteworthy difference between the two Iberian countries: in Spain, in fact, the fall in institutional confidence has been much sharper than in Portugal: the destruction of trust in political institutions recorded since 2008 – when the PSOE was elected for a second term – has been larger than the one occurred in Portugal since the establishment of the second PS government (September 2009)3. We argue
that this difference in the rise of distrust constitutes a third difference which distances the two countries. As figure 5 shows, Spain has experienced a more profound erosion of institutional confidence than Portugal over two consecutive legislatures (one governed by the socialists and one controlled by the centre-right). The trust gap between the two cases might help explaining the divergent level of support obtained by PSOE and PS. Ceteris paribus, in fact, in a political system like the Spanish one, characterised by plummeting trust in parties and other representative institutions, rebuilding the voters' confidence can be a harder job for a party like the PSOE than for the PS in Portugal, where institutional trust did not crumble at the same pace.
[FIGURE 5 AND 6 ABOUT HERE]
As we are interested in the PSOE and PS, we examined, in particular, the decline in trust registered in Spain and Portugal during Zapatero's and Sócrates' second terms in office, from 2008-09 to 20114. Figure 6,
which covers a shorter time span than figure 5, is important for two reasons. First, it highlights that the largest part of the trust loss in the two countries took place when the socialists were in power. It must be recalled that the PSOE and PS’ second terms in office fully overlapped the start of the international financial crisis; the first Greek bailout and the discussion of the second one; the pressures of the Ecofin on Spain and Portugal to abandon the path of social expenditures; the Portuguese bailout and the eruption of the sovereign debt crisis (Bosco and Verney 2012). All these events obliged Zapatero and Sócrates to start implementing the austerity policies requested by the EU and the markets: policies for which they have been considered as the main responsible by their voters.
Secondly, figure 6 confirms that the socialist governments had a different impact in terms of institutional confidence: for instance, while in Spain trust in political parties fell by 75 per cent between 2008
3 The EB survey no. 62 realised in November 2004 is the first one realised after the Spanish March general election, won
by the Psoe. The EB survey no. 63 realised in June 2005 is the first released after the Portuguese election of February 2005, won by the PS. The 2004 and 2005 elections opened a phase of socialist governments that ended with the 2011 defeats in both countries. The third EB survey used is the EB survey no. 82 realised in November 2014.
4 For Spain we used the EB surveys no. 69 and no. 77 and for Portugal the EB surveys no. 63 and no. 76 (the first surveys
and 2011, in Portugal it declined by a mere 33.3 per cent in the period 2009-2011. Confidence in government slipped by 76.4 per cent in Spain but only by 25 per cent in Portugal. Finally, trust in parliament, the main representative institution, registered a -79.6 per cent in Madrid but -46.3 per cent in Lisbon. We argue that this difference can be considered as a sort of measure of the different legacy that the PSOE and PS had to face once they moved from government into opposition.
Two final considerations regard the drop in institutional confidence and the difference in magnitude between the two countries. The reasons behind the destruction of confidence are the same in Madrid and Lisbon: first, the consequences of the international crisis, which have led voters to blame the centre-left and centre-right incumbents for their broken electoral promises and the unsolved economic problems; second, the outbreak of several corruption scandals that involved both the incumbent and the opposition parties. The decline in trust however, presents specific features in the two countries. In fact, although the largest part of the trust loss took place when the socialists were in power in both countries, the fall in confidence was much more dramatic in Spain than in Portugal5. The reason behind the gap lies in the higher expectations of
the Spanish citizens at the end of the first PSOE term in office, in 2008. By then, Spaniards' positive attitudes toward the representative system (parties, government, and parliament) had reached a peak level. A level remarkably higher than the European average, thanks to the economic boom of the country and the success of the first Zapatero's term. The fall was consequently more extreme than in Portugal, exactly as it happened with the economic hard landing and the soaring of unemployment. The trust gap between the two countries can help explaining the different curve of support for the PSOE and the PS since 2011 as the PSOE has had to re-build the voters' confidence from scratch, while the PS has not faced the same challenge.
The party gap
Finally, there is one further factor that we consider crucial to understand the different trajectories undertaken by the two socialist parties in Spain and Portugal, that is, the internal party context, or better, the degree of internal cohesion (or conflict) of the two parties, the leadership challenges (if any) and their final outcome.
As we said above, Zapatero’s two terms in office were very different. The first successful legislature, in which the government accomplished nearly all its electoral promises, was followed by another one monopolised by the economic crisis and a U-turn in the policies implemented until then. In terms of popularity this was devastating for the socialists. Therefore, in April 2011 Zapatero announced that he would
5 Citizens' discontent not only led to distrust toward political institutions, but also to popular protests in both countries.
not be standing for a third term and that the party would hold primaries to choose a candidate for the 2012 general elections.
The two possible candidates were the ministers Carme Chacón and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. Chacón, born in 1971, was a young Catalan politician very close to Zapatero. Rubalcaba, born in 1951, was a politician who had held various ministerial posts under both González and Zapatero. Lined up behind Chacón and Rubalcaba there were two party factions6 which started a bitter fight for the succession once it became clear
that Zapatero would step down from both office and the party leadership. But after the May 2011 electoral defeat in regional and municipal elections, an internal conflict erupted within the PSOE leading to a cancellation of the planned primaries, replaced by the appointment of Rubalcaba – proposed by the party's federal committee –as the party’s candidate for PM, with Zapatero remaining secretary general until the next party congress. In the end, Rubalcaba could not avoid the disastrous results of the November 2011 general election. The real problem, however, was that after the defeat(s) the PSOE missed the opportunity to embrace a much-needed process of change. What followed, instead, was a sequence of problematic circumstances: first, the lack of self-criticism by the party in central office, after the electoral defeat; second, a party congress – held in February 2012 – that split the organisation from the top to the bottom between the two factions of Rubalcaba and Chacón; finally, the election of a new secretary general, Rubalcaba himself, who had been electorally defeated and could not convey any message of confidence or novelty. Moreover, the internal divisions continued to plague the PSOE for the years to come7 as proved by the regional party
congresses held in 2012 and 2013, which gave voice to the members’ discontent. In Galicia, in particular, internal problems led to the first direct election of a regional secretary by party members: something that was unheard in the PSOE and marked the path for the choice of the next secretary general (Fundacion Alternativas 2014, 61-69 ).
It took two and a half years and one further dramatic defeat at the 2014 European election before Rubalcaba resigned and a new secretary general was elected. In July 2014, Pedro Sánchez – one unknown Socialist MP from Madrid – was directly elected by the party members for the first time in the PSOE's history. Pedro Sánchez won the election with 48.7 per cent of the votes in a competition in which 66.7 per cent of the 197,480 socialist members took part. The second (Eduardo Madina) and third candidate (José Antonio Pérez Tapias) gained respectively 36.3 and 15.1 of the votes. The 42 years-old new secretary general marked the beginning of a generational change, later extended to the direction of the party (Fundacion Alternativas 2015, 89-102). Finally, on the 21st of July 2015 Pedro Sánchez was also proclaimed candidate for PM. Primary elections were called but never held as Sánchez was the only candidate.
However, the fact that the same person was the PSOE secretary general and the PM candidate did not
6 Zapatero's supporters and the group of those who were closer to González (politicians who had participated in his long
period of government). See Sánchez-Cuenca (2012).
7 Despite a slender margin of victory in the 2012 convention, in fact, Rubalcaba decided to form an executive committee
put an end to the party's internal turmoil. Sánchez had been supported as secretary general by the Andalusian president Susana Díaz as a temporary solution, a 'leader under supervision' until the right circumstances would take place for her to lead the national party. The secretary general of the Andalusian socialists (the strongest regional branch of the PSOE) and a party's 'heavy weight', Díaz was considered by a large part of the PSOE the natural candidate to become the party leader and, in case of electoral victory, Prime Minister. Sánchez, however, had other plans and his decision to run as PM candidate was considered an act of betrayal by Díaz and her supporters. This opened up a deep division into the party, that reverberated throughout every made decision by the PSOE in 2015 and 2016.
In brief, from 2011 onwards the PSOE has been a party internally split by competing factions. Internal fights cost the party precious time before implementing a process of change and made such a process very fragile. On the one hand, the PSOE has democratised its leadership selection process – with the direct election of the secretary general and open primaries for the choice of the PM candidate. But on the other hand, the fight between Díaz and Sánchez divided the socialists as it had never happened before, plunging the organisation in its worst crisis since the return to democracy. This became evident after Sánchez lost the 2015 and 2016 elections and was forced to resign in October 2016 (Maraña 2017). A caretaker commission then run the party until new primary elections and a new congress were called in May and June 2017, respectively. As Sánchez won the race against Susana Díaz and the former president of the Basque region, Patxi López, with 50.2 per cent of the votes of the party affiliates (El País, 22 May 2017), we can reasonably expect the party to remain divided. Political and organisational differences between the followers of the two leaders have in fact grown to a point where it seems difficolt to bridge them in some way.
Unlike the PSOE, in Portugal it was the former PM José Sócrates, despite the serious problems of distrust that the socialists were facing, who led the party until the electoral defeat, before definitely pulling out by calling for an extraordinary party congress in July 2011. António José Seguro was then elected secretary general, with about 68 per cent of votes – and was also reconfirmed in April 2013 (with about 96 per cent of votes). In his first public statement as new leader, Seguro promised to carry out an opposition that would be responsible, constructive and loyal. In the initial party plan, Seguro was certainly going to be the socialist candidate for PM at the 2015 election. But after the inadequate result of the PS at the 2014 European election, many started to question his leadership, blaming him of being too ineffective and incapable to lead the party to succeed at the successive legislative election.
of the latter from both the party leadership and the parliament, a new party congress was held in late November, in which the Socialist Party elected Costa as its new secretary general.
Costa not only managed to defeat Seguro but was also more popular than the incumbent PM, Passos Coelho, from that time onward. Although slightly declining, the poll published in July 2015 – three months before the new legislative election – still showed a support of 9.3 for Costa versus a 6.6 for Passos Coelho. In addition, even more remarkably, citizens considered Costa more capable to act as a PM (42.3 per cent) than Passos Coelho (31.6)8. Finally, Costa was also more popular than his own party: the level of confidence in the
PS leader, as reported by the opinion polls in July 2015, in fact, exceeded the voting intentions for his party9.
Lastly, Costa’s election had a very positive impact on the PS voting intentions: the Portuguese socialists, who had faced a significant decline from the 2014 European election onward, rose to 32.7 per cent in September 2014, in the day of the primary election, and to 36.2 in the successive month, keeping rising also afterwards. Apparently, Costa was also able to keep a distance from the Sócrates’ affair, after his imprisonment, even
though never denying his close relation with the ex PM.
But the new PS leader’s capabilities did not suffice to keep the PS leading the polls until the very end. The party started losing some support in July 2015, with the approaching of the new legislative election. The reasons are varied and actually not related to Costa’s figure: the economic recovery witnessed by the country since late 2014 certainly played a crucial role. Citizens were no longer convinced that the austerity programme implemented by the centre right government had had only negative implications. Furthermore, the announcement of the two governing parties to create for the first time a formal electoral alliance – Portugal à Frente (Portugal Ahead – PAF) – at the successive election proved successful at the polls for the centre right. Therefore, the slow but significant recovery of the government forces together with the good success of the radical left parties made, as we said above, the return of the Portuguese socialist to office all but triumphal.
To conclude, despite many similarities in the path undertaken, the two Iberian parties show significant differences also in the party internal dimension. Neither of the two parties decided to wait until the successive general election before undertaking a process of renovation: they both went through the replacement of the former PM – although in different phases of the party’s crisis – after his resignation and both opted for a second replacement after the disappointing result of the European election in 2014. Finally, they both adopted a more open selection process in order to regain their electorate’s support. Nonetheless, the picture shows two parties quite different one from the other in terms of resolution of internal conflicts and the strength of the leadership. The PS appeared as a more united party, certainly with a stronger leader who has been able to regain (at least partially) the electoral support lost in the previous years. On the other hand, the PSOE appeared as a deeply divided party, run by weak leaders – despite the appointment of a new
and young secretary general. All this, together with the rise of new competitors able to attract the most disillusioned voters, left the PSOE in a weaker position than the PS at the end of the legislature.
Conclusions
Going back to our initial research question: what can explain such a different outcome for the two socialist parties in Spain and Portugal, after their term in opposition, which coincided with the austerity season in their respective countries?
Given the analysis made so far, we can suggest some tentative answers: first, the PS and PSOE have dealt with different challenges in the 2011-2015 period. Despite the Portuguese socialists signed a bailout programme, in fact, the opposition constraints have been more compelling for the PSOE than for the PS. The exceptionally positive phase experienced by Spain before the eruption of the international financial crisis set up a sort of 'golden age', in which the economy was booming, the PSOE government accomplished nearly all of its electoral promises, and trust in the political institutions was very high. During the crisis, the existence of such a 'touchstone' became a cause of disillusion and disappointment for the voters in general the and left-wing supporters, in particular, who shifted to old and new parties, as well as towards abstention. In brief, the economic, competitive and trust gaps made opposition a harder job for the PSOE than for the PS.
Finally, the internal context of the parties also played a crucial role in the opposition opportunities of the two parties. The PSOE has been a split party on the leadership issue for four years, which has been forced to implement some form of internal democratisation after three state-wide defeats in a row. On the other hand, the PS has remained a more cohesive party which has implemented more orderly and timely change and found in António Costa, the current PM, a strong and charismatic leader, despite the presence of critical voices even among the Portuguese socialists.
Altogether, these different ‘gaps’ contribute to explain the performance and evolution of the PSOE and the PS between 2011 and 2015 and understand the reasons of their different political destiny afterwards.
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Figures
Figure 1. GDP growth in Spain and Portugal in real terms (2002-2015)
Source: Eurostat
Figure 2. Employment rate in Spain and Portugal (2002-2015)
Source: Eurostat
100 103 106 110 115 119 121 116 116 115 112 110 112 116 100 99 101 102 103 106 106 103 105 103 99 98 99 105 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Spain Portugal 100 104 108 114 119 122 122 114 111 109 105 102 103 106
100 99 98 98
99 99 99
96 95 92 88 86 88 89 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Figure 4. Voting intentions - Spain (2011-2015)
Source: Centro de investigaciones sociológicas
Figure 4. Voting intentions for all the parliamentary parties in Portugal (2011-2015)
Source: www.popstar.pt
3,2
0,9 2,1 3,1 13,8
11,1 14,7 13,9 6,9 7,9 8,6 8,6 9,4 9,4
9,9 11,5 11,3 11,3 10,1 8,2
4,8 5,2 4,8 3,7 4,7 3,7 8 15,3 22,5 23,9 16,5 15,7 10,8 12,7 44,6 42,7 40,6
36,6 35,9 35
34 32,5 34 32,1
26,1 30
27,5 27,3
25,6 28,2 29,1 28,7 28,8 28 29,6 29,9 28,6 30,2 28,2
27,2 26,8 26,6 23
21,2 23,9
22,2 24,3 24,9 25,3 22
4,7 5,7 5,1 6,6 7,3 6,8 7,4
8,8 7,7 9,2
6,5 5,9
4,1 4,6
1,9 1,3 1,2 0,6
Ciudadanos IU Podemos PP PSOE UPyD
28 25
27,2 27,2 27,8
30,1 31,8
34,3 34 34,8 36,1 36,3 31,4
34,7 32,7
37 37,2 37,7
32,3 38,6
40,8 42,4 40,2
36,7 34,6 28,8 28,6 27,2 25,1 28
26,5 27,9 27,9 27,7 27,6
11,7 13,6
9,7 9,7 8,9
7,9 7,9 8,8 9 9 7,8 7,6 6,9 7,1 6,7 6,7
27,7
36,2 38,6
7,9 7,7 7,8 9,1 8,5 9,4 9,9
10 11,5 12,2 11,8 11,9
12,6 11,5 11,2
9,6 9,6 9,6 8,3 5,1 4,8 4,7 4,9 5,3 6,3
7,5 8,5 8,2 8,4 7 6,6
4,5 6 5,1 4,5 4,2 5
10,2
Figure 5. Trust in parties, national government and parliament. Rate of change 2008-09 - 2014
Source: Eurobarometer (no. 62, 63 and 82).
Figure 6. Trust gap between 2008-09 and 2011 in Spain and Portugal
Source: Eurobarometer
-87
,5
-80
-81
,5
-47
,6
-46
,9
-51
,2
T R U S T I N P A R T I E S T R U S T I N G O V E R N M E N T S T R U S T I N P A R L I A M E N T S Spain Portugal
-75
-76
,4
-79
,6
-33
,3
-25
-46
,3
