New Party Entrance: the Case of BE and PAN in Portugal
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Umeå University, Department of Political Science New Party Entrance: the case of BE and PAN in Portugal Thesis for a master’s seminar in Political Science (Magister) at Umeå University 2nd Term 2019 Lívia Costa Abstract Back in 2012, Niklas Bolin offered an innovative perspective on the importance of agency for new party entrance. With his doctoral thesis he concluded that the ownership of at least one non-mainstream position and the possession of certain party resources were two necessary conditions for new parties to reach parliament membership. This investigation aimed to test his findings with the analysis of the only two cases of new party entrance in the Portuguese democracy since the end of the consolidation period: the Left Bloc (BE) in 1999 and Pessoas- Animais-Natureza (PAN) in 2015. The thesis concludes that in one hand both parties emphasized “unique” issues in their electoral programs. On the other hand, some party resources proved to have greater importance than others for this case: both parties had low levels of membership, limited leadership and considerable financial funds when compared to similar size parties. Finally, regarding media exposure while BE managed to gain some space within the traditional channels, PAN relied solely on social media. As a result, this study corroborates both the current tendency for a decline in the number and importance of party affiliates and the equalization theory regarding the opportunities of the Internet for small parties as a more equal space for party competition. Keywords: New party entrance; Party Resources; Issue ownership; Bloco de Esquerda (BE); Pessoas-Animais-Natureza (PAN) 1 Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 6 Chapter 1. Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2. Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 3. New party entrance in Portugal ............................................................................................. 16 3.1. The Left Bloc at the 1999 Legislative Elections ........................................................................ 16 3.1.1 Party’s Political Project (analysis) .......................................................................................... 17 3.1.2 Party’s Resources (analysis) ...................................................................................................... 23 3.2 PAN at the 2015 Legislative Elections ........................................................................................... 29 3.1.1 Party’s Political Project (analysis) .......................................................................................... 30 3.1.2 Party’s Resources (analysis) ...................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 4. Final Reflections and Further Research .............................................................................. 39 References ............................................................................................................................................................. 42 2 List of Tables Table 1 "Portugal's General Election Results 1999” ............................................................................ 17 Table 2 Evolution of Party Membership in Portugal ............................................................................ 25 Table 3 "Election to Parliament (Assembleia da República) in Portugal in 2015.................... 30 3 List of Figures Figure 1 "Position of the Party in terms of its overall ideological stance" in Portugal in 1999.......................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Figure 2 Voter’s issue positions by party choice on a left-right wing scale ................................... 22 Figure 3 Media Coverage of Party Leaders from 1 September to 10 October 1999 in Portugal, including only parties with parliamentary representation plus BE .......................... 24 Figure 4 Expenses with Electoral Campaign 1999 (BE vs. Parties with Parliamentary Representation) ................................................................................................................................................... 26 Figure 5 Total Party Expenses 1999 (BE vs. Parties with Parliamentary Representation). 27 Figure 6 Media Coverage of Political Parties from 1 September to 10 October 1999 in Portugal ( ................................................................................................................................................................ 28 Figure 7 Media Coverage of Party Leaders from 1 September to 04 October 2015 in Portugal, including only parties with parliamentary representation plus PAN. ...................... 34 Figure 8 Electoral Expenses PAN vs Elected Parties/coalitions 2015 .......................................... 35 Figure 9 Electoral Expenses PAN vs Non-Elected Parties 2015 ...................................................... 36 Figure 10 Total of Party Assets 2015 (parties in parliament). ........................................................ 37 Figure 11 Media Coverage of Political Parties from 1 September to 04 October 2015 in Portugal ................................................................................................................................................................... 38 4 Figure 12 Media coverage of smaller (relevant) parties from 1 September to 04 October 2015 in Portugal .................................................................................................................................................. 38 Figure 13 Party Popularity on Facebook (11 Sptember 2015) ....................................................... 39 5 Introduction The year of 2019 will encompass three different electoral acts in Portugal: European, legislative and Madeira’s parliamentary elections will take place setting political parties in motion for their new campaigns. In recent years, we have observed the formation of a growing number of political forces prior to the elections periods and this year is no exception with at least seven new political parties trying to formalize their candidatures (Lopes, 2019). Although, many parties accomplish their legalization and successfully fund their campaigns few actually enter the system. From 1974 to 1985 Portugal experienced the implementation and consolidation of democracy (Magone, 2013) since then, only two new parties managed to enter the system, electing at least one member to the national assembly: BE in 1999 and PAN in 2015. New party entrance has been the subject of many studies and theories from which Niklas Bolin’s (2012) doctoral thesis stands out due to its innovative perspective on the importance of agency. By focusing on the Swedish case, he analyses the success of four different parties that gain seats at the national parliament concluding that both political opportunity structures, such as general trends in public opinion or acceptance by the established parties of the system, and party agency, such strategies and resources, played an important role in their accomplishment. Bolin formulates its results into two general theoretical hypotheses: 1. “To be newly elected, a party needs to present a non-mainstream position on at least one political issue that it is deemed by voters to own.” 2. “To reach parliament, a party needs resources, but that the constellation of these resources varies between parties.” As a similar study has not been done for the Portuguese case, this thesis aims to fill up this gap by testing Bolin’s hypothesis to the cases of BE and PAN in Portugal. 6 The study was conducted using a descriptive and comparative strategy based on peer’s work, news, electoral manifestos relevant official documents such as party regulations or financial information. The main focus of analysis will be the electoral campaigns that conducted to the first member election of BE and PAN. These two political forces were chose as study cases because they were the only parties to reach parliament after the consolidation of democracy period ended in 1985, according to Magone (2013). To test the hypothesis issue positioning/ownership, leadership, membership, financial resources and media exposure will be analyzed. The first chapter will discuss the existing theoretical literature emphasizing the relevance of Bolin’s in terms of an agency centered perspective. Methodological clarifications will compose the subsequent chapter, while the analytical results will be presented in the third chapter. Finally, the concluding remarks point to the prevalence of media exposure and all year around financial funds over electoral campaign higher investments and number of affiliates to reach parliamentary entrance in Portugal. Leadership might have a positive effect when catching conventional media attention but nowadays smaller parties can successfully rely on social media to reach the electorate. Both hypotheses were generally confirmed but for the case of PAN the second hypothesis could only be confirmed if we consider social media popularity as an important factor for media exposure, counting