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RE-ENTERING ELECTORAL POLITICS: Reputation and Party System Change in Spain and Greece

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RE-ENTERING ELECTORAL POLITICS: Reputation and Party System Change in Spain and Greece 04 – Hamann 20/11/98 8:53 am Page 55 PARTY POLITICS VOL 5. No.1 pp. 55–77 Copyright © 1999 SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi RE-ENTERING ELECTORAL POLITICS Reputation and Party System Change in Spain and Greece Kerstin Hamann and Barbara Sgouraki-Kinsey ABSTRACT This article examines change in the Greek and Spanish party systems between their pre- and post-authoritarian periods. While the Greek party system displayed substantial continuity, the Spanish system showed considerable change. We connect continuity in party structure with length of interruption of competitive electoral politics. Our argument relies on the idea of reputation to explain why Spanish party leaders were far less constrained in moving their parties along the policy space than their Greek counterparts. Political parties in Spain had less reputation for established policy positions than Greek parties. Our argument and its implications are formally derived from a model developed by Bowler. We evaluate some alternative explanations and conclude that reputation is a factor accounting for variation in party system change in these two cases. At the time of the transition party leaders were presented with different opportunities to redefine their respective parties’ policy positions. KEY WORDS n democratization n elections n Greece n political parties n Spain Studies of transitions1 from authoritarian to liberal democratic regimes often note the importance of the length of authoritarian rule as a factor likely to affect the redemocratization process, but few studies explore any aspect of this relationship systematically (Pasquino, 1975; Diamandouros, 1982).2 One of the most important actors in the transition process are politi- cal parties (Pridham, 1990) as they structure alternative policy choices for voters. This article examines how the length of authoritarian rule – i.e. the length of the interruption of competitive party politics – affects continuity in the party system once liberal democratic regimes are reinstated. We argue that there is a negative association between the length of the electoral 1354-0688(199901)5:1;55–77;006647 04 – Hamann 20/11/98 8:53 am Page 56 PARTY POLITICS 5(1) interruption and party system continuity at the time of the transition: the longer the interruption of competitive party politics, the less the expected party system continuity. Party system continuity refers to the stability of defining features of the structure of a party system, including the number of parties, their electoral strength and their policy positions. The logic of the argument relies on the concept of reputation. In com- petitive party systems, parties develop reputations for emphasizing policy issues and advocating particular policy positions over time. Their repu- tations constrain the extent to which party leaders can move along the policy space, that is, compete with other parties, as the policy positions parties assume have to be consistent over time to be credible to voters (Klingemann et al., 1994: 24). Thus, reputation constrains party leaders’ competitive strategies. There is wide agreement on the role of party competition in shaping party systems. Competition between parties determines the scope of political mobilization and participation, structures electoral alternatives and shapes the different aggregations of varied social interests and demands and their translation into public policy (e.g. Downs, 1957; Dawson, 1967; Pasquino, 1990; Klingemann et al., 1994). From one election to the next, more or less freedom to move along the policy space (that is, freedom to compete) trans- lates into more or less stability in the structural features of party systems. We argue that the longer competitive electoral politics are interrupted, the less fixed are the parties’ reputations and, therefore, the greater their freedom to compete, which translates into greater change (or less continu- ity) in the party system. Any attempt at exploring the mechanisms underlying party competition has to include an argument linking the behavior of voters and party elites, for the two are interrelated. As Powell (1982: 74) argues, ‘party systems are designed to link citizens and leaders’ or, as Lawson (1980: 3) puts it, ‘parties are seen, both by their members and by others, as agencies for forging links between citizens and policymakers’. The extent to which parties move across the policy space is, at least in part, a vote-getting strategy pursued by party leaders. On the other hand, from the perspective of the electorate, this movement determines which party voters choose and how easily they are swayed to other parties. The vote-getting calculations of party leaders influ- ence to a great extent their competitive strategies, which in turn affect voters’ electoral choices. Theories of party competition tend to either under- play or overplay the electoral role of the voters (Downs, 1957; Kirchheimer, 1966; Sartori, 1975). Using Bowler’s (1990) approach linking reputation and party movement, we explore change in re-emerging party systems by considering both voters and party leaders in Spain and Greece. While the factors influencing the nature of party systems in re-installed democracies are many, we focus here on the effects of the link between reputation and length of interruption of electoral politics. In the first section we provide a rationale for the selection of our cases, 56 04 – Hamann 20/11/98 8:53 am Page 57 HAMANN AND SGOURAKI-KINSEY: RE-ENTERING ELECTORAL POLITICS Spain and Greece. We then use Bowler’s (1990) approach to explore the mechanism by which length of electoral interruption is linked to party system competition and thus continuity in reborn democratic regimes; we develop our argument and derive some implications. In the third section we test these implications for the cases of Spain and Greece, examining and comparing continuity in their respective party systems and introducing alternative explanations. We finally apply our argument to the case of Por- tugal, which serves as a control case. We conclude by evaluating our argu- ment and discussing some implications for transitional politics. Case Selection We explore the effect of the length of authoritarian rule on party system competition and continuity for the cases of Spain and Greece. These coun- tries provide useful cases for comparison in that they assure variation in the length of interruption of their electoral politics. Spain did not have demo- cratic elections between 1936 and 1977;3 this 41-year interruption is con- trasted with a 7-year absence of democratic elections in Greece (1967–74). In addition, the two cases vary in the extent to which their party systems underwent change. The Greek party system displayed a remarkable degree of continuity despite the authoritarian interlude, while the Spanish party system changed considerably between 1936 and 1977. Moreover, selection of these cases allows one to control for other poten- tially relevant variables. Spain and Greece exhibit many common traits regarding their ‘historical evolution, predominant modes of political domi- nation, the form and tempo of their economic development and systems of class relations’ (Giner, 1986: 12). Although variation exists in the timing of the civil wars in the two countries (Spain: 1936–9; Greece: 1944–9), the consequences for the conflict between right and left, the rightist authori- tarian tradition, and historical and political memories for participants in the electoral system are expected to be comparable (Dalton, 1977; Dimitras, 1992; Iatridies and Wrigley, 1995; Litras, 1996). To be sure, we do not intend to disregard the important differences between these two countries. We only attempt to make some generalizations without considering such intervening factors as the nature of the authoritarian rule (for instance, the extent of repression or liberalization), the timing and the circumstances of its breakdown, or the nature of the previous democratic regimes and the particulars of their breakdown. Such considerations may complicate the argument and lead the discussion beyond the scope intended here without fundamentally changing the basic argument that the length of electoral interruption affects the extent of change in the party system by means of the constraints on party competition by party reputation. Finally, some com- parisons with Portugal allow us to evaluate competing explanations and to better assess our argument. 57 04 – Hamann 20/11/98 8:53 am Page 58 PARTY POLITICS 5(1) The Logic of Party System Continuity and Party Competition Political parties are central actors in transitions to democracy and as such are the subject of scholarly work on democratization. Only a few studies have explored the question of how party systems are established in cases of redemocratization (Gunther et al., 1988; Pridham, 1990; Pridham and Lewis, 1996) and even fewer refer to the nature of the pre-authoritarian party systems to explain the shape of the party system in the post-authori- tarian period (Linz, 1980; Remmer, 1985). In most studies, links between the old and the new party systems are not investigated (McDonough and López Pina, 1984; Barnes et al., 1985). However, the re-emerging party system is related to the party system of the previous democratic period. As Lipset and Rokkan (1967: 2–3) argue, ‘parties do not simply present ... themselves de novo to citizens at each election ... they have a history and so have the constellations of alternatives they present to the electorate’. Looking at the pre-existing party system provides clues for understanding the current party system, including cases where competitive elections have not been continuous. The extent to which party systems change during authoritarian interludes varies from case to case, and factors accounting for the breakdown of the previous democratic regime (Bennett, 1996), the breakdown of the authoritarian regime, or social, economic and demo- graphic changes during the authoritarian period may all play a part in shaping the reborn party system. In this article we link the pre- and post- authoritarian party systems by focusing on the role of party reputation in shaping the new party system.
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