From Consensus to Competition:
Changing Conceptions of Democracy in the Spanish Transition*
Jonathan Hopkin
University of Birmingham
(Visiting Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University)
Contact details:
(to 15 May 2000)
Department of Political Science
Johns Hopkins University
3400 N. Charles St
Baltimore MD 21218 USA
[email protected]
(after 15 May 2000)
Department of Political Science and
International Studies
University of Birmingham
Birmingham B15 2TT UK
[email protected]
Paper to be presented to the workshop on ‘Competing Conceptions of Democracy in the
Practice of Politics’, ECPR Joint Sessions, Copenhagen, April 14-19 2000.
* The author would like to thank Richard Gunther for providing valuable interview data
used here; the usual disclaimer applies.
Introduction
The theme of this workshop is particularly germane to our understanding of how
democracy became institutionalised in Spain. The Spanish transition to democracy
attracted a wave of scholarly interest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and few aspects
of the process have remained unstudied. The juridical mechanisms and political
negotiations underpinning the reform (García San Miguel 1981, Gunther 1990), the
emergence of parties and electoral politics (Gunther, Sani & Shabad 1986, Linz &
Montero 1986), the role of the military (Preston 1986, Aguero 1995), and the attempts to
address territorial tensions (Clark 1987) all received extensive attention. Subsequent
work focused on the concept of consolidation, with threats to democratic stability itself
constituting the main concern (Morlino 1995 & 1998, Heywood 1996). Now that the dust
has settled and no one doubts the sustainability of Spanish democracy, it seems
appropriate to look into what kind of democracy has emerged in Spain and why. This
paper is therefore concerned with how the contest between competing types of
democracy was resolved in post-Franco Spain, and how the subsequent development of
the new regime was conditioned by the outcome of this contest.
The Rise and Fall of Consensus in the Spanish Transition
I will start with a stylised description of what this paper is seeking to explain: the
emergence of a form of democracy in Spain that can be described as majoritarian, in
spite of its origin through a process of consensus (Lijphart 1984, Capo et al 1990).
Spain’s transition from authoritarian rule rested on a combination of constitutional
ambiguity and tireless negotiations amongst key political actors. Such a strategy was seen
by regime reformists (King Juan Carlos, Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez and Speaker of
the Cortes Torcuato Fernández Miranda, to name the most prominent) as a way of
overcoming a potentially dangerous polarisation emerging in Spain on Franco’s death.
This polarisation pitted reactionary Francoists resistant to change (continuistas) against a
left-wing opposition which insisted on the immediate dismantling of the authoritarian
regime (rupturistas). Both sides had substantial resources. The continuistas had a
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presence in all the key state institutions, including the armed forces and law enforcement
agencies, as well as strong support in financial circles. The rupturistas had the ability to
mobilise street protests and organise widespread strike action, as well as support from
democratic governments in Europe through their party Internationals. The explosion of
violence in the Basque Country and a collapsing economy completed the picture.
After a failed attempt to introduce limited reform from within the extant
institutions (December 1975-July 1976), Adolfo Suárez’s appointment signalled a move
to a negotiated solution to the crisis. Suárez had secret talks with opposition leaders,
including the leader of the banned Communist Party (PCE), Carrillo, to convince them
that he intended to establish full democracy in Spain. At the same time, he convinced
regime continuistas that his plans would respect the constitutional order and maintain
political stability (notoriously promising prominent military leaders that he would not
legalise the PCE). A Law for Political Reform was passed, within the Francoist
constitutional framework, which envisaged free elections to the Cortes. Legislation on
political associations was manipulated to allow the legalisation of opposition political
parties, and an electoral law was designed in consultation with both regime conservatives
and opposition leaders. The reform was described as ‘cross-eyed’ (estrábico), since it
appeared to satisfy incompatible demands: full democracy for the opposition,
constitutional continuity for regime conservatives (Lucas Verdú 1976).
Despite a strong majoritarian bias in the new electoral system (Montero 1999), the
consensual theme continued after the first democratic elections. Suárez’s hastily
organised party, the Union of Democratic Centre (UCD), won the elections, allowing him
to remain in power (at the head of a minority government) to direct the remainder of the
transition. The 1977-79 parliament was in effect a constituent assembly, and Suárez used
his parliamentary dominance to impose negotiated solutions to divisive constitutional
issues. The new constitution passed through parliament with almost uniform support after
months of secret negotiations in Madrid restaurants. But with the dissolution of
parliament the atmosphere changed. The 1979 elections, whilst producing similar results
to 1977, were more fiercely fought, and Suárez was invested as Prime Minister after a
bad-tempered debate. Consensus was maintained for the passing of Statutes of Autonomy
for the pressing cases of the Basque Country and Catalonia, but in some cases broke
2
down for the remaining regions. The UCD minority government began to suffer regular
parliamentary defeats, and attempts to find consensual solutions for divisive questions
such as education, workers’ rights and family law failed. Despite a brief revival of the
UCD-PSOE consensus after the 1981 coup attempt, the UCD sank into internal crisis,
and rival parties to the right (Alianza Popular [AP]) and left (the Socialists [PSOE])
squeezed its electoral space. The 1982 election was a ‘critical’ election, which produced a
much more polarised parliament, divided between a Socialist majority and a conservative
opposition (AP), with the party of consensus, UCD, constituting a rump of only 9
deputies. As if to consacrate the shift to competitive, majoritarian democracy, the new
Socialist government gave AP’s leader the formal title of ‘leader of the opposition’.
From Consensus to Majoritarian Democracy: Some Indicators
The above account is of course a simplification. There were elements of
majoritarianism in the consensual dynamic of the initial phase of transition, and the post1982 period retained elements of consensual democracy. Moreover, my account refers
only to a shift in the nature of Spanish democracy on what Lijphart calls the executiveparties dimension (1999, 3); on the federal-unitary dimension the movement was more
gradual, and in the opposition direction. However, sufficient evidence can be assembled
to substantiate the shift from consensus to majoritarian democracy on the executiveparties dimension.
Lijphart’s criteria for distinguishing the two types (1999, 3) serve as a basic
framework for this analysis:
1. Executive power-sharing in broad multiparty coalitions vs. concentration of executive
power in single-party majority cabinets.
Although the UCD governments of 1977-82 were not formally coalitions, they fell into
the ‘consensus’ category in a number of ways. The party itself was heterogeneous,
originating as a coalition, following a broadly factional dynamic in the distribution of
positions both in party and in government, and ultimately disintegrating into its
constituent parts (Hopkin 1999). Especially in the 1977-79 period, a number of
prestigious independents served in the UCD governments. The high levels of cabinet
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instability – five mid-legislature reshuffles in as many years – reflect this lack of party
cohesion. Moreover, as minority administrations, the UCD governments were obliged to
build coalitions in order to pass legislation. In the 1977-79 period, supermajorities
integrating virtually all the parliamentary groups were commonplace (this has even,
perhaps questionably, been described as a ‘consociational model of transition’ [Huneeus
1985]). The PSOE governments from 1982 to 1993 were in contrast almost exclusively
partisan, highly cohesive and supported by solid single-party majorities which allowed
them to push through highly partisan legislative programmes.
2. Executive-legislative balance of power vs. relationships in which the executive is
dominant.
The constitutional framework governing executive-legislative relations in post-Franco
Spain has facilitated executive dominance over parliament, first under the Francoist
Fundamental Laws, which not surprisingly exaggerated government authority, but also
under the democratic 1978 Constitution, which reinforced executive power in a number
of ways (Heywood 1995). Still, the executive-legislative relationship was far more
balanced before 1982 than afterwards. In 1977-79 Suárez had sufficient authority within
UCD to block any internal opposition within his parliamentary support base, but used this
authority to subordinate his government’s partisan interests to the general objective of
writing a consensual constitution acceptable to all the mainstream parties. As a result, the
parliamentary opposition had an effective power of veto over government proposals
(Hopkin 1999, Ch.3). After 1979 Suárez’s authority collapsed, leaving the executive a
hostage to its own parliamentary minority and to any parliamentary groups whose support
it needed to pass legislation. The difficult investiture votes of March 1979 and February
1981 and the censure motion of May 1980 testify to this executive weakness. After 1982
the González governments had cohesive parliamentary majorities which obviated the
need for consensus or consultation with the ideologically antagonistic opposition, AP
(Pasquino 1995, 269). Executive dominance permitted a series of highly partisan and
potentially divisive measures (the legalisation of abortion, educational reforms favouring
the state sector, significant increases in public spending) to be implemented with little
parliamentary difficulty. González’s position as Prime Minister remained secure even
after major political setbacks such as his change of heart over NATO, soaring
4
unemployment and a successful general strike. Only with the loss of its majority in 1993
was the González government’s authority curtailed.
3. Multiparty vs. two-party systems.
Spain’s post-Franco democracy has always had a multiparty system. However the nature
of that system has changed over time, with significant shifts occurring both in 1982 and
in 1993. Lijphart’s preferred measures, the number of effective parliamentary parties and
the number of issue dimensions, fail to capture the extent of this shift: the former
declined from 2.85 in 1977 to 2.32 in 1982, but then rose again to 2.77 in 1989 (Montero
1999, 62); the latter did not change over the period. This is because party system
fragmentation has been maintained at high levels by the constant presence of nonstatewide parties in parliament, with 7-8% of the seats in 1977-86, and 9-10% after 1986.
It is the changes in the statewide party system, which accounts for the remaining 90% of
the parliamentary seats, which have fundamentally altered the dynamic of the system, and
in particular the disappearance of just one party, the UCD, in 1982. The pre-1982 system
could be described as moderate pluralism, with two large centre-oriented parties both
potentially capable of governing (UCD and the PSOE) flanked by two smaller more
extreme parties (AP and the PCE), neither of which were genuine anti-system parties
(Table 1). The presence of four statewide parties made single-party majority governments
unlikely, and imposed a coalitional logic to party interactions. After 1982, this balance
was overturned as the PSOE obtained a comfortable and sustainable single-party
governing majority (Table 2). The UCD’s disappearance allowed the Socialists to
monopolise the pivotal centre space in the party system, whilst the PCE’s decline
minimised the threats to its left. The hegemonisation of the right political space by a party
many regarded as authoritarian undermined the potential for government alternation and
allowed the PSOE obtain a single-party majority. In short, the system shifted from a
balanced and fluid moderate pluralism with a coalitional dynamic to a dominant party
system with higher levels of polarisation and interparty antagonism. A further shift in
1993 brought greater balance to the system without undermining the essential antagonism
between the two major parties; the disastrous results for the United Left coalition in the
March 2000 elections have accentuated the two-party system at the statewide level.
4. Proportional representation vs. majoritarian and disproportional electoral systems
5
The basic features of the Spanish electoral law have remained constant throughout the
post-Franco period. Formally a PR system using the d’Hondt formula, a series of
correctives make it effectively a hybrid system with strong majoritarian tendencies
(Gunther et al 1986, 43-53; Montero 1999). The large number of constituencies and
limited number of seats available to be distributed make high levels of proportionality
difficult, and the system overrepresents large statewide parties and non-statewide parties
with geographically concentrated support. The majority premium has tended to be small,
but sufficient to provide single-party majorities for 11 out of the 23 years of
democratically elected parliaments. This institutional framework has made both
consensus and majoritarian democracy possible.
5. ‘Corporatist’ vs. pluralist interest group systems
Although this factor plays a limited role in the analysis, some degree of concertation was
achieved during the UCD governments, fell away during the PSOE governments, and has
timidly reemerged in the 1996-2000 parliament.
It could be argued that these changes are unremarkable. Parties will obviously
form coalitions and alliances if they fail to achieve parliamentary majorities to govern
alone; if electoral rules are held constant, ‘consensus’ and ‘majoritarian’ democracy may
just be neat ways of describing the outcomes of general elections. Moreover, consensus
democracy in Spain coincided with the establishment of the basic rules of the game
during the transition from authoritarian rule – what could be more natural than a move to
‘real’ party competition once the delicate transition phase was over?
The first objection is supported by Lijphart’s (perhaps obvious) finding that party
systems and cabinet types are very closely related (1999, 112-3). However, the outcomes
of general elections are dependent as well as independent variables, and I will argue that
movements between ‘consensual’ and ‘majoritarian’ behaviour on the part of party elites
determine party system characteristics as well as being determined by them. Second,
although consensus may appear a logical route to constitution-building, there is no logical
reason why majoritarian democracy ought to be the end result of a transition process:
Lijphart’s study found that on the executive-parties dimension, his 36 cases of
democracies were evenly distributed between ‘consensus’ and ‘majoritarian’ types (1999,
248). Finally, there is compelling evidence from the Spanish case to suggest that
6
‘majoritarianism’ resulted from conscious choices on the part of political and social
elites, despite a number of factors which pushed Spain towards the ‘consensus’ type of
democracy (in particular, the persistence of important divisions in Spanish society). The
remainder of the paper will analyse these choices in the light of the environment facing
the key political forces.
The Starting Point: Regime and Opposition
Political forces in Spain were deeply polarised in the last months of the Franco
regime. The dictatorship, after a tentative move towards limited reform in early 1974,
quickly reverted to a violent and repressive response to strike actions, street protests and
Basque terrorism. However the transition to democracy was ultimately supported, or at
any rate tolerated, by broad sectors of the regime apparatus. It is difficult to establish the
range of conceptions of democracy held by these sectors independently of their actions,
since many made no significant pronouncements on the subject until after Franco’s death.
The exception to this are the conservative reformers led by Manuel Fraga, who published
widely on the issue of reform. An Anglophile1, Fraga admired the British path to
democracy through gradual reform, and hoped to establish the two-party Westminster
model in Spain (for example, Fraga 1954). His approach to reform saw it as the
‘broadening of the base’ of the regime (Ortega y Díaz-Ambrona 1984), integrating
moderate democratic forces, but excluding for as long as was feasible groups such as the
Communist Party and the radical nationalist groups (see for example his statements in
Fraga 1976, 283-4). This was a kind of ‘majoritarian’ view of transition, which ‘aspires
in a reasoned manner to a profound transformation of political, social and economic
structures, based on the majoritarian consensus, which banishes violence and demands
the use of the authority of a strong state to guarantee the rights of citizens vis-à-vis those
minorities who, by one means or another, attempt to destroy them’2. Democracy would
be ‘bestowed’ (otorgada) on Spaniards (as long as they behaved themselves, one might
add). The institutional corollary of this was Fraga’s preference for a strong executive and
1
Ambassador in London in 1973-5, Fraga enjoyed having himself photographed wearing a bowler hat, in
one memorable case standing in front of a statue of Churchill.
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a majoritarian electoral law on the Anglo-Saxon model, a position which his party, AP,
maintained consistently throughout the transition period (despite being penalised by the
majoritarian features of the 1977 law [Capo Giol 1990, 408]). A majoritarian law would
strengthen executive power and safeguard political stability.
The positions of the remaining political forces were less clearly specified a priori.
However the most significant parties were broadly favourable to an electoral system
based on the principle of proportional representation. On the moderate right, reformist
Prime Minister Suárez saw a proportional electoral system as a key part of the reform
strategy: consensus amongst the most powerful forces would be unlikely if any party
were able to gain an absolute majority in parliament, and the distortions inherent in
majoritarian systems made that a possibility. In particular, the two best organised political
forces in 1976 were Fraga’s AP and the Communist Party: parliamentary majorities for
either of these parties would halt the transition process. Furthermore, to the extent that
Suárez had any more abstract theoretical preferences, he apparently favoured a more
consensual style of democracy based on continuous negotiation, as an antidote to the
disastrous consequences of a confrontational style of politics in the 1930s (Suárez 1978,
Meliá 1981). A majoritarian law would risk exacerbating any ideological polarisation in
Spanish society, hindering the institutionalisation of democracy (Capo Giol 1990, 409).
The other components of the UCD were also favourable to PR, because of their minority
status, because of their close links to parties in the more consensual European
democracies (the Christian Democrats for instance had strong links with sister parties in
Belgium, Germany and Italy), and because of their approval of the consensual path to
democracy outlined by Suárez (see for example Tácito 1975).
On the left, a preference for the institutions of consensus democracy was not so
clear cut. All the forces of opposition to the Franco regime, which had combined in a
platform known as Coordinación Democrática to pressurise for change, subscribed to the
project of democratisation through ruptura. Negotiation between regime and opposition
was not regarded as a viable project for real political change. However this rejection of
consensus as a route to democratisation did not necessarily rule out a consensus-type
democracy emerging from the process. It is difficult to separate theoretical positions on
2
Quote from Fraga’s Libro blanco para la reforma democrática, cited in Gunther et al 1986, 79.
8
institutional design from tactical choices amongst the left parties, since so many of their
statements and documents about the post-Franco crisis are focused on much ‘bigger’
questions than mere electoral institutions: capitalism or socialism, monarchy or republic,
reform or revolution. However in constituent negotiations both the Communists and
Socialists argued strongly for the maximum degree of proportionality in the electoral
system (Capo Giol 1990, 408), in part out of fear that under a majoritarian law a
conservative bloc could achieve a parliamentary majority allowing it to block political
change. The PCE had particular reason for favouring PR, since it was unlikely to enjoy
the kind of broad social support necessary for it to benefit from a majoritarian system.
Before their success in the first elections, the Socialists could not be sure they would
benefit from majoritarianism either, since they faced strong competition from both the
Communists and other Socialist parties (such as the PSP) for their political space. The
links between the PCE and its Italian counterpart, and the PSOE’s close contacts with the
German SPD, provided further grounds for supporting proportionality. Non-statewide
parties also favoured proportional representation, for the obvious reason that single-party
government would effectively deprive them of any power in the national parliament. In
sum, all the major political forces to gain representation in the 1977 elections favoured
proportional representation, with the sole exception of AP, which only won a handful of
parliamentary seats. The prospects for consensus democracy were therefore bright at this
point.
Democracy Through Consensus: The Constituent Period
The electoral law negotiated between these forces was itself a product of
consensus, as Suárez’s stated aim was a law ‘acceptable to all’ (Gunther et al 1986, 45).
It was formally proportional, but the large number of constituencies and the
overrepresentation of sparsely populated rural areas created majoritarian distortions.
Ironically, this system penalised conservative sectors in AP, who had insisted on such
majoritarian ‘correctives’ in the belief that they would benefit, allowing them to control
and limit political change. Instead the allocation of parliamentary seats in 1977 vastly
overrepresented the UCD, whose leader Suárez was committed to fundamental political
9
change achieved through consensus (his stated aim was ‘to draw up a Constitution in
collaboration with all the groups represented in the Cortes, however many seats they
have’3. The UCD’s plurality in the chamber (it had 47 more seats than the second largest
party, the Socialists) allowed it to dominate legislative activity, whilst its inability to
govern on its own (it was 11 seats short of a majority) obliged it to seek agreements with
other forces, allowing Suárez to resist pressures from the conservative sector of UCD to
limit political change. The Socialists’ domination of the left political space (with 118 of
the 350 parliamentary seats, compared to only 20 for the PCE) meant that any measure
the UCD agreed with them would have an unassailable majority. The parliamentary
arithmetic turned out to be ideal for a consensual constituent process.
Consensus was further assisted by the positions adopted by parties which could
potentially destabilise the process. In particular, the PCE threw its weight behind
constitutional consensus, a choice coherent with the broadly Eurocommunist strategy
followed under Carrillo, but not coherent with its original insistence on ruptura.
Carrillo’s sense of responsibility and his good relationship with Suárez were undoubtedly
important, but the PCE had strategic incentives for such a choice. First, despite the strong
Communist presence in the trade union movement, the party did not have sufficient
capacity for mobilisation to force ruptura and its 9 per cent vote share in 1977 confirmed
it could not put forward a realistic alternative to the Suárez project (Bermeo 1999, 136).
Second, its position in the party system left it few options. The PCE was rather isolated
on the left, and had historically poor relations with its only feasible coalition partner, the
PSOE, which had little interest in forming a broad left front (Gillespie 1989): González’s
view as early as June 1976 was that ‘any bilateral alliance which could provoke reactions
against us and undermine the process of stability we are aiming for would be an error’
(Juliá 1997, 452). Given its failure to hegemonise the left space as the PCI had done in
Italy, only a broad-based ‘national government’ (gobierno de concertación) could
provide the PCE with any real influence. For a period these strategic interests coincided
with Suárez’s aim to squeeze the Socialists’ electoral space4, and a shortlived pact
between the two parties was in fact reached in 1977-78 (including an offer made in 1978
3
In El País, 20 May 1977, p.11.
10
by Suárez to form a parliamentary majority together). The Communists’ willingness to
participate in consensus is therefore easily explained in terms of its strategic position.
The Socialists’ position was far more complex, and led to regular changes in
strategy throughout the 1976-82 period. Strategy was driven by the aspiration to form an
electoral majority and carry out a socialist transformation alone, an aspiration made
possible by the promising 1977 results and by the overwhelming influence in the PSOE
of the German Social Democrats, whose ‘Nordic’ model of a majoritarian socialist
strategy tended to underplay the potential role of alliances with other forces such as the
Communist Party (Juliá 1997, 472). The Socialists were involved in two discrete
‘games’: a game of political reform, in which the interests of regime reformists and
opposition in part coincided, and a game of electoral competition, in which the PSOE had
conflicting interests with the UCD and the PCE. In the game of political reform, the
PSOE had a clear interest in participating in the elaboration of the new constitution, in
order to shape the future institutions and impress its electorate. At the same time,
collaboration with the UCD would undermine the Socialists’ profile as the alternative
governing party, and would favour their rival in the subsequent elections. The situation
was made even more complex by the UCD’s tactical manoeuvres. Suárez’s attempts to
marginalise the Socialists by dealing over their heads with the PCE responded to a
calculation that the Communists were not an electoral threat to anyone but the Socialists,
and that anything the UCD could do to strengthen Carrillo would benefit UCD
electorally. Furthermore, agreements with the PCE over constitutional issues would
‘cover’ the government’s left flank, and give the appearance of the working class being
drawn into the constitutional arc, at relatively little cost in terms of substantive
concessions (Carrillo was determined to overcome his party’s extremist image, and had
insufficient bargaining power to extract significant concessions from Suárez).
Ultimately, however, the Socialists had to be incorporated if the constitution was
to achieve broad parliamentary backing, and the Socialists themselves were not prepared
to jeopardise the transition by blocking the constituent process. The scenario can be
4
The PSOE being UCD’s most serious electoral rival and the only feasible alternative governing party
(Juliá 1997, 457).
11
usefully described in game theoretical terms as a chicken game (see figure 1) 5, since the
consequences of mutual intransigence (potential civil confrontation) were worse than the
sucker’s payoff for both regime reformists and the bulk of the opposition. The game was
an iterative one, as the reform process comprised a series of separate steps, and the
constituent process lasted around 18 months, providing plentiful opportunities for the
participants to test out each other’s resolve and for tradeoffs to be made. Ultimately,
however, the UCD, as the party of government, was able to establish a pattern of
compromise through the threats and incentives at its disposal. For example, the UCD’s
ability to form majority coalitions with both the PCE and AP constituted a useful threat to
push the Socialists into compromise positions. When the draft constitution began its
passage through the parliamentary commission, the UCD negotiated the first 25 articles
with AP, forming a ‘bourgeois bloc’ (bloque burgués). The PSOE protested furiously,
and the rest of the constitutional text was drawn up through joint negotiations between
the two major parties (de la Cuadra & Gallego-Díaz 1981, 44). Once the uncomfortable
issue of accepting the monarchy had been overcome, the Socialists participated in the
constitutional consensus - with occasional slamming of doors to emphasise their
distinctiveness from the governing party (Juliá 1997, 486-504) – and benefited from a
substantial input into the constitutional text (in Carrillo’s words, ‘consensus allowed the
draft text of the Constitution to be more progressive than it would have been on the basis
of pure parliamentary arithmetic’ [cited in Attard 1983, 129]). The UCD, for its part,
benefited from having piloted a successful constituent process in which practically allparty agreement had been reached. Among the most significant parties, only the Basque
Nationalists (PNV) and the most reactionary sector of AP failed to ratify the text. Crossparty agreement was also reached on a package of measures to address the economic
crisis (the Moncloa Pacts, September 1977). However this consensual relationship was,
as we see below, fundamentally unstable.
5
I therefore disagree with Colomer’s claim that these parties were involved in a prisoner’s dilemma, which
assumes that mutual intransigence, seen by most participants as risking a civil confrontation, was somehow
preferable to accommodation in the face of high risk strategies by opponents (1995, Ch.4).
12
Interparty Competition and the Decline of the Centre
The new constitution came into force in December 1978, and elections were
called for March 1979, producing largely similar results to those held in 1977 (Table 2).
Despite the essential continuity of the party system format, consensus quickly began to
collapse. This change of climate can be explained in terms of the changing strategic
incentives facing the major political actors.
Perhaps the most important change in the strategic scenario was the apparent
resolution of the constitutional question. The success of the referendum on the new
Constitution (only in the Basque Country did a majority fail to support it), and the
agreement of Statutes of Autonomy for the Basque Country and Catalonia in the summer
of 1979, gave the impression that the transition was over. One UCD politician recalled ‘it
was generally a feeling in public opinion, exaggerated by the media, that consensus
politics were for the constituent period, and that after that, parties should take up their
real positions’6. The fear of civil war in Spain, based on the traumatic memory of the
1936-39 conflict (Aguilar 1999), was sufficiently real for the key political elites to
compromise on contentious issues rather than risk confrontation during the transition
period. With the success of the constituent process in 1977-8, and the failure of Francoist
hardliners to destabilise the democratisation process, this fear began to fade, increasing
the values attached to the ‘mutual intransigence’ option in the game illustrated in Figure
17. At the same time, the conclusion of the constituent process reduced the value of
mutual compromise, as there were few substantive constitutional issues remaining on
which reaching an agreement was equally important to all the major parties. In these new
circumstances, high risk strategies to maximise payoffs became more feasible.
The UCD, despite reaffirming its position as biggest party in the 1979 elections,
suddenly found itself in a vulnerable position. Its lack of an absolute majority was not a
serious problem in the constituent period, since its main objective had been to pass a
constitution with cross-party support. Suárez aimed to continue governing as a minority
administration after March 1979, seeking consensus on broad constitutional issues and ad
6
7
Richard Gunther interview, 1981 (Juan March Institute, Madrid).
This interpretation is drawn from Tsebelis’ analysis of Belgian consociationalism (1990, 175-7).
13
hoc alliances on other matters. The strategy was reflected in UCD’s failure to publish any
partisan programme of government, and in its post-election commitment to ‘carry out a
moderate set of policies, in a spirit of service to the whole Spanish people, accepting all
the responsibilities deriving from its popular mandate and in full respect of the other
political forces’8. This strategy ran into trouble as early as the investiture vote, where
Suárez struggled to find the 8 votes necessary to achieve majority backing. AP offered its
parliamentary support, but on the understanding that Suárez ‘abandoned the ambiguities
of his previous government and the concessions to the left’, adding that ‘it is our intention
to clear the path so that Adolfo Suárez can adopt a proper right-wing programme, without
concessions’9. At the same time, the PSOE began to adopt a tougher line towards UCD,
representing it as a party of the classic conservative right10, and announcing the end of
consensus, which ‘would remain in the archives of history’ (Juliá 1997, 520). In the end
Suárez was forced to hammer out a deal with regionalist parties.
This shift in strategic incentives, combined with shifts in the political resources
available to the different political forces, combined to make Suárez’s consensus strategy
impracticable. On the part of the Socialists, the rationale for adopting an aggressive
strategy of opposition was clear enough: they had confirmed their position as hegemonic
party of the left in 1979 by incorporating the rival PSP and marginalising the PCE as a
minor force, but were still distant from the kind of electoral support necessary to enter
government. The kind of electoral growth the PSOE needed in order to win elections and
take power could only come from the right, and taking votes off the UCD would also
weaken the only other potential party of government. A prerequisite for this strategy was
a shift towards the ideological centre, achieved by the abandonment of Marxism in an
Extraordinary Congress in September 1979 (Gillespie 1989, 337-56, Juliá 1990), and
contacts with the Spanish ‘power elites’ (the big banks, the church and sectors of the
military) and Washington to establish the PSOE’s credentials as a ‘responsible’ party of
government (Juliá 1997, 523). The party could then set about attacking the UCD
government for its failure to respond to the pressing economic and public order problems
facing Spain in 1979-80. Consensus had threatened the PSOE’s identity as an alternative
8
9
‘UCD favorecerá la modificación del reglamento del Congreso’, El País, 4 March 1979, p.12.
‘Coalición Democrática apoyará a UCD sin exigir contrapartidas’, El País, 8 March 1979, p.13.
14
party of government (Capo Giol 1981, 158), so the Socialists became unavailable for
agreements with the UCD. A key example of this was the UCD’s attempt to contain the
process of political decentralisation by imposing a restrictive Statute of Autonomy on the
regions of Galicia and Andalusia. The Socialist leadership reneged on an agreement over
Galicia, and then ran a demagogical campaign for increased autonomy in Andalusia,
sensing an opportunity for electoral growth in Spain’s most populous region (Hopkin
1999, Ch.4).
Rather more complex changes were also taking place on the right of the political
spectrum. The UCD contained a conservative sector of mainly Christian Democrats and
Liberals who had had little option but to join Suárez in 1977, but were far less
enthusiastic about consensus with the parties of the left; as one party leader recalled in an
interview, ‘consensus was very strongly attacked; it provoked a great deal of tension
within the party’11. During the constituent period, these groups were too weak to
challenge Suárez, as the Liberal faction leader admitted in 1978: ‘Adolfo Suárez is at the
moment the only man inside the UCD who possesses sufficient political capital to
exercise the functions of president of the party and of the government (…). I think that
we should support him, since he continues to represent the safest option for the
consolidation of democracy’ (Garrigues Walker 1978, 126-8). By 1979 this support was
running out, and other options became open to UCD conservatives. An important key to
understanding the changes within the governing party is the mood amongst Spanish
business elites. One UCD leader interviewed by Richard Gunther neatly explained the
changing position of conservative interests in Spain in the course of the transition period:
The Spanish right was, in 1974-75, terrified at what might happen after Franco’s
death; the feeling of a ‘leap in the dark’ was widespread. When Suárez offered
them a possibility of change without trauma, they went along with that. But when
they found that instead of a right-wing policy he was adopting policies which only
partly satisfied that electorate, then these circles went out for revenge. It’s
obvious! If only we could have gone all out instead of making concessions. So
10
11
See for instance the article by Socialist Luis Solana, ‘Ya no hay centro’, El País, 18 March 1979, p.14.
Richard Gunther interview, 1983 (Juan March Institute, Madrid).
15
then there is a movement to support Fraga, thinking that instead of giving up 30
per cent they could have got away with just giving up five per cent12.
This contrasted sharply with the UCD leadership’s strategy of negotiating broad crossparty agreements on contentious issues such as the decentralisation process, family law,
labour law and education, which addressed the key political faultlines which had divided
Spanish society in the 1930s: the class and religious cleavages and the centre-periphery
cleavage. Interviews with UCD leaders make the choice of continued consensus clear:
‘party interests could not be allowed to prevail. The interests of the state had to prevail
and that interest was to consolidate a system of freedoms in which all Spaniards would
have a comfortable and secure place’; ‘there are a series of laws which have to be passed
in consensus between the major political forces, because they are permanent laws (…).
Without that consensus there is no way of creating an integrated society’13.
UCD conservatives tried to push for an end to Suárez’s strategy of consensus, and
on a number of occasions used their parliamentary leverage to push for more partisan
policies (for example on the position of religious schools and on divorce; see Hopkin
1999, Ch.5). Their position within the UCD did not permit them to take over the party
leadership, so instead they sought to push Suárez into a parliamentary deal with Fraga’s
AP, a strategy known as the ‘natural majority’ (mayoría natural) and strongly supported
by business interests (the big banks and the employers’ federation CEOE). Suárez used
all his resources to resist such a deal, which would have undermined his consensus
strategy and his electoral strategy, which rested on a catch-all appeal to centrist voters. At
this point the strategies of the conservative right and the PSOE coincided, as a UCD
leader explained:
On the one hand AP is aware that unless UCD becomes weaker it cannot gain
support (…). On the other the Socialist Party understands that anything that
weakens UCD and helps it gain a moderate image will bring electoral advantage,
12
13
Richard Gunther interview, 1983 (Juan March Institute, Madrid).
Richard Gunther interviews, 1983 (Juan March Institute, Madrid).
16
so there is a kind of tacit understanding between AP and the PSOE to weaken
UCD and encourage internal divisions in UCD14.
This collusion found its maximum expression in a parliamentary censure motion tabled
by the Socialists in May 1980. Ostensibly this formed part of the Socialist strategy of
distancing itself from consensus and presenting itself as an alternative governing party,
capitalising on Suárez’s increasing weakness. In practice it developed into a curious
pincer movement involving both the PSOE and AP. On the one hand the Socialist Guerra
denounced Suárez as a throwback of Francoism incapable of governing democratically,
on the other Fraga denounced Suárez for being too weak and failing to impose public
order15. At the same time, the two parties complimented each other, with González
suggesting that ‘with that brain big enough to fit the state inside, if Mr Fraga was on the
left, this country would have a great leader of the left’16, and Fraga offering his
counterpart similar praise. The two parties faced a positive sum game: by undermining
the UCD, they could push interparty relations towards a competitive majoritarian
dynamic which would improve the position of both.
The 1982 Elections and the Triumph of Majoritarianism
The final push towards majoritarianism required the UCD to become a more
clearly conservative party tied to Alianza Popular, and to abandon its strategy of
consensus with an increasingly aggressive Socialist Party. Suárez’s opposition to
majoritarianism and his close control over the party machinery were a formidable
obstacle to this. Further, the coup attempt of February 1981 temporarily restored
consensus as the Socialists and conservative interests took fright and called off their
assault on the government. Agreement was reached over the decentralisation process, and
unions and employers reached a deal on wages and working conditions. The perceived
negative consequences of mutual intransigence in the aftermath of military intervention
14
Richard Gunther interview, 1983 (Juan March Institute, Madrid).
See Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de los Diputados, 91-95, 20-30 May 1980, pp.5949-6294.
16
Diario de Sesiones del Congreso de los Diputados, 94, 29 May 1980, pp.6170-1.
15
17
were responsible for this, but fear of a further coup quickly subsided and consensus
collapsed again in the summer of 1981.
The bipolar majoritarian competition between Socialism and conservativism in
the 1982 elections became possible as a result of the UCD’s implosion. The causes of this
implosion were in part internal (Hopkin 1999), but a decisive contribution was made by
both the PSOE and the conservative interests backing Fraga. Both stood to gain from the
UCD’s collapse: around a fifth of the UCD’s 1979 electorate voted Socialist in 1982, and
around half voted for AP (Sani 1986, 13). The Socialists’ contribution was to entice
prominent figures in the UCD’s Social Democrat faction to cross the floor with offers of
ministries in a future PSOE government, whilst AP, with the encouragement of the
CEOE, offered conservative sectors of UCD places on its electoral lists. The business
elite, which had bankrolled UCD from the beginning, had long criticised the Suárez
governments’ economic policies, but in the tense transition period felt that the UCD
represented the safest bet for political stability. Their perception of strategic opportunities
had shifted by 1981, according to one UCD minister:
Between 1981-2 an important sector of Spanish public life, and particularly in
financial circles, organised a manoeuvre which would involve splitting UCD and
electing Manuel Fraga as the leader of the new formation (…). Reagan and
Thatcher’s election victories had a big impact in this, they made the CEOE
believe that given the world climate it was possible for a clearly right-wing party
to win here17.
A senior UCD figure recognised that the Socialists’ increasingly centrist strategy made a
high risk strategy more attractive to conservative circles: ‘the PSOE now has a much
more moderate image, and for this reason conservative sectors feel they don’t have to
accept the UCD’s reformist position just for fear of a Socialist victory’18. Business
interests, which had lacked organisational strength at the beginning of the transition, were
also much better organised by the 1980s; by 1981 1,250,000 firms were affiliated,
17
18
Interview by the author, 1993. See also Meliá 1981.
Luis Gámir, ‘La tentación conservadora/2’, El País, 12 September 1981, p.14.
18
representing 80% of private sector employment in Spain (Martínez & Pardo Avellanada
1985, 84). The CEOE threw its weight behind AP in regional elections in Galicia and
Andalusia, and sought to polarise the election campaigns with an aggressive anti-Socialist
message; AP managed to overtake the UCD’s vote share in both these regional elections.
Business circles also bankrolled the ‘critical’ movement within UCD, which attempted to
push UCD into the ‘natural majority’ alliance with AP (Herrero de Miñón 1993, 228).
Once it became clear that they would not be able to take control of UCD (at the party
congress in early 1981) and convert it into a more right-wing party, these conservative
Liberals and Christian Democrats set out to weaken the UCD as a prelude to crossing
over to AP. One minister recalls that
After the Palma congress the critics had given up on UCD, and they were already
making different plans. There was a decision to change UCD, a view that UCD’s
purpose had been fulfilled, that the idea of a broad-based party was no longer
viable and that there needed to be a much more precise definition of the political
space, and that that definition could be achieved through AP19.
The same minister also explained how this would be done: ‘there were meetings, hosted
by the CEOE, in which they more or less reached the conclusion that since it was not
possible to reform and change UCD, it was necessary to do everything possible to destroy
it’20. The CEOE’s president Ferrer Salat went as far as to make veiled threats in public,
stating in his annual address to the Confederation that ‘the present state of the governing
party is worrying (…) If its leaders and the president of the government do not manage to
move beyond the illogical conception of the centre as a mixture of disparate ideologies
(…) we foresee an inevitable election defeat in the next elections’21. This ‘clarification’
of the electoral map was achieved in 1982, with the help of significant defections from
the UCD to Coalición Popular, the electoral alliance constituted by Fraga’s AP. The
Christian Democrat group formed a separate party, the PDP, in order to make the shift.
19
Interview by the author, 1992.
Ibid.
21
(CEOE 1981, 21). This not simply a piece of advice – shortly afterwards the CEOE withdrew campaign
funding from the UCD.
20
19
One AP provincial leader described the purpose of the PDP to Richard Gunther as
follows: ‘The PDP is an operation designed to destroy the UCD. That is how the PDP
was born; with clear intentions of allying with AP. The PDP was born with the assistance
of the AP in order to finally break the UCD’ (cited in Gunther 1989, 851).
The business circles which backed the Suárez reform operation had grown tired of
a formula in which they bankrolled a center-right party which then governed through
consensus with the left. They preferred to push for a more conservative party to dominate
the space to the right of the Socialists, thus reconstituting party competition into a leftright battle in which they were (erroneously) confident their money and social influence
would prevail. AP, which had expected to dominate conservative politics after Franco,
and the tiny conservative factions marginalized within UCD, were only too happy to join
this operation. The Socialists realised that a clearly right-wing party would be much less
dangerous competitor than UCD, given the broadly center-left orientation of the Spanish
electorate (Maravall 1982, Ch.2), and collaborated too. One UCD leader complained
bitterly that the PSOE and AP combined to deny the small UCD parliamentary group
access to its state funding after the 1982 elections:
The Socialist Party did nothing to help us out, to stop UCD disappearing as a
political force. Why? Because let’s suppose that in 1986 the election is a contest
between Fraga and a Felipe González whose image has suffered in government,
even if Fraga increases his support, Felipe González will still beat Fraga. The
Socialist Party decided that it was better for UCD to go into hibernation, they let
our creditors freeze the party’s state subsidy, and the right did nothing either. The
PSOE is happier with Fraga in opposition than with UCD22.
Another UCD leader with particular responsibility for financial affairs told the author that
‘important figures in the banking sector told me that if you dissolve, then there will be no
problem, there won’t be anyone to pay us, and that will be that. But if you intend to carry
on, we are going to call in your debts – which were 5000 million pesetas’23. The 1982
22
23
Richard Gunther interview, 1983 (Juan March Institute, Madrid).
Interview by the author, 1992.
20
elections were not simply an alternation in government between political parties, or even
a case of a particularly heavy electoral defeat by an unpopular governing party (although
the UCD did have plenty of responsibility for its own decline). It was also the outcome of
a deliberate and sustained campaign by two political parties and influential business
interests to realign the Spanish party system on a bipolar basis, in which ‘the best of the
left could compete with the best of the centre’ (Alzaga 1981). The UCD was duly
dissolved in early 1983, and Spain had, at the statewide level at least, a majoritarian party
system.
Concluding Remarks
This account of the shift from consensus to majoritarian democracy in postFranco Spain rests largely on political forces’ perceptions of their strategic opportunities,
and the ways in which these strategic opportunities changed over the transition period.
The thrust of my argument is that the Socialists’ unexpected electoral success and the
Communists’ corresponding failure provided a rationale for the PSOE to switch to a
majoritarian strategy, abandoning consensus politics and collaborating with conservative
forces in undermining the UCD, the party around which consensus politics had been
based. For AP’s part, the preference for majoritarian democracy remained constant
throughout the period; what changed were the resources available to them, and in
particular the changing position of Spanish business elites. The electoral stagnation of
Communism, and the aimless leadership of the UCD after 1978, provided the Socialists
and AP with the opportunity to reshape the party system in terms of their own electoral
interests.
Although this is a compelling reconstruction of the development of Spanish party
politics in the post-Franco period, it does not in itself necessarily explain why one model
of democracy was chosen above another. The shift in the opportunity structure which
permitted a move to majoritarianism was the result of a sharp decline in the fear of civil
confrontation, which led political actors to perceive intransigent positions as less
dangerous than they had been in the initial phase of the transition (see figure 1). This
seems to presuppose that competitive, majoritarian democracy is a kind of ‘default
21
setting’, which will emerge whenever politicians perceive it to be to their advantage.
Although the argument lies beyond the scope of this paper, I suspect that a comparative
study of consensus and majoritarian democracies would reveal few of them to be Nash
equilibria deducible from distinct types of opportunity structure. Consensus democracies
are always potentially at risk from defections of key political groups, and some
conception of the ‘public interest’ is probably necessary for them to be sustained. This is
implicit in Tsebelis’ account of Belgian consociationalism (1990), which describes elite
cooperation in terms of nested iterative games, but ultimately resorts to a functionalist
argument about ‘the necessity of enforcing mechanisms for conflict management’ (181)
to explain how such cooperation becomes institutionalised. Even if a chicken game
scenario can explain the development of institutions of consensus democracy, political
actors must be well aware of the risks of failure to cooperate, suggesting that consensus
democracy is only likely to develop in situations of extreme political tension.
Certainly, consensus could be an individually rational strategy for political actors
to adopt if the payoffs for mutual intransigence are disastrously low. As Hirschman
argues, there is no easy exit from public ‘bads’ (1970), and a repetition of the 1930s
conflict in the 1970s would have been a desperately poor individual outcome for many
political actors in Spain, leaving some of them dead or in exile. However, there are
plentiful examples of such situations failing to produce consensus (to take the most
obvious example, the dire consequences of mutual intransigence in Yugoslavia were not
sufficient to maintain interelite cooperation in the early 1990s). It is more reasonable to
argue that the possibility of disaster is not the only foundation for consensus politics; a
widespread normative commitment to a cooperative rather than a competitive model of
democracy is equally if not more important. My account of the move from consensus to
majoritarian democracy has interpreted politician behaviour in largely strategic and
instrumental terms; a more complete account would require a fuller understanding of
what, if any, a priori conceptions of democracy were held by the key protagonists in the
Spanish transition, and how these conceptions influenced their perception of strategic
opportunies.
22
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25
Table 1
Statewide party system in Spain 1977-96 – Ideological Positions of Statewide Parties
with Parliamentary Representation
Ideological Position* Left
1977
1979
1982
1986
1989
1993
1996
Right
PCE
PSOE
UCD
AP
(2.6)
(3.8)
(5.6)
(7.7)
PCE
PSOE
UCD
AP
(2.7)
(3.9)
(5.9)
(7.0)
PCE
PSOE
UCD/CDS
AP
(2.3)
(3.8)
(5.4/5.6)
(7.2)
IU
PSOE
CDS
AP
(2.5)
(3.6)
(5.2)
(7.4)
IU
PSOE
CDS
PP
(2.6)
(3.7)
(5.3)
(7.2)
IU
PSOE
PP
(2.6)
(3.4)
(7.2)
IU
PSOE
PP
(2.9)
(3.7)
(6.5)
* Self positioning of party voters, Montero 1999, 63 (voters’ positioning of the parties
produces similar measures, but I do not have the data to hand as I write this paper).
26
Table 2
Statewide party system in Spain 1977-2000 – Parliamentary Strength of Statewide Parties
with Parliamentary Representation (%)
1977
1979
1982
1986
1989
1993
1996
2000
PCE
PSP
PSOE
UCD
AP
Total
(5.7)
(1.7)
(33.7)
(47.4)
(4.6)
(93.1)
PCE
PSOE
UCD
AP
FN
(6.6)
(34.6)
(48.0)
(2.6)
(0.3)
PCE
PSOE
CDS UCD
AP
(0.8)
(57.7)
(0.6) (3.4)
(30.3)
IU
PSOE
CDS
AP
(2.0)
(52.6)
(5.4)
(30.0)
IU
PSOE
CDS
PP
(4.8)
(50.0)
(4.0)
(30.6)
IU
PSOE
PP
(5.1)
(45.4)
(40.3)
IU
PSOE
PP
(6.0)
(40.3)
(44.6)
IU
PSOE
PP
(2.3)
(35.7)
(52.3)
(92.1)
(92.8)
(90.0)
(89.4)
(90.9)
(90.9)
(90.3)
27
Figure 1
Chicken Game Between Government Reformists and Opposition
Opposition
chickens out
Reformists’
payoff
Mutual
compromise
Reformists chicken
out
Mutual
intransigence
Opposition payoff
(Dotted arrow shows direction of changes in payoff values after promulgation of 1978
constitution)
Payoffs for two players:
Reformists: Opposition chickens out > mutual compromise > Reformists chicken out >
mutual intransigence
Opposition: Reformists chicken out > mutual compromise > Opposition chicken out>
mutual intransigence
28