Coalition oversight and blame avoidance in Greece

This article examines the behavior of Greek political parties before, as well as during, the recent austerity period. Drawing on coalition oversight and blame avoidance literature, it argues that the unpopularity of austerity governments leads to extreme levels of dissent within the coalition. I operationalize this ‘intra-coalition opposition’ behavior using parliamentary questions, a legislative institution that has not been studied in the context of coalition politics. The analysis demonstrates that junior members in unpopular austerity governments increase their use of parliamentary questions to a degree that matches or even exceeds the formal opposition. However, intra-coalition dissent is conditional on the type of unpopular government policies, and on the ideology of coalition members. Specifically, using a new method of text analysis, I show that while the socialist Panhellenic Socialist Movement uses its parliamentary questions to avoid or minimize the blame associated with austerity policies, the conservative New Democracy does not, because left-leaning parties are electorally vulnerable to austerity measures. The results have implications for studying dissent in coalition politics in general, and the politics of austerity in particular

Electoral competition in Europe’s new tripolar political space : class voting for the left, centre-right and radical right

In a growing number of countries, the two dominant political poles of the 20th century, the parties of the Left and the Centre-Right, are challenged by a third pole made up by the Radical Right. Between 2000 and 2015, the Radical Right has obtained more than 12 per cent of the vote in over ten Western European countries and in over twenty national elections. We argue that the three poles compete with each other for the allegiance of different social classes. Our analysis shows the micro-foundations of class voting in nine West European countries where the political space was tripolar for part – or all – of the period between 2000 and 2015. Based on the European Social Survey 2002-2014, we find that socio-cultural professionals still form the party preserve of the Left, and large employers and managers constitute the party preserve of the Centre-Right. However, the Radical Right competes with the Centre-Right for the votes of small business owners, and it challenges the Left over its traditional working-class stronghold. These two contested strongholds attest to the coexistence of old and new patterns of class voting. The analysis of voters’ attitudes shows that old patterns are structured by the economic axis of conflict: production workers’ support for the Left and small business owners’ endorsement of the Centre-Right. In contrast, new patterns are linked to the rise of the Radical Right and structured by the cultural axis of conflict: the support for the Radical Right by production workers and small business owners

Diversificación y reconfiguración de los sistemas de partidos de las democracias postindustriales

Desde el final de la II Guerra Mundial hasta nuestros días los sistemas de partidos tradicionalesse han desmoronado o, cuando menos, han sufrido grandes cambios. En esteartículo describo este cambio, expongo sus causas y explico cómo han operado para llegara modificar los sistemas de partidos tradicionales. Las preferencias políticas de los ciudadanossurgen principalmente, aunque no sólo, a partir de la inserción de los ciudadanosen el mercado de trabajo, la familia y las organizaciones empresariales. El proceso depostindustrialización y los cambios impuestos al desarrollo de los estados del bienestarhan dado lugar a diferentes pautas y trayectorias que han influido y continúan influyendoen la distribución de preferencias políticas de los ciudadanos. En el nivel macro, ha habidoun cambio en los ejes de la distribución de preferencias políticas: en dos fases distintas,se ha pasado de la prioridad del eje de las políticas distributivas (derecha-izquierda) ala del eje de las estructuras de gobernanza sociocultural (autoritario-liberal). Estos cambiosen los ejes de preferencias tienen implicaciones para las estrategias de los partidospolíticos. Los partidos son sensibles a las preferencias de los ciudadanos, como lo pruebael descenso del clientelismo, y en consecuencia se adaptan a sus cambios, siempre dentrodel margen de posibilidades que les ofrece la estructura social, su propio historial partidistay, por supuesto, las condiciones económicas restrictivas y la crisis de los estados del bienestarvigentes. Como consecuencia de este proceso los sistemas de partidos se han complejizadoy se han diversificado, dejando en manos de los movimientos sociales y los gruposde interés amplios ámbitos de actuación: toda la serie de temas y ámbitos de competiciónelectoral que no pueden interpretarse dentro del espacio definido por los dos ejes dedistribución de preferencias que rige la competición partidista

Workplace characteristics and working class vote for the old and new right

This article focuses on the role of plant size for working class vote. We argue that workplace size does matter for political behaviour. Workers in smaller plants are less unionized and therefore base their voting decisions more strongly on their cultural attitudes, which undermine the support for social democratic parties. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2010), we find that workers in small plants have more right-wing attitudes and, consequently, vote for new and old right parties, contrarily to workers in larger plants. Our research points towards important structural explanations of working class support for the right and its cross-national differences

From stability to stagnation: Germany at the beginning of the twenty-first century

"Among political and economic elites as well as in public opinion a sense of malanaise has spread across Germany since the mid-1990s, after the initial enthusiasm about German unification, the end of the Cold War and the acceleration of European integration. In the early 1980s West Germany was widely celebrated, and indeed celebrated itself, as an island of economic prosperity, social peace and political stability in an increasingly turbulent world. Reflecting the opinion of the time, 'West European Politics' published a Special Issue in 1981 under the title of 'Germany: Perspectives on a Stable State'. During the 1970s and early 1980s, when the United States was in a deep crisis of economic performance and public confidence, the German industrial strategy of 'diversified quality production' became an admired model world-wide, echoing Helmut Schmidt's proclamation of 'Modell Deutschland' in his first election campaign of 1976 when he prided himself on his government's achievement of apparently unshakeable tripartite consensus with business and labour." (excerpt

Vínculos entre ciudadanos y políticos: una introducción

[ES] La movilización etnocultural y su impacto en los vínculos entre ciudadanos y políticos en una comunidad política son importantes condicionantes de las circunstancias político económicas, el desarrollo y especialmente la competición partidista. Ambos aumentan la politización de la gobernanza económica y la intensa competición partidista posibilita que se acreciente la movilización etnocultural, de manera que los políticos tienen fuertes incentivos para desarrollar relaciones principal-agente clientelares. El desarrollo económico puede tener una influencia ambivalente, pero cuanto más posibilita una mayor prosperidad social, hace más accesibles los recursos para el juego redistributivo que moviliza a grupos etnoculturales alrededor de relaciones clientelares. Por supuesto, la movilización etnocultural se mantiene exógena a todos los demás factores causales en el grado que debe existir un espacio de viabilidad de indicadores culturales –preferentemente indicadores también asociados con impactos distributivos en la división del trabajo y la distribución de recompensas económicas en una sociedad– sin los cuales los políticos no podrían siquiera concebir una estrategia prometedora de interés en movilización etnocultural

Political trust and historical legacy: the effect of varieties of socialism

This paper, unlike the vast existing literature on political trust, focuses on trust in post-socialist countries, and more specifically on their emerging elites, rather than on their general populations. Studying emerging elites is important in the context of establishing democracy and the survival of democracy. We stipulate that political trust is significantly determined by historical legacy: type of socialist regime, accounting for path dependence and thus, for pre- socialist legacies. Utilizing individual-level data from an institutional survey, we find that distinguishing between different types of socialism is instrumental in explaining trust of emerging elites. Our findings have implications for policies aimed at fostering political trust in post-socialist countries and more importantly for discerning future patterns of political and social developments

Breaching the social contract: crises of democratic representation and patterns of extreme right party support

Why has the extreme right Greek Golden Dawn, a party with clear links to fascism experienced a rise defying all theories that claim that such a party is unlikely to win in post-WWII Europe? And, if we accept that economic crisis is an explanation for this, why has such a phenomenon not occurred in other countries that have similar conducive conditions, such as Portugal and Spain? This article addresses this puzzle by (a) carrying out a controlled comparison of Greece, Portugal and Spain and (b) showing that the rise of the extreme right is not a question of intensity of economic crisis. Rather it is the nature of the crisis, i.e. economic versus overall crisis of democratic representation that facilitates the rise of the extreme right. We argue that extreme right parties are more likely to experience an increase in their support when economic crisis culminates into an overall crisis of democratic representation. Economic crisis is likely to become a political crisis when severe issues of governability impact upon the ability of the state to fulfil its social contract obligations. This breach of the social contract is accompanied by declining levels of trust in state institutions, resulting in party system collapse

Parties, promiscuity and politicisation: business-political networks in Poland

Research on post-communist political economy has begun to focus on the interface between business and politics. It is widely agreed that informal networks rather than business associations dominate this interface, but there has been very little systematic research in this area. The literature tends to assume that a politicised economy entails business-political networks that are structured by parties. Theoretically, this article distinguishes politicisation from party politicisation and argues that the two are unlikely to be found together in a post-communist context. Empirically, elite survey data and qualitative interviews are used to explore networks of businesspeople and politicians in Poland. Substantial evidence is found against the popular idea that Polish politicians have business clienteles clearly separated from each other according to party loyalties. Instead, it is argued that these politicians and businesspeople are promiscuous. Since there seems to be little that is unusual about the Polish case, this conclusion has theoretical, methodological, substantive and policy implications for other post-communist countries

Aggregation and Representation in the European Parliament Party Groups

While members of the European Parliament are elected in national constituencies, their votes are determined by the aggregation of MEPs in multinational party groups. The uncoordinated aggregation of national party programmes in multinational EP party groups challenges theories of representation based on national parties and parliaments. This article provides a theoretical means of understanding representation by linking the aggregation of dozens of national party programmes in different EP party groups to the aggregation of groups to produce the parliamentary majority needed to enact policies. Drawing on an original data source of national party programmes, the EU Profiler, the article shows that the EP majorities created by aggregating MEP votes in party groups are best explained by cartel theories. These give priority to strengthening the EP’s collective capacity to enact policies rather than voting in accord with the programmes they were nationally elected to represent