Mariano Torcal

The Political Recrafting of Social Bases of Party Competition: Chile, 1973–95

This article examines social cleavages and the impact of political legacies on Chiles post-authoritarian party system. In contrast to society-oriented approaches to party system formation, we argue that cleavage appearance in a party system depends on political agency, which can even (re)create social identities and social conflicts. The Chilean case illustrates this point; the structure of the party system is deeply influenced by distinctive political legacies of the authoritarian period. The cleavage between those who supported authoritarian rule and those who opposed it has powerfully shaped the party system during the new democratic period. In post-authoritarian Chile (1990-2001), a societal approach does not adequately explain the formation of cleavages or the contours of the party system. A class cleavage has appeared between the governing coalition and the conservative opposition, but this cleavage is politically constructed and maintained. The Chilean case also shows that it is important to examine the ways in which political elites craft party systems from above during the transition period. Political agency from the supply side played a decisive role in emphasizing or diminishing some of the political and cultural conflicts existing after the authoritarian experience and, therefore, an essential role in party system formation in post-authoritarian Chile. We have undertaken this enterprise of examining social cleavages and the impact of political legacies on Chiles post-authoritarian party system as a way of exploring how post-authoritarian party systems in general are structured. Because a party system is formed and/or re-established when democracy is restored, new democracies provide an ideal context in which to discuss theoretically important aspects of cleavages and the formation

Elite Strategy, Social Cleavages, and Party Systems in a New Democracy Spain

Electoral studies of the Spanish party system have consistently noticed that social class has no influence on the vote. This paper will argue that social class has emerged as influential in determining the vote between the two major parties—the PSOE and PP. The development of these links between social class and political parties resulted from the strategic programmatic choice made by the political elites of both major parties since 1989 and the policy adopted by the governing PSOE. Evidence for this argument will be drawn from a very large Spanish survey conducted in 1992, a textual analysis of party platforms, and a survey of government economic policy since 1989. The attribution of this association between social class and the vote in Spain to the strategic policy choices made by elites also offers an additional perspective on how social divisions come to be linked to party systems.

Democracy in Spain: Legitimacy, Discontent, and Disaffection

This article examines changes in perceptions of democracy in Spain over the last two decades. A variety of empirical indicators gleaned from numerous surveys are used to distinguish between democratic legitimacy and political discontent, as well as between this (which includes the well-known indicator of dissatisfaction with the way democracy works) and political disaffection. The article traces the different ways in which these attitudes have evolved in Spain over the last twenty years, and demonstrates that they belong to different dimensions. It also includes the results of two tests showing that these two sets of attitudes are conceptually and empirically distinct: a factor analysis confirms the distinct clustering of the indicators at the, individual level, whilst cohort analysis identifies different patterns of continuity and change across generations.

The Decline of Political Trust in Spain and Portugal Economic Performance or Political Responsiveness

This article deals with the problem of the increasing distrust in institutions in European democracies, paying special attention to countries such as Spain and Portugal, which are being severely harmed by the current economic crisis and the austerity measures imposed by supranational organizations such as the European Union and implemented by their respective national governments. Contrary to the purely political-economic paradigm, the present article, based on panel survey data gathered during the years 2011 and 2012 in Spain and Portugal, shows that this deterioration is due principally to the negative perception of the political responsiveness of representative institutions and aggravated by the increasing perception of political corruption. Multilevel governance and the present economic crisis are challenging representative institutions, but their functioning and elite misbehavior during the crisis are the main explanations of increasing citizen distrust in such institutions.

Institutional trust and multilevel government in the European Union: Congruence or compensation?

Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that both will be positively related, others have proposed the opposite hypothesis: low levels of trust in national institutions will lead citizens to higher levels of support for the EU. We argue that both hypotheses are true but operate at different levels: whereas more trusting citizens tend to be so in both the national and the European arenas, we also find that at the country level the relationship is negative: living in a country with highly trusted and well-performing institutions hinders trust in the European Parliament. We test our hypotheses using data from the European Social Survey and Hierarchical Linear Modeling.

Teoria e institucionalização dos sistemas partidários após a terceira onda de democratização

Resumo Este artigo examina duas diferencas entre os sistemas partidarios das democracias industriais avancadas e os de paises menos desenvolvidos, particularmente em termos do nivel de institucionalizacao. O argumento geral e que os sistemas partidarios dos paises menos desenvolvidos sao menos institucionalizados. De modo mais especifico, mostramos primeiro que a maioria das democracias e semi-democracias em paises menos desenvolvidos tem uma volatilidade eleitoral muito mais alta e menos estabilidade eleitoral do que as democracias industriais avancadas. E, em segundo lugar, boa parte da literatura sobre partidos e sistemas partidarios pressupoe o contexto de sistemas partidarios institucionalizados com partidos fortemente enraizados na sociedade e supoe ainda que vinculos programaticos e ideologicos estao na raiz dos vinculos estaveis entre eleitores e partidos. Nos sistemas partidarios da maioria das democracias e semi-democracias dos paises menos desenvolvidos, os vinculos programaticos e ideologicos entre eleitores e partidos sao mais fracos. Nessa mesma direcao, os vinculos entre eleitores e candidatos sao mais personalistas nas democracias e semidemocracias dos paises menos desenvolvidos do que nas democracias industriais avancadas. Palavras-chave: partidos politicos, sistemas partidarios, democracia, institucionalizacao.

The 2006 Regional Election in Catalonia: Exit, Voice, and Electoral Market Failures

This paper analyses the results of the 2006 autonomous election in Catalonia and their implications for Spanish politics. In accordance with the analytical framework provided by Hirschman (Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Harvard University Press, 1970), and using individual and aggregated data, we show that demands shared by a significant number of voters were unsatisfied in this election, provoking an electoral market failure and a consequential rise of exit (or abstention) and voice (or blank and null votes and voting for new parties). All these behaviours are symptoms of both an increasing level of political discontent and a lack of political integration due to a divergence between issues salient to Catalans and the dominant focus of party platforms and agendas.

LA PARTICIPACIÓN POLÍTICA EN ESPAÑA: MODOS Y NIVELES EN PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA

This article proposes a new typology for modalities of political participation. It gives an empirical comparison of thirteen European democracies and suggests going beyond most used typologies. This proposal is built upon the discussion of two dimensions that have an important impact on such participation: the use of traditional representative or extra-representative mechanisms and the use of mechanisms based on ordered debate or on protest demonstrations. The interaction between these two dimensions enables us to distinguish five types of political participation: voting, contact, party activities, protest activities and consumer participation. The rest of the article compares the levels of these modalities in Spain and in some of its Autonomous Communities.

Ciudadanos y partidos en el sur de Europa: los sentimientos antipartidistas

Este articulo explora las actitudes antipartidistas de los ciudadanos, un supuesto rasgo de las democracias occidentales tan frecuentemente aducido como escasamente estudiado. En el analisis empirico de cuatro paises del sur de Europa hemos encontrado que las orientaciones antipartidistas presentan dos dimensiones. Una de ellas, a la que hemos llamado antipartidismo «reactivo», parece cambiar en respuesta a circunstancias politicas coyunturales. La otra dimension, denominada antipartidismo «cultural», esta caracterizada por su estabilidad y su vinculacion con bajos niveles educativos y cotas reducidas de informacion politica.Y mientras que el antipartidismo reactivo no tiene implicaciones actitudinales o participativas significativas, el cultural parece formar parte de un sindrome mas amplio de desafeccion politica.

El conflicto democracia/autoritarismo y sus bases sociales en Chile, 1973-1995: un ejemplo de redefinición política de un cleavage

En este articulo se estudian los cleavages sociales y la influencia de los legados politicos en el sistema de partidos chileno durante el periodo posterior a la dictadura. A diferencia de los enfoques que se centran en argumentaciones sociologicas para explicar la formacion de los sistemas de partidos, en estas lineas se argumenta que la aparicion de los cleavages en un sistema de partidos es producto de la agencia politica, la cual puede llegar a (re)definir las identidades y los conflictos sociales. El caso chileno ilustra este punto ya que la estructura del sistema de partidos actual esta notablemente influida por determinados legados politicos del periodo autoritario. El cleavage entre quienes apoyan al pasado regimen autoritario y aquellos que se oponen a el, ha contribuido de manera notable a la formacion del sistema de partidos durante el periodo democratico.