The Socialist Party in government and in opposition

The Politics of Contemporary Spain

Volumn , Issue , 2004, Pages 169-197

  Méndez Lago, Mónica ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MURCIA   (Spain)

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EID: 84906476784     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203002759     Document Type: Chapter

References (63)

1. See A. Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
2. See J. Hopkin, 'Ideological Change in European Social Democracy: Assessing Possible Explanations', paper presented for the Political Studies Association-UK, Fiftieth Annual Conference, April 2000.
3. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: Methuen, 1959).
4. For a detailed account of this process, see Richard Gillespie, The Spanish Socialist Party. A History of Factionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
5. Joaquin Almunia, personal interview, 14 June 1996.
6. PSOE, internal bulletin, May 1980.
7. Santos Juliá, Los Socialistas en la politica espanola 1879-1982 (Madrid: Taurus, 1997).
8. It is also important to take into account the distribution of population according to types of municipalities: 86.2 per cent of municipalities have 5,000 inhabitants or less, and represent only 16.8 per cent of the total Spanish population. Conversely, only 0.8 per cent of municipalities represent around 42 per cent of the population, in cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants (see Irene Delgado Sotillos, Comportamiento electoral municipal (Madrid: Centro de Investi-gaciones Sociológicas, 1997), p. 165). For example, Castilla León chooses half of all local representatives, since it contains nearly 28 per cent of all Spanish municipalities, but only 7 per cent of the population.
9. See Alessandro Pizzorno, 'Political Exchange and Collective Identity in Industrial Conflict', in C. Crouch and A. Pizzorno (eds), The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968, vol. 2 (London: Holmes and Meier, 1978), pp. 277-98.
10. Expression used by Javier Pradera, 'Las pasiones del poder. El PSOE tras diez anos de gobierno (1982-1992)', Claves de razón práctica 36 (1992), pp. 32-43.
11. 'From the elections of 15 June [1977] the party defined a strategy to become the governmental alternative. The place we occupied in the political scene and the results of the elections pointed us in this direction' (González, opening speech of the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress, May 1979).
12. Management report of the Federal Executive Committee, Twenty-Seventh Party Congress, 1976, p. 4.
13. PSOE campaign guide, 1979, p. 55.
14. 'It is true that these elections [1979] did not confirm the expectations our party had' (González, opening speech of the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress, May 1979).
15. See Joaquin Garcia Morillo, 'El desarrollo de la campana', in Jorge De Esteban and Luis López Guerra (eds), Las elecciones legislativas del 1 de marzo de 1979 (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1979), pp. 189-293 and
16. José Félix Tezanos, 'El espacio politico y sociológico del socialismo espanol', in Sistema 32 (1979), pp. 51-75.
17. Gunther cites some interviews with leaders of the UCD in which they chose this incoherence as one of the main campaign lines of the UCD against the PSOE. See Richard Gunther, 'Democratization and Party Building. The Role of Party Elites in the Spanish Transition', in Robert P. Clark and Michael H. Hatzel, Spain in the 1980s (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 35-65.
18. 'In one and a half years of political struggle we have not been able to integrate other sectors of society in our political project' (González, opening speech of the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress, May 1979).
19. José Félix Tezanos, 'Análisis sociológico del voto socialista en las elecciones de 1979', Sistema 31 (1979), pp. 106-21.
20. For a detailed account of the development of this Party Congress see Paul Preston, The Triumph of Democracy in Spain (London: Methuen, 1986), pp. 153-7 and
21. Gillespie, The Spanish Socialist Party, pp. 348-56.
22. Resolutions of the Twenty-Eighth Congress (1979), p. 4.
23. José Maria Maravall, 'From Opposition to Government. Politics and Policies of the PSOE', in Maravall et al., Socialist Parties in Europe (Barcelona: Institut de Ciencies Politiques i Socials, 1991), pp. 10-11.
24. Craig also shares the same point of view: 'minimising dissent within the party was crucial for the PSOE's rise to power in the context of a post transition policy which associated fractious parties with democratic breakdown': see Patricia Craig, 'Democratization and the Emergence of the Spanish Party System: Dominant Parties and Democratic Transition', paper presented at the conference 'Party Politics in the Year 2000', Manchester 13-15 January 1995, p. 1.
25. Maravall, 'From Opposition to Government', pp. 20-2.
26. See Donald Share, Dilemmas of Social Democracy. The Spanish Socialist Workers Party in the 1980s (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989) and
27. Carles Boix, Political Parties, Growth, and Equality. Conservative and Social Democratic Strategies in the World Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 148-50.
28. See, for example, the references to this question in the interviews of the Ministers of Economics, Miguel Boyer (1982-5) and Carlos Solchaga (1985-93) in Tom Burns, Conversaciones sobre el socialismo (Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1996).
29. Maravall, 'From Opposition to Government', p. 24.
30. The level of fiscal pressure as a percentage of the GDP increased from 18.4 in 1975 to 28.8 in 1985 and 34.4. in 1990. José Maria Maravall, Regimes, Politics and Markets. Democratization and Economic Change in Southern and Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
31. The theme of the campaign was 'OTAN, de entrada no'. The campaign was also viewed as an opportunity to mobilise the party and the electorate for the next general elections (see Share, Dilemmas of Social Democracy, p. 80).
32. For a detailed account of the development of the position of the PSOE vis-a-vis NATO see José Maria Maravall, Accountability and Manipulation, Estudio/Working Paper 1996/92, Madrid: Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones; and
33. Consuelo Del Val, Opinión pública y publicada. Los espanoles y el referéndum de la OTAN (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1996).
34. Maravall, Accountability and Manipulation, p. 15.
35. Share, Dilemmas of Social Democracy, p. 82.
36. José Maria Maravall (personal interview 28 December 1995) credits the UGT with being one of the causes limiting the debate. The UGT asked the party not to deepen the debate on the issue in exchange for not positioning itself publicly against remaining in NATO.
37. According to the data of López Pintor, a third of those surveyed concluded that the most important motive for the strike was support for the unions' demands, while around 38 per cent said that strikers were intimidated by the pickets and another 20 per cent decided that the strike was in opposition to the way the Socialists were governing the country. See Rafael López Pintor, 'El sistema politico espanol', in Miguel Juárez (ed.), V informe sociológico sobre la situación social en Espana (Madrid: Fundación Foessa, 1994), p. 591.
38. For a discussion of this dilemma see A. Przeworski and J. Sprague, Paper Stones: The History of Electoral Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 55.
39. For a broader perspective, including considerations of its reflection in internal party relations, see T. Koelble, 'Social Democracy between Structure and Choice', Comparative Politics 24/3 (1991) and
40. T. Koelble, 'Recasting Social Democracy in Europe: A Nested Games Explanation of Strategic Adjustment in Political Parties', Politics and Society 20/1 (1992), pp. 51-70.
41. See Mónica Méndez-Lago, La estrategia organizativa del Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol, 1975-96 (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2000), chapter 5, for a detailed analysis of the membership strategy of the PSOE.
42. These differences of powers and responsibilities would be blurred later on as a result of the transfer of powers that took place at the end of the 1990s. For an analysis of the process of decentralisation and the characteristics of the Estado de las Autonomias, see Eliseo Aja, El Estado Autonómico: federalismo y hechos diferenciales (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2003).
43. See Méndez Lago, La estrategia organizativa, chapter 4, for an analysis of the consequences the process of decentralisation had on the way the PSOE was structured and functioned.
44. El Pais, 11 November 1990.
45. López Pintor, 'El sistema', signals the spring of 1992 as the turning point in what had previously been a largely favourable evaluation of the political and economic situation. Nearly one out of every two citizens considered that both political and economic conditions were bad.
46. Several authors argue that the change in the support structure of the Socialists underwent a process of 'proletarianisation' owing to the withdrawal of middle-class and blue-collar support, so that the weight of dependants or unskilled workers was higher. They agree that this was a partial result of the policies carried out by the Socialist government, particularly from 1989 onwards, prioritising pensions, health and unemployment coverage. See Juan Jesús González, 'Clases, ciudadanos y clases de ciudadanos. El ciclo electoral del post-socialismo (1986-94)', Revista Espanola de Investigaciones Sociológicas 74 (1996), pp. 45-76 and
47. Boix, Political Parties.
48. As shown by the responses obtained in a post-election survey carried out in 1993 to the following question (López Pintor, 'El sistema', p. 607): 'In your opinion, what did people support in the 6 June elections, Felipe González or the PSOE?': Total (per cent) PSOE (per cent) PP (per cent)
49. The sentence 'For a change of the change' (El cambio del cambio) refers to the PSOE slogan in 1982 'por el cambio'.
50. Maravall, Regimes, Politics and Markets, p. 193.
51. Belén Barreiro and Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, 'Análisis del cambio de voto hacia el PSOE en las elecciones de 1993', Revista de Investigaciones Sociológicas 82 (1998), pp. 191-211.
52. Joaquin Almunia, Memorias politicas (Madrid: Aguilar, 2001), p. 343.
53. For an analysis of the primary elections see the work of Carles Boix, 'Las elecciones primarias en el PSOE. Ventajas, ambigüedades y riesgos', Claves 83 (1998), pp. 34-8;
54. Jonathan Hopkin, 'Bringing the Members Back In? Democratizing Candidate Selection in Britain and Spain', Party Politics 7/3 (2001), pp. 343-61; and
55. Ramón Vargas Machuca, 'A vueltas con las primarias del PSOE', Claves 86 (1998), pp. 11-21.
56. The PP used this as an issue against the PSOE during the 2000 general election campaign, to make it appear territorially fragmented. The more the 'territorial' and, particularly, the Basque question becomes central in the political agenda, the more damaging this image can be for the PSOE. For more details on how this issue was used by the PP in the 2000 campaign see Antonia Martinez and Mónica Méndez, 'La campana de los partidos', in Ismael Crespo (ed.), Las campanas electorales y sus efectos en la decisión del voto: la campana electoral de 2000: partidos, medios de comunicación y electores (Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch, 2003). This issue continues to be used by the PP to discredit the PSOE. The following statement of Aznar to the press is a good example: 'The problem isn't whether the nationalist parties should or should not be in the Cortes. The problem is whether national parties are ceasing to be national. Until now, there were two. Today there is only one, because it can't be said that the PSOE continues to be one', El Pais, 15 January 2004.
57. There is a certain consensus among researchers and political analysts that the pact did have a clear effect in mobilising the supporters of the PP and thus probably helped it to get the absolute majority of seats in the Congreso de los Diputados. For this thesis, see José Ignacio Wert, '12-M: /Lluvia o diluvio? Una interpretación de las elecciones generales', Claves de Razón Práctica 101 (2000), pp. 20-30.
58. For example, Rosa González started the speech in which she presented her candidacy for the position of Secretary-General stating 'I was not in Suresnes' ('Yo no estuve en Suresnes') (cited in Gonzalo López-Alba, El relevo. Crónica viva del camino hacia el ilsuresnes del PSOE (Madrid: Taurus, 2003), p. 122.
59. Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Study 2555.
60. Even one of the most favourable surveys for the PSOE, published by La Vanguardia (7 March 2004), placed the PP ahead.
61. For a preliminary analysis see B. Barreiro, '14-M: elecciones a la sombra del terrorismo', Claves de Razón Práctica 141 (2004), pp. 14-22.
62. To the question 'Do you think that the PSOE have won the elections or that the PP has lost them?', 59.7 per cent respondents thought the latter, while 26.4 per cent thought the former: El Pais (4 April 2004).
63. Panebianco, Political Parties.