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The 2023 Elections in Greece and Spain: Evolving Party Systems in Post‐Crisis Southern Europe

2024; Wiley; Volume: 62; Issue: S1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jcms.13658

1468-5965

Susannah Verney, Bonnie N. Field,

European Union Policy and Governance

The 2023 elections in Greece and Spain showed that Southern Europe could still surprise. Greece experienced significant change, with the unexpected collapse of the official opposition presaging the emergence of a predominant party system. However, predictions that Spain would become the next European country with far-right government participation were not fulfilled. These elections took place a decade and a half the start of the European debt crisis which sorely tried these countries' political health. They signalled a new phase in the evolution of the post-crisis party systems. Both countries transitioned to democracy in the mid-1970s and subsequently established patterns of two-party dominant party competition and single-party governments, though Spain's party system was more fragmented and its minority governments often relied on regionally based non-statewide parties (NSWPs) to govern. The post-2008 crisis era was marked by greater fragmentation, more complex governance and polarisation. In both cases, the political fallout from major economic recessions, European Union (EU)/International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailouts and harsh austerity triggered dramatic party system transformation. This included a dive in popular support for the social democratic and conservative parties that had previously alternated in government: PASOK (Πανελληνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα, Panhellenic Socialist Movement) and New Democracy (Νέα Δημοκρατία, ND) in Greece, and the Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) and Popular Party (PP) in Spain. The challenger parties that benefitted in Greece included the radical left SYRIZA (Συνασπισμός Ριζοσπαστικής Αριστεράς, Coalition of the Radical Left), which replaced the socialists as the main force on the left and led two governments in 2015–2019. Greece also witnessed a rise of the far right, notably the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn (Χρυσή Αυγή), one of the most extreme parties in Europe. In Spain, the radical left Podemos (We Can) and centrist Ciudadanos (Citizens, Cs) surged first, then later, the radical right Vox (Voice) took off in 2019 in part as a response to the 2017 Catalan independence push and corruption scandals engulfing the PP. In Greece in 2012 and Spain in 2015–2016, repeat elections were required before a government could be formed. The 2019 elections marked milestones in both countries. In Greece, four successive coalitions governed in 2011–2019, two of them including a (different) radical right party. In contrast, the 2019 election was hailed as a 'return to normal' (Rori, 2020), resulting in a single-party ND government and the disappearance from parliament of most of the crisis-era challenger parties, including Golden Dawn. However, it did not restore the pre-crisis status quo, as SYRIZA became the official opposition whilst PASOK's vote remained in single figures. Meanwhile, as in 2015–16, Spain once again needed two elections to form a government in 2019. This was its first governing coalition since its democratic transition, bringing a radical left alliance of United Left and Podemos (Unidas Podemos, United We Can) into partnership with the PSOE. Vox became the third-largest party. This article shows what happened next, analysing the outcomes of the 2023 elections in Greece and Spain and highlighting key similarities and differences. The article explores the election campaigns, the results and their domestic and European implications before drawing its conclusions. This time, in contrast to 2019, it was Greece which held repeat parliamentary polls, while Spain needed only one election. In Greece, it had long been known that 2023 would bring double elections, held under different systems. The battle over the electoral laws was a legacy of the crisis era. In an era of coalition governments, the majoritarian electoral system had become dysfunctional. The 50-seat bonus for the political force gaining the most votes also lost legitimacy after the party system dealignment election of May 2012, when it was awarded to a winning party with under 19% of the vote. In 2016, the SYRIZA-led government abolished the bonus, switching to proportional representation (PR) with a 3% parliamentary threshold. But under the Greek Constitution, any new law applies to the next election. After the return to majority rule in 2019, the ND government declared it would not accept the outcome of the forthcoming PR election. Instead, it reintroduced the seat bonus in a modified form, insisting it would be implemented in a repeat election immediately after the first poll. The elections were duly held on 21 May and 25 June. At the centre of the May poll was a verdict on the continuation of the familiar majoritarian system versus the proposed switch to PR. The latter implied coalition governments, which many Greeks associated with the insecurity of the crisis decade. Of the six parties elected in 2019, only two were major political forces and potential coalition leaders. ND and SYRIZA were led by Prime Minister (PM) Kyriakos Mitsotakis and former PM Alexis Tsipras, respectively. The other four parties had all received single-digit vote shares. Only SYRIZA advocated a coalition, but without having built the essential alliances. Instead, it suggested that the other three left-wing forces could join a post-electoral coalition. The proposal, which ND dubbed 'the coalition of the defeated', was a non-starter. The third party, PASOK, declared it would not participate in any government led by Mitsotakis or Tsipras. It also rejected collaboration with Mera-25, a SYRIZA breakaway led by former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who in spring 2015 had taken Greece to the verge of a disorderly Eurozone exit. Varoufakis, in turn, ruled out any post-electoral alliance, demanding any agreement be made in advance. Meanwhile, for the last 30 years, the communist KKE (Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας) has adopted an isolationist stance, rejecting any alliance, pre- or post-electoral, at any level of government. Finally, the radical right Greek Solution (Ελληνική Λύση) was adamant it would not enter a coalition with ND, which had not made any such offer. All of this generated a powerful dynamic in favour of government stability, benefitting ND as apparently the only political force able to offer it. ND was well ahead in the opinion polls. After it took power in July 2019, its lead over SYRIZA rarely fell below 10% and sometimes exceeded 20% (Politico, n.d.). This included the first phase of the pandemic, when an early lockdown brought coronavirus casualties to just a fraction of those elsewhere in Southern Europe (Verney et al., 2023). The subsequent national record in Covid-19 management was significantly less successful. But what mattered was that a country reviled for mismanagement during the debt crisis had briefly been held up as a model for emulation in Europe. Meanwhile, after a decade of impoverishment during the debt crisis, ND presided over a period of growth. Although in 2020 GDP dropped temporarily due to Covid, the impact was cushioned for many voters by lockdown payments, a factor probably helping to buoy ND's support. Then in 2022, boosted by the post-Covid tourist boom, the economy grew by 5.9% whilst unemployment fell to 12.5% (European Commission, 2023a, pp. 78–79). Whilst Greece was moving into a new era, SYRIZA did not move with it. Retaining its crisis-era leader after the 2019 election defeat kept SYRIZA closely associated with its government record, including a narrowly avoided 'Grexit' in 2015 and a new round of austerity under the third EU/IMF bailout – a recent past that most voters preferred to forget. Nevertheless, there were also causes for discontent in the present. Greek GDP per capita is now the second lowest in the EU. Inflation and high energy prices, along with wage stagnation, triggered economic dissatisfaction. The last pre-election Eurobarometer showed that Greeks had the most negative assessments in the EU of their national economy and employment situation (88% and 87%, respectively). Nearly four fifths of Greeks (79%) assessed the overall situation in their country as bad, and nearly three quarters (74%) did not trust the government (European Commission, 2023b). A major political scandal entailed revelations of widespread surveillance of government ministers and other politicians, journalists and even the head of the armed forces, supposedly on national security grounds. Involving the use of illegal spyware in the EU, it was particularly damaging to the government as the secret service was directly controlled by the PM. Then the Tempi train crash on 28 February sparked popular outrage. It rapidly became clear that 57 people would not have died if the long-delayed automation of rail safety systems had been implemented. Both issues raised rule of law concerns and attracted EU attention. From autumn 2022 on, Greece was already under investigation, both by the European Public Prosecutor for potential misuse of EU funding for railway modernisation (Michalopoulos, 2023) and by the European Parliament's PEGA Committee for the illegal use of spyware, decried as a violation of EU values (European Parliament, 2022, p. 52). On several occasions during ND's term, the European Parliament also called for an investigation of alleged illegal migrant pushbacks in Greece. A different European dimension to this election concerned Varoufakis' call for Greece to develop a contingency plan in case of Eurozone exit, entailing closing the banks for 3 days and transforming all domestic debt into an alternative currency exclusively for domestic use. For a country that had teetered for 5 years on the brink of 'Grexit', this reminder of a terrifying period reinforced the primacy of government stability as the key issue shaping this election. As expected, ND won in May but was unable to form a single-party government. In line with its promises, the party called for new elections, and the second campaign started immediately. ND's resounding success in the PR election, falling just five seats short of a majority, meant its victory under a majoritarian system seemed assured. The only real question concerned the size of its majority. Thus, the second campaign was not a simple rerun of the first. The electoral arithmetic made it clear there was no alternative government. Although ND continued to promote its successful mantra of government stability, the key systemic issue now was whether Greece was moving towards a predominant party system (Tsirbas, 2023). Whilst concerns were raised about ND winning a three-fifths parliamentary majority that would allow it to revise the Constitution alone, this was not a likely prospect. In fact, the major question marks concerned the opposition: if there would be an official opposition large enough to exercise effective parliamentary control, whether SYRIZA or PASOK would be the second party and whether the far right would be substantively strengthened in the second poll. This seemed likely, given that there were now three competitive parties in this section of the political spectrum. In May, Greek Solution had been re-elected, whilst the ultra-conservative Victory (Νίκη), advocating the primacy of church over state (Rori and Georgiadou, 2023), had fallen less than 0.1% short of the parliamentary threshold. Meanwhile, the spectre of Golden Dawn reappeared in the form of former Member of Parliament (MP) Ilias Kasidiaris. As he was in jail for running a criminal organisation, the Supreme Court excluded his new party from the May election as well as his list of supposedly independent candidates in June. Kasidiaris then declared his support for the Spartans (Σπαρτίατες), a completely unknown party, which began a meteoric opinion poll rise. Playing into the far-right agenda was the issue of Rhodopi, the sole constituency where ND did not come first in May. Rhodopi is an area of special sensitivity due to a sizeable part of its population, which the Greek state recognises only as a religious and not an ethnic minority. ND's demand for SYRIZA to withdraw two minority candidates on the grounds they were close to the Turkish consulate was likely to arouse nationalist sentiment. Immigration, also favourable terrain for the far right, acquired particular salience due to a tragedy 10 days before the election. The Pylos shipwreck resulted in the drowning of several hundred people being smuggled to Europe, with questions subsequently asked about the role of the Greek coastguard. Spain also had two important statewide elections in 2023. In May, it held local elections across the country and regional elections in 12 of its 17 regions, and in July, for its national parliament, including the Congress of Deputies and most members of the Senate. The incumbent national government at the time was the leftist minority coalition of PSOE and Unidas Podemos (UP), led by PM Pedro Sánchez (Orriols and León, 2020). The day after the subnational elections, on 29 May, PM Sánchez unexpectedly called for parliamentary elections (Garmendia Madariaga and Riera, 2023), even though they were not required until November. Whilst PSOE did not suffer a major electoral decline in May, PP's surge, in part due to support from former Cs' voters, meant PP would govern many of Spain's regions and largest municipalities, alone or with Vox, dramatically diminishing the left's territorial power. Given the timing of the call, the parliamentary elections would occur in July, generating speculation about how a mid-summer election would affect turnout. The main parties competing in the election were PSOE and Sumar on the left and PP and Vox on the right. PM Sánchez faced off against the new PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. A novelty in this election, Deputy PM and Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz, from the United Left side of the UP alliance, launched Sumar to revitalise the left (of the PSOE) in the face of diminishing support. Sumar combined various left, far left and green parties under its umbrella, including Podemos, United Left, Más País (More Country) and regionally based parties, such as Catalunya En Comú (Catalonia in Common), the Valencian Compromís (Commitment) and independents. Podemos joined the platform after publicly visible strife with Sumar's leadership. NSWPs also competed, including parties from the Basque Country, Catalonia, Canary Islands and Galicia, representing distinct positions on the left–right and centre–periphery dimensions of party competition, ranging from moderately autonomist to strongly committed secessionist parties (Massetti, 2009). Notable for its absence was crisis-era newcomer Cs, a party that once aspired and almost attained surpassing the PP electorally. After its dismal results in the May 2023 subnational elections, Cs decided not to run. Much of the campaign was negative and centred on the likely governing alliances and potential allies of the two dominant parties, PSOE and PP. The left parties attempted to mobilise voters based on fear that the PP would govern with Vox. Vox stridently defends Spanish nationalism, opposes Spain's peripheral national identities and is anti-feminist, nativist, ultra conservative and economically liberal. A PP–Vox government was a real possibility, with most polls indicating a victory for PP, though it was unclear whether the two would jointly win a majority. In Spain's polarised, two-bloc party system (Rodríguez-Teruel, 2020; Simón, 2020), a coalition between the PSOE and PP was nearly unthinkable. Moreover, the right parties were already allying in Spain's regions and municipalities. When Vox first won seats in Spain's regional parliaments in 2018 and 2019, the PP brokered deals in which Vox agreed to support PP–Cs minority governments in Andalusia, Madrid and Murcia, helping to normalise the new party (Field and Alonso Sáenz de Oger, 2024). Then, in 2022, in Castile and Leon, the PP and Vox jointly governed one of Spain's regions for the first time. Given the timing of the parliamentary elections so soon after the subnational elections, PP and Vox were also simultaneously involved in government formation negotiations across the Spanish territory. Generating fear of a right and radical right government that could implement or roll back policies related to immigration, gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as economic policies supported by the left, was not difficult. For example, referring to Vox, the PP's regional leader in Extremadura said she would not govern with those that 'deny gender-based violence and dehumanize immigrants', only to form a government with Vox a week later in June 2023 (Hermida, 2023). Ultimately, PP and Vox signed four coalition agreements in the regions of Aragon, Valencia, Extremadura and Murcia, bringing to five regions the two parties governed jointly, and signed an investiture agreement for Vox to back a PP regional government in the Balearic Islands and numerous municipal-level agreements (Garmedia Madariaga and Riera, 2023, p. 18). PP and Vox campaigned against Sanchismo, a term used to capture everything they view as wrong with PM Sánchez, his style, policies and allies, and the PSOE–UP government, which Vox's Santiago Abascal refers to as 'the worst government in our history'. They particularly sought to gain electorally from the government's reliance on the votes of Catalan and Basque separatist parties in parliament, especially the Catalan Republican Left (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC) and Basque Euskal Herria Bildu (Basque Country Unite, EH Bildu). The leftist coalition came to office in 2020, in part because of a deal with ERC, one of the parties that unilaterally voted to declare independence for Catalonia in 2017, to set up a dialogue between the Spanish and Catalan governments to resolve the political conflict over Catalonia's status. In 2021, the government extended a partial pardon to Catalan leaders jailed for their involvement in the failed independence push. The right parties also accused the government of reliance on terrorists, linking EH Bildu with the now-defunct terrorist organisation ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom).1 There were also relevant policy issues, though they struggled to gain traction in Spain's combative politics. The governing left parties highlighted what they viewed as successes, such as their policies to combat climate change, a labour reform designed to reduce temporary contracts, an increase in the minimum salary and pensions, a minimum guaranteed income policy and the government's handling of challenges stemming from the pandemic and war in Ukraine. After a drop in GDP in 2020 due to the pandemic, Spain's growth recovered in 2021 and reached 5.5% in 2022, with an unemployment rate of 14.8% (European Commission, 2023a, pp. 80–81). The economy continued to grow in 2023, by an estimated 2.5%, and add jobs.2 Whilst the two left parties pointed to policy differences between them, they campaigned amicably on the premise that they would govern together. Whilst Spain had a better record of reducing inflation than many of its European counterparts, Spaniards nonetheless faced high inflation in 2022 (8.3%), which continued, though dramatically lower at 3.4%, in 2023, compared with an EU average of 6.4%, according to Eurostat. In The Economist, PP's Núñez Feijóo referred to a decade of stagnation. Real GDP per capita in 2022 was only slightly above what it had been in 2008.3 PP and Vox also pointed to what they viewed as the failures of the PSOE–UP government, including the sexual consent law, which inadvertently led to more than a thousand convicted sex offenders' sentences being reduced (Rodon and Rodríguez, 2023, p. 5). The PP repeatedly asked voters to concentrate their votes in the PP, angering Vox, and pushed PSOE to agree to allow the most voted party to govern, something the PP has not practised itself. PP and Vox were more adversarial with one another than the left parties, though always within limits. Núñez Feijóo never explicitly discarded governing with Vox. Despite occurring as Spain was taking up the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the campaign centred on domestic issues. The elections clearly had EU implications, not least of which was whether the far right would govern another EU member country. Along with other far-right leaders, Giorgia Meloni, PM of Italy, campaigned for Vox and its leader, Abascal, hoping Vox's success would aid change in Europe. While in Greece, the June election in particular was characterised by high abstention and protest voting, in Spain there was a significant return of voters to the two main parties. It was not a surprise that ND won the May election. What was unexpected was the extent of its victory. ND came first in every age group and every major socio-economic category (Coustenis, 2023). The map of Greece turned blue, with the party winning 58 of 59 constituencies. This included former left-wing strongholds like Crete and West Attica. The real shock of the election was the unprecedented decline of SYRIZA, which lost around one third of its 2019 voters. The party's vote share fell everywhere except Rhodopi, with its losses exceeding 10 percentage points in 35 constituencies. The resulting gap of 20 percentage points between the government and the official opposition had only been matched in the very first election after the establishment of democracy in 1974 (Table 1). This was unexpected: for the first 4 months of the year, SYRIZA's support had held up in the opinion polls, at around 28%. This was comparable to the last polls before the 2019 election, when SYRIZA subsequently performed better than expected, with a vote of 31.5%. But in 2024, beginning about 2 weeks before election day, the party's support began to fall off a cliff (see Politico, n.d.). Three days before the election, an off-the-cuff suggestion by a former SYRIZA minister that the party might increase taxes on the self-employed caused an outcry. But this only reinforced the dramatic shrinking of the party's support already underway. Probably the approach of the elections increasingly focused voters' attention on the question of government formation, to which SYRIZA was not offering a convincing answer. Certainly, over half the voters who decided at the last moment opted for ND (Coustenis, 2023). As could be expected, small parties increased their support under PR. The exception was Varoufakis' Mera-25, which failed to meet the parliamentary threshold. Notably, PASOK received a double-digit vote share for the first time since 2009. This made its declared challenge to SYRIZA for the leadership of the left less fanciful than it had previously seemed. Meanwhile, extra-parliamentary forces received 16% of the vote, close to the dealignment election of May 2012. Nevertheless, no new parties reached the 3% parliamentary threshold. As a result, the outcome was a five-party parliament for the first time since 2009, the last election before the party system fragmentation of the crisis era. The forces elected in May 2024, all participants in the previous parliament, were the three that had previously led governments – ND, SYRIZA and PASOK – flanked by two minor protest parties, the communist KKE and the radical right Greek Solution. All but the Greek Solution had been stable elements of the pre-crisis party system. In June, ND's vote share remained stable, whilst SYRIZA's position as the official opposition was further weakened, without strengthening PASOK. However, the repeat poll brought significant changes to the shape of parliament. Ironically, the contest held under a majoritarian system brought a parliamentary breakthrough for three parties, producing an eight-party chamber. The most startling development concerned the Spartans, which the Supreme Court had allowed to contest the election before it became clear this was a front for jailed Golden Dawn cadre Ilias Kasidiaris. The Spartans and its leader were completely unknown and did not present a programme. Yet solely with Kasidiaris' endorsement just two-and-a-half weeks before the election, the Spartans emerged as the fifth party with almost 5% of the vote. It thus became one of three far-right parties in the Greek Parliament, alongside the Greek Solution and the newly elected Victory. The third new entrant, Course of Freedom (Πλεύση Ελευθερίας), was founded as a radical left party in 2016 by a former SYRIZA parliamentary speaker. Its 2024 campaign was leader focused and avoided taking positions on policy issues, leaving its current ideological imprint vague. The overall outcome was an extraordinary parliamentary constellation with a dominant party enjoying more electoral support than the next three political forces combined and a fragmented opposition including a mosaic of minor extremist forces. Besides the loud 'voice' expressed by protest voting, these elections also saw extensive 'exit'. In May, almost two in five voters did not go to the polls, the third highest number since 1974. In June, the abstention rate approached one in two voters, breaking all records for a national election. Thus, the popular discontent registered by the Eurobarometer did not translate into support for an alternative government but largely manifested as alienation from the system. Whilst Spain's parliament has two chambers, the Congress of Deputies is far more powerful politically than the Senate. The electoral system for the Congress of Deputies is PR in format, yet variation in district magnitude across Spain's electoral districts and a minimum allocation of two seats per district produce important departures from proportionality in many districts. The PP won the most votes (33.1%) and seats, followed by PSOE (31.7%), Vox (12.4%), Sumar (12.3%) and a variety of NSWPs, most notably the Catalan ERC (1.9%) and Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) (1.6%), and the Basque EH Bildu (1.4%) and Basque Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco, PNV) (1.1%)4 (Table 2). This marked the highest vote concentration in the two largest parties (64.8%) since 2011, the election just prior to the crisis-era fragmentation. It was a dramatic recovery for the PP from 20.8% in the prior parliamentary elections. The PP captured many former Cs' voters (Rodon and Rodríguez, 2023, pp. 17–19). PSOE also increased its vote share by 3.7 percentage points, winning 121 seats compared with the PP's 137. They jointly won 74% of the seats. In contrast to Greece, the Spanish elections were highly competitive. The public expressed similar electoral support for the two main parties, the national right (45.4%) and left (44.0%) blocs, though these results translated to a larger gap in seats (170 vs. 152). Whilst PSOE and PP both benefitted from the electoral system, PP received a larger boost. Taking the number of votes each party won divided by its seats, each seat on average cost PP 59,568 votes, compared with 64,642 for the PSOE, 98,226 for Sumar and 92,636 for Vox. Vox lost votes (2.7 percentage points) compared with 2019 and, more dramatically, dropped from 52 to 33 seats. Most significantly, PP and Vox fell six seats short of an absolute majority, making it nearly impossible for PP to form a government. None of the other parties would agree to a governing alliance that involved Vox because of its extreme positions on ideological and national identity issues. In the left bloc, Sumar won 31 seats, a slightly lower vote share than UP won in November 2019. Within the Sumar alliance, Podemos only took five seats. Whilst coming in second, it was immediately clear that PM Sánchez had a better chance of finding allies to govern than PP's candidate Núñez Feijóo, even with PSOE and Sumar falling 24 seats short of an absolute majority. The left parties are more proximate to the NSWPs on the centre–periphery dimension of party competition. Turnout, whilst not high at 66.6%, was not dramatically lower than the average (68.5%) of the post-Great Recession elections (2011–2023) and significantly higher than in Greece. The election outcomes in both cases brought continuity: Greece consolidated the return to single-party majority rule and Spain repeated its experiment with coalition government. The May election was a game changer. The move to proportional representation had aimed to consolidate the crisis-era shift to a system of coalition government. Instead, the voters' resounding verdict in favour of a single-party majority probably marks a definitive end to the Greek left's perennial demand for PR. Meanwhile, the vote for government stability ironically ended up destabilising the party system. The crisis-era breakdown of the established two-party system, based around PASOK and ND, had been followed by its gradual reconstitution around ND and SYRIZA. The 2019 election outcome appeared to be 'two-partyism reloaded' (Tsatsanis et al., 2020), with the two main parties together winning over 70% of the vote for the first time since 2009. In 2023, their combined vote share fell first to 60.9% and then to 58.4%, the lowest levels throughout the 50 years of the current Greek democracy, apart from the period of dealignment in 2012. Even more significant, after these elections, there is no longer a two-party system in Greece. With the exception of May 2012, SYRIZA's vote was the lowest for any second party in the post-dictatorship period. The party was further weakened by Tsipras' resignation 4 days after the June poll and the surprise election in September of Stephanos Kasselakis, Greece's first openly gay party leader, as his successor. Kasselakis, with a background in banking and shipping, had lived in the United States for the previous 20 years and had no known connection with the left. The resulting intraparty crisis led in November to 11 MPs breaking away to form the New Left (Νέα Αριστερά), increasing the parliamentary parties to 9 and reducing SYRIZA to 35 MPs, less t