Populist Euroscepticism in Iberian party systems
| Author | Carolina Plaza-Colodro,Margarita Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395718762667 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
research-article2018
Special Issue Article
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(3) 344 –360
Populist Euroscepticism in
© The Author(s) 2018
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Iberian party systems
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718762667
DOI: 10.1177/0263395718762667
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Margarita Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
Carolina Plaza-Colodro
Universidad de Salamanca, Spain
Abstract
As the introduction to this special issue highlights, the Great Recession, along with the more
recent phenomenon such as the refugees’ crisis and the Brexit referendum, has contributed to
the success and strengthening of populist Eurosceptic parties across European party systems.
The loss of legitimacy of governments and European institutions has opened a window of
opportunity for parties expressing anti-establishment positions and populist orientations and
criticizing the political-economic arrangements prevailing in Europe. Our study focuses on the rise
of a specific left-wing populist Euroscepticism linked with the impact of the Great Recession and
austerity measures in Portugal and Spain and the party system transformations. Thus, economic
issues, bailouts, and, above all, anti-austerity measures were the main driving forces behind the
transformations of Iberian party systems. The increase in populist reactions in both countries
after the economic crisis and the implementation of austerity had to do with the transformation
of the radical left emphasizing distributive issues in Eurosceptic populist directions. Finally, the
analysis shows the distinctiveness of the populist Euroscepticism of the new challenger, Podemos,
which illustrates the opportunities afforded with the economic crisis for the rise of new challenger
parties exhibiting the contemporary link between populism and Euroscepticism in the radical left.
Keywords
Euroscepticism, party system, political parties, populism, radical left
Received: 26th July 2017; Revised version received: 23rd January 2018; Accepted: 2nd February 2018
Introduction
As the introduction to this special issue highlights, the Great Recession, along with the
more recent phenomenon such as the refugees’ crisis and the Brexit referendum, has con-
tributed to the success and strengthening of populist Eurosceptic parties across European
Corresponding author:
Carolina Plaza-Colodro, Department of Public Law, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Salamanca, Paseo
Tomás y Valiente, s/n 37007 Salamanca, Spain.
Email: cplazaco@usal.es
Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro and Plaza-Colodro
345
Figure 1. Evolution of voters’ consideration of the two most important problems faced by the
country (2005–2016).
Source: Standard Eurobarometer. What do you think are the two most important issues facing (OUR
COUNTRY) at the moment?
party systems. The crises have fuelled a renewed political reaction against European inte-
gration and immigration that signals the emergence of a new transnational cleavage
(Hooghe and Marks, 2017). While many scholars are interested in the transformations
leading to the rise of challenging radical right parties (RRP), others focus on the impact
of these crises on the rise of populist radical left parties (RLP) with distinctive ideological
and programmatic stands (Hooghe and Marks, 2017). The crises diversify the nature of
challenger parties, further undermine the pro-European consensus, and reinforce the con-
straining dissensus (Hooghe and Marks, 2009). Across European party systems, the new
political space for right and left populist Eurosceptic parties is inextricably linked to the
erosion of the representative function of mainstream parties (Hobolt and Tilley, 2016;
Kriesi, 2014). The loss of legitimacy of national governments and European institutions
has opened a window of opportunity for parties expressing anti-establishment positions
and populist orientations and criticizing the political-economic arrangements prevailing
in Europe.
The extent to which the different crises have played a role in the rise of populist
Eurosceptic parties and the manner in which party systems have responded to them vary
(Hooghe and Marks, 2017: 15). In Southern Europe, all countries suffered the blow of the
Great Recession since 2008. Data from the Eurobarometers in Figure 1 show public opin-
ion trends in four South European countries and reveal the utmost importance of socio-
economic issues for Southern publics. The international economic crisis severely hit all
Southern European countries, although each country faced its own social and economic
challenges (Bosco and Verney, 2012: 136). The impact of the European sovereign debt
crisis began in 2010 in Greece and followed in Portugal and Spain with the adoption of
austerity measures and international bailouts to repay government debt in 2011.1 However,
Italy and Greece faced the immigration and the refugee crises unlike Portugal and Spain
that remained relatively isolated from them.
346
Politics 38(3)
This article examines the impact of the Great Recession on the Iberian party systems
and compares the transformations of Portuguese and Spanish party systems in a populist
Eurosceptic direction. Before the crisis, both party systems were characterized by the
absence of populist RRP (Alonso and Rovira-Kaltwasser, 2015). Before the crisis, one of
the reasons to study Euroscepticism with a regional focus on Southern Europe was the
widespread pro-Europeanism of parties and voters and the marginal inroads of
Euroscepticism (Verney, 2011: 34). What made the South distinctive vis-à-vis other cases
in Europe was not the causes or a different type of Euroscepticism but its relative low
levels (Hooghe and Marks, 2007: 123; Llamazares and Gramacho, 2007: 123). In this
regard, both Portugal and Spain were outstanding examples of the absence of major
Eurosceptic forces in both party systems since they played a minor role in party mobiliza-
tion and competitive dynamics (Llamazares and Gramacho, 2007). In both countries,
‘soft’ Euroscepticism was circumscribed to RLP and, in the Spanish case, some minority
nationalist parties (Costa Lobo and Magalhães, 2011; Gómez-Reino et al., 2008;
Llamazares and Gramacho, 2007). Party-based populist Euroscepticism in Europe was
mainly the domain of the populist radical right, but both Portugal and Spain lack relevant
parties of this party family (Alonso and Rovira-Kaltwasser, 2015; Llamazares and
Gramacho, 2007). According to Treib (2014), the set of (soft) Eurosceptic parties includes
in Portugal the Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Português, PCP) and
the Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda, BE) and in Spain the United Left (Izquierda Unida, IU)
and the newly born Podemos.
The study of Llamazares and Gramacho (2007) showed that low levels of Eurosceptic
orientations displayed by the Portuguese and Spanish citizens were connected to the his-
torical positive associations with the European Union (EU).2 A possible outcome, although
very unlikely in Portugal and Spain, would be a new niche party emphasizing the cultural
sources of dissatisfaction with European integration (Llamazares and Gramacho, 2007:
229). Instead, the Great Recession triggered changes in citizens’ political attitudes in the
countries most affected by its negative consequences. In Southern Europe, political trust
was undermined (Van Erkel and Van der Meer, 2016: 177), especially regarding European
institutions (DottiSani and Magistro, 2016; Ehrmann et al., 2013; Roth et al., 2014), open-
ing a window of opportunity for new and old Eurosceptic forces. Public opinion concerns
illustrate the centrality of these issues. According to the Eurobarometer, the economic
crisis had a crucial impact on the most important concerns for South European societies
(Figure 1).
Portugal and Spain were less exposed to the refugee crises than Italy and Greece, and
therefore, they did not experience the crises politically exploited by populist RRP else-
where in Europe. Thus, economic issues, bailouts, and anti-austerity measures were the
specific issues behind the transformations of Iberian party systems. Portuguese and
Spanish publics did not express a special concern about migration or terrorism, but they
were much more concerned about unemployment, the economic situation, and public
debt, traditional issues exploited by left-wing parties. Thus, the impact of the Great
Recession in Portugal and Spain held wide repercussions for the transformations of the
party systems.
The impact of populist Eurosceptic parties in Portuguese and Spanish elections was
marginal in 2011 (Bosco and Verney, 2012). However, the electoral impact in subsequent
elections in Portugal (2015) and Spain (2016) shows the political potential of populist
Eurosceptic parties. The Portuguese BE jumped from 5.2% of the vote and 8 seats in the
2011 general elections to 10% and 19 seats in 2015; and the newly born Podemos in Spain
Gómez-Reino Cachafeiro and Plaza-Colodro
347
between the European and general elections in 2014–2016 became the third party in
Spanish politics. In this article, we are not concerned with the electoral success of these
parties in Portugal and Spain. Rather, we investigate the configuration of the supply of
populist Eurosceptic parties after the crises in both countries. We follow Van Kessel
(2014) in the specification of populism as...
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