Founding Coalitions in Southern Europe: Legitimacy and Hegemony

In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 162-189

Abstract

ULTIMATELY, POLITICAL PARTIES ARE FOR GOVERNING; BUT who shall govern? In some countries the decision rests by broad agreement on the normal waxing and waning of electoral sympathies. Not so in Southern Europe today. Hopes or fears ofcontinuismo, have combined since the mid-1970s to raise divisive issues about the governing credibility of many parties, as Portugal and Spain inaugurated a party system after decades of no-party politics, Greece reinstated party competition after a briefer military rule, and Italy's parties underwent the most complicated electoral and coalitional test in thirty years of democracy.Otherwise said, the complexity of coalitional preferences does not reflect a generic situation of competitive multi-party politics. It reflects a specific situation of crisis of founding coalitions, and therefore points to a lingering issue of legitimation. Who then, shall govern in Southern Europe, and with what legitimacy? The question admits no easy answer.