Political Ecology

It is a commonplace of Spanish politics that the transition of the late 1970s in unravelling. Here's one reason why: a multi-party system has been superseded in most, but not all, of Spain, by a two-party system. Here's the percentage of votes and number of deputies won by the two winning parties in every election since 1977. Note that the total number of deputies has not varied.

1977:  69.9% (284 deputies)
1979:  65.62% (289 deputies)
1982:  74.8% (309 deputies)
1986:  70.46% (289 deputies)
1989:  65.01% (276 deputies)
1993:  73.66% (300 deputies)
1996:  76.42% (297 deputies)
2000:  78.68% (308 deputies)
2004:  81.6% (312 deputies)
2008:  83.8% (323 deputies)

The institutions set in place in 1978 presupposed a multi-party environment in which deals between big and small parties would be possible and, indeed, desirable. They were to serve as a safeguard against the manipulation of institutions for party-political purposes. In theory, parties would have to seek out honest brokers, independent of party loyalties, for positions in such institutions as the constitutional court. It's the sort of theory that works in a country like Germany.

Elections to the Constitutional Court require a 3/5 majority, i.e. 210 votes, but the winning party in the last election--2008--only holds 169 seats. Only 27 seats are held by other parties (i.e. neither the party in government or the main opposition party). 169+27=196. Spain must now develop an informal mechanism--a culture, as people are fond of saying these days--between the two main parties, or the institution itself will eventually fall apart. When enough justices have died in office or retired, the court won't have a quorum and the whole judicial system will grind to a halt.

I began this post with the observation that most of Spain had adopted a two-party political system. The ecology of parties in the Catalan parliament has trended the other way. Support for the first- and second-place parties began at 50% in 1980, only to jump to 78% (and 113 out of 135 seats). Since then, the percentage of votes going to the two largest parties has declined steadily: in 2006 they only polled 58%.