Bipartisanship has not returned

I read these days in various media that after the general elections of 23-J, bipartisanship has returned, or at least the imperfect bipartisanship that characterized our political system until the 2011 general elections, when the emergence of new political forces born in the heat of the crisis of 2008 and the 11-M movement (Unidas Podemos and its confluences), or later due to the emergence of the territorial issue (Ciudadanos-Partido de la Ciudadanía), ended the hegemony and turnismo of PSOE and PP. A change that was confirmed in the European elections of 2014 and in the legislative elections of 2015, and increased if possible in those of 2019 with the irruption of the far-right Vox, to such an extent that up to 19 parties and a dozen coexisted in Congress. of parliamentary groups.

However, bipartisanship has not returned and is not expected. At most, it could be said that partisan fragmentation has stabilized after the last elections, with 11 parties in the lower house and nine potential parliamentary groups, due above all to the extreme electoral polarization of the PP-PSOE, the non-competition of Ciudadanos and to the agglutinating effect of Sumar. The two big parties obtained their best result since the irruption of Podemos and were the force with the most votes in 89.6% of the Spanish municipalities. However, the data in absolute terms is eloquent: in the 2008 elections, PSOE and PP shared 21.5 million votes. In those of 2019 they did not reach 12 million. And in 2023, in exceptional circumstances such as those described, they barely reached 16.

In short, in a few years there has been a transition from a Congress in which the two great traditional parties coexisted together with other territorial minorities (the former CiU or PNV) or other significant forces (PCE-PSUC or IU-ICV), to a Congress inexorably dominated by a moderate pluralism, in which the majority forces coexisted with four or five other median forces, among them some territorial minorities that began to act as the hinge of the majorities (ERC, EH Bildu).

It is true that the complexity associated with such fragmentation gave rise to some unusual events, such as the extension of the terms of government in office (314 days after the 2015 elections, 253 after those of 2019), with what this entails paralysis and even controversy over the continuity of control of the Executive by Parliament, an issue settled by the Constitutional Court in 2018. In addition, in terms of political trust, it is no less true that two dissolutions of the Cortes have been chained because the candidate did not obtain the support necessary, proliferating the rounds of consultations with the King. In 2016, there was even the unexpected resignation of the leader of the party with the highest number of votes to be proposed as a candidate for the investiture (Mariano Rajoy), and the acceptance of the next one on the list, with no possibility of being invested (Pedro Sánchez), only as instrument to start the two-month count from the first investiture vote to precipitate a new electoral call.

It is still anomalous and infrequent that there have been three failed investitures: Pedro Sánchez and Mariano Rajoy in 2016, and Pedro Sánchez again in 2019. And, finally, still speaking of the fiduciary relationship between Parliament and the Government, it cannot be forgotten the approval for the first time of a motion of censure, in 2018 against Mariano Rajoy, presented by the socialist parliamentary group, with Pedro Sánchez as candidate, where a spectrum of forces of such a heterogeneous sign agreed, that even some of them came from giving its approval of the removed Government Budget project. The temporary nature of this communion of interests was starkly highlighted after nine months, when the draft accounts for 2019 was rejected, and the President of the Government was politically compelled to make use of the power to dissolve it.

However, partisan atomization has nothing to do with the outcome of other functions of Parliament, such as the appointment or integration of constitutional bodies, where the balance is little short of devastating if the paralysis or the delay that occurred in the renewal is verified. of the Constitutional Court and, above all, the one that exists with regard to the General Council of the Judiciary, a circumstance rather attributable to the partisan advantage of the PP. And it is that the fragmentation of political representation is inherent to the pluralism of the party state and generates a more representative Parliament. It cannot be affirmed that it necessarily entails instability in the management of the Government, although on occasions some pathologies such as those observed from 2011 are manifested, which are a consequence of the emergence of populism derived from the growing deterioration of prosperity and inequalities, a a situation in which the parties tend to emphasize their differences in search of their own electoral gain, making constructive dialogue and consensus on crucial issues difficult. And this has more to do with the proverbial inclination of the Spanish political system to confrontation without quarter than to collaboration through stable agreements and, if necessary, beyond the logic of majorities.

Joan Ridao is a professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona.

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