Podemos, the Overturn of Spanish Politics and the Challenge of Populism
Jorge Sola & César Rendueles
Abstract: The rise of Podemos, a political force that is ideologically and organizationally new, has shaken Spanish politics. Only two years old, and taking advantage of the dual economic and political crisis, it has managed to put an end to the two-party political system, while becoming a source of inspiration (or grounds for concern) outside of Spain. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to analyze the main characteristics of Podemos (its origin, its ideology, its organization and its social bases) and the effects it has had on Spanish politics; secondly, to consider what this case can teach us about the so-called ‘populist challenge’ and the academic approaches to this phenomenon.
Keywords: Spain, Podemos, populism, left, democracy, party-system change.
The emergence of Podemos has overturned Spanish politics. In its two years of life, Podemos has managed to articulate electorally the widespread discontent with traditional political actors and institutions. It has succeeded in opening up the political agenda, redrawing the axes of conflict and modifying the party system. After its surprising result in the European elections in May 2014 (8% of the vote, see Table 1), Podemos rocketed in the polls. In local and regional elections in May 2015 it obtained an acceptable but uneven result. Finally, it was consolidated as the third force in the general elections of December 2015 and June 2016, few votes behind the second, PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party).
[Table 1]
But the relevance of Podemos goes beyond the number of votes. On the one hand, it has introduced new frames, issues and symbols in political life, forcing all political actors to respond, one way or another, to its criticisms and proposals. On the other hand, its uniqueness and novelty have turned it into a source of inspiration for many progressive people elsewhere concerned with the limits that social movements and leftist parties encounter(Gutiérrez, 2015).
The success of Podemos is directly linked to its context. Despite the fact that the Spanish situation presents some peculiarities, it also reflects broader trends that appear in other Western countries, which have been interpreted as a ‘hollowing of democracy’ (Mair, 2013; see also Crouch, 2004). According to this diagnosis, democracy is recoiling from the power of business and the proliferation of non-majoritarian institutions, but also on account of the withdrawal of citizenry and the weakening of its linkages with the political system. Parties, which had played a central role in the mass politics of the last century, have undergone a process of ‘cartelization’ (Katz & Mair, 1995). From this perspective, parties have ceased to be the intermediaries between civil society and the state, distancing themselves from the former, and merging with the latter. The result is a strong convergence of their substantive policies and a limitation of the issues that are part of the political agenda. This process of ‘de-democratization’ has intensified with the neoliberal architecture of the European Union, revealed in all its harshness by the management of the crisis (Streeck, 2014). Podemos has been the result and response to this state of affairs. However, despite being classified as a new species of the ‘populist’ genre (Mudde, 2015), its characteristics do not match well the ‘populist solutions’ as described by Mair himself (2002). This discrepancy invites us to revise the widespread concern about the so-called ‘populist challenge’ (Mêny & Surel, 2002).
The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, to sketch the main characteristics of Podemos (its origin, its ideology, its organization and its social bases) and the effects it has had on Spanish politics; on the other hand, to consider what this case can teach us about the so-called ‘populist challenge’ and the academic approaches to this phenomenon.
The article is divided into six sections. The first section accounts for the structure of opportunities that led to the emergence of Podemos. The second section characterizes the ideology of Podemos as ‘left-wing populism’ and considers its discursive and programmatic strategy. The third section delves into the organizational form of Podemos and the distribution of power that derives from it. The fourth section analyzes the profile of the voters of Podemos and the way in which it matches its discourse. The fifth section examines the effects Podemos has had on the Spanish political system and offers some reflections on the populist phenomenon. Lastly, we offer some brief concluding remarks.
Emergence: The Political Opportunity Structure
Podemos emerged in an environment of economic and political crisis, of which the new formation took advantage very effectively. Spanish politics in recent years has been characterized by high levels of excitement and uncertainty. However, it is quite easy to reconstruct in retrospect the political opportunity structure (Tarrow, 2011) of this scenario through five interrelated elements that succeeded each other in chronological order: (1) the economic crisis of 2008 gradually turned into (2) a political crisis that in 2011 led to (3) the explosion of the 15M or the ‘movement of indignados,’ into whose legacy (4) no consolidated political actor knew how to tap, until, finally, (5) the emergence of Podemos in the European elections of 2014, which offered low electoral thresholds.
The international crisis of 2008 affected Spain very deeply. Over the previous decade, the country had experienced strong economic growth based on financial and real estate speculation (López & Rodríguez, 2011). On account of this, the effect of the bursting of the speculative bubble was fast and spectacular. In barely a year, the GDP decreased by 3.8% and unemployment doubled, reaching almost 20%. Since then, the average unemployment rate has been 22.5%, public debt has doubled to reach 100% of the GDP and there have been nearly 100,000 evictions per year. But perhaps the most specific trait of the Spanish crisis has been its impact on inequality: Spain is one of the countries in which social inequalities have increased the most, as the result of an underdeveloped and poorly redistributive welfare state (OECD 2014; Mari-Klose & Martínez Pérez, 2016).
The economic crisis eroded the material basis that had provided legitimacy to the Spanish political system during the first three decades of democracy. The party system was characterized by the so-called bipartysim. The two major political parties –PSOE and PP (Popular Party)– alternated systematically in power, so that the loss of support for one of them resulted in the increase of support for the other one. The Spanish case fits the mentioned diagnosis of ‘cartelization’ (Katz & Mair, 1995). In fact, the countless cases of corruption that have come to light in recent years suggest that the State-parties collusion extended to the entrepreneurs, who financed the parties in exchange for political favours. The crisis gradually undermined the hegemony of the major parties, as well as of other actors and institutions of the political system (Sánchez-Cuenca, 2014), as shown in Figure 1.
[Figure 1]
The spark that ignited unrest in Spain was the 15M, also known as the indignadosmovement, which began in May 2011. It was a novel phenomenon, difficult to classify, a diffuse revolt rather than a homogeneous social movement with well-defined objectives. The 15M offered the common people a space for participation and expression and was the catalyst for massive demonstrations against the austerity policies that took place over the next two years. From an instrumental standpoint, the 15M failed, because it was unable to put an end to the budgetary cuts and it did not manage to consolidate in organizational terms. However, it had a profound, yet difficult to quantify effect on Spanish society: it re-politiziced ‘common sense’ in a specific direction. Or, in words of George Lakoff(2004), it managed to frame the political debate in progressive terms: it offered a vocabulary with which a broad social majority could identify, it allocated responsibilities, and it presented proposals that revolved around the idea of democracy, its absence, and its redefinition (for a particular case-study focused on the Platform of Those Affected by Mortgages, see Flesher Fominaya, 2015).
The speech of the 15M was diffuse and polyphonic, but it included two ideological axes, branching out in more moderate or radical nuances, that would later reappear in Podemos: criticism of the political system (corruption, transparency, responsiveness, etc.) and criticism of the economic system (finance, inequality, budget cuts, etc.). The form adopted by this discourse (for instance, the division between an inclusive ‘us’ and a visible ‘they’) offered in nuce –according to Podemos’ number two, IñigoErrejón(2011)– the basic ingredients to adapt the Latin American neopopulist strategy to the southern European scenario. The 15M was, as well, the political school of many young activists who would later play a prominent role in Podemos. Indeed, the absence of a response on the part of the party system led many activists to revise their initial rejection of institutional politics and to consider the need to find organizational tools to intervene in it (Fernández & Portos, 2015).
This goal, however, ran into two obstacles that ended up being less relevant than they initially appeared: the existence of other parties and the threshold demanded by the electoral system. There were two forces that aspired to become spokesmen of social discontent –IU (United Left) on the left, and, to a lesser extent, UPyD (Union, Progress and Democracy) in the centre-right– but they were unable to interpret the 15M and to tap into its wake. In this sense, one could say that in Spain there was an ‘electoral market failure’ (Lago & Martínez, 2011). No force seemed ready to articulate and capitalize on the social disaffection.
The second obstacle was the threshold of the Spanish electoral system. It is a proportional system with a majoritarian bias that favours the two major parties (as well as the more conservative rural vote), harms small parties, and punishes division. The European elections, however, are an exception, since in them the more proportional electoral system (one single district) lowers the threshold and facilitates the access of small parties. In addition, the European elections could fulfil the role of ‘second order’ elections –in which voters participate less, can punish the governing parties or vote in more sincere and less strategic way (Reif & Schmitt, 1980)–, as ended up being the case (Cordero & Montero, 2015).
Podemos emerged thus in an unprecedented scenario in recent Spanish history: over the rubble of the economic and political crisis, with the wind of the 15M in its favour, without the majority tolls of the electoral system, and having at its disposal the free space vacated by the big parties. Its driving forces were a small group of just half a dozen people, many of them professors of Political Science, and some of them leaders of a small party, IzquierdaAnticapitalista, that was soon cornered and would go on to spearhead the critical sector within the formation. They all came form the radical left, several of them had served as advisers to progressive Latin American governments in the previous years, and none of them was well-known, except in small activist circles (Rivero, 2015).
The exception was the leader of the project: Pablo Iglesias, a 36-year old university professor with a long engagement in activism and who had gained, in the previous year, considerable media attention due to his participation in political TV programs. It is no exaggeration to say that Iglesias’ visibility constituted the main asset of the party. Without external funding and formal members, Podemos resorted to crowdfunding to finance the electoral campaign. Initially, the party was characterized by a development from the top down, with a strong control over the discursive strategy on the part of the leading core. But at the same time, ‘circles’ (the name that Podemos gave its local groups) appeared spontaneously, and undertook a highly effective grassrootscampaign. The electoral result was incontestable. Podemos, a party created five months prior, obtained in the European elections 8% of the vote and five deputies. Three months later, some polls ranked it first in voting intention.
The appearance of Podemos corroborates the relevance of some of the factors identified in the literature on the emergence of new parties (Lago & Martínez, 2011; Bolleyer, 2013), but also confirms the chaotic complexity surrounding this phenomenon (Lucardie 2000). In fact, one should be cautious of the hindsight bias that attributes a high probability to the result that finally took place (Tetlock, 2005). In this case, the emergence of Podemos and its success were highly unlikely. As some witnesses have acknowledged (Monereo & Juanatey, 2015), if IU had opened its candidacy to the European elections to other forces and persons, the leaders of Podemos would have not started the project (or would have done it later, in a very different way). But to that wink of fortuna one must add the virtù of the leaders of Podemos in successfully following through with their challenge. As a matter of fact, there were other concurrent electoral projects supported by the extra-parliamentary left that failed spectacularly, such as that of Partido X, a force akin to the pirate parties.
Ideology: Left-Wing Populism
Podemos’ political bet took the form of a ‘left-wing populism,’ an ambiguous and somewhat obscure label. Broadly speaking, in the growing literature on populism we can distinguish two basic approaches. On the one hand, ‘substantive’ approaches consider populism as a content: be it an ideology, a movement, or certain policies (Mudde, 2004; Ionescu & Gellner, 1969). On the other hand, ‘formal’ approaches consider populism as a form: be it a discursive logic, a style of communication, or a mode of mobilization (Jansen, 2011; Moffitt & Tormey, 2014; Laclau, 2005). In what follows, we will stick to this second approach that conceives populism as a device compatible with different ideologies, organizational forms and social bases. In fact, in the case of Podemos, Ernesto Laclau’s interpretation of this phenomenon is particularly helpful, since he has been one of the theoretical inspirations of its leaders.
According to Laclau (2005), the discursive logic of populism consists in taking advantage of a context of crisis to draw a divisive line between ‘us’ (the people) and ‘them’ (the elite). In order to do so, one must employ floating signifiers that could mobilize the support of the greatest possible number of social groups. The aim is to overcome old loyalties that are in crisis and to bring together groups with diverse (and sometimes divergent) identities and interests, creating a national-popular identity in which all of them could recognize themselves. Laclau's theory lends itself to idealistic interpretations that exaggerate the performative power of political communication, but, from another point of view, it connects with a certain sociological tradition interested in the articulation of political blocs departing from the divisions of the social structure through different discursive strategies (Leon, Desai & Tuğal, 2015).
Drawing from the lessons of recent populist experiences in Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador) and the materials left over by the 15M, Podemos designed its own populist strategy. It drew a line dividing two opposing camps: the people versus a caste that had taken hold of the institutions and neglected the demands of society. The first term was very inclusive and little loaded politically,[1] whereas the second –previously popularized in Italy (Stella & Rizo 2007) and employed by BeppeGrillo– was used to name an enemy against which the project of Podemos defined itself negatively. The ‘caste’ was a diffuse term that could include politicians, bankers, speculators, and any other privileged group; a floating signifier to which anyone –from those who have certain class-consciousness to those who embrace antipolitics– could turn to express their indignation against the establishment. Although Podemos also resorted to other dichotomies (‘those below’ against ‘those on top’ and ‘new politics’ against ‘old politics’), this was the most successful one, to the extent that the term ‘caste’ entered everyday language.
Through this dichotomous division of the playing field, Podemos tried to articulate the broadest possible political bloc out of the amorphous social malaise provoked by the economic and political crisis. In order to do so, it resorted to a discourse based on little loaded frameworks and signifiers, far from the classical repertoire of the left, that could eschew pre-existing loyalties and mobilize a ‘social majority.’ Certainly, the construction of an encompassing popular-national identity is not an easy task in the Spanish political context, due to the elusiveness of the pre-existing collective identities (Errejón & Mouffe, 2015): class identity had suffered an important decline, the republican past evoked defeat and division, the idea of ‘homeland’ retained a certain reactionary flavour associated to the dictatorship… one must add to this the delicate pluri-national reality, particularly in Catalonia and the Basque Country. Despite all this, Podemos has successfully circumvented these obstacles (for instance, identifying the homeland with public healthcare and education, and supporting at the same time the referendum in Catalonia).