Political Representation and Leadership in Southern Europe: Crisis or Continuing Transformation following the Great Recession?

Abstract

The consolidation of democracy and the increasing Europeanization of the European south has led many scholars to assume that the region was mainly stabilized and democracy was consolidated there. However, the global economic crisis of 2007-08 and the ensuing political developments have brought to the fore once again questions about the distinctiveness of Southern Europe in the European context. Many South European countries have entered a period of political instability, if not rapid delegitimation. Given that a discussion about a crisis of political representation has opened in Southern Europe, we think that a panel brings experts together from the region might be of interest to a wider audience, interested in the political trajectories of the Southern European countries as well as broader questions about the current crisis, the future of political representation and the role of political leaders. Southern Europe have rapidly growing traditions of political representation studies. Namely, through the participation of the countries of this region (mainly France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) in several comparative research networks on political elites and political representation, such as the Comparative Candidate Survey, the PARENEL (Parliamentary Representation at the National and European Levels), the INTUNE (Integrated and United) and the PARTIREP (Party Representation) research networks. This panel has four major objectives. First, it intends to give a general overview about political representation studies (however, both studies about political elites strictu sensu and about the links between the electors and their representatives are included in this special issue) in Southern Europe. In each paper the authors review existing studies about political representation from a single country: the respective principal investigators/teams, their major focus, their methodologies and their fundamental findings. Apart from providing a general overview about the study of political representation in each country, each article will focus on three major topics, attempting to balance parsimony and comparability with in-depth knowledge of representation studies in each country. These three topics correspond to our three remaining objectives in this panel and are all related to questions of continuity and change in patterns of political representation after the onset of the economic crisis. Although these are fundamentally review studies, the authors will also use updated longitudinal data (going back to at least one or two decades before the 2007-2008 crisis and stretching forward to recent years) to supplement their reviews and to address the three major research questions and objectives.