Southern Europe in the Era of Governmental Coalitions?

The economic crisis had its most dire effects in Southern Europe, culminated in an “electoral” and later “government epidemic” (Bosco & Verney, 2016). In all three countries, Greece, Portugal and Spain, a complex conflict structure shaped by struggles over austerity, Europe and political renewal emerged (Hutter, Kriesi, Vidal, 2018). Given the differences in the three political systems, government formation was heavily affected through the 2011-2018 period, leading to a series of incongruous coalitions between both mainstream and challenger parties of (radical) Left and Right. We aim an empirical comparative analysis of the government formation process in the three Southern countries. Thus, we focus on the passing of Greece from two multiparty-oversized coalition governments (2011, 2012) to a minimum-winning coalition (2015), on Spain’s minority governments (2016, 2018) and on Portugal’s move from a connected coalition (2011) to “contract parliamentarism” (2015) (Bale & Bergman, 2004). Drawing from coalition theory and theory of minority governments, given the institutional constrains in each case, we comparatively discuss the factors affecting government formation in the first phase of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis (2010-2015) and during the transitional phase 2015 onward. Our hypothesis is that the diversity of political dichotomies in each country (an economic left-right/welfare-economic liberalism dimension in Portugal, a pro-European/Eurosceptic component in Greece and a complicated central-regional political cleavage along with corruption scandals in Spain) has defined the coalition strategies of both traditional and “new”/challenger parties, bringing about unusual cases and outcomes of governmental coalitions. Given that conflict structure emerging from crisis is gradually reformulated as we move to a “post-crisis” era, these patterns of government formation in some cases have already been affected (Greece and Spain) and in others seem to be more resilient (Portugal).