Impulse and decadence of linkage processes: Evidence from the Spanish radical left. Tània Verge & Luis Ramiro

Transcription

1 Impulse and decadence of linkage processes: Evidence from the Spanish radical left Tània Verge & Luis Ramiro (First draft. Please do not cite or quote without authors permission) Abstract Since the early 1980s the Communist Party of Spain (PCE, Partido Comunista de España) began a process of party change that prominently included strategies thought to affect the role of party members and the linkage of the party with its social milieu. The party developed from the mid 1980s a plan to give form a new organization, United Left (IU, Izquierda Unida), in the creation, impulse and design of which the PCE would have an absolutely key role. In this organizational strategy, the Communists included the explicit purpose to give IU a more democratic internal functioning than in traditional parties, granting the rank and file would have more influence in decisionmaking processes. PCE s design of IU also included the goal of having closer and wider relations with old and new social movements, opening the traditional left towards a more intense relationship with a broad catalogue of social organizations. Throughout the last 25 years the PCE and IU have experienced rise and defeat and, simultaneously these strategies have also experienced impulse and decadence. This paper describes and gives an account of their design and implementation and evaluates the specific outputs produced in the two fronts, namely the participatory (membership) and the policyresponsiveness (interest groups) linkages. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Reykjavik August 2011, Section Crisis Zone? State Quality and Democratic Quality in Southern Europe, Panel Radical Left parties and Civil Society in Southern Europe.

2 Introduction Since the mid-1980s, in reaction to electoral failure and internal crisis, the leadership of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE, Partido Comunista de España) designed a new political and organizational strategy. The Communists began then a process of party change through a plan to create a new organization, United Left (IU, Izquierda Unida), in the design and impulse of which the PCE would have a key role (Ramiro, 2004a). The organizational dimension reckoned on according IU a more democratic internal functioning vis-à-vis traditional parties. In this vein, Communist leaders stressed the importance of the participatory linkage granting the rank and file more influence in decision-making processes. The political dimension considered establishing closer and wider relations with civil society, opening the traditional left towards a more intense relationship with a broad catalogue of social groups, thereby stressing the relevance of the policy-responsiveness linkage. Throughout the last 25 years IU s electoral performance the organization under which the PCE has run elections since 1986 has experienced ups and downs and, simultaneously, the strategies of empowering party members and reinforcing linkages between the party and its social milieu have also gone through phases of impulse and decadence. The article aims to describe and give an account of the design and implementation over time of the participatory and policy-responsiveness linkages, and to evaluate the specific outputs produced in the two fronts. In doing so, we engage with the literature on party change developed in the last two decades which has identified a pattern of party detachment from their representational functions. In fact, the weakening of linkage with society is even considered one of the main features of contemporary western parties. However, some parties seem to be implementing strategies that, apparently, counterbalance that contemporary trend in party evolution. While the move that makes parties more distant from society has been widely exposed, the strategy that contrary to what is expected attempts to rebuilding linkages is far less studied. Which factors might foster that strategy? To what extent is it successful? We seek to answer these questions analyzing one case in which party leaders explicitly conceived of strategies to strengthen linkage, that of the Spanish Communists. The remainder of the article is organized as follows. The second section describes the participatory and policy-responsiveness linkages and states our expectations for the Communist party family. The third section presents IU s ideological, electoral and factional evolution since its creation in The fourth 1

3 section explores the design and implementation of the participatory and policyresponsiveness linkages during the past three decades. The analysis of the participatory linkage focuses on the incentives offered to members regarding candidate and leader selection as well as to policy-making. As to the policy-responsiveness linkage, we focus on the relationships established with organized civil society, the rationales embedded in these relationships, and how they have changed over time. Last, the concluding section assesses our expectations for party change in relation to the two types of linkage under study and evaluates their degree of success in attaining broader party goals. Party linkage in contemporary parties Party linkage process has two main components. The participatory linkage is aimed at channeling the involvement of individual party members in the party s decision-making process, whereas the policy-responsiveness linkage focuses on interest representation and, more specifically, on establishing diverse links with organized civil society (Lawson 1980; Merkl 2005). Contemporary debates over the representational functions tend to be dominated by the assumption that parties have detached themselves from social groups and have no interest in forging more than tenuous links as they can comfortably rely on public funding (Katz and Mair, 1995). However, although partyinterest group relationships seem nowadays rather weak, lack of formal affiliation does not entail complete separation (Poguntke, 2002; Thomas, 2001; Wilson, 1990). Links may exist through joint committees, the participation of external groups into the process of developing party platforms, or overlapping memberships (Allern, 2010). These links can still be used to reincorporate society into politics once parties can no longer depend on members to support their activities nor rely on strong incentives to secure voter loyalty (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2001; Koole, 1996; Yishai, 2001). Similarly, the transformation of parties in electoral and professional machines with autonomous leaders would have reduced their need of a mass membership; indeed, active members could be an obstacle for flexible and electoral market-oriented parties and leaders (Katz and Mair, 1995). Notwithstanding, the daily party practices escape from simple assimilation to the more ideal type versions of the electoral-professional party. The necessity of legitimacy, the adaptation to public preferences increasingly favorable to a more participatory democracy, and even the effectiveness of grass-roots party campaigners would counterbalance the influences towards the loss of importance of party members (Kitschelt, 1994: 299). Selective incentives which empower party 2

4 members might also help parties compensate for the erosion of their capacity to deliver solidarity incentives as well as to re-build links with voters. In fact, numerous parties seem to be broadening their intra-party democracy, giving individual members more influence, while preserving leaders autonomy and maintaining some features of the traditional mass party model (e.g. the relevance of party conferences), as shown by Scarrow et al. (2000). To solve this paradox, the expansion of members rights has been sometimes described as a strategically-oriented action which actually aims to erode middle-level cadres power vis-à-vis the party leadership (Webb, 2000; Hopkin, 2001). However, some parties still seem to find the linkage process useful and have embraced strategies which have entailed considerable organizational changes. Which factors might have impulse them to apply strategies against the weakening of the linkage function in the era of electoral-professional parties? Party change does not just happen. It is rather the discontinuous result of specific decisions taken by parties in relation to their goals (Panebianco, 1988). Some scholars claim that internal factors may foster party change in the absence of external shocks (Harmel et al. 1995); others maintain that internal factors affect party change only in the presence of external forces, especially electoral misfortune (Katz and Mair 1993). But both approaches accept that external stimuli do not dictate party change; they may be a necessary but not sufficient condition. Party leaders interpret changes in the environment, analyze their impact on the party, evaluate the risks and decide how to respond. As leaders perception is located between objective facts and party reactions, who the leaders are makes an extraordinary difference (Harmel and Janda 1994: 262). In this vein, leadership renewal creates especial opportunities for party change. On the one hand, the new leadership may want to leave its mark and, on the other hand, changes in the leadership or in the composition of the dominant coalition most often occur when leaders fail to accomplish the party s primary goals (Harmel et al. 1995: 5). Western Communist parties are an interesting example of party change and, particularly, of the strategies aimed to rebuild linkage processes. This party family is the one which has confronted biggest environmental challenges: cultural and social changes adverse to party identity, an acute ideological crisis, a massive loss of party members and, finally, a remarkably electoral decline. Since the mid-1980s, some western Communist parties began a process of change aiming at reviving their organizations and rebuilding their electoral appeal (Waller and Fennema, 1988; Bell, 1993; Bull and 3

5 Heywood 1994; Bosco, 2000; Botella and Ramiro, 2003). How did these needs affect the way in which they confronted the challenge of linkage? Certainly the Communists can not be considered vote-maximizer parties. They can not be affected in the same way than other parties by the trend towards a dismissal of party members relevance due to their strong attachment to the mass party model with regards to members role and internal procedures (party conferences, local party groups, etc.). Due to their traditional organizational principles but also to their financial impossibility to run more professional and expensive campaigns, they need members to run relatively more labour-intensive campaigns. So, members are expected to be more valued and to play a more relevant role than in other parties. Although Communist parties organizational tradition also includes a long history of centralization and hierarchical decision-making, which could counterbalance incentives to change their organization with participatory mechanisms in order to appeal to voters, the urgent need to stop electoral decline and to reinforce linkage with their potential voters provides a strong incentive to empower members and to strengthen ties with social groups. These frequently opposed influences make us to expect Communist parties to have changed both candidate and leadership selection and policy-making procedures towards larger involvement of party members while elite monitoring is safeguarded as conventional party organs keep control over these processes something favored by their most traditional and rigid organizational principles. Regarding social organizations we expect an effort to rebuild the linkages, not only encouraged by their recently adopted participatory democracy ideals but also by their need to redesign the electoral bases of support after the deep electoral crisis Communist parties have suffered. Radical left parties in Spain The PCE was unable to capitalize its role as the main opposition party under dictatorship rule and obtained just 9.3 per cent of the vote in the first democratic elections. By 1982 the party s electoral support had more than halved (see Table 1). By the mid-1980s the PCE began working with other minor left parties to ultimately form the IU coalition in 1986 as a means to counteract the electoral crisis of Communism by launching an organization whose platform would add feminist and environmental demands to the traditional left issues. Although plans were initially made to dissolve the founding parties into IU, the PCE maintained a prominent role which granted its 4

6 hegemony in the new organization and the preservation of a traditional radical left identity of IU. IU experienced a significant gain in votes from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, reaching its peak in 1996 (10.5 per cent of the national vote). Since then it has dramatically suffered a steady electoral decline, albeit maintaining itself as the third most popular national party (see Table 1) 1. Whereas IU had typically attracted former disaffected PSOE voters, once the Social Democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party/Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) became an opposition party in 1996 IU not only stopped receiving an inflow of Socialist voters, but also started suffering a significant decrease in its own vote share. In Spain, the interaction between low district magnitudes and a fragmented Left provides an appropriate setting for strategic voting. As the races between the two main statewide parties (PSOE and Popular Party) became more competitive, many IU supporters gradually voted for the Socialists to avoid a right-wing government, although vote losses are also explained by other factors such as steady factional disputes or IU s radicalization. In 2008 its presence at the Congress of Deputies was reduced to one seat (failing to form its own parliamentary group since 1977) and it has become an extra parliamentary force in six of the 17 regional parliaments while it maintains a very weak presence in the others. The progressive loss of MPs at both tiers of governments is aggravated by the important reduction in the number of local councilors, only stopped at the 2011 regional and local elections due to the important backlash suffered by the PSOE voters made the governing party responsible for the country s poor economic performance and the very high unemployment rate, about 20 per cent. Traditionally, IU s electoral strategy was based on maintaining a differentiated radical-left profile, which aimed to distinguish itself from and mount opposition to the PSOE. This strategy was pursued as a means to increase its vote share and eventually overtake the PSOE as the largest party on the left. No trade-offs were envisaged between vote-seeking and policy-seeking goals (Ramiro, 2004b: 20). Collaboration between two parties was restricted to local coalition governments. It was not until the late 1990s when IU moved away from its mistrust towards the PSOE. Attempts to build a new image as a coalitionable partner were most visible at regional level, where it 1 A majoritarian twist in the electoral law (D Hondt method of proportional representation, with mediumsized provincial districts averaging 6.7 seats) works to minority parties disadvantage when transforming votes into seats, given their support is not concentrated at the constituency level but it is rather spread thinly throughout the country (Montero, 1999: 73). 5

7 entered coalitions with a diverse array of parties in four regions and a more collaborative strategy towards the PSOE was also deployed (see Ştefuriuc and Verge, 2008; Hough and Verge, 2009). Nonetheless, as it can also be seen in Table 1, no significant electoral gains have been hitherto made out of this change of strategy. Table 1. The PCE s and IU s electoral results ( ) PCE IU Legislative a Seats Votes (%) c c 3.8 Regional b Seats Votes (%) Local Seats Votes (%) n.a 12.7 n.a 8.0 2, , , , , , , Source: Electoral results archive, Spanish Ministry of Interior. otes: a Congress of Deputies, 350 seats. b It includes the Basque Country and Catalonia (1980), Galicia (1981) and Andalusia (1982). c The percentage of votes includes those obtained by its coalition partner in Catalonia, Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds, which obtained two seats in 2004 and one seat in 2008 that are not added to the total count of IU seats in the table. In the early 1990s the original electoral coalition model was abandoned through internal reforms that unified the organization of IU. However, despite recurrent debates, the Communist leadership did not dissolve the PCE into the new organization, which since the mid-2000s, is the only relevant party to remain in IU, the rest having gradually abandoned it, partially due to the continuous internal strife 2. The PCE has always been the most important actor within IU and many of its activists are IU cadres. Furthermore, although the number of non-communist party members increased over time, PCE members have constituted the bulk of IU s affiliation the proportion is currently 50 per cent, according to party data which is not completely reliable. Differences around the strategies towards the PSOE and the unions, and around the ideological definition of IU have made the party internal life particularly conflictive. IU s permissiveness towards dissent is formally large due to the need to accommodate the ideologically diverse groups that formed the IU in conjunction with the PCE (communists of several tendencies, left socialists, republicans, environmentalists, and feminists, among others). The IU allows the creation of factions and even parties, which are allowed to present their candidates in internal elections. Seats in decision-making 2 Besides the PCE, there are currently only two very small parties: CUT (an Andalusian extreme left party based in some rural counties) and Republican Left, a tiny party that had abandoned IU after being one of the founders in

8 bodies are allocated by consensus among the competing lists obtaining at least 10 per cent of the delegates vote in the party conference, which tends to produce divided dominant coalitions. The faction system has not been peaceful at all, open conflict leading to expulsions, splits and members defection (Paniagua and Ramiro 2003; Verge and Gómez 2011). As Table 2 shows, both the PCE and IU have suffered a continuous outflow of members, in opposition to most Spanish political parties which have steadily increased their rank and file in the past decades. Table 2. Party membership, Party Year Total M/E M/V , PCE , , , , , , IU , , , (a) 58, (b) 50, Source: Own elaboration based on Ramiro (2000: 257) and Verge (2007: 113). Data for 2008 corresponds to the party data used for the (a) primaries held that year and (b) the organization of the party conference in otes: M/E: ratio members/(spanish)electorate; M/V: ratio members/(pce/iu)voters. Severe electoral defeats have brought change in IU s dominant coalition 3. The disastrous results in the 1999 local and European elections and in the 2000 legislative elections encouraged the new leadership to seek to deradicalize the discourse by relaunching the organization as a post-communist ecosocialist party (Verge, 2010: 90). At the party conference held in 2000, the two contending candidates belonged to the inner circles of the PCE and IU leadership groups: Gaspar Llamazares, the leader of both IU and PCE regional federation of Asturias, and Francisco Frutos, PCE s secretary-general. Llamazares was elected with only one more vote than his rival, and was thus forced to integrate members of the losing faction into the party directorate. This election interrupted a long-established tradition by which PCE s secretary-general 3 The group that controls skills and knowledge, recruitment, finances and communications is the dominant coalition (Panebianco, 1988: 37). However, it is often the case that dominant coalitions are fragmented. When dominant coalitions are heterogeneous they become coalitions of factions made of governing and opposition factions (Key, 1956). The party s governing or dominant faction is then the coalition component which is better equipped to impose its ideological or organizational preferences (Harmel and Tan, 2003: 411). 7

9 was IU s leader as well as it happened when Julio Anguita substituted Gerardo Iglesias as leader of both parties at the end of the 1980s. Since then, and until 2008, the PCE leadership acted as an opposition faction within IU s dominant coalition. The 2008 electoral results forced Llamazares to resign as party leader and was replaced by the candidate of PCE s most critical faction, led by Cayo Lara. Yet, the national leadership still has a very heterogeneous composition. The new leader urged the party to distance itself from the PSOE (again in national government since 2004) and stepped up a rhetoric radicalization (see Verge, 2010: 101). Design and implementation of participatory and policy-responsiveness linkages Participatory linkage The adaptation of the Communist ideology to societal change of preferences has entailed a frequent vindication of participatory (intra-party) democracy. Although the goals to strengthen the role of party members and to empower them do not appear very clearly in the first steps of IU or in PCE s original design of IU in 1986, they became one of the main themes of internal discourse when IU began to develop its own organization beyond the initial electoral coalition. IU s first party conferences (1989 and 1990) included as guiding principles the promotion to the fullest extent of citizens involvement in IU, including programmatic elaboration, and the designing of local organizations open to the widest participation of members and no members. The IU aimed to organizationally recreate the model of participatory democracy party manifestoes claimed to bring to society at large. IU new politics, the leaders and party documents argued, required a more open, more democratic, and more participatory organization. The opposition between the old politics of traditional parties and the new politics advocated by IU, both at the ideological and the organizational levels, is constant during the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to party leaders, IU was to be a social and political movement, a new type of organization, participatory for members and open to the involvement of non members and civil society groups. Paradoxically enough, this new type of organization coexisted with the presence of small parties within IU and, first and foremost, with PCE s hegemony. Basically, this has remained IU s official discourse and it is one of the most relevant aspects of its identity, although the party has often admitted relevant shortcomings in its implementation. As shown below, the real practice has fell very 8

10 short from the original purposes in three areas in which members empowerment might be more visible, namely candidate selection, leader selection and policy making. Candidate selection Since 1992 IU is officially committed to the possibility to organize party primaries for the selection of party electoral candidates. Nonetheless, most local party branches have so few members that a sort of general assembly is routinely used for the selection of local candidates. Regarding the selection of candidates to other layers of the political system, the picture is more complex. Regarding national legislative elections, in spite of the official discourse favourable to participatory politics, this procedure is just vaguely mentioned in organizational documents: primaries are not the compulsory or the sole procedure for candidate selection. Although they should have an undefined priority in the selection of candidates in case of the presence of several pre-candidates, there is not a single, general and undisputed regulation, and membership ballot results have to be approved by the federal executive committee. In practice, the use of primaries has been very infrequent and mainly found at the regional level, although there is not even a consistent pattern in those regional branches which have ever applied them. Primaries might be used in one election while other less inclusive methods are chosen for subsequent elections 4. It should be noted that the celebration of primaries has always been surrounded by conflict and strife. In the regional branch of Madrid primaries were held in 1993 and 1996 to select the national legislative candidates (except the head of the list, which is by default the party s candidate to Prime Minister, already nominated by the national leadership), a district where, in spite of the electoral crisis, IU has always obtained electoral representation. In the 1993 occasion, once the primaries had been held, both the process and the results were opposed by a faction of the regional executive committee, where the latter imposed a new vote and managed to have the order of the list modified the reason being this faction had more weight among regional executive committee members than among grass-roots members. In 1996, Communist members were invited to vote the candidates supported by the PCE. This sort of informal and not regulated campaign to influence members vote was understood by non-pce factions as a means through which the PCE tried to subtly assure its hegemony on IU s electoral 4 Regional branches are in charge of the selection of candidates for their electoral districts, the federal executive committee being responsible for the final approval of the regional draft candidate tickets. 9

11 list against the principles of pluralism and consensus which should prevail in an ideologically diverse organisation. After these two far from peaceful experiences primaries were not used in the subsequent 2000 national legislative elections and, what is more relevant, the national leadership did not show any intention at all to promote its celebration for the Madrid electoral list. The candidates list was solely decided by the regional executive committee, whose names were informally suggested by the federal leadership. Primaries were not held either for the election of the candidate to Prime Minister, although the candidate selected by the national executive committee, the party leader Julio Anguita, had to retire due to health problems. So, in contrast with the party s discourse and even with the evolution of other contemporary parties, the use of primaries is far from consolidated and institutionalized in IU. The link between internal conflict and primaries is one of the main features of the use of this procedure in IU. Primaries are the last resort in case agreement among factions can not be reached through other informal practices. They are not generally promoted by the leadership and their use is subject to the calculus by the different factions on which selection procedure is more advantageous to them (primaries or selection by the executive committee). This can well be exemplified by the only occasion IU has used primaries to select its candidate to Prime Minister. In the months previous to the 2008 national legislative elections, amidst an internal climate of strong division on the party s political strategy and on the collaboration towards the PSOE, the PCE leadership promoted the celebration of primaries trying to avoid the party leader, Llamazares, who had an exiguous majority in the federal executive committee, to be nominated candidate. Llamazares faction accepted the challenge and obtained 62.5 per cent of the members vote. Subsequently, this faction tried to take advantage of its victory to extend the use of primaries to elect the rest of candidates with a view to assure the future parliamentary group would have a majority of members close to Llamazares. However, the PCE changed its mind on primaries and made use of its majority in the executive committees of some regions to nominate candidates. This new internal confrontation was the origin of an acute crisis. Primaries were celebrated but, in two key electoral districts (Valencia and Seville), entailed episodes of very severe strife and, what is certainly relevant, the results were eventually modified by the regional executive committees. As a result, the regional branch of IU in Valencia split. Even if some factions show their discomfort with this functioning, it is clear that the majority of the organization has not assumed the primaries as part of the party 10

12 routine. Cadres mistrust towards primaries seems to be such that the possibility to open them to non-members has been rarely considered. Surrounded by the vague definition of the procedure, open primaries have been an exceptional event in IU, all of them held at the local level, in some cases against the leadership will (selection of the candidate to mayor of Jaén in the 2007 local elections), and tolerated in others (selection of the candidate to mayor of Valladolid in the 2011 local elections). Party leader selection The procedure for the selection of party leader has remained basically unchanged over time. The election of IU s leader is a two-step process. During the federal party conference, party delegates select the members of the Federal Political Committee who will thereafter choose the party leader in a separate vote. The distribution of offices in this party board is strictly proportional to the votes obtained by the various lists competing for delegates votes. Therefore, the selection of party leader in IU is done through an indirect procedure. The only significant change was the enfranchisement of regional party leaders as members of the selectorate within the Federal Political Committee who select the party leader. This change has its origins in internal strife too. It was introduced by Llamazares in the 2004 party conference when his list received 49.5 per cent of the delegates votes but opposition factions lists had two more votes than him in the Federal Political Committee (Verge, 2007). In 2008, five groups put up candidates lists for the national executive committee. The one that best represented the PCE s most critical faction obtained 43 per cent of the delegates votes, and the one that supported the former party leader 27 per cent. As none of the two managed to obtain sufficient support from the other three minority candidatures the conference finished without having elected a new party leader. A temporary commission was established in which the five candidates were proportionally represented according to the delegates vote that they had obtained. It took a month to reach the decision and it was finally the opposition faction led by the PCE which managed to see its candidate, Cayo Lara, come out on top (Verge, 2010). Policy making Since the early 1990s, the collective elaboration of the electoral manifestoes in a participatory way, including the direct input of members and social movements, became one of the most relevant party principles. IU began to create a new party structure of 11

13 working groups (called áreas ) responsible for the direct participation of individual members and non members in the policy making. Areas would be linked to the different policy-making domains (economy, women, youth, environment, urban planning, etc.). Any member could be involved in any of them (in fact, the party urged members to be involved in the works of an area) and the areas should maintain a close link with social movements, which would be invited to participate in their works. The areas, created in every territorial level of organization (from local to national), had to have their own structures. The relevance of these bodies for the party was recognised through the presence of area coordinators in the executive committees of IU at the different territorial levels. Their policy proposals, ideally a result of members and social movements involvement, were to be the basic inputs for electoral manifestoes to be approved by the executive committee and by a programmatic party conference. IU public officials, either in government or in opposition, should be involved in the areas related to their activity as IU representatives. In their work, IU parliamentary groups and even (local) governments as well as IU leadership bodies should reflect and promote the policy proposals elaborated by the areas. However, the analysis of the real functioning of party channels for the direct involvement of members in policy making reveals several shortcomings in the development and functioning of the areas. First, their creation was very slow and many of them still remain underdeveloped. By 1997 these working groups did not exist yet in some regional branches and in others they were very fragile. Although this situation was corrected and they have been developed in the entire organization their expansion to the local level is far from successful. Second, despite being designed as participatory bodies the number of members taking part in the areas has remained low. Similarly, the participation of non-members and social movements in the areas is far from massive. Their involvement seems to be generally rare and reduced to particular occasions such as pre-electoral or strong mobilization periods in a policy area. As a consequence, those areas which have a regular functioning often resemble more a group of specialists, consultants or advisers than the participatory device they were thought to be. Third, the relation of the areas with the IU leadership and IU MPs and local councillors has not been easy but rather uneven and unpredictable. Although in some instances the relation has been the originally planned of collaboration and primacy of the policy proposals of the area, in some other cases the areas have worked without any contact with IU s public representatives or, at most, the areas (or some members of certain areas) have 12

14 acted as mere advisers of a particular public official. Last, the relation of the areas with the IU leadership has been troublesome. One contentious issue was the creation by the IU leadership at the beginning of the 1990s at the different territorial levels of party secretaries in charge of policy domains that overlap with the areas (i.e. secretary of economy). To a certain extent it shown the incapacity of the areas to play their original policy-making role as well as it was the result of the perceived need to count with a more agile and effective structure. Yet, it also reflects the mistrust of different IU leaderships towards the areas as, in the context of a divided party, they have often become a battleground for factional disputes. Leaving aside the description of the work of the areas, this exam of policymaking procedures and of the role of members would be incomplete without mentioning that in the drafting of electoral manifestoes a key role is played by party (senior) officials and MPs in the conventional way common to many parties. Party conferences are officially the main decision-making body. Although since 1994 the party conference mandate was enlarged from two to three years, thus potentially reducing members capacity to provide inputs, their influence was actually increased with the acquisition of new rights. In 1997 IU granted members the right to make proposals to national organs and the right to be asked their opinion through a public consultation process on questions of special interest for the party. In 2004 the right to call referendums, originally in hands of the national committee, was extended to regional committees and members gathering the support of 30% of party s affiliates. Yet, in practice, these new rights and procedures have had a limited impact on the decision-making process. A membership ballot was planned for September 2004 to decide the party position on the European Constitution Treaty, which the national government would submit to citizen s will in February It did not finally go ahead as it overlapped with an extraordinary party conference convoked after the disastrous electoral results obtained by IU in the March 2004 general election. Instead, party delegates ratified during this conference the party leadership s position which advocated for a negative vote (Verge, 2011b). Although no referendums of this kind have been held at the national party level, two were called by the regional organization of Extremadura and the provincial organization of Álava to decide on IU s governing strategy after the 2011 local and regional elections. The referendum of Extremadura resulted in public conflict between the regional organization and the federal leadership as the results of the membership ballot contravened the latter s instruction to support the 13

15 investiture of the PSOE candidate, showing the vague statutory definition of these procedures, their lack of institutionalization but also the confuse distribution of powers between federal bodies and regional party branches. Policy-responsiveness linkage Embedded in the political dimension of the new organizational project launched by the PCE was the goal of opening the traditional left towards a more intense relationship with civil society. How did the need to redesign the party s electoral bases and the new participatory democracy approach guide linkage-building in Spanish radical left? As said, IU s self-conception was that of a political and social movement rather than a (traditional) political party. The creation of IU fostered change in the way the founding parties related to social groups. For example, since the 1960s, the PCE used its resources to organize Spanish civil society against the authoritarian order (Encarnación, 2003: 47). The organizations created by the PCE included the Democratic Movement of Women, pioneering the contemporary Spanish feminist movement, and the Popular and Citizen s Movement, a grassroots neighborhood movement. The PCE also employed the nascent labor movement organized around the Workers Commissions (CCOO), controlled by the party, as its key instrument in the fight against Francoism, penetrating the vertical syndicate and leading workers mobilization. The links between the PCE and CCOO materialized in the overlapping composition of their leaderships and rank-and-files and the presence of union leaders among public representatives, which allowed the party to have an important influence in the formulation of union policies (Fishman, 1990: ). In the 1980s, the PCE believed social presence was decisive for the implementation of Eurocommunism as well as for recovering electoral support and for stopping membership losses. Party cadres and activists were urged to foster social mobilization as well as to spread the party message within social movements. In addition, the party sponsored the creation of various social organizations and exerted influence over others in the areas of feminism, environmentalism, pacifism, and human rights through overlapping memberships and the presence of party members in leadership positions (Verge, 2011a). Alternatively, the proportion of Communist members among CCOO rank-and-file gradually decreased and leadership overlaps dramatically diminished until their near disappearance. 14

16 Conversely, IU has not sponsored the creation of collateral social organizations 5. Still, close ties with civil society are considered very relevant as a means to foster social mobilization. It should be noted that IU was born in 1986 after the success obtained by the Civic Platform for Spain s exit from NATO in which the PCE participated with other left-wing social and political groupings 6. Linkage with civil society materialized through various mechanisms. First, the participation of social groups in the design of party manifestos was to be channeled through the areas, as we have already discussed, in which not only inputs would be provided but also joint social mobilization would be planned. Second, the party adopted a collaborative strategy as it perceived increased autonomy demands from civil society. This is illustrated by CCOO s rejection of PCE s and IU s interference on the definition of its policies 7 (Ramiro, 2004b: 22). Throughout the 1990s, IU participated in several social platforms such as the Civic Platform for Social Rights ( ), articulated against the labor reform approved by the Socialist government, and was also an active member of the Citizens Network for the Abolition of External Debt aimed at canceling the debt poor countries have to pay back to the richest nations, and the Platform for the 0.7 (1994), which urged national governments to devote this amount of the GDP to third world aid. In 1994 IU also launched the Taskforce for a Green and Alternative Left composed of party members and social activists. It aimed at mirroring the anti- NATO social mobilizations of the 1980s, the target being on this occasion the 1994 European elections (Verge, 2007: 280). Party candidatures were even offered to social activists (Pastor, 2004: 35), which the PCE had also done in the 1980s. Once again, IU leadership aimed at translating social mobilization into electoral mobilization, which would eventually lead the IU overcoming the PSOE as the main left-wing party. Besides, the political recruitment of social activists was thought to offer prestige and 5 Though we might think that political and social changes rend this strategy impossible, the PSOE still used it during the 1990s and the PP has not abandoned it yet (see Verge, 2011b). 6 The PSOE national government had initially defended withdrawal from NATO in 1981 but once in office supported permanence in the military alliance. The referendum (March 1986) yielded a minimal victory for the remaining in NATO but seven million Spaniards cast a no-vote. These were precisely the voters IU would target. 7 The growing ideological gap between CCOO and the PCE and IU, a phenomenon common to other leftwing west European parties and unions, included episodes of strong disagreement and harsh confrontation during the 1990s. Subsequent strategies aimed at rebuilding the union-party relationship have not been able to halt a dynamic of separation of CC OO from any link with any party that is rooted in deep political and social changes. Their relation has evolved from one of close coordination and leadership overlapping to one of mere policy coincidence, and not even in all the relevant social and economic issues. 15

17 credibility to the party s electoral tickets. Yet, the party s electoral expectations were clearly overestimated, as Table 1 has shown. From 1996 onwards, IU joined several social platforms against the conservative government and launched common proposals with social groups. It joined the Social Forum and the platform against the Iraq war. New party secretaries were established from the late 1990s in order to forge ties with social organizations (Social Movements, Ecology, International Solidarity, Human Rights, and Globalization and Youth). Finally, the party has traditionally invited social representatives to party conferences. Although IU has tried to foster social activism of its members as a means to pick up on social demands and to keep left-wing voters mobilized, and indeed many IU members are activists in a broad array of social groups, no formal communication is established regarding their participation so the potential feedback is lost. Besides not having created social organizations of its own, the IU has also lost influence over those groups the PCE had long controlled through overlapping memberships. In addition, party factionalism has often led to a fragmented social presence, with no political direction or strategy, which has often impeded IU to bridge social demands e.g. internal disputes were brought into the anti-globalisation movement, some factions trying to instrumentalize its support against the competing factions (Verge, 2010: 97). With the exception of the 1980s, in the context of the anti-nato social mobilizations and the general strike against the PSOE government, IU has been unable to capitalize discontent voters support. Despite several social platforms rallying against the right-wing PP government ( , especially since 2000 onwards) on issues like secondary education and university reform, labor reform, or the Iraq war provided for various meeting points with civil society, in the 2004 and 2008 national legislative elections a significant proportion of former IU voters strategically opted for the PSOE to oust the conservatives from power or to prevent its victory. Another opportunity to forge links was the referendum for the European Constitution when the IU sided with the No supporters, basically minor left-wing and some nationalist parties along with the anti-globalization movement and other social organizations. The No position, given Spaniards embedded Europeanist political culture, was not based on euroscepticism, but instead on the claim that the ECT was insufficient in reach regarding social and workers protection or democratization of institutions, among other issues (Benedetto and Quaglia, 2007: 493; Verge, 2011b). Eventually, the number of 16

18 positive votes was vast, 76.7 per cent, and about a third of IU voters also supported the European Constitution against the party s official position. After the 2008 disastrous electoral results, the party admitted that change was urgently needed and all factions unanimously agreed to the re-foundation of IU. One of the secretaries of the national executive board was entrusted with organizing a constituent assembly by mid-2010 and establishing working groups at the different territorial levels of the party aimed at discussing how to re-found the party and to strengthen its political-and-social-movement nature. Social groups opposing neoliberalism were also invited to put forward their inputs for the renewed project. Particularly, IU targeted for engagement feminist, environmental, pacifist, international cooperation, human rights, and gays rights organizations, unions, neighborhood and students associations, as well as social groups in favor of an alternative economy and those in favor of the abolition of the monarchy (IU, 2009). Actually, 40 per cent of the 1,000 delegates at the Re-foundation Assembly held in June 2010, were not party members and about 60 social organizations were invited to participate. Although it is too soon to assess the impact of the re-foundation process, almost three years after the goal was established no significant results have been produced and many regional party branches are completely disconnected from it. Some party factions have repeatedly denounced the shortcomings of its implementation and its incapacity to appeal to social groups and other left-wing parties. In fact, IU has suffered new splits in several regions in recent years (Comunidad Valenciana, Balearic Islands and the Basque Country), and the splitting groups have not been included in the refoundation process, so we might wonder how inclusive this process has been (which in any case shows it has been insufficient to deter internal strife). It is not clear either if PCE s support is sincere, which is very relevant given PCE s predominance within IU. Finally, the social mobilizations which raised on the eve of the 2011 local and regional elections, the so-called Spanish revolution, was mainly led by young Spanish angry at massive unemployment, austerity measures and political corruption who established protest camps and open-air sit-in in the centre of the main cities and claimed to represent an independent movement from any political party. Although IU made some electoral gains and even managed to obtain seats in a couple of regional parliaments where it had become an extra-parliamentary force since 2003, the results of the regional and local elections point at stagnation rather than significant improvement. 17

19 Yet, it is too soon to assess whether the party might be able to connect with this spontaneous and organizationally decentralized movement. Concluding remarks The PCE responded to its electoral and organizational crisis by creating a new organization in 1986, IU, which has explicitly tried to improve and reinforce its participatory and policy-responsiveness linkages. This strategy should be placed in the context of the electoral decline of western Communist parties and the decisions adopted by some of them to survive in an increasingly competitive (and hostile) electoral and organizational market. In several cases these parties have moved towards more open organizations, with more empowered members, ideologically closer to New Politics issues, and with a vocation to strengthen ties with social organizations. More generally, the Spanish radical left is also an example of the strategies followed by some contemporary western parties to adapt to social, political and technological changes. This paper has analyzed the formal definition and practical implementation of the strategies aimed at strengthening the linkage processes. Given their centrality in IU s political project and identity, the shortcomings of these strategies are certainly notorious. Regarding the participatory linkage, IU tried to give form to a new type of organization in which citizens and grass-roots members played a relevant role in decision-making. However, the restricted definition of the new powers to be enjoyed by members questions the reach of the strategies pursued by party leaders. When examining both candidate and leader selection and policy-making procedures, the restricted ambition of the changes and the limits of their implementation clearly stand out. In some key aspects the role of members has grown very modestly. The definition of primaries is vague and confusing, the leadership is not obliged to promote them, and there is no clear regulation of their implementation. Concerning leader selection, IU has not introduced any innovation on the traditional procedure of selection by party conference/executive committee. On top of this, due to their practical implementation, some of the strategies designed to reinforce the participatory linkage can hardly be considered appealing incentives to boost party membership. Some procedures for members participation have been strategically promoted by leaders and factions with purposes not always coincident with the goal of reinforcing the linkage process, as shown by the institutional under-development of primaries, their scarce and 18