The Politics Of Regeneration

The people of the Balearics have been asked what they think about the political situation in the islands and in the country. The good news is that there are more who think the situation is very good in the Balearics than in Spain: 1.1% beats 0.1%. The bad news is that, no surprise here, over three quarters believe that the Balearics situation is bad or very bad. It is worse in Spain, but that will be small comfort to an islands' political class which might previously have taken little notice of such findings but which now finds that it has to take note. Democratic regeneration is on everyone's lips (well, not quite everyone's) and the various parties are galvanising themselves into regenerative action, having been stung out of their inertia by the regenerators of Podemos.

This political flavour of the moment is even being tasted by the Balearics' Partido Popular, President Bauzá claiming that it is only the PP which can regenerate democracy. Given that it has been the PP which has been principally responsible for its degeneration, this might sound a bit rich, but then as we know the president is apparently steadfast in his desire to drive out corruption, and it is corruption that, according to the recent survey by the research organisation Gadeso, is the main cause of this degeneration. Fighting the fight against corruption or not, it is doubtful whether Bauzá would have suddenly discovered a regeneration zeal had it not been for Podemos going around telling everyone that democracy needed regenerating.

There are other parties who have been waving the flag of regeneration for a few years longer than Podemos has been, but it is unquestionably the emergence of Podemos and its campaigning against corruption and the political system that has brought the issue to the front of the public's mind. It is doubtful that the public would, until recently, have been asked about democratic regeneration; it is a mark of the impact that Podemos has had that the question should now be being put.

The Gadeso survey concludes that confidence in the post-Franco political system is at an all-time low (which we knew anyway), and the causes are familiar ones. Corruption and dissatisfaction with the political system cover a multitude of sins, so they are not just about trousering some dodgy money. Lack of transparency, lousy communications and aloofness, nepotism and "amiguismo" (favouring friends) and sheer inefficiency are all identified. Basically, the whole system sucks, and into this mix can be added the perceived ills of the justice system (unfair, too slow, not independent): the second greatest concern after corruption.

While discontent with political systems is not unique to the Balearics or Spain, the system here has its peculiarities which mean that it is not as entrenched as elsewhere. The main target for the discontent is the dominant two-party system (the PP and PSOE). Yet this is comparatively new. The PP is only 26 years old. Its forerunner, the Alianza Popular, with its Francoist hangover, was not a great power in the land. It performed well enough in some regions (the first Balearics government was an Alianza one) but not nationally, being soundly stuffed by PSOE at both the 1982 and 1986 general elections. It reinvented itself as the PP in 1989 and finally gained power for the first time in 1996 under José María Aznar.

The two-party status quo, while it has endured for a generation in its current guise, is far less established than in certain other countries. Allied to this relative newness, there is, as revealed by all the survey's anxieties, a perpetuation of what existed before democracy and indeed well before Franco. It is a system which, in a sense, hasn't grown up, and as it hasn't matured, the potential to disrupt it is greater than might be the case elsewhere. And this, as evidenced by the rise of Podemos, is what is happening.

One way in which the established parties are trying to put the fear of God into the electorate is by referring to Podemos as a dangerous "experiment" which threatens democracy. Describing it as an experiment is reasonable enough, but then it might be said that the system which finally emerged with the PP in 1989 has also been an experiment, and if democracy is in such need of regeneration as it appears to be, then one conclude that the experiment has not succeeded. Can a different approach be described as a threat to democracy when the one it seeks to replace has been so discredited?

For all this and for all that Podemos has taken the lead in espousing regeneration, even it needs to look at what the survey finds. Yes, Podemos is considered to be more capable of democratic regeneration than other parties, but it trails by fifteen points the survey winner: no party will be capable.