The impasse

Last Sunday's election results took the country by surprise. The winning party was the expected one, the next government will be headed by the same prime minister, with the same minority conditions and, overall, the various smaller parties remain similar. And yet, there is a feeling in the air that everything has changed, or at least that the political-party system we have lived with for the last 50 years has been shaken up for good.

The fight for second place is not just irrelevant symbolism. A world with two dominant parties in an imperfect two-party system is entirely different from a world with a dynamic of party competition in which three parties of similar and medium size (each with between one-fifth and one-third of the electorate) face off and have to decide between themselves how to govern the country.

At this point, it is not clear where the party system is headed. Will the relative size of the three parties remain the same for a few electoral cycles? Will the PS and PSD swap places in the next electoral cycle? Or could Chega swap places with the PSD and become the largest party on the right and in the country? It is also possible that Chega will continue to be a protest party of varying sizes in the near future. Or will it become a party like the PS and the PSD in terms of ambitions and governmental possibilities? One electoral cycle is not enough to know how a pattern of competition will unfold, which, by nature, needs several iterations to establish itself.

First of all, a tripartite system generates much greater uncertainty than a bipolar and two-party system (even if imperfect). For the elites of the three major parties, it is much more uncertain and more difficult to deal not only with a single opponent, with whom they hope to alternate, but also with two opponents simultaneously, without knowing which axis of competition to prioritize. And, even on the voters' side, a tripartite system also generates more uncertainty. Duverger's famous “law”, which explains the tendency of some systems to bipolarize through strategic voting, is based on a psychological mechanism according to which voters know with certainty and a priori that there are two parties that are larger than all the others and that they are competing for first place. If, on the other hand, voters are faced with greater uncertainty about the relative size of the parties and observe three parties of similar size, it becomes much more difficult for the strategic voter to know where to cast his or her vote.

Although our electoral system is undoubtedly and formally a system of proportional representation, the logic of party competition in Portugal over the last 40 years has never been exactly the same as in countries where electoral proportionality is purer, such as the Netherlands, Denmark or Germany. In fact, it is perhaps more accurate to say that our system has always combined proportional elements with majoritarian elements.

Of our 22 electoral districts, eleven elect only 2 to 5 members. In these districts, the logic of competition is not proportional and has been dominated, in recent decades, by two parties. The other half is divided into medium-sized and very large districts, where there is proportionality and which, as a rule, allow smaller parties to enter parliament. Overall, this asymmetric system has allowed us to combine the positive characteristics of proportional and majoritarian systems: the best of both worlds, so to speak. As in proportional systems, we have always had a greater representation of the ideological diversity of society than in systems with only two parties. As in majoritarian systems, there has been no excessive fragmentation of the party system, which has allowed periods of stable governance associated with one of the two large parties, alternately. This combination has often been seen as a good and desirable balance. In the real world, it is not possible for any political institution to achieve the best of all worlds, but balance has always been seen as positive and partly responsible for successful democratization.

Sunday’s election results, however, reveal the other side of the coin. Today, and due to the confluence of several historical trends, our political system also combines the worst of both worlds: the negative consequences of both systems. As in proportional systems, we are currently witnessing the consequences of greater fragmentation of the electorate, including instability. Furthermore, this fragmentation has been — not only in Portugal, but throughout continental Europe — a fragmentation accompanied by the electoral success of a “new” type of party: radical right-wing parties, which these systems were not accustomed to incorporating.

But, as is the case in many majoritarian systems, we also lack the flexibility of a historical culture of governing coalitions. In highly proportional and fragmented systems, it is this culture of coalitions that gives the system its flexibility. This is not a mere lament about our lack of a civilized political culture. It is rather the perfectly expected and rational product of the majoritarian side of the system that I described above. The pattern of competition established over the last four decades is a bipolar pattern: voters expect alternation between the center-left and center-right blocs, in a model of responsible party government . In other words, Portuguese voters expect that, in each electoral cycle, one of the two major parties, from moderate but opposing ideological camps, will govern. During their term in office, governments produce measures and public policies and, in the end, voters attribute the results to the major party that was in government. This logic is a majoritarian logic of rotation of power and accountability of a single party. Just think that, in a coalition government with 5 or 6 parties, with different ideologies, it becomes much more difficult to vote based only on this simple retrospective assessment of a single, large governing party.

To date, Portuguese voters have never expected governments to be formed by coalitions of many parties at various points on the ideological spectrum, nor have they expected a formal grand coalition between the two largest parties. Let us compare this situation with that of other proportional systems. In Austria, more than half of the governments since the Second World War have been grand coalition governments between the two main parties, the Social Democratic Party and the People's Party, namely between 1945-1966, 1987-2000 and 2007-2017. In the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, coalition governments with five or more parties are common. In Germany, voters are also no stranger to grand coalitions : there have been four coalitions between the SPD and the CDU/CSU since 1945, for a total of more than 15 years under this coalition model, and this year saw the start of another one, which was expected by everyone. In the periods when there was no grand coalition, the Liberal Party (FDP) sometimes governed with the centre-left, sometimes with the centre-right. This flexibility was crucial: since the post-war period, the FDP has entered into nine coalition governments with the CDU and five coalition governments with the SPD. It was a genuine pivotal party between the two camps. When they go to vote, no voter is surprised by a coalition between the Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals, just as no one is surprised by a coalition between the Christian Democrats, Greens and Liberals, and these expectations are incorporated into the way people vote.

In Portugal, the situation could not be more contrasting. There was only one formal Central Bloc, more than 40 years ago, which lasted only 2 years. An incomplete mandate that was not well remembered by voters, especially given the economic context of the time. Almost no voter expects there to be a Central Bloc when they go to vote and, therefore, votes according to another logic. Similarly, after the 1978 coalition between the PS and the CDS, which lasted only 7 months, no one expects one of the smaller parties to support a government led by a party from an opposing ideological camp. There are no pivotal parties in Portugal, which contributes to the bipolar and majority logic of the system. No one expects the IL to enter into a government coalition with the PS, just as no one expects the Livre to enter into a government coalition with the PSD. Starting with the voters themselves who vote for the IL and Livre, who would feel that their vote would be “betrayed” if something like that were to happen.

Voter expectations are fundamental and incorporate the usual and expected logic of competition in the system. When they go to vote, voters incorporate these expectations into their voting intentions and the way they view their vote. In turn, politicians are not accustomed to other models of party competition, such as those I described above, and so they do not have the mental, social and even ritual models to carry out this type of interaction and political negotiation naturally. Perhaps more importantly, since they know that they would be breaking with the usual logic of party competition, these political elites fear that, whatever their decision, it will be penalized by voters who did not expect such actions when they went to vote. This applies to coalitions such as grand coalitions (central bloc), coalitions of many parties, coalitions of ideologically distant parties, but also to a coalition between the PSD and the new Chega party, which was neither assumed nor expected by many of the voters who voted for AD and Chega last Sunday and who, therefore, voted with these expectations in mind. At the moment, it seems that all executive and business innovations would be penalized at the polls by someone. Thus, we are dragging ourselves from unstable minority government to unstable minority government.

We do not have mechanisms to deal simultaneously with fragmentation, the rise of the radical right and the governing logic that we have become accustomed to up until now. This is the result of the impasse we feel today. It is not clear how we will get out of this impasse or who will resolve it. But, perhaps intuitively, I have the impression that it will not be possible to remain in the impasse for much longer.