Politics in Europe An Introduction To The Politics of The United Kingdom France Germany Italy Sweden Russia and The European Union

Politics in Europe
Politics in Europe
An Introduction to the Politics of the United Kingdom,
France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Russia, and
the European Union
THIRD EDITION
M. Donald Hancock
Vanderbilt University
David P. Conradt
East Carolina University
B. Guy Peters
University of Pittsburgh
William Safran
University of Colorado, Boulder
Stephen White
University of Glasgow
Raphael Zariski
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Seven Bridges Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Politics in Europe : an introduction to the politics of the United
Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Russia, and the European Union
/ M. Donald Hancock . . . [et al.]. ,rd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Politics in Western Europe. :nd ed. :,,.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN :-,::,-,-: (pbk.)
:. EuropePolitics and government:,, . I. Hancock, M. Donald.
II. Politics in Western Europe.
JN,.A,: Po,, :cc:
,c.,,dc::
:cc:cc,,:
Manufactured in the United States of America
:c , ; o , , : :
Contents
List of Tables vii
List of Comparative Figures x
Preface xi
Introduction xiii
Part I. The United Kingdom
B. Guy Peters
1. The Context of British Politics 1
2. Where Is the Power? 17
3. Who Has the Power? 42
4. How Is Power Used? 63
5. What Is the Future of British Politics? 78
For Further Reading 84
Part II. France
William Safran
6. The Context of French Politics 87
10. What Is the Future of French Politics? 157
Part III. Germany
David P. Conradt
11. The Context of German Politics 167
15. What Is the Future of German Politics? 239
Part IV. Italy
Raphael Zariski
16. The Context of Italian Politics 253
20. What Is the Future of Italian Politics? 334
Part V. Sweden
M. Donald Hancock
21. The Context of Swedish Politics 347
25. What Is the Future of Swedish Politics? 395
Part VI. Russia
Stephen White
26. The Context of Russian Politics 403
30. What Is the Future of Russian Politics? 456
Part VII. The European Union
M. Donald Hancock and B. Guy Peters
31. The Context of European Union Politics 467
35. What Is the Future of EU Politics? 525
Appendix 545
Index 563
vi politics in europe
List of Tables
Part I. The United Kingdom
1.1 Unemployment Levels by Region, 1996 5
3.1 Citizens per Parliamentary Seat 46
3.2 Class Voting, 1979 and 1997 54
Part II. France
6.1 France: Some Changes in Fifty-four Years 91
6.2 Political Cycles and Regimes 93
7.1 Political Composition of Selected Fifth Republic Governments
before 1981 105
7.2 Political Composition of Selected Fifth Republic Governments,
198188 106
7.3 Political Composition of Selected Fifth Republic Governments
since 1991 107
8.1 Parliamentary and Presidential Elections, 195897 124
8.2 Composition of the National Assembly since 1956 126
8.3 Recent Cantonal Elections: Number of General Councilors Elected 140
8.4 Composition of the Senate, 195999 141
Part III. Germany
11.1 German Unity, 198990: A Chronology 175
11.2 The States of the Federal Republic 177
11.3 Income by Occupation, 1988 182
11.4 The Ten Largest Firms in the Federal Republic 183
11.5 Satisfaction with Democracy: Germany, Britain, France, Italy,
European Union 188
13.1 Seat Distribution in the 1998 Election 220
15.1 What Has Become Better, What Has Become Worse since
Unification? East Germany, 2000 240
15.2 Catching Up: East vs. West, Economic Indicators, 199199 243
Part IV. Italy
18.1 Percentages of Total Vote Polled by Italian Parties in Elections
for the Chamber of Deputies, 194896 294
18.2 Seats Won by Various Italian Parties in Elections for the
Chamber of Deputies, 194896 295
Part V. Sweden
21.1 Comparative Tax Payments, 1998 355
23.1 Election Results, 193298 369
23.2 Bloc Alignments, 195898 378
23.3 Government Formation, 19322002 379
24.1 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product, 1997 382
24.2 Measures of Commitment to Public Welfare 385
Part VI. Russia
26.1 Some Characteristics of Russias Population 405
26.2 Russians Main Concerns in the Late 1990s 412
27.1 The 1996 Russian Presidential Election 422
27.2 The Russian Presidential Election of 26 March 2000 423
28.1 Elections to the Russian State Duma, December 1995 433
28.2 Elections to the Russian State Duma, December 1999 438
28.3 Some Characteristics of Party Support, December 1999 439
29.1 Russian Economic Performance, 199298 449
Part VII. The European Union
31.1 Area and Population of EU Member States 468
31.2 Indicators of Economic Development 468
32.1 Number of Votes in Qualified Majority Voting 485
32.2 The Prodi Commission, 20002005 488
32.3 Distribution of Seats in the European Parliament 490
32.4 Elections to the European Parliament, June 1999: Number of
Seats by Party Group, 19992003 491
33.1 Consultations and Cooperations and Co-Decision Procedures
in the European Parliament, 1998 503
33.2 Decisions and Resolutions Adopted by the European
Parliament, 1998 504
34.1 European Union Budget: Sources of Revenue, 19992000 515
34.2 European Union Expenditures, 2000 517
35.1 Treaty of Nice: Qualified Majority Voting 538
35.2 Treaty of Nice: Number of Members of the European Parliament 539
viii politics in europe
Appendix
A.1 National Election Outcomes: Percentage of Popular Support 547
A.2 Distribution of Seats in National Legislatures 550
A.3 Postwar Executive Leadership 553
A.4 Per Capita Gross National Product (GNP), 197597 556
A.5 Growth of Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 19702001 557
A.6 Consumer Prices, 197099 558
A.7 Average Unemployment Rates, 196099 559
A.8 Annual Unemployment Rates, 198599 559
A.9 Central Government Total Outlays as Percentage of Nominal
GDP, 19862002 560
A.10 General Government Total Tax and Nontax Receipts as
Percentage of Nominal GDP, 19862002 560
A.11 Days Lost through Strikes and Lockouts per 1,000 Employees,
19602000 561
A.12 Infant Mortality Rate, 196090s 561
A.13 Life Expectancy at Birth, 196090s 562
A.14 Student Enrollment Rates 562
A.15 Religious Adherents by Major Denominations, mid2000 562
list of tables ix
List of Comparative Figures
Population 10
Population Density 31
Annual Immigration 67
Percentage of Population Aged 65 and Older 80
Gross Domestic Product per Capita 88
Average Annual Growth Rate of Gross Domestic Product 103
Average Unemployment Rates 120
Percentage of Females in Workforce 158
Average Balance of Trade 159
Voter Turnout 196
Vote for Radical Left Parties 206
Vote for Social Democratic/Labor Parties 246
Vote for Centrist Parties 277
Vote for Conservative Parties 329
Number of Postwar Cabinets 336
Comparative Tax Payments 356
Total Government Expenditures as a Percentage of Nominal Gross
Domestic Product 396
Trade Union Density 397
Infant Mortality Rate 413
Days Lost Annually through Strikes and Lockouts per 1,000 Employees 457
Defense Expenditures as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product 461
Inequality Index 475
European Parliamentary Election, June 1999 507
Contribution of Own Resources by EU Member States to the 1999
Budget 518
Disbursements Made in Each EU Member State as a Percentage of the 1999
Budget 520
Preface
THIS THIRD EDITION of Politics in Europe constitutes a major departure from previous
versions. A principal innovation is the inclusion of Russia alongside the established West
European democracies of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. Russias transition
since the early :,,cs from an authoritarian communist regime to a pluralist democracy and
market economy is one of the most profound transformations in recent political history,
equivalent in scope and depth to the Bolshevik revolution of :,:; (albeit in a diametrically
opposed direction). The Russian experience offers compelling counterpoints to historical
patterns of democratization, discontinuity, and regime stabilization in Western Europe.
Another change in this edition is a fundamental revision of the chapters on the
European Union to correspond with the analytical framework applied throughout the
country sections in the remainder of the volume. An especially daunting challenge was
exploring the question Who Has the Power? with respect to multiple national, institu-
tional, and organizational actors, all of whom play important roles in EU policymaking
and implementation. Increasingly, the European Union has come to dominate domestic
policy agendas among its member states, particularly with respect to Economic and
Monetary Union (and, with it, the implementation of a common currency, the euro).
This prospect has galvanized the domestic political debate in Britain, Denmark and
Sweden, all of which have yet to choose to adopt the euro. Moreover, the prospective ex-
pansion of the EU to include a number of Central European nations will inevitably trans-
form the fabric of European politics in the years ahead.
In addition, each of the country sections has been substantially updated to reect recent
election results and political developments, including the AprilJune :cc: presidential and
parliamentary elections in France. Chatham House has established a web page to accompany
this volume that will contain future election outcomes, analyses of current political and eco-
nomic trends in Europe and important activities of the European Union (including high-
level aspirations to craft a constitution), and links to websites dealing with European govern-
ment and politics (see www.sevenbridgespress.com/chathamhouse/hancock).
In a rapidly changing political and economic world, Europe continues to command
the attention of students, informed citizens, scholars, and other professionals. Demo-
cratic principles and the postwar economic performance of the West European nations
helped inspire the dramatic events during the late :,cs and early :,,cs that led to the
transformation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union into edgling market economies and democratic political systems. Domestically,
national politics have assumed new and, in some cases, unsettling dimensions in response
to globalization, increased electoral volatility, the increased salience of the European
Union, and an ever-evolving political agenda.
An emergent New Europe encompasses both continuity and change. Democratic
constitutional principles and institutional arrangementswell established on the basis of
historical experience in the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden and the product of
postwar consensus in Germany and Italy and the demise of Communism in Russiare-
main rmly entrenched throughout Europe. Traditional political parties and organized
interest groups continue to occupy center stage, with the exception of Italy and Russia. At
the same time, resurgent social-political movementsranging from Communists in
Russia to right-wing nationalist parties in France, Italy, and Germanycontinue to chal-
lenge the established political order. While familiar conicts over economic management
and social welfare continue to animate national electoral campaigns, new issues have
arisen concerning immigrants, crime, globalization, and international terrorism. An im-
portant consequence is increased electoral volatility.
Contributors to this volume address these disparate themes of contemporary
European politics with an empirical focus on the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
Italy, Sweden, Russia, and the European Union. The volume is organized to facilitate
both single-country analysis and cross-national comparison. Figures dispersed through-
out the text display cross-national comparisons at recent points in time. Their purpose is
to present visually useful snapshots of salient demographic, political, economic, and so-
cial characteristics of each country. In addition, detailed statistical tables on postwar elec-
tions, executive leadership, and socioeconomic performance are included in the appendix
to make possible systematic comparisons among the various countries over time. For the
benet of students of comparative politics, the data in these tables also serve as a basis for
generating hypotheses and conducting preliminary research.
This volume is dedicated to students of comparative politics who seek enhanced
knowledge of the new Europe at a time when all European democracies confront the
challenge of adaptive economic, social, and political response to domestic, regional, and
global changes. We would like to thank our students, colleagues, and others who have
contributed to our own understanding of European affairs, among them Norman Furniss
and Timothy Tilton, both at Indiana University, and the late Arnold Heidenheimer. For
their research and editorial assistance, we are grateful to Larry Romans and Gretchen
Dodge at the Heard Library at Vanderbilt University, John Logue at Kent State
University, Victor Supyan at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada
of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, Erwin Hargrove at Vanderbilt University,
and Francesco Giordano at the University of Chicago. Special thanks for their timely in-
sights into European politics in general and British politics in particular are due Andrew
Hughes Hallett, formerly of Glasgow University and now a colleague at Vanderbilt
University, and David Coates at Wake Forest University.
M. Donald Hancock
Vanderbilt University
xii politics in europe
Introduction
THE STUDY OF comparative politics serves multiple purposes. They include acquiring
greater knowledge about similarities and differences among nations and their subsystems,
testing various scientic propositions, and deriving political lessons from the experience of
others that might usefully be applied or studiously avoided in ones own place and time.
:
Throughout the evolution of comparative politics as a core eld within political science,
this endeavor has involved varying degrees of empirical, normative, and theoretical analy-
sis.
2
Traditionally, Western scholars concentrated on constitutional norms and institutional
arrangements in the established democratic systems of the United Kingdom, the United
States, France, and, for a time, Weimar Germany. After World War II, many of the most
creative comparative scholars turned their attention to problems of modernization, leader-
ship, and revolution in the Third World countries of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East,
and Africa in an effort to devise more rigorous concepts and methods of comparative polit-
ical analysis.
3
More recently, scholars have reincorporated European politics into the main-
stream of comparative politics as they have sought to extend and rene basic concepts of
the eld.
4
This volume of country surveys is testimony to the renewed relevance of the
European political experience for comparative purposes. A key example is the attainment
of democracy under vastly different historical and political conditions in Western Europe
and Russia. Their similarities and contrasts offer important insights into processes of de-
mocratization elsewhere in the contemporary world of nations.
A compelling justication for the comparative analysis of European politics lies in
the historical contributions of nations such as Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and
Sweden to basic philosophical, cultural, and institutional tenets of Western civilization.
Immigrants from throughout Europe (including Russia and Central Europe) have helped
create new nations in the United States, Canada, Israel, and elsewhere. Many of their de-
scendants understandably look to Europe to comprehend the signicance of their na-
tional origins and the European roots of their own countries constitutional and political
development.
From a historical perspective, Europe also offers important insights for the compara-
tive study of different paths to modernity. The striking contrast between the success of
Britain and Scandinavia in sustaining an evolutionary pattern of political change and the
far more tumultuous experiences of France, Germany, Italy, and Russia during the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries provides crucial knowledge about underlying factors of
system stability and political effectiveness.
5
In the contemporary world of nations,
Europes postwar political and economic achievementsincluding its democratic conver-
gence and unprecedented material growthconstitute a series of most similar cases
broadly comparable to other advanced industrial democracies in North America, Japan,
and parts of the British Commonwealth. As such, Europe provides a rich laboratory for
the comparative study of political parties and organized interest groups, political culture,
institutional arrangements, economic management, social services, and public policy.
6
A Common Analytical Framework
Consistent with these multiple purposes of comparative political inquiry, this volume ad-
dresses fundamental features of modern European politics on the basis of a common ana-
lytical framework designed to facilitate both single-country and crossnational analysis.
Various country specialists address six important European nations according to the fol-
lowing criteria: (:) the context of national politics (including basic geographic and demo-
graphic factors, history, and political culture); (:) formal decision-making and implemen-
tation structures; (,) political parties, organized interest groups, and electoral behavior;
() the uses of political power; and (,) the future of politics under changing domestic and
international conditions.
7
Accompanying the country sections are photographs as well as
tables, graphs, and statistical appendixes containing empirical comparative data.
The choice of country studies is based on a variety of considerations. One is the tra-
ditional inclusion of the United Kingdom and France in most comparative courses on
European politics. Both countries have provided major contributions to the emergence of
Western democracy and continue to play important political and economic roles in re-
gional and world affairs. A second consideration is the signicance of Germany as a com-
pelling instance of fundamental system transformation over time. Theoretically and em-
pirically, the German case offers crucial insights into processes of socioeconomic and
political development under successive historical conditions of regime discontinuity, post-
war stability in the West, the failure of communism in the former German Democratic
Republic, and unication in :,,:. Third, the inclusion of Italy and Sweden provides im-
portant systemic contrasts to more familiar case studies with respect to their distinctive
patterns of postwar political dominanceChristian Democratic (until the early :,,cs)
versus Social Democratic, respectivelyand the central role of civil servants and organized
interest groups in the policymaking process. Finally, Russias simultaneous transitions to
democracy and a market economy pose fundamental questions concerning system trans-
formation and performance. Russian experiments, rst with communism and now with a
distinctive form of democracy, are of a sweeping scale daunting to comparative analysis.
The seventh section of this volume deals with the European Union (EU). Since the
early :,,cs, institutionalized economic cooperation among principal European nations
has resulted in the emergence of the EU as an increasingly important regional political
system. The completion of an integrated regional market by the early :,,cs and the more
recent attainment of economic and monetary union among a majority of the EU member
states underscore the Unions importance as a key economic and political actor in its own
right.
8
xiv politics in europe
Contrasting System Types
While each of the contributors concentrates on single countries, their analysis illuminates
contrasting features of three basic types of democratic polities that transcend national
boundaries: (:) pluralist (the United Kingdom, Italy, and the EU), (:) tatist (France and
Russia), and (,) democratic corporatist (Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Germany).
9
The rst of these typespluralist democraciesis characterized by dispersed politi-
cal authority and a multiplicity of autonomous organized interest groups representing
employers, farmers, labor, and other special interests vis--vis the state. In such systems
competitive economic and electoral relations dominate intergroup relations, with most
groups oriented more toward short-term material and social gains than intermediate or
long-term goals of system transformation. A dominant feature of pluralist systems is
group reliance on coalition formation, often with respect to specic policy issues, as a
means to maximize a groups economic and/or political inuence. The structure and dy-
namics of pluralist democracies vary according to the distribution of political power
among key policy actors. Majoritarian pluralism characterizes political systems dominated
by a majority party in parliament, as has been the case during alternative peroids of
Conservative and Labour governance in the United Kingdom. Fragmented pluralism, in
contrast, characterizes systems in which power is dispersed among a multiplicity of parties
(none of which is able to command a sustained legislative majority in its own right).
Policymaking in majoritarian pluralist systems can yield decisive policy outcomes (wit-
ness Thatcherism and recent constitutional reforms under New Labour in Britain),
whereas political outcomes tend to be incremental and oftentimes tentative in frag-
mented pluralist regimes, with successful outcomes dependent on the strength (or
fragility) of winning coalitions. Fragmented pluralism characterizes both Italy and the
European Union as well as non-Europeans polities such as the United States and Canada.
In contrast, tatist systems are political regimes that embody more centralized author-
ity structures and policymaking processes. A chief feature of tatist regimes is the concen-
tration of bureaucratic power at the apex of the political system, as is the case in Italy de-
spite its postwar record of successive changes of government. If accompanied by a parallel
concentration of executive power (as in the Fifth Republic of France and in Russia under
President Putin), the likely result is a high degree of institutional efcacy in the political
process. Thus, forceful policies can be more efciently decided and implemented in
tatist regimes than is typically the case in pluralist systems, but for that very reason they
can also be more readily reversed by an incumbent or a successor government (as proved
the case with successive phases of nationalization and privatization during the :,cs and
:,,cs in France). Such policies may also be subject to less legislative control than in plu-
ralist systems.
Democratic corporatist systems, nally, encompass institutionalized arrangements
whereby government ofcials, business groups, and organized labor jointly participate in
making (and in some cases implementing) economic and social policies. Such decisions
are subsequently enacted through executive decrees, legislative endorsement, or both.
10
Democratic corporatism is more highly developed in Sweden, the other Scandinavian
countries, and Austria than in other European countries; yet, primarily in the sphere of
introduction xv
national economic policymaking, corporatist linkages exist in the Federal Republic of
Germany as well.
11
By facilitating institutionalized participation by organized interest
groups in the political process, democratic corporatism encourages a partnership ap-
proach to problem solving in specied policy areas (such as economic reconstruction in
eastern Germany). Critics, however, fault corporatist arrangements because they tend to
bypass legislative channels of representation, impede leadership accountability, and dis-
courage democratic participation on the part of rank-and-le members of trade unions
and other mass organizations.
12
These different system types are relevant for explaining contrasting patterns of socio-
economic and political performance on the part of modern democracies. Without ques-
tion, many aspects of system performanceincluding those measured by basic indicators
such as annual rates of economic growth, ination, and unemployment levelsare inu-
enced by external economic and other factors beyond the direct control of national policy
actors. Nonetheless, national policymaking institutions and processes mediate the domes-
tic economic and social consequences of exogenous trends and events. As Hugh Heclo
has observed in commenting on different national responses to the international crisis of
stagation during the :,;cs and early :,cs, Each nation has embarked on a search for
innovations in economic policymaking, although each has done so in its own way. This
recent agitation for economic policy innovation in the midst of constraints provides a
good example of what [has been] termed structured variation in public policy.
13
As con-
temporary European politics demonstrates, structured variations among nations with re-
spect to policy choices and their effects on socioeconomic performance are products of
contrasting patterns of institutionalized power, different ideological preferences on the
part of governing political parties, and varying degrees of access by the principal orga-
nized interest groups to national policy councils.
The central questions of comparative political analysis remain, in short, who governs,
on behalf of what values, with the collaboration of what groups, and with what socio-
economic and political consequences. The experience of the six European democracies in-
cluded in this volume and the European Union reveals illuminating answers.
Notes
:. This denition of comparative politics is based on Robert Dahl, Modern Political Analysis, th ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, :,); and Lawrence C. Mayer, Comparative Political Inquiry: A
Methodological Survey (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, :,;:).
:. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis.
,. For a summary overview of innovation in postwar approaches to comparative political analysis, see Ronald
H. Chilcote, Theories of Comparative Politics: The Search for a Paradigm (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
:,:). A critical assessment of the failure of the behavioral revolution to live up to many of its promises can
be found in Lawrence C. Mayer, Redening Comparative Politics: Promise Versus Performance (Newbury
Park, Calif.: Sage Library of Social Research, :,,). Standard sources on the methodology of comparative
research include Mattei Dogan and Dominique Pelassy, How to Compare Nations: Strategies in Comparative
Politics, :d ed. (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, :,,c); Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry (New York: Wiley-Interscience, :,;c); and Robert Holt and John Turner, eds.,
The Methodology of Comparative Research (New York: Free Press, :,;c).
. Note, in particular, the increased relevance of European politics for the comparative study of public policy.
See Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Hugh Heclo, and Carolyn Teich Adams, Comparative Public Policy: The
xvi politics in europe
Politics of Social Choice in America, Europe, and Japan, 3d ed. (New York: St. Martins, :,,c). See also
Francis Castles, Comparative Public Policy: Patterns of Post-War Transformation (Northampton, Mass.:
Edward Elgar, :,,).
,. See Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, :,oo); and
Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, :,;,).
o. Important examples of comparative studies of groups, institutions, democracy, and culture incorporating
European data include Francis G. Castles, The Impact of Parties: Politics and Policies in Democratic
Capitalist Society (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, :,:); Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A
Framework for Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, :,;o); Russell Dalton et al., Electoral
Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies: Alignment or Realignment? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, :,); Peter H. Merkl, ed., West European Party Systems (New York: Free Press, :,;,); Kay
Lawson, Comparative Study of Political Parties (New York: St. Martins, :,;o); Suzanne Berger, ed.,
Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics (New York:
Cambridge University Press, :,:); Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political
Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown, :,o,, :,) and Almond and Verba, eds.,
The Civic Culture Revisited (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, :,c); Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution:
Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
:,;;) and Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,,c;
Robert Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy vs. Control (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, :,:); Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, :,;;); Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in
Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,,,); Theda Skocpol, States and Social
Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (New York: Cambridge University Press,
:,;,); Peter Hall, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (New
York: Oxford University Press, :,o); Douglas A. Hibbs Jr., The Political Economy of Industrial Democracies
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, :,;); Gsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare
Capitalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,,c); and Adam Przeworski et al., Democracy
and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, :),o:))o (Cambridge, U.K., and New
York: Cambridge University Press, :ccc).
;. The same conceptual framework was utilized in the original edition of this book.
. The original signatories of treaties establishing the European Coal and Steel Community in :,,: and
the European Economic Community in :,,; included France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the
Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The United Kingdom, Denmark, and Ireland joined the Community in
:,;: and were followed by Greece in :,: and Spain and Portugal in :,;. Austria, Finland, and Sweden
became members in January :,,,.
,. The distinction between tatist, pluralist, and democratic corporatist regimes is utilized to help explain
contrasting patterns of economic policy management in M. Donald Hancock, John Logue, and Bernt
Schiller, eds., Managing Modern Capitalism: Industrial Renewal and Workplace Democracy in the United
States and Western Europe (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood-Praeger, :,,:).
:c. Excellent compilations of reprinted articles and original research on varieties of democratic corporatism
can be found in Philippe Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch, eds., Trends toward Corporatist
Intermediation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, :,;,); and in Gerhard Lehmbruch and Philippe Schmitter,
eds., Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, :,:). Also see Reginald J. Harrison,
Pluralism and Corporatism: The Political Evolution of Modern Democracies (Boston: Allen and Unwin, :,c).
::. Democratic corporatism was most fully institutionalized in former West Germany in the form of con-
certed action, which involved high-level consultations focusing on economic policy among government
ofcials and representatives of employer associations and trade unions from :,o; to :,;;. Since then, for-
mal trilateral policy sessions have been replaced by much more informal policy discussions among key eco-
nomic actors that are periodically convened at the behest of the federal chancellor. See M. Donald
Hancock, West Germany: The Politics of Democratic Corporatism (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, :,,).
::. From a critical ideological perspective, Leo Panitch argues that corporatism in liberal democracies pro-
motes the co-optation of workers into the capitalist economic order and thus impedes efforts to achieve
greater industrial and economic democracy. Panitch, The Development of Corporatism in Liberal
Democracies, Comparative Political Studies :c (:,;;): o:,c.
:,. Heidenheimer, Heclo, and Adams, Comparative Public Policy, :,o.
introduction xvii
Chapter 1
The Context of British Politics
BRITISH SOCIETY AND British politics often have been discussed in terms of tradition,
homogeneity, and integration. Authors have written of the absence of signicant social
cleavages other than social class and of the presence of a uniform set of political and social
values. Consensus also has been argued to exist on the nature of the political system and
about the general policies of government. The impression commonly given is one of ho-
mogeneity, stability, and indeed of a rather boring locale in which to study politics. The
impression of stability was reinforced by the ability of one political leaderMargaret
Thatcherto remain in power for over a decade and for her party to win the subsequent
general election. Even after the election of the Labour government in :,,;, enough of the
Conservative policies remain in effect to make traditional supporters of Labour argue that
there has been too much continuity in British politics.
In reality, the social and political systems of the United Kingdom are substantially
more diverse than they are frequently portrayed, and many of the factors that divide other
democracies politically also divide the citizens of the United Kingdom. There are differ-
ences in religion, language, regions, and perceptions of issues that both mitigate and re-
inforce the traditionally dominant class divisions in British politics. Those divisive factors
have become even more important as immigration, Europeanization, and continuing
economic change have tended to increase the salience of existing social divisions and to
create new divisions.
Not only is there diversity, but also the setting of British politics has a number of
seemingly contradictory elements that make the management of government much more
of a balancing act than might be thought at rst glance. In fact, the genius of British pol-
itics in maintaining a stable political system over several centuries is not the good fortune
of operating in a homogeneous society but the development of a set of institutions, val-
ues, and customs that permit the pragmatic acceptance of diversity and an effective ac-
commodation to change. Historically these changes have been rather gradual, but the
pace of transformation accelerated during the last part of the twentieth century. This
chapter explores several contradictory elements within the environment of British politics
and their relationship to the functioning of the political system.
A United Kingdom of Four Countries
Perhaps the fundamental point of diversity in British politics is that the United Kingdom
is a multinational state composed of four parts. To begin, therefore, let us introduce some
nomenclature with real political importance. The proper name of the nation usually re-
ferred to as Great Britain is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Great Britain, in turn, is composed of England, Wales, and Scotland. All are constituent
parts of the United Kingdom, albeit rather unequal partners in terms of population and
economic productivity. Over , percent of the total population of the United Kingdom
lives in England, , percent in Scotland, , percent in Wales, and the remainder in
Northern Ireland. Over ,c percent of total wages and salaries in the economy are paid in
England, with only : percent going to residents of Northern Ireland.
The three non-English components of the United Kingdom, sometimes called the
Celtic Fringe, joined with England at a number of times and in a number of ways.
1
Wales
was added rst, by conquest, in the early fourteenth century. The English and Scottish
crowns were united in :oc, when the Scottish king James I became the rst Stuart king of
England, and the parliaments of the two countries were joined by the Act of Union in
:;c;. This unication did not, however, terminate the conict between the northern and
southern portions of Great Britain. Scottish uprisings in :;:, and again in :;, resulted in
English (or British) occupation of Scotland and the outlawing of a number of Scottish
customs, such as the kilt and bagpipes. These restrictions were removed, at least infor-
mally, by :::, and manifestations of Scottish nationalism have been substantially less vi-
olent since that time.
The desire of some Scots (and substantially fewer Welsh) for greater autonomy or
even independence has not, however, disappeared entirely. A nationalist party began to
run some candidates in Scottish elections during the :cs and gained one seat in a by-
election in :,,. Since :,o; the Scottish National Party (SNP) has been able to gain rep-
resentation in Parliament at every election. During the :,;cs, pressure for independence
was sufciently strong to force a referendum on the issue of nationalism. That referen-
dum failed, but the issues of self-determination and autonomy did not go away.
2
Another
referendum in :,,; approved the devolution of a number of powers to a Scottish
Parliament, which formally took ofce in July :,,,. The interest in Scottish devolution
has to some extent been connected with the European Union and its interest in regional-
ism and the rights of subnational territories in all European countries. Wales received its
own assembly at the same time, although that body has substantially fewer powers than
the Scottish Parliament.
The involvement of the British government in Ireland has had a long and tortuous
history. English armies began invading Ireland in ::;c; the island was nally conquered in
:oc, and was formally joined with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom in :cc.
The unity created was more legal than actual, and Irish Home Rule was a persistent polit-
ical issue during the second half of the nineteenth century. Political arguments were ac-
companied by increasing violence and then by armed uprisings against British rule. The
most famous of these was the Easter Uprising in :,:o, which constituted the beginning of
years of serious violence. Following a long period of negotiation, the twenty-six southern
counties of Ireland were granted independence in :,:: as the Irish Free State (later the
Republic of Ireland), while six northern counties in Ulster remained a part of the United
Kingdom.
2 the united kingdom
This partition did not solve the Irish Question. Continuing tensions and outbreaks
of violence between Catholics seeking to join with the rest of Ireland and Protestants de-
siring to maintain their unity with the United Kingdom has been a persistent problem for
any British government. The troubles, beginning in :,o,, were a period of continuing
violence between the two communities. The London government tried a number of ways
of creating a political settlement, all in the general context of Ulster remaining within the
United Kingdom. For a short time, substantial rule was devolved to Belfast, and arrange-
ments for power sharing between the Catholic groups and the British government were
attempted. None of the plans were successful, and they were followed by a return to di-
rect rule and the large-scale use of British troops in Ulster.
After years of mutual distrust, the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic entered
into negotiations over the future of Ulster. The Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed in :,,
by the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic and was meant to foster a spirit of com-
promise, but by itself could not put an end to the troubles in Northern Ireland. Most of
the violence was not ofcially sanctioned, and hence formal agreements among govern-
ments were unlikely to produce real results. What put the violence on hold, if not ending
it permanently as was hoped, was the voluntary suspension of violence, rst by the Irish
Republican Army (IRA) and then by the Protestant paramilitary organizations, during
:,,.
These agreements established the conditions for initial negotiations for an enduring
settlement. A statement of a possible workable settlement was negotiated between Prime
Minister John Major and the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland, John Bruton, in
February :,,,.
3
This agreement included a number of points, the most important being
that there be some democratic means of negotiating a more enduring solution to the ques-
tion involving all parties to the continuing dispute. Further, some form of executive for all
of Ireland was envisaged, with its powers including dealing with the European Union.
More immediately, the agreement meant that, after several decades of doing so, British sol-
diers stopped patrolling the streets of Belfast. If nothing else, this removed a symbol of the
troubles and a continuing irritant for the Roman Catholic population.
Moving beyond the initial cease-re agreement to more meaningful negotiations
proved to be more difcult. Progress toward talks was repeatedly stalled by the British
governments insistence that the IRA must decommission all its weapons before talks be-
gan, as a necessary demonstration of its commitment to peace and a political settlement;
to the IRA, decommissioning would be the equivalent of surrender because there was no
reciprocal demand for decommissioning weapons held by the Protestant paramilitary
forces.
4
A highly signicant step toward resolving the question of Northern Ireland was the
Good Friday agreement of :,,. It was signed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Irish
prime minister, and the leaders of Sinn Fein (the political arm of the IRA) and the Ulster
Unionists. It called for electing a new assembly for Northern Ireland, establishing an ex-
ecutive formed from both communities, and forming a joint consultative body between
Dublin and Belfast to address issues that affect all of the island of Ireland. The most fun-
damental point was that a much greater measure of self-government was to be returned to
the context of british politics 3
the province. A referendum on the agreement passed overwhelmingly in Northern
Ireland and even more so in a simultaneous vote in the Republic of Ireland.
Peace seemed to be returning to Northern Ireland. Elections were held for the
Assembly in spring :,,,, and the executive assumed ofce, with David Trimble (an Ulster
Unionist) as First Minister, in July. The executive also included members of several im-
portant parties in the Province, including Sinn Fein. Initial optimism over the govern-
ment proved short-lived, however, when the peace process stalled over the question of de-
commissioning weapons held by the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries. In response
London restored direct rule over the province. The political impasse was tentatively re-
solved when Sinn Fein, in an unprecedented move, called on the IRA in October :cc: to
begin decommissioning its weapons. Trimble, who had resigned in July, was reelected
First Minister in November.
Preserving the unity of the United Kingdom does not prevent the expression of a
number of differences among its constituent parts, and to some degree those differences
are enshrined in law and the political structure. Before devolution, each of the three
non-English components of the United Kingdom had a cabinet department responsible
for its affairs. Most laws have been passed in Parliament with separate acts for England
and Wales, for Scotland, and for Northern Ireland. This differentiation is in part because
both the Scottish and Ulster legal systems are substantially different from the English
(and Welsh), and legislation must be tailored to conform to those differences. In addi-
tion, Scottish and Welsh legislation has been treated somewhat differently in Parliament,
with committees composed of the MPs of each of the two regions reviewing the legisla-
tion at the same time as it is considered by other parliamentary committees.
5
The devolu-
tion of many issues to the new legislative bodies in Wales and Scotland, and perhaps
Northern Ireland, means that this system will have to be amended, although the details
will take months or years to implement.
6
Prior to the imposition of direct rule in Northern Ireland in :,;:, Stormont, which
was the parliament of Northern Ireland, had a major role in policymaking for that
province, and there is still a separate Northern Ireland civil service, which is responsible
for implementing the policies of the government in London. After direct rule, the role of
Stormont was virtually eliminated, but one part of the proposed settlement with the
Roman Catholic groups will be a restoration of some powers to a legislature in Northern
Ireland.
Law, language, and religion also differ in the four parts of the United Kingdom.
Scottish law is derived in part from French and Roman law, as well as from common law,
and various legal procedures and ofces differ between English and Scottish practice.
Language is also different in various parts of the United Kingdom. Welsh is accepted as a
second language for Wales, although only about :c percent of the population can speak it
and only about : percent speak it as their only language. Some people in Scotland and
Northern Ireland speak forms of Gaelic, but it has not been accorded formal legal status,
perhaps because only just over : percent of the population speak Gaelic. Finally, the estab-
lished religions of the parts of the nation are different: The Church of England (Anglican)
is established in England, the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) in Scotland; Wales and
Northern Ireland do not have established churches because of their religious diversity.
The diversity in Wales between Anglicans and various chapel religions (Methodism in
particular) has not had the dire consequences of the differences between Protestants and
Catholics in Northern Ireland, but it has been a source of political diversity and some-
what different patterns of voting in the principality than in England.
7
These traditional
religious divisions are becoming less important as church membership declines, but they
are being replaced by differences with non-Christian religions, especially Islam.
Finally, the four components of the United Kingdom differ economically. This is less
true of their economic structures than of their economic success. Differences in the pro-
portion of the working population employed in manual jobs, or even in the proportion
employed in agriculture, are relatively slight between England and the Celtic Fringe. The
major differences in employment patterns are the substantially higher rates of public em-
ployment in the Celtic Fringe, especially in Northern Ireland. Measures of economic suc-
cess do differ, with levels of unemployment on average higher in the non-English parts of
the United Kingdom (especially Northern Ireland) than in England.
In economic terms, however, the divide in the United Kingdom is as much between
the south of England and the rest of the country as it is between England and the
non-English nations. Unemployment rates in some parts of northern England are as high
or even higher than in Scotland or Wales, while London and the southeast have at times
in the recent past had shortages of workers (see table :.:). Average personal income in all
three parts of the Celtic Fringe is also lower than in England, and by a large margin in the
case of Northern Ireland. These economic differences have political importance, for they
create a sense of deprivation among non-English groups within the United Kingdom, as
well as among some residents of northern England. Not surprisingly, these areas vote
heavily for the Labour Party.
The differences among the four nations within the United Kingdom are manifested
politically, although fortunately infrequently with the violence of Ulster politics. Scottish
nationalism did not die entirely following the Act of Union, but it has experienced a
number of cyclical declines. Votes for the Scottish National Party (SNP) had an upsurge
Table 1.1 Unemployment Levels by Region, 1996 (in percentages)
England
North 10.1 Northern Ireland 11.0
Northwest 8.5 Scotland 8.1
Yorkshire and Humberside 8.4 Wales 7.9
West Midlands 8.0
Southeast 7.5
East Midlands 7.4
South West 6.9
East Anglia 6.1
Source: Department of Employment.
from :,,, to :,;. The SNP at least doubled its vote in every election from :,,, to :,;
and received more than o percent of the Scottish vote in the October :,; election but
only : percent in :,;.
Welsh nationalism has been less successful as a political force than has Scottish na-
tionalism, but Plaid Cymru, the Welsh National party, won over :, percent of the Welsh
vote in the October :,; election. Nationalist voting declined after :,;, but remained a
signicant factor in these Celtic portions of the United Kingdom. In the :,,; election
Plaid Cymru won :c percent of the vote and continued to push for the referendum that
eventually approved setting up the Welsh Assembly. The party received :., percent in
:cc:.
Party politics in Northern Ireland, which has been based on cleavages of the seven-
teenth century as much as the twentieth century, bears little resemblance to politics in the
rest of the United Kingdom. There are two parties that represent the Roman Catholic
population, with one allied with the IRA. There are also two parties for the Protestant
majority, varying primarily in the intensity with which they express allegiance to the
United Kingdom and distrust of Roman Catholics, especially the IRA. Finally, there is
one party that attempts to be a catchall for the two confessional groups. There are some
elements of economics and class in the equationone of the Roman Catholic parties also
has a moderate socialist agendabut the fundamental basis of politics has been religion.
The rst thing, therefore, that we must understand about the United Kingdom is
that it is a single state composed of separate parts. Unlike the states of the United States,
these elements of the union possess no reserved powers, but only the powers delegated to
them by the central government. The political system remains unitary while allowing an
increasing degree of latitude for the Scottish and Welsh governments, and the potential
for a greater role for an executive in Northern Ireland. Only rarely has the unity of the
United Kingdom been questioned by its constituent parts, at least since the Scottish up-
rising of :;,. One challenge of that sort was at least partially successful, however, and
most of Ireland did receive its independence. The :,,; referendums on devolution of ad-
ditional powers to governments in Scotland and Wales appear to make the unity of the
United Kingdom even less problematic, given that these two regions have achieved an im-
portant political goal. These elections were but two more events in a long history of re-
gional and national politics within the United Kingdom. The contemporary political
Zeitgeist of participation and self-determination makes devolution and regional auton-
omy all the more important. The institutional structure of the United Kingdom contin-
ues to evolve, and governance issues that relate the different components will continue on
the political agenda.
Stability and Change
A second feature of the context of contemporary politics in the United Kingdom is the
continuity of social and political institutions, combined with a signicant degree of
change. If a subject of Queen Victoria were to return during the reign of Elizabeth II, he
or she would nd very little changed, at least on the surface. Most of the same political
institutions would be operational, including the monarchy, which has vanished in a num-
ber of other European nations. Laws would still be made by the House of Commons and
the House of Lords, and there would still be a prime minister linking Crown and
Parliament. Most of the procedures and the vestigial ofces involved in making law are
also almost entirely unchanged, including the anachronistic outt of the Speaker of the
House of Commons (although recently worn by a woman). There would be a new politi-
cal party commanding one of the more important positions in partisan politicsthe
Labour Partybut party politics would still be primarily two-party politics. Finally, the
majority of the subjects of the Queen would be loyal and supportive of the basic struc-
tures and policies of the government.
At the same time that there has been this great continuity, there has also been great
change. The political system has been greatly democratized since Victorian times. When
Queen Victoria came to the throne, only about , percent of the adult population was eli-
gible to vote; that despite the Great Reform Act of :,:. In the reign of Elizabeth II, al-
most all adults are entitled to vote. Before :,::, the House of Lords was almost an equal
partner in making legislation; since that date, the House of Lords has exercised only mi-
nor inuence over policy. A Victorian prime minister was denitely primus inter pares
(rst among equals), while in the twentieth century collegial patterns of decision making
changed to create something approaching a presidential role for the prime minister. The
monarchy, which in Victorias day still had substantial inuence over policy, has today
been constitutionally reduced to virtual impotence. Finally, but not least important, the
United Kingdom has changed from being perhaps the strongest nation on earth and the
imperial master of a far-ung empire to a second-class powereconomically and militar-
ilyin a nuclear age.
Social and economic trends have paralleled political trends. Just as the monarchy has
been preserved, so too has a relatively stratied social system that includes hereditary (as
well as life) peerages. In contrast, working-class organizations such as trade unions have
tended to lessen the domination of the upper classes and to generate some democratiza-
tion of the society as well as the political system. The economic structure of the United
Kingdom is still primarily based on free enterprise, but government ownership and regu-
lation have had a signicant, if declining, impact. The decade and a half of Tory domina-
tion of politics until :,,; weakened the unions and enhanced the power of business inter-
ests, and New Labour under Tony Blair has done little to strengthen the role of the
unions. One strategy of the Conservatives in their conscious attempts to reinforce capital-
ism was the spread of wealth in the society through selling off public housing and priva-
tizing public corporations. The Labour government rst elected in :,,; has been follow-
ing many of the same policies, albeit for different ideological reasons.
Compared with other industrialized nations, the British economy is no longer the
great engine of production it once was. The relative poverty of the United Kingdom,
when compared to many of its European and North American counterparts (see table A,
p. ,,), has severely restricted the policy options that are available to British government,
but those reduced opportunities for spending have not signicantly affected governmen-
tal stability. Despite high levels of unemployment among minority populations (espe-
cially the young in those groups) and high levels of income inequality, governmental sta-
bility appears almost certain to continue, with the major question being Northern
Ireland.
The evolutionary change so characteristic of British political life has been facilitated
by the absence of a written constitution. It would be more accurate to say the absence of a
single written document serving as a constitution, for a number of documents (Magna
Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Petition of Right, the :,:: Parliament Act, the Statute of
Westminster) have constitutional status. In addition, the Parliament of the day, express-
ing the political will of the British people, is competent to do virtually anything it deems
necessary, without the limitations of judicial review that exist in the United States. For ex-
ample, the Scotland Bill and the Wales Bill create a quasi-constitutional form of inter-
governmental relations in a way that would have been alien to a centralized regime. Such
constitutionally unlimited powers have the potential for great tyranny, inasmuch as only
other politicians, the threat of elections, and their own good sense restrain governments.
The Blair government has undertaken to make major changes in the constitution
through acts of Parliament. These include the devolved powers to Scotland and to Wales
and attempts to do the same for Northern Ireland. There also have been further reduc-
tions in the powers of the House of Lords, or at least the reduction of the number and
powers of hereditary peers sitting in that body. A limited freedom of information bill is
being introduced to end decades of secrecy in the government.
Although many aspects of the monarchy and Parliament have changed little, the ex-
ecutive branch of government underwent a revolution during the Thatcher government,
and the pace of change lessened little during the Major government. Among other
changes, large cabinet departments were broken up into a number of executive agencies
headed by chief executives who may be recruited from outside the civil service or other
government organizations. In addition, in major policy areas such as the National Health
Service market-based instruments were introduced to attempt to increase the efciency of
those services. A number of procedural changes were introduced, also designed to im-
prove efciency and economy in the public sector. The Blair government has embraced
many of these changes, with some retreat from the internal markets in health, but a con-
tinuing interest in corporatization and privatization. For example, in mid-:,,, the Blair
government converted the Post Ofce into a corporation, a move not dared even by
Margaret Thatcher.
Traditional and Modern:
The Political Culture of the United Kingdom
Much of the ability to accommodate to political change while maintaining older political
institutions in Britain may be explained by the political culture of the United Kingdom.
That is to say, it may be explained by the values and beliefs that political elites and ordi-
nary citizens have about politics and government. One way of describing this culture has
been traditionally modern.
8
A number of traditional views are combined with a num-
ber of modern elements to produce a blend that, if apparently internally contradictory,
appears to function well and produce effective government. This culture has not been sta-
tic but has permitted relatively gradual change based on pragmatic acceptance of chang-
ing national needs and changing social values. The traditional elements of the political
culture are best known, with deference, trust, and pragmatism still important for an un-
derstanding of how the British political system functions. As with any statement about
national cultures or patterns of values, these statements run the risk of being a stereotype.
Taken with a grain of salt, however, these observations about political culture can help us
understand not only how British politicians and citizens function in their political roles
but also how they tend to think about politics.
In the rst place, the British population is generally said to be deferential to author-
ity, both generally and particularly to the authority of the governing classes. Authority
implies the lack of opposition by citizens to the actions of their government, or perhaps
even the positive acceptance of those actions. The British government has, by all ac-
counts, a large reservoir of authority, for few citizens question the correctness of the cur-
rent political arrangements or the right of the government to make and enforce laws. The
diffuse support the populace gives the political system and its willingness to obey laws
and accept the authoritative decrees of government make the United Kingdom a much
easier nation to govern than most.
There have been only a few major challenges to the authority of elected governments
in the United Kingdom, aside from the peculiar politics of Ulster. One is the trade
unions attempt to bring down Conservative governments and their economic and indus-
trial policies. This succeeded against the Heath government in :,; but not against
Thatcher in the mid-:,cs. In both cases the miners were the central union involved. The
miners were able to bring about the changes they desired with the fall of Heath, but a
year-long strike against mine closings and certain conditions of work under Thatcher re-
sulted merely in a reassertion of the power of government to make law.
Another major challenge to the authority of governmentriots in the inner cities
occurred during the Thatcher government. Although the authority of government was
again asserted, such disturbances produced some policy responses to aid these severely de-
pressed areas. Finally, during the early :,,cs, the Thatcher governments attempt to
change the system of local government nance from property taxes (rates) to a per capita
community charge (poll tax) provoked political violence and signicant tax evasion. The
Major government quickly reversed the decision and implemented a complex mixture of
property and household taxes to pay for local government.
The tradition of deference to the upper social classes is a special case of trust in the
United Kingdom. Even in a modern, secularized political system, a number of citizens
still feel obliged to defer to their betters and accept the upper classes as the only appro-
priate rulers of the society. In political terms, this has provided the Conservative Party an
immense advantage and prevents it from being the permanent minority that it would be
if people voted strictly on class lines. This traditional attitude is being transformed, how-
ever, as many working-class Tories have adopted a more pragmatic concept of the upper
classes as being better educated and trained to govern, as opposed to merely accepting
their position from deference. In addition, a number of working-class voters have started
voting for the Tory Party because it has beneted them through lower taxes, opportunities
to buy cheap council houses, and other changes brought in by the Thatcher government.
For the working-class people who had jobs, the Conservative era from :,;, onward was
one of growing prosperity and increasing acceptance of the Conservative Party. Also, an
increasing number of Tory politicians (including John Major) have come from modest
backgrounds, have worked their way up socially and economically, and believe that others
should be able to do the same.
There are, however, a number of factors eroding that deferenceif indeed it was ever
as strong a force as it was characterized.
9
First, the very fact that the Conservative politi-
cians tend increasingly to come from modest means and often lack the educational ad-
vantages of their predecessors is making deference a less rational option for voters.
Further, the nouveau riche nature of many new Conservatives is tending to accentuate
the class and economic element of their own party and to drive away other people.
Finally, the general secularization of society and the increased media coverage of scandal
and suspect behavior among ofceholders is making the idea of the betters running the
country difcult for many citizens to accept any longer.
10
Associated with deference toward authority and political leaders is a high degree of
trust in the political system as a whole and in its leadership. Survey evidence for the United
Kingdom indicates an extremely high level of trust, higher than in almost any other politi-
cal system, in the fairness and general benevolence of government.
11
This high level of
trust, although declining in the face of more abrasive political campaigns and some equally
abrasive policy decisions, permits a form of political democracy to ourish in the United
Kingdom that would be out of place in almost any other industrial society. In this form of
democracy the central decision-making process is closed to scrutiny or participation by cit-
izens, or even by politicians who are not members of the cabinet. The United Kingdom is
a democracy, but it is a system of democracy by consent and not by delegation, of govern-
ment of the people, for the people, with, but not by, the people.
12
The number of cases of
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
,.o
:.:
,;.o
:.;
:;.c
.o
,o.
:.,
Population (in millions)
Source: OECD, Economic Surveys, :ooo; Department of Economic and Social Affairs, :)) Democratic Yearbook
(New York: United Nations, :ccc).
sleaze that have been exposed by the media, and by parliamentary processes, have also
tended to erode the trust that the public has had in its government.
British citizens expect to participate in politics at election times; most have been con-
tent to settle back, watch the government work, and pass judgment at the next election.
13
Breaks in ofcial secrecy have given citizens and academics a better view of the internal
workings of government, but much of this activity still remains hidden to outsiders. To
run a government on such a closed basis requires an extraordinary level of trust on the
part of citizens. The increasingly participative nature of British citizens, however, is mak-
ing them more resentful of their lack of genuine involvement in government, and there is
now a perceived need to reexamine the traditions of secrecy and limited democracy that
have characterized British government. The need for participation must, however, be
weighed against the capacity of governments to make decisions without having to expose
their internal decision making.
The obverse of the publics trust is the responsible behavior of elected leaders.
Government has generally conducted itself responsibly, even benevolently, and has not vi-
olated existing political norms. When those norms have been violated, as when elections
were suspended during the two world wars, it has been by broad agreement among the
political parties. Responsibility has also meant that parties and governments are expected
to deliver more of what they promised in election campaigns than would be expected of
American parties. Although there is continuing agitation for increased openness in govern-
ment, the steadfastness of the great majority of British politicians has helped prevent
these demands from gaining wide popular acceptance. The credulity of the population
was strained by a number of scandals during the Thatcher decade, but even those did not
have so great an impact as they might have had in other democratic nations.
14
The acceptance of a rather secretive government in exchange for responsible perfor-
manceassuming these two traits are connectedpoints up another feature of the polit-
ical culture of the United Kingdom: its pragmatism. Although ideologies are frequently
spouted during campaigns or in speeches delivered for mass consumption, British politics
is extremely practical. An empirical, pragmatic mode of political thought has so domi-
nated British political life that the preservation of traditional political institutions such as
the monarchy is justied not on grounds that they are right and just but on grounds only
that they have worked. Even in the more ideological Thatcher government, there were
enough turnarounds and changes in policy that illustrate the pragmatic mode of thinking
about government at work. Obviously such a political epistemology will be associated
with gradual change and a continuous adjustment to changing conditions, a factor that
has assisted the system in altering in all but its essential features to accommodate a mod-
ern world. It could be argued, in fact, that it was rigidity over several issues (the poll tax
and Europe) that led to Thatchers replacement by John Major in November :,,c.
The traditional values of deference, trust, and pragmatism exist in the context of a
modern, or even postindustrial, political system. Prime Minister Tony Blair has, for ex-
ample, attempted to create the image of Cool Britannia to counteract the traditional
and stodgy image he feels the country has abroad and as a spur to modernize the political
culture. The policies pursued, the presence of mass democracy and mass political parties,
a very large level of public revenues and expenditures, and some increasingly close link-
ages between state and society are evidence of the modernity of the political system. Yet
with all that, political leaders are allowed the latitude to discuss and decide political issues
without directly involving the public or press. This is a modern democracy, but a democ-
racy permitting an elite to govern and exercising latent democratic power only at agreed
upon times.
Class Politics, but . . .
The characteristic most commonly identied with politics and political conicts in the
United Kingdom is social class. The principal basis of social differentiation and political
mobilization is social class, meaning primarily levels and sources of income. The major
partisan alignments in politics are along class lines, with the Labour Party representing
the interests of the working classes and the Conservative Party (and to a lesser extent the
Liberals and Democrats) reecting the interests of the middle and upper classes. We have
already seen that the correspondence between class and party is less than perfect, but the
generalization remains a useful one.
Social class is both an objective and a subjective phenomenon. Objectively, the
United Kingdom has signicant inequalities of income, even after the effects of redistrib-
ution of taxes and governmental expenditures are taken into account. But despite the
prominence given to class politics in Britain, the inequalities are in general no greater
than in many other industrialized democracies. The bottom one-tenth of income earners
in the United Kingdom earns :.o percent of the total income in the nation, while in the
United States the same proportion of income earners receive only :. percent of total in-
come. The highest decile in the United Kingdom earns :;., percent of total income,
compared with ,c., percent in the United States and :,.; percent in Germany.
15
Britain is
more class based, however, in that a larger proportion of income earners in Britain is still
employed in industrial working-class occupations, meaning primarily manual labor,
whereas the largest single category of employment in most other European and North
American nations is now service jobs.
Access to other goods and services is also affected by class considerations, although
again perhaps not to the extent of other European nations. In particular, education is
class related, both in the small elite private sector and in the larger state sector that until
very recently tracked or streamed all children at an early age. Access to secondary and
postsecondary education retains a pronounced upper-class bias, although again less so
than in many European nations. With the expansion of university enrollments during the
late :,cs and :,,cs, that bias may be reduced further. And, in part because of the class
basis of education, social mobility is rather low in Britain, although it is still apparently
higher than in much of continental Europe.
Subjectively, people in the United Kingdom are generally more willing to identify
themselves as members of a particular social class than are Americans, who overwhelm-
ingly identify themselves as members of the economic middle class. Issues of all kinds
may become polarized on a class basis. Any policy that preserves or extends the privileges
and power of the more afuent is immediately held suspect by the Labour Party and the
trade unions, even when (as with selling council houses to their current tenants) the pol-
icy may have a number of benets for working-class families as well as the government.
Several caveats must be raised about a simple class model of British politics. The rst
is that recently there has been some change, and the embourgeoisement of the working
classes, so obvious in many European nations, is occurring to some degree in Britain also.
Manual labor is a declining share of the labor force, even though it remains a larger share
in the United Kingdom than in most other European countries. Also, the wages paid to
manual workers now often approach or even surpass wages and salaries paid to many
non-manual workers, and manual workers nd some of their economic interests served
by the Conservatives. Changes are occurring within the occupational and economic
structure, then, that may mitigate the impact of class on politics.
Numerous other issues also lessen the dominance of class. We have already men-
tioned the existence of ethnic and regional cleavages based on the national constituent el-
ements of the United Kingdom. Scottish and Welsh nationalism have tended to cut
broadly across class lines and to be concerned with national rather than class conscious-
ness. A new ethnicity entered British politics with the formation of the anti-immigrant
National Front party in :,o;. Such groups have declined in size in the past few years, but
they are still active in many places. In :,,; an estimated :. million people of New
Commonwealth and Pakistani origin lived in Great Britain, comprising almost , percent
of the population. These ethnic minorities now dominate many older industrial towns,
and in some inner-city schools English is taught as a second language. As these groups are
also multiplying more rapidly than white Britons, the specter of nonwhite domination
and the loss of jobs by whites are powerful weapons for some political groups. Pressure by
the minorities for representation has already begun to affect the local and national politi-
cal systems.
Religion also plays a role in British politics. The monarch is required to be a
Protestant, which in practice has meant a member of the Church of England. This
Anglican monarch (Presbyterian while in Scotland) rules a population that is only ap-
proximately three-quarters Anglican and that contains a signicant Roman Catholic mi-
nority. This characteristic has been most visible in Northern Ireland, but cities such as
Liverpool and Glasgow also have large and politically relevant Roman Catholic popula-
tions. Christianity in Britain is, with the exception of Northern Ireland, of decreasing rel-
evance as a small and declining proportion of the population actually practice their nom-
inal religion.
Perhaps even more important, the fastest-growing religions in Britain are not
Christian of any denomination but rather are Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist. As well as af-
fecting political behavior, these new religions raise questions about civil liberties and toler-
ance in a country without a formal bill of rights. The tensions created by the growing eth-
nic diversity are not as great as in France or Germany, but they are present nonetheless and
racial tensions are becoming of increasing concern to the police and civil libertarians alike.
Politics in Britain is not entirely about class, but it is very much about class. The im-
portance of other cleavages varies with the region of the nation (with the Celtic Fringe be-
ing the most inuenced by non-class cleavages) and by the time and circumstances of the
controversy. Nevertheless, if one attempts to understand British politics through only
class divisions, one can miss a good deal of the complexity of politics and the political sys-
tem. Finally, politics in Britain may also be about substantive issues. For example, the
Green movement has not been as powerful in Britain as in most of the rest of Europe, but
it is increasingly inuential. The Green Party received :., percent of the votes in the :,,
European election and has had some success at the local level, although it has not fared as
well since then. The nature of the electoral system prevents new parties or social move-
ments from gaining representation in Parliament rapidly, but there does appear to be a
real interest in issues that go beyond simple class politics.
Conservatively Liberal Policy Ideas
Another apparent paradox about British political life is the conservatively liberal nature
of many of the policies and policy ideas of the nation. For most of the postwar period
members of the Labour Party regularly spoke about the virtues of socialism, and they often
would sing the Red Flag at their party congresses. Members of the Conservative Party
regularly spoke about the restoration of laissez-faire economics and dismantling a good
deal of the welfare state and the return of a more signicant role for Britain in the world.
In practice, however, most of the policies adopted by most governments bore a re-
markable resemblance during the postwar period. The Labour Party accepted that most
of the British economy would be privately owned and at the same time pressed national-
ization of certain large industries and the extension of social services to the disadvantaged.
The Conservative Party while in ofce generally accepted the virtual entirety of the wel-
fare state, as well as government ownership of such industries as coal, steel, and the rail-
ways. The major deviation from this pattern in recent memory was Margaret Thatchers
Conservative government. This government began to sell off government stock in nation-
alized industries such as British Gas, British Telecom, British Steel, and British Airways,
as well as to encourage local authorities to sell off their council (public) housing to sitting
tenants. There was talk of ending the Post Ofce monopoly over the delivery of mail.
Also, a number of social programs were cut or more stringent requirements for recipients
were introduced.
These Thatcherite policies, largely continued by the Major government that fol-
lowed, represented a signicantly more ideological approach to policymaking than has
been true for most postwar governments in the United Kingdom. The public water sup-
ply system now has been sold off to the private sector, and a number of local government
services (garbage collection, for example) have been contracted out to the private sector
under a system of compulsory competitive tendering.
16
In something of a return to the consensual style, the Blair government has continued
many of the programs of the previous governments. New Labour is much less inter-
ested in even talking seriously about socialism than was old Labour. Instead, there is a
good deal of discussion of how to use the private sector to provide many public services
and the need to make government more like the private sector. The third way between
the market and the state is argued by this government and its supporters to be the way
forward to making Britain a better place in which to live and work.
17
Despite the intrusions of ideology, there does appear to be broad support for a
mixed-economy welfare state. All major political parties favor the major programs of the
welfare state such as pensions, other social insurance programs such as unemployment
protection, and the National Health Service. At the same time, the majority of the popu-
lation accepts private ownership and management as the major form of economic organi-
zation, despite the presence of a (declining) number of nationalized industries. What the
parties and politicians appear to disagree about is just what is the proper mix of the mixed
economy and just how much welfare there should be in the welfare state.
Isolated but European
One of the standard points made about Britains history is that its insular position relative
to the European continent has isolated Britain from a number of inuences and has al-
lowed it to develop its own particular political institutions and political culture. The
mental separation from Europe was to some degree greater than the geographical separa-
tion, so Britain may have looked European from North America; but Britons did not al-
ways feel European on their islands. The separation of Britain from the Continent and
from the world can be overstated; John Major said, We are only an island geographi-
cally. Britain has not been successfully invaded since :coo, but it has been deeply in-
volved in European politics and warfare. Also, Britain was by no means insular when
dealing with the rest of the world, managing a far-ung empire and even more far-ung
trade routes, from its little islands. And, unlike that other great island nation, Japan,
Britain was never really isolationist but was always involved in world politics and trade.
One of the major changes in the political environment of the United Kingdom has
been its entry into the European Union (EU) three decades ago. After two denials of ad-
mittance, largely at the instigation of France and Charles de Gaulle, Britain joined the
EU in :,;,, followed by the rst advisory referendum in its history. Joining the EU obvi-
ously has brought Britain closer to its continental counterparts, and it has had important
domestic consequences as well. Joining the EU introduced a whole new level of govern-
ment to the United Kingdom; some of the previous exclusive rights of Parliament to leg-
islate for British subjects now actually reside in Brussels.
The importance of Europe for Britain has been increasing, and pressures toward
closer integration of the European market place even more economic decision-making
power in Brussels. The move toward greater political integration arising from the
Maastricht Treaty of :,,:, and the adoption of the euro as a common currency by most
EU member states has placed even more pressures on British government to bring its
policies in line with those of the continental countries. The Blair government is pressing
toward greater involvement but faces stiff opposition from the Conservatives and from a
largely Euro-skeptic population. The British people, more than those of any other na-
tion in Europe, express reluctance about any greater economic and political unication
by the EU. Britain may be a part of Europe, but it maintains some distance (psychologi-
cal as well as geographic) from its partners on the Continent.
The issue of Britains involvement with Europe has become important in domestic
politics. Thatcher lost ofce in no small part due to her European policies, but she con-
tinued to oppose deeper involvement from the back benches. Prime Minister Major
sought to follow the more moderate path of a greater political role for European institu-
tions, although without supporting more complete political union. Further, divisions
within his party over Europe hastened the downfall of the government. The issue of
European unication remains divisive in Britain, as well as within the Conservative Party,
but Britain does not appear able to accept isolation from Europe any longer and may have
to accept an ever increasing involvement with the European Union.
Joining the EU has required something of a retreat from longstanding British com-
mitment to its Commonwealth countries, whose special economic privileges are gradually
being phased out as Britain expands trade with continental Europe. The political com-
mitment to the former colonies remains, and the queen and prime minister both make a
point of attending Commonwealth meetings and dealing with Commonwealth business.
Head of the Commonwealth is by now largely a symbolic function for the monarchy, al-
though it can have some real political impact, especially when dealing with questions
such as apartheid in South Africa and ethnic conicts in other former colonies.
Notes
:. See, for example, Richard Rose, The Territorial Dimension of Government: Understanding the United
Kingdom (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, :,:).
:. In some ways the referendum was designed to fail. It required that there be a majority of all eligible voters,
not just those actually voting, in order to pass.
,.
A Knock at Number Ten, The Economist, February :,,,.

. Peace Comes Dropping Slow, The Economist, : March :,,,.
,. For example, the Scottish Grand Committee deals with the second reading of all Scottish bills. It is com-
posed of all ;: Scottish MPs along with enough other members to preserve the partisan balance found in
the entire House. There is a similar structure for Welsh legislation.
o. Although there are agreements about which policy areas are devolved, the separation between United
Kingdom law and Scottish law will at times be difcult to make cleanly. For example, education has been
devolved, but research and science support have not.
;. Kenneth Wald, Crosses on Ballots (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,).
. Richard Rose, England: A Traditionally Modern Political Culture, in Political Culture and Political
Development, ed. Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,o,).
,. Denis Kavanagh, The Deferential English: A Comparative Critique, Government and Opposition o
(:,;:): ,,,oc.
:c. The numerous ministers who resigned during the Major government over sex or nancial scandals have
deated the notion of a natural ruling class rather thoroughly in the eyes of many, if not most, citizens.
::. This evidence goes back to Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, :,o,), ::,.
::. L.S. Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution (London: Oxford University Press, :,;), :c.
:,. See Geraint Parry, George Moser, and Neil Day, Political Participation and Democracy in Britain
(Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, :,,:).
:. These include disinformation about the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands War and sus-
pect dealings about the purchase of helicopters from the Westland Corporation. See Magnus Linklater and
David Leigh, Not With Honour (London: Sphere, :,o).
15. World Bank, World Development Report, :oo: (New York: Oxford University Press, :cc:), :,,,. Country
data span the years :,,:,; and hence are not wholly comparable.
:o. Kieron Walsh, Public Services and Market Mechanisms: Competition, Contracting and the New Public
Management (Basingstoke: Macmillan, :,,,).
:;. See Anthony Giddens, The Third Way and its Critics (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, :ccc).
Chapter 2
Where Is the Power?
THE GOVERNMENT OF the United Kingdom is parliamentary. Parliamentary govern-
ment links executive powers directly to legislative powers. The executive of a parliamen-
tary government such as that of the United Kingdom is elected not directly and indepen-
dently of the legislature but rather by the legislature. With modern political parties, voters
know that when they vote for a certain political party, if that party becomes the majority
in the legislature, they will have a certain person as the next executive (prime minister in
the case of the United Kingdom). Becoming prime minister still requires action by Parlia-
ment. The British people did not elect Tony Blair as prime minister in :,,; and :cc:; in-
stead, citizens voted for a majority of Labour Party members of Parliament, which en-
abled Blair as party chair to become prime minister.
The government of the United Kingdom is also a parliamentary government of a
particular type, described by Arend Lijphart as majoritarian.
1
The operative tradition is
that there must always be at least a majority of members of the lower house supporting
the government. Failing that, a government can nonetheless remain in power if a majority
of MPs do not disavow it in a vote of no condence. There is little or no acceptance of
minority governments, which have been successful in many other European countries.
Further, the effectively two-party nature of politics for most of the modern era has meant
that a British government generally has been composed of members of a single political
party. The popular support for the Liberal Democratic Party during the :,cs and :,,cs
threatened to produce a hung Parliament, and with that the need to create a true coali-
tion government. There have been tacit coalitions in the past (e.g., the Lib-Lab agree-
ment during the late :,;cs) but no true coalition since the wartime government of
:,c,.
2
If at any time a majority of the members of Parliament decide they no longer want
the current government to continue in ofce, they can remove that government by a vote
of no condence, or by defeating a major government legislative proposal. As there are
now a majority of Labour deputies in Parliament, removing the prime minister would re-
quire the defection of members of Blairs own party, an uncommon but not unheard-of
occurrence. For example, the Conservative government almost fell in spring :,,, when a
number of Tory MPs were prepared to defect over European Union policy. Also, as the
Conservatives did when they elected Major as party leader in November :,,c, a majority
party can change its leader and thereby change prime ministers.
Remaining the queens rst minister requires the continual support of Parliament;
if that support is lost, the prime minister and the other ministers must, by convention, ei-
ther reorganize themselves or go to the people for a new election.
3
And not only the
prime minister must go in a change of government. The doctrine of collective responsi-
bility makes the government as a whole responsible for its actions and in consequence re-
quires that the government as a whole resign.
4
Individual ministers may be forced out of
ofce for their own particular failureswhether policy, administrative, or personalbut
when a government falls, all ministers will leave, although if a new government of the
same party were formed, many would soon be back in ofce.
Another implication of collective responsibility is that decisions also will be collective
and must be supported by the entire cabinet. Ministers are expected to argue for their po-
sitions in cabinet, but once the collectivity has made its decision they must all support
that decision publicly. If a member of the government cannot support the decision, then
he or she must resign. Further, ministers are expected to respect the secrecy of the Cabinet
Room and not reveal who was on which side in the discussion (although a signicant
amount of leaking and brieng occurs in practice); the government is expected to present
a united front to Parliament and to the public.
5
Although still the norm, collective re-
sponsibility appears to be anachronistic because policymaking in British government has
become dominated increasingly by the prime minister.
One virtue of a parliamentary government, especially a majoritarian one, is that it al-
lows an executive, once elected to ofce, to govern. While presidential governments
even semipresidential regimes such as Francefrequently have conicts between the
legislative and executive branches over which body should control a policy issue, this
rarely occurs so overtly in a parliamentary regime.
6
A political executive that cannot com-
mand the acquiescence of the legislature will soon cease to be the executive. This unity of
the two institutional forces enables a strong prime minister such as Margaret Thatcher to
push through policies (e.g., the poll tax) that are unpopular even within her own party in
Parliament.
7
Even less powerful British prime ministers (e.g., John Major) have the capac-
ity to exert much stronger policy leadership than would be possible in more consensual
parliamentary regimes, much less in presidential regimes.
8
And when a prime minister
such as Tony Blair has a substantial majority of his or her party in Parliament (:: of o,,
seats in the House of Commons elected in :cc:), there is an almost unlimited capacity to
implement a desired program of legislation.
British Parliamentary Government
While a number of political systems practice parliamentary government, each practices it
differently. Several features of parliamentary government as practiced in the United King-
dom should be described before we discuss each of the major institutions. The rst is the
principle of government and opposition. With rare exceptions (such as policy affecting
Northern Ireland), bipartisanship has little place in this form of parliamentary government;
instead, it is the role of the Opposition to oppose the government. Even if the Opposition
should agree with the basic tenets of the governments policy, it still must present construc-
tive alternatives to that policy if it is to do its job appropriately. It is assumed that through
this adversarial process better policies will emerge, and that the voters will be given alterna-
tive conceptions of the common good from which to choose at the next election. The major
exception to this principle is in times of war or crisis, but even then the Opposition is ex-
pected to question the means by which goals are pursued.
9
British parliamentary government is also party government. Although there are cer-
tainly barriers to the effective implementation of party government, the idea that political
parties are extremely important for governing pervades the system. Parliament is now
conceived of, to some degree, as an institution in itself but also as an arena in which the
political parties clash. Parties are expected to be responsible, to stand for certain policies
and programs, and to attempt to carry out those programs if elected. There are always
necessary compromises once elected to ofce, but parties are expected to attempt to im-
plement their programs or to have a reasonable justication for failure to do so.
Finally, British parliamentary government is sovereign. There are, strictly speaking,
no legal limitations on the powers of Parliament. There is virtually no means by which a
citizen can challenge an act of Parliament as unconstitutional, although some actions may
be found to go beyond the powers of a particular minister. Other limitations on the dis-
cretion of Parliament increasingly have come into play through Britains membership in
the European Union and the Council of Europe (e.g., the European Convention on Hu-
man Rights), but these are appeals to external standards rather than strictly British consti-
tutional rules.
10
There are, of course, very real political limitations on the activities of Par-
liament, but its actions, once taken, are law until Parliament acts again.
With the above considerations about parliamentary government in mind, we now
proceed to a brief description and discussion of the six major institutions of British na-
tional government: the monarch, the prime minister, the cabinet and government, Parlia-
ment, the courts, and the civil service. We describe the features most salient for an under-
standing of the manner in which the British system converts proposals into law. Also, as
the style of government has changed in the United Kingdom, as well as in other Euro-
pean governments, there are a number of important actors that do not t conveniently
into those six major structures.
The Monarch
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, with the powers of the monarch con-
strained by both law and convention. Further, there is grumbling about the cost of main-
taining the royal household and about the wealth of the queen and the royal family, with
some agitation to terminate the role of the monarchy in favor of a republic. The role of
the royal family became more contentious when Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in
an automobile accident in :,,;. Her divorce from Prince Charles and other widely publi-
cized family problems brought the monarchy into disrepute, and the tabloid press has
made it common practice to expose any perceived failings in the royal family.
11
There is
now more sentiment in favor of reducing the power and inuence of the monarchy, al-
though this sentiment waxes and wanes with specic events.
12
The powers of the monarchy are very closely circumscribed; although many acts are
performed by the queen or in her name, the prime minister or the cabinet makes the ac-
tual decisions. Declarations of war, making treaties, granting peerages, and granting
where is the power? 19
clemency to prisoners are all royal prerogatives, but all are exercised only on the advice of
the prime minister and other ministers, or even by those ministers alone in the case of
Orders in Council (see below). Similarly, the royal assent is necessary for legislation to be-
come law, but this has not been refused since Queen Anne in :;c,.
One major point at which the monarch could possibly inuence policy and politics
substantively is in the selection of the prime minister. There is little or no possibility for
the exercise of independent judgment by the monarch if one major party wins a clear ma-
jority, as Labour did in the :,,; and :cc: elections. If there were no clear winner, how-
ever, the monarch might be able to exercise some independent judgment, albeit with the
advice of the outgoing prime minister. The conventions governing such an eventuality
only began to be clearly articulated in the early :,,cs, and the monarch would have to be
extremely careful not to overstep the tacit boundaries in a society increasingly less certain
about the efcacy of continuing the monarchy.
13
The monarch also is empowered to dissolve a sitting Parliament, and the decision to
do so could (in theory at least) be made independently if the government did not resign
and call for elections after a vote of no condence or if it lost on a major issue. As govern-
ments since the :,;cs have appeared unwilling to resign in the face of policy defeats, this
potential power of the monarch to force a government to go to the people may become
important in making policy choices. Likewise, a monarch could refuse to dissolve a Par-
liament when asked by the prime minister, if she believed that it was not in the national
interest to do so. These powers would, however, be exercised at some peril for the
monarch, as any such direct intervention into the political life of the country might
threaten the legitimacy of the institution of the monarchy.
The great commentator on British politics, Walter Bagehot, described the monarch
as a real part of the policymaking system in Britain, concealed in a cloak of dignity and
ceremony.
14
Much of the impact of a monarch on policy and politics remains hidden and
is very subtle. The monarchs inuence is exercised through frequent meetings and con-
sultations with the prime minister and requires her to be as well briefed as her ministers.
The power of the monarch, then, may be as personal as the power of any other political
actor, even more so. It would be easy for a monarch not to have inuence, given the dom-
inant partisan mold of the British policymaking system. For the monarch to be effective,
she must not only perform the extensive ceremonial functions of the ofce but also be an
effective politician in her own right. The most important function of the monarch, how-
ever, remains to be a symbol of the nation as a whole and to rise above the partisan strife.
She must be a unifying force when much else in the political system tends to be centrifu-
gal, divisive, and adversarial.
The Prime Minister
The monarch is head of statethat is, the representative of the nation as a whole and the
symbolic head of the entire governing system. The prime minister is head of government
of the day and its chief executive ofcer. Of course, in the United States, the two roles are
merged in the president, who is at once head of state and head of government. Separating
the two roles in Britain means that a citizen or a politician can more readily criticize the
prime minister without being seen to attack the legitimacy of the entire system of govern-
ment.
The ofce of prime minister has evolved slowly since the beginning of the eighteenth
century. The prime minister is at once just another minister of the Crown and above the
other ministers. There is increasing discussion of the role of the prime minister becoming
presidential, as more power appears to ow into :c Downing Street.
15
This alleged presi-
dentialization of the prime minister is a function of several factors. The rst is that par-
liamentary campaigns have become increasingly directed toward electing a particular
prime minister rather than toward the selection of a political party to govern. The person-
alization of British politics increased substantially while Thatcher was prime minister, but
even before that time campaigns were oriented toward the appeal and personality of indi-
viduals. The Labour government of Tony Blair has produced an even greater emphasis on
personal loyalty than the Thatcher government.
16
Party remains important in the voting
decision, but so too do the prospective leaders of the nation.
Additional aspects of the presidentialization of the ofce of prime minister include
the stafng and organization of the ofce. Thatchers placement of several special assis-
tants in departments, especially in the Treasury, constituted an early move to extend the
authority of the prime minister substantially beyond its traditional role of primus inter
pares (rst among equals). Tony Blair has intensied this process through a number of
administrative and organizational innovations. Among them has been the appointment
of special assistants to the prime ministers Private Ofce for presentation and planning,
the expansion of the prime ministers Policy Unit to include thirteen ofcers, and the cre-
ation of a new Strategic Communications Ofce with a staff of six. Its job is to generate
a coherent and unied presentation of government policy by co-ordinating departmental
announcements and ensuring that they are on message.
17
Following the American
precedent, Blair has also appointed a chief of staff to pull together the work of the Prime
Ministers Ofce and to co-ordinate it with that of the Cabinet Ofce.
18
The rst in-
cumbent, Jonathan Powell, was recruited from Labour parliamentary party ranks and is
employed as a temporary civil servant.
Another key innovation under Blair has been the integration of the formerly separate
Cabinet Secretariat and Ofce of Public Service into a single cabinet ofce under the
management of a cabinet secretary. This move was accompanied by the creation of a
Constitution secretariat in :,,;, whose chief purpose is to oversee Labours constitutional
reform program, and a Central secretariat (:,,) charged with advising on ministerial re-
sponsibilities and accountability.
19
A separate unit was established in the prime ministers
ofce in :,,; to facilitate intradepartmental cooperation in addressing problems arising
from social exclusion of individuals and groups from intended policy benets.
The cumulative effect of these moves, dating from the Thatcher years onward, has
been the evolution of the ofce of the prime minister in the direction of the Executive
Ofce of the American president and the Bundeskanzlersamt in Germany, although on a
much smaller scale.
20
Certain characteristics, powers, and limitations on the prime minister are important
for understanding the ofce. First, the prime minister is the leader of the majority party
in the House of Commons. Until :,c:, prime ministers frequently came from the House
of Lords, but by convention, the prime minister now is a member of Commons. For ex-
ample, Sir Alec Douglas-Home renounced his hereditary title in order to sit in the House
of Commons and eventually become prime minister in :,o,. The political party rst
makes the selection of a potential prime minister; whoever would be prime minister must
rst win an election within the party. Even sitting prime ministers may have to be re-
elected by their party; sometimes they lose the condence of their party, as Thatcher did
in :,,c, and with it their ofce. This is but one of many ways in which the customs and
conventions of the British political system reinforce the cohesiveness and integration of
political parties. The prime minister, therefore, must be able to command the apparatus
both of a political party and of government.
In addition to being the leader of a political party, the prime minister must be a po-
litical leader within the House of Commons. Becoming prime minister indeed may say
more about an individuals abilities in Parliament than about the skills necessary to run a
government. The prime minister is expected to lead parliamentary debates, and the abil-
ity to win in verbal jousts in the House of Commons frequently appears more important
to success as prime minister than winning less visible policy and administrative battles.
Prime Ministers Question Time, now occurring only once a week, is watched widely and
is a test of the skills of the prime minister.
Although technically he or she is only primus inter pares, the powers of the prime
minister are actually substantial. First, the prime minister is the formal link between the
Crown and the rest of government. The queen invites a prospective prime minister to
form a new government, and relationships between the monarch and Parliament are
channeled through the prime minister. In like manner, the prime minister serves as chief
political adviser to the queen, especially on major issues such as the dissolution of Parlia-
ment. The monarch and the prime minister routinely meet on a weekly basis, especially if
there are important political issues on the agenda.
The prime minister also dispenses ofce. Once the queen has invited a prospective
prime minister to form a government, it is the prime minister who assembles the govern-
ment team. Certainly members of that team will have political followings of their own,
and others may have to be included to placate certain segments of the party, but the ofce
held by each cabinet member will be the decision of the prime minister. The power to
dispense ofce also extends to a number of other ofces, including an increasing number
of lucrative positions in the quangos.
21
The prime minister can also decide on life peer-
ages, which are nominally appointed by the Crown but, in actuality, are in the gift of the
prime minister. Opposition parties can also nominate life peers. In all cases the nominees
are subject to a scrutiny process to ensure their eligibility.
Once in ofce, the prime minister has considerable personal power over policy and
the activities of the cabinet. We have already mentioned the growth of the prime minis-
ters staff and the alleged presidentialization of the ofce. As the organizer, leader, and
summarizer of the business of the cabinet, the prime minister is also in a position to en-
force views over his or her nominal equals. As the head of the government, the prime
minister has substantial public visibility and inuence over society. This public inuence
has increased with the growing power of the media, and the Blair government has been
particularly conscious of the ability to inuence the public.
22
For example, the prime
minister used that power to inuence the public through the media as one strategy to
push forward the peace process in Northern Ireland. Finally, in time of emergency, the
powers of a prime minister are not limited by a constitution, as are those of an American
president.
We should also mention the role of the leader of the Opposition, who, as leader of
the largest minority party in the House of Commons, would probably be prime minister
if the sitting government were defeated in an election. Although lacking the ofcial
powers of ofce, the role of the leader of the Opposition is not dissimilar to that of the
prime minister. He or she is expected to be the leader of a political party, a leader in Par-
liament, and the leader of a cabinet, albeit one out of ofce (the shadow cabinet). The
adversarial style of British politics obliges the leader of the Opposition to oppose the
program of the government and to propose searching for alternatives to all government
programs, in preparation for the day when the Opposition becomes the government and
must introduce its own policy proposals. As the alternative prime minister, the leader of
the Opposition is paid a salary in addition to that of an MP and is kept briefed on im-
portant policy issues because he or she must be ready to become prime minister on very
short notice.
Cabinet and Government
Working beneathor withthe prime minister are the cabinet and the government. Al-
though these terms are often used interchangeably, they actually designate somewhat dif-
ferent entities. The cabinet is composed of the individualsin the :cc: Blair government
the sixteen men and seven womenwho meet with the prime minister as a collectivity
called the cabinet and who make collective policy decisions. The term government is more
embracing, including all ministers regardless of their seniority or degree of responsibility;
in :,,, there were almost ,c ministers, junior ministers, and parliamentary private secre-
taries. The cabinet is technically a committee of the government selected by the prime
minister to provide advice in private meetings and to share in the responsibility for policy.
Although the prime minister is certainly primarily responsible for government policies,
the cabinet is also collectively responsible to Parliament, and cabinet members generally
will rise and fall as a unit rather than as individuals.
There are several varieties of ministers: secretaries of state, ministers, and junior min-
isters; to some degree, parliamentary private secretaries have some ministerial functions.
The distinction between secretaries of state and ministers is rather vague. Each tends to
head a department of government (e.g., the Department of Health, Department for
Work and Pensions, or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), al-
though all major departments are now headed by secretaries of state. Some members of
cabinet may carry titles other than minister (e.g., chancellor of the exchequer, the chief
Treasury minister). The government, and in some instances the cabinet, also includes a
number of posts without departmental responsibilities, either ministers without portfolio
or holders of such titles as Lord Privy Seal. These ofcials are included in the government
as general or political advisers, or as the leadership of the House of Commons or the
House of Lords. In those positions they manage government business in the house.
Junior ministers are attached to a department minister to provide political and policy
assistance in the management of the department, and these positions serve as stepping-
stones for persons on the way up in government.
23
Ministers of state are junior ministers,
placed between parliamentary undersecretaries of state (colloquially called pussies) and
parliamentary private secretaries. Each department has one minister to deal with Lords
business, who may be of any rank (but is often a pussy). Finally, parliamentary private
secretaries are unpaid (aside from their normal salaries as members of Parliament) assis-
tants to ministers and are responsible primarily for liaison between the government and
the rest of Parliament. There are, then, in any government, some eighty to ninety posi-
tions to be lled in the political executive, most coming from the House of Commons.
The job of a minister is a demanding one. Unlike American political executives, a
British minister remains a member of the legislature and an active representative for a
constituency; consequently, he or she must fulll a number of positions and responsibili-
ties simultaneously. The rst of these multiple tasks is to run the department. The minis-
ter must be able to run the department in two ways. First, the minister is responsible for
the day-to-day management of the large, bureaucratic organization of which he or she is
the head. Few politicians have experience with the management of such large organiza-
tions, so they are at some disadvantage in making the department run effectively.
The minister must also manage the policies of the department. That is, he or she
must develop policies appropriate to the departments responsibilities, policies that will be
in keeping with the overall priorities of the government. In this task, ministers are gener-
ally hindered by their lack of expertise. Ministers are seldom chosen for their expertise in
a policy area; more often, they are appointed for their general political skill and voter sup-
port. For example, it is estimated that only ve of fty-one ministerial appointments in
the Wilson government of :,o;c had any prior experience in the area of their depart-
ments responsibilities.
24
There is evidence that the knowledge base of ministers has not
improved substantially.
25
The consequences of their lack of expertise are exacerbated by
the tendency to shift ministers from one department to another, even during the lifetime
of a government. For example, the Labour government reshufed its ministers in the
summer of :,,,, at the halfway point in its ve-year (maximum) term of ofce, and there
were a number of instances of ministers who had gained substantial expertise in an area
being moved, even in the important economics area.
26
Furthermore, in their departments
ministers are faced with experienced and relatively expert civil servants, who tend to have
views of their own about proper departmental policies (see pp. ,:,,). An inexperienced
and inexpert minister must then ght very hard just to manage his own department.
If the minister is also a member of the cabinet, there will be additional demands on
his or her time. Traditionally, the cabinet has met ve to six hours per week (although the
practice under Blair has been only one hour a week), but preparation for those meetings
requires even more time. Membership in the cabinet also requires that each minister be at
least briefed on all current political issues. And there are the cabinet committees necessary
to coordinate policies and deal with issues requiring consideration prior to their determi-
nation by the cabinet.
27
A minister cannot afford to take cabinet work lightly, even
though he may be only a part of a collectivity often dominated by the prime minister. In
cabinet, as in Commons, political reputations are made, and in both the interests of the
ministers department must be protected and advanced.
The minister remains an active member of Parliament and as such is required to ap-
pear in Parliament for a substantial amount of time each day, especially when the govern-
ment has only a small majority. The minister must also be prepared to speak in Parlia-
ment on the policies of his department or for the government as a whole. A minister must
also be prepared to respond to questions during Question Time, and may have to spend
hours being briefed and coached on the answers to anticipated questions. The constitu-
tional responsibility of the executive to the legislature places a great burden on ministers
in a parliamentary government.
As a member of Parliament, the minister also retains constituents in the district from
which he was elected, and these citizens must be served. This service involves spending
weekends in the surgery (i.e., the constituency ofce or other locations in the district)
and receiving delegations from local organizations when in London. Unlike politicians in
other countries, a British member of Parliament often does not come from the con-
stituency from which he or she is elected and therefore may have to learn about the local
issues. And, since there is no xed term for a Parliament (other than that an election must
occur within ve years), British politicians, even more than American politicians, must al-
ways be preparing for the next election.
The cabinet does not work entirely alone, and one of the important developments in
British politics has been the development and expansion of the Cabinet Ofce. The Cab-
inet Ofce, or secretariat, grew out of the Committee of Imperial Defense in World War
I. Currently, a very senior civil servant, along with a small number of associates, serves the
cabinet. The secretary to the cabinet is himself inuential in shaping cabinet decisions, al-
though not by obvious means. The secretary creates the cabinet agenda, and he distrib-
utes cabinet papers to the appropriate individuals. By so doing, he determines which
ministers will be heard quickly and which will have to wait for their day in cabinet. Al-
though the prime minister summarizes cabinet meetings orally, it is the secretary to the
cabinet who as a result of the meetings drafts written communications to the departments
for action and prepares the formal written records of the meetings. These records are not
subject to change, even by the prime minister. While there is little or no evidence of these
powers being abused, the position of secretary to the cabinet is extremely inuential. In
recent years the Cabinet Ofce has undertaken a number of other important policy func-
tions, including managing British policy toward the European Union.
28
Responsibility
for the management of EU relations is shared with the Foreign Ofce, which runs the
Permanent Representation in Brussels.
There is also a small, but growing, prime ministers staff of political and personal ad-
visers. This is far from approaching the magnitude of the White House staff in the United
States or even the Bundeskanzlersamt in Germany, but it has been growing and is seen as
one more bit of evidence of the concentration of policymaking powers in the cabinet
rather than in Parliament as a whole. Each minister also is increasingly likely to have
some personal policy advisers, whether paid for by public money or by party funds. The
difculties that cabinet ministers encounter in trying to make policy have also produced
suggestions that each should be given a group of advisers, similar to the cabinet du min-
istre in France. The Thatcher government, more than previous governments, sought more
partisan and ideological policy advice than it was likely to receive from civil servants, and
it may be difcult to return to the policy dominance of permanent ofcials. The Blair
government has continued that practice and to some extent has actually extended their
use. This practice has to some extent devalued the civil service.
Parliament
The government of the United Kingdom has already been described as parliamentary, im-
plying a signicant role for Parliament in government. Despite the nominally strong posi-
tion of Parliament in the constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom, there are
serious questions as to the real, effective powers of Parliament. With the growing strength
of the political executive and the increased discipline of political parties, Parliament as an
institution is less capable of exercising control over policies than it once was. Parliament
has been attempting to create a more powerful position in the political process, especially
in the oversight of the executive, but the evidence is that it has had little success in these
efforts. The huge majority enjoyed by the Blair government since :,,; will make the job
of Parliament all the more difcult.
Members of Parliament
The rst thing that must be understood about a legislative body such as Parliament is the
nature of the individuals involved and the incentives offered to them to participate. The
Parliament elected in :cc: has o,, members, elected from a like number of constituen-
cies, meaning that the average member of Parliament (MP) represents fewer than ,c,ccc
people (compared to approximately occ,ccc represented by members of the U.S. House
of Representatives). Compared with members of most other legislative bodies, MPs have
few advantages. Their pay, even with continuing raises, is a modest ,,oc (roughly
$o;,ccc at :cc: rates of exchange), compared to over $:c,ccc for U.S. representatives.
MPs receive approximately the same amount for personal expenses, including weekend travel
to their districts when Parliament is in session and rent for a second residence in London.
Some members of Parliament may have sponsoring organizations that will either
help with their expenses in ofce or even provide some direct remuneration for the MP.
For Labour politicians, these are commonly trade unions; for Conservatives and a few
Liberal Democrats, they are industrial groups or large corporations, or perhaps other
types of interest groups. The appearance of corruption is leading to a rethinking of the
place of sponsorship. The Labour Party, for example, is beginning to restrict the role of
unions as sponsors for its members,
29
and the numerous scandals over Conservative Party
nance have tended to make that party more circumspect in its nancial relationships.
In return for these modest rewards, MPs work long hours and receive relatively little
staff support. While American legislators are accustomed to having several dozen staff
members working for them, the average MP has funding only for a part-time assistant or
secretary unless the member is paying personally for the assistance or is receiving assis-
tance from a sponsor. Historically many MPs lacked private ofces, unless they were in
the government or shadow government, and so they were forced to share small ofces
with other MPs. Most of them now have ofces of their own in a new building near the
House of Parliament, but even there accommodations remain cramped. The job of
member of Parliament was designed for a gentleman of independent means, and the re-
wards of ofce still have not changed sufciently to match the apparent demands of
modern legislative bodies.
Organization
Parliament is composed of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Both houses
are involved in making policy, but Commons is crucial for forming governments as well
as for setting the public budget. As the House of Lords has become relatively less impor-
tant in the policymaking process, let us rst describe it briey and then proceed to a more
extended discussion of the House of Commons.
The House of Lords is composed of the lords spiritual (representing the hierarchy of
the Church of England) and the lords temporal. The lords temporal comprise hereditary
and life peers, along with the Law Lords appointed because the House of Lords also serves
as the nal court of appeal in the United Kingdom. Hereditary peers (who once made up
an overwhelming majority of members in the House of Lords) claim their seats based on
inherited titles, whereas the queen appoints life peers (on the advice of the government)
only for their lifetime. Dating from :,,, the concept of life peers was designed in part to
rectify the partisan and ideological bias of the hereditary peers against the Labour Party.
In :,,,, the Labour majority in the House of Commons voted to abolish the privileged
status of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords in favor of a chamber dominated by
life peers. As a result of the :,,, constitutional reform, all but ninety-two hereditary peers
were removed from the House of Lords.
Early in :cc:, the House of Lords consisted of some ;cc members, of whom ,,
were life peers.
30
Conservatives still comprised the largest group in the chamber (:::,
compared to :,, Labour peers and o, Liberal Democrats). Approximately a quarter of the
members were nonparty, cross-bench peers. This change in the composition of the
House of Lords signicantly facilitates Labour-sponsored legislation. Until the enactment
of the reform, even the Blair government with its solid majority in Commons faced re-
current problems with the House of Lords.
The major impetus for limiting the powers of the House of Lords was David Lloyd
Georges peoples budget of :,c,. This budget introduced a progressive income tax (the
rst since the Napoleonic wars) and a rudimentary public health insurance program. The
Conservative Lords balked at this Liberal proposal and refused to pass the budget. Parlia-
ment was then dissolved; but when the Liberals were returned with a (reduced) majority,
the House of Lords accepted the budget. Further, after a second election in :,:c, in which
the Liberals were again returned with a majority, the House of Lords accepted the Parlia-
ment Bill of :,::, which greatly limited its powers.
The House of Lords now cannot delay money bills longer than one monthand
cannot vote them down and prevent their implementationand any legislation passed
by the House of Commons in two successive sessions of Parliament, provided one calen-
dar year has passed, goes into effect without approval by Lords. Lords does still occasion-
ally delay or even vote down legislation (as it did recently on an Animal Health bill).
Mainly, however, it serves as a debating society and as a locus at which the government
can accept amendments to its proposals that it would be less willing to accept in the more
politicized House of Commons. The House of Lords actually serves a useful function in
British policymaking despite its diminished role, as many useful modications to legisla-
tion result from the attention of the Lords. Further, Lords has chosen to become special-
ized in some areas of policy (e.g., science and technology), and its committee reports in
this area must be considered carefully. Further, the Blair government has used the House
of Lords to initiate legislation when its legislative calendar became clogged in its rst year.
The structure and functions of the House of Commons have evolved over centuries
and to some degree still reect their medieval roots. Much of the ceremony and proce-
dure derive from the past, but despite complaints about the vestigial aspects of the proce-
dures, these do not appear to inhibit in any signicant way the functioning of a modern
legislative body. To the extent that other institutions of British government seriously over-
shadow the House, the fault resides more with other structural and cultural characteristics
of British government than with the quaint trappings of power within the House of
Commons.
British politics is conducted in an adversarial style, and even the design of the House
of Commons emphasizes that fact. Most legislatures sit in semicircles, and the individual
members sit at desks and go to a central rostrum to address the body. The House of
Commons is arranged as two opposing ranks of benches, placed very close together in a
small chamber. Speakers generally face their political opponents, and although the form
of address is to the Speaker, the words are clearly intended for the opponents. The pro-
ceedings of the House of Commons are now broadcast, and statements by members
therefore are also directed at the voting public and the media. The cabinet and other
members of the government populate the front benches on one side of the aisle, while
their Opposition counterparts are arrayed on the other side. From these two front-row
trenches, the two major belligerents conduct the verbal warfare that is parliamentary de-
bate. Behind the front benches are the foot soldiers of the back benches, ready to vote to
their partys call, and perhaps to do little else. The style of debate in the House of Com-
mons, as well as being contentious and rather witty, is very informal, and for the MP ad-
dressing the House there are few protections against heckling.
As well as being a partisan body, the House of Commons is a national institution.
Ideas of cabinet government and collective responsibility are closely allied to ideas of
party government, and there is a strong sense that political parties should present clear
and consistent positions on policy issues either in or out of government. The electorate at
the next election on the basis of those policies can then judge them. In addition to re-
sponsibility for policy, the dependence of the executive on the ability to command a ma-
jority of the House requires that parties vote together. Political parties in the House of
Commons are organized in order to deliver votes when required. Members know that
voting against their party on an important issue can be tantamount to political suicide
(although it sometimes serves as a springboard to future political success), and each party
has a whip whose job it is to ensure that the needed votes are present. The British system
of government does not allow much latitude for individual MPs to have policy ideas of
their own, although the parties generally do allow their members free votes on issues of a
moral nature, such as abortion or capital punishment.
From the partisan organization and behavior of the House it follows that it is a na-
tional institution. The U.S. House of Representatives is usually conceptualized as a group
of ambassadors from their constituencies, while European legislatures are perhaps even
more national because of proportional representation and the absence of any real connec-
tion to geography. The House of Commons is somewhere between those two extremes,
although the British generally acknowledge that MPs are more responsible to the party
and its national goals and priorities than to the individual interests of their constituencies.
This is signaled by the fact that MPs are not required to live in their constituencies, and
many do not. Of course, the MP tries to satisfy the constituency whenever possible, but it
is generally assumed that the member owes the ofce to the party and the national poli-
cies advanced in the election campaign rather than to any geographically narrow interests
of the constituency. Nevertheless, as with free votes on moral issues, MPs are often al-
lowed to abstain from voting for, and in rare cases to vote against, party proposals when
they would clearly be inimical to the interests of the MPs constituency.
Amid this sea of adversarial and partisan politics, the Speaker of the House is an im-
partial gure, seated on a throne between the two front benches. Traditionally the
Speaker dressed in the style of the eighteenth century, although the current incumbent (a
Labour MP from Scotland) wears a business suit for normal meetings of the House.
31
Al-
though an MP and elected from the House, the Speaker is selected for not having been a
vociferous partisan; the aim is to nd someone who can be elected unanimously rather
than as a result of a partisan confrontation. Competitve elections have occurred only four
times since the beginning of the twentieth century, most recently in October :ccc, when
twelve MPs were nominated for the ofce. Once elected, the conventions are that a
Speaker may remain in the ofce as long as he wishes, with the Speakers parliamentary
seat rarely contested. Although he is still an MP, another member discharges his con-
stituency duties, and the Speaker will vote only in case of a tie. Then, by convention, the
Speakers vote is cast to preserve the status quo. As an impartial gure, the Speaker can
discharge his role as a moderator and, to some degree, be the embodiment of the dignity
of the House. The Speaker is not without real inuence over decisions, however; for ex-
ample, his use of the kangaroo determines which amendments to legislation will be de-
bated and which will not, and his acceptance of a motion of closure ends debate but only
after he believes all relevant positions has been heard. Likewise, the Speaker enforces the
rules of the House, not only in debate but also with respect to issues such as suspending
members who have violated nancial disclosure rules.
32
One important question a student of national legislatures would ask concerning the
House of Commons would be, What is the nature of its committee system? While the
House of Commons does have committees, they are by no means as central to the legisla-
tive process as the committees in the U.S. Congress or the German Bundestag. Eight
standing committees in the House of Commons are composed of from sixteen to fty
members. Unlike American committees, only the core of the committee is permanent;
other members are added to the committee depending on the nature of the bill being
considered. Any one committee may consider a variety of bills during a session of Parlia-
ment, with the composition of the committee changing to match the nature of the bills.
The composition of the committees, as well as reecting the expertise of its members, re-
ects the partisan composition of the House as a whole, and a small majority in the
House may result in a more substantial majority in committee. Also unlike American
committees, the standing committees of the House of Commons are not really indepen-
dent of the whole House but tend to reect the whole House. Their role is not expert and
transformative, as is that of U.S. committees; instead, they are miniature legislatures
where bills may be discussed and improved and before which the government can accept
amendments without jeopardizing its political stature in Commons. As an indication of
this more limited capacity, the committee stage for legislation in the United Kingdom is
after the principal political debate on the bill rather than before its primary consideration.
As such, the major battles over the legislation have already transpired before the commit-
tee sees the legislation. The committees task is to rene the legislation rather than signi-
cantly to inuence its basic nature and purpose.
Special committee provisions governed legislation affecting Scotland until the cre-
ation of a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly following referendums in both re-
gions in :,,;. Because most legislation until then was passed with a separate Scottish bill,
in part a result of special features of Scots law, a separate committee system existed for
Scottish bills. The recent devolution of legislative power from London to Edinburgh
means that the Scottish Parliament now exercises autonomous authority over Scottish af-
fairs except for economic policy and foreign affairs. The Scottish Parliament exercises lim-
ited rights of taxation and receives an annual block grant of around :, billion pounds (ap-
proximately $::., billion), which it can allocate as it wishes. Recent skirmishes over road
tolls and student fees between England and Scotland, however, reveal that lawmakers
have yet to agree on important details of the constitutional division of power between the
national and regional capitals. Persisting political conicts also raise what has come to be
called the West Lothian Questionwhether Scottish MPs in Westminster should be
barred from taking part in votes on legislation that affects only England, while English
MPs no longer have a vote on most Scottish matters.
33
In contrast, Wales remains much more subordinate to London. Separate Welsh com-
mittees in the national parliament never exercised as much inuence as the previous Scot-
tish committees, historically because there had never been a separate Welsh Assembly or
body of Welsh law before union with England. Consequently, much Welsh legislation is
joined with English. The newly established Welsh Assembly exercises only persuasive
powers in relation to London and the right of secondary rule-making within Wales itself.
In addition to the standing committees, there are several select committees in the
House of Commons. The most important of these are the Statutory Instruments Com-
mittee and the Public Accounts Committee. The rst of these committees monitors the
issuing of statutory instruments, or delegated legislation, by government departments. As
in all governments of industrialized societies, the workload of British government has in-
creased to the point that Parliament cannot make all the needed laws. Instead, it delegates
the authority to decide many legislative matters to the relevant executive departments,
with the provision that this delegated legislation be subject to review by the Statutory In-
struments Committee and potentially (if rarely) by the entire House of Commons.
The Public Accounts Committee is a modern manifestation of the traditional parlia-
mentary function of oversight of expenditures; it monitors the governments expenditure
plans, especially through the postaudit of the nal expenditures. It has also at times be-
come engaged in more analytic exercises, such as value-for-money audits, and has gained
the reputation as an authoritative body whose reports require some sort of government
response. By tradition, this committee is chaired by an MP from the Opposition. Its work
is now greatly aided by the National Audit Ofce, which, like most other government ac-
counting ofces, has become increasingly concerned with value for money in addition to
judging the probity of public expenditures.
One of the most interesting developments in the committee structure of Parliament
has been the creation of twelve (now fourteen) select committees to follow the activities
of government departments. This has been an attempt to establish the legislative over-
sight by committee so familiar to American political executives, although a similar sug-
gestion was made by Richard Crossman in :,o,, and even earlier by the Haldane Com-
mission on the structure of government (:,:).
34
Each of the select committees monitors
a functional area of government policy and holds hearings on and independent investi-
gations into policy. Although their success has varied, they have provided Parliament
with more institutionalized mechanisms for investigation; some of them, such as the
Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, have had a substantial impact on the di-
rection of policy. This Select Committee, for example, was active in monitoring and
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
:c;
:,c
:,c
,o
,
:c
::
,
Population Density (per square kilometer)
Source: OECD, Economic Surveys, :ooo; Department of Economic and Social Affairs, :)) Democratic Yearbook
(New York: United Nations, :ccc).
evaluating the major administrative reforms of the Conservative government such as
Next Steps (see below). Augmenting the work of the departmental select committees are
seventeen non-departmental select committees, which were appointed after Labours elec-
toral victory in :,,;. Most of them deal with domestic matters cutting across traditional
departmental boundaries. Examples include a catering committee, a standing orders com-
mittee, and a committee on standards and privileges. Other non-departmental commit-
tees have been charged with powers of investigative oversight over such matters as the en-
vironment, public administration, and European Union legislation.
As indicated by the activities of the select committees, an important function of Par-
liament is the scrutiny of the political executive and its policies. Perhaps the most famous
mechanism through which this takes place is Question Time. On four out of ve sitting
days during the week, the House of Commons opens its legislative day with an hour of
questions for the government from members of the House. These questions have been
submitted at least forty-eight hours previously in writing, so a minister has some oppor-
tunity to prepare an answer. In recent years, however, the practice has been to ask a very
vague question in writing and then follow it orally with more probing supplemental ques-
tions. Thus a seemingly innocuous question as to whether the prime minister intends to
visit Finland during the year may be an introduction to more important questions about
foreign policy. All members of the government may be subjected to questioning, and the
prime minister answers questions on one of the four days. Question Time places an addi-
tional burden on already overburdened ministers; but in a political system where secrecy
is the norm, this institution serves as one mechanism for Parliament, and the people as a
whole, to nd out what is happening in government and to exercise some control
through the ventilation of possible malfeasance.
As an institution, Parliament is threatened. It has had difculty maintaining its in-
dependent powers in the face of the growing powers of the prime minister and cabinet.
Most of the important weapons in the struggle are in the hands of the executive. These
assets include information, access to staff, and, more important, party discipline. Parlia-
ment now rarely exercises free and thorough scrutiny of the activities of the government;
the outcomes of votes are known in advance, and it is the rare politician who will risk his
political career on the basis of principle. There are instances in which Parliament does
have a more open and inuential debate on policy, as it did over European policy in the
summer of :,,:, and there are still revolts by backbenchersapproximately sixty Labour
MPs voted against a government social policy reform in the summer of :,,,, and back-
bench dissent has continued to rise in subsequent years. Even with those exceptions in
mind, parliamentary government has, in effect, become cabinet or party government.
These venerable institutions are, however, sometimes thought to be threatened by the
increased power of the actor in the political process next to be discussed, the civil ser-
vice.
The Civil Service
The civil service has changed perhaps more than any other institution of British govern-
ment. The traditional pattern of a nonpolitical, career civil service with substantial inu-
ence over policy has been one of the great paradoxes of British government. On the face
of it, the British civil service has appeared unprepared to perform the expert role expected
of it in the policymaking process. The recruitment of civil servants has been less on the
basis of expert knowledge in a substantive policy area than on the basis of general intellec-
tual abilities. Also, for a large proportion of their careers, civil servants are moved fre-
quently from job to job (although many remain within a single department throughout
their careers), gaining permanent appointments only rather late in their careers. The cult
of the talented amateur and the generalist has dominated thinking about selection and
training of civil servants, despite attempts at reform following the Fulton Committee,
which expressed concern about the absence of specialized education of persons selected
for the civil service.
35
For several decades after Fulton the pattern of recruitment changed relatively little,
and more humanities graduates than scientists or social scientists were entering the civil
service.
36
One of the changes introduced during the Thatcher government and continued
in subsequent governments was to emphasize management, rather than policy advice, in
the role of senior public servants. The policy advice role increasingly was to be handled by
political appointees. This change also involved opening recruitment for many senior posi-
tions to noncareer appointees and in general breaking down the monopoly that career
public servants had had over these positions. This pattern of recruitment has been espe-
cially evident for the chief executives of agencies created to implement public policies. In
general, the civil service has been somewhat deinstitutionalized, with greater competition
and less protection from political inuence.
Despite these changes, the civil service continues to have a substantial inuence over
policy. How can civil servants who themselves are hardly expert in the policy areas they
administer have the inuence over policy described by commentators and participants in
policymaking? Several factors seem to be related to this inuence. The rst is that al-
though its members may lack formal training in a policy area, the senior civil service is a
talented group of individuals and thus has the intellectual ability to grasp readily the sub-
ject matter it must administer. Second, despite their relative lack of specialized training
compared with civil servants in other countries, British civil servants are generally more
knowledgeable than their political masters about the relevant subject matter of depart-
mental policy. They learn a great deal on the job, while their ministers are not on the job
very long themselves. Finally, civil servants have a much longer time perspective than
politicians and so are able to wait out and delay any particular minister with whom they
disagree. Further, their ministries have an even longer collective memory than any single
civil servant, so the accumulation of expertise and experience can easily counteract the le-
gitimacy of the political master.
The relationship between civil servants and their political masters is important for
dening and understanding the role of the civil service in policymaking. The prevailing
ethos of the civil service is that it can serve any political master it may be called on to
serve. But this service may be seen by ministersand sometimes rightly soas an at-
tempt to impose the departmental view, or the particular policy ideas of the depart-
ment, on the minister. Any number of reasons can be advanced to explain why the ideas
of the minister are not feasible and why only the proposals made by the department itself
will ever work. Only the exceptional minister is able to counter such views.
The ministers task of countering a departmental view is made more difcult because
the department may appear to speak with one voice. American executive departments
tend to be fragmented, with a number of independent bureaus advancing their policy
ideas. Executive departments in Britain have had few such independent organizations;
and policy ideas arising in departments are channeled upward through a hierarchical
structure, with a permanent secretary being the primary link between the political world
and the civil service. The permanent secretary is the senior civil servant in a department
(though several departments now have two or more civil servants of this rank) and serves
as the personal adviser to the minister.
The creation of numerous executive agencies has fragmented British cabinet depart-
ments, so that the power exercised by permanent secretaries and senior public servants
has been diminished. The principal effect, however, has been to separate implementation
from policymaking. British central government looks increasingly like Scandinavian gov-
ernments, with small policy-oriented departments supervising a number of larger agen-
cies implementing policies. That separation is not as easy to make in reality as it is in the-
ory, and indeed the quasi-autonomous agencies are beginning to link their managerial
problems with policy.
Because the minister lacks any substantial personal staff, he has had to rely heavily on
the permanent secretary both for policy advice and for management of the department.
This dependence, in turn, has provided the civil service, through the permanent secretary,
a signicant inuence over policy. We would not argue that the civil service has abused
this position, and in general the evidence is that its members have been responsible and
scrupulous in the exercise of its ofce. Nevertheless, the structural position in which it is
placed as the repository of information and of a departmental perspective, and the lack of
alternative views coming to most ministers, places the civil service in a powerful position.
The cozy world of the civil service is now under considerable challenge.
37
We have already pointed out that Thatchers government brought its own advisers
into government to augment the policy advice offered by civil servants. Her government
and the subsequent Major government appeared to many observers to have sought to make
the civil service more political, so neutrality of the civil service may no longer be either
possible or valued. For example, some observers of the British civil service, whether cor-
rectly or not, believed that Thatcher played a more important role in the selection of se-
nior ofcials than had previous prime ministers and that it would be difcult for some
civil servants who were made permanent secretaries during her government to serve any
subsequent Labour government. The Labour government that was elected in :,,; ap-
peared to recognize that difculty and has found it easier than it would have previously to
affect the nature of senior appointments. In all of these appointments there appears to be
more attention to the policy concerns of the civil servants than to their partisan aflia-
tion, but there is the sense that the civil service is now a more politicized body.
38
A second major challenge to the traditional role and functions of the civil service is
that many individual civil servants question whether they have obligations to Parliament
and to the public that transcend their loyalty to ministers. Several civil servants who knew
of malfeasance in government have chosen to blow the whistle, and in some cases the
courts have supported their actions. Actions of this sort are uncomfortable and difcult in
a system built on secrecy and ministerial responsibility, and the need for greater openness
in government has become a political question. In :,, the Major government adopted
rules removing some of the secrecy in the public sector, but there is still a long way to go
to equal the openness found in most other European governments. In :,,, the Blair gov-
ernment introduced its own legislation to create greater openness in government, but that
too has been argued to be excessively weak by advocates of freedom of information.
39
Third, the Thatcher and Major governments implemented a number of reforms in
the civil service designed to minimize its policy advice role and to emphasize its manager-
ial role. The most important of these reforms is Next Steps, which has created several
hundred semiautonomous agencies (including local NHS trusts) to implement most poli-
cies of government.
40
The policy and planning functions are being retained within rela-
tively small ministries that are also responsible for supervising the operations of the agen-
cies and are a mechanism for enforcing parliamentary accountability. The heads of the
new agencies are not necessarily civil servants, and even if they have been, are hired on
xed-term contracts with performance standards.
This administrative change also means that ministers may be less responsible for ac-
tivities seemingly under their supervision and that some of the traditional mechanisms
for accountability in the system of government will be less viable. For example, in Octo-
ber :,,, the head of the Prison Servicea Next Steps agencywas red because of a
scathing report on the way in which the service handled escapes, even though the total
number of escapes was down. He chose to contest this dismissal in court, arguing that he
was held responsible for failures in government penal policy.
41
Few things about the role
and status of the civil service in the United Kingdom can now be taken for granted, as the
internal machinery of government, and even some constitutional principles, undergo
some very fundamental changes.
Finally, there has been an increasing use of patronage for government positions in the
United Kingdom, which threatens to undermine the tradition of apolitical public servants.
The Judiciary
By this time, the student of Western political systems such as Germany and the United
States will have wondered what has happened to the court system. There are courts in the
United Kingdom, but they are by no means as central to the political process as courts in
the United States. In large part, this absence of centrality is the result of the doctrine of par-
liamentary supremacy and the consequent inability of the courts to exercise judicial review
of legislation. There is little or no way that British courts can declare an act of Parliament
unconstitutional. As Dicey put it many years ago: if Parliament decided that all blue-eyed
babies should be murdered, the preservation of blue-eyed babies would be illegal.
42
Several things have changed to expand the powers and activities of the judiciary in
Britain. The most signicant change in the role of the courts results from Britains mem-
bership in the European Union, with the European Court of Justice declaring some activ-
ities of the British government to be out of conformity with the Treaty of Rome. For
some conservatives (both small and large c) the European Court has become a much
too pervasive inuence on policies affecting Britain. Further, British courts now must
play some role in deciding whether British government policies are in accordance with
the obligations of its membership in the EU. Again, decisions to the contrary have an-
gered many British political leaders and have raised more questions about the desirability
of continued membership.
The courts do have some role to play in the policymaking system. Although they lack
the ability to declare actions unconstitutional, the courts can issue a number of writs, in-
cluding ultra vires (literally, beyond the powers), inquiring as to the statutory authority of
specic actions; and habeas corpus, requesting to know under what authority a citizen is
detained by the authorities. These actions constitute a limited form of judicial review,
constrained, however, by the courts reluctance to endorse positions not upheld by the
legislature and the executive.
43
Each case is judged on its own merits; the courts cannot
make sweeping statements about the legality of actions, and the government may suspend
even the issuing of these writs, as it has done in Northern Ireland. In general, the courts
can have much more of an impact on administration than on the formation of policy.
In recent years, the courts have become more aggressive in declaring the actions of a
government to be ultra vires. This is in part a function of Britains joining the European
Union and the necessity of monitoring government implementation of Community law
and in part because of the perceived need for independent checks on government action
outside the politicized arena of Parliament. In particular, there has been some revival of
interest in the role of administrative law as a check on government.
44
The courts do fol-
low the election returns, however, and there are serious questions by some as to the extent
to which there can truly be a government of laws when there is little independent ability
to adjudicate the laws. This difculty is further exacerbated by the attorney generals be-
ing a political ofcial who in several instances in the late :,;cs, and then later in the
:,,cs, was charged with allowing his political afliations to interfere with his legal duties.
The courts have also found themselves having to deal with several major incidents of po-
lice misconduct that have shaken public condence in the judicial system.
The Rest of Government
British government is unitary, but local governments have a substantial impact on the ulti-
mate shape of public policies in the United Kingdom. In a similar manner, many public
activities are carried out through public corporations, quasi-public bodies, and formerly gov-
ernment (but now largely regulated) industries rather than directly by a government depart-
ment. This choice of institutions for service delivery has consequences for the ability of gov-
ernment to control these functions, as well as for the nature of the services being delivered.
Local Government
The rst point to be made is that local government is not an independent set of institu-
tions with its own constitutional base of authority, as found in a federal system such as
Germany or the United States; instead, British local government is the creation and the
creature of the central government. Local government is organized in different formats in
Scotland and Wales, and in England. In Scotland and Wales there is now a single level of
local government, following a reform that abolished the previous two-tier system.
45
In
England there is disparate system of counties, and districts under those counties, in much
of the country, although there are an increasing number of unied authorities exercising
the responsibilities of both levels. In addition, London has its own integrated government
structure.
46
The local government reorganization that created the current system of local govern-
ment has been the subject of numerous criticisms, both of the apparent inefciency of the
arrangements created and the loss of political accountability and involvement. This latter
critique is based on the large number of voters for each councillor in the large local gov-
ernment units that have been created. This apparent loss of local democracy has been off-
set to some extent by the creation of elected mayors in London and other cities, such as
Lewisham (a district of London),
47
but British local government is not the locus of grass-
roots democracy as in many other countries.
The loss of democratic control is even more evident with the creation of unelected
bodies to perform many services formerly provided by local governments, or were gov-
erned by boards named by local governments, is considered. Services such as housing,
some aspects of health care, education, and training have all been turned over to a variety
of local quangos or to other self-governing organizations.
48
The Blair government has re-
versed this trend toward quasi-governmental service provision only slightly, in part be-
cause the existence of these organizations provides a convenient source of patronage posi-
tions to the government. Thus, unlike most other developed democracies, British
government has been centralizing over the past several decades, leaving local governments
with little autonomy and fewer functions to perform.
Unlike American state and local governments, local governments in the United
Kingdom are closely supervised by the central government. Since May :cc:, the Ofce
of the Deputy Prime Minister is responsible for supervising local governments in En-
gland and for determining their range of activity, funding, and political structures. Even
after devolution, the Scotland Ofce and the Wales Ofce continue to exercise some
(limited) supervision over local governments in their respective portions of the United
Kingdom; after home rule in Northern Ireland was revoked in early :ccc, supervision of
local government in that province was returned to Whitehall. (Home rule was subse-
quently restored in late :cc:.) A much larger proportion of the expenditures of local
governments in the United Kingdom are funded through grants from the central gov-
ernment than is true in the United States (,: as opposed to :; percent in :,,,), making
British local authorities more dependent on the center. These factors do not preclude
conict between central government and local authorities, especially when the two au-
thorities happen to be governed by different political parties. The conicts between
Conservative central governments and Labour local councilors in Clay Cross (:,;),
Lambeth (:,;,c), and Liverpool (:,, onward) are indicative of such conicts. In the
early :,,cs there were major conicts between central government and local govern-
ments over nance, especially the implementation of the poll tax. Conicts with the
Labour government have been less overt, but it has been clear that the current govern-
ment has not met the expectations of many activists in local government, Labour and
non-Labour alike.
The Thatcher government sought to increase control over local authorities from the
center. This was in part for nancial reasons, to ensure that the activities of local authori-
ties did not counteract central government nancial policies, especially reducing public
expenditures. It was also for policy reasons, as a means of ensuring that the revolution
being implemented at the central government level would also be carried out at the local
level. For example, local authorities were required to put their activities out for bid from
private-sector contractorscompulsive competitive tenderingeven before much of
central government was. The Thatcher government also forced local authorities through
parliamentary legislation to nance their component of the total costs of local govern-
ment from the poll tax or community charge, a policy that helped bring the downfall of
the government and the prime minister.
49
The Labour government has talked a great deal
about devolution (and certainly has implemented it for Scotland and Wales) but has re-
tained central control over local authorities. The policies may be somewhat different, sub-
stituting a notion of best value for compulsory competitive tendering, but still impos-
ing its control. Indeed, the Labour government has taken its control down to the
individual institutions level, naming and shaming schools and other failing organiza-
tions.
London has been an especially important locus for issues concerning local govern-
ment and local democracy. In part because it was headed by Ken Livingstone, a member
of the left wing of the Labour Party, the Thatcher government abolished the Greater Lon-
don Council, an umbrella government for the citys thirty-three boroughs, and required
the boroughs to deliver services themselves. There were some common functions such as
London Transport, but the notion of London as a political and governmental entity was
largely abandoned. The Labour government subsequently re-created a unied govern-
ment for London; Ken Livingstone was then elected mayor in May :ccc.
Public Corporations and Regulatory Bodies
Public corporations have been an important part of the total governmental sector in the
United Kingdom even though they are, at least in theory, distinct from the government
itself. The Labour government elected at the end of World War II proceeded to national-
ize many of the major industries of Britain, including the railways, steel, coal, telecom-
munications, electricity, and gas. Government also was involved in other industries such
as petroleum.
The central government appointed members to the boards of the public corpora-
tions that ran these industries and made broad policy decisions (including about -
nance). The day-to-day decisions about these industries were made independently, al-
though this independence was constrained by their reliance on government funds to
cover operating decits and to provide capital for new ventures. Also, decisions by a na-
tionalized industry often provoked political discontent with a government, as when the
decision by the National Coal Board in :,;, to close several less productive Welsh pits
prompted a strong outcry, and again in the mid-:,cs more pit closings led to a bitter
year-long strike.
Nationalized industries constituted a signicant share of economic activity in the
United Kingdom, including such industries as coal, steel, shipbuilding, railroads, electric-
ity, gas, road transportation, and most domestic automobile manufacturing when the
Thatcher government took ofce in :,;,. Such a large share of industry in public hands
obviously gave government a great, albeit indirect, inuence over the economy. This was
especially true in a period of high ination when wage settlements in the nationalized in-
dustries were frequently used as guidelines for settlements in the private sector and when
consequent pressures to keep wage settlements down produced labor unrest.
The Thatcher government was anxious to reduce the role of the public sector in the
economy and to strengthen the private economy. This desire led the Conservatives to pri-
vatize a number of nationalized industries, including gas, telecommunications, road
transportation, and British Airways. The government also sold off much of a major local
industry in its public housing to the occupying tenants. (Approximately c percent of
tenants in London took advantage of this opportunity; only about ,c percent in the Glas-
gow region did so.) These sales helped balance the budget and helped fulll ideological
dreams and campaign promises on behalf of free enterprise. The process of privatization
continued with other public assets, including such public utilities as electricity and water,
being sold. The British government was becoming much less of a direct economic actor.
Government has not been able to get out of the economy entirely, however, and al-
most every privatization has required increased regulatory authority to control the new
industries. For example, privatizing gas led to the creation of the Ofce of Gas Regulation
(Ofgas, which is now merged with the electricity regulator), and privatizing telecommu-
nications produced Oftel, the Ofce of Telecommunications Regulation. The principal
task of these independent ofces was to set the rates that the newly created private mo-
nopolies, or oligopolies, could charge and also to set standards of service.
50
Unlike most
American regulators, these ofces focused more on the retail price index rather than on
return on capital in setting the rates, attempting to drive consumer prices downward and
efciency up. The rate-setting role of the regulators has diminished, however, as competi-
tion for services has increased.
Government may have privatized industries and created nominally independent reg-
ulators, but they cannot escape political fall-out from the privatized industries. The pub-
lic still remembers that these were once public and still thinks of them as public utilities
that should be operated with some concern for the common good. For example, poor ser-
vice, higher fares, and several major accidents have produced a hue and cry over the prof-
its being earned by the rms that now provide railway services. One consequence is that
the government has taken back ownership of rails and switches (although the railroads
themselves remain in private hands).
The Quasi-Governmental Sector
The quasi-governmental sector is one of the biggest areas of activity in the public sector
(up to one-third of public spending). A principal example is the National Health Ser-
vice, actually the largest organization in Western Europe either public or private. Al-
though government funded and controlled through the Department of Health, it repre-
sents an attempt to maintain some independence for the practice of medicine. The same
attempt at independence is made for the universities, a number of which no longer rely
on public funds for the majority of their income, and also for a number of research orga-
nizations funded more or less directly by the public sector.
Other parts of the quasi-governmental sector are kept under somewhat closer control
by government, although the control is indirect through appointment as much as it is
through direct accountability mechanisms. Indeed, one of the most important critiques
of the quasi-governmental sector is that it is less accountable than the more traditional
means of delivering public services. The Thatcher government had launched an offensive
against quangos early in its time in ofce, in part to impose greater control over govern-
ment and public expenditure. By the end its period in ofce, however, it had created hun-
dreds of new quasi-government organizations. These new organizations helped to make
the public sector appeared even smaller and also provided ways to diminish Labour Party
control over a number of local service delivery activities.
Notes
:. Arend Lijphart, Democratic Political Systems: Types, Cases, Causes, and Consequences, Journal of The-
oretical Politics : (:,,:): ,,.
:. The Scottish Parliament elected in :,,, adopted the basic Westminster form of government but did have
to create a coalition between the Labour and Social Democratic Parties in order to have a majority.
,. Ivor Jennings, Cabinet Government, :d ed. (Cambridge, U.K..: Cambridge University Press, :,o,),
:;;,.
. D.L. Ellis, Collective Ministerial Responsibility and Collective Solidarity, Public Law (Winter :,c):
,o;,o.
,. An eighteenth-century prime minister, Lord Melbourne, is responsible for the aphorism It matters not
what we say, so long as we all say the same thing.
o. Ray Pierce, The Executive Divided Against Itself: Cohabitation in France, :,o:,, Governance
(:,,:): :;c,.
;. David Butler, Andrew Adonis, and Tony Travers, Failure in British Government: The Politics of the Poll Tax
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,,).
. R. Kent Weaver and Bert A. Rockman, When and How Do Institutions Matter? in Do Institutions Mat-
ter? Government Capabilities in the United States and Abroad, ed. Weaver and Rockman (Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution, :,,,).
,. For example, immediately after the Kosovo crisis in :,,,, the Opposition called for a review of the policy
and conduct of the war.
:c. R. Blackburn, European Convention on Human Rights: The Impact of the European Convention on Human
Rights in the Legal and Political Systems of Member States (London: Cassell Academic, :,,;).
::. Peter Fearon, Behind the Palace Walls: The Rise and Fall of Britains Royal Family (London: Citadel Press,
:,,,).
::. The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, produced a major swing in public opinion against the royal family,
although they have managed to recoup some of those losses.
:,. Peter Hennessy, The Throne Behind the Power, The Economist, : December :,,, ;;;,.
:. Walter Bageot, The English Constitution (London: Fontana, :,o,).
:,. Michael Foley, The Rise of the British Presidency (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, :,,,).
:o. Mark Perryman, The Blair Agenda (London: Lawrence and Wishart, :,,,).
:;. David Coates and Peter Lawler, eds., New Labour in Power (Manchester and New York: Manchester Uni-
versity Press, :ccc), o.
:. Ibid.
:,. Ibid., ;c.
:c. Chris Clifford, The Prime Ministers Ofce in Britain, in Administering the Summit, ed. B.G. Peters,
R.A.W. Rhodes, and V. Wright (London: Macmillan, :ccc).
::. Quangos: Under the Carpet, The Economist, :: February :,,,; Chris Skelcher, The Appointed State
(Buckingham: Open University Press, :,,).
::. Nicholas Jones, Sultans of Spin: The Media and the New Labour Government (London: Victor Gollancz,
:,,,).
:,. Kevin Theakston, Junior Ministers in British Government (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, :,;).
:. Bruce Headey, British Cabinet Ministers (London: George Allen and Unwin, :,;,).
:,. Martin Burch and Ian Holliday, The British Cabinet System (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, :,,).
:o. George Parker, Reshufe: Bill Affecting the City May be Disrupted, Financial Times, ,: July :,,,; David
Wighton, Reshufe: Blairs New Faces Lack Business Background, Financial Times, ,c July :,,,.
:;. Brian W. Hogwood and Thomas T. Mackie, The United Kingdom: Decision Sifting in a Secret Garden,
in Unlocking the Cabinet: Cabinet Structures in Comparative Perspective, ed. Mackie and Hogwood (Lon-
don: Sage, :,,). See also Simon James, The Cabinet System since :,,: Fragmentation and Integration,
Parliamentary Affairs ; (:,,): o:,:,.
:. Hussein Kassim, The United Kingdom in Coordinating European Policy: The National Dimension, ed. H.
Kassim, B. Guy Peters, and V. Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :ccc).
:,. This is done to improve the image of Parliament as well as to distance the Labour Party from the unions.
See Blair Set to Axe Trade Union Sponsorship of Labour MPs, Sunday Times, :: June :,,,.
,c. Prior to the :,,, constitutional reform, approximately :,ccc peers were nominal members of the House of
Lords; in practice, however, fewer than a third of that number participated in legislative activities. The
hereditary peers elected among themselves the ninety-two hereditary peers who remain in the House of
Lords. (An analysis of the composition of the House of Lords is available at www.parliament.the-sta-
tionery-ofce.co.uk/pa/ld/ldinfo/ldanal.htm)
,:. The current Speakers immediate predecessor was the rst woman to hold the position.
,:. The Speaker generally follows the advice of the Commons Committee on Privileges.
,,. This question is so called because Tam Dalyell, who represents the West Lothian constituency in West-
minster, rst raised it.
,. Gavin Drewry, The New Select Committees, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,,).
,,. John Garrett, Managing the Civil Service (London: Heinemann, :,c); Colin Campbell and Graham K.
Wilson, The End of Whitehall: Death of a Paradigm? (Oxford: Blackwell, :,,,).
,o. Gavin Drewry and Tony Butcher, The Civil Service Today (Oxford: Blackwell, :,,).
,;. Campbell and Wilson, End of Whitehall.
,. Chris Clifford and Vincent Wright, Politicization of the British Civil Service, Unpublished paper,
Nufeld College, Oxford, :,,;.
,,. K.G. Robertson, Secrecy and Open Government (London: Macmillan, :,,,).
c. Brian W. Hogwood, Restructuring Central Government: The Next Steps Initiative, in Managing Pub-
lic Organizations, :d ed., ed. K. Eliassen and J. Kooiman (London: Sage, :,,,); Patricia Greer, Transform-
ing the Civil Service: The Next Steps Initiative (Buckingham: Open University Press, :,,,).
:. A Riot over Prisons, The Economist, :: October :,,,, o:o:.
:. A.V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, :cth ed. (New York: St. Martins, :,,,),
;.
,. Donley T. Studlar, Great Britain: Decline or Renewal ? (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,o), :c,.
. All SoulsJUSTICE, Administrative Law; Some Necessary Reforms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,).
,. See John McCarthy and David Newlands, eds., Governing Scotland: Problems and Prospects (Avesbury:
Ashgate, :,,,).
o. Michael Chisholm, Structural Reform of British Local Government (Manchester: University of Manchester
Press, :ccc).
;. For a personal account, see Ken Livingstone, Livingstones London (London: Victor Gollancz, :ccc); also,
The Dangers of Devolution, The Economist, :o February :ccc.
. See Skelcher, Appointed State.
,. In :,,, local revenue was reorganized as a council tax system, which is based on the capital value of prop-
erty.
,c. Given that effective competition is difcult in many of these industries, the market is not an efcient
price-setting institution.
Chapter 3
Who Has the Power?
A DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL SYSTEM requires mechanisms for the public to inu-
ence the decisions of its political leaders. This inuence may be exercised only intermit-
tently, as during elections, but in most democratic systems it is exercised almost con-
stantly through mechanisms such as political parties, through interest groups, and
increasingly through public opinion polls and the media. The government of the United
Kingdom is no different. While some commentators have said that the United Kingdom
is a democracy only once every ve years (the statutory maximum term for a sitting Par-
liament), in fact the day-to-day decisions of British government are inuenced by popular
demands and pressures. Further, the government is attempting to provide more opportu-
nities for participation at times other than elections.
The relative secrecy of British government may still protect it from as much external
pressure on policy as is encountered by some other European countries, such as Sweden.
Further, the majoritarian style of politics in the United Kingdom tends to give substantial
power to a single majority party until it is thrown out of ofce. The popular pressures are,
in part, transmitted through partisan institutions, but the signicant inuence of pressure
groups on policymaking also requires careful scrutiny.
Political Parties
To an American reader accustomed to political parties that have been little more than
electoral aggregations and have meant little or nothing in organizational or policy terms,
British political parties may appear well-organized and at times even ideological. For
other Europeans, however, British parties appear much more like American parties than
like continental ones. British political parties do have discernible policy stances, even if
sometimes these are adopted merely to oppose the stated policies of the other party. Al-
though they do have policy stances, British parties are primarily catchall parties and in-
clude a relatively wide range of opinion within any one party. Thus, they also differ from
the more ideological parties found in most other European countries. The catchall feature
remains apparent despite the ideological bent of the Conservatives during the :,cs and
:,,cs. Following a series of electoral failures, the Labour Party has attempted to enhance
its image as a broad, nonideological party, by purging its more confrontational elements
on the left and then revoking its commitment to public ownership. This change helped
to produce landslide electoral victories in :,,; and May :cc: by making Labour more ac-
ceptable to the expanding middle class. The policy change has, however, alienated a num-
ber of more traditional Labour supporters in the working class who still want a party that
advocates socialism and vehemently defends the interests of the industrial working class.
Perhaps the major differences between British and European political parties are that
the majoritarian style of the British parliamentary system means that a single party has
been almost certain to form the government. Further, the party out of power must con-
stantly be preparing to be capable of taking power with relatively little notice. British par-
ties also differ from American parties by being national organizations, expected to deliver
the same view on policy issues across the whole country and to be responsible for their
policy stances in and out of ofce. More than in other countries, British elections tend to
be about the performance of the party currently in government and the capacity of an-
other (clearly identiable) party to assume the role of government.
1
This characteristic
arises from the majoritarian nature of parliamentary government in the United Kingdom
and makes the responsibility for policies and performance clearer than in many other par-
liamentary systems.
The Party System
The British party system has been described variously as a two-party system and as a
two-and-one-half-party system. Historically, the dominant parties were the Tories (an-
tecedents of todays Conservatives) and the Liberals, both of which emerged out of leg-
islative factions dating from the seventeenth century. The Tories were identied with the
more privileged sectors of society and committed themselves to the defense of existing in-
stitutions and policies, including the Crown and church at home and imperialism
abroad. They also afrmed the need for a strong state, the primacy of law and order, the
sanctity of private property, and an evolutionary program of social change. The Liberals,
in contrast, represented primarily the middle classes and positioned themselves ideologi-
cally as a party advocating free trade, home rule in Ireland, and social reform. The failure
of the Liberals to accommodate the political and economic demands of Britains rapidly
growing class of industrial workers during the latter part of the nineteenth century
prompted a coalition of trade union leaders, socialists, and more idealistic Fabians to
form the Labour Party in :,cc as an extraparliamentary organization dedicated to a more
radical course of reform. By the :,:cs the Labour Party displaced the Liberals as Britains
other largest party.
The United Kingdom has subsequently retained a predominantly two-party system
in which ideological and regional third parties nonetheless play an important indirect
role in the political process. The two major parties in the United Kingdom remain the
Labour Party and the Conservative (Tory) Party. They are national parties in every sense
of the word and almost always run candidates in every Parliamentary constituency in
Great Britain.
The Liberals constitute a half party on the national level under their current name
as Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats were formed out of two parties, the original
Liberals and the Social Democrats (a moderate faction that broke away from the Labour
Party in the early :,cs). The two parties formed a Liberal/Social Democratic Alliance
based on their joint opposition to radicalization on the part of both Labour and the Con-
who has the power? 43
servatives, and pledged not to nominate candidates against each other in national elec-
tions.
2
In :,; the Alliance won twenty-two seats scattered from the Shetlands to Corn-
wall, with most of its support concentrated in Scotland and Wales. After that election, the
party divided again into two parties. The larger portion went into the Social and Liberal
Democrats, while a splinter led by Dr. David Owen retained for a while the name of the
Social Democrats. This split eliminated, at least in the short run, any real potential this
centrist grouping had of presenting an electoral alternative to the free-market neoliberal-
ism of the Conservatives and the collectivism of the Labour Party. In the :,,: election the
Liberal Democrats lost two of the seats won in :,;. The parties merged as the Liberal
Democrats in :,, who have performed well in recent elections. In :,,; they won :;.:
percent of the popular vote and o seats (an increase of :o from the previous election)
and increased their share to :. percent and ,: seats in June :cc:.
Election results during the :,;cs and party realignments during the :,cs revealed
the emergence of a more complex multiparty system. The parties that constitute the addi-
tions to the two- (or two-and-a-half ) party system have had some difculty in organizing
themselves and in presenting viable alternatives for forming a government to the two
dominant parties, but yet there has been some real change in the system. In some parts of
the United Kingdom one of the two major parties may actually be the third party; this
appears increasingly true for the Conservatives in Scotland. In the :cc: election the
Tories won one seat in Scotland (with :,.o percent of the vote), and the Scottish National
Party, not the Conservative Party, is the ofcial opposition in the Scottish Parliament.
Two other political parties regularly win parliamentary seats in Great Britain. These
are the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland, and Plaid Cymru, the Welsh national
party, in Wales. These parties experienced a marked decline in their electoral fortunes in
:,;,, following defeat of devolution referendums in :,;. They made a minor comeback
in the :,; election, increasing their total from four to ve seats, and then moved up to
seven seats (four from Plaid Cymru) in :,,:. The vote of the nationalist parties as a per-
centage of the vote in their regions also increased to almost : percent for the SNP in
Scotland in :,;, and then increased to ::., percent in :,,:, and then to more than ::
percent in :,,;. Electoral support declined marginally to :c.: percent in :cc:. In Wales
Plaid Cymru increased its vote to percent in :,;, then to almost , percent in :,,:, al-
most :c percent in :,,;, and :., percent in :cc:. The SNP has been doing especially
well in national elections, the election to the Scottish Parliament, and local elections since
:,,:, to the point that only one Conservative was elected from Scotland in :cc:. In fact,
the Liberal Democrats have become the third party, with ten MPs.
There is also substantial variation in the vote for the nationalist parties within their
own regions, with Plaid Cymru receiving a high of ,:.; percent and a low of : percent in
Welsh constituencies in :,,;. The SNP vote ranged between ,,.; percent and . percent
in Scottish constituencies in :,,:, but only two constituencies had less than :c percent
SNP votes. These variations are a function of factors such as the degree of urbanization
and industrialization of the constituency.
Finally, the partisan politics of Northern Ireland reect the troubled history of that
province and the religious and nationalist cleavages that divide the population. In :cc:,
four political parties elected members of Parliament from Northern Ireland. Two of
thesethe Democratic Unionists and the Ulster Unionistsare Protestant and are dedi-
cated to the continuing union of Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. These parties
differ primarily in the intensity of their commitment to union, with the Democratic
Unionists, led by the Reverend Ian Paisley (MEP), leading in that race. The other two par-
ties winning seats in Northern Ireland are primarily Roman Catholic and would like to
unite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to its south. The Social Democratic
Labour Party is overwhelmingly Catholic and would like to unite all of Ireland as a single,
socialist society; despite its sectarian appeal, it is a secular organization. The other Catholic
party is Provisional Sinn Fein, generally regarded as the political arm of the Irish Republi-
can Army (IRA). Sinn Fein is committed to the unication of Ireland by almost any means,
although since the mid-:,,cs it (and the IRA) have approached an agreement with Britain.
Before discussing political parties any further, we should add several points on the
British electoral system. The system for general elections is a single-member-district, plu-
rality system. Each constituency elects a single representative (member of Parliament),
and all that is required for election is a plurality (i.e., the individual with the most votes
wins whether receiving a majority or not). Such a system has the advantage of producing
majorities for Parliament, and although no British party since :,, has won a majority of
the popular votes, parliamentary majorities have been produced at each election. The
smaller parties are severely disadvantaged by this electoral system; the Liberal Democrats
have advocated proportional representation as a more equitable means of selecting mem-
bers of Parliament. Because their vote is spread widely across Great Britain they are disad-
vantaged more by the current system than are the nationalist parties whose votes are more
concentrated. In :,,; the Liberal Dems received only ;.: percent of the seats with :;.:
percent of the votes. The Jenkins Commission, appointed by the Blair government (as
part of a preelectoral deal with the Liberal Dems) to consider changes in the electoral sys-
tem, recommended moving to a proportional representation system.
3
The United Kingdom is beginning to experiment with proportional representation
(PR). European elections are now being run on a PR basis, although the disappointing
turnout in the :,,, elections caused even some advocates to consider the appropriateness
of the change in the United Kingdom. Also, almost half of the Scottish Parliament and
the Welsh Assembly are elected by PR. The Northern Ireland Assembly coming out of the
Good Friday Agreement is elected entirely by the single transferable vote, the same com-
plex system used in the Republic of Ireland. These are interesting experiments, but as
long as the existing electoral system continues to benet the parties in power, it is unlikely
to be changed.
One aspect of the British electoral system unlike that of the United States is that the
legal principle of one-person, one vote, one value is not honored. Scotland and Wales
are overrepresented, with more parliamentary seats than might be expected on the basis of
population; this is due in part to the fact that both regions have more rural areas. North-
ern Ireland, meanwhile, was signicantly underrepresented until :,c (see table ,.:). The
justication for this misdistribution of parliamentary seats is that Scotland and Wales, be-
cause of their national identity and history, were deemed to have special interests requir-
ing greater representation. In contrast, Northern Ireland was under-represented because,
until :,;, it had substantially greater self-government, with its own parliament sitting at
Stormont, than did other parts of the United Kingdom. With the imposition of direct
rule from Westminster, that justication was no longer valid, and subsequent changes in
the distribution of seats have made representation more like that in Great Britain, albeit
still lower than in the other parts.
The creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly may produce greater
equality of representation among the components of the United Kingdom. The Scotland
Bill promised to reduce Scottish representation in the House of Commons from ;: to ,;
seats at the next allocation (in :cc,); the position of Wales is less clear given the limited
powers of the Welsh Assembly. Given Scotlands current overrepresentation in Westmin-
ster, the reduction of the number of Scottish MPs is not good news for the Labour Party
since it will predictably lose some of the seats it claims from the region (,, after the June
:cc: election).
Another feature of the British electoral system that differentiates it from American
and most European systems is the importance of by-elections. If a seat becomes vacant
during the life of a Parliament, an interim election (by-election) is held to ll the seat. As
well as ensuring full membership of the House of Commons, by-elections serve as some-
thing of an ongoing vote of condence by the people, and poor electoral performance can
be quite embarrassing for a sitting government. For example, by-elections in the winter
of :,o; were used as gauges of Thatchers electoral strength, as well as that of the
SDP/Liberal Alliance, and became one component of the evidence used in deciding when
to call the :,; election. By-elections can also lead to a loss of a parliamentary majority, as
occurred in :,;;, and :,,:,;. Elections to the European Parliament can also serve as
a similar barometer of public opinion toward the government in power.
By-elections also play a role in internal party politics. The electoral losses and troubles
in by-elections in :,,c helped set the stage for the revolt within the Conservative Party
that pushed Thatcher out of ofce as prime minister. The continuing failures of the Major
government in by-elections during :,,,, :,,, and :,,, were one factor that led to a lead-
ership challenge in the party, although John Major was able to survive the challenge from a
much more Thatcherite candidate. These poor by-elections results did, however, produce
some softening of Conservative policies to attempt to win back moderate voters.
4
The Two Major Parties
Although many voters may choose other parties, only two partiesLabour and Conserv-
ativecan be expected to form a government. These governments may depend on the
Table 3.1 Citizens per Parliamentary Seat
Northern
England Wales Scotland Ireland
Seats 529 40 72 18
Citizens per seat 89,600 73,900 71,500 92,900
explicit or implicit support of smaller parties, as did the Labour government for much of
the period from :,; to :,;,. During this time, the Labour Party had a narrow majority
from the beginning of the session and frequently depended on Liberal votes, as well as the
tacit support of the Scottish National Party and portions of the Northern Ireland delega-
tion, to prevent a signicant defeat in Parliament. This did not constitute a formal coali-
tion government, however, and the Liberals had no cabinet positions. Likewise, John Ma-
jor depended on the Ulster Unionists to stave off defeat toward the end of his
government in :,,;. There is, however, a more explicit coalition between Labour and the
Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament seated in the summer of :,,,.
There is a great deal that divides the two major parties in Britain, but in many ways
they are similar. Both are essentially elite or caucus parties, having a relatively small mass
membership compared to their electoral strength. The parties are also aggregative, with
both covering a range of social and political opinion and consequently having internal
ideological divisions as well as disagreements with the other party. Both are relatively
centralized and disciplined parties, compared with decentralized American parties, al-
though not so easy to discipline as some continental parties in which members of parlia-
ment lack direct links with constituencies. Finally, both are national parties, drawing
strength from all parts of the country, and they generally have been the two top vote-
getters in each constituency.
5
The Labour Party
The roots of the British Labour Party lie in the Industrial Revolution. The Labour Party is
the principal representative of the working class in British politics, although its support is
broader than just industrial labor. Indeed, the :,,; and :cc: elections demonstrated that
the Labour Party has substantial appeal among almost all segments of society. The Labour
Party historically professed socialism as a major portion of its program but it is an aggrega-
tive party that includes many who do not accept socialism as the goal of the party or soci-
ety. New Labour, for example, is very muted in speaking about socialism and has given
up public ownership of the major means of production of as a signicant policy goal.
Ideological cleavages within the Labour Party are highly visible and intense. Faction-
alism in the party prevented it from being a viable competitor to the Conservatives for
much of the :,cs, but Neil Kinnock as leader of the party sought to create a more mod-
erate image and heal some of the strife within the party. For example, the Labour Party in
the early :,,cs dropped its campaign pledge of unilateral nuclear disarmament in an at-
tempt to appear stronger in foreign affairs and moderated its stances on the renationaliza-
tion of privatized industries, as well as its earlier criticism of the European Union. Thus,
it has behaved like a party in a two-party system shouldseeking the electoral center
but has found that center farther to the right than it had been. The Labour Partys current
leader, Tony Blair, has moved the party even more to the right on traditional class issues.
Following his urging, in :,,, the party dropped its commitment to Clause of the partys
constitution of :,: and with that a commitment to government ownership of principal
means of production and distribution.
6
Blair also has sought to broaden the appeal of the
party to women and minorities. For example, the party pledged to nominate female can-
didates in half the safe Labour and winnable marginal seats in the :cc: election.
7
These
decisions have alienated some traditional Labour supporters but appear to have enhanced
the Labour Partys popular appeal.
To comprehend the organization of the Labour Party outside Parliament, one must
rst understand the role that labor unions play in the party. The British Labour Party
originally was an alliance of trade unions and socialist organizations, with unions tradi-
tionally the dominant element in that coalition. Currently, many party members and the
majority of the partys nancial base come from the labor movement. Thus, when one
speaks of the membership of the Labour Party, one is really speaking of the unions, al-
though the voting strength of the unions in the annual conference has been reduced by
changes in the party constitution. Also, individual members, through socialist organi-
zations and constituency parties, now have inuence that is much greater than their nu-
merical strength. Their power was increased by a change in the partys constitution in
:,c involving the election of the party leader through an electoral college that has a dis-
proportionate share of constituency party members, albeit still dominated by the parlia-
mentary party.
The Labour Party has a National Executive Committee (NEC) that supervises party
operations outside Parliament and, to an increasing extent, manages the whole party. Of
the thirty-two members of this committee, twelve are direct representatives of labor
unions and six represent the constituency parties. The remaining members are the leader
and deputy leader of the party, the treasurer (who is elected by the annual party confer-
ence), three members of the Labour Parliamentary Party, two government representatives,
two Labour councillors, the leader of Labour Members of the European Parliament, a
Young Labour representative, and one representative of the Socialist Societies in Britain.
Five of these members are women. Major voices in the NEC and the annual conference
other than elective politicians make their actions less predictable and manageable than
those of the Conservative Partys Executive Committee. This is especially true when the
Labour Party is the opposition party and the leader lacks the power of ofce. The bureau-
cratic arm of the party is the Labour Party secretary and his staff. As noted, the party bu-
reaucracy is closely controlled by the National Executive Committee. This control ex-
tends to having subcommittees of the NEC supervise various sections of the party
organization such as research, press and publicity, and nance.
The Labour Party has regional organizations, but these organizations do not have the
degree of importance of their equivalents in the Conservative Party. Also, there are con-
stituency parties that, until the :,c changes in the partys structure, lacked even the au-
tonomy granted to their equivalents in the Conservative Party. These constituency parties
now have the right to reselect their candidates before each election, removing that power
from the central party. This power led to the selection of some extreme left-wing candi-
dates and some further division within the party. For example, in a Liverpool by-election,
the moderate Labour candidate was opposed by a real Labour candidate from Militant
Tendency, the extreme left of the party.
The power of the unions in the Labour Party has markedly declined at the partys an-
nual conference. Of the approximately ,ccc participants in these autumnal affairs,
more delegates represent constituency parties than unions. Voting is not based on the
number of delegates present, however, but on the number of dues-paying party members
represented by those present. Unions formerly held the balance of power, controlling ap-
proximately ve-sixths of all votes; presently, under Blair, their members cast only about
one-third of the votes.
At times, the annual conference has attempted to force its views on the Parliamentary
Labour Party (PLP). The formal statements of the party do, in fact, indicate that the an-
nual conference has the right to make binding policy decisions for the PLP, but party
leaders from the inception of the party have been unwilling to be controlled by policy
pronouncements of those out of ofce, especially when there is a Labour government.
The tension arises from the fact that Labour began as a movement that created a parlia-
mentary party to serve its interests, so there is a greater tradition of mass party control
than in the Conservative Party, which began as a faction in Parliament.
Some tensions, both institutional and ideological, between segments of the Labour
Party have been illustrated by the conict over the Commission of Inquiry mandated by
the :,;, annual conference. This commission was charged with investigating the struc-
ture and constitution of the Labour Party, especially questions of the authorship of the
party manifesto, the reselection of parliamentary candidates in each constituency prior to
each general election, and the election of the party leader by a more broadly constituted
body than the PLP. All these issues pitted the ideological left of the party, based in con-
stituency organizations, against the ideological right in the PLP, especially the leadership
of the PLP (then most prominently James Callaghan and Denis Healey). These issues
came to a head after the annual conference accepted the report of the commission favor-
ing the stand of the left, whereupon Callaghan resigned as party leader. The provisions of
the new constitutional arrangement for electing a party leader were now nally decided,
and Michael Foota representative of the left, although a less divisive one than most
was elected leader. These changes in the Labour Party led to the defection of what became
the Social Democrats from the party, and seemed to be pushing the Labour Party farther
left than has been true in the past.
Several disastrous electoral defeats of the more leftist leadership gave the right and
center the opportunity to reassert their case for a more centrist party dedicated to win-
ning elections, not ideological wrangles. Even the modernized Labour Party could not,
however, win the :,,: election, and Neil Kinnock resigned and was replaced by John
Smith. Smiths untimely death soon after his selection led to the selection of Tony Blair, a
young, energetic, and reformist leader for the Labour Party.
8
Blairs subsequent success in
transforming Labour into a more centrist New Labour party embracing neoliberal eco-
nomic and social policies while distancing itself from organized labor was a principal fac-
tor contributing to Labours landslide electoral victories in :,,; and :cc:. With . per-
cent of the popular vote in :,,; (compared to ,. percent ve years earlier), Labour won
:, seats to displace the Conservatives as Britains governing party for the rst time since
:,;,. Popular support declined marginally in June :cc: to :.: percent (largely because
of a low voter turnout), but with :, MPs the Labour Party easily won reelection for a sec-
ond full term. Prime Minister Blair promptly afrmed his determination to act on the
Labour Party leader
Tony Blair rallies his
party for the general
election in :));. (AP/
Wide World Photos)
partys campaign promises to improve public services (including education and health
care) while cautiously exploring the prospect of Britains eventually joining the Eurozone
within the European Union.
The party chair and deputy leader are chosen by a majority vote of an electoral col-
lege comprising three groups (each comprising one-third of its membership): the Labour
Parliamentary Party and European Parliamentary MPs, afliated trade unions, and the
constitutency parties. This procedure, which was implemented in :,: as a democratizing
departure from the earlier practice of election by members of the Parliamentary Labour
Party, has served to enhance the internal stature and legitimacy of the party leadership.
The Conservative Party
The Conservative (or Tory) Party has its roots in the political conicts of the eighteenth
century, and to some degree those roots produce conicts within the emerging character
of the Conservative Party today. In the late :,cs, the majority of adherents to the Con-
servative Party would feel akin to conservative parties in Europe and North America, re-
sisting encroachments into the affairs of individuals by government. Traditionally, how-
ever, the Conservative Party has advocated strong central government, in part because of
the perception that the poor and less educated cannot be counted on to make proper de-
cisions on their own and need guidance by their betters. Old Tories thus want signi-
cant governmental control over the private sector, albeit control used to preserve the in-
terests of the upper classes, or at least to preserve the existing social order.
9
New Tories, or Thatcherite Conservatives, tend to advocate greater freedom for indi-
vidual and business activities, and consequently advocate a diminished role for govern-
ment in economic and social life. Long after Thatcher left ofce there are conicts within
in the party over the meaning of conservatism. The leader of the party in :ccc, William
Hague, appeared much closer to the Thatcherite wing than to the Old Tories, but he
faced a formidable change in attempting to balance views within the party to win elec-
tions with a public that had grown skeptical of the perceived extremism of the party during
the Thatcher years. Further, the Labour Party is no longer the extreme left-wing party that
the Conservatives found easy to demonize during the :,;cs and :,cs, so the electoral
challenges are that much greater.
The Conservative Party is an elite party, both in terms of the socioeconomic charac-
teristics of the bulk of its adherents and in terms of the relationship between party mem-
bers and the voting strength of the party. The number of British citizens voting for the
Conservative Party is many times greater than its formal membership. The party is now
thought to have some cc,ccc members, down from over : million not too many years
ago.
10
Still, it remains a relatively small mass organization compared to its ability to orga-
nize voters and to manage national campaigns. The elitism of the party is further typied
by the domination of the party by the parliamentary party, and perhaps even more by the
leader of the party. There are a number of democratic structures within the party, but in
practice a small leadership group tends to be dominant.
The Conservative Party outside Parliament has two major components. One is a
mass organization headed by the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associa-
tions in England and Wales; there are similar bodies in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The governing body of the National Union is its Party Board, which has seventeen mem-
bers. Subordinate bodies include forty-two Area Councils.
The territorial organization of the Conservative Party is similar to the national orga-
nization. There are twelve provincial area councils; within each council the party is orga-
nized by constituencies, each with a leadership structure similar to that of the national
party. The constituencies are also served by agents responsible for the administrative
functions of the party. The constituency parties are important because it is at this level
that most funds are raised and the majority of campaigning is managed. Also, the con-
stituency must decide to accept candidates offered to them by the national party or to de-
velop candidates of their own who will be acceptable to the national party. Over time,
constituency parties have become increasingly assertive and are now willing to deselect
even sitting MPs as their candidates, or to retain candidates opposed by the party leader-
ship. Thus, although the Conservative Party is centralized for many functions, such as the
writing of the party platform (manifesto), for many important functions the party is be-
coming more decentralized to its constituency parties.
Assisting the local and national ofcers is the second major arm of the Conservative
Party outside Parliament: the Central Ofce. This ofce is directed by the chairman of
the party organization and employs a number of professional workers, including those in
the Conservative Research Department. The major ofcials in the Central Ofce are ap-
pointed by the party leader, and it is from this direct connection with party leadership
that the Central Ofce derives most of its authority. The latter points to the overriding
fact that the Conservative Party is largely a party based on Parliament. Certainly the an-
nual conference of the party has become much more assertive than it once was, and a
leader must pay attention to the mass members of the party, but the real control over a
leader comes from the party in Parliament, not from the mass membership.
The basis of Conservative Party organization in the House of Commons is the :,::
Committee, composed of all Conservative members of the House of Commons, other
than ministers when the party is in government. The :,:: Committee has exercised con-
siderable power over Conservative leaders, and that power had appeared to be increasing
prior to Thatchers time as prime minister. The leader of the Conservative Party does not
have to stand for annual election but can be challenged every year. Five of the ten leaders
of the party since :,c: have been forced out of the leadership by backbenchers, either by
direct vote or by the obvious disapproval of the leader by the led. Even after serving as
prime minister for over a decade and having molded the party in her own image did not
prevent Thatcher from being removed from ofce when a majority of Conservatives in
the House of Commons considered her policies to be poorly conceived and leading them
toward electoral problems.
In addition to exercising control over the leadership of the party, another function of
the party in Parliament is to maintain the voting discipline of the party members. The
Conservative Party has denied the whip (expelled any of its members) only once since
:,,. Eight Tory MPs abstained on an important vote on European policy in late :,, and
were disciplined. Also, a number of members have refused the whip during that period,
Margaret Thatcher
takes over as leader of
the Conservative Party
in :);,. (Hulton/Getty
Images)
and one conservative MP did cross the aisle to Labour in :,,,, protesting the social poli-
cies of the Conservative government. Until the :,,cs the Conservative Party was not beset
with the deep internal splits that have plagued the Labour Party, and therefore the Conser-
vatives have found it less necessary to employ the available sanctions, although conicts
over European policy in particular have raised internal tensions. Also important for con-
ict management within the Conservative Party are certain genteel traditions, such as not
taking votes in the :,:: Committee but instead reading the sense of the meeting.
The selection of party leader was traditionally left almost entirely to the parliamen-
tary party, although there were provisions for constituency parties and other concerned
groups within the party to make their views known. This method entailed a ballot of all
Conservative MPs, with provisions for run-off elections among the leading candidates.
The party broadened the selection process in :,, by establishing an electoral college con-
sisting of all party members to elect the party leader among candidates receiving at least
:, percent of votes among parliamentary MPs. In September :cc:, a majority of o: per-
cent of the partys ,:,ccc eligible members utilized the new procedure to elect Iain Dun-
can Smithan erstwhile skeptic of European integrationover Kenneth Clarke, a for-
mer chancellor of the exchequer who had advocated closer ties with the European Union.
Duncan Smith succeeded William Hague, who had announced his resignation following
the partys loss in the June :cc: election.
The Conservatives have in many ways gone from being the natural party of the
government to one perceived by a signicant portion of the public as being too divided
and too inconsistent to be trusted with governing. Crucial divisions within the party con-
cern domestic social and economic policy and, even more deeply, Europe and Britains
role in an expanding and ever more powerful European Union. These divisions were an
important factor in the disastrous showing of the Conservatives in the :,,; election,
when the partys share of the vote plummeted to ,:. percent (compared to :., percent
in :,,:) and the number of Conservative MPs fell from ,,o to :o,. The Conservatives
gained one seat in the June :cc: election, but popular support for the party was the sec-
ond lowest since :c (and the number of its supporters at the lowest level since the in-
troduction of universal suffrage in :,:,). Both defeats prompted the change of party lead-
ership and an intense internal debate over fundamental policy issues, including whether
or not Britain should abandon the pound in favor of adopting the European Unions
common currency (the euro).
Voting and Elections
Elections are a crucial driving force for democratic politics. Or are they? Certainly all con-
ventional analyses of British politics assume that the policies of government are decided
by the clash of political parties over issues. In like manner, voters are assumed to be both
interested in politics and to make their choices among parties on the basis of issues. These
may be assumptions largely unsubstantiated by evidence. Let us look at the evidence
about the turnout of voters and reasons for their voting choices, and then ask a few perti-
nent questions about the role of elections in policy choice in the United Kingdom.
Before we do that, however, we should point to several salient features of British elec-
tions. British elections are national elections, but they are national elections conducted in
individual constituencies. Although it is clear who will be prime minister should one
party or the other win, only two constituencies actually vote for prospective prime minis-
ters. Also, these constituencies are quite small compared with electoral districts in most
Western countries. The average English MP represents ,c,ccc people, and the average
Scottish MP roughly o;,ccc people. By way of contrast, the average member of the Na-
tional Assembly in France represents more than :cc,ccc people and the average legislator
in the United States over ,cc,ccc people.
In addition to size differences, the expenses of constituency campaigning in Britain
are regulated so that a candidate in :,,: could not spend more than ,,o plus ,., pence
(about , cents) per voter in urban districts and .: pence per voter in rural districts. These
spending restrictions, combined with the short campaign period (usually six weeks or
less), and the difculty of purchasing electronic media time other than for the limited
party political broadcasts provided free on all networks, make British campaigns very dif-
ferent than those in the United States. The expenditure restrictions on campaign spend-
ing by candidates understates the amount of money actually spent for elections, given
that the parties themselves raise and spend substantial amounts of money on behalf of all
their candidates. Still, British election campaigns are relatively inexpensive.
Also, the parties control the selection of candidates more centrally than American
parties do. The concept of a primary is unheard of, although the constituency parties do
have an active voice in the initial selection of their candidates. A prospective candidate
must be accepted by the constituency party, with the Central Ofce exercising a largely
advisory role. This holds true for the acceptance of a new candidate, although candidates
already sitting for a seat in Parliament, or having stood for a seat in the constituency in
the previous election, do not have to be reselected in the Conservative Party although
they now do in the Labour Party. Further, the Labour Party is now attempting to ensure
that more women run as Labour candidates and is giving some constituencies the option
of choosing only among women candidates.
Turnout
British citizens tend to vote more readily than American citizens do, although not so
readily as citizens in most other Western democracies. Turnout is also relatively evenly
distributed across the country. As is true for most other countries, the abstainers are con-
centrated in the working class, a factor that goes a long way to explain the ability of the
Conservative Party to win as many elections as it does. A key variable in the absentee rate
is the degree of political apathy prevailing among voters; the Labour Party in particular is
vulnerable to abstentions. Citizens are legally required to register to vote.
Partisan Choice by Voters
As well as deciding whether to vote, a voter must decide for whom to vote. There has
been a great deal of research on the determinants of the partisan choices of voters. Four
factors are usually discussed as the principal determinants of partisan choice in Britain:
social class, region of the country, demography, and issues. These four factors obviously
interact. Members of social classes are not evenly spread across the country, with more
working-class voters living in Scotland, Wales, and the industrial North and Midlands of
England and more middle- and upper-class voters living in the southeast or southwest of
England.
11
The issues to which citizens are assumed to respond also have different im-
pacts on members of different social classes, on different ethnic and age groups, and on
residents of different regions of the country. Consequently it is hard to disaggregate the
effects of these different inuences, but we can at least discern and describe some appar-
ent effects.
Social Class. Social class is generally considered to be the dominant factor in explain-
ing voting in Britain. As noted, much of British politics has been conceptualized in class
terms. While there is strong evidence that class remains an important factor in the voting
decisions, there is also some evidence that it is no longer so overwhelming as often be-
lieved.
12
For example, as shown in table ,.:, in the :,,; election , percent of skilled
manual workers voted for the Labour Party, whereas :; percent voted Conservative and :,
percent Liberal Democrat. In contrast, a solid plurality of professional and managerial
workers (, percent) supported the Conservatives, yet a third voted for Labour and more
than a fth for the Liberal Democrats. Thus, social class remains a general predictor of
party preference, but its importance has declined in recent elections as voters have be-
come more attuned to particular issues and personalities.
Several factors reinforce class voting among citizens, especially members of the work-
ing class. Three factors of importance are membership in certain organizations, patterns
of residence, and patterns of communication. In general, members of labor unions are
substantially more likely to vote Labour than are members of the working class as a
whole. For example, in :,,;, oc percent of union members voted Labour, while per-
cent of working-class voters who were not members of unions voted Labour. This was
true even though many of those not voting for Labour were in objectively worse socio-
Table 3.2 Class Voting, 1979 and 1997 (in percentages)
Conservative Labour Liberal Democrats
Professional and Managerial
1979 64 21 16
1997 45 33 22
Ofce/Clerical
1979 54 30 16
1997 28 51 21
Skilled Manual
1979 41 44 15
1997 27 58 15
Semiskilled and Unskilled Manual
1979 34 53 13
1997 22 64 14
economic conditions than the union members. The impact of union membership on vot-
ing has declined, in part because many union members who have jobs have begun to
make middle-class incomes and have begun to behave politically more like the middle
class. Moreover, aggregate trade union membership has fallen to approximately ,c per-
cent of the workforce (see gure, p. ,,;).
Membership in religious organizations also tends to affect the class dimension of vot-
ing. On the one hand, adherents of the Church of England tend to vote Conservative
more often than do members of other churches. To characterize the Church of England
as the Tory party at prayer may be to overstate the identity of church and party, but
church membership appears to have a signicant inuence. On the other hand, Catholic
members of the working class tend to vote Labour more consistently than do workers as a
whole. Even leaving aside the inuence of Northern Irish politics on voting, Catholic vot-
ers in cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool are among the most consistent Labour sup-
porters.
Finally, certain lifestyle characteristics are important in explaining why members of
the working or middle classes tend to vote for or against the nominal interests of their
class. Working-class voters living in council (public) housing (which varies considerably
by region) are much more likely to vote Labour than are members of the working class
living in other accommodations. Similarly, members of the middle class who enjoy such
middle-class amenities as automobiles and telephones are more likely to vote Conserva-
tive than their more deprived colleagues. Finally, the receipt of social benets appears to
have some inuence on voting, with individuals receiving benets more likely to vote
Labour.
These lifestyle characteristics have been characterized by Patrick Dunleavy as the
consumption cleavage in British politics,
13
meaning that it appears to matter less
whether one has a working-class occupation than whether the services one consumes
housing, education, health care, and so onare public or private. During her decade of
leadership, Margaret Thatcher did a great deal to shift overall patterns of consumption in
Britain in the private direction, for example, by selling off a signicant percentage of all
council housing to sitting tenants. That shift initially beneted the Conservative Party at
election time.
At least until the recession of :,,c,:, working-class voters with jobs often had good
incomes, and the Labour Party appeared to be becoming the party of the unemployed
and intellectuals. In the :,,: election there was a general shift to Labour voting, but some
analysts have argued that these lifestyle factors have become more important in explain-
ing patterns of voting behavior than simple membership in a social class.
Patterns of Residence. Where people live seems to affect their voting behavior. First,
living in the Celtic Fringe tends to affect voting. Leaving aside opportunities and motiva-
tions to vote for third-party candidates, the division of votes between the two major par-
ties also differs in different parts of the country. Wales is the most heavily Labour portion
of the United Kingdom, followed closely by Scotland. Were it not for Wales and Scot-
land, the Conservatives would have a permanent majority in the House of Commons be-
cause of their strength in England. The north of England has become more similar to the
Celtic Fringe, with the partisan divide (as well as the economic divide) in Britain now ap-
pearing to lie on a line from the Wash to Bristol Channel. Traditional class differences
have persisted north of this divide, while those cleavages tend to have eroded south of
that line.
14
Second, rural voters tend to vote Conservative in greater proportions than do urban
voters. This is in part a function of the concentration of workers in urban industrial areas.
In addition, the constituency within which a voter lives inuences voting. This is espe-
cially true of prospective Labour voters who vote Labour in much greater proportions in
safe Labour seats than in competitive, or safe Conservative, seats. This is a function of the
reinforcing effects of interactions with other Labour voters and of union efforts to mobi-
lize the vote.
Demography. Voters also appear to behave differently based on fundamental demo-
graphic characteristics. For example, women have historically tended to vote more for the
Conservative Party than do men. The effect of gender appears less in Britain than in other
European democracies, in part because the Tories have been seen as a somewhat radical
party in recent years. The evidence of voting by age group is much less comforting to the
Conservative Party. In :,,; and :cc: there was a linear relationship between age and vot-
ing Conservativethe older the voter, the more likely to vote Conservative. Given that
voting patterns tend to persist across time, this means that the future for the Conserva-
tives appears less positive.
15
Race or ethnicity is an increasingly important issue for voting in Britain. The minor-
ity population of Britain is approaching , million (out of approximately ,, million). This
population is also relatively young, so it will be of increasing importance as a voting
group. The evidence is that Labour does very well among minority voters, especially in
the industrial cities where they tend to be concentrated. There are a growing number of
Labour politicians from ethnic minority groups. Once again, the demographic trends ap-
pear to favor Labour even though the electoral turnout among ethnic minority groups
tends to be low.
Issues. One assumption of democracy is that voters respond to candidates on the
basis of the issues. British parties are at once centrifugal and centripetal. They express
class differences more clearly than do U.S. parties, but they are also sufficiently centrist
to attempt to disguise some of their potential policy differences in order to gain votes.
Although some issues divide voters, the majority of voters of both parties tend to be on
the same side of most major political issues in Britain, with conflicts often being over
how best to reach the common goals. Labour and Conservative majorities were on the
same side of seven of ten issues in :,;,, with the issues on which they were more di-
vided having to do primarily with the powers of labor unions.
16
In :,o, majorities of
the two parties agreed on ten of sixteen issues.
17
The parties have continued to polarize
somewhat, but their voters still share many common goals. Also, it should be noted
that there continues to be substantial disagreement within the parties on the issues, es-
pecially within Labour, and that the level of agreement within parties was not always
higher than the level of agreement across parties. More than any other issue, perhaps,
the role of the European Union in British public life tends to create cleavages within
the parties.
Despite the pressures toward greater ideological thinking by the Conservatives, and
Labours attempts to call its faithful back to the fold after years of defection, partisan
identication has been declining in Britain. Strong identiers with parties have decreased
by over ,c percent since the :,ocs. A similar popular dealignment is also found in most
other Western countries. It appears that voters are indeed more willing to think for them-
selves and to make decisions in each election based on issues, candidates, performance in
government, or whatever. This makes the task of political leaders that much more dif-
cult because they cannot count on a solid base of party identiers when they begin their
election campaigns.
There is no neat means of summarizing voting behavior in Britain. The class model
does not seem to t the increasing complexity of the situation as well as is often assumed.
Yet no other model can adequately describe the complexity of the situation either. Given
the importance of elections and parties for the choice of governments in the United
Kingdom, a number of interacting factors enter into party choice by voters. More impor-
tant, there is some question whether elections and the choice of parties really have much
consequence for the policies of government. Richard Rose has conducted a detailed
analysis of whether parties in Britain make a difference in policy terms, with the conclu-
sion that such differences as do result are more matters of emphasis and the timing of
policies than absolute differences in the content of policies.
18
Clearly parties do make a
difference, but the differences are subtle and not much based on a simple class model of
politics.
Pressure Groups and Corporatism
One factor that has pushed toward the homogenization of policies between the two par-
ties is the growing inuence of interest groups in British politics. As with most industrial-
ized countries, there was a movement toward corporatism in British politics from the
:,ocs through the :,;cs, with a number of interest groups granted something approach-
ing an ofcial status as generators of demands and implementers of policies once adopted.
The role of groups in British policy is rarely acknowledged ofciallythe doctrine of par-
liamentary supremacy is still invokedbut in practice much public policy is inuenced,
or even determined, by interest groups.
19
One consequence of Thatcherism, as conrmed
by the Major and Blair governments, has been a move away from corporatism. Nonethe-
less, no matter which party is in ofce, there are pressures for continuity of policies rather
than change from one government to the next.
Also, the policies made in conjunction with pressure groups tend to be made through
stable patterns of interaction between civil servants and pressure-group leaders and
through institutionalized processes of advice for the ministries. Changes in government,
therefore, would have little opportunity to affect the basic content of the dynamics of
policymaking. Interest groups may not be as closely linked into policymaking as in Ger-
many or Sweden, but there are close and enduring connections between government and
groups.
Major Interest Groups
A number of different interest groups affect policy in Britain. These range from small at-
titude groups with narrow and largely noneconomic concerns (e.g., ecological groups and
peace activists) to large, inuential interest groups that attempt to have their economic
interests served through the policy process. The most obvious example of an economic
group is the labor unions, although business and agriculture are also highly organized and
effective politically. While the clout exercised by the large economic groups is substantial,
there are notable cases of small attitude groups also exercising substantial inuence over
policy.
Labor Unions. The largest and probably still most inuential of the interest groups are
the unions, with a total membership of o million workers, or nearly ,c percent of the to-
tal labor force. Most of these unions are organized into one national federation, the
Trades Union Congress (TUC). The Labour Party is directly linked to the TUC, which
gained a reputation as one of the worlds most vociferous labor movements because of the
large number of strikes called in Britain in the :,ocs and :,;cs. Unions were once a ma-
jor counterforce to the power of government, and British elections were fought over
whether the unions or the government actually ran the country, with ambiguous results.
The political power of the unions, combined with the threat of industrial action by their
members, indeed made them a formidable political inuence until their decline in mem-
bership in the :,cs and :,,cs and their loss of political inuence under Blair.
Despite its large membership, the TUC has been losing some of its power. In the rst
place, a declining proportion of the labor force belongs to unions, and there is a shift
from blue-collar to white-collar union membership. Although some white-collar unions
have shown a willingness to use the strike weapon (e.g., those in the public sector), most
are less militant than blue-collar workers. Further, the TUC has not been able to enforce
any discipline on its own members. When the miners struck in :,,o, after some nego-
tiations with the government, the TUC urged them to return to work, but the miners re-
fused. The failure of the miners to win concessions from the government weakened the
trade union movement. Union militancy can still produce widespread and disruptive
strikes (e.g., the transportation strikes of the summer of :,,), but a good deal of the
power appears to be gone. This loss of power can also be seen by the willingness of the
Labour government under Blair to almost ignore the unions when making policy.
Management. Although there is a single large labor movement, business and man-
agement groups are divided into several groups. The Confederation of British Industry
(CBI) is the major management organization, but a number of other general and spe-
cialized industrial groups also speak for management. The linkage between management
groups and the Conservative Party is not so close as that between the unions and the
Labour Party, although it certainly does exist. They have relatively less direct inuence
on party policies and programs than the unions do in Labour. In addition to the CBI,
the Institute of Directors was increasingly important during the :,cs and has emerged
as another important group speaking for business. Although not really management per
se, nancial interests in the City of London (the City) also have a substantial inuence
over economic policy and over the Conservative Party. These became especially apparent
as nancial deregulation during the Thatcher government helped the London Stock Ex-
change and other nancial markets to prosper. During the :,,cs several scandals and a
general slowing in the economy reduced the inuence of the City.
Agriculture. Relatively few workers are employed in agriculture in the United King-
dom, but farmers and their colleagues in fishing are well organized and very effective.
The most important organization is the National Farmers Union (NFU), but commod-
ity groups ranging from beekeepers to dairymen are actively engaged in lobbying and
other political activity. Agricultural groups have traditionally been successful in obtain-
ing subsidies for their crops and have been especially advantaged by Britains entry into
the European Community. They have shifted a good deal of their lobbying focus to the
European level in Brussels but still are effective in extracting subsidies and benefits
from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in London, and the
Scottish Environment and Rural Affairs Department in Edinburgh.
Professional Organizations. A large number of professional organizations exist in the
United Kingdom, including groups such as the British Medical Association, the Royal
College of Nursing (a trade union afliated with the TUC), and the British Association of
Social Workers. These groups tend to be politically unafliated and traditionally more
concerned with the maintenance of professional standards of practice than with the protec-
tion of the political and economic interests of their members. In the former role, profes-
sional groups frequently serve in a public capacity as the source and implementers of
standards and as accrediting agencies for practitioners. Nevertheless, given that the major
employer of health care professionals and social service professionals is government, these
associations do press their own political interests. These have to do with economic issues
such as pay and working conditions, as well as social concerns such as the overall level of
funding and service in the National Health Service. The changes in the National Health
Service imposed by the Conservative governments provoked a good deal of opposition
from these groups, including industrial action.
Education is another service area dominated by the public sector. The major educa-
tion associations in the United Kingdom are at once professional associations and unions.
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of University Teachers
(AUT) are both afliated with the TUC, and both have struck or have threatened to
strike. They are also vitally concerned with professional issues such as academic freedom
and tenure. The AUT was especially active during the Thatcher and Major years, at-
tempting to ward off the effects of resource starvation and increased student numbers
that have been implemented as a part of higher educational policy in Britain.
Attitude Groups. In addition to the economic interest groups described above, a num-
ber of attitude groups are important in British politics. There are a huge number of such
groups, covering almost the gamut of social issues. Three sets of groups have been partic-
ularly important. One of these sets consists of peace movement groups. The Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has been the longest-lived of these, beginning its
protests against British nuclear weapons and U.S. weapons on British soil in the :,,cs
and continuing until the present. CND has been joined by a number of other peace and
antinuclear groups, such as the Greenham Common women protesting the location of
U.S. cruise missiles in Britain. Nature and environmental groups make up a second of
these sets. With the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on one end
of a spectrum of tactics and radical antivivisection groups on the other, this movement
has sought to protect wildlife in Britain and increasingly has been involved with similar
issues throughout the European Union. The third of these sets are those stressing human
rights rather than animal rights: Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Children, Shel-
ter, and a host of other social service and international aid organizations.
Patterns of Influence
As in virtually all democratic systems, there are a number of means through which pres-
sure groups in the United Kingdom can attempt to inuence the policies of government.
Government in the United Kingdom is formally less receptive to interest groups than
many other governments. It lacks institutionalized means of legitimating interest group
involvement, and hence the routes of exerting that inuence may be somewhat more cir-
cuitous. The four major methods for pressure-group inuence in the United Kingdom
are lobbying, direct sponsorship of MPs, direct representation on government bodies, and
consultation with ministries.
Lobbying. Lobbying the legislature is perhaps less common in the United Kingdom
than in the United States, in part because party discipline makes it less likely to inuence
an MPs vote. Lobbying does occur, with the purpose being to get a voice in Parliament,
more than a vote. MPs receive delegations from their constituencies or from nationally
based organizations. Such delegations are particularly inuential when a constituency has
a single major economic interest, as with automobile manufacturing in Coventry or coal
mining in some Welsh constituencies. Some pressure groups are sufciently well orga-
nized to hire parliamentary agents or correspondents to maintain contact with members,
attempting to inuence the few potential crossover MPs and feeding friendly MPs with
ideas and information. In turn, the lobbies receive attention for their interests during
those opportunities that even backbench MPs have to interject themselves into parlia-
mentary business (e.g., the Question Time or adjournment debates).
The lobbying activity of interest groups has been increasing markedly since the
:,;cs. This increase to some degree reects the greater contact between the public and
private sectors initiated by the Thatcher government. It further reects the general in-
crease in communications opportunities and activities in contemporary society, as well as
increased societal demands for participation and involvement. British government has al-
ways been subject to political pressure, but rather than the less overt patterns of pressure
observed previously, there is now more overt lobbying. Despite being a democracy of long
standing, the British population has been relatively quiescent, but that cultural pattern
has been changing rapidly and markedly.
Direct Sponsorship of MPs. In the United Kingdom it is permissible for interest groups
to sponsor prospective MPs. Groups do not contribute a majority of an MPs electoral
and other expenses, but some do pay MPs to represent particular causes in Parliament
(such as American tobacco interests). A group may even keep an MP on a regular retainer
as long as that relationship is registered with the Register of Members Interests. Sponsor-
ship historically has been especially important in the Labour Party as a means of permit-
ting manual laborers to go to Parliament. Naturally, sponsorship involves some degree of
control by the sponsor, although in cases such as those of unions and working-class MPs,
it is unlikely that the sponsor would ask the MP to do anything he or she would not oth-
erwise have done. Still, the increasing perception of impropriety is subjecting sponsorship
to questioning and reconsideration.
Direct Representation. British government has had very little of the corporatist pattern
of interest intermediation that has characterized many other European countries. Despite
that, interest groups have had direct and ofcial links with government in several ways. In
some instances, interest groups were directly represented in the advisory committees at-
tached to ministries. In other cases, pressure groups have actually composed the majority
of public organizations, such as the former National Economic Development Council
(Neddy), which was established under Conservative aegis in the early :,ocs to promote
economic growth through the cooperation of business, labor, and government. This ex-
periment with corporatism was abolished in the mid-:,cs because of Thatchers aversion
to programs of this type. Finally, interest groups may actually administer programs for
government, as the Law Society does with Legal Aid and agricultural groups do for some
farm programs. In all of these cases it is clear, rst, that governments cannot readily ig-
nore interest groups so closely tied to the public sector, and second, that many of the tra-
ditional ideas about the separation of state and society in Western democracies make rela-
tively little sense in the light of the increasing use of private organizations for public
purposes.
Consultation. Less formally, government organizations frequently consult with inter-
est groups. Interest groups have expert knowledge of their particular areas, and they are
able to predict the reactions of their members to proposed policy changes. A government
agency can gain not only in the technical quality of its proposals but also in their legiti-
macy by full consultation prior to the enactment. In an era in which delegated legislation
is increasingly important, this means that a substantial amount of policy will be deter-
mined by consultations between civil servants and interest-group members. Also, interest
groups are having an increasing impact on policies of all kinds, with a consequent decline
in the relative inuence of political parties and elective politicians.
Notes
:. Peter Hennessy and Anthony Seldon, eds., Ruling Performance: British Governments from Atlee to Thatcher
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, :,;).
:. David Denver, The Centre, in Britain at the Polls, :)):, ed. Anthony King (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham
House, :,,,).
,. The chair, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, is a prominent Liberal Democrat, and electoral reform has been a
long-term concern for the Liberal Democrats.
. Colin Brown and Patricia Wynn Davis, Major Gives a Pledge to Listen, The Independent, :, May :,,,.
,. This latter feature is becoming less true as Liberal Democrats often come in second to Conservatives in
constituencies in the south of England and second to Labour in Northern England. Further, in Scottish
constituencies the Conservatives now frequently come in third, or even fourth.
o. Nyta Mann, Blair Set for Clause Four Victory, New Statesman and Society (:c March :,,,): ;.
;. Patricia Wynn Davies, Labour to Impose All-Women Shortlists, The Independent, :; September :,,,.
. See Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann, Safety First: The Making of New Labour (London: Granta Books,
:,,,).
,. The term Old Tories comes from Samuel H. Beer, British Politics in a Collectivist Era (New York: Knopf,
:,o,). For a very useful discussion of the contemporary Conservative Party, see Paul Whiteley, Jeremy J.
Richardson, and Patrick Seyd, True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, :,,).
:c. These gures are estimates; no denitive gures exist for Conservative Party membership.
::. See J. Mohan, The Political Geography of Contemporary Britain (London: Macmillan, :,,).
::. Mark N. Franklin, The Decline of Class Voting in Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, :,,); Anthony Heath
et al., Understanding Political Change: Britain Votes :),; (Oxford: Pergammon, :,); Ivor Crewe, La-
bor Force Changes, Working Class Decline and the Labour Vote, in Labor Parties in Postindustrial Soci-
eties, ed. Frances Fox Piven (Oxford: Polity Press, :,,:).
:,. Patrick Dunleavy, The Urban Basis of Political Alignment: Social Class, Domestic Property Ownership
and State Intervention in Consumption Processes, British Journal of Political Science , (:,;,): c,.
:. In the south of England unemployment appears more important as a predictor of voting than does the
nominal occupation of an individual.
:,. There is some evidence that voters tend to behave somewhat more conservatively as they age, so these data
do not mean that the same patterns necessarily will persist.
:o. Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, :,c), ,,.
:;. Richard Rose, Politics in England, ,th ed. (Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman, :,,), :o:.
:. Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference?
:,. Some scholars argue that groups are in many ways more central to policy than are parties. See Jeremy
Richardson and A. Grant Jordan, Government Under Pressure (Oxford: Martin Robertson, :,;,). For a cri-
tique of British pluralism, see Samuel H. Beer, Britain Against Itself (London: Faber, :,:).
Chapter 4
How Is Power Used?
TO THIS POINT we have described the institutions of British government but have
done so in rather a static fashion. This chapter attempts to bring these structures to life
and to demonstrate how actors and institutions produce public policies. We also will
demonstrate how the distinctive character of British governmental institutions affects the
policies produced so that they may be different from those emanating from other political
systems, even those faced with similar policymaking problems. In particular, the majori-
tarian nature of British parliamentary democracy tends to produce somewhat broader
swings in policy than might be found in the consensual democracies such as Sweden,
Germany, and the Netherlands.
It is helpful in this discussion to consider two broad kinds of policymaking that must
go on in any government. The rst is making new policies, as when the institutions of
government decide to have the public sector engage in new activities or to undertake their
current activities in signicantly different ways. This type of policymaking is typically a
legislative process, although administrative actors are certainly involved in the propaga-
tion of new policy ideas and again during their implementation. Also, the making of new
policies tends to be more overtly politicized, with parties and interest groups directly in-
volved in the process.
The second major form of policymaking is simply maintaining the existing policies
and programs of government. This is frequently less political in a strictly partisan sense;
instead, it may involve bargaining among ministers and the managers of existing pro-
grams with their nancial overseers (in Britain, the Treasury), as well as overt or covert
competition among the existing programs. Thus, the majority of this policymaking activ-
ity is not legislative but involves executive and administrative actors. Further, government
does not have the opportunity to exercise very much discretion for most decisions in this
category of policymaking because existing commitments of government to citizens and
organizations must be honored. We now look at the British political system as it processes
both kinds of policy decisions.
One important departure from the typical pattern of policymaking has been the in-
creased emphasis on reducing the size of the public sector. This means that very few pro-
grams are able to escape serious scrutiny when they come up for funding or reconsidera-
tion. While the Labour Party (with support from the Liberal Democrats) has defended
programs that the Conservatives would like to eliminate or restrict, even the Blair govern-
ment has acquiesced in a general tendency of retrenchment. It has refrained from the tax
and spend characteristics of Old Labour, and has so far increased public spending some-
what less than might have been expected.
1
One consequence of this approach has been
New Labours failure to fulll electoral promises to improve public services such as rail
transport and the National Health Serviceat its potential electoral peril. Nonetheless,
the Labour government has been active in other policy areas, using its regulatory powers
as much as its spending powers to promote its policy goals.
The Parliamentary Process and New Policies
To understand how new policies are made and then put into operation, it is convenient to
follow a typical piece of legislation through the process of lawmaking, from an issue being
placed on the agenda for consideration through its implementation. Of course, no piece of
legislation is really typical; some bills are enacted in a matter of days (or even hours in an
emergency) the rst time they are proposed, while others must wait for years before being
passed. For example, legislation implementing the Northern Ireland agreements in the
summer of :,,, was expected to pass through Parliament in one or two days; there were
some delays, but still it passed in less than a week. Some policy ideas may never be passed
into law, or they may have their intentions almost totally altered through implementation.
Despite these differences, an underlying policymaking process is common to all proposals.
Agenda Setting and Policy Formulation
The rst thing that must be done if a piece of legislation is to be adopted is to place it on
the policymaking agenda.
2
This is true in an informal sense in that the policy must be
considered sufciently important for the government to act on, and is true in the more
formal sense of being placed before Parliament for consideration and possible adoption.
In an even more fundamental way problems must be identied before they can be placed
on a government agenda. For example, it has taken some time for the issue of race to be
recognized in the increasingly heterogeneous country that is Britain.
3
Deciding which issues are public and require the consideration of government is a
very diffuse and uncertain process in Britain, as it is in almost all countries. Political par-
ties and the governments they form are principal agents in placing issues on the agenda,
but other actors are also involved. These others include individual members of Parliament
who may have special interests and strivesometimes for yearsto have an issue consid-
ered. Interest groups are also involved in agenda setting and attempt to dramatize the
needs and desires of their members. The media increasingly places issues into the con-
sciousness of citizens and that of governing institutions. Finally, Britains membership in
the European Union has meant that a number of issues arising in Brussels have to become
a part of the agenda of the government in London, if only to implement EU decisions.
In a formal sense, the easiest way for an issue to come before Parliament is for it to
become part of the governments legislative program. Parliaments legislative time is lim-
ited, and the government must select those issues and bills it believes are most important.
This selection requires difcult choices by the government because it introduces relatively
few bills in any one year. For example, during the Thatcher and Major years, governments
introduced an average of just under fty bills per session; the Blair government has been
more active, but still less than ninety bills were introduced in each of its rst few years.
Since several of the bills involved annual budget and nancial considerations, and a large
number of the remaining bills involved consolidation and clarication of existing legisla-
tion, few signicant policy bills were introduced during each parliamentary session.
4
In
almost all cases, the policy bills that were passed were a part of the governments program,
and the government can, if it wishes (and it usually does), control the parliamentary agenda.
Bills and issues may also come before Parliament without being a part of the govern-
ments program. Backbenchers can introduce legislation, although it has little chance of
being passed. First, a backbencher must win a lottery to have the opportunity to intro-
duce a bill, and then there are generally only ten or twelve Fridaysthe only day on
which private members bills are debatedduring a session in which a bill may be con-
sidered. Bills may also be introduced under the ten-minute rule, which allows for ten
minutes of debate, pro and con, followed immediately by the vote. Both kinds of legisla-
tion can lead to consideration of issues the government may as soon forget or issues of a
moral nature on which the government does not wish to take a stance, and sometimes
private members bills are really submitted as a favor to a government that does not want
to have to take a stand on a difcult issue. Most private members bills are not, however,
likely to generate political controversy. One restraint on this form of legislation is that
backbenchers cannot introduce legislation involving the expenditure of public funds
only ministers can make those proposals.
It is easier for the nongovernmental parties and backbenchers in the majority party to
have issues discussed in Parliament than it is for them actually to pass legislation. Ques-
tion Time is an obvious opportunity for generating that discussion. Adjournment debates
and motions by private members also allow individual MPs to air grievances; the last
thirty minutes of each daily session is an adjournment debate on matters raised by back-
benchers. On average, backbenchers receive approximately :, percent of all parliamentary
time, an allocation made by the government, and much of that time is spent discussing
specic constituency grievances rather than general issues. This allocation permits the av-
erage member relatively little opportunity to have an impact on major policy issues. One
strategy that MPs can employ to counteract some of this imbalance of power is to special-
ize in particular policy topics, a strategy made easier by the creation of the select commit-
tees.
5
Also, the expanded use of the electronic media provides members of Parliament the
opportunity to air their opinions and to have at least an indirect inuence over policy.
The Opposition is also given a substantial amount of parliamentary time to present
its alternatives to the government program, the major opportunities being the extended
debate on the Queens Speech (actually written for her by the government as a statement
of its policy objectives for the session), which opens each session of Parliament, and the
twenty-six supply days scattered throughout the parliamentary session. Again, however,
this debate may be useful for ventilating opinions, but it may have little real impact on
policy choices. This is in part because the government has already established the agenda,
and all the Opposition can do is to react to its propositions. Further, if the government
maintains its party discipline, there is little the Opposition can do to prevent the legisla-
tion from being adopted.
how is power used? 65
In addition to controlling the agenda and timetable, the government must be heavily
involved in formulating legislation. Most of the broad ideas for policy formulation come
from the partys election manifesto, and ministers also have their own ideas about good
policy. Further, ministers receive advice about policy initiatives from their civil servants
and from political advisers in their departments. Within the cabinet, legislation typically
is rst considered by a cabinet committee composed of interested ministers (usually with
some Treasury representation) before being considered by the entire cabinet.
6
The shape
of legislation to be introduced generally will be decided by the full cabinet prior to the
legislations being proposed to Parliament. In full cabinet, the prime minister will play a
signicant role, not least because he or she summarizes the debate and says nally what
was decided.
Nevertheless, parties and political leaders are not the only source of policy intentions
and policy formulation, and many policy ideas come from the departments themselves.
And, as is true in many industrialized democracies, the balance of power between elective
and nonelective ofcials may have swung in favor of the unelected.
7
No matter which set
of actors is most powerful, the process of formulating policy is complex, involving the in-
teraction of ministers with their civil servants and, in turn, consultation with the affected
interests in society. The increased emphasis on managerialism in the British civil service
has weakened its policy capacity, although the separation of many implementation func-
tions from policymaking through the creation of agencies provides the remaining civil
servants in departments with more time to deal exclusively with policy.
Policy Legitimation
Once the cabinet has agreed on a policy proposal, it is introduced into Parliament as a
bill, with all politically controversial legislation by convention rst going to the House of
Commons. For a bill to become law, it must pass the House of Commons, pass the
House of Lords (unless it is passed by three successive Houses of Commons or is a money
bill), and gain royal assent. There are ways of short-cutting this process, and a signicant
amount of lawmaking in Britain is done by the government itself, using orders in council
and statutory instruments that do not require the approval of Parliament.
8
When a bill is introduced into the House of Commons, it is given a formal rst read-
ing and then printed for distribution. After two or three weeks, the second reading takes
place, which is the major political debate on the principles of the legislation. For noncon-
troversial legislation, however, the second reading may occur in committee. After the sec-
ond reading, a bill typically goes to committee for detailed consideration and possible
amendment. Note that the committee stage occurs after Commons has agreed to the leg-
islation in principle. Although committees are organized to mirror the partisan composi-
tion of Parliament, the government is much more willing to accept amendments in com-
mittee than on the oor of the House, where this might be taken as an admission of
defeat. Finally, the bill is reported out of committee with any amendments, a third read-
ing is given, and the legislation is passed.
After passage in the Commons a bill then goes to the House of Lords for considera-
tion and possible amendment. Any amendments made in Lords must be later considered
by Commons. In the adversarial political system of the United Kingdom, the House of
Lords can be an extremely useful institution. It is a place where the government can ac-
cept amendments and negotiate improvements in legislation without appearing to back
away from its policy proposals. A government can even accept defeat in Lords without se-
rious damage to its prospects of retaining ofce. And although deadlocks between the two
houses are possible, they are infrequent.
After agreement is reached, the bill is given to the Queen for royal assent, which is
virtually automatic. Of course, legislation does not necessarily move so easily through the
policymaking system, and so there must be some means of regulating the ow, particu-
larly preventing the delay of important legislation. At the report stage, a number of
amendments may be reported out of committee, and the Speaker is given the power to
decide which amendments should be debated and which would be repetitious of debates
in committee. The government can also attempt to impose closure and the guillotine
(allocation of time order). Closure is a motion to end debate made by one hundred or
more MPs, but it will be accepted only if the Speaker believes all relevant positions have
been heard. When there are a number of different points of dissent and closure is ineffec-
tive, the guillotine is employed. An allocation of time order is voted by the House of
Commons, and the government makes a determination of how much time will be spent
on each section of the bill. Once that time is exhausted, the Speaker must move the sec-
tion to a vote. The use of the guillotine is often cited as contradictory to the interests of
the House as a deliberative body, especially when it is imposed on major constitutional is-
sues, such as the devolution debates during the Callaghan government in the :,;cs. But
the guillotine may be necessary if Parliament is to process the amount of legislation a con-
temporary democracy requires.
With party discipline, much of the legislative activity of Parliament appears foreor-
dained, but it is still important. First, the legal and constitutional requirements for the
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
o
:c:.o
,,.:
c.
,o;.:
,.o
:,,
::;
Annual Immigration (in thousands)
Source: Eurostat Yearbook (:ccc), and Russian Statistical Yearbook (:ccc). Data are for :,,.
passage of legislation must be fullled. Second, amendments can be accepted and the
amended legislation must be approved, both in the committee stage in Commons and in
Lords. Finally, some legislation that seems perfectly reasonable to the majority of the cab-
inet may not appear so reasonable to backbenchers in the party, and the legislation may
never be passed. On average, about :c percent of all government bills introduced into
Parliament do not become law; few are defeated, but others may be withdrawn. Thus, al-
though the presence of disciplined majorities in the House of Commons is certainly im-
portant, legislative action is never certain.
British democracy has long been representative democracy, but there were several in-
teresting occurrences of direct democracy as a means of legitimating policies during the
:,;cs. Of particular signicance were two referendums on policy issuesin :,;, on
whether Britain should remain in the Common Market, and in :,;, on the devolution
proposals in Scotland and Wales. The latter proposals were voted on in Scotland and
Wales only, but the principle was the same: The government and Parliament to some de-
gree abdicated their decision-making powers to the people in an election. Although these
referendums were not legally binding, they were declared binding by the major parties.
Referendums represent a major departure from the traditional means of decision making
in British government and have potential importance for major policy decisions, includ-
ing the prospect of a referendum on British membership in Economic and Monetary
Union within the EU.
Policy Implementation
After a bill is passed by Parliament, perhaps the most difcult portion of the process of
changing society through government action occurs: the implementation process. This is
the process of taking the bare bones of parliamentary legislation and putting some meat
on them. This meat consists of both substantive policy declarations and organizational
structure to carry out the intent of Parliament, or at times, to thwart that intent. Most
legislation passed by Parliament is passed in a broad form, allowing a great deal of room
for interpretation as the laws are put into effect.
Public policies may be implemented in a number of ways. Probably the most com-
mon is through departments of the central government. Most legislation coming from
Parliament contains a broad mandate of power, with the ministry then having the power
and the requirement to make the necessary regulations and engage in the activities for the
intent of the legislation to come into being. A principal means for the departments doing
this is through statutory instruments developed pursuant to acts of Parliament. Statutory
instruments contain more detailed regulations than acts do and allow the executive to
have a major impact on the nature of the policy actually implemented. Parliament exer-
cises scrutiny over these instruments but cannot hope to master completely the volume or
technical content of all such regulations. Even when the issuance of a statutory instru-
ment is not required, the departments are heavily involved in shaping the meaning of pol-
icy and in making it work. The departments may also be barriers to effective implementa-
tion, especially when the policy enacted by Parliament appears to run counter to their
usual practices. In like manner, the existence of regional and local ofces of the ministry
is frequently associated with varying patterns of implementation and, at times, great vari-
ations from the original intentions of Parliament in some parts of the country.
9
Policies of the central government are also implemented through local authorities.
Unlike a federal system, local authorities in Britain are creatures of the central govern-
ment, and there is less differentiation between national and local policy than in the
United States.
10
While the major policy decisions in areas such as education, health, social
services, and the police are made by the central government, these services are actually de-
livered by local authorities. These public services are not delivered uniformly; local au-
thorities provide different quantities and qualities of service, albeit within centrally deter-
mined parameters and subject to inspection and control by the central government. This
relationship between central policy making and local administration does not work with-
out friction, especially when local and central governments are controlled by different
parties. Recent examples of conicts include Conservative local authorities delaying im-
plementation of Labour policies for comprehensive education, and Labour local authori-
ties refusing to implement Conservative cash limits on expenditures for health care and
housing.
In return for the administration of national policies, the local authorities receive the
majority of their revenues from the central government. Some of the grants to local au-
thorities are tied to the provision of specic services (e.g., the police), while the largest
single grantthe rate support grant is a general grant. (The formula for computing the
The shuttle train emerges from the Chunnel, a direct link between Britain and the Continent. (Jean-
Claude NDiaye/Imapress/The Image Works)
rate support grant does, however, include weightings for the levels of service provided by
a local authority.) If a local authority wishes to provide services not funded directly by the
rate support grant or the categorical grants from central government, then it must be will-
ing to raise funds from local revenues, generally the council tax system.
Finally, policies may be implemented by private organizations. Interest groups are
frequently regarded as barriers to effective implementation, but such groups may have
an increasingly important positive role to play in implementation. Minimally, an inter-
est group can function as a watchdog on the implementation of a policy, substituting for
the army of public inspectors that might otherwise be required. Environmental groups
have been particularly active in this monitoring role. A more important involvement of
groups in implementation involves the group actually implementing a policy for govern-
ment. This occurs frequently in agriculture when the Royal Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) applies general policies in enforcing animal welfare legisla-
tion. These activities would otherwise require huge amounts of time and public money
and might not be performed as well. Further, at times government subsidizes an organi-
zation to provide a service that government supports as a matter of policy and that
would have to be provided at public expense if the private organization were not willing
to provide it. One example of this is the Law Societys providing legal assistance to the
indigent.
Policy Evaluation
The last stage of making a policy occurs some time after the policy has been adopted or
even implemented. This is the evaluation of the policy. Here we are discussing the formal
evaluation of the policy, whereas informal evaluation begins almost at the time of passage.
Policy evaluation is also closely related to policymaking for continuing policy, which is
our next major topic, for the annual decisions to continue policies and programs made in
the budgetary process to some degree involve evaluation of the effectiveness and ef-
ciency of those policies.
Parliament is assumed to conduct ongoing scrutiny of the policies of government,
and a number of instruments for policy evaluation are housed within the government it-
self. The now defunct Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) and the diminished Public
Expenditure Survey Committee linked program evaluation directly with nancial man-
agement. The Select Committees of the House of Commons are increasingly active in
evaluating existing programs, and the few committees in the House of Lords also are en-
gaged in limited oversight. A growing staff in the Prime Ministers Ofce also monitors
policies on behalf of the executive. Through the parliamentary commissioner, or ombuds-
man, Parliament maintains additional evaluative control over the administration of
policy. Finally, the comptroller and auditor general and the National Audit Ofce have
become increasingly important watchdogs. Like auditing organizations in other industri-
alized nations, these ofces have added policy evaluation to their former duties as nan-
cial auditors. These ofces monitor policy developments in both the central government
and the local authorities.
A number of mechanisms for policy evaluation exist independent of the government.
One of the most commonly used devices is the appointment of parliamentary or royal
commissions to investigate particular policy concerns that are more fundamental than
any government may want to become involved in without advice. These commissions
and their reports often constitute milestones in the evolution of policy and program man-
agement. Such was the case of the Fulton Report on the civil service, the Plowden report
on public expenditure control, and the Kilbrandon report on devolution. The commis-
sions have no formal powers, however, and even excellent reports often go unheeded. In
part because of her reliance on her own advisers and on a more ideological style of gov-
ernment, there were almost no royal commissions during the Thatcher years. A number
of public inquiries into specic policy questions have taken place, some with substantial
policy and political relevance (e.g., into nuclear power and into the re in the London
Underground). The Blair government has appointed several commissions, the most im-
portant being the Jenkins Commission on Electoral Reform.
Finally, there are a number of less ofcial mechanisms for generating policy evalua-
tion. The news media constitute one such mechanism, which exercises a considerable
degree of self-censorship. Privacy has become a more important issue in Britain than re-
strictions imposed by the Ofcial Secrets Act and the lack of access to important infor-
mation. The number of policy think tanks also continues to increase, some of them rep-
resenting clearly dened ideological positions, while others strive toward greater
objectivity. Finally, research units of political parties and pressure groups also produce
evaluations of existing policies. A great deal of ofcial and unofcial policy evaluation oc-
curs, although tight control by the government over the parliamentary agenda makes
consideration of many policy changes unlikely unless they suit the purposes of the in-
cumbent government.
Although policy evaluation ends one cycle of policymaking, it often begins the
next.
11
Governments rarely make perfect policies the rst time they try, but often they
know so little about the dynamics of the problem area into which they intervene that
trial-and-error learning may be the only means available for improving conditions. There-
fore, governments often have to modify existing policies based on their experiences with
those policies. That experience is often reected in the evaluation process. Further, the so-
cial and economic conditions that are the objects of a particular policy may also change,
and government will have to modify its programs to meet those changing conditions.
Thus, although we have depicted policymaking as beginning at the beginning and going
through to the end, this may be just the start of another cycle. At times the messages from
the consumers of policies are very clear signals for change, as they were for the poll tax in
:,,:.
Policy Continuation: Budgeting
Most policymaking is not making new policies; it is reafrming old policies or making
marginal adjustments in those policies. In many ways this form of policymaking is politi-
cally more sensitive than making new policies, for existing programs have existing em-
ployees, clients, and organizations, while new policies have no inertia pushing existing
commitments forward. Although there may be some modications or even threatened
terminations, in most years the most important decisions for continuing policies are
made in the budgetary process. That process involves nancing the huge number of exist-
ing policy commitments, with their relative priorities determined in pounds and pence.
(Here we are speaking of the budgetary process in a U.S. sense; in Britain the term budget
usually refers to the governments revenue, not expenditure, proposals.)
The control of the public purse has been central to the powers of the British Parlia-
ment historically, but the existence of disciplined partisan majorities, and the general un-
certainty about economic growth, has transformed substantially the locus of effective
budgetary powers. Even now, however, British government appears to spend more time in
trying to get the machinery of nancial allocation right, when compared to most other
parliamentary systems. Budgeting can be best thought of as taking place in two stages.
One is an administrative stage during which the spending ministries negotiate with the
Treasury and with their colleagues in cabinet over expenditure commitments. The second
stage is the parliamentary stage during which these decisions are legitimated but only oc-
casionally changed.
The Executive Stage
The Treasury is the central actor at the executive stage of budgeting. The Treasury is
charged not only with making recommendations on macroeconomic policy but also
with formulating detailed expenditure plans that fall within those economic constraints.
The Treasury has traditionally been the most prestigious appointment for a civil servant,
and those in the Treasury have adopted the Treasury view concerning the proper
amount of public spending and who should spend the money. Since at least the days of
Gladstone, that view has been skeptical about expenditures and concerned with saving
candle ends as well as billions of pounds. This view does not always prevail, but it
must always be considered.
The rst round of bargaining over expenditures is typically at the level of civil ser-
vantsthose from spending departments and those from the Treasury. This bargaining
takes place with the knowledge of the relevant ministers, but can be conducted more eas-
ily by ofcials who know both one another and the facts of the programs. Both elements
are important. Interpersonal trust and respect are important components of the success of
any bargainer, especially when the spending departments must have their requests re-
viewed annually.
12
The same Treasury civil servants may see the same departmental civil
servants year after year, and any attempts to manipulate or deceive may gain in the short
run but will surely lose in the long run. Also, civil servants tend to understand the techni-
cal aspects of their programs better than ministers do. In addition to their annual (or at
times more frequent) bargaining for expenditures, departments must also bargain for de-
viations from expenditure plans during the year, allowing the Treasury a number of op-
portunities to monitor and intervene in departmental policies.
The second stage of executive bargaining occurs among the spending ministers, the
Treasury, and the cabinet as a whole. Budget decisions are manifestly political, and if
nothing else, they reect the relative political powers and skills of the ministers involved.
The task of the spending ministers is to ght for their programs and to try to get as much
money as they can. The Treasury ministers (the chancellor of the exchequer and the chief
secretary of the Treasury) are the guardians of the public purse and play the role of skep-
tic. They perform an important function in budgetary politics, and are responsible for
much of the nitty-gritty in day-to-day allocations and oversight. The prime minister
must moderate any conicts that arise, but knows that he or she can rarely go against the
Treasury ministers if the government is to function smoothly. Also, in todays more con-
servative period, there is some political advantage to opposing expenditure increases.
The ght over the budget occurs on a one-to-one basis between spending ministers
and the Treasury ministers, in cabinet committees, and nally in full cabinet meetings.
Under the Thatcher government, a special cabinet committee (referred to as Star Cham-
ber) was formed to review disputes between the Treasury and spending departments,
usually siding with the Treasury. The position of Treasury was enhanced after :,,:, with
the chancellor of the exchequer heading the cabinet committee reviewing expenditures.
The Treasury is in a powerful position politically and enjoys the right of making the rst
presentation of expenditure gures in cabinet meetings, but after that there is a tendency
for the spending ministers to gang up against the Treasury. As this is a political process, a
coalition can usually be formed to increase expenditures that enable all spending minis-
ters to make their constituents happy, and to make themselves look good in the eyes of
their departments. It takes a very strong chancellor, backed by an equally strong prime
minister, to oppose that type of coalition.
Opposition to spending in government was very successful under Thatcher, but ap-
peared less cohesive under the less assertive and somewhat less conservative Major. In
keeping with his strategy to make scal policy long-term and to loosen the supply side
(which no longer was considered a demand management tool), Major introduced three-
year expenditure plans that were to be discussed in the context of setting monetary policy.
Major also introduced an escalation clause on scal taxes (i.e., taxes were to rise in per-
centage terms faster than ination) and funding rulings for the NHS (i.e., spending was
to rise to about o percent above ination). Labour has stuck with the idea that current ex-
penditures should not rise faster than growth, but investment expenditures are allowed to
go beyond that. The idea is that current expenditures should not cause a decit on the s-
cal account, but investment expenditures may do so. Tony Blair and his chancellor, Gor-
don Brown, are not always in agreement on these policy issues, with Brown being some-
what more willing to spend on social issues than is Blair.
13
British government has made a great deal of effort to control the costs of government
through analytic programs such as PESC (Public Expenditure Survey Committee) and
PAR (Programme Analysis and Review). The major input of PESC into the decision
process is a projection of the expenditure implications of existing programs, showing
what the expenditure level would be if programs were to provide the same level of service
in the year being budgeted as in previous years. PAR was intended as a comprehensive
evaluation of specic programs, with the intention of making those programs more ef-
cient or perhaps eliminating them. PAR obviously ran counter to the established norms
of government and budgeting and was quietly phased out by the Thatcher government.
In addition to rationalist methods of expenditure control, the British government also has
used blunter instruments, such as cash limits that assign a maximum expenditure level for
a program, with the program not being allowed for any reason to spend any more money.
The Parliamentary Phase
After the civil servants and the cabinet prepare their expenditure plans (estimates), these
are presented to Parliament for adoption. Although the emphasis on control and on tech-
niques for budgeting such as PESC have produced signicant modernization, much of
the terminology and procedure used by Parliament when considering public expenditures
dates from earlier periods in which the monarch and Parliament were engaged in more
intense conicts over power. The major debates on expenditures occur during the
twenty-six supply days each session, although the topics selected by the Opposition for
debate on these days range far beyond expenditures. The civil estimates are introduced
into Parliament by the chief secretary of the Treasury in February, with the minister of de-
fense introducing defense estimates at about the same time. Parliament then has until July
or early August to pass the Consolidated Fund (Appropriations) Bill authorizing the ex-
penditure of funds. Given the difculties in forecasting expenditures, especially in uncer-
tain economic circumstances, the government usually must also introduce supplemental
estimates in December and March.
The budget is an important locus for parliamentary control over the executive. By
standing order, Parliament cannot increase expenditures on its own; any increases must be
recommended by a minister. Parliament can, however, recommend decreases. One means
of expressing displeasure with the management of a ministry is to move for the reduction
of the salary of the minister, frequently by a trivial amount such as :cc. This signals a
debate not so much about the :cc as about the policies of the department in question.
Members of Parliament may move for less trivial changes in expenditure plans as well, but
all these are likely to be defeated by the majority party, lest they be seen to be losing con-
dence in the House.
Even if they are not able to alter expenditure plans directly, Parliament has become
more effective at monitoring the spending decisions of government. Parliament as a
whole is perhaps too large and disorganized to scrutinize expenditure programs effec-
tively, and so it has developed a pair of committees to more closely examine the govern-
ment estimates. One is the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, a rather small
committee composed of members of the House of Commons who are well versed in is-
sues of public spending. Despite this expertise, it still cannot cover the total range of the
budget each year. This is especially true given the almost complete absence of professional
staff support. The committee therefore concentrates on particularly important spending
issues. Still, this committee has played an important role in the development of policy in
Britain and has ventilated a number of important issues, sometimes to the discomfort of
the government.
One such institution is the Expenditure Committee, the successor to the Estimates
Committee. The Expenditure Committee does its work in subcommittees, but unlike the
Appropriations Committee in the U.S. Congress, it does not presume to cover the entire
range of public expenditures each year. Instead, each subcommittee focuses on one or a
few particular topics for a more detailed analysis. Given the ability of the government to
have what it desires passed by Parliament, the Expenditure Committee has been unable to
alter much public policy directly, although it has played an important role in ventilating
ideas and opinions about the expenditure of funds. The committee is also important in
restoring some parliamentary control over expenditures.
The second important parliamentary committee for controlling public expenditures
is the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). Unlike most committees in Parliament, PAC is
headed by a member of the Opposition; it has the task of monitoring public expenditures
after they have been made and after they have been audited (by the National Audit Of-
ce). Out of the mass of public expenditures, PAC selects certain topics for consideration
each year and has the power to call civil servants before it to account for their actions.
Other than calling attention to mismanagement or outright deception, however, PAC has
few powers to improve the expenditure of funds.
In addition to the two principal committees examining expenditures, the select com-
mittees created during the late :,;cs for monitoring the activities of the executive depart-
ments may be a useful device for parliamentary control of expenditures. It appears that
these committees have been more successful than had been anticipated in exercising over-
sight. They have attracted the interest of many MPs and have demonstrated their ability
to keep track of the huge volume of paper and decisions produced by the ministries. The
powers of these committees are primarily to publicize any failures in the executive to the
public and to Parliament, but even that publicity can function as a useful restraint on the
power of ministers and civil servants.
14
To this point we have been discussing the expenditure side of budgeting. On the rev-
enue side, there is the same balance of power in favor of the cabinet and the Treasury. If
anything, the balance of power resides even more in the hands of the executive, as Parlia-
ment has yet to develop a committee structure for monitoring revenue proposals. A small
subcommittee of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee does examine revenue
issues, but this is a minor role compared to the scrutiny of public expenditures. And,
within the executive, the balance appears to favor the ofcials, as there are no ministers
pushing for increased taxation as they do for increased expenditures. This is not to say
that there are no political inuences on taxation, as the shift from direct taxation (income
taxes) to indirect taxation (value-added tax) in the rst Thatcher budget, and the launch-
ing of the poll tax in her third term, indicate.
Revenue recommendations are introduced each year around the rst of April in the
chancellors budget message. Immediately, Commons will pass the necessary budget reso-
lutions, allowing for the immediate collection of some or all of the proposed tax mea-
sures. This immediate action is taken to prevent the legal avoidance of taxes by purchas-
ing large quantities of alcoholic beverages, selling assets, paying off debts, and so on,
under the preexisting tax laws. After that action, there follows a period of debate leading
to the formal introduction of the Finance Bill, which is usually passed sometime before
Parliament takes its summer recess in August. Cases of Parliaments voting down new
taxes or increased government expenditures have been rare. A recent VAT increase on fuel
was only rescinded after massive public protests and a complete stoppage of the economy
in the fall of :ccc. But hostility to taxes in and out of Parliament has meant few increases
in visible taxes (at least until :cc:). Instead, Parliament has enacted many stealth taxes
(e.g., on insurance premiums, air tickets, and most obviously on pension funds).
One of the common criticisms about the British budgetary process, which is also true
of the budgetary process in many other nations, is that there is little or no integration of
revenue and expenditure decisions. Citizens and politicians both tend to like expendi-
tures and loathe taxation, and this commonly results in governments failure to collect ad-
equate revenues to meet expenditures and the creation of a decit budget. Changes to co-
ordinate taxation and expenditures would involve changes in many historic procedures
but might well produce an improvement in the management of public-sector nances.
The Blair government promised to address some of these issues with the publication of a
Green Paper in December :cc: on planning reforms affecting land use. Despite these in-
stitutional problems, the British government (unlike that of the United States) has not
run substantial decits since the early :,cs, apparently because of the political will of the
prime ministers and their scal advisers. This commitment to scal probity has continued
even though the British economy has not been as productive as many other economies.
Policymaking in Britain involves the interactions of cabinet, Parliament, and the civil
serviceto mention only the primary actors. In this interaction the formal location of
power and the actual location of decision may be markedly different. The formal powers
of decision reside in Parliament, but the effect of strong party discipline has been effec-
tively to make the cabinet the primary decision-making institution. Given a government
majority, once the cabinet decides on a policy, the dutiful members of the party will al-
most certainly ratify it on the oor of the House of Commons. There are, of course, in-
stances in which the backbenchers overtly or covertly oppose government policy, and the
cabinet rarely tries to run roughshod over its own party members; policy toward the Eu-
ropean Union is the one area in contemporary British politics where this may happen. In
most policy areas, if it is willing to push, the cabinet does have the ability to get most of
what it wants passed into law without much real internal party opposition.
The powers of the cabinet are restrained in other ways. First, ministers must contend
with skillful and permanent civil servants. Especially within the budgetary process, the
Treasury and its mandarins dominate decision making. Even in nonnancial decisions,
the expert knowledge of the civil servants, when compared with the relative dearth of ex-
pertise held by their nominal political masters, places the permanent civil service in a
powerful position to inuence outcomes. The reforms of the structure of British govern-
ment to separate executive agencies from policy advisers in the departments is designed to
improve political control over implementation, but there still is civil service power at the
formulation stage.
Finally, a number of interests and organizations other than these three major actors
within government inuence policy decisions. Interest groups not only attempt to inu-
ence policy as it is being formulated, but also may directly implement policies for the
government. The increased use of quangos and fully private-sector organizations for
policy formulation and implementation in Britain also reduces the degree of direct con-
trol over policy implementation by government. Local governments administer and im-
plement a signicant share of the programs of central government, and the central gov-
ernment must attempt to co-opt and encourage local governments to implement the pol-
icy as it was intended. Local governments also are effective lobbyists for their interests and
may help shape as well as merely implement public policy.
Notes
:. Colin Hay, The Political Economy of New Labour: Labouring Under False Pretenses? (Manchester: Manches-
ter University Press, :,,,).
:. On agenda setting in British government, see Simon James, British Government: A Reader in Policy-Mak-
ing (London: Routledge, :,,;), oc.
,. S. Saggar, Race and Politics in Britain (Hemel Hempsted: Harvester, :,,:); Racial Politics, Parliamentary
Affairs ,c (:,,;): o,:;c;.
. These gures are drawn from Ivor Burton and Gavin Drewry, Public Legislation, Parliamentary Affairs,
various years.
,. David Judge, Backbench Specialization in the House of Commons (London: Heinemann, :,,).
o. C. Hood and O. James. The Central Executive, in P. Dunleavy et al., Developments in British Politics ,
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, :,,;).
;. Martin Smith, The Core Executive in Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, :,,,), :co:.
. See R. Baldwin, Rules and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,,,). Parliament does, however,
review the content of these instruments through a select committee.
,. Brian W. Hogwood and Michael Keating, Regional Government in England (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, :,,:).
:c. R.A.W. Rhodes, Beyond Westminster and Whitehall: The Sub-Central Governments of Britain (London: Un-
win Hyman, :,).
::. Brian W. Hogwood and B. Guy Peters, Policy Dynamics (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, :,,).
::. Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public Money (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, :,;), ;o::.
:,. But see the comments from an old Labour politician: Roy Hattersely, The Secret Socialist at Number
::, The Guardian (:, March :ccc).
:. Keith Khrebiel, Information and Legislative Organization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, :,,:).
Chapter 5
What Is the Future of British Politics?
EVEN IN THE MOST prosperous and well-managed political system, there are always
crises and decisions, for governments are constantly facing challenges. Because Britain has
been neither the most prosperous nor the best-managed nation on earth, it must sustain
itself in the face of a signicant number of challenges to its political and economic sys-
tems. Many of these challenges arise from the international economic and political envi-
ronment within which Britain operates, as globalization and Europeanization alter that
environment and perhaps lessen the capacity of governments to control the economy.
Some of the challenges also arise from the changing character of the political system itself,
as constitutional reform alters many traditional ways of doing things in government.
The Economy
The economy was a problem for British government for much of the postwar period, but
in the rst part of the new century the economy is performing well, and at this time the
British economy is outperforming most of its European counterparts. Government had
to take the blame for the poor performance of the past, and it is now attempting to take
the credit for the positive performance of the present. In particular, Labours adoption of
some aspects of Thatcherite economic policy (deregulation, maintenance of lower tax
rates) and adding some features of its own (granting greater autonomy to the Bank of
England to set monetary policy) have produced rapid and sustained growth.
1
Although recent economic performance has been very positive, there are some poten-
tial challenges. One is the regional problem that persists in the economy, a disparity in
performance that may have real political consequences. Northern Ireland, the north of
England, and to some extent Scotland and Wales have not grown at the same rate as the
south of the United Kingdom, especially the London area. The problem for the Labour
Party is that the areas that have failed to prot as much from the reviving economy are
also the traditional heartland of the party. Ironically, the Labour boom appears to be bene-
ting stockbrokers and merchant bankers much more than it does the average industrial
worker.
Also, despite the general success in the economy, as in many industrialized countries
economic globalization is creating a group of people who appear to be faced with perma-
nent unemployment or underemployment, and this economic problem poses an impor-
tant political problem for any contemporary government. Further, this globalization
process is generating economic forces that widen income disparities within the popula-
tion. The policies of the Labour government (following many paths established by the
Tories) reducing the level of welfare state benets make the life chances for anyone left
behind in this economic transformation much less favorable than they would have been
prior to these policy changes.
The underlying uncertainty about the economic future of Britain has increased as a
result of the accelerated movement toward greater economic (and political) integration
with the European Union. Not all the plans of the Single European Act were imple-
mented, although the member nations of the EU now constitute much more of a single
economic area than they did prior to the implementation of the :,,: program. This in-
creased depth of integration is true despite the expansion of the EU in :,,,. Even more
important, the Maastricht treaty, the :,,o Intergovernmental Conference, and the Am-
sterdam treaty all point toward further economic integration. These changes have in-
cluded monetary integration and the creation of a common currency, the euro. The in-
creased international openness may place British industries into very direct competition
with continental industries usually considered more efcient. The British government has
been reluctant to support all the moves toward economic integration, especially the cre-
ation of a common currency (the euro). The United Kingdom may not be able to avoid
the competitiveness problems posed by Europe and the rest of the world economy and by
an especially strong pound that makes British goods expensive. Thus, continuing to play
the role of skeptic may not serve the long-term economic goals of Britain well.
The Public Sector
The nature of the public sector in Britain is associated with economic changes in Britain.
Despite the efforts of the Thatcher and Major governments to reduce the size of govern-
ment, public expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product were little reduced
by the end of the more than seventeen years of Conservative government.
2
The amount
of decit public borrowing had been put under control, but Britain continued to spend a
great deal of money through the public sector. While the Labour government might have
been expected to begin even higher levels of public expenditure, the opposite has been
true; the public sector has been stable or even declining (with the exception of increased
spending on the NHS). Likewise, there has been no attempt to return to the high levels
of public ownership of industry that had been a central policy of most previous Labour
governments.
What privatization did, however, was to shift the terms of the debate on the size and
nature of the public sector in British political life. The postwar consensus on the
mixed-economy welfare state has been broken, perhaps for good, and governments now
have the capacity to make their own choices about the social and economic future of the
nation. Such choices run the risk of accentuating economic divisions in the country and
therefore raising the political stakes in any policy discussion. What may be happening,
however, is that a new consensus is emerging across much of the population, a consensus
that calls for a much smaller and less intrusive public sector, even if that leaves some por-
tions of the population behind.
By the time John Major left ofce, there was relatively little industry left to privatize,
what is the future of british politics? 79
but the nature of the state in Britain continues to change signicantly. Instead of shed-
ding activities to the market, the continuing reforms tend to impose market-type mecha-
nisms within government. On the one hand, many of the industries that have been priva-
tized require regulation, given that they are monopolies, and the British government has
by now developed effective means of controlling rates and quality. The level of support
for, and the quality of service provided by, the NHS continues to be a major political is-
sue in Britain. The Conservatives were charged with harming the service, but it appears
that the Labour government has not been able to return the service to its former state of
respect by the population.
3
Further, a variety of evaluative, regulative, and expenditure review programs continue
to be implemented within the public sector. These began to some extent with the purpose
of reducing the size of the public sector, but they have continued more with the intention
of improving the quality of the services delivered. The Labour government has been sub-
stantially more willing to use its power over local governments and other public services
than was the Conservative government, threatening to close or assume direct manage-
ment of schools and other facilities if adequate standards of service are not maintained.
Who Rules Britain?
One of the major outcomes of the seventeen years of Conservative rule and the subse-
quent years of the Blair government has been to reassert the primacy of cabinet, if not al-
ways parliamentary, government in Britain. This may sound like an odd statement, given
that the existence of democracy was never challenged in the United Kingdom the way
that it has been in other countries, even in other European countries. In Britain the cen-
tral question was the role of trade unions and other interest groups and the domination of
policy in some Labour governments by those interests. Likewise, there was always the
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
:.
::.
:o.,
:,.
::.c
:;.,
:o.,
:,.c
Percentage of Population Aged and Older
Source: Calculated from Department of Economic and Social Affairs, :)) Democratic Yearbook (New York:
United Nations, :ccc).
sense that the City of London (meaning the nance industry) and other business interests
dominated the Conservative Party, a characterization that now seems truer than the dom-
ination of Labour by the unions.
The power of the trade unions was broken during the Thatcher government. The
miners attempted several times to exert their control over government policy with mixed
results, and in the summer of :,, the railway workers tried their hand. Somewhat later,
the public-sector unions challenged the capacity of the Thatcher government to rule
when it proposed reducing the size of the public sector and eliminating the recognition of
unions at the General Communications Headquarters, a major intelligence installation.
The unions lost all these battles against a determined Conservative government. New
Labour moved to reduce the power of the unions within its ranks, and certainly the
Labour government is less beholden to the labor movement than were previous govern-
ments from that party.
What these changes in Labour strategy and ideology imply is yet another dimension
of the new consensus within the center of British political life. Whereas the old postwar
consensus stressed the importance of the welfare state and services provided through the
public sector, the new consensus stresses the need for lower taxes, a government that in-
tervenes more with regulation and incentives than with spending and ownership, and a
commitment to serving the public rather than providing employment for large numbers
of public employees. The two major parties may interpret this consensus somewhat dif-
ferently and may emphasize different aspects of it, but there does appear to be some basic
agreement. The problem for the Conservative Party, however, is that the Labour Party has
adopted much of its natural agenda so that the Tories are left with no place to go except
for the (perceived) extreme and unacceptable political right by advocating dismantling
even more programs in the public sector.
Who Rules in Government?
Now that we are more certain that the government of the day does indeed manage
Britain, we still need to know which institution(s) are most inuential. The problem here
is also one of democratic governance. Voters in the United Kingdom go to the polls every
few years and make choices about the party they wish to govern them for a period of up
to ve years. And Parliament, to which the members of that victorious party are elected
(along with the opposition parties), nominally has the power to govern. As we have been
emphasizing, however, the cabinet within partisan institutions of government and the
civil service within government as a whole are increasingly important in policymaking.
This means that the voting choices of millions of citizens may be negated, or perhaps
only ignored, in the policymaking process. This is a serious problem for all democratic
political systems, as citizens believe that the institutions of government are no longer re-
sponsive to their wishes and are overly bureaucratic and technocratic, rather than demo-
cratic. This alienation appears weaker in the United Kingdom than in several other indus-
trialized countries, but it is still an important threat to the legitimacy of the system of
government.
4
The Conservative government in the :,cs addressed at least one component of this
problem of democratic governance. Rightly or wrongly, that government did not consider
many members of the civil service sufciently committed to the party program to imple-
ment it faithfully. Therefore, the Conservatives (and perhaps especially Thatcher) sought
to reduce the inuence of the civil service over policy. They brought more personal policy
advisers into government and therefore were able to ignore advice from senior civil ser-
vants. Also, through several structural reforms, they made the civil service more manager-
ial and less a source of policy advice. Some analysts argued that the government even in-
terfered in the appointment of senior civil servants, although the evidence on this point is
far from clear. In short, the structure of government was changed, apparently perma-
nently, to provide the party in power even greater control over policy. This may make the
system more democratic, but perhaps at the price of reducing the overall quality of pol-
icymaking by government. The Blair government has maintained, and perhaps even ex-
tended, the inuence of government over the civil service and over the noncareer ofcials
now appointed as heads of executive agencies.
Another question about who rules in government is whether Britain is a cabinet gov-
ernment (or perhaps a parliamentary government) or whether it is becoming more a gov-
ernment dominated by the prime minister. This issue was raised about Margaret
Thatcher, but it appears at least as applicable to Tony Blair. The Blair government has
strengthened the policy machinery in the Prime Ministers Ofce and has (along with the
party leadership who are very loyal to the prime minister) attempted to exert rather close
control over what Labour members of Parliament say and do in their public life. Of
course, party discipline is a part of political life in a parliamentary regime, but the degree
of control now being exerted does appear greater than in the past.
The success of the Labour Party and the great concern of the Blair government with
party unity and consistency also raise questions about who rules. On the one hand, this
government appears to provide the type of party government that analysts believed might
not be possible within this political system.
5
The party in government has done much of
what it said it would during the :,,; election campaign, often to the dismay of some
Old Labour politicians. On the other hand, one could argue that the party itself may
have replaced interest groups as a threat to conventional interpretations of democracy.
It also could be argued that the most important problem for government in the
United Kingdom is its own ability to make and implement unpopular policies with little
effective restraint and thereby to reduce the legitimacy of government with the popula-
tion. The clearest manifestation of this possibility was the poll tax debacle at the end of
the Thatcher government. The continuing reductions of funding and assaults on the Na-
tional Health Service had much the same impact. The adversarial and majoritarian nature
of British politics enables the party in government to push through policies that ulti-
mately will undermine government.
Also, the electoral system of the United Kingdom raises some questions about the de-
mocratic nature of the system. The single-member-district, simple-plurality system of
choosing members of Parliament has been an effective means of generating parliamentary
majorities from what has become effectively a multiparty system. Although this is bene-
cial in a parliamentary system with a majoritarian tradition, it is also regarded by an in-
creasing number of people as undemocratic. The Liberal Democrats (including their ear-
lier manifestations) have been campaigning for a move to proportional representation
(PR) for many years. Labour Party leaders promised that if successful in :,,; they would
look into the issue, but seeing the success that the old system produced for them, they de-
cided rather to appoint a commission to investigate the issue. PR elects a portion of the
members of the new Scottish parliament, however, and this system is now used for elec-
tions to the European Parliament, so the old system of election may be fading away.
Finally, beyond the question of which institution within British government is dom-
inant is the broader question of the role of the emerging government located in Brus-
selsthe governmental seat of the European Union. The ideas of parliamentary sover-
eignty and cabinet government are being challenged from abroad just as they are at home.
Many British politicians and citizens consider some actions of the EU undemocratic and
intrusive, but extricating themselves from Europe does not appear a desirable option for
most ofcials.
The nature of the British role within an ever-expanding Europe is not yet known,
but it is likely to be different from that existing today. Britain must decide what to do
about monetary union with the rest of the EU, and remaining outside the euro zone,
while seemingly protable in the short term, may have serious long-term economic con-
sequences. Likewise, the expansion of the EU to include a number of new members may
require changing some of the decision procedures within the system so that the United
Kingdoms capacity to block action will become more limited and the threats to sover-
eignty perhaps more real.
Devolution, Breakup, or What?
Will there continue to be a United Kingdom? Indications are strong that this question
can be answered in the afrmative, at least for the time being, although devolutionary
pressures certainly do put the long-term situation in greater doubt. The referendums on
Scottish and Welsh devolution in :,;, indicated substantial support for a more indepen-
dent Scotland (less support in Wales) but this support was not overwhelming. However,
by the time of the referendums in September :,,;, opinion had changed, and the
propositions won by a wide margin in Scotland, although by a smaller margin in Wales.
The success of these two referendums resulted in new governments being established in
Edinburgh and Cardiff and, especially for the Scottish government, a transfer of sub-
stantial powers to those new loci of governing. The process of moving toward greater au-
tonomy in Northern Ireland has been, of course, much more complicated, but for at
least a short period of time there was a devolved government in Belfast and agreement
between London and Dublin about self-government in what remained a part of the
United Kingdom.
In the nation as a whole, there appears to have been relatively little interest in devolu-
tion or other substantial changes from the current constitutional arrangements. Support
for some form of regional government for England is, however, also increasing, albeit
from a much lower level. Perhaps the only issue that has much real resonance in England
as a whole is the so-called West Lothian question. That is, why should Scotland have
MPs in Westminster voting on issues having to do with policies in England when English
MPs can no longer vote on issues that affect only Scotland? This asymmetry strikes some
observers as undesirable and unsustainable.
The other question about central rule from London concerns local government in
England. The Conservative governments in the :,cs and into the :,,cs centralized con-
trol over policy and local government nances. If anything, the Labour government has
extended and tightened that control and has used its regulatory and inspection organiza-
tions to attempt to make the local authorities conform to the wishes of central govern-
ment. One enduring question is whether the British government will nd means of ac-
commodating these interests within a governing framework that is historically unitary
and centralized.
British policymakers are much like other policymakers, although they have their own
particular processes, problems, and potential. The conduct of contemporary democratic
government requires British government to balance traditional norms and procedures
that legitimate decisions with the more modern techniques for analysis and control. More
technically sophisticated and professionally qualied ofcials challenge older institutions
for policymaking. And the underlying social divisions in society refuse to be homoge-
nized, despite the pressures of mass media, industrialization, and urbanization. Whether
in the United Kingdom or elsewhere, modern government is a balancing act between the
new and the oldthose things that unite and those that divide.
Notes
:. The greater linkage of the British economy with the booming U.S. economy than is true for the other Eu-
ropean countries also may contribute to this performance level.
:. In fact, during the early years of the Thatcher government, public expenditures increased as a proportion of
gross national product, in large part because GNP was stable or declining.
,. For example, the quality of services provided to cancer patients has been found to be much lower than in
other European countries.
. See Max Kaase and Kenneth Newton, Beliefs in Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,,o).
,. See especially Richard Rose, The Problem of Party Government (London: Macmillan, :,;).
For Further Reading
BOGDANOR, VERNON. Politics and the Constitution: Essays on British Government. Aldershot: Dartmouth,
:,,o.
BUTLER, DAVID, AND KAVANAGH, DENNIS. The British General Election of :));. Basingstoke: Macmil-
lan; New York: St. Martins, :,,;.
COATES, DAVID, AND PETER LAWLER, eds. New Labour in Power. Manchester and New York: Manches-
ter University Press, :ccc.
DREWRY, GAVIN, ANDTONY BUTCHER. The Civil Service Today, :d ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, :,,.
FOLEY, MICHAEL. The Rise of the British Presidency. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, :,,,.
GEORGE, STEPHEN. Britain and the European Community: The Politics of Semi-detachment. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, :,,:.
HEATH, ANTHONY, ET AL. Understanding Political Change in Britain: The British Voter, :),:);. Oxford:
Pergamon, :,,:.
HENNESSY, PETER. The Hidden Writing: Unearthing the British Constitution. London: Gollancz, :,,o.
. Whitehall. New York: Free Press, :,,.
HOGWOOD, BRIAN. From Crisis to Complacency? Shaping Public Policy in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
:,;.
JONES, TUDOR. Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell to Blair. London and New York: Routledge,
:,,o.
KAVANAGH, DENNIS. Thatcherism and British Politics: The End of Consensus? Oxford: Oxford University
Press, :,,c.
KELLAS, JAMES G. The Scottish Political System. th ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, :,,.
KING, ANTHONY, ET AL. Britain at the Polls, :oo:. New York: Chatham House, :cc:.
. New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls. Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, :,,.
. Britain at the Polls, :)):. Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, :,,,.
KING, DESMOND, AND GERRY STOKER. Rethinking Local Democracy. Basingstoke: Macmillan, :,,o.
MCILROY, JOHN. Trade Unions in Britain Today. :d ed. Manchester and New York: Manchester University
Press, :,,,.
MARSH, DAVID. The New Politics of British Trade Unionism: Union Power and the Thatcher Legacy. Ithaca,
N.Y.: ILR Press, :,,:.
MARSH, DAVID, AND R.A.W. RHODES. Implementing Thatcherism: A Policy Perspective. Buckingham:
Open University Press, :,,.
, eds. Policy Networks in British Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press, :,,:.
MILLER, WILLIAML., ET AL. Political Culture in Contemporary Britain: People and Politicians, Principles and
Practice. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :,,o.
NORTON, PHILIP. Does Parliament Matter? New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, :,,,.
PARRY, GERAINT, GEORGE MOYSER, AND NEIL DAY. Political Participation and Democracy in Britain.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,,.
STUDLAR, DONLEY T. Great Britain: Decline or Renewal? Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,o.
THAIN, COLIN, AND MAURICE WRIGHT. The Treasury and Whitehall. Oxford: Clarendon Press, :,,,.
THATCHER, MARGARET. The Downing Street Years. New York: HarperCollins, :,,,.
WHITELEY, PAUL, PATRICK SEYD, AND JEREMY RICHARDSON. True Blues: The Politics of Conservative
Party Membership. Oxford: Clarendon Press, :,,.
Chapter 6
The Context of French Politics
FRANCE HAS BEEN one of the important countries in the world. Its culture, architec-
ture, and cuisine have been much admired and copied; its language once served as the
chief medium of diplomacy; and its political philosophies and institutional patterns have
exerted inuences far beyond the countrys borders. Until the end of World War II,
France was the second-greatest colonial empire, with possessions in Southeast Asia, the
Caribbean, and North and West Africa.
The third-largest country in Europe (after Russia and Ukraine), France is more than
twice the size of Britain, oc percent larger than Germany, and four-fths the size of Texas.
Except in the north and northeast, France has natural frontiers: the Atlantic Ocean on the
west, the Pyrenees in the south, and the Alps and Jura mountains in the east. Wide varia-
tions in landscapethe northern atlands of Flanders, the forests of Normandy, the
mountainous east and center, the beaches of the Vende in the west, and the subtropical
Riviera coast in the southare accompanied by regional trends in cuisine, dress, speech,
and attitude.
For many generations the French referred to our ancestors the Gauls; they prided
themselves on the notion that they were descended from Gallo-Roman tribes that had
fused over centuries into a homogeneous nation. Many of the immigrants who were grad-
ually added in the course of several generations, such as Italians, Germans, and Poles, dis-
solved easily into the melting pot of Celtic, Latin, and other elements, and the more re-
cent arrival of immigrants from Africa and Asia has made the population of the country
truly multiethnic. At the same time, living in one of the rst large European countries to
have its boundaries more or less permanently xed, the French have acquired a deep sense
of national identity. Recently, however, the collective consciousness of minorities has been
reawakened: Alsatians, Bretons, Corsicans, and other ethnic groupsand more recently
the Jewish communityhave not been content with being merely French and have de-
manded that their cultural uniqueness be recognized. This development, in addition to
the fact that the percentage of foreigners among the inhabitants of the country had risen
from barely percent in the :,,cs to ;., percent in :,,,, reaching more than million,
led to an extensive debate about the future of national identity. Note, however, that the
acquisition of citizenship by the foreign-born has been relatively easy; it may be granted
after a minimum of ve years residence. Foreigners born in France may opt for French
citizenship on reaching majority (age eighteen).
Ever since the countrys early efforts at unication under centralized auspices, Paris
has been the locus of national political power. Unchallenged by other cities, the political
capital is also Frances cultural and economic center. Paris contains the biggest university
complex, three-fourths of the nations theaters, and the majority of its museums and art
galleries; and it is the hub from which most of the railroad lines radiate. The Paris region
constitutes about : percent of the nations land area, but since the early :,cs it has con-
tained :c percent of its total population, boasted its largest factories, and accounted for a
third of its industrial production.
For many years, the impression was widespread, among foreigners as well as natives,
that apart from Paris, France was essentially a peasant country. That perception resulted
from a number of factors. The Industrial Revolution did not proceed so early and so thor-
oughly in France as it did in Britain and Germany; by the end of World War II, an esti-
mated one-third of the French labor force was still employed in agriculture. Most of the
farms were and still are small; the consolidation of landholdings was impeded by the tra-
ditional division of a familys acreage among several descendants, and industrial develop-
ment was long delayed by the lack of private investment capital and the limited need for
industrial manpower in the cities. In the past fty years, however, there has been impres-
sive progress in agricultural modernization. As a consequence, employment in agriculture
has declined from more than ,c percent of the active population in :,o to less than ,
percent today. In :,o, ::., out of c., million people lived in cities; today, , million out
of nearly oc million do. While the number of farms and rural villages declined steadily,
the number of urban agglomerations continued to grow, and the French began to speak
of a terminal peasantry. In a parallel development, an extensive national superhighway
system, high-speed rail transport, and a modern telecommunications network tied the
provinces more closely to Paris, and the sense of separation between the small towns and
the capital diminished. Despite urbanization, many French men and women continue to
share the belief that life in the country is more satisfying than an urban existence. In re-
88 france
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
:,,;,
:,,;c
:,,,:,
:,,,:o
:,:;c
:,,;o
::,;c
:c,co
Gross Domestic Product per Capita (in U.S. dollars, )
Source: OECD, Economic Surveys, :ooo, and World Development Report (:ccc:cc:).
cent years, that myth has been reected in the tendency of middle-class big-city dwellers
to acquire second homes in the country.
For many years, a peasant romanticism was fortied by the patterns of family loy-
alty, parsimony, and conservative moral values carefully nurtured by the Catholic church;
today, this romanticism has been rediscovered as an ideal by those disenchanted with the
economic insecurities, overcrowding, unemployment, and growing social disorganization
and crime in the cities and has become a component of the ideology of extreme-right
movements. There is no doubt that urbanization has contributed to a rapid increase in
criminality. In :,,o, the crime rate (counting over ,., million crimes) was ,., per thou-
sand, compared with ,,.: in :,;;, ,:., in :,;:, and :,.o in :,o,.
Religion and Social Class
For a long time, most of the population embraced Roman Catholicism; France was con-
sidered the most Catholic of countries. To be sure, the Reformation spread to France; in
the sixteenth century, the country was riven by bitter struggles between Catholics, who
were supported by the ruling elite, and Protestant Huguenots (mainly Calvinists), many
of whom were massacred. After a period of toleration, the privileges of the Protestants
(e.g., the right to live in certain fortied towns) were revoked in the seventeenth century,
and many Protestants left the country. With the consolidation of absolute rule under the
Bourbon kings, the position of Catholicism as the state religion was rmly established.
Dissatisfaction with monarchism implied a questioning of the church and its privileges,
and revolutionary sentiments were accompanied by anticlerical attitudes.
Anticlericalism and republicanism, then, are closely intertwined. The revolutionary
commitment to lacit (laicism or secularity), associated with a religion of reason,
made considerable headway during the Third Republic, when, under the leadership of left-
wing parties, a national school system was created from which religion was entirely absent.
The hold of Catholicism gradually weakened as a consequence of industrialization,
the rise of a new working class, and demographic and social changes. In the rst decade of
the twentieth century the Catholic church was formally disestablished. France became,
like the United States, a secular country, at least in constitutional terms (except in the
province of Alsace where, for historic reasons, the clergy is supported by public funds).
Today, more than , percent of the population is Roman Catholic, but fewer than a third
of the Catholics are practicing. A large proportion of inhabitants of the larger cities, and
the great majority of industrial workers, are de-Christianized except in the most formal
sense.
1
Yet Catholicism cannot be divorced from French culture and political consciousness.
The cathedral remains the heart of small towns, most legal holidays are Catholic ones,
and many political movements and interest groups are still inuenced by Catholic teach-
ings. Furthermore, public policy attitudes have often been inspired by Catholic social
doctrine: aid to large families, the notion of class collaboration (instead of conict) and
the association of employers and workers in factories, the long-held opposition to the
legalization of birth control and abortion, and the legal dominanceuntil well into the
:,ocsof the male head of the family. Today, between :, and :c percent of parents opt to
the context of french politics 89
send their children to Catholic parochial schools, which benet from governmental -
nancial support.
There are about :., million French Protestants, many of them prominent in business,
the free professions, and, more recently, politics and administration. Three prime minis-
ters of the Fifth Republic have been Protestant (Couve de Murville, Rocard, and Jospin,
the current holder of the ofce) as were numerous cabinet ministers and presidential can-
didates. There have been Jews in France since before the Middle Ages; today they number
about ;cc,ccc. During the Dreyfus Affair in the :,cs, antirepublican feelings were ac-
companied by a campaign to vilify Jews and eliminate them from public life. With the
Nazi occupation of France (:,c) and the resulting persecutions and deportations, the
Jewish community was ravaged and reduced by a third. Since the early :,ocs, the number
of Jews has been augmented by repatriates from North Africa. Much like Protestants,
Jews have tended to support republican regimes and have decidedly preferred left-of-cen-
ter parties identied with anticlericalism. Jews are fully integrated into French life; never-
theless, anti-Semitism has not been eliminated and tends to be perpetuated by extreme-
right political parties.
Since the mid-:,ocs there has also been a signicant inux of Muslims, primarily
from North Africa, many of whom perform the most menial work in industrial cities.
The Muslim population, estimated at about million, constitutes the second largest reli-
gious group. The growth of this population has provoked a reaction on the part of many
French people (especially the lower-middle and working classes), who feel that the pres-
ence of these exotic immigrants has contributed heavily to the growth of unemploy-
ment and criminality and will ultimately disgure the very nature of French society.
Moreover, practicing Muslims, unlike other minorities, are said to adhere to a funda-
mentalist religion that is believed to reject the primacy of French civil law, secular educa-
tion, gender equality, and religious pluralism and therefore to pose a challenge to the val-
ues of the republic.
Supercially, the French social system is typical of that found in other European
countries. The medieval divisions of society into nobility, clergy, townsmen, and peasants
gradually gave way to a more complex social structure. The traditional, land-based aris-
tocracy declined as a result of the use of the guillotine and the diminishing economic
value of agriculture, and today the aristocracy has a certain vestigial importance only in
the military ofcer corps and the diplomatic service.
The modern upper class, or haute bourgeoisiea status derived from graduation from
a prestigious university or the inheritance of wealth or bothcomprises the higher eche-
lons of the civil service, the directors of large business rms, and bankers. The next social
group is the grande bourgeoisie, which includes university professors, high school teachers,
engineers, members of the so-called free professions (such as lawyers, physicians, and ar-
chitects), middle-echelon government functionaries, and the proprietors of medium-sized
family rms. The middle and lower-middle class, today the largest social category, com-
prises elementary school teachers, white-collar employees, petty shopkeepers, and lower-
echelon civil servants. The lower classes (classes populaires) include most of the industrial
workers, small farmers, and possibly artisans.
90 france
These class divisions have been important insofar as they have inuenced a persons
political ideology, general expectations from the system, lifestyle, place of residence, and
choice of political party. Thus, as we will see below, a typical member of the free profes-
sions has tended to adhere to a liberal party (i.e., one oriented toward individualism), a
businessman to a conservative (or moderate) one, and an industrial worker to a socialist
party. The class system and interclass relationships have been constantly changing, how-
ever; these changes have taken place with particular rapidity since the dramatic events of
MayJune :,o, when masses of students and workers joined in a general strike and al-
most brought down the government. Nor is there an exact correlation between class
membership and adherence to a specic political party. In recent years there has been a
growing underclass of uprooted farmers and redundant artisans, industrial workers made
redundant by the decline of traditional manufacturing and the increasingly important
high-technology sector, and immigrants who cannot be precisely categorized and whose
relationship to the political system is uid, if not marginal. Moreover, distinctions be-
tween classes have been partially obscured by the redistributive impact of a highly devel-
oped system of social legislation and the progressive democratization of the educational
system. Table o.: gives an idea of some of the changes that have taken place in the past
fty years.
Education
The centralized national school system established at the end of the nineteenth century
has been based on uniform curriculums stressing national, secular, and republican values
and theoretically creating opportunities of upward mobility on the basis of talent, not
Table 6.1 France: Some Changes in Fifty-four Years
:), :);, :), :))o :)), :ooo
Total population (in millions) 40.5 52.6 55.0 56.56 58.3 59.8
Number of adolescents over 14
enrolled in schools (in 650 4,000 4,200 5,400 5,600 6,400
thousands)
Average annual duration of
full-time work (hours) 2,100 1,875 1,763
a
n.a. 1,500 1,355
Infant mortality per 1,000 live
births 84.4 13.8 10.1 7.5
c
4.9 4.4
Number of private cars in
circulation (in thousands) 1,000 15,300 20,800 22,750
c
n.a. 27,500
Longevity of males (in years) 61.9 69.1 71
b
73.3 73.8 75.2
Longevity of females (in years) 67.4 77.0 79
b
80.6 81.9 82.7
Sources: Based on Jean Fourasti, Les Trente glorieuses ou la rvolution invisible (Paris: Fayard, 1979), 36; Quid
1988, 1992, 1996, 2001 (Paris: Robert Laffont); Dominique Borne, Histoire de la socit franaise depuis :),,
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1988), 95; Grard Mermet, Francoscopie :oo: (Paris: Larousse, 2000), 195, 3012.
a
1986.
b
1982.
c
1989.
wealth. Traditionally, the Ministry of Education controlled the educational curriculums,
from public elementary school in small villages to lyces in large cities, and had the major
voice in the administration of universities. In practice the system (at least until the late
:,,cs) fortied existing social inequalities because most children of the working and peas-
ant classes were not steered toward the lyces, the academic secondary schools whose
diplomas were required for admission to university, and thus were condemned to perpet-
ual lower-class status. Since the early :,ocs, there has been a spate of reform legislation
aimed at the comprehensivization of schooling, at least up to the age of sixteen. Cur-
riculum design has been made more practical, more technological, and less classical-
humanistic. Laws have been passed to permit universities to become more exible and
less hierarchical and to allow students to participate in decision making (but there are
complaints that the pace of implementation has occasionally been slowed down because
of insufcient funds and the resistance of the academic establishment). In recent years
there has been a veritable explosion of university enrollments, which reached : million in
:,, and :. million in :,,,. But the inability of many university graduates to nd jobs
has acted as a brake against further signicant increases. A large proportion of students
drop out after one or two years at a university; many others, coming from families in
straitened circumstances, complain that state scholarship aid is inadequate.
The attitudes of the French toward politics have been shaped by their education and
social condition. Scholars have suggested that the French are more critical of their regime
than are Americans or Englishmen of theirs. French citizens have frequently participated
in uprisings and revolutions; they have exhibited anticivic behavior patterns such as tax
evasion, draft-dodging, and alcoholism. They have often shown contempt for law (and
the police), and members of the working class in particular have been convinced that the
legal system favors the established classes. Finally, a large segment adhered to political
ideologies and parties oriented to the replacement of the existing political order.
The insufcient acceptance of the existing regimea phenomenon called crisis of
legitimacywas produced by, and in turn reected in, the apparent inability of the
French to create a political formula that would resolve satisfactorily the conict between
state and individual, centralism and localism, the executive and the legislature, or repre-
sentative and direct democracy. Since the abolition of the Old Regime of royal abso-
lutism, there has been a dizzying succession of governmentsrepublics, monarchies, em-
pires, and republics againmost of them embodying drastically different conceptions of
the proper division of governmental authority (see table o.:).
Revolutions, Regime Changes, and Legitimacy Crises
Many regimes created institutional solutions that were too extreme and therefore could
not last. The Revolution of :;, led to the abdication of King Louis XVI in :;,: and was
followed by a series of experiments that, collectively, has been termed the First Republic.
It was characterized by the abolition of the old provinces and the restructuring of admin-
istrative divisions, the reduction of the power of the church and the inauguration of a
rule of reason, the proclamation of universal human rights, and the passing of power
from the landed aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. It was also marked by assassinations and
92 france
mass executions (the Reign of Terror), which were ended when order was established
under Napoleon Bonaparte. At rst leader of a dictatorial Consulate (:;,,), then presi-
dent (:c:) of what was still, formally, a republic, Napoleon had himself proclaimed
emperor in :c. Napoleons empire collapsed after ten years as a consequence of military
defeat, but the emperor left behind a great heritage of reforms: the abolition of feudal tax
obligations, a body of codied laws, the notion of a merit-based professional bureaucracy
(much of it trained in specialized national schools), and a system of relationships (or
rather, a theory about such relationships) under which the chief executive derived his le-
gitimacy directly from the people through popular elections or referendums. The chief
executives rule was unimpeded by a strong parliament, subnational government units, or
other intermediary institutions or groups. At once heroic and popular, the Bona-
partist approach to politics had a strong impact on segments of the French nation; much
of what came to characterize Gaullism was heavily inuenced by that approach.
The power of the clergy and nobility was revived in ::, when the Bourbon monar-
chy was restored, but that was to be a constitutional regime patterned on the English
model and guaranteeing certain individual liberties and limited participation of parlia-
ment. In :,c the Bourbon dynasty, having become arbitrary and corrupt, was in turn re-
placed by another regime, that of Louis-Philippe of the House of Orleans. In : the
French rebelled once more and inaugurated what came to be known as the Second Re-
public. They elected Louis Napoleon (a nephew of Napoleon I) president for a ten-year
term, but he soon (in :,:) proclaimed himself emperor. The Second Empire was a re-
publican empire insofar as a weak legislative chamber continued to exist and, more im-
portant, because Louis Napoleon derived his power from the people rather than from
God.
The Second Empire was noted for many achievements: industrial progress, a stable
currency, and the rebuilding and modernization of Paris. But popular disenchantment
with what had become a dictatorial regime, boredom, and Frances military defeat at the
hands of the Prussians in :;c brought it down.
Table 6.2 Political Cycles and Regimes
Moderate monarchy Liberalization Conservative reaction
Constitutional monarchy Republic of 1792 Dictatorial govern-
of 1791 ment of 1795
Restoration of 1815 July Monarchy Second Empire
of 1830 (185270)
Early Third Republic Later Third Republic Vichy regime
(187079) (18791940) (194044)
Fourth Republic Early Fifth Republic
(195881)
Fifth Republic
(since 1981)
Source: Adapted from Dorothy Pickles, The Fifth French Republic, 3d ed. (New York: Praeger, 1965), 35.
The Third Republic, the regime that followed, was inaugurated in bloodshed: the
Paris Commune of :;:, in which thousands of proletarians rebelled and were brutally
suppressed by bourgeois leaders. Most of these leaders did not, in fact, want a republic.
The Assembly elected to make peace with Prussia was dominated by monarchists, but the
latter disagreed on which of the competing pretendersBourbon, Orleans, or Bona-
parteshould be given the throne. Consequently, the Assembly adopted a skeletal con-
stitution that provided, on a temporary basis, for an executive and legislative branch and
outlined the relationship between them. This constitution, which contained no bill of
rights, was to last nearly seventy years and set the pattern for subsequent republican
regimes. In the beginning, the president (elected by parliament for seven years) tried to
govern while ignoring parliament, and to dissolve the Assembly, whose political composi-
tion he did not like.
In :;;, parliament rebelled and forced the president to resign. Henceforth, presi-
dents became gureheads, and prime ministers and their cabinets were transformed into
obedient tools of powerful parliaments and were replaced or reshufed about once every
eight months. This instability was viewed by many as endemic to republican systems as
such and encouraged romantic monarchists in attempts to subvert the republic. Yet this
republic had many achievements to its credit, not the least of which was that it emerged
victorious and intact from World War I; it might have lasted even longer had France not
been invaded and occupied by the Germans in :,c.
Following the German defeat of France, the unoccupied southern half of the coun-
try was transformed into the French State, an authoritarian puppet regime led from
Vichy, a provincial resort town, by Marshal Philippe Ptain, an aging hero of World War
I. The behavior of the French during this period, both in the Vichy state and in the occu-
pied part of the country, was complex and ambivalent, and the question of who collabo-
rated and who resisted continues to be debated.
2
The Fourth Republic, which was instituted in January :,;, two years after Libera-
tion, essentially followed the pattern established during the Third. Although its highly
detailed and democratic constitution included an impressive bill of rights, it made for a
system even less stable than that of the Third Republic. There were twenty governments
(and seventeen prime ministers) in a twelve-year period; the Assembly, though theoreti-
cally supreme, could not provide effective leadership. Ambitious deputies, seeking a
chance to assume ministerial ofce, easily managed to topple cabinets, and a large pro-
portion of the legislatorsnotably the Communists on the left and the Gaullists on the
rightwere not interested in the maintenance of the regime.
The Fourth Republic was not without accomplishments. It inaugurated a system
of long-term capitalist planning under which France rebuilt and modernized its indus-
trial and transport structures. It put in place an extensive network of welfare state pro-
visions including comprehensive statutory medical insurance. It took the first steps in
the direction of decolonizationrelinquishing control of Indochina, Morocco, and
Tunisiaand paved the way for intra-European collaboration in the context of the
Coal and Steel Community and, later, the Common Market. Some of the failures of
the Fourth Republicfor example, its inability to institute meaningful local democ-
94 france
racy and its foot-dragging on tax reformwere to be failures, equally, of the political
system that replaced it.
It is likely that the Fourth Republic would have continued if it had not been for the
problem of Algeria and the convenient presence of a war hero, General Charles de Gaulle.
Algeria could not be easily decolonized, or granted independence, because more than :
million French men and womenmany of them tracing their roots in that territory sev-
eral generations backconsidered it their home and regarded it as an integral component
of France. A succession of Fourth Republic politicians lacked the will or the stature to im-
pose a solution of the problem; the war that had broken out in the mid-:,,cs in Algeria
threatened to spill over into mainland France and helped discredit the regime.
Under the pressure of the Algerian events (and the threat of a military coup in conti-
nental France and North Africa), the Fourth Republic leadership decided, in mid-:,,, to
call on de Gaulle. De Gaulle had been a professional soldier, a member of the general
staff, and several months after the outbreak of World War II, deputy minister of war. Af-
ter Frances capitulation in June :,c, de Gaulle refused to accept the permanence of sur-
render and the legitimacy of the Ptain regime. Instead, de Gaulle ed to London. There
Charles de Gaulle, head of the provisional government, celebrates the liberation of France, :),,. (AP/Wide
World Photos)
he established a government in exile and organized the Free French forces, which were
joined by numerous Frenchmen who had escaped in time from the Continent. In :, de
Gaulle became the provisional civilian leader of liberated France, presiding over a govern-
ment coalition composed of Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Communists. In :,o
he retired from the political scene, having failed to prevent the ratication of the Fourth
Republic constitution (a document he opposed because it granted excessive powers to
parliament). In retirement de Gaulle continued to be a political force: more precisely, a
force of inspiration to a political movement, the RPF, the Rassemblement du Peuple
Franais (Gathering of the French People). These original Gaullists wanted to replace
the Fourth Republic with a new regime that would be led by a strong executive.
The Fifth Republic, established in :,,, is an institutional mixture of a very powerful
executive and a weak legislature. The institutional relationships are discussed later; for the
moment it is useful to make some remarks about French political culture (i.e., political
attitudes that are widely held and behavior patterns that cut across specic social classes
and party ideologies).
Aspects of French Political Culture
Except for parts of the industrial working class, most French people have shared the uni-
versal ambitions of French civilization and have not seemed to consider the (often exag-
gerated) chauvinism of their intellectual elite to be inconsistent with such ambitions.
They have taken pride in Frances international prestige, cultural patrimony, and intellec-
tual accomplishments, although these may have borne little relationship to objective real-
ity, may not have beneted all citizens equally, and may not have compensated for the
more immediate economic needs of the underprivileged. The French have had a tendency
to hero worship that has led them, on several occasions, to accept men on horseback:
the two Napoleons, Marshal MacMahon (in the :;cs), Marshal Ptain, and General de
Gaulle. This has been balanced by an equal tendency to rebel against authority. Moreover,
the French have often opted for leftist or revolutionary ideologies and politicians; at the
same time, such leftist thinking and speaking have sometimes been meaningless exercises
because there was little expectation that they would (or ought to) translate into leftist
governmental policies. Public opinion polls conducted from the :,,cs to the :,,cs have
shown, typically, that the proportion of French voters preferring Socialist Party candi-
dates was consistently higher than the proportion of those who favored the nationaliza-
tion of enterprises or the equalization of incomesboth traditional components of So-
cialist ideology.
The French have often held their politicians in contempt, but have allowed them
greater leeway than do Americans with respect to tax evasion, collusion with business, or
(personal) behavioral departures from bourgeois moral norms. It is only in the past few
years that such toleration has been replaced by popular impatience with, and the electoral
punishment of, corrupt politicians. A manifestation of that impatience, reected in an in-
creasingly independent judiciary, has been the indictment (and in some cases, conviction)
of nearly a hundred elected ofcials (of both the right and the left) for the misappropria-
96 france
tion of public funds and a variety of other legal violations.
3
At the same time, there is a
widespread desire to enter the public service, and much prestige is attached to it. Tradi-
tionally, the French have been sharply critical of the regime, but they have had a highly
developed sense of belonging to the nation and great expectations from the state in
terms of what it should do for them. Recent illustrations were provided by the strikes of
public-transport workers in the fall of :,,,, who protested against threatened cuts in
social-security protections and demanded a lowering of the retirement age; and the
strikes, for similar aims, of drivers in the private trucking industry a year later. Al-
though greatly inconvenienced by these events, the general public supported the strik-
ersboth for reasons of social solidarity and because it did not wish to have traditional
welfare-state entitlements for any part of the population called into question.
Ideology is now far less important than it had been since the onset of the industrial
revolution, and a growing number of French women and men have become market-ori-
ented; such a change, however, is a far cry from an unqualied embrace of classic liberal-
ism. Frances traditional nationalism has been moderated, and most of its citizens are
more open to Europe and the world at large; at the same time, they are not quite willing
to accept the consequences of globalization.
There have been other important changes, especially in the past two decades.
There is now little question about the legitimacy of the political system: More than ,c
percent of the French people accept the institutions of the Fifth Republic, a consensus
signalized by a gradual convergence between parties of the right and left and, indeed, in
a growing impatience with ideological labels. Conversely, the state has been desancti-
fied in the eyes of many French citizens; at the same time, it retains at once its multiple
role as protector, motor, and dinosaur, insofar as million French citizens work for it
and several million more depend on it.
4
While the French still have an instrumental
view of the state in the sense that it is expected to continue to play an important role in
economic, social, and cultural affairs, their expectations have become somewhat more
realistic. This development is reflected in the fact that the French, in recent years, have
been attaching a greater value to liberty than to equality. A poll taken a decade ago re-
vealed that for o, percent of the respondents, French national identity is essentially
symbolized by a commitment to human rightsroughly the same percentage for
whom that identity is symbolized by French cuisine.
5
While the French have become
more ego oriented, they have also come to attach increasing importance to civil soci-
ety and its component parts. In addition to a greater reliance on the market, there has
been a rapid growth of voluntary associations on national and local levels. These devel-
opments have served to reduce the social distrust, to lessen the fear of face-to-face rela-
tions that was once considered a major aspect of French political culture,
6
and to fos-
ter a greater openness to out-groups, both within France and outside it. One
manifestation of that change is the widespread public support of fairer treatment of im-
migrants (which compensates for pockets of intolerance) and a greater appreciation of
aspects of non-French culture.
Notes
:. A recent survey of the attitudes of young people (age fteen to twenty-four) revealed that only :c percent
consider religion very important (compared to the family [:%], friendship [;,%], work [o:%], and love
[,,%]). SOFRES poll conducted in November :,,,, cited in Le Monde, :::: November :,,,, .
:. The debate even involved President Mitterrand. In :,,, considerable details began to be revealed about
his involvement with the Vichy regime and his earlier identication with right-wing movements and per-
sonalities. See Pierre Pan, Une jeunesse franaise, :),,:),; (Paris: Fayard, :,,); and Emmanuel Faux,
Thomas Legrand, and Gilles Perez, La main droite de dieu (Paris: Seuil, :,,).
,. This list has included Jean Tibri, the mayor of Paris, and Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the eldest son of
the former president. See Jrme Dupuis, Jean-Marie Pontaut, and Jean-Loup Reverier, :cc lus dans le
collimateur: Le Whos Who des mis en examen, Le Point, :c June :,,,, ,o,.
. Grard Mermet, Francoscopie :)), (Paris: Larousse, :,,), ::,. See also ::,.
,. Passages/CSA poll of October :,;, cited in Grard Mermet, Francoscopie :)) (Paris: Larousse, :,), :.
See also Claudius Brosse, LEtat dinosaure (Paris: Albin Michel, :ccc).
o. See Michel Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,o,), ::c::.
98 france
Chapter 7
Where Is the Power?
THE FIFTH REPUBLIC CONSTITUTION was drawn up several weeks after de Gaulle
was invested as the (last) prime minister of the Fourth Republic. The new constitution,
which was adopted by an c percent afrmative vote in a popular referendum (September
:,,), was tailor-made for de Gaulle. It contains many features found in previous French
republics: president, prime minister, and a parliament composed of two chambersa
National Assembly and a Senate. Institutional relationships were rearranged, however, so
as to reect the political ideas that the famous general and his advisers had often articu-
lated, that is, the ideology of Gaullism.
The President and the Government
De Gaulle and his advisersforemost among them Michel Debr, the principal drafts-
man of the constitution, who was to become the Fifth Republics rst prime minister
wanted to have a strong government. It would be capable of making decisions and con-
ducting an assertive foreign policy without having to worry about excessive parliamentary
interference or premature ouster.
The president is clearly the central feature of the Fifth Republic system. He is elected
independently of parliament. The constitution had originally provided for his election by
an electoral college composed of some c,ccc national, regional, and local legislators; but
since the approval by referendum of a constitutional amendment in :,o:, presidents have
been elected by popular vote for seven-year terms. Many political leaders (including aspi-
rants to the presidency and former presidents) consider the presidential term of ofce too
long and advocated its reduction to ve yearsa change nally accomplished by referen-
dum in the fall of :ccc.
The president is invested with nearly monarchical powers, and these have been ex-
panded through interpretation by at least the rst three of the ve incumbents of the of-
ce so far: Charles de Gaulle (:,,o,); Georges Pompidou (:,o,-;); Valry Giscard
dEstaing (:,;:); Franois Mitterrand (:,:,,); and Jacques Chirac (since May :,,,).
According to the constitution, the president appoints the prime minister, who thereupon
supposedly selects the rest of the cabinet. But de Gaulle and Pompidou took an interest in
many of these appointments, and Giscard decided the composition of the entire cabinet
on a rather personal basis. The composition of these cabinets was endorsed almost auto-
matically by the Assembly, which was controlled by politicians more or less in the same
(conservative) ideological camp as the president.
Under President Mitterrand, a Socialist, the situation became more complicated. For
ve years following his election in :,:, and the election immediately thereafter of a
Socialist-controlled Assembly, the composition of governments reected the presidents
wishes to a large extent. But after the legislative elections of :,o, and again in :,,,, when
the Gaullists and their allies recaptured control of the Assembly, the president was forced
to appoint a prime minister and cabinet to the Assemblys liking rather than his own. The
cohabitation of a Socialist president with a Gaullist governmenta situation not clearly
envisaged by the writers of the Fifth Republic constitutionled to a restructuring of the
relationship between the two: a delicate form of power sharing in which the prime minis-
ter took responsibility for most domestic policies, while the president retained a measure
of authority in foreign affairs and national defense as well as a vaguely dened inuence
in internal affairs.
After the reelection of Mitterrand as president in :,, and the recapture of control
of the Assembly by the Socialists immediately thereafter, the situation returned to nor-
mal, that is, the presidents preeminence was reestablished. Mitterrand, however, decided
not to exercise his restored powers fully but to share it with his prime minister, Michel
Rocard, and, to a lesser extent, with parliamentnot only because the cohabitation ex-
perience had chastened him but also because he had, in a sense, become an elder states-
man who transcended politics.
A normal situation of presidential supremacy was restored again in :,,, with the
election of Chirac, a Gaullist, as president of the republic, and the appointment of
Gaullist Alain Jupp as prime minister. Two years later, however, France was subjected to
a third experiment with cohabitation as a consequence of a premature parliamentary elec-
tion. The Assembly elected in :,,, had until :,,that is, another three yearsto re-
main in place; nevertheless, Chirac decided to dissolve it and call for early elections. This
move was prompted by pressure on France to make drastic cuts in public expenditures in
order to be ready to participate in the common European currency, which was scheduled
to be inaugurated in January :,,,. The requirement to reduce the government decit to a
maximum of , percent of the gross domestic product would force the parliament to make
unpleasant cuts in the welfare-state budget. Although the Assembly had an overwhelming
Gaullist and center-conservative majority, the retrenchment measures required under the
European Unions common monetary policy could not be completely enacted before
:,,, the expiration of the normal life of the Assembly, and it was feared that the public
would take revenge on that legislative chamber at the forthcoming regular election. The
early election was, therefore, seen as a preventive step: although the president expected
that the Gaullists and their allies would lose some votes, he was condent that they would
still retain a comfortable control of the Assembly.
The victory of the Socialist party and its left-wing allies in the parliamentary elec-
tions of :,,; was as dramatic as it was unexpected. Since it was an unnecessary election,
its outcome, a consequence of Chiracs miscalculations, served to undermine Chiracs
presidential authority. He had no choice but to appoint Lionel Jospin, the Socialist leader
who had run as a presidential candidate only two years earlier, as prime minister. In this
new cohabitation, Jospin asserted himself strongly as a decision maker, so that he came to
100 france
rival, and even eclipse, the authority of the president not only in domestic affairs but also
in foreign policy.
Under normal as well as cohabitation situations, the president has a variety of ap-
pointive powers, which he has continued to exercise without interruption: over military
ofcers, political advisers, and some of the members of several judicial organs (on the ad-
vice, to be sure, of the prime minister). In addition, he retains the powers traditionally as-
sociated with chiefs of state: the appointment of ambassadors and other high civilian per-
sonnel, the receiving of foreign dignitaries, the signing of bills and the promulgation of
laws and decrees, the issuing of pardons, and the right to preside over cabinet sessions and
to send messages to parliament. The president cannot veto bills; however, he may ask par-
liament to reexamine all or part of a bill he does not like. Furthermore, the president has
the right to dissolve the Assembly before the expiration of its maximum term of ve years
and thus to call for new elections. The only two constraints are rather mild: the require-
ment that he consult with the prime minister and the Speakers of the two chambers
and the stipulation that the Assembly not be dissolved less than a year after its election.
Thus far, presidents have made use of the dissolution power on ve occasions: in :,o:,
:,o, :,:, :,, and :,,;.
The president may submit to the Constitutional Council an act of parliament or a
treaty of doubtful constitutionality; and he may submit to a popular referendum any or-
ganic bill (i.e., one relating to the organization of public powers) or any treaty requiring
ratication. The constitution stipulates that he may resort to a referendum only on the
proposal of the government (while parliament is in session) or following a joint motion
by the two parliamentary chambers (who meet in congress in Versailles for formal ratica-
tion). But President de Gaulle ignored this stipulation when he called for a referendum in
:,o:. Since the founding of the Fifth Republic, there have been nine referendums (after
the popular ratication of the constitution itself ): in January :,o:, on self-determination
for Algeria; in April :,o:, on the Evian agreement on independence for Algeria; in Octo-
ber :,o:, on the method of electing the president; in April :,o,, on the reform of the
Senate; in April :,;:, on approving Britains entry into the European Common Market;
in November :,, on proposals for autonomy for New Caledonia, a French dependency
in the Pacic; in September :,,:, on the ratication of the Maastricht treaty on European
Union; and in November :ccc, on the reduction of the presidential term of ofce.
It is the president who conducts the nations diplomacy. He negotiates and signs (or
raties) treaties, and he must be alerted to the progress of all international negotiations
conducted in the name of France.
One of the most interestingand awesomeprovisions relating to presidential
power is Article :o, which reads (in part) as follows:
When the institutions of the Republic, the independence of the nation, the
integrity of its territory or the fulllment of its international commitments are
threatened in a grave and immediate manner and when the regular functioning
of the constitutional governmental authorities is interrupted, the president of the
Republic shall take the measures commanded by these circumstances, after
ofcial consultation with the prime minister, the [Speakers] of the assemblies and
the Constitutional Council.
Such emergency powers, which can be found in a number of Western democracies, are
intended for use during civil wars, general strikes, and similar public disorders that pre-
sumably cannot be dealt with through normal, and often time-consuming, parliamentary
deliberative processes. De Gaulle invoked the provisions once, during a failed plot orga-
nized in :,o: by generals opposing his Algerian policy. Although Article :o is not likely to
be used again soon, and though there is a stipulation that parliament must be in session
when this emergency power is exercised, its very existence has been a source of disquiet to
many who fear that a future president might use it for dictatorial purposes. Others view
Article :o more liberally, that is, as a weapon of the president in his role as a constitutional
watchdog, mediator, and umpire.
The constitution makes a clear distinction in its wording between the chief of state
and the head of government. Thus it is the prime minister, not the president, who di-
rects the action of the government, who ensures the execution of the laws, who exer-
cises regulatory powers, and who proposes constitutional amendments to the presi-
dent. There is, unfortunately, some doubt whether the prime minister and the
government can be functionally separated from any president who wishes to be more
than a gurehead. Indeed, the constitutional text is not without ambiguity. Thus, while
one article provides that the prime minister is in charge of national defense, another
makes the president commander-in-chief of the armed forces; similarly, the prime minis-
ters power to determine the policy of the nation may conict with, and be subordi-
nated to, the presidents responsibility for guaranteeing national independence.
Except during the rst two periods of cohabitation, prime ministers have in fact had
little independence and little discretion vis--vis the president in all areas in which the lat-
ter has taken a personal interest. Furthermorehere again, except under abnormal con-
ditions when the Assembly and the president are on different sides of the political di-
videthe prime minister may be dismissed not only by parliament but also (though the
constitution does not stipulate this) by the president. Eleven of the fteen prime minis-
ters preceding Lionel Jospin were replaced while still enjoying the condence of the As-
sembly. Prime ministers have come and gone for a variety of reasons. Their appointment
does not need to be ofcially approved by parliamentthough most prime ministers
have in fact gone before the Assembly to be invested (that is, formally conrmed for of-
ce) by securing that chambers approval of the governments general policy directions.
Prime ministers do not, in principle, have to reect the party composition of the Assem-
bly, and they do not have to belong to any party at allthough it is clear that in practice
they cannot function, or even remain in ofce, without the support of a majority of
deputies.
Michel Debr (:,,o:) had been a loyal Gaullist even during the Fourth Republic;
but he was eventually replaced by Pompidou (:,o:o), who had been a lyce professor
and banker (and not party politician) but had once worked intimately with de Gaulle and
had been the leader of his presidential staff. Pompidou was in turn replaced by Maurice
102 france
Couve de Murville (:,oo,), a professional diplomat, because blame for the mishan-
dling of problems that had given rise to the mass rebellions of MayJune :,o had to be
deected from the president.
Jacques Chaban-Delmas (:,o,;:), a former Radical-Socialist and hero of the
wartime Resistance, was chosen by Pompidou on the election of the latter to the presi-
dency because of the presidents desire to cultivate a more progressive image and thus en-
tice centrist parties to join the government majority forces in parliament. Subsequently,
Chaban-Delmas was ousted in part because his popularity threatened to eclipse the presi-
dents own, and he was replaced by Pierre Messmer, a Gaullist (:,;:;).
Jacques Chirac (:,;;o) was chosen prime minister of the rst government under
Giscards presidency as a reward for having bolted the Gaullist Partytemporarily, as it
turned outand having supported Giscards presidential candidacy; but he was later re-
placed by Raymond Barre (:,;o:), a nonpolitical professor of economics, because of
disagreements over economic policy as well as over Chiracs insistence on playing a more
signicant decision-making role.
Pierre Mauroy (:,:), the rst Socialist prime minister of the Fifth Republic, was
selected by Mitterrand because of his nearly ideal background: scion of a working-class
family and trained as a teacher, he served as the mayor of a large industrial city. He had
been prominent in the old Socialist Party of the Fourth Republic and managed to get
along well with the leaders of the party factions.
Mauroy was succeeded by Laurent Fabius (:,o) when Mitterrand decided to
change direction from a progressive, redistributive policy to a program of austerity and
economic restraint. Chirac was reappointed as prime minister (:,o) because the pres-
ident had little choicebecause, as was pointed out above, the Gaullist Party that Chirac
led had gained dominance of the Assembly. Michel Rocard was chosen to head the gov-
ernment in :, in part because he had an important following within the ranks of the
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
:.;
:.,
:.:
,.c
,.
:.
:.,o
:.:
Average Annual Growth Rate of Gross Domestic Product, (in percentages)
Source: Calculated from OECD, Economic Outlook o (December :ccc), and Survey of Economic Policy of Rus-
sia in :ooo (Moscow, :cc:).
Socialist Party and among the population at large. An ambitious politician, a nondog-
matic and technocratic Socialist, he had (in late :,c) been a rival of Mitterrand for nom-
ination as a candidate for the presidency and had served in a number of ministerial posts
under Mauroy.
In May :,,: Rocard was in turn replaced by Edith Cresson. It is unclear whether this
change constituted an abrupt ring or an amicable divorce of two politicians whose po-
litical marriage had been one of convenience; in any case, it had become necessary
because the public image of the governmentand, by derivation, that of Mitterrand
himselfhad been tarnished by continued unemployment, growing delinquency, riots of
immigrants, and scandals involving campaign funding of Socialist politicians. Cresson,
the rst woman prime minister in French history, had headed a succession of ministries.
She had a reputation both as a loyal follower of Mitterrand and his brand of socialism
(which was to the left of that of Rocard) and as a proponent of government policies favor-
ing business and industry.
1
In April :,,:, Mitterrand asked Cresson to resign as prime minister. This decision
followed on the regional and cantonal elections a month earlier, in which the Socialist
Party had incurred heavy losses. Cressons successor, Pierre Brgovoy, had served as Mit-
terrands presidential chief of staff, as minister of social affairs, and (before and after the
rst cohabitation period) as minister of nance. In that last position, Brgovoy devel-
oped a reputation for scal responsibility.
After the parliamentary elections of March :,,,, the time for a change had come
again. Since the RPR and the UDF won overwhelming control of the National Assembly,
Mitterrand had to appoint a Gaullist, Edouard Balladur, to head a new government,
which was a second experiment with cohabitation. Balladur had been a close collaborator
of Prime Minister Pompidou, served as the general secretary of the presidential ofce
when the latter became president, and later became minister of nance in the cohabita-
tion government of Chirac.
The rst prime minister appointed by Chirac after his election as president was Alain
Jupp. A close friend and political ally of Chirac, Jupp had begun his career in the higher
civil service (as an inspector of nance); he developed close links with Chirac when he
served as the deputy mayor of Paris, and later, as minister of the budget in Chiracs co-
habitation cabinet and subsequently as his ofcial government spokesman. As foreign
minister in the Balladur government, he was an early and consistent supporter of Chiracs
presidential candidacy.
A change of prime ministers occurred in June :,,;, following the premature parlia-
mentary elections. The new prime minister, Lionel Jospin, had been a member of the
diplomatic service, a professor of economics, a secretary-general of the Socialist Party,
and a minister of education. In the presidential elections of :,,,, he had been the So-
cialist candidate, capturing nearly half of the popular vote. Chirac had little choice in
appointing Jospin, who had become the unchallenged leader of the democratic left and
was widely considered the architect of the victory of the Socialists and their left-wing
allies.
Cabinet stability has been much greater under the Fifth Republic than under the
104 france
Fourth, with only fteen prime ministersone of them, Chirac, serving on two separate
occasionsin a forty-two-year period (:,,:ccc) (see tables ;.:, ;.:, and ;.,). But there
have been more than two dozen important cabinet changes during that time. Such re-
arrangements have been made for a variety of reasons: deaths, changes in domestic or
foreign policy orientations, voluntary resignations (often prompted by disagreements
over government policy), and changes in the political party composition of the Assembly.
During ordinary periods, most of these reshufes have been made at the behest of the
president; during cohabitation, they tend to be decided by the prime minister, often in
order to rearrange the partisan makeup of the cabinet or to freshen up the image of the
government.
The constitution provides that the chief of state preside over cabinet sessions. Similar
provisions had existed in previous regimes, but (especially in the Third and Fourth re-
publics) had meant little, since working sessions of the cabinet were in effect led by the
prime minister. In the Fifth Republic, the presidentexcept, again, during cohabita-
tion interludeshas effectively led most cabinet meetings and determined their agenda.
Moreover, he has had a major voice in determining the size of the government (which has
ranged from twenty-four to forty-nine full and junior ministers) and in deciding
Table 7.1 Political Composition of Selected Fifth Republic Governments before :,:
President: de Gaulle Pompidou Giscard dEstaing
Prime minister: Couve de Chaban-
Debr Pompidou Murville Delmas Messmer Chirac Barre
January April April July June July June August July
Political party :),) :): :); :) :)) :);: :);, :); :);)
Gaullists 6 9 21 26 29 22 12 9 12
Republicans 3 3 4 7 5 8 10 11
a
Centrists 3
b
5
b
3
c
3
c
2 2
d
4
d
Radicals 1 1 6
e
5 1
f
Left Radicals
Socialists
Communists
Miscellaneous 7
g
3
h
Nonparty 10 11 5 1 8 10
i
10
i

Totals (including 27 29 29 31 39 30 36 36 41
prime minister)
a
Known until 1977 as Independent Republicans.
b
MRP.
c
Center for Democracy and Progress (CDP).
d
Center of Social Democrats (CDS).
e
Reformers.
f
Democratic Left.
g
Includes 5 Independents.
h
Includes one Social-Democrat, one member of CNIP, and the prime minister, attached to the UDF.
i
Collectively designated as presidential majority.
which of the full ministersusually between sixteen and twenty-eightare cabinet
ministers (i.e., participate in the weekly cabinet sessions).
That does not mean that the prime ministers role has been negligible: most have
been political personalities in their own right and have accepted the prime ministership
for reasons of ambition, more than half viewing it as a stepping-stone to the presidency.
Their leadership of the government has meant that the prime ministers have presided
over important interministerial committees, counseled the president on policy, and pro-
moted and defended legislation in parliament and before public opinion. But the associa-
tion between president and prime minister does not necessarily constitute a genuine poli-
cymaking partnership; in fact, all presidents thus far have clearly rejected the notion that
there is a two-headed or dyarchical executive and have afrmed presidential supremacy,
except when, between :,o and :,,,,,, and again in :,,;, the executive was tem-
porarily depresidentialized.
2
The Parliament
In terms of its bicameral structure and internal organization, the Fifth Republics legisla-
ture bears a clear resemblance to that of earlier republics. The National Assembly is com-
posed of ,;; deputies,,, from metropolitan France and :: from overseas dpartements
106 france
Table 7.2 Political Composition of Selected Fifth Republic Governments, 198188
President: Mitterrand
Prime minister: Mauroy Fabius
a
Chirac
b
Rocard
May June July March May June
Political party :): :): :), :) :)
c
:)
d
Gaullists 20
Republicans 7 1
Centrists 7
e
1
Radicals 2 1 1
Left Radicals 3 2 3 2 3
Socialists 39 37 36 26 25
Communists 4
Miscellaneous 1
f
1
f
1
g
2
h
3
h
Nonparty 3 6 11 15

Totals (including 43 44 43 42 42 49
prime minister)
a
Cabinet: 18 ministers (incl. 14 Socialists).
b
Cabinet: 15 ministers (incl. 7 Gaullists, 5 various UDF, 3 nonparty).
c
Cabinet: 19 ministers (incl. 14 Socialists).
d
Cabinet: 22 ministers (incl. 14 Socialists, 1 Left Socialist, 4 UDF, 3 nonparty).
e
f
Movement of Democrats, an ex-Gaullist group supporting Mitterrand in the presidential elections of 1981.
g
Parti Socialiste Uni (PSU).
h
Direct (nondifferentiated) members of UDF.
and territories. All are elected for a ve-year term by direct popular vote on a single-
member constituency basis. Members of the Senate are chosen for nine-year terms by an
electoral college composed of National Assembly deputies, dpartement councilors, and
delegates of city councils. One-third of the membership is renewed every three years. In
:,;, the Senate contained :,, members; in :,:, ,c,; in :,;, ,:,; and since :,,:, ,::. In
theory, both chambers have equal powers, with the following exceptions: budget bills
must always be submitted to the Assembly rst, and only the Assembly may oust the
government on a vote of censure (see below).
The organization of parliament follows traditional patterns. Each chamber is chaired
by a president (Speaker)elected in the Assembly for ve years, in the Senate for three
who is assisted by vice presidents (or deputy Speakers): six in the Assembly and four in
the Senate, reecting roughly the number of major party groupings in each chamber.
These ofcers, who collectively constitute the conference of presidents in each chamber,
Table 7.3 Political Composition of Selected Fifth Republic Governments since 1991
President: Mitterrand Chirac
Prime minister: Cresson
a
Brgovoy Balladur Jupp Jospin
May April March May June
Political party :)): :)): :)), :)), :));
Gaullists 14 19
Republicans 7 8
Centrists 2
b
5
c
6
c
Radicals 1 1
Left Radicals 2
d
2 3
Socialists 32 31 18
Communists 3
Miscellaneous 1
e
2
f
2
g
2
h
Nonparty 9 9 1
i
6 1

Totals (including 46 42
j
30
k
42
l
27
m
prime minister)
a
Cabinet: 20 ministers (incl. 16 Socialists, 1 Centrist [France Unie], 1 Ecologist, 2 nonparty). The government
included 6 women, 2 in the cabinet. Cresson was replaced by Pierre Brgovoy in April 1992.
b
France Uniea coalition formed in the Assembly in 1990 of Left Radicals and Centrists to enlarge the presi-
dential majority toward the center and support Michel Rocard.
c
d
MRGThese 2 ministers also belonged to France Unie.
e
Ecologist movement.
f
Two direct adherents of UDF.
g
Direct (nondifferentiated) members of UDF.
h
Comprising 1 from the Greens and 1 from the Citizens Movement.
i
Madame Simone Veil, a centrist close to Giscard dEstaing.
j
In cabinet: 21 ministers.
k
l
m
formally determine the allocation of committee seats and the organization of parliamen-
tary debates.
In order for deputies to participate meaningfully in legislative affairs, they must be-
long to a parliamentary party (groupe parlementaire). In the Fourth Republic fourteen
deputies sufced for a parliamentary party. With the establishment of the Fifth Republic
the required number was raised to thirty; this change has forced small contingents of
deputies to align (sapparenter) with larger ones, thus reducing the number of parties in
the legislature. After the parliamentary elections of :,, the number was reduced to
twenty in order to reward the twenty-seven Communist deputies for their selective sup-
port of the government and, in particular, for having supported Laurent Fabius, the for-
mer Socialist prime minister, as Speaker of the Assembly.
The decision-making role of parliament is limited, particularly in comparison with
earlier French republics and with other Western European democracies. The maximum
duration of ordinary sessions of parliament used to be ve and a half months per year:
eighty days in the fall (from early October) and ninety days in the spring (from early
April). In :,,, the constitution was amended to provide for a single ordinary session of
nine months, from October through June, totaling ::c days. Special sessions may be con-
vened at the request of the prime minister or a majority of the deputies, but such sessions
must have a clearly dened agenda. There have been many special sessions in recent years,
convoked in most cases to deal with budgetary matters.
3
The areas in which parliament may pass legislation are clearly enumerated in the
constitution (Article ,). They include, notably, budget and tax matters; civil liberties; pe-
nal and personal-status laws; the organization of judicial bodies; education; social secu-
rity; the jurisdiction of local communities; the establishment of public institutions, in-
cluding nationalized industries; and rules governing elections (where not spelled out in
the constitutional text). Matters not stipulated fall in the domain of decrees, ordinances,
or regulations, which are promulgated by the government directly. The distinction be-
tween laws and decrees is not a clear-cut one. In some areasfor example, local gov-
ernment, education, or labor and social policythe parliament often does little more
than establish general principles and leaves it to the government to ll in the details by
decree. In addition, the parliament may be asked (under Article ,) to delegate to the gov-
ernment the power to issue decrees in areas normally under parliamentary jurisdiction, a
procedure resorted to on many occasions under de Gaulles presidency.
As is the custom in all parliamentary democracies, a distinction is made between a
government bill (projet de loi) and a private members bill (proposition de loi). The former
has priority; in fact, since the founding of the Fifth Republic less than :, percent of all
bills passed by parliament originated with private members (or backbenchers), and
most of these passed because the government raised no objections or because it encour-
aged such bills. Finance bills can be introduced only by the government, and back-
benchers amendments to such bills are permissible only if these do not reduce revenues
or increase expenditures. Furthermore, if parliament fails to vote on (in practice, to ap-
prove) a budget bill within a period of seventy days after submission, the government
may enact the budget by decree.
108 france
The government has a deciding voice on what bills are to be discussed and how
much time shall be allocated to debate on parts of a bill. It can also make amendments
to a bill virtually impossible by resorting to the blocked-vote procedure (i.e., demand-
ing that the text of the bill as a whole be voted on). Thus far, this procedure has been
used well over :c times in the Assembly, with more than ,c percent of such bills pass-
ing. In the Senate, about a third of the bills introduced in the blocked-vote fashion have
been rejected.
Enactment of a bill requires passage in both the Assembly and the Senate. Should
there be disagreement between the two chambers, a variety of procedures may be used.
The bill in question may be shuttled back and forth between the chambers until a com-
mon text is agreed on; alternatively, the government may call for the appointment of a
conference committee, or it may ask each chamber for a second reading.
4
If disagree-
ment persists, the Assembly may be asked to pronounce itself denitively by simple ma-
jority vote, thereby enacting the bill in question.
Constitutional amendments are subject to a special procedure. The initiative belongs
both to the president (after he consults with the prime minister) and to parliament. An
amendment bill, having passed in both chambers in identical form, is then submitted to
the people for ratication. A referendum may be avoided if the amendment is ratied by
parliament in joint sessionconvoked for this purpose by the presidentby a three-
fths majority.
5
Although the constitution grants the legislature jurisdiction in areas broad enough to
embrace, in principle, the most important domestic policy matters, the Fifth Republic
parliament has been in a poor position to exercise this power. In the Fourth Republic,
more than two dozen Assembly standing committees contributed much legislative input.
These committees, because of the expertise of their members, became quasi-independent
centers of power. Though they produced high-quality legislative proposals, they some-
times offered counterproposals to government bills, designed to embarrass the govern-
ment and bring it down. In contrast, in the Fifth Republic only six standing committees,
consisting of o: to ::: deputies each, are provided for. They do their work within carefully
limited time periods and are forbidden to produce substitute bills.
In theory, the parliament can do much more than just register and ratify what has
been proposed to it by the government. During the rst decade of the Fifth Republic,
parliament, and above all the Assembly, was relatively docile; but (especially since the
mid-:,;cs) parliament has become increasingly assertive. This can be seen in the growth
of the number of amendments to government bills introduced and passed.
6
In weekly question periods, questions (in written or oral form) are addressed to indi-
vidual ministers. Answers, not immediately forthcoming, may be provided by a minister
or by a person such as a higher civil servant deputized by him. Such question-and-answer
sessions are sometimes followed by a very brief debate, sometimes by no debate at all.
They cannot be followed by a vote of censure, which would cause the resignation of the
government.
Motions of censure must be introduced by a unique and specic procedure and sepa-
rately from the Assemblys routine business. These motions require the signatures of at
least one-tenth of all the deputieswho may co-sponsor only one such motion during
each parliamentary session (i.e., fall and spring)and can be voted on only after a cool-
ing-off period of forty-eight hours; the motion carries only if an absolute majority of the
entire membership of the Assembly supports the censure. The government may also chal-
lenge or provoke the Assembly to a motion of censure simply by making a specic bill or
a general policy declaration a matter of condence. If no successful censure motion is
forthcoming, the bill in question is considered to have passedand the government, of
course, remains in place. In forty-two years (between :,,, and :ccc), the government has
resorted successfully to this provocation method more than sixty times. During the
same period, more than forty motions of censure have been introduced by deputies, but
only one (in October :,o:) obtained the requisite majority vote. In that particular in-
stance, President de Gaulle was required to accept the parliamentary dismissal of his
prime minister (then Pompidou). But de Gaulle nullied the effect of the censure vote by
dissolving parliament and, after the elections that followed, simply reappointing Pompi-
dou to head a new government.
Another weapon that can be used by parliament against the executive is the Consti-
tutional Council. This body consists of nine membersone-third each chosen by the
president, the Speaker of the Assembly, and the Speaker of the Senateappointed for
nine-year terms (with a one-third renewal every three years). Its function was originally
viewed as largely advisory. The constitution provides that it must be consulted on the
constitutionality of an organic bill before it becomes law and of treaties before they are
considered as ratied. It also pronounces on the legality of parliamentary regulations
and the propriety of referendum procedures; it watches over presidential and legislative
elections and conrms the results; and it must, of course, be consulted if the president in-
vokes the emergency clause (Article :o) of the constitution. In addition, any bills may, be-
fore they become law, be submitted to the council for a judgment by the president, the
prime minister, the Speaker of either chamber, and (since the passage of a constitutional
amendment in :,;) by sixty deputies or sixty senators.
Under the Fourth Republic, deputies were often too willing to unseat a government
in the hope that there would be a portfolio for them in a subsequent cabinet; if they
should in turn be ousted from the cabinet, they would still retain their parliamentary
seats. But the Fifth Republic constitution purposely changed all that. Under Article :,, a
position in the cabinet is incompatible with simultaneous occupancy of a seat in parlia-
ment. Consequently, any deputy (or senator) who ascends to the cabinet must resign his
parliamentary seatwhich is immediately lled, without special election, by his alter-
nate (supplant), whose name was listed on the ballot alongside that of the deputy during
the preceding Assembly elections. (If the alternate, too, resigns or dies, there must be a
by-election.)
The spirit of the incompatibility clause has been violated repeatedly. Cabinet minis-
ters have run for parliamentary seats they do not intend to occupy; presidents have en-
couraged that practice because in this way popular support for the government can be
tested; and constituents have voted for such candidates because it is much better, for se-
curing pork-barrel appropriations, for local voters to have their representative sit in the
110 france
cabinet rather than in parliament. Furthermore, deputies appointed by the government
for special tasks (as chargs de mission) may retain their parliamentary seats if the appoint-
ment is for less than six months.
The incompatibility rule has not affected the traditional accumulation of elected of-
ces (cumul des mandats). For many years, most deputies were concurrently members of
regional, departmental, and municipal councils, and a sizable number were serving as
members of the European Parliament as well. Of the ,;; deputies elected to the Assembly
in :,,,, :c: continued to be mayors (with an even larger proportion found among sena-
tors). Of the deputies elected to the Assembly in :,,;, about half continued to be mayors
(with an even larger proportion found among senators); ::: deputies were mayors of
towns of over twenty thousand inhabitants; : were members of general (departmental)
councils; and o, presidents of regional councils. A (perhaps extreme) example of multiple
ofceholding was that of the late Jean Lecanuet, who (in addition to holding the leader-
ship of the UDF in the :,;cs), concurrently served as senator, mayor of a sizable town
(Rouen), president of a general (departmental) council, member of a regional council,
and member of the European Parliament. All these activities cut deeply into the time
available to the deputies or senators to devote themselves to their parliamentary work, let
alone to oppose the government. In order to rectify such a situationand perhaps in-
crease the attention span of parliamentariansan act was passed in :,, to limit the accu-
mulation of elective ofces to no more than two.
7
Such a limitation, let alone the aboli-
tion of the cumul, is not enthusiastically accepted by many politicians. Since the
enactment of this reform, about half the deputies have opted to retain their positions as
mayors as well as their parliamentary seats.
8
On becoming prime minister, Jospin re-
quired all his cabinet appointees to relinquish their positions as mayors of large cities as a
precondition for taking ofce; it is not certain, however, whether this practice will be fol-
lowed by his successors.
The limitations on the power of the deputy have not served to improve his or her
public image or, indeed, self-image. Still, there is no proof that individual legislators in
France are substantially less powerful or less rewarded than their counterparts in Britain.
In :ccc the gross annual salary of deputies and senators was about $,,ccc (roughly cor-
responding to that of higher civil servants and senior university professors), a sum that in-
cluded base pay plus rental subsidy. In addition, the typical deputy received about
$;c,ccc a year for administrative assistance (partly paid for by the Assembly), as well as
travel allowances and tax concessions.
9
For many deputies, such compensation is insuf-
cient to cover the cost of maintaining two apartments and traveling to and from their
constituencies. Hence they may be forced to pursue their normal professions as best
they can.
Most deputies are not rich; in fact, in terms of social background, age, and occupa-
tion they are reasonably representative of the population. Statistics reveal that National
Assemblies produced in the past ve elections (i.e., :,:,;) have included a large num-
ber of government ofcials, educators (especially among the Socialists), white-collar em-
ployees, and a fair number of physicians. The number of blue-collar workers and farmers
has been insignicant, however.
The Administrative State
One of the features of the French polity that has been subjected to relatively little change
and that is not likely to alter drastically in the near future is the administrative system.
Since the time of the Old Regime and Napoleon, that system has been highly centralized;
the various echelons below the national governmentdpartements, districts (arrondisse-
ments), and communeshave remained administrative rather than decision-making enti-
ties, whose responsibilities can be dened, expanded, or contracted at will by the national
government. (For recent decentralization policies, see pp. :,,,,.)
At the pinnacle of the system is the permanent civil service. Dened in its broadest
sense, it is the corpus of more than , million government employees and constitutes
about :, percent of Frances total labor force. In addition to the ordinary national civil
servants, it includes military ofcers, teachers from the public elementary schools through
the university, employees of local bodies, and the staff employed by the railroads, civil avi-
ation, electric power companies, and other nationalized sectors. Denationalization (or
privatization) policies, pursued at a steady pace for the past several years, will undoubt-
edly result in a reduction in the number of state employees.
The civil service proper (la fonction publique) numbers about one million. It is subdi-
vided into several categories ranging from custodial and manual workers to high adminis-
trative functionaries who are directly responsible to cabinet ministers. The civil service is
functionally divided into sectoral categories. The most prestigious of these are the Gen-
eral Inspectorate of Finance, the Court of Accounts, the Foreign Ministry, and the Coun-
cil of State (the pinnacle of the national administrative court system)collectively la-
beled the grand corps. This body also includes the prefectoral corps, whose members, the
prefects, are the chief agents of the government on departmental and regional levels and
are under the authority of the minister of the interior.
Since the time of Napoleon, recruitment to the higher civil service has been tied to
the educational system. A variety of national schools, the likes of which are not found in
other countries, trains specialized civil servants. These schools, the grandes coles, are
maintained alongside the regular universities and have highly competitive entry and
graduation requirements. The best known are the cole Polytechnique, for training civil
engineers and scientists, the cole Normale Suprieure, whose graduates become profes-
sors in prestigious lyces and universities, and the cole Nationale dAdministration
(ENA). The last-named, which opened its doors only in :,o, has trained the majority
of higher administrative personnel for the grand corps and the prefectoral corps. It num-
bers among its graduates the incumbent president (Chirac), a former president (Gis-
card), several prime ministers (Fabius, Chirac, Rocard, Balladur, Jupp, and Jospin), and
many cabinet ministers.
10
The French have often criticized the important position of the higher civil service.
They have argued that while it makes for stability, it tends to undermine democracy. This
criticism has been based on the upper- and upper-middle class origins of most of the
higher functionaries, on the fact that they are subject neither to popular elections nor ad-
equate controls, and on the belief that they have tended to serve not the citizen but an ab-
straction called the state.
112 france
Nevertheless, the higher civil service has not been monolithic or dictatorial, nor has
it been immune to internal conicts and external pressures. Although the ENA has re-
cruited only a minuscule portion of its student body from the working class and the peas-
antrydespite a number of half-hearted attempts to broaden the method of recruit-
ment
11
its graduates, the narques, have been as likely to be identied as progressives, or
even leftists, as conservatives or reactionaries. Sometimes there is a conict between those
civil servants who work for the Ministries of Finance and Industry, who often have close
personal and ideological ties with big-business managers, and those who work in the
Ministries of Health and Education, who tend to have afnities with their clientele and
therefore to have a social-reform outlook. Frequently there is a difference of opinion be-
tween the civil servants in the Ministry of Justice, who are concerned with procedural
propriety, and those in the Ministry of the Interior, who tend to be sympathetic with the
polices preoccupation with public order. There is also a certain tension between the tradi-
tional bureaucrats who serve in the standard ministries and have a legalistic orientation
and the technocrats who have been trained in economics, statistics, and management
methods and are found in the National Economic Planning Commission.
Public Corporations
A component of the administrative system that is difcult to categorize, yet is of great
importance, is the nationalized sector. From the beginning of the postwar period to the
early :,cs about :, percent of the French economy was in government hands, including
(but not limited to) the following: mass transport, gas, electricity, nuclear energy, the
postal service, civil aviation, the procurement and distribution of fuel, a large proportion
of banking and insurance, and one automobile manufacturing rm (Renault). The rea-
sons behind nationalizationthe inuence of Socialist ideology, the limits of the private
capital market, the monopolistic nature of certain enterprises, the need to consolidate
production or services in order to make them more efcient, and so onneed not de-
tain us here. Sufce it to say that the states involvement in the management of eco-
nomic matters has resulted in special approaches to recruitment, job classication, and
political control. On occasion, positions of responsibility in nationalized, or public,
enterprises are given to individuals coopted from the private sector or are handed over as
political plums to politicians who have proved their loyalty to the president. Because
of the complexity of the management problems, nationalized enterprises have been dif-
cult to subject to parliamentary surveillance; at the same time, their very existence can
be a useful weapon in the hands of a government interested in long-term economic
planning, or at least in inuencing the behavior of the private economic sector in its
production and pricing policies.
In :,::, the Socialist government (in conformity with its preelection platform) in-
troduced bills to bring additional sectors under public control, among them a dozen in-
dustrial conglomerates (manufacturing metals, chemicals, electronics, machine tools) and
most of the remaining private banks. Such a policy proved to be ill advised, and soon af-
ter coming to power in :,o, the Gaullist government of Chirac proceeded to denational-
ize most of these sectors, as well as most of the (hitherto government-owned) television
networks. When the Socialists returned to power in :,, they continued this privatiza-
tion policy at a slower pace, which sped up considerably after the installation of the
Gaullist governments of Balladur and Jupp. For them, privatization, in addition to con-
forming with Gaullists recently emerging neo-liberal (i.e., market-oriented) ideology,
served to bring a quick infusion of funds into the public treasury. Not all the privatization
projects had smooth sailing, however: Jupps proposal to privatize the Thomson rm,
Frances largest industrial-military production conglomerate, was shelved as a result of
widespread opposition; for similar reasons, the Socialist government of Jospin, which
took ofce in :,,;, had to scale down the privatization of the countrys civilian airline
and the telecommunications monopoly.
Control and Redress
One of the institutions that has played a signicant role as a watchdog over administra-
tive activities is the Council of State (Conseil dEtat). Originally created in :;,, by
Napoleon for resolving intrabureaucratic disputes, it has gradually assumed additional
functions. It advises the government on the language of draft bills; it passes on the legality
of decrees and regulations issuing from the executive; and most important, it acts as a
court of appeal for suits brought by citizens against the administration. Such suits, involv-
ing charges of bureaucratic arbitrariness, illegalities, or abuse of power, are initiated in de-
partment (prefectoral) administrative tribunals. Unfortunately, several years may elapse
before such cases are dealt with by the Council of State.
A :,;, innovation is the mediator, the French equivalent of the ombudsman, or
citizens complaint commissioner. This ofcial, appointed by the president for a six-year
term on the recommendation of parliament, may take upon himself the examination of a
variety of complaints involving, for example, social security agencies, prisons, national-
ized industries, and administrative and judicial malfunctions. He may request from any
public agency information he considers pertinent, initiate judicial proceedings against
misbehaving bureaucrats, and suggest to the government improvements in the laws. Ap-
peal to the mediator (which is free of charge) cannot be direct; it must be made via a
deputy or senator.
Subnational Government and Administration
The extent to which national decisions can be, or should be, inuenced or deected on
local levels has been a matter of intense debate in France for the past two decades. There
has been some question whether the existing subdivisions are of the proper size, whether
they are adequately nanced, and whether they provide a meaningful arena for the politi-
cal participation of citizens.
Metropolitan France consists of ,o dpartements, which are the basic subnational ad-
ministrative units into which the country was divided during the Revolution of :;,. In
addition there are ve overseas dpartements. Each dpartement is both self-administering
and an administrative subunit of the national government. Whatever autonomy the d-
partements possesses is reected by its General Council, which votes a budget, decides on
local taxes and loans, and passes laws on housing, roads, welfare services, cultural pro-
114 france
grams, and educational services (supplementary to those made mandatory by the national
government). The General Council, which is elected by popular vote (by single-member
constituenciesthe cantons) for a six-year term (with half of the membership renewable
every three years), in turn elects a president, or chairperson. Traditionally the latter, how-
ever, was not properly speaking the executive ofcer of the dpartement. That role was
lled by the prefect, an agent of the national government who used to be charged with
administering the dpartement in behalf of the Ministry of the Interior and other national
ministries. Thus the prefect (together with the mayor of a town) would be involved in the
maintenance of public order, but the (local) police was itself an instrument of national
administration and, as such, was directly under the authority of the minister of the inte-
rior in Paris.
In :,: the ofce of prefect was abolished and replaced by that of commissioner of
the republic (which meant, in effect, that the prefects were renamed commissioners). The
commissioners still functioned as agents of the national government, but they left bud-
getary and many other policy decisions to the General Councils (except for services and
expenditures mandated by national legislation). In :,;, the title of commissioner was
changed back to that of prefect.
The prefect is assisted by a cabinet composed of specialists in public works, agricul-
ture, housing, and other services. On the next lower level, are the ,:, arrondissements, the
basic (single-member) constituencies for parliamentary elections. (Some heavily popu-
lated arrondissements are subdivided into two or more constituencies.) A further subdivi-
sion is the canton, which contains a number of agencies such as units of the national gen-
darmerie, tax ofces, and highway services.
Since :,;: the dpartements have been grouped into twenty-two regions. These have
their own assemblies, elected by popular vote (on the basis of proportional representa-
tion) for six-year terms. The regional assemblies and their presiding ofcers all serve to
coordinate the activities of several dpartements.
The lowest, but most signicant, administrative unit is the commune. Communes,
of which there are more than ,o,ccc, may range in size from villages of fewer than :cc in-
habitants to the national capital. Communes have varied responsibilities, ranging from
re protection, the upkeep of elementary school buildings, the provision of selected social
services, the imposition of certain taxes, and the maintenance of public order.
12
Some
communes have become too small to provide a full range of services; they have been ei-
ther administratively merged with neighboring communes or compelled to associate with
them functionally. Under provisions put into effect in the early :,;cs, certain services,
such as water supply and re protection, may be performed jointly by several communes.
Conversely, some communes are so large that special regimes have been invented for
them. For instance, Paris and Lyon are themselves subdivided into arrondissements.
Paris has always been a special case. Between :;: and :,;;, Paris did not have a
mayor but was ruled by two prefects directly on behalf of the national government: a
prefect of the Seine (the former name of the dpartement in which the capital is located)
and a prefect of police. Each of the twenty arrondissements had its own mayor, whose
functions were generally limited to the maintenance of civil registers, the performance of
marriages, the changing of street names, and the like. Since the reinstitution of the
mayor for all of Paris, the twenty district mayors have been replaced by civil administra-
tors. The prefect of the Paris dpartement and the prefect of police, however, remain in
place.
The relationship between the national government and subnational units has been
rendered confusing by the existence of functional units that overlap geographical bound-
aries. Thus in addition to the dpartements and regions there are twenty-ve educational
districts (acadmies), which administer the educational system from elementary school
through universities; sixteen social security regions; and six military districts. All of these
have been, in the nal analysis, administrative conveniences put in place by the national
government and have provided little in the way of local decision-making opportunities.
The situation improved considerably after the election of Mitterrand, however, when
(under the decentralization laws enacted between :,: and :,,) municipal and General
Councils were given greater authority to collect revenues. This development has been
welcomed by the mayors of the larger towns, but the increasing pressure placed on them
has caused many of them to refrain from seeking reelection, or to give up their parlia-
mentary mandates. For many small communes, however, decentralization has been a
handicap, because they are too poor to manage by themselves some of the services that
had earlier been the responsibility of the national government.
13
A major purpose of subnational units is to serve as arenas of citizen involvement in
politics and the recruitment of politicians for both national and subnational echelons.
This is particularly true of communes: the outcome of municipal elections, which occur
every six years and produce nearly ,cc,ccc councillors, ultimately affects the composition
of the Senate, since the councils are part of the electoral college that chooses senators.
Municipal elections also enable the citizenry to express midterm attitudes regarding the
performance of the national government and, more specically, that of the party in
power. Thus, the outcome of the municipal elections of March :,,, in which many So-
cialist and Communist councillors (and, indirectly, mayors) were replaced by Gaullist or
Giscardo-centrist ones, was viewed as an expression of voters impatience with the record
of the Mitterrand presidency and the Socialist government after two years in ofce; con-
versely, the outcome of the municipal elections of March :,,, in which many Gaullists
were in turn ousted, was interpreted as a reection of a relative satisfaction with the per-
formance of the Socialist government led by Rocard.
In the most recent municipal elections, which took place in March :cc:, local issues
predominated. At the same time, these elections were of national signicance, insofar as
the outcome reected the national image of the major political parties and were thought
by many to serve as a political weather vane for their prospects in the nationalthat is,
presidential and parliamentaryelections scheduled for :cc:. On the one hand, the vic-
tories of right-wing parties in many of the provincial towns were encouraging to the
Gaullists and their right-of-center allies; on the other hand, the victories of the left in two
of the three largest citiesParis and Lyonswere good news to Prime Minister Jospin
and the Socialist leadership. However, the election of a Socialist (Bertrand Delano) as
mayor of Paris for the rst time in a century was due less to ideology or policy than to the
116 france
fact that the outgoing Gaullist mayor (Jean Tibri), had been charged with acts of corrup-
tion that dated back to the time when President Chirac was the mayor. These acts in-
cluded the appointment of phantom municipal employees, whose salaries went into the
coffers of the Gaullist party, as well as the maintenance of electoral registers that included
nonexistent voters.
Notes
:. Cresson developed a reputation for outspokenness and lack of tact, and within a few weeks of her assump-
tion of ofce, the popularity of her government plummeted, as did that of Mitterrand.
:. For a detailed statement of the legal-constitutional position of the prime minister, see Philippe Ardant, Le
Premier Ministre en France (Paris: Montchrestien, :,,:). For a discussion of the evolution of the prime
ministers actual relationship with presidents, see Robert Elgie, The Role of the Prime Minister in France,
:):): (New York: St. Martins, :,,,).
,. There were seventeen special sessions between :,: and :,o, four between :,o and :,, four in :,,,
and eleven between :, and :,,:.
. Typically, more than half of the bills passed have not required the use of conference committees. The
breakdown for selected years has been as follows:
Bills adopted* :)), :)), :)); :)))
Without use of committee 33 13 16 30
After use of committee 21 12 11 19
of which committee succeeded
in modifying bill 21 12 4 8
Total bills passed 54 25 27 49
Source: Anne Politique :))) (Paris: Evnements et Tendances, 1999), 151.
*not counting treaties.
,. The most recent constitutional amendments adopted by such a joint sessiona congress assembled in
Versailleswere passed in June :,,, and January :ccc. The former provided for the domestic applicabil-
ity of decisions handed down by the International Penal Court and for gender equality in putting up can-
didates for elective ofce. The latter ratied the Treaty of Amsterdam of :,,;, which empowered the Eu-
ropean Union to determine supranational immigration and asylum policies.
o. In :,o, :,,: amendments to bills were introduced in the Assembly, of which oco passed; in :,;,, ,c,o
(:,oc, passed); in :,:, ,,coc (:,,;c passed); and during the cohabitation period :,o, ,,:o (:,:,;
passed). In :,,:, ,,c, amendments were introduced (:,c; by legislative committees, ,o: by back-
benchers, and , by the government). Only ,,o, passed, few of them originating with backbenchers.
See Les grands textes de la pratique institutionnelle de la V
e
Rpublique. Didier Maus, ed. (Paris: Documen-
tation Franaise, :,,,), :,.
;. See Albert Mabileau, Le cumul des mandats, Regards sur lActualit :o, (March :,,:): :;:,.
. One of the rare exceptions to this development was the decision of Alain Carignon in :, to resign his
position as deputy while retaining that of mayor of Grenoble and member of the general council of his d-
partement. In :,,,, however, he was forced to resign these ofces in the wake of his conviction for the
misuse of public funds.
,. Ce que possdent vos lus, Le Point, :, January :cc:, ,.
:c. Another specialized school, the cole Nationale de la Magistrature, created in :,, and located in Bordeaux,
trains states attorneys, investigating magistrates, and judges.
::. In :,,, the Socialist government attempted to diminish the existing bias in favor of Parisians, graduates of
the better universities, and children of higher civil servants by providing for an alternative entry into the
ENA (by means of special examinations) to local politicians and middle-echelon ofcials of public agen-
cies; the Chirac government subsequently suspended that method. In a related move, the Cresson govern-
ment in :,,: initiated a policy of delocalizing the ENA by moving it from Paris to the provincial city of
Strasbourg. Although subsequent governments committed themselves to continuing this move, some
classes have in effect been retained in Paris or returned to it.
::. Since the mid-:,cs, a series of laws have been passed to permit localities to appoint their own municipal
police as supplements to the national gendarmerie. The size of such police forces, appointed by mayors
and approved by prefects, and their relationships to the national police, vary widely. See Marie Vogel, La
loi sur les polices municipales, Regards sur lActualit :,, (JulyAugust :,,,): ,,:.
:,. The relative poverty of small towns and the low salaries of elected municipal positions have impelled
many mayors (especially those who hold well-paid parliamentary seats) not to seek reelection to that of-
ce. Ccile Chambraud, Les nouveaux paramtres des lections municipales de :ccl, Le Monde, :, Feb-
ruary :ccc.
118 france
Chapter 8
Who Has the Power?
FRANCE HAS A COMPLEX political party system, which many view as symptomatic of
disorder and confusion. At any given timeespecially during electionsit is possible to
distinguish more than a dozen parties. Some of these can be traced back several genera-
tions and have been of national importance; others are of passing interest because of their
ephemeral or purely local nature or weak organization; and still others are mere political
clubs, composed of small clusters of people more anxious to have a forum for expressing
their political views than to achieve power.
From the point of view of national politics, one may identify six major ideological
families within which political parties have been arrangedat least from the postWorld
War II period until recently: Communists and Socialists; Radical-Socialists and Catho-
lics; and Conservatives and Gaullists. For the sake of analytic convenience, these may
in turn be grouped into the left, the center, and the right. Each of the families has tried
to represent different social classes and/or different views regarding economic policy,
executive-legislative relations, and the place of religion in politics. Before looking at spe-
cic parties, one should be warned that their positions have not always been consistent;
that their traditional ideologies often failed to be adjusted in terms of changing socioeco-
nomic realities, including the structure of the electorate; that politicians elected under the
label of one party have sometimes shifted to another; and that tactical considerations have
often forced parliamentary deputies to vote on issues in such a way as to ignore their
party platforms.
The Old Right
Historically, the political right was characterized by its identication with the status quo.
It had favored monarchism and deplored the Revolutions of :;, and :. Inclined to-
ward authoritarian rule, the right evolved from support of Bourbon kings to that of
Napoleon and other heroic leaders. It favored an elitist social structure; dened society
in organic (i.e., hereditary) and hierarchical terms; had contempt for the masses, who
were considered too irrational and selsh to be entrusted with political participation; and
invested the state with an aura of sanctity. Originally, the support of the right was de-
rived from the established classes: the aristocracy, the landed gentry, the clergy, and later,
the military and big business.
The importance of the political right was gradually reduced with the transforma-
tion of the French economy and society, specifically, the decline of those sectors that
had been its main electoral base. Furthermore, by the beginning of the Fourth Repub-
lic, much of that ideological family had become discredited because many of its adher-
ents had been collaborators of the Germans during the war, while the respectable
right had become converted to republicanism. The main political expression of the
postwar right was the National Center of Independents and Peasants (Centre National
des Indpendants et PaysansCNIP), a group of politicians sometimes also known as
moderates. The CNIP (later known simply as CNI) was feebly represented in the As-
sembly, in part because it reflected two conflicting positions: a liberal one (i.e., a be-
lief in laissez-faire economics) and a conservative one (i.e., a continued commitment
to the values of elitism, religion, authority, and family). Another reason for the weak-
ness of the traditional right was that it had to compete with the center parties for vot-
ers. A third, and most important, reason was the rise of Gaullism, a political movement
that drained off many of the rights old supporters, notably the nationalist and populist-
authoritarian elements.
Gaullism is a unique phenomenon. Many Frenchmen had shared General de Gaulles
dislike of the Fourth Republic. They objected to its central feature: a parliament that was,
in theory, all-powerful but in practice was immobilized because it was faction ridden.
They favored a regime with a strong leader who would not be hampered by political par-
ties and interest groups; these were considered particularistic and destructive interposi-
tions between the national leadership and the citizenry. Above all, Gaullists wanted
France to reassert its global role and rediscover its grandeur. Many of their early support-
ers had been identied with the general as members of his Free French entourage in Lon-
don or had been active in the Resistance. Others had worked with him when he headed
the rst provisional government after the Liberation; still others saw in him the embodi-
ment of the hero-savior. Gaullism can thus be described as nationalistic as well as Cae-
120 france
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
::.:
;.,
:c.;
,.
,.,
o.:
.c
,.,
Average Unemployment Rates, (percentages)
Sources: Calculated from OECD, Economic Outlook o (December :ccc); Tacis, Russia and the EU Member
States. Statistical Comparisons :))o) (Luxembourg: Ofce for Ofcial Publications of the European Comuni-
ties, :,,).
sarist or Bonapartist, in the sense that the legitimacy of the national leader was to be
based on popular appeal.
Nevertheless, Gaullism never contained a clear domestic policy program and, at least
in the beginning, did not seem to show great interest in economic reform or social justice
and therefore failed to get signicant support from the working-class electorate. Yet
Gaullists would vehemently reject the label of rightist because, they argued, nationalism
is not incompatible with social reform, and because the rst Gaullist party, the Rally of
the French People (Rassemblement du Peuple FranaisRPF), established in :,;, was in-
tended to be a movement that would appeal to all social classes. The RPF, however, was
not to become a mass party until the collapse of the Fourth Republic.
The Old Left
Leftism and socialism have been particularly important in modern French political his-
tory because they have stood for progress, equality, rationalism, and democratic govern-
mentthe aims with which the Revolution of :;, was associated. In response to the
gradual democratization of the suffrage and the growing electoral importance of the
working class, many parties appropriated the label socialist. Socialist parties have been
inspired by different traditions, some of them dating to the eighteenth centuryutopian,
revolutionary, and reformistbut these parties shared a preoccupation with the system-
atic explanation of social phenomena: an emphasis on the importance (and the claims) of
society as a whole; and a belief that economic, political, and social structures were inti-
mately related.
The major party of the left is the Socialist Party (Parti socialistePS). Originally
formed in :,c, out of small and disparate leftist groups, and known until :,o, as the
SFIO (Section Franaise de lInternationale Ouvrire), it was inspired by revolutionary
Marxism and appealed to the industrial working class. Increased parliamentary represen-
tation, participation in bourgeois governments, and the takeover of leadership positions
by intellectuals and other middle-class elements caused the Socialist Party to lose its revo-
lutionary dynamism and commit itself to the idea of gradual, nonviolent reform. The
party came to attach as much value to the maintenance of democratic processes as to so-
cioeconomic redistributive policies. In :,,o Lon Blum, the party leader, headed a gov-
ernment that (with the support of some of the other leftist parties) instituted far-reaching
social reforms. When the party was reconstituted in the Fourth Republic, it continued to
promote progressive legislation. But the Socialist Party was hampered in its growth by
competition from the Communist Party.
Established in :,:c, the Communist Party (Parti communistePC) had taken much
of the Socialists working-class electorate from them. The two parties of the left collabo-
rated on many bills in the legislature; but whereas the Communists wanted to bring
down the Fourth Republic, the Socialists were committed to maintaining it. In :,,, most
Socialists voted in favor of the investiture of de Gaulle as prime minister; the Commu-
nists opposed it. Later that year, while a large number of Socialist leaders endorsed the
Fifth Republic constitution, the Communists expressed opposition to it. In the :,ocs the
Socialists lost much of their membership, whereas the Communists were able to retain
most of their hard-core adherents. Both leftist parties were consigned to opposition status
from which they emerged only in :,:.
The Old Center
For at least a century there has been a political family that has represented the broad in-
terests of the petite bourgeoisiethe shopkeepers, artisans, and certain farmersas well as
portions of the intellectual and free professional classes. It has occupied the center posi-
tion in French politics insofar as it rejected both the elitism and static orientation of the
Conservatives and the loudly articulated egalitarianism of the left. It favored selective so-
cial reforms but rejected collectivism. It was committed to republicanism and to a pro-
gressive democratization of political institutions, which meant, among other things, the
extension of the suffrage and the increased power of parliament. The political center has
always been difcult to pin down with precision because many centrists pretended to ad-
here to a more fashionable leftism and provided themselves with misleading labels, and
because the center has been fragmented. It is necessary to distinguish between two basic
kinds of centrism: Catholic and Radical-Socialist.
The Radical-Socialist Party is the oldest existing party in France. Ofcially founded
in :,c:, its origins must be traced to the beginning of the Third Republic and, as some
would insist, to the French Revolution. The party backed a strongly centralized republic
but has been consistently led by local notables. It was radical in the sense that it fa-
voredand helped achievethe elimination of the role of the Catholic church in poli-
tics and the promotion of a secular school system. It viewed the state as the enemy and
hence argued strongly for civil rights (especially property rights). But this did not prevent
the Radicals from asking the state to give protection to that segment of their electorate
that felt its livelihood to be threatened by economic consolidation at home and competi-
tion from abroad. Such attitudes were leftist enough as long as the petite bourgeoisie
constituted the bulk of the politically underprivileged masses. With industrialization, a
new class became important: that of factory workers. The ideology of Socialist parties
the belief in the class struggle and opposition to private productive propertythat this
new class embraced made the Radicals leftism increasingly illusory and pushed them into
a defensive posture. Nevertheless, the tactical position of the Radical Party often made it
an indispensable partner in government coalitions and allowed it to play a dominant role
in the Third and Fourth republics and to provide both regimes with numerous prime
ministers.
Another orientation that must be classied as centrist is that of Christian (or
Catholic) democracy. Originally, Catholicism could not be equated easily either with re-
publicanism or with social progress; the Popular Party founded toward the end of the
Third Republic, which supported the parliamentary system, was relatively insignicant.
But political Catholicism gained a new respectability during World War II; after Libera-
tion, devout Catholics who had been active in the Resistance established the Mouvement
Rpublicain Populaire (MRP), which, although clericalist in orientation, was committed
to civil liberties and social reform in a republican context. In the beginning of the Fourth
Republic, the MRPs position was leftist enough, and its parliamentary representation
122 france
strong enough, to make it a coalition partner with the Socialists and Communists. More-
over, the party competed with the Radicals in its adaptability. Toward the end of the
Fourth Republic the MRP was weakened for the same reason as the Radicals. Some of the
partys leftist adherents turned with interest to the Socialists, while its conservative ones,
who were far more numerous, embraced Gaullism. In :,, a large proportion of the MRP
politicians joined the Gaullist bandwagon. (The pitiful remnant of the MRP dissolved in
:,oo.)
Elections and Political Parties in the Fifth Republic
The return of de Gaulle to power produced a temporary eclipse of all political parties that
the public mind associated with the discredited Fourth Republic. Under that republic, an
electoral system based on proportional representation had made it possible for many par-
ties to gain parliamentary seats. The game of politics had been such that most parties
could easily turn rightward or leftward, or switch from support of the government to op-
position status. The system of Assembly elections instituted in :,,, however, forced par-
ties to make the kind of clear choice they were often unprepared to make. That system is
based on the single-member district: a candidate for the Assembly is required to obtain an
absolute majority of all votes cast in his constituency. If no candidate obtains such a ma-
jority, a second, or runoff, balloting must be held one week later, in which a candidate
needs only a plurality of the votes. (Only those candidates who received at least ::., per-
cent of the rst-round votes may run in the second.) The system of presidential elections
is quite similar: if an absolute majority is not obtained on the rst round, a face-off
contest occurs two weeks later between the two candidates who had received the largest
number of rst-round votes.
The French are fond of saying that on the rst ballot one votes, and on the second,
one eliminates. Electoral realism has required that a political party, in order to maximize
its chances, think in terms of combining forces with another party by means of preelec-
toral deals and second-round withdrawal, or mutual-support, agreements. Such activities
have produced polarizing tendencies: the reduction of the number of political parties and
their rearrangement into two opposing camps, much in the manner of the United States
and Great Britain (see tables .: and .:, pp. :::o).
The Gaullist party emerged as the major beneciary of the new system. Relabeled the
Union pour la Nouvelle Rpublique (UNR), subsequently renamed as Union Dmocratique
pour la Rpublique (UDR), and obtaining a dominant position in the Assembly, it became
relatively institutionalized; in many localities, Gaullist machines were set up, and many
local notables, drawn by the magnet of power, associated with them. Most of the old cen-
trist formations remained in the Opposition (though a large proportion of centrist voters
had ocked to the banner of de Gaulle while not necessarily embracing Gaullist ideol-
ogy). One of the collecting points of centrist anti-Gaullism was the Democratic Center,
which included some of the old MRP politicians who distrusted or detested the general.
Both major parties of the left were reduced to impotence. The Communist Party
could count on the support of about :c percent of the electorate, but could not win with-
out allies. Clearly, the only possible ally was the Socialist Party. The Socialists had, theo-
1
2
4
f
r
a
n
c
e
Table 8.1 Parliamentary and Presidential Elections, 195897 (in percentage of total votes cast)
Elections
Radicals & Democratic Independents & National
Parliamentary Presidential Communists Socialists Left-Radical MRP Center Moderates Gaullists Front Others
1958 (1) 18.9 15.5 11.5 11.6 19.9 17.6 5.0
(2) 20.7 13.7 7.7 7.5 23.6 26.4 0.4
1962 (1) 21.7 12.6 7.5 8.9 9.6 4.4 31.9 0.4
(2) 21.3 15.2 7.0 5.3 7.8 1.6 40.5 1.3
1965 (1) 32.2
a
15.8b 43.7
c
8.3
(2) 45.5
a
54.5
c
1967 (1) 22.5 18.8

d
17.9 37.8 3.0
(2) 21.4 24.1
d
10.8 42.6 1.1
1968 (1) 20.0 16.5
d
10.3 43.7 9.5
(2) 20.1 21.3
d
7.8 46.4 4.4
1969 (1) 21.5
e
5.1
f
23.4
g
43.8
h
6.1
(2) 42.4
g
57.6
h
1973 (1) 21.5 21.2 13.1

i
36.4 7.8
(2) 20.6 25.1 6.1
i
46.2 2.0
1974 (1) 43.2
a
32.6
j
15.1 10.1
(2) 49.2
a
50.8
j
1978 (1) 20.5 22.5 2.3

k
23.9
l
22.6 8.2
(2) 18.6 28.3 2.3
k
24.8
l
26.1
1981 (1) 15.3
m
25.8
a
2.2
n
28.3
j
17.9
o
10.3
p
(2) 5i.8
a
48.2
j
w
h
o

h
a
s

t
h
e

p
o
w
e
r
?
1
2
5
1981 (1) 16.2 37.5
q
19.2
l
20.8 6.3
(2) 6.9 49.3
q
18.6
l
22.4 2.7
1986 9.8 31.0 0.4
k
8.3
l
21.5
r
11.2 9.7 0.9
1988 (1) 6.7
s
34.1
a
16.6
t
19.9
o
14.4
u
8.2
v
(2) 54.0
a
45.9
o
1988 (1) 11.3 37.5
w
40.4
x
9.7 0.9
(2) 3.4 48.7
w
46.8
x
1.1 2.6
1993 (1) 9.2 19.2
w
39.7
y
12.4 19.5
z
(2) 4.6 31.3
aa
55.0
ab
5.7 3.3
ac
1995 (1) 8.6
ad
23.3
ae
18.6
af
20.8
o
15.0
u
(2) 47.4
ae
52.5
o
1997 (1) 9.8 25.7
q
6.7
ag
14.9
ah
16.5 15.2 11.2
(2) 3.6 39.1
q
5.6
ag
21.2
ah
23.6 5.7 1.2
Note: (1) rst ballot; (2) second ballot; horizontal arrows ( , ) extent of support.
l
UDF and presidential majority.
m
Georges Marchais.
n
Michel Crpeau, a Left Radical.
o
Jacques Chirac.
p
Including 3.9 for Brice Lalonde, the
Environmentalist candidate.
q
Including Left Radicals (MRG).
r
Gaullist-UDF combined list.
s
Andr Lajoinie
t
Raymond Barre, UDF.
u
Jean-Marie Le Pen.
v
Including Ecologists (Greens) 3.8,
and miscellaneous left, 4.4.
w
Including Left Radicals (MRG) and
other allies.
x
Union du Rassemblement et du Cen-
tre (URC), an electoral alliance of
RPR and UDF.
y
Union pour la France (UPF), and al-
liance of RPR (19.83), UDF (18.64),
and smaller groups.
z
Of these, three environmental par-
ties, 10.7 (subdivided among Verts
[Greens] 4.02; Generation Ecologie,
3.61; and Nouveaux Ecologistes, 2.5).
aa
Socialist party 29.79, Left Radicals
and other allies 1.54.
ab
UPF, of which RPR 27.84, UDF
25.11.
ac
Ecologist groups 0.18, miscellaneous
right-wing parties 2.85.
ad
Robert Hue.
ae
Lionel Jospin.
af
Edouard Balladur.
ag
Includes Greens, Movement for
France, and other democratic left
candidates.
ah
UDF.
a
Franois Mitterrand.
b
Jean Lecanuet.
c
Charles de Gaulle.
d
Federation of Democratic and So-
cialist Left (FGDS).
e
Jacques Duclos.
f
Gaston Defferre.
g
Alain Poher, Christian-Democratic
Centrist.
h
Georges Pompidou.
i
Reformers.
j
Valry Giscard dEstaing.
k
Left Radicals (MRG).
retically, two options: an alliance with either the Communist Party or the opposition cen-
trists. In the presidential elections of :,o,, a united left tactic was preferred, but one
that implied the cooptation of part of the center. Both major parties of the left agreed
on a single presidential candidate, Franois Mitterrand. Mitterrands hand had been con-
siderably strengthened when he succeeded in forming the Federation of the Democratic
and Socialist Left (Fdration de la Gauche Dmocratique et SocialisteFGDS), which
grouped around the Socialist Party a variety of small leftist clubs as well as the Radical-
Socialist Party (which had begun its decline into insignicance). But after various elec-
toral failures, and because of the continued disunity between the Socialists and Commu-
nists, this alliance disintegrated, and in :,o, each of the two parties elded its own presi-
dential candidate.
The Socialists then decided to restructure their organization, rejuvenate their leader-
ship, alter their platform, and project an image of dynamism. One of the ideas the Socialists
were (later) to advocate for a number of years was autogestion, a form of self-management of
126 france
Table 8.2 Composition of the National Assembly since :,,o
Parlia- Conservatives, Miscellaneous
mentary Commun- Socialists and Radicals MRP and Moderates, and unaf- Total
elections ists allies and allies Center Independents Gaullists liated seats
1956 150 99 94 84 97 22 50 596
1958 10 47 40 56 129 206 64 552
1962 41 66 43 55 268
a
9 482
1967 73 121
b
41
c
242
a
10 487
1968 34 57
b
34
c
344
d
18 487
1973 73 100
e
34
f
270
d
13 490
1978 86 105 10
g
123
h
9
i
153 5 491
1981 44 286
e
62
k
88 11 491
1986 35 214
e
132
k
158 38
l
577
1988 27 277
e
130
k
129 14
m
577
1993 23 70
e
213
k
247 24
n
577
1997 36 250 33
o
113
k
140 5
p
577
a
Gaullists and Independent Republicans.
b
Socialist and Radical alliance.
c
Progress and Modern Democracy.
d
Gaullists, Independent Republicans, and progrovernment Centrists.
e
Socialist and Left Radicals.
f
Reformers (Moderate Radicals and Opposition Centrists).
g
Left Radicals (MRG).
h
UDF.
i
Independents and Peasants (CNIP).
j
Identied only (and directly) with UDF rather than one of its components.
k
UDF (Republican, CDS, and Moderate Radical-Socialists).
l
Including 32 National Front and 6 unafliated.
m
Including 13 miscellaneous right and 1 National Front deputy (who has since left the party).
n
CNIP and others afliated with the center-right coalition.
o
Including 13 Left Radicals, 8 Ecologists, and 7 Citizens Movement.
p
Including 1 National Front and 1 Movement for France.
industrial rms by workers. At the same time, the party enrolled many members of the
bourgeoisie: shopkeepers, artisans, white-collar employees, technicians, and even devout
Catholics. Its new position of strength encouraged the Socialist Party to rebuild its alliance
with the Communists. In :,;: the two parties signed a joint platform (the Common Pro-
gram of the Left) and agreed to support each other in subsequent national elections.
The centrists, meanwhile, remained weak. Pompidous election in :,o, had been the
excuse for some politicians of the Democratic Center, already starved for power, to join
the conservative majority; they reasoned, somewhat disingenuously, that the new presi-
dent, although a Gaullist, was much more inclined to accommodate himself to centrist
thinking than de Gaulle had been. Specically, they hoped that Pompidou would support
the policies most dear to them: European unication, more power for parliament, and
meaningful decentralization within France. Those centrists who were still disinclined to
make peace with Gaullism embraced another option: an electoral alignment with the
Radical-Socialists known as the Reformers Movement. The creation of that movement
marked a turning point in French politics because it implied that the Catholicanticleri-
cal discord had been reduced to a manageable scale. But the movement rested from the
start on too narrow an electoral base. Moreover, the left wing of the Radical Party was of-
fended by this open collaboration with clericalist forces and wanted no part of the Re-
formers experiment; instead, they reorganized into a distinct party, the Movement of Left
Radicals (Mouvement des Radicaux de GaucheMRG), which became the third partner
of the Common-Program alliance.
Bipolarization and Fragmentation
By the early :,;cs the French party system appeared to have become permanently bipo-
larized into a right-wing majority and a left-wing opposition. But the presidential elec-
tions of May :,;, into which France was propelled by the sudden death of Pompidou,
began as a three-way race. Mitterrand was again the candidate of a united left. The
Gaullist Partys candidate was Jacques Chaban-Delmas, whose background as a faithful
adherent of the late general and as a former Radical-Socialist could appeal to a good por-
tion of the (heretofore oppositionist) centrist electorate. Valry Giscard dEstaings candi-
dacy complicated the presidential race. Giscard had been a prominent politician since the
beginning of the Fifth Republic, had supported de Gaulles presidency, and had served as
minister of nance for several years while never, formally, joining any Gaullist party. He
had been originally associated with the conservative CNIP, which had remained a compo-
nent of the majority. But in the early :,ocs he had formed his own political organization
with the help of a number of other CNIP parliamentarians.
This group, the Independent Republicans, articulated a technocratic, problem-
solving approach to a policy of industrial modernization and a more serious reorientation
to free-market economics, as distinct from the Gaullist emphasis on the directing hand of
the state. Giscard had differed from the Gaullists also in taking a stronger stand in favor
of civil liberties and an enlarged role of parliament, political parties, and interest groups.
Finally, he had opposed the Gaullist-sponsored referendum of :,o, for the restructuring
of the Senate, and was instrumental in its defeat, and thus in bringing about the resigna-
tion of de Gaulle. Giscards background, his youthful image (he was born in :,:o), his se-
lective non-Gaullist policy positions, his promises of social reform, and his apparent sym-
pathy for close intra-European cooperationall these secured for him the support of
most of the Democratic Centrists and most Radicals. They were persuaded that Giscard
was essentially a centrist himself and that he would pursue policies that would be neither
Gaullist nor collectivist.
Giscards election to the presidency (with the support of the Gaullists in the second
round) raised the question whether the old polarization of French politics was ending and
whether France was in the process of becoming post-Gaullist. A year before the parlia-
mentary elections of :,;, it still appeared that bipolar confrontation would continue.
The parties adhering to the Common Program of the Left pledged to support each other
electorally, as did the various components of what came to be known as the presidential
majority: the Gaullists, the Independent Republicans (now known as the Parti Rpubli-
cain), the Radicals, and the Democratic Center (restructured since :,;o and relabeled the
Centre des Dmocrates SociauxCDS).
Unfortunately, the internal cohesion in both camps was more apparent than real.
Within the left, a bitter quarrel had broken out between the Communists and the Social-
ists over the meaning of the Common Program, particularly the extent of the nationaliza-
tion of industries, the equalization of wages, and the distribution of cabinet seats in the
event of a victory of the left. The Communist Party accused the Socialist Party of not
wanting a genuine restructuring of the economy and of merely trying to use the Com-
munists to gain power. The Socialists, now the senior partner of the left alliance, in turn
accused the Communists of not having de-Stalinized themselves sufciently and of
hoping to destroy democratic institutions. In the end, the left failed, by a few percentage
points, to gain a parliamentary majority, a result widely attributed to the refusal of the
left-wing parties in many constituencies to support each other in the second round.
Within the majority there were similar problems. Upon assuming the presidency,
Giscard had, so it seemed, managed to co-opt the Gaulliststhey had no place to go
by giving them a few cabinet posts and by retaining the essentials of Gaullist foreign
policy: hostility to NATO, the development of an independent nuclear strike force,
and a show of independence vis--vis the United States. Giscards first prime minister,
Chirac, was a Gaullist, but he resigned from the prime ministership in :,;o in the wake
of disagreements with Giscard. Subsequently Chirac became the leader of the Gaullist
partyby then renamed Rassemblement pour la Rpublique (RPR)as well as mayor of
Paris, and he made no secret of his ambition to run for the presidency in :,:. Giscard,
who had every intention to run for a second term, still needed the support of the
Gaullists, the largest party in the Assembly, but he wanted to reduce this dependence.
Shortly before the :,; legislative elections, he encouraged the establishment of the
Union pour la Dmocratie Franaise (UDF), an electoral federation of all non-Gaullist
elements of the presidential majority: the Republicans, the CDS, the Radicals, and a
few smaller groups. The UDF had decided to put up single first-round candidates in
many districts and to support Gaullist candidates only if necessary in the second round.
One of the results of this tactic had been realignment within the majority: an impres-
128 france
sive expansion of the number of Giscardist deputies at the expense of the Gaullist
parliamentary party.
The Elections of 1981
Early in :,:, as the presidential elections approached, the Common Program had been
shelved, the unity of the left appeared to be near collapse, and the Socialist and Commu-
nist parties each ran its own candidate, Mitterrand and Georges Marchais, respectively.
Before the rst round of balloting in April, Marchais had been almost as critical of Mit-
terrand as of Giscard; but after obtaining only :, percent of the popular vote (the lowest
for the party since the end of World War II) as against over :o percent obtained by Mit-
terrand, Marchais endorsed Mitterrand in the second round without qualication,
thereby permitting himself to claim the victory of the Socialist candidate as that of his
own supporters. Similarly, the mutual-support agreement between Socialist and Commu-
nist candidates was effective for the second round of the parliamentary elections that fol-
lowed in the wake of the Mitterrands accession to the presidency, and Socialist parlia-
mentary candidates were the principal beneciaries.
After these elections it was clear that, although the Socialist Party had emerged with
an absolute majority of all Assembly seats (for the rst time since :,,o), the Communist
Party, with barely , percent of the seats, had been reduced to a marginal status. Several
reasons may be cited for this decline: the excessive Stalinism of its leadership; the deterio-
rated public image of its secretary general, Marchais; the partys refusal to condemn Soviet
aggression in Afghanistan and elsewhere; a widespread attribution to the party of the
blame for the defeat of the left in :,;; and the lack of internal democracy. In any case,
the Communist Party had become a supplicant; in exchange for several unimportant
ministerial posts, the party accepted the conditions imposed on it by Mitterrand: a con-
demnation of Soviet actions in Afghanistan and Poland, a commitment to the Western al-
liance, a respect for public liberties, and an adherence to a policy of transforming the
economy (including selective nationalization) on the basis of gradual and democratic
methods.
Within the camp of the Gaullist and centrist-conservative alliance there were far
greater complications. In the rst round of presidential balloting, both Giscard and Chirac
were candidates competing for the same (bourgeois and right-of-center) electorate. While
continuing to be critical of each others personalities and policy preferences, both candi-
dates stressed the disastrous consequences for France of a victory of the left. During the
runoff between Giscard and Mitterrand, Chirac gave only a halfhearted endorsement of
Giscard. Chiracs refusal to issue a clear call to his Gaullist supporters to vote for the in-
cumbent was considered by the latter to have effectively sabotaged his reelection.
During the parliamentary elections, the erstwhile majority of Gaullists (RPR) and
Giscardists (UDF) reestablished an uneasy electoral alliance. The optimistically named
Union for the New Majority (Union pour la Nouvelle MajoritUNM) decided to sup-
port common rst-round candidates in more than ,cc constituencies and made the usual
mutual-support agreements for the second round. The alliance was virtually buried by the
Socialist landslide, which signicantly altered the complexion of the parliament and, in-
President Franois Mit-
terrand holds a rose, the
Socialist Party symbol,
after his election in :):.
(AP/Wide World Pho-
tos)
deed, of the whole political party system for the rst time since the founding of the Fifth
Republic.
There were a number of reasons for the defeat of the Gaullist-Giscardist forces. The
rst was the lack of unity: the incessant inghting between Giscards friends and the Chi-
raquists had sapped the strength of both. Second, there were the growing ination and
unemployment and the widespread conviction that Giscards policies were inadequate for
dealing with these problems. Third, there were several scandals involving a number of
ministers and, in fact, Giscard himself. The feeling that Giscard had been corrupted by
power was exacerbated by his increasingly monarchical behavior: his contempt for parlia-
ment, his unsatisfactory press conferences (which, in terms of their stage-managed nature,
came to resemble those of de Gaulle), the tightening of presidential control over the news
media, and what many considered to be an unscrupulous use of presidential patronage
the appointment of many of Giscards friends to important positions.
Many French voters had been uneasy over the prospect of having Giscard as presi-
dent for fourteen years, a longer term than had ever been served by a president in France,
and they thought that in a democracy there must be an occasional transfer of power from
one group to another. But for several years the Gaullists and Giscardists had argued that a
transfer of power to the left would be too dangerous, since the Socialists would be
hostages to the Communists. Such an argument proved less convincing as the Socialist
Party strengthened its position vis--vis the Communist Party, and it lost most of its
scare value after the rst round of the presidential elections in which, as we have seen,
the Socialists received nearly twice the support that the Communists got.
After the parliamentary elections of :,:, the now leaderless UDF was reduced to a
demoralized vestige of some sixty deputies (i.e., about half of its previous strength). Some
of the UDF politicians were hoping that, at some time in the future, Giscard would come
out of his retirement, as de Gaulle had once done, and revive their party. Several leaders
of the CDS, the Christian Democratic component of the UDF, were examining the pos-
sibility of autonomous behavior including, perhaps, a rapprochement with the new ma-
jority; the Radical Party, however, had been so decimated that it seemed to have no credi-
ble options left. Chirac now prepared to assume the leadership of the combined
centrist-conservative (or Giscardist and Gaullist) opposition forces. He appeared nally
to have achieved his ambition of eclipsing Giscard; but it was a hollow victory, since the
Gaullist contingent in the Assembly had itself been cut in half.
The Socialist majority in the :,: Assembly was so overwhelming that Mitterrand
and his government could use it to put into effect an ambitious program of reforms.
Among the most important of these were the enhancement of civil liberties, an expanded
budget for education, the liberalization of the penal code, cultural programs for ethnic
minorities, and an ambitious program of administrative decentralization. In addition,
bills were enacted providing for the nationalization of a number of industries and the re-
distribution of income by means of more steeply progressive taxation, higher minimum
wages, and expanded social benets. These redistributive policies corresponded to ele-
ments of the Common Program and were, by and large, supported by the Communists.
By :,,, Socialist reforming zeal had begun to cool; as the budget decit grew, the cost of
130 france
nationalizing proved too high and its benets doubtful; production slumped and unem-
ployment, which stood at over :c percent, was not reduced. In response to these develop-
ments, the government abruptly changed course and embraced an austerity program
aimed at rationalizing industry, keeping wages under control and encouraging economic
growth.
The changed strategy alienated the Communist Party, whose ministers opted out of
the government. A more serious consequence was the Socialists slippage in public sup-
port; this was a result of the governments failure to solve the problems of unemployment,
increased crimes of violence, and the presence of masses of North African immigrants
all three phenomena widely believed to be interrelated. One symptom of the growing
public concern with these problems was the sudden rise of the National Front, an ex-
treme-right party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen. Founded in :,;:, that party is a conglomer-
ate of fascists, Ptainists, right-wing Catholics, ultranationalists, erstwhile supporters of
Algrie Franaise, antiparliamentarists, former Poujadists,
1
anti-Semites, racists, and xeno-
phobes. It burst upon the French political scene in the municipal elections of :,,, when
it captured :; percent of the vote in an industrial town near Paris heavily settled by immi-
grants, and in the elections to the European Parliament a year later, when it won :c., per-
cent of the popular vote.
At the same time, the popularity of the RPR and UDF was rising, and public opin-
ion polls predicted that in the next parliamentary elections, the Socialists would lose their
majority. In order to limit the damage, the government reintroduced a variant of the old
(Fourth Republic) system of proportional representation. It was thought that under such
a system the National Front would get enough votes to gain representation in the Assem-
bly, but in so doing would take enough electoral support away from the Gaullists to make
the victory of the latter less certain and less crushing.
The First Cohabitation Interlude
The results of the legislative elections of March :,o proved the wisdom of Mitterrands
electoral stratagem. The RPR and UDF together obtained a bare majority (:,: out of ,;;)
seats) in the Assembly, not enough to enable them fearlessly to undertake policy changes
without the support of the National Front, which managed to seat ,: deputies. But it was
enough to enable them to insist on the appointment of a politically compatible (i.e.,
Gaullist-Giscardist) government. The new government embarked on an unprecedented ex-
periment in power sharing (see above). Its head, Gaullist leader Chirac, was forced to co-
habit with a Socialist president. During the early phases of cohabitation, France appeared
to undergo a process of de-presidentialization as Chirac asserted his (and the govern-
ments) leadership in the formulation and execution of internal policies, particularly in re-
gard to privatizing public enterprises, ghting terrorism, and controlling the movements
of resident aliens. Mitterrand conned himself largely to foreign policy pronouncements
and, intermittently, to selective criticism of Chiracs domestic measures.
Chiracs power to govern turned out to be less than absolute. It was limited by the
need of the Gaullists to cohabit with the Giscardists, who were not always in a coopera-
tive mood; they were unhappy over some of Chiracs policy choices as well as over an in-
adequate sharing of political patronage. Furthermore, there were rivalries between the
leaders of the RPR and UDF, as well as disagreements between themand within the
RPR itselfabout the posture to be adopted vis--vis the National Front. The liberals
wanted to have nothing to do with Le Pen (whom they regarded as a danger to democ-
racy), while the hardliners (notably among the Gaullists) advocated a selective embrace
of the National Fronts positions, especially on immigrants, in order to strengthen their
support base within the Assembly and, more important, to retrieve the support of former
Gaullist voters who had crossed over to the National Front and prevent further attrition.
In view of these conicts, Chiracs leadership suffered and he became the major target of
popular discontent; Mitterrand, in contrast, appeared increasingly like a conciliatory and
unifying statesman.
Consensus and Convergence: The Elections of 1988
The presidential elections of April and May :, pitted Mitterrand against three major ri-
vals on the right: Chirac (RPR), Raymond Barre (UDF), and Le Pen (National Front).
Several months before the elections, cohabitationat rst welcomed by most French cit-
izenshad already become a dubious pattern as the president and the prime minister
each sought to draw electoral advantage by discrediting the other.
The reelection of Mitterrand suggested that he had succeeded better than his rival.
But his impressive margin of victory must also be attributed to the disunity among the
right. The outcome of the rst round reected that disunity, as Barre and Chirac publicly
criticized one another. In addition, Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, drew votes
from the respectable right (especially from the RPR), and made a surprisingly strong
showing.
Mitterrands decision to dissolve the Assembly and call for new elections was made in
hopes that the delicate power-sharing pattern of the previous two years would be replaced
by a more normal relationship between president and parliament. The result of the As-
sembly elections, however, was ambiguous. Although the RPR and UDF (putting up
joint candidates in most constituencies) lost control of the Assembly, the Socialists failed
to get the absolute majority the pollsters had predicted. There are several explanations for
the outcome of that election, in which the abstention rate (over , percent) was the high-
est since :,o:. Some traditional Socialist voters had abstained because Mitterrand, run-
ning as a statesman above parties rather than as a Socialist, had not made great efforts to
appeal to them or even to mobilize the party activists. Others had been so sure of a So-
cialist victory that they believed their votes to be unnecessary, and still others were tired of
voting so often. In addition, there were those who had supported Mitterrand but did not
want a clearly Socialist regime, hoping instead that Michel Rocard, the new prime minis-
ter, would construct a pragmatic center-left government.
Rocard did not disappoint them; his government (as reconstituted after the legisla-
tive elections) included twenty-ve Socialists and twenty-four non-Socialists, among
them six centrists (of the UDF). Moreover, in an attempt to show that he paid as much
attention to civil society as to the political establishment, he also included fourteen
nonparty people.
132 france
Rocards overture toward the political center was a reection, however imperfect, of
the changes in Frances party system, changes in which some parties had lost their tradi-
tional supporters, others their credibility, still others their ideological coherence, and all
of them much of their dues-paying membership.
2
Just as the victory of Mitterrand was
not quite a victory for the PS, the reestablished dominance of the latter in the political
arena and in the Assembly was not quite a victory for socialism. Under the pressures of
electoral reality and, later, of governmental responsibility, the PS had given up most of its
Marxism and had transformed itself into a social-democratic party not unlike the social-
democratic parties of Scandinavia or Germany. During the :, election campaigns, it
presented a minimum platform whose ingredientssocial justice, productivity, solidarity
among various segments of French society, and the construction of Europedid not dif-
fer sharply from the equally vague generalities of the RPR/UDFabout liberty, security,
economic progress, and patriotism. This platform was designed to paper over continuing
disagreements among the major party personalities, including Mitterrand, Rocard, and
former Prime Ministers Mauroy and Fabius. These disagreements were not only matters
of personal ambition but related also to the tactical and long-term orientations of the So-
cialists. Thus while Rocard wanted to distance himself as much as possible from the
Communists, Mitterrand continued to express the need to keep the left as united as pos-
sible and to keep the door open to traditional Communist voters.
These disagreements were echoed at the PS congress in Rennes in :,,c. There the
nationalists were pitted against the Europeanists, the Jacobinsthe believers in a France
one and indivisibleagainst the pluralists and decentralizers, the statists against the
liberals, and the growth-oriented productivists against those favoring redistribution and
socioeconomic equality. This war of party factions was hardly resolved by a document
that aimed at a synthesis of these diverse positions.
3
The internal divisions were aggra-
vated during the Persian Gulf crisis, which set Mitterrand and his loyalists, who sup-
ported the U.S. war effort, against a faction led by Jean-Pierre Chevnement, which fa-
vored a foreign policy that was a combination of Gaullist independence-mindedness and
hysterical anti-Americanism. These divisions and the conict between tactical and pro-
grammatic orientations were reected in the government of Edith Cresson, who was ac-
cused of conducting a policy of the right while positioning herself on the left.
4
Speci-
cally, she prepared a rapprochement with the Communists and alienated the centrists
while abandoning the Socialists traditional infatuation with the Third World, continuing
the denationalization policies of Rocard, and even appearing to adopt the kind of hard-
nosed stance toward immigrants that had previously been associated with the right. Nev-
ertheless, the various factions decided to suspend their disputes until the Assembly elec-
tions of :,,,.
The Communist Party, too, was divided. Already in :,;, Communists who rejected
the rigid Stalinism of the party and held that outlookand its leader, Marchaisrespon-
sible for its steep electoral decline set up a rival party of Renovators and put up their
own presidential candidate in :,. After the elections, the PC alternated between a desire
to remain in opposition and a readiness to support the government on specic issues.
How much the PC leadership would be inuenced by perestroika and glasnost in the
Soviet Union remained to be seen. The twenty-seventh congress of the PC in :,,c saw an
expression of interest in a pluralistic communism instead of a bureaucratic and authori-
tarian one, a more open discussion than had been known previously, and even the sub-
mission of a minority report.
5
Yet the autocratic leadership of Georges Marchais was
reconrmed.
The RPR was torn between the nationalism and populist statism of the disciples of
de Gaulle on the one hand, and a pro-European neoliberalism on the other. Moreover,
though some Gaullist politicians were still thinking of a rapprochement with the Na-
tional Front, most of the Gaullist leadership had come to reject collaboration with that
party on any level. The UDF (from which the RPR had copied much of its neoliberalism)
was divided between the probusiness elitism of the Republican Party, its largest compo-
nent, and the moderate progressivism of a number of Christian Democratic (CDS) and
Radical politicians. There was also a confusion of strategies. Some Giscardists wanted to
align themselves closely with the RPR and harden their opposition to the new govern-
ment; others (including Giscard himself, who had become the ofcial leader of the UDF)
wanted to signal their centrist views by a constructive opposition; and still others (in-
cluding Barre) even held out the possibility of an eventual cohabitation with the Socialist-
led government. Meanwhile the CDS (which had increased its Assembly representation
from thirty-ve to fty) reconstituted itself as a separate parliamentary party while still
formally remaining a component of the UDF! Finally, as the RPR and UDF were prepar-
ing their list of candidates for the elections to the European Parliament (in the spring of
:,,) there were (abortive) attempts by younger politicians in both parties to oust Giscard
and other veterans from leadership positions.
In :,,c, in order to maintain the integrity and inuence of their respective organiza-
tions yet to achieve a measure of unityand, incidentally, to be better equipped to face
Le Pen and his National Frontthe RPR and UDF founded a confederation entitled
Union pour la France (UPF). The UPF began issuing joint communiqus and discussing
the adoption of a system of primaries for designating a common candidate for the presi-
dential election of :,,,. This common approach would, it was hoped, be used for future
legislative elections as well.
The National Front, which was responsible for some of the problems of the RPR and
UDF, was itself torn; it alternated between the bourgeois and respectable behavior of
some of its politicians and the provocative pronouncements of othersthe one reected
in an emphasis on the neoliberal segments of the partys platform (e.g., the free market
and individual rights), the other in a stress on nationalist and racist themes. Some re-
garded the National Front as a genuine alternative to the gang of four (the PC, PS,
UDF, and RPR), but many more voters were turned off from the party by Le Pens irre-
pressible penchant for demagogy and came to consider him a danger to democracy.
As the National Fronts credibility as a democratic alternative party weakened, that of
another party, the Greens (ecologists), assumed increased importance. Formed in the early
:,cs out of a number of environmental associations, the Greens opposed the construction
of nuclear reactors. Although ofcially aligned neither with the right nor the left, the
134 france
Greens advocated a number of policies often associated with the left, such as the reduction
of the workweek, the strengthening of local government, and a foreign policy more sympa-
thetic to the Third World. The Greens did surprisingly well in the rst round of the presi-
dential elections, but achieved insignicant scores in the parliamentary elections.
By the early :,,cs the popularity of the Socialists was beginning to decline. This was
manifested in the regional and cantonal elections of March :,,:, in which less than :c
percent of the electorate voted for that party. The PS was held responsible for a number of
problems and failures: the persistent unemployment; crime and urban violence; nancial
scandals involving Socialist politicians; the revelation that the government allowed the
use of blood products contaminated with the AIDS virus; and the Habbash affair, in
which a Palestinian terrorist leader was secretly own to France for medical treatment and
(after a public outcry) spirited out of the country. The position of the PS was not helped
by the fact that it continued to be riven by internal divisionsbetween the radical egali-
tarians and the pragmatists; those favoring the development of the European Union and
those against it; and those advocating closer collaboration with other leftist forces (in-
cluding the Communist Party) and those opposed to it.
The other major parties did not fare much better, with the RPR and UDF together
gaining only ,, percent of the votes in the cantonal elections. The two right-wing parties
suffered from internal divisions and a lack of credibility. The major gainers were the Na-
tional Front and the environmentalist parties, which made signicant inroads into re-
gional councils. But the environmentalists were hurt by a division of this movement into
two parties, the Greens and Gnration cologie, whose leaders sniped at one another
while proclaiming a desire for unity.
The results of recent elections signaled above all a disenchantment with the political
class. This disenchantment was reected in a steeply falling approval rating not only of
Prime Ministers Cresson and Brgovoy (and their governments) but of President Mitter-
rand as well.
The Parliamentary Elections of 1993
The publics disenchantment with the government was starkly reected in the results of
the :,,, parliamentary elections. These results constituted a virtual rout of the Socialist
Party and its allies, the Left Radicals (Mouvement des Radicaux de GaucheMRG). Gain-
ing only fty-seven seats (compared with the combined total of ;: seats obtained by the
RPR and UDF), the Socialists were left with the lowest Assembly representation since
:,o. The outcome threatened to fragment, if not destroy, the party as a whole, and re-
duced the role of Mitterrand, already a lame-duck president, to a marginal and symbolic
one. The new government of Edouard Balladur began with high popular opinion ratings
and a parliamentary majority of more than c percentthe largest majority enjoyed by
any group in more than a century. These ratings, which held for several months, reected
the publics perception of Balladur as a calm and reasonable political leader; and they im-
proved as a result of a number of apparent policy successes, among them the international
trade negotiations of :,,.
The Presidential Elections of 1995
In preparing for the presidential election, the Socialist Party was in a much weaker posi-
tion than the right-wing parties. The party had been in power too long and had to bear
the brunt of attacks for policy shortcomings and for scandals involving a signicant num-
ber of Socialist politicians. Mitterrand had been president for nearly fourteen years, and
many French voters decided that it was time for a change. Still, there were indications
that the PS might win the presidential race if Jacques Delors, the outgoing president of
the European Commission, became the Socialist candidate. But he declined to run, and
the PS hurriedly chose Jospin, a former minister of education, as the alternative candi-
date. Jospin was not enthusiastically supported by all Socialist politicians; moreover, Mit-
terrand gave him only a perfunctory endorsement.
These developments would normally have guaranteed the election of a Gaullist can-
didate. That party and its ally, the UDF, were reasonably united; the Maastricht treaty on
the European Union, the issue that had split the two conservative formations and had
split the RPR internally, seemed to have been resolved. There had been an informal un-
derstanding that Chirac, the mayor of Paris and the president of the RPR, would be that
partys candidate again, as he had been in :,: and :,. But public opinion polls
throughout :,,, and :,, were so favorable to Prime Minister Balladur that he was en-
couraged to become himself a candidate for the presidency. The Gaullists, then, had two
presidential candidates. As late as January :,,,, polls showed Balladur considerably ahead
of Chirac, and it was widely taken for granted that the former would easily be elected
president. But suddenly the French electorates enthusiasm for Balladur began to turn
sour. He was held responsible for weak and inconsistent handling of a number of prob-
lems, among them education and employment; and his patrician demeanor suggested an
inability to identify with the problem of ordinary French men and women.
As the election approached, voters had reservations about both major formations. In
previous years, voters had tended to opt for one or another of these formations on the ba-
sis of their own habitual positions on the right-left continuum. But the distinctions be-
tween right and left had gradually been moderated by a growing programmatic conver-
gence on several issues, such as decentralization, the need to check the growth of welfare
state expenditures, and above all, the institutions of the Fifth Republic. On other issues
there was an overlap, such as education, tax policy, and the development of the European
Union.
This convergence explains the fact that two weeks before the rst round, :c percent
of the electorate was still undecided. To compound the problem was the voters difculty
in detecting differences between Jospin, Chirac, and Balladur. All three seemed to favor
measures to reduce unemployment, improve the system of justice, further European inte-
gration, improve the environment, reduce the public decit, maintain an independent
French nuclear strike force, modernize and further democratize education, reduce the
contribution of employers to social security, improve the condition of the least-favored
segment of the population, ght against discrimination and social exclusion, and enlarge
the role of parliament. If there was a difference between the three, it revolved around the
presidency, with Jospin advocating a reduction of the presidential term of ofce to ve
136 france
years, Balladur favoring the existing seven-year term but eliminating the possibility of re-
election, and Chirac preferring the status quo.
6
In addition, Jospin favored reducing the
workweek from thirty-nine to thirty-seven hours, while Chirac and Balladur wanted to
leave that matter to the marketplace (and to collective contract negotiations).
Just before the rst round, Chirac, especially when speaking to workers and young
people, assumed a progressive social pose in order to garner the support of those who
had traditionally voted on the left; when speaking to shopkeepers and farmers, he spoke
in tones of socioeconomic moderation tinged with nationalism, in order to get the sup-
port of the traditional electorate of the republican right as well as those who were at-
tracted to the National Front.
Jospin, too, conducted an ambivalent campaign. On the one hand, he had to dissoci-
ate himself from a president and a number of Socialist governments whose image had be-
come tarnished; on the other hand, he could not disavow his predecessors completely, lest
he be accused of having abandoned the Socialist heritage.
Such electoral acrobatics help to explain why more than ,, percent voted for candi-
dates of minor or marginal parties. In this regard they had a wide choice among nine can-
didates: in addition to the two Gaullists and a Socialist, the list included a Communist
(Robert Hue, elected a year earlier as the general secretary of the party), a charismatic g-
ure who conveyed an impression of moderation; a Trotskyist radical (Arlette Laguiller);
a youthful and left-oriented leader of the Green Party (Dominique Voynet); a right-wing
nationalist running under the label of Mouvement pour la France (Philippe de Villiers),
whose positions on sovereignty, immigration, law and order, and family values was some-
what comparable to the rhetoric of Patrick Buchanan, one of the Republican contenders
for the U.S. presidency; an extreme-rightist (Le Pen); and a right-wing political new-
comer (Jacques Cheminade) who had unexpectedly entered the race under the label of
the Federation for New Solidarity and whose precise programmatic orientation was dif-
cult to describe but whose rhetoric included references to international conspiracies.
In the second round there was a kind of electoral recomposition: Jospin secured the
support of most of the left-of-center to extreme-left electorate, while Chirac reassembled
most of the right-of-center electorate. Exit polls, however, indicated that more than c
percent of the .o million citizens who had voted for extreme-rightist Le Pen in the rst
round abstained or cast blank ballots in the second round.
Chiracs second-round victory must not be interpreted as a victory for the Gaullist
Party (the Socialist Party did almost equally well in terms of popular votes) but the vic-
tory of a person who had not been in power in several years and could therefore not be
blamed directly for recent policy failings.
The election results indicated that the right-left distinction in French politics re-
tained some meaning and that more than ,c percent of the working-class electorate had
opted for one of the parties of the left. Nevertheless, about a third of the various parts of
the population classied as underprivileged had voted for Le Pen in the rst round.
7
The
results also showed that Chirac had transcended the limitations of previous Gaullist pres-
idential candidates by broadening his electoral base. In the second round, Chirac cap-
tured the votes of , percent of the workers, , percent of the students, oc percent of the
retired, and half of the ::: year olds. According to an exit poll, o percent of the voters
interpreted the election of Chirac as signifying a desire for change and reform, and only
:o percent saw it as a victory of the left over the right.
8
The election results also suggested that the National Front had achieved sufcient re-
spectability to be seen by many as having entered the mainstream of French politics. It
had attracted members of the urban working class who had traditionally supported left-
wing parties and had increased its appeal to the educated electorate. Conversely, as a re-
sult of the collapse of the Soviet Union and a change in the party leadership, the Com-
munist Party, while not able to widen its appeal beyond the working class, was no longer
feared as the tool of a foreign power.
The Parliamentary Elections of 1997
Chiracs victory proved to be short-lived; it was abruptly undermined by the unexpected
victory of the Socialists and their left-wing allies in the Assembly elections of :,,;.
9
As
was pointed out earlier, that election had been a needless miscalculation; it discredited
not only Prime Minister Jupp but President Chirac as well, and it weakened the author-
ity of both within the Gaullist party. That party was thrown into disarray as internecine
conicts broke out, not only over the leadership but also about its future direction and its
relationship with other right-wing parties. Some Gaullists favored a more rapid evolution
toward the market and a more positive stance toward European integration (including a
common European currency), while others, reacting to the victory of the left, were press-
ing their party to return to its traditional statism (and a concern with the protection of
national sovereignty) and to adopt a more social orientation. Some Gaullists argued for
a merger with the UDF; others favored a rapprochement with the National Front, or at
least a more systematic effort at capturing that partys electorate. Still others argued for a
change of name to give the party a new image; others again (notably former Prime Min-
ister Balladur) favored a fusion of all right-of-center formations into a single party, with
the RPR as the nucleus. This last outcome remained an unlikely prospect, largely due to
rival personal ambitions of the leaders of these factions. Some of the RPR politicians (in-
cluding Chirac himself ) are no longer Gaullists in the traditional sense; others are still
nostalgic for the old nationalist rhetoric that makes little sense in an age of transnational-
ism and globalization. This group includes Gaullist nationalists who have opposed the
surrender of sovereignty to the European Union; among them Charles Pasqua, who,
jointly with Philippe de Villiers, formed a new party, the Rally for France (Rassemblement
pour la France). De Villiers soon abandoned that party, however, claiming that Pasqua
wanted to dominate it.
10
The UDF was particularly disoriented: Giscard dEstaing, its former leader, and
the original raison dtre of that electoral umbrella organization, had aged and had be-
come politically marginalized, while its major component parts, especially the Republi-
can Party (now relabeled Dmocratie LibraleDL) and the CDS (henceforth known
as Force Dmocrate), maintained their respective individualities. In :,, the DL left the
UDF altogether.
11
The Socialist Party, in contrast, conveyed the impression of being more united than
138 france
ever, as the authority of Jospin had silenced its traditional internal factions. Moreover,
Jospin had succeeded in reestablishing an alliance with most of the other left-wing forma-
tions, including the Communist Party, which were rewarded for their cooperative atti-
tudes with cabinet positions. In the afterglow of the lefts election victory, there seemed to
be considerable coherence in government policy as most left-wing politicians rallied
around Joplins leadership; but it remained to be seen how long this cohesion would last
in the face of controversial economic policy decisions that would have to be made.
As the parliamentary and presidential elections of :cc: loomed on the horizon,
and Jospin began to lay the groundwork for a second attempt to gain the presidency,
the PS maintained its unity. To be sure, factionalism was not entirely eliminated,
12
but
it was moderated by the readmission of partys old elephants, including Mitterran-
dists, into leading government positions; the reduction of policy options; and the need
to present a solid front in face of PS relations with other parties in the pluralist left
governmentthe Citizens Movement (Mouvement des CitoyensMDC), the Greens,
and the PC. The PC had become virtually social democratic (except for a small group
among the rank and file that retained its radicalism), but the Greens increasingly artic-
ulated policy differences.
13
The parties outside the mainstream had their own problems. In :,,, the National
Front (FN) split into two rival formations largely owing to personal conictsone con-
tinuing to be led by Le Pen, and the other, now called Mouvement national rpublicain
(MNR), and led by Bruno Mgret. Le Pen, the more charismatic gure, appealed largely
to the electorate, while Mgrets support came from the party apparatus. Both, however,
tend to have the same platform, except perhaps that Mgret is more favorable to making
deals with other (smaller) right-wing formations, in particular those that could serve as
bridges to the mainstream parties, especially the RPR. One of these is the Hunters
party (Chasse, Pche, Nature et TraditionsCPNT). Formed in the early :,,cs, it argues
that it represents traditional farming interests; but its basic strength derives from its inter-
est in protecting the rights of hunters (in particular those who like to shoot birds as they
migrate south, an activity that violates the rules of the European Union and produces a
clash with the Green Party).
The cleavages between right and left have been moderated by a growing convergence
on a number of issues: the reduction of the gap between rich and poor; the need to retain
the welfare state; the continuation of decentralization; the modernization and democrati-
zation of the educational system; the reform of the judiciary; and a greater role for civil
society and the market. At the same time, there are disagreements within each of the two
camps that cut across them: on decentralization; on the growth of supranational powers
of the European Union; on immigration and naturalization; and on electoral reform, in
particular the reintroduction of proportional representation in parliamentary elections
(favored by the smaller parties of both right and left).
A note of caution is in order. The bipolarization of the party system and the national
electoral successes of one or another mainstream party that apply to the National Assem-
bly or the presidency do not necessarily apply to other elective bodies in France. As tables
., (p. :c) and . (p. ::) indicate, multipolarityspecically a meaningful representa-
tion of the left, the center, the Gaullists, and the traditional rightcan still be observed
in the Senate and the general (departmental) councils, the latter chosen in cantonal elec-
tions. In the municipal elections that followed the presidential contest (in June :,,,)
there was no Chiraquist carryover for Gaullist candidates: most of the mayors belong-
ing to left-wing parties were reelected, and the National Front secured control over one
fairly large city (Toulon) and three smaller towns. Regional and local elections correspond
to parliamentary elections neither in form nor alliance building. The use of proportional
representation in subnational and supranational elections (e.g., regional councils, Senate,
and European Parliament) explains why there are many more parties in the game, includ-
ing those of purely local interest, and why alliances are more diverse and unpredictable.
14
A stark illustration of bipolarization elections was provided by the most recent national
elections. The two rounds of the presidential election were scheduled for :: April and ,
May, to be followed in June by the two rounds of parliamentary elections. Sixteen candi-
dates were in competition, more than in any previous presidential election in the Fifth
Republic; they ranged from the National Fronts Le Pen on the extreme right to nominees
of three different extreme-left (Trotskyist) parties. During the campaign it was widely as-
sumed (and predicted by public-opinion polls) that Chirac, the incumbent president, and
Jospin, the incumbent prime minister, would emerge as the two top vote-getters and
would confront each other in the second round.
The rst-round result, however, was an unexpected upset: Chirac had come in rst
and Le Pen second, having edged out Jospin by less than one percent.
15
There were sev-
eral explanations for this shocking outcome. Only three months before the election, the
140 france
Table 8.3 Recent Cantonal Elections: Number of General Councilors Elected (results after second
round)
:): :), :) :)), :))
Extreme Left 4 1 6 16
Communists 199 149 175 147 136
Socialists 515 424 592 514 646
Left Radicals 59 57 44 35 36
Miscellaneous Left 39 59 68 142 149
Ecologists 2 1 5 4
Regionalists 1
UDF 555 525 441 395 330
Gaullists 348 400 365 380 303
Miscellaneous Right 295
a
425 328 363 341
Extreme Right 2 2
b
3 3
Sources: Regards sur lActualit, Anne Politique, and Le Monde. Figures for each party include afliated (appar-
ents) councilors.
a
Moderates and CNIP.
b
Includes 1 National Front.
polls had shown Jospin clearly ahead of Chirac, who was considered to be a politician
without a clear program and more interested in political power for its own sake. More-
over, he had been accused of corruption both as mayor of Paris and as president, and he
would have been indicted but for the fact that the incumbent presidency gave him immu-
nity. In contrast, Jospin was regarded as one of the best prime ministers of the Fifth Re-
public. Unfortunately, Jospin lacked the charisma of Chirac, who was an excellent cam-
paigner.
More important, the government of the pluralist left Jospin had led was riven by
disagreements between the PS and its coalition partners as well as well as by rivalries
within the party. Traditional leftist voters criticized Jospin both for abandoning the work-
ing classin mid-campaign he had asserted that his program was not socialistand for
minimizing the importance of a rapidly growing crime rate. Many of these voters there-
fore opted for the candidates of smaller leftist parties and even for the National Front.
They wanted not to help these candidates to win, but rather to give a warning to Jospin.
The dissatisfaction with both major candidates was reected in the belief that there was
little programmatic difference between Chirac and Jospin, in the low voter turnout, in
electoral indecisionmore that c percent of the electorate remained undecided as late
as two weeks before the electionand in the fact that both Chirac and Jospin got fewer
popular votes than they had obtained in :,,,, as did Le Pen.
The second-round choice, between Chirac and Le Pen, was viewed as unpleasant by
most of the supporters of leftist and left-of-center parties. But voting for Le Pen presented
too great a riskgiven his reputation and program, his election was regarded as endan-
gering democracyso, with the slogan vote for the crook, not the fascist, the over-
whelming majority of republican voters opted to continue Chirac in ofce. In the
runoff, Chirac thus won easily, with the overwhelming support of the left, who voted for
Table 8.4 Composition of the Senate, 195999 (selected years)
MRP/
Democratic Democratic Indepen- Unafl-
Communists Socialists Left
a
Center dents Gaullists iated Total
1959 14 51 64 34 92 41 11 307
1965 14 52 50 38 79 30 11 274
1968 17 54 50 40 80 29 13 283
1981 23 63 38
b
67
c
51
d
41 15 305
1989 16 66 23
e
68
c
52
d
91 5 321
1992 15 70 23 66
c
47
d
90 10 321
1998 16 78 22 52 47 99 7 321
Sources: LAnne politique, 19591998; Le Monde; and Regards sur lActualit. Figures for each party include af-
liated (apparents) senators.
a
Mainly Radical Socialists
b
Includes Left Radicals (MRG)
c
Center Union
d
Republicans and Independents
e
Rassemblement dmocratique et europen
him not because they endorsed him or his program but rather because, in the name of
republican defense, they rejected Le Pen.
In the ensuing Assembly elections, voters provided Chirac with a clear majority.
16
Most did so because they were pressing for legislative action and did not want a continu-
ation of power sharing (cohabitation) between a president belonging to one party and an
Assembly controlled by an opposing party. The victory of the political right in this elec-
tion was also due to to the fact that it had capitalized on Chiracs victory. Several months
before the presidential elections, Chirac had created the Union en Mouvement (UEM), an
electoral alliance of various right-of-center formations, led by the RPR, that would sup-
port him. Immediately after the rst round, the UEM was transformed into the Union
pour la Majorit Prsidentielle (UMP), an umbrella party that swallowed up both the RPR
and several smaller parties, including Dmocratie Librale and most of the UDF. A wing
of the UDF, led by Franois Bayrou, held out for independence, but, given the fact that
UMP had gained an absolute majority of seats in the Assembly, the partys inuence in
that chamber would amount to little if anything.
The political left was in a state of disorganization and demoralization. The Commu-
nist Party was near collapseit had obtained its lowest score in national elections since
the end of World War IIbut still managed to get a bare minimum of the number of As-
sembly seats to constitute itself into a parliamentary group. The Greens had lost most of
their support, ending up with only three seats. The Trotskyists got no seats; the MDC (re-
baptized during the election campaign as the Ple Rpublicain) was nished, as was, so it
seemed, the political career of Chevnement. The PS survived as the largest formation of
the left, but it was beset with confusion and uncertainty about its leadership and its fu-
ture orientations. There was a tug of war between the more ideological leftistswho
wanted to return to the traditional redistributive policies of the Socialist Party and re-
trieve the lost working-class supportand the pragmatic moderateswho wanted to
embrace the market more fully and widen the partys appeal to the bourgeoisie.
Both the National Front (FN) and its extreme-left rival, the Mouvement National
Rpublicain (MNR), were left out in the cold, gaining no seats at all. Although it ap-
peared that about a third of the French electorate shared many of the FNs idease.g., on
immigrants, on law-and-order issues, and on Europeits future prospects did not seem
promising, given the aging of its leader (he was ;,) and the bipolarizing effect of the na-
tional electoral system.
Interest Groups
A French citizen who becomes disillusioned with political parties, nding them confusing
or doubting their effectiveness, has the opportunity to voice demands more directly
through interest groups. Originally, political thinkers with revolutionary and centraliz-
ing perspectives were as suspicious of economic and professional associations as of politi-
cal parties. Consequently, after the Revolution of :;,, organized groups were banned for
nearly a century. Today, interest groups are freely organized, very numerous, and play a
signicant role in Frances political life. There are groups representing, on a national level,
every conceivable sector and interest: labor, business, agriculture, the free professions,
142 france
teachers, and proponents of such diverse outlooks or policies as laicism, Catholicism, elit-
ism, racism, antiracism, birth control, womens rights, and environmental protection.
Interest groups in France participate in the political process in much the same way as
they do in the United States. They lobby with legislators, help elect candidates to political
ofce, engage in collective bargaining, and seek to inuence the higher civil service and
the leadership of political parties.
Two of the more important characteristics of French interest groups are their ideo-
logical fragmentation and their linkage to political parties. These characteristics can be
clearly seen in the case of labor, which is represented by several competing organizations.
The oldest, and once the largest, is the General Federation of Labor (Confdration
Gnrale du TravailCGT). Essentially a federation of constituent unions (such as the
automobile, chemical, metal, and transport workers unions), it has had a revolutionary
ideology, that is, the conviction that the interests of the working class can best be pro-
moted through direct political action. In its belief in the class struggle and its opposition
to the capitalist system, the CGT has shown a clear afnity to the Communist Party.
Many of the CGTs members (numbering today about ,cc,ccc) had in the past voted
Communist, and a signicant proportion of its leaders had been prominent in the PC hi-
erarchy. In fact, the relationship between the CGT and the PC was sometimes so close
that the union was described as a transmission belt of the party. The CGT frequently
engaged in strikes and other political action for the Communists political purposes, such
as opposition to NATO, to French policy in Algeria, to German rearmament, and (more
recently) to the Socialist governments overall socioeconomic policies. With the disinte-
gration of the Soviet Union and the dramatic weakening of the Communist Party, the
CGT has assumed a more autonomous and somewhat more moderate stance.
17
Another labor union is the French Confederation of Labor (Confdration Franaise
Dmocratique de TravailCFDT), with about cc,ccc members. Originally inspired by
Catholicism, it split, in the mid-:,ocs, from the French Confederation of Christian
Workers (Confdration Franaise des Travailleurs ChrtiensCFTC), which continues to
exist, and deconfessionalized itself. One of the most dynamic trade unions, it is closely
related to, though not formally afliated with, the Socialist Party. An important idea of
the CFDT, the promotion of self-management (autogestion), was incorporated into the
PS platform in the :,;cs.
The Workers Force (Force OuvrireFO) and the General Confederation of
Cadres (Confdration Gnrale des CadresCGC), are two other unions of some im-
portance. The FO (with about :.: million members) is an industrial workers federation
noted for its preference for union autonomy vis--vis political parties, for its staunch anti-
communism and for its emphasis on U.S.-style collective bargaining. The CGC (with
about ,c,ccc members) is not very ideological in orientation; it represents supervisory,
middle-echelon technical, and other white-collar employees. Finally, there are several
teachers unions, fragmented on the basis of professional level or ideology.
18
This fragmentation, coupled with a relatively feeble extent of unionizationfewer
than :, percent of French workers are unionized todayhas added to the predicament of
organized labor. Until recently, unions had been at a disadvantage because their patron
parties, notably the Communists and Socialists, were in the opposition. In order to over-
come that disadvantage, unions learned to cooperate in practical matters. They often pre-
sent common demands to employers and the government and join in demonstrations and
strikes. During the Socialist government of :,:o, trade unions gained important con-
cessions under legislation (the Auroux laws) that strengthened their right to organize and
bargain collectively at plant levels. But these concessions have been in part nullied by
developments that have weakened the position of unions: the scab effect of immigrant
workers; the growth of the tertiary sector, in which unionization has been weak; and the
decline of traditional smokestack industries and the concomitant reduction of total
union membership.
19
Organized business is much more unied than organized labor. The major business
association is the MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France), known until :,, as the
Conseil National du Patronat Franais (National Council of French EmployersCNPF),
the umbrella organization of more than eighty manufacturing, banking, and commercial
associations represents more than cc,ccc rms. In its lobbying efforts, this employers
group has been fairly effective. Many of its leaders have old-school ties with the govern-
ments administrative elite; it is well-heeled nancially; it provides ideas and other kinds
of assistance to the Gaullist and Giscardist (notably the Republican) parties that ruled
France from :,, to :,: and again from :,o to :,; and it has been an important part-
ner of the government in the push toward economic modernization.
Small- and medium-sized manufacturing rms, shopkeepers, and artisans have their
own organizations. These have lobbied separately in order to ght against economic con-
solidation policies that have been a threat to them (including the growth of supermar-
kets), but their success has been mixed.
The greatest organizational complexity is found in agriculture, where associations
speak for different kinds of farms, product specialization, ideology, and even relationships
to the government. Thus there are associations of beet growers, wine producers, cattle
raisers, young farmers, Catholic farmers, agricultural laborers, and so on. Farmers inter-
ests were in the past well represented by centrist and conservative parties; the decline of
these parties has been associated with the decline in the number of farmers and the re-
duced importance of agriculture in the French economy. Yet the farmers cannot be totally
neglected, if only for social reasons; and they often nd a receptive ear in the government.
In recent years, farmers associations have collaborated with the government in the shap-
ing of policies that encourage land consolidation, mechanization, the retraining of redun-
dant farmers, and the promotion of agricultural exports, especially in the context of the
European Union and its supranational Common Agricultural Policy.
Patterns and Problems of Interest-Group Access
One of the important features of French interest-group politics is the fact that most
groups have a fairly institutionalized relationship to government authorities. Numerous
advisory councils are attached to ministries; these councils, composed largely of represen-
tatives of interest groups, furnish data that may inuence policy suggestions and regula-
tions that emanate from ministries. Similar councils are attached to nationalized indus-
144 france
tries in which one nds spokespersons for consumers and trade unions. One of the most
important entities is the Economic and Social Council, a body of :,c delegates of trade
unions, business associations, civil servants, and other groups, which must be consulted
on all pending socioeconomic legislation. In addition, there is a network of regional eco-
nomic development committees, composed in part of interest-group spokespersons,
which provide input for the four-year economic plans. Similarly composed councils are
attached to the highly differentiated national and regional social security organisms that
administer statutory health care, unemployment insurance, pension schemes, and family
subsidy programs. The implementation of pricing policies takes place with the participa-
tion of farmers groups; the application of rules on apprenticeships involves employers as-
sociations; and the adjudication of labor disputes takes place in specialized tribunals (con-
seils de prudhommes), which include trade union representatives. Interest-group delegates
to these bodies and to regional professional, agricultural, and commercial chambers, fac-
tory councils, and similar institutions are elected by the groups rank-and-le members
without the mediation of political parties. On occasion, interest groups colonize parlia-
ment in the sense of having their ofcials elected (via a sympathetic party) to the National
Assembly. Finally, interest-group leaders may be co-opted into ofcial positions in a min-
istry with which they have clientelistic relations.
It is a matter of controversy whether the institutionalization of relations enhances or
reduces the power of groups. In the rst place, not all interests are sufciently important
or well enough organized to benet from reliable patterns of relationship with the govern-
mentfor example, foreign workers, ethnic minorities, domestics, and certain categories
of small businessmen. Second, while a formalized network of involvement, sometimes la-
beled neocorporatism, guarantees group access to public authorities, such access does
not by itself ensure that the views of a particular group will prevail. Furthermore, highly
formalized relationships with the government may weaken the will of a group to bargain
collectively or resort to more traditional means of pressure, such as strikes.
To many observers, the events of MayJune :,o suggested that the access of inter-
est groups to the authorities was too underdeveloped and inadequate to inuence politi-
cal decisions. It is not necessary to recount the complexities of these events. Sufce it to
recall that students and workers, in a rare display of unity, engaged in a massive general
strike that, for two weeks, paralyzed the country and threatened to bring down the gov-
ernment and endanger the republic itself. These events had several causes: for the work-
ers, dissatisfaction with de Gaulles economic and social policy that seemed to favor big
business and permitted wages to lag woefully behind prices; for the students, disgruntle-
ment over the failure to modernize, with sufcient speed and thoroughness, a university
system whose curriculum was antiquated and not relevant to the labor market, whose
physical facilities were cramped, and whose administration was too rigid. The general
strikean example of anomic political behaviorachieved certain reforms that formal-
ized interest-group relations with the government had failed to achieve: the partial de-
mocratization of university governance, enormous wage increases for workers, improved
trade union rights, and a loosening of relations between social classes. In the process,
however, de Gaulles leadership was discredited and his image severely tarnished. The
most recent examples of the effectiveness of massive strikes (and of the power of labor
unions despite their numerical weakness) were the strikes of public transport workers in
:,,, and of the private truckers in :,,o, both of which succeeded in derailing Premier
Jupps attempts to reform the social-security system. These successes must be attributed
in part to the support of many other sectors of the general public, which (although in-
convenienced) expressed solidarity with the strikers because they feared that their own
welfare-state entitlements might be endangered. As a consequence, Jupps authority was
severely weakened.
The preceding discussion must be supplemented by a reference to a host of noneco-
nomic interests or sectors, such as women, ethnic minorities, and environmentalists.
France has several national womens associations. These may not be so large or so well or-
ganized as their U.S. counterparts; yet they have successfully pressured the authorities,
since the middle and late :,ocs, to abolish legal disabilities based on gender (e.g., inheri-
tance, adoption, and property ownership), to legalize birth control and abortion, and to
make the initiation of divorce easier for women. A major, and more recent, political vic-
tory for women has been legislation providing for gender parity: the requirement that
,c percent of the candidatures in legislative elections be set aside for women.
20
Environ-
mental groups grew rapidly during the same period; in all parliamentary elections since
:,;, and in the presidential elections of :,:, :,, and :cc:, ecologists (under various
labels) elded their own candidates. (As we have seen, the Green Party has several
deputies in the Assembly, and its leader was an important member of Jospins leftist coali-
tion government.) Antiracist groups, such as SOS-Racisme, have developed rapidly since
the early :,cs to ght for the rights of ethnic minorities, particularly immigrants. At the
same time, the government legalized (and sometimes encouraged) immigrants to form
their own associations. Recent strikes by nurses, teachers, physicians, investigating magis-
trates, and municipal bus and tram drivers, most of them of a spontaneous nature rather
than organized by their respective associations, have taken place largely to promote eco-
nomic as well as noneconomic demandsfor example, for more staff or better protection
against violence. One of the developments of increasing importance (and increasing vio-
lence) has been the anomic street action of poorly organized categories, such as undocu-
mented immigrants, the homeless, and the unemployed.
21
Notes
:. The Poujadists were supporters of the Union for the Defense of Shopkeepers and Artisans (UDCA), an
interest group established during the Fourth Republic to protect elements of the petite bourgeoisie against
the vicissitudes of rapid economic modernization. Led by Pierre Poujade, the UDCA ran in the parlia-
mentary elections of :,,o under the label of Union et Fraternit Franaise, combining hostility to industri-
alism with antiparliamentarism and anti-Semitism.
:. As of :,;, the membership of the various parties was estimated as follows: RPR, cc,ccc; PC, occ,ccc
according to some sources, :cc,ccc dues-paying members according to others; PS, :cc,ccc:,c,ccc;
MRG, ::,ccc; National Front, ;c,ccc; UDF, ,cc,ccc (of which Republican Party, oc,ccc; Radical-
Socialists, oc,ccc; and CDS, ,c,ccc). These gures are approximate and based on a number of (often
conicting) sources. Typical annual membership dues are about $,c. In the past few years all political par-
ties have lost dues-paying members; it is estimated that in :,,,, after its electoral defeat the PS had no
more than :cc,ccc members and the PC even fewer.
146 france
,. On these cleavages, see Pascal Perrineau, Les Cadres du Parti Socialiste, in SOFRES, LEtat de lOpinion
:)):, ed. Olivier Duhamel and Jrme Jaffr (Paris: Seuil, :,,:).
. Jean-Pierre Soisson, Les grands mots, Le Point, :, July :,,:, :o.
,. Alain Rollat, M. Leroy se rfre au communisme . . . balsacien! Le Monde, :, September :,,c.
o. See Les propositions des candidats, Le Monde, o May :,,,, :c.
;. Le Monde, Dossiers et Documents, :,,,, ;.
. Specically, the electorate voted for Chirac because they had condence that he would address himself se-
riously to the following themes, in descending order: unemployment, the construction of Europe, immi-
gration, and the ght against social exclusion. Thomas Ferenczi, Les Franais attendent de M. Chirac
quil mette en oeuvre le changement, Le Monde, :: May :,,,, ,
,. See Le Vote Surprise: Les lections Lgislatives des :, Mai et :er Juin :));. Pascal Perrineau and Colette Ys-
mal, eds. (Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po, :,,;); and How France Votes, ed. Michael S. Lewis-Beck (New
York: Chatham House, :ccc).
:c. Pasqua has often acted like a loose cannon. In the municipal elections of March :cc:, he supported the
reelection of Jean Tibri, the mayor of Paris. Tibri, after being disavowed by the Gaullist leadership be-
cause of corruption and prevented from leading the right-of-center ticket for the Paris mayoralty, ran as an
independent.
::. One of the signs of the incoherence of the UDF has been the rapprochement (especially within the Parlia-
ment) of its moderate component, the Radical Party, with the left-wing Radicals (which continues its al-
liance with the Socialists).
::. For example, between traditional leftistssuch as Martine Aubry (minister of labor) and Henri Em-
manuelli (a former Speaker of the Assembly)who favored a reduction of the workweek to thirty-ve
hours, and pragmatistssuch as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, minister of economics, and his successor Lau-
rent Fabiuswho were more reserved about such a policy.
:,. William Safran, The Socialists, Jospin, and the Mitterrand Legacy, in How France Votes, ed. Lewis-Beck,
::.
:. For example, UDF and Gaullists have made selective deals with the National Front, despite opposition
from the national leadership of these mainstream parties.
:,. For vote totals and percentages of all major candidates, see table A, Presidental Elections, :cc: at
www.sevenbridgespress.com/chathamhouse/hancock.
:o. For vote totals and numbers of Assembly seats won by all major parties, see table B, Parliamentary Elec-
tions, :cc: at www.sevenbridgespress.com/chathamhouse/hancock.
:;. Herv Nathan and Pascal Virot, La CGT lache le PCF en rase campagne, Libration, October :,,,.
:. Among the most important of them are the Fdration dEducation Nationale (FEN), oriented toward so-
cialism and secularism (lacit), and the Fdration Syndicale Unitaire de lEnseignement, de lEducation, de
la Recherche et de la Culture (FSU), with more eclectic membership. Each of the two unions has about
:c,ccc members.
:,. On the steep decline of union membership, see Dominique Labb and Maurice Croisat, La Fin des Syndi-
cats? (Paris: LHarmattan, :,,:).
:c. See Batrice Manjoni dIntignano, Egalit entre femmes et hommes: aspects conomiques. (Paris: Documenta-
tion Franaise, :,,,).
::. See Johanna Simant, La cause des sans-papiers (Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po, :,,).
Chapter 9
How Is Power Used?
THE MERE OUTLINE of the powers of the principal institutionsthe executive, the
legislature, and the civil servicefound in the constitution and the laws cannot ade-
quately convey how policies in France are decided and implemented. The distinction be-
tween what the French have called the legal country and the real country can be seen,
rst, in the tendency of Fifth Republic presidents to interpret the constitution in such a
way as to increase their power at the expense of that of the prime minister. This has ap-
plied not only to cabinet appointments, in which most presidents have had an almost free
hand (except during cohabitation episodes). Most important, it has also applied to the
content of policy decisions. De Gaulle (who took little interest in economics) and Pompi-
dou allowed their prime ministers a great deal of discretion except in the areas of foreign
and defense policies; but Giscard dEstaing (an narque specialized in economic matters)
took an active lead in almost all aspects of domestic policy (even while his government
was headed by Barre, a professor of economics) and even meddled in the drafting of the
language of government bills.
In short, the presidents domain, as distinct from that of the government, has been
stretched almost at will. Under de Gaulle, presidential decisions included the blackballing
of Britains entry into the Common Market, the raising of the minimum wage of indus-
trial workers, and the vetoing of an appointment to the prestigious Acadmie Franaise;
under Pompidou, the devaluation of the franc, the lowering of value-added taxes on food-
stuffs, and the modication of rules on the maximum height of buildings in Paris. Under
Giscard, there were hundreds of intrusions in matters affecting taxes, wages, social secu-
rity, and interest rates. Mitterrand (before and after the cohabitation interludes) person-
ally decided on the construction of a series of grandiose public buildings and even inter-
fered in the appointment of the director of an opera house.
In promoting his policies, the prime minister and the cabinet help the president,
who uses his ministers to transform his ideas into concrete legislative proposals, to de-
fend them in parliament, and to take the blame for them when they prove unpopular or
unsuccessful. The distance the president thereby establishes in the public mind between
himself and his ministers is a political convenience. To provide one example: although the
austerity policies adopted between :,;o and :,c were largely of Giscards inspiration,
public opinion surveys showed that the president was less unpopular than Prime Minister
Barre. Much of the above did not, of course, apply during the exceptional period of
:,o; even then, however, Mitterrand was able to veto Prime Minister Chiracs origi-
nal choices for several cabinet posts (including that of foreign minister). Moreover, al-
though Mitterrand could not interfere effectively in the governments domestic policy de-
cisions, he was able to prevent a number of measures from being enacted by decree. Yet
the president was sufciently removed from the daily operations of government so that
his popularity rose while that of Prime Minister Chirac declined. During the second co-
habitation period, Mitterrand left virtually all aspects of domestic policy to the discretion
of Prime Minister Balladur because the control of the Assembly by the RPR and UDF
was so overwhelming and the degree of cohesion between these parties so signicant that
Mitterrand was unable to exploit internal political differences. Furthermore, Mitterrand
was aficted by a terminal illness (he died in :,,o), and he wished to devote his remain-
ing energies to symbolic acts and the safeguarding of his positive leadership image for fu-
ture historians.
1
Whatever the reason, his withdrawal from an active decision-making role
contributed to a relatively amicable relationship between him and his prime minister.
Some observers suggest that in calling for an early and unnecessary parliamentary
election in which his party was defeated, Chirac so undermined his presidential authority
that he transformed himself prematurely into a lame-duck president despite the fact that
his presidential term had ve years left. Others, however, argue that he retained signi-
cant presidential power, including the power to dissolve the Assembly again in the event
that Jospins government became unpopular. The relationship between Chirac and Jospin
was a tense one, oscillating between cooperation on selective policy issues (e.g., the ex-
pansion of European Union membership, the reduction of the presidential term to ve
yearsa change realized by constitutional referendum in :cccand the reform of the
judiciary) and competition in appealing to public opinion. In this contest, Jospin initially
seemed to have the upper hand; his popularity rating was uncharacteristically high for a
prime minister after nearly four years in ofce. He used this situation to advantage: He
had a fairly free hand in reshufing his cabinet, and he increasingly concerned himself
with foreign policy, a matter that was hitherto considered an almost exclusively presiden-
tial domain. Conversely, Chirac had difculty recovering from his ill-advised dissolution
of the Assembly, and his relationship with his own Gaullist party and other right-of-cen-
ter forces was frequently less than cordial.
Normallyand to some extent even during cohabitationthe president makes use
of the cabinet, but he does not rely on it alone. He appoints, and presides over, re-
stricted committees composed of selected ministers, higher civil servants, and whatever
additional personalities he may co-opt. Furthermore, there is a growing staff of presiden-
tial experts who, like the White House staff in the United States, often function as a sup-
plementary cabinet.
Deputies, Senators, and Decisions
In a formal sense, parliament has been weakened by the constitution as well as by the leg-
islatures own standing orders. Nevertheless, that institution is not intrinsically so weak as
to be dismissed. Although in most casesand certainly in all budget mattersthe initia-
tive belongs to the government, deputies have succeeded in signicantly modifying gov-
ernment bills through amendments: for instance, on abortion, unemployment, farm
credits, education, the reorganization of the television networks, and the reform of local
scal administration.
Sometimes the government virtually abandons a legislative project to which it is os-
tensibly committed if it becomes apparent that there is insufcient support for the project
among deputies belonging to the majority, as happened in :,;o with capital-gains taxa-
tion and in :,,, and :,, with Balladurs proposals relating to the employment of young
people at wages below the minimum and a variety of educational reforms. In other cases,
the government permits, or encourages, leaders of a parliamentary group belonging to the
majority to introduce legislation. This is what occurred in :,c with a Gaullist-sponsored
bill on participationthe distribution of industrial shares to the workers in given rms.
The government itself lacked enthusiasm for the policy but did not wish needlessly to an-
tagonize the Gaullist Party, whose support would be required for other matters. In still
other cases, public opposition to the project may be strong enough to entail political risks
for its supporters and lead deputies to abandon their endorsement of it and, nally, cause
the government to abandon it. This happened in :,, in the case of a bill to bring private
schools under greater control of the Ministry of National Education, and in the case of
another bill, introduced in :,o, to reform the citizenship and naturalization laws. Fi-
nally, government bills affecting labor, social security, and the naturalization of immi-
grants have been signicantly modied by parliamentary input. One of the most recent
government proposals, which was intended to legalize the cohabitation of gay and same-
sex couples, was extensively altered by the parliament, especially in the Senate, which has
increasingly been in an oppositionist mode.
2
If there is little evidence of open conict over policy between majority deputies and
the government that does not necessarily mean that deputies have resigned themselves to
inaction. Instead, it may indicate that they have made their inuence felt during the bill-
drafting phase through backstage negotiation with ministers or higher civil servants.
Frequently, too, a government bill reects the pressures of interest groups. The watering
down of tax bills, the softening of price controls, and the governments failure to institute
the genuine participation of workers in industrial decisions within rmsall these have
been due largely to the successful lobbying of the business associations. Similarly, the gov-
ernments acquiescence on wage demands and retirement benets must be attributed to
the pressure of labor unions (especially those representing transport workers). It must be
understood that this is not U.S.-style lobbying by means of appearances before legislative
committees; instead, lobbying is done through frequent contacts between leaders of big
business and higher civil servants. In this respect trade unions have been at a disadvantage
because the personal links of their leaders to upper-echelon bureaucrats are weak. In the
past, unions compensated for this weakness by threatening strikes and unrest and suc-
ceeded in pushing the government into making periodic wage adjustments in their favor,
particularly during election years. But with the continuing moderation and the increas-
ingly centrist orientation of the Socialist leadership under Jospin, such methods were
likely to bear less fruit than they had in previous years, even when the PS was in power.
When the right controls the government, as was the case from :,,, to :,,;, unions are in
an even weaker position. The Jospin government, which took ofce thereafter, was so de-
150 france
pendent on the support of Communist and other leftist deputies, some of them close to
the unions, that it had to initiate a number of policies favored by organized labor, includ-
ing a reduction of the workweek to thirty-ve hours, a raise in corporate taxes, and the
modication of a number of privatization attempts.
Parliamentarians who are unhappy with government bills have a juridical weapon
at their disposal. They may try to block the passage of bills by resorting to the Consti-
tutional Council. That body is not a judicial review organ in the sense of the U.S.
Supreme Court; it is not a court of appeals to which citizens complaints about constitu-
tional violations may be brought; and it does not have the authority to nullify laws al-
ready in effect. Its major legislative function used to be the examination of organic bills
(which may also include the budget) before their complete parliamentary passage and be-
fore they are signed into law. (It is for these reasons that many observers have regarded the
council as a supplementary branch of the legislature rather than a court.) In recent years,
the council has widened its scope considerablybeginning with a ruling in :,;: by which
it forced the government to withdraw a bill that would have given prefects the power to
forbid or cancel public meetings. In this case the council acted on the grounds that the
bill violated freedom of association.
3
In :,;; the council nullied a bill that would have
allowed the police, without a warrant, to search parked cars, because the bill violated a
constitutional provision (Article oo) on judicial safeguards of individual liberties. In :,c
the council nullied a bill aimed at special surveillance of foreign workers on the grounds
that it violated the principle of equality before the law. In :,:, the council voided parts
of the Socialist governments nationalization legislation dealing with the compensation to
private shareholders on the grounds that it amounted to an unconstitutional deprivation
of property. During the earlier period of the Fifth Republic (i.e., under Presidents de
Gaulle and Pompidou), the council, being heavily Gaullist in composition, tended not to
take issue with decisions by the executive. Since thenin large part because it has been
increasingly called on by opposition deputiesit has taken a very independent position.
4
If contributions of parliament to the legislative process have amounted to less than
many had hoped, it has reected not only the rationalized legislative process but also
the condition and behavior of the deputies themselves. Parliamentarians have often
lacked the expertise of the administrative professionals who draft government bills. Fur-
thermore, the deputies absenteeism has made it difcult for them to acquire mastery over
a subject or to participate in parliamentary debates with consistency. Absenteeism has
continued to be a problem despite the recent limitation of the number of additional elec-
tive ofces a deputy might hold.
Even if such problems were completely overcome, deputies would still be unable
to make their wills prevail as individuals. Under Gaullist presidents and under Giscard
dEstaing, the deputies belonging to parties of the left lacked unity and voting strength;
the Gaullist or Giscardo-centrist deputies hesitated to confront the government in open
parliamentary sessions, for they, too, were divided between enthusiastic and reluctant
supporters of the government. After the elections of :,: the tables were turned: the right-
of-center parties were too small and fragmented to ght the executive, whereas the Social-
ist deputies became part of an obedient machine for endorsing presidential wishes. After
the parliamentary elections of :,,, the tables were turned again. The conservative control
of the Assembly and the internal cohesion of the RPR and UDF, to which we referred
earlier, strengthened the position of the prime minister vis--vis the president, but it also
strengthened the position of the conservative parliamentary parties vis--vis the prime
minister. After :,,, the position of these parties, and of the Assembly as a whole, was
strengthened not only because Prime Minister Balladur disliked confrontation and was
inclined to share the burden of delicate policies with parliament but also because the new
Speaker, Philippe Sguin, worked hard to upgrade the level of participation of the Assem-
bly. He did so by taking an active role in the articulation of policy alternatives, encourag-
ing legislative amendments, inviting foreign dignitaries to the Assembly, and controlling
absenteeism by attempting to do away with proxy voting. Laurent Fabius, who suc-
ceeded Sguin as Speaker in :,,; (resuming the position he had held from :, to :,,:)
continued efforts at upgrading the role of the Assembly in the shaping of domestic policy
until he moved to a cabinet position in :ccc.
There is still the factor of party discipline; there is also the fact that majority deputies
do not wish to endanger their prospects for political advancement (i.e., appointment to
ministerial posts) or pork-barrel favors to their constituents. Moreover, the lack of seri-
ousness with which deputies have often viewed their own efforts could be attributed in
part to the realization that much of the work done in parliament does not necessarily
have permanent value: the decisions that count are made elsewhere.
Bureaucratic Politics
In theory, civil servants do not make policy, but only do the research and prepare the
groundwork for policy and then implement it at various levels. But career administrators
have been in effect co-decision makers. During the Fourth Republic, the political execu-
tive had been subject to such frequent change, and hence had been so unstable and weak,
that the permanent, professional civil service was depended on for decisional continuity
and even initiative. In the Fifth Republic, the distinction between the political decision-
making elite and the higher bureaucracy has been obscured by the tendency of presidents
to recruit a large proportion of the cabinet from the administrative corps. In addition,
civil servants have frequently dominated interministerial committees as well as the cabi-
nets ministriels, the staffs of collaborators appointed by each minister. In principle, the
members of these cabinets are responsible to the minister whom they serve; but since they
understand the technicalities of a dossier better than the minister, they often act accord-
ing to their own discretion, sometimes in concert with the staffs of other ministries.
The old-boy network consisting of narquesgraduates of the National School of
Administration (cole Nationale dAdministrationENA)facilitates this relationship,
for, as insiders have observed, there is less difference between an narque of the left and
an narque of the right than between an narque and a non-narque.
5
The position of
the narchie in the French political system can be appreciated from the fact that ve of
the nine candidates for the presidential election of :,,, were graduates of that institution.
There has been a steady growth of the size of the staff of the cabinet ministriel, from
an average of about :c per minister, and about ,cc for the ministries collectively, during
152 france
the :,ocs and :,;cs, to ::., per minister, with a total of ,c under Chirac (:,;) and
more than occ in the Rocard government. This growth of what has been called a parallel
administration
6
in part reects the growth in the number of ministries; but it is also a
manifestation of a spoils system in which jobs are given to more people but money is
saved at the same time because a smaller proportion of the appointees (i.e., :: percent un-
der Rocard, as compared to ,o percent under Chirac) are professional civil servants who
graduated from the ENA, as were Jospin and seven of his ministers. In recent years, the
adequacy and utility of ENA have been increasingly questioned, and proposals have been
made to rethink the structure and recruitment basis of that institution.
There are also the comits des sages, study commissions whose appointment is from
time to time encouraged by the president, the prime minister, or individual ministers.
These commissions (which are roughly comparable to the Royal Commissions in Britain)
may include academicians, managers of public enterprises, and politicians, but civil ser-
vants have tended to dominate them. Military ofcers may also be members of such com-
missions, as in the case of a committee on defense appointed by Prime Minister Balladur.
There have been many study commissions: for example, the Toute Commission on wage
negotiations in nationalized industries (:,o;); the Sudreau Commission on workers par-
ticipation in industrial management (:,;); the Nora Commission on the impact of
computer technology (:,;); the Giraudet Commission on the reduction of the work-
week (:,c); and the Long Commission on the reform of citizenship and naturalization
laws (:,;). The commissions reports to the government, which reect the input of in-
terest-group representatives and miscellaneous experts, may be used by the government as
a basis for legislative proposals; or, if the government does not agree with the reports con-
clusions, they may be ignored. There have been several reasons for the proliferation of
such commissions: the need to circumvent a parliament that might make proposals that
would be unwelcome to the government or, conversely, to supplant a parliament that has
been unwilling to make decisions (and failed to use the power to set up its own special
study or investigation committees); the desire of the government to pass the buck for
politically risky policies; andon a more positive notethe quest for a policy based on a
broad consensus.
Once the parliamentarians have passed a bill, it gains substance only when it is en-
forced. But governments (and higher civil servants) may show their reservations regarding
a bill by failing to produce the necessary implementing regulations or ordinances. Thus
the government has denatured acts of parliament by delaying, or omitting, follow-up
regulations on bills dealing with educational reforms, birth control, prison reform, and
the nancing of local government. Occasionally the administrative bureaucracy may, at
the behest of a minister, produce regulations that contravene the intent of the law passed
by parliament. For example, after parliament had passed a bill requiring equal treatment
of immigrant workers, administrative regulations subjected them to special disabilities;
similarly, an act of parliament forbidding discrimination on the basis of religion or race
aimed at rms engaged in international trade was followed by a government regulation
permitting such discrimination. The Council of State may nullify such regulations after a
legal challenge; however, litigation is selective and may take several years.
The Delegation of Responsibility
In order to weaken the effects of long-established legislation, the executive and its adminis-
trators may resort to various forms of buck-passing. Thus, to avoid using public moneys to
keep the government-controlled health insurance funds solvent, the funds were permitted
to raise the social security contributions of the insured. Similarly, the autonomous public
corporation that runs the Paris transport system contracted with private rms to obtain
workers to clean the metro stations, instead of employing its own workers and having to pay
them the minimum wage generally granted by legislation to public employees. Finally, al-
though all subnational administrative activities remain ultimately subject to the supervision
or guardianship (tutelle) of the national government, the latter has saved itself trouble and
money by permitting considerable local variations in the implementation of primary-school
curriculums and vacation policies, public health standards, and social services for the aged.
The decentralization measures begun in :,:, institutionalized that approach and at the
same time provided for greater local autonomy and grassroots participation.
Since the early days of the Fourth Republic, governments have been committed to a
form of capitalist national planning. The four-year economic modernization plans were
prepared through complex procedures involving the cabinet (notably the Ministry of Fi-
nance), governmental statistical ofces, and several hundred technocrats working in a Na-
tional Planning Commission, and numerous interest-group spokespersons who were con-
sulted regularly in the Economic and Social Council and the regional modernization
committees. This harmonization of conicting class interests was supposed to result in a
fair macroeconomic plan that represented a ne balance between a productivity orienta-
tion and a social one. Hence the plan was invested with a certain moral authority; it led
the government and parliament to process specic pieces of legislation that were consis-
tent with the plan: bills on public-works investments, social welfare, wages, employment,
housing, and so on. For both de Gaulle and Pompidou, the plan was an ardent obliga-
tion; under Giscard dEstaing and his prime ministers, the planning institutions were re-
tained, but planners did little more than prepare position papers and statistical forecasts,
while many of their policy recommendations were ignored by the government.
After the election of Mitterrand (and the appointment of Rocard as minister of
planning), the economic plan was not only to be revived, geared to the production of so-
cial goods, and made more redistributive in orientation, but was to be given extra
weaponry with an enlarged number of nationalized industries and a plethora of eco-
nomic regulations. But the Ninth Development Plan, theoretically in effect in :,,, be-
came in practice a dead letter, as it was displaced by an interim plan conforming to the
austerity policy to which the government committed itself. Part of the plan, moreover,
was replaced by piecemeal economic policy contracts with individual regions (contrats
tat-rgion). Under the Chirac government, not much remained of the plan except its
name and its institutions; whatever economic policy there was to be was conded to the
cabinet as and, more specically, to the Ministry of Finance. Indeed, given its program
of reprivatizing a variety of industries and banks, its commitment to deregulation and
degovernmentalization, and its reliance on market forces, the government would have
little if any room for planning. With the installation of the Rocard government, a plan
154 france
(the Tenth Development Plan, :,,,:) was adopted; but there was only a junior minis-
ter in charge of it, and planning in a meaningful sense was not revived. Under Rocards
successors planning has fared no better; plans are still made, but, given the increasing
role of the market and the relocation of certain aspects of economic decision-making
and monetary policy to the transnational levels of the European Union, the plans policy
impact is open to question.
Conflicts within the System
It should not be inferred that governmental attitudes are monolithic. Occasionally, the
national administration is hampered by internal conicts as well as conicts with parlia-
mentary and local politicians. For instance, the ministers in charge of labor (especially
unskilled labor) and social affairs have been interested in raising minimum wages and up-
grading working conditions, but ministers of nance have interfered with such policies in
the interest of saving money both for the treasury and for the inuential business sector
whose prots are maximized by cheap labor. While the minister of solidarity has been
concerned with protecting the rights of immigrants, the minister of the interior has at-
tempted (in the name of law and order) to control their movements.
Some of these conicts are resolved in response to political (i.e., electoral) considera-
tions rather than merely administrative ones. It is true that the cabinet, the parliament,
and other political institutions have been bureaucratized; it is also true that administrative
institutions have remained politicized. Deputies may serve on the boards of nationalized
industries, on regional bodies, and in agencies involved in economic policymaking. These
deputies may be trained technocrats or civil servants and hence professionally concerned
with objective approaches to problem solving; at the same time, they are politicians re-
sponsive to local electorates.
The conict between administration and politics is seen most clearly in the relation-
ship between the mayor and prefect. The latter is legally responsible to the national gov-
ernment; he still (even after the passage of the decentralization laws) has the power to
nullify acts of a city council, to veto the budget adopted by the general council, and even,
under certain circumstances, to depose a mayor. He takes such action rarely, however, for
a mayor may be more powerful than a prefect, especially if the former heads a large city
and is simultaneously a member of parliament or, better, a cabinet minister. Here it
should be noted that a large number of ministers (including most of the prime ministers)
continued to function as mayors of towns while exercising their national functions. In
fact, shortly after becoming prime minister after the presidential elections of :,,,, Alain
Jupp was selected as mayor of Bordeaux in the municipal elections that followed. When
Jospin became prime minister, he obliged all his cabinet members to relinquish their
posts as mayors, so that they would be able to devote their full attention to their national
tasks. This innovation may serve as a precedent for his successors.
Sometimes a mayor may be too political and too powerful to suit the taste of the na-
tional government. In :,; Chirac, the mayor of Paris, was punished for his presidential
ambitions and his unreliable support of the president: the mayor (at the presidents insti-
gation) failed to get a national nancial supplement for the maintenance of the municipal
police forcea situation that forced the mayor to increase local tax assessments and
threatened to reduce his popularity.
The preceding is not intended to suggest that France has a mixed political system in
which various institutions and individuals lling a variety of different political positions
play equally signicant roles. Still, the fact that the constitution has given the chief of
state vast powers to make decisions and that he has added to these powers by one-sided
interpretation does not mean that he always makes use of these powers. Under Giscard
dEstaing, for instance, the distinction between president and prime minister was made
more obscure than before. Giscard did not, in reality, freely decide all policies. He some-
times avoided tough decisions for electoral reasons, contenting himself with making a
good impression on television and otherwise playing at being president. During the
election campaign of :, Mitterrand, in a Letter to all the French,
7
outlined his ideas
about the constitution, economic policy, education and research, social security, citizen-
ship, and foreign and defense policies, but after he retrieved his presidential powers he
gave only general direction to Prime Minister Rocard. The latter, in turn, produced his
own circular in which he articulated his ideas of government.
8
In a television debate
with Jospin during the presidential election campaign of :,,,, Chirac deplored the
monarchical drift of French decision-making patterns and contended that presidents
had come increasingly to behave like super prime ministers instead of conning them-
selves to articulating grand visions and providing general impulses to political actions.
He argued that the French regime was basically a parliamentary rather than a presidential
one and called for an increase in the power of the parliament to legislate and control the
actions of the government.
9
To what extent these views would be reected in actual
changes in institutional relationships remained to be seen.
Notes
:. Mitterrand failed in that effort, for a number of unpleasant aspects of his past were revealed, including his
extreme-right connections before World War II, his involvement with the Vichy regime, and his continu-
ing friendships with fascist collaborators after the war.
:. One of the most recent examples of this mode concerned the government bill to legalize the status of un-
married and same-sex couples, the Civil Solidarity Pacts (Pacte civil de solidaritPACs). The Senate wa-
tered the bill down by exempting incestuous and other unnatural cohabitation. See Suzanne Daley,
France Gives Legal Status to Unmarried Couples, New York Times, : October :,,,.
,. The actual provisions of the :,, constitution do not include a bill of rights. Nevertheless, the preamble of
that document includes references to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of :;, and to the
preamble of the Fourth Republic constitution, both of which have extensive listings of rights and liberties,
among them freedom of association. In its decisions, the Constitutional Council has inserted these refer-
ences into the constitution by according them operational validity.
. Between :,,, and :,;, the Constitutional Council rendered decisions on :; pending bills: only :, be-
tween :,, and :,;, o, between :,; and :,:, ; between :,: and :,o, and :, in :,o;. Of these, ;c
(or :%) voided the bills in question. See Louis Favoreu, Conseil constitutionnel: mythes et ralits, Re-
gards sur lActualit :,: (June :,;): :.
,. See Philippe Rocqueplo, Regards sur la complexit du pouvoir: Enqute dans les cabinets ministriels,
Annales des Mines, June :,,c, ,c.
o. Jean-Franois Doumic, Ladministration parallle, Le Monde, : February :,,.
;. Lettre tous les Franais, in Le Monde, and , April :,.
. Gouverner autrement, dated :, May :,, in Regards sur lActualit :, (JulyAugust :,): :,:.
,. Le dbat tlvis entre les deux candidats, Le Monde, Dossiers et Documents, LElection prsidentielle, :)),, ,,.
156 france
Chapter 10
What Is the Future of French Politics?
IF INSTITUTIONAL STABILITY and economic progress are used as the principal crite-
ria for judging a political system, the Fifth Republic must be considered a success. Four
decades after its inauguration, the regime has amply reected the themes of change
within continuity articulated by both Presidents Pompidou and Giscard dEstaing. A re-
markable balance has been achieved between French traditionalism and the spirit of inno-
vation; the old institutions have been retained, but their functional relationships have
been rationalized. The executive has sufcient unity and power to make decisions, and it
has used this power fairly effectively.
Stability, Modernization, and Democracy
The political party system has been simplied, and political conicts have been re-
ducedin part by means of a manipulation of the system of elections but, more impor-
tant, as a consequence of socioeconomic changes and a clear popular consensus about the
legitimacy of the constitutional system. As a result of the decentralization reforms that be-
gan in the early :,cs and are still continuing, subnational (i.e., regional, district, and
municipal) administration has been adapted to respond to new realities, and local com-
munities have been given signicantly greater powers of decision and revenue gathering.
The voting age has been lowered to eighteen, and great progress has been made toward le-
gal equality for women, minorities, homosexuals, and children born out of wedlock. In-
stitutions have been created to make the bureaucracy more accountable. Apart from occa-
sional lapses, freedom of association, including the rights of workers to organize in
factories, has been made more secure. There has been continuing experimentation aimed
at modernizing and democratizing the educational system and at adapting it to the re-
quirements of the job market, despite budgetary constraints and the opposition of part of
the traditional academic establishment. Decolonization was achieved without undue
bloodshed (except for Indochina and, later, Algeria) and without tearing French society
apart, and the North African repatriates have been for the most part successfully inte-
grated. The French economy has adapted with remarkable success to the challenges of the
European Union, and France has reached the status of the worlds fth-largest industrial
power and fourth-largest exporter. The national and urban mass transport networks have
been modernized and are among the nest in existence. The social security system has re-
sponded fairly well to the needs of the majority, and it is holding its own despite the pres-
sures imposed by the European Union and by globalization to hold the line in welfare-
state expenditures. In short, France has become a prosperous country oriented to mass
consumption; its currency is stable, and the living standard of its people corresponds to
that of Americans.
Administration and Justice: Developments and Reforms
To many of the French, especially Gaullists, the administrative state has been preferable
to the regime of parties because civil servants have been viewed as more professional,
less ideology-ridden, and less particularistic than party politicians. Being less inuenced
by electoral pressures, the administrative bureaucracy is supposed to be much better able
to make long-term policy in the public interest.
It is true that most upper-echelon civil servants are highly cultivated and public-spir-
ited; moreover, the social esteem and excellent pay they have received have made them, by
and large, immune to corruption (at any rate in comparison with elected politicians). But
given their bourgeois or upper-class origins, they have also tended to be elitist and pater-
nalistic. They are often too far removed from the people, and their actions are not sub-
jected to adequate parliamentary surveillance. The citizens means of redress against bu-
reaucratic misbehavior are unreliable, despite such institutions as the administrative
courts, topped by the Council of State (Conseil dtat) and such newer institutions as the
mediator.
The judicial system, too, whose essential features date to Napoleons rule, is in need
of liberalization. The network of courts is large; the appeals echelons are well distributed
geographically, and most Western-type due process criteria are followed. Although Anglo-
American style habeas corpus provisions are omitted in the constitution, they have been
introduced gradually by means of ordinary legislation. Yet elements of class justice persist;
preventive (pretrial) detention is often still too long, especially for suspects belonging to
158 france
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
.
:.
,,.,
o.o
o.
.o
.,
,.:
Percentage of Females in Workforce ()
Sources: Tacis, Russia and the EU Member States. Statistical Comparisons :,,c,o (Luxembourg: Ofce for Of-
cial Publications of the European Communities, :,,); World Bank, World Development Indicators on CD-
Rom, :,,;.
the working class and the peasantry. The police, the prosecuting attorneys, and the courts
have dealt particularly harshly with immigrants from the Third World. For many years,
the government hesitated to liberalize the penal code, a hesitancy attributed in part to
continued fear (shared by large segments of the population) of disorder and violence.
This fear had (until :,:) prevented governments from sponsoring legislation to abolish
the death penalty; it also explained the retention of the State Security Court, which dealt
with cases of sedition. That court had been set up in :,o, in the wake of a series of violent
acts by opponents of de Gaulle and his policies. Under Mitterrand, the State Security
Court was abolished.
In the spring of :,c, the government introduced (and the Assembly passed) a bill to
reform the penal code. This bill, labeled Security and Liberty, aimed at making the
punishment for crimes of violence more severe and at reducing the discretion of judges in
the imposition of sentences. At the same time, the bill provided for a reduction of the
maximum period of pretrial detention. During the rst term of Mitterrands presidency,
the government, in particular the minister of justice, Robert Badinter, initiated numerous
measures aimed at reforming the legal system. The illiberal features of the Security and
Liberty law were rescinded; prison conditions were improved; the indigent were guaran-
teed the right to counsel; the rights of immigrant aliens were more or less aligned with
those of citizens, and the former were given greater protection against harassment by pub-
lic ofcials; and the power of the police was curbednot without opposition from the
minister of the interior.
1
The process of reforming the judicial system is continuing. In mid-:,,;, a blue-
ribbon commission appointed earlier by President Chirac recommended a number of
measures to modernize the judiciary and make it more independent. Yet much remains to
be done to deal with the problems of understaffed courts, underpaid police ofcers, over-
crowded prisons, and the (still) inadequate protection of the rights of citizens against the
state. The rights of those detained for criminal investigation have been enlarged, and leg-
islation is being considered to make rmer the presumption of innocence of the accused.
2
what is the future of french politics? 159
France
Germany
Italy
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
::.;;
,o.;
:.o
:.o;
:;,.::
:,.;;
::.,
Average Balance of Trade, (in billions of dollars)
Source: OECD Economic Outlook o (December :ccc).
Finally, in order to afford better protection of human rights, Mitterrand came out in fa-
vor of a constitutional amendment that would permit the Constitutional Council to ex-
amine bills at its own initiative and that would grant ordinary citizens the right to bring
the issue of the constitutionality of a law before the council.
Some of the impetus for improvement has come from the European Union. For ex-
ample, the constitutional amendment to grant alien residents the right to vote in munic-
ipal elections, passed in :cc:, brought France in line with a supranational European
standard. The same is true of gender equality with respect to working conditions.
3
Other
pressures have come from the Council of Europe; thus, in :,,, the European Court of
Human Rights censured France for the use of torture.
4
Finally, France continues to be
under pressure to conform to European norms regarding the legitimation of minority
languages.
On occasion, governments have intervened in judicial matters, thus degrading politi-
cal democracy. Such intervention was sometimes inspired by foreign policy considera-
tions: for example, in :,;; the release, without trial, of an Arab suspected of terrorist ac-
tion; in :,c, the physical interference by the (nationally controlled) Paris police in a
peaceful demonstration in front of the Soviet embassy; and in :,;, the (unsuccessful) at-
tempt by the Chirac government to interfere in the trial of another Arab implicated in the
assassination of diplomats in Paris. Conversely, the judicial establishment has become less
lenient in prosecuting and convicting high government ofcials.
Under the presidencies of de Gaulle, Pompidou, and Giscard, there were a number of
constraints to the expression of opinion in the mass media. The television networks and
most radio stations were public monopolies, and they were often used by the government
to distort the news. The press was free and pluralistic, but governments would occasion-
ally conscate issues of periodicals that had published articles critical of the president, and
in one case (under Giscard dEstaing) even instituted legal proceedings against a newspa-
per. Under Mitterrand such practices ceased; moreover, the setting up of private radio sta-
tions was permitted, and the television networks were put under autonomous manage-
ment and, in most cases, privatized.
Problems and Prospects
The Economic Challenge:
Welfare Statism and Neoliberalism
For many years, most French citizens accepted their countrys version of the mixed econ-
omy under which a large and pluralistic private sector coexisted with a signicant array
of nationalized industries. In addition, France has had a highly developed welfare state,
reected in a complex of redistributive policies that had been gradually evolving from the
end of the Third Republic through the rst years of the Mitterrand presidency. These
policies include a progressive income tax; income supplements to families with several
children; low- and moderate-rent housing; state-subsidized (and virtually tuition-free)
higher education; and (compared with the United States) generous retirement, unem-
ployment, maternity, and medical benets and paid vacations (of ve weeks) nanced in
160 france
large part by employers. In addition, there are governmentally imposed minimum wages
(which are higher than in the United States), complemented, until recently, by a system
of semiautomatic wage increases, pegged to the cost-of-living index.
Although most citizens accepted these features as almost inalienable rights, they were
not regarded as solutions to a number of persistent problems, among them the inequality
of incomes, housing shortages, unemployment, and large-scale tax fraud (compensated
only in part by the more or less automatic (but regressive) system of value-added taxes re-
quired for all members of the European Union). Moreover, the heavy governmental in-
volvement in social and economic matters was thought to have a stiing effect on private
initiative in general and industrial (and employment-creating) investment in particular;
and the existence of a large nationalized sector was held responsible for impeding produc-
tivity and competition. Responding to the pressures of the international and the Euro-
pean market, and inspired to some extent by the (presumably) successful examples of the
United States (under Reagan) and Germany, French governmentsespecially under the
prime ministerships of Barre, Fabius, and Chiracdiscovered the virtues of the market-
place and promoted policies of selective denationalization and deregulation. Such neo-
liberal policies continued under the Gaullist governments of Balladur and Jupp, but
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac appear at a news conference at the EU summit in
Nice, December :ooo. (AP/Wide World Photos)
they were subjected to modication under electoral pressures and partially reversed when
Jospin assumed the prime ministership.
Foreign Policy
Under de Gaulle, Frances foreign policy had been inspired by aspirations to grandeur.
Given the limitations of the countrys economic and military power, however, these aspi-
rations could not be realized. Unable to play a decisive role in the international system, de
Gaulle pursued a policy of symbolism and rhetoric that expressed itself in hostility to the
two superpowers, in opposition to the institutional development of a supranational Eu-
rope, in futile attempts to interfere in regional disputes outside Europe (e.g., the Middle
East), and in efforts to mediate relationships between industrialized Europe and the de-
veloping countries (notably in Africa). An important element of de Gaulles policy was his
resentment of the Anglo-Americans, reected in his hostility to NATO. Such attitudes
were in part determined by fears of U.S. economic domination and of U.S. cultural hege-
mony and by doubts about the reliability of the U.S. commitment to defend Europe in
case of Soviet aggression.
Responding to the pressures of the Gaullist party, and reecting the outlook of much
of the French intellectual elite, Pompidou and (to a lesser extent) Giscard continued the
main lines of de Gaulles foreign policy, but it was becoming considerably less hostile to
the United States and to the development of European unity. Under Mitterrand, France
continued to develop its national nuclear deterrent and, on the cultural level, to foster as
much as was still possible the cultivation of the French language abroad; at the same time,
the country abandoned the Gaullist illusions about its international power and became
more favorably inclined toward NATO. Henceforth, Frances foreign policy came increas-
ingly to be marked by a concern with its economic aspect, such as global and regional
competitiveness. This aspect, however, could not be separated from Frances role in Eu-
rope. From the early :,;cs on it had become clear that Germany was the economic pow-
erhouse in Europe; as long as Germany was divided, however, France retained a degree of
political dominance on the Continent. With the reunication of Germany, French fears
of that country were revived, mixed with resentment and admiration. To compensate for
their reduced weight in Europe, the French have utilized a number of opportunities for
asserting their role in world affairs, whether military (e.g., peacekeeping in Bosnia and
elsewhere), economic aid (to Russia and the Third World), humanitarian (e.g., French
medical missions around the globe), and symbolic (e.g., participation in the Gulf War).
Some of Frances foreign policy moves have been indicative of a hard-nosed realism tinged
with cynicism; these have included, in particular, the countrys dealings with Third World
dictatorships and an almost automatic pro-Arabism. Other moves have been little more
than efforts at maintaining Frances presence on the diplomatic stage and shoring up its
cultural inuence, efforts manifested in Chiracs frequent (and often maladroit and futile)
travels to the Middle East, China, Africa, and Russia. A more recent policyFrances par-
ticipation in the setting up of a oc,ccc-member European rapid intervention forceis
designed both to retain the countrys military parity with a reunited Germany and as-
sure its autonomy vis--vis NATO.
162 france
Societal and Systemic Issues
The problems that preoccupy the majority of the residents of France are domestic in na-
ture. Chief among them is the presence of several million immigrants and their impact on
French society. Progressive elements, led by Mitterrand and other moderate Socialists, at-
tempted to ght racism and speed the process of legal integration and cultural assimila-
tion of immigrants, and to that end they promoted a liberal approach to naturalization.
But opponents expressed the fear that easy acquisition of French citizenship would actu-
ally hamper the assimilation process and that ultimately French society would be changed
beyond recognition. A related problem has been the existence of regional and nonterrito-
rial French ethnic minorities (e.g., Bretons, Alsatians, Basques, Arab Muslims, and South-
east Asian immigrants). A growing sensitivity to these minorities has been evinced in the
Socialists decentralization policies, a greater tolerance to cultural diversity, and the grant
of autonomy to Corsica, a particularly violent and troublesome region, and a number of
overseas territories (including New Caledonia). Nevertheless, there are those who fear
that excessive attention to the claims of minorities might weaken Frances cultural and
political unity and undermine its national identity.
5
The growing sensitivity toward minorities and provincial aspirations constitute evi-
dence that the traditional Jacobin ideology characteristic of republican regimesthe idea
of France as a uniform and centralized nation-statethat has been an important aspect of
French exceptionalism, is increasingly being called into question and that pluralisms of
all kinds are developing. This can be seen not only in the existing rivalries between politi-
cal parties and interest groups, and more specically between the various trade unions,
but also in the more assertive behavior of parliament; in the increasing frequency and ac-
ceptance of power sharing between president and prime minister; in the greater readiness
to grant a degree of legitimacy to regional ethnic languages; and in the competition be-
tween private and public educational systems and mass media, between national and sub-
national centers of decision (albeit stopping short of federalism), and between the state
and the market.
6
There are numerous social and economic problems, among them overcrowded (and
often unsafe) secondary schools and an insufcient number of teachers; the pollution of
the environment; and the persistence of unemployment and its corollary, the risk of de-
pleted social security funds. Finally, there is a widespread recognition of the need for
strong steps to curb delinquency, urban violence, and terrorism and to protect society
from the spread of AIDS, but there is an equal interest that in the process there would be
no infringement on civil liberties.
In recent years, there has been some concern about citizens loss of interest in tradi-
tional forms of political participation. There has been a growing electoral abstentionism:
it was ,c. percent in the rst round of the :,,, Assembly elections and ,:. percent in
the second round; ,,.o percent in the :,, cantonal elections; ,c.o percent in the rst
round of the :,,, municipal elections; ,,.o percent in the rst round of the :cc: Assem-
bly elections and ,,.; percent in the second round; and nearly ;c percent in the :ccc ref-
erendum to reduce the presidential term of ofce. Furthermore, there has been a steady
decline of identication with political parties, as reected in a loss of dues-paying mem-
bers in all the major partiesa situation that is only partly compensated by growing
membership in interest groups, especially on the local level.
These phenomena are indicative of an impatience with mainstream political parties
and a distrust of politicians. The fact that in recent national elections marginal parties, in-
cluding the National Front, garnered more than a third of the vote does not, however,
mean that the French want to replace the existing democratic system with another one;
on the contrary, there is a widespread consensus about the regime itself. To be sure, there
continue to be disagreements about the best ways to reduce the social security decit and
to administer the welfare state; about reform of the educational system; about stemming
the delocalization of labor-intensive industries; and about policies to be adopted with re-
gard to immigration. There continue to be disagreements about specic institutional
questions as well, among them the following: whether there should be a (full or partial)
return to proportional representation for Assembly elections; whether the practice of
holding more than one elective ofce simultaneously should be maintained or abolished;
whether the referendum should be resorted to more or less frequently; and the extent to
which the relationship between the judiciary and the executive should be redened. But
there is little doubt that the constitutional system as a whole is sound and well enough
designed to meet Frances challenges in the future.
Notes
:. See William Safran, Rights and Liberties under the Mitterrand Presidency: Socialist Innovations and Post-
Socialist Revisions, Contemporary French Civilization ::, no. : (Winter/Spring :,): :,,.
:. At the end of :ccc, members of the judiciary, while fully supporting such a policy, went on strike to obtain
an addition to the panels of investigating magistrates needed to deal with the added caseload required to
implement it.
,. In order to provide such equality, the French government has introduced a bill to change the labor code,
under which women may not be employed in any job that requires night work. Clarisse Fabre, Le travail
de nuit des femmes divise la majorit, Le Monde, :, November :ccc.
. Services France et Socit, La condamnation de la France pour torture embarrasse le gouvernement, Le
Monde, ,c July :,,,.
,. See William Safran, State, Nation, National Identity, and Citizenship: France as a Test Case, Interna-
tional Political Science Review ::, no. : (:,,:): ::c,,.
o. See Vivien A. Schmidt, The Changing Dynamics of State-Society Relations in the Fifth Republic, in The
Changing French Political System, ed. Robert Elgie (London: Frank Cass, :ccc), ::o,.
For Further Reading
ALDRICH, ROBERT, AND JOHN CONNELL, eds. France in World Politics. London and New York: Rout-
ledge, :,,.
ANDREWS, WILLIAM G., AND STANLEY HOFFMAN, eds. The Fifth Republic at Twenty. Albany: State
University of New York Press, :,c.
ARDAGH, JOHN. France Today. New York and London: Penguin, :,;.
BAUMGARTNER, FRANK R. Conict and Rhetoric in French Policy Making. Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of
Pittsburgh Press, :,,.
BOY, DANIEL, AND NONNA MAYER, eds. The French Voter Decides. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, :,,,.
CHRISTOFFERSON, THOMAS R. The French Socialists in Power, :):-:). Newark: University of Delaware
Press, :,,:.
CONVERSE, PHILIP E., AND ROY PIERCE. Political Representation in France. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, :,o.
164 france
DE GAULLE, CHARLES. The Complete War Memoirs. , vols. New York: Simon & Schuster, :,;:.
ELGIE, ROBERT. The Role of the Prime Minister in France, :):):. New York: St. Martins, :,,,.
, ed., The Changing French Political System. London: Frank Cass, :ccc.
FELDBLUM, MIRIAM. Reconstructing Citizenship: The Politics of Nationality Reform and Immigration in Con-
temporary France. Albany: State University of New York Press, :,,,.
FENBY, JONATHAN. France on the Brink. New York: Arcade Publishing, :,,,.
FLYNN, GREGORY, ed. Remaking the Hexagon: The New France in the New Europe. Boulder, Colo.: Westview,
:,,,.
FRIEND, JULIUS W. Seven Years in France: Franois Mitterrand and the Unintended Revolution, :)::).
Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,.
GODT, PAUL, ed. Policy-Making in France From De Gaulle to Mitterrand. London: Pinter, :,,.
GOUREVITCH, PETER A. Paris and the Provinces. Berkeley: University of California Press, :,c.
GUYOMARCH, ALAIN, HOWARD MACHIN, AND ELLA RITCHIE, eds. France in the European Union.
London: Macmillan, :,,.
HAUSS, CHARLES. Politics in Gaullist France: Coping With Chaos. New York: Praeger, :,,:.
HAZAREESINGH, SUDHIR. Political Traditions in Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press, :,,.
HOLLIFIELD, JAMES F., AND GEORGE ROSS, eds. Searching for the New France. New York and London:
Routledge, :,,:.
JUDT, TONY. The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century. Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, :,,,.
KEELER, JOHNT.S. The Politics of Neocorporatism in France. New York: Oxford University Press, :,;.
KEELER, JOHN T.S., AND MARTIN A. SCHAIN, eds. Chiracs Challenge: Liberalization, Europeanization
and Malaise in France. New York: St. Martins, :,,o.
NORTHCOTT, WAYNE. Mitterrand: A Political Biography. New York: Holmes & Meier, :,,:.
PENNIMAN, HOWARD, ed. France at the Polls, :): and :): The National Elections. Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, :,.
RAYMOND, GINO G., ed. Structures of Power in Modern France. New York: St. Martins, :ccc.
ROHR, JOHN A. Founding Republics in France and America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, :,,,.
ROSS, GEORGE, STANLEY HOFFMAN, AND SYLVIA MALZACHER, eds. The Mitterrand Experiment.
New York: Oxford University Press, :,;.
SAFRAN, WILLIAM. The French Polity, ,th ed. New York: Longman, :,,.
SCHMIDT, VIVIEN A. From State to Market? The Transformation of French Business and Government. New
York: Cambridge University Press, :,,o.
STONE, ALEC. The Birth of Judicial Politics in France: The Constitutional Council in Comparative Perspective.
New York: Oxford University Press, :,,:.
SULEIMAN, EZRA. Elites in French Society: The Politics of Survival. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, :,;.
THODY, PHILIP. The Fifth French Republic: Presidents, Politics, and Personalities. London and New York:
Routledge, :,,.
TIERSKY, RONALD. France in the New Europe: Changing Yet Steadfast. Belmond, Calif.: Wadsworth, :,,.
WEBER, EUGEN. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, :;o:):,. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, :,;o.
WILSON, FRANK L. French Political Parties Under the Fifth Republic. New York: Praeger, :,:.
. Interest-Group Politics in France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,.
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Chapter 11
The Context of German Politics
IN ANY STUDY of modern European politics an examination of Germany must occupy
a prominent place. Germans are the most numerous people in Western and Central Eu-
rope. From :,, to :,,c, Germany was divided into two states: the Federal Republic of
Germany (FRG), or West Germany, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or
East Germany. The unied Federal Republic, which was formed in :,,,c, unlike
France, Britain, Italy, or Sweden, is now in the process of integrating :o million new citi-
zens into its economy, society, and polity. The vast majority of these former East Germans
have had little or no experience in democratic citizenship.
The collapse of the East German state in :,,,c and its incorporation into the
Federal Republic is another example of the frequent and sudden changes that have char-
acterized Germanys history. Indeed, the study of modern German politics offers an ex-
ceptional opportunity to examine the problems associated with political change and de-
velopment. Few societies have experienced such drastic changes in their political system,
as has Germany. In little more than a century Germany has had an empire (:;::,:),
an unstable democratic republic (:,:,,,), a totalitarian dictatorship (:,,,,), military
occupation (:,,,), two separate states (:,,,c)a federal republic in the West and
a one-party communist state in the Eastand, since :,,c, a single federal state. Thus
Germany and the Germans have experienced most of the major political and ideological
movements in modern history. The development of the Federal Republic during the past
ve decades, however, illustrates the extent to which a country can largely overcome its
political heritage and change its political culture. Few modern democracies have been as
stable, effective, and legitimate as the Federal Republic that we examine in the following
chapters. The success of West Germany and its attraction to East Germans was an im-
portant factor in the deterioration of the East German communist regime.
How can all these changes be explained? Not only is the Federal Republic a stable
democracy; in recent years it has emerged out of the shadows of the Third Reich to be-
come an increasingly important and assertive actor in European and international poli-
tics. It is one of the worlds largest trading nations and has Europes strongest and most
dynamic economy. Its army is the largest national contingent in the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). Germany has also supplanted Great Britain as the chief European
ally of the United States. Yet the Federal Republic is rmly committed to deepening its
relations with Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union and has become
the leading advocate in the West of a new era of East-West cooperation. The collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union together with the breakup of the
Soviet empire means that the Federal Republic will assume a greater leadership role in
Central and Eastern Europe. Clearly, much is to be gained from an examination of Ger-
manys politics.
Historical
Europe has known German-speaking people and German political units for almost a
thousand years. Nevertheless, the Federal Republic of Germany is one of Europes and the
worlds newest states. In May :,,, it observed only its ftieth anniversarya time span
hardly comparable to that of most of its European neighbors. Although a relatively young
state, the Federal Republic claims to be the legitimate successor to the Third Reich
(:,,,,) and the Bismarckian Second Reich (:;::,:). This claim also makes the Re-
public the heir to the German political tradition, a tradition characterized by national
division and frequent change. Before there were Germans, Europe was populated
by numerous Germanic tribes: Saxons, Franks, Bavarians, Swabians, Silesians, and
Thuringians, to name a few. No single state has ever united all of Europes ethnic Ger-
mans. The :,,,c division between West Germany, East Germany, and the Eastern ter-
ritories, now part of Poland and the Russian Federation, was thus only one more varia-
tion on a constant theme in German and European history. The political division of the
German nation has been the rule rather than the exception.
The Empire (18711918)
Until :;:, Europes German-speaking people were divided into many small principali-
ties, a few moderate-sized kingdoms, and two large yet divided major powers: Austria in
the southeast and Prussia in the north. The German Reich, or Empire, proclaimed in :;:
was a Prussian-dominated structure that did not include Austria. Nonetheless, it was by
far the most successful unication effort in German history. This empire was largely the
work of the Prussian prime minister and rst imperial chancellor, or head of government,
Otto von Bismarck, and was brought about through classical European power politics.
Prussia, under Bismarck, fought successful wars against Denmark (:o), Austria (:oo),
and France (:;c) to become the dominant power in northern and western Germany.
National unication did not, however, represent any success for German liberalism.
Nationalism, which historically has been closely associated with liberalism in countries
such as France and the United States, has been an illiberal force in the German political
experience. The empire was established through the fabled blood and iron policies of
Bismarck and not by Germanys parliamentary liberals. After :;:, most of them in fact
deferred to the Iron Chancellor and became more national than liberal.
During the imperial period, Germany became one of the worlds great powers. In-
dustrialization and urbanization advanced rapidly, as did the Reichs military power. Yet
the industrialists and other members of the expanding middle class did not challenge the
political authority of the traditional Prussian ruling elites: the military, the bureaucracy,
and the landed nobility. Germany had become a modern society ruled by a premodern,
traditional elite. The empire was an authoritarian political structure with some democra-
168 germany
tic features. While the kaiser appointed the chancellor and his government, a freely
elected parliament held the power of appropriations and could exert some inuence and
control over the executive. The upper house, however, which represented the states and
could block most lower-house initiatives, was effectively dominated by Prussia. And in
Prussia the voting system still gave a disproportionate inuence to the upper-middle and
upper classes. Military and foreign policy as well as internal security remained very much
the province of the traditional Prussian elite. Parliament could not prevent, for example,
Bismarcks campaigns of suppression against Catholics and socialists.
None of Bismarcks successors could maintain the delicate foreign and domestic equi-
librium that characterized Germany from :;: to :,c. In creating the Reich, Bismarck
and the Prussians made many enemies in Europe, especially France, which lost the
provinces of Alsace and Lorraine after the :;c Franco-Prussian War. To the east, Russia
feared German power. Bismarck was able to avoid a Franco-Russian alliance, but his suc-
cessors were not. With Kaiser Wilhelma romantic nationaliston the throne, Germany
after Bismarck sought to acquire overseas colonies and through the expansion of the eet
to challenge British naval superiority. By the turn of the century, this aggressive post-
Bismarckian foreign policy had managed to provoke Britain, France, and Russia to ally
against the Reich.
Internally, the paradox of a rapidly modernizing society controlled by premodern po-
litical elites continued to produce socioeconomic and political tensions. The expanding
working class provided a solid electoral base for the Social Democratic Party, which, how-
ever, was unable to achieve political inuence commensurate with its growing numerical
strength. The middle-class parties that also grew throughout the empire were unable and
probably unwilling to oppose the militarist and imperialist policies of the kaiser and his
chancellor.
Indeed, in many cases, Germanys middle-class parties deferred to the traditional
Prussian elites and supported measures such as the naval arms race with Great Britain.
Unlike their counterparts in Britain and France, the German middle classes did not exert
a moderating inuence on policy. Militant nationalism was one means by which the tra-
ditional elite could unify a divided society and maintain its power position.
The empire so carefully constructed by Bismarck did not survive World War I. As the
war dragged on after the failure of the initial German offensive, the many tensions and
contradictions in the socioeconomic and political structures of the empire became appar-
ent. Socialists, liberals, and Catholics began to question a conict that pitted Germany
against countries such as Britain and the United States, whose democratic values and con-
stitution they hoped someday to achieve in Germany. A victory on the battleeld would
strengthen a regime they had opposed in peacetime.
Severe rationing caused by the Allied blockade, mounting casualty lists, and the pres-
sures of wartime production began to take their toll on civilian morale, especially among
factory workers. When the armys spring offensive in :,: failed, the military, which in
the nal years of the war actually made most key economic and political decisions, ad-
vised the kaiser to abdicate and the parliamentary leadership to proclaim a republic and
negotiate a peace with the Western powers.
the context of german politics 169
The Weimar Republic (191933)
In January :,:, Germans elected delegates to a constituent assembly that met in the city
of Weimar to formulate a new constitution for the postwar republic. The delegates, many
of whom were distinguished legal scholars, produced a model democratic constitution,
one of the most advanced in the world. It contained an extensive catalogue of human
rights and provided numerous opportunities for popular participation through referen-
dums, petition, and the direct election of a strong president.
The republic, however, began under very unfavorable circumstances. Following the
departure of the kaiser, some German Marxists attempted to duplicate the Bolsheviks
success in Russia. Workers and soldiers councils were established in several cities, and
Bavaria experienced a short-lived socialist republic. A coalition of moderate social democ-
rats, liberals, and conservative nationalists crushed these abortive efforts at a communist
revolution. As a consequence, the working class remained divided throughout the
Weimar Republic between the Social Democratic Party, which supported the parliamen-
tary system, and the German Communist Party, which sought its overthrow. These events
also established a pattern of political violence that was to continue throughout the period.
In addition, the republic was identied from the beginning with defeat, national humili-
ation, and ineffectiveness.
The conservative nationalists, urged on by the military, propagated the myth that
Germany had not really lost World War I but had been stabbed in the back by the No-
vember criminals, identied as socialists, communists, liberals, and Jews. Large segments
of the bureaucracy and the judiciary also were more attached to the authoritarian values
of the empire than to those of the republic, and they acted accordingly.
The republics brief history was characterized by a steady polarization of politics be-
tween left and right. In the early elections of the :,:cs, pro-Republican partiesSocial
Democrats, the Center (Catholic) Party, and the Democratic Party (Liberals)had a
solid majority of seats. By the early :,,cs, the pro-Republican share of the vote had
dropped from about o, percent to only ,c percent. The Nazis on the right and the Com-
munists on the left together held over half of the parliamentary delegates. With most vot-
ers supporting parties opposed to the republic, it became impossible to build a stable gov-
erning coalition. Policymaking became increasingly the responsibility of the president,
who made extensive use of his power to issue executive decrees without regard to the
wishes of the fragmented parliament.
The worldwide depression of :,:, dealt the republic a blow from which it could not
recover. By :,,:, over a third of the workforce was unemployed, and the Nazis became
the largest party in the parliament. The German public wanted an effective government
that would do something. The democratic parties and their leaders could not meet
this demand.
The Third Reich and World War II (193345)
The only party that thrived on this crisis was the Nazi Party, under its leader, Adolf
Hitler. The Nazis, or National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), was one of
many nationalist and vlkisch (racialist) movements that had emerged after World War I.
170 germany
Hitlers leadership ability set it apart from the others. A powerful orator, Hitler was able
to appeal to a wide variety of voters and interests. He denounced the Versailles treaty that
had imposed harsh terms on Germany after World War I and the criminals who signed
it for Germany. To the unemployed, he promised jobs in the rebuilding of the nation
(rearmament and public works). To business interests, he represented a bulwark against
communism. To farmers and small businessmen, caught between big labor and business,
he promised recognition of their proper position in German society and protection
against Marxist labor and Jewish plutocrats.
In January :,,, President von Hindenburg asked Hitler to form a government. The
conservatives around the president believed they could easily control and handle Hitler
once he had responsibility. Two months later, the Nazis pushed an Enabling Act through
the parliament that essentially gave Hitler total power; the parliament, constitution, and
civil liberties were suspended. The will of the Fhrer (leader) became the supreme law and
authority. By :,,, almost all areas of German life had become synchronized (gleich-
geschaltet) to the Nazi pattern.
There is little doubt that most Germans until at least the start of World War II sup-
ported Hitler. A survey conducted in :,,:, six years after the war, found that a majority of
Germans less than forty-ve years of age still stated that the prewar years of the Third
Reich (:,,,,,) were the best that Germany had experienced in this century.
1
These
were years of economic growth and at least a surface prosperity. Unemployment was vir-
tually eliminated; ination was checked; and the economy, fueled by expenditures for
rearmament and public works, boomed. That during these good years thousands of
Germans were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered in concentration camps, and hun-
dreds of thousands of German Jews were systematically persecuted, was apparently of mi-
nor importance to most citizens in comparison with the economic and policy successes of
the regime. Most Germans, at least between :,,, and :,,,, were willing to give up the
democratic political order and the liberal society and accept the regimes racism and per-
secution of political opponents in exchange for economic prosperity, social stability, and a
resurgence of national pride.
World War II in Europe was, in the words of a former chancellor of the Federal Repub-
lic, Helmut Schmidt, totally started, led, and lost by Adolf Hitler acting in the name of the
German people.
2
The world paid for this war with a total of ,, million dead, including
million Jews and other political and racial victims murdered in concentration camps. The
most ruthless and inhuman Nazi actions were directed against European Jewry. From the
beginning of the Nazi movement, the Jews were regarded as the prime cause of all the mis-
fortune, unhappiness, and disappointments endured by the German people. Hitler in his
autobiography, Mein Kampf, written in the early :,:cs, repeated in print his oft-spoken
conviction that Jews were not humans, nor even subhumans, but rather disease-causing
bacilli in the body of the nation that must be exterminated. Unfortunately, at the time, few
took his ranting seriously, yet Hitler and the Nazis remained rm to this policy after they
came to power. From :,,, on, rst in Germany and then throughout the conquered lands
of Europe, the Nazis systematically began a process that denied the Jews their dignity, eco-
nomic livelihood, humanity, and nally, by the early :,cs, their right physically to exist.
The nal solution to the Jewish problem meant the murder of millions of Jewish
men, women, and children, rst by special SS killing units, German military personnel,
and militarized police detachments and later at extermination camps especially con-
structed for this purpose in isolated sections of Europe. Hitler and other leading Nazis
were able to carry out this holocaust in part because of deeply rooted traditions of anti-
Semitism in Germany and other parts of Europe. As recent research has shown, many
ordinary Germans who were neither Nazis nor members of the SS willingly participated
in the torture and murder of innocent Jews. They believed, as did Hitler, that Jews were a
mortal threat to Germany that had to be eliminated.
3
Only the total military defeat of the Third Reich by the United States, Britain,
France, the Soviet Union, and forces from other allied nations in May :,, prevented the
Nazis from exterminating European Jewry. The remnant that remained amounted to less
than :c percent of the prewar Jewish population of Europe. The Federal Republic has ac-
cepted legal and moral responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era. It is, of course, im-
possible to atone for the Holocaust. Nevertheless, since the early :,,cs the Federal Repub-
lic has paid almost $c billion in reparations to the state of Israel and Jewish victims of
Nazism. In :,,c the rst and last freely elected government in the German Democratic
Republic acknowledged East Germanys responsibility for the Holocaust and apologized
to the world Jewish community and the state of Israel for the refusal of the communist
regime to deal with this issue.
For many Germans, the real distress began after the war. During the war, the Nazis,
mindful of the effects of Allied blockades during World War I, had gone to extensive
lengths to ensure a relatively well-fed, housed, and clothed population. That this meant
the ruthless exploitation of regions conquered by the German armies was a matter of mi-
nor concern to the Nazi leadership. Military defeat ended this supply of foodstuffs, raw
materials, and labor from the occupied territories. The Germans after :,, were put in
the same position as the populations in other European countries. In :,, and :,o, the
average caloric intake was set at only a third of the daily requirement. In large cities, such
as Berlin and Dsseldorf, c to ,c percent of all houses and apartments were uninhabit-
able; in Cologne, a city with a population of ;,c,ccc before the war, only c,ccc people
remained during the winter of :,,o. Heating fuel was also in critically short supply.
Before the war, the coalmines of the Ruhr had an average daily production of cc,ccc
tons; in :,,o, this dropped to only :,,ccc tons per day.
The end of World War II meant the end of Germany as a political entity. The victo-
rious Allies returned some of the territory conquered by the Nazis to its prewar owners
(Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Austria, France) and divided the remainder into
zones of military occupation. But by the late :,cs, the onset of the Cold War dashed any
hopes that the wartime coalition could agree on a single postwar German state. In :,,
the U.S., British, and French zones of occupation became the Federal Republic of Ger-
many, or West Germany, with its capital in the small city of Bonn on the Rhine River. In
the same year the Soviet zone of occupation became the German Democratic Republic,
or East Germany, with East Berlin as its capital.
172 germany
The Federal Republic
During the past ve decades the Federal Republic has developed into a strong, dynamic
democracy. Unlike the Weimar Republic, the Federal Republic has from the beginning
been identied with economic prosperity and foreign and domestic policy successes.
There is also considerable evidence that a consensus on democratic values and norms has
developed during this period. The vast majority of the German population supports this
system and believes in its fundamental norms: individual freedom, the rule of law, civil
liberties, free political competition, and representative institutions. In this sense, Ger-
many and the Germans have changed.
The history of the Federal Republic can be divided into ve rather distinct phases.
The rst, from :,, to :,o:, was characterized by an emphasis on economic reconstruc-
tion and the stabilization of the new political system both internally and externally
through German participation in the European Community and the Atlantic Alliance
(NATO). This stabilization occurred within the context of the Cold War. The Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) and the republics rst chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, domi-
nated politics during this period. The construction of the Berlin Wall in :,o: marked the
end of this period. The Cold War foreign policy of strength had failed to reunify Ger-
many or roll back communism in Eastern Europe. The search for alternatives to con-
frontation had begun.
The second phase encompassed most of the :,ocs and ended with the election of
:,o, when, for the rst time in the Federal Republics history, the Christian Democratic
Union was put into the opposition and was replaced by a government led by the Social
Democratic Party (SPD). This phase was marked by a search for new domestic and for-
eign policy directions. Many domestic areas, such as education, urban development, eco-
nomic planning, and social welfare programs, relatively neglected during the hectic years
of reconstruction, now moved up on the political agenda. The :,ocs also witnessed the
beginning of the increase in mass political participation that continued throughout the
:,;cs. The student protest movement, the extra parliamentary opposition spawned by
dissatisfaction with the :,oo Grand Coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD,
and the beginnings of a grassroots citizens action group movement (Brgerinitiativen)
were all expressions of this growing politicization.
The third phase began with the social-liberal coalition of :,o,. The politics of inter-
nal reform, the modernization and expansion of the republics social security and welfare
system, liberalized divorce and abortion legislation, criminal law reform, and worker
codetermination in industry were major domestic developments in this period. Although
Germany, like its Western neighbors, experienced an economic recession following the
rst oil price shock in :,;,, the levels of unemployment and ination remained well be-
low those of other industrial societies. More important, the :,;;o recession did not
produce any signicant antisystem political movements. In foreign policy, reconciliation
and normalization with Germanys Eastern neighbors were continued and extended
through treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland (:,;c), East Germany (:,;:), Czecho-
slovakia (:,;,), and an additional agreement with Poland (:,;o). The second oil price
shock in :,;, sent the Federal Republic into another major economic recession, the worst
since the Great Depression of the :,,cs. High unemployment, ination, and rising state
decits took their toll on the social-liberal coalition, which collapsed in :,:.
The fourth phase in the republics history began with the return to power of the
Christian Democrats in :,: and lasted until the unication with East Germany in :,,c.
Together with their Free Democratic partners, they promised a Wende, or fundamental
change, especially in the republics domestic policies. Social programs were cut, incentives
to business were increased, and government budget decits declined. This was a modest
German version of the supply-side economics practiced by Prime Minister Thatcher in
Great Britain and the Reagan administration in the United States. But the new govern-
ment also attempted to turn Germany away from what it regarded as the excessive per-
missiveness and liberalism of the social-liberal era. Traditional values of family, country,
thrift, work, and duty were emphasized, at least by the new chancellor, Helmut Kohl. Yet
the trends toward increased politicization and mass protest evident since the late :,ocs
continued. In :,, the rst new political party in almost thirty years, the Greens, entered
the national parliament. Their success was due above all to the new politics of environ-
mental protection, womens rights, and disarmament. This phase saw the Federal Repub-
lic assume a higher prole in international relations. In :,, West Germany strongly op-
posed the policies of the United States over the question of the modernization and
deployment of new short-range missiles in West Germany.
The fth and present phase in the Federal Republics development began with the
collapse of the East German communist regime in :,,,c and the admission of the ve
East German states into the federation in :,,c. These dramatic changes were part of the
larger disintegration of communism throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union and are closely connected with the reform policies of former Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev. No Eastern European communist regime was more opposed to dem-
ocratic reform than East Germany because, unlike Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Hungary,
East Germany was not a nation. Indeed, its only source of identity and legitimacy was its
claim to be the only socialist German state. East German leaders believed that if this
commitment to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism were to be diluted or abandoned, as
Gorbachev seemed to be proposing, it would eventually lead to demands for unication
and the end of the East German state. They were right.
In the summer and fall of :,, East Germans on vacation used the newly opened
border between Hungary and Austria to escape to the West. Later, the Great Escape
would also take place via Czechoslovakia and even Poland. Between May and September
:,,, over ,c,ccc East Germans had ed, the largest number since the construction of
the Berlin Wall in :,o:. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind began to demonstrate and
organize new, but illegal, opposition political parties. By October :,,, when Gorbachev
arrived in East Berlin to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the regime, an addi-
tional oc,ccc East Germans had departed. Gorbachev told the aging and ailing East Ger-
man leader, Erich Honecker, that the time for reform had come and that life punishes
those who arrive too late. His warning fell on deaf ears.
The demonstrations continued as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in
174 germany
Leipzig, East Berlin and other cities, chanting Wir sind das Volk! (We are the people!)
and demanding reform. For the rst time in German history, a grassroots democratic rev-
olution was under way. By mid-October, Honecker was forced to resign. On , November
:,,, in a desperate attempt to acquire some popular support, the new communist leader-
ship opened the countrys borders to West Germany, including the Berlin Wall. As the
world watched, millions of East Germans ooded into Berlin and West Germany. But the
vast majority returned and now called for a unied GermanyWir sind ein Volk! (We
are one people!) was added to their demands.
By the end of :,,, the East German state was on the verge of collapse. The countrys
rst (and last) free elections were set for March :,,c. West German parties moved quickly
to organize the East German electorate. At the election, about c percent of the voters sup-
ported parties advocating a speedy unication. In May :,,c, the two German states con-
cluded a treaty that unied their monetary, economic, and social security systems (see table
::.:). On : July :,,c the West German mark (DM) became the sole legal currency for all of
Germany. On , October :,,c, less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Ger-
many ceased to exist and, reconstituted as ve states (Lnder), joined the Federal Republic.
Europes : million Germans were once again united in a single state. But unlike the Bis-
Table 11.1 German Unity, 198990: A Chronology
SummerFall 1989 East Germans ee through Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to the West
October 1989 Mass demonstrations in Leipzig and other cities
9 November 1989 Opening of the Berlin Wall
13 November 1989 Hans Modrow becomes prime minister of East Germany
24 November 1989 Communist Party gives up its monopoly of power
28 November 1989 Kohl announces 10-point plan for unity
3 December 1989 Communist Party leadership resigns
12 December 1989 Round-table talks (Communists and democratic opposition) in East Germany
19 December 1989 Kohl and Modrow agree on a community of treaties
1 January 1990 Demonstrations in Leipzig demand German unity
2 January 1990 Modrow announces plan for unity
18 March 1990 First free elections in East Germany; Kohl-led Alliance for Germany is the
strongest party
12 April 1990 Lothar De Maiziere (CDU) becomes East German prime minister
5 May 1990 Beginning of talks between the four World War II powers and the two German
states over unication and the status of Berlin
1 July 1990 Currency union between the two German states; the West German DM
becomes the sole currency
1418 July 1990 Kohl-Gorbachev summit in the Soviet Union
23 August 1990 GDR parliament agrees to join the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990
12 September 1990 Conclusion of 2 + 4 talks; World War II allies agree to give up all rights in
Germany and Berlin
3 October 1990 GDR joins the Federal Republic; Day of Unity a national holiday
2 December 1990 First all-German election. Kohl-led governing coalition is returned with an
increased majority
marckian Reich or Hitlers Third Reich, German unity in :,,c was achieved without vio-
lence and with the full support of its neighbors in Eastern and Western Europe.
The economic, social, and political integration of these new East German states into
the Federal Republic is a major policy problem. In the present phase Germany must also
adapt to a new role as Western and Central Europes strongest power. While the Federal
Republic remains committed to the Western Alliance and is rmly embedded in the Eu-
ropean Union, it must accept more responsibility in the international arena, especially in
its relationships with the newer democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. The days when the Federal Republic was content to be an economic giant but a
political dwarf are past.
Federalism
Germany, unlike Britain, France, Italy or Sweden, is a federal state in which certain gov-
ernmental functions are reserved to the constituent Lnder (states). Each of the sixteen
states has a constitution and parliament. The states have fundamental responsibility for
education, the mass media, and internal security and order (police power). In addition,
the bureaucracies of the Lnder administer most laws passed at the national level. As table
::.: shows, German states vary widely in area, population, and socioeconomic structure.
The three city states of Hamburg, Berlin, and Bremen are largely Protestant and indus-
trial commercial areas. They have generally been strongholds of the Social Democrats
throughout the postwar period. The two other northern Protestant states are
Schleswig-Holstein, which is relatively rural and small town, and Lower Saxony, which is
more balanced between urban-industrial and rural-agrarian activity. Politically,
Schleswig-Holsteins politics have been generally in the hands of the Christian Demo-
crats. In :,, however, following a major Watergate-style dirty tricks scandal, the Social
Democrats won an absolute majority for the rst time in the states history. Lower Saxony
has had a more competitive style of party politics with relatively frequent alternations be-
tween Socialist and Christian Democratic-led governments.
The most populous state is North RhineWestphalia, which contains over :c per-
cent of the Federal Republics : million inhabitants. A heavily industrialized and urban-
ized state, North RhineWestphalia has a relative balance between Catholics and Protes-
tants. Its politics have been largely controlled by the Social Democrats during the past
fteen years. Another very industrialized, religiously balanced, western Land is Hesse,
which has been ruled by Social Democrats for most of the postwar period.
The remaining Western statesthe Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarlandare
heavily Catholic. The Rhineland is less industrialized than the much smaller Saarland,
which has had an extensive, but now declining, steel industry. In the Saar, the Social
Democrats were in the minority until :,,, when they won their rst state election since
:,,. In :,,, they returned to the opposition. The Rhineland-Palatinate, until :,,:, had
been governed continuously by Christian Democraticled coalitions. The current Social
DemocraticFree Democratic coalition is the rst in the states history.
West Germanys sunbelt is composed of the two states of Bavaria and Baden-
Wrttemberg. Bavaria is heavily Catholic. It is the only large German Land whose borders
176 germany
were restored intact following the war. It terms itself a free state with its own strong his-
torical traditions. Separatism in various forms has at times been a signicant force in
Bavarian politics. It has been governed without interruption since :,o by the Christian
Social Union (CSU), the sister party of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); that is,
the CDU does not contest elections in Bavaria. Historically rural and small town in char-
acter, Bavaria has become an increasingly industrialized and urbanized state in the post-
war period. It is the center of Germanys aerospace industry.
Baden-Wrttemberg in the past twenty years has had the most dynamic economy of
any state. It is the center of Germanys computer, robotics, and other high-tech industries
and the home of Daimler-Benz and Porsche. Its high rate of economic growth contrasts
with the more sluggish economies of many northern areas. The Christian Democrats
have been the dominant party in this state.
The New Eastern States
The ve new states that joined the Federal Republic in :,,c are all relatively small. The
largest state, Saxony, with about , million residents, is only the sixth largest of the sixteen
states. Saxony is also the major industrial center of the former East Germany, accounting
for about ,, percent of the areas gross national product. Before :,,, Saxony was a strong-
Table 11.2 The States of the Federal Republic
:))) Area Population
population (thousands per sq.
1. Area and Population Capital (millions) of sq. km.) km.
North RhineWestphalia Dsseldorf 18.0 34.1 527
Bavaria Munich 12.0 70.6 170
Baden-Wrttemberg Stuttgart 10.4 35.8 291
Lower Saxony Hannover 7.8 47.6 165
Hesse Wiesbaden 6.0 21.1 286
Saxony Dresden 4.5 18.4 246
Berlin 3.4 .9 3,846
Rhineland-Palatinate Mainz 4.0 19.8 202
Saxony-Anhalt Magdeburg 2.7 20.4 132
Schleswig-Holstein Kiel 2.8 15.8 175
Brandenburg Potsdam 2.6 29.5 87
Thuringia Erfurt 2.5 16.2 153
MecklenburgWest Pomerania Schwerin 1.8 23.2 78
Hamburg - 1.7 .8 2,257
Saar Saarbrcken 1.1 2.6 421
Bremen .7 .4 1,667
Total or average 82.1 357.2 230
Continued...
Source: Federal Statistical Ofce (Wiesbaden).
hold of the Social Democrats, but the Christian Democrats won an absolute majority at
the states rst free election in :,,c and were reelected in :,, and :,,. The strip-mining
of lignite, an outmoded chemical industry, and decades of neglect have left the state with
major environmental problems.
The remaining four states are all smaller and less industrialized than Saxony. Its
neighbor, Saxony-Anhalt, has the shortest history as an independent political entity. The
state, which contains some of Germanys most fertile farmland, is currently governed by
the Social Democrats. This SPD government, however, does not have a majority of leg-
islative seats and depends on the former Communist Party, now named the Party of Dem-
ocratic Socialism (PDS), for its programs to be passed. Thuringia, with :., million inhab-
itants, has a more mixed economy than Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt. It was the center of the
former East Germanys high-tech microelectronics industry. The Christian Democrats
currently govern this state. Brandenburg, which was once the core province of Prussia, is
a sparsely populated state in the northeast. Until :,:c Berlin was a province of Branden-
burg; the city lies within its borders, and the two states have been discussing a merger.
Since :,,, it has also been governed by the coalition of Social Democrats and Free Dem-
ocrats. The smallest of the new states in population with less than : million residents is
the coastal state of MecklenburgWest Pomerania. This region is primarily agricultural,
178 germany
Table 11.2 (continued)
Total Percentage of Per capita
II. Gross national product (:)),) ($ billions) total ($
a
)
North RhineWestphalia 698.0 22.8 28,943
Bavaria 526.0 17.2 32,713
Baden-Wrttemberg 449.0 14.7 32,174
Lower Saxony 279.0 9.1 26,726
Hesse 306.0 10.0 38,065
Saxony 84.0 2.7 15,827
Berlin 123.0 4.0 28,374
Rhineland-Palatinate 134.0 4.4 25,777
Saxony-Anhalt 48.0 1.6 15,623
Schleswig-Holstein 98.0 3.2 27,112
Brandenburg 50.0 1.6 16,759
Thuringia 44.0 1.4 15,502
MecklenburgWest Pomerania 32.0 1.0 14,975
Hamburg 119.0 3.9 52,574
Saar 39.0 1.3 26,359
Bremen 35.0 1.1 38,750
Total or average 2,313.6 100.0 27,265
Continued...
a
DM :.,c $:.cc.
but it has a shipping industry that could become competitive in the international market-
place. In :,, the Social Democrats, in a controversial decision, formed a governing coali-
tion with the former Communist Party, the PDS. This marked the rst time since uni-
cation that the PDS had assumed power at the state level.
Geography
Unied Germany comprises about three-fourths of the preWorld War II territory of the
German Reich. The remainder is now part of Poland or the Russian Federation. With a
total area of about :,,ccc square miles, the Federal Republic is roughly half the size of
Texas. Its population of about : million, however, makes Germany one of Europes
largest and most densely populated states. Since :,,, the population has grown through
(:) the inux between :,, and :,o: of : million refugees and expellees from Germanys
former eastern territories and East Germany; (:) the migration of foreign workers, which
began in the late :,,cs and reached a high point of about , million workers in :,;,; and
(,) the addition of :o million East Germans by unication. Since the late :,cs, almost :
million ethnic Germans, largely from Poland, the Soviet Union, and other areas in East-
ern Europe, have resettled in West Germany.
During the past two decades, however, the Federal Republic has had one of Europes
Table 11.2 (continued)
Workforce in :oo:
Foreign agriculture Unemployment Roman governing
residents (:))) (:)))) Catholics party or
III. Workforce, religion, politics % % % % coalition
North RhineWestphalia 8 2 9.0 51 SPD-Green
Bavaria 9 4 7.9 69 CSU
Baden-Wrttemberg 12 3 7.1 46 CDU-FDP
Lower Saxony 6 4 11.5 19 SPD
Hesse 14 2 9.1 33 CDU-FDP
Saxony 2 3 18.9 5 CDU
Berlin 14 16.3 11 SPD
Rhineland-Palatinate 8 3 9.2 55 SPD-FDP
Saxony-Anhalt 2 4 21.8 8 SPD
Schleswig-Holstein 5 3 10.7 6 SPD-Green
Brandenburg 2 5 18.3 5 SPD-CDU
Thuringia 1 4 17.0 9 CDU
MecklenburgWest Pomerania 1 6 20.1 5 SPD-PDS
Hamburg 18 11.2 8 SPD-Green
Saar 7 11.4 73 CDU
Bremen 12 15.2 10 SPD-CDU
Total or average 9 3 11.6 36
and the worlds lowest birthrates. Indeed, deaths have outnumbered births in most of
these years, and whatever growth in population West Germany has experienced has been
the result of foreign workers and their much higher birthrates. Between :,;c and :,;,
the native German population actually declined by :., million, while the number of for-
eign residents increased by :.; million. If these trends continue, the native German popu-
lation will decline to ;c million by the year :ccc. In East Germany following unication,
the birthrate dropped by almost oc percent. Uncertainty about the future, the massive
loss of jobs, and the end of special state subsidies for children and child-care programs
were the major factors in the decline. One East German state in :,, even offered a $o,c
grant to the parents of each newborn child.
The effects of World War II are still noticeable in the age and sex distribution of the
population. The low wartime birthrate and casualty losses have left some age groups
(,,,, ,c,,, and oco,) underrepresented in the population relative to other groups.
Because of the war, women are still in the majority (,: percent), and almost oc percent of
persons over sixty-ve are females.
Religion
Most Germans are born into one of two churches: the Roman Catholic or the Evangeli-
cal Protestant (Lutheran).
4
Since the Reformation, Protestants and Catholics have been di-
vided along regional lines. The east and north are predominantly Protestant; in the south
and west adherents of Roman Catholicism are in the majority. Historically the respective
secular rulers (princes) in these areas acted as protectors of the faith in their kingdoms,
thus making the churches dependent on state authority for their survival. The close, de-
pendent relationship with the state meant that both churches, but especially the Protes-
tant, which has no international ties comparable to those of the Roman Catholics, were
conservative, status quooriented institutions. The separation of church and state, funda-
mental in the political tradition of the United States, is thus alien to the German political
tradition; both churches occupy a privileged position in German society and politics.
The Lutheran and Catholic churches are largely nanced through a church tax, a sur-
charge of about percent on the individual income tax. The tax is collected by the state
via withholding and is transferred free of charge to the churches treasuries. This tax en-
sures them of a generous and ination-proof income. The Cologne archdiocese of the Ro-
man Catholic Church, for example, is the richest in the world. An individual can escape
the church tax only by formally leaving the church, a procedure that most West Germans
have declined to follow. Yet between :,;c and :ccc, the proportion of Germans electing
to contract out of the church tax increased from percent to over :c percent. Religious
instruction in public schools by teachers acceptable to the churches is paid from public
funds, and the state also pays the salaries of some church ofcials.
Although formal afliation with the established churches is generally automatic and
hence high, most West Germans and especially Protestants are religiously not very active.
Only about :, percent of Protestants and :, percent of Catholics report regular atten-
dance at church services. Church attendance is strongly related to gender and age, with
older females being especially active.
180 germany
In spite of this at best moderate level of religiosity in postwar Germany, the political
position and inuence of the churches have been strong. The postwar occupation author-
ities viewed the churches as relatively untainted by Nazism and gave them preferential
treatment. In addition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the dominant political
party from :,, to :,o,, was generally successful in projecting an image as a political
movement that would govern with some regard to Christian principles. Cynics and polit-
ical opponents strongly disputed this CDU claim to be more concerned with religion and
morality than other parties, but the CDU has denitely enjoyed the favor of, especially,
the Catholic Church. While in power, the CDU reciprocated by being particularly sensi-
tive to the issues such as state support of church schools and strict divorce and abortion
laws stressed by the church. This close CDU/CSU Catholic church relationship also
compelled the Social Democrats by the late :,,cs to seek at least a normalized, less con-
ictual relationship with the church.
Religion in East Germany
Historically, the regions that constituted East Germany were predominantly (about ,c
percent) Protestant. The communist regime imposed after :,, at rst tried to eliminate
the churches as independent social institutions. Funds for the upkeep of church build-
ings, seminaries, and publications, as well as the salaries of pastors, were steadily reduced.
Religious instruction was banned from the schools and replaced by courses on scientic
atheism. As a substitute for the traditional conrmation, the Communist Party instituted
a Jugendweihe ceremony in which young people pledged delity to socialism and eternal
friendship with the Soviet Union. Failure to participate usually meant that the young per-
son would be denied admission to a university-track secondary school program. This anti-
religious policy of the regime had some success. Only :: percent of East Germans, as
compared to o: percent of West Germans, believe there is a God, and belief in a life af-
ter death is held by : percent in the East and ,: percent in the West.
5
About oc percent
of East Germans report no religious afliation as compared to :, percent in West Ger-
many. About ,, percent of East Germans remain afliated with the Protestant church,
which throughout all the turmoil of the past forty years still maintained close ties with its
West German counterpart; about , percent are practicing Catholics.
The addition of East Germany to the Federal Republic in :,,c has made it a more
secular society. The proportion of Germans with no ties to the churches has increased to
about :: percent. Whether East Germans who left the churches because of political pres-
sures will now return is an open question.
Social and Economic Structure
Throughout its history West Germany has enjoyed a relatively continuous pattern of in-
creased economic growth and prosperity. While not immune to the ups and downs of the
business cycle and the world economy, West Germanys economic record cannot be
matched by any other large, advanced, industrial society, with the possible exception of
Japan. The countrys four postwar recessions in :,ooo;, :,;;o, :,::, and :,,:,,
were mild by prewar German and international standards.
The last recession, from :,,: to :,,,, was the most severe and almost brought down
the government of Helmut Kohl in October :,,. Unemployment grew to almost mil-
lion, over , percent of the workforce, and the economy in :,,, failed to grow for the rst
time in eight years. The recovery from this recession was just enough and just in time to
reelect the government, but economic growth in the :,,cs was sluggish and insufcient
to make any serious inroads into unemployment. Nonetheless, when compared to its Eu-
ropean neighbors, Germany remains the strongest economy on the Continent.
What has this economic performance meant for the average German in the past
half-century? Table ::., shows the average net yearly wage for German employees, blue
and white collar, from :,, to :,,,. In :,, the net annual wage, after taxes and social se-
curity deductions, for a German employee was about $:,cc. By :,, this had increased
to about $:,,cc, and in :,,, the net annual wage of a German worker was about
$:c,,c. Thus there has been an increase of almost :,,cc percent in net wages. In terms of
buying power (i.e., net wages adjusted for ination), the increase has been over ,c per-
cent. This is the highest real increase in wages and salaries among the worlds ten major
industrialized countries.
Urbanization
Most Germans live in towns and cities with populations greater than :c,ccc; over half of
the : million inhabitants live on less than :c percent of the land. There are nine major
urban areas whose population exceeds : million: the Rhine-Ruhr region between
the cities of Dsseldorf and Dortmund, the Rhine-Main, or Frankfurt, area, Berlin,
Stuttgart, Hamburg, Munich, the Rhine-Neckar region, and in the East the Leipzig and
Dresden regions.
Germany is one of the worlds major economic powers. Its per capita income, indus-
trial production, and currency reserves are among the worlds highest. It consistently
ranks along with the United States and Japan as one of the worlds largest trading nations.
182 germany
Table ::., Income by Occupation, 1998 (in percentages)
Net monthly income
a
Less than More than
$:,:oo
b
$:,:oo:,ooo $:,ooo,,,,o $,,,oo
Occupational group West East West East West East West East
Independents (owners,
directors of enterprises,
free professionals, farmers) 7 14 15 20 27 34 49 32
White collar, civil servants 7 10 20 25 35 41 38 24
Manual workers 9 13 33 33 44 46 15 10
Source: Federal Statistical Ofce, ed. Datenreport :))) (Bonn: Bundeszentrale fr Politische Bildung, 2000),
113.
a
After deduction for taxes and social insurance contributions, approximately 4050 percent.
b
DM 1.50 $1.00
The economic system is mixed with private property and free enterprise coexisting with
substantial state involvement. It is also a social market economy in which an elaborate so-
cial welfare system is supported by both management and labor, as well as by all signi-
cant political parties.
Industrial production is the largest single contributor to the countrys gross national
product. A look at table ::. shows that the dominant industrial enterprises are concen-
trated in the electronics, automobile, chemical, and energy elds. White-collar, technical,
and service employees now constitute the largest occupational group. Between :,,c and
:ccc, the proportion of the workforce in these occupations increased from :, percent to
, percent. Industrial workers, once the largest group, now constitute ,, percent of the
workforce. The remainder is composed of those in independent nonmanual occupations
(small businessmen, shopkeepers), independent professionals (physicians, lawyers), and
farmers.
The fruits of the economic system have enabled the vast majority of Germans to
achieve a high standard of living. In spite of ination, the disposable income of all occu-
pational groups, including industrial workers, has steadily risen during the past forty
years. Foreign vacations, automobiles, television sets, and modern appliances and gadgets
are now commonplace in most German families.
Nonetheless, inequality is very much a characteristic of German society. The same
manual worker who is satiated with consumer goods is much less likely to own a home or
apartment in his lifetime. His or her children in all likelihood will not receive a university
education. In the West almost half of the independent group had net monthly incomes of
over $,,,cc in :,, as compared to , percent of the white-collar employees and only
:, percent of manual workers. While only :c percent of white-collar employees had net
monthly incomes of less than $:,ccc, over c percent of manual workers were in this cat-
egory.
In the East income differences were substantially less in :,, than in West Germany.
Table 11.4 The Ten Largest Firms in the Federal Republic (by gross sales)
Enterprise in DM billion
Daimler-Benz (motor vehicles, electronics) 104
Siemens (electronics) 89
Volkswagen (motor vehicles) 88
VEBA
a
(energy) 66
RWE
a
(energy) 53
Hoechst (chemicals) 52
BASF (chemicals) 46
BMW (motor vehicles) 46
Bayer (chemicals) 45
Thyssen (steel) 39
Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 July 1996, 16.
a
Partially under state ownership.
Both independents and white-collar employees had similar net monthly incomes. About
o percent of manual workers had monthly incomes in the East of less than $:,ccc, as
compared to about one-third of the white-collar and independent groups. The incomes
of East German independents and white-collar employees were actually closer to those of
West German manual workers than to their nonmanual colleagues in the West. As eco-
nomic development proceeds in the former East Germany, these regional differences
should decline (see chapter :,).
There is even greater inequality in the ownership of capital resources: land, stocks,
bonds, securities, savings, and life insurance. In :,,;, the last year for which these data are
available, the top :.; percent of the population owned almost ,c percent of these re-
sources and the top :c percent controlled almost half of the nations productive wealth.
The bottom half of Germanys population held only :c percent of its wealth, usually in
the form of lower-interest savings accounts or life-insurance policies.
6
There has been lit-
tle change in this general pattern over the past twenty years. This indicates that German
governments, including those led by the Social Democrats, have not pursued policies de-
signed to redistribute the countrys wealth.
These data show that beneath the surface prosperity of the Federal Republic are substan-
tial differences in personal wealth. This distribution of capital reects in part the postwar de-
cision of German and Allied occupation elites to take the free-market route to economic re-
covery. West German political leaders of all major parties, even the Social Democrats, have
generally sought to create a favorable climate for investment capital through low tax rates on
prots and dividends, as well as subsidies and tax benets for new plants and equipment. The
currency reform of :,, for example, clearly favored capital-holding groups. Germans with
savings accounts or cash in old Reichsmarks received only about : new mark (DM) for every
: old marks. Thus millions of lower- and lower-middle-class Germans saw their savings
largely wiped out. Those with stocks, securities, and land lost nothing.
Education
The German educational system has generally reected and reinforced this socioeco-
nomic inequality. Traditionally this system was designed to give a basic, general education
to all and advanced academic training to only a few. Most German education is still struc-
tured along three tracks. At about the age of six, all children enter a four-year primary
school. But in most states, after the fourth year, with most children at about the age of
ten, the tracking process begins.
:. About :c percent of all children will attend a general secondary school for an
additional six years. After this, at about the age of sixteen or seventeen, they will
enter the workforce, in most cases as apprentices, and attend vocational school
part-time for about three years.
:. A second group, comprising about :, percent of a given age group, will attend
an intermediate school (Realschule) for six to eight years. The Realschule
combines academic and job-oriented training. Medium-level careers in business
and administration usually require a middle-school educational background.
184 germany
,. The remaining school-age children will pursue an academic or university-level
educational program. Attendance at an academic high school (Gymnasium) or
comprehensive school (Gesamtschule) for up to nine years culminates in the
Abitur (a degree roughly comparable to a U.S. junior college diploma) and the
right to attend a university.
It is possible for children to change tracks, especially during the rst two or three
years, which are considered an orientation period. Most students, however, do not switch,
and the decision made by their parents and teachers after four to six years of school is usu-
ally decisive for their educational and occupational future.
The entire system has had a class bias. The Gymnasium and the university are still
largely preserves of the middle and upper-middle classes, and the majority of children in
the general vocational track come from working-class backgrounds. One study, con-
ducted in :,c, found that the children of government ofcials were twenty times more
likely to attend a Gymnasium than were the children of manual workers; the children of
self-employed and white-collar employees also were much more likely to be in the aca-
demic track than were the offspring of manual workers.
7
But the trend since the :,,cs has
been toward a reduction of this bias. Between :,,, and :,,, for example, the proportion
of children from working-class families enrolled at universities increased from percent
to :c percent. This is in part the result of a large enrollment increase in the Gymnasia. In
the past twenty years, attendance in the university preparatory tracks has tripled.
German education also has no lack of critics. There has been no more controversial
policy area in the past twenty years than education. Critics and reformers emphasize, in
addition to the class bias, the systems inexibility: the difculty children have in chang-
ing tracks as their interests and values change. The key element in plans for reforming
and restructuring education is the merger of the three-tracked secondary system into a
single comprehensive school (Gesamtschule). Instead of tracking after the fourth grade, all
children would remain in the same school for an additional six years, or until about the
age of sixteen. At that point, the tracking process would begin. The purpose of the com-
prehensive school plan is to provide more equality of educational opportunity and social
mobility. Since :,o,, comprehensive schools have been introduced in all states, but more
extensively in those governed by social democratic or liberal political parties. Conserva-
tives have generally opposed comprehensive schools, citing their concerns about a decline
in educational standards and their support for the traditional Gymnasium. Politics thus
has a lot to do with access to the various types of schools. In Bavaria, where the traditional
structure supported by the conservative Christian Social Union is still dominant, less than
:c percent of children in :,,, attended the Gymnasium, as compared to , percent of the
children in Hamburg, a city-state where the Social Democrats have been the major party.
8
Education in East Germany
In the past decade the East German states have restructured their educational systems to
the West German pattern. This has been a massive task involving the establishment of
new schools, curriculums, textbooks, and teacher retraining. The communist system, in
addition to the standard academic subjects, included extensive programs designed to in-
doctrinate young people with Marxist-Leninist ideology and thus produce the new So-
cialist man. The inuence of the Communist Party was pervasive. Most teachers and al-
most all school administrators were in the party. Communist youth organizations,
modeled on their counterparts in the former Soviet Union, were present in all schools.
Most teachers were placed on probationary status for as long as ve years. Many ad-
ministratorsprincipals and assistant principalswere dismissed or demoted. By :ccc
about c,ccc of the :,,ccc East German teachers had been either replaced or retired.
Many of these teachers, however, were let go for nancial and not political reasons. The
East German schools, like many other sectors of the state administration, were overstaffed.
Political Attitudes
In :,,, few if any observers in Germany or elsewhere gave the Federal Republic much of
a chance to survive, much less prosper. The decision to establish a West German state was
made by neither the German political leadership nor the German electorate in any refer-
endum; it was the decision of the three victorious Western powers in World War IIthe
United States, Britain, and France. The Federal Republic was a product of the foreign
policies of these countries, which sought to counter what they perceived as a growing So-
viet threat in Central and Western Europe. The Germans living in the American, British,
and French occupation zones thus had imposed on them by their conquerors a new polit-
ical system, which they were to regard as their own. Moreover, the new state was to be a
liberal parliamentary democracy, a form of government that Germany had tried between
:,: and :,,, with disastrous consequences. Even the committed democrats in postwar
Germany had few fond memories of that rst democratic experiencethe Weimar Re-
public. In addition, some citizens perceived the establishment of a West German state as a
move that would result in the permanent division of the country. Hence the regional and
state leaders in the Western zones, who were requested to begin the process of drafting a
constitution for the new state, were very reluctant to make the republic appear as a per-
manent entity. The constitution that was drafted was not even called such, but rather a
Basic Law.
Although the Germans were not consulted about their new state, many of them in
:,, did not really care. The great majority of the population was fed up with politics,
parties, and ideals. Following the mobilization of the Nazi years, the incessant propa-
ganda, the endless calls for sacrice, and the demands of total war, they wanted above all
to put their private lives back together again. They had been badly burned by politics and
were quite willing to let someone else, even foreigners, make political decisions for them
as long as they were more or less left alone to pursue their private concerns: the family,
making a living, catching up for all that was missed during the war years. This privatized
character of postwar attitudes meant that both Allied and German political elites had
considerable freedom to develop and initiate policies. The Germans, in short, were will-
ing to follow the orders of their occupiers that they now be citizens in a democracy, even
though most inhabitants had little if any experience with a successful, functioning demo-
cratic political order. Thus the institutions of democracy preceded the development of an
186 germany
attitudinal consensus on democracy. The need to educate the postwar population and
change political attitudes was, however, strongly perceived by Western and especially
American occupation authorities and by some Germans.
But one did not have to be an enthusiastic supporter of political democracy to op-
pose any sort of return to a Nazi-style dictatorship after :,,. Apart from any personal
predilection for a one-party state, the performance of the Third Reich made it distinctly
unattractive as an alternative to most Germans in the postwar period. While there has
been a consistent relationship between a positive attitude toward the Third Reich and op-
position to the key values and institutions of the Bonn Republic after :,,, it should not
be overlooked that a sizable proportion of respondents with little sympathy for liberal
democracy still rejected a return to some form of dictatorship. These non- or antidemo-
crats were nonetheless not willing to support a restoration. This was hardly a rm foun-
dation on which to build a stable and effective political democracy, yet it did provide
postwar elites and the consciously democratic segments of the larger population with a
breathing space in which the republic was given an opportunity to perform and socialize
postwar generations to its values and norms.
The early years of the republic were characterized by ambivalence on the part of
many citizens about political democracy. Surveys revealed that signicant proportions of
the population retained the traditional authoritarian if not antidemocratic attitudes ac-
quired during earlier regimes. In :,,, for example, about half the population still agreed
with the statement that National Socialism was a good idea, which was only badly car-
ried out. When asked to choose between a hypothetical government that guaranteed
economic success and security and one that guaranteed political freedom, Germans in the
late :,cs preferred the former by a two-to-one margin.
9
In the early :,,cs, about a fourth of the adult population still preferred a one-party
state; almost half of the electorate in :,,: stated they would be indifferent to an attempt
by a new Nazi party to take power; and one of every three adult Germans had positive at-
titudes toward a restoration of the monarchy. Moreover, although the turnout at elections
was high, most voters went to the polls out of a sense of duty and not because they be-
lieved they were participating in the making of important political decisions. Only about
a fourth of the population in the early :,,cs expressed any interest in political questions,
and most Germans reported that they rarely talked about politics with family or friends.
They had, in short, largely withdrawn from political involvement beyond the simple act
of going to the polls.
This pattern of mass political attitudes and behavior was not conducive to the
long-run viability of the new Federal Republic should it have encountered a major eco-
nomic or social crisis. Most citizens in the :,,cs, even those with fascist or authoritarian
dispositions, were quite willing to support political democracy as embodied in the Federal
Republic as long as it worked, but they could not be counted on if the system encoun-
tered major problems. The Germans were fair-weather and not rain or shine demo-
crats, but they were willing to give democracy a chance.
After fty years of experience with democratic government, this pattern of political
attitudes has changed.
10
There is now a solid consensus on the basic values, institutions,
and processes of parliamentary democracy. Support for such key values as political com-
petition, freedom of speech, civil liberties, and the rule of law ranges from a minimum of
about ;, percent to over ,, percent for a principle such as political competition. Similar
proportions of West German citizens by the :,cs had a positive orientation toward the
parliament, the constitution itself, and the federal structure of the state. Consistent with
this consensus on the present political system is the high level of satisfaction with the way
democracy is functioning. As table ::., shows, Germans are the most satised of the ma-
jor European countries in which this question was asked.
Political Attitudes in East Germany
The :o million Germans who joined the Federal Republic in :,,c lived for forty years in
a different political, economic, social, and cultural setting than West Germans. What ef-
fects will unication have on the overall pattern of German political attitudes discussed
above? Will the postwar consensus on liberal democratic values, institutions, and
processes change? Will the Federal Republic move to the left as East Germans demand
the social and economic programsa guaranteed job, low rents, subsidized food,
low-cost day carethat some in the old German Democratic Republic consider the suc-
cesses of the former communist regime?
It is too early to give denitive answers to these questions. Only since the opening of
the Berlin Wall in :,, have social scientists had free access to East Germany. The rapid
pace of events since :,,the opening of the borders, the currency union, unication,
the collapse of the East German economyalso make it difcult to determine how
well-dened East German political attitudes have become. Tossed and turned by unprece-
dented developments, it could be argued that few East Germans have any stable political
attitudes.
The evidence thus far is mixed. On the one hand, there is little doubt about the com-
mitment to democratic values among the East German revolutionaries who brought
down the communist regime. The great majority of voters in a series of free elections in
:,,c also supported democratic parties. On the other hand, there is also evidence that
forty years of authoritarian rule have left their mark on the East German political psyche.
Recent studies have found that East Germans are more authoritarian and alienated than
188 germany
Table 11.5 Satisfaction with Democracy: Germany, Britain, France, Italy, European Union (in percentages)
Germany
a
Britain France Italy European Union
b
Satised
c
68 53 48 22 50
Not satised
d
29 39 45 75 45
Undecided or no response 3 8 7 3 5
Source: European Commission, Euro-Barometer, Trends, :);,:)), (Brussels, 1995), 2336; Eurobarometer Nos.
46, 48, 50, 53.
a
German percentages include the former East Germany.
b
Twelve-nation average.
c
Percentages very satised and fairly satised.
d
Percentages not very satised and not at all satised.
West Germans. They are more supportive of the old German values of discipline, order,
and hard work than of the new values of individualism, self-realization, and tolerance.
East Germans have less trust in the institutions of liberal democracy such as the parlia-
ment and courts than West Germans do. Their acceptance of foreign residents is also
lower than that of West Germans. East Germans also have a more simplistic, either/or
conception of democracy than do West Germans. They see democracy either as a very
elitist systemthe chancellor or state must take care of them, or as a very participatory
systemwe must demonstrate to secure our demands. Democracy as a system in which
intermediate organizations such as parties, interest groups, and parliament play key roles
of channeling citizen demands into policies is still poorly understood in the former East
Germany.
11
These ndings are not surprising. While they have been able to watch democracy in
the West through television, East Germans are new at participation in democratic poli-
tics. As in West Germany during the :,,cs and :,ocs, the performance of the democratic
order will be a key factor in the political integration of East Germany.
The stability and performance of German democracy during the past fty years does
not mean that the Federal Republic is a political system without problems or that it has
become an ideal democracy. As we discuss later, Germany is a society with many prob-
lems; they include the massive challenge of rebuilding East Germanys society and econ-
omy, that is, putting Germany back together again, discrimination against both politi-
cal and social minorities, as well as myriad economic and social problemsenergy, the
environment, housing, health-care costs, unemploymentshared by other advanced in-
dustrial societies. Germany must still deal with the legacy of its Nazi past, its national
identity, and its new role in international politics. It also does not mean that there are no
individuals and groups calling for basic changes in the countrys social, economic, and po-
litical structures. What the data signify, however, is that these problems will be debated
within a consensual framework. In short, the question is no longer whether Germany will
remain a liberal democracy, but what kind of and how much democracy Germany will
have. This is a question that other European democracies also face.
Notes
:. Most respondents over age , in :,,: considered the imperial years, :,cc:, to be the best Germany had
experienced in this century. Institut fr Demoskopie Survey No. cc, October :,,:.
:. Helmut Schmidt, Erklrung der Bundesregierung zur Lage der Nation vor dem deutschen Bundestag,
:; May :,;,, printed in Bulletin o (Bonn, : May :,;,): ,,o.
,. See Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion :o: and the Final Solution in Poland
(New York: HarperCollins, :,,:), and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners (New York:
Knopf, :,,o).
. About :cc,ccc Jews live in the Federal Republic. Seventy-three Jewish congregations receive state nan-
cial support. The largest (over ,,ccc members) Jewish communities are in West Berlin and Frankfurt.
There are also about :., million Moslems living in the Federal Republic, most of whom are Turkish na-
tionals. About :,occ Moslem organizations, including mosques, have been established. They generally do
not receive state nancial support.
,. Der Spiegel, Special Edition, : (:,,:): ;,B;.
o. Der Spiegel, Die gespaltene Gesellschaft c (:, September :,,;): ,c.
;. Jutta Pilgram, Nach der vierten Klasse trennen sich die Lebenswege, Sddeutsche Zeitung, : May :,,,.
. Cited in Russell J. Dalton, Politics in West Germany (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, :,,), :,.
,. Max Kaase, Bewusstseinslagen und Leitbilder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, in Deutschland-
Handbuch. Eine doppelte Bilanz, :),):)), ed. Werner Weidenfeld and Hartmut Zimmermann (Bonn:
Bundeszentrale fr politische Bildung, :,,), :c,.
:c. For an analysis of these changes, see David P. Conradt, Changing German Political Culture, in The
Civic Culture Revisited, ed. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (Boston: Little, Brown, :,c), ,::;:, and
Political Culture in Unied Germany: Will the Bonn Republic Survive and Thrive in Berlin? German
Studies Review :: (February :,,): ,:c.
::. Ursula Feist, Zur politischen Akkulturation der vereinten Deutschen. Eine Analyse aus Anla der ersten
gesamtdeutschen Bundestagswahl, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte :::: (March :,,:): ::,:. For more re-
cent data, see Oskar Niedermayer and Klaus von Beyme, eds., Politische Kultur in Ost- und Westdeutsch-
land (Leverkusen: Leske und Budrich, :,,).
190 germany
Chapter 12
Where Is the Power?
Policymaking Institutions
POLITICAL POWER IN the Federal Republic is fragmented and dispersed among a wide
variety of institutions and elites. There is no single locus of power. At the national level,
there are three major decision-making structures: (:) the Bundestag, the lower house of
parliament; (:) the Federal Council (Bundesrat), which represents the states and is the
German equivalent of an upper house; and (,) the federal government, or executive (the
chancellor and cabinet). In addition, the sixteen states that constitute the Federal Repub-
lic play important roles, especially in the areas of education and internal security. These
states also have a direct inuence on national policymaking through the Bundesrat,
which is composed of delegates from each of the states. The Federal Constitutional
Court, which has the power of judicial review, has also become an increasingly powerful
institution. Also, at the national level, a federal president, indirectly elected but with little
independent responsibility for policy, serves as the ceremonial head of state and is ex-
pected to be a unifying or integrating gure, above the partisan political struggle.
Finally, the Federal Republic, like other members of the European Union, has trans-
ferred some policymaking power and responsibility to European-wide institutions. Mon-
etary policy, for example, is now largely the province of the European Central Bank in
Frankfurt; the European Commission and the Council of Ministers (both in Brussels)
and the European Parliament (which divides its sessions between Strasbourg, France, and
Brussels) make most agricultural policy. In recent years the European Court of Justice
(Luxembourg) has also issued rulings that have been accepted as binding on German
courts. National political institutions, however, still hold a veto power over many of the
decisions of European Union bodies.
Formal power is vested in these institutions, but their integration and effectiveness
are also very much functions of the party system that has emerged in the postwar period
and the well-organized, concentrated system of interest groups.
The Bundestag
Constitutionally, the center of the policymaking process is the Bundestag, a legislative
assembly consisting of about ooc deputies who are elected at least every four years. They
are the only political ofcials in the national constitutional structure directly elected by
the people. The constitution assigns to the Bundestag the primary responsibility for (:)
legislation, (:) the election and control of the government, (,) the supervision of the
bureaucracy and military, and () the selection of judges to the Federal Constitutional
Court.
Parliamentary government has a weak tradition and a poor record of performance in
German political history. During the empire (:;::,:), effective control over important
areas such as defense and foreign affairs and the supervision of the civil service was in the
hands of a chancellor appointed by the monarch. In addition, Prussian control of the up-
per house meant that important legislative proposals of the parliament could be blocked
at the will of the Prussian ruling elite. Parliament did have the power of the purse as a
source of inuence, but it could not initiate any major policy programs. Its position to-
ward the executive, bureaucracy, and military was defensive and reactive. While parlia-
ment debated, the government acted.
Under the Weimar constitution, the powers of parliament were expanded. The chan-
cellor and his cabinet were directly responsible to it and could be removed by a vote of no
condence. But the framers of the constitution made a major error when they also pro-
vided for a strong, directly elected president independent of parliament, who could, in
emergency situations (i.e., when the government lost its parliamentary majority), rule
by decree. The Weimar parliament, especially in its later years, was also fragmented into
many different, ideologically oriented parties, which made effective legislation difcult.
The institution became immobilethere were frequent majorities against governments,
but rarely majorities in favor of new governments. At the last elections, most voters
elected parties (Nazi, Nationalist, Communist) that were in one way or another commit-
ted to the abolition of the institution. The parliament became identied in the public
mind as weak and ineffective. By approving the Nazi Enabling Act in :,,,, it ceased to
function as a legislative institution.
In the postwar parliament, this pattern of legislative immobility has not been re-
peated. While important initiatives remain the province of the restructured executive, the
parliaments status as an instrument of supervision and control has grown.
The Bundestag, similar to other parliaments, has the responsibility to elect and con-
trol the government. After each national election, a new parliament is convened, with its
rst order of business the election of the federal chancellor. The control function is, of
course, much more complex and occupies a larger share of the chambers time. Through
the procedure, adopted from English parliamentary practice, of the Question Hour, a
member may make direct inquiries of the government either orally or in writing about a
particular problem. A further control procedure is the parliaments right to investigate
governmental activities and to demand the appearance of any cabinet or state ofcial.
The key organizational unit of the Bundestag is the Fraktion, the parliamentary cau-
cus of each political party. Committee assignments, debating time, and even ofce space
and clerical assistance are allocated to the Fraktionen and not directly to individual
deputies. The leadership of these parliamentary parties effectively controls the work of the
Bundestag. The freshman deputy soon discovers that a successful and inuential parlia-
mentary career is largely dependent on the support of the leadership of his or her parlia-
mentary Fraktion.
The parliament has a committee system that is more important than those in Britain
192 germany
and France, yet less powerful than the committees in the U.S. Congress. The twenty-
three standing committees, like their U.S. counterparts, mirror the partisan composition
of the whole parliament; but committee chairmanships are allotted proportionately ac-
cording to party strength. Thus the minority opposition party or parties will chair several
of the standing committees. These committees have become more signicant in recent
years as a result of the introduction of U.S.-style hearings and the greater use of commit-
tee meetings as forums by the opposition. But German committees, like those in other
unitary systems, are still reluctant to engage in the full-blown criticism of the executive
associated with presidential systems. This reects the generally higher level of party disci-
pline and the dependence of the government for continuance on having a parliamentary
majority. Committee criticism, if comprehensive enough, could be interpreted as an at-
tempt to bring down the chancellor. This is a major problem with strong committee sys-
tems in parliamentary governments.
There is also considerable specialization among committee members, and thus the
day-to-day sessions tend to concentrate on details of proposed legislation and rarely
produce any major news. German committees cannot pigeonhole bills; all must be re-
ported out. About four of every five bills submitted by the government will be re-
ported out with a favorable recommendation, albeit with a variety of suggested revi-
sions and amendments. Outright rejections are rare. When the government discovers
that a bill is in trouble, it is usually withdrawn for further study before a formal
committee vote.
The Bundesrat (Federal Council)
The Bundesrat represents the interests of the states in the national policymaking process.
It is composed of sixty-eight members drawn from the sixteen state governments. Each
state, depending on its population, is entitled to from three to six members. Most Bun-
desrat sessions are attended by delegates from the state governments and not the actual
formal members, the state-level cabinet ministers.
Throughout most of its history, the Bundesrat has concentrated on the administra-
tive aspects of policymaking and has rarely initiated legislative proposals. Since the states
implement most national legislation, the Bundesrat has tended to examine proposed pro-
grams from the standpoint of how they can be best administered at the state level. The
Bundesrat has thus not been an institution in the partisan political spotlight.
Since :,o, Germany has frequently had a form of divided government, that is, the
party in power in the Bundestag has not had a majority in the Bundesrat. While the
chambers are not coequal, the party controlling the Bundesrat can cause many problems
for the government. From :,o, to :,:, the Christian Democrats were the majority party
in the Bundesrat. During this period, the frequency of Bundesrat objections to govern-
ment legislation increased to the point where the leaders of the government accused it of
becoming the extended arm of the parliamentary (Bundestag) opposition. It was sug-
gested that the CDU/CSU was seeking to obstruct the governments electoral majority by
turning its majority in the Bundesrat into a politicized countergovernment. Thus the
Bundesrat blocked or forced compromises on the government on issues such as divorce
law reform, speed limits on autobahns, higher education reform, tax policy, the contro-
versial radicals in public employment law, and the :,;o treaty with Poland.
In :,,: the Social Democrats, now the opposition party, after a series of victories in
state elections, gained control of the chamber. The party promptly used its majority to
force the government to change some provisions of a new tax law designed to nance the
costs of unication. The :,,, Solidarity Pact, which restructured the nancing of unica-
tion, was passed only after SPD objections were met. In :,,; the SPD Bundesrat major-
ity blocked a major tax reform proposal of the Kohl government. This SPD veto became
an issue in the :,, federal election.
In :,,,, less than a year after their victory in Bundestag elections, the governing
SPD-Green coalition lost its majority in the Bundesrat, and Germany once again had di-
vided government. Before passage of landmark citizenship legislation in :,,, the
Schrder government had to make concessions to the Bundesrat or the legislation would
have failed. In :ccc the governments tax reform program passed only after Schrder
made a host of last-minute concessions, that is, promises of extra money, to several key
states.
To become a genuine second chamber, however, the Bundesrats delegations, still
controlled by state leaders, must also be willing to accept direction from the opposition
partys national leadership in the lower house. Thus far, this has happened on only some
issues. Generally, the more remote the issue from the concerns of state leaders, the more
likely they are to go along with the national leadership in the lower house and try to block
the bill in the Bundesrat. Conversely, state leaders can quickly forget their party loyalty if
the issue directly impacts their region.
A Federal Council veto of a proposed bill by a majority of two-thirds or more can be
overridden in the Bundestag only by a two-thirds majority of the members present and vot-
ing. This means that a party controlling forty-six or more delegates in the Bundesrat,
which is in a minority in the Bundestag, can nonetheless bring the legislative process to a
halt and force new elections. Such a development would run counter to the intentions of
the framers of the Basic Law, who did not envision the Bundesrat as such, a party-politi-
cal body. Since the respective state governments determine the composition of the Bun-
desrat, political and electoral developments at the state level can have direct national po-
litical consequences. A series of defeats at state elections in :,,, greatly weakened the
national government. State elections have become Germanys version of midterm elec-
tions at which national issues and personalities dominate the campaign.
The Chancellor and Cabinet
The chief executive in the Federal Republic is the chancellor. The powers of this ofce
place it somewhere between those of a strong president in the United States and the
prime minister in the British parliamentary system. Constitutionally, the German chan-
cellor is less powerful than a U.S. president, yet a chancellor has more authority and is
more difcult to remove than a prime minister in the British model.
The Weimar constitution provided for a dual executive: a directly elected president
and a chancellor chosen by the parliament. The president was chief of state, commander-
194 germany
in-chief of the armed forces, and could in an emergency dismiss the chancellor and his
cabinet and rule by decree. The president during the nal years of the Weimar Republic,
former Field Marshal von Hindenburg, misused especially this latter power and helped
undermine public support for democratic institutions. During :,,:, for example, the last
year before the Nazi seizure of power, the parliament passed only ve laws, while the pres-
ident issued sixty-six decrees. The framers of the Basic Law sought to avoid a repetition of
this problem by concentrating executive authority in the chancellor.
The power of the chancellor in the Federal Republic derives largely from the follow-
ing sources: the constitution, the party system, and the precedent established by the rst
chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. The constitution makes the chancellor responsible for de-
termining the main guidelines of the governments policies. This places him above his
ministers, although they are in turn responsible for policy within their specic area. The
chancellor also essentially hires and res cabinet ministers. If the parliament wants the
removal of a particular cabinet member, it must vote no condence in the whole govern-
ment, including the chancellor. Bringing down the government via a vote of no con-
dence has, in turn, become more difcult in the postwar system because of the construc-
tive vote of no condence provision. This means that a parliamentary majority against an
incumbent chancellor does not sufce to bring down the government; the opposition
must also have a majority in favor of a new chancellor before the chancellor and cabinet
are dismissed. The provision was intended to protect the chancellor from the shifting and
unstable parliamentary majorities that brought down so many Weimar governments
without, however, being able to agree on a replacement.
The constructive vote of no condence has been tried only twice, in April :,;: when
the CDU/CSU opposition attempted (unsuccessfully) to bring down the Brandt govern-
ment and in October :,: when Helmut Kohl replaced Helmut Schmidt as chancellor.
The rare use of this procedure reects the strength of the new party system. A chancellor
in the Federal Republic, unlike his Weimar predecessors, can usually count on the rm
support of a majority of the parliament throughout the four-year session. Since there are
fewer but larger parties in the Federal Republic, the political ties between government
and parliament are much stronger. The concentration of electoral support in two large,
disciplined parties and three smaller parties has assured most chancellors of rm parlia-
mentary majorities.
Chancellor Democracy
From Adenauer to Schrder
The rst chancellor of the Federal Republic, Konrad Adenauer, set the standards by
which future chancellors would be evaluated. His performance in the ofce and the sub-
stance he gave to its constitutional provisions have inuenced all his successors. Adenauer
assumed the ofce at the remarkable age of seventy-three in :,, and remained until
:,o,. Before the Third Reich, he had been lord mayor of Cologne, but he had never held
any national political ofce during the Weimar Republic. Shortly after the Nazi seizure of
power, he was removed from ofce and was allowed to retire. Although he had some con-
Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer announces his
determination to run
for reelection in :),.
(Bettman/Corbis)
tact with anti-Nazi resistance groups and was arrested, imprisoned, and nearly executed
in :,, he essentially sat out the Third Reich.
Adenauers rst government had a majority of only fourteen seats. From the begin-
ning, his chancellorship was characterized by a wide variety of domestic and foreign polit-
ical successes: the economic miracle, the integration of :c million refugees from the
Eastern territories, membership in the European Community, and the alliance with the
United States.
Adenauer used to the fullest extent the powers inherent in the chancellors ofce. In
rm control of his party, he was out front on all major foreign and domestic policies and
usually presented decisions to his cabinet and the parliament as accomplished facts. Un-
der Adenauer, there was no extensive consultation within either the cabinet or the parlia-
ment before important decisions were made. The chancellor led; he initiated policy pro-
posals, made the decisions, and then submitted them to the cabinet and parliament
essentially for ratication. He did not always succeed in this approach, but on most is-
sues, such as rearmament, membership in NATO, and the Common Market, his views
prevailed. During his tenure, the ofce of the chancellor clearly became the center of the
policymaking process. All his successors have beneted from the power Adenauer gave to
the ofce. This presidential-like control over the cabinet, bureaucracy, and even parlia-
ment soon became known as chancellor democracy, a parliamentary system with a
strong, quasi-presidential executive.
Chancellor Adenauer was pessimistic about the capacities of the average German to
measure up to the demands of democratic citizenship. Through his authoritarian-pater-
nalistic style, he encouraged Germans to go about the rebuilding of their private lives and
leave politics to the old man, as he was often termed. Most Germans probably agreed
with this approach, but it meant that his successors would encounter a host of unnished
business, particularly in the area of citizen involvement in public affairs. In retrospect,
196 germany
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
o;.,;
:.:
:.:
,:.c
o:.,
:.,,
,,.
o:.:
Voter Turnout (percentage of eligible voters, legislative elections )
Note: Parliamentary elections, :,,;:cc: (U.S.: :ccc presidential election).
Adenauers major contribution was to demonstrate to many Germans, who were indiffer-
ent if not ignorant of democratic norms and values, that a liberal republic could be ef-
cient and successful in Germany.
Since Adenauers departure in :,o, the Federal Republic has had eighteen govern-
ments headed by only six chancellors, a record of stability that compares well with other
European democracies. Adenauers rst two CDU/CSU successors, Ludwig Erhard and
Kurt-George Kiesinger, assumed the ofce at the time when support for the CDU/CSU
was on the decline. Erhard, a very successful economics minister, never had control of his
party. As long as conditions remained favorable, he could attract voters and was thus tol-
erated by the Christian Democrats. When the rst economic recession came in :,ooo;,
he was promptly dropped, with his own party taking the lead in urging his departure.
Kiesinger became chancellor of the Grand Coalition government with the SPD, a novel
arrangement that called for a person adept at compromise and mediation with a record of
good relations with the Social Democrats. There was no one in Bonn who met these re-
quirements, and Kiesinger came from Stuttgart, where he had been chief executive of
Baden-Wrttemberg. When the CDU/CSU failed to gain sufcient votes at the :,o,
election to form another government, Kiesinger passed from the national scene.
The First Social Democratic Chancellors: Brandt and Schmidt
The rst two Social Democratic chancellors, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, offer a
contrast in personality, political style, and policy emphasis. Willy Brandts two govern-
ments, from :,o, to :,;, were characterized by the introduction of a new foreign policy
of reconciliation with Germanys Eastern neighbors and the acceptance of the perma-
nence of postwar boundaries in Eastern Europe. This Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) involved
the negotiation and ratication of treaties with the Soviet Union (:,;c), Poland (:,;c),
East Germany (:,;:), and Czechoslovakia (:,;,). This policy put West Germany at the
forefront of the worldwide trend toward dtente and made Brandt one of the worlds
most respected political leaders. For this policy of reconciliation he was awarded the No-
bel Peace prize in :,;:, only the fourth German ever so honored. For many, he personi-
ed the other Germany, a man of peace and goodwill accepting moral responsibility for
the acts committed in Germanys name by the Nazis. As the rst chancellor with an im-
peccable record of uncompromising opposition to Nazism, he contributed greatly to the
republics image abroad as a society that had nally overcome its totalitarian past. For
many Germans, especially the young, he became a symbol of a political system that was
now democratic in content as well as form.
These foreign policy successes and great international prestige could not in the long
run compensate for Brandts ineffective leadership in most domestic political areas. Dur-
ing his rst government his inability to institute a wide variety of promised domestic re-
forms, codetermination in industry (worker representation on a rms board of control),
prot sharing, tax and educational programs, could be attributed to the governments
small (twelve-seat) majority. But after :,;: his second government held a comfortable
majority of fty seats. Yet his domestic legislative program stalled again. Brandt had little
interest in many internal policy areas and little knowledge of economics and nance. He
was also unwilling to resolve the conicts within the cabinet and the SPD, which ared
up after :,;:. The very weak response of his government to the :,;, Arab oil embargo
and the subsequent economic recession prompted suggestions even from within his own
cabinet that he step down. Finally, when an East German spy was discovered on his per-
sonal staff in April :,;, Brandt assumed full responsibility and resigned.
The fth chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, assumed the ofce with more successful
national-level experience than any of his four predecessors. An academically trained econo-
mist, he had been the leader of the SPD parliamentary party (:,ooo,), defense minister
(:,o,;:), and nance minister (:,;:;). In these posts Schmidt acquired the reputation
as a very capable political decision maker. He was also criticized for what some regarded as
an overbearing, arrogant, cold personal style. He clearly lacked the emotional, warm
image of Brandt, yet he is given higher marks for his concrete performance.
Schmidt became chancellor in the midst of the worldwide economic recession that
followed the :,;, Arab oil embargo and subsequent astronomical rise in oil prices. His ex-
pertise and experience in national and international economic affairs and his ability to take
charge in crisis situations (e.g., a :,;; terrorist hijacking and commando raid) soon be-
came apparent. Within two years, ination was brought under control and unemployment
reduced, although it would remain well above pre-:,;, gures. In addition, the Schmidt
governments continued, albeit at a lower key, the Ostpolitik of their predecessors.
Unlike Brandt, Schmidt had little patience with the SPDs left. He was a strong sup-
porter of the mixed economy and maintained a close relationship with the Federal Re-
publics economic and industrial elite. Indeed, even many CDU voters saw him as more
capable than their own partys candidates. Schmidts policy successes, however, were not
matched by his performance as the leader of the Social Democrats. He was unable to
overcome and integrate the opposition of the SPD left to many of his policies, especially
the :,;, NATO decision, which Schmidt initiated, to station a new generation of
mid-range nuclear missiles in the Federal Republic should negotiations with the Soviet
Union fail. He also overestimated the intensity of opposition within his own party and in
the country as a whole to nuclear power as an energy source.
Germany was unable to avoid the worldwide recession that followed the second oil
price shock in :,;,. By :,:, unemployment had increased to ;., percent, up from less
than percent in :,;,. The worsening economy coupled with increasing conict within
the Schmidt government over budget cuts for social programs took their toll, and in Sep-
tember :,: Helmut Schmidt lost his parliamentary majority as the Free Democrats, the
junior partner in the coalition with the SPD, left the government. Shortly thereafter, the
leader of the CDU, Helmut Kohl, became the republics sixth chancellor, heading a new
coalition composed of the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democrats. At the
March :,, national election, the voters endorsed these parliamentary changes by giving
Kohl and his coalition a solid majority in the parliament.
Helmut Kohl and German Unity
Helmut Kohl has been a signicant gure on the German political scene since :,o, when
he became chief executive of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz). His suc-
198 germany
cesses at the state level coincided with the decline of his party, the CDU, in national pol-
itics. After CDU/CSU defeats in :,o, and :,;:, Kohl moved out from his provincial
power base and in :,;, assumed the leadership of a badly divided and weakened CDU.
He is credited with initiating a thorough modernization and revitalization of the partys
organization. In :,;o, as the chancellor candidate, he conducted a well-planned and exe-
cuted campaign, which almost toppled the SPD-FDP government.
More than any of his predecessors, Helmut Kohl, as the rst chancellor who did not
experience the Third Reich as an adult, attempted to appeal to patriotic symbols and na-
tional pride. The evocation of national themes remains a very sensitive topic in the Ger-
man political culture. Terms such as Vaterland (fatherland) and nation and an emphasis
on the past fty years of German history as an object of pride were a frequent theme in
Kohls speeches. He pushed plans for the construction of two large museums, in Bonn
and Berlin, dealing with German history. While not denying Germanys responsibility for
the Third Reich and World War II, Kohl, together with some conservative intellectuals,
urged Germans in general and postwar generations in particular to develop a positive
sense of German history.
The collapse of the East German communist regime in :,,,c and the desire of
most East Germans for unity with West Germany provided Kohl with the greatest oppor-
tunity and challenge of his political career. Seizing the initiative in late November :,,,
just weeks after the opening of the Berlin Wall, Kohl outlined a ten-point plan for unity
within ve years. The continuing exodus of East Germans to the West, however, caused
the government to accelerate this timetable. His personal intervention in East Germanys
rst free election in March :,,c was a major factor in the victory of the Alliance for Ger-
many, a coalition of three center-right parties put together by Kohl only a month earlier.
Two months after this vote, the two states completed a treaty that unied their currencies,
economies, and social welfare systems. The opposition parties and some foreign govern-
ments criticized Kohls rush to unity, but he continued to press for the complete uni-
cation of the two states, including all-German elections and the end of all four-power
(United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union) rights in Germany and Berlin, by
the end of :,,c. The victory of his governing coalition at the December :,,c election, the
rst free vote in all of Germany since :,,:, made him Germanys Unity Chancellor.
The breakneck pace of the unication process was prompted by both political and
policy factors. Kohl was in fact more popular among East German voters than those in
the West. His promises of rapid economic prosperity corresponded to East German de-
sires to catch up with their cousins as soon as possible. The drive for unication, however,
also reected the fear that any delay could prompt a massive exodus to the West by mil-
lions of East Germans with the resultant collapse of the East German state and an un-
bearable burden for the West German political, economic, and social system.
In :,, Kohl became the rst chancellor since Adenauer to win four straight elec-
tions. His governments majority in the parliament, however, fell from :, seats to only
:c. The slow pace of economic and social unication in the East coupled with an eco-
nomic recession and voter discontent in the West over the higher taxes needed to nance
unication took their toll on the chancellors majority. In short, after proting from the
upside of unication in the heady days following the :,,c unication, Kohl in the early
:,,cs experienced the downside of this issue as Germans struggled with the day-to-day
frustrations of putting their country back together.
The elder statesman among the Wests major political leaders, Kohl in :,,; became
the longest-serving German chancellor since the legendary Otto von Bismarck. Still, con-
sidering the successful completion of the European Currency Union to be his last major
task, he decided to run in :,, for an unprecedented fth term. It was his last hurrah.
In :,, after a record sixteen years in power, German voters told Kohl and his Chris-
tian Democrats that it was time to go. The government was soundly defeated by the So-
cial Democrats and Greens led by Gerhard Schrder and Joschka Fischer. A weak econ-
omy, high unemployment and continued discontent in the East with the slow pace of
unication were major factors contributing to Kohls defeat.
Kohls legacy as the unier of Germany and a champion of European union was tar-
nished badly when he was implicated in a major scandal involving the nances of the
Christian Democratic party. The scandal broke in :,,,, about a year after Kohl left ofce.
Kohl admitted that he indeed had kept secret bank accounts outside of regular party
channels to reward favored CDU regional organizers and leaders. He vehemently denied,
however, that the funds had come from illegal kickbacks. A parliamentary investigation
was launched in :ccc, and Kohl also faces possible criminal charges.
Gerhard Schrder: First Chancellor of the Berlin Republic
Gerhard Schrder, Germanys current chancellor, succeeded where ve previous candi-
dates had failed. His :,, victory marked the rst time in German history that an entire
incumbent government, that is, all parties in the coalition, was replaced. Schrder dif-
fered from his unsuccessful predecessors in his single-minded determination to win the
election by changing his partys reputation for big government tax-and-spend programs.
Schrders childhood spanned the end of World War II, the Allied occupation, and
the formative years of the Federal Republic. Born in Lower Saxony, Schrder left school
early to work as an apprentice sales clerk. He later earned a law degree at the University of
Gttingen and joined the SPD shortly after the completion of his degree. Schrder rose
quickly in party ranks and was rst elected to the Bundestag in :,c. A leader of the
Young Socialists during his early political career, Schrder gradually abandoned his leftist
sympathies in favor of ideological moderation and a probusiness orientation. In :,o he
was elected head of the Lower Saxon SPD and a member of the partys national executive
in Bonn.
The May :,,c election in Lower Saxony catapulted Schrder into the national polit-
ical limelight. The SPD defeated the incumbent CDU and joined with the Green Party
in forming a coalition government with Schrder as minister-president. He utilized his
executive status to develop a political prole that distinguished him from most traditional
Social Democratsabove all, a reputation for toughness tempered by pragmatism and a
savvy sense of public relations. Schrders effectiveness in ofce helped the SPD win a
narrow majority in its own right in :,, and then sweep to an even more convincing vic-
tory in :,,. Party leaders honored the latter triumph by choosing Schrder as their chan-
200 germany
cellor candidate over his chief rival, Oskar Lafontaine (minister president of the Saar), to
oppose Chancellor Kohl in the national election that fall.
Borrowing image and tactics from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Schrder pre-
sented himself during the campaign as a centrist modernizer in a calculated effort to
mobilize crucial swing voters while retaining the loyalty of the SPDs core supporters. He
also drew on Bill Clintons skillful use of the media to project himself and his party as
trustworthy architects of innovation in national politics. Schrder shrewdly kept his op-
tions open concerning the choice of a potential coalition partner after the election, leav-
ing it to political pundits to speculate whether the SPD might enter into a Grand Coali-
tion with the Christian Democrats or form a Red-Green government with the Greens.
In the end, Schrder opted for the Green Party.
The SPDGreen cabinet got off to a slow start during its rst year in ofce, due
partly to the inexperience of its members in holding national ofce but also intense ri-
valry between Schrder and the more leftist Lafontaine, who had joined the cabinet as
minister of nance. Lafontaines abrupt resignation in March :,,, freed Schrder to con-
centrate executive power within the party in his own hands and to focus his energies as
chancellor on a major tax reform in :,,,. The result was a turn-about in public con-
dence in the government. Schrders forceful engagement on Germanys behalf in the
Kosovo conict further enhanced his prestige as an international statesman at the very
time that the CDUs reputation became badly tarnished because of the nancial scandals
recounted above.
Cuts in social programs, above all the large pension and health care systems, remain
priorities on Schrders agenda. His goal is to stimulate investment, create jobs, and make
Germany more competitive in the global economy. Future electoral prospects of the SPD
will depend in large measure on the governments ability to deliver on these promises.
Formal Policymaking Procedures
Legislation
Most legislation is drafted in the ministries of the national government and submitted to
the parliament for action. Two additional, but relatively minor, sources of legislative pro-
posals are the state governments and the parliament itself. State governments may submit
national legislation via the Bundesrat (Federal Council), but at least six states (a majority)
must support the bill. If at least , percent (about thirty-ve) of the parliamentary deputies
cosponsor a bill, it also enters the legislative process.
Administrative regulations and legal ordinances that deal largely with the technical,
procedural aspects of existing programs are introduced and enacted by the government
and do not require the consent of parliament. If regulations and ordinances affect the
states, however, they must be approved by the Bundesrat. They can also be challenged in
the courts. The president can in some cases refuse to sign the regulation or ordinance.
Before a draft bill is submitted to parliament, it is discussed and approved by the cab-
inet (government). If the legislation affects several ministers, the Chancellors Ofce will
coordinate the drafting process and attempt to resolve any interministerial conicts. At
the cabinet level, the states, through the Bundesrat, will be asked to submit their reaction
to the legislation. Since cabinet approval is necessary for all draft legislation coming out
of the ministries, a minister will usually have the legislation put on the cabinet agenda
only if approval is very likely. Indeed, since the chancellor directs this entire process, most
cabinet meetings dealing with legislation already in draft tend largely to formalize deci-
sions already taken informally between the chancellor and the relevant ministers.
After governmental approval, the proposed bill is presented to the Bundesrat for its
rst reading. The Bundesrat usually assigns it to a committee, which issues a report and
recommends the acceptance, rejection, or (in most cases) the amendment of the legisla-
tion. Since the Bundestag can override a Bundesrat veto, it considers the bill regardless of
Bundesrat action.
In parliament, the bill is given a rst reading and assigned to the relevant committee.
Since the government has a majority in each committee, a bill will rarely be returned to
the oor with a negative report. The committee report before the whole chamber is the
occasion for the second reading, at which time amendments to the proposed legislation
can be considered. If after debate on the second reading the bill is approved without
amendment, the third and nal reading follows immediately.
After adoption by the Bundestag, the bill goes back to the Bundesrat for a second
reading. If approved there without amendment, the legislation goes directly to the presi-
dent for his signature and promulgation. If the policy area requires Bundesrat approval
and it vetoes the bill, it is dead. In some cases, the Bundesrat proposes amendments to
the lower-house version, and the two houses form a conference committee to resolve the
differences.
The Judiciary
Germany is a law- and court-minded society. In addition to local, regional, and state
courts for civil and criminal cases, corresponding court systems specialize in labor, admin-
istrative, tax, and social security cases. On a per capita basis, there are about nine times as
many judges in the Federal Republic as in the United States. The German legal system,
like that of most of its Western European neighbors, is based on code law rather than
case, judge-made, or common law. These German legal codes, inuenced by the original
Roman codes and the French Napoleonic Code, were reorganized and in some cases
rewritten after the founding of the empire in :;:.
In a codied legal system, the judge only administers and applies the codes, tting
the particular cases to the existing body of law. A judge, in theory at least, may not set
precedents and thus make law, but must be a neutral administrator of these codes. Coun-
sel for the plaintiff and defendant assist the judge in this search for justice. The assump-
tion behind this system, which is common to other Western European societies, is that
a right and just answer exists for every case. The problem is to nd it in the codes.
The judge is expected to take an active role in this process and not be merely a disinter-
ested referee or umpire of court proceedings. Court observers accustomed to the Anglo-
American system would be surprised by the active, inquisitorial posture assumed by the
judge. At times, both judge and prosecution seem to be working against the defendant.
202 germany
Unlike the Anglo-American system, the process is not one of advocacy, with both sides
presenting their positions as forcefully and persuasively as possible and with the judge or
jury making the nal decision; it is more inquisitorial, with all participants, defense attor-
neys, the prosecution, and judge expected to join together in a search for the truth.
This approach to law has been termed legal positivism or analytical jurispru-
dence. Some critics of the German legal system consider positivism to be a basic cause
for the scandalous behavior of German judges during the Third Reich, when most judges
disclaimed any responsibility for judging the content of laws they were to administer.
The independence of judges, protected by law, is limited by their status as civil ser-
vants. All judges, with the exception of those at the Federal Constitutional Court, are un-
der state or national ministers of justice. To move up the judicial hierarchy obviously re-
quires that they perform their duties in a manner consistent with the standards set by
their superiors. This bureaucratization of the judiciary, common to all continental West-
ern European societies, discourages the type of independence associated with judges in
Anglo-American systems.
Judges in Germany are also a tightly knit, largely middle- and upper-class group.
Hardly radicals, their attitudes and values (as determined in a number of studies) are
quite conventional and conservative. Some critics have charged that many judges dis-
pense class justice because they know little about the problems or lifestyle of the working-
class and lower-middle-class defendants who come to their courts.
Justice in East Germany
During the forty-year reign of the Communist Party in East Germany, the rule of law was
generally subordinate to the ideological and demands of the party. All East German
judges were members either of the Communist Party or of the puppet parties associated
with it in a pseudo-democratic National Front. They were instructed to consider, above
all, the interests of the working class and its party, the Communists. Once again, Ger-
many must deal with judges who administered political justice for offenses such as ee-
ing the republic and behavior damaging to the state, which resulted in numerous po-
litical prisoners and questionable legal judgments.
Since unication, most of the :,,cc East German judges and prosecutors have either
retired or been dismissed. West German judges and recent graduates of West German law
schools are lling the gap. East German law schools are also beginning to produce gradu-
ates who are pursuing a career in the judiciary.
The Federal Constitutional Court
The practice of judicial reviewthe right of courts to examine and strike down legisla-
tion emanating from popularly elected legislatures if it is considered contrary to the con-
stitutionis alien to a codied legal system. Nonetheless, especially under the inuence
of American Occupation authorities and the tragic record of the courts during the Third
Reich, the framers of the postwar constitution created a Federal Constitutional Court and
empowered it to consider any alleged violations of the constitution, including legislative
acts. Similar courts were also established at the state level.
This new court, located in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, has in its rst fty
years built an impressive record of constitutional interpretation. In doing so it has also be-
come an increasingly powerful political institution. Unlike other courts, it is independent
of any justice ministry. Both houses of parliament select its members, and its budget and
other administrative matters are dealt with in direct negotiations with parliaments judi-
ciary committees. It took several years for the Court to achieve this independence, but it
was recognized as an indispensable prerequisite for the performance of its constitutional
responsibilities.
In recent years, the Court has rendered decisions on such controversial political cases
as the Ostpolitik treaties, abortion reform, university governance, the powers of the Bun-
desrat, the employment of radicals in the civil service, codetermination in industry, the
deployment of German military forces in non-NATO areas, and the right of Bavarian
school authorities to display a crucix in public school classrooms. Like the U.S. Supreme
Court, the Federal Constitutional Court has also been criticized for becoming too polit-
ical, for usurping the legislative and policymaking prerogatives of parliament and gov-
ernment, and for not exercising sufcient judicial restraint. To students of judicial re-
view, this is a familiar charge and reects the extent to which the Court since its founding
has become a legitimate component of the political system. Most important, both win-
ners and losers in these various cases have accepted and complied with the Courts deci-
sions.
204 germany
Chapter 13
Who Has the Power?
Political Parties
THE DISPERSION OF power in the Federal Republic creates a need for its integration
and aggregation if there is to be any coherence in the policy process. The key agencies
performing these functions of integration and aggregation in the postwar period are the
political parties. One of the most striking changes in postwar Germany has been the
emergence of a system of political parties that has effectively organized and controlled the
political process. Traditionally, parties were marginal factors in German political life.
Their home was the legislature, but the executive and the bureaucracy dominated politics;
the parties had little inuence in these institutions. This pattern was also dominant dur-
ing most of the Weimar Republic when the party system was fragmented and stable par-
liamentary majorities became impossible to form. By the late :,:cs, effective political
power, in spite of the democratic structure of the state, had passed once again into the
hands of the executive and the state bureaucracy.
This system of weak, unstable, and fragmented parties did not reemerge after :,,.
Indeed, democratic political parties began to assert themselves early in the Occupation
period, and they assumed major leadership roles in the parliamentary council that drafted
the Basic Law establishing the West German state. Never before in German history have
democratic political parties been as important and powerful as they are in the Federal Re-
public today.
Related to the increased power of political parties is the sharp decrease over the past
forty years in the number of parties seriously contending for power. During the Weimar
Republic, up to :cc parties contested elections, and as many as :, gained parliamentary
representation with no single party able to secure a majority of seats. Coalition govern-
ments consisting of several parties were the rule. These were, for the most part, unstable;
this meant governments had to expend their resources on surviving instead of planning
and implementing policy programs. During the thirteen-year Weimar Republic, there
were twenty different governments.
In contrast, the postwar party system has been characterized by a concentration of
electoral support in two large parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the
Social Democratic party of Germany (SPD), together with a much smaller third party,
the Free Democrats (FDP). A new political party, the Greens, entered parliament in :,,
and then joined the Social Democrats in a national coalition government in :,,. Uni-
cation in :,,c also brought the former East German Communist Party, now named the
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) into the parliament. In :,,, seventeen different
parties contested the rst national election, and fourteen succeeded in entering the rst
parliament. By :,o:, this had dropped to three parties, and they have carried the Federal
Republic. They have dominated the selection and control of governmental personnel and
have had major inuence in the setting of the policy agenda.
The postwar democratic parties had several advantages over their Weimar predeces-
sors. First, their competitors in previous regimesthe state bureaucracy, the army, the
landed nobility, and even big businesswere discredited through their association with
the Third Reich. Second, the parties from the outset enjoyed the support of the Occupa-
tion powers. This gave the parties numerous material and political benets and put them
in a strong starting position when the decision was made (by the Allies) in :, to launch
a West German state. Third, the parties largely organized and controlled the proceedings
of the parliamentary council. The constitution made the parties quasi-state institutions
by assigning them fundamental responsibility for shaping the political will of the peo-
ple. This provision has also been used to justify the extensive public nancing of the par-
ties both for their normal day-to-day activities and during election campaigns. Fourth,
these same parties, exploiting their strong constitutional and political position, ensured
that their supporters staffed the local, state, and national postwar bureaucracies, at least at
the upper levels. In contrast to the Weimar bureaucracy, the civil service in the Federal
Republic has not been a center of antirepublican sentiment but has been rmly integrated
into the republican consensus.
There has also been a downside to this system of strong political parties. Recent scan-
dals have shown that all too frequently parties have manipulated the laws governing their
nancing. They have voted themselves generous subsidies for election campaigns and
have not been fully accountable for the funds they have received. Currently, there are sev-
eral major investigations in progress involving the payment of large kickbacks to party of-
cials in exchange for favorable political decisions.
The Christian Democrats
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), together with its Bavarian partner, the Christ-
ian Social Union (CSU), is a postwar political movement. Like the Gaullists in France,
the CDU/CSU developed largely as a vehicle to facilitate the election and reelection of a
single political personality, Konrad Adenauer. The Union did not even have its rst na-
206 germany
France
Germany
Russia
Sweden
,.,
,.:
:,.o
::.c
Vote for Radical Left Parties (percentage in most recent legislative election)
tional convention until after it became the major governing party in :,,. From the out-
set in :,,, the CDU was a broadly based movement that sought to unite both Protes-
tants and Catholics in a political organization that would apply the general principles and
values of Christianity to politics. The religious division between Protestants and Catholics
was regarded as one factor for the rise of Nazism. But the Union also stressed that it was
open to all social classes and regions. The CDU/CSU became a prototype for the new
catchall parties that emerged in postwar Europe: parties that sought through a prag-
matic, nonideological image to attract as broad an electoral base as possible. The CDU
wanted voters, not necessarily believers, and it refused to place itself in one of the tradi-
tional liberal, conservative, socialist, or communist ideological categories. To more tradi-
tionally minded politicians and some intellectuals, this was nothing more than oppor-
tunism. How could one have a party without a clearly articulated ideology and program?
The CDU/CSU represented a new development in politics.
In the :,,cs, the remarkable success of Chancellor Adenauer in foreign policy and
the free-market policies of his economics minister, Ludwig Erhard, made the Union Ger-
manys dominant party. At the :,,; election, it became the rst democratic party in Ger-
man history to secure an absolute majority of the popular vote. The CDU/CSUs pro-
gram was very general: free-market economic policies at home, alliance with the United
States and other NATO countries, and a staunch anticommunism abroad; otherwise, no
experiments (the partys main slogan at the :,,; election).
This approach worked well throughout the :,,cs, but the Berlin Wall in :,o: and the
:,ooo; economic recession showed the weaknesses in the CDU/CSUs policies. Anti-
communism and a refusal to recognize the legitimacy of postwar boundaries in Eastern
Europe had not brought Germany any closer to unication. Moreover, the weak U.S. re-
sponse to the Wall was for many a sign that the Federal Republic could not rely entirely
on the United States to run its foreign policy. The :,oo-o; recession, although mild in
comparison with past economic declines and in comparison with those experienced by
other industrial societies, indicated that the postwar boom was over and that the econ-
omy was in need of more management and planning. Almost two decades of governing
had taken their toll on the leadership of the party. Adenauers successor, Ludwig Erhard,
lacked the political skill of the old man. Also, the Social Democrats, as we discuss be-
low, had since the late :,,cs begun to revamp their program, organization, and leader-
ship. The collapse of the Erhard government in :,oo was followed by a Grand Coalition
with the Social Democrats. By sharing power with its chief adversary, the Union enabled
the SPD to show Germanys middle-class voters that it could indeed be entrusted with
national political responsibility.
After the :,o, election, the SPD and FDP formed a coalition that ended twenty
years of CDU/CSU government in Bonn. Lacking a programmatic focus, the party went
through four different chancellor candidates in search of a winner who could bring it
back to power. In opposition it expended much of its time in internal conicts revolving
around this leadership question.
In :,:, after thirteen years in opposition, the Christian Democrats returned to
power. While the party did not receive any direct electoral mandate in :,:, both state
elections and national public opinion polls showed that the CDU/CSU enjoyed a sizable
advantage over the Social Democrats. This was conrmed at the March :,, election
when the Union scored a solid victory over the SPD.
The partys most difcult task following its return to power in :,, was to deliver on
its promise of economic recovery. In other policy areas it pursued its traditional pragmatic
course: the innovations of the Socialist-Liberal years in foreign policy were consolidated
and even extended; the commitment of the previous government to deploy new missiles
was carried out; cuts in social programs were limited.
The Christian Democrats and Unification
Prior to the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the East German regime, the
fortunes of the Christian Democrats were at low ebb. In public opinion polls throughout
the rst ten months of :,, the partys level of support ranged from ,, percent to , per-
cent. In June, Chancellor Kohls leadership of the party was challenged by several intra-
party dissidents. The prospects for the CDU at the upcoming national election were not
good. The unity issue clearly gave the party new political life. Led by Chancellor Kohl,
the CDU received ,. percent of the vote in the December :,,c all-German election
and together with the Free Democrats enjoyed a commanding majority of :, seats in the
parliament.
But after the :,,c election German taxpayers began to get the bills for unication. In
spite of its campaign pledge of no new taxes, the CDU-led government in :,,: an-
nounced that Germanys contribution to the Gulf War and the unexpectedly high costs of
unication necessitated a temporary tax increase. The voters were not amused, and the
CDUs performance in state elections declined sharply. Only an improving economy, the
popularity of Chancellor Kohl, and the mistakes of the rival Social Democrats enabled
the party to stay in power after the :,, election, albeit with a majority of only ten seats.
In :,,, after sixteen years in power, the party suffered the worst defeat in its history.
Kohl fatigue and a poor economy, especially in the eastern regions, were the major fac-
tors in the electoral debacle. The CDU must now prepare for a life after Helmut Kohl. In
:,,, the Kohl legacy took a new and ominous turn for the Union. The party was hit by a
major scandal when the former chancellor admitted that he had kept secret bank ac-
counts, and several other party gures were accused of accepting illegal kickbacks for fa-
vorable government decisions. In :ccc the scandal spread to Kohls successor as party
leader, Wolfgang Schuble, who admitted that he had also received campaign contribu-
tions from the same people under investigation in the Kohl case. Schuble resigned under
heavy pressure from CDU members of parliament. Hoping to turn the partys fortunes
around, the CDU selected Angela Merkel as its new leader. Merkel became the rst fe-
male to lead any major political party. She also became a prime contender to oppose
Chancellor Schrder at the national election in :cc:.
The Social Democrats (SPD)
The SPD is Germanys oldest political party and the only one to emerge virtually intact
following the collapse of the Third Reich. The heir to Germanys rich Marxist tradition,
208 germany
the SPD was outlawed and persecuted during the nineteenth century by Bismarck and
the kaiser and by the Nazis in the twentieth century. In :,, it appeared that the SPDs
hour had nally come. Unlike other Weimar parties, its record of opposition to Nazism
was uncompromising. In :,,, it was the only political party to vote against Hitlers En-
abling Act. Its commitment to socialism had long been tempered by an even greater sup-
port for the principles and values of political democracy. Even during the Weimar Repub-
lic, the partys interest in the class struggle and the realization of the revolutionary vision
had given way to a policy of reformist gradualism designed to change the society and
economy by peaceful, political means.
During the Third Reich, the SPD retained a skeletal organization in exile and a small
underground movement in Germany. While many Socialists did not survive the war and
the concentration camps, the party was still able to regroup in a relatively short time after
:,,its loyal members emerged literally from the ruins of Germanys cities to begin the
task of reconstruction. Yet the SPD at the rst parliamentary election in :,, did not be-
come the largest party and found itself in opposition. After the landslide CDU/CSU victo-
ries of :,,, and :,,;, it could claim the support of only about ,c percent of the electorate.
The SPDs rst postwar leader, Kurt Schumacher, was unable to convert the partys
opposition to Nazism and its resultant moral authority into electoral success. While he
made a substantial contribution to the Bonn democracy by preventing a fusion between
the SPD and the German communists and shaping the SPD into a viable opposition
party, his overall political strategy was unsuccessful. Specically, Schumacher failed to rec-
ognize that the post-:, success of free-market (capitalist) economic policies left the
bulk of the German electorate with little interest in socialism, with its connotation of
government ownership of the means of production, centralized economic planning, and
the class struggle. He also overestimated the interests of the average German in an inde-
pendent nationalist foreign policy designed to secure the reunication of the country.
Most West Germans, at least by the early :,,cs, were willing to accept the division of the
old Reich in exchange for the economic prosperity, individual freedom, and security they
received from German integration into the U.S.-led Atlantic Alliance. Finally, Schu-
machers political style, with its emphasis on conict, polarization, and ideology, simply
reminded too many voters of the Weimar Republic. Postwar Germany and Western Eu-
rope had tired of this approach to politicsthis was the heyday of the end of ideology,
and most voters were supporting consensual, middle-of-the-road parties and leaders.
1
During the :,,cs, however, an increasing number of SPD leaders in Lnder such as
Hamburg, Frankfurt, and West Berlin began to advocate major changes in the partys
program, organization, and leadership. The reformers wanted the party to accept the
pro-Western foreign policy course of Adenauer and abandon its opposition to the
free-market economic policies of the CDU/CSU.
This reform movement culminated in the partys :,,, program, which was adopted
at its convention in Bad Godesberg. In the Bad Godesberg program the SPD dropped its
advocacy of nationalization of the means of production and compulsory economic plan-
ning. It stressed its opposition to communism and its support of NATO and the Western
alliance. Shortly thereafter, the party sought to broaden its membership base to include
more white-collar employees and even independent businessmen. It also made the young,
politically attractive mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, its national chairman and :,o: candi-
date for chancellor. National political responsibility also brought new problems, espe-
cially from the SPDs old and new left. The old left, composed of socialists who had al-
ways opposed the Bad Godesberg reforms, and the new left, mainly in the partys youth
organization, argued that the party had sold out its ideological and revolutionary heritage
and its commitment to social and economic change for political power. It had become as
opportunistic as the CDU/CSU and in reality was a tool of the ruling capitalist elite.
Conicts within the party peaked during the latter years of Helmut Schmidts chan-
cellorship and were a major factor in the partys return to the opposition after the :,,
election. In opposition, the party was unable to make signicant progress toward resolv-
ing its internal divisions until :,,, when it won decisive victories in two state elections.
But in the :,; national election, the question of how to deal with the Greens again di-
vided the party, and its vote dropped to ,; percent, its lowest level since :,o:.
210 germany
Chancellor Willy Brandt kneels in tribute at the Jewish Heroes monument in Warsaw, :);o. (Bettman/Cor-
bis)
The Social Democrats and Unification
The :,,,c unication both surprised and divided the SPD. For years the party had
sought to improve the concrete living conditions of East Germans by negotiating with
the Communist regime. This contact with the GDR leadership, however, also gave the
Communists a certain legitimacy and status in the view of many Germans. When the rev-
olution began, the SPD was ill prepared. While the party had good contacts with the now
beleaguered GDR elite, it had few if any with the street, that is the edgling demo-
cratic opposition including the churches. The rush to unity that followed the opening
of the Wall also divided the party. Many members under the age of forty-ve had no liv-
ing memories of a united Germany. They had accepted at least tacitly the permanence of
Germanys division, or believed that it could be overcome only within a united East and
Western Europe.
In the :,,c election, these SPD activists, including the partys :,,c chancellor candi-
date, Oskar Lafontaine, were unable to recognize the broad appeal that German unity
had in the West and its fundamental importance for the new voters in the East. Older So-
cial Democrats, such as the former chancellors Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, en-
thusiastically supported unication and had few problems with the euphoria this issue
generated. Lafontaines lukewarm approach to this issue hurt the SPD at the :,,c elec-
tion, especially in the East, where the SPD received only :., percent of the vote. Overall,
its total of ,,., percent represented the partys worst performance since :,,;.
In :,, the party had high hopes of nally returning to power. Through numerous
victories in state elections it had in :,,: gained control of the Bundesrat. Its internal divi-
sions appear to be resolved as Bjrn Engholm, the partys leader from :,,: to :,,,, and
Rudolf Scharping, the SPDs chancellor candidate for :,,, moved toward the center of
the political spectrum. A weak economy throughout :,,, further enhanced the SPDs
electoral fortunes.
But in early :,, the economy began to improve, and the Kohl government was able
to eke out a narrow victory in October. While the SPDs proportion of the vote increased
to its highest level since :,;, it still lost its fourth straight election.
Not long after the vote, internal conicts ared up again among the SPDs leader-
ship. The aggressive minister-president of Lower Saxony, Gerhard Schrder, who nar-
rowly lost out to Rudolf Scharping in the vote for party leader in :,,,, attacked Scharp-
ing and the national leadership for their continued advocacy of classic Social Democratic
nostrums such as increased spending for public works, welfare programs, and a reduced
workweek. The indecision of the SPDs national leadership over the use of German forces
in UN military operations also drew his criticism. According to Schrder, there are no
longer Social Democratic or conservative economic policies, but rather modern or
unmodern economic policies. He clearly put Scharpings positions in the latter category.
Soon thereafter, Scharping removed Schrder as the partys chief spokesman on economic
questions. Schrder returned the favor by calling the entire national SPD leadership a
cartel of mediocrity.
In November :,,, after a disastrous election in Berlin in which the party fell to less
than ,c percent in its former stronghold, Scharping was successfully challenged for the
leadership by Oskar Lafontaine at the SPD convention. After the leadership change the
partys fortunes in public opinion polls improved. The SPD went on the offensive and fo-
cused on the high unemployment and sluggish economic growth record of the Kohl gov-
ernment. Lafontaine had unied the party, but the SPD still needed a candidate to chal-
lenge Kohl in :,,. Lafontaine yearned for another chance at Kohl, but Schrder was
convinced that he was the only Social Democrat who could defeat the chancellor.
Schrders victory at a state election in early :,, and his standing in public opinion polls
compelled even his opponents in the party to concede that he had the best chance of de-
throning Kohl. While the SPDs heart wanted Lafontaine, its brain said Schrder could
win.
In :,,, after eighteen years in the political wilderness, the Social Democrats nally
regained national political power. It had been a long and rocky road back. The party had
lost four straight national elections and had tried ve different chancellor candidates be-
fore nally selecting a winner.
The party nally presented a united front in :,, and positioned itself in the center
of the electorate. Like the Democratic Party in the United States under Bill Clinton and
the British Labour Party of Tony Blair, the SPD now advocates a third way between un-
fettered capitalism and traditional social democracy with its emphasis on big government
and high taxation. But it took one more intraparty struggle between the Traditionalists,
led by Lafontaine, and the Modernizers, led by Schrder, before this new course was set.
After a stormy cabinet meeting in early :,,,, Lafontaine left the new government, but
not before he denounced Schrders probusiness policies.
The Free Democrats
The Free Democratic Party (FDP) is the only small party to survive the postwar emer-
gence of a concentrated and simplied party system. Ideologically and programmatically,
it is somewhere between the two large parties. On economic issues it is closer to the
CDU/CSU than the SPD; but on matters such as education, civil liberties, and foreign
and defense policies, the FDP has had more in common with the Social Democrats.
The FDP owes its continued existence and relative success to the electoral system,
which gives the party a proportionate share of the parliamentary mandates as long as it se-
cures at least , percent of the vote. The FDP has held the balance of power in most na-
tional elections. Both major parties have tended to prefer coming to terms with the Free
Democrats in a small coalition to forming a Grand Coalition with the other major party.
Between :,, and :,,;, and again from :,o: to :,o,, the Free Democrats were the junior
coalition partner in CDU/CSU governments. From :,o, to :,:, it was in coalition with
the Social Democrats. In :,:, the FDP changed partners once again and returned to the
Christian Democrats. This last move sharply divided the party, but it was still able to sur-
mount the ,-percent barrier at the :,, and :,; elections.
With :: percent of the vote at the :,,c all-German election the FDP achieved the
third-best result in its history. This success was largely a tribute to the role the partys titu-
lar leader, the long-time (since :,;) foreign minister and vice-chancellor, Hans-Dietrich
Genscher, played in the unication process. As FDP campaign speakers never tired of re-
212 germany
minding the voters: Bismarck unied Germany with blood and iron. Helmut Kohl did
it with Hans-Dietrich Genscher! The FDP also beneted from its no new taxes pledge
and did especially well in East Germany, from which Genscher had ed in the :,,cs.
Following Genschers departure in :,,:, the party went into a deep tailspin. From
September :,,, to October :,,, it lost nine straight state elections and was soon repre-
sented in only four of sixteen state legislatures. Its return to the Bundestag in :,, was
due largely to Christian Democratic voters who split their ballots in an effort to prevent
the party from dropping below the ,-percent minimum needed for representation.
In :,, the party went down with Kohl. For the rst time in almost thirty years the
Free Democrats were not in the national government. While the party was able to sur-
mount the ,-percent barrier, it ran a lackluster campaign devoid of popular leaders or an
attractive program. But many saw the defeat as an opportunity to rejuvenate the party.
Freed from its ties to Kohl and the Christian Democrats, the FDP can now move in new
directions.
The Greens
In the late :,;cs, a variety of environmentalist groups with a common opposition to the
governments plans for the expansion of nuclear energy plants banded together into a
Federal League of Citizen Groups for the Protection of the Environment, or simply, the
Environmentalists, or Greens. The Greens were a new face on the political scene.
Their antiestablishment, grassroots, idealistic image had an appeal that was especially
strong among younger Germans. In October :,;,, the Green Party gained entrance into
the parliament of the city-state of Bremen, and in March :,c, it surmounted the ,-per-
cent hurdle in the relatively large state of Baden-Wrttemberg. After a poor showing at
the :,c national election, the environmentalists rebounded by gaining representation in
the state parliaments in Berlin, Lower Saxony, Hamburg, and Hesse.
The Greens in the early :,cs were above all a protest movement with a single is-
suethe environment. Their opposition to placing U.S. middle-range missiles in West
Germany gave them the additional issue they needed to gain representation in the Bun-
destag in :,,, the rst new party to enter the parliament since the :,,cs.
The partys string of successes was snapped in :,, when it fell below the ,-percent
minimum in two state elections. The internal divisions within the movement had become
an issue. The critical problem was the partys relationship to the Social Democrats.
Should the Greens seek power through a coalition with the SPD, or should they remain a
protest movement unsullied by any association with the established parties? Most Green
voters preferred the former alternative (i.e., an alignment with the SPD). The partys ac-
tivists and leaders were divided. One group, the Fundamentalists, rejected any coopera-
tion with the SPD, whereas a second wing, the Realists, were willing to form coalitions
with the Social Democrats at state and national levels in order to achieve Green goals, if
only in piecemeal fashion.
The :,o nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union brought the Fundamen-
talists back in control of the party. At their convention that year, the Greens passed reso-
lutions calling for West Germanys immediate withdrawal from NATO, unilateral demil-
itarization, and the dismantling of all nuclear power stations in the country. The Greens
also refused to distance themselves from the violent demonstrations that took place at nu-
clear power plants and reprocessing facilities following the accident.
In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, support for the party in public opinion polls
doubled to over :: percent. For a time it appeared that if the Greens decided to coalesce
with the SPD, the two parties would have an absolute majority after the :,; election. By
mid-:,o, however, the effects of Chernobyl had begun to wane, and the potential Green-
SPD vote dropped from ,, percent to , percent. Although the Greens clearly gained
support because of the Russian accident, they also lost voters because of their radical posi-
tions on foreign policy, defense, and domestic issues. In spite of these problems, the party
was able to increase its share of the vote at the :,; elections from ,.o percent to ., per-
cent. By the end of the :,cs, the party was also able to gain representation in most state
parliaments. It had clearly become accepted by most German voters as a legitimate politi-
cal force.
In :,,c the Greens were ill prepared for the unication issue. Their predominantly
young electorate had little interest in a unied Germany, having known only the reality of
two German states throughout their lifetime. Most Greens wanted the indigenous East
German revolutionary groups to have more time to nd a third way between the Stalin-
ism of the old GDR regime and what they considered the antienvironmentalist capitalism
of the West. With only ,., percent of the vote, down from ., percent in :,;, the party
failed to return to parliament. Low turnout among Green voters and losses to the Social
Democrats were the major factors in the partys poor performance. The Greens in the for-
mer East Germany, however, did surmount the ,-percent barrier in their region and en-
tered the parliament.
Following the :,,c election, the Greens rebounded in public opinion polls and in
state elections. With the euphoria over unication past and the Realists rmly in control
of the party, the Greens in :,, became the rst party ever to return to the Bundestag fol-
lowing a failure to clear the ,-percent hurdle at a prior election.
By :,, the Realist faction, led by Joschka Fischer, had control of the party. The
Greens were determined nally to assume national political power as a junior coalition
partner with the Social Democrats. This was the Greens goal at the :,, election and
they succeeded. Fischer became foreign minister and other Greens took over the Environ-
mental and Health ministries. The party is now part of the establishment it once so
strongly condemned. But can classic Green demands such as the elimination of atomic
energy and drastic cuts in defense spending be achieved, or has the party been co-opted
by the very consensual structures it once vowed to change? German interest in environ-
mental questions is waning. Among younger voters, once the core of Green support, the
environment is an uncool topic. The Greens must also redene themselves if they are to
remain a viable component of the party system.
Other Parties
Since :,o: a variety of parties in addition to the Greens have attempted to break the mo-
nopoly of the three system parties. Thus far, all of them, with the exception of the East
214 germany
German PDS, which owes its presence in the parliament to special provisions of the elec-
toral law, have failed to surmount the ,-percent mark, but one of them came fairly close.
In the mid-:,ocs, the radical right (if not neo-Nazi) NPD won seats in several state par-
liaments and seemed to have a good chance to enter the national parliament at the :,o,
election. The party secured only ., percent, however, and thus failed to win any seats.
Following this near miss, the NPD faded quickly.
In :,, a new radical-right party, the Republicans, burst on the political scene at state
elections in Berlin, a local election in Frankfurt, and the election of deputies to the Euro-
pean Parliament. Led by a former Waffen-SS ofcer, the party attracted enormous media
attention. Its success resulted largely from its strong antiforeigner theme (i.e., its hostility
to foreign workers, residents, and even ethnic Germans who since :, have been allowed
to emigrate from the Soviet Union, Poland, and other Eastern European countries). Voter
interest in the Republicans, however, dropped quickly in the wake of the unication
movement during :,,,c. After losses in several state elections, the party at the :,,c
election received only :.: percent of the vote. The party made a slight comeback at state
elections in :,,:, again largely because of the asylum issue. But the passage in :,,, of a
constitutional amendment restricting the right of asylum deprived the party of its major
appeal. Its support dropped rapidly, and in :,, it secured only :., percent of the party
vote.
The East German Party Alignment
The opening of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the communist regime led
to rapid changes in the political party spectrum in the GDR. The once subservient bloc
parties (the Christian Democrats, Liberals, National Democrats, and Farmers parties)
replaced their leaders and began to distance themselves from the Communist Socialist
Unity Party (SED). At the same time the various dissident groups who played a crucial
role in East Germanys gentle revolution regrouped, with some difculty, into party-like
organizations for the March :,,c parliamentary elections. East German versions of West
German parties not previously present in the GDRthe Social Democrats, Free Demo-
crats, and Greenswere also formed. Even an East German CSU emerged in the state of
Saxony, with the help of the Bavarians, in the form of the German Social Union (DSU).
Finally, the deposed communists replaced their leadership and changed their name to the
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). A few months after the election, most East Ger-
man parties merged with their West German equivalents in preparation for the December
:,,c all-German election.
The only indigenous East German party now in the national parliament is the old
Communist Party, the PDS. In :,, the party surmounted the ,-percent barrier and re-
turned to the parliament. That same year the PDS entered its rst governing coalition at
the state level when it formed an alliance with the Social Democrats in the eastern state of
MecklenburgWest Pomerania. These successes have been due to the partys role as the
voice of the discontented in the former East Germany. But the PDS is still lost in unied
Germany. It has been unable to attract any signicant support in the West, where c per-
cent of the electorate resides.
Interest Groups
As in other Western European societies, in the Federal Republic a wide variety of groups,
associations, and movements play signicant political roles. The major interest groups
business, labor, agriculture, the churches, and professional organizationsare well orga-
nized at local, state, and national levels and work closely with the political parties and
state bureaucracy. They have been joined in the past two decades by less structured but
widely based new social movementsenvironmentalists, peace and disarmament ac-
tivists, womens rights groups, as well as other movements for various social minorities.
Less established than the traditional interest alignments, the new social movements have
nonetheless had a growing inuence in the political process.
The hierarchical organizational structure of the established German interest associa-
tions means that their top ofcials can speak authoritatively for the membership and en-
sures them access to state and party elites. Indeed, the rules of procedure in German min-
istries require ofcials to consult with the leading representatives of interest groups when
drafting legislation that relates to a groups area of concern. Unlike the United States,
where the terms interest or pressure groups and lobbyists have negative connota-
tions, Germany treats their counterparts as legitimate and necessary participants in the
policy process. Each major interest-group alignment also maintains contact, although not
to the same extent, with all major parties. Labor unions, for example, have closer ties to
the Social Democratic Party than to the Christian Democrats or the Free Democrats. Yet
there is also a labor wing within the CDU; and the FDP, at least while it was in coalition
with the Social Democrat, maintained contacts with trade union leaders. Business and in-
dustrial interests enjoy a warmer relationship with the center-right CDU/CSU than the
SPD, but again, there are supporters of the SPD among the ranks of Germanys busi-
ness-industrial elite.
This pattern of strong government interest-group/political party integration even be-
came somewhat institutionalized during the late :,ocs when the top representatives of
each area met in a Concerted Action, a regular conference at which general economic
conditions were discussed and guidelines for wages, prices, and economic growth were
set. At these meetings business, labor, and the national government sought to reach a con-
sensus on (:) what a reasonable wage increase would be for various industrial workers,
(:) the acceptable level of price increases, and (,) the amount of government spending
and taxation necessary to ensure stable economic conditions and moderate (i.e., nonina-
tionary) economic growth. In :,, newly elected Chancellor Gerhard Schrder made his
Alliance for Jobs the cornerstone of his plan to reduce unemployment. The Alliance
consists of representatives from business, labor, and government who periodically meet to
propose job programs. It is similar in structure and purpose to the old Concerted Action.
The Alliance for Jobs and the other less formal interest-group government contracts
have prompted some analysts to term Germany a neocorporatist state.
2
Corporatism is
an old term in social and political thought; it refers to the organization of interests into a
limited number of compulsory, hierarchically structured associations recognized by the
state and given a monopoly of representation within their respective areas. These associa-
tions become in effect quasi-governmental groups with state approval, training, licensing,
216 germany
and even exercising discipline over the members. The power of these associations is not
determined by a groups numerical size alone but also by the importance of its function
for the state and community.
Major Associations
Business and Industrial Interests
Three organizations speak for business and industry in the Federal Republic: the League
of German Industry, which represents large industrial and business interests; the National
Association of German Employers, which represents essentially small- and medium-sized
rms, and the German Industrial and Trade Chamber, composed of smaller, independent
businesses (shopkeepers, artisans).
The impressive accomplishments of the German economy and the importance of
economic conditions for the political health of any government assure these associations
easy access to the political elite. Recently they have been most concerned with opposing
union plans for a shortening of the workweek to thirty-ve hours with no reduction in
wages. Business interests also advocate cuts in government spending and business contri-
butions for social programs, usually citing their negative effect on Germanys competitive
position in the world market.
The ability of business interests to inuence government policy even under the So-
cial-Liberal coalition that governed from :,o, to :,: is seen in the relatively weak Co-
determination Law passed in :,;o, under which the representatives of capital and man-
agement still retained a majority on a rms supervisory board; and the Apprentice
Education Bill of :,;o, which continued to assign fundamental responsibility for the
training and control of young apprentices, who still account for almost half of the six-
teen- to nineteen-year-old age group, to employers and not the school or the state. Gov-
ernment efforts to institute a more progressive tax structure in the late :,;cs were also, for
the most part, successfully opposed by business interests.
Labor
The German labor movement, like the German political parties, has changed extensively
in the postwar period. During the Weimar Republic, labor was divided along
politico-ideological lines into socialist, communist, Catholic, and even liberal trade
unions. These unions, especially the socialist and communist groups, were concerned
with more than wages, hours, and working conditions. They sought to mobilize their
members into supporting and implementing a comprehensive ideology of social, eco-
nomic, cultural, and political change. Many of their resources were spent on developing
and rening this ideology and the accompanying tactics that included confronting fellow
workers in competing unions. The German labor movement was thus fragmented and
relatively ineffectual in securing solid economic gains for its members or, of course, in
preventing the Nazi seizure of power.
The postwar Western Occupation authorities and many prewar German trade union
leaders sought to restructure and reform the unions. The result of their work is the Ger-
man Trade Union Federation (Deutscher GewerkschaftsbundDGB), an organization
composed of twelve different unions with a total membership of over million in West
Germany and about : million in the former East Germany.
3
The DGB has become labors chief political spokesperson and has pursued essentially
a policy of business unionism concentrating on wages and working conditions. Labor
leaders as well as economic policymakers within the Social Democratic Party advocate a
pragmatic position toward the market economy best summed up by the adage Do not
kill the cow we want to milk.
The trade unions have been successful in securing steady and solid economic gains
for German workers. The unions have also shared in this prosperity. One factor in the
low strike rate is the economic strength of organized labor, which induces business to
take union proposals seriously and seek compromises. Business knows that labor has
the financial resources to sustain an extensive strike action. The unions ties to all par-
ties, especially to the Social Democrats, give them direct access to the government.
This political power is an additional factor that produces close worker-management
cooperation.
Unification and the Trade Unions
The communist-controlled trade unions in the former East Germany collapsed with the
larger communist state and party. Union membership was compulsory in the old GDR,
but the unions were under the control of the party. Collective bargaining, the right to
strike, and the free election of union ofcials were unknown. After unication, the West
German DGB organized about ,.o million East German workers, or about , percent of
the membership of the old communist trade unions.
4
But by :ccc about half of these
new members had left the trade unions as unemployment in the East increased sharply.
Union membership, Easterners discovered, could not protect them from the unemploy-
ment that accompanied the restructuring of the East German economy.
Agriculture
Few interest groups in the Federal Republic have been as successful in securing govern-
mental policies benecial to their members as have the various organizations representing
German farmers. Farmers constitute less than , percent of the workforce, and agricultures
contribution to the gross national product is less than , percent. Yet no occupational
group is as protected and as well subsidized by the government as German farmers. They
receive guaranteed prices for most of their products; they are given subsidies and tax ben-
ets for new equipment, construction, and the modernization of their holdings. And the
increase in the value of farmland has led some observers to term them Germanys secret
rich.
5
While they may be land rich but cash poor, it is difcult to consider them an
impoverished or disadvantaged minority in German society.
A succession of green plans has consolidated many small farms into larger, more ef-
cient units, but German agriculture still could not compete with other Western societies
were it not for the strong European Union protective tariff system for farm products and
additional subsidies from Berlin. These benets to farmers have been estimated to add an
218 germany
additional :c to :, percent to the food bill of consumers; but all governments since :,,,
regardless of their party conguration, have essentially continued these policies.
Agriculture in the former East Germany is in a state of transition. Under the commu-
nists, almost all farmers were forced to join collective farms. Since the revolution, some
have reclaimed their land and are attempting to become independent, while others are re-
organizing the former collectives into cooperatives. Many of these new cooperatives are
run by the managers of the former collective farms. These Red Barons acquired a con-
trolling interest in the cooperatives by buying out former members at cut-rate prices. They
then modernized the operation through investments in new equipment and personnel
cuts. The result: many East German farms are twenty to thirty times larger than their West
German counterparts. The large size of agricultural holdings makes them more efcient.
Indeed agriculture is one of the most productive sectors of the East German economy.
6
Elections
Elections in the Federal Republic offer citizens their chief opportunity to inuence the
political process. Convinced that the German common man had been supportive of
Hitler and the Nazi regime during most of the Third Reich, the Federal Republics found-
ing fathers essentially limited popular involvement at the national level to participation in
periodic elections.
7
There are thus no provisions for the direct election of the president or
the chancellor, referendums, the recall of public ofcials, or direct primaries to ensure
more popular involvement at the national level.
8
As in other Western European parliamentary systems, national elections do not di-
rectly determine the chief personnel of government. The chancellor and cabinet are
elected by parliament after parliament has been elected by the voters. Elections must be
held at least once every four years but can take place more frequently if a government
loses its majority and parliament is dissolved. The Federal Republic has automatic regis-
tration and universal adult suffrage for all citizens over eighteen years of age.
Electoral System
Generally, there are two basic procedures in Western democracies for converting votes
into legislative seats: a proportional system in which a partys share of legislative man-
dates is proportional to its popular vote, and a plurality, or winner take all system, un-
der which losing parties and candidates (and their voters) receive no representation.
Proportional systems are usually favored by smaller parties because under pure propor-
tionality, a party with even a fraction of a percent of the vote would receive parliamen-
tary representation.
Conversely, plurality systems are usually favored by the large parties, which have both
the resources and candidates to secure pluralities in electoral districts. Some political sci-
entists have hypothesized that there is a causal relationship between the electoral law and
the number of political parties, with a proportional law causing a multiparty pattern and
a plurality system producing a concentration of electoral support in two parties.
The German electoral law has elements of both plurality and proportionality, but is
essentially a proportional system. One-half of the delegates to parliament are elected on a
plurality basis from ,: districts; the other half are chosen on the proportional principle
from state (Land) lists. The voter thus receives two ballotsone for a district candidate,
the other for a party. But the second ballot is by far the more important. The proportion
of the vote a party receives on the second ballot determines ultimately how many seats it
will have in parliament because the district contests won by the partys candidates are de-
ducted from the total due it on the basis of the second ballot vote.
An example from the :,, election should illustrate this procedure (see table :,.:). In
:,, the SPD won c., percent of the second ballot vote and was thus entitled to :o
mandates. Since it had already won ::: contests at the district level, however, these were
deducted from the total due it on the basis of the second-ballot vote. Thus its total of :o
was composed of ::: direct district victories plus ,o from the second-ballot party lists.
Similarly, the CDU/CSU with ::: district victories received an additional :: from the
second ballot to bring its total to :,c. Note that the PDS won only four districts while
neither the FDP nor the Greens won a single direct victory in any district. Thus all the
FDPs forty-three seats and the forty-seven received by the Greens came from the party-
list part of the ballot.
Since all other smaller parties failed to surmount the ,-percent hurdle, the o percent
of the vote and approximately thirty-nine seats they would have received under pure
proportionality were awarded to the parties that did secure representation. Thus the nal
total for the SPD, for example, was :, seats; thirty more than the party actually
earned. These additional seats came from the SPDs share of the smaller parties vote
(seventeen) and from the excess mandate provision (thirteen) described below.
There are two further exceptions to pure proportionality. If a party secures more dis-
trict mandates than it would be entitled to on the basis of the second-ballot vote, it is al-
lowed to keep these excess mandates and the parliament is enlarged accordingly. In :,,
there were thirteen of these seats; all of them went to the SPD. Finally, if a party wins
three direct district victories, the ,-percent minimum on the second ballot is waived. In
:,, the PDS returned to the parliament under this provision. Its four direct victories
meant that it would participate in the proportional payout even though it failed to
220 germany
Table 13.1 Seat Distribution in the 1998 Election
Percent Percent Seats District List
Party rst ballot second ballot entitled to
a
seats won
b
candidates elected
c
SPD 43.8 40.9 268 212 86
CDU/CSU 39.5 35.1 230 112 133
Greens 5.0 6.7 44 0 47
FDP 3.0 6.2 41 0 43
Minor parties 3.8 6.0 39 0 0
Total 100.0 100.0 656 328 341
a
Number of seats entitled to under proportional representation.
b
Number of district contests won on rst ballot.
c
Number of list candidates elected.
achieve the ,-percent minimum. It thus received an additional twenty-two seats from the
list mandates.
9
This complicated electoral law, which most German voters do not fully understand,
was intended to combine the best features of the plurality and proportional systems. The
district contests were to introduce a personalized component into elections and give
voters a means of identication with their parliamentary deputy; the party-list alloca-
tions were meant to ensure that a programmatic or policy dimension to elections would
be present. The ,-percent clause was designed to prevent small, antisystem splinter parties
from gaining representation and making coalition building in parliament difcult. In
spite of its basically proportional character, the German party system has become more
concentrated over the past fty years. The small parties, the Free Democrats, the Greens,
and in the East, the PDS, owe their existence to this system. They are all, of course, op-
posed to any change in the direction of an Anglo-American plurality system.
Candidate Selection
Candidates for the party lists are selected at state-level conventions held several months
before the general election. The composition of a list involves considerable bargaining
within the party and between it and its major interest clientele. Generally, the very top
positions are reserved for the partys notables in the state, followed by representatives of
factions and interest groups. In some cases, a candidate assigned a relatively weak district
will be compensated by a promising list position. All participants in this procedure have a
rough idea of how many list positions will be allotted to the party; that is, how many can-
didates will actually be elected. As the assumed cutoff point is approached, the intensity
of the bargaining increases.
District candidates are nominated at local meetings of party organizations. These meet-
ings are intended to provide an opportunity for all party members to screen prospective can-
didates. In fact, the district leadership of the party dominates the proceedings. Nonetheless,
state and national party leaders have relatively little inuence in the district-level nominat-
ing process, and there have been cases where prominent legislators have had difculty be-
cause they had paid insufcient attention to the grassroots membership.
Since most candidates are incumbents, the most obvious qualication for nomina-
tion to the parliament is previous experience in the job. A successful local- or state-level
legislative background, long service in a local party organization, and close association
with an interest group important to the party are other major qualications. For a list
nomination, expertise in a particular policy area can also be an important factor.
The German Voter, 194998
The results of the fourteen national elections held between :,, and :,, reveal several
major trends in German elections:
:. A generally high rate of turnout, which by the :,;cs exceeded ,c percent, the
highest proportion of any major Western democracy without legal penalties for
nonvoting. This high turnout reects the strong emphasis in the political
culture placed on voting as a duty, but it also indicates a tendency to perceive
elections as a means of citizen inuence in the policymaking process.
:. The increasing concentration of support in two large parties from :,, to :,;:,
and between :,, and :,,c two small but strategically important third parties,
all of which support the basic democratic structure of the system.
,. The dominant position of the CDU/CSU between :,,, and :,o, and again
since :,:. During this period, the Union was the largest political party and the
major partner in all coalition governments.
. The steady rise of the SPD between :,,, and :,;: from the ,c percent ghetto
to relative parity with the Christian Democrats.
,. The decline in support for the two major parties since the :,cs. At the :,,
election, the CDU/CSU-SPD share of the vote, which has been as high as ,,
percent, was about ; percent.
In :,, fourteen political parties entered the parliament. Most of them were ab-
sorbed by :,,; into the Christian Democrats led by Konrad Adenauer. Extremist parties
such as the Communists and several radical right-wing groups also disappeared by :,,;,
rejected by the electorate. Campaigns of the :,,cs focused on the performance of Ade-
nauers governments. CDU gains during this period came largely from the ranks of the
smaller parties. Most SPD advances between :,,; and :,;: were from CDU/CSU voters
and new voters, not from those of the minor parties. The Free Democrats, depending on
their coalition partner, attempt to appeal to CDU/CSU and SPD voters dissatised with
their normal party. The FDP projects itself as a liberal corrective to the major parties:
less conservative and clerical than the CDU/CSU, but not as radical or socialist as the
SPD. In election campaigns, the FDP must to an extent campaign against its coalition
partner.
At the :,, election, the voters solidly endorsed the CDU/CSU-FDP government of
Helmut Kohl, which had governed since October :,:. The Christian Democrats, with
. percent of the vote, achieved their best result since :,,;. The CDU/CSU gains came
largely at the expense of the Social Democrats, and almost : million :,c SPD voters
switched to the Union. The major issues of the campaign were unemployment, the secu-
rity of the pension system, the reduction of decit spending, and price stability. In all
these areas the CDU/CSU was regarded as better qualied to deal with these problems
than the SPD. The Social Democrats campaign focused on the missile question, which
was not nearly as important to the majority of voters as the bread-and-butter economic
problems. The Free Democrats, with ; percent of the vote, were able to gain the support
of voters dissatised with the Christian Democrats but who also wanted the coalition to
remain in power. Nonetheless, the partys performance was its worst since :,o,.
In :,; German voters returned the ruling Christian Democratic-Free Democratic
coalition, but with a reduced majority. For the rst time in postwar German electoral his-
tory, both major parties lost support at the same election. The combined CDU/CSU
(., percent)Social Democratic (,; percent) share of the vote dropped to : percent,
the lowest level since :,,,. The Free Democrats increased their vote to ,.: percent, while
222 germany
the Greens proportion of the party vote rose to ., percent. Voting turnout dropped to
. percent, the lowest since the rst federal election in :,,.
Unified Germany at the Polls, 199098
In the :,,c all-German election, the rst democratic election in all of Germany since the
:,,cs, the Kohl-led coalition was returned for the third straight time. Within the govern-
ing coalition, the big winner was the Free Democratic party, which achieved the third-
best result (:: percent) in its history. This vote was largely a personal tribute to Foreign
Minister Genscher for his achievements in the unication process.
The parties on the left of the political spectrum were the major losers in :,,c. The Social
Democrats, with only ,,., percent of the vote, dropped to their lowest level since :,,;. In the
new East German states the party received less than a fourth of the vote. This poor result was
in part a reaction to Oskar Lafontaines lukewarm attitude toward unication. The big sur-
prise of the election was the failure of the West German Greens to return to parliament.
In :,, the ruling CDU/CSU-FDP government led by Helmut Kohl won its fourth
straight election, but by a very narrow margin. Only about percent of the German
electorate voted for the government. The complexities of the electoral, however, turned
this minority vote into a thin majority, ,c.; percent, of the seats.
In :,, German voters went to the polls for the fourteenth time since :,,, and for
the rst time, they removed an entire incumbent government. In ofce since :,:, Chan-
cellor Kohls coalition government of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats was de-
feated soundly and replaced by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, nicknamed
Red-Green. The new government was headed by Gerhard Schrder, the chief executive
of the state of Lower Saxony.
Several factors led to this decisive shift of power. First, the Social Democrats ran a
carefully planned, professional campaign closely modeled on the :,,; effort of Tony Blair
in Great Britain and the :,,: and :,,o campaigns of Bill Clinton in the United States.
Second, the SPD put aside its chronic ideological quarrels and presented itself as a united
party that would take a pragmatic approach to the pressing problems of unemployment
and global economic competition. Third, after sixteen years, many German voters had
grown tired of Chancellor Kohl and wanted at least a new face, if not new policies. Fi-
nally, Kohl and his Christian Democrats were abandoned en masse by voters in the for-
mer East Germany. Since :,,c the Christian Democrats had been the strongest part in
the East in both national and regional elections. But in :,, Eastern voters reacted to
continued high unemployment and the slow pace of economic and social unication,
turning on Kohl and the CDU with a vengeance. The party lost almost ,c percent of its
Eastern support.
Voting Behavior
The votes of most Germans can be explained by (:) demographic characteristics of voters,
especially social class and religion; (:) voter attitudes toward major candidates; (,) the
policies and images of the political parties; and () voter attitudes about important policy
issues facing the country.
Demographics. Germanys unionized manual workers still form the core of the Social
Democratic electorate, while the Christian Democrats and the FDP do well in
middle-class or nonmanual occupations. In :,, unionized manual workers preferred the
SPD over the other parties by about a oc:c margin. Among middle-class voters, Chris-
tian Democratic and Free Democratic support is about as high. The religious factor also
structures the party vote. Most German Catholics who regularly attend church are
staunch supporters of the Christian Democrats. But the party preference of Catholics
varies signicantly by their attachment to the church (as measured by church atten-
dance). Catholic voters who seldom or never go to church are far less likely to support the
Christian Democrats than those who regularly attend services. For nominal Catholics, so-
cial class, rather than religion, is a more important determinant of voting behavior. The
SPD and FDP and the Greens receive disproportionate support from Protestants, espe-
cially those with a weak attachment to their church. The Greens also do very well among
voters who report no religious afliation.
While social class and religion remain important factors in voting behavior, their rel-
ative impact has declined over the past forty years. The proportion of Germans in manual
occupations has dropped from ,: percent in :,,c to ,, percent in :ccc. Thus there is less
of a proletariat for the Social Democrats to draw on. Similarly, the old middle-class
component of the electorate, the small shopkeepers, farmers, self-employed doctors and
lawyers, has declined from : percent in :,,c to only :c percent by :ccc. This reservoir
of Christian DemocraticFree Democratic strength has also become smaller.
The erosion of the social-class cleavage is also evident for the religious division. A
generation ago, conservative German politicians characterized elections as a competition
between Christian good and atheist evil, and such rhetoric succeeded in polarizing many
voters along religious lines. But social change in the Federal Republic includes a strong
secular trend. In the :,,cs, over c percent of voters reported going to church on a weekly
basis; by the :,, election, barely :, percent attended church this regularly. Among Ger-
man Catholics, regular church attendance has declined from , percent in :,,, to :, per-
cent in :,,. While churchgoing Catholics were about as likely to vote for the
CDU/CSU in the :,,cs as they were in the :,,cs, their numbers and hence the aggregate
impact of religion on the vote have declined.
10
These social changes have an especially strong impact among young voters. They are
the least likely to be tied to the old class and religious networks and hence the most
likely to seek out new alternatives. In short, age is one demographic factor whose impor-
tance has increased. Age is of particular importance in explaining support for the
Greens. In :,,, for example, over half the Green vote came from Germans under
thirty-ve years of age. While over : percent of voters under age twenty-ve supported
the Greens, almost twice their national average in :,,, only about : percent of Ger-
mans over age sixty voted for this party. As Green voters age, this polarization should de-
cline, but in the near future the generation gap will remain an important factor in voting
behavior. The Social Democrats in :,, made a strong appeal to younger age groups,
and among those voters under thirty-ve years of age the SPD was indeed the strongest
party.
224 germany
Attitudes toward Candidates. Voters perceptions of major candidates, especially party
leaders and those slated for the chancellorship or cabinet membership, are important in-
uences on voting behavior. The incumbent chancellor, for example, generally has an ad-
vantage, or bonus, over the challenger. As in other Western societies, the chief executive
can to an extent inuence the newsannounce new programs such as tax reductions, in-
creased spending for social programs, tax cuts, and subsidies to various groups, all timed
to the election.
A major factor in the landslide CDU/CSU victories in :,,, and :,,; was the personal
popularity of Adenauer. More voters liked Adenauer than liked his party, and the SPDs
chancellor candidates were less popular than their party. The low popularity of the Chris-
tian Democratic candidate in :,c, Franz Josef Strauss, was an important factor in the
victory of the SPD-FDP coalition. In :,,c, following unication, Chancellor Kohl be-
came more popular than his party.
Party Policies and Strategies. Through their policies and strategies the parties have also
played an independent role in shaping electoral outcomes. The SPDs :,, decision, for
example, to all but ignore the unemployment issue and emphasize noneconomic issues
such as the NATO missile decision cost the party sizable blue-collar support. In :,; the
Christian Democrats underestimated the extent of discontent among Germanys farmers,
many of whom stayed home. The Social Democrats decision to seek an absolute major-
ity, with their chancellor candidate conducting a U.S.-style campaign, lacked credibility
in the view of most voters. By bringing down the Schmidt government in :,:, the Free
Democrats lost many voters and were able to return to the parliament in :,, only with
the support of many CDU/CSU supporters who split their ballots; the party narrowly es-
caped political extinction. In :,,c the Social Democrats division over the unication
question was an important factor in the partys poor performance. In :,, the decision of
Helmut Kohl to seek a fth term was a major factor in the Christian Democratic defeat.
Issues. In most elections, the issues of prime concern to German voters revolve
around the economy and social stability: ination, unemployment, law and order (terror-
ism), and the viability of the social welfare system. Security is a word often used by all ma-
jor parties in their electoral appeals; the bulk of the electorate does not want any major
political or socioeconomic changes. In :,, the economy was the major issue, and the
economic upturn that began in late :,,, was just in time and just enough to bring the
Kohl government a narrow victory. Kohl became the rst chancellor to escape unscathed
from a recession. In :,,, however, record high unemployment worked against the in-
cumbent government.
More specic issues, while not of concern to a great majority of the electorate, can be
important in effecting the small voting shifts that can be decisive in an election. In :,;:,
for example, the SPD-FDP coalition was clearly helped by the issue of Ostpolitik, the gov-
ernments policy of improving relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Some
voters, normally CDU/CSU, supported the Brandt government because of this issue;
they saw the policy as a step toward a more lasting peace in Europe.
Since the early :,cs, noneconomic or new politics issues have increased in impor-
tance. Chief among them was the protection of the environment, and specically the
problem of nuclear power plants. By :,,c, almost ;, percent of German voters consid-
ered the environment to be a very important issue, second only to unemployment. The
:,o nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union struck Germany with a special
force, as citizens were told not to eat certain foods and to keep their children indoors.
This crisis was soon followed by a series of chemical spills into the Rhine. The ecological
cries of the Greens were now taken seriously by supporters of all political colors, and sup-
port for the Greens in public opinion polls soared. Over c percent of all German voters
considered the Greens to be the most competent party to deal with nuclear power issue;
this was almost ve times greater than the partys vote at the :,, election. Other noneco-
nomic issues whose importance increased in the :,cs and :,,cs were womens rights,
peace and disarmament, and the treatment of foreign minorities.
Notes
:. For a discussion of this point, see Gordon Smith, Democracy in Western Germany (New York: Holmes and
Meier, :,;,), ,o ff.
:. Gerhard Lehmbruch, Liberal Corporatism and Party Government, in Trends toward Corporatist Inter-
mediation, ed. Philippe Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, :,;,), :;.
,. There is a union for white-collar employees (Angestellten) with about a half million members that is not
afliated with the DGB. This is the only non-DGB union of any signicant size in the private sector.
. Michael Fichter, From Transmission Belt to Social Partnership? The Case of Organized Labor in Eastern
Germany, German Politics and Society :, (Summer :,,:): :c.
,. Michael Jungblut, Die heimlichen Reichen, Die Zeit o (:c November :,;): :,.
o. Adalbert Zehnder, Wo die Roten Barone das Sagen haben, Sddeutsche Zeitung, :o September :ccc.
;. Kurt Sontheimer, Die Bundesrepublik und ihre Brger, in Nach dreiig Jahren, ed. Walter Scheel
(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, :,;,), :;,o.
. Referendums are constitutionally possible in most states, and a little-known provision of the Basic Law al-
lows local communities to be governed by citizen assemblies. Thus far, no locality has employed this form
of governance.
,. Two additional changes in the law were in effect for only the :,,c election, the rst free all-German vote
since :,,:. First, largely as a concession to the East German parties, a party in :,,c was required to secure
the , percent minimum in either the former West or East Germany. Hence the PDS, the former Commu-
nist Party and the East German Greens, now allied with the East German citizen democracy movement,
Bndnis )o, both are in the parliament even though they only received :. percent and :.: percent respec-
tively of the national vote. In the former GDR they met the , percent minimum. Second, parties were al-
lowed to combine their electoral lists, that is, form alliances in the various states. This was also designed to
help the new East German parties. Ironically, had the West German Greens formed such an alliance with
their East German counterparts, they would have returned to parliament with about twenty-six seats.
:c. David P. Conradt and Russell J. Dalton, The West German Electorate and the Party System: Continuity
and Change in the :,cs, Review of Politics, January :,, ,:,. For the :,,c election, see Rainer-Olaf
Schultze, Bekannte Konturen im Westenungewisse Zukunft in Osten, in Wahlverhalten, ed.
Hans-Georg Wehling (Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, :,,:), ;; for :,, church attendance among
Catholics, see ALLBUS (General Social Survey), :,,.
226 germany
Chapter 14
How Is Power Used?
THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC is a complex political system characterized by the presence
of several power centers. Although the national executive with its control over the civil
service initiates the broad outlines of policy, it cannot secure the approval of its policy
proposals or their implementation without at least the tacit prior approval of other actors
in the political system: major interest groups, extraparliamentary organizations of the
governing parties, key members of parliament, the states, the courts, the health and social
security system leadership, the Federal Employment Service administration, and even the
opposition parties through their chairmanship of several parliamentary committees and
their delegates in the Bundesrat. Strong opposition by any of these actors will hinder the
efforts of the government and chancellor to determine the main guidelines of policy.
Successful policymaking must be accomplished within the framework of the
politico-economic consensus that has developed over the past ve decades. This means
that the system resists any efforts at introducing major innovations within a relatively
short time frame. Change tends to be gradual and incremental and rarely will it have a
redistributive effect. The issue of subsidies for agriculture, the coal and steel industry,
shipbuilding, and the construction trade has been a policy problem throughout much of
the republics history. Economic advisers, countless study commissions, and in the case
of the coal industry even the courts have recommended their drastic reduction or elimi-
nation. Most governments on entering ofce promise nally to tackle the problem, but
regardless of their partisan composition the subsidies continue. Even the enormous -
nancial demands of unication have not made a dent in programs that pay construction
workers when the weather is bad, coal miners to produce coal for which there is no mar-
ket, and farmers to grow crops that will be added to the huge stockpiles of the European
Union. Attempts to change the tax system in the direction of more progressive rates have
been stymied partly by factions within the ruling political parties, but also through the
efforts of well-organized interest groups that have extensive contacts with governmental
ministries.
The federal structure of the republic, which gives the states extensive responsibilities
in implementing national legislation, represents a further dispersion of political power
and is thus a further inhibiting factor on major policy innovation.
1
The importance of the
constituent states in the policy process has increased as the scope of their veto power in
the Bundesrat has expanded. At present, almost two-thirds of all legislation is subject to a
Bundesrat veto.
In addition, between :,;: and :,: the combination of a CDU/CSU majority in the
Bundesrat and a Social Democratic-Free Democratic majority in the Bundestag reduced
the chances of the national government using its power without extensive bargaining with
the states. Thus the :,;o treaty with Poland, although negotiated by the national govern-
ment, was ratied only after a variety of changes and concessions were made at the insis-
tence of the CDU/CSU majority in the Bundesrat. State opposition also thwarted
planned changes in education policy and the liberalization of regulations governing the
employment of radicals in the public service. But even friendly states (those governed
by the same coalition that rules in Berlin) can and indeed have opposed national policy
initiatives when they perceive a threat to state interests. Thus the national government
had to struggle for decades to change signicantly the distribution of taxes between the
national and state governments or to expand its inuence in higher education, urban
planning, and environmental protection legislation. In these areas, all the states have
guarded their prerogatives.
In :,,: this condition of divided government returned as the Social Democrats ac-
quired a majority in the Bundesrat, while the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats
held a solid majority in the Bundestag. The Social Democrats used this new inuence to
force changes in the governments tax program to nance unication. Because of the
SPD majority in the Bundesrat, the Kohl government had to make changes in a wide va-
riety of planned policies including the :,,, asylum law, the new system of long-term
nursing care insurance, and legislation allowing the deployment of German troops out-
side NATO territory.
Finally, the Federal Republic has transferred some important policymaking power to
the institutions of the European Union. Agricultural policy is made largely in Brussels
under the terms of the European Unions Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Since :,,,
control over monetary policy is in the hands of the European Central Bank as part of
Germanys membership in Euroland, that is, the twelve nations who have adopted a com-
mon currency, the euro.
Semipublic Institutions
The use of political power in the Federal Republic is not restricted to the formal govern-
mental institutions. Germany has an extensive network of semipublic institutions that
play major roles in determining how power is to be used and how policy is to be imple-
mented. Among the semipublic institutions, the German social security and health sys-
tems, like the bureaucracy and courts, have survived the frequent and sudden regime
changes of the past century. Both were established in the :cs by the conservative chan-
cellor Otto von Bismarck, who sought to ensure that the growing German working class
would support the existing monarchical regime and not the socialists. Through these so-
cial welfare programs, Bismarck in effect tried to buy the workers political support. The
Federal Labor Institute (Bundesanstalt fr Arbeit), located in Nuremberg, which adminis-
ters a nationwide network of employment ofces, was established during the Weimar Re-
public and reemerged relatively intact after :,,. These institutions assume functions per-
formed by national governments in centralized systems such as Britain and France. In
228 germany
Germany, they lessen the total political load carried by the national government, but they
also reduce its strength. Their distance from the national and state governments has also
generally shielded them from the conicts of partisan politics.
2
The Social Security and Health Systems
The German welfare state is one of the most generous and comprehensive in the world.
Expenditures of the health, pension, industrial accident, child support, public housing,
and veterans programs account for about ,c percent of the national governments budget
and provide citizens with over a fourth of their disposable income. The pension and
health care programs are nanced largely through equal employer and employee contri-
butions. The state does pay for civil servant pensions and about c percent of the pension
costs for farmers. The costs of other programs, such as child support, housing and rent
subsidies, and welfare, are taken from general tax revenues. Employers must pay the costs
of the accident insurance program.
Yet the administration of these huge programs is not carried out by either the na-
tional or state governments, but by more than :,cc social security and health funds lo-
cated throughout the country. The health, or sickness, funds cover about ,c percent of
the population. They are organized by economic sector (business, agriculture, profes-
sions), occupational group, and geographic area. The social security (pension and acci-
dent) programs insure about ,, million adults.
Although dating from the late nineteenth century, the programs have undergone ex-
tensive changes since the founding of the Federal Republic. The governing boards of all
the funds are now based on the principle of parity representation for the various busi-
nesses, professional, and labor interests most concerned with the programs. After :,,,
the left or labor wing of the ruling Christian Democratic Union, working with the trade
unions and the opposition Social Democrats and enjoying the support of Chancellor
Adenauer, was able to convince business interests that the confrontational class politics of
the Weimar Republic should be replaced with a new emphasis on social partnership.
This required concessions from both business and labor. The trade unions gave up their
majority control of the health funds, while employers did the same for the pension and
accident insurance programs.
The administrative independence of the funds is limited by federal law. The size of
pension payments and the taxes to pay for them, for example, are determined by the par-
liament. But they do have considerable power to set the fee structure for physicians, the
construction and management of hospitals, and the investment of pension fund capital.
The concept of social partnership thus extends to the state as well.
The health and pension system funds, according to one authority, are political shock
absorbers, connecting state with society because they leave it to the major economic in-
terest groups to mediate the states administration of major social welfare programs.
3
The postwar emphasis on consensus and social partnership is seen most clearly in the
:,,; reform of the pension system. Previous pension legislation based the size of pay-
ments largely on the individuals contributions. The :,,; law, while retaining some ele-
ments of individual insurance, linked increases in pension payments, with some time lag,
to increases in the overall national wage level. This dynamic feature enabled all pension-
ers, regardless of their individual contribution, to share directly in the expanding national
economy. The :,,; law was a political compromise. Conservative business interests and
the Christian Democrats accepted its dynamic provisions, that is, indexing pensions to
the national economy, while the labor unions and the Social Democrats abandoned their
preference for a more uniform, egalitarian pension scheme. The system now combines el-
ements of individual insurance with collective welfare.
In recent years the combination of an aging population, a sluggish economy, and the
costs of unication have severely strained the postwar consensus on the welfare state.
Contributions from employers and employees to the pension and health programs have
not kept pace with expenditures. The resulting decits have been covered from general
tax revenues. In addition, persistently high unemployment has put the unemployment
insurance system into the red, adding further to the state decit.
Since the :,cs a variety of piecemeal cuts were made in the welfare state, but in :cc:
Chancellor Schrders SPD-Green government passed a massive overhaul of the pension
system. Over the opposition of its core electoral clienteleblue-collar workers and the
trade unionsthe new system effectively reduced pension payments from about ;c per-
cent of a workers prior income to o, percent for at least two years. This was accomplished
by linking pension increases not to the average annual increase in wages, but rather to the
increase in the cost of living. The dynamic in the dynamic pension system was gone. To
compensate for the decreased payments, workers will be encouraged to establish their
own retirement accounts. Up to percent of annual income, capped at about $:,ccc for
singles and $,ccc for married couples, can be invested tax free in an individual retire-
ment account. In addition, from :cc on the state will contribute an additional $,cc an-
nually as a premium to the individual accounts. For each child, an additional $:c will be
added to the accounts. These funds will accumulate on a tax-deferred basis. Lower-in-
come groups will also receive tax credits to encourage them to establish supplementary re-
tirement accounts.
The Federal Labor Institute
The Federal Labor Institute is a semipublic institution that is assigned primary responsibil-
ity for organizing the labor market (i.e., bringing jobs and job seekers together) and ad-
ministering the system of unemployment insurance. The institute also administers pro-
grams, nanced from unemployment insurance revenues, that retrain workers and
supplement the income of those put on short time. In its programs, the institute must
give special attention to the elderly, women, the handicapped, long-term unemployed, and
other special groups such as seasonal workers. The institute, which was established in :,,:,
is located in Nuremberg and is under the supervision, but not the direct control, of the La-
bor Ministry in Bonn. It is governed by a president, an executive committee, and a super-
visory board, which has representatives from trade unions, employers, and federal and state
ofcials. The major guidelines determining labor policy are developed in Nuremberg and
administered in hundreds of branch, local, and regional ofces. Most of the unemploy-
ment compensation programs are nanced by equal employer and employee contribu-
230 germany
tions, which amount to about , percent of a workers gross income. If the unemployment
level is high, however, the federal government must subsidize the institute. Thus in certain
circumstances it can be nancially dependent on the federal government.
But, as in the case of the pension and health systems, business and labor representa-
tives are closely involved in the work of the institutes employment ofces through their
membership on its local, regional, and national administrative committees. The members
of these committees are proposed by the trade unions, business associations, the federal
government, and local government authorities.
The mass unemployment in the former East Germany since unication has strained
the resources of the institute. From :,, to :,, its budget increased from about $: bil-
lion to $oo billion. Currently about half of the institutes unemployment payments go to
the unemployed in the East although the population in this region comprises only about
:c percent of the countrys total. Unemployment insurance payments made by westerners
are thus also being transferred to the East. Between :,,: and :,,, national government
subsidies to cover the institutes shortfall grew from about $: billion to almost $:, billion.
4
Since :,,, private commercial employment agencies have been permitted, thus end-
ing the near-monopoly of the Federal Institute. These private agencies are now allowed to
place employees in all available positions; previously, they were restricted to placing man-
agers, artists, and models. Their fees, however, must be paid by employer, not the job
seeker. About :,ccc private employment agencies have opened since the :,, law went
into effect.
Use of Power in the Social-Liberal Era, 196982
The basic pattern of incrementalism, a problem-solving bargaining orientation to poli-
tics, continued unchanged under the Social-Liberal coalition that governed from :,o, to
:,:. Indeed, the Social Democrats since :,,, were committed not to change the rules of
the game if they did achieve national political responsibility. Most of Germanys Social
Democrats do not propose any basic changes in the structure of the economy or polity. In
economic policy they have advocated only gradual changes in capitalism German style.
Capital and labor are viewed as partners, rather than opponents, with government me-
diating any major differences. This basic orientation means, of course, that governmental
power will be used cautiously and above all in a manner that will not disrupt consensus.
The thirteen years (sixteen including the :,ooo, Grand Coalition) of Social Democratic
rule did not produce any basic changes in this pattern. What the SPD effected was a grad-
ual shift in distributive policies in the direction of greater benets for lower- and
lower-middle-status groups (tax, welfare, education policies) and the beginnings of a pos-
sible shift in the distribution of power and inuence within the industrial enterprise
(codetermination). The other major change associated with SPD rule from :,o, to
:,:Ostpolitik, the normalization of relations between West Germany, the nations of
Central Europe, and the Soviet Uniondid not in fact represent any major challenge to
the consensus but drew on previous initiatives made during the mid- and late :,ocs when
the Christian Democrats were still the dominant party. Thus was considerable support for
the new policy within the parliamentary opposition.
Conicts between the two coalition partners were more frequent in socioeconomic
policy and especially over questions of the organization of the economy, the reform of vo-
cational (apprenticeship) training, land-use laws, the inequality of capital resources (com-
pulsory prot sharing), and tax reform. The Free Democrats generally are opposed to in-
creased state intervention in the economy and the extension of worker participation in a
rms decision-making process at the expense of capital and management. The leveling
implied in the prot-sharing plans supported by the Social Democrats and their plans for
increasingly progressive taxation were also opposed by the FDP. In short, when the issue
involved the redistribution of economic resources and power, that is, increasing the re-
sources of one group (workers) at the expense of another (the middle and upper classes),
there was extensive conict within the coalition. The Free Democrats were usually able to
force a compromise that beneted its largely upper- and middle-class clientele. The Social
Democrats, in this area, probably gave up more than their numerical strength required;
also, the Free Democrats exerted more inuence than their size would have entitled them
to.
5
The coalition was more harmonious when problems were largely regulative and dis-
tributive in character. There was essentially little difference between Social Democrats
and Liberals in the areas of civil liberties, education, internal security, defense, and foreign
policies. These latter problems dominated the legislative program of the rst SPD-FDP
government led by Willy Brandt (:,o,;:).
How Power Was Used after the Wende, 198289
The Christian Democrats returned to power in :,: promising a fundamental change
(Wende) in the republics policies and its moral-cultural climate. The era of free-spend-
ing, permissive socialism had, in the view of the Christian Democrats, had a corrupting
effect on the West German community. Kohl promised a return to traditional values:
thrift, hard work, and discipline, and an end to the entitlement mentality of the Social
Democratic-Liberal years. The victory of his government in the :,, election, however,
was due primarily to the recession of :,:,, Germanys worst since the Great Depres-
sion of the :,,cs. Many voters associated this economic slump with the policies of the
previous government. The Christian Democrats promised an economic upturn through a
German version of supply-side economics: cuts in government spending including most
social programs, investment incentives for business, lower taxes, and reduced state
decits. While these policies, when nally implemented, did not produce changes as dras-
tic as those associated in the early :,cs with Reaganomics or Thatcherism, they did
represent a departure from the generous support given to social welfare programs during
the SPD-FDP governments.
But the German welfare state was by no means drastically cut during these years. In-
deed, most analysts argue that most of the cutbacks in education, health, and pension
spending lasted only until early :,.
6
And by :,, the Kohl government suffered sharp
losses in state elections to the Social Democrats that were related to public opposition to
any further reductions in the welfare state. Numerous surveys over the past twenty years
have consistently shown that while Germans are willing to accept marginal reductions
232 germany
during difcult economic times, they still rmly support welfare programs and expect the
state to assume fundamental responsibility for the health and well-being of the popula-
tion. Thus spending for social programs dropped only from ,:., percent of GNP in :,,
to ,c percent in :,o. While budget decits dropped from $,c billion in :,: to $ bil-
lion in :,;, by :,, they had risen again to about $:c billion. At the :,; election there
was little talk of a Wende, or of any further reductions in social programs by the Christian
Democrats.
How Power Was Used in the Unification Process
The speed and effectiveness of the external dimension of unication belied the conven-
tional wisdom that modern democracies cannot act in a timely and decisive manner. In
less than eleven months after the opening of the Berlin Wall on , November :,, the
Kohl government concluded
treaties with the four World War II powers ending their occupation rights in
Germany, including Berlin, reduced the Germany Army by about half, and set
the eastern borders of the unied country.
a separate agreement with the Soviet Union in which Moscow agreed to
withdraw its twenty-one Red Army divisions from East Germany by :,, and
allowed a unied Germany to remain in NATO in exchange for about $c
billion in German aid.
two major treaties with East Germany merging the countries economic and
social welfare systems (June :,,c) and regulating the entrance of East Germany
into West Germanys political, constitutional, and legal order (August :,,c).
The government in these eleven months secured the support of all of Germanys
neighbors and allies as well as its adversaries in the former communist bloc. While both
Britain and France were opposed to unication, their inuence was more than countered
by the strong support of the United States.
Internal unication has been a much more difcult process, requiring the usual bar-
gaining and compromise between and among the key domestic political players described
above. Some difcult unication-related issues such as abortion and the question of prop-
erty rights were not resolved in the unication treaties, but left to the new German parlia-
ment and/or the courts to resolve. The nancing of unication has also thus far been an-
other example of incrementalism with political and electoral considerations playing
important roles.
The government in :,,: was unable to agree on an abortion bill, and it was left to an
ad hoc coalition of government and opposition deputies to hammer out a compromise
proposal that the government actually opposed. But the new law was promptly chal-
lenged in the Constitutional Court, which in :,,, invalidated the legislation. The govern-
ment returned to the drawing board with new legislation in :,,, which was rejected by
the SPD-controlled Bundesrat. It was not until :,,, that another compromise law was
passed, which pleases no one. The new abortion statute does grant a woman the right to a
state-nanced abortion in the rst trimester provided that she participates in a counseling
session aimed at discouraging her from having the operation.
Since unication in :,,c, almost : million claims have been made on property con-
scated either by the Nazis after :,,, or by the Communists after :,,. Many East Ger-
mans acquired these homes, shops, and farms under laws and regulations issued by the
Communist regime, which was a sovereign state until :,,c. The national and state parlia-
ments, courts, and administrative agencies must now decide whether the rights of East
Germans, who in many cases have lived on the property for decades, take precedence over
the rights of former residents, or their heirs, who ed or were deported from the country.
The nal unication treaty in :,,c set forth as a general principle that the restitu-
tion of property to its former owners takes precedence over monetary compensation.
This maxim has proved difcult to implement and has led to a huge backlog of court
cases. In :,,: and :,,: two new laws were passed by the parliament, which were designed
to speed up the legal process and encourage new investment in the region. The restitu-
tion before compensation rule has also been opposed strongly by many East Germans
who believe that they have acquired rights to their property by virtue of having lived on
the land. Under then-valid East German law, most Eastern Germans were in fact the legal
owners of the real estate.
In nancing unication the Kohl government proceeded with the usual political cau-
tion. While some advisers in :,,c urged that Chancellor Kohl appeal to patriotic senti-
ments and call on West Germans to sacrice and accept stiff tax increases to nance the
rebuilding of the East, most public opinion polls found little support for such an ap-
proach. Instead the government has borrowed about half of the $: trillion spent thus far
on unication and raised the rest through a series of direct and indirect tax increases.
It was only after the :,,c election that German taxpayers began to get the bills for
unication. In spite of his campaign pledge of no new taxes Kohl in :,,: announced
that the unexpectedly high costs of unication would necessitate a temporary increase in
income taxes, specically ;., percent Solidarity surtax. Additional revenues were raised
by sharp hikes in gasoline taxes and social insurance premiums. The surtax did expire
prior to the :,, election, but a new Solidarity Pact reinstated the levy in :,,,, that is, af-
ter the :,, election. This :,,, Solidarity Pact setting forth the long-term nancing of
unication was supported by the government, the opposition Social Democrats, and the
sixteen state governments.
Overall, since :,,c there have been thirteen different tax increases imposed, usually
in the manner described above. Between :,,: and :,,o, the proportion of the average
Germans gross income deducted for taxes and social insurance premiums has increased
from : percent to o percent.
7
Since :,,c, unication has cost each West German man,
woman, and child over $:,ccc in increased taxes or public debt.
The Use of Power by Schrders Red-Green Coalition
Following their dramatic victory in :,, the Social Democrats and the Greens assumed
the reins of power with a full policy agenda. Few governments have ever gotten off to a
worse start. Both parties had little experience in governing at the national level. The So-
234 germany
cial Democrats had been out of power since :,:, and the Greens were in their rst-ever
national government. This lack of experience showed in the early months as confusing
and conicting policies were announced.
The SPD was divided between a traditionalist wing led by Finance Minister Oskar
Lafontaine and the Modernizers under Schrder. Both played important roles in the :,,
election victory, with Lafontaine appealing to the partys historic working-class core and
Schrder bringing in new voters from the center. But only one could eventually govern.
Lafontaine wanted to stimulate consumer demand through tax cuts for lower- and mid-
dle-income groups and increases in spending for social programs. Schrder favored a
more probusiness policy of reductions in the costs of hiring new employees, tax breaks for
investors, and reductions in welfare state spending. Lafontaine also advocated major
changes in the international monetary system by returning to xed exchange rates and
limiting international capital movements. The conict between the two men came to a
head in early :,,, when Lafontainefollowing an emotional cabinet meeting at which
Schrder declared that his government must stop antagonizing business interests
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Chancellor Gerhard Schrder answer questions in parliament, January
:oo:.
resigned as nance minister and leader of the SPD. Schrder himself replaced Lafontaine
as head of the party and appointed a new nance minister who would support his centrist
policies.
In the short run the intraparty conict cost the government dearly at a series of local
and state elections. The SPD faithful were dismayed at Schrders probusiness approach
and stayed home in protest. But by late :,,, Schrder, helped by the Kohl nance scan-
dal, had stopped the partys free fall. An improving economy and declining unemploy-
mentalbeit slightlyalso helped the Red-Green government.
The crowning policy achievement of the Schrder government thus far came in :ccc
when he was able to skillfully guide a major tax reform package through both houses of
parliament. Under the new law, the most signicant since World War II, the top corpo-
rate tax rate would drop from about ,: percent to ,, percent by :cc,. Individual rates
would also be cut from a current high of ,: percent to : percent, while the bottom rate
would go from : percent to :, percent. The tax package was very similar to the one the
Kohl government failed to pass in :,,;.
Like Kohl, Schrder had a solid majority in the Bundestag, but was in the minority
in the second chamber, the Bundesrat, which represents the states. To pass the Bundesrat,
the Schrder government would need ,, votes. The ve state governments governed
either by the SPD alone or in coalition with the Greens were secure, but their vote total
was only :,. Six states with : votes were governed either by the CDU, the CSU, or
CDU-FDP coalitions. They would, of course, vote against the tax package. Thus
Schrders only change was to secure at least :: of the :; remaining votes of the ve states
where the SPD governed either in coalition with the CDU (Berlin, Bremen, Branden-
burg), or with the FDP (Rhineland-Palatinate), or the PDS (MecklenburgWest Pomera-
nia). In the case of the FDP and PDS states (; votes) the SPD had a dominant position;
in the Grand Coalition states, it was the largest party in Bremen and Berlin.
Time to Deal
Schrder and Finance Minister Hans Eichel had various sweeteners ready for the poten-
tial turncoats: Berlin received about $c million to cover the extra security costs incurred
by the visits of foreign dignitaries since becoming the national capital again and for the
citys museums; the small and very poor state of MecklenburgWest Pomerania received
support for a new power plant. The smallest state of Bremen was assured that the weight-
ing system for state-to-state revenue sharing, which benets the small states, would not
change. This was pork-barrel politics German style. Late on the eve of the decisive vote
Schrder had his majority. The next day he triumphantly proclaimed the end of slow
growth and high unemployment; Germany was a competitive global economic player.
The CDU, of course, cried foul. Never in my ,c years in politics, lamented
Thuringias Minister-President Bernhard Vogel, have I witnessed such an abuse of a con-
stitutionally established institution. Behind the backs of elected state ofcials, new ma-
jorities were shamelessly put together. Bavarias Stoiber observed that the CDU states
had been bought by the Schrder government. He considered the CDU governments in
Berlin and Bremen to be traitors to the party. Irrespective of party, small states do not like
236 germany
to be dominated by the larger states. Schrder was able to play on this fundamental prin-
ciple of federalism. Of course, it did not hurt that historically there has been little love
lost between Berliners (Prussians) and Bavarians. The CDU mayor of Berlin essentially
told his fellow Christian Democrat in Bavaria to mind his own business.
The process of implementing national legislation takes place largely through the adminis-
trative structures of the state (Land) governments. The national government is thus de-
pendent, in many cases, on the states if legislation is to have its intended effect. At rst
glance, this system would seem to allow the sixteen states, especially those governed by
parties not in power in Bonn, to sabotage or undermine national legislation they oppose
on ideological or partisan political grounds. In practice, this has not taken place.
German federalism has a number of unifying or centralizing characteristics that make
this implementation phase function remarkably well. First, as we have discussed, state
governments and their bureaucracies have extensive input into the national-level legisla-
tive process through their membership in the Bundesrat. They are well aware of what the
legislation will entail in terms of administrative machinery and resources. Second, the
laws and rules of procedure for state bureaucracies are unied. Unlike U.S. federalism,
constituent states do not have different laws for divorces, bankruptcy, or criminal of-
fenses. Also, the rules by which the civil service operates are the same for all states and the
national government. Third, the constitution requires that there be a unity of living
standards throughout the republic. In practice, this has meant that richer states, such as
North RhineWestphalia and Hamburg, must pay via grants and tax transfers to bring
the poorer states up to their level of government services and standards. Thus the expen-
ditures of poorer states for public works or welfare are not drastically different from those
of more prosperous Lnder. Differences between resources and expenditures are made up
by this system of tax redistribution, or revenue sharing.
Differences between states do exist in policy areas where the Lnder have sole or ma-
jor responsibilitiesmainly education (especially primary and secondary) and internal
security (police and law enforcement). Educational reform, for example, has proceeded
differently in the various states. Although the CDU/CSU governs six of the sixteen
Lnder, only one of every ten comprehensive schools is in a CDU state. Procedures for
the screening of candidates for public employment have also varied, with CDU/CSU
states taking a more hard-line position on this issue. There have been cases of prospective
schoolteachers whose applications were rejected in CDU/CSU-governed states such as
Bavaria and Baden-Wrttemberg for alleged radical political activity securing positions in
SPD states. Until :,,: the abortion issue, described above, also divided the West German
states and the ve new East German regions.
Notes
:. Although Berlin is now the ofcial political capital and the seat of the parliament and central government,
not all major administrative units of the federal government will have their central ofces there. The cur-
rent practice of dispersing national ofces throughout the country will continue. For example, none of the
major federal courts is in the current capital, Bonn; they are scattered about in Karlsruhe, Kassel, Berlin,
and elsewhere. The federal railways and federal bank are in Frankfurt, the airline has its administrative cen-
ter in Cologne, the national archive is in Koblenz, the Federal Criminal Ofce (the German version of the
FBI) is in Wiesbaden. This dispersion of administrative ofces reects the decentralized character of the
Federal Republic and, perhaps more important, the fact that the states preceded the federal government af-
ter :,,. Indeed, many of these ofces were the product of the Occupation period. The ve new states are
also beginning to receive their share of federal ofces. The Federal Administrative Court will soon move
from West Berlin to Leipzig (Saxony). The national Environmental Protection Ofce will move from
Berlin to Dessau (Saxony-Anhalt), and Erfurt (Thuringia) will be the new home for the Federal Labor
Court, which has been in the West German city of Kassel.
:. Peter J. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, :,;).
,. Ibid., ,.
. Institute gures cited in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, :: July :,,, :.
,. Manfred G. Schmidt, The Politics of Domestic Reform in the Federal Republic of Germany, Politics and
Society , no. : (:,;,): :o,:cc.
o. Jens Alber, Der Wohlfahrtstaat in der WirtschaftskriseEine Bilanz der Sozialpolitik in der Bundesre-
publik seit den frhen siebziger Jahren, Politische Vierteljahresschrift :;, no. : (March :,o): :oc.
;. Das Parlament ; (; November :,,,): :.
238 germany
Chapter 15
What Is the Future of German Politics?
AS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC enters the twenty-first century, it is faced with a vari-
ety of domestic and foreign political problems, many of which are common to other
advanced industrial democracies: unemployment, environmental protection, crime,
drug abuse, urban development, energy, the financing of the extensive social welfare
system, European integration, economic growth, and East-West relations in a
postCold War world. To these problems common to other developed democracies
must be added the challenge of unification. The Federal Republic is attempting to in-
tegrate :o million East Germans into its Western-style society, economy, and polity.
Most of these new citizens have lived for most of their lives under either Nazi or com-
munist dictatorships. Their experience with Western democracy is limited to the pe-
riod since November :,, during which they have experienced a rapid and sometimes
difficult transformation of their society and way of life. Unified Germany must also
define its role in the international arena and especially its relationship to the postcom-
munist societies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This chapter exam-
ines these issues.
None of the republics current tasks, however, should obscure its fundamental ac-
complishments since :,,: a consensus on liberal democracy has nally been achieved in
a German political order. The Federal Republic has become an effective and legitimate
democratic political system. Indeed, for some, it has become a model of an advanced in-
dustrial society.
1
Its critics, those who view it as vulnerable to a major economic crisis and
those who regard it as a neofascist restoration, are simply mistaken. That these clichs
endure testies to the power of stereotypes and not to any actual political developments
in the past fty years.
This process of consensus building and legitimating has taken most of the postwar
period to develop. As a result, many institutional and policy changes have been slower to
emerge in the Federal Republic than in other Western democracies. Thus there is no lack
of problems for Germany. Nevertheless, few modern industrial democracies have more
resources to deal with these issues than the Federal Republic.
Putting Germany Back Together Again: The Rebuilding and
Integration of the East
The October :,,c unication of the two German states ended a legal and international
political process that began less than a year earlier with the breaching of the Berlin Wall.
Germany was formally united, but the signing of a few agreements and treaties cannot
simply bring together two societies divided for forty years.
Unication has political, economic, social, and psychological dimensions. What hap-
pened on , October :,,c? Was West Germany simply enlarged by the addition of :o mil-
lion new citizens, about a fourth of the population of the old Federal Republic? Or was a
new state created from the merger of two independent states? Or was the Germany that
was defeated and divided in :,, reunied in :,,c? Will the addition of :o million East
Germans produce a new political cultural mix? Will Germany now look more to the East
and reassert its historic economic and political role in this region? These are the questions
that Germans themselves are now posing. Discussion and debate over these issues and re-
lated problems will constitute much of the substance of German politics in the years
ahead.
The :,,c unication was not a merger of two independent sovereign states but a
friendly takeover. East Germany was bankrupt, the communist regime discredited, and
the great majority of Easterners wanted unicationthe security, prosperity, and free-
dom they associated with the Westas soon as possible. After the disappearance of their
own state, however, East Germans discovered that many West Germans considered them
an economic and political burden. Over ;, percent of East Germans, according to surveys
conducted from :,,c to :,,,, feel that they are second-rate citizens. They resent the arro-
gance of some West Germans, the Besserwessis (know-it-all Westerners), who treat them
like colonial subjects. East Germans also see the Westerners as too materialistic and ma-
nipulative. Many East Germans feel that their condition was just an accident of history.
They have a sense neither of guilt nor of responsibility for the forty years of communist
dictatorship.
2
Since unication, West Germans have realized that stiff tax increases and
240 germany
Table 15.1 What Has Become Better, What Has Become Worse since Unication? East Germany,
2000
Better Worse
Consumer goods services 95% Protection against crime 78%
Condition of streets and buildings 86 Social justice 52
My own living standard 76 Opportunities for children 50
Freedom of speech 74 Time alone, reection 49
Housing conditions 71 Relations with friends 49
Political participation 63 Sense of security against lifes risks 44
Personal freedom 62 Health services 38
My own self-esteem 55 Schools 36
Sense of social well-being 41
Health services 37
Opportunities for children 34
Source: Infratest-DIMAP survey cited in Rita Mller-Hilmer, Zehn Jahre Vereinigung, Die Zeit 40 (29 Sep-
tember 2000).
Note: Multiple responses were allowed.
large decits are the price for real unity, and many question why they should continue to
sacrice. Some Westerners see the Ossies (Easterners) as lazy, always expecting a handout:
They think they can live like we do without working for it. German political leadership
is now attempting to deal with this Wall in peoples heads or inner unication.
After a decade of living together, some progress toward breaching the psychological
Wall has been achieved. When asked in :ccc whether they consider themselves to be the
winners or losers in the unication process, about oc percent of Easterners saw them-
selves as winners, :c percent as losers, with the remaining :c percent somewhere between
these two positions. Between :,,, and :ccc the proportion of winners rose from ,: per-
cent to oc percent. Younger, better-educated Easterners were the most likely to feel that
they were winners. As Table :,.: shows, after ten years of unication most residents of the
former East Germany see the positive results of unication outweighing the negatives. A
better standard of living, freedom of speech, political participation, and greater self-es-
teem are recognized by solid majorities of Easterners as the positive results of unication.
The biggest negative is the problem of crime and the perceived lack of social justice in the
market society of modern Germany.
A New Capital
The June :,,: decision to move the government and parliament to Berlin was in part an
attempt to demonstrate to East Germans that unied Germany was more than a simple
what is the future of german politics? 241
The new Chancellery opens in Berlin, May :oo:. (AP/Wide World Photos)
enlargement of the old Federal Republic. The narrow vote in parliament was preceded by
a nationwide debate. Supporters and opponents of Berlin and Bonn were found in all the
political parties. The :,,c unication treaty stated that Berlin was the capital, but left
open the question whether the government and parliament would remain in Bonn or
move to Berlin. Supporters of Bonn contended that moving the government would
weaken the postwar federal system. Bonn was associated with West Germanys postwar
transformation into a stable democracy and a model member of the Western community
of nations. For some, Berlin is a symbol of Germanys militaristic, authoritarian, and to-
talitarian pastthe Prussian Kaisers and Hitler all waged war from Berlin. The citys sup-
porters counter that it is unfair to blame an entire city for the acts of a few individuals
many years ago. They pointed to Berlins steadfast commitment to Western values during
the darkest days of the Cold War.
The controversial vote expressed the conviction of at least a narrow majority of polit-
ical leaders that Germany had to integrate its new eastern regions into the larger political
community as quickly as possible. Unied Germany will be a more eastern, northern, and
secular society than the old Federal Republic. The close vote was followed by over eight
years of planning and frequent postponements of the eventual move. It was not until the
summer of :,,, that the government nally settled in Berlin.
The Economic and Environmental Reconstruction of the East
Unication revealed the full extent of the former East Germanys economic problems. Its
economy was characterized by an outmoded, overstaffed industrial sector, an underdevel-
oped service sector and a dilapidated infrastructure. Many of the regions industrial enter-
prises were largely incapable of competing in a market economy. Many East German
products were obsolete, of poor quality, and when priced in hard currency, more expen-
sive than those of Western competitors. The countrys largest customers, Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union, could not afford to pay for imports in the Western currencies de-
manded after the July :,,c unication treaty. East Germans themselves also stopped buy-
ing the products from their own region. Most East Germans were also underemployed;
feather-bedding was widespread. By :,,, the average West German worker produced al-
most four times as many goods and services as his or her East German counterpart, that
is, the gross national product produced by East Germanys ,.: million workers only
equaled the GNP of :. million West Germans.
Following unication, the countrys economy went into free fall; hundreds of plants
were closed, some for environmental reasons, and unemployment soared. Production in
some areas dropped by ,c to ;c percent. By the end of :,,:, the regions workforce had
declined by about ,, percent from ,.: million in October :,,c to o.: million. One mil-
lion were unemployed, an additional million and a half were on subsidized short time,
and over a half-million had moved to the West.
Beginning in :,,,, the East German economy began to recover. Since then, more
jobs have been created than have been lost, but the economy is still dependent on transfer
payments from the West. Between :,,c and :ccc total transfer payments to the East
242 germany
amounted to about $: trillion (this gure does not include tax and other payments that
then owed back from the East to the West). About oc percent of this money has been
used to supplement the Easts social welfare programspensions, unemployment pay-
ments, health carein order to bring them up to Western standards. The remaining c
percent has nanced a variety of infrastructure investments: transportation, telephone
systems, and hospitals. Private-sector investment during the :,,c:ccc period has to-
taled an additional $,cc billion. These funds have been used above all for new housing,
commercial and industrial ofces and plants, and equipment.
Unification: The Record after Ten Years
These transfers from West to East Germany have had a dramatic impact on the living
standards of East Germans since :,,c. The net monthly income of East Germans in-
creased from ,, percent of the Western level in :,,c to almost percent by :,,. Pen-
sioners in the East have fared even better. Under the communist regime pensions were
very low; in :,,c the core East German pension amounted to only c percent of the
Western level. By :,, this had risen to about ; percent.
East Germans have used some of this increased income to acquire the services and
durable goods long regarded as necessities in the West, but which under communism
were scarce luxuries. In :,,c only : percent of East Germans, largely the trusted party
and state elite, had private telephones. By :,, telephone service had reached the near-
universal level of the West. A similar pattern was found for items such as computers, micro-
wave ovens, and other household items. Private bathrooms and central heating were en-
joyed by less than half of all East German households in :,,c; by :,, this had increased
to o percent. The average living space per member of an East German household has
also increased from :.: to :.o rooms.
As table :,.: shows, the economy of the eastern regions has made substantial progress
in achieving parity with the West. Between :,,: and :,,, the East German per capita
gross domestic product (GDP) as a percentage of the Western level rose from ,: percent
to o: percent. Wages and salaries grew from about half the Western level to almost c per-
Table 15.2 Catching Up: East vs. West, Economic Indicators, 199199 (Eastern level as percentage of
Western level)
Indicator :)): :)), :)), :)))
Gross domestic product, per capita 33 57 60 61
Investment in plant and equipment 70 164 176 147
Wages and salaries 49 73 74 78
Productivity 41 65 66 69
Unit labor costs 144 113 113 114
Source: Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher wirtschaftlicher Forschungsintitute e.V, Die Lage der Weltwirtschaft und
der deutschen Wirtschaft im Herbst :ooo, Halle, 2000, 81.
cent by :,,,. Productivity, however, by :,,, was just at o, percent of the Western level.
Thus East Germans continue to earn or receive more than they produce; transfers have
made up the difference from the West. This productivity/income relationship means that
the relative cost of labor is higher in the East, even though the wages are lower. Unit labor
costs in :,,, were about :: percent of the costs in the West, but this is a substantial im-
provement from the situation in :,,: when they were : percent of the Western level.
The key factor in increasing productivity is new investment in plants and equipment. By
:,,,, the investment level in the East was :; percent of that in West Germany, an in-
crease of almost :cc percent over :,,:, but below the levels in :,,,,.
As discussed in chapter :, West German taxpayers, present and future, are largely
footing the enormous bill for this economic and social reconstruction. By :ccc, unica-
tion was costing the average West German family about $::, monthly in increased taxes.
Future taxpayers must also deal with a rapidly expanding national debt. By :ccc, to-
tal public-sector debt passed the : trillion DM (about $:. trillion). Since the collapse of
East Germany in :,,, this debt has almost doubledas a proportion of the countrys
GDP the debt has increased from : percent in :,, to over oc percent in :ccc. Interest
payments on this debt now consume over :: percent of public-sector budgets.
3
While this
is still below the level of other Western societies, most notably the United States, it is a
cause of growing concern for economists and some political leaders.
By the end of :,, one important economic task, the privatization of the formerly
state-owned economy, had been largely completed. The Trusteeship Authority (Treuhand),
the agency charged with this task, has sold almost ,,,cc enterprises to private owners or
turned them over to state and local governments. About ,,occ formerly state-owned com-
panies were shut down. The proceeds from the sale of these companies, however, greatly
exceeded the authoritys expenses and left the taxpayers with a bill of about $:;, billion. In
order to sell the enterprises quickly, the authority, in many cases, had to assume the debts
of the old companies and the liability for their damage to the environment.
The Environmental Crisis
Cleaning up the environment in the East has become a harder task than rebuilding its
economy. Water, ground, and air pollution levels are among the highest in Europe. This
monumental clean-up job will last well into the next century.
Only , percent of the regions rivers and streams are ecologically intact, and only :
percent of its lakes are free from pollution. Almost c percent of the areas water sources
are either biologically dead or heavily polluted. The remainder are only moderately poi-
soned. The most important waterway in the East, the Elbe, is the most polluted river in
Europe.
Pollution is most severe in the industrialized south and southwest parts of the region.
Outmoded industrial plants, many built before World War II, dumped millions of
pounds of untreated industrial and chemical wastes into waterways or huge pits each year.
The areas major source of energy, lignite or brown coal, was the chief cause of air pollu-
tion including virtually nonstop smog during the fall and winter months. The sulfur
244 germany
dioxide emitted when lignite is burned affects the nose, throat, and lungs. Skin cancers
and respiratory ailments are two to three times higher in this area than in the rest of the
former East Germany.
Soil pollution is most extensive in the uranium mine areas in the states of Saxony and
Thuringia. From :,o until :,,c, over :cc,ccc tons of uranium were shipped to weapons
factories and power stations in the Soviet Union. Whole villages were evacuated and de-
stroyed during the mining operations. The total cleanup of this area will not be com-
pleted until :c:,.
Since unification, substantial progress has been made in dealing with these huge
environmental problems, but much remains to be done. The closing down of many of
the worst polluting industries, chemical plants, and coal-fired industrial plants, mainly
for economic reasons, has produced some improvement, especially in air quality. Since
unification, about $,c billion has been invested for environmental protection, by far
the largest clean-up project in Europe: sewage treatment plants, filtration facilities,
desulfurization units, waste incinerating systems, and modern recycling facilities have
begun to have an effect. The largest clean-up project is in the brown-coal region in Sax-
ony, the most industrialized and polluted region of the old East Germany. By :ccc
brown coal production had been reduced by c percent and almost half of the land
damaged by strip mining had been restored. Air quality in the state now approximates
that achieved in the Ruhr region in the West in the :,;cs. Over ,cc sewage treatment
plants have been built, which has improved water quality in most rivers and streams.
Scientists in :,,, reported that over :cc species of mussels have reappeared in the Elbe,
the regions largest river. The concentration of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium,
zinc, and nickel in the river has dropped by over :, percent since :,,:. Environmental-
ists, however, remain very concerned about the amount of toxic materials present in the
rivers sediments.
Minorities: Foreign Residents and Right-Wing Violence
After unication, the most complex social problem confronting the Federal Republic is
the condition of its almost million foreign residents. The economic miracle of the :,,cs
transformed Germany from an economy with a surplus of labor to one with an acute la-
bor shortage. There were simply too many jobs available for the native workforce, espe-
cially in menial, low-paying positions. To remedy this problem and maintain economic
growth, the government, working closely with employers, recruited workers from Italy,
Greece, Spain, Turkey, and other less-developed countries. Guest workers (Gastarbeiter),
as they were euphemistically termed at the time, usually occupy the lowest rung on the
occupational ladder: unskilled manual positions, sanitary and sewage workers, custodial
and janitorial staff. They tend to be concentrated in large cities: Berlin, for example, is the
city with the third-largest Turkish population in the world.
4
They have been subjected to
discrimination in housing. Apart from their jobs, most foreign workers have little or no
social contact with the native German population.
The dependents of foreign workers, especially their children, make this a potentially
explosive issue. Many of these children have spent most or all of their lives in Germany.
Yet their parents cling to the goal of someday returning to their home country and thus
want the children to retain its language and values. The result is that children grow up in
a sort of twilight zonethey master neither their parents language nor German. They in-
variably drop out of school and, urged on by the parents, attempt to secure employment
to augment the familys nances and hasten its return to the homeland. But in recent
years the tightened job market has made it difcult for young, half-literate, and untrained
foreign people to nd work. The result is a growing body of unemployed adolescents, es-
pecially in the large cities, involved in petty crime and, increasingly, the drug trade.
Discrimination, a lack of social mobility, and poor educational and job opportunities
for their children are the result, in part, of the guest workers lack of political inuence.
As non-Germans, they cannot vote, and the acquisition of citizenship is a difcult process
even for those foreign residents who want to be naturalized. The political system has sim-
ply not responded to the needs of an unorganized, politically powerless minority, and as
long as foreign workers do not have the vote, it is difcult to envision any major changes.
In fact, new restrictions on residency for foreign workers, imposed by some local govern-
ments, hinder their freedom of movement and hence decrease their prospects for upward
social mobility.
The problem is compounded by the ambiguity of the foreign workers future plans.
Many still insist that their goal is to return to their home country. They are in Germany
just to earn as much money in as short a period of time as they can and are thus not in-
terested in becoming politically involved. For some, this return to the homeland has be-
come a myth or illusion that enables them to endure the discrimination and deprivation
they experience. By the second and third generation, however, it becomes less viable, and
the frustration of their children increases.
Several proposals have been made to improve the status of guest workers and their
families. One involves giving the franchise to foreign workers for local elections. Two
states, Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, passed such legislation in :,,. This wouldit
is argued make local ofcials more responsive to their needs, especially in housing and
education. In :,,c, however, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the law unconsti-
246 germany
France
Germany
Italy
Sweden
United Kingdom
Canada
:,.,,
c.,
,o.;
,o.
:.:
.,:
Vote for Social Democratic/Labor Parties (percentage in most recent legislative election)
tutional. Citizens from other member countries of the European Union, however, can
since :,,: vote in local elections.
In :,,, after years of debate, the new Social DemocraticGreen government passed
legislation reforming the countrys :,:, citizenship and naturalization laws. Based largely
on the principle of lineage or blood, the old laws made it very difcult for the countrys
foreign residents to become naturalized citizens. The new legislation grants automatic cit-
izenship to anyone born in Germany if at least one parent has lived in the country for at
least eight years. Dual citizenship is allowed until the age of :,, when a choice must be
made. The new laws also liberalized the naturalization process for foreign residents by re-
ducing the required length of residency and the costs of the process.
Immigration and Asylum
By the late :,cs, the problem of foreign workers was compounded by the arrival of hun-
dreds of thousands of political refugees from various Third World countries and ethnic
German resettlers from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. A strong antiforeigner
backlash also developed among native Germans in some cities and was related to the suc-
cesses of the radical right-wing Republican Party. Germany had the most liberal political
asylum law in Western Europe, which is due in part to the fact that many of the founding
fathers of the Federal Republic were themselves political refugees during the Third Reich.
But, in recent years, a ood of asylum seekers prompted the government to change the
existing laws. Germany contends that many asylum seekers are not victims of political
persecution but want access to the Federal Republics prosperous economy and generous
welfare state.
In :,,: and :,,: groups of skinheads and young neo-Nazis attacked some of the hos-
tels and dormitories where many asylum seekers are housed. Resentment toward foreign-
ers was especially strong in the former East Germany. While German political leaders and
the great majority of the public condemned the violence, growing support for reducing
the inux of foreigners into the country prompted the government with the support of
the opposition in :,,, to amend the constitutional right to asylum. The amendment
sought to exclude persons who attempt to enter the country for largely economic reasons.
By :,, the number of asylum applications had declined by oc percent.
Xenophobia and Right-Wing Violence
The new citizenship and asylum laws have improved, but by no means solved the prob-
lem of foreign residents and immigration. Globalization means not only the free ow of
capital but also the increased mobility of people. In Germany, as in other West European
countries, the end of the Cold War and increased world trade has increased the number
of immigrants. With Europes largest economy, it is the chief target country for immi-
grants from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Right-wing violence against foreigners, which began in the early :,,cs, has not disap-
peared. In :ccc, for example, neo-Nazi activity increased with about :c percent more
hate crimes including vandalism, beatings, murder, and the display of Nazi symbols than
in :,,,. A disproportionate amount of radical right-wing activity took place among
young people in the East. The relatively few foreigners in the Eastern regions make them
ideal targets for skinheads and other radical right-wing groups. Emigrants from Asia and
Africa, whose skin color easily distinguishes them from Germans, are routinely insulted,
harassed, and physically attacked by roving gangs of skinheads. Many East Germans have
thus far been passive and indifferent, thus giving some legitimacy to the violence.
But West Germany was not immune from these xenophobic attacks. With the end of
the Cold War, Germanys Jewish community, largely through immigration from the for-
mer Soviet Union, has more than tripled, to about :cc,ccc. Governmental support for
Jewish immigration is based on the conviction that the Nazi past requires the country to
be open to Jewish refugees. Among some ordinary Germans, however, there is a latent re-
sentment about what is termed Jewish blackmail.
Responding to the problem, the Schrder government, joined by several states, pro-
posed a ban on the radical right National Democratic Party (NPD), which many believe
serves as a cover for the illegal neo-Nazi groups. Such a ban is permitted by the constitu-
tion, but the Federal Constitution Court must issue it. Critics of the ban argue that it will
focus more attention on the party, which is electorally weak, and drive it underground.
The great majority of the public condemns these outbreaks of rightist violence. In
November :ccc, on the occasion of the fty-second anniversary of Kristalnacht (Night of
Broken Glass), when synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany were attacked in
a Nazi-orchestrated campaign and many Jews were sent to concentration camps, demon-
strations were held throughout the country. In Berlin :cc,ccc people, including Chan-
cellor Schrder, marched through the capital in protest against right-wing violence. The
leaders of Germanys Jewish community lashed out at conservative politicians for whip-
ping up a national debate on immigration and suggesting that minorities had to adopt
German culture.
Germanys International Role
Like Japan, Germany since the end of World War II has maintained a low prole in the
international political arena. While an economic powerhouse, it has been content, in-
deed has encouraged, other Western nations, especially the United States, Britain, and
France, to take the lead in dealing with international issues. During the :,,: Gulf War,
for example, it sent no combat troops to the Middle East, but did make a multibillion-
dollar nancial contribution to the effort. But because of its size and strength, Ger-
manys allies and neighbors expect it to be a more important player in international pol-
itics in the future.
In :,,,, for example, Germany contributed ,ccc troops to the UN Bosnian peace
force. It was the largest single deployment of German soldiers since World War II. The
German contingent was composed of medical, transport, and logistics units rather than
combat troops. Mindful of Nazi atrocities against Serbs during the war, the government
has requested that German forces be stationed only in Croatia.
A new chapter in postWorld War II German foreign policy began in March :,,,,
when Luftwaffe jets took off from bases in Italy to participate in attacks on Serbia as part
of NATOs Kosovo operation. It marked the rst time since the :,cs that German mili-
248 germany
tary forces, once the most feared on the Continent, had engaged in combat. The action
was not without controversy. Several members of Schrders SPD-Green government op-
posed the military deployment. It was one factor in the resignation of Oskar Lafontaine,
the leader of the SPDs left wing. At a stormy Green Party convention, Foreign Minister
Joschka Fischer, who once advocated Germanys withdrawal from NATO and the coun-
trys unilateral disarmament, was pelted with bags of paint after he argued strongly for
Germanys responsibility to stop Serbian aggression in Kosovo. But while participating in
the air war, the Schrder government steadfastly opposed the deployment of ground
troops to drive out Serbian forces. The eventual cease-re spared the government from an
open conict with the United States and Britain over this issue. Germany has contributed
over o,ccc troops to the NATO peacekeeping force in the region.
In spite of its Kosovo involvement, Germany is still reluctant to assume a leadership
role for a variety of reasons. First, its leaders and most of its citizens know that many of
the countrys neighbors still remember the Third Reich and what the Nazis did to Europe
and the world. There is still a residual distrust of Germany stemming from this experi-
ence. Second, this low political prole approach has been successful. Never before in its
history have so many Germans had so much peace, prosperity, and freedom as they have
had since :,,. Third, Germans fear that increased international leadership will eventu-
ally bring the country into a major military conict somewhere in the world. The memo-
ries of the death and destruction caused by the world wars of this century are still very
alive; they have been passed down from generation to generation. There is a latent yet
pervasive pacism in the country that inhibits the actions of its political leadership.
Fourth, the country will be preoccupied with unication, the common European cur-
rency, and the enlargement of the European Union for at least the next decade. Any inter-
national initiatives would be premature and not supported by public opinion. Finally,
Germany hopes that its international responsibilities can be accommodated through its
membership in the European Union. It wants the Union to assume a stronger role and it
wants to act only with and through a united Europe.
Yet it is doubtful that these factors will be as important in Germanys future foreign
policy as they have been in the past. With the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Eu-
rope and of the Soviet Union itself, a vacuum has developed. Germany has been in the
process of assuming a leading economic and political role in this region. Hopes that this
can be accomplished through the European Union have thus far been unfullled. The
Union, for example, failed its rst foreign policy test when it was unable to stop the civil
war in Yugoslavia.
The Federal Republic has in fact become Russias major sponsor within the council of
NATO and the European Union (EU). Stressing the Wests obligation to Russia, Ger-
many has urged that NATOs expansion into Eastern Europe be accompanied by special
partnership agreements between the Alliance and Russia.
Yet its involvement in the East must not come at the expense of the requirements of
Western European integration. As one authority has observed German leaders know that
a race is currently being waged between integration in Western Europe and disintegration
in Eastern Europe; hence they also know that they must forge a set of policies that facili-
tate the deepening of the European Community and simultaneously keep it open as a
safety net to deal with the problems produced by the collapse of communism in Eastern
Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
5
From :,, to :,,c, as a divided
country protected against Soviet power by the nuclear shield of the Western Alliance,
Germany led a sheltered existence. Unication and the collapse of the Soviet empire will
increase German inuence, but they will also impose new responsibilities and challenges
on the Federal Republic.
Notes
:. M. Donald Hancock, West Germany: The Politics of Democratic Corporatism (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham
House, :,), :,,:.
:. EMNID surveys cited in Der Spiegel ,c (:: July :,,:): :.
,. Federal Finance Ministry statistics cited in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ; September :,,,, :;.
. In :,,, the country experienced a wave of bombings of Turkish mosques, travel agencies, and cultural cen-
ters as the religious and ethnic conicts in Turkey spilled over into Germany. As in their homeland, Ger-
man Turks are divided into groups of Islamic fundamentalists, secularists, and Kurdish separatists. The rad-
ical left-wing Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) is believed responsible for much of the current violence against
Turkish institutions in Germany. The PKK apparently receives support from extreme left-wing German
groups including the former East German Communist Party. Police ofcials fear that the violence could
provoke a backlash against all Turks by radical, antiforeigner German groups.
,. Ronald D. Asmus, A Unied Germany, in Transition and Turmoil in the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Robert A.
Levine (New York: Crane Russak, :,,:), .
For Further Reading
ASH, TIMOTHY GARTON. In Europes Name: Germany and the Divided Continent. New York: Random
House, :,,,.
BAKER, KENDALL L., RUSSELL DALTON, AND KAI HILDEBRANDT. Germany Transformed. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, :,:.
BOTTING, DOUGLAS. From the Ruins of the Reich: Germany, :),,-:),). New York: Crown, :,,.
BRACHER, KARL DIETRICH. The German Dictatorship. New York: Praeger, :,;c.
BRAUNTHAL, GERARD. Parties and Politics in Modern Germany. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,o.
BREYMAN, STEPHEN. Why Movements Fail: The West German Peace Movement, the SPD, and the INF Nego-
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250 germany
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Chapter 16
The Context of Italian Politics
AMONGTHE LARGER industrial states of Western Europe, Italy possesses certain strik-
ing characteristics. It has become one of the worlds seven leading industrial powers, yet
the southern half of Italy is relatively underdeveloped and lags far behind the rest of the
countryto say nothing of Western Europein per capita income. It has achieved spec-
tacular social and economic progress since World War II, yet the former Italian Commu-
nist Party that in :,,: adopted the name Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democra-
tico di SinistraPDS) is the strongest communist or ex-communist party in Western
Europe. Its predecessor, the PCI, was much more powerful than communist parties in
such less prosperous societies as Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Italy has attained a high de-
gree of modernization in its economic structures, yet it is burdened with an antiquated,
inefcient bureaucratic apparatus. In short, Italy presents a dramatic contrast between
rapid economic and social change on the one hand and the survival of anachronistic re-
gional imbalances, political cleavages, and administrative deciencies on the other. More-
over, it has become evident in the past few years that longstanding rumors of widespread
corrupt practices were substantially true and that corruption has come to permeate every
level of the Italian political system. Thus, the Italian polity has come to lag ever farther
behind the Italian economy. This political lag characterizes a dangerous transitional
period, which Italy is now traversing on the road to becoming a stable and modern
democracy.
Italy covers an area of only ::o,,: square miles, compared to the ::c,o:o square
miles that comprise the domestic territory of the French republic. Italys population, how-
ever, is almost as large as that of France: ,;,,c,ccc compared to Frances ,,,;,,ccc.
1
Italian population density should not be overstressed, however. Impressive by U.S. stan-
dards, it is actually lower than that of Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, and the Nether-
lands. Moreover, the Italian birthrate (.: percent) is now one of the three lowest in West-
ern Europe: only Spain and Portugal have equal or lower birthrates. The historic Italian
predicament of too many people on too little land no longer seems to be as difcult to re-
solve as it was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Thanks to its mountainous Alpine frontier, which makes for clearly dened bound-
aries, Italy has an overwhelmingly Italian-speaking population. Ethnic minorities are rela-
tively insignicant: :,c,ccc to ,cc,ccc German-speaking people in Bolzano Province,
less than :cc,ccc French-speaking people in the Val dAosta, and a few thousand Sloveni-
ans near the Yugoslav border. The religious composition of Italys population is also quite
homogeneous. There are only about ;,,ccc Protestants and about ,c,ccc Jews, with the
rest of the population being at least nominally Catholic. To be sure, a very signicant
number of nominal Catholics are also conrmed anticlericalsespecially in north-central
Italywho resist the Catholic Church whenever it attempts to exercise inuence or ob-
tain special privileges from the government.
While the people of Italy are almost entirely of Italian nationality, they are divided by
signicant regional differences. These differences may be attributed partly to Italys
mountainous terrain. The Apennine mountain range divides central and southern Italy
from the Po Valley in the north and impedes transportation between the major cities of
the south. Regional differences are also the result of the many waves of invaders that have
swept across the Italian peninsula, Sicily, and Sardinia. Latins, Greeks, Etruscans, Celts,
Germans, Moors, and Normans have settled and intermingled in various parts of Italy,
producing a great variety of regional customs and dialects. Although the Italian language
and its dialects are based on Latin, the transformations Latin has undergone reect the
ethnic background and composition of each region. For example, the dialect of Piedmont
in the northwest bears some resemblance to French. To be sure, standard Italian (which
derives from Tuscany, with Dante as its linguistic father) prevails in the schools and in the
political and commercial life of the country; dialect usage is usually conned to the fam-
ily and other face-to-face groups.
Historical Context
Like Germany, Italy did not attain national unication until the latter half of the nine-
teenth century.
2
There were a number of reasons for this long delay in the nation-build-
ing process. For several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the north of Italy
was under German political domination (in the form of the Holy Roman Empire) while
most of the south was under Byzantine or Moorish rule. Later, the south came under the
control of the centralized and autocratic, but largely inefcient, Kingdom of the Two Sic-
ilies, while northern and central Italy were divided into a number of prosperous but mu-
tually antagonistic city-states. This internal division permitted foreign powers such as
Spain and, later, Austria to dominate large portions of Italy. Not until the French Revolu-
tion of :;,,, and Napoleons subsequent invasion of Italy did a sense of Italian nation-
ality begin to gain ground among Italys educated elites. Even so, after Napoleons defeat
in :::,, Italy was still split into eight territorial units: the Kingdom of Sardinia (Pied-
mont) in the northwest; the Lombard and Venetian possessions of the Hapsburg Empire
in the north and northeast; the duchies of Parma and Modena in north-central Italy; the
duchy of Lucca, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the Papal State in central Italy; and the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south.
Nationalist agitation in the nineteenth century culminated in :;c in a resur-
gence of nationalistic sentiment known as the Risorgimento. During that period, the
Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont) led the drive for national unication after a republican
movement headed by Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi had launched several
unsuccessful uprisings against Austrian and papal rule. Receiving military support rst
from France (:,,) and later from Prussia (:oo), exploiting and taking over control of
254 italy
Garibaldis unexpectedly successful invasion and occupation of the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, the Kingdom of Sardinia occupied the entire Italian peninsula by :;c. Backed
mostly by a town-dwelling educated minority, the Risorgimento resulted in the creation of
a unied Kingdom of Italy. In most of Italy, the process of unication consisted partly of
a military occupation by Piedmont and partly of a revolution from above, viewed with
hostility or apathy by the peasantry. Moreover, foreign intervention played a key role in
ensuring the success of this process.
The newly established Kingdom of Italy was a constitutional democracy with a par-
liamentary form of government, but it faced a severe problem of legitimacy because of the
way in which it had been founded and consolidated. First, Italy had been unied by a se-
ries of military conquests, involving the elimination of several existing Italian states and
their simple annexation by the Kingdom of Sardinia. Second, the fait accompli was rati-
ed by obviously rigged plebiscites in the various Italian regions. Third, a rigidly central-
ized unitary system was set up, and no political or institutional concessions were made to
the autonomist aspirations of the several regions. This extreme centralization followed the
French model of a prefectoral unitary system (the German Second Reich was to move in-
stead toward a federal system). Finally, by annexing the Papal State and storming Rome,
the Kingdom of Italy provoked a conict with the Catholic Church. As a result, devout
Catholics abstained for almost half a century from playing an active role in Italian poli-
tics. They, and many other Italians, did not feel a moral obligation to obey the commands
of the Italian government. When obedience is based mainly on expediency, a political sys-
tem lacks full legitimacy.
In addition to its problem of legitimacy, the Kingdom of Italy faced the difcult task
of achieving national integration, of creating a sense of nationhood among Italians with
diverse regional allegiances and ethnic origins. The elitist character of the Risorgimento
had failed to give the peasant masses a feeling of participation in the nation-building
process. It also had tended to create certain contempt for majority rule among many Ital-
ian intellectuals, who were fully aware of the fact that the Risorgimento had been the work
of an active minority. There was also a feeling among Italian elites that only new foreign
conquests and foreign wars could create a sense of national allegiance among the com-
mon people of Italy. This sense of incomplete integration helps explain why the right to
vote was withheld from most industrial workers and peasants until :,::. It also helps ex-
plain why Italy embarked on a series of colonial adventures in East Africa and Libya and
why Italy intervened in World War I on the Allied side against the wishes of a neutralist
parliamentary majority.
The Italian constitutional monarchy lasted barely half a century. Italys costly partici-
pation in World War I, in which more than occ,ccc Italian soldiers died, brought the
crises of legitimacy and integration to a head. The Italian massesworkers and peasants
barred from the polls until :,::voted mainly for the Socialist and Popular (Christian
Democratic) parties, both of which threatened to encroach on the rights of private prop-
erty. Also, these parties had shown a marked reluctance to support Italys entry into
World War I in :,:,. After the war, the rise of Benito Mussolinis Fascist Party repre-
sented, to a considerable degree, a middle-class backlash against the redistributive and
the context of italian politics 255
pacist implications of the entry of the Italian masses into politics. With the aid of an
armed militia, which was nanced by industrialists and large landowners, the Fascist
Party between :,:c and :,:: unleashed a reign of terror against the Socialist and Popular
parties in local communities all over the nation. The army and police, like the Italian gov-
ernment itself, were unable or unwilling to intervene effectively against Fascist violence.
Finally, in October :,::, Mussolinis blackshirt militiamen marched on Rome, the king
refused to sign a government decree to declare a state of emergency, the government re-
signed, and the king appointed Mussolini to be the next prime minister. Mussolini soon
took advantage of his executive powers to establish a Fascist dictatorshipa regime that
was to last until :,,.
The Italian Fascist regime differed in a number of ways from Adolf Hitlers Nazi dic-
tatorship. Italian fascism was far less totalitarian. Controls over Italian business and agri-
culture were nowhere near as thoroughgoing as in Germany, though labor unions were
suppressed and replaced by Fascist-sponsored organizations. Italian fascism was much
more closely identied with propertied interests than was Nazism. It did a much less ef-
fective job of mobilizing the economy for total war. Corruption and inefciency plunged
to almost incredible depths. Italian fascism never laid primary stress on doctrines of racial
supremacy, and the means it employed to suppress political opposition were less radical
than those employed in Germany. In addition, it retained the king as nominal constitu-
tional monarch (whereas Hitler assumed the position of chief of state as well as head of
government after President Hindenburgs death in :,,). By so doing, Italian fascism
paved the way for its own legal demise. In July :,,, with the Western Allied armies newly
landed in Sicily and Italian forces in full retreat, the king was persuaded by a number of
military and civilian notables to exercise his rarely used constitutional prerogative to re-
move the prime minister. He appointed Marshal Badoglio to replace Mussolini, and the
Badoglio government signed an armistice with the Allies on September :,,. This was
followed by a rapid German occupation of continental Italy. Until May :,,, which
marked the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, the Italian government exercised some lim-
ited authority only over the Allied-occupied areas of central and southern Italy.
The democratic parties, which had emerged in the liberated zones of Italy under the
protection of the Western Allies, had not forgotten the failure of the monarchy to support
the legally elected government of Italy in :,:: during the march on Rome. After consid-
erable discussion, it was decided to hold an institutional referendum on the question
whether the monarchy was to be retained. The referendum was duly held on : June :,o,
and about :: million Italians voted for a republic; about :c million voted to keep the
monarchy. As a result of the referendum, the royal family went into exile and Italy be-
came a republic. An elected Constituent Assembly then drew up and ratied a constitu-
tion, which went into effect in :,.
The constitution of the Italian republic provided for a parliamentary system but with
some deviations from the classic parliamentary model. To be sure, it included the custom-
ary provisions for an elected parliament, a prime minister and cabinet responsible to that
parliament, and an indirectly elected, largely ceremonial president. It also possessed fea-
tures that differentiated it from most other parliamentary systems. First, both houses of
256 italy
the Italian parliament were to be popularly elected and were to be roughly equal in power,
in contrast to the weaker, less representative upper houses in Great Britain, France, and
West Germany. Second, a constitutional court was to exercise the function of judicial re-
view over parliamentary legislation. This was consistent with constitutional innovations
in West Germany, but not with the British parliamentary system, characterized by parlia-
mentary sovereignty, or with most other preWorld War II parliamentary systems. Third,
there was an element of direct democracy in the form of provisions for the initiative and
referendum. Finally, certain specied powers were entrusted to semi-autonomous regions
listed in the constitution. These regions were not to have as much power as states or
provinces in a federal system, but they would enjoy a much higher status than did the
subnational units of government in a unitary system such as the British or the French. In
short, the Italian constitution established neither a unitary nor a federal system, but an
intermediate form: regional devolution.
One aw in the Italian constitution was the failure of postwar Italian governments to
implement the provisions cited above with a reasonable degree of dispatch.
3
The Consti-
tutional Court was not set up until :,,, and did not begin to function until :,,o. Legisla-
tion to implement the referendum was not passed until :,;c. As for the regions promised
by the constitution, four special regions with special ethnic or separatist problems
Sicily, Sardinia, Val dAosta, TrentinoAlto Adigewere created shortly after World War
II; the fth special region, FriuliVenezia Giulia, was established by parliament in :,o,.
But the fteen ordinary regions listed in the constitution were not instituted until :,;c.
These delays in implementing the constitution could be attributed to the unwilling-
ness of the ruling Christian Democratic Party to share power with the opposition or to
tolerate potentially crippling restraints on its power to govern Italy. Before :,, when
Communists, Socialists, and Christian Democrats had governed together in a tripartite
cabinet, the Christian Democrats had been staunch advocates of decentralization, judicial
independence, and other checks on the executive. The Communists and Socialists, in
contrast, had favored a strong parliament and cabinet and had opposed any checks on ab-
solute majority rule, since they expected that a leftist government was just around the
corner. After the :, parliamentary elections, which gave the Christian Democrats an
absolute majority and made it clear that they would be the dominant force in Italian pol-
itics for many years to come, the roles were reversed. Now the Communist and Socialists
demanded regional autonomy, judicial review, and similar checks on the government in-
dicated by the constitution; the Christian Democrats dragged their feet on implementing
such measures.
The political history of postwar Italy may be divided into phases corresponding to
the type of government formula that usually, but not invariably, prevailed. Between :,,
and :,;, the three major Italian partiesthe Christian Democrats, the Communists,
and the Socialistscollaborated in cabinet coalitions, with the help of several minor par-
ties of the center. This was the period of so-called tripartite rule, which ended in :,;
when the Communists and their Socialist allies were ousted from the cabinet. From :,;
through :,o:, Italy was usually governed by centrist coalitions, which were always domi-
nated by the Christian Democratic Party. The minor center parties (the Social Demo-
crats, the Republicans, and the business-oriented Liberals) played the role of junior part-
ners in these coalitions. Then, in :,o:, the rst center-left government was formed: the
Christian Democrats and the minor center parties formed a cabinet with the favorable
abstention of the Italian Socialist Party, which had gradually drifted away from its former
close alliance with the Communists. After abstaining on condence votes for a year, the
Socialist Party nally entered the cabinet in December :,o, after sixteen years in opposi-
tion. The center-left formula simply subtracted the Liberals from, and added the Social-
ists to, the center coalitions of the :,;o: period.
From :,o: until :,:, the center-left coalition was the dominant combination in Ital-
ian politics, though developments in the :,;cs and early :,cs eroded this dominance.
One development was the increasing moderation and consequently enhanced respectabil-
ity of the Communist Party. The Communists were actually treated as part of the parlia-
mentary majority between :,;o and :,;, (although they were not granted any cabinet
posts), and Italy seemed for a time to be on the verge of being governed by a grand coali-
tion of all non-Fascist parties. A second development was the declining strength of the
Christian Democratic Party. This trend compelled the party to make greater concessions
to its allies as the price for preserving the center-left formula. One concession was a will-
ingness to relinquish the partys monopolistic stranglehold on the position of prime min-
ister. Thus, in :,:, Italy had its rst non-Christian Democratic prime minister in thirty-
ve years: Giovanni Spadolini, leader of the Republican Party. And in :,,, the Socialist
leader, Bettino Craxi, was able to form a cabinet.
In :,:, a new phase was initiated. The moderate rightist Liberal Party was asked to
share cabinet ofce with the four center-left parties. Thus, for most of the period from
:,: until :,,,, the center-left formula was replaced by an oversized ve-party coalition
ranging from the moderate left through the moderate right. During the rst nine months
and the last four years of this period, the small centrist Republican Party chose to remain
outside the coalition, thus reducing the coalition membership to four.
With the corruption scandals, which began to see the light of day in February :,,:
and implicated a very large proportion of Italys political elites during the next two years,
and with the electoral earthquake which took place in the parliamentary elections of April
:,,: and March :,,, traditional Italian coalition formulas have undergone some start-
ling changes. After the :,,: elections, the four-party coalition formula (Christian Dem-
ocrats, Socialists, Social Democrats, and Liberals, with the Republicans not participating
in the cabinet) was adopted once again. Its leader, however, was not a Christian Dem-
ocrat but a Socialist, Giuliano Amato (Craxi had been vetoed by the Christian Demo-
crats). And when Amato nominated a short-lived reshufed cabinet in February :,,,, he
included a number of nonpolitical technocrats. These developments reected only the
rst signs of the Christian Democrats political eclipsethe loss of twenty-eight seats in
the Chamber of Deputies in :,,: and the rising strength of the edgling Lombard
League.
As the corruption scandals continued to unfold in :,,, and voter condence in the
traditional parties continued to decline, truly fundamental changes took place in the Ital-
ian party system and in the composition of Italian cabinets. In April :,,,, Carlo Azeglio
258 italy
Ciampi, director of the Bank of Italy, took over as prime minister. He was the rst non-
politician and nonparliamentarian to occupy that post. His cabinet included not only the
four parties of the Amato coalition and a number of nonpolitical technocrats, but also
three members of the PDS (the Democratic Party of the Left: the former Communist
Party) and one Green. To be sure, the PDS members and the Green all resigned less than
twenty-four hours after their appointment, in protest against the Chamber of Deputies
refusal to lift Craxis parliamentary immunity so that he could face corruption charges.
The fact remained that the former Communist Party, for the rst time in forty-six years,
had actually been invited to enter a cabinet.
After the parliamentary elections of April :,,, which fatally weakened the parties
that had hitherto dominated Italian politics and which brought a number of new parties
to parliament, it became evident that the old coalition formulas were not merely going to
be revised, but were going to be drastically transformed. The new cabinet, formed in May
:,,, was headed by Silvio Berlusconi, a media magnate and leader of Forza Italia! (Go,
Italy!), a new catch-all party of the center-right that had been established only three or four
months before the election. The other major parties in the coalition were the Northern
League (a relatively new federalist and quasi-separatist party of the center-right) and the
National Alliance (a party of former fascists and monarchists, whose central core was the
MSIthe neofascist Italian Social Movement). There had been a few center-right cabi-
nets in Italy since :,,, but never one that actually included a party dominated by ex-
Fascists, and that included some leaders who refused to renounce their Fascist past. For
the rst time since :,,, Italy had veered sharply to the right, and former Fascists entered
the corridors of power. It seemed clear that Italian coalition politics had entered new and
uncharted waters.
Yet, the Berlusconi cabinet lasted only seven months: he was compelled to resign in
December :,,, as the result of serious disagreements that split his center-right coalition.
His successor was Lamberto Dini, a technocrat and top ofcial of the Bank of Italy. Un-
like the Ciampi cabinet of :,,,,, which was partly composed of technocrats, the Dini
caretaker cabinet of :,,, was all technocraticanother new departure. After Dinis resig-
nation on ,c December :,,,, the elections of March :,,o resulted in a center-left victory.
Romano Prodi, a Christian Democrat running under the new label of the Italian Popular
Party, became prime minister. His cabinet coalition was center-left, but with a major dif-
ference from preceding center-left coalitions. Included in the cabinet were members of
the Popular Party; of Italian Renewal (a small new party formed by Dini); of the Demo-
cratic Union (a moderate party of the center-left); of the Greens; and above all, of the
PDS, the former Communist Party. The PDS had become much more of a moderate cen-
ter-left movement. Nevertheless, its admission to the cabinet as the dominant partner in
the coalition marked a sharp break with the past.
This break with the past was further conrmed in October :,,, when the Prodi cab-
inet resigned and Massimo DAlema, leader of the PDS, became the new prime minister.
His cabinet, too, was largely center-left, but it included an extreme left element and a
center-right elementArmando Cossuttas small and newly-formed Italian Communist
Party (a far cry from the old and much more powerful PCI of pre-:,,: days) and the
Democratic Union for the Republic or UDR (a center-right party of former Christian Dem-
ocrats, led by the former president, Francesco Cossiga. Cossiga apparently aspired to con-
struct a vast centrist movement appealing to both Catholic and laic forces, as well as to
those voters who currently support Forza Italia! He saw Prodi (a member of the Catholic
Popular Party) as an obstacle to his construction of such a movement.
4
Following elections
in May :cc:, Berlusconi returned to ofce as head of a center-right coalition.
It is evident today that the extreme left and the extreme right have become relatively
weak players on the Italian stage. The PDS is clearly no longer a party of the extreme left;
it greatly overshadows two small avowedly Communist parties to its left on the political
spectrum. As for the extreme right, Gianfranco Fini, leader of the National Alliance, has
very recently renounced the Fascist past, and particularly its racial excesses. The National
Alliance is now regarded as a conservative party of the center-right, comparable to the
Popular Alliance in Spain. Italy seems to be moving toward a bipolar system alternating
between moderate left and moderate right ruling coalitions.
5
Socioeconomic Context
Before World War I, the Italian economy was only partly industrialized, with most heavy
industry concentrated in the Milan-Genoa-Turin industrial triangle; total Italian indus-
trial production lagged far behind that of France, Germany, and Great Britain. The Fas-
cist era was marked by a sluggish, stagnant economy, held back by the rigorously dea-
tionary policies of the Fascist regime. World War II brought devastation to Italian
industry and transportation facilities alike. After an arduous period of postwar recon-
struction, Italy managed to bring about an economic take-off, which has been generally
described as the economic miracle. During the :,,cs, per capita income in Italy rose
more than it had during the ninety-year span from :o: to :,,c.
6
The occupational com-
position of the labor force also underwent a remarkable transformation that both fueled
and reected economic expansion. At Liberation in :,,, over c percent of the Italian la-
bor force was employed in agriculture; by :,,;, only o. percent was so employed, com-
pared to ,: percent in industry and o:.: percent in the service sector.
7
Growth in per capita income and growth in industrialization and services at the ex-
pense of agriculture were accompanied by massive movements of population. People mi-
grated from rural areas to cities, from southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia to the northwest
industrial triangle, and from southern Italy to northern Europe. These migrations had
far-reaching implications for the Italian economy and Italian society. Overloaded social
services in the cities, soil erosion and eventual ooding in depopulated mountainous rural
areas, rising expectations, and a general loosening of social bonds and restraintsthese
were some of the less desirable side effects of the economic miracle. Nevertheless, the
:,,cs and :,ocs were times of great economic progress and expanding horizons for most
Italians.
The spectacular economic growth depended on a number of favorable conditions. A
war-shattered economy cried out for reconstruction and provided entrepreneurs with
many investment opportunities. Marshall Plan aid from the United States furnished the
necessary capital. A divided and weak labor movement was in no position to make major
260 italy
demands on Italian employers. Foreign raw material prices were conveniently low. And
vigorous economic leadership was furnished by a free-spending public sector headed by
giant public corporations that formed part of two industrial empires: the Institute for In-
dustrial Reconstruction (Istituto per Ricostruzione IndustrialeIRI) and the National Hy-
drocarburants Corporation (Ente Nazionale IdrocarburiENI). The bold entrepreneurs
who managed Italys public corporations helped to create the climate of optimism and ad-
venture that pervaded the growth-oriented Italian economy.
By the late :,ocs, however, these favorable conditions were beginning to fade, and
the :,;cs brought a rude awakening to the Italian economy. A wave of unprecedented la-
bor unrest during the Hot Autumn of :,o, gave a clear signal that Italian employers
could no longer expect to deal with a docile, self-denying labor force. Far-reaching wage
concessions had to be granted; indexation arrangements had to be accepted, tying wages
more closely to the cost of living; and discipline in the factories had to be greatly relaxed.
Moreover, parliament passed legislation consolidating and extending the gains labor had
achieved through collective bargaining. Italys three labor confederations were impelled
by these developments to work more closely together and to adopt a more militant pos-
ture. As a result, Italian labor costs rose sharply, not only in terms of wages but also in
terms of social security benets. The competitive advantage formerly enjoyed by Italian
manufactured products was a thing of the past.
An assembly line at the Fiat automobile plant in Miraori, Italy, epitomizes the industrialization of the
northern provinces. (David Lees/Corbis)
In the :,;cs, further misfortunes befell the Italian economy. The rise in raw material
prices, particularly the price of oil, did serious damage to the balance of trade by raising
the prices of imports and making Italian exports more expensive. Public corporations
were increasingly involved in nancial speculation, empire building, currying favor with
the major political parties, and allowing political considerations to inuence their hiring
and personnel policies. As a result, the public sector was running large decits, keeping
sick industries alive, and creating grave problems for the Italian economy. The decade was
marked by declining economic growth, a high rate of ination combined with rising un-
employment, and serious decits in the balance of trade. The larger corporations, bur-
dened with onerous health insurance and pension costs imposed by the unions as part of
the wage package, were especially affected by this situation.
As a result of the hard times of the :,;cs, the :,cs, and the early :,,cs, some en-
tirely new problems have come to the fore. One has been the issue of unemployment, es-
pecially among young people seeking their rst job. Facing oppressive wage and social se-
curity costs, and restricted in their ability to discharge surplus labor, many Italian
employers are reluctant to hire new personnel. This creates a bulge of unemployment
among psychologically vulnerable high school and university graduates, with frightening
implications for the future of Italian society. A second problem has been the emergence
and proliferation of a submerged economy consisting of a multitude of small employers
who pay their workers substandard wages, fail to pay social security or payroll taxes for
their employees, and keep their economic operations a well-guarded secret from the pry-
ing eyes of the government. Such clandestine employers provide second jobs for moon-
lighting civil servants, low but untaxed wages for migrants or part-time workers, and
part-time employment for housewives or pensioners. And a third related socioeconomic
question is posed by the growing gap between the relatively prosperous employed worker,
protected until very recently by indexation against economic vicissitudes, and the various
marginalsworkers in the submerged economy, the unemployed, students facing a
precarious future, and others who have been left behind by economic progress.
All of these threats to social stability would appear to call for the traditional remedy
of increased government spending. But it has become painfully and urgently evident in
Italy that government spending has reached excessively high levels, especially with regard
to social welfare programs and pensions. Unsustainable high levels of government spend-
ing are now regarded as dragging down the Italian economy, building large decits, and
perpetuating ination. In :,, the Italian national debt had represented ;;.,; percent of
Italys gross domestic product (GDP); in :,,,, it had grown to ::,.: percent of the GDP.
By :,,o, it had crossed the threshold of ::: percent of the GDP. Annual budget decits
had reached an intolerable peak (:,.:, percent of the GDP) in :,,. Strenuous economiz-
ing measures by post-:,, Italian governments (especially the post:,,: governments)
managed to reduce the annual decit to , percent of the GDP in :,,, and ; percent of
the GDP in :,,o.
8
In the early :,,cs, it was estimated, ,, percent of scal income went
to cover internal charges on the national debt.
9
Clearly this situation could not continue in a world characterized by a global econ-
omy and by erce international competition, and in a Western Europe that was moving
262 italy
toward a common market, common monetary policies, and eventually a common cur-
rency. The desire to be part of a closely knit Western European economic and political
union is very deeply rooted among reform-minded Italians, who see such a union as en-
abling them to overcome backward and corrupt tendencies in their own society. In order
to be admitted to the Economic and Monetary Union and to the euro zone, Italy needed
to reduce its annual decit to , percent of GDP and its national debt to oc percent of
GDP. The rst criterion was met by :,,, thanks to an all-out effort by the Prodi govern-
ment in :,,o,an effort that relied far more heavily on tax increases than on struc-
tural reforms in the social welfare and pension systems. The second criterion could not be
met over the short run; but Italy gained admission to the euro zone nevertheless, on the
ground that substantial and satisfactory progress toward debt reduction was being
made.
10
Religion
The Catholic Church has traditionally played a major role in Italian politics. During the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Papal State, the temporal domain of the pope, re-
sisted numerous attempts by the Germanic Holy Roman Empire to unite Italy. In the
nineteenth century, the Papal State opposed Piedmonts bid to unify the Italian peninsula;
and in fact the nal event of the Risorgimento was the forcible seizure of Rome by Italian
troops in :;c. From :;c to :,:,, the church hierarchy advised religious Italians to ab-
stain from voting in Italian national elections. The Gentiloni Agreement of :,:,, under
which Italian Catholics began to give large-scale electoral support to candidates for parlia-
ment, brought this boycott of the Italian state to an end. In :,:,, a Christian Democratic
partythe Popular Party led by Don Sturzoentered Italian national elections and
openly campaigned for the support of religious voters. After Mussolinis coming to power,
the Popular Party was disbanded and in :,:, the Church signed the Lateran Agreements
with the Fascist state, signaling a complete reconciliation between church and state. One
of these agreements, the Concordat of :,:,, recognized the sovereignty of the pope over
Vatican City, guaranteed religious education in Italian public schools, and declared
Catholicism to be the ofcial religion of the Italian state. The Church was granted a
number of far-reaching privileges with regard to the holding of property, jurisdiction over
divorce, and so on.
After the defeat of Fascism, the Church was able to strike a favorable bargain with the
new Italian republic. The Lateran Agreements of :,:, were actually incorporated into the
new constitution. Article ; provided that the agreements could be modied only by mu-
tual consent of both parties or by a constitutional amendment. It is interesting to note
that the Communist delegates to the Constituent Assembly actually voted for Article ; in
:,;, possibly in an effort to conciliate their Christian Democratic coalition partners and
avert the impending expulsion of the Communist Party from the Italian cabinet in lieu of
Pope Pius XIIs effective policy against the Communist Party.
During the :,cs and :,,cs, political Catholicism was an aggressive and pervasive
force in Italian politics. With the Christian Democratic Party playing a dominant role in
the Italian political system, the Church and its lay organizations enjoyed privileged access
to national centers of decision-making. Priests and bishops openly took sides in election
campaigns, urging the faithful to support candidates sympathetic to the Catholic Church.
Catholic Action, a church-sponsored lay organization, set up a network of civic commit-
tees to conduct canvassing and propaganda activities on behalf of the Christian Democra-
tic Party. A number of Catholic interest groups representing labor, peasants, teachers, and
others were directly afliated with the Christian Democratic Party, with which they en-
joyed a parentela relationship. Such groups had the right, as members of the family, to be
consulted on appointments to cabinet positions, nominations of candidates for parlia-
ment, and policy questions affecting their interests.
11
In short, the Italian Catholic Church
was much more prominent on the political scene than its French counterpart.
Since the early :,ocs, the political aggressiveness of Italian Catholicism has waned.
Under Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, the Church assumed a lower prole in Italian poli-
tics and displayed much less hostility toward leftist parties. To be sure, the church was by
no means united. Some bishops continued to maintain a politically active stance and to op-
pose any alliances with leftist forces. Nevertheless, as the papacy in the early :,ocs aban-
doned its hostility to the idea of a center-left coalition government, most bishops reluc-
tantly followed suit. Later, even the partial collaboration between Christian Democrats and
Communists at the national level in :,;o;, did not call down the anathema of the church.
264 italy
A farm woman at work in Apulia
province represents the rural lifestyle
of the southern region. (Hulton/Getty
Images)
What underlay the more cautious line followed by the Church was the growing secu-
larization of Italian society. Church attendance was declining in the :,ocs and :,;cs. An
increasing number of Catholics, especially Catholic intellectuals, displayed independent
attitudes in direct conict with the dictates of the Church hierarchy. Some Catholic asso-
ciations loosened their ties with the Christian Democratic Party. Also, the exodus from
Catholic rural strongholds to the big cities, from agricultural occupations to industrial
and service jobs, seriously undermined the inuence of religious tradition.
Clear evidence of the weakening of religiosity in Italy was the passage of a divorce bill
in :,;c, despite the strong resistance of the Christian Democratic Party and the Vatican.
More striking still was the aftermath of the bills passage. When militant Catholics pushed
the issue to a referendum in an effort to get the divorce law repealed, the result was a
clear-cut victory for secularism. A :,; referendum upheld the divorce law, with only :
percent of the voters casting their ballots for its repeal. Forces favoring divorce carried
most of Italy with the exception of the Catholic northeast and the continental south.
Even Sicily, Sardinia, and Latium (the region that includes Rome) voted to retain divorce.
During the campaign, a number of priests and Catholic laymen spoke out against repeal.
Moreover, the size of the vote against repeal clearly indicated that repeal lacked the sup-
port of a considerable number of Christian Democratic voters.
The receding inuence of the Catholic Church in Italy was in line with a tendency
toward secularization that is affecting all of Europe. This tendency was reected not only
in declining Christian Democratic voting strength but also in the increasingly secular at-
titudes of those voters who (often for socioeconomic reasons) continued to support Ital-
ian Christian Democracy. That secular attitudes were spreading and intensifying is evi-
dent when we observe the results of a referendum held in :,: to decide whether or not a
rather liberal abortion law should be repealed. Sixty-eight percent of Italians who took
part in the balloting voted against repeala bigger majority than the pro-divorce major-
ity of :,;. It is probably in recognition of its waning strength that the Catholic Church
agreed in :, to accept a revision of the Concordat.
Education
The Italian educational system has undergone a major transformation since World War
II. In the :,,cs, ,c percent of the population had not attended school more than ve
years. Moreover, at the end of fth grade, the child was assigned either to an academic ju-
nior high school or a terminal vocational school. This was more or less standard European
practice at the time; yet to assign a child to a secondary school on the basis of aptitude at
such an early age meant that aptitude was all too frequently determined on the basis of
family background and social class.
In the :,ocs, with the entry of the Socialist Party into center-left cabinets, educa-
tional opportunities were broadened. A unied junior high school was established to re-
place the earlier two-track system. The decision regarding eligibility for eventual univer-
sity entrance was thus postponed several years to the time when the student was admitted
to one of several types of senior high school. Even in the senior high schools, transfers
from one type of school to another were permissible during the rst two years. Compre-
hensive schools have thus come to Italy, but so far only at the junior high school level (as
in France) rather than at the senior high school level (as in Britain and Sweden).
The educational changes of the :,ocs led to a great increase in high school enroll-
ment. They also led, naturally enough, to the lowering of standards to accommodate the
incoming masses. Moreover, pressure for further democratization led to the adoption in
:,;c of an open admissions policy for the universities. Thus the universities, too, became
overcrowded, and lost much of their usefulness, performing neither their traditional func-
tion of training an elite nor their supposed new function of facilitating social mobility.
Initial results of these reforms have been somewhat disappointing, producing unfore-
seen side effects. The great wave of student unrest that submerged Italian universities in
the late :,ocs and early :,;cs, and brought chronic indiscipline and frequent violence in
its wake, was a direct outcome of the skyrocketing enrollments. The depressing working
conditions that prevailed, the frustrated expectations of the students, and the example of
what was happening in American and French universities combined to foment student
unrest. Many a young terrorist spent his formative years in the chaotic milieu of Italian
higher education. Even today, when the more obvious and blatant disorders of :,o;c
appear to have abated, there is a residual climate of laxity and indiscipline. For this rea-
son, perhaps, the Conference of University Rectors recommended in :,;, that Italian
universities be allowed to restore a selective admissions policy.
As things stand at present, Italian education is marked by declining scholastic
achievement, a dropout rate markedly superior to that of most countries in Western Eu-
rope, and a below average level of spending on education. A number of reforms have been
proposed to improve the quality and rigor of Italian primary and secondary education;
but only a few have been adopted, and these do not appear likely to do more than scratch
the surface of the school problem. One interesting proposalto achieve parity between
public and private schools by government nancing of the latterhas yet to overcome
the opposition it has aroused.
12
Political Culture
What we have seen thus far in the Italian political context is a pattern of drastic change
a remolding of the Italian political, social, economic, religious, and educational land-
scapes. In the ve decades since liberation, Italians have seen their country transformed.
Inevitably, this metamorphosis has had a notable impact on political attitudes.
The most signicant attitudes that have traditionally characterized Italian political
culture may be summed up briey before we examine changes that have taken place since
the early :,ocs.
13
First, Italians have ranked rather low in social trust: they have appeared
to lack faith in the motives and actions of their fellow citizens. Second, Italians have had a
low degree of political trust; that is, they have had little condence in the efciency and
integrity of government institutions and ofcials. Both elected ofcials and bureaucrats
are distrusted. Third, Italians have had a tendency to seek protection against a potentially
hostile environment by joining informal but hierarchical groupings (cliques and clien-
teles) where they could enjoy the protection of a powerful patron. Fourth, Italians have -
nally acquired a sense of national identity after two world wars and a period of partisan
266 italy
resistance against German occupation forces in :,,,. Fifth, Italians have had a low
sense of political competence (they have felt unable to inuence the formation of public
policy) and a low sense of administrative competence (they have not believed they could
obtain fair treatment from government agencies). Sixth, many Italians have been politi-
cally alienated. They have felt very little pride in and much suspicion toward the political
system; their alienation has frequently expressed itself in riots, demonstrations, and, more
recently, kneecappings and assassinations.
The most important feature of Italian political culture has been its heterogeneity and
fragmentation. The above attitudes have not been universally shared; instead, there have
been competing sets of values and attitudescompeting subcultures, in other words.
These divergent subcultureselite and mass; northern and southern; liberal or clerical or
Marxisthave helped shape Italys party system and the tendency of Italian voters to
think in left-right, clerical-anticlerical terms. They also account for the pre-:,,: pattern
of stable partisan preferences (voters frequently continued supporting the same parties
election after election) and the high degree of hostility that some parties aroused among
voters at the other end of the political spectrum.
During the years :,o,,:, this set of attitudes underwent some signicant changes.
The balance of forces among competing subcultures shifted visibly, with Catholic (cleri-
cal) traditions losing popular support and suffering from a weakened organizational net-
work. Partisan hostility diminished a great deal, especially with regard to the former
Communist Party, which gained considerable acceptance as a legitimate political force
among Italian political elites. Among more educated, inuential Italians, there seemed to
be a pronounced movement toward bridging the cleavages that had divided the respective
subcultures. At the level of mass culture, however, much remained the same. Voters still
tended to place themselves along a left-right spectrum, identifying themselves as left, cen-
ter, or right. While the Catholic tradition had declined, about c percent of Italian voters
still supported repeal of the divorce law. Distrust of the political system was still very pro-
nounced despite the improvement in socioeconomic conditions experienced by most Ital-
ians. Actually, evaluations of the political system were more negative in the :,;cs and
:,cs than they were in the :,ocs. The sense of political competence had also dropped
considerably since the :,ocs. Widespread political alienation and political distrust still ex-
isted. This would help explain the frequent occurrence of direct confrontations between
demonstratorsusing a variety of provocative strategiesand public authorities. It
would also help explain the tendency of disaffected fringe groups to resort to acts of ter-
rorism. Nevertheless, some scholars came to the conclusion that alienation and distrust
did not represent a passionate rejection of the Italian style of democracy, but a sober and
realistic recognition of the limited potentialities of any political system.
14
In general, it seemed in :,,c that although Italian political elites were conducting
their quarrels with more moderation and mutual forbearance, the potential for unrest and
violent upheaval was still alive and well among noninuentials. Italian mass culture still
posed a major threat to Italian democracy, should the political system fail to perform
more adequately in the years ahead than it had in the past.
Yet, the Italian political system had a record of great resiliency. There were some very
promising elements in the picture to offset the negative features we have described. For
instance, it was hoped that the growing convergence among Italian elites might eventu-
ally have an impact on the residual cleavages in the mass culture. Voters seemed to be giv-
ing somewhat greater support than in the past to the middle-of-the-road minor parties.
Secularization was visible in both the Catholic and Marxist camps, as Italian voters ap-
peared to reject extremist tendencies. In short, it was widely suggested that the Italian
polity might once again survive the dangers we have outlined, as it had done so often in
the past.
The corruption scandals of :,,:, did much to undermine the optimistic prospec-
tus presented in the previous paragraphs. With the investigation or arrest of over :,,cc
political ofce holders and business people on charges of corruption and bribery in the
awarding of government contracts, a sharp decline in the levels of social and political
trust, and of political and administrative competence, was bound to take place. An in-
creasing sense of alienation has had the effect of thoroughly discrediting the leftist and
Catholic traditions, since the Socialist and Christian Democratic parties had been most
deeply involved in the general pattern of corruption known as Kickback City.
The smashing victory of the center-right parties in :,, has made it clear that the
electoral stability of partisan preferences is a thing of the past: most of the parties that had
dominated Italian politics since :,, suffered enormous losses and in some cases were de-
nied representation in parliament. And new political parties have come to the fore. It ap-
peared, in :,,, that Italian political culture might be tilting to the right, with laissez
faire, authoritarian, and separatist tendencies receiving spectacular support from the Ital-
ian masses. However, it soon became evident that the victory of right-wing populism was
to be short-lived indeed. Berlusconi was ousted in late :,,, and the elections of :,,o
brought the center-left to power. What seems to be in the cards, for the time being, is an
alternation, in control of the national government, of moderate center-left and moderate
center-right coalitions. It is probably far too early, however, to project even such a mildly
hopeful trend in the face of persistent social and economic privations and inadequate sys-
tem performance, which are affecting at least a large minority of the population.
Notes
:. See France and Italy in The Europa World Year Book :)) (London: Europa Publications, :,,), Vol. I,
:,:,o, at :,,,,, and ::oo, at ::,.
:. For the period before :,;c, see Raphael Zariski, Italy: The Politics of Uneven Development (Hinsdale, Ill.:
Dryden Press, :,;:), chap. :.
,. See Norman Kogan, A Political History of Italy: The Postwar Years (New York: Praeger, :,,), :co, and
:,,,o.
. See Michele Simone, Il Governo DAlema inizia la sua navigazione, La Civilta Cattolica :, (:,,),
,:;:, at ,::,.
,. See Vittorio Bufacchi, The coming of age of Italian democracy, Government and Opposition (:,,o),
,::o.
o. See Rosario Romeo, Breve Storia Della Grande Industria in Italia (Bologna: Capelli, :,o;), ::,:.
;. See Italy, ::.
. See Dermot McCann, European Integration and Explanations of Regime Change in Italy, Mediter-
ranean Politics , (:,,): ;,: at :,. See also Charlemagne: Prodis Prayer, The Economist, : January
:,,, ,.
,. McCann, ,.
268 italy
:c. See Claudio M. Radaelli, Networks of Expertise and Policy Change in Italy, South European Society and
Politics , (:,,): :::. See also Charlemagne: Prodis Prayer, ,.
::. See Joseph La Palombara, Interest Groups in Italian Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
:,o), chap. ,.
::. Giancarlo Ggasperoni, The Uncertain Renewal of Italian Education, in Italian Politics Mapping the Fu-
ture, ed. Luciano Bardi and Martin Rhodes (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,), chap.::.
:,. On the traditional features of Italian political culture, see, for example, Zariski, Italy, chap. ,; and Gabriel
A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,o,). On recent changes in Italian political culture, see Giacomo
Sani, The Political Culture of Italy: Continuity and Change, in The Civic Culture Revisited, ed. Gabriel
A. Almond and Sidney Verba (Boston: Little, Brown, :,c), chap. .
:. See Joseph La Palombara, Democracy Italian Style (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,;),
:,:,,, :o,o.
Chapter 17
Where Is the Power?
ITALY, LIKE BRITAIN and Germany, has a parliamentary system. There has been some
discussion in recent years about setting up a quasi-presidential system on the French
model, but such institutional reform at the national level has thus far not generated suf-
cient support. There are some additional similarities with Germany. First, Italy is a parlia-
mentary republic with a weak, indirectly elected president. Also, Italy is far more decen-
tralized than most parliamentary systems. It does not actually have a federal system like
that of the German Federal Republic, but it has a form of regional devolution that differ-
entiates it quite clearly from unitary systems such as Great Britain and France.
The President: Ceremonial Chief of State
Unlike the hegemonic French president, the Italian president resembles the ceremonial
chief of state in other parliamentary republics (e.g., Germany). Most of his formal execu-
tive powersincluding the promulgation of laws, signing of treaties, making of executive
appointments, and command of the armed forcesrequire the prior initiative of a mem-
ber of the cabinet before the president can act and ministerial countersignature before the
presidents action can have legal effect. Like other ceremonial chief executives, Italys pres-
ident is expected to greet visiting dignitaries, dedicate major public projects, visit disaster
zones in order to comfort the populace, and perform other purely formal duties as the
symbolic head of the Italian state.
To be sure, the presidents position is more powerful than that of a British monarch.
First, a strong, ambitious president may hold press conferences and discuss current issues
or may include controversial statements about public policy matters in a public address.
Second, he may deliver a message to parliament and comment critically on the state of
the nation. Third, he may return a bill to parliament for reconsideration, along with a
message stating his reasons for doing so. Such a suspensive veto may be overridden by a
simple majority of those voting in each house in parliament. Fourth, given the complex
nature of Italys multiparty system, the presidents formal function of appointing the
prime minister provides him with a great deal of potential inuence. For no one party has
a majority in parliament, and the appointment of a new prime minister is therefore pre-
ceded by intricate negotiations among various parties and factions. In the course of those
negotiations, the president could seek to promote a candidate of his own, as President
Scalfaro did in :,,, and :,,,, when he put forward the names of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
and Lamberto Dini, respectively. Or he could ask a resigning prime minister to reconsider
his resignation. Fifth, the president appoints ve of the fteen judges of the Constitu-
tional Court and has the power to dissolve parliament on the prime ministers request.
Apart from the constitutional and customary restraints cited above, the power of an
Italian president is limited mainly by the manner of his selection. He is elected indirectly
by an Electoral Assembly composed of the members of the Chamber of Deputies (o,c),
the members of the Senate (,:c), and a delegate from the Val dAosta, and three delegates
from each of Italys other nineteen regions. Election is by secret ballot. On the rst three
ballots, a two-thirds majority of the members of the Electoral Assembly is necessary to
elect a president; from the fourth ballot on, an absolute majority sufces. The secret bal-
lot makes party cohesion and party discipline impossible. A party cannot really compel its
members to support its ofcially designated candidate. The nominee who emerges from
this intricate procedure lacks the mandate to act as a popular tribune, to speak for the
Italian nation over the head of its government.
This system of election, with its clandestine procedures and resulting breakdowns in
party discipline, often produces unforeseen results. It can turn out factional bosses capa-
ble of unpredictable adventures rather than men of broad vision. Some presidents have
been quite distinguished: Luigi Einaudi (:,,,), a prominent Liberal economist; Giuseppe
Saragat (:,o;:), leader of the Social Democratic Party; Sandro Pertini (:,;,), a ven-
erable and respected Socialist factional leader with a slight tendency to outspokenness.
Others have been Christian Democratic factional chieftains who have reected little
credit on the ofce: Giovanni Gronchi (:,,,o:), who appointed the notorious Fernando
Tambroni to head a cabinet that brought Italy to the brink of civil conict; Antonio Segni
(:,o:o), who was suspected by some journalists of having been involved in the prelim-
inary planning for an abortive military coup; and Giovanni Leone (:,;:;), who was
forced to resign six months before his term expired because of alleged complicity in sev-
eral cases of tax fraud and bribery.
The Italian president from :,, to :,,:, Francesco Cossiga, was also a Christian Dem-
ocrat. During the rst ve years of his term, he maintained a relatively low prole. After
:,,c, however, he became extremely outspoken, making numerous controversial and of-
ten intemperate statements on public issues and delivering blistering personal attacks on
the competence and integrity of a number of Italian political leaders, even demanding the
resignation of the chief justice of the Italian Constitutional Court. He was one of the
chief advocates of a stronger presidency and, on one occasion, claimed he might have the
right to dissolve the parliament on his own, without the prime ministers consent. A
number of Italian commentators expressed grave doubts about his emotional balance. Be
that as it may, he indubitably overstepped the boundaries of his ceremonial functions.
In a break with precedent and with the letter of the constitution, Cossiga dissolved
parliament during his last six months in ofcethe so-called blank semester when a pres-
ident is constitutionally barred from dissolving parliament. This action was apparently
taken at the behest of the leaders of the various parties, since parliaments term had only
two more months to run. In May :,,:, in a surprise move, Cossiga resigned, two months
before his term was due to expire.
The next president, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, also a Christian Democrat, appeared to be
more stable and less controversial than his mercurial predecessor. Yet, in the turmoil of
the post-:,,: years, he too found it impossible to avoid making highly controversial deci-
sions. When Prime Minister Berlusconi resigned in December :,, and asked for dissolu-
tion of parliament and new elections, President Scalfaro refused to comply with his re-
quest until the possibility of forming another cabinet had been fully explored. A cabinet
was eventually formed in :,,, under an independent central bank ofcial and former
member of the outgoing cabinet, Lamberto Dini. But President Scalfaro was denounced
and vilied by Berlusconis supporters.
It should also be noted that neither Dini nor the prime minister appointed in :,,,,
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was a member of parliament: both were high ofcials of the Bank
of Italy. By appointing non-MPs to head the cabinet, President Scalfaro was venturing
where other presidents had feared to tread. He also established an informal custom
whereby prime ministers consult the president before making important decisions with
regard to presidential appointments. It remains to be seen whether future presidents dare
to magnify the presidents role as Scalfaro has done.
1
It is quite conceivable that, if the
system settles down to a more normal and predictable rhythm with alternation in power
between center-left and center-right majority coalitions, future presidents may be more
inclined to conne themselves to their ceremonial duties.
In all likelihood, Scalfaros successor as president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who was
supported by both the PDS and Forza Italia! because of his nonpartisan image, is less
likely to stir up controversy. Two-thirds of the Electoral College elected Ciampi on the
rst ballot in May :,,,, which was a major departure in Italian politics. In his rst ad-
dress to parliament later that month, Ciampi emphasized the need for constitutional and
political reform.
The Prime Minister and the Cabinet
The Italian cabinet (ofcially labeled the Council of Ministers) and the prime minister
(whose ofcial title is president of the Council of Ministers) constitute the political wing
of Italys dual executive. They resemble the classic model of the political executive in a
continental European parliamentary system. The prime minister is asked by the president
to form a cabinet, after the president has rst engaged in a series of consultations with the
leaders of the various parties in parliament. The newly designated prime minister selects a
cabinetusually a coalition cabinet, composed of members of several partiesfrom among
the members of parliament. Then, on the prime ministers recommendation, the presi-
dent proceeds to appoint the cabinet. (It should be noted, however, that the appointment
of technocrats to the Ciampi and especially to the Dini cabinets represented a departure
from this model.)
In discussing the Italian cabinet, we shall rst describe its pre-:,,: characteristics. We
shall then touch on any major changes that seem to be taking place in response to the up-
heavals of the :,,cs.
The Italian cabinet was considerably larger than the British one, for it included all
the ministers in the government, including the ministers without portfolio. Its size could
be attributed in large part to the representative function it had to perform. Because Italy
272 italy
had a much more complex party system than France or Germany, to say nothing of
Britain, it was necessary to provide each party in the governing coalition with adequate
representation in the cabinet. In most cabinets, at least two parties were involved and had
a right to their share of cabinet posts. Moreover, each Italian party contained within its
ranks a number of highly organized factions; these, too, demanded representation in the
cabinet. A disgruntled intraparty faction was just as capable as a disaffected party of with-
drawing its support from a coalition cabinet, thereby causing that cabinet to fall.
Since the cabinet usually consisted of several parties, and because even one-party cab-
inets were usually torn by interfactional strife, the cabinet could not and did not function
as a united team. Its members, even when they belonged to the same party, regarded one
another as political rivals. Consequently, they often failed to consult one another before
initiating new legislation and frequently leaked information to the press regarding what
took place in cabinet meetings. It should also be noted that the prime minister did not re-
ally enjoy freedom of choice in selecting his cabinet. Before nominating members for ap-
pointment by the president, he had to consult the leaders of the various parties in his
coalition, as well as a number of leaders of intraparty factions. Also, because he was more
or less obligated to accept the recommendations of these party and factional leaders, his
power of appointment was severely restricted. At the same time, he could not dismiss cab-
inet members. (To be sure, even if he had the power to force them to resign, he would still
be running the risk of alienating the parties or factions that had sponsored them.)
In addition to its heterogeneous partisan and factional character, the cabinet was split
by some major functional cleavages. Most notably, nancial and economic policy was di-
vided among three separate ministries with overlapping functions: the Ministry of the
Treasury, the Ministry of the Budget and Economic Planning, and the Ministry of Fi-
nance. The Ministry of the Treasury, primarily interested in a stable economy, usually pre-
vailed over the expansion-minded Ministry of the Budget.
Unlike the French cabinet, the Italian cabinet had no residual or reserved powers to
govern by decree in areas from which parliament had actually been excluded by the con-
stitution. In this respect, it was again in line with the classic parliamentary model, in
which legal sovereignty is vested in parliament, as opposed to the French quasi-presiden-
tial system. The Italian cabinet could issue decrees under only two types of conditions.
Legislative decrees could be enacted if parliament rst passed an enabling act, with a time
limit attached, authorizing the cabinet to legislate on a specied subject matter in accor-
dance with certain guidelines. Decree laws could be promulgated by the cabinet in case of
emergency: they expired within sixty days of their publication unless converted into
statutory law by parliament. In addition to these two types of decrees, the cabinet and in-
dividual ministries could issue administrative orders (regulations ) without prior autho-
rization by parliament. These regulations were presumably more specialized in content
and inferior in legal status to decrees.
Italian cabinets did not normally enjoy a long or peaceful existence. Their average
lifespan was slightly less than a year, though some managed to survive for eighteen or
even twenty-four months. Cabinets could be forced to resign in a variety of ways by either
house of parliament. The legal procedure prescribed by the constitution stipulated that, if
:c percent of the members of either of the two houses of parliament signed a motion of
no-condence, and if a majority of those voting in that house supported the motion at
least three days after it had been presented, then the cabinet had to resign. However, nu-
merous cabinets resigned without waiting for this procedure to be employed. Some cabi-
nets resigned after having suffered a defeat on a government bill or after a party or faction
had announced that it no longer intended to support the cabinet. Even a hostile state-
ment by a party secretary outside of parliament or an adverse resolution by a party con-
gress or executive committee might precipitate a cabinets resignation.
Yet what appeared on the surface to be extreme cabinet instability in Italy was ac-
companied by some features of continuity, until the massive changes that took place after
:,,:. From :,o to :,,:, with only two exceptions (Giovanni Spadolini of the Republi-
can Party in :,:: and Bettino Craxi of the Socialist Party in :,,;), all prime minis-
ters were Christian Democrats. A number of Christian Democratic leaders headed not
one but several cabinets: there were seven De Gasperi cabinets, ve Moro cabinets, ve
Rumor cabinets, and ve Fanfani cabinets. Some cabinet positionsthe Ministry of the
Interior and the Ministry of the Treasury, for examplewere continually or almost con-
tinually under the control of the same party from :,o to :,,:. Some cabinet ministers
held the same position year after year, in successive cabinets. For example, Emilio
Colombo was treasury minister in no less than eleven cabinets. Since :,,:, this continuity
has been abruptly interrupted and Christian Democratic hegemony has become a thing
of the past.
What usually happened after a cabinet fell was not a complete turnover but a slight
shift in the balance of power within the majority coalition. From :,o to :,,:, it was an
unwritten rule of Italian parliamentary politics that the Christian Democratic Party MUST
form part of any majority coalition in order for the coalition to have sufcient votes to sur-
vive in parliament. The only two questions left open were which allies the Christian Dem-
ocratic Party would select and how cabinet positions were to be allocated among the vari-
ous Christian Democratic factions and among the other parties in the cabinet.
Between :,o and :,,: there were relatively few general formulas available for form-
ing a cabinet. They included the tripartite formula, the center coalition, the center-right
coalition, the center-left coalition, and a broader center coalition embracing ve parties
from the moderate left to the moderate right. When no decision could be reached among
these formulas, a monocolor all-Christian Democratic caretaker cabinet would be set up
for the purpose of buying time to reach an agreement on the establishment of one of the
above types of coalition cabinet.
2
Some additional formulas were advocated in the :,;cs but were never employed at
the national level:
:. The left alternative. A Communist-Socialist-Social Democratic-Republican
coalition cabinet, seeking the support of left-wing Christian Democrats. It was
advocated by the Communist Party.
:. The historic compromise. A cabinet including Communists, Christian
Democrats, Socialists, and all or almost all non-Fascist parties. Major emphasis
274 italy
was placed on the Communist-Catholic alliance. This formula was advocated
by Communist Party leaders between :,;o and :,;,, but was temporarily
dropped by them in favor of the left alternative. It bore some resemblance to
the tripartite formula of :,,;, and to the Grand Coalition that has been
tried out in West Germany and Austria.
From :,,, through :,,, some interesting variations on past formulas were adopted.
It remains to be seen whether these variations will prove to be only eeting experiments
or will become permanent alternatives in the process of cabinet formation:
:. A broadened center coalition with nonpolitical technocrats playing a major role. The
Ciampi cabinet in :,,,, was headed by a former central bank executive who
was neither a member of parliament nor a politician.
:. A center-right coalition with a sharp tilt to the right: the Berlusconi cabinet,
appointed in :,,.
,. An all-technocratic cabinet, headed by another former central bank executive: the
Dini cabinet of :,,,.
. A broader center-left coalition, expanded to include the ex-Communists of the
PDS in a leading role of external support: the Prodi cabinet of :,,o,.
,. A much more inclusive center-left coalition, headed by the PDS/DS, but stretched
to include two alien elements: a small newly formed orthodox Communist
Party (Armando Cossuttas PCI) and a small center-right party of former
Christian Democrats (Francesco Cossigas UDR). This was the DAlema
cabinet, formed in October :,,, and the successor government headed by
Giuliano Amato.
While the cabinet before :,,: was a loosely jointed and motley body with a great
number of uncoordinated ministries often operating at cross purposes, there was a grow-
ing trend, in the :,;cs and :,cs, in the direction of a dominant position for the prime
minister. The premier increased his inuence by virtue of his ability to mediate differ-
ences among various power centers within and outside the cabinet and to give some mea-
sure of central direction to the government. He was able to assume this key role with the
help of the Ofce of the Prime Minister, a staff agency that had grown remarkably since
the :,,cs and that employed about cc people by :,c. In the :,;cs, the Ofce of the
Prime Minister acquired control over government spending, over the expenditures of
public corporations, over supervising relations with the regions, and over some aspects of
security and public order. This increase in the prime ministers inuence depended less on
his formal powers than on his strategic location and his possession of a growing and
skilled staff.
3
In the years since :,,:, the cabinet and the executive branch it controls have been
further strengthened.
4
First, technocrats and ex-central bankers have played a dominant
role in the economic ministries and have served as prime ministers on a number of occa-
sions. As we have noted, there were several technocrats in the reshufed Amato cabinet of
February :,,, and in the Ciampi cabinet of April :,,,. Ciampi himself had been director
of the Bank of Italy. In :,,,, the Dini cabinet was again headed by a top ofcial of the
Bank of Italy and was composed entirely of technocrats. The Prodi cabinet of :,,o,
was headed by a distinguished professor of economics, who had been at the helm of a gi-
ant public holding company (the Institute for Industrial ReconstructionIRI). It also in-
cluded Ciampi as Treasury Minister. In the DAlema cabinet, appointed in October :,,,
Ciampi was once again entrusted with the key Treasury portfolio.
Second, the premier seems to have more discretion in making appointments, partic-
ularly with regard to the key economic ministries. The party groups in parliament are still
consulted, to be sure, but they are no longer in the position of being able to dominate the
appointment process to the extent they had in the past. In fact, Prime Minister Ciampi
did not bargain with the parties at all when he selected his cabinet.
Third, on a number of occasions, the executive has been delegated a virtual free hand
to deal with certain economic problem areas. For instance, the Amato cabinet was autho-
rized to govern by decree in four policy areas which were considered to be the chief sources
of budget decits: health, pensions, public sector employment, and local government -
nance. Such delegations were often justied by citing the need for Italy to conform to the
economic and monetary guidelines laid down by the European Union. In addition, there
has been a major reform of public nance that places severe restrictions on parliaments
power to modify the governments budgetary and nancial proposals.
Fourth, some progress was made toward cutting down the size of the cabinet and
making it a less unwieldy body. A number of ministries were actually abolished, some by
law, some by referendum, despite the resistance of vested interests within the executive
branch and in parliament.
Finally, both the Prodi cabinet (:,,o,) and the DAlema cabinet (:,,:ccc) re-
solved the longstanding conict between the expansion-minded Budget Ministry and the
stability-biased Treasury Ministry by merging them into a single super ministry headed
by the Minister of the Treasury. In both cabinets, that minister was Ciampi, formerly di-
rector of the Bank of Italy. The hegemonic role of technocratic and banking interests in
Italy, and the concomitant commitment to economic stability, was vividly symbolized in
May :,,, by the election of Ciampi as president of the republic.
The Parliament
In its structure and mode of operation, the Italian parliament differs in some signicant
ways from most other Western European parliamentary bodies. First, it is truly bicameral.
A bill must pass both housesthe Chamber of Deputies and the Senatein order to be-
come law. Moreover, the cabinet is equally responsible to both houses. This legal equality
is reinforced by the fact that both houses are elected by popular vote. The main differ-
ences between the two elections are these: (:) the minimum voting age for senatorial elec-
tions is twenty-ve, whereas the minimum voting age for elections to the Chamber of
Deputies is eighteen; (:) senators are elected from somewhat larger single-member dis-
tricts, within a regional framework: each deputy represents about ::c,ccc voters, whereas
each senator represents about :c,ccc voters. Because these differences are not very strik-
276 italy
ing, the Senate can rightfully claim that it is hardly less representative than the Chamber
of Deputies and is therefore entitled to equal legislative power.
Representing roughly similar electorates, the two houses do not differ sharply in their
political make-up: the respective strength of the various parties is roughly the same in
both chambers. Moreover, they tend to represent the Italian electorate at the same point
in time. Although the Chamber of Deputies originally had a ve-year term and the Sen-
ate a six-year term, in practice the Senate was always dissolved simultaneously with the
Chamber of Deputies. Finally, in :,o,, the constitution was amended to establish a ve-
year term for both houses. Thus, given the similarity of composition of the two houses,
the Senate fails to give special representation or protection to any specic minority inter-
est (as do the French Senate and the German Bundesrat). Bicameralism becomes little
more than a device for delaying the passage of legislation.
A second, rather distinctive feature of the Italian parliament is the power possessed
by its standing committees. They receive a bill just after rst reading and may subject it to
drastic changes before reporting it to the oor. The chairperson of a standing committee
appears to be master of the committees timetable and can expedite or slow down the
progress of a bill without having to worry about pressure from the presiding ofcer (pres-
ident) of the chamber. Most important, the committees have the power to pass certain
bills. When the president of the chamber refers a bill to a standing committee, he or she
decides whether the committee is to act in sede referente (report the bill back to the cham-
ber with proposed amendments) or in sede deliberante (take nal action on the bill: pass it
and send it on to the president of the republic, or defeat it once and for all). Thus, Italian
standing committees literally act as miniature legislatures. Most bills approved by the Ital-
ian parliament are enacted through this rather unique in sede deliberante procedure. There
are only two limitations on its use. First, certain kinds of important legislative proposals
(constitutional amendments, electoral laws, delegations of legislative power, treaties, bud-
getary and spending bills) must be discussed on the oor after being considered in com-
mittee. Second, a bill being considered in sede deliberante must be brought to the oor of
France
Germany
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
:,.o,
o.:
:.
,c.o
:.,
,.
,,.c,
Vote for Centrist Parties (percentage in most recent legislative election)
the chamber if so requested by the cabinet or by :c percent of the members of the cham-
ber or :c percent of the members of the standing committee.
The procedures of the Italian parliament include several atypical usages, which help
to differentiate it from the parliaments of other West European democracies. First, there
is no effective limit on the number of private-member bills that may be introduced; the
cabinet has far less control over the agenda than is the case in Britain and Germany. Sec-
ond, there is no conference committee to iron out differences between Senate and Cham-
ber of Deputies versions of a bill. Consequently, many bills shuttle between the two
houses for years without ever achieving passage. Finally, there was until recently a require-
ment in the rules of the Chamber of Deputies that the nal vote on a bill be taken by se-
cret ballot. Such a procedure permitted recalcitrant Christian Democratic deputies
(snipers) to vote against measures supported by their party leadership. Of course, when
a bill was defeated in a secret ballot, the cabinet could ask for a formal vote of condence,
which required a roll call. However, sniping was an embarrassing event that lowered the
prestige of cabinet members and might impel them to resign. The parliamentary secret
ballot has recently been abolished.
In other respects, the Italian parliament is much more in line with other West Euro-
pean parliamentary systems (excluding France, which possesses both presidential and par-
liamentary features). It can pass any law that does not violate a provision of the constitu-
tion, and it can manage its own procedures without being subject to external interference.
Its powers are fairly conventional. It can pass laws, delegate rulemaking power to the cab-
inet, ratify treaties, approve the budget, and conduct investigations. It meets in joint ses-
sion to elect the president of Italy, to impeach the president for high treason or offenses
against the constitution, and to elect one-third of the members of the Constitutional
Court. It may also amend the constitution. An amendment has to be passed twice by
each chamber with the two votes at least three months apart. The second vote requires an
absolute majority of each house. Unless at least two-thirds of the members of each house
support the amendment on the second vote, it may have to be submitted to a popular ref-
erendum on the demand of one-third of the members of each house, or of ,cc,ccc vot-
ers, or of ve regional councils (legislatures).
The organization of the Italian parliament is also fairly orthodox. Two presiding of-
cers, the president of the Senate and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, have par-
tial control over the order of business, which they must share with the Conference of
Presidents (heads of various standing committees and parliamentary groups). They have
the power, subject to appeal, to assign bills to standing committees, and to determine
whether a bill should be passed in the committee itself in sede deliberante or reported to
the oor in sede referente. And they appoint the members of select committees. Unlike the
Speaker of the House of Commons, they tend to be prominent partisans with ambitious
plans for future advancement (e.g., to president or prime minister). Yet, given the loose
power structure of the Italian parliament, the two presiding ofcers are very limited in the
power they can exercise.
In :,;:, both houses of the Italian parliament adopted some major changes in their
rules and procedures. One of the most ambitious of these changes gave formal recogni-
278 italy
tion to the Conference of Presidents and assigned it the task of setting the legislative
agenda, by unanimous agreement, for periods of from two to three months. The pious
hope that long-term legislative planning by unanimous consent would somehow be possi-
ble has proved to be unjustied. What was supposed to be an organic plan for a long-
term legislative program has turned out to be either an incoherent shopping list based on
log rolling or a series of brief one- or two-week calendars for which unanimity is not
required.
5
In addition to a presiding ofcer who resembles the continental European model of
an avowedly partisan Speaker and who has political clout and ambitions of his own, each
house of the Italian parliament possesses another characteristic trait of a continental Eu-
ropean parliamentary system. It is divided into parliamentary groups that are more or less
cohesive and disciplined caucuses of the respective parties. These groups are responsible
for assigning members to standing committee positions that have been allocated to each
group; they also advise the president of the chamber on the appointment of investigating
committees and on lling vacancies on select committees.
The president of each parliamentary party group represents the group on the Confer-
ence of Presidents, which is supposed to reach agreement on the order of business for the
chamber. The president of the republic also consults the parliamentary group leaders dur-
ing a cabinet crisis, when a prime minister has resigned and a successor must be ap-
pointed. The parliamentary group reaches binding decisions as to how its members are to
vote on pending legislation. Finally, the parliamentary group has itself been subject to
pressure from the party organization outside parliament. Some parliamentary groups have
been more successful than others in maintaining a certain degree of autonomy against di-
rectives issued by extraparliamentary party organs. Overall, however, the party outside
parliament has traditionally exercised more inuence over legislative affairs in Italy than is
the case in Britain or Germany.
Since :,,:, party organizations outside parliament have lost much of their customary
clout. Such parties as the Socialists and the Christian Democrats have become much
weaker and more loosely organizedor have literally disintegrated. And new parties like
Forza Italia! and the Northern League have become much more like U.S. parties in their
emphasis on election campaigns and in their responsiveness to the political themes
stressed by the party leader.
It is evident, from what we have observed so far, that the sort of executive domina-
tion of parliament that exists in Britain and France has not really been present in the Ital-
ian parliamentary system. The multiparty, multifactional system that has prevailed in
Italy made the Italian parliament almost unmanageable, despite the existence of some de-
gree of party cohesion (generally solid bloc voting by each parliamentary group) and
party discipline (sanctions against individual legislators who stray from the party line).
The power of dissolution, which the president of the republic could exercise on the rec-
ommendation of the prime minister, was rather ineffective since elections rarely could be
counted on to improve the governments mandate. What was the use of dissolving parlia-
ment when the percentage of the total vote polled by each party was subject only to rela-
tively minor changes and proportional representation minimized the impact of these
changes? As a result, between :, and :,o, parliament always was allowed to serve out
its full ve-year term. After :,o, with the increasing volatility of the Italian electorate,
shorter intervals (four years, except in :,;o;,) occurred between elections in :,;:, :,;o,
:,;,, :,,, and :,;. The adoption in :,,, of a new election law providing for the elec-
tion of most deputies and senators from single-member districts with election by plurality
seemed to portend that the power of dissolution would be relied on more heavily in the
future. And in fact, only two years after the election of :,,:, parliament was dissolved
again.
It is far too early in this period of transition to make predictions about future pat-
terns of dissolution. When Prime Minister Berlusconi asked President Scalfaro for yet an-
other dissolution in the fall of :,,, he refused. However, the parliament elected in the
spring of :,, only served a two-year term: it was dissolved in :,,o. The subsequent par-
liament served until May :cc:. One factor seems to militate in favor of more frequent
dissolutions and elections, however: the current election law produces somewhat more
decisive verdicts than did the old system of proportional representation.
Some of the structural characteristics and procedures of the Italian parliament have
tended to protect it further against executive dominance. These include the absence of
any limit on private-member bills; the lack of tight cabinet control over the agenda; the
power of Italian standing committees to enact laws in sede deliberante; and the presence of
a powerful popularly elected second chamber. And of course, lacking a secure majority,
cabinets have come and gone; parliament has been protected against dissolution by the
party system and, until :,,,, by the electoral law.
One other basic characteristic of the pre-:,,: Italian parliament should be noted in
closing: its hybrid nature. On the one hand, it had relatively cohesive, disciplined parties
acting through parliamentary groups, in the tradition of European parliamentary systems.
On the other, it had a fragmentation of decision making among the presidents of the two
chambers, the standing committees and their chairs, and even private members, who
played a far larger role than elsewhere in Europe. In these respects, the Italian parliament
bore some vague resemblance to the U.S. Congress. This curious combination of a frag-
mented but mostly stable and internally cohesive structure of parliamentary groups with
parliamentary rules protecting individual and minority prerogatives
6
made it difcult to
t the Italian parliament into a neat category for classication purposes.
What impact does the post-:,,: upheaval appear to be having on parliament?
7
First,
as we have noted, the executive has managed to establish a more dominant position vis--
vis parliament. The economic ministries, headed by or highly responsive to technocrats,
have used their expertise, their power to issue and reissue executive decree laws, and the
moral authority conferred on them by the general consensus that Italy should reduce
decits in order to retain good standing in the European Monetary Union (EMU), to by-
pass many of the parliamentary barriers to policymaking. Parliament continues to service
the demands of constituents, submit questions to the executive, and disseminate informa-
tion. In fact, it performs these functions more vigorously than it did in the past. However,
when it comes to general economic policy, the cabinet has increased its inuence to a very
marked degree.
280 italy
A second and related point is that there is no longer a major party in permanent op-
position; it is therefore much easier to build a strong and reasonably coherent cabinet en-
joying a working majority. Before :,,:, the Communist Party was barred by longstanding
custom from entering the cabinet, as was the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).
These two parties at the extreme poles of the system commanded over one-third of the
seats in parliament. Any cabinet could survive only with the support of over ,c percent of
the members of parliament; but in practice this meant that the support of about three-
fourths of the non-Communist, non-Fascist MPs was indispensable. Currently, both the
ex-Communist PDS/DS and the ex-Fascist National Alliance are regarded as within the
mainstream. Over the long run, this situation should reduce the power of parliament to
precipitate cabinet crises and to multiply the frequency of elections.
The Bureaucracy
It is estimated that there are about : million state employees in Italy at present. However,
if one subtracts over a million employed in the schools and in the armed forces, the num-
ber of regular civil servants is approximately occ,ccc, about c,ccc of whom are higher
civil servants with policymaking duties. In addition to this vast army of state employees,
there are approximately :.,, million employed by the parastatale (state-controlled) sector.
These people work for local and regional governments, public corporations, service agen-
cies, and the like.
8
The Italian higher civil service (carriera direttiva) is staffed mostly on the basis of
merit, though there are a certain number of patronage appointments and a fairly sizable
minority of positions is lled without competitive examination by temporary appointees
who eventually acquire permanent status. For those recruited by competitive examina-
tions, either by direct entry from the universities or by promotion, the examinations tend
to stress legal training rather than the broad social science background emphasized in
France.
This recruitment system results in the overrepresentation of the south in the higher
civil service because the south, like other developing and economically backward areas,
has a higher percentage of its university population attracted to traditional professions
like law and medicine. Moreover, southerners are more apt to be attracted to the secure if
rather humdrum career provided by the bureaucracy; young people from economically
stagnant regions often lack the contacts and know-how to embark on a business career.
Many southern recruits are apt to be of lower-middle-class origin, in sharp contrast to the
upper-middle-class Parisians recruited into the French higher civil service. Thus, Italian
higher civil servants are drawn disproportionately from the most underdeveloped, tradi-
tion-bound regions of Italy. This bureaucracy, which also receives a brief period of in-ser-
vice training, tends to be cautious and negative in its attitude toward policy innovations.
Moreover, its members are obsessed with the need to nd a legal justication for every ac-
tion, and this obsessive legalism makes for a certain reluctance to take any action if it can
possibly be avoided.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the Italian bureaucracyunlike the British,
French, and German bureaucraciesis regarded by many Italians as corrupt. The recent
revelations about the power exercised by political parties over bureaucratic decision mak-
ing, and about the use of that power to reward friends, punish enemies, and extort nan-
cial support for the party machines, appear to vindicate what was hitherto regarded as an
exaggerated set of public perceptions, stemming from a low level of political trust.
Since :,,:, it would appear that there has been no thoroughgoing coherent effort to
reform the bureaucracy. Unlike public nance, which was under the control of the power-
ful Treasury Ministry, bureaucratic reform came under the aegis of the Minister of Public
Administration, who was in effect a minister without portfolio dependent on the com-
mitment and support of the prime minister, who did not usually give this problem top
priority. Also, it was urgent to reform public nance in order to conform to European
Union expectations. There were no such external pressures to satisfy in the case of bu-
reaucratic reform.
9
Public Corporations and Semi-Independent Agencies
Another major source of policymaking in Italy is the so-called para-state sector: public
corporations and the semi-independent agencies that preside over the Italian public sector
and a variety of regulatory and welfare functions. These include such holding companies
as the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), the National Hydrocarburants Cor-
poration (ENI), and the Corporation for Stockholding and Financing of the Manufactur-
ing Industry (EFIM), each of which supervises a number of subsidiary companies that
hold controlling stock in a broad assortment of enterprises ranging from steel mills to oil
reneries to motels. Also in the para-state sector are ENEL, the public corporation that
runs the electric power industry (nationalized in :,o:); and EFIM and GEPI, two nan-
cial agencies set up to help businesses in distress. A number of social welfare and social in-
surance funds, and a hodgepodge of miscellaneous agencies and companies, are also part
of the heterogeneous para-state sector.
State control over the public sector has been uncoordinated and therefore ineffective.
Both IRI and ENI were placed under the Ministry of State Share Holdings, but this cabi-
net department was unable to check the expansionist policies pursued by these giant
holding companies and their subsidiaries. (In a referendum held in April :,,,, ,c.: per-
cent of the voters voted to abolish this ministry.) More recently, the Ofce of the Prime
Minister has gradually extended its sphere of inuence to encompass many of the public
corporations. Other para-state agencies are under the Ministry of Industry (ENEL, for
instance) or under one of the ministries concerned with social welfare. So, supervisory re-
sponsibility has been divided among a number of ministries. This situation, along with
interparty, interfactional division within the Italian cabinet, seems to have made it virtu-
ally impossible for the executive to impose a measure of coherence and discipline on the
para-state sector.
In the :,,cs and early :,ocs, numerous observers regarded the public corporations,
headed by adventurous entrepreneurs like Enrico Mattei of ENI, as a major constructive
force in Italys economic recovery. By the :,;cs, however, it had become all too evident
that the public enterprises had contracted some serious economic maladies and had de-
veloped some deplorable managerial and scal habits. Employing about :, percent of the
282 italy
Italian labor force and producing about :, percent of Italys gross domestic product, the
Italian public sector became a serious drain on the countrys economy.
The defects of the public enterprises have often been recited. Their executives and
managers have engaged in reckless speculation and unscrupulous empire building. Gains
in productivity have slackened or disappeared altogether; large sums have been squan-
dered on mergers and takeovers. Executive positions at the helm of these public-sector en-
terprises have become political patronage plums to be divided among members of various
parties or even warring factions within a party. Such patronage appointments have cer-
tainly bolstered the political inuence of the public sector, but at the price of efciency.
Finally, the state holding companies have sheltered their weaker, less viable enterprises,
thus encouraging the unt to survive. As one caustic commentator put it, the state hold-
ing companies have become paddle ponds for lame ducks.
10
The new nancial and managerial elite that has emerged in the public sector has come
to be regarded as a new parasitical classa state bourgeoisie. Obsessed with patronage
and with nancial manipulations, members of this new class were responsible for over-
stafng Italian factories, permitting labor discipline to deteriorate, and piling up huge
debts. Placing increasing reliance on state grants and on loans from public credit institu-
tions, the public holding companies have contributed heavily to the rising tide of ination
and to the alarming budget decits that have resulted from excessive public spending.
During the :,cs, there seemed to be some heartening signs that the Italian govern-
ment might be addressing itself seriously to the problem of limiting the excesses of the
public sector. There were some widely heralded efforts to reduce decits and weed out
rms that were losing money, by reducing the amount of government subsidies and priva-
tizing unsuccessful or superuous rms. These objectives, however, had to be pursued in
the face of political interference (by the patronage-addicted party machines) and work-
ing-class resistance to industrial layoffs. The corruption scandals of the early :,,cs re-
vealed the degree to which public corporations like ENI had illegally subsidized the So-
cialist Party and the Christian Democratic Party, in exchange for various economic and
political favors. Pressure for privatization was greatly enhanced by these revelations and
the resulting prosecution of public corporation executives and the politicians with whom
they had dealt.
11
Entrenched habits die hard. Consequently, until the Ciampi government took ofce
in mid-:,,,, little real progress had been made. Some privatizations had actually oc-
curred, but these were considered to be semiprivatizations, since the state continued to re-
tain control. They represented little more than tinkering at the edges when taken in rela-
tion to the overall state holdings.
12
Lack of condence in the governments willingness
or ability to pay off the debts of public-sector companies generally made for a certain re-
luctance on the part of private investors (especially foreign banks) to acquire state hold-
ings when these were placed on the market. It should be noted, however, that the techno-
cratic Ciampi cabinet did accelerate progress. Between mid-:,,, and mid-:,,, about $o
billion in state holdings were sold off by the Italian government.
13
As Minister for Economic Affairs (responsible for both the Treasury and the Budget
ministries) in the Prodi cabinet, Ciampi made additional progress on the privatization
front. In :,,;, he gave notice to the newly appointed director of IRI, that that mammoth
public holding company was to sell off its holdings within three years. He also moved to-
ward privatizing the telephone industry and continued his efforts to hasten the sale of
ENIs assets. But all of these projects faced active and passive resistance from the trade
unions, from some top-ranking bureaucrats, from the ex-Fascists, and from Communist
Refoundation, a small but strategically placed party of orthodox communists.
14
The Judiciary
Like France and Germany, Italy has a legal system in the civil-law tradition, which stems
originally from Roman law. The judge is simply supposed to apply the law as stated in the
relevant provisions of the legal code, not to analyze the facts of the case and explore the
applicability of past judicial decisions as is the case in the British and American common
law systems. Law is not determined primarily by an accumulation of judicial opinions,
but is to be found in statutes, executive decrees, legal codes, and accepted interpretations
of legal scholars. In short, the concept of judge-made law is foreign to the civil-law tradi-
tion. The judges function appears to be viewed as somewhat mechanical, and there is lit-
tle room for judicial discretion. To be sure, there are inevitable departures in any civil-law
country from this model of the civil-law tradition.
The Italian judicial system has some features in common with that of France. There
are two parallel judicial hierarchies: ve tiers of ordinary law courts, culminating in the
Court of Cassation, and a system of administrative courts. As in France, judges are re-
cruited into a judicial career service after graduation from law school and work their way
up the judicial ladder in a series of promotions and transfers.
There are some signicant differences between the two systems. First, Italian judges
at the lowest rung of the hierarchy receive much lower salaries than their French and Ger-
man counterparts. Second, there is nothing corresponding to the National Center of Ju-
dicial Studies in France, which provides modern training for future magistrates; Italian
judges enter the judicial corps with only the formalistic legal training they received in law
school. Third, promotion in Italy is less dependent on executive at than it is in France.
While it is generally agreed that the French executive branch has come to dominate the
promotion process, in Italy a Superior Council of the Judiciary has effective control over
appointments, transfers, and promotions. From its inception, this council has been dom-
inated by senior judges of the higher courts, who tend to be somewhat conservative.
Thus, Italian judicial independence has been threatened less by executive encroachment
than by the nancial penury that younger judges have had to endure and the domination
senior judges of the higher courts have exercised over the promotion process. However,
the hegemony of the senior judges was eroded in the :,ocs and early :,;cs by a number
of reform measures, which made promotion based on seniority virtually automatic and
which provided for guaranteed salary increases at periodic intervals. In the :,;cs and
:,cs, judicial power and prestige were greatly expanded as a result of the key role played
by the judiciary in the struggle against terrorism and organized crime.
15
The administrative court system deviates from the French model to a still greater de-
gree than the ordinary judicial system. There are two separate hierarchies of administra-
284 italy
tive courts, one headed by the Court of Accounts and the other by the Council of State.
Italian administrative courts are less prestigious and self-assertive than the French, since at
the lower levels they are staffed by civil servants rather than by full-time judges. Unlike
the French administrative courts, which can hear both suits by private citizens for dam-
ages against the state and suits challenging the legality of executive decrees, Italian admin-
istrative courts can consider only the question of legality. Damage suits must be intro-
duced in the ordinary law courts. Finally, the Italian Council of State has been much
more cautious in challenging the executive than has the French Conseil d tat.
We have noted how both the Italian cabinet and the public corporations have been
permeated by partisan and factional conicts. The same phenomenon is to be found in
the Italian judiciary. A split has developed among Italian judges between the older and
more senior judges associated with the Court of Cassation and the younger, more inter-
ventionist judges who seek a more active, socially conscious judiciary. As a result, two
competing judicial associations have been formed, and they compete for control of the
Superior Council of the Judiciary.
Despite the personal and political ties that many Italian judges have developed with
the world of partisan and factional politics, and despite the fact that signicant elements
in the Italian judiciary have allowed those ties to inuence their behavior, the Italian judi-
cial system enjoys a high degree of independence from executive control. This applies also
to public prosecutors, who are considered to be part of the judiciary and are consequently
responsible to the Superior Council of the Judiciary rather than to the Ministry of Justice.
This de jure independence enabled a portion of the judiciary, especially in the Milan re-
gion, to initiate a series of investigations of political corruption in :,,:the so-called
Operation Clean Hands. The investigations, followed by a wave of prosecutions, were
to some degree inuenced and encouraged by some unprecedented events: heavy Chris-
tian Democratic losses and Northern League gains in the parliamentary elections of :,,:
and in municipal and provincial elections; and the rapidly declining electoral strength of
the main political parties. At rst, southern judges and prosecutors, more closely con-
nected to the political parties than their Milanese counterparts, took a more cautious
stand; but the mushrooming of the corruption crisis seemed likely to result in a general
weakening of the bonds between judges and politicians.
16
The post-:,,: investigations and prosecutions involving the network of bribery and
corruption widely referred to as Kickback City resulted in the arrest of many national
and local politicians, as well as businessmen, industrial managers, and high-ranking bu-
reaucrats. Thousands more were investigated. Prosecutors like Antonio Di Pietro in Mi-
lan became national heroes in the eyes of large segments of the Italian public. Even the
new political forces that came to power in :,, were not immune from judicial scrutiny.
The brother of Prime Minister Berlusconi, leader of the Forza Italia! party, had to face
trial on corruption charges, as did a number of senior executives of his Fininvest nancial
empire. The leader of the Northern League, Umberto Bossi, also came under investiga-
tion for possible involvement in the illegal nancing of political parties. And Berlusconi
himself was eventually indicted and convicted for bribery and fraud.
The ongoing investigations highlighted some of the less appealing features of the
Italian judicial system. Preventive detention may be used to subject a suspect to a lengthy
period of imprisonment while he or she is awaiting trial. Moreover, given the unpleasant
conditions prevailing in Italian prisons, the prospect of indenite preventive detention
may be employed to coerce a suspect into collaborating with the authorities. These possi-
ble abuses were cited by Prime Minister Berlusconi in July :,,, when his government is-
sued a decree suspending the powers of the judiciary to order the preventive detention of
corruption suspects. However, the decree aroused a major political uproar, involving not
only threats of resignation by several well-known public prosecutors and protests by the
leaders of the opposition parties, but also vocal objections by Berlusconis coalition part-
ners, the Northern League and the National Alliance. As a result, the decree had to be
rescinded.
17
Since the mid-:,,cs, a backlash has emerged against the judiciarya backlash not
conned to the center-right. The excesses of the judiciary have been denounced; a num-
ber of prominent prosecutors have themselves been accused of corrupt practices; and the
charge has been made that prosecutors wield excessive powers and enjoy an autonomy
and lack of accountability that only judges should possess. One of the proposals submit-
ted to the Bicameral Commission for constitutional reform was to separate the public
prosecutors from the judges and to place their initiatives under a certain degree of control
by the Ministry of Justice. No agreement on proposals for reform of the judiciary (sup-
ported by the Forza Italia! party but opposed by numerous judges and by the PDS) could
be reached.
18
In one important respect, the Italian judicial system bears a strong resemblance to
that of Germany. There is a Constitutional Court with powers of judicial review. Estab-
lished by the constitution, this court was not actually set up by parliamentary law until
:,,o. It had taken almost a decade to overcome the foot-dragging of the Christian Demo-
cratic Party, which saw the court as a threat to majority (i.e., Christian Democratic) rule.
The Constitutional Court has fteen members, ve selected by the president of Italy,
ve elected by a three-fths vote of a joint session of parliament, and ve elected by
judges of the highest Italian courts (the Court of Cassation, the Council of State, and the
Court of Accounts). The members serve a twelve-year term, which is not immediately re-
newable. The Constitutional Court has the power to determine the constitutionality of
national and regional laws. Any case may be brought before the Constitutional Court on
the appeal of an individual, a group, or a region. There is one serious obstacle to utiliza-
tion of the appellate procedure. The judge of the lower court from which an appeal to the
Constitutional Court is being sought may block the appeal by issuing an interlocutory
judgment to the effect that the appeal is patently unfounded. Because many Italian judges
(especially in the Court of Cassation) resented the establishment of the Constitutional
Court as a departure from the traditions of the Italian legal system, and could not accept
the concept of judicial review, such interlocutory judgments were not uncommon during
the rst years of the courts existence.
The Constitutional Court has had a major impact on the Italian political system. It
has struck down numerous provisions of the penal code adopted during the Fascist
regime. In :,o:, for example, it declared the unconstitutionality of an old law that for-
286 italy
bade any individual from moving from one locality to another unless he rst had a guar-
antee of a job in his new locality. A number of laws restricting freedom of expression have
also been invalidated. In controversies over divorce and abortion, the court has strength-
ened the cause of secularism. In :,;c, it decided that a pending divorce bill would not re-
quire an amendment of the constitution, despite the fact that Article ; of the constitution
incorporated the Concordat of :,:,. Also in :,;c, the court declared the Italian law for-
bidding adultery to be unconstitutionally discriminatory against women. In :,;:, a law
prohibiting the publication of birth control information and the sale of contraceptives
was struck down. In :,;,, the court declared unconstitutional some provisions of an an-
tiabortion law of long standing. Many restrictions on civil liberties are still on the books.
The Constitutional Court has done a great deal to extend individual freedom, while
avoiding any major clash with the executive branch.
Subnational Governments
The three main tiers of governmental authority below the national level are the regions,
the provinces, and the communes. The regionsve special regions and fteen ordi-
nary regionscorrespond in size to the French regions and the German Lnder. The
provinces, :c: in number, are comparable to French departments. And the ,c; com-
munes are counterparts of the French communes, although they are far less numerous
and fragmented than the French.
There have traditionally been some strong similarities between French and Italian
patterns of local government. Both have been characterized by elected local and depart-
mental/provincial councils, which in turn elected executive committees or juntas from
their ranks. Both had a system of appointed central ofcialsthe prefectsnamed by the
minister of interior to supervise the departments/provinces and communes. There was a
prefect for each department/province, and he had the power to annul the decisions of
communal or departmental/provincial councils and to suspend local ofcials who were
derelict in their duties. At the communal level, the executive committee or junta was
headed by a mayor whose job was to supervise the executive organs of the commune and
negotiate both with central government agencies and with the prefect. Finally, before
World War II, both systems were highly centralized (the central government had direct
control over the schools, the prefect had authority over local police functions) and unitary
(the departments/provinces and communes possessed only such powers as the central
government chose to grant them). There were no regional units of government in either
country before World War II.
The main difference between the two systems lay in the role of the prefect. While the
French prefect also acted as coordinator and supervisor of central government eld agen-
cies, the Italian prefect was conned to controlling local government. Moreover, unlike
the French prefect, he had to share this power of control with a number of central gov-
ernment eld services. In short, while France had an integrated prefectoral system, the
Italian prefectoral system was unintegrated.
19
In :,, with the ratication of the constitution of the Italian republic, Italy adopted
a system that is neither unitary nor federal but possesses some quasi-federal features. Un-
der a form of regional devolution, the Italian regions have been granted extensive concur-
rent powers to share with the national government in a number of elds. As in a federal
system, the powers of regional governments are specied in the Italian constitution and
may be formally repealed only by constitutional amendment, although of course the Con-
stitutional Court may restrict or dilute those powers by judicial interpretation. Moreover,
the regions are specically named in the constitution, thus protecting them against any
ordinary parliamentary statute or executive decree reorganizing the boundaries and pow-
ers of subnational governments.
However, the Italian system of regional devolution contains some denitely nonfed-
eral restrictions on regional autonomy. First, the regions cannot exercise their concurrent
powers until central government organs have issued the necessary enabling statutes and
decrees. Second, the regions have no original taxing power of their own and have to de-
pend upon central legislation to authorize such taxes as they are permitted to impose.
Third, an appointed central government commissioner in each region has a suspensive
veto over bills passed by the regional councils (legislatures). Finally, a bill passed once
again by a regional council after such a veto can be blocked either by the Constitutional
Court (which can rule on its constitutionality before it goes into effect) or by the Italian
parliament (which can declare that a bill is contrary to the national interest). Thus, not
only is national law supreme over regional law, but regional law must give way to the na-
tional interest as dened by parliament.
Before :,;c, the regional autonomy provided by the :, constitution remained
largely a dead letter. Five special regions had been created because they contained spe-
cial ethnic minorities or displayed marked separatist tendencies. These regions comprised
three ethnic border zonesFrench-speaking Val dAosta, partly German-speaking Trentino
Alto Adige, and partly Slovenian FriuliVenezia Ginliaand the two big islands of Sicily
and Sardinia. The other fteen regionsthe ordinary regionsremained only on pa-
per, since no enabling legislation had been passed. Once again, as in the case of the Con-
stitutional Court, the fault lay with the dominant Christian Democratic Party, which did
not want to establish any institutional checks on majority rule. By the late :,ocs, how-
ever, the situation had become ripe for change. The centrist coalition cabinets of the :,,cs
had given way to a series of center-left cabinets that included the Italian Socialist Party;
and the Socialists wanted to see the regions established at long last. There was also a great
deal of support for the regions among a number of more progressive factions in the Chris-
tian Democratic Party; and the Communist Party was favorably inclined, since it ex-
pected to control several regional governments. Moreover, after the strikes and demon-
strations of the Hot Autumn of :,o,, it seemed advisable to deect some popular
grievances to lower levels of government. Accordingly, enabling legislation was passed,
and regional councils were elected in the ordinary regions in :,;c.
Even then, the position of the regions was still quite precarious. While regional coun-
cils existed and regional juntas were assuming their executive duties, very few decision-
making powers had been transferred to the regions. Not until :,;,, when the left and par-
ticularly the Communists made remarkable gains in the second set of regional elections,
was parliament induced to authorize real progress toward regional devolution. In :,;,, a
288 italy
law was passed directing the government to complete the transfer to the regions of all
powers assigned to them by the constitution. In :,;;, a set of decrees was issued carrying
out many but by no means all of the transfers envisioned by the :,;, law and turning over
to the regions approximately :, percent of the national budget. With Law No. ,: (:,;,)
and D.P.R. o:o (:,;;), the regions were nally in business.
20
Since :,;, the regions have been engaged in a continuing contest with the central
government to defend and, if possible, extend the powers they have been granted, to ob-
tain an adequate share of national revenues, to protect their turf against encroachment by
the central government, and to clarify their role vis--vis central and local authorities.
Their status leaves much to be desired from the regional point of view.
21
First, the process
of transferring the constitutionally dened regional powers from the central to the re-
gional governments is incomplete. There are still policy areas where delegation of powers
to the regions has not taken place. Second, the parliament and the ministries often take it
upon themselves to saddle the regions with the task of enforcing certain national laws,
thus reducing the resources and options available to regional governments. Third, the
central government still decides what revenues will be assigned to each regional govern-
ment. Fourth, the central government has tended to develop direct ties with local author-
ities, bypassing the regions. Fifth, the Constitutional Court has generally ruled against
the regions in cases involving conict between national and regional powers. Finally, con-
sultation between the central government and the regions has been sporadic and unsys-
tematic at best.
The situation of Italian local governments was even less satisfactory. Despite the re-
peated introduction of abortive bills and numerous debates, it was not until the early
:,,cs that the Italian parliament nally got around to passing new legislation (Law
::/:,,c and Law :/:,,:) redening the structure and powers of local governments and
their relationship to the regions and the central government. Until such laws were passed,
everything was provisional at the subnational level.
Even before the passage of Laws ::/:,,c and :/:,,:, some trends were discernible.
The prefect had been stripped of most of his supervisory powers over local government,
especially those involving prior surveillance of local government decisions. That function
was now performed by a regional Control Committee, a majority of whose members were
elected by the regional council. A second development was a delegation of certain powers
to the local governments on the part of both the national government and the regions.
But it should be noted that the regions showed a marked tendency to procrastinate in del-
egating functions to the local authorities, or to delegate only minor functions, or to at-
tempt to exercise rigid controls over how those functions were carried out. This points to
a third tendency in Italian local government, one that was already manifest before the
:,,cs: the regions seemed to be pushing for a centralized relationship with the local au-
thorities. And by way of reaction, local governments were sometimes seeking a closer link
with the central government, which was seen as a protector against regional domination.
What are some of the most signicant changes projected for the :,,cs as the result of
the passage of Laws ::/:,,c and :/:,,:?
22
Law ::/:,,c has granted statutory auton-
omy to the provinces and communes, permitting them to set up their own administrative
structures and procedures instead of conforming to a national model imposed from
above. It has stripped the regional Control Committees of most of their powers to exer-
cise external controls over local decisions. It has strengthened the executive role of the
junta and conned the role of the elected council to legislative and oversight duties. It has
introduced the German constructive vote of no condence to make it impossible for a
council to overthrow an executive junta and mayor, unless it simultaneously designates
their successors. Finally, it has charged the regional governments with the task of creating
metropolitan authorities for nine of the largest cities in Italy. On this last matter, however,
no action whatsoever has yet been taken or even projected.
Law :/:,,: is even more far-reaching: it provides for the direct election by popular
vote of the mayor and the president of the provincial junta (both had hitherto been
elected by their respective councils) and replaces proportional representation with major-
ity voting for the election of communal and provincial councils. Also the members of the
executive are to be appointed directly by the mayor and are to be responsible to him/her,
not to the separately elected communal council.
The years since :,,, have already provided some rst indications of how these re-
forms are affecting local and regional government. A new class of strong mayors with per-
sonal mandates from the electorate has emerged from the reform of local elections; these
mayors have been free to appoint nonpolitical experts to key executive posts in local gov-
ernment. The stiing inuence of the party machines over local and provincial adminis-
tration has been greatly weakened. Also, the nancial autonomy of local governments has
been augmented by the creation of a local authority property tax (the ICI) for which in-
dividual local governments can set rates. There has also been increased talk of an evolu-
tion toward a federal system; but there is no agreement on this point as yet, or indeed on
what kind of federal system is being contemplated. In any event, pressure by the North-
ern League ensures that this debate will continue.
These laws leave many loose ends and unresolved problems. The possibility of dead-
lock between an elected council and a separately elected mayor; the question of what will
be the relationship between the regional governments and the strengthened local and
provincial governments (and, above all, the new metropolitan authorities, which may in
some cases comprise over half the population of the regions in which they are located);
the degree to which local and provincial authorities will be able and willing to make use
of their expanded opportunities and responsibilitiesthese are issues that will arise in the
years ahead.
Notes
:. See Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Italys Meddlesome Nanny, The Economist, :c April :,,,, ,; and David Hine
and Emanuela Poli, The Scalfaro Presidency in :,,o: The Difcult Return to Normality, in Italian Pol-
itics: The Center-Left in Power, ed. Roberto DAlimonte and David Nelken (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,
:,,;), chap. ,.
:. On Italian Cabinet formulas since :,o, see Alberto Marradi, Italy: From Centrism to Crisis of the Cen-
ter-Left Coalitions, in Government Coalitions in Western Democracies, ed. Eric C. Browne and John Dreij-
manis (New York: Longman, :,:), chap. :, esp. ,o.
,. See Sabino Cassese, Is There a Government in Italy? Politics and Administration at the Top, in Presidents
290 italy
and Prime Ministers, ed. Richard Rose and Ezra N. Suleiman (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise In-
stitute, :,c), :;::c:.
. See Vincent della Sala, Hollowing Out and Hardening the State: European Integration and the Italian
Economy, in Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics, ed. Martin Bull and Martin Rhodes (London: Frank
Cass, :,,;), :,,, at :o, ,c; Gianfranco Pasquino, No Longer a Party State? Institutions, Power and the
Problem of Italian Reform, in Bull and Rhodes, ,,, at ; Giacinto della Cananea, The Reform of Fi-
nance and Administration in Italy: Contrasting Achievements, in Bull and Rhodes, :c:c,, at :,o:c:.
,. See Giuseppe Di Palma, The Available State: Problems of Reform, in Italy in Transition: Conict and
Consensus, ed. Peter Lange and Sidney Tarrow (London: Frank Cass, :,c), :o:o,; and Giuseppe Di
Palma, Risposte parlamentari alla crisi del regime, in La crisi italiana, ed. Luigi Graziano and Sidney
Tarrow (Torino: Einaudi, :,;,), c, :c.
o. See Giuseppe Di Palma, Surviving Without Governing: The Italian Parties in Parliament (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, :,;;), :,c.
;. See della Sala, Hollowing Out and Hardening the State, :, ,c. See also Vincent della Sala, Italy: A
Bridge Too Far? Parliamentary Affairs ,c (July :,,;): ,,oc, at ,,co; and Luca Verzichelli, The
Majoritarian System, Act II: Parliament and Parliamentarians in :,,o, in DAlimonte and Nelken, chap.
.
. See Cassese, Is There a Government in Italy? :;,; and Carlo Donolo, Social Change and Transforma-
tion of the State in Italy, in The State in Western Europe, ed. Richard Scase (London: Croom Helm, :,c),
:;c.
,. See della Cananea, The Reform of Finance and Administration in Italy, :,,:c.
:c. A Survey of Italy, The Economist, :, July :,,, ,;.
::. See Martin Rhodes, Financing Party Politics in Italy: A Case of Systemic Corruption, in Bull and
Rhodes, ,c.
::. See Peter Curwen, Privatization, the Italian State and the State of Italy, International Review of Adminis-
trative Sciences ,, (:,,,): o,;o at o,.
:,. See Michael Brush, Saving Italys Economy, Europe: Magazine of the European Union ,,; (June :,,):
:c:: at ::.
:. See Going Private at Last: Privatization in Italy, The Economist, : February :,,;, ,:. See also Luciano
Bardi and Martin Rhodes, Introduction: Mapping the Future, in Italian Politics: Mapping the Future,
ed. Luciano Bardi and Martin Rhodes (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,), :c,, at :,:.
:,. See Carlo Guarnieri, The Judiciary in the Italian Political Crisis, in Bull and Rhodes, :,;;,, at :,,o.
:o. See Carlo Guarnieri, The Italian Judiciary and the Crisis of the Political System, Italian Journal ; (:,,,):
:c::; and Francesco Sidoti, The Italian Political Class, Government and Opposition : (summer :,,,):
,,,,: at ,.
:;. See Luck Runs Out for Berlusconi, The Economist, :, July :,,, ,.
:. See Mary L. Volcansek, Justice as Spettacolo: The Magistrature in :,,;, in Bardi and Rhodes, ed.,
:,,; David Nelken, Stopping the Judges, in Italy: The Stalled Transition, ed. Mario Caciagli and
David I. Kertzer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,o), chap. ,; and Carlo Guarnieri, The Judiciary in the
Italian Political Crisis, in Bull and Rhodes, :,;;,. For a critical discussion of the entire corruption in-
vestigation, see Stanton H. Burnett and Luca Mantovani, The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands
and the Overthrow of Italys First Republic (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleeld, :,,).
:,. See Robert C. Fried, The Italian Prefects: A Study in Administrative Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, :,o,), ::o:, :,,,, ,c,.
:c. Robert Leonardi, Raffaella Y. Nanetti, and Robert D. Putnam, Devolution as a Political Process: The
Case of Italy, Publius :: (winter :,:): ,,::;.
::. See Editoriale, Le Reqioni, :: (JanuaryApril :,,): :.
::. For the main highlights of regent legislation reforming local government in Italy, see Marco Cammelli,
Eletto dal popolo: il sindaco fra ruolo nuovo e vecchi poteri, Il Mulino , (JulyAugust :,,,): :;;,;
and R.E. Spence, Institutional Reform in Italy: The Case of Local Government, Local Government Stud-
ies :, (summer :,,,): ::o:. For the impact and outcome of that legislation, see Bruno Dente, Sub-Na-
tional Governments in the Long Italian Transition, in Bull and Rhodes, :;o,,; and James Newell, At
the Start of a Journey: Steps on the Road to Decentralization, in Bardi and Rhodes, :,o;.
Chapter 18
Who Has the Power?
SINCE :,,:, THE ITALIAN party system has undergone a sweeping realignment. But
during the period :,o-,c, this party system appeared to be relatively stable, with rela-
tively few shifts in party identity, party strength, and voting behavior. In order to put con-
temporary changes in perspective, it is necessary to survey briey some of the principal
features of the traditional pre-:,,: party system.
Ever since :,o, the Italian multiparty system has been much more complex than
that of France or Germany.
1
No fewer than nine national parties (parties that presented
lists of candidates in all or most constituencies) were represented in the Italian parliament
in :,,:. These included the following:
:. Democrats of the Left (DS), known until :,,: as the Italian Communist Party
(which was the strongest communist party in Western Europe) and
subsequently as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The DS is usually
referred to now as the ex- (or post-) Communist Party.
:. The Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC), a party of orthodox communists,
who object to the moderate course and symbolic change of label adopted by the
PDS.
,. The Green Party, which tends to focus its efforts on environmental questions.
. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI), once allied with the Communists but since
:,o,, much closer to the center-left of the political spectrum.
,. The Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI), even more cautious and moderate
than its socialist cousin.
o. The Italian Republican Party (PRI), moderately left-of-center and very
prestigious, despite its small size and voting strength.
;. The Christian Democratic Party (DC), which had played a dominant and
usually hegemonic role in Italian politics since :,o.
. The Italian Liberal Party (PLI), actually a moderately conservative party of the
center-right.
,. The Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-Fascist party that was something of
an outcast among the national political parties.
In addition to these national parties, there were a number of regional, ethnic, or
splinter parties: the newly powerful Lega Nord (Northern League); the Liga Venta; the
Sdtiroler Volkspartei (a German-speaking party in Bolzano Province); the Val dAosta
List; the Network, representing an anti-Maa movement in Sicily; the Pannella Lists, an
assortment of former Radicals concerned with postmaterialist lifestyle issues; and the
Party of Pensioners.
Some of the traditional characteristics of the postWorld War II Italian party system
should be duly noted in order that the signicance of recent trends may be assessed. One
set of characteristic features had to do with the relative strength of the parties in the sys-
tem. There was a dominant partythe Christian Democratic Partythat had headed
every Italian cabinet between :,o and :,:. The second-ranking partythe Communist
Party (now the DS)was the strongest communist party in Western Europe (now its
strongest ex-communist party). The Italian Social Movement had been split ever since
:,;, with the exception of a brief interval from :,oo to :,o,, and consequently the posi-
tion of Italian socialism was much weaker than in most other West European countries.
And nowhere else in Western Europe except in France was there a neo-Fascist movement
whose strength even remotely approached that of the Italian Social Movement.
Some authors stressed the polarization of the Italian party system, which included
powerful extremist parties (the communists and the neo-Fascists) at its left and right
poles. Others referred to its remarkable stability. Parties made only minor gains or suf-
fered only minor losses in general elections, and voters rarely shifted far along the political
spectrum but moved, say, from extreme left to moderate left or from center to center-
right. This stability was attributed partly to the very high degree of party identication,
partly to the existence of one-party regions like the Catholic Veneto, and partly to the re-
markably large turnout which reduced the number of undecided voters to be mobilized.
Finally, it was pointed out that two of the parties in Italys multiparty system tended to
corner the lions share of the vote. Between them, the Communists and the Christian Dem-
ocrats polled between oc percent and ;,.: percent of the votes in every election from
:,,, through :,;, reaching a high point of ;,.: percent in :,;o before beginning to ebb
(see table :.:, pp. :,).
2
(The outcomes for party representation in the Chamber of
Deputies are given in table :.:, p. :,,).
3
This led to the conclusion that Italy had an im-
perfect two party system, with one of the two major parties permanently in the cabinet
and the other permanently in the opposition.
4
Events during the :,,,: decade had cast
considerable doubt on this thesis, however. The combined vote of the Communists and
Christian Democrats dropped to o:. percent in :,,, oc., percent in :,;, and a start-
ling ,:. percent (counting the votes of both the PDS and Communist Refoundation) in
:,,:.
Italian parties also possessed some organizational traits that endowed them with a
distinctive character. They were highly centralized, and the central party organization did
not hesitate to intervene in nominations at the local level. They were cohesive: members
of the party in parliament generally voted together as a solid bloc though there were devi-
ations. And they were relatively disciplined: legislators who failed to follow the instruc-
tions of their party leaders and whips might be courting severe disciplinary sanctions, not
excluding expulsion from the parliamentary party group. Another point to be stressed is
the important role played by the party outside of parliament in its relationship with the
294 italy
Table 18.1 Percentages of Total Vote Polled by Italian Parties in Elections for the Chamber of Deputies, 194896
:), :),, :), :), :) :);: :); :);) :), :); :)): :)), :))
PDUP 4.5 1.9 1.5 2.3 1.5 1.7
PRC 5.6 6.1 8.6
Radicals 1.1 3.5 2.2 2.6
Greens 2.5 2.8 2.7 2.5
PCI/PDS
a
22.6 22.7 25.3 26.9 27.1 34.4 30.4 29.9 26.6 16.1 10.3 21.1
PSI/PSU
b
31.0
12.7 14.2 13.8 9.6 9.6 9.8 11.4 14.3 13.6 2.2
PSDI 7.1 4.5 4.5 6.1
14.5
5.1 3.4 3.8 4.1 3.0 2.7
PRI 2.5 1.6 1.4 1.4 2.0 2.8 3.1 3.0 5.1 3.7 4.4
Prodi List
c
6.8
Dini List
d
4.3
DC/PPI 48.5 40.0 42.4 38.3 38.7 38.7 38.3 32.9 34.3 29.7 11.1 5.8
CCD/CDU
e
PLI 3.8 3.0 3.5 7.0 5.8 3.9 1.3 1.9 2.9 2.1 2.8
LN 8.7 8.4 10.1
FI 21.0 20.6
PNM 2.8 6.8 4.8 1.7 1.3
MSI/DN/AN
g
2.0 5.9 4.8 5.1 4.5 8.7 6.1 5.3 6.8 5.9 5.4 13.5 15.7
Others
f
2.3 2.9 1.7 1.3 1.4 2.1 .7 1.7 3.2 3.3 8.2 14.7 4.5
Note: Party abbreviations:
PDUP: Democratic Party of Proletarian Unity
PRC: Party of Communist Refoundation
PCI/PDS: Italian Communist Party/Democratic Party of the Left
PSI/PSU: Italian Socialist Party/United Socialist Party
PSDI: Italian Social Democratic Party
PRI: Italian Republican Party
DC/PPI: Christian Democratic Party/Italian Popular Party
CCD: Christian Democratic Center
PLI: Italian Liberal Party
LN: Northern League
FI: Forza Italia! (Go Italy!)
PNM: National Monarchist Party
MSI/DN/AN: Italian Social Movement/National Right/National Alliance (neo-fascist, but National Alliance professes to be
ex-fascist).
a
In 1948 the Communists and Socialists formed a single electoral bloc, the Peoples Democratic Front (FDP). The experiment
was not subsequently repeated. In 1992 the PCI changed its name to the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). An orthodox
minority seceded to form the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC).
b
In 1968 the Socialists and Social Democrats ran as a unied party: the United Socialist Party (PSU). The party split in 1969.
c
In the 1996 election, the Prodi List consisted of the Popular Party of Italy (see note e below), the South Tyrol Volksparten, the
Republican Party, and the Democratic Union.
d
The Dini List of candidates, which was headed by caretaker Prime Minister Lamberto Dini, sought support during the 1996
campaign from various moderate members of various right-wing parties.
e
In 1994 the DC disintegrated. It was replaced by two Christian Democratic parties: the Popular Party of Italy (PPI) in the
center and the much weaker Christian Democratic Center (CCD) on the right. In the 1996 election, the PPI campaigned as
part of the Prodi List of candidates.
f
The CCD formed part of Berlusconis Forza Italia! electoral slate in both the 1994 and 1996 elections.
g
In December 1976, the MSI split, with about half of its deputies joining a new right-wing party, the National Right (DN).
The DN failed to gain any representation in 1971. Between 1992 and 1994, Gianfranco Fini formed a broader National Al-
liance (AN). The AN included most of the old MSI (which was later dissolved as a party) and other right-wing factions. It
claimed to have put the fascist experience behind it and to be a mainstream conservative alternative, committed to the preser-
vation of democracy.
parliamentary party. Many cabinet crises originated outside parliament with decisions
reached by party secretaries or party directorates (executive committees). To be sure, there
was much overlap between the parliamentary and extraparliamentary party organizations.
The secretaries and members of party directorates were frequently themselves simultane-
ously members of parliament.
Perhaps the most interesting property of Italian political parties was the presence
within their ranks of highly organized competing factions. These intraparty groupings re-
ected more than mere tendencies or currents of opinion. They had, in many cases, a
well-dened organizational structure, press, and research organs to formulate and dissem-
inate their views, their own sources of nancing independent of the party organization,
and their own leadership hierarchy. Factions vied with one another for control over the
party organization and over patronage appointments, and they demanded appropriate
representation when cabinets and regional and local juntas were being formed. On nu-
merous occasions, the formation of a cabinet or a regional or municipal junta was held up
while negotiations proceeded to determine which Christian Democratic or Socialist fac-
tions were to be assigned which executive posts.
With the Italian parliamentary elections of :,,:, some of the traditional features of the
Italian party system seemed to be undergoing major and perhaps permanent alterations.
For one thing, the Christian Democratic Party (DC) appeared to be in serious danger of
Table 18.2 Seats Won by Various Italian Parties in Elections for the Chamber of Deputies, 194896
:), :),, :), :), :) :);: :); :);) :), :); :)): :)), :))
PDUP 2.3 0 6 6 7 8
PRC 35 40 35
Radicals 4 18 11 13
Greens 13 16 11
PCI/PDS 143 140 166 177 179 228 201 198 177 107 115 284
a
PSI/PSU
183
75 84 87 61 58 62 73 94 92 15
PSDI 33 19 22 33
91
29 15 20 23 17 16
PRI 9 5 6 6 9 14 14 16 29 21 27
DC/PPI 305 262 273 260 266 266 262 262 225 234 206 33
PLI 19 14 17 39 31 21 5 9 16 11 17
LN 55 122 59
FI 97 246
b
PNM 14 40 25 8 6
MSI/DN/AN 6 29 24 27 24 56 35 30 42 35 34 109
Others 5 3 5 4 3 4 3 6 6 7 25 88 6

Total 574 590 596 630 630 630 630 630 630 630 630 630 630
Note: Party abbreviations: see note, table 18.1.
a
Olive Tree Alliance, consisting of the PDS, the Greens, the PPI/Prodi List, and the Dini List.
b
Freedom Alliance, consisting of Forza Italia!, the Christian Democratic Center (CCD), and the National Alliance (AN).
losing its hegemony over the Italian party system. It had already lost considerable ground
in :,, and :,;; but the :,,: election results were disastrous for the DC. With :,.; per-
cent of the total vote, it plumbed new depths of electoral failure, ,.: percentage points be-
low its :,, all-time low.
The PDS (formerly the Italian Communist Party or PCI) was still the second-rank-
ing party on the Italian political scene. But the hitherto consistent forward progress of
Italian communism had already been halted as early as :,;,, when the PCI captured only
,c. percent of the votes as compared to its :,;o high-water mark of ,. percent. This
retrogression continued in the :,, elections and, more sharply, in :,;, when the Com-
munist Party received only :o.o percent of the votes, its weakest showing since :,o. This
was the second most serious defeat in its history [as of that time].
5
But the worst was yet
to come.
In :,,:, in response to an initiative launched by PCI Secretary Achille Occhetto to
dissociate the Italian left from the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the PCI
split into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and the Party of Communist Refoun-
dation (PRC)the former, led by Occhetto and representing the bulk of the former PCI,
committed to a moderate leftist posture, the latter a party of diehards rebelling against the
triumph of reformist tendencies in Italian Communism. In :,,:, the PDS received :o.:
percent of the votes, whereas Communist Refoundation mustered only ,.o percent. The
combined total of ::.; percent was ., points below the already deplorable :,; mark of
:o.o percent and was the worst showing since :,o.
The Socialist movement was still divided between Socialists (PSI) and the somewhat
more centrist-oriented Social Democrats (PSDI). Both parties were rather on the weak
side, especially the PSDI, and their combined vote since :,o had always oscillated be-
tween :: and : percent of the total votes cast. In the :,; elections, after four years of rel-
ative stability under the commanding leadership of Socialist Prime Minister Bettino
Craxi, the Italian electorate rewarded the PSI with :., percent of the total voteits
highest percentage as an independent and distinctive party since :,o. However, in :,,:,
the PSI dropped back to :,.o percent, undergoing its rst slump in twenty years. As for
the PSDI, it steadily lost ground after :,,, receiving , percent in :,; and :.; percent in
:,,:.
The other two minor center parties (the RepublicansPRI, and the LiberalsPLI)
had chalked up very modest electoral achievements, with their combined vote since :,o
ranging from ., percent to percent of the votes cast. In :,,:, they registered rather
modest gains: the PRI rose to . percent and the PLI rose to :. percent. As for the neo-
Fascists of the MSI, they had been in a state of decline since :,,. In :,,:, despite the
presence of Mussolinis granddaughter on their ticket, they polled only ,. percent of the
total vote. Thus, the MSI, along with the centrist PRI and PLI, appeared in :,,: to be
facing a very unpromising electoral future.
Italys imperfect two-party system seemed to be in critical condition in light of the
:,,: results. As we have seen, the combined DC, PDS, and Communist Refoundation
vote dropped to ,:. percent of the total vote. By contrast, if one adds the PSI vote to that
of the three minor center parties (PSDI, PRI, PLI), the laic bloc (the bloc of secular
296 italy
democratic parties) won :,., percent of the votes in :,,:. Thus, the imperfect two-party
system was showing signs of unraveling, whereas the laic bloc seemed to be emerging as a
powerful third force in Italian politics, reaching its highest levels in twenty years. It also
appeared that the .; percent of the vote garnered by the regionalist Northern League
(dominated by the Lombard League) and the ,.o percent captured by Communist Re-
foundation had been won at the expense of the DC and the PDS, not the laic bloc. Yet,
the apparent renaissance of the laic bloc was to prove a short-lived phenomenon.
The emergence of the Northern League, with .; percent of the votes, as a major
protagonist on the Italian political scene was one of the more striking outcomes of the
:,,: elections. With its demands that a federal Italy be created, that major functions and
a signicant share of national revenues should be shifted from the central government to
the regions, and with its clearly expressed anti-southern, anti-immigrant biases, the Northern
League represented a new and possibly centrifugal force in Italian politics. Like the split
in Italian communism, the Northern Leagues appearance made it clear that the Italian
party system of :,o,: was a thing of the past.
The :,,: election also called into question the stability so often ascribed to the Ital-
ian party system. Both of the factors that had contributed to this stability in the past
strong party identication and high voter turnoutseemed to be declining. Voter turnout
dipped below ,c percent for the rst time in :,;, and never regained that level. More-
over, more voters were casting blank and invalid ballots. As we see later, Italian voting tra-
ditions seemed to be eroding under the impact of the social and cultural changes we ob-
served in chapter :o. One result has been a remarkable downward dip in the Christian
Democratic vote.
The Christian Democratic decline was already foreshadowed in :,: when the Chris-
tian Democratic grip on the ofce of prime minister was nally broken. In that year, the
Republican leader, Giovanni Spadolini, became prime minister. A number of factors facil-
itated Spadolinis takeover: a referendum vote to retain the relatively liberal abortion law,
Christian Democratic implication in a scandal involving the political inuence of a secret
Masonic lodge, Christian Democratic losses in local elections that year, and Socialist de-
mands that the ofce of prime minister be given to a Socialist or at least to a leading
member of one of the center-left parties. Spadolini emerged as a compromise candidate
because the Christian Democrats were not yet ready to let the Socialist leader, Craxi, be-
come prime minister. The visibility and credibility bestowed on the Republican Party by
Spadolinis sixteen-month tenure as prime minister probably help explain Republican
gains and Christian Democratic losses in :,,. From :,, to :,;, Craxis four-year span
as prime minister further weakened the Christian Democratic image of being the peren-
nial ruling party.
The Election of 1994
Between April :,,: and March :,,, the Italian party system underwent a series of mas-
sive transformations, which altered the political map of Italy, decimated the ranks of
Italys political elites, and brought a new cohort of political leaders to power. The precipi-
tating factor was public revulsion resulting from the revelation that very large segments of
the Italian political class had accepted kickbacks from business rms in exchange for gov-
ernment contracts and licenses, or had cultivated and maintained illicit connections with
the Maa and other criminal organizations. As a result of these scandals and the ensuing
prosecutions, many Christian Democratic and Socialist political leaders at the national,
regional, and local levels came under criminal investigation. This included such former
prime ministers as Bettino Craxi (PSI) and Giulio Andreotti (DC). The disgrace befalling
the DC and the PSI led to the virtual disintegration of these parties, and the formation of
successor rump parties under new leadership. While fragments of the DC and PSI did
survive and soldier on, the Social Democrats, Republicans, and Liberals virtually disap-
peared.
6
The parties of the left, led by the PDS, had hoped to win the general election of :;
and : March :,,. After all, they had won against a divided right in a majority of the
mayoral elections held in November :,,,. Only four months later, however, the left al-
liance confronted a newly formed right alliance, led by the charismatic media magnate,
Silvio Berlusconi, and a new center alliance as well.
In the :,, elections, the Progressive Alliance, formed by the parties of the left, suf-
fered a clear-cut defeat. This alliance, designed to maximize leftist probabilities of carry-
ing single-member districts by the necessary plurality, comprised the PDS; Communist
Refoundation; the Greens; the moribund rump of the PSI (which was to disband shortly
after the elections); the anti-Maa Network Party (headed by Leoluca Orlando, mayor of
Palermo); the Democratic Alliance, composed mostly of former supporters of the minor
center parties; the Christian Socialists; and one or two additional splinter movements. It
received only ,. percent of the total PR vote.
7
Of this total, the PDS contributed :c.
percent (as compared to :o.: percent in :,,:); Communist Refoundation contributed o.:
percent (as compared to ,.o percent in :,,:); the Greens obtained :.; percent (:. percent
in :,,:); the Network polled :., percent (no change since :,,:); the Democratic Alliance
(which had not existed in :,,:) received :.: percent; and the hapless Socialists, who had
received :,. o percent of the votes in :,,:, eked out a meager :.: percent.
8
In looking at these gures, we should note that the combined vote of the PDS and
Communist Refoundation was :o. percenta clear-cut gain over the ::.; percent at-
tained in :,,:; and that the great bulk of that gain was chalked up by the PDS, which has
denitely become the recognized standard-bearer of the moderate left. The decline of the
left as a whole from over c percent of the votes in :,,: to ,. percent of the votes in
:,, may be attributed almost entirely to the collapse of the scandal-ridden PSI, some of
whose voters migrated to the PDS, while others drifted to Berlusconis Forza Italia! or to
the Northern League. In general, one could say that the Italian left suffered a severe de-
feat, but that, within the left, the PDS had recovered from its debacle of :,,:.
The minor center partiesthe PSDI, the PRI, and the PLIhad polled a total of
,., percent of the total votes in :,,:. And the DC, weakened as it was in :,,:, had still
received :,.; percent. So these four center parties had totaled ,,.o percent of the votes.
What happened to the center in :,, was a defeat of staggering proportions: the center
parties went down to :,.; percent of the votes. The minor center parties simply disap-
peared, obliterated by the scandals and by the percent threshold imposed by the new
298 italy
election law as a precondition for receiving seats under proportional representation. Some
of their votes may have gone to the Democratic Alliance on the left, others to the Segni
Pact in the center. As for the DC, two Christian Democratic parties had replaced it: the
Popular Party in the center, and the Christian Democratic Center (which formed part of
Berlusconis Forza Italia! slates) on the right.
The centrist alliance in :,, was called the Pact for Italy. It included two parties: the
Popular Party to which we have just referred, and the Segni Pact, led by Mario Segni, the
former Christian Democrat who had led a number of successful referendum campaigns
for electoral reform since :,,:, including a drive to change and simplify the system of
preferential voting and a movement to virtually eliminate the system of proportional rep-
resentation in Senate elections. In :,,, the Popular Party obtained only ::.: percent of
the votes, and the Segni Pact (which contained former supporters of the minor center
parties and some former Christian Democrats) received only .o percent. Of the three
major political alliances in Italy, the centrist alliance was the weakest.
The winner of the :,, elections was the rightist bloc, labeled the Freedom Pole in
the north (where Forza Italia! was allied with the Northern League) and the Pole of Good
Government in the south (where Forza Italia! was allied with the National Alliance). This
curious binomial bloc consisted of three major political forces and two minor parties. The
rst was Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia!, a new center-right mass movement revolving
around a charismatic business leader and including on its electoral lists candidates of a
minor center-right Christian Democratic grouping called the Christian Democratic Cen-
ter and of a centrist splinter movement called the Center Union. The second was Um-
berto Bossis Northern League, particularly powerful in Lombardy. And the third was a
self-styled post-Fascist party, the National Alliance, led by Gianfranco Fini, formerly the
leader of the neo-Fascist MSI. The Pole of Liberty and the Pole of Good Government had
the largest number of voters: :., percent of the total. Twenty-one percent of the elec-
torate voted for the Forza Italia! lists (including about ,., percent for the Christian Dem-
ocratic Center); . percent (as compared to .; percent in :,,:) voted for Bossis North-
ern League; and :,., percent (as compared to only ,. percent in :,,:) voted for Finis
National Alliance. The Northern League had barely held its own since :,,:; but the Na-
tional Alliance had more than doubled the strength of the neo-Fascist MSI; and Forza
Italia! had carved out spectacular gains at the expense of the discredited old parties of the
center and moderate right.
A number of striking results of this election should be noted. First, the Pole of Lib-
erty and the Pole of Good Government won a clear majority in the Chamber of Deputies
(,oo seats out of o,c) and a near majority in the Senate (:,o seats out of ,:,). This permit-
ted Berlusconi to form a cabinet composed of members from Forza Italia! (,), the North-
ern League (o), the National Alliance (o), the Christian Democratic Center (:), and the
Center Union (:), plus three independents. Second, the complexion of the parliament
had changed remarkably since :,,:. Of the nine national parties listed at the beginning of
this chapter, the DC had vanished to be only partially replaced by two weak successor
parties, the PSI had been reduced to a mere fragment, the three minor center parties were
no more, and the MSI had expanded into a watered-down post-Fascist movement whose
leader preached moderation. On the right, the Northern League had become a major na-
tional actor rather than a regional protest movement, and Forza Italia! had emerged as a
new and possibly dominant protagonist on the national scene. Third, the composition of
Italys governing elite had undergone a bewildering metamorphosis. Of the ,, members
of parliament elected to the two chambers, o, were new, only :c had prior service in
parliament.
9
And most of the big political names that had dominated the headlines for so
many yearsAndreotti, Forlani, and Gava for the DC, Craxi and De Michelis for the
PSIseemed to have vanished from the front pages.
Finally, however, the results of the :,, elections were inconclusive and somewhat
deceptive, for two reasons. One is that the election was conducted under a hideously
complex electoral system devised by the outgoing lame-duck Parliament in :,,,. The sec-
ond and more compelling reason is that the center-right coalition that took power in the
spring of :,, proved to be fatally split by conicting policies and personalities. In De-
cember :,,, under a hail of criticism, much of it coming from his coalition partners of
the Northern League, Berlusconi felt compelled to resign as prime minister.
On :: April :,,o, after Berlusconis :,, victory had been dissipated by dissension among
members of his center-right coalition, and after Dinis cabinet of technocrats had outlived
its legitimacy and could no longer deal with a deadlocked parliament, new elections were
called by President Scalfaro despite the fact that parliaments term still had three years to
run. Because no agreement could be reached on a new election law, the complex election
law used in :,, was retained. As a result of the bewildering electoral alliances spawned
by this law, the media were unable to give a prompt report on the exact distribution of
seats in parliament. It was announced that the Olive Tree center-left alliance had won :
seats in the Chamber of Deputies (plus an additional thirty-ve seats garnered by Com-
munist Refoundation, a maverick member of the alliance), and that the Freedom Pole
center-right alliance had won :o. The Northern League, running alone, had won fty-
nine, and other lists had won ve. It took some time for the exact distribution of seats
among the parties composing each alliance to be ascertained.
10
The Olive Tree Alliance received a plurality of the votes (,., percent) and a bare ma-
jority of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies (,:, out of o,c) and in the Senate. But one
party in this alliance, Communist Refoundation (which polled .o percent of the votes
and won thirty-ve seats in the Chamber), indicated that it would support Olive Tree ini-
tiatives only on a case-by-case basis and that its loyalty to the alliance would depend on
the policies the alliance chose to adopt. The leading party in the alliance was the ex-com-
munist Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). It polled ::.: percent of the votes, a gain of .
percent since :,,, whereas Communist Refoundation picked up :., percentage points
over its :,, showing. In terms of seats, the PDS far outnumbered the PRC: :;: seats
to ,,.
The other three parties in the Olive Tree Alliance included the Greens, who polled
:., percent of the vote compared to : .; percent in :,,, and who won twenty-one seats;
the Prodi List, led by the alliances candidate for prime minister, Romano Prodi; and the
300 italy
Italian Renewal Party, led by the outgoing prime minister and former top ofcial of the
Bank of Italy, Lamberto Dini. Neither the Prodi List nor the Italian Renewal Party was on
the ballot in :,,. Italian Renewal received ., percent of the total vote and twenty-four
seats. The Prodi List (which received the support of the Popular Party of former Christian
Democrats, the South Tyrol Volkspartei, and the Republican Party, plus some even smaller
splinter groupings) received o. percent of the votes as compared to ::.: percent polled by
the Popular Party in :,, (part of that vote had obviously been captured by Italian Re-
newal). Virtually all the seats won by the Prodi List went to the Popular Party, which
picked up sixty-seven seats, while Others received ve. Together, the Prodi List and Ital-
ian Renewal polled ::.: percent of the vote, compared to :,.; percent received by the cen-
trist alliance (Pact for Italy, composed of the Popular Party and the Segni Pact) in :,,.
Thus, the centrist alliance of :,, simply converged with the leftist Progressive Al-
liance of :,, to form a center-left bloc, the Olive Tree Alliance. The Olive Tree voting
totals of ,., percent were actually less than the combined total polled by the leftist and
centrist alliances, running separately in :,, (,c.: percent).
Why, then, did the Olive Tree Alliance win an electoral victory over the center-right?
It won because the center-right alliance (called the Freedom Pole in :,,o, as it had been
in :,,) had lost one of its most electorally powerful members: the Northern League. The
Northern League ran as an isolated list this time and obtained :c.: percent of the votes
and ,, seats as compared to . percent of the votes and ::: seats in :,,. As for the Free-
dom Pole, it racked up very respectable totals of :.: percent (:., percent in :,,). Of
these voting percentages, :c.o percent was accounted for by Forza Italia! (:: percent in
:,,), :,.; percent by the ex-Fascist National Alliance (:,., percent in :,,), and ,. per-
cent by the Christian Democratic Center/Christian Democratic Union (,., percent in
:,,). Of the :o seats won by the Freedom Pole, ::, went to Forza Italia!, ,, to the Na-
tional Alliance, and ,c to the CDC/CDU. This was a respectable showing. But the split
with the federalist Northern League cost the Freedom Pole what would otherwise have
been a popular majority and a probable majority in parliament.
In the Chamber of Deputies, with its total membership of o,c, the ,:, seats won by
the Olive Tree Alliance constituted a slender majority. But, as we have seen, the orthodox
communists of Communist Refoundation had declared their independence. Subtracting
their ,, seats would leave the Olive Tree Alliance with only : seats, short of a majority.
It would therefore be necessary for the Olive Tree Alliance to court the support of Com-
munist Refoundation and/or the Northern League (,, seats) in order to muster a major-
ity on controversial legislation. As we have noted, the Olive Tree itself was a rather loosely
jointed alliance of leftist and centrist parties, and its future cohesion was in doubt. Thus,
it would appear that the media exaggerated the extent and signicance of the center-left
victory in :,,o, just as they had exaggerated the extent and signicance of the center-right
victory in :,,.
The tenure of the Olive Tree coalition indeed proved fragile, although it managed to re-
main in ofce for the duration of its ve-year term. Romano Prodi served two-and-a-half
years as the rst of three Olive Tree premiers, resigning in October :,, after Communist
Refoundation deputies rejected his governments austerity budget. (Prodi was subse-
quently chosen president of the European Commission in March :,,,.) His successor
was Massimo DAlema, a leader of the PDS and Italys rst post-communist head of gov-
ernment. DAlema stepped down a year later following losses by Olive Tree coalition par-
ties to the center-right opposition in regional elections in April. Giliano Amato reconsti-
tuted the Olive Tree coalition but failed to mobilize popular enthusiasm for either himself
or the governments policies.
Silvio Berlusconi emerged early as the leading contender to wrest the premiership
from the center-left in the campaign leading up to national elections in May :cc:. He
forged a more disciplined coalition between his own party, Forza Italia!, and the North-
ern League and the National Alliance than had been the case in :,,, and succeeded in
casting himself (thanks in large part to his virtual monopoly ownership of private televi-
sion in Italy) as a man of vision and action. Berlusconi seized on his honorary title of il
Cavaliere (the knight) to proclaim himself the greatest politician in the world.
Campaigning jointly as the Freedom House, the center-right parties relentlessly at-
tacked the Olive Tree coalition for its internal dissension and alleged adherence to the sta-
tus quo. Advocating radical changes in domestic policies, Berlusconi called for tax reform
(including the abolition of the inheritance tax), greater exibility on the labor market, the
modernization of Italys transportation system, and safer cities. Members of the Olive
Tree coalition responded by nominating Francesco Rutelli, the popular mayor of Rome,
302 italy
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi campaigns for reelection in the general election of May :oo:.
(Reuters NewMedia Inc./Corbis)
to oppose Berlusconi in what became an electoral contest more between strong personali-
ties than between competing ideologies. The center-lefts criticism of il Cavaliere focused
on legal charges of corruption, which had been dismissed on appeal, and his collusion
with the National Alliance.
Berlusconi and his allies swept to a solid victory in both houses of parliament on :,
May. The Freedom House parties won :., percent of the popular vote and ,oo seats in
the Chamber of Deputies, compared to the Olive Trees ,.; percent and :: seats. The
center-right coalitions margin of victory was even greater in the Senate: ,.o percent
compared to ,., percent for the Olive Tree. The electoral outcome dismayed many Eu-
ropeans who were concerned about the rightest tilt of the winning coalition, but Italian
president Ciampi duly appointed Berlusconi premier in accordance with established
democratic norms.
The Main Political Parties
The Ex-Communists and Orthodox Communists (PDS, PRC, new PCI)
The Party of Democratic Socialists (now known as the Democrats of the Left) was
founded in February :,,:, only thirty-two months after Achille Occhetto became secre-
tary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in June :,. Almost immediately after be-
coming party secretary, Occhetto, aided by a new generation of leaders of middle-class
origin, began to campaign for radical changes in the structure and goals of the PCI. In
doing so, he was continuing and accelerating the reformist course set by his predecessors,
Enrico Berlinguer and Alessandro Natta. But he went further. He proposed to break with
the Marxist tradition, to establish close links with West European socialist parties, to de-
mocratize the internal organization of the PCI, and (after the fall of the Berlin Wall in
November :,,) to change the name of the PCI. At a special party conference held in
March :,,c, he won approval for his proposal for a party constituent assembly to debate
and approve a statute for the new party he intended to create. Despite considerable inter-
nal opposition, his motion prevailed by almost a two-thirds majority. Ten months later,
after much wrangling over the name, symbols, and goals of the new party, a party con-
gress at Rimini in late January and early February of :,,: voted to terminate the existence
of the old PCI and to establish a new Party of Democratic Socialists (PDS). A week or so
later, many of Occhettos opponents convened to found another new party, pledged to
continue the communist tradition: the Party of Communist Refoundation or PRC.
11
In one sense, the establishment of the PDS was not a complete break with the past in
the history of Italian communism. Ever since :,,o, when the PCI (responding to the in-
vasion of Hungary by Soviet troops) had shifted from all-out opposition to constructive
opposition within the system, the Communist Party had moved in the direction of
greater moderation.
12
From :,;, to :,;,, with Berlinguer as secretary, the Communist
Party had proposed a historic compromise that would include all Italian parties that
were willing to uphold the constitution but would emphasize an alliance between the
Communists and the Christian Democrats. It had also pledged to come to power
through free elections; to maintain a multiparty system; to allow itself to be voted out of
ofce; to enforce the constitution; to forego further nationalizations; and to crack down
on both left-wing and right-wing terrorism. Its leaders had occasionally, though rather
tentatively, spoken out for wage restraint and austerity. And in the eld of foreign affairs,
the PCI had clearly and repeatedly asserted its independence from Soviet inuence.
The PCIs independent and moderate stance had paid off in electoral terms. Practic-
ing Gramscis politics of presence, offering sensible pragmatic solutions to concrete
problems in every area of Italian life, the PCI had won many positions in local, provin-
cial, and regional government. There were Communist mayors in some of Italys largest
cities. In national elections, the Communist voting percentages had peaked in :,;o, but
the PCI still commanded :o.o percent of the Italian voters in :,;.
However, the PCI was facing increasingly serious difculties before its demisethe
price of its success. Its moderate policies had somewhat dissipated the feelings of distrust
that animated many Italians, but only at the cost of arousing PCI rank-and-le discon-
tent with its lack of militancy. Its collaboration with the Christian Democrats in :,;o;,
had laid it open to charges that it had joined the establishment and had saddled it with
part of the blame for hard times. And if it tried to halt the desertion of marginals and stu-
dents on its left by making militant noises, it then proceeded to lose some moderate votes
on its right.
When the PDS was founded in :,,:, it did not escape the difculties that the old
PCI had encountered. Quite the contrary, in fact. The secessionist diehards of Commu-
nist Refoundation (PRC) received ,.o percent of the votes in :,,:, as compared to :o.:
percent for the PDS. The secession of the PRC had further weakened the already dwin-
dling forces of Italian communism (Communist Refoundation) and ex-communism (the
PDS).
However, the disintegration of the PSI in :,,:, gave the PDS a new lease on life.
It became, in effect, the standard-bearer for the moderate left. In the :,, election cam-
paign, the PDS advocated a program of economic austerity and privatization of state in-
dustries; it supported tax reduction and a shifting of control over tax revenues from the
central to the regional and local governments; it demanded that pensions be equalized;
and it called for further progress toward European integration and the strengthening of
NATO. It promised to back the outgoing prime minister, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, a former
governor of the Bank of Italy and champion of austerity.
13
On the other hand, Commu-
nist Refoundation, its ally in the Progressive Alliance favored a pump-priming program of
decreasing work hours and increasing pensions, and also expressed opposition to NATO.
While its more radical ally cast some doubt on the credibility of the PDS, the Democratic
Party of the Left nevertheless gained considerable ground in :,,.
At the end of :,,, after the resignation of Achille Occhetto, and the rise to power of
a new PDS leader, Massimo DAlema, the PDS appeared to have preempted that moder-
ate left area of the political spectrum that was once occupied by the PSI. In the election of
:,,o, it was the leading party in Prodis Olive Tree Alliance. And when Prodi became
prime minister, it became a leading protagonist in the Prodi cabinet. When Prodi was
forced to resign in October :,,, DAlema succeeded him and formed a center-left cabi-
304 italy
net that was, however, broadened to include the PCI (a new and recently formed ortho-
dox Communist Party that had seceded from the PRC) and Cossigas center-right Demo-
cratic Union for the Republic (UDR).
The DAlema government continued to follow the policies of monetary stability,
controlled public spending, and austerity to pave the way for Italian admission to the
euro zone at the beginning of :,,,. For example, Ciampi, who was Treasury Minister un-
der Prodi, retained that post under DAlema until he was designated President of the Eu-
ropean Commission in March :,,,. At the same time, DAlema made conciliatory ges-
tures toward the center-right Democratic Union for the Republic (headed by ex-president
Cossiga) and toward the newly established Italian Communist Party (headed by Armando
Cossutta). The PRC, headed by Fausto Bertinotti, continued to demand heavier govern-
ment spending (especially in the south), a thirty-ve-hour workweek, the perpetuation of
the existing cumbersome and expensive welfare structures, and opposition to NATO. It
was clear that the PDS and its leader faced a very difcult balancing act, and that the pol-
icy cleavage between the PDS, on the one hand, and the PRC and PCI on the other
posed a very critical threat to the future of the Italian left.
14
Following heavy losses in regional elections in April :ccc to the center-right parties,
DAlema submitted his resignation. He was succeeded by Giuliano Amato, until then
Treasury and Budget minister in the DAlema cabinet. A majority of ,:, deputies in the
Chamber of Deputies conrmed Amato as prime minister on April :. Amato reconsti-
tuted the center-left coalition, resisting opposition demands to call an early election.
As noted earlier in this chapter, the PDS had obtained ::.: percent of the votes and
:;: seats in the Chamber of Deputies in the :,,o elections. By October :,,, it still held
:;: of those seats. There had been virtually no defections. The PRC was less fortunate. In
:,,o, it had won .o percent of the votes and ,, seats. By October :,,, it was down to :,
seats. Of the twenty-two defectors, twenty-one had joined Cossuttas secessionist PCI.
While claiming to be orthodox Marxists like the PRC they had abandoned, Cossutta and
his followers felt that Bertinotti (the PRC leader) had acted recklessly by repeatedly
threatening to withdraw his support from the Prodi cabinet. Overthrowing that cabinet,
they argued, might bring Berlusconi and the center-right back to power. So the PCI en-
tered DAlemas cabinet and supported the Amato coalition.
The Death of the Socialist Party (PSI)
After the returns were in for the elections of :,,o, it was clear that the Italian Socialist
Party was, to all effects and purposes, history. A tiny splinter group, the Italian Socialists
(SI), had been allotted twelve single-member district candidacies under an electoral agree-
ment with the predominantly ex-Christian Democratic Dini List. Thanks to the Dini
Lists support, it carried three of those twelve districts.
15
It takes more than three members
in the Chamber of Deputies to form a parliamentary group, however. So the three lonely
Socialist deputies are part of the group of unafliated members of the Chamber of
Deputies. In those same elections, the PDS-European Left electoral coalition, the main
component of Prodis Olive Tree Alliance, allotted twenty-eight single-member-district
candidacies to a variety of allied splinter parties. Thanks to the support of the PDS, eigh-
teen of those single-member districts were carried by the splinter-party candidates: six by
the Unitary Communist Movement, four by the Social Christians, six by the Labourites,
one by the Movement for the Unity of the Reformist Left, and one by the Social Demo-
cratic Party. Of these assorted leftist splinter groups (none of which was able to form a
parliamentary group of its own), it seems possible that the Labourites (o) and the Re-
formist Left (:) could be regarded as remnants of the old PSI. Adding these to the three SI
deputies, we may conclude that only ten ex-Socialists, under three different labels, found
their way into the Chamber of Deputies in :,,o.
16
The demise of the PSI came as a severe disappointment for those who had hoped
that this party would eventually lead Italy to a brighter future. Its gradual disengagement
from its :,o,o alliance with the Communist Party, and its entry into a center-left cabi-
net with the Christian Democrats in :,o,, had seemed to usher in a new and progressive
era in Italian politics.
However, this opening to the left, as it was called, had a disillusioning outcome.
The Socialist Party became simply a captive junior partner in Christian Democratic-dom-
inated center-left cabinets. It proved unable to have much impact on government policy
or to spur the Christian Democrats into speeding up progress toward social reform. In-
stead, it proved very adept in obtaining its share of patronage. Just as the PSIs reputation
had been seriously damaged by its earlier dependence on the Communist Party, similarly
its post-:,o, alliance with the ruling Christian Democrats had overtones of dependency
and opportunism. The result was electoral decline.
Efforts by the PSI to stem that electoral decline and establish a separate identity were
partly successful in electoral terms, especially after Bettino Craxi took over as party leader
in :,;o. But the PSIs attempts to formulate attractive policies had a reactive quality to
them. It almost seemed as if the Socialist leaders were more interested in distinguishing
their party from its giant neighbors on the political spectrum (the PCI and the DC) than
in developing a coherent policy line of their own. This tactical opportunism seemed to
pay off at the polls, however, especially after Craxi became prime minister and pursued
moderate, pragmatic policies in the domestic and foreign spheres from :,, to :,;. In
:,;, the PSI polled an almost unprecedented :., percent of the votesits high-water
mark since :,o. And in :,,:, it dipped only slightlyto :,. percent.
By :,, the PSI was reduced to the status of a discredited splinter party, which des-
perately needed an alliance with the PDS in order to pick up a handful of seats in parlia-
ment. After the elections of :,,, the PSI, thoroughly disgraced by the scandals of Kick-
back City, closed up shop. To avoid a prison sentence after a conviction for corruption,
Craxi ed into exile to Tunisia (where he died of heart failure in January :ccc).
Some new movements were founded to succeed the defunct PSI (one of these move-
ments labeled itself the SIItalian Socialists); but the elections of :,,o seemed to indi-
cate that the old PSI tradition, so thoroughly tainted by Craxian opportunism and cor-
ruption, cannot be revived. If there is to be a renaissance of Italian Socialism, it seems
more likely that it will be led by the PDS, which has staked a powerful and rather credible
claim to the moderate left space on Italys new political spectrum.
306 italy
The Successors to the DC (PPI, CDC/CDU, Democratic Renewal, UDR)
During the period :,,:,, the DC suffered the same catastrophe that befell the PSI.
Both parties, along with their minor center allies, were fatally damaged by the series of ju-
dicial inquiries that revealed how corrupt and, in some cases, how closely linked to orga-
nized crime, many of their more prominent leaders had been. The growing competition
from the Northern League also played a role in shaking Christian Democratic morale.
Heavy Socialist and Christian Democratic losses in the local elections of December :,,,
revealed the extent of resulting public disaffection and induced the Christian Democratic
Party to terminate its own existence. On : January :,,, the DC was ofcially dissolved,
to be replaced by the Italian Popular Party. This new partys title was meant to conjure up
memories of Don Sturzos Popular Party, which had led a brief but relatively honorable
existence from :,:, through most of :,:o. The leader of the new party (Mino Martinazzoli)
had not been one of the top DC hierarchs and was untainted by the Kickback City scan-
dals. Under his leadership, the Popular Party steered a resolutely centrist course, rejecting
overtures from both the left and the right alliances. Its only ally was also centrist: the Pact for
National Renewal, led by Mario Segni, a former Christian Democrat. The votes polled by
these two parties in :,, were only :,. percent of the total. Another group of former DC
membersthe Christian Democratic Center (CDC)rejected Martinazzolis glorious isola-
tion and chose to run candidates for parliament on Berlusconis center-right Forza Italia!
The fact that the PPI and the Segni Pact center parties were able to poll a combined
total of only :,. percent of the votes in the parliamentary election of :,, was an unmis-
takable symptom of the sharply reduced inuence of the Catholic Church. To be sure,
there were a few other Catholic lists of a splinter nature (the votes of the CDC could not
be ascertained because it formed part of the Berlusconi Forza Italia! lists); but the total
Catholic vote was well below :c percent.
The collapse and fragmentation of the DC was a revolutionary development in Ital-
ian politics. From :,o through :,,,, the DC had been the leading party in Italy. From
:,o to :,:, every Italian prime minister had been a Christian Democrat. So, unlike the
Communists and the Socialists, the Christian Democrats had formed the major part of
every cabinet. The question of what alliances the party should form had been a perpetual
bone of contention, and had helped to keep the DC divided into warring factions.
The characteristics of the DC as a party had included, rst and foremost, its hetero-
geneous catch-all nature: it had ranged across a large part of the Italian political spec-
trum, from moderate left to moderate right, and had included in its ranks supporters of
virtually every type of alliance or cabinet combination. Among those who had voted for
the DC were industrialists, Catholic workers, small farmers, housewives, pensioners, and
shopkeepersa mixed bag indeed.
Not only had the DC been faction-ridden, but the factions had been bewilderingly
volatile. A given faction might, within the space of one or two years, completely reverse
its position on an issue involving party policies or party alliances. Frequently, a faction
that had professed to be left, right, or center would turn out to be little more than the
personal following of one or more prominent DC leader. And personal rivalries among
the leaders might outweigh policy considerations.
The DC had also been internally divided on policy matters, more so than other Ital-
ian parties. It had contained strong supporters of private enterprise and champions of the
state sector (which helped nance the party), representatives of management and spokes-
men for organized labor, diehard opponents of divorce and advocates of a more liberal set
of moral codes for Italian society. The party had essentially been all things to all men. As
Aldo Moro once put it, in a revealing slip of the tongue, The DC emphasizes every-
thing.
17
Perhaps the one common denominator that might be discerned throughout the
DC had been a distributive approach to public policy. The party had built its strength, es-
pecially in the south, by judiciously allocating contracts, jobs, and public money. Patron-
age, however, had become more than a means to an end; it had become an end in itself.
The ambiguity and ambivalence of the DC had taken their toll in elections. Even be-
fore the electoral debacles of :,, and :,,:, the DC had been unable, all through the
:,ocs and :,;cs, to regain the c percent level it had once attained. In addition to voter
reaction against its lack of a clear sense of purpose and against its image of patronage and
corruption, the DC had suffered the inevitable erosion that affects any dominant party
after an extended period in power. Efforts had been made in the :,cs to commit the
party to a program of economic austerity, to an abandonment of excessive reliance on the
spoils system, to an emphasis on productivity gains rather than purely distributive poli-
cies. But this new rigor had failed to convince and may actually have contributed to the
DCs losses over the short run.
After the schism in :,,, the Catholic camp was still divided and weak in the :,,o
elections. The center-left Popular Party, Italian Renewal (the center-left list headed by
Lamberto Dini, former prime minister), and the CCD/CDU (Christian Democratic
Center/Christian Democratic Union, allied with Berlusconis center-right alliance), polled
a combined total of :o., percent of the vote for party lists.
18
After the elections, there was a further repositioning of the Catholic forces. Francesco
Cossiga, a former president of Italy, formed a new party of ex-Christian Democratsthe
Democratic Union for the Republic (UDR). This center-right party apparently received
much of its support from legislators elected on the CCD/CDU party lists. In October
:,,, out of o,c members of the Chamber of Deputies, o; adhered to the Popular Party
(same as in :,,o), :: adhered to Dinis Italian Renewal (: in :,,o), and ,: identied with
the UDR (the CDC/CDU had elected ,c in :,,o, but was not listed as a party group in
October :,,.
19
Thus, apart from a few splinter deputies, the Catholic deputies in the
Chamber totaled ::,about :., percent of the membership. The presence of political
Catholicism in parliament has been dramatically reduced by the electoral revolution of
the :,,cs. But it is still a formidable force, despite its internal divisions: it has not been
wiped off the political map as the Italian Socialist Party has been. It remains to be seen
whether the segments of the former Christian Democratic Party can ever reunite. For the
time being, all three segments are represented in the DAlema cabinet, led by the PDS.
The Minor Parties: A Forest of Shrubs
Before :,,, the minor center parties included the Social Democrats (PSDI), whose com-
mitment to social democracy appeared to focus on public works, social welfare measures,
308 italy
and a preoccupation with the interests of pensioners; the Republicans (PRI), a moder-
ately left-of-center party committed to scal austerity and honesty in government, whose
leader, Giovanni Spadolini, was the rst non-Christian Democratic prime minister since
:,,; and the Liberals (PLI), a party of the moderate right, competing with the Christian
Democrats for the votes of businessmen and large landowners. The one common strand
connecting these three parties was their commitment to democracy and to a secular soci-
ety. They tended to side with the DC on many issues but not on matters having to do
with church-state relations.
In the years since :,o, the minor center parties registered very modest electoral per-
formances, with their combined share of the total vote usually less than :c percent. But
the scandals of Kickback City and the new election law of :,,, sounded the death knell
for these parties, which disappeared from the Italian parliament. In their place was a mul-
titude of shrubs a large number of splinter parties that allied themselves with major
parties like the PDS and Forza Italia! in the hope of being allotted a few safe seats that
they could carry because they enjoyed the support of their major-party ally. Such shrub
deputies are hard to pin down and identify once they get elected to parliament. They join
the group of unafliated deputies because their respective splinter parties are not strong
enough to be allowed to form parliamentary groups of their own. An already cited article
written in October :,, lists , others (unafliated deputies) out of a total of o,c. Sev-
enteen of the , were elected as members of the Olive Tree Alliance.
20
It would probably
take a paragraph or more to list the splinter shrubs to which these unafliated deputies
belong. One shrub that was rather easy to identify was the Green Party, part of the Olive
Tree Alliance, which obtained :., percent of the votes and twenty-one seats in :,,o, but is
not listed in the cited article dealing with the members of the Chamber in :,,. Probably,
those missing Green deputies are to be found among the other members of the Olive
Tree Alliance.
In February :,,,, former premier Romano Prodi formed yet another shrub party by
creating the Democrats for the Olive Tree. Prodis intent was to strengthen the center-left
coalition, but critics feared that his initiative would further fragment the left.
The Northern League
In the local and regional elections of :,,c, a relative newcomer appeared on the Italian
political scene: the Lombard League, which polled :, percent of the votes in Lombardy
(equivalent to . percent of the votes in Italy). Far outnumbering similar regional leagues
elsewhere in northern Italy, the Lombard League stood for a much greater measure of re-
gional autonomy, restrictions on immigration from foreign countries, and an end to the
colonization by southern Italians of the bureaucratic eld services in northern Italy. It also
demanded that the northern regions have much greater control over their own revenue
base, instead of being taxed heavily by the central government to nance allegedly unpro-
ductive public investments in the south. In the elections of :,,:, the Lombard League
formed an electoral blocthe Northern League, in which it was the preponderant ele-
mentwith several other regional leagues in northern and north central Italy. Its showing
in the elections of :,,: was little short of spectacular for a new competitor in Italian party
politics. With .; percent of the votes in Italy as a whole, the Northern League received
over ,c percent of the votes in Lombardy, replacing the DC as the leading party in a
number of Lombard provinces. And it won no less than fty-ve seats in the Chamber of
Deputies. In short it had become the fourth largest party in Italian party politics.
The Northern League made further progress at the local level when the PSI and the
DC, hitherto dominant in Lombard local government, were brought to their knees by the
wave of scandals and resulting indictments that captured public attention in :,,: and
:,,,. In local elections held in several Lombard provincial capitals in :,,:, the Northern
League out polled both the DC and the PSI. In September :,,,, Marco Formentini of
the Northern League was elected mayor of Milan, a city where the PSI had held sway for
the past twenty years.
In the :,, elections, after considerable vacillation, the volatile leader of the North-
ern League, Umberto Bossi, formed an electoral alliance in northern Italy with Berlus-
conis Forza Italia! and with the Christian Democratic Center. In the elections of :;:
March :,,, the Northern League once again polled .; percent of the votes cast in Italy,
but about ,c percent of the votes cast in Northern Italy, where the great bulk of its
strength was concentrated. Thanks to its electoral alliance with Forza Italia!, Northern
League candidates, designated to represent the electoral alliance entitled the Pole of Lib-
erty and receiving the support of their electoral allies, won far more single-member-
district seats in the Chamber of Deputies than would have been possible under a system
of proportional representation: :::, as compared to ::, for Forza Italia! and its CDC al-
lies, and ,; for the National Alliance.
After the elections, both the Northern League and the National Alliance of former
neo-Fascists entered the Berlusconi cabinet. This center-right coalition, however, was in-
ternally divided from the start. Bossi disliked and distrusted both Berlusconi and the for-
mer neo-Fascists. He accused Berlusconi of not taking sufciently bold steps toward a
federal or quasi-federal Italy, of making some very questionable appointments to the reg-
ulatory boards charged with supervising the public sector in the eld of mass communi-
cations, and of attempting to interfere with the way the judiciary was handling the inves-
tigations of corrupt practices by politicians and business leaders. As for the former
neo-Fascists, Bossi claimed that they were still untrustworthy because of their past con-
nections with fascism. He also wanted privatization to be stepped up and was antago-
nized by the National Alliances insistence that the public sector remain quite strong, in
order that it might continue to transfer subsidies and public contracts to the south. As a
result of Bossis attitudes, the Berlusconi cabinet was driven by internal conict, and
Berlusconi resigned as prime minister, after bitterly denouncing Bossi, in December :,,.
In :,,o, the Northern League obtained :c.: percent of the votes but only fty-nine
seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Its percentage of the total vote had risen from . per-
cent; but it had won far fewer seats (,, instead of :::) because it was no longer part of an
alliance with other center-right parties. Consequently, its candidates in single-member
districts could no longer count on the help and support of the center-right alliance. By
late :,,, the Northern League still had fty-eight members in the Chamber of Deputies:
less than half of its :,,,o delegation.
21
310 italy
During the campaign preceding the April :: elections, the Northern League had
adopted a more militant and dramatic posture. Instead of speaking of autonomy and a
federal Italy, its leader, Umberto Bossi, spoke of the establishment of a northern state of
Padania, which would secede from the rest of Italy and proclaim its independence. Lack-
ing allies, the Northern League expected to lose many seats in parliamentas, in fact, it
did. But it expected to play a balance-of-power role, because it believed that neither the
center-left nor the center-right would be able to command a majority in a deadlocked
parliament.
These hopes were doomed to disappointment. Facing an unanticipated center-left
majority in the new parliament, the Northern League launched a series of mass demon-
strations along the entire length of the Po River. Mass participation in these demonstra-
tions fell far short of expectations, however, and in the next few years the power and pres-
tige of the Northern League visibly waned. It suffered losses in local and provincial
elections (for example, it lost the mayoralty election in Milan); and its strength was in-
creasingly conned to the middle-sized cities and small towns of the Alpine foothills. The
big metropolitan areas of the north were increasingly out of its reach. Under these cir-
cumstances, Bossi had to modify his message. In early :,,, independence was aban-
doned as an immediate goal and presented as a long-range possibility, to be preceded by
experimentation with a federal system under which the north would enjoy a high degree
of scal autonomy. So, temporarily, the threat from the Northern League has diminished
in intensity; but the grievances it expressed have not abated, and the possibility of a mas-
sive resurgence of northern separatism should not be discounted.
22
Forza Italia!
Forza Italia! (Go, Italy!) is an entirely new addition to the Italian party system. Unlike the
other parties discussed in this chapter, it was created only a few months before the :,,
election as the personal political vehicle of one manSilvio Berlusconi, head of a vast
private media, publishing, real estate, and retail merchandising empire held together by a
giant holding company, Fininvest, and also owner of the Milan soccer club. (Ironically,
Berlusconi had been a close friend of the former PSI prime minister, Bettino Craxi, who
is under indictment for his involvement in the Kickback City scandals.)
Alarmed by the victory of the left bloc against a demoralized and discredited right
center, all too often represented by neo-Fascist candidates, in the municipal elections of ,
December :,,, Berlusconi decided to launch his own party in order to pick up votes
from former Christian Democrats and former Socialists. With the aid of his media prop-
erties, he created a network of about :,:cc Forza Italia! clubs with about : million mem-
bers.
23
These clubs were established in order to give Berlusconi a base of popular support
and were not really designed to exercise policymaking or control functions or to practice
internal democracy.
Unlike the uninspiring and rather pedestrian platform of the born-again moderate
leftists of the PDS, Forza Italia! presented the disillusioned Italian electorate with a series
of right-wing populist appeals. It promised, not austerity, but a new Italian miracle, tax
cuts and a single income tax bracket at ,, percent, reductions in the decit, privatization
of health care and pensions resulting in lower costs and higher benets, a million new
jobs, and a quasi-presidential system resembling the system of the French Fifth Republic.
In short, it offered new vistas rather than the humdrum moderate formulas put forth by
the PDS.
24
In the elections of :,,, Forza Italia! obtained :: percent of the votes cast for
proportional representation candidates in the Chamber of Deputies (including ,., per-
cent cast for the Christian Democratic Center) and a total of ninety-seven seats (thirty-
two additional seats were allotted to the Christian Democratic Center candidates who
were allowed to represent the Forza Italia! slate in far more than their proportionate share
of single-member districts). As a result of the :,, elections, in which Forza Italia! s ::
percent represented a plurality of the votes cast, Berlusconi was asked by President Scal-
faro to form a cabinet.
The Berlusconi cabinet, like most of the Italian cabinets that preceded it, was never a
united team. Two of its most important component parties, the Northern League and the
National Alliance, were in constant conict with each other. Umberto Bossi, the leader of
the Northern League, sniped continually at Berlusconi and his policies from a vantage
point outside the cabinet. And Berlusconi himself proved to be a disappointing and vacil-
lating leader, unable to meet the far-reaching expectations he had aroused during the elec-
tion campaign of March :,,. Also, only a few months after taking ofce, he came under
judicial investigation for bribery and conict of interest involving his vast private hold-
ings of which he had failed to divest himself.
During Berlusconis seven months in ofce, he attempted unsuccessfully to restrict
the power of the judiciary to conduct investigations into political and business corruption
and to place suspected culprits under preventive detention. Because the ongoing investi-
gations were affecting his own Fininvest holding company and were implicating his own
brother in a bribery scandal, Berlusconis actions aroused a great deal of suspicion regard-
ing his motives. His long-delayed budgetary proposals for deep cuts in health and pen-
sion benets resulted in a storm of popular protest and had to be watered down. And he
provoked widespread criticism by his efforts to intervene in the internal management of
RAI, the state-owned broadcasting organization, and of the Bank of Italy.
Local elections in November :,, for mayors and councils in cities and towns in var-
ious parts of Italyelections involving about : million votersrevealed a very adverse
voter reaction to the Berlusconi cabinet. Forza Italia!, which had polled :: percent of the
votes in the general elections of March :,,, and had risen to ,c.o percent of the votes in
the elections to the European parliament in June :,,, dropped to a mere . percent in
the local elections of November :,,. The Northern League also suffered a loss of popu-
larity, but of a steadier and more continuous nature: from . percent in March to o.o
percent in June to ., percent in November.
25
Under the pressure of judicial investiga-
tions, economic and political unrest, and constant bickering among members of his un-
wieldy coalition, Berlusconi nally resigned as prime minister in December :,,. Presi-
dent Scalfaro refused to accede to his request for a dissolution of parliament and resulting
new elections. Instead, after several weeks of consultation, Lamberto Dini, an indepen-
dent who had served as Minister of the Treasury in the Berlusconi cabinet, and who had
312 italy
been the second-ranking administrator in the Bank of Italy, was designated to form a
cabinet.
The fall of the Berlusconi cabinet, and the strong possibility that Berlusconi might
eventually be indicted and even convicted for corrupt practices, raised serious questions
about the future of Forza Italia! This party, the personal vehicle of Silvio Berlusconi, had
been compared to the Gaullist Party in France. But the Gaullists had been led by an in-
corruptible and untarnished military heroa far cry from a business magnate like Berlus-
coni, whose actions and associations had been far from immaculate. It appeared conceiv-
able that the decline of Christian Democracy in :,,,, might be followed by a similarly
dramatic decline of Forza Italia!
The decline came, but it was not as far-reaching as many had anticipated. In the :,,o
elections, Forza Italia! suffered a very slight setback. It garnered :c.o percent of the votes
(as compared to :: percent in :,,) and it won ::, seats in the Chamber of Deputies (as
compared to ,, in :,,). The gain in seats was illusory: it simply represented a number of
single-member districts that had been allotted to Northern League candidates by the Pole
of Liberty Alliance in :,,, and were now allotted by the same alliance to Forza Italia!
candidates. But with the defection of the Northern League, the center-right alliance had
suffered a clear-cut defeat and the center-left had come to power.
Yet, Berlusconi remained the leader of Forza Italia!, which was basically his own per-
sonal vehicle, and continued to survive his problems with the judiciary (in :,, he was
convicted three times for bribery and fraud, but shrugged off the convictions as politically
motivated, and remained at liberty pending a long and tortuous appellate procedure) and
with his increasingly indebted business empire (Fininvest), for which he was frequently
seeking special privileges from the Italian state.
For all his faults, Berlusconi retains the support of the middle-class masses that
backed him in :,, and again in :cc:. With regard to his convictions in court, the polls
show that about one-third of the electorate express hostility to him based on his fraudu-
lent record, one-third feel he is unjustly accused, and one-third are neutral and believe the
judges may be going too far. While the Northern League is a populist middle-class party
appealing to the industrialized small towns and small businessmen of the Alpine foothills,
Berlusconis Forza Italia! is a populist middle-class party appealing to the great metropol-
itan areas of the north. So far, at least, Forza Italia! is still the strongest element in Italys
divided center-right opposition.
The Post-Fascists: National Alliance (AN, formerly MSI)
From the late :,cs until :,,, the neo-Fascists of the MSI were little more than a minor
irritant on the right ank of Christian Democracy. They reached their peak in :,;:, with
.; percent of the votes, but usually polled between , and ; percent. In :,,:, they re-
ceived ,. percent of the votes. Their positions on public issues seemed conventionally ul-
traconservative. They opposed national economic planning and restrictions on free enter-
prise, they favored repeal of the divorce law in the :,; referendum campaign, and they
advocated heavy defense spending. Nevertheless, their commitment to a corporate state
based on functional representation, and the undercurrent of violence that seemed to lurk
behind their speeches and their party rituals, placed them under much suspicion. The
other Italian parties generally treated them as untouchables, and their external backing
for a coalition cabinet was considered tainted and unacceptable.
Between :,,: and :,,, under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini, a serious effort was
made to transform the MSI into a mainstream conservative party, committed to the
maintenance of liberty and democracy, and soft pedaling, though never completely repu-
diating, the fascist past. While some diehards still utter racist and fascist statements, Fini
himself has rejected anti-Semitism, has said that fascism belongs to the past, and has pro-
jected a moderate and reasonable image. His party has advocated a centralized Italy (re-
jecting Bossis federalism); a unied national health service; a revamped pension system
but with adequate safety nets to protect the neediest cases; a reformed policy of public in-
vestment in the south (again, contrary to the demands of the Northern League that such
investment be drastically reduced); and the retention of the big public corporations that
have conducted investment programs in the south (disagreeing with both Bossi and
Berlusconi on this score). With regard to Europe, Fini supports NATO and the European
Union. But there is one note of familiar nostalgia: the National Alliance favors renegotiat-
ing with Slovenia the status of the Istrian peninsula, which was annexed by Yugoslavia af-
ter World War II.
26
The National Alliances new model message more than doubled in :,, the votes cast
for the MSI in :,,:. In :,,, with the collapse of the patronage-nourished DC machine
in the south, the National Alliance received :,., percent of the votes and :c, seats in the
Chamber of Deputies (,. percent and , seats in :,,:). It also was allotted six portfolios
in the Berlusconi cabinet (the MSI had never been admitted to any cabinet). In the :,,o
elections, it continued to advance in terms of votes (:,.; percent) but lost some seats (,,
in :,,o, :c, in :,,) because of the Northern Leagues defection from the Pole of Liberty.
Since :,,o, Fini has steered an ever more moderate course. He has worked closely
with DAlema on the Bicameral Commission for constitutional reform; he has disavowed
Mussolini and has edged the younger rebrands of fascist leanings out of the National Al-
liance (some of these extremists ran their own Social Movement Tricolored Flame
[MSFT] list in :,,o and polled only ., percent of the vote); he has come to support pri-
vatization and Italys entry into the euro zone; he has softened his stand on immigration;
and he has sought to identify with foreign conservative parties like the Gaullists and the
British Conservatives, rather than with fascist parties like Le Pens National Front in
France.
27
Thus, it would appear that, whatever Finis ultimate objectives may be, his
post-Fascist party has attained a modicum of respectability and credibility among many
Italian political leaders and a sizable minority of Italian voters, especially in the south.
The Electoral System and Voting Behavior
Until :,,, members of the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, were
elected by a list system of proportional representation from multimember districts. The
number of seats awarded to a party in an electoral district was arrived at by dividing that
partys total vote by an electoral quotient (total number of seats + :). The remainders re-
314 italy
sulting from this operation (if a party received no seats, its entire vote was treated as a re-
mainder) were then sent to Rome to be totaled up for each party in the Single National
College, which then proceeded to allocate several dozen additional seats on the basis of
proportional representation.
28
A system of preferential voting gave the voters a chance,
not only to support their party list, but also to express their preferences among the names
on the party list. A more complex system, relying mostly but not entirely on proportional
representation, was employed in electing members of the upper house, the Senate. As a
result of this electoral system, each party obtained a share of parliamentary seats roughly
proportional to its share of the total votes. Moreover, under the distribution of remain-
ders for the Chamber of Deputies by the Single National College, even a party with be-
tween : and : percent of the vote might be able to win a few seats.
The Italian electoral system had some important consequences for the party system.
First, as we have seen, it favored the proliferation and survival of splinter parties with as
little as : to : percent of the vote, since even such tiny parties were able to win a few seats.
Nor was there anything like the German , percent rule to block splinter parties from en-
tering parliament. Second, the Italian electoral system prevented any landslide in parlia-
mentary elections, and consequently made it all but impossible for one party to get a ma-
jority in parliament. Under proportional representation, small shifts in voting behavior
only resulted in equally small shifts in legislative representation. Third, the system of pref-
erential voting encouraged factionalism, by giving minority factions in a party a chance to
appeal to party voters over the heads of party leaders. It also encouraged corruption by
compelling candidates on the same party lists to launch very expensive personal cam-
paigns for preference votes and to solicit funds from private interests for that purpose.
After Italian voters in April :,,, had approved a referendum proposal to elect three-
fourths of the members of the Senate from single-member districts by plurality vote (rst-
past-the-post), a parliamentary committee prepared a bill to adopt a plurality system for
each of the two houses of parliament. The committee presented its proposal on , August
:,,,, and it was adopted by the parliament later that year. Because the current election
law is extremely complex, no attempt will be made here to describe the law in any great
detail. Rather, the fundamental characteristics of the law will be briey stated, as well as
the effect the law has had thus far on the Italian party system.
About three-fourths of the members of each house are elected from small single-
member constituencies with election by plurality. The remaining one-fourth of the mem-
bers in each house are elected from somewhat larger multimember districts on the basis of
proportional representation. In order to be awarded any of the proportional representa-
tion seats set aside for the Chamber of Deputies, however, a party must poll at least per-
cent of the total votes cast for the proportional representation lists nationwide. Yet a
hideously complex device known as the Scorporo renders this electoral hurdle easier for a
small party to overcome. In calculating the votes of party lists at the national level, each
party list is penalized a varying number of votes (determined by a formula which need
not detain us here) for every single-member district it has carried. Thus, the larger, more
successful parties are penalized somewhat, mitigating the damaging effect the percent
rule is supposed to have on smaller parties.
The effect of the :,,, law, combined with the public revulsion engendered by Kick-
back City, was to eliminate the three minor center parties (the Social Democrats, the Re-
publicans, and the Liberals) that had played a supporting role in so many coalition cabi-
nets. Even the Greens, the Network, the PSI, and the Democratic Alliance were unable to
scale the percent barrier. Nevertheless, these latter parties were able to win single-mem-
ber seats by taking advantage of the laws provision for the formation of electoral alliances.
By entering an electoral alliance (the Pole of Liberty) with Berlusconis Forza Italia!, the
Northern League, and the Christian Democratic Center were rewarded by being allowed
to have their candidates run as sole standard-bearers for the Pole of Liberty in a number
of single-member districts. In this way, they were able to win more single-member dis-
tricts than would have been possible had they contested those districts without allies. As
for the Greens, the Network, the PSI, and the Democratic Alliance, they were able to
achieve the same goal (of avoiding utter extinction) by entering the Progressive Alliance,
led by the PDS. Even Communist Refoundation was able to carry twenty-nine single-
member districts by representing the Progressive Alliance, while the PDS obligingly stood
aside. For this reason, the move to single-member districts with plurality voting, did not
result in an early transition to a two-party system.
29
How has the current electoral law affected or altered the consequences that the pre-
vious electoral law entailed for the Italian party system? Not as much as was hoped. For
instance, the previous electoral law favored the proliferation of splinter parties. Under
the current law, such parties can still gain entry to parliament by forming alliances with
major parties. The previous law prevented landslides in parliamentary elections and
made it virtually impossible for a single party to win a parliamentary majority. The cur-
rent law permits landslides, but they are landslides for electoral alliances rather than sin-
gle parties; and the parties in the Berlusconi alliance were soon at loggerheads and gener-
ated gridlock.
One major achievement of the current law has been to eliminate preferential voting,
thus making it much more difcult for minority factions to appeal to party voters over
the heads of party leaders. Yet, single-member districts may conceivably reintroduce fac-
tionalism through the back door, and may also (as in the United States) make candidates
dependent on lobbies rather than party machines. Another achievement of the current
law seemed, at rst glance, to be to encourage a kind of moderate pluralism, with center-
left and center-right alliances alternating in power: a bipolar system. But the bargaining
power of splinter parties has been enhanced: their refusal to join an alliance can actually
cost the alliance a number of crucial single-member districts. Thus, the MFST, with only
., percent of the vote, cost the Pole of Liberty several highly competitive seats simply by
running its own separate candidates. It has been suggested that the current election law
has conferred greater political weight on smaller and medium-sized parties, and that this
results in a serious lack of cohesion and stability within the coalitions that emerge from
the electoral process. And the number of parties remains quite high. The party system is
still fragmented.
30
Because the current electoral law was generally regarded as unsatisfactory and provi-
sional at the time of its passage in :,,,, it was considered probable that a new election law
316 italy
would be enacted before very long. So far this has not happened. The chief obstacle has
been a desire on the part of the strategically placed smaller- and medium-sized parties to
keep the present system because it guarantees their survival and increases their clout. Such
parties as Communist Refoundation, the Northern League, the Popular Party, and Cos-
sigas Democratic Union for the Republic (UDR) played a leading role in opposing a ref-
erendum proposal to scrap the rule whereby :, percent of the seats in the Chamber of
Deputies are assigned on the basis of proportional representation.
31
The proposal ob-
tained a majority in the referendum but failed because of insufcient turnout.
Voting patterns in Italy have been based, to a considerable degree, on traditional
cleavages of a social, economic, or religious nature. The prime example of a socioeconomic
cleavage has been, of course, the ever-present factor of social class. Before the political
earthquake of the :,,cs, the Communists had a plurality of the working-class vote, with
substantial minorities being polled by the Socialists and Christian Democrats. Among
middle-class voters, the Christian Democrats had a majority of the votes cast by shop-
keepers and artisans, and at least a plurality among business and professional people, with
the Liberals and neo-Fascists being their chief competitors. The Communists and Social-
ists had substantial success in penetrating one stratum of middle-class voters: white-collar
workers and lower-level civil servants. Social class also served to divide the agricultural
electorate, with large landowners supporting Liberals and neo-Fascists, for the most part;
medium and small landowners voting overwhelmingly for the Christian Democrats; and
sharecroppers and farm laborers backing the Communists and Socialists.
Other cleavages reduced the impact of social class. One such division was religious
practice as opposed to anti-clericalism. The Christian Democrats polled a substantial
share of the working-class vote, especially in devoutly Catholic areas in the northeast.
Communist and Socialist successes among a substantial minority of middle-class voters in
north-central Italy could be explained partly in terms of the anticlericalism of regions like
Emilia-Romagna. Region was another line of demarcation. Regional voting traditions cut
across class lines in inuencing voting behavior. As we saw, however, such regional tradi-
tions may have simply been expressing or reinforcing religious cleavages. Finally, union
membership may have been a more reliable factor than mere social class in predisposing
voters to cast their ballots for leftist parties.
These traditional patterns of the :,,cs and :,ocs have been undergoing some major
changes. For one thing the rural exodus has uprooted great numbers of transplanted small
landowners, sharecroppers, and farm laborers from their traditional political and social
networks and often from their home regions as well. Second, the rise of the service sector
has injected a new element of ambiguity into the Italian class structure. Third, families
and social networks such as the church and its lay organizations seem to be losing their
ability to socialize young voters into traditional patterns of voting behavior. As a result,
more and more voters are remaking their choices less on the basis of traditional party
identication (vote of appartenenza or belonging), and more on the basis of the parties
positions on the issues (vote of opinion). At the same time, the number and variety of
voters who cast ballots on the basis of satisfaction or frustration of their personal needs by
the incumbents (vote of exchange) is growing, especially now that the Christian Demo-
crats have lost their monopoly over sources of patronage. While the urban middle classes
are most likely to cast a vote of opinion, the vote of exchange characterizes the precar-
iously employed service workers of the urban subproletariat.
32
Some early assessments of voting patterns in :,, indicated more stability on the left
than on the right. The PDS, like the PCI before it, continued to be the dominant party
in the four regions of north-central Italy: Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and the
Marches; but the defection of most PSI voters reduced the strength of the left even in
these historic strongholds. The PDS also showed a great deal of strength in parts of the
south: Campania, Basilicata, and Calabria. The Northern League was particularly strong
in Lombardy and the Veneto, but Forza Italia! carried most of the north and also led in
Sardinia and Sicily (where it was rumored to have Maa support). In large parts of the
continental south (especially Lazio, Abruzzi, and Puglia), the National Alliance led the
eld. Thus, the chief beneciaries of Socialist and Christian Democratic collapse have
been the National Alliance andto a lesser degreethe PDS in the south; and Forza
Italia! andto a lesser degreethe Northern League in the north.
33
After the :,,o elections, a number of observers pointed out that the Northern
League was becoming the dominant force in northeastern Italy, especially eastern Lom-
bardy and the Veneto, in an area of ourishing small and medium industry and bustling
small cities. In this area, which was once known as the white (i.e., devoutly Catholic)
northeast, and in which the Christian Democratic Party had once enjoyed hegemony, the
Northern League appealed increasingly to all classes and segments of the population. On
the other hand, Forza Italia! was outstripping the Northern League in the big metropoli-
tan centers of the north, in a more competitive political milieu with many service work-
ers. The old class alignments were losing their hold in the north.
34
It is much too early to speak of a permanent party realignment. But the deeply
rooted class and regional allegiances of the :,,cs, :,ocs, and early :,;cs seem to have
been seriously weakened in Italy and other parts of the Western world, as the postindus-
trial age brings social and class disintegration in its wake.
Pressure Groups
The Italian interest-group system has both traditional and modern features. An example
of the kind of interest group that one nds quite frequently in developing countries is the
anomic group in the form of more or less spontaneous violent demonstrations. The :,;c
;: riots in Reggio Calabria, to protest the designation of Catanzaro to be the capital of the
region of Calabria, are a case in point. Also, nonassociational groupsgroups that articu-
late their demands on an ad hoc basis without setting up a formal public organization
are quite common in Italy. Examples would be the various informal patron-client net-
works. At the same time, like other West European countries, Italy has a system of
well-organized associational interest groupslabor confederations, farm organizations,
employers associations, and so onthat operate continuously with the aid of professional
staffs.
The Italian interest-group system since World War II has borne some similarity to
the French system, while differing in some signicant ways. Like France, Italy has had an
318 italy
ideologically divided labor movement: there was a Communist-dominated labor confed-
eration (the CGIL), which contained some Socialist members; a labor confederation (the
UIL) in which Socialists and Republicans were the prevalent element; and a Catholic-
dominated labor confederation (the CISL). The confederations have survived the disap-
pearance of the parties that used to dominate them. In both countries, too, anomic group
behavior (riots and demonstrations) has been somewhat more acceptable in the eyes of
public opinion than has been the case in Northern Europe. (To be sure, anomic group be-
havior is beginning to ourish also in Britain and Germany.)
There have also been some notable contrasts. Because the Italian parliament inu-
ences policymaking so much more than does the parliament of the Fifth Republic, Italian
interest groups have expended much more effort in the legislative arena. They have found
the powerful standing committees, with their ability to enact minor bills directly into law,
a most rewarding site for their endeavors. Many interest groups, going beyond mere lob-
bying, have tried to get their ofcials elected to parliament on some partys list. These so-
called parentela groups have had very close ofcial ties with a political party and would
openly act as organized factions within that party in parliament. They can be contrasted
to the clientela groups, which are regarded by government agencies as sole ofcial repre-
sentatives of a given set of interests. An example of a clientela group would be the Italian
General Confederation of Industry (Conndustria); an example of parentela groups
would be Catholic Action in the Christian Democratic Party. With the disappearance of
the formerly dominant mass parties like the DC and the PCI, the parentela groups are
having to strike out on their own.
Agricultural Interest Groups
Because Italian family farms have tended to be much smaller on the average than French or
German family farms, the Italian farm organization that speaks for medium and large
landowners, the Italian General Confederation of Agriculture (Confagricoltura), has repre-
sented only a minority of Italian agricultural proprietors. A much more powerful farm or-
ganization has been the National Confederation of Direct Cultivators (Coldiretti), whose
members mostly live on smaller farms. Coldiretti has been a parentela group directly afli-
ated with the Christian Democrats, while a much smaller rival organization, the National
Peasants Alliance (ANC), has been sponsored by the Communist Party. By virtue of its
control over the Federation of Agricultural Consortiums (Federconsorzi), a quasi-public or-
ganization that furnished credits, subsidies, storage facilities, and other services to farmers,
Coldiretti has been one of Italys most powerful pressure groups.
In addition to organizations speaking for landowners and peasant proprietors, there
are three separate federations of farm laborers, associated with the three major labor con-
federations. Similarly, there are several competing associations of agricultural coopera-
tives. Most of these farm organizations have in the past been under either Communist or
Christian Democratic leadership.
What appears to have taken place in the past thirty years has been a remarkable de-
bilitation of Italian agricultural pressure groups. This trend is comprehensible, given the
steady movement of agricultural emigrants to cities and towns. With the farm population
rapidly diminishing, groups such as Coldiretti have suffered severe loss of clout. Farm or-
ganizations are still powerful, but the curve plotting their inuence denitely slopes
downward. Among other manifestations of relative weakness has been the inability of
southern citrus growers to get the kind of protection from the European Community that
is liberally accorded north European (and north Italian) producers of grain, beef, and
dairy products.
Labor Interest Groups
Italian organized labor has been weakened in the past by its division into the Italian Gen-
eral Confederation of Labor (CGIL, Communist-dominated), the Italian Confederation
of Workers Unions (the Catholic CISL), and the Italian Union of Labor (UIL, Socialists
and Republicans). Also, Italian unions have been chronically weak in membership re-
cruitment, dues collections, and economic resources to support possible strikes. Lack of
leadership at the plant level has been another disability. Heavy unemployment in the
postWorld War II era weakened the bargaining power of Italian unions and resulted in
persistently low wages for Italian workers. It also resulted, it must be admitted, in lower
prices and other competitive advantages for Italian exports, thus encouraging the expan-
sion of the Italian economy.
After :,o, new tendencies developed within the Italian labor movement. First, the
three labor confederations manifested increasing independence from their respective par-
ties. Second, the three labor confederations showed a marked tendency to cooperate with
each other on many issues. Third, the unions no longer allowed their ofcials to hold a
parliamentary seat and a trade union ofce simultaneously. Fourth, labor became tem-
porarily much more powerful in the :,;cs and the CGIL, CISL, and UIL confederations
were much more militant in pushing their demands. In fact, at times, particularly in
:,;o;, when the Communist Party was supporting austerity, the Catholic unions made
more far-reaching demands than the Communist unions. Labors increased intransigence
reected pressure from newly employed southern migrants and semiskilled workers, who
demanded more rapid progress to make up for past privations.
Developments in the trade union eld were by no means marked by linear progres-
sion, however. After greater expansion, intransigence, and decentralization of authority to
the plant level in :,o;:, there was a movement toward a decline of trade union mem-
bership, recentralization of union authority at the national level, and a more cooperative
relationship with employers and with the state during the :,cs. The problem of selling
Italian products in increasingly competitive export markets, the impact of free collective
bargaining in improving the lot of skilled workers while raising economic hurdles against
the employment of marginal workers, and the rising burden of ination greatly weakened
the unions and induced union leaders to moderate their demands. The January :,,
agreement by the noncommunist unions to accept a slight downward modication of the
system of wage indexation (the so-called scala mobile, or escalator, that ties wages to the
price index) was a straw in the wind. The failure of a communist attempt to challenge
the governments settlement with the noncommunist unions by appealing to the voters in a
referendum, was a clear indication of labors diminished inuence. In July :,,:, the Am-
320 italy
ato cabinet was able to reach an agreement with the three principal labor confederations
and the representatives of organized business, to abolish the system of wage indexation al-
together. This achievement marked the beginning of a new and more positive decade in
labor-government relations.
What seemed in the late :,cs to be a dismal prospect for organized labor has im-
proved considerably over the past decade. In :,,:,,, the Amato and Ciampi cabinets, in
which nonpolitical technocrats played a prominent role, showed a new willingness to
bring the unions into the decision-making process as equal partners. The ongoing disinte-
gration of the major political parties made this kind of close cooperation more feasible,
for neither the labor confederations nor the cabinet could any longer be viewed as mere
mouthpieces for the party machines. The improved climate in government-labor relations
was temporarily interrupted in :,,, during the short-lived Berlusconi cabinet. When
Berlusconi attempted to push through pension reform without eliciting sufcient input
from the labor confederations, the unions launched a wave of massive protest demonstra-
tions that helped to bring down the government. But when the Dini cabinet took ofce
in early :,,,, the unions showed their willingness to collaborate closely with Dini (an-
other nonpolitical gure) in drawing up a plan for pension reform.
Thus, the position of organized labor in Italy has improved substantially. The three
labor confederations are much more inclined to cooperate with each other than in the
past (they are frequently referred to as the Triple Alliance), now that they are no longer
party-dominated. Their moderation, and their willingness to accept industrial, economic,
and social change as long as they are given a major voice in shaping that change, has made
the government willing to use them as virtual coalition partners. Their greater readiness
to consult their rank-and-le at the plant level through a newly established system of
works councils has made it easier for them to obtain rank-and-le support for whatever
bargains they strike with the government. Their new authority and credibility has in-
duced the center-left government to use them as unofcial coalition partners to counter-
balance the extreme demands of Communist Refoundation. To be sure, economic hard-
ships stemming from Italys entry into the euro zone could eventually spoil this promising
picture.
35
Business Interest Groups
In the rst few decades after World War II, Italian business had several leading character-
istics. There was a higher degree of concentration and less distrust of big business than in
France. Also, small business lacked the autonomy and self-assertiveness of the big rms of
the Genoa-Milan-Turin industrial triangle. Conndustria, representing the great majority
of industrial rms, tended to speak for big-business interests.
Conndustria had a classic lobbying relationship with the Christian Democratic
Party. Its efforts to transform this clientela relationship into a parentela bond, however,
were not successful. It was also unsuccessful in preserving a united front among Italian
employers. Some industrial giants (e.g., Fiat) preferred to pursue their own policies, inde-
pendent of Conndustria guidance. Far more important was the position taken by the
public corporations, which had their own employers association, Intersind. While Con-
ndustria tended to be allied with the Liberals and with the right wing of the Christian
Democrats, Intersind seemed more inclined toward a kind of Italian New Deal, based on
welfare capitalism and social reforms. In this, it had much in common with the Socialists
and with the left-wing Christian Democrats.
Recent developments have changed the above picture. First, the public-sector enter-
prises have been pretty thoroughly discredited by their partisan connections and by the
gross inefciency that increasingly reigned in their factories. By the :,;cs they had lost
the aura of infallibility they had acquired in the :,ocs. With the disintegration of the
Christian Democratic and Socialist parties in the early :,,cs, they were deprived of their
principal political allies. Their current situation is perilous: they are the targets of a gov-
ernment privatization campaign that seems likely to dismantle a sizable proportion of the
public sector in the next decade or so. Second, Conndustria staged something of a come-
back in Italian public opinion in the :,;cs, proting from the backlash against the Hot
Autumn of :,oo,. Third, small businessmen are playing a much more decisive role in
Conndustria. This reects the economic slump that has hit the traditional heavy indus-
try of the northwest triangle, while medium and small enterprises have brought great
prosperity to the central Italian regions of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, and
Latium. And nally, Conndustria has become much larger and more heterogeneous; for
it has virtually absorbed Intersind, now that the public corporations Intersind represented
are threatened with privatization.
Catholic Interest Groups: The Church and Its Lay Organizations
The Catholic church and various associations of Catholic laypeople have been very active
in Italys interest group system. As we saw, the Concordat of :,:, had constitutional sta-
tus and could be altered only by bilateral agreement between church and state or by a for-
mal constitutional amendment; and religion was part of the public educational curricu-
lum. Heavily inuential throughout Italian public life, the church intervened openly in
Italian domestic politics in the rst two decades after World War II. But its intervention
tended to diminish in intensity in the :,ocs and :,;cs under Popes John XXIII and Paul
VI. It should also be borne in mind that there have always been factional disputes within
the Church regarding the scope and purpose of political intervention.
The principal church-sponsored lay organization is Catholic Action, which at its
peak had , million members and contains a number of separate groups or branches, such
as the Union of Men, the Union of Women, Italian Catholic Action Youth (GIAC), and
the Federation of Italian Catholic University Students (FUCI). The president of Catholic
Action and the presidents of its component branches are appointed by individual bishops
at the diocesan level. In addition to such organizations as Catholic Action, which are di-
rectly controlled by the hierarchy, there are Catholic associations set up to pursue special-
ized nonreligious goals that are not under the tutelage of the hierarchy. These include
Coldiretti, the Italian Association of Catholic Schoolteachers (AIMC), and the Christian
Association of Italian Workers (ACLI). These organizations have acted as economic and
social pressure groups and have not behaved primarily as spokespersons for the church.
Since the late :,ocs, the inuence of the church and its lay organizations has greatly
322 italy
diminished. The failure of a referendum campaign to repeal the divorce law (:,;), the
more recent failure of a referendum campaign to repeal an abortion law (:,:), and the re-
vision of the Concordat are all indicative of waning clerical inuence. It should be noted
that some Catholic lay organizations (e.g., the Confederation of Catholic University Stu-
dents) actually came out in favor of the divorce law. It should also be noted that such as-
sociations as ACLI have been steering a more autonomous course: even before the politi-
cal upheaval of the l,,cs, ACLI cut its formal ties with both Catholic Action and the
Christian Democratic Party, though it still maintained a dialogue with the church.
Perhaps one reason for the increasingly independent stance adopted by Catholic or-
ganizations was their greatly reduced strength, which was itself a symptom of the growing
secularization of Italian society. Catholic Action, which had , million members at its peak
in the :,,cs, was down to occ,ccc by the late :,;cs. ACLI, which had about a million
members in the :,,cs, had only cc,ccc in the late :,;cs.
36
Clearly, Catholic organiza-
tions are no longer the dominant, hegemonic force they were in the immediate postwar
decades. And there is no longer a single mass Catholic Party to unite and energize these
organizations. Nor is such a party being encouraged by the dominant elements in the
church, which seem to favor something like the German CDUa large center party
composed of both Catholics and center-right liberals.
37
Current Trends: The Advent of Fragmented Pluralism
The Italian interest-group system seems, according to some observers, to be moving in
the direction of fragmented pluralism: the weakening of old established interest groups
speaking for business or labor as a whole, and the rise of a multiplicity of new groups,
each expressing a more narrow range of interests and concerns. These groups are now re-
ferred to in Italy with the newly accepted term lobbies, and like U.S. lobbies, they are
concerned only with serving the short-run interests of their members.
38
With the disap-
pearance of the clearly dened classes that typied Italian industrial society, the Italian in-
terest-group system could become as unstructured and as incapable of generating con-
structive leadership as its chaotic counterpart in the United States. And thanks to the
trend toward single-member districts, interest groups may come to have a disintegrating
and corrupting effect on the party system, thus recreating the U.S. model.
And yet, as we have seen, there is strong evidence of a countervailing tendency: the
increasing leadership and sense of responsibility being displayed by labors Triple Alliance
and the growing inclusiveness of Conndustria. Only time and the impact of EMU on
the Italian economy and Italian society will determine which tendency will prevail.
Notes
:. See Raphael Zariski, Italy, in Western European Party Systems: Trends and Prospects, ed. Peter H. Merkl
(New York: Free Press, :,c), :::,:.
:. Ibid., :,c, and The New Parliament, News from Italy (published by the Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli) :c
(July :,,): ::. See also Robert H. Evans, The Italian Election of June :,;, Italian Journal I, nos. : and
, (:,;): :,.
,. See Zariski, Italy, :,:, and New Parliament, ::. See also A Comprehensive Report on the :,; Political
Elections: Nine Tables of Statistical Data, Italian Journal I, nos. : and , (:,;): :.
. See Giorgio Galli, Il bipartitismo imperfetto (Bologna: Il Mulino, :,oo).
,. See Evans, Italian Election, ::.
o. For the disastrous effects of the corruption scandals and the Maa connections on the DC, the PSI, and
the minor center parties, see Mario Caciagli, Italie :,,,: vers la Seconde Republique? Revue franaise de
science politique (April :,,,): ::,,o.
;. Under the new election law of :,,,, three-fourths of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies were allocated
to single-member districts that could be won by the candidate of a party (or alliance of parties) if he or she
obtained a plurality of the votes cast. The other one-fourth were to be distributed on the basis of propor-
tional representation. Since several parties did not run candidates in every single-member district, party
voting performance is calculated on the basis of each partys share of the PR vote.
. For the results of the :,, elections, see Edmondo Berselli, Solution on the Right: The Evolving Political
Scenario, Italian Journal (:,,): :,::; Robert H. Evans, Italy . . . Quo Vadis? Italian Journal (:,,):
::; Michael Gallagher, Michael Laver, Peter Mair, Representative Government in Western Europe, :d ed.
(New York: McGraw-Hill, :,,,), :oo,; Mark Gilbert, Italy Turns Rightwards, Contemporary Review
:o, (July :,,): :c; and Francesco Sidoti, The Signicance of the Italian Elections, Parliamentary Af-
fairs ; (July :,,): ,,,;.
,. La repubblica, ,: March :,,, :,.
:c. For the results of the :,,o elections, see James L. Newell and Martin Bull, Party Organizations and Al-
liances in Italy in the :,,cs: A Revolution of Sorts, in Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics, ed. Martin
Bull and Martin Rhodes (London: Frank Cass, :,,;), ::c,, at :c.
::. For an analytical account of the process that led to the demise of the PCI and the formation of the PDS,
see Leonard Weinberg, The Transformation of Italian Communism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,
:,,,).
::. See Donald L.M. Blackmer, Continuity and Change in Postwar Italian Communism, in Communism in
Italy and France, ed. Donald L.M. Blackmer and Sidney Tarrow (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, :,;,), ::o.
:,. On the PDS program in :,,, see Evans, Italy Quo Vadis? :c; and Sidoti, The Signicance of the Ital-
ian Elections, ,,o,;.
:. On the PDS Conict with the PRC, see Stephen Hellmann, The Italian Left After the :,,o Elections,
in Italian Politics: The Center-Left in Power, ed. Roberto DAlimonte and David Nelken (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, :,,;), ,:c:.
:,. For the seats held by the various parties in the Chamber of Deputies in October :,,, see Number ,o:
Italy Searches for a Government, The Economist, :; October :,,, ,,,o at ,o.
:o. See Aldo Di Virgilio, Electoral alliances: Party identities and coalition games, European Journal of Polit-
ical Research , (:,,): ,,,, especially at ::, :o.
:;. Centro sinistra e politica locale, Il Mulino :: (March :,o,): :c.
:. See Newell and Bull, Party Organization and Alliances in Italy in the :,,cs, ::c; at :c.
:,. Number ,o: Italy Searches for a Government, ,,,o at ,o.
:c. Ibid., ,o. It should be noted that the :,,, election law, which permits major parties to throw their support
to designated candidates of allied splinter parties in single-member districts, makes it very difcult to pin-
point the party afliation of a sizable minority of deputies. For this reason, even in the same edited work,
one can nd two articles giving slightly different gures as to the respective number of seats won by each
party in the Chamber of Deputies. See Newell and Bull, Party Organization and Alliances in Italy in the
:,,cs, :c (whose gures were relied on by this author); and, on the other hand, see Roberto DAlimonte
and Stefano Bartolini, Electoral Transition and Party System Change in Italy, Bull and Rhodes, ::c,
at ::,.
::. For some early discussions of the Northern League, see for example, Tom Gallagher, The Regional Di-
mension in Italys Political Upheaval: Role of the Northern League :,:,,,, Government and Opposi-
tion :, (summer :,,): ,oo; and Dwayne Woods, The Crisis of the Italian Party-State and the Rise of
the Lombard League, Telos ,, (fall :,,:): ::::o.
::. See Ilvo Diamanti, The Lega Nord: From Federalism to Secession, in DAlimonte and Nelken, o,:;
and Roberto Biorcio, La Lega Nord e la transizione italiana, Revista italiana di Scienza Politica :, (April
:,,): ,,o.
:,. See Adrian Lyttelton, Italy: The Triumph of TV, New York Review (:: August :,,): :;; and Vincent R.
Tortora, Italys Second Republic, The New Leader ;; (,:, May, :,,): o.
:. See Evans, Italy . . . Quo Vadis? :c::; and Sidoti, The Signicance of the Italian Elections, ,,,c.
:,. See Hanging On, The Economist, :o November :,,, ,,oc.
324 italy
:o. See Evans, Italy . . . Quo Vadis? :c::; and Sidoti, The Signicance of Italian Elections, ,:.
:;. See Gianfranco Fini: A Nearly Respectable Post-Fascist, The Economist, :: February :,,, ,o.
:. For a fuller discussion of the Italian electoral system under the pre-:,,, electoral law, see Raphael Zariski,
Italy: The Politics of Uneven Development (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden, :,;:).
:,. On the :,,, election law and its effects, see Evans, Italy . . . Quo Vadis? o; and Gallagher, Laver, and
Mair, Representative Government in Western Europe, :o,.
,c. See Stefano Bartolini and Roberto DAlimonte, Majoritarian Miracles and the Question of Party System
Change, European Journal of Political Research , (:,,): :,:o,, especially :,:,; and :o:o.
,:. See Carlo Fusaro, The Politics of Constitutional Reform in Italy: A Framework for Analysis, South Eu-
ropean Society and Politics , (autumn :,,): ,; at ,,,, o;o; see also Take It to the People: Refer-
endum in Italy, The Economist, o February :,,,, ,,.
,:. See Arturo Parisi and Gianfranco Pasquino, Changes in Italian Electoral Behaviour: The Relationship
Between Parties and Voters, in Italy in Transition: Conict and Consensus, ed. Peter Lange and Sidney Tar-
row (London: Frank Cass, :,c), o,c.
,,. See Evans, Italy . . . Quo Vadis? ::::.
,. See Diamanti, The Lega Nord, o,: at o;:; Biorcio, La Lega Nord, ,,,; and Patrizia Messina,
Opposition in Italy in the :,,cs: Local Political Cultures and the Northern League, Government and
Opposition, ,, (autumn :,,): o:;.
,,. See Marino Regini and Ida Regalia, Employers, Unions, and the State: The Resurgence of Concertation
in Italy? in Bull and Rhodes, ::c,c; Michael Braun, The Confederated Trade Unions and the Dini
Government: The Grand Return to Neocorporatism? in Italian Politics: The Stalled Transition, ed. Mario
Caciagli and David I. Kertzer (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,o), :c,::; and Claudio M. Radaelli and
Marcello G. Bruni, Beyond Charlemagnes Europe: A Sub-National Examination of Italy within the
EMU, Regional and Federal Studies (summer :,,): ,,: at ,,,.
,o. See Gianfranco Pasquino, Italian Christian Democracy: A Party for All Seasons? in Lange and Tarrow,
Italy in Transition: Conict and Consensus, ,:,,.
,;. See Sandro Magister, The Church and the End of the Catholic Party, in Caciagli and Kertzer, ::,c.
,. See Raphael Zariski, Italy: The Fragmentation of Power and Its Consequences, in First World Interest
Groups: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Clive S. Thomas (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, :,,,): ::;,.
Chapter 19
How Is Power Used?
WE HAVE OBSERVED the sharp divisions of power that existed within the Italian deci-
sion-making system before :,,:: the coalition cabinets that were split, not only by com-
peting parties, but by competing intraparty factions as well; the parliament that was not
really under the unifying tutelage of any cohesive leadership structure or ruling commit-
tee; the public corporations that enjoyed a high degree of de facto autonomy. These cleav-
ages within the decision-making apparatus made it difcult to ascertain who, if anyone,
was in charge. Reecting these internal divisions, the policymaking process was itself frag-
mented and incoherent. Although we have become increasingly aware of the inefciency
and lack of central direction that exist in any policymaking systemincluding the much-
touted British and American modelsItaly seemed to constitute a particularly acute case
of poor coordination and lack of harmony. In this chapter, we describe the traditional
process of policymaking and policy implementation and then point to some important
changes that have apparently taken place within the past decade and especially since :,,:.
Policy Formulation
The process of policy formulation begins with the initiation of proposals. In any demo-
cratic country, proposals are brought to the attention of policymakers by parties, pressure
groups, higher civil servants in the bureaucracy, and individual legislators. In Italy, the in-
dividual member of parliament was given a comparatively large voice in the process of
policy initiation. Italy, in fact, was one of the few Western democracies that placed no re-
strictions on the introduction of private-member bills in parliament. Nevertheless, even
though a majority of the bills introduced in parliament were private-member bills, only a
minority of bills passed by parliament had been initiated by individual deputies and sena-
tors without some sort of executive sponsorship. So, once the phase of proposal initiation
was completed, the executive still emerged as wielding more weight than the legislature in
the process of policy formulation.
While most bills originated in the ministries, there was strong reason to suspect that
parties and pressure groups played a much more important part in initiating legislation
than did the bureaucracy per se. It is a well-known fact that Italy lacks a strong bureau-
cratic tradition, that Italian civil servants tend to be conservative and legalistic in their at-
titudes and to show little interest in policy innovations. Unlike French higher civil ser-
vants, they are unlikely to search for new and controversial solutions to socioeconomic
problems.
The political parties affected the initiation of policy proposals in a number of ways.
While they did not bother with the great number of leggini (little laws, that is, private
or minor bills) initiated by government agencies and individual members of parliament,
they did stimulate the introduction of broader bills of general application. And they had
other ways of exercising inuence. In a broad sense, they had on occasion replaced the
cabinet as the source of general policy decisions. Between :,;o and :,;,, when the Com-
munist Party was part of the ruling coalition without actually holding ministerial posi-
tions, the cabinet was committed to applying a program agreed upon by the parties that
supported the ruling coalition. Since these parties included some (like the Communist
Party) that were not represented in the cabinet, a particular procedure was followed. The
government program was drawn up outside parliament by leaders of the parties committed
to supporting the cabinet. The cabinet then adopted it. In effect, the cabinet was simply
ratifying decisions adopted by an extraparliamentary conference of party leaders.
1
Parties also had a major impact on detailed and specic policy initiatives, even if they
did not as parties introduce vast numbers of proposed leggini in parliament. There devel-
oped, especially after the opening to the left in the early :,ocs, a tendency to allocate pol-
icymaking positions in various executive and administrative agencies to the various polit-
ical parties supporting the cabinet. Before the :,ocs, it was almost invariably the
Christian Democrats who received patronage in the form of such decisional posts. After
the opening to the left, the Socialists and the other allies of Christian Democracy were in-
creasingly successful in obtaining a signicant share of strategic jobs. The distributive
spending decisions made by such government agencies were in effect made by the politi-
cal parties that participated in managing the agencies. What had changed since the :,ocs
was that a Christian Democratic-dominated spoils system had been broadened to include
other parties, with pieces of the action distributed on a quota basis.
2
In addition to political parties, Italian pressure groups were responsible for initiating
many proposals that ministries adopted as their own. One reason for the accentuated role
of pressure groups was that the Italian bureaucracy was neither willing nor able to gener-
ate many proposals on its own. This was partly caused by the inadequacy of the research
facilities available to the bureaucracy and to parliament. Both the bureaucracy and parlia-
ment were unusually dependent on pressure groups for information and expertise.
Once a proposal had been initiated, the ministry involved engaged in a long process
of consultation with affected interests. Each ministry had an advisory council represent-
ing the various clientela groups with which the ministry dealt. Moreover, an intricate sys-
tem of cabinet committees was supposed to keep ministers informed about what their
colleagues were doing or planning to do. But there were gaps in this consultation process,
and very often interested groups and agencies were not kept informed, and ministries
were unaware of each others projects.
The complaint was often voiced that there was no adequate coordination of the vari-
ous policy proposals initiated by government agencies. The great number of cabinet com-
mittees made for a functional decentralization of policy. Each cabinet committee had its
own restricted sphere of public policy in which it all too often acted as nal arbiter; the
cabinet, supposedly the supreme organ of policy coordination, was too large and too in-
ternally divided to perform this function. As a result, many bills came before the cabinet
without adequate notice and caught ministers by surprise; meetings were called suddenly
with much the same effect; minutes were sketchy and incomplete; and there was no regu-
lar exchange of information among cabinet members. In short, the cabinet did not main-
tain adequate control over policy formulation.
3
In the absence of effective cabinet surveillance, there were few real limitations on the
activities of Italys various executive agencies and public corporations. Many of their deci-
sions involved the awarding of grants or contracts or loans and required no action by the
legislature. The Ofce of the Prime Minister exercised some oversight over policy formu-
lation but was in no position routinely to block initiatives of which it disapproved. Some
checks on excessive spending could be imposed by the Ministry of the Treasury and the
governor of the Bank of Italy by regulating the cash reserves required of Italian banks,
thus encouraging or curtailing borrowing or lending. But the Bank of Italy, for all the
technocratic expertise of its governor, had not been as independent as many observers as-
sumed. The Administrative Council of the bank, which chose the new governor, was
made up of the incumbent governor and fteen members, of whom twelve were nomi-
nated by an assembly of banks and credit agencies that held Bank of Italy stock. The gov-
ernor was responsible, then, to Italian banking interests, but these interests in turn had
been partly under the inuence of Christian Democratic-controlled public corporations
such as the Institute of Industrial Reconstruction (IRI).
4
The policies pursued by the Bank of Italy in the :,cs and :,,cs had the effect of fa-
voring business while simultaneously strengthening the position of Christian Democracy.
With the opening to the left in the :,ocs, the Bank of Italy loosened controls to a degree
that encouraged large-scale wage increasesa policy designed to retain Socialist support
for the new center-left cabinet formula. This was in accordance with the views of Chris-
tian Democratic factions committed to the opening to the left, factions powerfully en-
trenched in the public corporations that exercised a signicant inuence on the Italian
banking sector and consequently on the Bank of Italy.
Apart from the credit and monetary restraints imposed by the Ministry of the Trea-
sury and the Bank of Italy, there was no effective check within the executive branch on
the process of policy formulation. The cabinet did not serve as a reliable gatekeeper pre-
venting the introduction of bills, which did not enjoy general support within the execu-
tive branch, because the executive branch did not speak with one voice. In its divisiveness
and lack of coherence, it bore more resemblance to the U.S. executive branch than to the
executive branch of a model parliamentary system. Some executive and administrative
agencies had more clout than others (just as a feudal system has greater and lesser feudal
lords), but no single committee or institution was clearly in charge.
5
As we have seen, numerous policy proposalssuch as those involving investments,
grants, and loans undertaken by the public corporations and other government agencies
did not need approval by parliament. It was sufcient for them to secure the approval of
the relevant supervisory ministry (often, in the past, the recently abolished Ministry of
State Holdings) or of the entire cabinet, approval that was usually forthcoming. The pres-
328 italy
ident of the Chamber of Deputies or the president of the Senate assigned policy proposals
that did go the parliamentary route in the form of bills to a standing committee. He or
she would instruct the committee to report the bill back to the oor in sede referente with
its recommendations, or to enact the bill into law in sede deliberante. Whichever path was
chosen, the committee stage was the crucial stage in the life of a bill. Many controversial
bills never emerged from committee. In fact, the standing committees, by preventing bills
from reaching the oor for a vote, spared the executive branch much embarrassment by
sidetracking measures the executive organs did not support wholeheartedly but were
afraid not to sponsor.
If the in sede referente procedure was followed and if the bill was reported to the oor,
the Conference of Presidents (heads of parliamentary party groups) decided the bills
place on the legislative calendar. The bill was then discussed in the chamber, rst on a
general motion for approval and then article by article. In this second and more detailed
discussion, amendments could be introduced and voted on. The nal version of the bill
after the amendment stage was then voted on by the entire house. If it passed, it went on
to the other chamber where the same lengthy and cumbersome procedure was followed.
It had to pass both chambers in the same form to become law, and this meant it might
have to shuttle between the chambers in order for discrepancies to be ironed out.
Most laws were adopted in committee through the in sede referente procedure. This
procedure was used mostly for legginiincremental bills of minor importance that af-
fected relatively small segments of society. Such bills were often introduced by the govern-
ment as an alternative to an executive decree, which might be blocked by the Court of
Accounts, or they originated with private members seeking to curry favor with some con-
stituents. It should be remembered that, under the in sede deliberante procedure, :c per-
cent of the members of parliament or :c percent of the members of a standing committee
could prevent a bill from being passed by insisting it be brought to the oor for plenary
debate. This meant that the Communist Party always had enough votes to prevent the
procedure from being used. Yet it did not usually employ this power to obstruct legisla-
France
Germany
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
:,.;
,,.:
,:.;
,.,
::.,
:,.
Vote for Conservative Parties (percentage in most recent legislative election)
tion, even in the :,,cs and :,ocs when it was still considered an antisystem party. Evi-
dently, many behind-the-scenes compromises with the Christian Democratic regime took
place even before the :,;cs.
In the case of executive orders (legislative decrees, decree laws, and regulations), nu-
merous consultations were required by law or by administrative practice. If a cabinet
measure was involved, not just a minor regulation of interest to only a single ministry, the
measure had to be considered by a cabinet committee before obtaining the consent of the
cabinet as a whole. The cabinet committee stage was crucial in most cases. Also the
Council of State had to be consulted in its advisory capacity; and the Court of Accounts
could refuse to register the executive order. Finally, the president of Italy had the right (he
exercised it only occasionally) to refuse to authorize the issuance of a cabinet decree or the
introduction of a government bill in parliament.
One device for redressing the apparent weakness of the executive branch vis--vis
parliament, the parties, and the pressure groups was a tendency to resort more and more
to decree laws as a way of proposing legislation. They were used as a means of obtaining
quick, temporary action and bypassing normal legislative procedures. To be sure, decree
laws expired within sixty days unless approved by parliament, but meanwhile an accom-
plished fact had been created. Moreover, if parliament, during the sixty days, rejected or
drastically modied a decree law, the cabinet did not feel obligated to resign.
6
Some major changes have taken place in the Italian policymaking process within the
past decadechanges that were accelerated by the political cataclysm of the :,,cs, but
were already under way in the late :,cs. First, the political parties began to play a much-
diminished role in initiating policy proposals. The winding down of the Cold War had
led to a sharp diminution of U.S. aid for such government parties as the Socialists and the
Christian Democrats, and their research capabilities diminished accordingly. Their heavy
reliance on patronage and subsidies to a very wide variety of beneciaries was piling up an
unsustainable burden of debt and injuring Italys ability to compete in world markets. Di-
rectives and guidelines from the European Union were increasingly calling for policy
changes in the direction of austerity and stabilitychanges that the party machines were
ill equipped and unwilling to adopt. And nally, after :,,:, both the DC and the PSI vir-
tually vanished from the political scene.
7
Second, the key role in the initiation of major economic and nancial policy deci-
sions has been taken over by technocrats and academic experts. Ofcials from the Bank of
Italy, technocrats at the helm of the Treasury Ministry, professors of economics at the
head of the Ministry of Finance have replaced the career politicians who used to domi-
nate the economic and nancial ministries. Ministerial cabinets, which provide ministers
with crucial advice on economic and nancial policy matters, are staffed by technocrats
and social scientists rather than legalistically inclined high civil servants. And think tanks,
such as the Europe Research Center (CER), the Institute of Social Research (IRS), and
the Rosselli Foundation, have served as forums for the discussion of economic and nan-
cial policy and have helped to shape the prevalent elite consensus on the desirability of
maintaining economic stability, cutting decits, and reducing spending.
8
330 italy
Third, the executive branch has been considerably strengthened in various ways.
There is greater executive control over the budgetmaking process, particularly with regard
to setting forth the main objectives, controlling the timetable, and rejecting amendments
by the Chamber of Deputies to the governments nancial proposals. Also, the cabinet is
not only relying more and more frequently on decree-laws to bypass potential resistance
in parliament, but is also demonstrating a tendency to reissue those decree-laws again and
again, should parliament fail to approve them within the sixty-day time limit.
9
Finally, there has been increasing recourse to the referendum as a device to overcome
parliamentary resistance to a controversial policy proposal. The legalization of divorce
and abortion, and the establishment of a plurality system for the election of three-fourths
of the members of the Chamber of Deputiesthese goals were ratied by the Italian
public in referendums. But there seems to be a signicant voter backlash against what is
seen as overuse and abuse of the referendum. This backlash seems to be conrmed by very
low turnout in recent referendum votes.
10
For example, in the spring of :,,,, a referen-
dum proposal to scrap the rule whereby :, percent of the seats in parliament are assigned
by proportional representation was approved by a comfortable margin of those voting.
But the turnout was too low for the referendum to be legally binding.
The responsibility for implementing policies that emerged from the policy-formulation
process lay with the Italian bureaucracy. Italian civil servants tended to be obsessed with
the primacy of the law and with the need to nd a legal justication for every action. This
attitudelaudable enough under normal circumstances and when balanced against other
considerationswas carried to ridiculous extremes in Italy because of the predominantly
legal training and traditionalist orientation of most Italian civil servants.
Policy implementation proceeded with agonizing slowness and indecision. Each step
in the implementation of a law or decree had to be subjected to a series of controls and
procedures: approval by a subsidiary branch of the General Accounting Ofce, registra-
tion by the Court of Accounts, consultation with the Council of State for all contracts
above a certain sum, and so on. At any one of numerous way stations, a le might be sent
back to the point of origin because of some minor irregularity or might even be mislaid.
Cases might literally take years to resolve, even when no particularly controversial prob-
lem was involved.
Overcentralization also slowed down the policy implementation process. Local au-
thorities and regional authorities were subject to a variety of central controls. National
eld services of ministries in Rome were compelled to refer a great number of relatively
minor decisions to the capital for the signature of the director general of a bureau. In fact,
even when the rules did not so specify, minor ofcials often preferred to pass the buck to
their superiors in the hierarchy. This centralizing tendency had deep roots in Italian polit-
ical culture. It should be noted that, ever since the regions were created in :,;c, the new
regional governments had employed the same techniques of overcentralization in their re-
lations with local authorities.
Other factors impeding effective policy implementation were overstafng and cor-
ruption. The expansion of the bureaucracy since World War II had contributed to the
sluggishness of bureaucratic procedures. The introduction of more modern methods
would mean a reduction in staff; on the other hand, the imposition of an additional set of
checks or controls might serve to justify an individuals salary. As for corruption, cases of
favoritism, often based on family or friendship ties, were constantly discussed in the me-
dia, to a greater degree than in other Western democracies. In a civil service recruited from
a traditionalist region like the Italian south, family loyalty was bound to have a serious
impact on behavior.
One glaring example of the inefciency of the policy-implementation process was
the growing importance of so-called residui passivi (residual liabilities) in Italy. These are
funds that have been allocated to an agency in a given budgetary period but have re-
mained unspent. Residual liabilities were increasing in size; this helps explain why so
many reform measures represented only paper promises, given the bureaucratic controls
that stood in the way of transforming words into deeds.
11
Since the late :,cs, there has been a thoroughgoing and coordinated reform of Ital-
ian public nance. But administrative reform has lagged far behind. There have been a
sizable number of piecemeal directives, but no coherent overall plan and very little fol-
low-through to insure directives are enforced. Many civil servants have a vested interest in
the present system with all its faults. Therefore, reform proposals encounter bitter resis-
tance. The Ministry of Public Administration often spearheads this resistance, for it tends
to put the interests of government employees ahead of those of the general public. Finally,
administrative reform has been assigned a lower priority by the Italian government than
reform of public nance, because the immediate stimulus of conforming to European
Union guidelines or being denied admission to the European Monetary Union and the
euro zone has been lacking.
12
Notes
:. See Stefano Bartolini, The Politics of Institutional Reform in Italy, West European Politics , (July :,:):
:c;.
:. See Carlo Donolo, Social Change and Transformation of the State in Italy, in The State in Western Eu-
rope, ed. Richard Scase (London: Croom Helm, :,c), :,,,o; and Giuseppe Di Palma, The Available
State: Problems of Reform, in Italy in Transition: Conict and Consensus, ed. Peter Lange and Sidney Tar-
row (London: Frank Cass, :,c), :,,,;.
,. See Sabino Cassese, Is There a Government in Italy? Politics and Administration at the Top, in Presi-
dents and Prime Ministers, ed. Richard Rose and Ezra N. Suleiman (Washington, D.C.: American Enter-
prise Institute, :,c), :;,, :c::.
. See Alan R. Posner, Italy: Dependence and Political Fragmentation, in Between Power and Plenty: For-
eign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, :,;), :,,,.
,. See Donolo, Social Change and Transformation of the State in Italy, :;:;,.
o. See Bartolini, The Politics of Institutional Reform in Italy, :c.
;. See Martin Bull and Martin Rhodes, Between Crisis and Transition: Italian Politics in the :,,cs, in Cri-
sis and Transition in Italian Politics, ed. Martin Bull and Martin Rhodes (London: Frank Cass, :,,), ::,,
at .
. See Claudio M. Radaelli, How Does Europeanization Produce Domestic Policy Change? Corporate Tax
Policy in Italy and the United Kingdom, Comparative Political Studies ,c (October :,,;): ,,,;,, at
332 italy
,,;o:; and Claudio M. Radaelli, Networks of Expertise and Policy Change in Italy, South European So-
ciety and Politics , (autumn :,,): :::, at :.
,. See Vincent della Sala, Hollowing Out and Hardening the State: European Integration and the Italian
Economy, in Bull and Rhodes, :,,, at :,,c; Giacinto della Cananea, The Reform of Finance and
Administration in Italy: Contrasting Achievements, in Bull and Rhodes, :,:c,, at :,o,;; and Vin-
cent della Sala, Italy: A Bridge Too Far? Parliamentary Affairs ,c (July :,,;): ,,oc,, at ,,,cc.
:c. See Referendum in Italy: Take It to the People, The Economist, o February :,,,, ,:.
::. See Donolo, Social Change and Transformation of the State in Italy, ::.
::. See della Cananea, The Reform of Finance and Administration in Italy, :,,:c.
Chapter 20
What Is the Future of Italian Politics?
OUR TREATMENT OF the Italian political system has focused on its weaknesses and
imperfections. We have seen the serious problems facing the Italian economy and Italian
society; the disruptive effects of rapid modernization; the survival of widespread political
alienation at the level of the mass culture; the lack of unied, coherent political leader-
ship; the absence of effective coordination over the institutions responsible for policy for-
mulation and policy implementation; and the ubiquity of patronage and corruption. Yet,
this system endured for over forty years, until the upheavals of the :,,cs.
We begin this nal appraisal with a brief discussion of the positive features of the pre-
:,,: Italian political systemfeatures that enabled the system to survive for almost ve
decades and to weather a number of crises. We also deal briey with the catalytic factors
that helped to bring aboutafter so many false alarmsthe political earthquake of :,,:
,o. We then turn to some of the more critical problems Italy must still confront.
Elements of Strength and Seeds of Crisis in
the Italian Political System
Some contemporary observers of Italian politics have pointed to some of the possible rea-
sons why the Italian Republic, prior to :,,:, was able to remain in existence despite all its
travails.
1
We deal rst with the political factors. As we have seen, until :,,, Italy lacked a
strong party of the extreme right. The Communist Partyrepresenting the extreme left
over most of the past ve decadeswas generally a moderate and constructive force.
There were no protracted foreign wars or colonial adventures to politicize the Italian
armed forces. And, until the :,,cs, no ethnic or regional minority had called into ques-
tion the continued existence of the Italian state. In short, there were no irreconcilable
conicts to overload the Italian polity.
Other political factors have been identied as contributing to system survival. First,
the Christian Democratic Party, with all its faults, managed to bridge the divisions among
social classes by virtue of its catchall nature, strengthened small and medium industry and
gave invaluable transfusions to backward regions, and kept the Catholic middle class
committed to democratic institutions and democratic methods. Second, the Italian polit-
ical eliteswith all their inefciency and seemingly unprincipled opportunismshowed
resourcefulness, imagination, and an ability to take remedial action in a crisis. They were
also far more united and willing to cooperate than they appeared. Third, subcultural dif-
ferences were narrowing, as the secularization of Italian society and the increasing moder-
ation of the Communist Party brought the Catholic and Marxist subcultures closer to-
gether. In the :,cs, the rising generations of party activists appeared to be less ideologi-
cally committed than their fathers had been. Fourth, the parties of the leftincluding
the Communistshad acquired a stake in the system. They were by no means excluded
from the politics of patronage practiced by the Christian Democratic-dominated regime.
Quite the contrary, their share of the action was increasing.
Certain socioeconomic factors contributed to the resilience and underlying strength
of Italian democracy. Living standards had risen enormously since the late :,cs when
movies like Bitter Rice and Bicycle Thief dramatized the plight of the Italian masses. Indi-
cators of this trend included the decline in both the birth rate and the death rate, the
growing per capita consumption of meat and dairy products, and the increasing acquisi-
tion of automobiles and household appliances by the masses.
2
Urbanization, too, under-
mined the traditional allegiances that had divided Italy into regions committed to differ-
ent political families. Although the regional differences in voting behavior remained, they
no longer seemed to reect fundamental cleavages in values and political orientations.
Also, the rise of the service sector was doing much to reduce the intensity of class conict.
And the advent of mass education had fostered national integration, reduced the differ-
ences among regional subcultures, and perhaps contributed to the more pragmatic atti-
tudes displayed by Italian voters (e.g., the vote of appartenenzabased on pure party
identicationwas to some degree being replaced by the vote of opinion and the vote
of exchange). While the Italian economy and Italian society had undeniable major weak-
nesses, many of them were weaknesses that are beginning to surface throughout the West-
ern industrial world. It was, therefore, no longer possible simply to dismiss Italy as the
sick man of Western Europe; this would have been true even if Ireland, Spain, Portugal,
and Greece had not recently joined the West European club.
However, there were some profound long-term economic trends that were undercut-
ting these apparently hopeful socioeconomic and politico-cultural tendencies.
3
First, the
need to compete in world markets and in the European Union had led to a restructuring
of Italian industry, to mass layoffs in the big industries of the northwest industrial triangle
and to the emergence of an increasing number of medium and small enterprises in north-
eastern and north-central Italy. This had weakened class consciousness and strengthened
regional consciousness, had aroused resistance to high levels of taxation and government
spending, and had fueled resentment of welfare programs that seemed to benet more
backward and unproductive regions and social strata at the expense of the emergent social
groups in the center and north.
Second, the new social programs and heavy spending of the early :,;cs had increased
the annual decit from ,.; percent of GDP in :,;c to ::.o percent in :,;,. Efforts to trim
the decit after :,;, were not very successful. In :,:, it still stood at ::. percent of GDP,
and in :,,: at :c.: percent. But far more intolerable was the growth in the public debt: ,
percent of GDP in :,;c, ,;.o percent in :,;,, ,,., percent in :,:, but a staggering :c:.
percent in :,,:. It reached a peak of :::., percent in :,,, and has receded only about ve
percentage points since then. The size of the decit was causing interest payments on the
public debt to skyrocket; these interest payments had become the largest item of expendi-
what is the future of italian politics? 335
ture in the national budget. Obviously, this situation was intolerable. Either spending had
to be drastically cut, taxes heavily increased, or both.
Third, however, the pre-:,:: Italian patronage system depended very heavily on pa-
tronage and subsidies for all groups and categories whose political support was being so-
licited by the governing parties. This cozy but rather indiscriminate and enormously
costly politics of distribution was nanced in large measure by tolerating huge decits.
Meanwhile, tax evasion was tolerated to a greater degree than in the other major Western
countries. For many years, the explicit costs of this kind of public policy were not too vis-
ible to the average Italian. By the early :,,cs they could no longer be glossed over. The
Italy that had reaped the benets of the economic miracle would now have to face some
hard and politically disruptive decisions.
The Italian Economy: The Endangered Miracle
One of the chief problems facing Italy is the same one that confronts every modern in-
dustrial society: how to maintain an expanding economy with a low rate of unemploy-
ment while avoiding excessive ination and an unstable currency, and keeping exports
competitive in world markets.
4
This problem became acute in the Hot Autumn of :,o,,
when Italian labor abandoned its postwar behavior pattern of relatively docile industri-
ousness, and in the fall of :,;,, when skyrocketing oil prices began to affect the economy.
Since that time, the Italian economic miracle has lost much of its magic. Ination, unem-
ployment (particularly among young people), and a balance of payments decit are
chronic threats. And government spending has grown by leaps and bounds, producing
massive decits. Italy has had occasional spurts of growth since :,;,the economy ex-
panded by :: percent between :,;; and :,cbut the unbroken linear progression of the
:,,cs and early :,ocs is a thing of the past. In fact, a further increase in oil prices in :,c
led to a trade decit of $:: billion and an ination rate of :: percent. The Bank of Italy
had to impose a squeeze on credit that promptly reduced economic growth and pushed
up unemployment.
Strong measures taken by the Craxi (:,,;), Amato (:,,:,,), and Ciampi
(:,,,,) governments were successful in lowering the rate of ination to less than , per-
336 italy
France
Germany
Italy
Russia (since 1992)
Sweden
United Kingdom
::
;
,
o
:,
:
Number of Postwar Cabinets
cent (,.; percent in mid-:,,); unemployment and interest rates remained high, however,
and the budget decit approached U.S. levels (despite the fact that Italy has a much
smaller economy than the United States). As we have seen, the annual decit grew rapidly
in the :,;cs and :,cs. In :,,:, it was ,., percent of Italys gross domestic product
(GDP), and Italys public-sector debt was a staggering :c percent of GDP. By way of
contrast, the much-touted U.S. decit was only , percent of GDP, and the public sector
debt was only ,, percent of GDP.
5
Is there an alternative to this stop-go process marked by frequent administration of
debilitating nancial castor oil by the Bank of Italy? The answer seems to be to reduce
government spending and establish some control over wage increases. In a word, a policy
of austerity. This has already involved (under the Amato government in :,,:) eliminating
the escalator (scala mobile) system of wage indexation, under which wages rose every three
months to conform to upward movements in the price index. It would also require either
reducing the vast amounts disbursed by the public corporations, the pension funds, and
various public services (especially in the social welfare area) or increasing taxes and users
fees.
The trouble with austerity is that it is a politically unpalatable solution in any
democracy, and it ran counter to several basic characteristics of the pre-:,,: Italian polit-
ical and social system. For example, it directly repudiated the distributive policy that had
been followed by the Christian Democratic regime as a means of building electoral sup-
port and that had been later adopted by the Socialists as well. It would require very un-
popular decisions. And it might well restore class conict and general alienation, which
had seemed until :,,: to be playing a diminishing role in Italian politics. When Prime
Minister Berlusconi, in the fall of :,,, introduced a budget that included sharp cuts in
spending on pensions, even his own coalition partners criticized him; a general strike was
threatened; and masses of hostile demonstrators took to the streets. The proposals had to
be greatly watered down. (To be sure, Berlusconi had committed the cardinal error of fail-
ing to devote enough effort to consulting the labor confederations.)
Worse, austerity could bear an electoral price tag, at least in the short run. Young vot-
ers (in the labor force but still looking for their rst job) and marginal workers (lacking
modern skills required by todays labor market) might be particularly affected by austerity
and might retaliate by backing minor parties of the extreme left like the PRC or Cos-
suttas recently formed PCI. The evidence for this alleged pattern of electoral revenge is by
no means conclusive. Nevertheless, widespread fear remains that a policy of austerity
would result in drastic reprisals at the polls.
Despite the potential dangers of a policy of austerity, something of a majority con-
sensus has developed in Italy around this issue. Even the ex-Communists of the PDS
seem to concur in the need to cut spending, raise taxes, reform the social welfare and pen-
sion systems, and reduce the public-sector annual decit and the public-sector debt. Mi-
nor parties of the extreme left, certainly the PRC and possibly Cossuttas PCI, are outside
this consensus. They demand the thirty-ve-hour workweek and a special fund to deal
with unemployment in the south (now over :c percent). The union confederations are
somewhat reluctant, especially with regard to cuts in welfare spending and social services,
but are open to persuasion since they strongly support Italian membership in the euro
zone. As for the center-right, most of it also tends to form part of this consensus, though
the National Alliance (with its power base in the south) is rather ambivalent about heavy
cuts in government spending on social programs, and the maverick Northern League is
hostile to large tax increases. Thus, austerity itself is no longer a major issue. The question
is, what methods are to be used to achieve austerity? With the exceptions noted above, the
center-left prefers to emphasize tax increases, whereas the center-right usually leans to-
ward cuts in government spending.
6
How did this consensus develop? We have already noted the economic factors that
precipitated the political crisis of :,,:,o. Major stress should also be placed on the glob-
alization of the world economy: in a world where protection against foreign competition
was becoming a thing of the past, the old free spending ways would have to be jettisoned.
And nally, Italys desire to enter the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the
euro zone was a crucial factor. After the Maastricht treaty had been signed in :,,:, a
growing consensus developed among central bankers, social scientists, and members of
think tanks. The central theme of this consensus was the perceived need for Italy to adjust
its economy and its public nance to the goals set by the Maastricht treaty. This meant
sound money, control of ination, the independence of the Bank of Italy from the execu-
tive branch, and restraints on government spending. By the mid-,cs this point of view
was shared by the vast majority of the policy-oriented intellectuals who were beginning to
exercise so much inuence on the Italian economic decision-making process.
7
Italy and the European Union
Italy was one of the original six members of the European Union (EU), which was known
as the European Economic Community (EEC) when it was rst established in :,,, and
was later named the European Community (EC) from :,o, until :,,:. After the rst few
years of Italian membership in the EEC, a general consensus in favor of continuing this
link with France, West Germany, and the Benelux countries had replaced the relative ap-
athy with which large segments of the Italian public had greeted the decision to enter the
Common Market. The European connection was regarded as stimulating and challenging
Italys already burgeoning industrial economy and providing enlarged markets for Italian
products. It also provided employment opportunities for Italian workers in Northern Eu-
rope and thus eased Italys labor surplus and unemployment problem. And nally, Italys
poorer regions (the south and the islands) received a good deal of assistance from EEC
agencies.
There were also some powerful and compelling political reasons why many Italians,
especially those who wanted to modernize and reform their country, gave solid support to
the ambitious programs being formulated in Brussels. And these political motives have
became paramount now that Italy has attained prosperity and no longer needs economic
assistance to the same degree as in the past. First, membership in the EU gives Italian pol-
icymakers a sense of belonging to a larger and more powerful entity and of being accepted
as having a vital role to play in the building of a new Europe. International recognition
and prestige enhances their status. Second, many Italians see membership in a united Eu-
338 italy
rope as a kind of ideal goal to compensate for the perceived backwardness and corruption
of their own political and administrative system. Finally (and this factor has become in-
creasingly salient), EU obligations furnish Italian political leaders with convenient lever-
age for demanding domestic reforms and rigorous stabilization measures to enable Italy
to fulll its duties as a member of the EU.
8
The Italian government loyally accepted some of the more onerous side effects of EC
obligations in the past and continues to do so with the EU today. EC policies hurt south-
ern agriculture and compelled the shutdown of a number of unprotable steel mills,
which the Italian public sector was enjoined from subsidizing any longer. The enlarge-
ment of the EC, admitting South European competitors like Spain and Portugal, was ac-
tually sponsored by the Italian government. So Italy played the role of a constructive and
public-spirited member of the EC, always ready to sacrice its own short-run interests for
the greater good of Western Europe as a whole. However, while the Italian government
displayed a very cooperative attitude on major issues, it was somewhat laggard in follow-
ing through on its ambitious commitments, in implementing EC regulations and in en-
acting legislation to fulll the terms of EC directives. This legal and administrative delin-
quency reected the archaic and obstructionist character of Italian parliamentary and
bureaucratic institutions.
The Single European Act of :,o, the Maastricht treaty of :,,:, and the EUs deci-
sion to press ahead toward the adoption of a common monetary policy and currency once
again presented Italy with some weighty tasks to undertake. Certain convergence criteria
were laid down by the protocols attached to the Maastricht treaty. In order to be admitted
to be part of the single EU currency (the euro), a member state should (among other less
specic requirements) have an annual public decit approaching , percent or less of GDP,
a national debt approaching oc percent or less of GDP, and an ination rate below cer-
tain clearly dened limits. Also, the central bank of the member state had to be indepen-
dent of direct government control. The performance of member states in meeting their
obligations under the Maastricht treaty was to be monitored by the Commission of the
EU on an annual basis, and noncompliance was to be publicized. To meet these conver-
gence criteria, and to continue to meet them in the future, the Italian government would
have to sacrice its ability to devaluate its way out of a serious recession.
9
This was auster-
ity with a vengeance.
The Prodi cabinet of :,,o, accepted the mission of making signicant progress to-
ward meeting the convergence criteria. By mid-:,,, Prodi had succeeded in his goal: sev-
eral of the convergence criteria had been met (including the prescribed reduction of the
annual decit), and moderate but satisfactory progress had been made toward reducing
the national debt. As a result, Italy was admitted to participation in the monetary union.
However, in order to obtain the support he needed from the extreme leftist PRC, Prodi
had to rely on increases in taxation to pay most of the cost of conforming to the conver-
gence criteria: he did not feel prepared to defy the PRC by tackling welfare or pension re-
form. In order to appease his leftist allies, he was compelled to incur the displeasure of the
center-rightespecially the Northern League, but also, to a lesser degree, Forza Italia!
10
Once again, then, the Italian government has successfully played the European card
as a means of dragooning the Italian economy and the Italian body politic into greater
progress by conjuring up an external threat: Italian exclusion from the inner circle of the
EU. Both the DAlema and Amato cabinets were committed to a continuation of Prodis
policies of conforming to EU guidelines. With Romano Prodi serving as the newly desig-
nated president of the EU Commission, and with two Italians (Emma Bonino and Mario
Monti) serving on the Commission as unusually active and prestigious members, Italys
status in the new Europe seems to be quite secure.
However, this victory has its downside. Support for Italys compliance with EU
guidelines is no longer as strong as it was.
11
The Northern League, representing the thriv-
ing but competitively embattled medium and small business sector in northern and
northeastern Italy, has been turned off by the center-lefts decision to saddle the middle-
class taxpayer with the lions share of the cost for Italys adhesion to the Economic and
Monetary Union (EMU). Its representatives have been the sole Italians in the European
Parliament to vote against the euro. Moreover, polls indicate that negative attitudes to-
ward the euro are also rising among northern industrial workers. Italys adoption of the
euro still commands a majority in the north, but that majority is threatened with erosion
not only because of the economic interests of northern taxpayers but also because of a ris-
ing tide of regional and ethnic consciousness in the north. Moreover, the rest of the cen-
ter-rightthe National Alliance and especially Forza Italia! is showing signs of disaf-
fection with the way the EMU mission is being nanced. Forza Italia! s gains in the
European parliamentary elections of :,,, and regional elections in April :ccc and its vic-
tory in the national election of May :cc: are clearly straws in the wind.
A more serious problem looms ahead. Who can predict what the eventual costs of
Italys entry into the EMU will be? As some observers point out, that bill has yet to be
paid in full.
12
With a population that is likely to decline in the near future and to have a
sharp increase in the percentage of senior citizens, Italy needs to have a drastic reform of
its pension system and its welfare state or costs will skyrocket and annual decits will be-
gin to climb once more. So far, the Italian government has not really gotten at the roots of
this problem, but has relied primarily on quick-x tax increases.
With Italy in the EMU, unemployment in the south may increase beyond its present
unacceptable level of over :c percent. EMU obligations are likely to require that the pub-
lic sector of the Italian economy be privatized more speedily and that tens of thousands of
its employees be dismissed. They are likely to prescribe signicant reductions in the num-
ber of civil servants. The south, which relies very heavily on these two sources of employ-
ment, would be especially hard hit. And given the nancial and monetary restraints im-
posed by the EU, the Italian government could not give its depressed areas the emergency
economic aid they would need. Thus, while the northern problem is the center of atten-
tion today, the southern problem may take center stage in hard times.
The Question of Institutional Reform
Numerous Italian politicians have raised the question whether Italys political institutions
should be altered to enable the government to develop a more coherent set of policies
based on a rm mandate.
340 italy
One such proposal would be to emulate the French quasi-presidential system. A pop-
ularly elected chief executive might be better able to dominate parliament and coordinate
his own cabinet. An electoral law based on single-member districts with election by ab-
solute majority, or a runoff election if the threshold was not reached, might force the ma-
jor parties to combine their forces (as in France) and might bring about rm parliamen-
tary majorities such as those attained by the Gaullists in the :,ocs or by the Socialists in
:,:. This type of proposal (generally championed by Berlusconi and the center-right) has
aroused considerable opposition on the part of the center-left. It is feared that, given Ital-
ian political traditions, the system might produce an Italian reincarnation of Mussolini
rather than an Italian de Gaulle or an Italian Mitterrand. On the other hand, the idea of
adopting a French-style system of single-member districts with runoff elections is resisted
by the small- and medium-sized parties. They are afraid that larger parties such as the
PDS and Forza Italia! might dominate electoral alliances promoted by a French-type
runoff system. There is no assurance, then, that the adoption of certain French constitu-
tional procedures would result in a duplication of the positive result achieved in France:
the establishment of a strong, stable, democratic executive with a popular mandate and
(usually) a rm majority in parliament.
Others want to reform the present parliamentary system by bolstering the power of
the prime minister and the cabinet. Supporters of this goal are often attracted by those
features of the German system that would strengthen the prime minister and his cabinet
and reinforce the dominant party at the expense of the smaller parties in the system.
Some would like to adopt the German constructive vote of no condence, which would
make it impossible for Parliament to overthrow a cabinet except by a resolution approved
by an absolute majority of the members of either chambera resolution that would
specically designate the outgoing prime ministers successor. Some have also suggested
reducing the number of parties in the Italian parliament by adopting something similar
to the German ,-percent rule, which permits a party to benet from proportional repre-
sentation in Bundestag elections only if it carries three single-member districts or polls ,
percent of the total vote. A -percent rule was applied in Italy by the :,,, electoral law
governing elections to the Chamber of Deputies. It required a party to obtain percent of
the votes in order to obtain a proportional share of the seats reserved for party lists elected
by PR (about one fourth of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies were covered by this
provision). It did have the effect of reducing the number of parties in Parliament some-
what; but its effect was diluted by the formation of interparty alliances for the capture of
single-member districtsalliances in which some splinter parties were allotted a quota of
seats by their more powerful allies.
As matters stand today, neither a presidential nor a strengthened parliamentary
model has enough solid support in parliament to guarantee its adoption in the face of
sharp partisan opposition. Adoption would be rendered doubly arduous by the fact that
most reform proposals would need to be passed as constitutional amendments. It may
even be politically unfeasible to pass a new election law replacing the mind-blowing
statute now in force.
When the Prodi center-left cabinet came to power in :,,o, it prepared a bill provid-
ing that a bicameral Parliamentary Commission be set up to formulate and submit to
parliament a project to reform the constitution. This Commission, referred to in the Ital-
ian media as the Bicameral, was to draw up a nal draft of its recommendations and lay it
before the Chamber of Deputies. The project was to be discussed by each chamber and
if passed by an absolute majority of each chambersubmitted to the voters for their ap-
proval in a referendum. The bill creating the Bicameral was approved by parliament on ::
January :,,;. The Bicameral, chaired by DAlema (leader of the PDS, who became prime
minister in October :,,), submitted a nal draft of its project to parliament on No-
vember :,,;.
The reform proposals constituted a mixed bag, the products of tension and compro-
mise between center-left and center-right. The president was to be elected by popular
vote for a six-year term and was to have some power in the elds of defense and foreign
affairs: a semipresidential reform modeled on the French Fifth Republic and representing
a concession to the center-right viewpoint. On the other hand, as a concession to the cen-
ter-left, the prime minister, selected by the president, would have the power to dismiss
cabinet members, and would be subject to removal from ofce only by an absolute ma-
jority of the Chamber of Deputies: the constructive vote of no condence employed in
the German parliamentary system. Both houses of parliament were to have a reduced
number of members; and the Chamber of Deputies was to become stronger than the Sen-
ate, with sole power to remove the prime minister and with nal power to decide whether
certain types of bills were to be enacted into law. A rather odd form of federalism was to
be established, with provinces and communes receiving constitutional recognition and
thus being in a position to challenge regional supremacy.
After extensive discussion in parliament, the project foundered, when Berlusconi,
disappointed by his failure to obtain agreement on a far-reaching reform of the judiciary,
withdrew his support. In June :,,, Forza Italia! announced it was no longer backing the
Bicamerals project. Institutional reform would have to wait for more consensual times.
13
An Uncertain Future
At the turn of the millennium, the future of the Italian polity is difcult to predict. De-
spite its elements of strength, Italian democracy is undergoing an unprecedented crisis. In
many ways, it is the same crisis confronting other Western democracies: public unrest
over widespread corruption and over an increasingly depressing long-term economic out-
look is breeding alienation and intransigence. It takes on particularly dramatic dimen-
sions in Italy, however, where corruption is more pervasive and blatant than elsewhere in
the West, and where the economy rests on shakier ground than in other industrial
democracies. A amboyant manifestation of regional protest against corruption and
against alleged colonialists in Rome occurred in September :,,o when the leader of the
Northern League, Umberto Bossi, symbolically declared the creation of a separate state
of Padania stretching north of the Po River. Bossis theatrical efforts to proclaim regional
independence prompted counterdemonstrations elsewhere in Italy and were promptly de-
nounced as illegal by then-President Scalfaro and Prime Minister Dini. Despite a subse-
quent decline in electoral strength, the Northern League continues to reect a basic de-
342 italy
cline in the legitimacy of the Italian statenot just the Italian political system or the gov-
ernment of the dayin the eyes of a sizable minority of its people.
Italys new political elites are challenged both to legitimize their authority and to
tackle the arduous task of ensuring Italys continued compliance with the convergence
criteria for membership in economic and monetary union (EMU) within the European
Union. They must cope with whatever political crises such compliance or a slump in the
global economy may cause. While meeting these challenges, they must also consider the
desirability and feasibility of constitutional changes, if indeed consensus can be reached
on any such changes. Meanwhile, the Italian political systemits institutions, political
parties, and new governing elitesremains in a state of transition and uncertainty.
Whether Berlusconis electoral victory in :cc: will prove a decisive turning point remains
to be seen.
Notes
:. See, for example, Sidney Tarrow, Italy: Crisis, Crises, or Transition? in Italy in Transition: Conict and
Consensus, ed. Peter Lange and Sidney Tarrow (London: Frank Cass, :,c), :oo,. See also Norman Ko-
gan, A Political History of Italy: The Postwar Years (New York: Praeger, :,,), chap. ::.
:. Kogan, A Political History of Italy, ,:,. By :,;,, there was one automobile in Italy for every ,. people.
,. See Vincent della Sala, Hollowing Out and Hardening the State: European Integration and the Italian
Economy, in Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics, ed. Martin Bull and Martin Rhodes (London: Frank
Cass, :,,;), :,, at :::;; Maurizio Ferrera, The Uncertain Future of the Italian Welfare State, in Bull
and Rhodes, :,:, at :,;; and Dermot McCann, European Integration and Explanations of Regime
Change in Italy, Mediterranean Politics , (autumn :,,): ;,: at ;,,.
. See The Flawed Renaissance: A Survey of the Italian Economy, The Economist, :; February :,, special
insert, ,,.
,. Ibid., ,, :c. See also Until the Fat Lady Sings: A Survey of Italy, The Economist, :o June :,,,, special in-
sert, ,:: at :,.
o. On the position of the various actors vis--vis austerity, see della Sala, Hollowing Out and Hardening
the State, in Bull and Rhodes, :o:;; Stephen Hellman, The Italian Left after the :,,o Elections, in
Italian Politics: The Center-Left in Power, ed. Roberto DAlimonte and Daviv Nelken (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, :,,;), ,:c: at ,o,,; Luciano Bardi and Martin Rhodes, Introduction: Mapping the Fu-
ture, in Italian Politics: Mapping the Future, ed. Luciano Bardi and Martin Rhodes (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, :,,), ::,, at :,,:; Now for a Party?: Italys Troublesome Trade Unions, The Economist,
April :,,, o:.
;. See Claudio M. Radaelli, Networks of Expertise and Policy Change in Italy, South European Society and
Politics , (autumn :,,): ::: at ,.
. See Kogan, A Political History of Italy, :,:,,; Frederic Spotts and Theodor Wieser, Italy: A Difcult
Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,o), :,,,o, :;:; and Christopher Tugendhat,
Making Sense of Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, :,), :co.
,. See della Sala, :c::.
:c. See James I. Walsh, The Uncertain Path to Monetary Union, in Bardi and Rhodes, Italian Politics,
,,::c; Charlemagne: Prodis Prayer, The Economist, : January :,,, ,; Burning While Rome Fid-
dles: Italys Budget Disaster, The Economist, , April :,,;, o;; Italys Back and Eurogeld: Italys
Government Restored, The Economist, : October :,,;, :,, ,:.
::. See Roberto Borcio, LUnione in Italia: chi ha paura delleuro, Il Mulino ; (MayJune :,,): ,,,,.
::. See Claudio M. Radaelli, Beyond Charlemagnes Europe: A Sub-National Examination of Italy within
the EMU, Regional and Federal Studies (summer :,,): ,,:.
:,. See Carlo Fusaro, The Politics of Constitutional Reform in Italy: A Framework for Analysis, South Eu-
ropean Society & Politics , (autumn :,,): ,;; Funeral March? Italys Constitutional Flop, The Econ-
omist, o June :,,, ,; and Hard Cop, Soft Cop: The Politics of Italian Reform, The Economist, No-
vember :,,;, ,,,o, ,,.
For Further Reading
ABERBACH, JOEL D., ROBERT D. PUTNAM, AND BERT A. ROCKMAN. Bureaucrats and Politicians in
Western Democracies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, :,:.
ALLUM, P.A. Italy: Republic Without Government? New York: Norton, :,;,.
BARDI, LUCIANO, AND MARTIN RHODES, eds. Italian Politics: Mapping the Future. Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, :,,.
BARNES, SAMUEL H. Party Democracy: Politics in an Italian Socialist Federation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, :,o;.
BARZINI, LUIGI. The Italians. New York: Bantam, :,o.
BELLONI, FRANK P., AND DENNIS C. BELLER, eds. Faction Politics: Political Parties in Comparative Per-
spective. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio Press, :,;.
BLACKMER, DONALD L.M., AND SIDNEY G. TARROW, eds. Communism in Italy and France. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,;,.
BULL, MARTIN, AND MARTIN RHODES, eds. Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics. London: Frank Cass,
:,,;.
BURNETT, STANTON H., AND LUCA MANTOVANI. The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and
the Overthrow of Italys First Republic. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleeld, :,,.
CACIAGLI, MARIO, AND DAVID I. KERTZER, eds. Italian Politics: The Stalled Transition. Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, :,,o.
CASSESE, SABINO. Is There a Government in Italy? Politics and Administration at the Top. In Presidents
and Prime Ministers, ed. Richard Rose and Ezra N. Suleiman, :;::c:. Washington, D.C.: American Enter-
prise Institute, :,c.
DALIMONTE, ROBERTO, AND DAVID NELKEN, eds. Italian Politics: The Center-Left in Power. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview, :,,;.
DIANI, MARIO. Green Networks: A Structural Analysis of the Italian Environmental Movement. Edinburgh: Ed-
inburgh University Press, :,,,.
DI PALMA, GIUSEPPE. Surviving without Governing: The Italian Parties in Parliament. Berkeley: University
of California Press, :,;o.
FRIED, ROBERT D. The Italian Prefects: A Study in Administrative Politics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
sity Press, :,o,.
GALLI, GIORGIO, AND ALFONSO PRANDI. Patterns of Political Participation in Italy. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, :,;c.
GREW, RAYMOND. Italy. In Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States, ed. Raymond
Grew. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,;.
KOGAN, NORMAN. A Political History of Italy: The Postwar Years. New York: Praeger, :,,.
LANGE, PETER, AND SIDNEY TARROW, eds. Italy in Transition: Conict and Consensus. London: Frank
Cass, :,c.
LA PALOMBARA, JOSEPH. Democracy Italian Style. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,;.
. Interest Groups in Italian Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,o.
LOW-BEER, JOHN R.. Protest and Participation: The New Working Class in Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, :,;.
PASQUINO, GIANFRANCO, AND PATRICK MCCARTHY, eds. The End of Postwar Politics in Italy: The
Landmark :)): Elections. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,,.
PUTNAM, ROBERT D. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, :,,,.
. The Beliefs of Politicians: Ideology, Conict and Democracy in Britain and Italy. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, :,;,.
RANNEY, AUSTIN, AND GIOVANNI SARTORI, eds. Eurocommunism: The Italian Case. Washington, D.C.:
American Enterprise Institute, :,;.
SANI, GIACOMO. The Political Culture of Italy: Continuity and Change. In The Civic Culture Revisited,
ed. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, :;,,:. Boston: Little, Brown, :,c.
TARROW, SIDNEY. Between Center and Periphery: Grassroots Politicians in Italy and France. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, :,;;.
. Peasant Communism in Southern Italy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,o;.
VANNICELLI, PRIMO. Italy, NATO, and the European Community. Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Interna-
tional Affairs, Harvard University, :,;.
344 italy
WEINBERG, LEONARD. The Transformation of Italian Communism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction,
:,,,.
WILLIS, F. ROY. Italy Chooses Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, :,;:.
ZARISKI, RAPHAEL. Italy: The Politics of Uneven Development. Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden, :,;:.
ZUCKERMAN, ALAN S. The Politics of Faction: Christian Democratic Rule in Italy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, :,;,.
Chapter 21
The Context of Swedish Politics
SINCE AT LEAST the mid-:,,cs, Sweden has fascinated many outside observers. Some
commentators have enthusiastically praised Swedens economic and social achievements
as a middle way between competitive capitalism and state socialism and as a model for
the world.
1
Others, ranging from skeptical conservatives to radical socialists, have criti-
cized the centralization of political and economic power in the hands of public ofcials,
unions, and/or an alleged governing class made up of a small group of wealthy capital-
ists.
2
These diametrically opposed assessments underscore Swedens singularity in com-
parison with more familiar capitalist democracies such as Britain, France, Germany, and
the United States.
Sweden has undeniably attained one of the worlds highest standards of living and
most fully developed welfare systems. At the same time, twentieth-century economic and
social reforms have resulted in an extraordinarily high rate of taxation and pervasive ten-
dencies toward bureaucratization. Swedens political parties and organized interest groups
have responded with different strategies of policy modication and system change. The
result is an ongoing struggle to redene fundamental tenets of the Swedish model of
advanced industrial society.
In this and following chapters, I describe basic historical, contextual, institutional,
party, and group characteristics of modern Sweden. Analytically, my principal objective is
to assess Swedens status with respect to the distinction that Lawrence D. Brown draws
between breakthrough politics and a more restrictive form of rationalizing politics. By
breakthrough politics, Brown means government initiatives to expand the scope of public
commitment in response to socioeconomic need. By rationalizing politics, in contrast, he
means the attempts by public ofcials to solve evident problems of existing government
programs.
Thus, breakthrough politics denotes a strategy of system reform, whereas rationaliz-
ing politics constitutes less ambitious government measures to make public policies
more rational, that is, problem free.
3
The latter approach, Brown contends, character-
izes contemporary American politics and, by implication, earlier policy choices by
Thatcherite Conservatives in the United Kingdom, the Christian Democrats in Ger-
many, and nonpartisan government experts in Italy as well.
The empirical test of these contrasting approaches to economic and social manage-
ment in contemporary Sweden involves opposing efforts to reconstitute the Swedish
model in response to domestic and international changes. Can the Social Democrats and
their trade union allies realize their long-term ideological aspirations to achieve an un-
precedented form of economic democracy? Or will key features of the Swedish model be
modied or even abandoned as political and economic elites seek to rationalize political
power and public policy?
Geography, Resources, Population
Sweden is geographically part of the northwestern European land mass known as Scandi-
navia, or Norden, located on approximately the same latitude as Alaska and northern
Siberia. The other Nordic states include neighboring Denmark, Norway, and Finland, as
well as more remote Iceland in the North Atlantic.
4
Sweden is the largest of the Scandina-
vian countries, with an area somewhat greater than California. It shares a long, largely
mountainous boundary with Norway to the west and a considerably shorter border with
Finland to the northeast. The rest of Sweden is surrounded by water: the Gulf of Bothnia
to the east, the Baltic Sea to the east and south, and a narrow passageway known as the
Kattegat, which separates Sweden from Denmark to the southwest.
Sweden is a land of rugged beauty. Much of the country is covered by forests and
lakes, with the hills of central and northern Sweden yielding gradually to majestic peaks
along the northwestern border. Approximately :c percent of the land is arable. The rich-
est soil is located in the southernmost province of Skne, although highly productive
farms also surround lakes Vttern and Vnern in the south-central lowlands. A relatively
mild climate, attributed to warming winds from the Atlantic and the indirect effects of
the Gulf Stream, permits good harvests despite a short growing season. Rivers crisscross
the country, providing transportation links and indispensable sources of natural energy.
Two large islands guard the Baltic approaches to Sweden: Gotland, with its ancient
fortress city of Visby, and land, now connected by a modern causeway to the mainland.
Various natural resources serve as the mainstay of Swedens economy. Among them
are large deposits of some of the worlds highest-grade iron ore, timber and timber
by-products, and abundant sh in the coastal waters. Partially compensating for the ab-
sence of domestic supplies of coal and oil are numerous rivers and waterfalls that provide
a plentiful and cheap source of hydroelectric power. The principal other sources of energy
are imported oil and twelve nuclear energy plants.
Swedens population of . million inhabitants is unevenly distributed. Fully , per-
cent of the Swedes live in the southern half of the country, where most industry, services,
and agriculture are concentrated. The remainder of the populace is scattered throughout
the various provinces that make up the forested and mining regions of Norrland. Stock-
holmSwedens capitalis the largest city, with a population of :. million (including
surrounding suburbs). Gteborg, on the west coast, is second, with ;,,occ. Third in size
is Malm, which is located in Skne directly across the Sound from Copenhagen, with
:,,,ccc inhabitants. Other important cities include Uppsala, the site of Scandinavias old-
est university (founded in :;;); Vsters, rebro, Norrkping, and Helsingborg, all of
which are centers of industry, shipping, or both; and the mining town of Kiruna in the
far north.
Similar to the other Scandinavian countries but in contrast to the United Kingdom
348 sweden
and most of continental Europe, Sweden is a highly homogeneous nation. Ethnically,
most Swedes are descendants of the ancient Germanic tribes that settled the region begin-
ning in ;ccc,ccc B.C. The native exceptions are some c,ccc Finnish-speaking Swedes
who live along the Finnish border and approximately ;c,ccc Samis (Lapps) in the north-
ern provinces. Traditionally, many of the latter were nomads, moving with their herds of
reindeer across northern Scandinavia in search of pasture with the annual change of sea-
sons. In recent decades, however, more and more Samis have settled in permanent resi-
dences. In August :,, a cabinet ofcial formally apologized to the Sami people for cen-
turies of economic and social discrimination by mainstream society.
Like Britain, Germany, and France, Sweden also claims a sizable contingent of immi-
grants. In :,, they numbered more than ,::,c, and made up ,., percent of the total
population. Most of the immigrants occupy lower-paid jobs in industry and services. By
far the largest group, the Finns (who constitute :c percent of foreign nationals) are fol-
lowed in descending order by Yugoslavs, Iranians, Bosnians, Norwegians, Turks, and
Danes. Because of their close linguistic, ethnic, and other afnities with the Swedes, the
Danes and the Norwegians are virtually invisible within the majority culture. In contrast,
many Finns and especially the Middle Eastern, southeastern European, and Asian immi-
grants are less well integrated. Most live in semisegregated housing in working-class neigh-
borhoods and suburbs and interact socially far more with members of their own subculture
than with the majority Swedes. Nonetheless, government efforts to provide quality hous-
ing for the immigrants and facilitate instruction in Swedish for the adults during working
hours and bilingual education for their children at school have lessened the degree of social
alienation that many guest workers experience in Britain and elsewhere on the Continent.
Religion and language reinforce national cohesiveness. An overwhelming majority of
Swedes (,c percent) belong to the state Lutheran Church. The remainder are either
members of dissenting Protestant sects, Catholic, or non-Christian. In addition, virtually
all citizens speak Swedish as their common language, albeit with regional variations in
pronunciation (especially among Finno-Swedes and in Skne, which until the seven-
teenth century belonged to Denmark).
Although Swedens ethnic and cultural homogeneity strikes some foreign observers as
monotonous in comparison with more colorfully diverse societies elsewhere in Europe,
the absence of signicant social cleavages has proved an important factor contributing to
distinctive national political traits. Among them is Swedens largely peaceful transition
from an agrarian society governed by a traditional monarchy to todays advanced indus-
trial democracy.
Early Political Development
Swedish political development is a product of both regional and domestic factors of sys-
tem change. From the appearance of the rst hunters and shermen in prehistoric times
until the beginning of the Viking era in the ninth century A.D., Swedish history was vir-
tually indistinguishable from that of the Scandinavian region as a whole. Gradually, how-
ever, separate Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kingdoms began to evolve on the basis of
rudimentary legal codes, recognized political authority in the form of elected monarchs, a
the context of swedish politics 349
sense of national identity shaped by language and an oral tradition of heroic sagas, and
warfare with other Europeans. The advent of Christianity in the ninth century helped do-
mesticate Viking impulses of pillage and conquest and facilitated the incorporation of the
Scandinavian kingdoms into the larger fabric of Western civilization. Christianization
also encouraged incipient processes of modernization within the region as members of
the clergy introduced literacy and codied the legal basis of state authority.
Through conquest, Sweden absorbed present-day Finland in the thirteenth century.
Domestically, feudal estates similar to those elsewhere in Europe, which consisted of a
landed aristocracy, the clergy, and farmers, gradually evolved. By the fteenth century, a
fourth estate of urban burghers (borgare) had emerged as well. Unlike later develop-
ments in Russia and even neighboring Denmark, however, the independence of the farm-
ers, which was rooted in their ownership of land, prevented the emergence of serfdom in
Sweden. Thus, each estate retained its corporate autonomy.
The three Scandinavian kingdoms were united temporarily under Danish domi-
nance in :,,;. In subsequent decades, the more numerous Swedes became increasingly re-
sentful of their Danish rulers. Representatives of the nobility and the borgare undertook
an early move toward Swedish independence when they convened Swedens rst parlia-
ment (Riksdag) in :,, to select a military commander. Full rebellion ensued in :,:: when
peasants, miners, and nobles joined in an armed uprising in response to a number of
punitive acts by the Danes. Their efforts succeeded, and in :,:, the Riksdag unanimously
elected the leader of the rebellion, Gustav Vasa, Swedens king. As Gustavus I, the youth-
ful monarch centralized political and administrative authority in Stockholm and pro-
claimed Swedens break with Catholicism in support of the Protestant Reformation in :,c.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, successive kings and their armies
wrested sovereignty over Skne and other southwestern provinces from Denmark and es-
tablished a formidable Baltic empire. The most important of Swedens heroic monarchs
was Gustavus II Adolphus, who reigned from :o:: to :o,:. Under his energetic leadership,
Sweden extended its boundaries eastward and southward at the expense of both Russia
and Poland and intervened decisively in the Thirty Years War (:o:). To pursue Swe-
dens wartime exploits more effectively, Gustavus Adolphus and his advisers further cen-
tralized state authority by reorganizing the Riksdag as a four-estate parliament formally
representing the nobility, clergy, borgare, and farmers. Through a series of taxation and -
nancial reforms, the government also encouraged economic development and the growth
of Stockholm, Gteborg, and other urban centers.
Defeat at the hands of Russia in :;c, marked the beginning of an extended period of
territorial retrenchment that culminated in Russias annexation of Finland in :c,. The
victorious anti-Napoleonic coalition sought to compensate Sweden for the latter loss by
transferring control over Norway from Denmark to Swedish authorities in ::. Norways
peaceful bid for independence in :,c, reduced Sweden to its present boundaries.
Democratization and Industrialization
From independence through the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden experienced successive consti-
tutional cycles that oscillated between extremes of monarchical and parliamentary su-
350 sweden
premacy. Defeat by Russia prompted a palace coup against the last of the despotic mon-
archs in :c,, resulting in the adoption of a new constitution that institutionalized shared
authority between the king and the four-estate Riksdag. The outcome was broadly based
elite consensus on constitutional arrangements comparable to the Glorious Revolution in
England in :o. Members of parliament elected Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, a French mar-
shal, regent in ::c. He served as king from :: until his death in :.
The diffusion of liberal political doctrines during the rst half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, coupled with the spread of industry and the advent of social democracy during the
second half, brought about Swedens piecemeal democratization. Liberal demands to trans-
form the archaic four-estate parliament into a more modern representative body resulted
in the introduction of a bicameral Riksdag in :o,oo. Popular agitation for more sweep-
ing political reforms followed in the wake of industrialization, which began in the :,cs
and reached takeoff proportions in the :,cs.
Out of industrialization arose an organized labor movement and the Social Demo-
cratic Workers Party (SAP), founded in :,. Together, the Liberals and the Social Dem-
ocrats advocated an extension of the right to vote and the introduction of a parliamentary
form of government. Conservative leaders at rst resisted, but, acknowledging the in-
evitable, they conceded manhood suffrage in exchange for the introduction of propor-
tional representation in the Great Compromise of :,c;,. This agreement codied a
new elite consensus on fundamental political principles comparable to the constitutional
settlement of :c,.
The Liberals and the Social Democrats established a parliamentary form of govern-
ment, modeled on the British pattern, when they formed a majority coalition in :,:;.
The coalition partners proceeded to introduce universal suffrage in :,:, which was rati-
ed by constitutional amendments in :,:,::, as the nal major step in Swedens democ-
ratization. Subsequent constitutional revisions have rened but not substantially modi-
ed the historic achievements of :,c;::.
Political Culture: Constants and Change
Swedens evolutionary process of system change during the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies is both cause and effect of a political culture that afrms traditional values and si-
multaneously endorses efforts at political creativity. Linking these attributes is a willing-
ness among political actors to seek compromise solutions to partisan disagreements.
The most important traditional element inherent in Swedish political culture is a
deeply ingrained respect for constitutionalism and law. Among Swedens oldest historical
documents are legal codes that served to limit kingly power and prescribe procedures for
settling private disputes. Indeed, as Dankwart Rustow observes, an ancient Swedish adage
proclaims: Land skall med lag byggas (The country shall be built with law).
5
Shared re-
spect for orderly legal procedures among legislative, administrative, and military ofcials
underlay the restoration of constitutional government in :c, and has served as a power-
ful stimulus for regulating conict within the political system and on the labor market in
the intervening years.
Associated with diffuse support for government by law is elite-mass veneration of es-
tablished political institutions. The Riksdag dates from the fteenth century and the
monarchy from the sixteenth. As they do in British custom, important monarchical occa-
sions serve as unifying symbols of national identity and pride. These range from annual
ceremonies opening the Riksdag and honoring Nobel Prize recipients to intermittent
royal marriages, births, and funerals. Other institutions that have proven their worth over
time are similarly valued, including the ofce of the parliamentary ombudsman (a form
of legislative watchdog) and Swedens decentralized form of public administration (both
of which are discussed in the next chapter).
Respect for law and traditional institutions by no means translate into resistance to
system change. On the contrary, receptivity to institutional reform and policy innovation
stands out as a third basic tenet of Swedish political culture. Legal codes have been con-
tinually revised to meet changing political, economic, and social conditions, just as both
the Riksdag and the monarchy have undergone profound transformation in the course of
democratization. In each instance, reforms were products of group demands to revise ex-
isting structures and government policies advanced variously by Liberals, Conservatives,
farmers, Social Democrats, and others.
That reform aspirations did not spark violent social confrontations comparable to
events in France, Germany, and Russia reects, nally, shared values of moderation and
pragmatism. These attributes of Swedens acclaimed politics of compromise are rooted
in diverse factors. Among them are cultural-ethnic homogeneity; a historical pattern of
collaboration among members of the medieval estates; the absence of oppressive govern-
ment measures directed against the advocates of reform; and responsible behavior on the
part of Liberal, Social Democratic, and trade union ofcials. A willingness among key po-
litical and economic actors to seek compromise solutions to partisan disputes signicantly
facilitated the constitutional settlements of :c,, :o,oo, and :,c;,, as recounted ear-
lier. In more recent decades, party and interest-group leaders have similarly acted on tra-
ditional values of moderation and pragmatism to achieve consensus on successive eco-
nomic, social, and constitutional initiatives, as is explained below.
Swedens compromising style of politics has not precluded recurrent class or political
conict. Employers and public ofcials linked forces to disperse striking workers in a ma-
jor local dispute in :;, and on a national scale in :,c,. In more recent decades, nonso-
cialist spokesmen have vehemently opposed postwar Social Democratic initiatives to es-
tablish supplementary pensions, extend worker rights, and introduce a compulsory
system of wage-earner funds, as is discussed below. Nonetheless, a willingness among po-
litical and economic elites to accept reforms (at least ultimately) rather than sabotage
them through obstructionist tactics remains a central hallmark of Swedish political culture.
Nor have prevailing traditions of moderation and restraint precluded individual acts
of violence, as tragically demonstrated by the assassination in February :,o of Prime
Minister Olof Palme. Chair of the Social Democratic Party and head of government from
:,o, to :,;o and after September :,:, Palme was gunned down by an assailant late one
evening on a street in Stockholm as he and his wife were returning home by foot from a
movie. In late :,, the police arrested a native Swede previously convicted of murder as a
suspect in the slaying. He was later tried and acquitted for lack of evidence.
352 sweden
Neutrality and Internationalism
A key instance of political consensus in Sweden is elite-mass endorsement of the countrys
foreign policy of neutrality. Since ::, Sweden has successfully avoided involvement in
successive European wars. National attempts to escape invasion during World War II
failed in Denmark, Norway, and Finland, but not in Sweden. As a result, Swedish leaders
resolved to maintain a voluntary policy of nonalignment during the postwar period de-
spite decisions by Iceland, Norway, and Denmark to join the North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
nization (NATO). Finland, too, remains nonaligned within the Nordic region, albeit on
the basis of a state treaty with the former Soviet Union that bound the country not to un-
dertake measures detrimental to the Soviets.
Sweden enforces its neutrality by maintaining a strong national defense. In :,,o the
government spent :. percent of Swedens GNP on military expenditures, with principal
emphasis on air and naval defense. This percentage was lower than that of the United
States (,.o percent) and the United Kingdom (,.c percent), but it was approximately
equal to that in most other advanced industrial democracies. Swedens per capita defense
expenditures in :,,o were approximately $o,c, compared to $,:c in the United States,
$oc in France, $,oc in the United Kingdom, $,,c in Italy, $,:c in Canada, and $,;c in
Germany.
6
Because of a diminished security threat in the Baltic region following the col-
lapse of the former Soviet Union, the Swedish government announced in October :,,,
that it would reduce military expenditures by :c percent through :cc:.
Government ofcials further underscored Swedens neutrality by carefully circum-
scribing economic cooperation with other European nations. In :,oc Sweden joined the
European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which is strictly an intergovernmental organi-
zation designed to promote industrial free trade among its member states,
7
but studiously
refused in the early :,;cs to follow Britain, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway in applying
for membership in the more ambitious European Economic Community (EEC). How-
ever attractive the economic advantages of tariff-free access to the EEC market for the
countrys industrial and agricultural exporters, cabinet spokesmen declared that member-
ship in the Community would undermine the international credibility of Swedens policy
of neutrality by potentially restricting the governments freedom of action in the event of
war. Hence, Sweden negotiated a more restricted industrial free-trade agreement in :,;:
that did not formally bind the nation to political or economic decisions by the EEC.
Norway negotiated a similar agreement after a narrow majority of voters rejected a pro-
posed membership treaty in a popular referendum. The following year, Britain, Ireland,
and Denmark formally joined the European Community (EC).
The subsequent demise of communism in Eastern and Central Europe and the vir-
tual end of the Cold War, however, prompted national leaders to reconsider Swedens rela-
tions with the European Community. After a majority of the members of parliament
voted in December :,,c to endorse full membership in the European Community, the
cabinet submitted Swedens application in :,,:. The European Commission issued a fa-
vorable position on the Swedish application (along with parallel applications by Austria
and neighboring Finland and Norway) in :,,:, and government ofcials negotiated a
treaty of accession the following year. A majority of ,:.: percent of Swedish voters en-
dorsed the membership treaty in a national referendum on :, November :,,, and Swe-
den ofcially joined the European Union (EU) on : January :,,,.
8
Leaders of the princi-
pal political parties have afrmed that Sweden will maintain its established policy of neu-
trality in wartime even as a full member of the EU.
Sweden couples its policy of nonalignment with strong support for the United Na-
tions and other international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the
World Trade Organization (WTO). Swedens internationalism is rooted in a blend of eco-
nomic self-interest and political idealism. Economically, Sweden is highly dependent on
trade with other industrial nations and Third World countries for continued growth and
afuence. In :,,, for instance, exports accounted for nearly ,;., percent of the nations
gross domestic product (GDP). Swedens principal trading partners are fellow member-
states of the EU (notably Germany, the United Kingdom, and Denmark) and North
America.
Politically, the Swedes and other Scandinavians have afrmed collective security and
principles of international economic and social cooperation since the founding of the
League of Nations in the :,:cs. In the postWorld War II period, all the Scandinavian
states have contributed men and material to a variety of UN peacekeeping operations in
Africa and the Middle East. Dag Hammarskjld, a distinguished civil servant whose fa-
ther was Swedish prime minister during World War I, served as Secretary-General of the
United Nations from :,,, until his untimely death in a plane crash in Africa in :,o:.
Development of the Welfare State
An object of both widespread support and partisan dissent in Sweden is the nations vast
array of welfare services. The development of the Swedish welfare state is primarily associ-
ated with the Social Democrats. With the support of the Agrarians and occasionally the
Liberals, they sponsored legislation from the mid-:,,cs onward that provided for a volun-
tary program of unemployment insurance, an improved national pension system, school
lunch subsidies, and public assistance to individuals and families in need. World War II
interrupted the social reform movement, but by the late :,cs the Social Democrats re-
sumed their efforts to provide minimum standards of collective social security. Postwar
legislation included the introduction of compulsory sickness insurance (:,;), improved
basic retirement benets (:,), a new system of supplementary pensions based on indi-
vidual earnings (:,,,), and a Law on Social Help (:,,o) that consolidated and extended a
variety of welfare benets. Among the latter are government-nanced maternity care,
quarterly cash allowances to single parents or families with children, and rent subsidies to
those in need.
The cumulative effect of these measures is that all citizens and registered aliens (in-
cluding guest workers) experience an extraordinary degree of social security. Swedes pay
relatively little out of pocket for health care and education and are guaranteed generous
pensions on retirement. Since workers and families whose income falls below minimum
standards receive a variety of government payments to help defray rent and other ex-
penses, a strikingly visible consequence of Swedens comprehensive welfare system is the
354 sweden
virtual absence of urban slums comparable to those in most metropolitan areas in North
America and elsewhere in Western Europe.
To nance their extensive welfare provisions, the Swedes pay one of the highest levels
of taxes in the world (although the tax rate has marginally declined in recent years). As in-
dicated in table ::.:, the per capita tax contribution in :,, in Sweden was the equivalent
of $:,,,;,. This amount was lower than in neighboring Denmark but higher than in
other advanced capitalist democracies. As a percentage of GDP, Swedens tax rate of ,:.c
percent is the highest among OECD member countries.
A majority of the electorate has repeatedly honored the Social Democrats for their
social policy achievements. As indicated in table :,.: (see p. ,o,), the Socialists steadily
increased their share of the popular vote during the :,,cs and :,cs and have achieved an
absolute majority on ve occasions. Since the end of World War II, their electoral
strength has uctuated between a high of ,c., percent in :,o and a low of ,o. percent in
:,,, for a postwar average of ., percent in national elections. Because of their majority
status in parliament, the Social Democrats were able to retain control of the national ex-
ecutive from :,,: to :,;o with virtually no interruption. Since then the Social Democrats
have alternated in power with various nonsocialist governments.
Yet the welfare state is not without its critics. Conservatives and other nonsocialists
have repeatedly attacked both the nations high rate of taxation and bureaucratizing ten-
dencies within the public sector. On the left, radical socialists earlier condemned the So-
cial Democrats for their failure to achieve a socialist society and, more recently, have crit-
icized the majority party for cutbacks in welfare state provisions. These opposing views,
combined with a counteroffensive initiated by the Social Democrats in the :,;cs to ex-
tend worker and union rights, helped set the stage for an intense public debate concern-
ing Swedens political and economic future.
Table 21.1 Comparative Tax Payments, 1998 (in U.S. dollars)
As percentage
Annual per capita of gross domestic
Country tax payment product (GDP)
Sweden 13,973 52.0
Denmark 16,313 49.8
Norway 11,512 43.6
Finland 10,821 46.2
France 10,821 45.2
Germany 9,694 37.0
Italy 8,822 42.7
Canada 7,572 37.4
United Kingdom 8,814 37.2
United States 9,213 28.9
Source: Revenue Statistics of OECD Member Countries (Paris: OECD, 2000), 68, 84.
Notes
:. See, for example, Marquis W. Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way, rev. ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
sity Press, :,;); and Hudson Strode, Sweden: Model for a World (New York: Harcourt, Brace, :,,). Childs
has updated and marginally revised his optimistic assessment in Sweden: The Middle Way on Trial (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,c).
:. For contrasting right vs. left critiques, see Roland Huntford, Sweden: The New Totalitarians (New York:
Stein & Day, :,;:); and Jan Myrdal, Confessions of a Disloyal European (New York: Pantheon, :,o).
,. Lawrence D. Brown, New Policies, New Politics: Governments Response to Governments Growth (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Brookings Institution, :,,), ;.
. Greenland, a self-governing county of Denmark, located off the North Atlantic coast of Canada, is also
culturally and politically a part of Scandinavia.
,. Dankwart A. Rustow, The Politics of Compromise (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,,;), :,o,;.
o. Calculated from data reported in Sveriges ofciella statistik, Statistisk rsbok fr Sverige :ooo (Stockholm,
:ccc), oc:.
;. The other founding members included the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, and
Portugal. Finland and Iceland later joined EFTA.
. An even greater majority of ,; percent similarly endorsed membership in a national referendum in Finland
the same month, but ,:. percent of Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum in November.
356 sweden
France
Germany
Italy
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
,.:
,;.c
:.;
:.,
,:.c
,;.:
,;.
Comparative Tax Payments (as a percentage of GDP, )
Source: OECD, Revenue Statistics of OECD Member Countries (Paris, :ccc), o.
Chapter 22
Where Is the Power?
SWEDENS CONTEMPORARY INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS are the product
of a century and a half of evolutionary political and constitutional change. Whereas the
constitution of :c, provided for a division of power between the king and parliament,
the Riksdag gradually acquired increased competence in the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury as various categories of law become subject to joint rather than royal jurisdiction. In
parallel fashion, members of the kings advisory council (the cabinet) gradually displaced
the monarch as the effective center of executive authority. The prime minister and mem-
bers of the cabinet subsequently became politically accountable to the Riksdag in the
course of Swedens democratization between :,c; and :,::. Swedens contemporary status
as a parliamentary democracy was formally ratied with the adoption of a series of consti-
tutional amendments in :,oo, and a wholly new constitution in :,;,;.
The cabinet and the Riksdag are thus the principal sites of policy initiative and rati-
cation, with the role of the monarch reduced to ceremonial and symbolic functions. Since
Sweden is a unitary rather than a federal state, national and local institutions that are con-
stitutionally subordinate to parliament and the central government exercise other politi-
cal functions.
The Riksdag
From :oo until :,;c, the Riksdag consisted of two houses: a popularly elected second
chamber equivalent to the British House of Commons and a smaller, indirectly elected rst
chamber whose members were chosen by Swedens twenty-four provincial assemblies. Con-
stitutional reforms ratied in :,oo, and implemented in :,;c abolished the bicameral sys-
tem and established in its place a unicameral parliament similar to the national legislatures in
Denmark and Finland. Further changes were incorporated with the adoption of a new In-
strument of Government and Act of Parliament in :,;,;, which went into effect in :,;,.
These documents, which are of equal constitutional weight, dene executive and legislative
functions and the organization of the Riksdag, respectively. The two acts can be amended
only by majority vote by two successive sessions of parliament with an intervening election.
1
The preamble to the Instrument of Government denes the principles of Swedish
parliamentary democracy as follows:
All public power in Sweden emanates from the people. The Swedish democracy is
founded on freedom of opinion and on universal and equal suffrage and shall be
realized through a representative and parliamentary polity and through local
self-government. Public power shall be exercised under the laws.
The rst of these principles is institutionalized in the form of free, competitive elec-
tions to the Riksdag and the nations city and county representative assemblies. Full rights
of suffrage are accorded citizens eighteen years of age and older. Registered aliens also
have the right to vote, but only in local elections. Until the abolition of the previous bi-
cameral parliament, national and city-county elections were held at staggered four-year
intervals. Accompanying the advent of unicameralism in :,;c were constitutional provi-
sions for simultaneous national and local elections every three years. The constitution was
subsequently amended in :,, to reestablish a four-year electoral cycle. Parliamentary
elections are held on the third Sunday in September, unless a dissolution election inter-
venes. In the latter event, Riksdag deputies merely serve out the remainder of the legisla-
tive term rather than constitute a new parliament as is the practice elsewhere in Europe.
The result is that dissolution elections are extremely rare in Sweden; since the advent of
parliamentarianism, the Riksdag has been dissolved only once (in :,,, as recounted below).
Sweden employs a proportional electoral system, dating from the constitutional re-
forms of :,c;,, which utilizes a modied version of the St. Lague method for distribut-
ing seats among contending parties.
2
The nations twenty-four provinces serve as regional
constituencies for the election of the Riksdags ,, deputies. Most of the seats (,:c) are al-
located among the constituencies on the basis of the number of eligible voters and the rel-
ative strength of the parties competing for support in each of them. The remaining thirty-
nine seats are distributed among the parties according to their aggregate percentage of
votes within the country as a whole. The purpose of the latter provision is to compensate
the largest party or parties for the possible loss of seats in individual constituencies and
thereby ensure strict proportionality. To be represented in the Riksdag a party must re-
ceive a minimum of either percent of the national vote or :: percent of the vote in a sin-
gle constituency.
The Riksdag provides the legislative basis for cabinet formation and tenure and
serves as Swedens principal lawmaking body. In its former capacity, the Riksdag elects the
prime minister (statsminister) following each general election. If a government resigns, as
was the case in :,; and :,:, the Riksdag elects a successor prime minister. The Instru-
ment of Government does not require that a candidate receive an absolute majority (as is
true under normal circumstances in, for example, Germany). Instead, a prime minister is
elected if not more than half of the members of the Riksdag vote against him. This fea-
ture of Swedish constitutionalism makes possible the formation of minority governments
in the absence of a majority by a single party or coalition of parties.
Since :,;c, the Riksdag has also been empowered to move a vote of no condence
against an incumbent prime minister and individual cabinet ofcials. Such a motion
must be signed by a tenth of the deputies and approved by an absolute majority. In such
an event, a prime minister or cabinet member would be compelled to resign. To date,
however, no votes of no condence have passed in Sweden.
358 sweden
As in other parliamentary systems, one of the most important functions of the Riks-
dag is to hold the government accountable for its actions and omissions on a day-to-day
basis. For this purpose, Riksdag deputies utilize written as well as oral questions, which
are addressed to cabinet ministers, and the right of general debate. Although party disci-
pline has thus far ensured the survival even of minority cabinets in the face of parliamen-
tary queries and criticism, the various control devices usefully serve as means to extract
information and ofcial justications concerning government policy. The number of
written questions (known as interpellations) averaged :, per year between :,, and :,,,,
while the annual number of oral questions averaged nearly c, during the same period.
3
The Riksdags legislative powers include the exclusive right of taxation and appropri-
ation. In addition, parliament shares authority with the cabinet to propose constitutional
amendments, initiate changes in civil and criminal law, and schedule advisory referen-
dums on major political issues. National referendums were held ve times in the twenti-
eth century on the following legislative proposals: prohibition in :,::, which failed; a
switch from left- to right-hand trafc in :,,,, which also failed but was nonetheless im-
plemented by the Riksdag in :,;;; supplementary pensions in :,,;; nuclear energy in
:,c; and Swedish membership in the European Union in :,,. The latter three measures
are discussed below.
For deliberative purposes, the Riksdag is divided into seventeen standing committees
whose powers of scrutiny and amendment are broadly comparable to those of committees
in the U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag. They include committees on nance,
taxation, agriculture, economic affairs, justice, laws, foreign affairs, defense, the European
Union, social insurance, social welfare, cultural affairs, education, communications, the
labor market, local government, and the constitution. A principal purpose of the latter
committee is to examine the minutes of cabinet meetings to determine whether or not
any member of the government has violated the law. If such proves the case, the commit-
tee on the constitution is authorized to bring legal charges against the offending ofcial
before a special court of impeachment. In practice, the committee has not initiated for-
mal charges against a cabinet member since :,.
All bills, whether submitted by the cabinet or backbench members of the parliament,
are referred to the relevant committee for deliberation. Unlike U.S. congressional prac-
tice, Swedish committees may not pigeonhole (and thereby kill) legislation but must re-
port all bills back to parliament. Their recommendations almost invariably serve as the
basis of legislative enactment.
Riksdag ofcers include a Speaker and three vice-Speakers, all of whom are elected by
majority vote. (In practice, the positions are distributed among the major parties repre-
sented in parliament.) The Speaker and vice-Speakers play a key legislative role by presid-
ing over parliamentary deliberations and determining, in consultation with the chairmen
of the standing committees and four other elected members of parliament, the order in
which bills and committee reports are considered on the oor of the Riksdag. In addition,
the Speaker is empowered under the :,;, constitution to nominate the prime minister
prior to his election by parliament.
The Prime Minister and the Cabinet
The relative signicance of the Riksdag and the cabinet in Swedens policymaking process
varies in relation to the strength of the governments parliamentary backing. During the
:,:cs, when no party or coalition commanded a stable majority, the Riksdag was the
dominant partner. The advent of majority parliamentarianism under Social Democra-
ticAgrarian aegis in :,,:,, marked the beginning of a long-term shift in the balance of
power in favor of the prime minister and his cabinet. More recently, periods of minority
rule under the Social Democrats and later the nonsocialists resulted in the reassertion of
parliamentary inuence during the :,;cs and early :,cs. Because of its direct access to
administrative structures and organized interest groups, however, the cabinet remains the
central source of policy initiative and coordination.
Since :,,:, most Swedish prime ministers have been selected because of their status
as chairs of either the largest party in parliament (the Social Democrats) or the largest
party within a nonsocialist coalition (as was true in :,;o;, :,c:, and :,,:,). Re-
cent exceptions include nonsocialist leaders who held ofce as prime ministers in minor-
ity cabinets in :,;;, and :,:,. Until the constitutional reforms of :,;,;, the king
appointed the prime minister on the advice of party leaders in parliament. Since :,;,, as
previously noted, the Riksdag has elected the prime minister.
The prime minister is primus inter pares among the seventeen or so persons who
make up the cabinet. (The actual number varies from government to government.) Thus,
the prime minister chairs cabinet sessions and is primarily responsible for determining the
broad outlines of government policy. He is also the chief spokesman for cabinet policy
both within and outside parliament. The prime minister is assisted by a deputy with cab-
inet rank, whose task is to coordinate and plan government activities, and a staff of polit-
ical advisers and professional civil servants who make up the royal chancery.
The prime minister selects the members of the cabinet. They may be dismissed by
him or through a vote of no condence by parliament, as described earlier. Ministerial
positions, which correspond in most cases to the standing committees in the Riksdag, in-
clude nance, budgetary affairs, foreign policy, defense, the European Union, justice, so-
cial policy, communications, education, agriculture, interior, labor market, housing, in-
dustry, and interior. The deputy prime minister and three to ve ministers without
portfolio serve as policy generalists with rotating responsibilities.
Each of the designated ministers heads an administrative department that is re-
sponsible primarily for policy formation (including the preparation of the annual bud-
get). Unlike the national ministries in other Western democracies, Swedish departments
are quite limited in size. Typically, they consist of an administrative assistant to the minis-
ter (a state secretary, who in most cases is a high-level civil servant rather than a political
appointee), an ofce manager, a legal adviser, and a relatively small number of civil ser-
vants who handle departmental planning, budgetary proposals, and policy coordination.
The actual implementation of policy is delegated to a decentralized network of adminis-
trative agencies (see later discussion).
Thanks in large measure to its executive authority over the various departments and
administrative agencies, the cabinet plays the central role in Swedens formal policymak-
360 sweden
ing process. Riksdag deputies by no means hesitate to propose legislation on their own
initiative (:,,c: motions in :,,,,), but most private members bills are dismissed in
committee. In contrast, virtually all government proposals (which numbered : in :,,
,,) are duly enacted into law.
4
Its authority to mobilize the resources of Swedens powerful organized interest groups
in the prelegislative stage of parliamentary decisions further enhances the cabinets policy-
making role. Since the nineteenth century, Swedish cabinets have regularly appointed
state commissions (statsutredningar, commonly translated as Royal Commissions) to gather
facts and advise the government on pending legislation. In major questions, such com-
missions characteristically consist of experts representing the important interest groups,
political parties, and relevant administrative agencies. Commission members are usually
very thorough in their work, with their nal recommendations frequently serving as the
basis of the cabinets legislative proposal concerning the issue.
Interest-group viewpoints are also solicited through a consultative process known as
remiss. According to this procedure, ministerial departments invite organized groups and
administrative agencies to comment on pending legislation. A government proposal to
the Riksdag contains a summary of the state commissions report and remiss replies along
with the governments own recommendation for action.
Together, the state commissions and the remiss procedures constitute the formal core
of Swedens version of democratic corporatism as dened in the introduction to this vol-
ume: namely, institutionalized consultative arrangements that permit public ofcials and
representatives of the nations principal interest associations to confer jointly about pend-
ing policy issues. By serving as channels for initiating and/or reviewing important legisla-
tive initiatives, the commissions and the practice of remiss accord organized interest
groups a more direct means to inuence policy outcomes than is true of most Western
democracies.
The Monarch
The reigning monarch in Sweden is Carl XVI Gustav, who was crowned king in Septem-
ber :,;, following the death of his grandfather, King Gustaf VI Adolf. The latter per-
formed residual executive functions dating from the nineteenth century in his constitu-
tional role as chairman of formal cabinet sessions, but even this monarchical prerogative
was deleted with the adoption of the present constitution in :,;,;. A key reason was
lingering Social Democratic resentment of efforts by King Gustaf V Adolf, who had
reigned from :,c; to :,,c, to inuence cabinet policy in Germanys favor during both
world wars. Thus, since :,;,, the monarchs role has been restricted largely to ceremonial
acts, such as presiding over the annual opening of parliament and conferring Nobel prizes
on academic and literary dignitaries.
King Carl XVI Gustav helped ensure the survival of the monarchy through his mar-
riage in :,;o to an attractive West German commoner from Bavaria, who as Queen
Sylvia has charmed even many erstwhile republicans within Social Democratic ranks.
Three children have been born to the royal couple. First in line of succession is Princess
Viktoria Ingrid Alice Desiree, born in :,; as the eldest of two daughters and a son. The
constitution was amended in :,;,: to permit Viktoria, as the rst-born, to succeed her
father as future Swedish monarch. Previously, the constitution had permitted succession
only by male offspring.
Other Institutional Actors
While policymaking authority is concentrated in the hands of the cabinet and parlia-
ment, powers of implementation and enforcement are functionally dispersed among a va-
riety of institutions. They include public administrative bodies, county and local govern-
ment units, state-owned enterprises, the court system, and four ombudsmen.
The Public Administration
Responsible for most policy implementation in Sweden is a decentralized network of cen-
tral administrative boards (centrala mbetsverk) and a dual system of county and munici-
pal government. On the national level, the administrative boards number approximately
eighty. Among the most signicant are the National Board of Health and Welfare, the
National Industrial Board, the Labor Market Board, the National Nuclear Energy Inspec-
tion Board, and the Central Ofce of Statistics. Other important administrative agencies
include the national railways, the postal service, telecommunications, civil defense, and
362 sweden
Queen Silvia, Princess Madeleine, King Carl XVI Gustav, Prince Carl Philip, and Crown Princess Viktoria
attend the Nobel Prize award ceremony, December :ooo. (AP/Wide World Photos)
the court system (see below). Many administrative agencies, especially those dealing with
economic and social policy, maintain regional ofces on the level of county government.
5
Alongside the central administrative boards are several legislative agencies that per-
form important policy tasks as well. They include the Bank of Sweden, which issues cur-
rency and controls the nations supply of money, and the National Debt Ofce, which is
empowered to borrow money in the name of the government and is responsible for ad-
ministering the national debt.
In contrast to the hierarchical structure of public administration in Britain and on
the Continent, Swedens administrative boards and agencies are legally autonomous from
the cabinet and parliament. The present system, which dates from the seventeenth cen-
tury, was established to maximize the rational implementation of public policy. As
Thomas Anton observes: Administrative power was . . . a function of Swedish insistence
that political and administrative decisions were clearly distinct and that the latter could
be made simply by applying law to the facts of a particular case. The administrative
boards . . . were designed to provide such legal judgments, and ofcials were assigned full
authority to make those judgments, free from political interference.
6
Despite their legal autonomy, Swedens administrative agencies are nonetheless sub-
ordinate to the central government and the Riksdag for authoritative policy directives.
Moreover, cabinet ofcials have increasingly relied in recent decades on detailed bud-
getary guidelines as a means to oversee and coordinate day-to-day administration.
Regional and Local Governments
Regional and local governments consist of partially overlapping structures made up of ap-
pointive state county administrative boards and elected county and municipal councils.
Heading the former in each of Swedens twenty-four counties is a provincial governor ap-
pointed by, and therefore responsible to, the cabinet. The elected members of the parallel
county councils designate the fourteen other members of the administrative boards. The
appointive boards supervise regional planning, county employment ofces, worker re-
training programs, environmental protection, and the administration of justice.
Swedens : elected provincial councils and : subordinate rural and municipal as-
semblies are responsible for implementing medical and health care; social welfare; educa-
tion; housing policy; land use; ambulance service; re protection; and cultural, youth,
and athletic policies. The regional administrative agencies, appointive county boards, and
elective councils work closely together in coordinating and implementing their desig-
nated policy assignments.
Growth of the Public Sector
Swedens public sector has grown signicantly in both size and economic importance in
recent decades. From fewer than ,,ccc civil servants at the turn of the century, the num-
ber of public ofcials has increased to approximately :., million out of the countrys
workforce of ., million (nearly c percent of the total). Private consumption accounts
for the lions share of the gross domestic product (, percent in :,,), while public con-
sumption comprises : percent of the total. County and local government expenditures
account for :, percent of expenditures on gross domestic product; the central government
and its administrative agencies expend , percent.
7
Contrary to postwar policies of the British Labour Party and the French Socialists,
Swedens Social Democrats have nationalized very little industry.
8
The Swedish state owns
,c percent or more of shares in only fty-two industrial enterprises and nancial institu-
tions. Although state-owned rms constitute less than :c percent of Swedens overwhelm-
ingly private economy, they accord the national government varying degrees of control
over investments, production, and sales in designated economic sectors. The major eco-
nomic sectors in which the government is sole owner or majority shareholder include var-
ious banks and insurance companies, forestry, home mortgages, the nations waterworks
and canals, and Systembolat (a monopoly controlling the distribution and sale of wine,
liquor, and strong beer).
9
Courts and the Administration of Justice
The Swedish court system dates from legislation originally passed in :;,. Three levels de-
ne its basic structural hierarchy: some ninety-seven district courts of rst instance
(tingsrtter), six intermediate courts of appeal (hovrtter), and a Supreme Court (hgsta
domstolen). Jurisdiction extends in each case to both civil and criminal law.
By far the largest number of cases are settled in the courts of rst instance. In :,,,
for example, the district courts heard o,,,; civil disputes and o:,c, criminal cases. The
courts of appeal, in contrast, reviewed ,,,;; civil appeals and ,c, criminal cases. That
same year, the Supreme Court passed judgment in only :,, cases and rejected ,,c other
appeals.
Judges must have university degrees in legal studies and are appointed by the cabinet.
They are assisted in all criminal and most civil cases on the local level by panels (nmnd)
of lay judges who are elected for six-year terms by the county assemblies. Unlike Anglo-
American juries, the nmnd not only hear evidence and help reach a verdict but also con-
fer with the judge concerning points of law.
The Riksdag has also established various specialized courts to deal with conicts that
arise outside normal civil and criminal jurisdiction. They include the scal courts of ap-
peal, the supreme administrative court, the labor court, and a market court. The purpose
of the latter is to help enforce the Competition Act of :,:, which the Riksdag imple-
mented to prohibit restrictive business practices.
The Ombudsman
A distinctive Swedish institution that serves as an important legislative control device over
administrative behavior is the parliamentary ombudsman (Justitieombudsman, or JO for
short). The ofce was created under the constitution of :c, as a means to prevent the
potential abuse of executive-administrative power. Elected for a four-year term by the
Riksdag, the JO is accorded legal autonomy to investigate internal records of all state
agencies (including the central administrative boards, courts, the military, and county
and local governments) in an effort to determine whether public ofcials are guilty of vi-
364 sweden
olating constitutional or statutory law. A JO may undertake such investigations either on
his own initiative or in response to complaints by individual citizens.
Through the years, the JOs caseload has increased so substantially that the ofce has
been steadily expanded. In :,:, a military ombudsman was added. In :,o the two ofces
were merged and three ombudsmen were established in their place, each with equal legal
competence. A fourth ombudsman was added in :,;o.
In :,,;, the ombudsmen reviewed ,,cc,, most of which are led by private citi-
zens (,,o). The ombudsmen instigated :: investigations on their own volition.
10
Only
a handful of cases ultimately resulted in a formal reprimand or prosecution through the
courts. In :,;,c, for instance, the ombudsmen undertook disciplinary action against
offending ofcials in only o cases while issuing :; milder rebukes and :, public pro-
nouncements. More recent ofcial Swedish statistics no longer contain detailed sum-
maries of JO activities.
Corporatism and Swedish Democracy
The distribution of political power in Sweden thus corresponds to Stein Rokkans concept
of a two-tiered system of decision-making, which he used in the mid-:,ocs to describe
neighboring Norway.
11
The rst tier consists of popularly elected members of the parlia-
ment and the county and municipal assemblies who are responsible for formulating and
ratifying government policy. The second tier of decision makers encompasses representa-
tives of the principal organized interest groups and the public administration who are ac-
corded a recognized policy role through their participation in state commissions and the
remiss consultative procedure.
The sum of these arrangements is a form of democratic corporatism characterized by
institutional openness and broad group participation in the policy process. Coupled with
the strength of the Social Democratic Party and organized labor (described in the follow-
ing chapter), democratic corporatism facilitated efforts by political and group leaders to
sustain a pattern of active system change throughout much of the postwar era.
Notes
:. Four documents constitute the composite Swedish constitution. They include the aforementioned Instru-
ment of Government and the Riksdag Act, as well as the Act of Succession and the Freedom of the Press
Act. They are compiled in English translation in the Swedish Riksdag, Constitutional Documents of Sweden
(Stockholm: Norstedts Tryckeri, :,;,).
:. Under the St. Lagu method of proportional representation, which was adopted in :,,:, the total of the
votes for each party in a given electoral district is divided by a succession of uneven numbers (:., ,, ,,
etc.), and seats are awarded to the highest quotients obtained among the various parties. For a detailed dis-
cussion of Swedish electoral law, see Dankwart A. Rustow, The Politics of Compromise (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, :,,,), ::,:.
,. Statistiska centralbyrn, Statistisk rsbok fr Sverige :ooo (Stockholm, :ccc), ,:,.
. Statistiska centralbyrn, Statistisk rsbok :ooo (Stockholm, :ccc), ,:,. Swedish scholars reported that dur-
ing a single legislative session (:,c:), the cabinet initiated fully :o,::c executive actions. They included
:c, government bills, ,, budgetary and other decrees, ,o,c appeals, and ;,,oc miscellaneous measures
(including administrative appointments). See Bengt Owe Birgersson and Jrgen Westersthl, Den svenska
folkstryrelsen (Stockholm: Liber Frlag, :,:), :;:.
,. Ibid.
o. Thomas J. Anton, Administered Politics: Elite Political Culture in Sweden (Boston/The Hague/London:
Martinus Nijhoff, :,c), ,.
;. Statistiska centralbyrn, Statistiskt rsbok :ccc (Stockholm, :ccc), :,,, :,,.
. Instead, the SAP has relied much more on a combination of scal, monetary, and active labor-market
policies to achieve its economic objectives of continued growth and full employment. In ironic contrast,
the nonsocialist parties nationalized the shipbuilding industry while they were in ofce from :,;o to :,:
in an attempt to salvage the branch in the face of increased international competition. See chapter :.
,. Statistisk rsbok fr Sverige :ooo (Stockholm, :ccc), c, :.
:c. Ibid., ,.
::. Stein Rokkan, Norway: Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism, in Political Oppositions in
Western Democracies, ed. Robert Dahl (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,oo), :c;.
366 sweden
Chapter 23
Who Has the Power?
THE CAPACITY TO PARTICIPATE in policy decisions in Sweden is shared by political
parties, organized interest groups, and administrative elites. Of these diverse political ac-
tors, parties and interest groups have played the key role in initiating systemic reforms as
well as basic policy decisions, including political democratization, the rise of the welfare
state, the extension of worker rights, and ongoing changes in the political management of
the economy. Administrative elites, in contrast, are signicant with respect to policy re-
nement, continuity, and implementation.
Political Parties
From the early part of the twentieth century through most of the :,cs, Sweden sustained
a multiparty system consisting of ve major parties: a small Left Party (formerly the
Communists), the far larger Social Democrats, the Liberals, the agrarian-based Center
Party, and the Moderates (Conservatives). A sixth political movement, known as the En-
vironmentalist Partythe Greens, became in September :, the rst new party to enter
the Riksdag in seventy years. In the September :,,: election two other minor parties suc-
ceeded in gaining representation in the Riksdag: the conservative Christian Democratic
Union and New Democracy, the latter a new right movement advocating substantial
tax cuts and other radical reforms. Although New Democracy subsequently disappeared
from the political landscape, Swedens party system nonetheless resembles the more com-
plex multiparty systems of neighboring Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
Party fragmentation in Sweden has not meant political stalemate or parliamentary
immobilism, as was true in the nal years of the Weimar Republic of Germany and fre-
quently in postwar Italy and the Third and Fourth republics of France. Instead, Swedens
multiparty system has proved capable of sustaining stable governments and adapting to
changing economic and social conditions. The principal explanation lies in the persis-
tence of loosely united socialist and nonsocialist blocs that partially blunt the parliamen-
tary effects of party fragmentation. The Social Democrats and Left Party are popularly
identied as the socialist bloc because they usually vote together on most legislative mat-
ters, while the Liberals, the Center, the Moderates, and the Christian Democrats make up
the nonsocialist bloc. During the :,,,: legislative session and again after September
:,,, the Greens were ofcially unaligned but generally sided with the Social Democrats,
just as New Democracy tacitly supported the other nonsocialist parties in the Riksdag
during the :,,:, legislative session. The existence of opposing socialist and nonsocialist
alignments thus facilitates both cabinet stability and legislative cooperation across party
lines.
The Social Democrats
The Swedish Social Democratic Workers Party (Socialdemokraterna, or SAP) is Swedens
oldest political party (founded in :,) and, since :,:;, its largest. The party was initially
established to represent working-class political and economic interests with respect to suf-
frage reform, the introduction of parliamentarianism, and improved working conditions
and social services. With time, the party extended its appeal to middle-class voters as well.
Thanks to the success of its economic and social policies after :,,:, the SAP increased its
popular support from , percent in the :,:cs to an average of nearly ; percent during
the :,,cs and :,cs. From :, through :,,, the party averaged , percent of the popu-
lar vote in successive national elections. Its postwar peak came in :,o when the SAP re-
ceived ,c.: percent. The SAP received only ,;.o percent in the September :,,: election;
party strength rebounded to ,. percent in :,, only to fall in September :, to ,o.
(its lowest level since :,:) (see table :,.:). For reasons to be explained below, its losses
were primarily to the more radical Left Party.
The SAPs principal ideological commitmentcomparable to that of other West Eu-
ropean democratic socialist partiesis to collective measures designed to enhance indi-
vidual economic and social security and the equality of opportunity. Social Democratic
leaders have pursued these objectives through economic policies designed to promote ma-
terial growth and full employment, parliamentary action (e.g., in the form of welfare leg-
islation, educational reforms, and the extension of worker rights), and trade union nego-
tiations with employer associations on the labor market (see below).
A distinctive feature of Swedish social democracy is that the movement emerged si-
multaneously with organized liberalism during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Because both parties were intent on achieving similar political objectives, they were able
to cooperate during the formative decades of industrialization and democratization rather
than engage in fratricidal conict (as was the case with competing Liberal and Social Dem-
ocratic parties in much of continental Europe). This historical legacy has contributed to
the emergence of Swedens largely consensual political culture.
The SAP is also distinguished by a tradition of stable leadership. Since the party was
founded, only six men have served as party chair: Hjalmar Branting (:,:,:o), Per Al-
bin Hansson (:,:oo), Tage Erlander (:,oo,), Olof Palme (:,o,o), Ingvar Carlsson
(:,o,,), and Gran Persson (since :,,o). Each leader has been an able parliamentarian
and adept at forging unity among diverse party factions, thereby enhancing the partys
claim to long-term executive competence.
A major strength of the Social Democratic Party is its close organizational link with
the Swedish Federation of Trade Unions (LandsorganisationenLO). Through a combi-
nation of overlapping leadership on the partys Executive Committee and rank-and-le
membership between the unions and the party, the LO contributes important policy ini-
tiatives as well as the bulk of the SAPs electoral support. Unions also provide a major
share of SAP nancial contributions.
368 sweden
The Left Party
Similar to other European communist movements, the Swedish Communist Party was
formed in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution in :,:; as a leftist offshoot of the So-
cial Democrats. Unlike most of their continental counterparts, Swedens Communists
have maintained a tradition of ideological independence of the former Soviet Union
rooted in their countrys historical antipathy toward Russia and prevailing political cul-
tural values of moderation and pragmatism. A Stalinist faction exists within the party, but
it is overshadowed by a revisionist (Eurocommunist) majority that afrms Western-style
Table 23.1 Election Results, 193298
Type
a
VP
b
MP SAP FP C M KDS NYD
1932 R 8.3 41.7 11.7 14.1 23.5
1934 C 6.8 42.1 12.5 13.3 24.2
1936 R 7.7 45.9 12.9 14.3 17.6
1938 C 5.7 50.4 12.2 12.6 17.8
1940 N 4.2 53.8 12.0 12.0 18.0
1942 C 5.9 50.3 12.4 13.2 17.6
1944 R 10.3 46.7 12.9 13.6 15.9
1946 C 11.2 44.4 15.6 13.6 14.9
1948 R 6.3 46.2 22.8 12.4 12.3
1950 C 4.9 48.6 21.7 12.3 12.3
1952 R 4.3 46.1 24.4 10.7 14.4
1954 C 4.8 47.4 21.7 10.3 15.7
1956 R 5.0 44.6 23.8 9.4 17.1
1958 R 3.4 46.2 18.2 12.7 19.5
1958 C 4.0 46.8 15.6 13.1 20.4
1960 R 4.5 47.8 17.5 13.6 16.5
1962 C 3.8 50.5 17.1 13.1 15.5
1964 R 5.2 47.3 17.0 13.2 13.7
1966 C 6.4 42.2 16.7 13.7 14.7
1968 R 3.0 50.1 14.3 15.7 12.9
1970 R 4.8 45.3 16.2 19.9 11.5
1973 R 5.3 43.6 9.4 25.1 14.3
1976 R 4.8 42.7 11.1 24.1 15.6 1.4
1979 R 5.6 43.2 10.6 18.1 20.3 1.4
1982 R 5.6 45.6 5.9 15.5 23.6 1.9
1985 R 5.4 44.7 14.2 12.4 21.3
1988 R 5.8 5.5 43.2 12.2 11.3 18.3 2.9
1991 R 4.5 3.4 37.7 9.1 8.5 21.9 7.1 6.7
1994 R 6.2 4.1 45.3 7.2 7.7 22.4 4.1 1.2
1998 R 12.0 4.5 36.4 4.7 5.1 22.9 11.7
a
Type of election: R identies Riksdag (parliamentary) elections; C identies communal (county and munici-
pal) elections.
b
Party abbreviations: VP Left Party (postcommunists); MP Environmentalist Partythe Greens; SAP
Social Democratic Party; FP Peoples Party (Liberals); C Center Party; M Moderates (Conservatives);
KDS Christian Democrats; NYD New Democracy.
parliamentary democracy and individual civil liberties. A small group of hard-core Stalin-
ists broke with the party to form a separate Swedish Communist Party in :,;;, but thus
far they have failed to attract appreciable electoral support.
Party leaders adopted the name of Left PartyCommunists (Vnsterpartiet-kommu-
nisterna) and a new party program in :,o; in an effort to afrm their allegiance to demo-
cratic norms. Left Party activists dene themselves as a radical alternative to the SAP
through their ideological critique of capitalism; their advocacy of state ownership of key
industries, banks, and insurance companies; and their strong support for welfare provi-
sions. In :,,c party leaders dropped the designation Communist altogether and short-
ened the ofcial party name to Left Party (VnsterpartietVP) in an effort to distance
themselves from discredited Marxist-Leninist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe.
The VP draws most of its electoral support among industrial workers and intellectuals.
During the Cold War era, the Lefts share of the popular vote uctuated between a high
of o., percent (:,) and a low of ,. percent (:,,) for an average of nearly ,.c percent.
The Left Party has recently expanded its electoral base at the expense of the SAP, mobiliz-
ing fully :: percent of the popular vote in the :,, election.
Given its minuscule size, the VPs only hope of affecting policy outcomes is through
a tactical alliance with the Social Democrats in the Riksdag. Thus, party deputies usually
support SAP parliamentary initiatives (or at least abstain in crucial votes) and have
thereby helped ensure the continuance of Social Democratic governance throughout
most of the postwar era.
The Environmentalist Partythe Greens
Also identied as a left party but with a much less clearly dened ideological prole
than either the VP or the Social Democrats are the Greens. Ofcially, the movement calls
itself the Environmentalist Partythe Greens (Miljpartiet De Grna, abbreviated MP).
The movement was founded during the early :,cs in emulation of similar parties in
Germany and neighboring Finland and Denmark. By mid-decade the Greens had suc-
ceeded in winning seats on more than half of Swedens city and county councils, and in
September :, they made their rst entrance into parliament with ,., percent of the
popular vote.
Similar to their counterparts in other West European countries, the Greens stress
measures to protect the natural environment and promote the socioeconomic interests of
less privileged groups. Accordingly, they advocate an end to the use of nuclear energy, the
introduction of new taxes on energy use and factory and automobile emissions, and tax
cuts for lower-income workers. They also urge a ban on new highway construction in fa-
vor of increased reliance on the nations extensive railway system.
The Greens are a highly heterogeneous movement. They attract most of their mem-
bers and voters from among younger, better-educated, and urban citizens. They are led by
a committee made up of rotating members, with no spokesperson standing out as a dis-
cernible leader. Twenty MP deputies served in the Riksdag from September :, until the
September :,,: election, when the Greens received only ,. percent of the vote and thereby
failed to garner sufcient support to remain in parliament. The Greens reentered the
370 sweden
Riksdag in :,, after winning .: percent of the popular vote. In the :,, election they
marginally increased their support to ., percent.
The Nonsocialist Bloc
The fragmentation of Swedens nonsocialist forces has inhibited the emergence of a cohe-
sive alternative to Social Democracy comparable to the Conservative Party in Britain or
the Christian Democrats in Germany. Nonetheless, leaders of the Liberal, Center, and
Moderate parties forged a limited form of bourgeois unity that enabled them to displace
the Social Democrats in executive ofce from :,;o to :,:. The nonsocialist parties once
again won a majority in :,,: and governed jointly until the September :,, election.
The Liberals
The Liberals were the smallest bourgeois party from :,o until the parliamentary election
of September :,, when they scored :.: percent of the popular vote to become the sec-
ond-largest nonsocialist party. In subsequent elections Liberal support has steadily dwin-
dled to approximately a third of that level (see table :,.:, p. ,o,).
Their literal name, Folkpartiet (Peoples Party), suggests the Liberals simultaneous
strength and weakness. As a broadly based movement appealing variously to business-
men, workers, intellectuals, prohibitionists, and free thinkers, the Liberals have at times
been Swedens largest nonsocialist party. They peaked at c percent of the popular vote in
:,::, fell below Conservative strength during the :,,cs and early :,cs, and then resumed
their dominant status among the nonsocialist parties from :, until :,,. At the same
time, the very diversity of the Liberals popular support makes them highly vulnerable to
electoral shifts within the nonsocialist bloc. Thus, from :,, through the mid-:,cs, the
Liberals lost votes to both the Center and the Moderates, declining to ,., percent in :,:.
Their temporary resurgence in :,, was, in turn, primarily at the expense of the other two
nonsocialist parties. Electoral support for the Liberals subsequently declined in the next
three elections to a postwar low of .; in :,,.
The Liberals support of suffrage reform and parliamentarianism enabled them to
play an important role, through cooperation with the Social Democrats, in achieving
Swedens democratization. They lost votes to the left during the :,:cs and :,,cs because
of their opposition to government activism in the economy and society. Under new lead-
ership, the Liberals dramatically increased their electoral support in the late :,cs by en-
dorsing the Social Democrats social program and simultaneously advocating greater indi-
vidual economic freedom. Their recovery was halted in :,, when they proposed a
compromise solution to a controversy over supplementary pensions that failed to satisfy
either the left or right (see below).
Liberal spokesmen have contributed signicantly to the nonsocialist critique of cen-
tralizing tendencies within government and the economy, even though the party itself has
suffered recurrent electoral losses in recent decades. In an attempt to assure the partys
survival in the light of the percent minimum threshold for parliamentary representa-
tion, Liberal deputies elected a new chairman in October :,,: Bengt Westerberg, a for-
mer state secretary in the Department of Finance and an acknowledged party moderate.
Westerbergs factual and pragmatic style of leadership contributed to the Liberals advance
during the mid-:,cs. Westerberg was succeeded in :,,, by Maria Leissner, who in turn
was followed two years later by Lars Leijonborg.
The Center Party
The Center Party (Centerpartiet) is more solidly anchored than the Liberals in terms of
socioeconomic support. Yet, like the Folkpartiet, the Center is vulnerable to recurrent
electoral shifts. Founded in :,:: as the Farmers Party (a successor organization to several
nineteenth-century ruralist movements), the Center adopted its present name in :,,,
along with a more broadly based program emphasizing the need for economic decentral-
ization and a more humane urban environment. The partys transformation coincided
with increased public concern about ecological issues as symbolically expressed by the ad-
vent of a popularly based grna vgen (green wave). The result was an increase in electoral
support, primarily at the expense of the Liberals. Center strength rose from ,. percent in
:,,o to an average of : percent during the :,ocs and a peak of :, percent in :,;,. Most
of the increase reected the partys strategic success in expanding its appeal from farmers
(who still contribute a quarter of the partys support) to include blue- and white-collar
workers (who together make up : percent of Center voters). Like the Liberals, the Cen-
ter has subsequently lost support to the Moderates. Party strength began to decline in
:,;o; by :,, it had fallen to ,.: percent.
Recent uctuations in the Centers electoral fortunes reect the partys stand on pol-
icy issues. Increased Center support in the :,;o election, for example, was attributed pri-
marily to chairman Thorbjrn Flldins opposition to an expansion of Swedens nuclear
energy program as a central plank in the partys pro-ecological stance. Conversely, the
partys electoral declines in :,;, and :,: were related to an interim resolution of the nu-
clear energy conict in :,c (see below) and the Centers subsequent failure to identify
new policy issues as a basis for mobilizing continued popular support.
Largely in response to the partys recent electoral decline, Flldin resigned under
pressure as Center chairman in :,o. He was succeeded by Karin Sder, former foreign
minister and the rst woman to head a major Swedish political party. Sder subsequently
stepped down a year later because of ill health; she was succeeded by Olof Johansson,
party secretary and a specialist in economics. In :cc: Maud Olofsson, a party activist in
northern Sweden who has never served in the national government, was unanimously
elected chair at a special party congress.
The Moderates
Since :,;,, the largest of Swedens nonsocialist parties, the Moderates (Moderaterna) have
consistently offered clear policy alternatives to those of the Social Democrats. Among
their chief demands are tax reductions, deregulation of private enterprise, and the partial
privatization of education and childcare services. The Moderates also strongly opposed
measures undertaken by the LO and the SAP during the :,;cs and :,cs to extend the
collective economic inuence of organized labor.
372 sweden
A linear descendant of nineteenth-century bureaucratic-economic conservatives, the
Moderates initially opposed democratization. Their ideological forebears notwithstand-
ing, to ensure the political survival of Swedish Conservatism they endorsed the introduc-
tion of manhood suffrage in the Great Compromise of :,c;, in exchange for propor-
tional representation. Separate party organizations were established in the former upper
and lower houses of parliament in :,::; they were known as the National Party and the
Ruralist and Citizens Party, respectively. The two factions merged in :,,, as the Right
(Hgern), a term utilized throughout Scandinavia from the mid-nineteenth century on-
ward to designate Conservatives.
From the :,,cs through the :,,cs, the Right distinguished itself primarily by its op-
position to the Social Democrats activist economic and social policies. As a consequence,
the party steadily lost popular support. Its share of the national vote fell from :,. percent
in :,: to an average of :c.o percent during the :,,cs and :,. percent in the :,cs.
Conservative strength rose marginally to :;., percent during the :,,cs under the ar-
ticulate leadership of a new chairman, Gunnar Heckscher, a political scientist at the Uni-
versity of Stockholm who sought to establish a more positive party prole. His successors
have pursued a similar strategy, with the adoption of the partys present name and a pro-
gressive program in :,o, signaling a determined effort by Conservative spokesmen to ad-
just the partys image and ideology to changing economic and social conditions. Thus,
the Moderates have embraced a more positive view toward government intervention in
the economy and society while defending principles of private ownership and political
decentralization.
The Moderates ideological afrmation of individual freedom, independence, and
security rooted in an ethical tradition of humanism
1
has facilitated the partys recent
electoral recovery. Its strength increased from ::., percent in :,;c to :., percent in :,;,
and continued to climb through the :,: election. The party lost support in :,, and
:, but reversed its decline in subsequent elections. During the :,,cs the Moderates av-
eraged ::. percent of the popular vote to retain their position, which they have held
since :,o,, as Swedens largest nonsocialist party.
Carl Bildt, who was elected chairman of the Moderates in :,o on the basis of his ex-
perience as a former political secretary and coordinator for nonsocialist governmental co-
operation in :,;,:. From :,,: to September :,,, Bildt served as Swedens rst conser-
vative prime minister in sixty years. The Moderates elected Bo Lundgren, a former
minister of nance, to succeed Bildt in August :,,,.
Christian Democrats and New Democracy
Two new center-right political parties gained entrance to the Riksdag in :,,: to add fur-
ther complexity to Swedens multiparty system: the Christian Democratic Union (Kristlig
demokratisk samlingKDS) and New Democracy (Ny DemokratiNYD). Only the for-
mer, however, survived subsequent national elections.
The Christian Democrats established themselves as a national political party in the
:,ocs on the model of Christian Peoples parties in neighboring Denmark and Norway.
The partys programmatic sober afrmation of traditional values of family and Christian
morality appealed to fundamentalist voters, but its organizational weakness and lack of a
solid socioeconomic basis restricted its initial electoral advances to local and provincial as-
semblies. The Christian Democrats sought to legitimize their claim to national ofce
through a tactical electoral alliance in :,, and :, with the Center, and in September
:,,: they nally managed to surpass the minimum threshold for representation in the
Riksdag when the party won ;.: percent of the vote (primarily at the expense of the Cen-
ter and the Liberals). Contributing to its electoral success was widespread public con-
dence in the party chair, Alf Svensson. Popular support for the KDS fell to .: percent in
:,, but rebounded to ::.; percent four years later.
New Democracy was a self-proclaimed maverick in Swedish politics. The party was
founded in late :,,c by two antiestablishment cultural gures: Bert Karlsson, an amuse-
ment park owner and publisher of popular music, and Ian Wachtmeister, a satirist and in-
dustrialist who is a member of Swedens nearly extinct aristocracy. Both leaders claimed to
speak for an emergent new populism that reected a growing popular distrust of state
bureaucrats and the high cost of government. In addition to its attacks on the state and
demands for steep tax cuts, New Democracy demanded stiffer penalties for criminals and
restrictions on rights of immigration. Ideologically, the party thus corresponded closely to
other new right parties elsewhere in Europeincluding the Progress parties in Den-
mark and Norway, the National Front in France, and the Republikaner in Germany. New
Democracy scored an overnight success in the September :,,: election by attracting the
support of o.; percent of the electorate. The party subsequently lost political credibility,
in part because of public bickering between its two leaders, and received only :.: percent
of the popular vote in September :,, and therefore is no longer represented in the
Riksdag.
Interest Groups
Alongside Swedens national parties, three organized interest associations stand out as ma-
jor centers of political power: the National Federation of Trade Unions (LO), the Swedish
Association of Employers (Svenska ArbetsgivarefreningenSAF), and the Central Orga-
nization of Salaried Employees (Tjnstemnnens centralorganisationTCO). Also impor-
tant, though less inuential than the preceding groups, are the Swedish Central Organi-
zation of University Graduates (SACO-SR), the National Association of Farmers (LRF),
and the Swedish Cooperative Association (KF).
2
The political signicance of Swedens principal organized interest groups lies primar-
ily in their afliation or alignment with important political parties and their participation
in state commissions and the remiss consultative procedure, as described in the preceding
chapter. In addition, the LO, the SAF, and their constituent organizations play an impor-
tant role in economic and social outcomes through their direct negotiations with each
other on the labor market. Employer groups and organized labor also participate in the
formation and implementation of labor-market policy through their membership (along
with government ofcials) in the National Labor Market Board (Arbetsmarknadsstyrelsen
AMS), which is discussed in the next chapter.
374 sweden
Landsorganisationen (LO)
The most important labor association is the LO, which was founded in :, as a federation
of local and regional craft (later, industrial) unions. Since then, the federation has grown to
encompass twenty-two national trade unions that together claim as members ,; percent of
Swedens total labor force (:.: million members out of nearly million employees in :,,).
The LOs largest constituent units are the Association of Local Government Workers with
o:c,c; members and the Metal Workers Union with ::,,; members (:,,).
3
As previously noted, the LO is closely linked with the SAP through a combination of
overlapping leadership and the collective membership of most rank-and-le union mem-
bers in the party. Its afliation with the Social Democratic Party has enabled LO leaders
to initiate a number of signicant legislative measures in recent decades. As discussed be-
low, these primarily have involved extensions in the rights of individual workers and
unions at the workplace.
In its simultaneous role as Swedens principal bargaining agent on behalf of higher
wages and improved working conditions, the LO until recently negotiated directly with
the Association of Employers (the SAF) to establish annual framework agreements cover-
ing all its member unions. This practice, which was instigated in the :,,cs, was aban-
doned in :,, when the Metal Workers Union negotiated its own wage pact. The LO re-
mains responsible for coordinating the overall negotiation process, but actual agreements
are now reached on an industry-by-industry basis. Both union leaders and employers
have welcomed the return to a more decentralized system of wage negotiations on the
grounds that it permits greater exibility.
Throughout the postwar period, the LO and its member unions have pursued a
largely cooperative strategy in their relations with the SAF. As a result, Sweden has sus-
tained one of the worlds lowest levels of industrial conicts. A major exception was a pro-
tracted dispute over wages in :,c that resulted in a national lockout by the SAF and a re-
taliatory strike by the LO affecting nearly a million workers. The country was virtually
paralyzed for three days before the two labor-market partners agreed on a compromise so-
lution. Since then, organized labor and employers have succeeded in reaching wage agree-
ments with a minimum of open strife.
The pattern of peaceful labor relations is rooted in two important historical accords:
(:) the Collective Agreements Act of :,:, which prohibited strikes and lockouts over the
interpretation of wage contracts and required that they be settled instead by a newly cre-
ated Labor Court; and (:) the Saltsjbaden Agreement of :,,, which was negotiated
by the SAF and the LO and established a consensual framework governing wage negotia-
tion and grievance procedures.
The Central Organization of Salaried Employees (TCO)
Swedens second most important labor organization is the TCO (Tjnstemnnens Cen-
tralorganisation). Representing primarily white-collar workers, the TCO consists of nine-
teen national unions that together claim :., million members (:,,). Slightly more than
half of its membership is employed in the public sector on either the national or re-
gional/local levels of government; the remainder work for private rms.
The TCO comprises a more heterogeneous clientele than the LO. As a result, its
leaders studiously pursue an ofcial strategy of neutrality in their relations with the
principal political parties rather than one of alignment or afliation. In practice, however,
the TCO cooperates closely with the LO in promoting bread-and-butter economic issues
such as annual wage increments on behalf of its members. As a result, the TCO leader-
ship is inclined, on balance, to endorse SAP legislative initiatives more than those of the
nonsocialist parties. One consequence is that the Social Democrats tapped the TCO
chairman, Lennart Brostrm, to become foreign minister after their electoral victory in
September :,:. Brostrm later shifted cabinet seats to assume duties as minister of edu-
cation in :,.
Association of Employers (SAF)
The SAF (Svenska Arbetsgivarefreningen) was founded in :,c: as a counterpart employer
organization to the LO. Similar to both the LO and the TCO, the SAF is a national fed-
eration made up of constituent parts (in its case, branch associations of industrial and ser-
vice rms). Its membership in :,, consisted of ,,;c companies represented in the na-
tional organization through ,: branch associations. The largest corporate members are
those involved in manufacturing, commerce, and forestry.
Like the LO, the SAF has a dual identity. On the labor market, the SAF and its
branch associations are responsible for negotiating wage and related agreements with or-
ganized labor, as described earlier. Politically, the SAF is closely aligned with the nonso-
cialist bloc, especially the Moderates. Through a combination of research and publication
activities, publicity campaigns, its participation in government commissions and the re-
missive procedure, and lobbying efforts vis--vis the cabinet and parliament, the SAF
seeks to maximize employer inuence in policy outcomes. In recent decades, the SAF has
concentrated on tax reform, wage restraint, and a campaign to impede Social Democra-
ticLO initiatives to extend the power of unions in economic decisions.
Overlapping in large part with the SAF is a second employer association: the Swedish
Federation of Industry (Svenska IndistrifrbundetSIF). The SIF concentrates on pro-
moting economic, trade, and environmental policies favorable to business interests.
Administrative Elites
High-level civil servants (i.e., the administrative elites who manage the planning and
budgetary processes within the various cabinet-level departments) are also instrumental
actors in Swedens policy process. Unlike leaders of the various parties and interest groups,
they are not politically accountable to the public at large or organizational members. In-
stead, they exercise power on the basis of their academic qualications, institutional sta-
tus, and bureaucratic skills. As such, Swedens departmental bureaucrats are a principal
source of empirical information, technical expertise, and long-range reform perspectives.
As Thomas Anton observes in his assessment of elite political culture in Sweden, the
administrative elites who constitute the ministerial departments in Stockholm are distinc-
tive in comparative perspective primarily because of their close personal interaction in a
world that is small, comfortable, well-understood, and highly specialized; their social
376 sweden
skills, coupled with a pragmatic orientation toward people and problem solving; and their
formal participation alongside politicians and interest-group representatives on Swedens
myriad state commissions.
4
Together, these personal and institutional attributes of the ad-
ministrative elites contribute signicantly to Swedens highly deliberative and rational
mode of policymaking.
Elections
Electoral outcomes determine whether the socialist or nonsocialist blocand therefore
indirectly which organized interest groupsdominates the legislative agenda. Between
elections, the composition of the cabinet and interparty as well as intergroup bargaining
determine the specic content of policy choice.
Sweden is the only country among the six nations presented in this volume that held
competitive elections on schedule throughout the twentieth century. Even the onset of
World Wars I and II did not cause political leaders to postpone national elections. From
democratization through :,o, Riksdag elections were held every four years (except for a
special dissolution election in :,,). Elections to county and city assemblies were also
conducted at four-year intervals, albeit midway through each legislative session. Thus the
Swedes voted every two years, alternating between Riksdag and county/local elections.
The election dates were merged through the constitutional reforms of :,oo, (effective
in :,;c) that reduced the terms of national and regional ofce from four to three years. As
previously noted, legislative terms were extended once again to four years beginning in
the fall of :,,.
Electoral outcomes are associated with three distinctive stages in Swedish parliamen-
tary development. The rst was one of minority parliamentarianism, which spanned
the years from :,:c to :,,: and was characterized by the absence of stable legislative ma-
jorities by a single party or governing coalition. The Social Democrats advance in the
:,,: election inaugurated a shift toward majority parliamentarianism, which involved
forty-four years of informal and formal coalitions between the SAP and other parties al-
ternating with periods of a Social Democratic legislative majority. Since :,;o, Sweden has
experienced more indeterminate electoral results resulting in the formation of successive
majority and minority cabinets and an alternation of executive power between the Social
Democrats and nonsocialist parties.
The Social Democrats have consistently remained Swedens largest political party
since :,:;. Their strength has peaked during two electoral cycles during the twentieth
century: in the late :,,cs and early :,cs and for a shorter period in the :,ocs. Within the
nonsocialist bloc considerable electoral uctuations have occurred over time. The Liberals
relinquished their dominant status to the Conservatives in the aftermath of World War II,
but regained it from the mid-:,cs through the mid-:,ocs. From then through the early
:,cs, the Center and the Moderates vied for leadership among the nonsocialist forces.
The Liberals subsequently displaced the Center as the second-largest nonsocialist party
from :,, until :,,, when the Center reclaimed that position.
The emergence of a shared sense of nonsocialist identity among the Liberal, Center,
and Moderate parties during the :,ocs effectively transformed the conditions of electoral
competition. Henceforth, bloc rather than merely party outcomes became decisive for de-
termining government formation and the thrust of policy decisions. An increase in aggre-
gate nonsocialist strength from the communal election of :,oo onward, as indicated in
table :,.:, thus enhanced bloc competitiveness between the socialist and nonsocialist par-
ties and presaged later shifts in executive leadership. Electoral advances by the Christian
Democrats and New Democracy contributed to a discernible increase in aggregate non-
socialist strength in :,,:.
Continuity and change characterize recent electoral behavior. Each party retains an
identiable core of supporters. Both the Social Democrats and the Left Party draw most
of their support among workers and lower-level salaried employees; the Liberals recruit
broadly among all major occupational groups; the Center draws most of its support from
among farmers, workers, and civil servants; and the Moderates attract the bulk of their
voters among businessmen and higher- and medium-level civil servants.
At the same time, new political issues have motivated many voters (especially
younger ones) to abandon their occupational or class identities to vote across party or
bloc lines. Among such issues are nuclear energy, environmental concerns, and economic
and social policy. Increased electoral volatility has contributed in turn to discontinuities
in executive leadership from the mid-:,;cs onward.
378 sweden
Table 23.2 Bloc Alignments, 195898
Type of Socialist Nonsocialist
Year election
a
parties
b
parties
c
1958 C 50.8 49.1
1960 C 52.3 47.6
1962 C 54.3 45.7
1964 R 52.5 43.9
1966 C 48.6 45.1
1968 R 53.1 42.9
1970 R 50.1 47.6
1973 R 48.9 48.8
1976 R 47.5 50.8
1979 R 48.8 49.0
1982 R 51.2 45.0
1985 R 50.1 47.9
1988 R 54.4 41.8
1991 R 45.6 46.6
1994 R 55.6 41.4
1998 R 52.9 44.4
a
Type of election: R Riksdag; C Communal.
b
Combined support for the SAP, the Left Party, and the Greens.
c
Includes support for the KDS in 1985 and 1988, when the Center and the KDS formed an electoral alliance,
and after 1991; excludes support for New Democracy.
Governments and Opposition
From :,,: through the :,,:cc: legislative sessions, fourteen distinct coalitions or sin-
gle-party governments have held executive ofce (see table :,.,). The Social Democrats
controlled the cabinet, either alone or in coalition with one or more of the nonsocialist
parties, between :,,: and :,;o. A succession of nonsocialist cabinets governed from :,;:
to :,:: rst, a three-party coalition led by the Center, then a Liberal minority cabinet,
next a restored three-party coalition, and nally a Center-Liberal minority coalition. The
Social Democrats resumed executive leadership following the :,: parliamentary election.
They lacked an absolute majority but could rely, depending on the policy issue at stake,
on either the VP, the Greens (after :,), and/or one or more of the nonsocialist parties to
enact their legislative agenda. In October :,,: a four-party coalition was formed consist-
ing of the Moderates, the Liberals, the Center, and the Christian Democrats that was tac-
itly supported by New Democracy. The nonsocialists governed until the September :,,
election when Ingvar Carlsson resumed the prime ministership as head of a minority SAP
cabinet supported by the VP, the MP, and tactically by some members of the bourgeois
bloc. The SAP retained executive ofce following the September :,, election.
Long-term Social Democratic governance, interrupted by nonsocialist interregnums
in :,;o: and :,,:,, thus distinguishes Swedish politics from that of other advanced
industrial democracies. The SAP has utilized its executive status to pursue a succession of
transformingand often controversialpolicy initiatives that constitute a long-term
pattern of breakthrough politics followed by a shift toward neoliberalism similar to poli-
cies pursued by Britains Tony Blair and Germanys Gerhard Schrder. Perceived short-
Table 23.3 Government Formation, 19322002
Year Composition
a
Prime minister and party
193236 SAP Hansson (SAP)
1936 C Pehrsson i Bramstorp (C)
193639 SAP-C Hansson (SAP)
193945 SAP-C-FP-M Hansson (SAP)
194551 SAP Hansson/Erlander (SAP)
195157 SAP-C Erlander (SAP)
195776 SAP Erlander/Palme (1969) (SAP)
197678 C-FP-M Flldin (C)
197879 FP Ullsten (FP)
197981 C-FP-M Flldin (C)
198182 C-FP Flldin (C)
198291 SAP Palme/Carlsson (SAP)
199194 M-FP-C-KDS Bildt (M)
199498 SAP Carlsson/Persson (SAP)
19982002 SAP Persson (SAP)
a
Party abbreviations: SAP Social Democratic Party; FP Liberals; C Center Party; M Moder-
ates; KDS Christian Democrats.
comings of these strategies have prompted spirited public debate and recurrent electoral
realignments.
Notes
:. Moderata samlingsparti, Moderat grundsyn [Moderate Principles], adopted at the :,,, party congress.
www.moderat.se.
:. The latter organizations are discussed more fully in Nils Elvander, Intresseorganisationerna i dagens Sverige,
:d ed. (Lund: CWK Gleerup Bokfrlag, :,o,).
,. Statistiska centralbyrn, Statistisk rsbok fr Sverige :ooo (Stockholm, :ccc), :,.
. Thomas J. Anton, Administered Politics: Elite Political Culture in Sweden (Boston/The Hague/London:
Martinus Nijhoff, :,c), esp. ::,,;.
380 sweden
Chapter 24
How Is Power Used?
QUALITIES OF PRAGMATISMand a willingness to seek compromise solutions to parti-
san differences have facilitated a consensual approach to many aspects of both domestic
and foreign policy. Thus, leaders of the major political parties, SAF, the LO, and other or-
ganized interest groups have jointly afrmed the constitutional reforms that modernized
Swedish parliamentarianism in the :,;cs, the need to sustain material growth on the basis
of SAF-LO-TCO cooperation, an active labor-market policy, and neutrality. Within this
broad consensus on fundamental principles of Swedish politics and economics, however,
the socialist and nonsocialist blocs have simultaneously promoted competing ideological
visions of system change. In short, power is used by political parties and organized inter-
est groups on behalf of both shared and divergent socioeconomic objectives.
Between Swedens key political actors, the Social Democrats and the LO have deci-
sively inuenced policy outcomes because of their numerical and organizational strength,
the SAPs long-term parliamentary majority, and the fragmentation of the nonsocialist
opposition. During more than ve decades of executive leadership, the Social Democrats
undertook major policy initiatives and systemic reforms that culminated in todays com-
prehensive welfare state. Many of the attributes associated with the Swedish model are
products of the SAP-LOs strategic commitment to active system change, including the
historic compromise between private capital and organized labor codied in the Salt-
sjbaden agreement of :,, and an overarching commitment to full employment and
equality of opportunity for all citizens.
The nonsocialist parties, the SAF, and other organized groups have endorsed many of
the SAP-LO innovations, but on important occasions they also resisted Social Democra-
tic initiatives. With the maturation of the Swedish model during the :,ocs and :,;cs, the
result has been a mixed record of economic and social performance accompanied by re-
current political conict.
Economic Performance
Economic factors signicantly enhanced the SAPs long-term claim to cabinet ofce. By
introducing expansionist scal policies along Keynesian lines when they rst came to
power in the early :,,cs, the Social Democrats helped engineer Swedens recovery from
the devastating effects of the prevailing international economic crisis. The advent of
World War II led to a sharp reduction in trade and the introduction of rationing, as well
as numerous economic controls that resulted in a temporary decline in the nations stan-
dard of living. But from the late :,cs onward, Sweden, like most of Western Europe,
North America, and Japan, experienced an unprecedented rate of economic growth and
national prosperity. The upshot, as indicated in table :.:, is that today Sweden claims a
per capita income that ranks among the highest among the worlds industrial democracies.
Much of Swedens postwar economic expansion is the result of external factors.
Among them are American loans and grants to Sweden and other West European coun-
tries under the Marshall Plan (initiated in :,;), a rapid expansion of world trade from
the early :,,cs onward, and the success of the European Coal and Steel Community
(founded in :,,:) and the European Economic Community (established in :,,) in stim-
ulating growth throughout Western Europe as a whole. Yet international economic trends
alone do not account for other, more distinctive Swedish patterns of economic perfor-
mance. Among them are one of the lowest unemployment rates among the industrial
democracies and a long-term pattern of labor peace.
During the postwar period Sweden sustained virtually full employment until the
early :,,cs. The unemployment rate uctuated between a high of ,., percent in :,, and
a low of :., percent in :,,, the former at a time when unemployment climbed to record
postwar levels in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and North America. Equally notewor-
thy, Sweden experienced a comparatively low level of labor-management conict. During
the :,ocs, workers went on strike an average of only : times a year, compared to an an-
nual average of :oo times in Germany, :,,, in France, :,o in Britain, and ,:c; in the
United States. The number of strikes in Sweden increased during the :,;cs to an annual
average of eighty-seven. Yet even this gure is signicantly lower than the annual averages
during the same decade in other industrial democracies: :,oc in Britain, ,,:, in France,
and ,,:, in the United States.
1
During the :,cs, only Germany among the countries
surveyed in this volume maintained a lower record of industrial conict.
2
Swedens low levels of unemployment and industrial conflict have not been acci-
dental. First, the SAPs executive leadership from :,,: to :,;o and again from :,: to
:,,: facilitated long-term efforts to fine-tune the nations economic performance
through a combination of indicative economic planning, short-term adjustments in fis-
382 sweden
Table 24.1 Per Capita Gross Domestic Product, 1997 (at current prices using current purchasing
power parities)
Country Amount
Sweden $20,439
Canada 23,242
France 21,993
Germany 22,049
Italy 21,265
Japan 24,574
United Kingdom 20,483
United States 29,326
Source: OECD, Basic Statistics: International Comparisons, Economic Surveys :ooo (Paris, 2000).
cal and monetary policies, and government measures designed to encourage economic
rationalization.
3
As a result, Sweden was spared abrupt changes in macroeconomic policymaking asso-
ciated with periodic shifts in power between conservative and socialist parties in postwar
Britain and during the :,cs in France.
Second, the Social Democrats have utilized their executive status to promote an ac-
tive labor-market policy in collaboration with their LO allies and the SAF. The concept of
an active labor-market policy was originally formulated by several prominent LO econo-
mists during the :,,cs and was formally implemented by the Social Democrats in re-
sponse to an economic slowdown during the late :,ocs. In contrast to Keynesian theory
and practice, which emphasize reliance on scal measures to combat unemployment, ad-
vocates of an active labor-market policy urged collaborative actions by administrative of-
cials, unions, and employers to maintain or create jobs on the level of individual rms. A
basic instrument for this purpose is the National Labor Market Board (AMS), which is
composed of government, union, and employer representatives. The AMS coordinates
public and private efforts to promote employment through a combination of training and
retraining programs, the relocation of workers displaced when companies are forced to
shut down, and temporary relief work. The government supplements the activities of the
AMS and its decentralized network of county and local employment agencies by provid-
ing cash subsidies to companies willing to hire workers who might otherwise not be able
to nd a job, among them many young people and the handicapped. An important con-
sequence of the active labor-market policy is that Sweden has far fewer people on wel-
fare than has traditionally been the case in the United States.
Augmenting Swedens active labor-market policy are other political factors that have
contributed specically to labor peace. One is the numerical strength of the LO and its
member unions, which has permitted organized labor to bargain effectively with em-
ployer groups on behalf of higher wages and improved working conditions, thereby less-
ening potential causes of employee dissatisfaction. A second is the pattern of institution-
alized collaboration between employers and unions that has governed SAF-LO relations
since their Saltsjbaden accord of :,:. The joint resolve by leaders of both associations to
resolve differences with minimum government interference and, during the :,ocs and
:,;cs, to negotiate nationwide collective wage agreements, signicantly facilitated
labor-management cooperation. This does not mean that labor disputes do not occur in
Sweden. As previously noted, a major wave of strikes and a national lockout by employers
took place in May :,c, but the conict proved shorter and less disruptive than compara-
ble labor-management confrontations in most other industrial democracies.
The Welfare State: Achievements and Dissent
A crucial adjunct of the Social Democrats emphasis on active economic management is
their successive extension of welfare services, as recounted in chapter ::. Postwar SAP re-
form initiatives have included improved unemployment and retirement benets, a na-
tional health insurance program, and a variety of individual and family cash allowances.
As a prominent LO economist observes, the result of these measures is that public ser-
vices and payments are provided, under specic rules, to everyone who is entitled to
them, regardless of means-tested need. Good examples are childrens allowances and pen-
sions, which are sent automatically to millionaires and the unemployed alike.
4
With varying degrees of enthusiasm, nonsocialist leaders endorsed most of the SAPs
early postwar reform initiatives. A dramatic exception occurred in the mid-:,,cs, how-
ever, when the LO and the Social Democrats moved to introduce a new system of supple-
mentary pensions (ATP). The basic purpose of the ATP was to accord individual workers
additional retirement benets amounting to an average of oc percent of their taxable in-
come during their fteen best-paid years of employment. In addition, the Social Demo-
crats viewed the reform as a means to generate collective savings that could be used for
government-sponsored economic objectives (such as the construction of new apartments
to relieve recurrent housing shortages). All three nonsocialist parties, as well as the SAF,
opposed the compulsory features of the SAP-LO proposal. Dissent was so intense that the
Center Party withdrew from the government coalition with the Social Democrats in :,,;.
A national referendum, held that same year, and a dissolution election, conducted in :,,,
were required to settle the issue.
The Social Democrats obtained a relative majority of votes in both the referendum
and the dissolution election. The Center and the Moderates, both of which rejected
mandatory legislation, gained in electoral support, while the Liberals, who advocated a
positive compromise solution that would enable individual workers to contract out of a
collective system of supplementary pensions, lost heavily (see table :,.:, p. ,o,). The So-
cial Democrats interpreted their electoral advance as a mandate to proceed with imple-
menting their version of supplementary benets. The ATP proposal was endorsed by a
narrow parliamentary majority in May :,,,.
In subsequent decades, Swedish welfare provisions have become among the most
comprehensive in the world. Swedens current government disbursements (including the
purchase of goods and services as well as transfer payments) are among the highest in the
world, while its annual rate of infant mortality is one of the lowest. In parallel fashion,
postwar Social Democratic legislative initiatives to enhance educational opportunities for
lower-middle-class and working-class youth have led to a greater public investment in ed-
ucation than in most other advanced democracies (see table :.:). In :,,,, the largest
expenditures in Swedens annual welfare budget were for health care, retirement, and dis-
ability benets (which consisted of o percent of the total) followed by economic assis-
tance to families with children (:; percent).
As noted in chapter ::, the Social Democrats have implemented a correspondingly
high rate of taxation to nance Swedens extensive social programs and other government
services. In :,,, current government expenditures accounted for :.; percent of the
countrys gross national product (GNP), compared to .o percent in France, :.: in
Italy, ,o., percent in the United Kingdom, ,:.o percent in Germany, and :c. percent in
the United States.
5
Critics on the right and left have joined in attacking the concentration of power and
the high cost of government in welfare Sweden while advocating specic partisan reme-
dies. Nonsocialist leaders have criticized bureaucratization and excessive government
384 sweden
expenditures and have repeatedly denounced Swedens high tax rate as a disincentive to
private initiative and savings. From the opposite end of the political spectrum, the VP
and other left socialists attacked the Social Democrats for their failure to socialize indus-
try and thereby mitigate the concentration of private economic power in the hands of
wealthy shareholders. The cumulative effect of left and right criticisms of Social Demo-
cratic governance was the onset of a continuing pattern of dealignment in electoral be-
havior and the gradual erosion of central tenets of the Swedish model.
The Nonsocialist Interlude
Joint left-right criticism of Social Democracy resulted in a sharp decline in SAP electoral
strength in the :,oo county and municipal elections. The SAP recovered in the :,o par-
liamentary election but gradually lost support during the :,;cs as the nonsocialist parties
succeeded in projecting an image of bloc unity on behalf of an alternative program of
government decentralization and tax reduction. The outcome was a nonsocialist electoral
victory in :,;o and the formation of a Center-Liberal-Moderate coalition that displaced
the Social Democrats from cabinet ofce after forty-four years in power (see table :,.:, p.
,o,, and table :,.,, p. ,;,).
Once in power, however, the Center, the Liberals, and the Moderates proved inca-
pable of maintaining interparty unity on important policy issues. The rst partisan con-
ict involved nuclear energy. During the :,;o campaign, Center Party leaders had strenu-
ously opposed SAP plans to increase the number of Swedens nuclear energy plants from
six to thirteen by the mid-:,cs. Liberal and Moderate ofcials, in contrast, endorsed the
Table 24.2 Measures of Commitment to Public Welfare
General government Public spending Infant mor-
disbursements as on education as tality per
a percentage of a percentage of :,ooo live
Country GDP
a
GNP
b
births
c
Sweden 62.9 8.3 5
France ,:. o.c o
Germany 46.8 4.8 5
Italy 49.4 4.9 7
United Kingdom 41.4 5.3 7
United States 33.9 5.4 7
Canada 44.7 6.9 6
Japan 28.4 3.6 4
Source: Based on Francis C. Castles, The Social Democratic Image of Society (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1978), 68.
a
OECD, Basic Statistics: International Comparisons, Economic Surveys :ooo (Paris, 2000). Data are for 1997.
b
United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization, Statistical Yearbook :)); (New York: 1997),
6869, 71, 7374. Data are for the years 199496.
c
United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization, Statistical Yearbook :)); (New York: 1997),
8688. Data are for the years 19952000.
measure. Following the election, the latter compelled Prime Minister Flldin to reverse
his partys campaign stance and agree that a seventh plant could begin operations.
The Center Party subsequently held rm in its resolve to oppose any further develop-
ment of nuclear energy. A government crisis subsequently ensued in October :,; when
the Moderates and Liberals endorsed a recommendation of the National Nuclear Energy
Inspection Board to activate two additional nuclear energy plants. Flldin and his fellow
Centrists promptly resigned from the cabinet in protest. The Liberals formed a minority
government in place of the previous three-party coalition.
The nuclear energy impasse was resolved in March :,c when a majority of the
Swedish electorate voted in a national referendum in favor of a temporary expansion of
the countrys nuclear energy program to include a maximum of twelve plants. The Liber-
als and the Social Democrats concurred on a joint government-opposition decision even-
tually to phase out all twelve plants by the early part of the twenty-rst century in tandem
with a policy of stringent conservation and the development of alternative sources of en-
ergy such as solar and fusion.
Despite their interbloc disagreement on the nuclear energy issue, the nonsocialist
parties won a one-seat majority in the September :,;, Riksdag election (see table :,.:, p.
,o,, and table :,.:, p. ,;). Accordingly, they reconstituted a three-party coalition gov-
ernment under Center leadership.
Ultimately, the nonsocialists failed once again to sustain executive unity. Ironically,
the second divisive issue proved to be taxation policy. Center and Liberal spokesmen
acted in the spring of :,: to honor an earlier agreement with the Social Democrats to re-
duce marginal tax rates in exchange for a simultaneous cut in the amount of deductions
allowable for interest paid on home mortgages. In response, Moderate spokesmen, who
were opposed to the tradeoff on ideological grounds, angrily withdrew from the govern-
ment coalition. As a result, the Center and the Liberals formed a minority government in
May :,:. They governed jointly until September :,:, when the Social Democrats re-
sumed power with the indirect support of the Left Party.
The Quest for Economic Democracy
Intense partisan disagreements over nuclear energy and tax policy during the late :,;cs
and early :,cs revealed a deepening conict between nonsocialist forces and the Social
Democrats over long-term economic policy and strategies of system change. Similar to
other advanced industrial nations, Sweden has experienced a slowdown in economic
growth since the mid-:,;cs. The causes are rooted primarily in global factors, including
successive oil price increases in :,;,; and :,;;, and increased international trade
competition from Asia in such industries as steel production and shipbuilding.
The onset of stagation as an international phenomenon meant that Swedens aver-
age annual growth rate fell from . percent during the :,ocs to : percent or less from
:,;c through the early :,cs. Accompanying the decline in economic growth were in-
creases in the rate of ination, which jumped from an annual average of ., percent dur-
ing the :,ocs to ,., percent in the :,;cs, and unemployment, which rose from an annual
average of :. percent in :,,o; to more than , percent by the summer of :,:. A spiral-
386 sweden
ing budgetary decit and a negative trade balance further exacerbated Swedens bleak eco-
nomic situation.
During their time in ofce, nonsocialist leaders sought to restore domestic growth
through a combination of measures. Among them were the Liberal-Center-SAP accord in
:,: to reduce marginal taxes, the introduction of tax-sheltered savings and equity programs
designed to stimulate the growth of investment capital, the socialization of Swedens ailing
shipbuilding industry, and government subsidies to encourage increased employment
among younger persons. To pay for these expansionary measures, the nonsocialists resorted
to heavy borrowing from international capital markets and raised the value-added tax
(VAT), which is a form of national sales tax, from :;.o, to :,.o percent. In addition, the
Center-Liberal minority government reduced health care benets marginally in :,: in an
effort to decrease public expenditures and thereby restrict the growing budgetary decit.
The Social Democrats attacked the nonsocialists economic strategy from both an
immediate and a longer-term perspective. In the short run, the SAP and the LO criticized
the nonsocialists on the grounds that their scal policies were inadequate to achieve the
economic recovery that presumably all Swedes desired. Above all, the SAP cited the un-
precedented postwar jump in the unemployment rate after :,;o as evidence of the inade-
quacy of the nonsocialist response to prevailing international conditions of stagation. As
an alternative approach, the Social Democrats called for even greater government eco-
nomic activism to be nanced by yet another increase in the VAT.
Far more controversial was the SAP-LOs ideological commitment to a break-
through strategy of industrial and economic democracy. LO and SAP leaders had jointly
launched a series of important legislative reforms during the mid-:,;cs that considerably
strengthened the status of individual workers and unions vis--vis private management.
The bills included the Employment Security Act of :,;, which restricted the right of
employers to dismiss workers; the Work Environment Act of :,;, which accorded
oor-level safety stewards sweeping powers to enforce strict health and safety standards;
and the Employee Participation Act of :,;o, which transformed the traditional right of
managers to direct and allocate work into an object of collective bargaining.
6
In :,;o,
LO spokesmen formally urged that these increments in the collective power of organized
labor be augmented through the introduction of a national system of wage-earner funds.
The LOs proposal can be traced to a resolution at the federations :,;c congress to
appoint a study group to investigate steps to implement some form of prot-sharing
arrangement that would tap so-called excess prots in private industry to the collective
advantage of organized labor.
7
Five years later, the study group, which was headed by
Rudolf Meidner, a leading LO economist, submitted a report recommending the creation
of a collective system of employee funds that would be nanced through a tax on com-
pany prots. The funds would be empowered to purchase company shares on the domes-
tic stock market. Thus, in time the funds could acquire majority ownership of individual
companies. Precisely that prospect outraged employer groups and the nonsocialist parties
and caused even many rank-and-le Social Democrats to question the wisdom of the
Meidner plan. The resulting controversy over the LO proposal proved a major factor in
the SAPs electoral defeat in :,;o.
While in opposition, the LO and the SAP refined the original Meidner concept to
include provisions for a decentralized system of funds and the transfer of dividend in-
come into the ATP system as a means of safeguarding future individual retirement ben-
efits. From :,;; onward, the Social Democrats also stressed the importance of the
wage-earner funds as a source of domestic investment capital. These revisions were en-
dorsed by overwhelming majorities at LO and SAP congresses held during the early fall
of :,:.
The Social Democrats thus conducted their :,: campaign against the Moderates,
the Center, and the Liberals on the dual basis of short-term charges of economic misman-
agement and their longer-term advocacy of enhanced economic democracy. The SAP vic-
tory in September :,: enabled the Social Democrats to proceed with new initiatives on
both fronts.
The Social Democrats Back in Office
Prime Minister Palme and members of his cabinet proceeded cautiously but with a clear
sense of direction when they resumed ofce in :,:. As initial steps, they honored the
SAPs campaign promises to restore nonsocialist-sponsored reductions in health care and
increase government expenditures on behalf of job creation (both of which were nanced
by a higher VAT rate). They also moved to stimulate renewed economic growth by de-
valuing the Swedish krona (crown) by :o percent in an effort to reduce the cost of Swedish
exports and thereby encourage an export-led recovery from the economic doldrums of
the early :,cs. The cabinet simultaneously enacted an austere budgetary policy designed
to reduce the governments decit below levels projected by the previous Center-Liberal
coalition. In the process, Social Democratic leaders incurred the temporary wrath of some
trade unionists and rank-and-le activists who demanded a more expansionist economic
policy even at the cost of a greater budget decit.
Early in their renewed term of ofce, the Social Democrats also acted to implement
the controversial system of wage-earner funds. Despite nonsocialist criticism and the ab-
sence of a popular majority in support of the concept (as measured by successive public
opinion surveys), the SAP formally proposed during the summer of :,, the creation of
ve regional funds to be nanced through a combination of a :c percent tax on company
prots and a .: percent increase in employee contributions to the ATP retirement system.
They would be governed by appointive boards dominated by trade union ofcials. The
government sought to diffuse nonsocialist fears that the wage-earner funds could eventu-
ally acquire majority ownership of specic companies by restricting both their total capi-
talization (to a maximum of :;., billion Swedish crowns by :,,c) and the percentage of
shares that each of the funds can purchase in a single enterprise (namely percent per
fund for a hypothetical total of c percent shared by the ve funds). Moreover, the Social
Democrats stipulated that the wage-earner funds would remain in place only through
:,,c. This seven-year period would sufce, in the view of the cabinet, to facilitate the
necessary structural transformation of the Swedish economy with the assistance of the ad-
ditional investment capital generated by the ve funds.
The Riksdag endorsed the governments proposal in December :,,. The Social Dem-
388 sweden
ocrats voted solidly in favor, the VP abstained to ensure the bills passage, and the three
nonsocialist parties voted against. The bill went into effect on : January :,.
Tactically, the SAP legislative initiative on the wage-earner fund issue was dictated by
both the timing of parliamentary elections and the partys calculation of foreseeable inter-
national economic trends. The Riksdags approval of the governments proposal in late
:,, ensured that the funds would be operative prior to the September :,, election. If
the domestic economy noticeably improved by then, the Social Democrats could reason-
ably expect an electoral plurality and thus a renewed parliamentary mandate. To help en-
sure the latter outcome, the LO and its constituent unions negotiatedas an explicit
tradeoff for the introduction of the wage-earner fund systemwage settlements averag-
ing a modest , percent or less in both :,:, and :,,. The intent of the LOs policy
of wage restraint was to curtail domestic inationary pressures and thus facilitate Swedens
economic recovery from the doldrums that prevailed at the beginning of the decade.
The full implementation of the wage-earner fund system promised a partial transfor-
mation of authority relations in the Swedish economy. The diluted version of the
wage-earner fund system enacted in :,, was not designed to achieve outright nationaliza-
tion or trade unionization of industry (to the consternation of some left Social Demo-
crats), since the legislation explicitly restricted the total percentage of company shares that
the regional funds were permitted to purchase. Nonetheless, SAP and LO leaders could
reasonably anticipate that the extension of collective ownership of company stockin
combination with the various workplace reforms implemented during the :,;cs and
sketched abovewould inevitably induce managers to be more responsive to union de-
mands concerning employment, investments, and production. The minimum result of
the funds would thus be to increase managerial awareness of the social consequences of
microeconomic decisions and thereby indirectly strengthen workplace democracy.
Precisely because the wage-earner fund system involved central issues of share owner-
ship and managerial prerogatives, the nonsocialist parties, the SAF, and other private in-
terests remained adamant in their opposition to the concept of collective ownership and
control of the funds as a potentially important source of investment capital. Accordingly,
nonsocialist leaders repeatedly announced their determination to abolish the funds when
they returned to power.
Economically, Social Democratic policies met with greater interim success. The
SAPs return to power coincided with the beginning of a general improvement in interna-
tional economic conditions. Renewed growth of world trade and a decline in the world
price of oil by the mid-:,cs helped stimulate renewed domestic growth. From a negative
rate of :., percent in :,:, Sweden experienced a steady expansion of its real gross na-
tional product (GNP) through :,, when the rate peaked at percent. Accompanying
the restoration of growth was a decline in the unemployment rate, which fell from .,
percent in :,,, to less than , percent by the end of the decade (see table A., p. ,,;).
Other positive signs included a substantial increase in exports and the attainment of a
slight budget surplus in :,;. These solid achievements contributed to a Social Demo-
cratic victory in the September :,, election and the extension of the SAPs executive
mandate into the early :,,cs.
In a major departure from its ideological principles, however, the Social Democrats
signaled through their actions that the era of social reform was at an end. They were de-
termined to maintain the existing welfare state, but because of severe budgetary con-
straints, they in effect announced that no additional benets would be forthcoming. In
addition, party leaders yielded to longstanding nonsocialist claims that Swedens taxation
rate was too high. In :, the SAP initiated negotiations with the Liberals and other op-
position parties to reduce taxes and thereby bring them closer in line with prevailing rates
in their principal trading partners. The declared purpose of tax reform was to encourage
greater private investment at home and, in the process, discourage a damaging drain of
investment capital abroad (primarily to EC countries and the United States).
The principal architect of Swedens new politics of austerity was Kjell-Olof Feldt, a
moderate Social Democrat whom Prime Minister Palme appointed minister of nance
when the SAP resumed power in :,:. Economically conservative and distrustful of LO
demands to transform property relations via the wage-earner fund system, Feldt sought to
impose nancial discipline on the nation by urging unions to practice self-restraint in
their negotiations over annual wage increases with employers. His most compelling argu-
ment was that wage increases in excess of government guidelines of , percent or less con-
tributed to a higher ination rate during the :,cs in Sweden than in other industrial
democracies. When union leaders balked at his demands, Feldt induced the cabinet to
adopt a stringent anti-inationary program in February :,,c that prescribed a freeze on
prices, wages, and rents and prohibited strikes by unions.
The cabinets restrictive economic proposals and attempt to curtail trade union activ-
ity sparked immediate outrage on the part of organized labor, the Left Party, many
rank-and-le Social Democrats, and the nonsocialist parties. After a heated debate, an
overwhelming majority of Riksdag deputies rejected the government package in February
:,,c. The cabinet temporarily resigned as a result, but Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson,
who had succeeded Palme following the latters assassination in February :,o, formed a
new Social Democratic government when nonsocialist leaders rejected an offer from the
speaker of the Riksdag to form a minority coalition. Feldt thereupon resigned from the
cabinet.
Electoral and Political Flux
Although the Social Democrats survived the government crisis of February :,,c, they re-
mained thereafter on the political defensive. They clearly confronted a policy and ideo-
logical crisis from which they could not readily recover. Growing LO and rank-and-le
worker dissatisfaction with SAP economic and nancial policies coincided with an incip-
ient electoral dealignment at the expense of the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats
had confronted an earlier decline in support during the late :,cs and :,,cs as the num-
ber of industrial workers (who are their traditional core of supporters) dwindled in the
wake of postindustrialization, but they managed to recoup their losses during the :,ocs
by extending their appeal among members of the new middle class of salaried employees.
Beginning in the early :,;cs, however, the party experienced a renewed erosion of sup-
port (except for periodic uctuations during the early :,cs) as more and more citizens
390 sweden
switched partisan allegiances or abstained from voting altogether. By the spring and sum-
mer of :,,:, opinion polls indicated a clear realignment in favor of the nonsocialist bloc,
with the Christian Democrats and New Democracy emerging as the principal benecia-
ries. Explanations for the electoral shift include voter protests against short-term Social
Democratic economic policies, disappointment on both the left and right concerning tax
reform, discontent among women over wage inequalities, and the diffusion of postmate-
rialist values among many younger citizens who are critical of conformist norms and bu-
reaucratic constraints associated with the established welfare state.
8
Diverse international and domestic factors thus converged in :,,: to spell another in-
terim disruption in Social Democratic governance. As indicated in table :,.: (p. ,o,) and
table :,.: (p. ,;) the SAP lost heavily in the September electionfalling to its lowest
point since the early :,,cswhile the nonsocialist bloc garnered o.o percent of the pop-
ular vote. The election revealed a pattern of continued electoral volatility, accompanied
by a decline in the importance of party as a determinant of voter choice. Electoral partic-
ipation declined for the third time in a row, falling to ,., percent (compared to o per-
cent in :, and ,., percent in :,,). At the same time, the number of voters who did
not know which party they would support a week prior to a given election steadily rose
from o percent in :,, to ,.: percent in :, to :,. percent in :,,:. Whereas only ; per-
cent of Swedish voters switched party allegiances between elections during the late :,,cs,
fully :c.: percent changed loyalties in :,. In the September election voters deserted not
only the Social Democrats but also the Liberals, the Center, and the Greens. New
Democracy beneted most dramatically from the decline of voter loyalty, drawing sup-
port from both the traditional nonsocialist parties and especially the Social Democrats.
Indeed, exit polls revealed that a majority of New Democracy adherents were trade
unionists.
Prime Minister Carlsson promptly submitted his resignation, and in early October
Carl Bildt formed a nonsocialist coalition made up of the Moderates, the Liberals, the
Center Party, and the Christian Democrats. To achieve its declared determination to
bring Swedens age of collectivism to an end, the Moderate-led cabinet announced the
following shared objectives: a reduction in public expenditures, economic deregulation,
additional tax reforms designed to encourage private savings and strengthen small busi-
ness rms, the partial privatization of education and social services, and a reafrmation of
Swedish membership in the European Community.
From the outset, the nonsocialist coalition confronted several formidable challenges
to its capacity to enact a coherent agenda of policy innovation. One was its minority sta-
tus in parliament. While the four parties together commanded :;c out of ,, seats in the
Riksdag, they lacked nine votes for a majority in their own right. Hence, the coalition was
indirectly dependent on the support of New Democracys twenty-ve deputies to remain
in ofce. This dependency not only posed the ever-present risk of a government crisis but
also accorded the New Democrats a disproportionate policy inuence despite strong an-
tipathy among traditional nonsocialist leaders, especially the Liberals, toward their pop-
ulist ideological demands.
An even more daunting obstacle was Swedens continuing economic malaise. In the
face of sluggish growth, increased ination, and a surge in the unemployment rate from
,.c percent in :,,: to .: percent in :,,,, the nonsocialist cabinet assigned highest policy
priority to reducing government expenditures to encourage private investments and cur-
tail Swedens worsening public decit as means to stimulate economic recovery. This en-
tailed a succession of budget cuts from January :,,: onward, primarily at the expense of
established welfare entitlementsincluding unemployment and retirement benets, sick
pay, and housing subsidies. Simultaneously, the nonsocialists acted to eliminate taxes on
electricity and fuel for industrial use and declared their intention to lower the nations
high value-added tax rate.
Both of these obstacles ultimately thwarted nonsocialist aspirations to achieve funda-
mental changes in Swedens political economy and the established welfare state. New
Democracy repeatedly held the minority government hostage to specic policy demands
(including a successful effort in :,,: to earmark a portion of the wage-earner funds as risk
capital accessible to small businesses) even as leaders of the maverick party discredited
themselves in the eyes of the electorate through an extended public feud. Members of the
New Democracy legislative faction voted against cabinet bills twice in :,,, (including the
proposed budget for :,,,,), but abstained in a crucial vote of no condence to ensure
the governments survival.
Economic imperatives loomed even larger. In their efforts to trim public expendi-
tures and welfare entitlements, the nonsocialists confronted Swedens worst economic cri-
sis since the :,,cs. In tandem with recessionary international economic trends in :,,:,,
and an accompanying European currency crisis, which triggered intense pressure on
Swedish banks and a de facto devaluation of the krona by , percent, the nations growth
rate stagnated. The annual rate of ination fell from :c.: percent to :. percent by the
end of :,,:, but unemployment spiraled relentlessly upward from , percent in :,,: to
fully :, percent by :,,. Swedens economic doldrums, combined with the governments
tax cuts, caused the public debt to jump from ;., percent of the gross domestic product
(GDP) in :,,: to :,., percent a year later.
Return of the Social Democrats to Power
Swedish voters responded to the worsening economic conditions and nonsocialist cuts in
social entitlements by restoring the Social Democrats to power in the September :,,
election. Electoral participation fell marginally to o., percent, but the SAP dramatically
reversed its earlier decline by mobilizing ,. percent of the national vote. The Left Party
increased its share to o.: percent, and the EnvironmentalistsGreens returned to parlia-
ment with , percent of the vote. The Moderates increased their share slightly to ::., per-
cent, but the Liberals, the Center, and the Christian Democrats lost support (see table
:,.:, p. ,o,). New Democracy effectively disappeared from the political scene with only
:.: percent.
Following Bildts resignation as leader of the nonsocialist coalition, Ingvar Carlsson
was once again sworn in as Social Democratic prime minister. The Social Democrats in-
troduced an austerity budget of their own that prescribed further reductions in a number
of public expenditures but also included an increase in taxes and the restoration of the
392 sweden
previous governments curtailment of unemployment and sickness benets. Prime Minis-
ter Carlsson declared that the SAPs principal policy objective would be to reduce the na-
tions high unemployment rate through economic growth. As a means to that end, the
Social Democrats successfully led the campaign to ratify Swedens accession treaty with
the European Union in November :,,.
In a statement to parliament immediately following his election, Prime Minister
Carlsson announced that the rst priority of his government was to combat Swedens
high unemployment rate ( percent in :,,o). To this end, he declared that the Social
Democrats would seek to reduce the government decit (which peaked under nonsocial-
ist governance at :, percent of GDP in :,,,) to , percent by the end of :,,;; improve
conditions for enterprise as a means to encourage job growth in small- and medium-size
rms; encourage new forms of social and political cooperation; and promote lifelong
learning by integrating school, preschool, and leisure center activities and expanding
postsecondary educational opportunities. Sweden will be competing [in the world mar-
ket] with high qualications, Carlsson declared, not low wages.
9
Prime Minister Carlssons policy declaration contained echoes of traditional Social
Democratic valuesfor example, his emphasis on the equal value of all personsbut
in essence it afrmed a neoliberal reorientation of public policy in conformity with EU
norms. Indeed, the governments scal and economic objectives were explicitly formu-
lated to meet the so-called convergence criteria required for eventual participation in
the European Unions program of economic and monetary union (EMU; see chapters ,:
and ,:).
Carlsson announced his decision to retire as party chair and prime minister in No-
vember :,,,. He was succeeded by Gran Persson, a moderate Social Democrat and for-
mer minister of nance who was elected prime minister by the Riksdag in March :,,o.
Perssons cabinet consisted of fteen new appointments and seven ministers who had
served in the previous government; ten of the twenty-two incumbents were women (in-
cluding the heads of the crucial ministries of foreign affairs, justice, culture, agriculture,
environment, and the labor market).
Perssons election heralded the latest phase in the continuing redenition of the
Swedish model. Under his leadership the Social Democrats have utilized executive power
to modify public policy in accordance with EU norms while confronting paradoxical
consequences of electoral backlash and economic revitalization.
Notes
:. The averages are tabulated on the basis of annual data published in International Labour Ofce, Year Book
of Labour Statistics (Geneva: ILO, :,,c to the present).
:. During the :,cs the number of working days lost in Sweden as a result of strikes and lockouts ranged
from none in :,: to :.co days per civilian worker in :,c. In Germany the only statistically relevant year
of conict during the decade was :, when twenty-one working days were lost per worker.
,. A useful though decidedly apolitical account of postwar Swedish scal and monetary policy is Assar Lind-
becks Swedish Economic Policy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, :,;). A central
component of the governments effort to facilitate structural and technological modernization on the part
of Swedish industry and services has been increased public expenditure on research and development as
part of an active industrial policy. See the chapter on Industrial Policies in the United Kingdom, Sweden,
and Germany: A Study in Contrasts and Convergence, in Managing Modern Capitalism: Industrial Re-
newal and Workplace Reform in the United States and Western Europe, ed. M. Donald Hancock, John Logue,
and Bernt Schiller (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood-Praeger, :,,:).
. Gsta Rehn, The Wages of Success, Daedalus, spring :,, ::.
,. World Bank, World Development Report :ooo/:oo: (New York: Oxford University Press, :ccc), ,cc, ,c:.
o. These reforms are described and assessed in greater detail in M. Donald Hancock and John Logue, Swe-
den: The Quest for Economic Democracy, Polity, fall/winter :,. See also Bernt Schillers chapter, The
Swedish Model Reconstituted, in Hancock, Logue, and Schiller, Managing Modern Capitalism.
;. Excess prots referred, in the eyes of the LO, to those additional prots gained by individual rms attrib-
utable to wage restraint exercised by the trade unions.
. An excellent assessment of citizen demands for new forms of political participation in Sweden is Olof Pe-
terssons Democracy and Power in Sweden, Scandinavian Political Studies : (:,,:): :;,,:. Diane Sains-
bury discusses efforts by the Social Democrats to respond to domestic economic and social change in
Swedish Social Democracy in Transition: The Partys Record in the :,cs and the Challenge of the :,,cs,
West European Politics : (:,,:): ,:,;. The diffusion of postmaterialist values in Western democracies is ex-
plored in Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,;;); and idem., Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Democ-
racies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,;;).
,. Sweden, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Press Section, Statement of Government Policy Presented by the
Prime Minister to Parliament, Friday :: March :,,o (unofcial translation).
394 sweden
Chapter 25
What Is the Future of Swedish Politics?
TRENDS IN RECENT DECADES reveal a gradual transformation of the Swedish model
as a consequence of multiple factors of international and domestic change. Among them
are the consequences of Swedens membership in the European Union and an incipient
erosion in solidarity within Social Democratic ranks. At stake in the redenition of the
Swedish model is a continuing tension between breakthrough politics of reform and
rationalizing politics of retrenchment.
Transition in the 1990s
The :,,cs marked a signicant transition in the role of the Swedish state in managing do-
mestic economic and social change. An important exogenous factor constraining tradi-
tional Social Democratic policy preferences for an expansive public sector and a regulated
economy was Swedens increasingly close ties with the European Community.
1
Recogniz-
ing that the countrys economic fortunes were inexplicably linked with the EC by virtue
of expanding trade with its continental neighbors, the Swedish cabinet had issued a policy
paper in December :,; outlining a strategy to promote intensied cooperation between
Sweden and the EC.
2
The proposal entailed extensive coordination of Swedish monetary,
scal, and industrial policies with those of the EC; the elimination of existing restrictions
on the free ow of investment capital; and deregulation of agriculture (including a grad-
ual reduction in government subsidies to farmers). The government hoped thereby to en-
courage the increased movement of goods, services, people, and capital in Western Eu-
rope as well as the maintenance of full employment and social security.
3
The fall of the Berlin Wall less than two years later, symbolizing the collapse of
Soviet-style communism in Central and Eastern Europe, subsequently induced Swedish
leaders to conclude that neutrality no longer precluded formal collaboration with the
EC. Accordingly, Prime Minister Carlsson submitted a bid for membership in June
:,,:. As recounted in chapter ::, Sweden negotiated an accession treaty with the Euro-
pean Union in :,,, that a majority of voters affirmed in a national referendum in No-
vember :,,.
While membership in the EU promises to encourage long-term material growth
through trade expansion, the necessity to adapt Swedish structures and policies to accord
more closely with EU regulations imposes discernible constraints on national policy au-
tonomy. The political consequence, as John Logue observes, is that the nation state no
longer serves as the appropriate unit for both economic and social policy making. In-
stead, there is a clear tendency to turn to Brussels rather than . . . Stockholm [for author-
itative decisions].
4
Domestic changes also contributed to a transformation of the Swedish model. The
rst of these was the abandonment of centralized wage negotiations between the LO and
SAF on the labor market. Simultaneous pressure on the part of both individual trade
unions (notably in the engineering industries) and employer associations within SAF to
pursue direct bargaining over wages and other terms of employment yielded during the
:,cs a more decentralized mode of industrial relations. While direct negotiations have
facilitated more exible responses to changing labor-market conditions (including labor
shortages in manufacturing and construction), an unintended consequence has been to
undermine worker solidarity. The result has been increased trade union egoism and
heightened discord between public- and private-sector employees. Empirical measures of
lessened solidarity among LO and TCO members include an increase in strike activity
during the latter part of the decade, noted earlier, and resistance by the unions to Feldts
ill-fated attempt to impose greater trade union discipline through legislation in February
:,,c.
A further change was heralded by intermittent conict between the LO and the SAP
over key political issues. Incipient discord was already apparent during the :,;cs when
the LO promoted, much more aggressively than the party itself, the introduction of
wage-earner funds. LO leaders were partially mollied when the Social Democrats pro-
ceeded to introduce a version of the system in :,,, but the fact that the regional
wage-earner funds were restricted in their capitalization and capacity to purchase majority
shares in individual rms curtailed their effectiveness as a direct instrument of economic
democratization. Instead, with the maturation of the wage-earner funds in :,,c, the So-
cial Democrats proposed that they be merged with existing national pension funds to cre-
396 sweden
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
,:.:
.,
o.;
:,.,
:o.,
,,.,
,.
o.;
Total Government Expenditures as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product ()
Source: World Bank, World Development Report :ooo/:oo:: Attacking Poverty (New York: Oxford University
Press, :cc:), and Survey of Economic Policy in Russia in :ooo (Moscow, :cc:).
ate a series of ve superfunds with capital assets totaling ,c,ccc million kronor that
would be used for investment purposes. The result was the demise of the wage-earner
fund system as an instrument to promote economic democracy.
Tensions heightened between the two branches of Swedish Social Democracy over
the governments austere budgetary policies and its agreement with the nonsocialist par-
ties in :, to proceed with a overhaul of the tax system designed to benet middle- and
upper-income citizens. LO leaders charged that the reform would prove disadvantageous
to lower-income workers and successfully pressed the SAP into granting marginal conces-
sions. Despite continued LO misgivings, the tax reform was implemented on : January
:,,c.
Each of these outcomes reveals a gradual weakening of the LO in relation to other
economic and political actors. Similar to Tony Blairs New Labour party in Britain, the
SAP has marginally distanced itself from organized labor in its embrace of an EU-inspired
neoliberal approach to economic and social management.
Paradoxes into the Twenty-First Century
The transformation of the Swedish model remains a work in progress, characterized by
multiple political and economic paradoxes. While in ofce from :,,: to :,,, the nonso-
cialist parties had implemented a number of policy changes, which were designed to trim
the national budget decit (including the introduction of a waiting period before workers
could claim sickness benets) that proved highly unpopular. Moreover, the nations slug-
gish economic performance in the early :,,cs undermined the credibility of the non-
socialists to offer a viable set of policy alternatives to those of the Social Democrats. The
cumulative effect of these discontents was a convincing SAP victory in the :,, national
election.
Substantively, the Social Democrats continued many of the policies initiated by the
nonsocialists, particularly with respect to budgetary austerity and marginal reductions in
welfare benets. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Gran Persson, who succeeded
what is the future of swedish politics? 397
France
Germany
Italy
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
.o
,,.
,.c
:,.
o.
,c.:
,c.c
Trade Union Density (percentage of workers, )
Ingvar Carlsson in :,,,, the government simultaneously adjusted national policy princi-
ples in response to EU precepts. A primary example was the transition to a credible ina-
tion targeting regime, from the highly inationary environment during the :,;cs and
:,cs, which embodied a cycle of excessive wage growth and exchange rate adjustment.
5
The government also initiated greater independence on the part of the Central Bank and
proclaimed price stability as the explicit objective of monetary policy, targeting the at-
tainment of an annual ination rate of : percent.
6
A central feature of the governments
embrace of a neoliberal approach to economic management was deregulation in accor-
dance with the EUs Single European Act directives of :,, (see chapter ,:). In the
OECDs assessment of Swedish policy, Sweden embraced rapidly all the directives under
the internal-market programme of the European Union. . . . Sweden has gone farther
than most countries in exposing the former public monopolies to competition.
7
Another
important SAP initiative was a decision to dismantle Swedens nuclear power plants in ac-
cordance with the outcome of the national referendum in :,c (see chapter :,).
The :,, election campaign exposed the Social Democrats to simultaneous attacks
from the right and the left. The Moderates, joined by the Liberals, criticized the govern-
ments tax and nuclear energy policies, while the Christian Democrats tapped into elec-
toral discontent about the continued secularization of Swedish society. The Left Party,
meanwhile, positioned itself as a stanch opponent of retrenchments in welfare benets.
The Left Party also drew on a populist groundswell of resistance to the encroachment of
the EU in national politics. The result was a devastating decline in SAP electoral support,
down from ,. percent three years earlier to ,o. percent (its lowest level since the intro-
duction of democracy in :,::.
8
The SAPs downward electoral spiral continued a year
later in the June :,,, elections to the European Parliament, when it received a scant :o.c
percent (compared to :,. percent for the Left Party). Despite these setbacks, the Social
Democrats remained in power with the indirect support of the Greens and the Left Party.
Paradoxically, the SAPs electoral outcomes came at a time when the Swedish econ-
omy began to demonstrate a resounding turnaround. The annual rate of national growth
jumped to .: percent in :,,when the Social Democrats resumed power (up from
::. percent in :,,,)and averaged ,. percent a year from :,,, through :,,,. From a
high of :c. percent in :,,c, meanwhile, the annual ination rate plummeted to c., per-
cent in :,,,. Simultaneously, unemployment fell from .c percent in :,,; to a projected
rate of ., percent in :cc:.
9
Much of Swedens economic revitalization can be attributed
to a combination of government policies, especially deregulation; expanding exports; and
the success of numerous new start-up small enterprises exploiting cutting-edge computer-
based technology.
Breakthrough vs. Rationalizing Politics
Recent policy enactments by both the nonsocialists and the Social Democrats confirm a
retreat in Sweden from what Lawrence Brown depicts as reformist breakthrough poli-
tics toward a more restrictive style of rationalizing politics.
10
From their rise to power
in :,,: through most of the postwar period, the Social Democrats sponsored successive
398 sweden
breakthrough initiatives that had the cumulative effect of achieving a distinctive
model of advanced industrial society: the implementation of a coordinated approach to
economic management, the extension of welfare benefits, the introduction of a supple-
mentary pension system (which not only provided individualized retirement benefits
but also accorded the state significant sources of investment capital), legislation during
the :,;cs that signicantly enhanced workers rights, and the creation of the wage-earner
fund system.
By the early :,cs, however, the Social Democrats embarked on a strategy of ideolog-
ical retrenchment when they began to embrace a market approach to economic manage-
ment and suspended the march toward economic democracy as well as further social re-
forms. The welfare state remains largely intact, but in practice the Social Democrats have
increasingly sought to harmonize Swedish policies with those of the EU as they struggled
to cope with erratic patterns of economic performance. In the process the SAP shifted
course toward a rationalizing approach to public policy.
The nonsocialist victory in the :,,: election intensied the new direction in Swedish
politics. While the Social Democrats have restored some welfare entitlements since their
return to power in :,,, they, too, recognize the compelling scal limitations of further
breakthrough reforms (at least for the foreseeable future). Whether Swedens contempo-
rary era of rationalizing politics will necessarily make politics more problem free, as
Brown suggests, is another question.
Notes
:. European Community ofcials declared their intention to eliminate remaining restrictions on free trade
and the movement of capital and labor within the EC with the adoption of the Solemn Declaration on
European Union in :,, and the Single European Act in :,o. The Swedish cabinet coupled Swedens
afrmation of closer ties with the EC with a renewed declaration that prospective membership in the
Community would be incompatible with the nations traditional foreign policy of neutrality.
:. kat samarbete utan medlemskap r Sveriges linje mot EG, Frn Riksdag & Departementet, :, January
:,, :,.
,. Sweden, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Press Section, Statement of Government Policy Presented by the
Prime Minister to Parliament, Friday :: March :,,o (unofcial translation).
. John Logue, Small Frogs, Big Pond. Can the Scandinavian Social Democratic Welfare States Adopt to
Globalization? Paper presented at the conference on the Swedish EU Presidency and the Nordic Coun-
tries in the ::st Century, U.S. Department of State (:: January :cc:): ,, :.
,. OECD, OECD Economic Surveys :)):))), Sweden (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation
and Development, :,,,), :c.
o. Ibid., ::::.
;. Ibid., :,.
. Tommy Mller, The Swedish Election :,,: A Protest Vote and the Birth of a New Political Landscape?
Scandinavian Political Studies :: (:,,,): :o:;o.
,. OECD, OECD Economic Outlook o; (Paris, June :ccc): :,.
:c. Lawrence D. Brown, New Policies, New Politics: Governments Response to Governments Growth (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Brookings Institution, :,,).
For Further Reading
ADLER-KARLSON, G. Functional Socialism: A Swedish Theory for Democratic Socialism. Stockholm: Prisma,
:,o,.
ANTON, THOMAS J. Administered Politics: Elite Political Culture in Sweden. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, :,c.
CASTLES, FRANCIS. The Social Democratic Image of Society: A Study of the Achievements and Origins of Scan-
dinavian Social Democracy in a Comparative Perspective. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :,;.
CHILDS, MARQUIS W. Sweden: The Middle Way on Trial. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, :,c.
DAEDALUS, Nordic Voices, Spring :,, and The Nordic Enigma, Winter :,.
EINHORN, ERIC S., AND JOHN LOGUE. Modern Welfare States: Politics and Policy in Social Democratic
Scandinavia. New York: Praeger, :,,.
ESPING-ANDERSEN, GSTA. Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, :,,.
. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :,,,.
FREEMAN, RICHARD B., ROBERT TOPEN, AND BIRGITTA SWEDENBORG. The Welfare State in Tran-
sition. Reforming the Swedish Model. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,,;.
FURNISS, NORMAN, ed. Futures for the Welfare State. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, :,o.
FURNISS, NORMAN, ANDTIMOTHY TILTON. The Case for the Welfare State. Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
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GEYER, ROBERT, CHRISTINI INGEBRITSEN, AND JONATHAN MOSES, eds. Globalization, Euro-
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400 sweden
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Chapter 26
The Context of Russian Politics
WINSTON CHURCHILL ONCE complained that Russia was a riddle in a mystery
wrapped inside an enigma. A nineteenth-century Russian poet, Fedor Tiuchev, went
even further: Russia, he insisted, could not be understood, it could only be believed in.
Modern social scientists are understandably less willing to explain the politics of the
worlds largest state by referring to the complexities of the Slavic soul. As everywhere else,
resources are limited, and their allocation is determined by the competition of organised
interests within a structured framework. But if Russia is not unique, it is certainly distinc-
tive: in its territorial expanse, its encompassing of Europe and Asia, its centuries-long ex-
perience of authoritarian rule. Its distinctive characteristics, in turn, have helped to shape
a political system that combines the formal institutions of Western democracy with a
strong emphasis on central leadership of a kind that has not always respected the rights of
ordinary citizens.
A Continent More than a Country
Of all the forces that make Russia what it is today, geography is arguably the most impor-
tant. Every Russian government, whatever its political complexion, has to reckon with
the fact that this is the worlds largest state (over :; million square kilometers, or about a
seventh of the worlds land surface) with an extraordinary variety of human and physical
features. Such is its size and variety that it is better described as a continent than as a
country. Its land area stretches over ,,ccc km across Europe and Asia, from the Atlantic
to the Pacic, embracing eleven different time zones, and for up to ,ccc km from north
to south. It has the worlds longest land frontier (with China) and the worlds longest
(mostly frozen) coastline. And it borders sixteen other states, from Norway and Finland
in the west to Mongolia and North Korea in the Far East, and then to sea borders with
Japan and the United States. Many of these borders, following the collapse of the USSR
and the emergence of an independent Russian state at the end of :,,:, are still undemar-
cated, and in some casessuch as the Kurile islands, claimed by Japanthey are in dispute.
The great extent and variety of the Russian landmass have always made it difcult for
central governments in the Kremlin to impose their authority on outlying areas, espe-
cially in earlier centuries when communications were few and imperfect. Russias great
size, for instance, presents major difculties for the operation of a national railway and air
transport system (the whole of the network uses Moscow time even when this is very dif-
ferent from local time, otherwise there would be total confusion), and there are similar
difculties for Russian radio and television, which have to rebroadcast their programs at
different times in different time zones. Russias vast open boundaries have also meant that
this is a country that has often been invaded, from the east as well as the west; but its
enormous size has also meant that this is a country that is almost impossible to conquer as
warlords from the Tatars, Poles, and Swedes to Napoleon in the early nineteenth century
and Hitlers armies during World War II all discovered to their cost.
The climate makes a difference as well, with its wide variations from place to place
and from season to season. This is largely because few parts of Russia are close to the
moderating inuence of the sea. The whole of Russia, in fact, lies in relatively northern
latitudes compared with most of the worlds other industrial powers. Its northernmost
point is just a few hundred miles south of the North Pole, and c percent of the surface
area consists of permafrostland that is permanently frozen. The southernmost parts of
the Russian landmass, by contrast, are in the subtropical regions that border on the Black
and Caspian Seas, and farther south is desert. Moscow, the capital, is about as far north as
Newfoundland in Canada, but it is much colder in January (when the average tempera-
ture is ,
C) and rather warmer in summer (the average in July is :
C). St. Petersburg,

the former capital, is nearly as far north as Anchorage in Alaska; the average temperature
here is
C in January and :;
C in July.
Elsewhere in the country the range of climate variation is far greater. Yakutsk, in east-
ern Siberia, has an average January temperature of
C; temperatures here are as low as

anywhere in the inhabited world, but in summer (an average of :,
C in July) they are as

high as in most parts of Western Europe. This wide range of climatic variation makes agri-
culture difcult in all but the most temperate parts of the country, it hinders transport,
and it makes construction slow and much more expensive (at such low temperatures
metal becomes brittle and oil rapidly solidies). Some have even speculated that it may
help to explain the Russian character, with its characteristic swings between sorrow and
joy, apathy and enthusiasm, and sobriety and drunkenness.
Climate, in turn, has implications for settlement. Population densities across the
country as a whole are relatively low at just .; for every square kilometer, which is half
the level of the United States and just a seventeenth of the population density of the Eu-
ropean Union. What matters more is that settlement is very unevenly distributed, with
nearly c percent of the population concentrated in the European part of the country al-
though it accounts for no more than a quarter of the total land area. The far north, by
contrast, with about ;c percent of the countrys land area, accounts for no more than
percent of its entire population. There is a similar mismatch between the distribution of
population and of natural resources. More than three-quarters of Russian industry is in
European Russia, to the west of the Urals. But ,c percent of the countrys coal reserves lie
in Siberia and the Far East; so too does most of its oil and gas, and two-thirds of its hydro-
electrical power potential. That potential, moreover, is enormous: Russia accounts for
more than a third of the worlds known reserves of gas, and for :::, percent of its oil.
There is a mismatch even in the water supply, with only :o percent of Russias river water
owing across its central and southern regions, and most of its ::c,ccc rivers emptying
themselves uselessly into the Arctic.
1
404 russia
A Slavic People
Russia is equally varied in its ethnic composition, although Russians and other Slavs ac-
count for the overwhelming majority. Russia, in fact, has never been more Russian than
it is today: the population of the Russian Empire in :,; was just , percent ethnically
Russian, and in the Soviet period Russians were just over half the total (see table :o.:). Al-
together, there are at least a hundred recognized nationalities in contemporary Russia and
:,, spoken languages, of which c are written and about two-thirds of which are sus-
tained by substantial indigenous communities. Russian, for obvious reasons, is the most
widely spoken language, not only among Russians themselves but also among other peo-
ples, percent of whom claimed to know it well at the time of the most recent census in
:,, and about a quarter of whom were reported to consider it their native language.
Overall, nearly , percent of the entire population was reported to be uent in Russian
by the same date, and nearly ; percent considered it their native language. Russian, for
such reasons, is recognized as the ofcial state language (other languages can have ofcial
status at lower levels of government), and it operates as the medium through which the
countrys different nationalities can most easily communicate with each other.
Many Russians lived outside their own republic during the Soviet years, and at the
end of :,,: when the USSR broke up they found themselves in what had now become in-
dependent and foreign states. At the time of the last national census in :,, nearly , per-
cent of all Russians lived within the Russian Federation (still, at this time, one of the re-
publics of the USSR), and nearly : percent of the population of the Russian Federation
consisted of Russians. But more than :, million Russians lived elsewhere, in what were
originally other Soviet republics but which became foreign states in the early :,,cs. There
were more than :: million of them in Ukraine, for instance, and more than o million in
Kazakhstan; they were often a large proportion of the population of the state in which
they now livedmore than a fth of the population of a newly independent Ukraine and
about a third in Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia. Understandably, the fate of these fellow
nationals has been a central concern for Russian foreign policy, particularly in the Baltic
the context of russian politics 405
Table 26.1 Some Characteristics of Russias Population
Total population, 1998 147,105,000
Of which: (in percentage)
Urban 73
Rural 27
Male 47
Female 53
Ethnic composition, 1994 microcensus
Russians 82.95
Tatars 3.77
Ukrainians 2.35
Chuvash 1.17
Others 9.76
States, where they have been denied citizenship and the right to vote unless they satisfy a
number of linguistic and other requirements.
Russians are united by their religion, as well as by their language and territory. His-
torically they are a Christian people, more specically members of the Russian Orthodox
Church, which is a branch of Eastern Christianity. Although all confessions suffered from
a variety of forms of direct and indirect repression during the Soviet period, at least half
the populationaccording to the survey evidenceclaim to be believers, although few
of them attend church with the regularity that is a feature of many Western countries.
About ; percent of the adult population attended a service at least once a month in the
late :,,cs; this compared with :, percent in the United Kingdom and percent in the
United States, which is an unusually high gure in comparative terms.
2
But although
Russians are often prepared to identify themselves as Orthodox and as believers, they also
appear to be unsure of many of the essentials of their faith. They may be Christians, for
instance, but at the same time believe in ying saucers, the evil eye, and various forms of
Oriental wisdom. Atheists, for their part, are often positive toward the role of Orthodoxy
in their society, attend church services on a regular basis, and want their children to have
a religious upbringing. These loose and amorphous patterns have helped to ensure that
there are few clear divisions between believers and others in their political attitudes or
party support, although frequent attendees (as in other countries) are somewhat more in-
clined to support conservative positions on questions that relate to censorship, or the
role of women, or the rights of sexual minorities. As well as Russian Orthodox believers,
there are substantial and well-established communities of Muslims, Protestants,
Catholics, Jews, and (in the Far East) Buddhists.
Patterns of History
Russia today is a product of its history as well as of its geography, and some features of its
past are still of great importance if we wish to understand policies and attitudes in the
early years of a new century.
3
One of the most important of these legacies is the tradition
of autocratic rule, a pattern established in early medieval times and virtually unbroken up
to the present. Scandinavian tradersthe records suggestestablished the rst Russian
state, founded in the ninth century in the city republics of Novgorod and Kiev, but it was
the southern city that quickly became its cultural capital. It was under one of the rst
rulers of this Kievan state, Vladimir, that Russia embraced Christianity as its ofcial reli-
gion and, later, began to establish its own codes of law. But an enduring pattern was soon
established of disputed successions and local rivalries, and this made it less easy to defend
the new state against outside invaders. Proting from these divisions, Mongol armies led
by the grandson of Genghis Khan overran the country in the thirteenth century, taking
Kiev and the other major cities and imposing a pattern of subordination, tribute, and
military service. It was their patronage that helped the city of Moscow to establish a dom-
inant position among the Russian principalities, and it was that position that in turn al-
lowed the city to assemble a military force and lead them to a victory over the Mongols at
the battle of Kulikovo eld in :,c, and to the nal overthrow of the Mongol yoke in
the following century.
406 russia
Under a succession of skillful leaders, Moscow went on to extend its rule over other
Russian cities and to establish itself as the core of a revived and independent Russian state.
Ivan the Terrible was the rst to be known as tsar, and it was he who began its territorial
expansion to the east, annexing the Kazan khanate in :,,: as the Mongol empire itself be-
gan to collapse. Russias territorial boundaries expanded much more rapidly in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, and relations became much closer with the rest of Eu-
rope, particularly under the modernizing leadership of Peter the Great (:o::;:,). A
large part of Poland and Lithuania was annexed under Catherine the Great in the late
eighteenth century, together with the northern shores of the Black Sea. The nineteenth
century saw another series of advances, into Central Asia and the Far East, in a pattern
that was reminiscent of the colonial expansion that other European powers were conduct-
ing in their overseas dominions. It was an empire built on conquest and occupation, and
any resistance was mercilessly suppressed; Poland, which rose several times in resistance,
was eventually incorporated as a Russian province and its people subjected to a campaign
of Russication.
Russian rule was autocraticnot just in its territorial acquisitions but also within the
lands that formed the historic core of the state itself. Tsars and emperors ruled with a rm
hand, their subjects had little inuence on the decisions of government, and their rights
and liberties were poorly respected even by the standards of the time. Under the laws of
the empire, the tsar was an absolute ruler, subordinate only to God himself. The nobility
were scarcely a check on his authority, as their position was dened by state service; and
the commercial and professional classes were few in number and weak in their political
inuence. Considerable changes did take place in the later tsarist period, particularly after
:,c, when a constitutional reform allowed an elected parliamentary body (the State
Duma) to come into existence. But its electoral base was narrow and its powers were very
limited; it had no direct inuence on the composition of government, or on two-thirds of
state expenditure. A limited freedom of the press was also permitted after :,c,, and bod-
ies like trade unions and political parties were given some legal standing. The Provisional
Government, in :,:;, extended these freedoms further. But even on the most generous
interpretation, this was a short break in a tradition of authoritarianism that arguably sur-
vives to the present day.
Russians, in addition, were accustomed to a state that played a prominent part in
economic and social as well as in political life, as owner and manager and not simply as
custodian of the public interest. Before :,:;, as well as after it, the state owned a consider-
able proportion of the countrys productive resources, including coal, oil, and gold, and
most of the railway system. There were more peasants in the hands of the state by the
time serfdom was abolished in :o: than in the hands of private landlords. And the state
had a large measure of control over remaining parts of the economy through the banking
system, and particularly through the State Bank, which was the largest in the world in the
assets it controlled and a central agency of economic management. The state decided ap-
pointments and regulated what was taught at all levels of the educational system, and it
exercised a strict system of censorship over all forms of publication (one of its decisions
was to allow the publication of Marxs Kapital on the grounds that it was far too compli-
cated to inuence an ordinary worker, but Bolshevik newspapers had to be smuggled into
the country in false-bottomed suitcases and all Western publications were carefully scruti-
nized at the border).
Equally, there was only a limited rule of law. Although there had been signicant re-
forms in the :ocs, including a declaration that judges were independent of government,
there was no trial by jury in political cases, and a system of special courts introduced in
:: allowed the governors in each region to arrest or exile any citizen, to ban any meeting,
and to close any newspaper or journal. Considerable numbers were held in prison camps
in various parts of the country, or were exiled to remote places for extended periods;
Lenins brother lost his life for his part in a conspiracy to assassinate the tsar, and the So-
viet leader himself spent three years in Siberia. The state also exercised a considerable de-
gree of inuence over organized religion. The Russian Orthodox Church, as the national
church, was given a series of privileges as well as nancial support, and other denomina-
tions were subject to various forms of discrimination (this was most obviously true in
the case of Jews, who were allowed to live only in certain parts of the countrythe Pale
of Settlementand who were admitted to higher education in deliberately restricted
numbers).
The effectiveness of government control was admittedly far less outside the towns,
and the great majority who still lived in the countryside were normally able to get on with
their lives with little external interference. Villagers were generally part of a peasant com-
mune, the mir, and their social world revolved around it. The mir made its decisions col-
lectively, and usually unanimously, based on the participation of the heads of all the
households concerned. It was responsible for most of the economic activities of the com-
munity, for administrative matters such as taxation and military service, and it took a
close interest in the beliefs and behavior of its members as well. Although the mir was be-
ginning to break up in the years before World War I, in part because of government sup-
port for individual farming, this was the way in which their social world was organized
for the great majority of Russians until comparatively recent times. It would be surpris-
ing, in turn, if this did not have at least something to do with the apparent acceptability
to many Russians in more recent times of forms of government that are authoritarian and
collectivist, but which also include some genuine concern for the public welfare.
The Impact of Communist Rule
There was strong support for a change from tsarist rule in :,:;, although not necessarily
for a Bolshevik dictatorship. The old regime had provided incompetent leadership during
the war; the court itself was compromised by the German nationality of the empress and
by the unsavory intrigues that circulated around Rasputin, the semiliterate Siberian monk
who established a hold over the tsarina and who was eventually put to death by patriotic
noblemen in :,:o. Tsarist rule was ended by the February revolution of :,:;, which led to
the abdication of the tsar and the formation of a Provisional Government headed by
Alexander Kerensky, a moderate socialist. But the new government failed to provide deci-
sive leadership, above all by its refusal to withdraw from an increasingly disastrous war,
and in October (or, by the Western calendar, early November) it was replaced in its turn
408 russia
by a Soviet government headed by Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, more widely known by the
name he used in revolutionary politics, Lenin. In the elections to a constituent assembly
that took place over the following weeks, Lenins Bolshevik Party took about a quarter of
the vote; but it had a majority in the bigger cities, and about two-thirds went to socialist
parties that were committed in various ways to a republic that would give a wider range of
rights to ordinary people.
Lenin had not expected that a Soviet government would remain in power in an iso-
lated country. Russia, after all, was one of Europes most backward regions, far from the
developed capitalism that Marx had suggested was the natural precursor to a socialist so-
ciety. All Russia by itself could do was to set off a wider European and then a worldwide
revolution, taking advantage of the fact that the major capitalist countries were intercon-
nected and that Russia was their weakest link. Equally, it took some time for the Soviet
government to establish authority within its own territory, after a civil war and foreign in-
tervention had failed to dislodge it. But there was no serious domestic challenge to the
Soviet government after the early :,:cs, and over the seventy years or more in which it
was in power the new regime pushed through a series of policies that were designed to re-
shape all aspects of the society they had inherited.
One of the most important features of the new regime was political monopoly. The
early Soviet government had been a coalition, but after the summer of :,: the Bolsheviks
ruled by themselves, acting in the name of a dictatorship of the proletariat. A detailed
censorship was imposed, on a temporary basis that lasted until the end of the :,cs.
Opposition parties were marginalized and then closed down. Elections became increas-
ingly formalistic, and elected institutions became passive instruments of the ruling party.
Within the party itself, internal opposition and differing opinions of any kind were grad-
ually eliminated. The party leadership became a source of unchallengeable authority, and
within it the general secretary (from :,::, Joseph Stalin) became the central gure. Stalin
had established his dominance by the end of the decade, and under his leadership author-
itarianism gradually became a full-edged terror. The lowest point was in the late :,,cs,
when a series of show trials was staged at which former members of the leadership con-
fessed to the most ridiculous of crimes, such as plotting to assassinate Lenin. There has
been no agreement on the number of victims of the purges, which swept across the whole
of the society and not simply the political elite, but it is clear that at least occ,ccc death
sentences were handed out for what were essentially political offences between the late
:,,cs and :,,,.
4
In addition to deaths there were prison sentences, periods of exile, and
other forms of repression.
During the years of Stalinist rule, a full-scale offensive was launched to industrialize
and collectivize a still backward society. Industrialization involved the elimination of
what remained of private ownership, and a drive to expand production at a rate that was
without historical precedent. Industrialization was promoted by a series of ve-year plans,
the rst of which was introduced in :,: and pronounced achieved ahead of time in
:,,:. The plans emphasized heavy industry and defense rather than consumer goods, and
impressive achievements were recorded. In :,: Soviet industrial output was just ; per-
cent of the corresponding U.S. gure; by :,, it was up to , percent. For many inside
the USSR and even outside it, it appeared that the USSR had discovered the secret of
rapid and continuing economic growth at a time when the West was suffering from de-
pression and mass unemployment. The plan became a rallying point; the whole coun-
try began to be organized around its continuous fulllment; and children, reecting the
popular enthusiasm, began to be called Tractor, Five-Year Plan, or even Ninel (Lenin
spelled backward).
The collectivization of agriculture was launched a year later, in :,:,. By this date
only percent of rural homesteads had been collectivized, or grouped into rural co-op-
eratives. By :,, the proportion had reached more than ,, percent. The campaign fo-
cused particularly on kulaks, who were dened as rich and exploiting farmers but who
were often simply more efcient; Stalin called for their liquidation as a class. But the
campaign extended much further as the regime consolidated its control over the country-
side and brought the entire society within its ambit. Perhaps o million died in one of the
largest and most brutal social changes that have ever been attempted.
The modern Soviet Union emerged from these processes of change; it was also shaped
by the impact of war when Hitler broke off the Nazi-Soviet Pact of :,,, and ordered an
invasion in :,:. The German army blockaded Leningrad and reached the outskirts of
Moscow; but resistance was increasingly determined, and the harsh winter conditions
took their toll. A turning point was the battle of Stalingrad in :,,, when Field-Marshal
von Paulus and his huge army were forced to surrender. The Red Army was able to launch
a counteroffensive, and in :,, it was the rst to reach Berlin and plant its ag on the
Reichstag. But the losses that had been suffered in the war were enormous: at least :; mil-
lion dead (half of them civilians or prisoners), :, million left homeless, and transport and
industry devastated. The war had other effects as well: it helped to legitimate Communist
rule (it was the party that had led the resistance, and , million of its own members had
died); and it increased the determination of Soviet leaders to ensure that they established
rm control over Eastern Europe at the Yalta conference in :,,.
Communist rule began to liberalize after the war, reecting a society that was itself
maturing. The single most important development was the Communist Partys :cth Con-
gress in :,,o, at which Khrushchev accused his predecessor of a whole series of exceed-
ingly serious and grave perversions of party principles, of party democracy and of revolu-
tionary legality. Over the years that followed, there was a gradual attempt to establish at
least a limited rule of law, or socialist legality. There was a wider degree of freedom in the
arts, with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, for instance, allowed to publish his harrowing account
of a Stalinist prison camp, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (:,o:). Internationally,
the Soviet Union established closer relations with India, Egypt, and other developing
countries. Khrushchev made the rst-ever visit by a Soviet leader to the United States,
where he got into an argument with Richard Nixon and banged his shoe on the podium at
the United Nations. The momentum of reform slowed down under Khrushchevs succes-
sor Leonid Brezhnev, party leader from :,o up to :,:, but it speeded up under Yuri An-
dropov (:,:) and then acquired an entirely new scope and purpose under Mikhail
Gorbachev (:,,,:), when it became known as perestroika, or economic restructuring.
410 russia
The developments of these years, as well as of the postcommunist period, are considered in
more detail in later chapters.
For Gorbachev himself (and for many Western scholars), the broadening of the politi-
cal process that took place in the late :,cs was a reection of a society that had become
more urban, educated, and differentiated. In :,:; only :; percent of the Soviet population
lived in towns, and the proportion was no higher in :,:o (indeed, the proportion was
scarcely higher than it had been at the end of the previous century). By the end of the
:,,cs, however, more than half of the population lived in towns, and by the :,cs the pro-
portion was over ;c percent. There had been comparable changes in educational levels. Il-
literacy, which had affected almost three-quarters of the population before World War I,
was reduced and then eliminated during the :,,cs. At the other extreme, just under ,.
million had a university degree in :,,,, at the time of the rst postwar census; by :,,, at
the time of the last Soviet census, there were :, million. As a proportion of the adult pop-
ulation, that was four times as many college graduates as at the beginning of the period.
5
In the workforce, fewer were employed in agriculture, but many more in the services, and
the USSR alone maintained a quarter of the worlds scientic staff. There were even the be-
ginnings of a civil society as the professions became larger and more organized and as in-
creasing numbers of ordinary people came together to pursue their common interestsin
sport, ballroom dancing, or French cuisine, although not yet in politics.
Russian Political Culture: Values and Attitudes after Communism
The Soviet authorities had originally taken a dubious view of the study of public opin-
ionwhat differences, after all, could there be in a society based on the monolithic
unity of its people. From the early :,cs, however, it began to be acknowledged that
there could be differences of attitude and even conicts of interest under socialist condi-
tions, and that public policy would be more successful if they were known and taken into
account. The rst substantial step in this direction was in :,,, when the Central Com-
mittee of the Communist Party agreed that a feedback mechanism was needed that would
bring changes in the public mood to the attention of its leading ofcials. Perhaps, they
suggested, it was time to establish a national public opinion research center, as in some of
the East European countries. The All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion,
headed by a prominent reform-minded sociologist, Tatyana Zaslavskaya, was nally es-
tablished at the end of :,;; it remains today the most substantial of a large number of
such institutions.
Surveys were, in principle, the best way of establishing the distribution of opinion
across a heterogeneous and changing society. But, in part because the society was chang-
ing so rapidly and because there was still some reluctance to express views on public issues
(or even, with the increase in crime, to open the front door), they were often ambiguous
and a poor predictor of election outcomes. Telephone surveys were particularly problem-
atic because not much more than a third of the population had access to a receiver, and
the last available census, conducted at the end of the :,cs, became increasingly irrelevant
as thousands became refugees or changed their address for other reasons. As elsewhere,
President Mikhail
Gorbachev. ( Peter
Turnley/Corbis)
surveys could in principle provide a representative impression of the public mood, but
they were always best interpreted within a context that took proper account of the ways
in which ordinary citizens were inclined to conceive of their own problems on the basis of
their own experience.
What, so far as surveys were concerned, were the main concerns of ordinary Russians
at the start of a new century?
6
For the most part they had little to do with constitutional
design, or even the crisis in culture and public morality; most people were more con-
cerned about how they were to earn a living in a rapidly changing economic environ-
ment. In the late :,,cs, prices and unemployment came rst in the list of public con-
cerns, followed by the collapse of industrial and agricultural output. These were followed
by delays in the payment of wages (only a third of those who were asked in :,,, had re-
ceived the previous months salary in full and on time). The next most important public
concerns were crime and the widening gap between rich and poor (see table :o.:).
What about the market, to which Russians had been committed by their government
even before the end of communist rule? To begin with, the popular view was broadly sup-
portive, but as the real-life consequences of a market became apparent, including unem-
ployment and higher prices, ordinary Russians became increasingly disillusioned. By the
late :,,cs, according to the surveys, Russians were more favorable to a system based on
state planning rather than on market relations, although a substantial minority were
unable to make up their minds. There was overwhelming agreement, in particular, that
the state should provide a job for all who wished to work and that it should guarantee a
basic standard of living for all its citizens. At the same time, a majority thought a free-
market economy was necessary for Russias economic development and there were as
many who thought the reforms should be continued as who thought they should be
ended (still larger numbers found it difcult to say).
At least in retrospect, the principles of socialism were also attractive. Who, for in-
stance, were the most outstanding political leaders in Russias history in the twentieth
412 russia
Table 26.2 Russians Main Concerns in the Late 1990s
Issue :)); :)) :)))
Ination 47 40 87
Increasing unemployment 54 65 60
Economic crisis 47 57 58
Delays in pay 67 56
Increasing crime 54 50 43
Social inequalities 45 41 36
Weakness of state authority 40 37 34
Corruption, bribery 38 32 25
Moral and cultural crisis 26 26 20
Shortage of foodstuffs 7 5 13
Environmental deterioration 26 24 13
Source: Ekonomicheskie i sotsialnye permeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya, various issues.
century? The rst choice, ten years after the collapse of the system he had established in
its modern form, was Joseph Stalin (:, percent); Lenin, who had led the Bolsheviks to
power, came second with nearly :; percent, and the austere party leader of the early :,cs,
Yuri Andropov, was in third place with :: percent. More than half of those who were
asked thought it would have been much better if the situation had remained the way it
was before :,,, when Gorbachev began his reforms and the system began to disinte-
grate; much larger numbers regretted the passing of the USSR, which was the most obvi-
ous source of their economic difculties. Yet only a minority, at the same time, thought it
would actually be better to restore the communist system, and no more than a very sub-
stantial minority were prepared to vote for the Communist candidate in the :,,o presi-
dential election, when there was a genuine choice between alternative political futures.
What, the national public opinion center asked in the late :,,cs, were the main char-
acteristics of the Soviet system that had existed in the :,;cs and :,cs, and of the post-
communist system that had succeeded it in the :,,cs? The Soviet system had certainly
been bureaucratic and shortsighted, but much larger numbers thought it was close
to the people, legal, and familiar. The postcommunist system, by contrast, was just
as shortsighted as its communist predecessor, but the most general opinion was that it
was corrupt and criminal, remote from the people, or even illegal, in spite of its for-
mally democratic character. In all these matters, Russians were typically much more dis-
satised than their East European neighbors. They were more likely to take a favorable
view of the past than of the present or the immediate future, whereas Central Europeans
(on the whole) preferred the present to the past and took a still more positive view of their
immediate future. And equally, they were the most dissatised of all the postcommunist
nations that were asked by Eurobarometer to assess the performance of the country in
which they lived in terms of democracy and human rights.
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
,.c
.,
,.:
.,
;.
,.,
,.
o.:
Infant Mortality Rate ()
Source: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, :)) Democratic Yearbook (New York: United Nations,
:ccc).
There was at least one other way to discover what ordinary Russians actually thought
and that was in the form of letters to the editor.
7
Petitioning the authorities was a prac-
tice that went back to medieval times, when a bucket, in which petitioners could place
their grievances, was lowered from a window in the Old Kremlin Palace. In the Soviet pe-
riod, it developed into the most widely employed of all the forms of communication that
linked the Kremlin and those over whom they ruled. Substantial numbers wrote to the
Soviet government, or to party headquarters, or (in the early years) to Lenin himself. Still
larger numbers wrote to the daily papersthe peasant paper Krestianskaia gazeta received
half a million letters a year in the :,:cs on all kinds of subjects, including their reections
on a socialism that was like the building of the Great Wall of China, which had swal-
lowed up a lot of energy but to no obvious effect.
8
Letters maintained their signicance into the postcommunist period, although there
were now many other ways of attempting to inuence the public agenda. Boris Yeltsin,
for instance, received about :,,cc letters a day while he was president, raising all kinds of
questions from the state of the museum in Leo Tolstoys birthplace to the conditions in
student dormitories (some of them using uncensored language). Much larger numbers
wrote to the daily papers, including the bestselling weekly Argumenty i fakty (Arguments
and Facts), where the editorial day began with the enormous bags of mail that had
come in from their readers. There were four main kinds of letter-writer, the paper re-
ported. They included irreconcilables, who disagreed with what the paper had to say;
analysts, who had their own ideas for the improvement of the society in which they
lived; and ghters for justice, who wanted to call attention to a social problem. Others
raised personal concerns, such as Polevik of Moscow, who had observed a large collec-
tion of condoms of various sizes oating down the river and wondered which institu-
tion (?!) had been responsible.
9
The letters that appeared in Argumenty i fakty in the late :,,cs raised all kinds of con-
cerns. Some of the papers correspondents were most interested in questions of public life:
for instance, how much were the presidents of the post-Soviet republics paid? (Yeltsin, it
emerged, was not the best rewarded.) And what about Yeltsin himself: was it true that his
father had served in an anti-Bolshevik army during the civil war? (Apparently not.) But
more often, it was a private matter or simply curiosity that led readers to take up their
pens. For instance, could you take a dog on the underground? Could you bequeath your
apartment to your cat? (Apparently you could.) Could you buy a place in a graveyard
with the privatization vouchers that began to be distributed in the early :,,cs? How
could you open a licensed brothel? What was the best way to lose weight? Was it true that
a Russian emigr had designed the U.S. one-dollar bill? (It was.) Was Jesus Christ a Jew or
not? And when He came again, would He take his believers? If so, what about the rest?
As these reections suggest, Russians were still rather confused a decade or more after
the system in which they lived had changed in fundamental ways. They were unhappy
about the higher prices they had to pay and about the unemployment that appeared to
threaten their future livelihood. They deplored the chaos and disorder of public life and
the wave of organized crime that appeared so intertwined with government that there was
no way to resist it. They regretted the collapse of the state in which they had grown up and
414 russia
the diminished role that had been allocated to Russia on the world stage. On balance,
they thought multiparty elections and the right to strike had brought more harm than
good. But they welcomed some of the other changes that had taken place since the late
:,cs, including a greater freedom of the press and of public opinion. Perhaps more than
anything else, Russians wanted to live normally: in reasonable dignity, without further
convulsions, and without bothering about the label they put on a society of this kind. As
the twenty-rst century started, this still seemed a distant prospect.
Notes
:. See A.P. Gorkina et al., Rossiia: entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik (Moscow: Drofa, :,,), ,. Several good mod-
ern geographies are available, including Denis J.B. Shaw, Russia in the Modern World: A New Geography
(Oxford: Blackwell, :,,).
:. The discussion draws at this point on Stephen White, Bill Miller, Sarah Oates, and Ase Grodeland, Reli-
gion and political action in postcommunist Europe, Political Studies , no. (September :ccc): o:;c,.
,. There are numerous modern histories of Russia from the earliest times to the postcommunist years: see for
instance Paul Dukes, A History of Russia c. ::)), ,d ed. (London: Macmillan, :,,), and Nicholas V.
Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, oth ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, :,,,).
. This is the estimate presented in Gregory L. Freeze, ed., Russia: A History (New York: Oxford University
Press, :,,;), ,:,. There is a fuller discussion of the contentious issues involved in J. Arch Getty and Roberta
T. Manning, eds., Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, :,,,).
,. Itogi Vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya :),) goda: SSSR (Moscow: Gosstatizdat, :,o:), ;,; and Narodnoe
khozyaistvo SSSR v :)) godu (Moscow: Finansy i statistika, :,,c), :;.
o. In the following I have drawn, unless otherwise stated, on the following standard sources of poll data: the
All-Union Public Opinion Centers bimonthly journal Ekonomicheskie i sotsialnye peremeny: monitoring ob-
shchestvennogo mneniya; the Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, published under the auspices of the Euro-
pean Commission from :,,c to :,,; and the New Russia Barometer and New Democracies Barometer,
published periodically by the Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde (summaries
are available at www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/CSPP; current data are available at www.russiavotes.org).
;. For a fuller discussion see Stephen White, Russias New Politics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, :ccc), :,:c,.
. Neizvestnaya Rossiya: XX vek, vol. , (Moscow: Istoricheskoe nasledie, :,,,), :::.
,. Argumenty i fakty, no. ,;, :,,o, :.
Chapter 27
Where Is the Power?
IN THE SOVIET PERIOD there was no doubt where political power was located. The
Communist Party enjoyed a monopoly of political authority, enshrined after :,;; in a
constitution that declared it the leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nu-
cleus of its political system, of all state bodies and public organisations. Within the party
the leadership was exceptionally powerful, helped by a principle of democratic central-
ism that required each lower level of the party organization to accept its instructions.
Within the leadership itself the rst or (as he was more often known) general secretary
was clearly the person who mattered most of all. His judgments were the most authorita-
tive. His statements were the ones that were quoted most often in Pravda editorials and
his picture was the one that appeared most frequently on its front page. His six-hour
speech was the one that, by convention, opened the party congress, and it was the one
that was applauded the most enthusiastically. When Leonid Brezhnev spoke in :,:, at his
last party congress, his address was interrupted seventy-eight times by applause, forty
times by prolonged applause, and eight times by stormy, prolonged applause; there
were shouts of hurrah a few days later when it was announced that he had been unani-
mously reelected to head the new Politburo.
1
Central control of this detailed kind, in fact, was already breaking down in the last
years of Soviet rule. The party leadership had steadily evolved into a collective one based
on discussion and consensus and representing the most important interests in Soviet
lifethe army, the ministerial bureaucracies, the largest cities and regions. A diversity of
opinion began to emerge in public life, reecting an increase in the numbers of highly edu-
cated professionals and the increasing complexity of policy choices. The media began to
reect a wider variety of subject matter, particularly after Gorbachev had begun to pro-
mote his policy of glasnost from the mid-:,cs. The rule of law began to strengthen at the
same time, encouraged by legislative changes that gave more independence to the courts
and to those who worked within them. There were largely competitive elections from
:,, onward and a new working parliament. And the Communist Party began to share its
authority with other parties and movements, particularly after March :,,c when its guar-
anteed political monopoly was removed from the constitution. This was still a Soviet sys-
tem, but it was already one in which a considerable degree of political pluralism had been
institutionalized.
Communist rule came to an end in December :,,:. The USSR itself fragmented into
its fteen constituent republics, and political power moved into the hands of a strongly
anticommunist president. But the end of communist rule, clearly, was not the same as the
establishment of a liberal democracy. A decade or more after its transition, political
power in Russia remains highly centralized, with a concentration of power in the hands of
an enormously powerful president and his administration. There is a choice of political
parties at elections, but few that have a substantial and committed following. There is a
choice of newspapers and television channels, but few that have escaped the control of
Russias newly rich oligarchs. The courts, meanwhile, offer little protection against the
abuse of ofce, still less from a wave of organized crime that clearly enjoys a measure of
political protection. Some, like the economist Grigorii Yavlinsky, have called this a crim-
inal oligarchy with a monopolistic state; others have described it as a nomenklatura
democracy that has left ordinary people with no more inuence over those who rule
them than they enjoyed in the last years of Soviet rule.
2
The Russian Presidency
However its political system was classied, the central institution in postcommunist Rus-
sia was clearly the powerful presidency that had been established in the spring of :,,:.
Mikhail Gorbachev had established a Soviet presidency the year before, in the spring of
:,,c; over the months that followed, almost all of the Soviet republics moved toward a
fully presidential system. Russians themselves voted overwhelmingly in favor of an elected
executive presidency in the referendum that took place in March :,,:, at the same time as
a referendum was held on the future of the USSR itself; and then, in June :,,:, Boris
Yeltsin was elected to the newly established ofce with ,; percent of the vote in a six-sided
contest. Russia was still, up to the end of that year, one of the republics of the USSR; but
there was already no doubt that the dominant gure in its political life was its rst-ever
directly elected president, not the Soviet president to whom he was nominally subordi-
nate. When the USSR itself collapsed at the end of :,,:, the authority of the Soviet presi-
dent passed naturally to the newly elected Russian president, and Russia itself assumed
the position that the USSR had occupied in the international community.
Yeltsin owed much of his authority to the fact that he had been directly elected, un-
like the Soviet president who had been elected (in the rst instance) by the national par-
liament. He had won additional respect when he faced down an attempted coup in Au-
gust :,,:, at some risk to his own life; the whole world saw him standing on a tank in
front of the Russian parliament, reading out his denunciation and demanding the imme-
diate release of the Soviet president. Yeltsins public standing was never higher than in the
immediate aftermath of the coup, and he became the dominant gure in the negotiations
among the republics that led eventually to the collapse of the USSR and its replacement
by a Commonwealth of Independent States. At the same time he had to govern through a
parliament that had also been elected, in :,,c, and could also claim to represent the pop-
ular will. The parliament had originally been supportive and had elected Yeltsin as its own
rst chairman; but as the Yeltsin government pushed through a package of economic re-
forms that left millions of Russians in destitution, there was understandably some resis-
tance from their elected representatives.
Yeltsin, speaking to the parliament in December :,,:, complained that it was creat-
ing intolerable working conditions for the government and the president attempting to
turn deputies into the absolute rulers of Russia, and aiming in the last resort at the
restoration of the totalitarian Soviet-communist system. It had, he told the deputies,
become impossible to go on working with such a parliament, and he demanded a refer-
endum to resolve the tension between two irreconcilable positions. The referendum,
when it took place in April :,,,, suggested that most Russians supported the president
and his policies in this confrontation. The result encouraged the presidential camp to
press ahead with the preparation of a new constitution that would resolve the constitu-
tional impasse in favor of the president.
The parliamentarians had a rather different view, and they raised a rather different is-
sue: should government be accountable, not just elected, and should a broadly representa-
tive parliament be allowed to act as a counterbalance to what would otherwise be an
overly powerful executive? For the parliamentary speaker, Ruslan Khasbulatov, the state
in Russia had always been identied with the power of an autocratic ruler, and in the
communist years the party leader had become almost a tsar. Parliament, in these cir-
418 russia
President Boris Yeltsin defends the Russ-
ian White House during the August :)):
coup. (AP/Wide World Photos)
cumstances, had a vital role: it could represent the society as a whole, and it could help to
limit the power of the executive in matters like public spending and the composition of
government. A parliamentary system was particularly important in postcommunist Rus-
sia, Khasbulatov argued, with its need to reconcile the differences that still remained and
to build up a supportive consensus.
These were differences that would have been recognized by most constitutional theo-
rists, and they formed the focus of a series of discussions that took place between the two
sides during :,,: and :,,, with a view to securing an agreed and workable compromise.
In the end, however, the differences that still remained were resolved by military force.
The Russian parliament was rst of all suspended by a presidential decree in late Septem-
ber :,,,; in early October it was shelled and taken over by the Russian army after it had
voted for Yeltsins impeachment and a popular demonstration had encouraged its leaders
to believe they were about to take power. Khasbulatov and the other leaders of this par-
liamentary insurrection were taken into custody, a number of parties and publications
were banned, and another referendum was held in December that allowed Yeltsin to se-
cure approval for a new version of the draft constitution that incorporated a more
strongly presidential form of executive authority.
3
Presidential Power in Postcommunist Russia
Under the :,,, Russian constitution, the president is head of state and guarantor of the
constitution itself, to which he swears an oath of allegiance. It is the president who repre-
sents the Russian Federation at home and abroad, and who denes the basic directions
of the domestic and foreign policy of the state (Art. c). He prepares an annual address
on the situation in the country, clearly modeled on the U.S. presidents State of the
Union address, which he delivers to both houses of parliament at the start of each year
(Art. ). The president, moreover, has extensive powers of appointment. He appoints the
prime minister with the consent of the State Duma, which is the lower house of parlia-
ment, and can preside over meetings of the government. He nominates candidates to
head the State Bank; he appoints and dismisses deputy premiers and ministers; and he
nominates candidates to the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the Procu-
racy. He forms and heads the Security Council and appoints and dismisses his representa-
tives in the Russian regions as well as the high command of the armed forces and diplo-
matic representatives (Art. ,).
The Russian president, in addition, can initiate legislation (Art. ), and he has the
right to dissolve the Duma in specied circumstancesfor instance, if it refuses his prime
ministerial nomination three times in a row or if it votes in favor of motions of no con-
dence in the government twice within three months (Arts. ::: and ::;). The Russian pres-
ident also enjoys the right to issue his own decrees, which have the force of law through-
out the federation (Art. ,c). Formally, any decrees of this kind are supposed to be
consistent with the constitution and with existing legislation, but in practice they have of-
ten exceeded such limits. The decree that suspended the parliament in September :,,,,
for instance, was in clear violation of the constitution that prevailed at the time; the pres-
ident also broke new ground in the decree in December :,, that began the war with
Chechnya and in some of his decrees on privatization. The president, nally, heads the
armed forces and can declare a state of war as well as a state of emergency (Arts. ; and
).
There are, in fact, few limits on the powers of a Russian president. He can be im-
peached, but less easily than in the constitution that prevailed before :,,,: the Duma
must rst vote in favor of proceedings by a two-thirds majority on the initiative of at least
a third of the deputies after a special commission of deputies has decided he has been
guilty of treason or a crime of similar gravity. The Supreme Court then must rule that
there are grounds for such an accusation, and the Constitutional Court must conrm
that the proper procedures have been followed. The Federation Council, which is the up-
per house of the Russian parliament, must then vote in favor by a two-thirds majority,
not less than three months after the original charges have been presented (Art. ,,). It is
unlikely, given this elaborate procedure, that any Russian president will be forced out of
ofce on this basis, although attempts have periodically been made to initiate proceed-
ings. A more serious restriction is the ability of the Russian parliament to override the
presidential veto, provided a two-thirds majority in both houses rule in favor (Art. :c;).
There is a lower age limit for a candidate for the Russian presidency but no upper age
limit, presumably because Yeltsin would have passed the age of sixty-ve before his rst
term came to an end. There is no provision, as there had been before the :,,, constitu-
tion, that the president cannot dissolve the Russian parliament or suspend its operation
(Yeltsins decree of September :,,, was in effect a constitutional coup). It became the
presidents responsibility to approve the military doctrine of the Russian Federation,
which was a constitutional novelty (Art. ,), and it was for the president, not the parlia-
ment, to call a referendum once the necessary procedures had been completed. Nor was
there any provision for a vice president who could deputize for the president whenever
necessary and help to ensure continuity if the president died or became incapacitated.
The president, indeed, has additional powers that are not fully specied in the con-
stitution. The constitution, for instance, mentions that the president forms an adminis-
tration (Art. ,), but gives little indication of its role in government. It has served, in
practice, as a sort of supergovernment, headed by the presidents closest advisers and with
a substantial staff, and reminiscent in many ways of the central party bureaucracy of the
Soviet period (indeed it is housed in the same buildings). The head of the presidential ad-
ministration (at the start of :ccc, Alexander Voloshin) has always ranked among the
most inuential gures in Russian political life, although his position is not an elective
one. This, in effect, is the presidential court, with its favorites and its gossip, its in-
trigue, and (it became increasingly clear in the late :,,cs) its greed and corruption.
Electing a President in 1996 and 2000
Under the constitution, the Russian president is directly elected for four years by univer-
sal, direct and equal ballot, and cannot be elected for more than two consecutive terms
(Art. :). Unlike his U.S. counterpart, he can in theory be elected on a subsequent occa-
sion. A Russian president must be at least thirty-ve years old and must have lived in the
Russian Federation for at least ten years (Art. :): this was presumably intended to rule
420 russia
out the migr candidacies that had been seen in some of the other East European coun-
tries in the postcommunist period (a Canadian businessman of Polish origin had come an
astonishing second in the Polish presidential election of :,,c, and a Lithuanian-American
who had retired from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency won the Lithuanian
presidential election of early :,,; Latvians elected an migr Canadian psychology pro-
fessor to their own presidency in :,,,, but by a parliamentary rather than a popular vote).
Boris Yeltsin had lost most of his earlier charisma when he stood in his second presi-
dential election in the summer of :,,o. He had, indeed, almost lost his voice and made
the announcement of his candidacy with some difculty. But he mounted a remarkable
campaign that carried him to victory in the second round over his Communist chal-
lenger, Gennadii Zyuganov. It was a victory that owed a good deal to the prerogatives of
the presidency itself. Yeltsin made full use of his control over the state media, particularly
television. He invited the head of Russias newly established independent television ser-
vice, which had been critical of his policies in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, to
join his campaign staff. He committed public funds with increasing abandon to small
businesses and the Academy of Sciences, pensioners, and those who had lost their savings.
An end was declared to conscription in the armed forces, and the troops themselves were
allowed to avoid compulsory duty in Chechnya and other hot spots. Nearly all of these
commitments were rescinded or simply not fullled after the election.
In addition, Yeltsin spent his own funds without restraint. Formally, his campaign
spending should have been limited to about $, million, but estimates of his expenditure
range up to $,cc million. Most important, Yeltsin campaigned with increasing con-
dence, travelling around the country with an energy that belied his sixty-ve years and
presenting himself as the only serious alternative to a return to the Soviet system. After
one of his trips, at least four of the accompanying journalists suffered pneumonia, and so
did two of Yeltsins own staff. The changes in his behavior were so extraordinary that ordi-
nary Russians began to believe he had been connected to a battery; another view, put
about by a nancier involved in his campaign, was that at key points in his life, Boris
Yeltsin wakes up.
4
The outcome in the rst round, on :o June :,,o, was a narrow plurality (see table
:;.:, p. ::): Yeltsin took rst place with ,, percent of the vote, not far ahead of his Com-
munist challenger with ,: percent. But within a few days Yeltsin had received the third-
place candidate, former general Alexander Lebed, and offered him a place in his adminis-
tration as secretary of the Security Council with particular responsibility for public order.
Zyuganov found himself unable to extend his coalition of supporters between the two
rounds, despite attempts to form a broadly based government of national condence.
In the second round, Yeltsin won a clear victory, with most of Lebeds voters behind him
as well as the overwhelming majority of the voters who had backed other reform-oriented
candidates in the rst round.
Yeltsin had rst been elected the president of Russia when Russia was one of the con-
stituent republics of the USSR. The Constitutional Court, however, ruled that this must
count as a rst election to the post he now occupied, and so he had no alternative but to
stand down at the following election, which was due to take place in June :ccc. Yeltsin
took the political world by surprise when he resigned at the end of December :,,,, al-
lowing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to take over as acting president. Yeltsin had already
identied Putin as his chosen successor when he nominated him to the premiership in
August :,,,. With his early resignation the presidential election was brought forward to
:o March :ccc, which gave Putin, already the incumbent, a substantial advantage.
Putins success, however, owed even more to the campaign against terrorism in Chech-
nya, a war that appalled international opinion because of its violations of human rights,
but which appeared to have persuaded Russians that at last they had found a vigorous
leader who could ensure their physical security. Putins rating, only : percent when he be-
came prime minister, had reached o: percent by mid-January, and the only real question
at the start of the campaign was whether there would be any need for a runoff or if he
would win on the rst ballot.
Putin refused to campaign directly, or to use the public funds he had been allocated
for publicity, and he did not issue a preelection manifesto. He did, however, publish an
Open Letter to Russian Voters, and in early March :ccc he published a series of inter-
views with journalists, entitled First Person. Two themes were given particular attention:
the need for a strong state and for a properly functioning market economy. The stronger
the state, Putin suggested, the stronger the individual. Nor was there any conict between
a strong state and a market economy: the state was needed to protect the rights of prop-
erty, encourage entrepreneurs, and collect taxes. Putin emphasized the dangers of a sec-
ond Yugoslavia in Russia if fundamentalist Islam was allowed to spread from Chechnya
to the middle Volga, and more generally he promised to restore Russias place as a great
422 russia
Table 27.1 The 1996 Russian Presidential Election
Candidates Percentage support
First round, 16 June (turnout 69.7 percent)
Boris Yeltsin 35.3
Gennadii Zyuganov 32.0
Alexander Lebed 14.5
Grigorii Yavlinsky 7.3
Vladimir Zhirinovsky 5.7
Svyatoslav Fedorov 0.9
Mikhail Gorbachev 0.5
Martin Shakkum 0.4
Yuri Vlasov 0.2
Vladimir Bryntsalov 0.2
Against all 1.5
Invalid votes 1.4
Second round, 3 July (turnout 68.8 percent)
Boris Yeltsin 53.8
Gennadii Zyuganov 40.3
Against both 4.8
Invalid votes 0.7
and respected power among the leading nations.
5
His campaign was greatly assisted by
the attention he automatically attracted as prime minister and acting president; he made
a further contribution by undertaking a series of energetic stunts, like piloting an air force
jet between two of his engagements, which underscored the difference between him and
his ailing predecessor.
In the end, Putin won narrowly on the rst ballot (see table :;.:). The runnerup was
Communist leader Gennadii Zyuganov, with a more respectable vote than many had ex-
pected; Yabloko leader Grigorii Yavlinsky came third, but with a smaller share of the vote
than he had secured in :,,o. None of the other candidates secured more than , percent,
which meant that they would be obliged to return the state funds that had been made
available for their campaigns. The turnout, at o.; percent, was very close to the turnout
that had been recorded in the rst round of the :,,o presidential campaign. This gave
Putin a decisive victory and one that took him beyond a margin of victory that might
have been attributed to his manipulation of the airwaves. It was equally clear that he had
enjoyed all the advantages of ofce, including the de facto support of the state machine,
and that he had received a quite disproportionate degree of attention in the mass media
(more than a third of the television coverage that was given to all of the candidates put to-
gether and about half of the entire news and current affairs output).
Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin
With a political system that invests the president with so much power, and with few of
the informal constraints on executive authority that have developed in Western countries,
the personal qualities of the Russian president make a real difference. This was certainly
true of the bulky Siberian gure who dominated Russias early postcommunist politics,
Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin.
6
Yeltsin was born in a village in the Sverdlovsk region, in the
Urals, in :,,:. According to his autobiography he was lucky to have survived at all, as the
Table 27.2 The Russian Presidential Election of 26 March 2000
Candidate Votes Percentage Support
Vladimir Putin 39,740,434 59.94
Gennadii Zyuganov 21,928,471 29.21
Grigorii Yavlinsky 4,351,452 5.8
Aman-Geldy Tuleev 2,217,361 2.95
Vladimir Zhirinovsky 2,026,513 2.7
Konstantin Titov 1,107,269 1.47
Ella Pamlova 758,966 1.01
Stanislav Govorukhin 328,723 0.44
Yuri Skuratov 319,263 0.43
Aleksei Podberezkin 98,175 0.13
Umar Dzhabrailov 74,898 0.10
Against all 1,414,648 1.88
Note: The total electorate was 109,372,046, of whom 75,181,071 took part (68.74 percent).
priest nearly drowned him when he was being baptized (the priest, not in the least put
out, remarked that this showed the young Boris was a good plucky lad). Yeltsins own
family was affected by the repression that swept through the country during these years;
both his father and his uncle were persecuted in :,, when they fell foul of the campaign
against better-off peasants and were accused of conducting anti-Soviet agitation. Al-
though they protested their innocence, they were given three months hard labor. Yeltsin
himself, though only three, claimed to remember the horror and fear years later. These
were years of shortage and even famine in the Siberian countryside, and the family might
not have survived the war but for the milk and sometimes the warmth of their nanny
goat. The young Yeltsin lost two ngers when he picked up an unexploded grenade; his
father beat him regularly; he broke his nose and contracted typhoid fever. Later, he lost
almost all hearing in one ear. But he did well at school and graduated as an engineer at
the Urals Polytechnical Institute, which was the classic background for a career in the
party bureaucracy.
Yeltsin began work as a construction engineer, managing a large state enterprise that
specialized in prefabricated housing. He joined the Communist Party in :,o:, becoming a
full-time ofcial in :,o and then in :,;o rst secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional party
organization. One of his rst duties was to order the demolition of the Ipatiev house in
which the tsar and his family had been shot in :,:, to prevent its becoming a royalist
shrine. (Yeltsin made atonement in :,,, when the familys remains were moved to St.
Petersburg and interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral). Yeltsins management style at-
tracted the attention of his party superiors, and in :,, he was invited to Moscow to take
up a position in the central party administration, moving at the end of that year to be-
come the citys party rst secretary.
Yeltsin had already attracted attention with his outspoken comments at party meet-
ings. Then, in October :,;, came what turned out to be the decisive moment in his ca-
reer. The Central Committee was discussing Gorbachevs important speech on the seven-
tieth anniversary of the October revolution. It was a formal and somewhat reverential
occasion. Yeltsin caused shock and outrage when he complained that the party had failed
to feed and clothe the people adequately in those seventy years and went on to speak of
an increase in adulation of the general secretary and of the development of a cult of
personality around his wife. Not surprisingly, Yeltsin was replaced as Moscow party rst
secretary within a couple of weeks and demoted to a junior position in the state construc-
tion committee. He was dropped from the partys ruling Politburo in early :,, and his
career seemed at an end. Yeltsin saw himself at the time as a political outcast, surrounded
by a vacuum. But the more the party leadership denounced him, the more Yeltsin at-
tracted the support of ordinary people as an opponent of privilege and an over-mighty
bureaucracy. In March :,, he was able to turn this support to his advantage when he
stood as a candidate in Moscow in the rst largely competitive elections to the Soviet par-
liament. He won over , percent of the vote and a majority of over , million. It was an
extraordinary comeback.
Yeltsin was still a member of the Communist Party, but an increasingly disillusioned
one. There had, it seems, been a decisive moment in this intellectual trajectory. In late
424 russia
:,,, he visited a Moscow bathhouse and found himself surrounded by about forty naked
men, all urging him to keep up his challenge to the party leadership. It was, he later re-
called, quite a sight. Yeltsin was also impressed by his visit to Houston in September
:,, and by the abundance that was on display in ordinary supermarkets there. By early
:,,c he was pushing for a looser federation in which Russia would be able to make its
own decisions; he also wanted the private ownership of land, nancial independence for
factories and farms, and freedom of political associationin other words, multiparty pol-
itics. This, in turn, was the program he brought with him when he was elected to the
chairmanship of the Russian parliament in late spring :,,c and to the Russian presidency
a year later. Yeltsin was also the decisive gure in the discussions that led to the dissolu-
tion of the USSR into its constituent republics, although this was not necessarily his orig-
inal intention.
Over the :,,cs, Yeltsin gave a distinctive character to the Russian presidency. Formal
position mattered rather less than personal associations: whether, for instance, you shared
the presidents passion for tennis (this was no help to prime minister Chernomyrdin, but
very good news for the national team coach), or whether you came from the same part of
Russia (there was a Sverdlovsk maa, composed mostly of former party ofcials who
played an important part in the early years of the Yeltsin presidency). Loyalty mattered
more than competence: the presidents bodyguard, for instance, had no constitutional au-
thority but began to exert a major inuence on matters of state in the mid-:,,cs. The
presidents family mattered most of all, particularly his younger daughter Tatyana, who
advised Yeltsin on his public image and became an ofcial adviser in :,,;.
By the end of the :,,cs, the family had become an even broader term. It extended
beyond Yeltsins biological family to his closest associates, including wealthy nancier
Boris Berezovsky, who was the main shareholder in the international carrier Aeroot,
whose director was the husband of Yeltsins older daughter, and who took personal re-
sponsibility for the publication of the second volume of Yeltsins memoirs in :,,. Not
surprisingly, given these associations between politics and private wealth, there were per-
sistent rumors of corruption. In the summer of :,,, particularly serious charges surfaced:
that highly placed persons in the Kremlin had beneted from the enormous contract to
redecorate its public rooms and that the sums involved had owed out of the country
into foreign banks. A crucial element in the deal that was struck when Yeltsin stood down
at the end of that year was that not only he but also his immediate family would be ex-
empted from any further investigation in connection with these very serious charges.
The Yeltsin court was a distinctive place in other ways as well. There was an atmos-
phere of intrigue and suspicion, in which leading ofcials had reason to believe their
phones were tapped. And there was a male, sometimes locker-room aspect. For instance,
on a trip along a Siberian river, Yeltsin became fed up with his press secretary and de-
manded that he be thrown overboard. The president himself was fond of drinking
songs and was a skillful instrumentalist. Even on ofcial trips he would demand, bring
spoons! His favorite trick, his bodyguard recalled, was to play knick-knack-paddy-
whack with his spoons on the head of his chief of staff; on one occasion it was the presi-
dent of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akaev, who had to suffer this indignity.
7
Yeltsins indifferent health provided a continuing element of uncertainty throughout
his presidential years. He continually suffered from colds and other illnesses, even after
a complicated heart bypass operation at the end of :,,o, and there were extended periods
of absence from his Kremlin duties. There were also repeated indications that the presi-
dent shared the national weakness for alcohol. He was visibly tired, for instance, when
he arrived in Berlin in :,, to review Russian troops as they returned to their homeland.
After a well-watered lunch, he asked for a coffee as he traveled with the German chancel-
lor to the ofcial ceremony, but then poured it all over his shirt; at the ceremony itself he
caused some surprise when he stepped forward and conducted the Berlin police band in a
stirring rendition of Kalinka. Visiting Ireland shortly afterward, he failed to appear after
the plane had landed at Shannon airport. The president, staff explained, had overslept (in
fact, it appears, he had suffered another heart attack); opponents complained that he was
in a permanent state of visiting Ireland.
8
Vladimir Putin was much younger and a judo black belt; reportedly, he spent forty-
ve minutes every day jogging and doing physical exercises.
9
There was certainly no rea-
son to think he would be subject to the same physical difculties as his predecessor. His
policy priorities, however, remained somewhat opaque, apart from bringing the antiter-
rorist operation in breakaway Chechnya to a successful conclusion. Putin, born in
Leningrad in :,,:, had graduated from Leningrad Universitys law faculty in :,;,. He
went to work in the foreign intelligence administration of the KGB and spent a long time
in East Germany, developing a uent knowledge of the language as well as of the interna-
tional intelligence community. He returned to Leningrad in :,,: and worked in the city
administration, becoming closely associated with its reform-minded mayor. In Lenin-
grad, press reports suggested, he was considered an eminence grise, whose opinion often
counted for more than that of the mayor himself. He kept a low prole and avoided
making public statements and was reserved in his statementsno one ever saw him
show his feelings in public.
10
Putin moved to Moscow in :,,o, working in the presiden-
tial administration and then from July :,, as the director of the Federal Security Bureau,
the successor to the KGB, moving on to the premiership in August :,,,.
Some of Putins objectives became a little clearer in the address he issued at the end of
:,,, on Russia at the turn of the millennium. Putin rejected a return to the totalitarian
past, while recognizing its considerable achievements; at the same time he rejected the
abstract models and schemes taken from foreign textbooks that had been applied dur-
ing the free-market experiments of the :,,cs. He appeared to recognize the importance of
universal values such as freedom of expression and freedom to travel abroad. But there
was rather more emphasis on traditional Russian principles of government, such as patri-
otism and the greatness of the nation itself. Russia, Putin insisted, was and would always
remain a great power, in economic and cultural if not necessarily in military terms. Sta-
tism was another traditional virtue: the state and its institutions had always been strong
in Russia, and there was no immediate or even long-term prospect that Russia would be-
come a second edition of, say, the U.S. or Britain in which liberal values have deep his-
toric traditions. Social solidarity was also important, with its emphasis on cooperation
rather than individualism. This, clearly, was a view of the Russian future that would re-
426 russia
President Vladimir
Putin speaks at the
Kremlin, September
:ooo. (Reuters
NewMedia Inc./
Corbis)
spect liberal freedoms, but one that would also emphasize the need for a strong and pro-
tective state in line with rather longer-standing national traditions.
11
Prime Minister and Government
The daily business of Russian government is in the hands of the prime minister and his
colleagues under the overall authority of the president. (The arrangement is not very dif-
ferent from the Soviet practice by which the party ruled and the government carried its
decisions into effect.) The president with the consent of the State Duma appoints the
prime minister, under the constitution; the entire government submits its resignation to
the new president (Art. ::o), and the president has in turn to submit his prime ministerial
nomination within two weeks of taking ofce (Art. :::). But unlike parliamentary sys-
tems, there is no question of the prime minister submitting his resignation to a newly
elected Duma and securing the support of deputies in order to continue. Indeed Viktor
Chernomyrdin, who was prime minister at the time of the December :,,, Duma elec-
tion, went out of his way to insist that there would be no change of policy or personnel
even though the party he had led into the electionOur Home Is Russiahad secured
no more than :c percent of the popular vote. Conversely, the succession of changes in the
premiership that took place in :,, and :,,, had nothing to do with an election, a Duma
resolution, or a change in public attitudes.
The Duma does have some inuence over the choice of prime minister, but it is a
power of last resort. The Duma has a week to vote on any prime ministerial nomination.
If it rejects three nominations in a row, the president is obliged (and not simply empow-
ered) to dissolve the Duma and call a new election (Art. :::). The Duma has another
power of last resort, which is its right to call for a vote of no condence in the govern-
ment as a whole. If it does so twice within three months, the president must either an-
nounce the resignation of the government or dissolve the Duma. The government can
also decide to offer its own resignation, which the president can either accept or reject
(Art. ::;). Both of these powers are unlikely to be used in normal circumstances, however,
as they would normally precipitate a constitutional crisis.
The ordinary business of government is in the hands of the prime minister and his
colleagues. The prime minister makes proposals to the president on the structure of the
government as a whole, and on deputy premiers and ministers (Art. :::). More generally,
he is supposed to identify the basic guidelines of government activity and to organize
its work (Art. ::,). It is the government that submits an annual budget to the Duma and
reports on its fulllment. The government also takes charge of nance, credit, and cur-
rency matters; and it conducts a uniform state policy in culture, education, science,
health, social security, and the environment. The government is additionally responsible
for state property, public order, and foreign policy (Art. ::), and it can issue resolutions
and directives to put its decisions into effect (Art. ::,). At the start of :ccc there were
twenty-four federal ministers in the Russian government, with portfolios that included
defense, justice, foreign affairs, nance, economics, health, culture, and education. There
were eleven state committees, including youth, the environment, telecommunications,
and housing; two federal commissions; fteen federal services, including tax collection,
foreign intelligence, security, broadcasting, and currency; ten agencies; and two inspec-
torates; and three other bodies that were associated with the presidential ofce.
Soviet ministers held ofce for long periods of timesometimes decadesand there
was a comparable period of stability at the prime ministerial level after December :,,:,
when former oil minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was nominated and approved by the
Russian parliament. Yeltsin, however, became jealous of the presidential role that Cher-
nomyrdin had begun to playfor instance, in his regular dealings with U.S. Vice Presi-
dent Al Goreand in March :,, he was unexpectedly dismissed together with his entire
government (as the law required). Yeltsins choice to replace him was Sergei Kirienko, a
boyish thirty-ve-year-old who had served as energy minister but was otherwise unknown
(Sergei who? asked the weekly paper Moscow News). Rejected in a rst and second vote,
he was nally conrmed in late April :,,. But in August a further convulsion occurred
following a default on Russias international obligations and a dramatic collapse in the
value of the currency. Kirienko had been celebrating his rst hundred days, but he was
out of ofce a week later. As Yeltsin explained, the times required a heavyweight, and
for this reason he nominated Chernomyrdin once again. But this time it was the presi-
dent who backed down, as the Duma rejected Chernomyrdin in the rst two votes with
every indication that they would reject him again in the third and decisive ballot. Follow-
ing negotiations, Yeltsin was persuaded to put forward an entirely new candidate, foreign
minister Evgenii Primakov, and an overwhelming majority approved him in early Sep-
tember :,,. Primakov had the support of the Duma as well as of the president, and it
appeared that a rather larger shift of power had taken place away from the president and
toward government and parliament.
Yeltsin, however, was clearly dissatised with these new arrangements, and in May :,,,
he caused a further upheaval when he sacked Primakov and his government, nominating
interior minister Sergei Stepashin in their place. Primakov, Yeltsin suggested, had shown
insufcient dynamism, but it appeared that Yeltsin had again become jealous of the pop-
ularity of his premier and that he was alarmed by the way in which he was protecting the
prosecutor general in his investigation of high-level corruption, an investigation that was
coming very close to the presidential family itself. Stepashin in his turn was replaced in early
August by Vladimir Putin, an even more committed Yeltsin loyalist, in an unexpected move
that, for Izvestiya, was the presidents way of showing the Duma whos boss. These were
rapid and unsettling changes, and they strengthened the hand of those who had been argu-
ing for a fundamental revision of the constitution or even its replacement. The most widely
favored proposal was that government should be accountable to parliament as well as presi-
dent, in what elsewhere was called semipresidentialism; some called for the abolition of di-
rect election of the Russian president, and even for the abolition of the post itself.
12
Yeltsin,
however, resisted any diminution of his formidable prerogatives, and there was little sign
that his successor would be more accommodating. Indeed how could it be otherwise,
Yeltsin asked Izvestiya, in a country that is used to tsars and strong leaders?
13
The Duma and the Legislative Process
Just as its elections lacked any element of choice until the late Gorbachev years, so too the
Soviet system had lacked any element of parliamentarianism. The elected soviets (or
428 russia
councils) were meant to be very different. There was no separation of powers, for a start,
as working people were supposed to have a common interest that made it unnecessary for
an articial division between making laws and adjudicating on their application. The So-
viet parliament, the USSR Supreme Soviet, met very briey, for two or three days at a
time twice a year, and its votes were normally unanimous. So predictable were its pro-
ceedings that parliamentary correspondents could le their reports the previous day.
Deputies were part-timers, so that they could combine their representative duties with
their ordinary employment; and a high proportion were replaced from election to elec-
tion, so that others could have a chance to run their own state. In practice, this meant
that ministers were immune from criticism and that ordinary people had little condence
in the institution through which their interests were supposedly being represented.
There were fundamental changes in this system in the Gorbachev years, as part of the
new party leaders program of democratization. The rst working parliament in modern
Soviet history was established in :,,, with deputies who carried out their responsibilities
on a full-time basis; and there were competitive elections to ministerial positions, which
were to be held for limited terms. A still larger change took place with the adoption of the
new constitution in December :,,,. An entirely new Federal Assembly was established,
with a lower house (the State Duma) made up of deputies elected either by individual
constituencies or by a competition between party lists; the upper house, the Federation
Council, was made up of two representatives each from the eighty-nine republics and re-
gions. The upper house considered issues that related to the federation as a whole: it ap-
proved boundary changes, the introduction of martial law, and the deployment of Rus-
sian troops in foreign countries. But because its members had full-time positions in the
regions from which they came, it met irregularly, for just one week in three.
Most parliamentary activity took place in the lower house, or State Duma. It was the
Duma, for instance, that gave its agreement to nominations to the premiership; it also ap-
pointed and dismissed the chairman of the State Bank, and the Accounting Chamber,
who scrutinized the use of public funds. The Duma, above all, was a legislative body. The
rst Duma alone, between :,,, and :,,,, adopted more than cc laws, many of which
were designed to consolidate the postcommunist state system. Much of the work of the
Duma was conducted through its twenty-eight committees, whose chairmen were often
gures of some political authority. The Dumas legislative decisions had to be approved by
the upper house, but the Duma could override a veto by conrming its original decision
by a two-thirds majority. The president could refuse to sign a bill that had gone through
both houses, but again, a two-thirds majority in both houses could override his veto.
The conduct of the Duma and its members did not always encourage respect for
their positions. One nationalist deputy, for instance, a deputy chairman of the committee
on women, families, and youth, lived openly with three women and proposed a bill to le-
galize polygamybecause, he explained, there werent enough men to go around. The
majority of Russian men are too poor to support one family, let alone several, he told re-
porters. I have the money and energy to keep all my women fully satised, materially
and physically.
14
A session in September :,,,, which had been convened to discuss
NATO bombings in Bosnia, was particularly remarkable. A far-right deputy, Nikolai Ly-
senko, took the opportunity to attack one of his opponents, Orthodox priest Gleb
Yakunin, as he was returning to his seat. Another deputy tried to separate them but be-
came involved in the melee; so did two women deputies. At this point the Liberal Demo-
crat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky waded in, elbowing one of the women out of the way
(she suffered a concussion) and seizing the other in an armlock. A bloodied Yakunin later
announced that he would be taking legal action against Lysenko for the theft of his cross,
banditry, and offending the sensibilities of believers. The press took a somewhat different
view, describing the whole incident as the Dumas solution to womens issues.
15
There appeared some prospect, in spite of these inauspicious beginnings, that the
Duma would eventually become a responsible participant in the legislative process. The
deputies elected in December :,,, appeared more willing than their predecessors to ne-
gotiate with the government. They adopted a state budget with reasonable promptness.
The chairmen of both houses met regularly with the president and prime minister as a
big four that helped to stabilize relations among the branches of government. Russians,
it seemed, did want a parliament of some kind, even if they were cynical about the repre-
sentative body they actually had. A more fully parliamentary role for the Duma, how-
ever, was hindered by the political system itself. So long as its powers remained restricted,
there was little incentive for parties to organize in order to win a majority of seats, and lit-
tle reason for ordinary Russians to regard it as a central rather than peripheral element in
the formation of public policy.
16
Notes
:. Iu. K. Aksyutin, ed., L.I. Brezhnev. Materialy k biograi (Moscow: Politizdat, :,,:), :;o.
:. Quoted respectively in Sotsiologicheskii zhurnal (:,,;): ;,; and Izvestiya, : June :,,, :, ;.
,. The text of the Russian constitution was published in Rossiiskaya gazeta, :, December :,,,, ,o. For a
convenient edition, see Vladimir V. Belyakov and Walter J. Raymond, eds., Constitution of the Russian
Federation (Lawrenceville, Va.: Brunswick, :,,).
. Stephen White, Richard Rose, and Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House,
:,,;), :, and chap. :: more generally.
,. Ot pervogo litsa. Razgovory s Vladimirom Putinym (Moscow: Vagrius, :ccc); an English translation has
been published, First Person (New York: HarperCollins, :ccc).
o. Biographies include Leon Aron, Boris Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (London: HarperCollins, :ccc); and
John Morrison, Boris Yeltsin: From Bolshevik to Democrat (Harmondsworth: Penguin, :,,:). Yeltsins own
memoirs appeared in two English-language translations: Against the Grain: An Autobiography (London:
Cape, :,,c); and The View from the Kremlin (London: HarperCollins, :,,).
;. New York Review of Books, , April :,,, :c.
. Alexander Rutskoi in Lipetskaya gazeta, : March :,,,, :.
,. Izvestiya, :c August :,,,.
:c. Vremya, :c August :,,,.
::. Rossiiskaya gazeta, ,: December :,,,.
::. For a fuller discussion, see Eugene Huskey, Presidential Power in Russia (Armonk and London: Sharpe,
:,,,). A broader comparative discussion is available in Ray Taras, ed., Postcommunist Presidents (Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, :,,;); and Robert Elgie, ed., Semi-Presidentialism in
Europe (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :,,,).
:,. Izvestiya, :, November :,,,.
:. Gosudarstvennaya Duma Rossiiskoi Federatsii vtorogo sozyva. Spravochnik (Moscow: Ves mir, :,,o).
:,. New York Times, :, January :,,;, section .
:o. New Statesman and Society, :: September :,,,.
430 russia
Chapter 28
Who Has the Power?
THE SOVIET SYSTEM, up to almost the very end, had allowed no choice of party or
even candidate at its periodic elections. Indeed, there was little choice about voting or
not, although in principle the exercise of the franchise was entirely voluntary. In practice,
there was never more than a single candidate on the ballot paper; and to vote in favor all
that was required was to drop it, unmarked and possibly unread, into the box. A vote
against was rather less easy: there was a screened-off booth for this purpose inside the
polling station, but if voters went off to use it their intentions could hardly be secret. The
results were so predictable that newspapers could prepare their front pages with pictures
of the successful candidates the day before the election; the Politburo, as late as the :,cs,
could approve the report of the central electoral commission two days before the polls
had opened.
In :,;, in the rst partial break with these arrangements, a small number of com-
bined districts in the local elections of that year were allowed to nominate more candi-
dates than seats available; and then in :,, as democratization developed further, a new
election law was adopted that provided for the rst elements of genuine competition.
There was no limit on the number of candidates who could be nominated (formally this
was not a change, but now it was going to be more than an empty provision). More im-
portant, nominations could be made by ordinary citizens, provided there were ,cc or
more signatures, rather than by the Communist Party and other approved organizations.
Candidates had for the rst time to put forward their own manifestos, even if they had to
stay within the bounds of the constitution and legal system, and they had campaign staff
to assist them, paid from public funds. The results, in March :,,, were a sensation, as
nearly forty ofcials, including a member of the ruling Politburo, went down to defeat,
and Boris Yeltsin romped home in Moscow with a majority so large that it went straight
into the Guinness Book of Records. The Politburos leading conservative, Yegor Ligachev,
called the whole exercise political shock therapy.
1
Ten years or more into postcommunist Russia, it was far less clear that the institution
of free elections had handed power back to ordinary citizens in a way that made it possi-
ble to speak of Russia as a democracy. Certainly, there were regular multiparty elections,
but government itself was accountable to the president, not to elected representatives.
Elections themselves were heavily inuenced by national television, which in turn re-
ected the views of a small number of newly rich oligarchs. In many of the republics and
regions the political process was even more strongly dominated by executive authority,
with Soviet-style majorities for single candidates and a press that was entirely in the pock-
ets of the local administration. Ordinary Russians, if the surveys were any guide, thought
that their fundamental liberties were much better secured than in the Soviet period, but
that they had less inuence over the government that ruled in their nameeven though
they were able to choose it for themselves. For some, this made Russia an electoral but
not yet a liberal democracy; for New York-based Freedom House, Russia was no more
than partly free at the start of the new century, and regressing rather than advancing.
2
Parties and Elections
Although the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been mentioned in earlier ver-
sions, the constitution that was adopted under the guidance of Leonid Brezhnev in :,;;
had converted the partys effective dominance into a formal political monopoly. From
March :,,c, Article o of the constitution was amended to refer to the CPSU and other
political parties, as well as trade union, youth, and other public organisations and mass
movements. A legal basis for multiparty politics was established the following October
when a new law on public organizations was adopted, covering the formation of trade
unions, sporting clubs, womens and veterans associations as well as political parties, and
setting out a procedure for them to register with the Ministry of Justice. The new consti-
tution, adopted in December :,,,, made it clear that postcommunist Russia was rmly
committed to political diversity and a multiparty system, subject only to a requirement
that parties and associations refrain from a forcible challenge to the state and from incite-
ment to social, ethnic, or religious strife. And there could, under the new constitution, be
no state or compulsory ideology (Art. :,).
The rst test of this emerging but still weakly formed party system was the election
of December :,,,, called on the same day a referendum was taking place to approve the
new constitution. The election came less than three months after President Yeltsin had is-
sued his decree suspending the Russian parliament and after he had ordered the Russian
army to seize the parliament building when substantial numbers of deputies refused to ac-
cept the legitimacy of his action. Some newspapers were banned, several of Yeltsins lead-
ing opponents had been taken out of the parliament building with their hands in the air,
and sixteen parties or movements were suspended on the grounds that they had been in-
volved in the events of early October. All of this created a rather unusual and inhos-
pitable environment for the conduct of what was, in effect, Russias rst multiparty elec-
tion. In the end, thirty-ve parties or movements began a campaign to collect the
:cc,ccc signatures they needed to secure the right to put forward candidates. Thirteen
were able to do so and to register their lists, with a total of :,;:; candidates upon them. A
similar number of candidates (:,,o;) sought election in one or another of the ::, single-
member constituencies, nominated either by a party or by electors themselves.
3
The results were a considerable shock, not just to Yeltsin and his colleagues but to the
Western governments that had backed his attack on an elected parliament. Most successful
of all were the independents, who won :: of the ::, constituency seats; this gave them
nearly a third of all the seats in the new Duma. The most successful of the parties was Rus-
sias Choice, led by former acting premier Yegor Gaidar, with a total of seventy seats. But
432 russia
there was a sensational result in the party-list contest, which was won by the right-wing na-
tionalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with nearly a quarter of the vote, with the Communists in
third place. Television coverage was suspended in the early morning because of technical
difculties, and U.S. Vice President Al Gore, invited to witness the birth of a new Russian
democracy, had to leave in some embarrassment. Gaidar acknowledged that reformers had
suffered a bitter defeat; the Moscow evening paper, more dramatically, warned that Rus-
sians had woken up in a new state after the Communo-Fascists success.
The :,,, Duma, however, was a transitional one that was to hold ofce for only two
years. The elections that followed in December :,,, would obviously be far more impor-
tant, with the potential to shape Russian party politics for the following four years or even
longer. Parties or movements had this time to collect :cc,ccc signatures, no more than ;
percent of which could be drawn from any single republic or region; forty-three eventu-
ally satised this requirement, more than three times as many as in :,,,, with a total of
,,o;, candidates on their lists. In the single-member districts there were :,:o; candidates,
each of whom had been able to collect the signatures of at least : percent of the electors in
their constituency.
4
With so many parties competing for seats, it was clear that very few would reach the
,-percent threshold; and in the end only four did so (see table :.:). The Communist
Party of the Russian Federation took more than a fth of the total vote; Zhirinovskys
Liberal Democrats and Prime Minister Chernomyrdins Our Home Is Russia each took
just over :c percent; the reformist party Yabloko came fourth, with just under ; percent.
These four accounted for just over half the total party-list vote, which meant that just un-
der half of the vote had been wasted; it also meant that the parties that reached the
threshold would secure twice as many seats in the new Duma as their share of the vote
would otherwise have secured for them. There was no precedent anywhere in the world
for this degree of disproportionality, and there were understandable complaints that the
rights of millions of voters had been violated.
Table 28.1 Elections to the Russian State Duma, December 1995
Proportional
representation Single-member
party list district seats Total seats
Parties clearing 5-percent threshold: Percentage Seats Seats Total
Communist Party 22.3 99 58 157
Liberal Democrats 11.2 50 1 51
Our Home Is Russia 10.1 45 10 55
Yabloko 6.9 31 14 45
Won single-member seats (19 parties): 65 65
Independents 77 77
Won votes but no seats (20 parties):
Against all lists 2.8
Invalid vote 1.9
Elections in the single-member constituencies did something to rectify these imbal-
ances, and some of the parties that won no seats in their own right were able to gain some
representation. The Communists, again, did well, but so did their allies in the Agrarian
Party, who spoke for the interests of state and collective-farm agriculture rather than for
private farmers. The number of seats won by independents went down sharply, but they
were still the most successful of the parties in the single-member districts and the sec-
ond-largest party overall. The Liberal Democrats, by contrast, won no more than a sin-
gle single-member seat; Women of Russia, a feminist grouping that had won a place in
:,,,, fell short of the threshold but took three seats, and Gaidars Russias Choice, which
had also fallen short, took nine. The turnout was o percent, an improvement on the ,,
percent that were reported to have voted in December :,,, but still far down on earlier
totals.
The 1999 Duma Election
The election law that had led to this skewed result came under increasing criticism over
the years that followed, and attempts were made to have the results themselves declared
unconstitutional. In the end, no signicant changes were made to the law that was ap-
proved in June :,,, and which then governed the elections that took place the following
December. As before, the new Duma would be divided into two halves, one of ::, party-
list and the other of ::, single-member seats. But the law now provided that if the parties
or movements that reached the threshold secured less than half the party-list vote among
them, other parties that had won at least , percent would be added, starting with the one
that was closest to the threshold, until their combined total reached at least half of the en-
tire party-list vote. Similarly, if a single party won more than half the total party-list vote
and no other party reached the threshold, a second party would be added to the alloca-
tion of seats. This was a oating, rather than a xed threshold.
Another innovation was that parties and candidates were allowed to register on the
basis not of a certain number of signatures but of an electoral deposit (for a party, :,,ccc
times the minimum wage or about $:,ccc at the prevailing rate of exchange; for an in-
dividual candidate, :,ccc times the minimum). But if parties won less than : percent na-
tionally, or candidates less than , percent in their individual districts, their deposits would
be forfeited. Equally, candidates who failed to secure at least , percent of the vote, and
parties that failed to secure at least : percent were obliged to repay the entire cost of their
free time on radio and television, and their free newspaper coverage. Candidates, in a fur-
ther innovation, were required to declare any court sentence they were still serving (it was
hoped this would reduce the number of criminals in the new Duma) and to make a full
declaration of their income and property.
Russian parties represented a spectrum of opinion, although it was difcult to classify
them in conventional terms.
5
The Union of Right Forces (Soyuz pravykh sil or SPS), how-
ever, identied itself explicitly with the political right. It was formed in late :,,,; its lead-
ers were former Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko, former deputy premier Boris Nemtsov,
and deputy Irina Khakamada. The SPS, in its program, stood for the values of a free so-
ciety and for a European capitalism in Russia. Its other priorities were private property,
434 russia
public order, the targeting of social benets to those who really needed them, and the sep-
aration of business and government. In the view of the SPS, the market should properly
be responsible for guaranteeing development and prosperity. The partys full economic
program, a document of over :,,cc pages, was intended to provide the guidelines for a
rather longer period of government. It was handed over to Prime Minister Putin at a well-
publicized meeting shortly before the election, at which the premier endorsed substantial
parts of it. Kremlin strategists were apparently determined to ensure that the SPS reached
the ,-percent threshold and won a share of the party-list seats.
Yabloko (Apple) was another party that identied itself as democratic, or broadly
supportive of the political and economic reforms that had taken place since :,,c. Its em-
phasis, however, was less on the market and more on the classic liberal objective of good
and honest government, and it saw itself as a democratic alternative to the current
regime. In its manifesto, Yabloko promised to clear corrupt elements out of the state
apparatus and replace them with honest professionals, ready to serve the public good.
Its economic proposals assumed a greater role for the state as the main representative of
the national interest, and social benets would be improved, including health, educa-
tion, pensions, and a happy childhood for all whatever their parental income. Russia
would meanwhile return to a worthy place among the nations, united with Belarus in a
treaty that was open to the other former Soviet republics, and integrated into the world
economy but without the shameful dependence on the IMF that had developed in re-
cent years. Yablokos list was headed by economist Grigorii Yavlinsky, the partys long-
standing leader and its presidential candidate in :,,o. Second place went to former Prime
Minister Sergei Stepashin, who announced his adhesion in late August and who stood, in
addition, in a St. Petersburg constituency.
The centrist parties were those that broadly supported the policies of the Kremlin
and of the Putin government. Our Home Is Russia (Nash dom Rossiya, or NDR) was asso-
ciated with former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and had originally been formed
in :,,, to enable him to campaign for a pro-government majority in the Duma election
of that year. Our Home promised a new level of responsibility of the state before soci-
ety, including a balanced budget and the prompt payment of social benets. There
would also be an emphasis on job creation and a program of legislation that would restore
the faith of domestic and foreign investors; there would be a campaign against crime and
corruption and a constitutional reform that would increase the role of parliament. Cher-
nomyrdin, speaking to a congress in August, claimed that NDR had acquired a new in-
spiration, and it enjoyed considerable resources as the historic party of power with
close ties through Chernomyrdin to the gas industry. But its rationale had become a little
doubtful after Chernomyrdin left the government in the spring of :,,, and the party
could thereafter present itself as no more than a party of inuence on power. Not sur-
prisingly, many of the regional governors who had supported NDR in the past came to
the conclusion that their time might be better invested in other and more effective ways
of advancing their interests.
The most intriguing of the new parties was the Inter-Regional Electoral Association
Unity (Yedinstvo), also known from its Russian initials as Medved (Bear). Unity had
come into existence in late September as a movement of governors through which the
Kremlin could seek to inuence the composition of the new Duma in its favor. The new
grouping was evidently intended to counter the support that was being enjoyed by the
main oppositional groupings; it was also thought to enjoy the support of nancial and
Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky. For one of the daily papers, Unity was simply an anti-
Fatherland bloc, a sort of disposable kamikaze party, whose one and only task [was] not to
win the elections but to prevent disagreeable political groups from doing so. For another,
it was the Kremlins nal attempt to get a party of power of its own into the running.
6
The partys list was headed by emergencies minister Sergei Shoigu, who had the great ad-
vantage that he could appear constantly on television in connection with his ofcial du-
ties; the other leading gures on its list were an Olympic wrestling champion and the for-
mer head of the organized crime division of the interior ministry. For Shoigu, Unity was
not a political party but an association of sensible people, fed up with seeing others de-
cide their fate. Its ideology, he told interviewers, was actually the absence of ideology.
What did it matter what a society was called if its people lived well and peacefully? What
mattered more was that Unity was a movement very closely associated with the Putin
government: Putin himself declared that as a citizen he would be voting for it, and
Unity itself accepted that it might be called the Putin party.
The parties of the left-center were represented above all by another new grouping,
FatherlandAll Russia (Otechestvo-Vsya Rossiya, or OVR). OVR was again an association
that had simply been formed to ght the coming elections, but it drew on two more sub-
stantial and continuing organizations: the Fatherland Party that had been founded in late
:,, by Moscow mayor Yuri Luzkhov and a movement of governors and regional elites
known as All Russia. Its list was headed by former prime minister and foreign secretary
Yevgenii Primakov, followed by Luzhkov and the governor of the St. Petersburg region,
Vladimir Yakovlev. Fourth place went to Yekaterina Lakhova, leader of the Women of
Russia Party (which nonetheless contested the election independently because it had
been offered too few well-placed positions on the OVR list). OVR, according to its pro-
gram, was above all a party that favored a strong state, which alone could establish condi-
tions for the development of the whole society and of its individual members. OVR also
favored a socially oriented market economy in which particular attention would be at-
tached to the real sector and to the encouragement of domestic producers. Like others,
it promised the timely payment of social benets and a determined onslaught on terror-
ism and organized crime. OVR, in its own view, was neither on the right nor on the
left, and it was equally opposed to pseudoliberal reforms (in practice, the policies that
had been followed since the start of Yeltsins presidency) and to a return to the totalitar-
ian past (in other words, to the Soviet system).
The parties of the orthodox left included, most notably, the Communist Party of the
Russian Federation. The list was headed by the partys long-standing leader, Gennadii
Zyuganov, by Duma Speaker Gennadii Seleznev, and by Vasilii Starodubtsev, a farm di-
rector who had taken part in the attempted coup of August :,,:. The fourth position was
held by Aman-Geldy Tuleev, governor of the coal-mining Kemerovo region. The Com-
munists, however, failed to enlist all the parties that had previously supported them, in-
436 russia
cluding the Agrarian Party (most of whose leaders joined OVR) and the Movement in
Support of the Army, Military Science, and the Defense Industry, which contested the
election independently. So too did Spiritual Heritage, led by a Duma deputy who had
been expelled from the Communist faction. The Communist ideal, according to their
program, was a society that harmoniously combined social justice with dynamic eco-
nomic development. This meant the establishment of a renewed socialist system, in-
cluding a powerful public sector that would sustain social benets, education, culture,
and science. But it also meant a spiritual revival and a strengthening of the state itself.
There were also nationalist parties, including Vladimir Zhirinovskys Liberal Demo-
cratic Party, which had also been the surprise winner of the party-list contest in :,,, and
nished second in :,,,. The Liberal Democrats were nationalist and anti-Western in their
foreign policy, strongly in favor of the restoration of federal control in Chechnya, and pro-
market but also protectionist in their economic strategy. They were equally opposed to the
break up of the USSR and called for it to be restored within its earlier boundaries or, ide-
ally, the boundaries the Russian Empire had enjoyed after the Crimean War, including
Finland, the Baltic States, and Alaska. The Liberal Democrats were well nanced, had a
national network of activists, and enjoyed a high level of support within the armed forces.
But they owed most of it to their leader, a charismatic campaigner who successfully identi-
ed the problems of ordinary Russians and suggested simple ways of dealing with them
such as shooting the leaders of organized crime. In spite of their oppositional rhetoric, the
LDPR tended in practice to support the government in the Duma: they voted in favor of
the budget and prime ministerial nominations, and opposed the attempt that was made in
the spring of :,,, to initiate the impeachment of President Yeltsin. The LDPRs ratings
had certainly sagged since the last election, but it regularly did better than the polls sug-
gested. The Kremlin, moreover, had every reason to offer its own support so that another
broadly pro-government fraction entered the new Duma, either under its own auspices or
(when there were last-minute difculties about nominating the LDPR itself ) as a Zhiri-
novsky bloc. In all, twenty-six blocs were listed on the ballot paper in the federal-list com-
petition, with a total of ,,;,o candidates on their lists; a further :,,cc sought election as in-
dependent or party-sponsored candidates in the single-member constituencies.
The nal results took some time to emerge, but from an early stage on election night
it was clear that pro-Kremlin partiesand particularly Unityhad performed much bet-
ter than expected (see table :.:, p. ,). The winner, as in :,,,, was the Communist
Party, with a larger share of the vote. But Unity followed closely and secured almost as
many party-list seats in the new Duma. FatherlandAll Russia came in third, but with a
smaller share of the vote than the polls had predicted, and the Union of Right Forces did
rather better than expected, helped (it was thought) by an energetic and imaginative cam-
paign as well as by the implicit support of the prime minister. Zhirinovskys Liberal Dem-
ocrats came in fth with scarcely more than half of their :,,, vote, but they were still
above the threshold; Yabloko failed to achieve the breakthrough it had hoped for (indeed
its vote was slightly down in :,,,), but it was the sixth of the parties that secured repre-
sentation in their own right. The parties that had reached the threshold accounted,
among them, for :. percent of the party-list vote, a result that gave few grounds for
challenging the representativeness of the result. Turnout, at o, percent, was slightly down
from the level that had been achieved in :,,,, and in eight single-member constituen-
ciesfor the rst timethe vote was declared invalid because the number of ballots cast
against all the candidates exceeded the number that had been cast in favor of the most
successful candidate.
Parties were also able to sponsor candidates in the single-member constituencies, but
not all of them did so. As in previous elections, independentssome of whom had a
well-known party afliation but who preferred to stand on this basiswere more success-
ful than any of the parties, winning nearly half of the single-member seats for which they
could compete. Even when the results from the party-list election were added, indepen-
dents were still more numerous than all but Communist deputies. Few, however, were ex-
pected to remain independent in the new Duma, and the pro-government parties were
normally in a position to offer the most substantial inducements for their support. The
outcome was a new Duma that was expected to be much more supportive of the new
prime minister and his policies; Izvestiya, for instance, estimated that half of the new
Duma would be relatively loyal. Much, however, depended on the independents, and as
the year ended they were being energetically courted by both sides.
Party Politics in Postcommunist Russia
By the start of the new century, the postcommunist electorate had acquired a number of
established characteristics. Communist and OVR voters, for a start, were somewhat older
than the electorates of other parties, while the Union of Right Forces and Zhirinovsky ap-
peared to have made a successful appeal to the younger voter (see table :.,). The SPS had
also appealed to the woman voter, but so had the Communists, and the clearest gender
effects wereas beforefor the Liberal Democrats, whose support was much less than
438 russia
Table 28.2 Elections to the Russian State Duma, December 1999
Proportional
representation Single-member
party list district seats Total seats
Parties clearing ,-percent threshold: Percentage Seats Seats Total
Communist Party 24.3 67 47 114
Unity 23.3 64 9 73
FatherlandAll Russia 13.3 37 29 66
Union of Right Forces 8.5 24 5 29
Zhirinovsky bloc 6.0 17 0 17
Yabloko 5.9 17 0 17
Won single-member seats (8 parties): 17 17
Independents 105 105
Won votes but no seats (12 parties):
Against all lists 3.3
Invalid vote 1.2
that of other parties among women, who in fact accounted for slightly more than half of
the electorate. Zhirinovsky was also less successful in appealing to voters with a higher or
technical education, but he and his bloc were strongly supported in villages and small
towns, along with Unity and the Communists. OVR was the strongest party in the two
capitals, reecting the inuence of Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
Religion, by contrast, made little difference, except that those who attended church
at least a few times a year were much less likely to vote for Zhirinovsky; conversely, his
support was particularly strong among ethnic Russians, while there was relatively more
support for the Communists and for OVR among the other nationalities. OVR support-
ers, for reasons that were not obvious, were the most likely to feel European; the Union of
Right Forces were the most strongly in favor of private rather than state ownership, with
Communist supporters at the other extreme.
The polls made clear some other features of party support. Unity, whose supporters
were otherwise a cross-section of the entire society, did better than the other parties in
terms of their leadership: a reection of the prominence that Shoigu and his colleagues
had enjoyed over the few months since their establishment, as well as of the obscurity of
the principles on which the new party had been founded. Communist supporters, how-
ever, were more likely to say they agreed with the program of their party and to believe it
would defend their interests. They were also the most likely to report that they supported
their party because they always had done so and the least likely to say it was a party that
had a future. The Union of Right Forces, by contrast, was the most likely to have sup-
porters who believed it had a future and that it was a party of the young. On the other
hand, it was seen as the weakest of the parties, while the Communists, followed by Fa-
Table 28.3 Some Characteristics of Party Support, December 1999
Right
Category Communist FatherlandAR forces Unity Yabloko Zhirinovsky
Age
1829 6 11 31 23 9 33
>55 58 44 24 31 37 24
Gender
Female 56 47 58 50 52 35
Residence
Village or small town 38 28 16 35 8 39
Moscow/St. Petersburg 6 29 14 3 18 10
Religion
Attends church 22 24 24 22 19 9
Nationality
Ethnic Russian 79 77 88 88 87 94
Attitudes
Feels European 55 65 58 56 44 54
Prefers private ownership 8 29 51 29 32 31
Source: New Russia Barometer VIII, eldwork 129 January 2000, N 1940.
therlandAll Russia, were seen as the strongest. Not a single party, however, had more
than percent of supporters who claimed to know something about it.
Russia, as this evidence suggested, could scarcely be said to have a party system. Polit-
ical parties, for a start, were the most distrusted of all public institutions. Only percent
of Russians, at the end of :,,,, completely trusted the political parties, compared with
,, percent who completely distrusted them. Yeltsin had the condence of just : percent
of Russians, but the parliament, government, police, and trade unions all ranked higher,
and the mass media, army, and (at the top) the church were all trusted more than they
were distrusted.
7
Was there, another question asked, a party or movement with which re-
spondents felt able to identify themselves? Just over a quarter (:o percent) chose the
Communists, : percent the democrats, but nearly half (: percent) were unable to
identify with any of them or indeed to answer at all.
8
Not surprisingly in these circum-
stances, parties appeared and disappeared with alarming rapidity (of the six that won
party-list places in December :,,,, three had been formed earlier the same year). There
was also a much greater tendency than in Western countries for voters to split their ticket,
favoring one party in the national party-list contest but another (or an independent) in
their local district.
Russian parties were typically centered on an individual leader or a small group of
leaders. Yabloko, for instance, was identied with its leader Grigorii Yavlinsky (the partys
name incorporated the rst two letters of his surname), and the Liberal Democrats with
their amboyant standard-bearer Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Some of the parties that had
taken part in the :,,, election were known simply as the bloc of a particular leader, and
the same was true in :,,,: there was the Zhirinovsky Bloc (formed when difculties arose
with the registration of the Liberal Democrats as a party) and the Bloc of General Niko-
laev and Academician Fedorov. Only the Communist Party enjoyed a substantial individ-
ual membership, of perhaps ,cc,ccc. Over the country as a whole no more than :. per-
cent were estimated to belong to one or another of the parties, and no more than ::
percent identied themselves as committed supporters. This compared with a level of
about ; percent in the United States, and ,: percent in the United Kingdom.
9
Many of
the new parties, indeed, avoided the word party altogether, reecting the long period
of Soviet rule during which there had been a single ruling organization that was generally
agreed to have abused its position.
The weakness of Russian parties reected the long years of Communist rule and the
lack of the kinds of organized interestsof labor or of capitalthat might have helped to
sustain them. It also reected the political system itself. The electoral system certainly
gave parties a real advantage in that they were quite deliberately allocated half the Duma
seats in addition to the seats they could hope to win in the single-member constituencies.
But there were few incentives to put forward a coherent or responsible program, as even a
majority party would not necessarily play any part in government. Equally, the composi-
tion of the new Duma bore a very loose relationship to the outcome of the election. In a
Western parliamentary system, deputies sit and vote together with their party colleagues.
In the Duma, party fractions and groups were formed after the election, and they had a
much more distant relationship to the election outcome. Independents typically trans-
440 russia
ferred to one or another of the party fractions, deputies elected on a party ticket became
independents, and some moved from one party to another. In these circumstances, par-
ties were less a means of attempting to win power, and rather more a device through
which prospective presidential candidates could obtain media exposure (and free air time)
and in this way strengthen their position in the contest that really mattered.
Other Political Actors
If parties were relatively minor political actors, who was shaping the new Russia? From
the polls that were regularly conducted with a view to dening the politically inuential,
it was clear thatafter the president and prime ministerit was the oligarchs who com-
manded the greatest weight. The oligarchs were nancial-industrial tycoons and bankers.
They included gures like Vladimir Potanin, a former ofcial of the ministry of foreign
economic relations who had founded an import-export bank at an advantageous moment
and who later became, for a year, rst deputy chairman in the Chernomyrdin govern-
ment. Vladimir Gusinsky was another, an oil and gas engineer who was also a qualied
theater director and who went on to head Most-Bank. So was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a
Moscow engineer who had risen through the Communist Partys youth wing and who
went on to head the banking and industrial group Menatep. Others owed their positions
to their control over the countrys vast natural resources, including Rem Vyakhirev, an en-
gineer who had risen from management of the gas industry in Tyumen to a deputy minis-
terial position and the chairmanship of Gazprom, the worlds largest gas company and in
effect the former USSR ministry of the gas industry. He had been closely connected with
Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, another gas man, for more than thirty years.
Boris Berezovsky, perhaps the most inuential of all, had been a mathematician with
a doctorate in management who had gone on to become the head of an automobile deal-
ership that became the center of a group of companies, as well as a close friend (as we
have seen) of the Yeltsin family. He was also, for a year, deputy chairman of the Security
Council and later, for another year, executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Inde-
pendent States. The inuence of oligarchs like Berezovsky was broadly based and often
included a segment of the media: Gazprom controlled the newspapers Trud and
Rabochaya gazeta, Berezovsky held shares in the Russian Public Television (the countrys
main channel) and in the now ironically named Nezavisimaya gazeta or Independent
Newspaper. Potanins Oneksimbank owned Komsomolskaya pravda, a popular daily, and
shared ownership of the well-respected Izvestiya with oil interests; Gusinsky and his bank
owned a series of newspapers including the inuential Segodnya (Today) as well as inde-
pendent television and a radio station.
There was continuing controversy about the extent to which the oligarchs consti-
tuted the real government of Russia, as the Financial Times once described them. The
oligarchs were certainly prepared to exaggerate their own inuence. But, it was clear that
it had been the oligarchs, meeting early in :,,o, who had decided collectively to bankroll
Boris Yeltsins campaign to secure his reelectiona campaign that had been successful, al-
though not simply because of their funding. It was also clear that Berezovsky had helped
to fund Unity, an openly pro-Kremlin grouping, in the :,,, Duma election. And in a po-
litical campaign that was dominated by television, his control of the most important of all
the channels was an enormously important weapon. The content analysis that was con-
ducted during the campaign showed that Berezovskys channel ORT, the only one that
had a genuinely national reach, gave disproportionate attention to Unity and to other
pro-Kremlin parties, but sponsored an unceasing stream of black PR addressed toward
their main competitors, this, even though all channels and the public service channels in
particular were required by Russian law to be fair, impartial, and unbiased.
Labor and industrial capital, by contrast, had relatively little inuence. The trade
unions still had a mass membership, but they were in no position to offer strike pay, and
indeed their income came largely from the management of the range of properties they
had inherited from Soviet times. This made them less concerned to challenge the system,
even though their members were experiencing a sharp fall in their standard of living and
were often losing their employment altogether. Business was divided by rivalries among
the oligarchs, and it had no representative structures of any signicance. An inuential
governor could lobby the interests of his own region; but the Academy of Sciences, which
was almost entirely dependent on public funds, found itself obliged to suffer a chronic
decit, and many of its most talented staff joined the brain-drain to Western countries.
Ordinary citizens, arguably, had even less inuence than they had enjoyed in the Soviet
period, when they could hope that party intervention would help them to resolve a local
difcultysuch as street lighting, public transport, or housing.
The armed forces were in a very different position. Russia had always maintained a
disproportionately large number of servicemen, and military spending had represented an
unusually large share of state expenditure since at least the eighteenth century. With a
conscript army, a very large proportion of Russian males had served within its ranks at
some point in their lives. An older generation, still inuential in public life, had fought
during World War II and celebrated Victory Day (, May) with special enthusiasm. Rus-
sias national heroes were often its military leaders: Suvorov, Kutuzov, or Georgii Zhukov.
Peter the Great, and later Stalin, were political leaders who acquired additional authority
as the leaders of a national war effort. A successful military career, in fact, could be a
springboard into national politics; for example, Alexander Lebed went from general to
presidential candidate and then governor of the vast Krasnoyarsk region, and Boris Gro-
mov (who had led the withdrawal from Afghanistan) won the governorship of Moscow
region in December :,,,. Of all the organized interests that help to shape the allocation
of resources in postcommunist Russia, this is almost certainly the most important.
In spite of the ending of the Cold War, Russia has still one of the worlds largest and
most formidable concentrations of military might.
10
The regular army numbers :c,ccc,
of whom :;c,ccc are conscripts; the proportion of conscripts will diminish in the future
with the gradual move to a wholly professional force. It deploys some :o,cc battle tanks,
:,,o: multiple rocket launchers, and :,,cc surface-to-air missiles. The strategic nuclear
ground forces have a further :cc,ccc men divided into ve rocket armies, responsible
among them for Russias ,: intercontinental ballistic missiles. The navy had thirty-eight
strategic and sixty-six nuclear attack submarines in the late :,,cs, although the retting
and refueling of all the eets remained at a low level because of lack of funding, and there
442 russia
was a continuing dispute with Ukraine about the ownership of the Black Sea eet. A fur-
ther ,:c,ccc troops were deployed in the late :,,cs in the air and air defense forces, with
a eet that included nuclear-capable bombers. The overall management of these forces
rests with the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, and the president is
formally commander in chief.
Russia inherited the international treaties that the USSR had signed, including the
Conventional Forces in Europe treaty of :,,c and the Strategic Arms Reduction (Start)
treaty of :,,:. With the ending of the Cold War, signalled by the signing of the Charter of
Paris in November :,,c even before the USSR itself had collapsed, there was a wide-
spread belief in Russia as well as in the West that spending levels and troop numbers
would fall and that there would be a peace dividend to distribute. One of the reasons
the Soviet leadership had withdrawn from Afghanistan and avoided any similar foreign
adventures was that it was no longer possible to sustain their cost. In any case, it ap-
peared, the Western democracies were Russias natural allies. But disagreements began
to multiply: over the bombing of Iraq, over the expansion of NATO toward the east, and
over the bombing of Serbia in the spring of :,,,. As Russian leaders made clear, there
must be a global balance, not a unipolar world in which the United States could unilater-
ally impose its wishes.
Reecting these circumstances, military spending was still a remarkably large part of
the state budget in the late :,,cs. The :,, budget as a whole came to just under ,cc bil-
lion rubles; defense came to about a sixth of the total (just under : billion), and it was by
far the largest single item of state expenditure. Social and cultural expenditure came next,
with o; billion rubles; but then came internal security, at just under : billion (these were
the allocated sums; the totals actually spent diverged in various directions). The armed
forces were short of the resources they needed to maintain an adequate level of combat
readiness, but they were still innovating and still introducing new weapons systems into
their repertoire. And they had the backing of public opinion, which was strongly sup-
portive of the army as an institution and of higher levels of military spending. Domestic
circumstances were part of the explanation, in particular the threat of terrorist attacks
from Chechnya, as well as a worsening international environment. The army itself had al-
ways taken a skeptical view of Western intentions, and it continued to regard NATO (in
the national security concept that was published in January :ccc) as its main potential
adversary. Clearly, it had been able to argue its case to some effect in the still rather uid
process by which public policy was formulated in early postcommunist Russia.
Notes
:. Ye. K. Ligachev, Zagadka Gorbacheva (Novosibirsk: Interbuk, :,,:), ;,.
:. For the distinction between electoral and liberal democracy, see particularly Larry Diamond, Developing
Democracy: Towards Consolidation (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, :,,,). There is a fur-
ther discussion of Freedom House and its indicators in chapter ,c below.
,. For book-length treatments, see Peter Lentini, ed., Elections and Political Order in Russia (Budapest: Cen-
tral European University Press, :,,,); and Jerry F. Hough and Timothy J. Colton, eds., Growing Pains:
The :)), Russian Duma Election (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, :,,).
. For a fuller discussion of the :,,, Duma election, see Stephen White, Richard Rose, and Ian McAllister,
How Russia Votes (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, :,,;), chaps. ,::.
,. There are several studies of the development of Russian party politics: see particularly John Lowenhardt,
ed., Party Politics in Post-Communist Russia (London: Cass, :,,); Matthew Wyman, Stephen White, and
Sarah Oates, eds., Elections and Voters in Post-Communist Russia (Cheltenham, U.K., and Northampton,
Mass.: Edward Elgar, :,,); and Timothy J. Colton, Transitional Citizens (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, :ccc).
o. See, respectively, Segodnya, October :,,,, and Kommersant, :, September :,,,.
;. See Ekonomicheskie i sotsialnye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya o (:,,,): o:o,.
. Ekonomicheskie i sotsialnye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya , (:,,,): ;:.
,. See White, Rose, and McAllister, How Russia Votes, :,,. The estimate of party membership levels nation-
ally is from Argumenty i fakty ,o (:,,,): :.
:c. The most convenient source of information on military strengths is the International Institute for Strate-
gic Studies Military Balance (London: IISS, annual).
444 russia
Chapter 29
How Is Power Used?
IN THE COMMUNIST PERIOD the task of policy implementation was relatively sim-
ple. There was, in principle, a correct position, based on the ofcial ideology. It was the
job of the ruling party to express that position and of the government to carry it into ef-
fect. The party dominated all key positions and supervised the government in its work.
The parliament was effectively appointed; so was the leadership of lower levels of govern-
ment. There was no opportunity, in practice, to challenge ofcial policies through the
courts or to mobilize opposition to them on the streets. And there was no opportunity to
criticize ofcial policies, directly at least, in the mass media, because their editors were
party appointees and their contents were censored.
The Soviet policy process, in fact, was rather more complicated. The leadership, for a
start, were often divided in their loyaltiesby region or by the sector of the economy
with which its individual members were most closely associated. There were increasingly
open differences between hardliners committed to central planning and a class approach,
and their more moderate colleagues, who were prepared to allow a greater element of pri-
vate ownership in the economy and a wider range of opinion in public life. There could
be criticism of the performance of leading ofcials, if not of the principles on which they
operated. If all else failed, the mass public had other ways of making its wishes known,
from contacting their elected representatives to strikes and public protests.
The postcommunist system, in principle, was a very different one. There was open
competition between political parties and presidential candidates. Implementation was a
matter of government decision, enforced where necessary by the rule of law. Decisions
that violated the law or constitution could be contested in the courts (there were occa-
sions when even Boris Yeltsin was overruled, as when he tried to merge the interior min-
istry with the security service). And every aspect of policy could in theory be challenged
by a newly independent media. But in practice, much remained the same. The ruling
group was largely made up of the same people as before, particularly in the regions. Par-
liament was still peripheral, the media were mostly in the pockets of tycoons, and deci-
sions were enforced by criminals rather than the courts. In these circumstances, policy ad-
vancedif it did at allthrough a series of one-time deals between the Kremlin and the
larger organized interests, centrally and in the regions. Russia was certainly postcommu-
nist, but there was little sign by the early years of the new century that the long-standing
gulf between regime and society had been bridged and that ordinary people had at last
been given the means of ensuring that public policy reected their own preferences.
Privatizing the Economy
The central challenge, for Russias postcommunist leadership, was to replace a failing
command economy with a capitalist market.
1
We must, Yeltsin declared in October
:,,:, provide economic freedom, lift all barriers to the freedom of enterprises and of en-
trepreneurship, and give people the opportunity to work and to receive as much as they
can earn, throwing off all bureaucratic constraints. Presidential decrees later in the year
abolished limits on earnings, liberalized foreign economic relations, and commercialized
shops and services. Most dramatically of all, prices were freed on : January :,,:; within
a month they had risen three-and-a-half times, and over the year they rose twenty-six
times. Price reform, Yeltsin acknowledged, was a painful measure, but it was the path
the whole civilized world had been obliged to follow.
A program for the next stages of reform was adopted in July :,,:. It set out a series of
objectives, including deregulation, a balanced budget, privatization, structural change
(including demilitarization), and the creation of a competitive market economy. The
main outlines of a privatization program had already been approved by the Russian par-
liament in July :,,:, and a committee for the management of state property had been ap-
pointed to supervise the entire exercise. All citizens, it was agreed in the summer of :,,:,
would receive privatization checks or vouchers to the value of :c,ccc rubles (about $:c
at the time), which was the nominal value of all property that belonged to the state di-
vided by the population. Vouchers could be used to buy shares in ones own workplace, or
to buy shares at an auction where other enterprises were being sold, or placed in invest-
ment funds. The rst were distributed in October :,,:, and they had all to be used by the
end of :,,,. The more property owners and business people there are in Russia, Yeltsin
declared in a television address, the sooner Russia [would] be prosperous and the sooner
its future [would] be in safe hands.
By the time voucher privatization came to an end in June :,,, approximately
:cc,ccc enterprises had changed their forms of ownership, and more than c million cit-
izens had nominally become property ownersindeed there were more private share-
holders in Russia at this time than in either Britain or the United States. A second stage of
privatization began in :,,, involving the sale of large enterprises at auction; a third stage,
involving smaller individual projects, began in :,,o. The pace of privatization was slow-
ing down by this time; but already o, percent of all Russian enterprises had moved from
state into private hands, accounting for about a quarter of total output (this was because
relatively few of them were in large-scale heavy industry, and many more in retail trade
and catering). At least for Western advisers, the whole exercise had been an extraordinary
achievement.
2
Privatization of agriculture had been taken less far by the late :,,cs, even though the
private ownership of land had been incorporated into the Russian constitution in :,,c
and had then formed part of the new constitution that was adopted in :,,,. A presiden-
tial decree of March :,,: and a further decree in June had provided for the sale of private
plots of land. A more far-reaching decree of October :,,,, hailed as a historic step, estab-
lished that it was legal for those who owned it to buy, sell, lease, and exchange land, al-
though any change in ownership had to take due account of the rational organization of
446 russia
land areas. Changes in ownership, for this and other reasons, advanced slowly: the num-
ber of commercial farms increased but then fell again, and by :,,; they accounted for no
more than : percent of the value of all agricultural output (they were most important for
their production of sunower seeds).
The larger problem, apart from the regulations themselves, was that Russias farms
were mostly unprotable, which provided little incentive to take over their ownership. By
the late :,,cs, over c percent of collective and state farms were running at a loss. There
was strong political opposition in any case to the speculation that might result from a
free market in land. The Russian parliament pushed in these circumstances for lifetime
leasing rather than outright ownership, and there was little willingness to legislate for pri-
vate ownership in the Russian regions. Meanwhile, agricultural output fell steadily from
year to year, livestock numbers collapsed, and farmers who continued to produce slipped
even deeper into a debt abyss.
There were mixed results from the privatization of industry as well. The change in
ownership had certainly had little effect on investment or enterprise behavior. There was
a fall, not an increase, in labor productivity. Output was even more highly concentrated
in a small number of factories than it had been before the move to private ownership. En-
ergy costs per unit of output had risen, not fallen. And there were few signs of a revolu-
tion in managerial attitudes. Managers, on the contrary, were just as keen as their Soviet
predecessors to retain state subsidies, cheap credits, and protection from foreign competi-
tion. And although there was an investment crisis of astounding proportions, managers
as well as workers were opposed to the sale of shares in their enterprise even if a new
owner was likely to bring them the resources they needed to expand and modernize.
3
Why was privatization being carried out at all? More, it appeared, for political rea-
sons than for economic ones. Once a substantial share of property had been placed in pri-
vate hands, there would be a powerful group with a vested interest in the postcommunist
order. It was less important who the new owners were or how the property itself had been
acquired; capitalism in the West, after all, had established itself by violence and robbery
as well as by thrift and innovation. But once a new class of owners had been formed, they
would, it was assumed, nd it in their interests to establish more civilized procedures.
The new owners, in fact, found it easier and quicker to make money by exploiting their
control of the state to secure public assets at prices that were below historic costs, and
safer to invest their money in foreign bank accounts than in the future of their own soci-
ety. They were committed to public order, but not necessarily to the rule of law (which
might mean an investigation of their own fortunes) or to democracy (which might mean
they lost their inuence over government, and possibly their liberty). Communists and
nationalists had been skeptical from the outset, and they were scathing about the results.
Pravda, for instance, spoke of an enormous swindle in which a narrow stratum of
new Russians feeding off the budget and raw material exports had got richer and
richer; a former minister spoke similarly of an exercise in which under the guise of re-
forms the most substantial property in world history [had] come into the hands of a
criminal community.
4
A liberalized economy was meant to achieve its purposes, in part, by attracting for-
eign direct investment. As part of this process, Russia became a member of the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during :,,:; and the Group of Seven
of the major industrial nations eventually became a Group of Eight, although Russia was
clearly in a rather different position than the other members. A series of agreements,
meanwhile, brought Western funds to the assistance of the Russian economy, starting
with a ruble stabilization fund in :,,: that was worth $: billion. Foreign assistance, at
the same time, was unlikely to bring about the transformation that had widely been ex-
pected. It took some time to materialize; it came with strings attached; and it cost more
and more to nance, swallowing up resources that might otherwise have been devoted to
domestic investment as well as to social programs of various kinds. Russian capital, mean-
while, was moving abroad more quickly than foreign assistance was arriving; an estimated
$,c billion was leaving every year in the late :,,cs, much of it to acquire property. In
Nice alone at least fty villas valued at $,c,ccc or more were being sold to Russians
every year in the late :,,cs; in the spa town of Carlsbad in the Czech Republic a ruble
maa had bought up most of the hotels, and locals concluded it had become a zone of
peace for Russian godfathers seeking a break from life at home and a convenient place to
launder their prots.
5
Foreign investment, meanwhile, remained at a low level, less (for instance) than in
Peru. Why were foreign investors so reluctant to entrust their resources to a newly demo-
cratic Russia but happy to do so in Communist-ruled China? Some of them conded
their reservations to the weekly paper Argumenty i fakty. A French electronics entrepre-
neur found that new Russian businessmen were simply too vulgar: they threw money
around in the casino, while he read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and tried to develop his rm
so that it could employ more workers in the future. Others were worried by the level of
serious crime, and the threat of political instability. Others still were discouraged by the
bribes they found they had to pay (Russia was one of the most corrupt countries in the
world, according to the gures that were produced annually by Transparency Interna-
tional). How to make a million in the former Soviet Union? asked one exasperated
American investor. Bring two million and it will soon be down to one.
6
Ten years or more after they had been launched, the record of economic reforms was
decidedly mixed. Growth, for a start, had failed to materialize. The Soviet economy, cer-
tainly, had already been contracting in its nal years: by percent in :,,c and by :, per-
cent in :,,: as the state itself fell apart. But there were further falls in almost every year of
the Yeltsin administration, with a minor upturn in :,,; but a still more dramatic collapse
in August the following year as Russia defaulted on its foreign debt and the ruble col-
lapsed on the foreign exchanges. By the end of the decade the Russian economy had con-
tracted to about half its size at the end of the period of communist rulea steeper fall
than the West had experienced during the Great Depression and a steeper fall than Russia
itself had experienced during World War II (see table :,.:).
It had widely been expected that there would be a short period of adjustment and
that growth would then resume; equally, that there would be a fall in the output of heavy
industrial goods for which there was no longer a demand and that the economy would
bounce back leaner and tter. In the event, the sharpest falls were in the output of mod-
448 russia
ern consumer goods, including electronics: oil, steel and gas fell by a third or more, but
the output of personal computers was down by oc percent, of cameras and watches by
more than c percent, and of color televisions by more than ,c percent. Investment,
meanwhile, had fallen every year to just a quarter of its :,,c level; and foreign trade was
even more overwhelmingly in raw materials, including oil and gas, rather than manufac-
tured products incorporating added value. At least for critics of the governments strategy,
this was deindustrialization rather than regeneration, and it carried the risk that Russia
would become a colonial appendage of the Western countries, exporting its natural re-
sources and importing a few luxuries while taking over some of the low-tech and environ-
mentally detrimental production that Western countries had no wish to retain.
These rates of decline, in turn, had obvious implications for Russias economic place
among the nations. In :,,c Russias gross domestic product had been about a third of the
U.S. level; by the end of the decade it was barely a fth. The Russian economy was still,
in absolute terms, one of the largest in the world, but by the late :,,cs it had fallen be-
hind Brazil, China, and South Korea, as well as the major Western democracies. Ex-
pressed in terms of population, Russian was well below the global average and (on World
Bank gures) behind Latin American countries such as Costa Rica and Ecuador, and
African countries such as Gabon and Namibia. For a nationalist like Alexander Solzhenit-
syn, what had been taking place was nothing less than the destruction of the Russian
economy, rather than the rapid turnaround that Western advisers had rashly predicted;
others went even further, speaking of genocide.
7
What did ordinary Russians make of it all? For a start, they were deeply skeptical
about the whole privatization exercise. Not many, according to the survey evidence,
thought it would make the economy more productive, give people a material stake in
the economy, or put more goods in the shops (between ,, and c percent agreed with
these propositions). It was much more likely, in the popular view, to make a few people
rich (o percent), increase prices ( percent), and create unemployment (: per-
cent). In a survey conducted for the U.S. Information Agency in :,,o, there was over-
whelming agreement ( percent) that privatization had mainly beneted the maa and
members of the former CPSU nomenklatura. Russians were meanwhile losing their early
faith in the market. In :,,:, as the reform process began, ; percent had been in favor of
a market economy, one that [was] largely free of state control, with ,, percent opposed.
By :,,; support had halved, to : percent, and opposition had increased to ,, percent.
8
Table 29.1 Russian Economic Performance, 199298
(ofcial data, percentage change year on year)
:)): :)), :)), :)), :)) :)); :))
Gross domestic product 86 91 87 96 97 101 95
Index (1990 100) 81 74 65 62 60 60 57
Industrial output 82 86 79 97 96 102 85
Agricultural output 91 96 88 92 95 101 88
Investment 60 88 76 90 82 95 93
In the short run, certainly, economic reform had led to a sharp fall in living standards, a
Third-World gulf between rich and poor, increasing unemployment, and the degradation
of public services. It was hardly surprising that Russians were looking for another way for-
ward in the new century, one that was neither a return to the past nor the continuation of a
liberal experiment that appeared to have failed even more comprehensively.
Foreign and Security Policy
Foreign policy was already changing in the late Soviet years.
9
The term new thinking,
apparently, was inspired by a book written by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell
some years earlier, with the title New Hopes for a Changing World. As conceived by Gor-
bachev and his colleagues in the leadership, it meant a reconsideration of almost all as-
pects of the Soviet relationship with the outside world. They lived, Gorbachev insisted, in
a vulnerable, rather fragile but interconnected world. This was partly a matter of nu-
clear war, in which there could be no winners. But it was also a matter of responding to
challenges that were global, in which neither capitalism nor socialism had all the answers.
This included environmental pollution and depletion of the worlds natural resources. It
also included the difculties that were facing the developing nations, including debt and
the degradation of their traditional cultures as a result of the wider availability of cheap
but low-quality lms and television.
These were propositions that departed from earlier Soviet orthodoxy and from Marx-
ism-Leninism itself, which placed its primary emphasis on class forces. They led in turn
to a series of departures in foreign and security policy that brought about the end of the
Cold War itself. The costly Soviet presence in Afghanistan was wound up, following in-
ternational negotiations, in :,,. Soviet relations with Cuba were deideologized, and
relations were opened or restored with Israel, the Vatican, and the Arab monarchies. An
agreement was reached with the United States in :,; that eliminated an entire class of
nuclear weapons, land-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles; it was followed by a
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in :,,:, which made the rst substantial cuts in the
weapons available to each side. And there was a still more far-reaching change in Soviet
relations with Eastern Europe, as the Sinatra doctrine (Ill do it my way) replaced the
Brezhnev doctrine that had been imposed after the Prague Spring had been crushed in
:,o.
Russias new president, Boris Yeltsin, had little experience of foreign affairs before he
assumed the leadership of the USSRs largest republic and then of an independent state at
the end of :,,:. But he lost no time in signaling the change that had taken place. In Janu-
ary :,,: he announced that Russian nuclear weapons would no longer be directed against
targets in the United States and went on to announce a series of unilateral cuts in nuclear
and conventional arms. He addressed the UN Security Council, where he insisted that he
saw the Western powers not just as partners, but as allies. While he was in North Amer-
ica he met President Bush, who announced that they had met not as adversaries, but as
friends and presented him with a pair of cowboy boots (they turned out to be too small,
but the Russian president kept them anyway). The Camp David declaration that was is-
sued at the end of their talks conrmed that relations between the two countries were
450 russia
now based on friendship and partnership, and that both presidents would personally
seek to eliminate the remains of the hostile period of the Cold War.
The rst Russian-U.S. summit, in the summer of :,,:, saw both sides speak of a still
closer democratic partnership. At a further summit, in January :,,,, an ambitious arms
reduction treaty, Start ::, was concluded, under which each side undertook to dismantle
two-thirds of its strategic nuclear warheads. It was, Yeltsin suggested, the most important
agreement that had ever been reached in the history of disarmament (it had, admittedly,
to be ratied by the Russian parliament, and this had not yet been achieved by the end of
the decade). Yeltsin met Bill Clinton three months later in Vancouver, and both presi-
dents committed themselves to a dynamic and effective Russo-American partnership. A
new Russian military doctrine, adopted at the end of the year, underscored the change in
attitudes that had occurred. No country would be regarded as an adversary of the new
Russia, and there would be no use of military force unless Russia was itself attacked.
Equally, the primary purpose of the armed forces, under these new and rather different
circumstances, would be domestic peacekeeping.
Older rivalries, however, soon began to make themselves apparent. For a start, Rus-
sian diplomats were rmly opposed to the expansion of NATO toward the east, incorpo-
rating former communist-ruled countries and perhaps eventually some of the former So-
viet republics. Yeltsin, addressing the UN in :,,,, called for a more general framework of
European security rather than the expansion of existing alliances and a new confronta-
tion. The new Duma, elected at the end of that year, was one in which the communist
presence was much larger, which meant that there was less domestic support for the pro-
Western policies that had characterized the rst years of the postcommunist administra-
tion. Yeltsins rst foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, came under increasing attack (critics
claimed he was representing the interests of the West, not of his own country), and in
early :,,o he was replaced by Yevgenii Primakov, a career Arabist who had served in the
CPSU Politburo and who took a much more skeptical view of Western actions. Russia,
Primakov insisted, was still a great power, and it had not lost the Cold War but shared
in common victory. Russia, accordingly, would be looking for an equal partnership with
the United States, one in which relations with the West as a whole were less important
than before and in which a greater emphasis would be placed on the former Soviet re-
publics and China.
There were further difculties when the West began to intervene in Yugoslavia,
which had been a zone of inuence if not a military ally during the Soviet period. Russia
had historic ties with the Serbs, who were Slavs and (like them) Orthodox Christians.
Sanctions, for such reasons, were very unpopular in the Duma, and even among moder-
ate opinion there was real anxiety that NATO was extending its sphere of action well be-
yond the territory of its own members, whatever Russia and the international community
might think. There was particular indignation when NATO nations launched air strikes
against the Bosnian Serbs without bothering to consult their Russian counterpartswho
were, after all, members of the UN and of its Security Council. The Western powers, for
their part, were more sympathetic toward the Bosnians and later the Albanian people of
Kosovo because of the Serb aggression that had started the conict and because of a pol-
icy of ethnic cleansing that led to a series of acknowledged atrocities. These were the os-
tensible grounds on which NATO launched a ferocious assault on Serbia in the spring of
:,,,; Boris Yeltsin described it as an act of undisguised aggression that risked a full-scale
Balkan conict; his foreign minister thought it was genocide. Russian mediation, in the
end, helped to bring the conict to a close, but not before it had placed a heavy strain on
the Russian relations with the major Western powers.
There were similar difculties when the United States and its allies launched a series
of air attacks against Iraq in January :,,,, without the prior consultation that had taken
place before the Gulf War. Russia, once again, had interests that diverged from those of
the Western nations. There was a long-standing treaty with Iraq, signed originally in :,;:.
But more than this, there were several thousand Russians living and working in Iraq;
there were substantial Russian investments that would be repaid only if relations were
maintained. There was also a personal element in that Primakov had been a friend of Sad-
dam Hussein since the :,ocs. When the United States and Britain launched missile
strikes against Iraq at the end of :,,, following its failure to comply fully with the de-
mands of UN weapons inspectors, the Russian government withdrew its ambassadors
from London and Washington in a gesture of ofcial dissatisfaction that had not been
seen since the worst days of the Cold War.
The CIS and the East
Relations were easier with the other states that had formerly been part of the USSR and
with the Asian states that had formerly enjoyed a close relationship with the USSRpar-
ticularly India and China. The new framework within which relations were conducted
with the former Soviet republics was the Commonwealth of Independent States, which
had been founded in December :,,: as the USSR itself collapsed into its constituent re-
publics. The CIS was not a state, or a supranational structure of any kind; it had no capi-
tal, only a headquarters. Least of all was it a USSR Mark :. It did, however, provide a
mechanism by which a group of states that had formerly been very closely integrated
could consider their common purposes. In practice, those purposes were the promotion
of trade and the maintenance of public order through the deployment of peacekeeping
forces in trouble spots throughout the territories of its member states, such as the civil
war in Tajikistan. The CIS conducted its affairs through a council of heads of state, which
was its supreme organ; there were other forms of coordination at the ministerial level
and an interparliamentary assembly. But in the view of its own executive secretary, the
CIS was a mechanism for reconciling interests, nothing more,
10
and relations among its
member countries reected quite distinct sets of considerations.
Among the CIS member countries, there were particularly close relations with neigh-
boring Belarus, where Alexander Lukashenko had won an overwhelming victory in the
presidential election of :,,. The following year Lukashenko and Yeltsin signed a treaty
of friendship and cooperation during a visit by the Russian president to what he de-
scribed as Russias closest partner. In :,,o the two countries established a deeply inte-
grated Community, with wide-ranging powers, including a common foreign policy,
shared use of military infrastructure, a common power grid, and eventually a common
452 russia
currency. A further agreement of April :,,; converted the Community into a Union,
which would involve a common legislative space and a single citizenship. There were fur-
ther agreements, which carried forward the process of integration but stopped well short
of the loss of sovereignty on either side, in December :,, and December :,,,. The new
treaty, Yeltsin explained at the last of these meetings, would enable both sides to move
forward in keeping the worldwide tendency toward integration, and he added that it was
not directed against any third partiesnot even Bill Clinton.
Reviewing the whole pattern of relations with the other CIS states in :,,, Izvestiya
noted that they spanned a wide spectrum. There were almost model relations with Be-
larus, but uncertain relations with Ukraine in spite of encouraging tendencies (a treaty
of peace, cooperation, and partnership had been signed in :,,; that appeared to place the
relationship on a new footing). There was no convergence in relations with Georgia, but
neighboring Armenia was almost an ally, and the Moldovans were well-disposed part-
ners. In Central Asia, Uzbekistan was demonstratively independent and pragmatic,
there were contradictory relations with Tajikistan and less and less understanding with
Turkmenistan, but more clarity and consistency in relations with Kazakhstan, and Kyr-
gyzstan was a loyal and well-disposed partner.
11
Popular attitudes reected the same em-
phases, with most support for closer relations with the other Slavic states, and so did for-
eign trade, with the largest ows of imports and exports linking Russia with Ukraine,
Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Perhaps not coincidentally, these were three of the four re-
publics with the largest numbers of Russians resident within their boundaries.
The Soviet relationship with Asia was dominated by the relationship with a still-
communist China, with which the USSR had shared the worlds longest land boundary
as well as its system of government. The Chinese authorities were clearly distressed by the
gradual relaxation of communist control in the USSR and Eastern Europe, but both sides
agreed to preserve normal relations and to accept differences in their ways and means of
pursuing reforms within the framework of the socialist choice. The collapse of the USSR
at the end of :,,: meant that the two countries could no longer share their ideology, but
there were other forces that helped to unite them: both favored a multipolar world in
which the United States was not allowed to dictate its will; both insisted that their do-
mestic affairs (including Tibet and Chechnya) were no proper concern of the outside
world; and both had every reason to favor an increase in trade, particularly (on the Chi-
nese side) in armaments.
By the late :,,cs, with Russian foreign policy becoming more assertive in relation to
the West, there was a further convergence toward the larger Asian powers. In particular,
during Yeltsins visit to Beijing in :,,o the two countries established relations of equal
partnership, based on trust, that [were] aimed at strategic cooperation in the twenty-rst
century. In their joint communiqu Yeltsin committed Russia once again to the Chinese
positions on Taiwan and on Tibet, while the Chinese endorsed Russian policy toward
Chechnya (an internal affair of Russia) and toward the expansion of NATO; and there
was an elaborate declaration on a multipolar world and the formation of a new world or-
der. By the following year virtually all issues that related to their common boundary
had been regulated. But while both sides could agree to deplore the hegemonism of a
single power, the Chinese remained reluctant to underwrite Russian plans for a joint sys-
tem of Asian security, and bilateral trade remained at a disappointing level. By December
:,,,, when Yeltsin (against his doctors advice) made a further visit to the Chinese capital,
the Russian press concluded that a political allianceor at least the basis for forging
one was already in place.
12
There were striking signs throughout the postcommunist years that foreign and do-
mestic policies were connected and that foreign policy in particular was part of the wider
patterns of the international system. The USSR had maintained an ofcial exchange rate
for its ruble, which insulated it from the vicissitudes of the international economy and
from speculative pressures; now the ruble was bought and sold inside the country and
outside it, and more Russians held their assets in dollars so as to protect them against in-
ation than in the national currency. The USSR had regulated movement across its fron-
tiers and jammed the foreign broadcasts that it regarded as hostile. Now there were no se-
rious restrictions on foreign travel (it was Western countries, worried about Russian
godfathers extending their criminal empires, that raised the most difculties), and virtu-
ally anything could be broadcast or published if there was a commercial demand for it.
The Gorbachev leadership had begun a partial reintegration into the international econ-
omy, liberalizing foreign investment and moving toward a convertible ruble. Postcommu-
nist Russia had become a part of the global economy, but a weak and vulnerable part,
with a productive base that was uncompetitive and a domestic environment that did not
encourage investment in the future.
To begin with, there was every wish to assist a newly democratic Russia back into the
world community. But Western opinion began to change as the Russian economy showed
no real sign of revival and as the Russian government showed little respect for human
rights in its campaign against breakaway Chechnya. Soon, Russia was being marginalized,
most obviously in Yugoslavia, with every indication that the NATO powers intended to
take over the peacekeeping functions that had previously been the prerogative of the UN.
With a contracting economy and a much smaller territory and population than in the So-
viet years, Russia just mattered less. It was still a member of the UN Security Council and
a nuclear power. But there was less talk of a strategic partnership with the Western pow-
ers, more of a candid realism that appeared to leave no room for partnership at all.
Russian policymakers, by the start of the new century, had a difcult hand to play.
They had to stand up to the West to show they were independent, but at the same time
look for its economic assistance. They had to press for a share in the resolution of regional
and global issues, but without the geopolitical weight that would have assured it. They
had to take account of the interests of Russians in other countries, not just in Russia. And
they had to act as if they represented a great power, but one that was scarcely able to pay
its armed forces or even their own salaries. It was hardly surprising in the circumstances
that Russian policy was often contradictory or ambiguous, or that those who helped to
shape it sometimes appeared to have different objectives.
Notes
:. For a fuller review, see, for instance, Marshall Goldman, Lost Opportunity: What Has Made Economic Re-
454 russia
form in Russia So Difcult? (New York: Norton, :,,o); Thane Gustafson, Capitalism Russian-Style (New
York: Cambridge University Press, :,,,); and Jerry F. Hough, The Logic of Economic Reform in Russia
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, :ccc).
:. See, for instance, Anders Aslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, :,,,), ::,, :oo; similarly, Brigitte Glanville, The Success of Russian Economic Reforms (London:
RIIA, :,,,); and Richard Layard and John Parker, The Coming Russian Boom (New York: Free Press, :,,o).
,. Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova, and Douglas Kruse, Kremlin Capitalism: the Privatization of the Russian
Economy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, :,,;), :;,, :c:.
. Pravda, :; September :,,;; Sergei Glazev, Genotsid. Rossiya i novyi mirovoi poryadok (Moscow: Astra sem,
:,,;), :,.
,. Izvestiya, :: May :,,; Sunday Telegraph, :c September :,,.
o. Quoted in Jerrold L. Schecter, Russian Negotiating Behavior: Continuity and Transition (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, :,,), :o.
;. Solzhenitsyn is cited from Argumenty i fakty , (:,,,): ,; Glazev, Genotsid.
. See, respectively, Richard Rose and Evgeny Tikhomirov, Trends in the New Russia Barometer, :))::)),
(Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, :,,,), ,,; Richard B. Dobson,
Is Russia Turning the Corner? Changing Russian Public Opinion, :))::)) (Washington, D.C.: USIA,
:,,o), o:; and the Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, :,,:,;.
,. A fuller discussion of late Soviet and Russian foreign policy is available in several studies, including Robert
H. Donaldson and Joseph L. Nogee, The Foreign Policy of Russia: Changing Systems, Enduring Interests (Ar-
monk, N.Y.: Sharpe, :,,); Neil Malcolm, Alex Pravda, Roy Allison, and Margot Light, Internal Factors in
Russian Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,,o); Mark Webber, The International Politics of
Russia and the Successor States (Manchester: Manchester University Press, :,,o); and Michael Mandel-
baum, ed., The New Russian Foreign Policy (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, :,,).
:c. Izvestiya, :; September :,,. On the CIS itself, see, for instance, Martha Brill Olcott, Anders Aslund, and
Sherman W. Garnett, Getting It Wrong: Regional Cooperation and the Commonwealth of Independent States
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, :,,,).
::. Ibid., :, April :,,.
::. Nezavisimaya gazeta, :: December :,,,.
Chapter 30
What Is the Future of Russian Politics?
IT IS ALWAYS difcult to make predictions, Oscar Wilde once remarked, especially about
the future. Predictions of the future of Soviet and now of Russian politics have been par-
ticularly wide of the mark. In its early days few expected the Bolshevik government would
last, not least because it seemed to have turned economic science on its head. No sane
man would give them as much as a month, the London Daily Telegraph pronounced in
January :,:. The New York Times gave its readers a similar impression. In the two rst
years of Soviet rule, a careful investigation revealed, the demise of the regime had been
announced at least ninety-one times. It had twice been reported that Lenin was planning
retirement, three times that he had been imprisoned, and once that he had been killed.
Four times, the paper told its readers, Lenin and Trotsky were planning to ee; three
times it reported that they had already left the Kremlin. Rather later, when the rigors of
war communism were replaced by the New Economic Policy, there were equally con-
dent assurances that the communist experiment had been ofcially abandoned.
1
Scholars did little better when it came to predicting the end of the USSR. The Soviet
system was well understood to have systemic weaknesses; and the falling rate of growth
was there for all to see. But it had survived so long that it had, some thought, become
taken for granted. It had survived the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War, and it
appeared to have forged a sort of bargain with its population based on full employment
and low prices as well as authoritarian forms of political control. Gorbachevs difculties,
wrote one respected scholar as late as :,,c, had been grossly exaggerated; the real story
of that year had been the further consolidation of Gorbachevs political position, and he
was almost certain to remain in power at least until the :,,, presidential election. The
Communist Party itself, according to an article published in :,,:, was likely to become a
dominant electoral party . . . [for] the rest of the century.
2
The U.S. ambassador in Rus-
sia, a long-standing student of Soviet affairs, was meanwhile telling his government that
Gorbachev was likely to remain in power for at least ve (possibly ten) years.
3
Russias postcommunist system seems more securely established, a decade or more af-
ter its foundation. There is still substantial support for communist rule, and more Rus-
sians subscribe to communist ideas than any other; but even more have no commitment
to any philosophy at all, and few of them in any case are willing to accept the social costs
of another transition. Nor is there substantial support for other forms of rule, such as a
monarchy or military rule (only , percent strongly supported either alternative at the start
of the new century, although somewhat more:: percentfavored a dictatorship).
4
The
questions that remain are within-system ones: for instance, is the federation itself falling
apart, as the regions seize more powers from the central government? Or will President
Putin be able to reassert central control, for instance, by appointing his representatives to
seven federal districts standing above the regions and their governors? Will the media
continue to offer a variety of viewpoints, or will the central government be able to muzzle
them as it clearly wishes to do? And will Russia continue to democratize or are there pres-
sures that will pull it in a Latin American direction, with wide social divisions, a ruling
class that is at least partly criminalized, and few means by which ordinary people can re-
sist them?
An Incomplete Democracy
Formally, at least, the new constitution of December :,,, had marked a step forward. It
was a constitution that committed the new state to ideological pluralism, political di-
versity, and multipartyism. In a clear break with the past, there could be no state or
compulsory ideology. A whole section dealt with the rights and freedoms of the individ-
ual, including equality before the law and equal rights for men and women. There were
guarantees of personal inviolability and privacy. There was an explicit commitment to
freedom of information, under which citizens had to be given access to any documenta-
tion about them that was held by an ofcial body unless security considerations were in-
volved. There was freedom of movement across and within national boundaries. There
was freedom of conscience, of thought and speech, and of association and assembly. Press
freedom was guaranteed, and censorship was abolished.
At the same time, there were grave weaknesses in Russias new constitutional design.
For a start, it had been unilaterally imposed after the parliament had been bombed into
submission. This made it Yeltsins constitution, not a document that reected a broader
national consensus. It was, moreover, a seriously unbalanced constitution. Formally, there
was a separation of powers: the president had powers in relation to the Duma and the
what is the future of russian politics? 457
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
;;
::
:,,
c
,,o,
,:
:,
::c
Days Lost Annually through Strikes and Lockouts per , Employees,
Duma had powers in relation to the president, both of them protected from abuse by an
independent judiciary. But the presidents powers were much greater, in theory and prac-
tice: in particular, his power to sack the government, as Yeltsin did four times in :,, and
:,,, without reference to parliamentary or public opinion. The parliament also enjoyed a
direct popular mandate, but its inuence over the president was very limited: its con-
sent was needed for the appointment of a new prime minister, but if that consent was
withheld it ran the risk of dissolution. And there was no serious prospect that the presi-
dent could be impeached, which was the parliaments ultimate sanction.
Countervailing forces of all kinds, meanwhile, were very weak. There were plenty of
political parties, but by common consent only onethe Communist Party of the Russian
Federationthat had achieved a degree of institutionalization that made it comparable
with parties in the liberal democracies. And yet how else were Russian voters to be given a
choice of alternatives? There were trade unions as well, and they repeatedly made it clear
that they could bring millions into the streets on days of action, but there was little point
in striking, as the employers, and sometimes, entire regional administrations, were them-
selves bankrupt. The press was vigorous and often oppositional, but it had increasingly be-
come the plaything of rich nanciers, and its circulation had fallen dramaticallyby more
than half between :,,: and :,,;. Judges, in accordance with the constitution, were inde-
pendent and inviolable, but the Constitutional Court, which was supposed to regulate
the behavior of the highest levels of government, was appointed on the recommendation
of the president himself (it had previously been elected by the parliament).
458 russia
Members of the Russian Army rehearse for the annual May Day parade in :oo:. (Laski Diffusion/East
News/Liaison/Getty Images)
An inuential school of thought recently distinguished between electoral democra-
cies and more broadly based liberal democracies. Democracy, for such scholars, in-
volves more than competitive elections. It means a government that is limited by law and
one that is accountable to the electorate directly or through representative institutions. It
is also important, in this view, to establish if the rights of ordinary citizens are respected,
whether or not they are seeking to inuence government. Can they travel freely and ex-
press their views in the media without undue restriction? Do they have freedom of wor-
ship and the right to assemble peacefully? Is there, nally, a democratic society, includ-
ing a network of groups and associations, economic institutions that are accountable to
those who work within them as well as to the public, and a culture of tolerance and civic
responsibility?
5
Turkey, for instance, is an electoral democracy in that there are regular opportunities
to choose among competing parties and candidates, and government itself has changed
hands at regular intervals. But there are restrictions on the basic rights of Kurds (who are
about a tenth of the total population), and there are extrajudicial killings and attacks on
the rights of assembly.
6
Russia, for bodies like Freedom House, occupies a similar position
in the hierarchy of democratic performance. There are certainly competitive elections,
but the regime itself enjoys an undue degree of inuence on the whole process through its
control of the media, particularly television. And there have been disturbing signs in
some of the regions that local ofcials are continuing to control the electoral mechanism
in much the same way they were able to do in the Soviet period. How else was one to ex-
plain the presidential election in Bashkortostan in the summer of :,,, for instance: the
main opposition candidates were kept off the ballot paper, the Supreme Court called for
their reinstatement but was ignored, and the incumbent won reelection with more than
;c percent of the vote.
7
Or a by-election in neighboring Tatarstan, with a ,,.; percent
turnout; the republics prime minister won ,, percent of the vote, his opponent a modest
c.;: percent.
8
Human Rights
These departures from fully democratic norms were reected in a human rights perfor-
mance that caused serious concern among the Western organizations that regularly sur-
veyed such matters. Amnesty International, for instance, was concerned about the physi-
cal abuse of conscripts and the deportation of asylum seekers. Conditions in pre-trial
prisons were appalling, with overcrowding, an inadequate diet, a lack of medicines, and
even oxygen starvation. Thousands died awaiting trial; those who survived had often been
tortured or otherwise maltreated. In Chechnya, particularly, there were indiscriminate
killings, detention without trial, torture, and extrajudicial executions. Several outrages
reached the attention of the Western press: in Samashki in April :,,,, for instance, when
about :,c civilians (including women and children) were reported to have been killed by
troops who were burning down houses and throwing grenades into the shelters where lo-
cal people were taking cover. There were other reported atrocities after the war had re-
sumed in :,,,, including well-documented cases of torture and indiscriminate killings.
The number of prisoners, meanwhile, was the highest in the world per head of popula-
tion (the United States, admittedly, followed just behind).
9
Human Rights Watch had a wider range of concerns, including freedom of thought
and expression as well as the physical abuse of prisoners. They drew particular attention
to the Russian provinces, which had degenerated into efdoms that engage[d] in civil
and political rights violations with impunity from Moscow. In what was apparently a
quid pro quo for support of its policies, the central government turned a blind eye to cor-
ruption by regional leaders and refused to investigate the human rights violations for
which they were clearly responsible. Regional leaders, for their own part, were making
every effort to extend their control over local newspapers and radio stations; this usually
presented few difculties as they typically ran at a loss, but in some cases local leaders
were prepared to sanction beatings and even murders to achieve their ends. The editor of
an oppositional paper in the Kalmyk republic, for instance, was stabbed to death in the
summer of :,, in what Human Rights Watch described as by far the most convincing
case of government collusion in the death of a journalist.
10
The Russian judicial system was another cause for concern. According to Human
Rights Watch, it was moving further away from Council of Europe standards as well as
those that were appropriate to a democracy. Their investigators found, for instance, that
corruption and abuse were the rule rather than the exception, and that torture while in
police custody had reached epidemic proportions.
11
Criminal justice ofcials solicited
and accepted bribes; and crime-solving statistics were improbably high, due in part to
torture. Torture, it emerged, was most likely to occur in the early hours of detention
when police isolated suspects from their families and lawyers; confessions were then ex-
tracted using beatings, asphyxiation, electric shock, and other forms of physical and psy-
chological torture. Requests for legal assistance were routinely refused and often resulted
in more violence. A shortage of judges slowed down the trials themselves and acquittal
rates were below : percent, reminiscent of the Soviet era.
12
What, over this period, was the broad trajectory of change? Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch chose not to attach a gure to the human rights performance
with which they were concerned, and there was no way in which the countries they con-
sidered could be ranked or otherwise compared with each other. A rather different ap-
proach was adopted by New Yorkbased Freedom House, in ratings that came to be in-
creasingly widely used by students of comparative politics. Freedom House issued an
annual evaluation of political rights and civil liberties everywhere in the world, evalu-
ated on a ;-point scale in each case. Combined, this yielded a threefold classication: a
regime was free if it scored between : and ,, partly free if it scored between , and ,.,,
and not free if it scored between ,., and ;. At the start of the century percent of the
worlds independent states were rated free, ,: percent were partly free, and :, percent
(but with ,o percent of the worlds population) were not free.
13
It was clear, on this evidence, that there had been no dramatic improvement in civil
and political rights following the end of communist rule. The USSR, in the Brezhnev
years, had been unfree, but by the start of :,,:, while still under communist rule, it was
rated partly free. The new union treaty that was under consideration at this time, Free-
460 russia
dom House considered, was based on human rights and the creation of a democratic state
that was founded on the principle of popular representation and the rule of law. All the
fteen republics had declared some form of sovereignty, reformers had been successful in
local elections in many parts of the country, Gorbachevs directives were being routinely
disregarded, and the Soviet parliament had adopted laws guaranteeing freedom of the
press and freedom of religion, both in :,,c.
14
Postcommunist Russia was initially placed much higher than its Soviet predecessor,
though still partly free. Ten years on it was still partly free, but with a lower score. Re-
markably, it was rated no more free at the start of the new century than it had been in
the last year of Soviet rule. In terms of Freedom Houses criteria, it was about as free as
Gabon, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, and Tanzania, just above Haiti and Kuwait, but below
Ukraine (also partly free) and Uganda. Freedom House had several concerns about the
quality of democracy and human rights in early postcommunist Russia. Economic life,
they pointed out, in an alarming trend, was increasingly dominated by the major en-
ergy and industrial corporations, which had been privatized by the nomenklatura that had
managed them in the past and who continued to enjoy substantial privileges. By contrast,
a nascent private sector of small businesses and entrepreneurs had made very little head-
way, and former communists and nationalists were winning a larger share of the vote, of-
ten by appealing to ultranationalist and anti-Western sentiment in a way that contributed
to long-term problems that promised to afict transitions to democracy in many coun-
tries of the former Communist world. The Russian media, in a separate exercise, were
judged only partly free because of libel laws, harassment, violence against journalists,
and the disproportionate inuence of nancial and industrial interests connected to the
government.
15
Communist rule in Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia had accommodated a variety of
France
Germany
Italy
Russia
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
,.c
:.o
:.c
,.,
,.
:.,
:.;
:.,
Defense Expenditures as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product
Source: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (Wash-
ington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Verication and Compliance, :ccc).
regime practices. Poland and Yugoslavia retained private agriculture and handicrafts;
Hungary had a burgeoning second economy; all three allowed the publication of au-
thorslike Orwell and Solzhenitsynwho would have been banned elsewhere in the re-
gion. There was even less uniformity in the postcommunist period as long-standing cul-
tural differences made themselves apparent. Two of the former Soviet republics, Tajikistan
and Turkmenistan, were among the seventeen most oppressive countries in the world ac-
cording to Freedom House. The three Baltic republics, at the other extreme, were all
free. So were nineteen of the twenty-seven countries of Central and Eastern Europe that
had formerly been under communist rule. But of the twelve members of the Common-
wealth of Independent States, not a single one was considered free. Six, including Rus-
sia and Ukraine, were partly free, and the remaining sixincluding all the Central
Asian republics apart from Kyrgyzstanwere unfree (Belarus had become partly free
in :,,; because of the deteriorating human and political rights climate under the tyran-
nical President Aleksandr Lukashenka). The outlook for the region as a whole, Freedom
House concluded, was bleak.
16
Why had democratic practices been restored in postcommunist Hungary and
Poland, and in post-Soviet Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania but not in Russia? Clearly, at
least a part of the explanation related to external inuence. German investment made
more of a difference in the Czech Republica smaller country, with a common border
than it could possibly do in Russia. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland became
full members of NATO in the spring of :,,,, which bound them politically as well as
militarily to the West. Equally, the countries of East-Central Europe that were preparing
for eventual European Union membership (the same three countries, Estonia and Slove-
nia in the rst instance) had to accept the Copenhagen criteria for accession, which in-
cluded minority rights and the rule of law. Even before they had entered the Union, their
domestic structures were beginning to adapt to these new requirements.
There was no prospect of Russia joining the Western alliances; nor could the mecha-
nisms of democratic compliance work in the same way. Russias future politics depended
much more on domestic processes; and they in turn reected a culture and practice that
pointed more rmly toward a form of nationalist authoritarianism than toward liberal
democracy. In an inuential study of Italian civic traditions, Robert Putnam suggested
that Palermo might be the future of Moscowessentially because of Russias lack of the
networks of civil engagement that had been built up in Italy since the middle ages and
which underpinned its democracy in more recent times.
17
This suggested in turn that the
construction of democratic institutions in the former Soviet republics would take
longerand might not take place at allas compared with the former communist coun-
tries that had shared in the Western experience of cooperation and self-government
within the framework of a rule of law. In Russia, and in the other Soviet republics, there
was little of this tradition that was available to be restored; it had to be democracy from
scratch.
The changes that were taking place in postcommunist Russia, equally, were often un-
helpful to a democratic outcome. The institution of an overly powerful presidency weak-
462 russia
ened the parliament and inhibited the development of political parties. The collapse in
living standards that took place under the Yeltsin government was on a scale that had un-
dermined the state itself in other countries. Nor was it a just a matter of statistics: life ex-
pectancies were falling, the population had been declining continuously since :,,:, and
social divisions were widening dramatically. The fall in levels of economic activity was
particularly marked in the ofcial economy, and this in turn had a more than propor-
tionate effect on state budgets. So libraries closed, hospitals went short of medicines, sci-
entists ed abroad, and police forces found they lacked the personnel and equipment to
chase an increasing number of criminals.
Certainly, there were forces that were pulling Russia toward more pluralist forms of
politics at the start of the new century. Many new freedoms were securely established, in-
cluding religious liberty and a freedom that was peculiarly important in a formerly com-
munist society, the freedom not to play a part in political life. Almost anything could be
published. A large part of the economy was outside the direct control of the state
admittedly, it included disproportionate numbers of small traders. And large numbers,
comparatively speaking, had a higher education. But there were enduring weaknesses in
terms of popular control over government action; and an increasing disposition, on the
part of gures like the newly elected president, to seek to resolve the countrys problems
by the reimposition of a Soviet-style discipline. Clearly, there was no inevitability about
democratization: a few of the former Soviet republics had established market economies
and liberal democracies, but others had regressed to forms of government that were often
more authoritarian than the later years of communism. Russia, entering a new century,
seemed likely to retain its basic freedoms, but its political system was more likely to em-
phasize the Russian tradition of executive authority than the Western tradition of limited
and accountable government within a framework regulated by law.
Notes
:. See S.J. Taylor, Stalins Apologist (New York: Oxford University Press, :,,c), ,o, ::,.
:. Jerry F. Hough, Gorbachevs endgame, World Policy Journal ;, no. (fall :,,c): o:, oo,; Hough, Un-
derstanding Gorbachev: the importance of politics, Soviet Economy ;, no. : (AprilJune :,,:): :co. Wider
issues of interpretation are considered in Michael Cox, ed., Rethinking the Soviet Collapse: Sovietology, the
Death of Communism and the New Russia (London: Pinter, :,,,).
,. Novaya i noveishaya istoriya : (:,,o): ::,, in a telegram of February :,,.
. These data are drawn from the New Russia Barometer , elded in January :ccc with an N of :,c. See
www.russiavotes.org.
,. See Stuart Weir and David Beetham, Political Power and Democratic Control in Britain (London: Rout-
ledge, :,,), :c. There is a very extensive literature: see, for instance, Juan J. Linz and Albert Stepan, Prob-
lems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Eu-
rope (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, :,,o); Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Christian
Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, :,,); and Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, :,,,).
o. This discussion is based on the U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights for :,,, (con-
sulted at www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/).
;. Izvestiya, :o June :,,, :.
. Izvestiya, , November :,,, :.
,. Izvestiya, :, March :,,,, :; and, more generally, the annual reports of Amnesty International.
:c. This discussion is based on the relevant sections of Human Rights Watch World Report :))) (New York:
Human Rights Watch, :,,).
::. Guardian (London), :: November :,,,, :,.
::. Human Rights Watch World Report, :,o.
:,. Journal of Democracy ::, no. : (January :ccc): :,,c.
:. Freedom Review ::, no. : (JanuaryFebruary :,,:): .
:,. Freedom Review :;, no. : (JanuaryFebruary :,,o): :c; and Adrian Karatnycky, ed., Nations in Transit:
Civil Society, Democracy and Markets in East Central Europe and the Newly Independent States (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, :,,;), ,,.
:o. Freedom Review :, no.: (JanuaryFebruary :,,;): ,, ;, :,.
:;. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, :,,,), :,, :;,.
For Further Reading
BARANY, ZOLTAN, AND ROBERT G. MOSER, eds. Russian Politics: Challenges of Democratization. Cam-
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, :cc:.
BREMMER, IAN, AND RAY TARAS, eds. New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations, :d ed.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, :,,o.
BROWN, ARCHIE. The Gorbachev Factor. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :,,o.
, ed. Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, :cc:.
COHEN, STEPHEN F. Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. New York: Norton,
:ccc.
COLTON, TIMOTHY J. Transitional Citizens. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press,
:ccc.
DONALDSON, ROBERT H., AND JOSEPH L. NOGEE, The Foreign Policy of Russia. Armonk and London:
M.E. Sharpe, :,,.
DUNLOP, JOHN B. The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, :,,,.
GILL, GRAEME, AND ROGER D. MARKWICK. Russias Stillborn Democracy? From Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Ox-
ford and New York: Oxford University Press, :ccc.
GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL. Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World. London: Collins and
New York: Harper and Row, :,;.
. On My Country and the World. New York: Columbia University Press, :,,,.
GUSTAFSON, THANE. Capitalism Russian-Style. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
:,,,.
HOUGH, JERRY F. Democratization and Revolution in the USSR, 19851991. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, :,,;.
. The Logic of Economic Reform in Russia. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, :ccc.
HUSKEY, EUGENE. Presidential Power in Russia. Armonk, N.Y., and London: M.E. Sharpe, :,,,.
LOWENHARDT, JOHN. The Reincarnation of Russia. London: Longman and Durham, N.C.: Duke Univer-
sity Press, :,,,.
, ed. Party Politics in Post-Communist Russia. London and Portland: Frank Cass, :,,.
MAWDSLEY, EVAN, AND STEPHEN WHITE. The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, :ccc.
MICKIEWICZ, ELLEN. Changing Channels. Television and the Struggle for Power in Russia, rev. ed. Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, :,,,.
MILLER, WILLIAM L., STEPHEN WHITE, AND PAUL HEYWOOD. Values and Political Change in Post-
communist Europe. London: Macmillan and New York: St Martins, :,,.
PUTIN, VLADIMIR. First Person. New York: Random House and London: Hutchinson, :ccc.
REDDAWAY, PETER, AND DMITRI GLINSKI. The Tragedy of Russias Reforms: Market Bolshevism against
Democracy. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, :cc:.
SAKWA, RICHARD. Russian Politics and Society, ,d ed. London: Routledge, :cc:.
SHEVTSOVA, LILIA. Yeltsins Russia: Myths and Reality. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, :,,,.
SMITH, STEVEN S., AND THOMAS F. REMINGTON. The Politics of Institutional Choice. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, :cc:.
URBAN, MICHAEL E. The Rebirth of Politics in Russia. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, :,,;.
464 russia
WHITE, STEPHEN. After Gorbachev, th ed. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, :,,.
. Russias New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society. Cambridge and New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, :ccc.
WHITE, STEPHEN, RICHARD ROSE, AND IAN MCALLISTER. How Russia Votes. Chatham, N.J.:
Chatham House, :,,;.
WYMAN, MATTHEW. Public Opinion in Postcommunist Russia. London: Macmillan and New York: St. Mar-
tins, :,,;.
WYMAN, MATTHEW, STEPHEN WHITE, AND SARAH OATES, eds. Elections and Voters in Post-Commu-
nist Russia. London and Northampton: Edward Elgar, :,,.
Chapter 31
The Context of European Union Politics
ALONGSIDE NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS in Britain, France, Germany, and other
European countries, the European Union (EU) constitutes a crucial international organi-
zation for the coordination and implementation of economic, structural, and foreign
policies on the regional level of governance. The signicance of the EU lies not only in its
economic status as a single integrated market and the worlds largest trading bloc but also
in its attainment of economic and monetary union (EMU) among most of its members
in :,,,an achievement accompanied by the introduction of a common currency, the
euro. Implementing EMU has entailed the transfer of signicant degrees of national deci-
sion-making authority to supranational institutions,
1
a process that began when the Eu-
ropean integration movement was launched during the early :,,cs and has been deep-
ened by a succession of treaties from the mid-:,cs onward.
2
Further efforts to strengthen
common institutional arrangements and implement a common foreign and security pol-
icy will rmly establish the European Union as a powerful governmental system in its
own right.
A Comparative Overview
The contemporary European Union consists of fteen countries, including six founding
members and nine that have joined the EU in successive rounds of enlargement begin-
ning in the early :,;cs. Its territory stretches from Finland and Sweden in the north to
Italy and Greece in the south/southeast and from France, Ireland, and the United King-
dom in the west/northwest to Austria in Central Europe. Geographically, the largest
member state is France, followed closely by Spain and Sweden. Germany claims the
largest population, followed at a distance by the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and
Spain. The smallest member state, measured in terms of both geography and population,
is Luxembourg (see table ,:.:, p. o).
Despite its small size, Luxembourg claims the highest per capita gross domestic prod-
uct (GDP) nation among the fteen member states. A majority of EU members similarly
count among the most afuent in the world, while Greece and Portugal are the least well
off. Closely associated with differences in national wealth are contrasting levels of na-
tional economic development. The Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, and the United King-
dom rank as the most postindustrial member states, as measured by the percentage of
workers engaged in public and private services. The least developed countries, as mea-
sured by the percentage of those employed in agriculture, are Greece, Portugal, and Ire-
land (see table ,:.:).
In international comparison, the EU as a whole is approximately one-third smaller
than the United States (:,:,.c million square kilometers vs. ,,;,:. million square kilo-
meters) but has a larger population (,;,., million vs. :;:., million). The EUs population
468 the european union
Table 31.1 Area and Population of EU Member States (in rank order)
Area Population
(in square kilometers) (in millions)
France 550,754 Germany 81,380,000
Spain 504,750 United Kingdom 58,782,000
Sweden 449,792 France 58,380,000
Germany 357,000 Italy 57,473,000
Finland 304,593 Spain 39,167,744
Italy 301,300 Netherlands 15,807,641
United Kingdom 245,273 Greece 10,707,135
Greece 131,957 Belgium 10,157,000
Portugal 92,000 Portugal 9,918,040
Austria 84,000 Sweden 8,827,000
Ireland 70,000 Austria 8,139,299
Denmark 43,000 Denmark 5,356,845
Netherlands 41,526 Finland 5,158,372
Belgium 30,528 Ireland 3,632,944
Luxembourg 2,596 Luxembourg 429,080
Table 31.2 Indicators of Economic Development (in rank order)
Per capita GDP Percentage of employees in Percentage of employees
(in U.S. dollars) public and private service in agriculture
Luxembourg 37,346 Netherlands 74.1 U.K. 1.8
Denmark 32,179 Belgium 71.4 Belgium 2.3
Sweden 25,746 Sweden 71.3 Luxembourg 2.7
Austria 25,549 U.K. 71.3 Sweden 2.8
Germany 25,470 Denmark 69.5 Germany 3.2
France 23,789 France 69.5 Netherlands 3.7
Finland 24,420 Luxembourg 66.1 Denmark 3.7
Belgium 23,820 Finland 65.5 France 4.6
Netherlands 23,280 Austria 63.8 Italy 6.8
U.K. 21,740 Ireland 61.7 Austria 6.8
Ireland 21,104 Spain 61.7 Finland 7.1
Italy 19,913 Italy 61.2 Spain 8.4
Spain 13,530 Germany 60.2 Ireland 10.4
Greece 11,438 Greece 56.9 Portugal 13.7
Portugal 10,184 Portugal 54.8 Greece 20.3
density per square mile is signicantly greater than that of the United States (,cc., vs.
;:.;). Its aggregate GDP slightly exceeds that of the United States ($,,,., billion vs.
$,:,c., billion), while the unemployment rate in the United States is substantially lower
(., percent vs. :c.c percent). EU member states export more goods and services to the
world than does the United States (:,.: percent of total world trade compared to :,., per-
cent in the case of the United States) but they import marginally less (:;.; percent com-
pared to ::.c percent; all data are from :,,).
From the ECSC to the EU
In its present form the European Union is the institutional culmination of early postwar
initiatives by West European governmentswhich were inspired by a combination of
idealism, national self-interest, and political and economic pragmatismto transcend
historical factors of national rivalry that had contributed to the outbreak of World Wars I
and II.
3
Political leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Luxembourg established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in :,,: as a
rst step toward regional economic and political integration.
The purpose of the ECSC was to eliminate customs duties on iron, coal, and steel
products among the six member countries and simultaneously to erect a common exter-
nal tariff, thereby creating a limited customs union. Executive and legislative powers of
the new organization were divided between a Council of Ministers, representing the six
the context of european union politics 469
Founding fathers of the European Community including Walter Hallstein, Konrad Adenauer, Herbert
Blankenhorn, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman meet in Paris, April :),:. (Hans Hubmann/Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz)
governments, and an appointive High Authority with supranational executive authority
to initiate common decisions and oversee their execution. Largely symbolic consultative
authority was vested in a European Assembly, whose deputies were appointed by the na-
tional parliaments of the six member states. In addition, a European Court of Justice was
established to adjudicate disputes over the interpretation and implementation of the
ECSC treaty. The signatories agreed that the Council of Ministers and High Authority
would meet in Brussels, the Assembly would conduct its plenary sessions in Strasbourg,
and the Court of Justice would hear its cases in Luxembourg.
The success of the ECSC in promoting regional economic growth encouraged the
same six nations to create a much more ambitious European Economic Community
(EEC) in :,,;. Determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the
peoples of Europe [and] resolved to ensure the economic and social progress of their
countries by common action to eliminate the barriers which divide Europe,
4
France,
Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries pledged to achieve economic integration as a
crucial move toward ultimate political union. Alongside the ECSC and the EEC, the six
signatories also established a third regional organization known as Euratom, which was
designed to promote intergovernmental cooperation in the development of peaceful uses
of nuclear energy.
5
The Treaty of Rome, which provided the legal foundations for the new
European Economic Community, called for the gradual elimination of customs duties on
all industrial and agricultural products, the establishment of a common external tariff, the
free movement of labor and capital, and the implementation of common policies in such
areas as agriculture, transport, and competition. Parallel executive-legislative structures to
those of the ECSC were established in the form of an intergovernmental Council of Min-
isters and a supranational European Commission. Serving both regional organizations
were the European Assembly and the Court of Justice.
The United Kingdom, which had refused to join in the negotiations leading to the
creation of the ECSC and the EEC because British ofcials and most citizens objected to
relinquishing national sovereignty to supranational bodies such as the High Authority and
the European Commission, led a regional counteroffensive to establish a strictly intergov-
ernmental economic organization that would restrict itself to the elimination of tariffs on
industrial products among its members. British efforts resulted in the creation of the Eu-
ropean Free Trade Association (EFTA) in :,oc. In addition to Britain, founding members
of EFTA included Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. Insti-
tutional authority was vested in an EFTA Council, where each member country was rep-
resented by a single delegate with the power to veto any collective decision. Finland, Ice-
land, and Liechtenstein later joined EFTA.
Rapid economic expansion within the EEC during the :,,cs and early :,ocs
prompted Britain to abandon its commitment to EFTA and apply for membership in the
EEC in :,o:. French President Charles de Gaulle publicly vetoed the British initiative at a
press conference in January :,o,, but his successors proved much more responsive to ex-
panding the boundaries of the EEC to include Britain and other European democracies.
Thus, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Ireland joined the Community in :,;,; they
were followed in :,: by Greece and in :,o by Spain and Portugal. On : January :,,,,
Austria, Finland, and Sweden became full members as well. Norway twice negotiated
treaties of accession with the Community (in :,;: and :,,,), but both times a majority of
citizens rejected membership in popular referendums. In October :,,: the European
Community negotiated an agreement with the remaining EFTA nations to establish a
joint European Economic Area (EEA) for the free ow of capital, goods, services, and
people among eighteen of the nations that make up the two regional blocs. Only Switzer-
land refused to join the EEA when a majority of voters rejected the treaty in a referendum
in December :,,:. The EEA treaty was implemented on : January :,,.
The demonstrated advantages of regional economic integration, as measured by a
steady expansion of industrial and agricultural production and foreign trade on the part
of the EEC countries, inspired French, German, Italian, and other European leaders to
broaden the Communitys policy responsibilities and accord it greater institutional auton-
omy. In :,o: they agreed on the implementation of a common agricultural policy de-
signed to stabilize prices and guarantee a higher standard of living for farmers through a
system of subsidies; achieved the completion of a customs union in :,o (eighteen
months ahead of the original schedule); and accorded the Community nancial auton-
omy in :,;c by agreeing to allocate to it all custom duties on imported industrial and
agricultural goods and a percentage of the value-added tax collected by each of the mem-
ber countries. Simultaneously, the EEC members acted to strengthen the EECs institu-
tions. In :,o, they concluded a treaty to combine the ECSC, the EEC, and Euratom as
the European Communities (effective :,o;). Accordingly, the two Councils became a sin-
gle Council, and the High Authority and the European Commission merged to form a
unied Commission. A decade later, in :,;;,, the Council of Ministers agreed to allow
the direct election of delegates to the European Assembly (which was renamed the Euro-
pean Parliament). This move, which was accompanied by an enlargement of the Parlia-
ment and an increase in its budgetary powers, signicantly enhanced the authority of the
Parliament vis--vis other Community institutions by according it greater legitimacy in
the eyes of national electorates. The rst direct elections to the European Parliament were
held in :,;,; subsequent elections occurred in :,,, :,,, :,,, and :,,,.
The integration movement experienced a serious interim setback in December :,o,.
The Treaty of Rome stipulated that majority voting in the Council of Ministers was to
take effect in :,oo. Fearing a reduction in Frances inuence in the Council of Ministers
and encroachments on French national sovereignty, President de Gaulle ordered a boycott
of Community activities by French ofcials in protest against the scheduled introduction
of majority voting.
6
Seven months later, in June :,oo, Community ofcials resolved the
crisis by negotiating an agreement known as the Luxembourg compromise, which in ef-
fect retained the original rule of unanimity in Council decisions in issues deemed of vital
interest to an individual member.
7
Mollied, de Gaulle ordered a resumption of French
participation in Community affairs.
Toward Economic, Monetary, and Political Union
Under de Gaulle, the French had been consistently mistrustful of the value of European
integration for the French economy. Ofcial French skepticism about the scope and pace
of European integration abated, however, following de Gaulles resignation from the pres-
idency in :,o,. Under subsequent Presidents Georges Pompidou, Valry Giscard dEs-
taing, Franois Mitterrand, and Jacques Chirac, France has linked forces above all with
Germany in promoting not only a territorial enlargement of the Community during the
:,;cs and :,cs but also an expansion of the ECs policy responsibilities. In successive
moves, the EC implemented common measures regarding regional policy, research and
development, the free movement of labor, workers rights, vocational training, the envi-
ronment, energy, and sheries. In :,;;, the Community undertook an important
qualitative step beyond functional integration when its members agreed to establish a
common European Monetary System (EMS) as a means to promote economic stability
and growth in response to the international crisis of stagation during the early :,;cs.
Key components of the EMS included a new European Currency Unit (the ECU) for ac-
counting and budgetary purposes, provisions for informational exchange about economic
conditions, stable currency exchange rates via an Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and
greater convergence of economic policies among the member countries.
8
To improve high-level policy consultation and coordination, the Council inaugu-
rated regular meetings of the foreign ministers of the member states in :,;c. At a summit
meeting in :,; in Paris, the heads of government and the French head of state concurred
that they, too, should personally convene several times a year as the European Council.
Together, these moves created highly visible and effective mechanisms for the Commu-
nity to extend its role from regional economic and social policy to foreign policy as well.
A Conservative electoral victory in :,;, and the formation of an assertive new gov-
ernment under Margaret Thatcher set the stage for an incipient cleavage between Britain
and other members of the Community concerning the pace and scope of European inte-
gration. Voicing reservations about the expansion of EC policy responsibilities and con-
cern about the costs of membership, Prime Minister Thatcher and her ministers strenu-
ously advocated changes in the common agricultural policy and a reduction in British
contributions to the annual EC budget. The other EC countries reluctantly acceded to
both demands, agreeing at successive Council meetings in :, to curb agricultural sur-
pluses and grant the United Kingdom monetary compensation for what the British con-
sidered to be excessive budgetary payments to the Community (which the Thatcher cabi-
net depicted as subsidies to less efcient agricultural markets on the Continent). Prime
Minister Thatcher criticized Community aspirations to achieve economic and political union
in a widely publicized speech in Bruges, Belgium, in September :, and adamantly refused
at a meeting of the European Council in :,, to join the other eleven members of the EC
in afrming a common Social Charter designed to protect workers rights. Mrs. Thatcher
and her partisan supporters viewed her actions not as a repudiation of the European idea
but instead as an afrmation of legitimate national self-interests and a commitment to a
form of internationalism that includes but is not restricted to the European Union.
9
Several factors converged during the :,cs to add increased momentum to the inte-
gration movement despite British misgivings. First was a second international economic
crisis in :,;,c, which had prolonged effects. That crisis compelled European leaders to
intensify their efforts to coordinate policies in an effort to combat ination and revive
growth. Second was the appointment of Jacques Delors as president of the Commission
in :,,. Delors, a former minister of nance in the French government, proved a deter-
mined policy activist. He repeatedly utilized his institutional position to mobilize support
in favor of expanding the responsibilities and authority of the Community. Third, inu-
ential members of the elective European Parliament demanded a renewed commitment
to European political integration. Their demands culminated in the adoption by the Par-
liament in :, of a draft treaty on European union.
Under Delorss leadership, the Commission in June :,, submitted to the Council a
White Paper that outlined a comprehensive strategy for transforming the European Com-
munity from a customs union and free-trade area into a fully integrated regional market.
As the Commission declared: Europe stands at the crossroads. We either go aheadwith
resolution and determinationor we drop back into mediocrity.
10
Emphatically favor-
ing the former approach as consistent with the Treaty of Romes vision of eventual Euro-
pean union, the Commission recommended nearly ,cc measures to eliminate technical
and other barriers to the attainment of an integrated regional market by the end of :,,:.
The measures, which required the approval of the member countries to be fully imple-
mented, ranged from the abolition of frontier controls and technical restraints on the free
movement of goods to technological standardization, the mutual recognition of profes-
sional qualications, the attainment of a common market for services, and the harmo-
nization of nancial and scal policies within the Community.
11
The initiatives of the European Parliament and the Commission resulted in the for-
mation of an intergovernmental conference that drafted a treaty entitled the Single Euro-
pean Act, which members of the European Council signed in Luxembourg on :; Febru-
ary :,o. The agreement endorsed the goal of economic and monetary union envisioned
in the Commissions White Paper of :,, (including the free movement of goods, ser-
vices, people, and capital) and called on the member countries to cooperate to ensure pol-
icy convergence in these important areas. To facilitate this process, the Single European
Act substituted the earlier unanimity rule with a new qualied majority voting proce-
dure with regard to Council decisions governing the implementation of the internal mar-
ket, research and development, economic and social cohesion, and improved working
conditions. Under the new procedure, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom
were each accorded ten votes; Spain eight; Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, and Portu-
gal ve each; Denmark and Ireland three votes; and Luxembourg two. Fifty-four votes
constituted a qualied majority, which meant that at least seven states had to concur in
a Council decision. Neither the large countries as a bloc nor a coalition of small ones
could therefore prevail over each other, which placed a premium on compromise and
joint decisions in Council deliberations. The arithmetic of qualied majority voting in
Council decisions changed marginally with the accession of Austria, Finland, and Sweden
as new member states on : January :,,, (see chapter ,:).
In addition, the Single European Act established a new cooperation procedure in-
volving an expanded role by the European Parliament in Council decisions that are sub-
ject to qualied majority voting. Henceforth, the Council was required to consider parlia-
mentary opinions on proposed legislation (including possible amendments and rejection)
Jacques Delors of
France, president of the
European Commission,
:),),. (Eye
Ubiquitous/Corbis)
in a second reading of a proposed decision. The agreement also granted Parliament the
right of joint decision making with respect to the accession of new members and agree-
ments of association and cooperation with nonmember countries. The Single European
Act was merged into the Treaty of Rome in the form of amended and new articles of the
original treaty.
In a crucial summit meeting held in Hannover in June :,, the European Council
appointed a committee headed by Commission President Delors and composed primarily
of the governors of the central banks in the twelve member countries to study and pro-
pose concrete stages that would lead to economic and monetary union (EMU). The De-
lors committee published its report in June :,,. Its central provisions called for progress
toward EMU through successive stages of implementation: an initial preparatory stage; a
second stage involving the attainment of monetary union encompassing ever-closer coop-
eration among the central banks in the member states, the attainment of permanently
xed foreign currency exchange rates, and the creation of a European System of Central
Banks as a precursor to a central European bank; and a third stage characterized by eco-
nomic union, which would encompass effective competition policy, common policies
for structural change, and macroeconomic policy coordination.
12
The European Coun-
cil endorsed the Delors report that same month in Madrid and declared that the rst
stage leading to monetary and economic union would begin on : July :,,c.
At a summit meeting in Dublin in June :,,c, members of the European Council re-
solved to formulate a concrete integration agenda by convening parallel intergovernmen-
tal conferences on economic, monetary, and political union. European commissioners
and high-level diplomats from each of the twelve member states labored for the next year
and a half to produce successive drafts of such a treaty. Thatcher and her Conservative
successor, Prime Minister John Major, restated British opposition to key features of the
envisioned union, but all parties to the deliberations concurred on the basic objective to
deepen institutionalized economic and political cooperation within the Community.
The work of the intergovernmental conferences culminated in a historic accord at a Euro-
pean Council meeting in early December :,,: in Maastricht, Holland, in which the EC
heads of government, foreign ministers, and nance ministers signed separate draft
treaties on political union and economic and monetary union.
Important provisions of the Maastricht agreement (ofcially known as the Treaty on
European Union) included an enhanced role of the European Parliament in Community
decisions; a commitment to a common foreign and security policy; and the attainment of
economic and monetary union through successive stages of institutionalized policy coor-
dination, beginning with the implementation of the second stage of the Delors plan and
the establishment of a European Monetary Institute (EMI) on : January :,,. The stated
purposes of the EMI were to strengthen cooperation between the national central banks;
strengthen the coordination of the monetary policies of the Member States, with the aim
of ensuring price stability; . . . [and] monitor the functioning of the European Monetary
System.
13
A decisive third stage in movement toward economic and monetary union entailed
the creation of a common currency and a Central European Bank. To join in this stage,
the treaty requires the member states to meet four stringent convergence criteria: (:) a
high degree of price stability as measured by an average rate of ination . . . that does not
exceed by more than : :/: percentage points that of, at most, the three best performing
Member States; (:) the absence of excessive budgetary decits; (,) the maintenance of
currency exchange rate stability within the normal uctuation margins provided for by
the exchange-rate mechanism of the European Monetary System; and () an average
long-term interest rate that does not exceed by more than two percentage points that of,
at most, the three best performing Member States in terms of price stability.
14
The
Treaty on European Union stipulated further that the European Council could decide by
a two-thirds vote to implement the third stage as early as :,,; if at least seven member
states met these criteria. If the Council did not make such a decision, the third stage
would begin automatically on : January :,,,.
Britain joined the other eleven members of the EC in afrming the Maastricht treatys
basic intent to establish an ever closer Union of the peoples of Europe as well as most of
its specic provisions, but the Major government reserved the right to opt out of the
commitment to establishing a common currency and refused to endorse an accompany-
ing Agreement on Social Policy that commits the member states to promote a number
of economic and social objectives within the European Union as a whole.
15
The separate
treaties on economic and monetary union and political union were subsequently merged
in a single Treaty on European Union, which was formally signed by the twelve govern-
ments on ; February :,,:.
Political euphoria over the Maastricht accord quickly dissipated in the face of domes-
tic and international events that unexpectedly delayed the treatys ratication and imple-
mentation. Whereas ratication was subject only to a majority vote in parliament in most
of the member states, the ratication process became highly politicized in those countries
whose constitutions either require or permit national referendums on important political
decisions. Populist concerns about the centralization of bureaucratic power in Brussels
France
Germany
Italy
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
,;.:
,,.,
:,.:
:.
:,.
,o.c
,.:
Inequality Index
Source: Anthony B. Atkinson, Lee Rainwater, and Timony M. Smeeding, Income Distribution in OECD Coun-
tries (Paris: OECD, :,,,).
and fears of potential dominance by the larger states in the proposed European Union re-
sulted in the treatys rejection by a narrow majority of ,c.; percent of Danish voters in a
referendum on : June :,,:. A domestic conict over abortion initially clouded the
prospect outcome of a referendum in Ireland as well, although o, percent of the elec-
torate endorsed the Treaty on European Union when the vote was held on :o June.
16
In
response to the negative outcome of the Danish referendum, President Mitterrand hastily
announced that he would schedule a referendum in France to restore European con-
dence in the ratication process. Although opinion polls initially indicated strong French
support for the treaty, opponents mobilized an effective campaign during the summer
against its ambitious objectives. In the end, only ,:.c, percent of French voters endorsed
the accord in the September referendum.
Frances lukewarm petit oui to the Maastricht treaty coincided with a European
currency crisis, which was triggered by heavy international speculation in favor of the
strong German mark at the expense of weaker currencies. As a consequence, both Britain
and Italy suspended participation in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and the Ital-
ian lira was effectively devalued by ,., percent. Moreover, this rst major realignment of
the European Monetary System (EMS) since its inception was accompanied by a deepen-
ing recession during :,,:, which was marked by a decline in national growth rates and a
precipitous jump in unemployment throughout Europe. In a dual effort to assuage do-
mestic opponents and sustain the ratication process under increasingly difcult interna-
tional economic conditions, the Danish government submitted a White Paper in early
October :,,: that would allow Denmark to opt out of the proposed currency union and
common defense arrangements envisaged by the Maastricht treaty. Community leaders
met in a special session of the European Council in Birmingham in mid-October to af-
rm their support for ratication of the treaty without renegotiation, but at a second
summit in Edinburgh in December they accepted the Danish conditions. In a second na-
tional referendum held on : May :,,,, ,o. percent of voters in Denmark endorsed the
amended Treaty on European Union.
17
Facing intense opposition to prospective economic and political union among both
his fellow Conservatives and some members of the opposition Labour Party, British
Prime Minister John Major delayed a nal decision on the Maastricht treaty until after
the second Danish referendum. The British Parliament subsequently ratied the accord
in July. Once Germanys Federal Constitutional Court dismissed a domestic legal chal-
lenge to the treaty in October :,,,, Community leaders reconvened in Brussels to pro-
claim the completion of the ratication process. The Treaty on European Union was
formally enacted on : November :,,,. With this step, the European Community became
the European Union.
Despite domestic controversies surrounding the Maastricht accord and recurrent eco-
nomic crises, movement toward economic and monetary union within the European
Union continued through the :,,cs, albeit at a slower pace than optimists had originally
anticipated. Ninety percent of the directives contained in the White Paper of :,, were im-
plemented by June :,,:, and at the beginning of January :,,, the single market became a
reality. A second currency crisis in August :,,, temporarily strained Franco-German polit-
ical relations because the refusal of the German Bundesbank to lower its discount rate
prompted intense speculative pressure against the franc, but the crisis eased when the EU
nancial ministers agreed to allow the exchange value of European currencies to uctuate
more broadly on both sides of the central ERM rate. Gradually improving economic con-
ditions accompanied the implementation of the second stage of economic and monetary
union on : January :,, in accordance with the timetable stipulated in the Treaty on Euro-
pean Union. A central feature of the second stage was the creation of the European Mone-
tary Institute (EMI), with headquarters in Frankfurt.
Determined efforts by governments of the member states to meet the convergence
criteria required for EMU membership proved successful in a majority of cases. The
EMI certied in April :,, that eleven countries qualied for inclusion in EMU: Austria,
the three Benelux nations, Ireland, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
The United Kingdom and Denmark acted on their treaty right to opt out of member-
ship, at least for the time being, as did Sweden (the latter for domestic political reasons).
Only Greecewith a high budgetary decit and ination ratefailed to qualify.
The European Central Bank (ECB) was duly established in Frankfurt in July :,,.
The third and decisive stage of EMU was subsequently implemented on : January :,,,,
albeit excluding Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and Greece. After meeting the requisite eco-
nomic criteria, Greece joined EMU as its twelfth member in January :cc:. The ECB as-
sumed responsibility for macroeconomic and monetary policy among the participating
states in EMU, and the euro became their common currency for transaction purposes.
Actual euro bills and coins began to circulate in January :cc: in place of the more famil-
iar francs, marks, lira, and other national currencies.
The Treaty of Amsterdam and Beyond
Accompanying the EUs progress toward economic and monetary union have been suc-
cessive steps toward further deepening and a pending eastward enlargement of the
Union. At the behest of the European Council, an intergovernmental conference was
convened in :,,o to review the EUs institutional arrangements and policy competence.
Preliminary assessments by both the Commission and the Council of Ministers con-
curred on the need to revise the Treaty on European Union to simplify decision-making
procedures, enhance the role of the European Parliament, and provide a more effective
basis for the conduct of a common foreign and security policy.
18
Most of these proposals
(along with French-inspired provisions on employment and economic growth) were sub-
sequently incorporated in the Treaty of Amsterdam, which the European Council en-
dorsed in June :,,;. Following ratication by the member states, the treaty was imple-
mented in :,,,. An eager participant in the Amsterdam summit was Britains new Labour
prime minister, Tony Blair, who announced his governments reversal of an important
tenet of earlier Conservative policy toward the EU by agreeing to endorse the EUs Social
Charter.
Despite its achievements, the Treaty of Amsterdam was conspicuous for its omis-
sionsnamely, the failure of the EU member states to agree on proposed changes in the
composition of the European Commission and the weight of individual country votes in
qualied majority voting. A new intergovernmental conference, convened in early :ccc,
addressed these issues in preparation for a new treaty by the end of the year. The outcome
was the Treaty of Nice, which members of the European Council endorsed in December
:ccc (see chapter ,,).
Additional political initiatives anticipate further widening of the European Union.
As discussed in chapter ,,, the European Council has authorized the Commission to ne-
gotiate terms of accession with Malta and Cyprus in the Mediterranean as well as a num-
ber of postcommunist countries in Central Europeincluding Poland, Hungary, the
Czech Republic, the Baltic states, Slovenia, and Slovakia. The expansion of the EU from
fteen to potentially twenty-seven member states will have profound consequences for in-
stitutional arrangements, Community nances, and a wide range of policies. A funda-
mental question is what these changes portend for the EUs future as a regional economic
and political system.
Notes
:. Supranational institutions can be dened as decision-making structures in international organizations that
possess legal authority to make rules that are binding on the nation-states that belong to the organization
in question. Supranational laws and policies thereby transcend national policymaking autonomy to a
greater degree than intergovernmental treaties or agreements whose enforcement is contingent on the will-
ingness of individual countries to comply with their terms. The European Community combines suprana-
tional and intergovernmental features in its institutional arrangements and decision-making powers, as ex-
plained in this and following chapters.
:. The most important of these treaties, as discussed below, include the Single European Act (:,o), the
Treaty on European Union (:,,:), and the Treaty of Amsterdam (:,,;).
,. The concept of European regional integration has deep philosophical and historical roots, but it did not
begin to take concrete form until shortly after the end of World War II. Important milestone events in-
cluded a widely publicized speech by wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Zurich in :,o
in which he advocated the creation of a United States of Europe, the formation of a privately supported
European Movement later that same year, U.S. encouragement of European economic cooperation with
the proclamation of the Marshall Aid program in :,;, the formation of the Organization for European
Economic Cooperation in :, to promote the reduction of nancial and tariff barriers to free trade
throughout the region, and the creation of the Council of Europe in :,,. These initiatives, which many
idealistic adherents hoped would culminate in a federal political system, coincided with the formation of
partially overlapping military security systems in the form of the Western European Union (:,) and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in :,,. A comprehensive account of postwar integration ef-
forts is Derek W. Unwin, The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration since 1945 (New
York: Longman, :,,:).
. Quoted from the preamble to the Treaty of Rome, published by the Ofce for Ofcial Publications of the
European Communities, Treaties Establishing the European Communities (Brussels and Luxembourg:
ECSC-EEC-EAFC, :,;), ::;.
,. In contrast to the ECSC and the EEC, Euratom proved relatively moribund as a regional organization.
o. Prior to this scheduled change in voting procedures, all Council decisions required unanimous consent
among the member countries. De Gaulle was also strongly opposed to efforts by the other member coun-
tries to grant the EEC nancial autonomy.
;. The agreement is named after the city where it was reached.
. The ECU served as a unit for calculating Community revenues and expenditures and in accounting for in-
tergovernmental transactions among member states. Its value derive[d] from a weighted average of the
value of the different Community currencies, with each currency given an inuence to reect its relative
economic importance. House of Lords, Select Committee on the European Communities, The Delors Re-
port. With Evidence (London: Her Majestys Stationery Ofce, :,,), ,. The ECU did not physically exist
in the form of banknotes and coins, but it [became] the basis [for the introduction of the euro]. The
ERM, meanwhile, promoted currency exchange rate stability within Western Europe by establishing a
central parity for each national currency against the currencies of the other member states. With the intro-
duction of EMU in January :,,,, currency exchange rates among the participating states became xed in
relation to the euro.
,. Such commitments include British membership in NATO and the United Nations and its leadership role
in the Commonwealth of Nations. See Stephen George, Britain and European Integration since :),, (Cam-
bridge, Mass., and Oxford, U.K.: B. Blackwell, :,,:).
:c. Commission of the European Communities, Completing the Internal Market, White Paper from the
Commission to the European Council (Brussels, June :,,,), ,,.
::. Ibid.
::. The Delors Committee Report, ;.
:,. Council of the European Communities and Commission of the European Communities, Treaty on Euro-
pean Union (Brussels and Luxembourg: ECSCC-EEC-EAEC, :,,:), :.
:. Ibid., : and :,.
:,. These include the promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions, proper social
protection, dialogue between management and labor, the development of human resources with a view to
lasting high employment and the combating of exclusion. Ibid., :,;.
:o. The controversy involved a legal and moral conict between the Republic of Irelands constitutional ban
on abortion and Community law permitting the free movement of persons (e.g., to EC countries where
abortions are permitted).
:;. Consistent with the declaration by members of the European Council at the Birmingham summit, the
treaty was not formally renegotiated; instead, the Danish conditions were appended to the treaty in a spe-
cial protocol.
:. Commission of the European Communities, Report on the Operation of the Treaty on European Union
(Brussels, :,,,); and Council, Draft Report of the Council on the Functioning of the Treaty on European
Union (Brussels, :,,,).
Chapter 32
Where Is the Power?
THE EUROPEAN UNION has a singular governmental structure. It is simultaneously an
international organization and the proto-government for a regional political system. As
such, EU institutions as they were originally designed have some characteristics of an in-
ternational organization, but they have also always had a more governmental nature than
most international organizations. As they have evolved over time, the institutions have
come to resemble those of a national government, although the analogues with national
legislatures and executives are not at all exact. Understanding the European institutions,
therefore, requires understanding that the principal institutions perform several types of
tasks and that both legislative and executive functions are divided between multiple struc-
tures. It also requires understanding the evolutionary path upon which the institutions
are embarked. Moreover, it requires understanding the importance of the EU executive,
and especially the fragmented nature of the executive, in segmenting conict and allow-
ing decision making in what might otherwise be difcult political circumstances.
The most important EU institutions include the Council of the European Union
and the European Council, which are intergovernmental bodies made up of executive of-
cials representing the fteen member states; the European Commission, a supranational
body that exercises important executive and supervisory powers on behalf of the Commu-
nity as a whole; an elective European Parliament; and an appointive Court of European
Justice. Other key institutions include the European Central Bank, the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development, a Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social
Committee, and the Committee of the Regions.
A persisting conundrum facing the EU concerns the relationship between these insti-
tutions and citizens in the member states. From the outset, the European integration
movement has been elite-driven, with all major initiatives to create, deepen, and expand
the Community emanating from the national and regional political levels of politics. De-
cisions on EU policies are typically made behind closed doors (with the notable exception
of deliberations in the European Parliament), and are announced to the public only after
the fact. On the citizen level of politics, EU decision making is thus commonly perceived
as remote and inaccessible. Critics characterize this feature of the European Union as a se-
rious democratic decit in institutional behavior and accountability.
Council of the European Union and the European Council
Among the various EU decision-making structures, the Council of the European Union
(formally known as the Council of Ministers prior to the implementation of the Maas-
tricht treaty) is the most similar to an institution that might be found in a conventional
international organization. According to the Treaty on European Union, the Council con-
sists of a representative of each Member State at ministerial level, authorized to commit
the government of that Member State.
1
Thus, the Council directly represents the nation-
states that constitute the EU, and its mode of interactions is to [a great extent] diplomacy
and bargaining among sovereign powers rather than the more collegial interactions that
might be expected within an organization pushing toward full economic integration in a
relatively short period of time. As a result, the Council often operates as a brake on move-
ment toward further economic and especially political integration. Yet, at the same time,
movement toward fuller economic integration could not have occurred unless the Council
had made decisions to proceed. It is at this level, and especially in the European Council
(which, as previously noted, is composed of the heads of government and the French head
of state), that the most visible decisions about integration are processed. Moreover, indi-
vidual members of the Council have been instrumental in the process of integration, so
that individuals as well as institutions have mattered at this level of executive-legislative
decisions.
The Council is empowered to make decisions with the effect of Community law.
Council decisions take the form of directives, which are binding as to the results to be
achieved. The member states retain the right, however, to select the form and method of
implementation. The Council may also issue regulations, which are directly binding and
require no implementing national legislation. The Council also has the authority to re-
quest studies by the European Commission that, in time, may become the basis of Com-
munity legislation. Informally, individual members of the Council may also suggest pol-
icy initiatives to the Commission.
As its name implies, the Council of the European Union is composed of cabinet
ministers who are appointed (one each) by the fteen member governments. In addition,
the Commission designates one representative to the Council to propose and defend poli-
cies and represent the interests of the Union as a whole. Assisting the Council is a Com-
mittee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER), which is made up of senior civil ser-
vants from the member countries. Its task is to help on a day-to-day basis in the
preparation and management of the work of the Council. The Council is also served by a
secretary-general, who heads a General Secretariat made up of professional civil servants
recruited from the member countries.
Members of the Council are elective politicians from the member countries; they are
rotated according to the issue being debated. For example, if agriculture is on the agenda,
ministers of agriculture will represent each country during that particular session of the
Council. Similarly, if nancial matters are to be discussed, the ministers of nance from
the member countries serve as the Council. When particularly important matters are de-
bated, the foreign minister or even the prime minister of each country (the president in
the case of France) will attend the Council sessions. The presidency of the Council rotates
among the member countries every six months; toward the end of each presidency, the
European Council convenes in the host country. These meetings have been a major
source of movement toward greater economic and political integration.
Because the ministers who participate in the Council for the European Union are
major political gures in their own countries, considerations of national politics charac-
teristically motivate their behavior. This means that the ministers must be concerned
about the impact of any decisions made in Brussels on the population back home and
about the impact of those decisions on any upcoming elections (and there is almost al-
ways an election of some sort looming somewhere in the fteen countries). As the popu-
lations of the member states have become increasingly cognizant of the importance of the
EU for their economic and political futures, it has become more difcult for politicians to
escape repercussions for decisions they may take within the European framework. For ex-
ample, a loss of popular support for the Conservative Party in Britain in both local elec-
tions and the European election in :,, was attributed in part to the anti-European atti-
tudes of former Prime Minister Thatcher and her willingness to broadcast those views in
ofcial venues.
The Council functions through a number of component councils. A relatively sparse
policy agenda during the early years of the Community meant that the work of the
Council could be processed by the general Council of the European Union, which was
usually attended by the foreign ministers of the member countries. As the workload be-
came more extensive and had more policy foci, however, the need arose for more special-
ized councils. The most important of those is the General Affairs Council, which is com-
posed of the foreign ministers or their deputies. Several other long-standing councils have
also been established. Paramount among them is the Council of Finance Ministers, which
is responsible for coordinating and harmonizing monetary and scal policy among the
member countries. It is also responsible for monitoring the European Monetary System
(EMS) and the euro in international nancial markets. The Agriculture Council, com-
posed of the fteen agricultural ministers, is another well-established and important
council. Since the largest proportion of the EU budget is allocated to agricultural pro-
grams, the importance of agricultural constituencies and the central place of the agricul-
tural program in EU politics have made the Agriculture Council a central locus of policy-
making.
As the EUs policy concerns have expanded, the number of other specialized councils
functioning under the umbrella of the Council has gradually increased. They include
councils dealing with sheries, budgets, the nonnancial aspects of the internal market,
foreign aid, social affairs, environment, and science and technology. Each council in-
volves the relevant ministers from the member countries and establishes a basis for on-
going personal cooperation and negotiation among executives specializing in a given pol-
icy area. Since the completion of the internal market during the early :,,cs involved
greater harmonization of all these activities, the work of these specialized councils has in-
evitably increased.
The functional differentiation of the councils is an important element of EU gover-
nance. It contributes to the complexity of governance, and beneath a proliferation of pro-
fessional and expert language it tends to mask many potentially divisive issues. Further-
more, these councils are linked directly to experts at the national level; interest groups
such as farmers, unions, and employer associations lobby at both national and European
levels of governance. Specialization and differentiation make policymaking within the
European Union resemble policymaking in the U.S. federal government, with the nu-
merous EU policy communities or networks appearing to exert signicant inuence (if
not control) over public policy to a greater degree than in most national governments in
Europe.
One of the most important functions of the COREPER and the Council for the Eu-
ropean Union is monitoring the numerous decisions taken within the Commission in the
name of the EU and analyzing draft legislation emanating from the Commission. This
constitutes, in essence, one executive institution exercising oversight over another (even
though, as previously noted, the Council embodies features of a legislative body as well).
The Commission is the principal source of the large volume of rules and regulations re-
quired to implement the Treaty of Rome and other agreements having the force of law in
the EU. Although the Commission has the authority to act independently in making
some rules, the Council is organized for oversight of these decisions through a large num-
ber of working groups. The working groups are composed of members of the permanent
missions of the member states as well as numerous national civil servants who y back
and forth between their national capitals and Brussels. As with the full Council of the Eu-
ropean Union, its component councils, and COREPER, the Commission has a represen-
tative on each working group to defend the position of the Commission, present draft
texts, and thereby advance the cause of increased integration. The Commission represen-
tatives are often unsuccessful in preventing national interests from being voiced in oppo-
sition to specic Commission proposals, but they do have an opportunity to defend such
proposals.
The Council remains the locus of most parochialism in the European Union. In-
deed, it was conceived from the outset as an institution that would permit member na-
tions to express national views about communitywide policy. There are, however, supra-
national checks on nationalism. First, a member of the Commission is present at every
level of the Councils operations to represent the European perspective and to prevent
any manifestation of nationalism from remaining unchallenged. This means that the
style of Council deliberations is usually more that of a discussion within a partnership
rather than a debate between adversaries, although there will always be debate. Second,
with at least two levels of ofcials always functioning beneath the more manifestly politi-
cal level of activity within the Council, much of the Councils work can be performed
with less regard to domestic political considerations. Likewise, the involvement of profes-
sional civil servants from the various EU member states means that decisions at the of-
cial level often are made in conformity with the technical standards prevailing in a given
policy area rather than along national lines. (Again, a bureaucratic or policy commu-
nity perspective is more apt for understanding policy in the EU than strictly political or
nationalist perspectives.)
It is especially important that the agenda and draft decisions are prepared for the
Council by COREPER and other permanent ofcials (e.g., members of the Councils sec-
retariat). If issues can be kept off the agenda or defused before they reach it, parochial
conict can be minimized. This is one indication of the importance of bureaucratic
processes for understanding politics in the European Union. This will be even more evi-
dent when we look at the role of the Commission in fostering integration and at the role
of national bureaucracies in implementing European policy. Continued movement to-
ward economic and political union under the Maastricht treaty is perhaps better served
by nonpolitical processes (political here meaning partisan and national). Progress to-
ward supranationalism appears possible when manifestly political institutions are con-
ned to the mere enregisterment of decisions made elsewhere,
2
a point that was raised
in much of the functionalist and neofunctionalist literature during the initial phase of the
integration movement.
3
The institutions of the European Community have not achieved
that bureaucratized state perfectly, but they do permit substantial policymaking activity
by bureaucracies before political ofcials ever see the prospective decisions.
Decision Modes
Three types of decision-making modes characterize the legislative activities of the Coun-
cil: (:) unanimity, which applies to the admission of new member states, treaty revisions,
the initiation of new policies, and the modication of an existing policy framework; (:) a
simple majority, which usually applies to procedural issues; and (,) qualied majority vot-
ing (QMV). The adoption of QMV through the Single European Act of :,o has signi-
cantly altered the role of the Council and, to some extent, changed the European Union.
Since the Council was designed as a venue where national representatives could defend
their national interests, voting rules prior to the acceptance of the Single European Act re-
quired unanimity on most issues. Provisions of the Single European Act have changed de-
cision-making rules so that a majority vote is now sufcient to enact most policies. (The
exceptions are those that clearly fall within the unanimity mode.) In :,,, for example,
the Council continued to adopt instruments by majority vote whenever appropriate
with the Commissions agreement. In many other cases the prospect of a qualied major-
ity vote was sufcient to secure a unanimous decision.
4
The introduction of QMV has
thus moved policymaking in the Community away from what might be expected in an
international organization toward what might be expected in policymaking and coalition
formation in a parliamentary democracy.
The enlargement of the European Union in :,,, to include Austria, Finland, and
Sweden dictated a change in the arithmetic of qualied majority voting, which in turn
provoked partisan conict among some of the member countries. The Council agreed
well in advance of enlargement on the allocation of votes among the applicant nations:
four apiece in the case of Austria and Sweden and three for Finland. Prior to enlargement,
a qualied majority in Council decisions constituted fty-three votes out of a total of sev-
enty-six. Twenty-three votes were therefore sufcient to comprise a blocking minority
against a controversial measure. The projected admission of Austria, Finland, and Sweden
would increase the total number of votes in qualied majority decisions from seventy-six
to eighty-seven, as depicted in table ,:.:. The member states could not initially agree,
however, on what would constitute a future blocking minority. Britain (with the support
of Spain) sought to retain a twenty-three-vote threshold, which would permit a coalition
of two larger states and one smaller state to block decisions. The other EU countries ar-
gued, in contrast, that increasing the threshold to twenty-seven seats would be a more eq-
uitable proportion in the enlarged Union. Following extensive diplomatic negotiations,
EU members reached a compromise agreement in March :,, whereby the blocking mi-
nority was increased to twenty-six but twenty-three votes would sufce to postpone
Council decisions while delegates on the Council seek to reach a consensus on controver-
sial measures. Sixty-two votes constitute a qualied majority.
Although the larger members of the Community are clearly more powerful than the
smaller countries, the requirement that a qualied majority must consist of sixty-two
votes out of the total of eighty-seven prevents the former from dictating policy to the lat-
ter. The same decision-making rule simultaneously protects the larger countries from at-
tempts by the smaller countries to impose policies they oppose or that may require more
from their greater economic contributions to the Community budget. Decision making
within the European Union, therefore, involves more of an emphasis on coalition forma-
tion than reliance on national vetoes for protection.
More subtle procedural changes have also inuenced the manner in which the Coun-
cil functions. Following the adoption of the Luxembourg compromise in :,oo, package
deals analogous to U.S. legislative logrolling, which benet all the involved parties, be-
came a common means to generate policy consensus, albeit sometimes an expensive one.
Although this practice did not silence opposition by Britain or other member states to par-
ticular Council decisions, many politicians and informed citizens in the member countries
increasingly perceived national isolation as a real danger. For example, many Conservative
politicians viewed ofcial British reservations about movement toward monetary union
during the summer and fall of :,,c as a major threat to Britains role in the Community;
their growing unease helped intensify internal party opposition to Thatchers leadership
and contributed to her decision to resign as prime minister in late November.
Greater use of qualied majority voting in the Council has also altered policymaking
dynamics among the member countries. If countries run the risk of becoming isolated by
bargaining too hard on an issue, they may become more compromising and willing to ac-
cept some short-term losses to perceived national interests in preference to losing a vote
publicly. Furthermore, if one country were to lose frequently in Council decisions, it
would risk becoming a pariah within the Community and losing even more power and
Table 32.1 Number of Votes in Qualied Majority Voting
Member countries Number of votes per country Number of votes per group or country
France, Germany, Italy,
United Kingdom 10 40
Spain 8 8
Belgium, Greece,
Netherlands, Portugal 5 20
Austria, Sweden 4 8
Denmark, Ireland, Finland 3 9
Luxembourg 2 2
Total 87
inuence with respect to other countries. Isolation would be a much greater danger for
smaller countries, but the established pattern of decision making, in which playing the
game is as important as winning all the time, is a more familiar pattern of politics in those
countries than in the larger European democracies. The Netherlands, in particular, has
managed a political pattern of inclusion and accommodation that has been benecial in
preserving the democratic stability and effective decision making that are crucial for the
future success of the EU.
The European Commission
The European Commission is the more permanent executive of the European Union and
has been the source of much of the movement toward greater integration. With the acces-
sion of new EU members during the :,;cs and :,cs and in :,,,, the Commission was
gradually expanded to include twenty members who are appointed by the Council (subject
to the approval of the European Parliament) from the member countries in consultation
with the other member states. France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom
have two commissioners each; the other countries have one each. With the implementa-
tion of the Treaty on European Union in :,,, the commissioners term of ofce was
lengthened from four to ve years.
Once appointed to ofce, commissioners take an oath of loyalty to the European
Union and pledge to accept no national instructions on policy. Members of the Commis-
sion are often individuals who have been politically active but who have decided, for per-
sonal or ideological reasons, to leave the fray of national politics and work on the Euro-
pean stage. Perhaps less generously, the Commission has become a place where national
governments can exile politicians too difcult to have at home or who need to be re-
tired with an honorable (and remunerative) position. This pattern has begun to change,
however, with the appointment in recent years of younger and more technocratic com-
missioners. What is most interesting is that politicians who have been deeply involved in
national affairs (including Roy Jenkins of Britain and Jacques Delors of France) have hon-
ored their oaths of ofce and became rather quickly active in, and committed to, broader
European issues. Some commissioners, on the other hand, have been seen by critics to be
extremely anxious to receive portfolios from which they could benet their home coun-
tries and to remain too much as national representatives.
The Council, in close consultation with the member countries, appoints one com-
mission member to be president of the Commission and thereby primus inter pares. The
president of the Commission serves a ve-year renewable term and is assisted by two vice
presidents who are also appointed by the Council. The operating understanding has been
that the presidency will alternate between larger and smaller member countries. Member
countries tend to nominate their commissioners to reect in part national political pres-
sures. Germany, for example, has tended to have one commissioner from the major gov-
ernment party and the second commissioner from the opposition. Clearly then, although
the Commission is a European and supranational institution, it also has direct and im-
portant links to national politics and national policy considerations.
Commission presidents have generally been chosen on the basis of prior consensus
among the member countries. An exception occurred at a European Council meeting in
June :,,, when British Prime Minister John Major unexpectedly vetoed the anticipated
appointment of the Belgian foreign minister as Delorss successor. Responding primarily
to anti-EU sentiment within the ranks of the Conservative Party, Major declared British
opposition to the candidates alleged interventionist approach to economic manage-
ment. Council members subsequently agreed at a special summit in Brussels in July on
the appointment instead of Jacques Santer, the prime minister of Luxembourg and a
member of the Christian Democratic Party. Santer assumed ofce as president of the
Commission, along with the other nineteen commissioners, on : January :,,,. Following
the mass resignation of the entire Commission in March :,,, in the wake of personal and
nancial scandals (see chapter ,,), members of the Council promptly closed ranks to
choose Romano Prodi, a former prime minister of Italy, as Santers successor.
In addition to meaning the commissioners themselves, the term Commission is applied
to all the permanent staff of the Communitynamely, the Eurocrats.
5
At present, the
Commission employs approximately :,,cc senior civil servants plus :c,ccc additional staff
members. Some of these employees are on secondment from their national governments,
although an overwhelming majority are direct employees of the European Union. While
certainly smaller than the bureaucracies of any of the member nations, this is still a sizable
staff with impressive professional capabilities for rulemaking and rule enforcement.
The EU bureaucracy is divided into thirty-six directorates-general (DGs), which cor-
respond to specic functional or policy tasks. Each DG is headed by a director-general
who serves under the supervision of a commissioner and a cabinet of no more than six
personal advisers who coordinate the work of a number of subordinate directorates and
sections. As a result of reforms initiated by the Prodi Commission, the cabinet members
must be recruited among at least three different nationalities.
6
Given the sensitivity of the
Commissions role and the possibility of trampling on national sensibilities, component
sections of the directorates tend to work on a somewhat shorter leash from their political
leaders than might be true in many national bureaucracies. The various directorates are
currently grouped into nineteen policy portfolios, as listed in table ,:.: (p. ). Prodi
himself serves without portfolio in his capacity as Commission president, while the two
vice presidents (Neil Kinnock of Britain and Loyola de Palacio of Spain) exercise respon-
sibility for administrative reform and relations with the European Parliament, transport,
and energy, respectively.
The activity of the Commission is analogous to that of a public bureaucracy in a na-
tion-state except for one important factor: the European bureaucracy is concerned less
than its national counterparts with the direct implementation of laws. In most instances,
they must depend on national bureaucracies (including national police forces) to imple-
ment Community law.
7
The principal task of the Commission, therefore, is to generate
rulesspecically, European rules. Much as a national bureaucracy issues secondary legis-
lation (comparable to American regulations) to supplement primary legislation passed
by the legislature, the Commission generates rules and regulations in pursuit of the Treaty
of Rome, the Single Europe Act, the Treaty on European Union, and the Treaty of Am-
sterdam. These rules are monitored by working groups within the Council, as well as by
committees in national governments, and most must be approved by the Council. The
initiative for rulemaking, however, lies in the hands of the Commission, which accords its
members considerable inuence over the nal shape of EU policy.
As well as having the capacity to generate a few rules on its own, the Commission has
the exclusive right to introduce legislation to the Council. The Council may accept a pro-
posal or not, but it cannot act without prior initiation by the Commission. Few items
ever come to the Council without previous widespread discussion within its working
groups, COREPER, and to some extent with the national governments, but the Com-
mission sets the Councils agenda. This right of initiation gives the Commission the abil-
ity to speed up the pace of integration, or at least the capacity to attempt to speed up the
pace. At times, it may be able to accelerate the pace simply by the volume of its activity.
With hundreds of employees and highly specialized personnel in the various directorates,
the Commission may be able to overwhelm the more political bodies of the Community
by sheer volume and speed of action. Again, this may be analogous to the central position
that permanent bureaucracies have achieved by virtue of their size and technical capacity
in most national political systems. One consequence is that the Commission has pro-
voked reactions similar to those in national political systems. An example is a recent deci-
sion by the Council to expand its secretariat as a means to ensure that the overtly political
arms of the EU government have the institutional ability to make their own voices heard
effectively.
8
Table 32.2 The Prodi Commission, 20002005
Nationality Portfolio(s)
Italian (Prodi) President (without portfolio)
British (Kinnock) Vice president: Administrative reform
Spanish (de Palacio) Vice president: Relations with the European Parliament;
transport; energy
French Regional policy; institutional affairs
Dutch Internal market
German Budget
Belgian Research
Irish Consumer protection
Greek Employment and social affairs
Austrian Agriculture and sheries
French External trade
Finnish Enterprise and information society
Italian Competition
Danish Development and humanitarian aid
British External relations
Luxembourgeois Education and culture
Spanish Monetary affairs
German Enlargement
Portuguese Justice and home affairs
Swedish Environment
As previously noted, the Commission has been the locus of much of the movement
toward greater economic and political integration. A great deal of this movement has re-
sulted from gradual bureaucratic pressure rather than from more dramatic political deci-
sions. Political decisions by the Council may receive greater media attention, as was the
case with the passage of the Single Europe Act in :,oo and agreement on the draft treaties
on economic, monetary, and political union at Maastricht in :,,:, but day-by-day activi-
ties by the Commission and its Eurocratsin the form of regulation after regulation
have established the public policy foundation for integration envisaged by such political
acts. Likewise, their seemingly incremental and bureaucratic activities interpret and ex-
tend the meanings of political actions and may at times push integration even further
than the more politicized Council intends or considers politically possible.
The position of the Commission constitutes something of a dilemma for both the
Commission and its leadership. On the one hand, the Commission is recognized as the
conscience of the Community and the most powerful force for a more integrated Eu-
rope. On the other hand, the Commission embodies a substantial democratic decit in
that its appointive and bureaucratic nature makes its members appear remote and intru-
sive to many actors in national governments, if not to the average citizen in Europe.
Thus, the Commission must at once be active in advocating its own agenda and remain
cognizant of the needs of the individual member countries and their political leaders.
This dilemma encourages the Commission to utilize bureaucratic politics as a means of
preserving its position within the Community. That is, individual commissioners are con-
scious of the need to build coalitions around specic proposals with members of affected
interests and relevant national actors, political as well as bureaucratic. This is not democ-
racy in the usual sense, but it does constitute a means of responding to functional and na-
tional demands.
The European Parliament
The third major political institution of the European Community is the European Parlia-
ment (EP). Its evolution reveals a great deal about the development of the European
Union. The parliament began as an institution in which member states were in reality the
dominant players; its members were initially appointed by their national parliaments and
therefore behaved more like national ambassadors than citizen representatives. Since the
advent of direct elections in :,;,, however, the European Parliament has evolved to the
point that it can ll some of the democratic decit that aficts the Community as a
whole because citizens now have a direct electoral relationship with their representatives.
Membership in the European Parliament was increased from ,: to ,o; deputies
prior to the June :,, election, primarily to take into account the growth in German
population following unication in :,,c. The European Parliament was expanded once
again in January :,,, to allow for the inclusion of additional deputies from Austria, Fin-
land, and Sweden. Its current size is o:o. Member countries are accorded seats in the Eu-
ropean Parliament in proportion to the size of their population (see table ,:.,, p. ,c).
From :,;, through :,,, deputies were chosen in the continental members of the Com-
munity according to national varieties of proportional representation, whereas delegates
from the United Kingdom and Ireland were elected on the basis of their countrys plural-
ity electoral system. The European Parliament subsequently established a Community-
wide electoral system in which the June :,,, election was conducted under various forms
of proportional representation throughout the Community.
9
Once elected, deputies are
formally designated Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). They elect a president
and fourteen vice presidents for two-and-a-half-year terms to preside over day-to-day par-
liamentary proceedings.
Elections to the European Parliament are conducted every ve years. Candidates are
nominated by political parties organized on a Europe-wide basis or that at least campaign
in several countries. Once elected, MEPs sit by party, not by nation, with nine groups
currently represented in the European Parliament (see table ,:.). National party caucuses
are sometimes (if rarely) convened, but the basic organization of the European Parliament
is partisan and supranational. This does not mean that the issues on which candidates are
elected to the EP are necessarily European; many campaigns are concerned with the rela-
tionship of the nation-state to Europe, as electoral difculties experienced by British
Conservatives during the campaigns of :,, and :,, indicated.
10
Still, Europe-wide is-
sues (including the attainment of the single market and monetary and economic union)
are also a component of electoral campaigns.
The Treaty on European Union explicitly recognizes the importance of political par-
ties in the Community. Article :,: (ex :,a) asserts: Political parties at the European level
are important as a factor for integration within the Union. They contribute to forming a
European awareness and to express the political will of the citizens of the Union.
Under the Treaty of Rome, the European Parliament was vested with limited powers.
Among them is the right to approve the Communitys annual budget, which MEPs have
consistently exercised in a serious fashion. In addition, Article :c: (ex :) of the Treaty of
Rome accords Parliament the authority to censure the Commission by a two-thirds vote
of its members and thereby force the resignation of the Commission as a body. The right
of censure, which is analogous to a vote of no condence exercised by national parlia-
ments, constitutes a blunt instrument of control that the European Parliament has yet to
Table 32.3 Distribution of Seats in the European Parliament
Member countries Number of seats
Germany 99
France, Italy, United Kingdom Spain 64
Netherlands 31
Belgium, Greece, Portugal 25
Sweden 22
Austria 21
Denmark, Finland 16
Ireland 15
Luxembourg 6
Total 626
employ with success.
11
Other important functions of Parliament include its right to de-
bate Community issues and review the annual general report of the Commission. For this
and other purposes, the Treaty of Rome stipulates that the EP shall meet in annual ses-
sions, beginning in March (Article :,o, ex :,,). Parliament may also meet in extraordi-
nary sessions at the request of a majority of its members, the Council, or the Commis-
sion. Commission members are allowed to attend sessions of the European Parliament
and are required to reply, either orally or in writing, to questions posed by its members.
The EPs legislative powers were signicantly enhanced through successive treaty re-
visions, beginning with adoption of the Single European Act. The SEA introduced a new
cooperation procedure involving decisions by the Council affecting the internal market,
social policy, regional policy, and research. Previously, Parliament would render an opin-
ion on legislation proposed by the Commission before the Council took nal action, but
that opinion had little real impact. Under the SEA, in contrast, the European Parliament
was accorded the right to review a Councils common position before the Council can
make a nal decision. The cooperation procedure spelled out three legislative options: (:)
the position can be approved or simply not disapproved within three months; (:) the po-
sition can be rejected, in which case the legislation fails unless the Council acts unani-
mously (with approval of the Commission) within three months to endorse it; or (,) the
European Parliament may propose amendments, which, if they are supported by the
Commission, require unanimity on the part of the Council to overturn. (A qualied ma-
jority sufces for the Council to accept proposed amendments.) Amendments rejected by
the Commission require unanimity on the Council for passage. Rejection and amend-
ment of Council positions require a simple majority of Parliament.
12
The Treaty on European Union further strengthened parliamentary prerogatives.
Table 32.4 Elections to the European Parliament, June 1999: Number of Seats by Party Group,
19992004
Party/group Seats
European Peoples Party and European Democrats (PPE-DE)
a
233
Party of the European Socialists (PES) 180
European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR) 51
Greens/European Free Alliance 48
Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left
b
42
Europe of Nations Group
c
30
Technical Group of Independent Members
d
18
Europe of Democracies and Diversities
e
16
Non-afliated 8
Total 626
a
Christian Democrats and (since 1992) the British Conservatives.
b
Includes Communists from France, Greece, and Portugal.
c
Anti-integration French and Danish MEPs.
d
French National Front and other right-wing MEPs.
e
Irish Fianna Fail and French Gaullists.
First, it requires EP approval of the Councils nomination of members of the European
Commission and all accession and association agreements with other states. Second, it
authorizes a quarter of the EPs members to request the appointment of temporary com-
mittees of inquiry to investigate . . . alleged contraventions or misadministration in the
implementation of Community law (Article :,,, ex :,c). In addition, the TEU empow-
ered Parliament to appoint an investigatory ombudsman who is empowered to receive
complaints from any citizen of the Union (Article :,,, ex :,e).
The Treaty on European Union and the Treaty of Amsterdam further expanded the
legislative role of the European Parliament by according it complicated new co-decision
powers shared with the Council. As under the Single European Act, Parliament retains
the right to approve or not take a decision on a common position by the Council, in
which case the Council shall denitively enact the proposal and it becomes law. Alter-
natively, an absolute majority of the members of the European Parliament may decide to
reject or amend a common position. In the case of rejection, the Council may convene a
Conciliation Committee composed of a representative of the Commission and an equal
number of Council members or their deputies and the European Parliament in an effort
to reconcile the differences. Following such deliberations, Parliament has the option of
once again rejecting the proposal by an absolute majority (in which case it fails) or of
proposing amendments to the act in question. In the case of proposed amendments, both
the Council and the Commission are required to state their opinions. The Council may
decide within three months to accept such amendments, either by a qualied majority if
the Commission concurs in them or unanimously if the Commission rejects the amend-
ments. In either event, the proposal becomes law. If the Council does not approve the
proposed amendments, the presidents of the Council and of Parliament are required to
convene a meeting of the Conciliation Committee. If the Conciliation Committee ap-
proves a joint text within a six-week period, the Council and the European Parliament
may decide by qualied and absolute majorities, respectively, to enact the proposal. The
failure of either institution to approve the text, however, means that it will not be en-
acted. Conversely, if members of the Conciliation Committee are unable to reach a com-
promise agreement, the proposal automatically fails unless the Council reafrms its origi-
nal position on the proposal by a qualied majority. In such an event, the act is adopted
unless Parliament rejects it by an absolute majority.
An important organizational feature enhancing the decision-making powers of the
European Parliament is its well-developed committee structure. Unlike many national
parliaments, the Parliament has developed an elaborate structure consisting of twenty
permanent committees specialized by policy area. Members are assigned to a committee at
the beginning of a ve-year term of ofce (roughly according to the partisan distribution
of seats) and can therefore serve long enough to develop substantial policy expertise. Fur-
thermore, the committees meet in Brussels (unlike the European Parliament itself, which
conducts most of its plenary sessions in Strasbourg) and hence have the capacity to over-
see the work of the Commission and Council at close range. Because these committees re-
view, at least informally, most draft legislation by the Commission and Council, they
have a substantial inuence on the shape of the nal rules.
The differentiation of the European Parliament into functional committees facilitates
cooperation between MEPs and Commission bureaucrats in the equally differentiated
DG structure. The predictable outcome is policy segmentation, much as in the United
States. The resultant symbiotic relationship that is emerging between the committees and
the DGs whose work the committees oversee appears heightened by informal linkages be-
tween both of these institutional actors and European and national interest groups, and
policy communities are emerging around each of the major issue areas within which the
Community has competence.
The European Court of Justice
Established as an extension of the European Coal and Steel Community during the initial
take-off phase of the integration movement, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has
evolved into an increasingly potent instrument of supranational authority within todays
EU. The central purpose of the Court, in the language of the Treaty of Rome, is to ensure
that in the interpretation and application of [the] Treaty the law is observed.
13
In per-
forming this vital task, the ECJ complements the role of the European Court of Human
Rights, which serves to enforce provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights
drawn up by the Council for Europe in :,,c.
14
Decisions by both courts have contributed,
perhaps even more than high politics at the level of ministerial councils and the Euro-
pean Parliament, to a growing sense of a European identity among ordinary citizens.
The ECJ consists of fteen justices, one representing each of the member states.
They are appointed by the fteen governments for staggered six-year terms of ofce,
which are frequently extended. The judges are assisted by nine advocates-general, ve of
whom are recruited from the largest EU member states while the remaining four are ap-
pointed from the smaller countries on a rotating basis. Their assigned duty is to make, in
open court, reasoned submissions on cases brought before the Court of Justice, in order
to assist the Court in the performance of the task assigned to it in Art. :o. The Treaty of
Rome stipulates that both the ECJ judges and the advocates-general shall be chosen
from persons whose independence is beyond doubt and who possess the qualications re-
quired for appointment to the highest judicial ofces in their respective countries . . . .
15
These provisions ensure both continuity and periodic renewal of incumbents as well as
high levels of legal competence.
The European Court meets in Luxembourg, either in plenary sessions attended by all
of its members or in smaller chambers consisting of three or ve judges whose task is to
undertake certain preparatory inquiries or to adjudicate on particular categories of cases in
accordance with rules laid down for these purposes.
16
Court decisions are based on major-
ity votes, with no specic provision for judges to publish dissenting opinions comparable
to the well-established practice of their counterparts on the U.S. Supreme Court.
17
As legal guardian of EU institutions and rules, the ECJ exercises authority under the
amended Treaty of Rome in three principal areas:
:. The power to enforce conformity to EU rules among the member states. If the Court
concurs in formal charges brought by the European Commission or a member
state that a member state has failed to fulll a treaty obligation, it is empowered
to require the country in question to take the necessary measures to comply . . . .
In such a case the Court can impose, at the behest of the Commission, a lump
sum or penalty payment on the offending government.
18
:. The power of judicial review. Several key provisions of the Treaty of Rome accord
the ECJ the right to determine whether EU policies and institutional behavior
conform to treaty provisions. Article :,c (ex :;,) allows the court to review the
legality of acts adopted by the Council, the Commission, the European
Parliament, and other Community institutions. The treaty continues: If the
action is well founded, the Court of Justice shall declare the act concerned to be
void.
19
In addition, the Rome Treaty empowers the ECJ to make preliminary
rulings concerning (a) the interpretation of [the] Treaty; (b) the validity and
interpretation of acts of the institutions of the Community . . . ; [and] the
interpretation of the statutes of bodies established by an Act of the Council,
where those statutes so provide.
20
,. The power to intervene in domestic judicial disputes. Article :, (ex :;;) also
requires the ECJ to rule on questions concerning validity and interpretation
issues raised in courts in the member states, if national courts so request as a
basis for making their own decisions. This provision effectively extends the
courts power of judicial review on the Community level to the member states.
Over time the European Court of Justice has evolved from a weak judiciary with no
authority to enforce compliance with its rulings to a much more activist and powerful in-
stitution. An important milestone in this process was the creation of a Court of First In-
stance in :,,, which relieved the ECJ of responsibility for dealing with most cases in-
volving individual challenges to domestic or Community law. As a result, the Court is
able to concentrate more of its energy on selective cases involving macro issues such as le-
gal integration and the supremacy of EU law. In addition, the preliminary ruling proce-
dure contained in Article :, has enabled the ECJ to extend its authority to national
courts in the member states. A binding precedent was a :,,: ruling in which the ECJ
won for the EC legal system the right to provide remedies for some violations of Euro-
pean law, declaring that national courts could require compensation by the national gov-
ernment for individuals hurt by a failure of a national government to implement EC di-
rectives punctually and properly (Francoovich v. Italy).
21
The long-term consequence, as
Simon Hix observes, has been a high penetration of EU law into the national legal sys-
tem. . . . [By] enabling national courts to enforce ECJ judgements, the preliminary refer-
ences procedure has the effect of making national courts the lower tier of an integrated
EU court system, and the ECJ the quasi-supreme court at its pinnacle.
22
Moreover, recent rulings by the ECJ have reinforced growing appreciation of the im-
portance of European law on the citizen level of politics. A case in point was an ECJ deci-
sion in January :ccc declaring a German military law that forbade a female recruit from
bearing arms to be unconstitutional because it violated EU guidelines governing equal
rights of men and women at the workplace. Following the ruling, the woman who had
pressed her case through German courts to the ECJ in Luxembourg declared: It was an
absolute discovery, and a very good discovery, the existence of this European court. I used
to think of myself as German. Now I feel a little European, too.
23
The German parlia-
ment subsequently amended the countrys Basic Law, or constitution, to permit women
to take on combat roles in the armed forces, effective in :cc:.
The Central European Bank and the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development
A new institution that has commanded a high European and international prole since
its inception in :,, is the European Central Bank (ECB), with headquarters in Frank-
furt. The ECB serves as the executive arm of the European System of Central Banks
(ESCB), which represents the national central banks of the nations belonging to EMU.
With the implementation of the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union on :
January :,,,, the ECB and the ESCB assumed supranational responsibility for macro eco-
nomic policy on behalf of the member states comprising the EUs euro zone. Their joint
task is to promote the basic objectives of Economic and Monetary Union as contained in
the Treaty on European Union: the adoption of an economic policy that is based on the
close coordination of the Member States economic policies, on the internal market and on
the denition of common objectives, and conducted in accordance with the principles of
an open market economy with free competition. Means to these ends include the irrevo-
cable xing of exchange rates leading to the introduction of a single currency, . . . and the
denition and conduct of a single monetary policy and exchange rate policy the primary
objective of both of which shall be to maintain price stability and . . . to support the gen-
eral economic policies of the Community. . . .
24
The ESCB and the ECB are empowered by the Treaty on European Union to dene
and implement monetary policy, conduct foreign exchange operations, and hold and
manage the ofcial foreign reserves of the member states.
25
The chief purpose of the
ESCB is to maintain price stability, while the ECB is authorized to x interest rates and
issue a common currency. The ECBs decision-making bodies consist of a Governing
Council, made up of the governors of the national banks, and an Executive Board con-
sisting of a president, a vice president, and four other members who are appointed for
eight-year nonrenewable terms by the European Council (after consultations with the
European Parliament). The Treaty accords both the ESCB and the ECB complete inde-
pendence from Community institutions and bodies, from any government of a Member
State or from any other body.
26
A second European Union nancial institution is the European Bank for Recon-
struction and Development (EBRD), which the European Council authorized in Decem-
ber :,,c in response to an initiative by former French President Franois Mitterrand. The
EBRD was established with an initial capitalization of $:: billion to disburse loans for
technical assistance, equity investment, and security offerings in the emerging postcom-
munist regimes in Central Europe. Its declared purpose was to foster a transition toward
open-market economies and to promote private and entrepreneurial initiatives in the
Central and East European countries committed to and applying the principles of multi-
party democracy, pluralism, and market economics.
27
After the collapse of the Soviet
Union in :,,:, the Federation of Russia and its successor states became eligible for EBRD
loans as well. EU member states collectively own a majority of shares in the bank, al-
though the United States is the largest single shareholder. In deference to France, the rst
two EBRD presidents have been French ofcials.
28
Other Institutions
Other EU institutions include the Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Commit-
tee, and the Committee of the Regions. The rst of these serves as an independent
watchdog agency, while the latter two perform advisory functions in the Communitys
legislative process.
The Court of Auditors was established as an independent oversight body in :,;, to
allay parliamentary concerns about the proper monitoring of Community nances. It
consists of twelve members who are appointed for six-year terms by the European Coun-
cil (subject to parliamentary approval). Their assignment is to examine the accounts of
all revenue and expenditure of the Community . . . and to provide the European Parlia-
ment and the Council with a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts
and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions.
29
In addition, the Court
assists the European Parliament and the Council in exercising their budgetary control
functions.
Both the Economic and Social Committee (ESC) and the Committee of the Regions
allow voice to constituencies that are not otherwise represented in the various councils
and the European Parliament. The ESC dates from the creation of the European Eco-
nomic Community in :,,; and represents employers, trade unions, professional associa-
tions, farmers, and consumers. It consists of ::: members who are apportioned among
the member states according to their relative size. They are nominated by their national
governments and appointed by the Council, acting unanimously, for four-year terms.
The Treaty of Rome stipulates that the Council and Commission must consult with
members of the ESC in specied policy matters and in other cases in which they con-
sider it appropriate.
30
Opinions of the ESC, however, are not binding on actions by ei-
ther the Council or the Commission.
The Committee of the Regions (COR) was established under the Treaty on Euro-
pean Union to represent regional and local bodies within the member states. COR con-
sists of ::: members who are appointed for four-year terms by the Council. They are
nominated by their home governments but once in ofce, may not be bound by any
mandatory instructions. They shall be completely independent in the performance of
their duties, in the general interest of the Community.
31
Comparable to the role of the
ESC, the Committee of the Regions performs strictly advisory functions in relation to
the Council and the Commission. In practice, COR has demonstrated that it more effec-
tively represents regional interests in member states with functioning state or regional
political structuresnotably, Germany, Spain, and Italythan in unitary states such as
France.
Notes
:. Article :c, (ex :o), Treaty on Political Union, o.
:. Alfred Grosser, cited in Mattei Dogan, The Political Power of the Western Mandarin, in The Mandarins
of Western Europe, ed. Mattei Dogan (New York: Halstad, :,;,).
,. See, for example, Ernst Haas, Beyond the Nation State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, :,o).
. European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union :)) (Luxembourg: Ofce
for Ofcial Publications of the European Communities, :,,,), ,:.
,. The term comes from Altiero Spinelli, a leading Italian advocate of European federalism.
o. John Peterson, Romano Prodi: Another Delors? ECSA Review :, (winter :ccc): :, ;.
;. Heinrich Seidentopf and Jacques Ziller, Making European Policies Work: The Implementation of Commu-
nity Legislation in the Member States (London: Sage, :,;).
. These differences are explained in the country chapters of this volume.
,. Article :,c (ex :,) of the Treaty on European Union stipulates that the European Parliament shall draw
up proposals for elections by direct universal suffrage in accordance with a uniform procedure in all mem-
ber states. Despite these provisions, Ireland and Northerrn Ireland continued to use a single transferable
vote system in the June :,,, election.
:c. Geoffrey Pridham and Pippa Pridham, Towards Transnational Parties in the European Community (Lon-
don: Policy Studies Institute, :,;,); and Roswitha Bourguignon-Wittke et al., Five Years of the Directly
Elected European Parliament, Journal of Common Market Studies :, (:,,): ,:,,.
::. Members of the European Parliament moved a vote of censure against the Commission in December
:,,, but it failed when percent of the MEPs rejected the motion the following month. See chapter ,,.
::. Conservative strength fell from ,., percent of the popular vote in the :,; election to ,.; percent in the
European election two years later (a loss of .o percent). In contrast, the opposition Labour Party ad-
vanced from ,:., percent in :,; to c.: percent in :,,. The trend continued through the mid-:,,cs. In
the general election of :,,: in Britain, the Conservatives received :., percent of the popular vote; two
years later, in elections to the European Parliament, Conservative support plummeted to :;. percent.
The Labour Party, in contrast, received ,. in the British election of :,,: and .: percent in the Euro-
pean parliamentary election in :,,.
:,. Article ::c (ex :o) of the Treaty of Rome.
:. The European Convention on Human Rights, whose declared purpose is to enforce individual rights con-
tained in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of :,, was enacted in :,,,. The
Court of Human Rights itself was established in :,,, and currently exercises jurisdiction in : European
nations.
:,. Article ::, (ex :o;) of the Treaty of Rome.
:o. Article ::: (ex :o,) of the amended Treaty of Rome.
:;. See Simon Hix, The Political System of the European Union (New York: St. Martins, :,,,), :c,.
:. Article :: (ex :;:) of the Treaty of Rome.
:,. Article :,: (ex :;) of the Treaty of Rome.
:c. Article :, (ex :;;) of the Treaty of Rome.
::. Karen J. Alter, European Court of Justice (ECJ), in Encyclopedia of the European Union, ed. Desmond
Dinan (Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner, :,,), :,c.
::. Hix, Political System of the European Union, :c;.
:,. A European Identity: Nation-State Losing Ground, New York Times, : January :ccc.
:. Article (ex ,a) of the Treaty on European Union.
:,. Article :c, of the Treaty on European Union.
:o. Article :c (ex :c;) of the Treaty on European Union.
:;. Bernt Schiller and M. Donald Hancock, The International Context of Economic and Political Transi-
tions, in Transitions to Capitalism and Democracy in Russia and Central Europe, ed. M. Donald Hancock
and John Logue (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, :ccc), ,:;.
:. Encyclopedia of the European Union, :;.
:,. Article : (ex :c) of the Treaty of Rome.
,c. Article :o: (ex :,) of the Treaty of Rome.
,:. Article :o, (ex :,a) of the Treaty of Rome.
Chapter 33
Who Has the Power?
THE EUROPEAN UNION is deeply embedded in the national and subnational systems
of its member states while simultaneously manifesting a high degree of institutional and
political autonomy in its own right. Political power in the EU, in short, is distributed
among multiple domestic, intergovernmental, supranational, group, and individual ac-
tors who interact in making Community policy and shepherding the course of European
integration. Hence, addressing the question, Who has the power in the EU? necessarily
involves multilevel analysis. Knowledge about conventional models of international orga-
nization or parliamentary systems is inadequate for understanding the intricacies of
power relations within the EU.
The most important instruments of Community power, as the preceding chapter ex-
plains, are national governments, the Council of the European Union and the European
Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Court of
Justice, and the Central European Bank. Other players include private-interest groups,
notably industrial rms, employer associations, and organized labor. Public opinion also
affects EU actions, sometimes in a forceful fashion.
National Governments as Actors
Since the inception of the European Coal and Steel Community in the early :,,cs, na-
tional governments have embodied the intergovernmental principle of the European inte-
gration movement. As such, they are represented on the basis of member state equality in
the EUs most important legislative-executive institutions: the Council of the European
Union and the European Council. Until the advent of qualied majority voting under
the Single European Act, important Community decisions were based on the unanimity
principle. This allowed each member state a potential veto over Community initiatives,
which had the effect of postponing (sometimes indenitely) Council decisions.
Qualied majority voting (QMV) has signicantly facilitated joint decision making
since the mid-:,cs, but even QMV does not diminish the central fact that national gov-
ernments continue to exercise ultimate authority over treaty revisions and the initiation
of new policies. They also exercise executive oversight over Community policies (includ-
ing EMU and common foreign and defense policies) and play a decisive role in deciding
Community legislation and the admission of new member states. Moreover, national gov-
ernmentsacting through the Council on the basis of prior agreement among them-
selvesappoint leading EU ofcials such as members of the European Commission (in-
cluding the Commission president and vice presidents,
1
the European Court of Justice,
and other Community institutions.
Domestic political considerations determine, to a signicant degree, behavior by mem-
ber states in the various Councils. Among them are contrasting degrees of national com-
mitment to European integration based on subjective calculations of costs and benets,
the partisan composition of governments, and coalition strategy within the EU. Leaders of
some of the smaller member states, notably the Benelux countries, have traditionally been
among the most ardent supporters of the European idea as a means to promote their polit-
ical and economic interests vis--vis their larger and more powerful neighbors. Similarly,
peripheral nations such as Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland have been positive players
in expectation of EU nancial assistance in the form of regional development funds. In
contrast, some of the larger member states have at important junctures expressed serious
reservations about further integration. A key example is de Gaulles veto of Britains appli-
cation to join the EEC in :,o, on the grounds that British membership would allegedly di-
minish French inuence within the Community. Another is Britains resolve in :,,: to opt
out of automatic membership in EMU under terms of the Treaty on European Union to
avoid subordinating its macroeconomic policies to supranational institutions.
Scandinavian members of the EU are divided in their orientations toward the EU.
For reasons similar to Britains ambivalence toward the EUs supranational powers, both
Denmark and Sweden chose to postpone joining EMU. A majority of Danish citizens
subsequently voted against full EMU membership, at least for the foreseeable future, in a
national referendum in September :ccc in which ,,.: percent of the electorate rejected
the euro as a common currency. Finland, however, has ardently embraced full responsibil-
ities and consequences of EU membership (including EMU) as a means to enhance its
national security and economic ties with the West.
Who governs in individual countries affects national policy toward the EU as well.
Georges Pompidou, who became French president in :,o,, reversed de Gaulles negative
stance toward British membership in the EEC when he agreed with German Chancellor
Willy Brandt and other heads of government to expand the Community. Nearly thirty
years later, New Labours electoral victory under Tony Blair led to more positive British
engagement in EU affairs than had been the case under Conservative leaders Margaret
Thatcher and John Major. An early instance was Blairs decision to endorse the EU Social
Charter when he attended his rst session of the European Council in June :,,;.
Germany constitutes a special case. During the early postwar years, the two major
partiesthe Christian Democrats and the Social Democratswere sharply divided in
their attitudes toward European and trans-Atlantic relations. The Christian Democrats,
under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer, proved ardent advocates of both economic and
military cooperation within Europe and the broader North Atlantic community, while
the Social Democrats were skeptical of any steps that would deepen Germanys division.
That the Christian Democrats dominated national executive ofce when the formative
decisions were reached to launch the ECSC and later the EEC thus made an enormous
difference in Germanys commitment to the integration movement. Only later, with the
adoption of a new pro-Western and a more moderate ideological program in :,,,, did the
Social Democrats unequivocally embrace European integration as well. Subsequent
changes of government have had little substantive impact on Germanys involvement in
European affairs.
National governments also affect Community actionsand, therefore, the course of
the integration movementthrough coalition strategies with other member states. The
most important and durable coalition is a strategic alliance between France and Germany.
The alliance is rooted in a mutual recognition among postwar leaders in both countries of
the imperative of political reconciliation after three disastrous wars in less than a century.
It was deepened by a close personal friendship between Charles de Gaulle, the rst presi-
dent of the Fifth Republic, and Adenauer, the rst chancellor of the Federal Republic.
The two leaders signed a historic Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in January :,o,
that institutionalized Franco-German reconciliation and established the foundation for
long-term policy rapport between the two countries.
2
Their mutual support was decisive
for achieving important milestones in the EUs parallel processes of widening and deep-
ening. More recently, French President Jacques Chirac publicly afrmed Franco-German
cooperation as the motor driving European integration in a speech in June :ccc to
members of the German parliament in Berlin.
3
A crucial instrument for the exercise of national power within the EU is the intergov-
ernmental conference (IGC), a diplomatic forum in which representatives of the member
governments consider the adoption of new European treaties or treaty amendments. The
rst IGC spanned the negotiations among the six founding members of the European
Coal and Steel Community to establish the EEC and Euratom in :,,;. Important subse-
quent IGCs include those leading to the Single European Act, the Treaty on European
Union, the Treaty of Amsterdam, and the Treaty of Nice.
The Final Provisions of the Treaty on European Union provide the legal basis for
constituting IGCs:
The government of any Member State or the Commission may submit to the
Council proposals for the amendment of the Treaties on which the Union is
founded. If the Council, after consulting the European Parliament and, where
appropriate, the Commission, delivers an opinion in favour of calling a
conference of representatives of the governments of the Member States, the
conference shall be convened by the President of the Council for the purpose of
determining by common accord the amendments to be made to those Treaties. . . .
The amendments shall enter into force after being ratied by all the Member
States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.
4
The most recent IGC was convened in early :ccc to deliberate proposed treaty
changes governing QVM and the composition of both the European Commission and
the European Parliament in the context of a pending expansion of the EU eastward. Deep
partisan divisions among the member states on these portentous issues initially clouded
prospects of agreement on requisite treaty amendments. The protracted disagreement un-
derscored the power exercised by national governments within the Union, straining even
the cohesiveness of the Franco-German alliance as a crucial force driving the European
integration movement.
5
Another manifestation of national power within the EU was a decision by fourteen
of the member states to impose a bilateral freeze on high-level political contacts with Aus-
tria after the right-wing Freedom Party joined the conservative Peoples Party in a national
coalition in February :ccc. The fourteen states were motivated by their displeasure over
neo-Nazi sympathies expressed by a leader of the Freedom Party. The sanctions, while not
formally an action by the EU itself, resulted in strained relations within the Community
that were eased only when they were lifted toward the end of the year.
The Councils as Actors
Despite national autonomy in bilateral relations and important aspects of Community af-
fairs, the Single European Act, the Treaty on European Union, and the Amsterdam Treaty
have nonetheless diminished the intergovernmental character of the various Councils.
Each of these treaties has signicantly deepened European cooperation, according the
Council and other EU institutions (including the Commission and the European Parlia-
ment) new collective powers and policy responsibility.
While national governments retain the right of veto over a number of executive and
legislative matters, the dynamics of QVM have transformed the Council of the European
Union and the European Council into quasi-supranational bodies. Peer pressure, com-
bined with the arithmetical imperative of QMV for member states to enter into policy
coalitions in Council deliberations, serve to discourage obstructionist behavior on the part
of national actors. On occasion, when a member government decides it cannot endorse a
collective action, it chooses to opt out of the decision rather than unilaterally veto it.
Such was the case when the Thatcher government chose not to endorse the Social Charter
in :,,. The right of member states to constructive abstentions from Council decisions
is explicitly recognized in provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam governing the EUs Com-
mon Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), as explained in the following chapter.
6
The long-term trend toward increased supranationalism in the legislative-executive
functions on the Council level has been reinforced by the increasingly important role of
the Union itself (usually represented by the Commission president) at the highly visible
sessions of the European Council, when political leaders of the member nations meet to
negotiate among themselves concerning the future shape of Europe. The momentous de-
cisions that have moved Europe through cyclical phases of Eurosclerosis and Europho-
ria throughout the course of the integration movement have been announced from these
summit meetings. Political outcomes emerging from European Council sessions have at
times appeared to be almost counter to the interests of the participants, given that their
own powers may be reduced, but participants have made such decisions notwithstanding.
The European Commission and Bureaucratic Politics
The EUs overtly supranational institutions are also important instruments of power and
decision making. Most visible among them is the European Commission, which (as dis-
cussed in earlier chapters) exercises administrative oversight over Union policies and pos-
sesses the legal authority to initiate policy proposals for subsequent deliberation by the
Councils. In contrast to the high politics characteristic of Council decisions, the Euro-
pean Commission with its staff of some :c,ccc professional civil servants embodies a less
visible level of bureaucratic politics that is highly signicant in the day-to-day activities
of the Union.
This level of activity has been important for promoting policy integration within the
European Community and now the European Union. With enhanced policy integration
has come an increased need for political integration. The bureaucratic level of policy-
makingand therefore of politicsis characterized by a gradual accretion of common
policies and standards through the European bureaucracy (and its masters within the
Commission) and through its contacts with national bureaucracies and with national and
transnational interest groups.
Policymaking at the bureaucratic level appears fragmented into relatively narrow,
specialized elds of competence. This apparent fragmentation and increased linkages be-
tween components of the Commission and components of national bureaucracies consti-
tute a crucial aspect of decision making within the EU. Accordingly, much of the politics
of the European Union can best be understood as bureaucratic politics.
7
Moreover, the
tendency of bureaucratic decision making to occur within policy communities (especially
those of a technical nature) has been to depoliticize what could have been highly divisive
issues. As a result, the less overt politics of the EC has been able to force, or perhaps ca-
jole, integration along. The process of bureaucratic rulemaking is facilitated by the pow-
ers given the Commission to initiate rules and the regulatory nature of much of the
emerging European political system.
Parliament as Legislator and Watchdog
Although the European Parliament remains institutionally and politically subordinate to
the various Councils and the Commission, its authority has steadily expanded as a result
of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty of Amsterdam. The newly acquired
power of codecision making in important policy areas signicantly augments the EPs
established authority with respect to plenary debates, budgetary issues, and the right of
policy consultation with the Council and the Commission.
Within Parliament, power is concentrated in the various party factions whose mem-
bers are elected at ve-year intervals. The moderate European Peoples Party (PPE) and
the Party of the European Socialists (PES) dominate legislative procedures because of
their sheer size (see table ,:., p. ,:). Since :,,: these two groups have alternated at reg-
ular intervals in claiming the presidency of the European Parliament, except for a brief in-
terlude from :,;, to :,: when a Liberal MEP held the ofce. Because neither the PPE
nor the PES can claim an absolute majority of seats in its own right, they have been com-
pelled to cooperate in asserting parliamentary authority vis--vis the Council and the
Commission. Facilitating the strategic alliance between the two groups is their shared
support for a more assertive role of the European Parliament in Community affairs and
their agreement especially on social issues.
Institutional authority, meanwhile, is dispersed among the EPs presiding ofcials
(including the president and fourteen vice presidents) and its intricate committee struc-
ture. The former play a decisive role in determining the parliamentary agenda and over-
seeing daily proceedings, while the EPs twenty committees are responsible for most
preparatory work and drafting parliamentary reports and resolutions.
MEPs have utilized their powers of debate and legislation in recent years to address
economic and monetary union, future challenges of institutional reform and enlarge-
ment, public health issues, and the environment. Consultations remain the largest do-
main of EP legislative activity, followed closely by co-decision procedures and, at a dis-
tance, cooperation procedures (see table ,,.:). In :,,, the EP assented to :; measures and
issued :c opinions on Commission communications, ;; resolutions in response to state-
ments by other institutions, and numerous reports, recommendations, and miscellaneous
resolutions of its own (see table ,,.:, p. ,c).
A dramatic exercise of parliamentary power occurred in January :,,, when MEPs ex-
ercised their authority under Article :c: (ex :) of the Treaty of Rome to create a Com-
mittee of Inquiry to investigate allegations of fraud among members of the European
Commission. (An earlier motion to censure the Commission failed to receive the requi-
site two-thirds majority.) The committees ndings that individual commissioners were
indeed guilty of favoritism and nancial mismanagement subsequently prompted the vol-
untary resignation of the Santer commission in March. The commissioners continued
Table 33.1 Consultations and Cooperation and Co-Decision Procedures in the European Parliament,
1998
Cooperation procedure Co-decision procedure
First Second First Second Third
Session Consultations reading reading reading reading reading
January 11 2 3
February 15 10 14 3 4
March 11 4 14 3
April 58 1 16 2 2
May 33 2 11 5 4
July
September 1 2
October 18 3 10
November 14 5
December 16 6 6 2
Total 177
a
0
b
19
c
69
d
34
e
12
Source: European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union :))) (Brussels-Luxem-
bourg, 2000), 401.
a
Includes 86 cases in which Parliament proposed amendments to the Commission proposal.
b
All proposals pending in rst reading under the cooperation procedure were transferred to the co-decision
procedure after entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam.
c
Includes 12 cases in which Parliament amended the Councils common position.
d
Includes 56 cases in which Parliament proposed amendments to the Commissions proposal.
e
Includes 24 cases in which Parliament amended the Councils common position.
their work in a lame-duck capacity until Romano Prodi and a new set of ofcials took of-
ce in May.
Alongside authoritative rulings of the European Court of Justice on such issues as job
discrimination (see chapter ,:), activities of the European Parliament come closest to ad-
dressing the EUs persisting democratic decit. The direct election of its members, its
expansive legislative functions, and its watchdog functions constitute an effective link
with a European citizenry familiar with the prerogatives and functions of national parlia-
ments. For the European Parliament to become more analogous to a parliamentary
regime will require future treaty revisions according it the right of legislative initiative and
closer scrutiny of the behavior of individual members of the European Commission.
Private Interests, Social Partners
While national governments and the EUs own institutions are the key instruments of
power within the Community, trans-European interest groups exercise varying degrees of
inuence in their own right. According to informed estimates, ofces in Brussels are
maintained by some ,,ccc groups whose unadorned purpose is to lobby the EU on be-
half of special interests. The most important among them are industrial rms and em-
ployer associations, followed at a distance by organized labor. Together, representatives of
private capital and labor constitute recognized social partners who play an important
role in the low politics of economic and social legislation.
8
Industrial rms are represented in Brussels by two major groups: the European
Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) and the Union of Industrial and Employers Confed-
Table 33.2 Decisions and Resolutions Adopted by the European Parliament, 1998
Miscellaneous
Other Budget CFSP
Own initiatives
decisions
Session Assent opinions
a
questions recommendations Reports Resolutions
b
Urgent subjects
c
and resolutions
d
January 11 7 5 9 50
February 1 13 9 5 8 80
March 3 18 2 9 6 10 2 81
April 2 20 5 6 6 119
May 3 22 7 5 6 9 5 110
July 1 6 7
September 7 3 3 8 1 25
October 1 6 3 8 8 57
November 5 1 3 9 1 37
December 7 2 1 9 11 3 63
Total 17 104 18 35 57 77 12 629
Source: European Commission, General Report on the Activities of the European Union :))) (Brussels-Luxembourg, 2000), 401.
a
Mainly opinions on Commission reports or communications.
b
Resolutions in response to statements by other institutions or following oral questions.
c
Resolutions on topical and urgent subjects of major importance.
d
Decisions concerning waiver of immunity, amendments to the Rules of Procedure and interinstitutional agreements.
erations of Europe (UNICE). The former is made up of the CEOs of a number of lead-
ing European companiesamong them, Philips, Fiat, Olivetti, Bosch, and Volvo. Cre-
ated in :,,, the ERT formulated the original vision of a single European market that was
later transformed through the Commission and the European Council into the Single
European Act.
9
UNICE, in contrast, is a larger and more bureaucratized organization
that was founded in :,, to represent national employer associations on the Community
level. Its principal function is to review and provide position papers on most horizontal
(cross-industry) EU legislation.
10
Institutionally, UNICE consists of a Council of Presi-
dents, made up of the presidents of the national federations; a Committee of Permanent
Delegates, consisting of ambassadors of the federations; policy committees assigned
functional responsibilities with respect to economic and nancial affairs, external rela-
tions, social affairs, industrial affairs, and company affairs; and a professional secretariat
whose task is to coordinate the work of the policy committees and disseminate UNICE
views on both the Community and national levels. Shared policy priorities of the ERT
and UNICE include market liberalization and deregulation, which they promote
through multiple informal and formal contacts primarily with Commission ofcials.
UNICE also utilizes its membership on the advisory Economic and Social Committee for
similar purposes.
Organized labors counterpart organization is the European Trade Union Confedera-
tion (ETUC). Union leaders were initially highly skeptical of the integration movement
because it seemed to benet private business more than ordinary workers, but the eco-
nomic realities of a deepening Community prompted representatives of national trade
union federations in the member states to establish ETUC in :,;,. ETUC accords orga-
nized labor an institutional voice on the Economic and Social Committee and in Com-
mission deliberations, albeit one that is relatively muted in comparison with the better
nanced and more powerful ERT and UNICE. Given ETUCs weaker status, the Com-
mission has consistently bolstered ETUC in order to provide a counterweight on the la-
bor side to UNICE on the management side.
11
The European Commission has purposely encouraged a social dialogue involving
UNICE, ETUC, and other labor market partners to augment the material dimensions of
European integration, particularly since the advent of the single market in the :,cs.
Their collaboration has frequently been fruitful, although the social partners differed in
their attitudes toward the Social Charter and the Social Protocol attached to the Treaty on
European Union. (The ETUC was strongly supportive, while UNICE ofcials were far
more reserved.) In recent years, both partners have constructively contributed to Com-
mission efforts to devise strategies to promote Community-wide economic growth and
reduce unemployment.
Public Opinion
An indirect source of inuence in the European Union are ordinary citizens. Lacking di-
rect access to executive instruments of power in Brussels, they nonetheless affect Commu-
nity activities in myriad ways. Most important, they determine the composition of na-
tional governments and the European Parliament through the electoral process. While (as
previously noted) the integration movement is primarily elite-driven, executive bodies in
the member statesand through them the decisive EU institutionsare ultimately de-
pendent on generalized support and/or prospective electoral sanctions expressed by the
voting public.
In addition to their manifest role in determining the outcome of national and Euro-
pean elections, voters in some of the member states exercise the right of referendum in
deciding the fate of crucial EU initiatives. Nowhere is this more important than in Scan-
dinavia, where national constitutions require a positive vote by citizens on pending con-
stitutional amendments (including those involving accession to the Union). Norway has
twice rejected membership in the Community through national referendums (:,;: and
:,,). In Denmark, six referendums have been held on the EU. The rst was in :,;:
when o, percent of the electorate voted in favor of joining the EEC. A narrower majority
approved the Single European Act in :,o, but in June :,,: Denmark stunned its fellow
member states when ,c.; percent of voters rejected the initial version of the Treaty on Eu-
ropean Union. Only after the European Council agreed to add a Danish protocol al-
lowing the nation to opt out of Economic and Monetary Union did a majority of Danes
approve the treaty in May :,,,.
12
Denmark once again proved a naysayer to the EU in
September :ccc, when ,,.: percent of the voters rejected joining EMU and adopting the
euro as its currency.
National referendums were also held in neighboring Sweden and Finland on acces-
sion to the EU in the fall of :,,, with positive outcomes in each case. Swedish govern-
ment ofcials have announced tentative plans to schedule a referendum on membership
in EMU in :cc. The outcome of the Danish referendum in :ccc, however, is likely to
cast a long shadow on the referendum campaign in Sweden. Public opinion polls indicate
a majority of Swedes are similarly opposed to economic and monetary union.
Other member states have conducted referendums on the EU as well. On successive
occasions, sizable majorities of Irish voters have approved membership in the Commu-
nity (:,;:), the Treaty on European Union (:,,:), and the Treaty of Amsterdam (:,,).
Two referendums have been conducted in France: the rst endorsing EEC enlargement in
:,;:, the second narrowly approving the Treaty on European Union in :,,:. One na-
tional referendum on the EU has been held in Austria and the United Kingdom. In the
former case, oo. percent of voters approved accession to the EU in :,,; in the latter, o;
percent favored continued membership in the EEC in :,;,. British Prime Minister Tony
Blair has promised to schedule a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should
join EMU. Given the intensity of anti-EMU sentiment among a majority of British vot-
ers, the campaign will undoubtedly prove contentious.
The linkage between public opinion and election outcomes and the European Union
is thus meaningful, if sometimes tful and disruptive. Recurrent voter skepticism toward
the integration process reects both citizen malaise concerning the EUs democratic
decit and widespread concerns that further harmonization of scal and social policies
on a European level constitutes a potential threat to domestic political systems. Speci-
cally, most Brits seem loath to cede further slices of national sovereignty to central deci-
sion-making institutions on the Continent, just as many Danes and Swedes are reluctant
to relinquish distinctive features of their well-established welfare states.
Influential Individuals
Alongside collective actors such as governments, EU institutions, private interest groups,
and voters, key individuals also wield signicant inuence in Community affairs. Fore-
most among them were the founding fathers of the integration process: Jean Monnet
and Robert Schuman of France, Konrad Adenauer of Germany, Paul-Henri Spaak of Bel-
gium, and Alcide De Gasperi of Italy. Together, these statesmen forged an unprecedented
degree of European elite unity that was a necessary condition for launching the ECSC
and EEC in the :,,cs. In contrast to their more nationalist predecessors in executive of-
ce, they shared a commitment to international cooperation rooted in their individual
origins as borderland Europeans and shared humanistic religious values.
13
Willy
Brandt, chancellor of West Germany from :,o, to :,;, similarly proved an effective ar-
chitect of both deeper and wider European union based in his wartime exile submersion
in the internationalist traditions of Norwegian and Swedish Social Democracy.
Activist presidents of the European Commission have also played a conspicuous role
in advancing the European idea. Among them were Walter Hallstein of Germany, who
served as the rst president of the Commission from :,, to :,o;; Roy Jenkins of the
United Kingdom (:,;;:), and especially Jacques Delors of France, president from :,,
to :,,,. Hallstein helped institutionalize the edgling EEC, Jenkins skillfully managed
the Communitys second round of enlargement and the introduction of the European
European Peoples Party/European
Democrats (PPE-DE)
European Socialists (PES)
European Liberal Democrat and
Reform Party (ELDR)
Greens/European Free Alliance
Europe of Nations Group
Independents
Non-affiliated
Europe of Democracies and Diversities
:,,
:c
,:
:
European United Left/Nordic Green Left :

,c
:o
European Parliamentary Election, June (number of deputies by party group)

Note: See notes to table ,:. (p. ,:) for details of the membership of these groups.
Monetary System, and Delors was a principal author of both the Single European Act
and economic and monetary union.
Romano Prodi assumed the Commission presidency in September :,,, intent on
following in Delorss footsteps. His would-be activism, however, has been curtailed by a
more assertive European Council vis--vis the Commission as a whole. Prodis eclipse
thus suggests that the autonomous authority of Commission presidents is subject to the
assent of national government ofcials comprising the Council.
Notes
:. As previously indicated, the appointment of members of the European Commission is subject to the ap-
proval of the European Parliament.
:. See, in particular, Haig Simonian, The Privileged Partnership. Franco-German Relations in the European
Community :)):), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, :,,).
,. French Leader, in Berlin, Urges a Fast Track to Unity in Europe, New York Times, : June :ccc.
. Article of the Treaty on European Union.
,. The Franco-German Axis Creaks, The Economist, : November :ccc.
o. Article :, (ex Article J.:,) of EC Treaty. These provisions apply to abstentions only by one or at most a
small number of EU members. If abstentions constitute a third or more of a Council vote, the decision
shall not be adopted.
;. Jerel Rosati, Developing a Systematic Decision-Making Framework: Bureaucratic Politics in Perspective,
World Politics :c (:,:): :,,:.
. A third social partner is the European Center of Public Enterprises (CEEP), which represents civil ser-
vants.
,. Maria Green Cowles, Setting the Agenda for a New Europe: The European Round Table of Industrialists
and EC :,,:, Journal of Common Market Studies ,, (December :,,,): ,c::o.
:c. Encyclopedia of the European Union, ::c.
::. Desmond Dinan, Ever Closer Union? An Introduction to European Integration, :d ed. (Boulder, Colo., and
London: Lynne Rienner, :,,,), :,.
::. They did so by a margin of o,.; percent to ,., percent. In a fth referendum on the EU in May :,,, ,,.:
percent of the Danes endorsed the Treaty of Amsterdam.
:,. Monnet was active before World War I in international business in Canada and served as an international
economic adviser in China and Romania during the interwar years. Schuman was born in Luxembourg,
grew up in France, and studied at German universities in Bonn, Munich, and Berlin. Adenauer was a na-
tive of the Rhineland in western Germany, physically closer and personally more sympathetic to neighbor-
ing France, Luxembourg, and Belgium than to Prussian Berlin to the east. Similar to Brandts experi-
ence, Spaak learned to think in global terms while in wartime exile in London. De Gasperi had served as a
deputy in the Austrian parliament before becoming an Italian citizen in :,:,. All were Roman Catholics.
Chapter 34
How Is Power Used?
AS THE PRECEDING ASSESSMENT of political actors indicates, the European Union
is characterized by distinctive features of decision making and implementation. One is
the dichotomy between national interests and supranational interests and the dynamic in-
terplay among individuals and institutions representing these often divergent interests. A
second distinctive feature is the importance of bureaucratic decision making within the
EU. Even if the European Union is not wholly dominated by permanent bureaucrats in
the Commission, it is certainly heavily inuenced by them and their interactions with the
bureaucrats of member states. Finally, a problem of democratic decit persists within
the European Union. Despite direct elections to the European Parliament, the EU still
lacks a strong direct relationship with its citizens and has a considerable distance to go be-
fore it will resemble a conventional parliamentary democracy.
The comparison between West European parliamentary democracies and EU institu-
tions should not be extended too far. For example, public revenue and expenditure issues
while important for the EUare not as central as they are for most national governments.
The major impact of the European Union on its constituent nations is increasingly felt
through law and regulation rather than through spending programs. Reliance on regula-
tory instruments as mechanisms for integration may be a wise choice. It is a characteristic
of regulative instruments that they tend to mask the effects of policies and to make win-
ners and losers less visible than expenditure programs commonly do. This characteristic
of regulatory policy may minimize (although not eliminate) national, regional, and class
conicts over EU policy. The choice of this policy instrument, however, also enhances the
relative powers of the Commission and the bureaucracy.
Executive Accountability
The European Union has an executive and a parliament. What it still lacks is a clear, de-
mocratic means of linking the one with the other comparable to parliamentary systems in
the member countries. The members of the Council of the European Union are account-
able to their national governments and will remain thereby constrained in the foreseeable
future. Therefore, it remains for the Commission to be held accountable to the European
Parliament. As currently constituted, the Commission is a responsible body but not an
accountable or responsive institution in the usual meanings of these terms. The commis-
sioners are responsibleprimarily to their own consciencesfor acting in a European
manner and for defending the various treaties undergirding the EU. This does not yet
constitute a conventional democratic government, and there are few means available for
directly enforcing responsibility or accountability on the members of the Commission or
even the bureaucrats employed by the Commission.
One check available to the European Parliament is to dismiss the entire Commission
through a vote of no condence. Although this has not yet occurred, the European Parlia-
ment came close when percent of its members supported a vote of censure against the
Santer Commission in January :,,, on charges of corruption. After a group of indepen-
dent experts reported that some of its members had indeed misspent funds, the Commis-
sion resigned en masse in March. The Commission continued to serve on an interim ba-
sis until the Council appointed Romano Prodi as Santers successor at a summit later that
month in Berlin. The Treaty on European Union introduced a second check on the Com-
mission by requiring parliamentary approval of all the commissioners after their nomina-
tion by the Council but before they can formally assume ofce. The European Parliament
has exercised this authority twice, after conducting extensive committee hearings on the
various nominees on both occasions: approving the Santer Commission by a vote of
:o:c, (with ,, abstentions) in January :,,, and the Prodi Commission by a vote of
,,:;: (with : abstentions) in May :,,,.
Thus far, the established system of responsible government has worked. The commis-
sioners have been deeply committed to the European Union and its goals, and most of
them have played their roles responsibly. Indeed, most members and especially the presi-
dents of the Commission have promoted supranational values and have been driving
forces in developing greater Union powers over policy. Still there is a need, if the EU is to
become a genuine political entity, for better articulated mechanisms of popular and polit-
ical accountability on the part of the Commission. Until the European Parliament
achieves greater direct control over the commissioners, the EU must depend on the good-
will and competence of national governments to send the correct people to Brussels. The
national governments have thus far acted very responsibly, but few political systems can
afford to rely on the goodwill of others too long and survive.
Some changes have made EU institutions more closely approximate the governments
of European nations. One important move is that budgetary accountability to the Euro-
pean Parliament has now been institutionalized, and the Parliament has twice rejected
budgets submitted by the Commission. Historically, the power of the purse has been the
central lever for legislative acquisition of power, and it appears that the development of
legislative-executive relationships in the EU will be little different. In addition, a ques-
tion hour has been institutionalized in Parliament, with members of the Commission re-
quired to attend when issues under their purview within the various DGs are discussed.
Likewise, members of the Commission increasingly are expected to attend committee
meetings in the European Parliament and may have to respond to questions advanced
there.
What is missing in these existing processes is a clear conception of cabinet govern-
ment and ministerial responsibility. First, if the president of the Commission is to be-
come the analogue of a prime minister, he or she should be able to select the other mem-
bers of the cabinet. At present, however, all commissioners are appointed by the
member states with the approval of the European Parliament. The Dooge Commission,
which submitted a comprehensive report on the functioning of Union institutions in
:,,, suggested that the president should be empowered to select the other commission-
ers, subject to review by the national governments.
1
This suggestion was incorporated in
the Treaty on European Union, which stipulates that the Governments of the Member
States shall, in consultation with the nominee for President, nominate the other persons
whom they intend to appoint as members of the Commission.
2
A persisting problem,
which the Maastricht treaty does not address, concerns the inability of either the presi-
dent or Parliament to dismiss individual commissions once they are appointed. The pres-
ident and the Council have the power to assign portfolios and can bury a less competent
or cooperative commissioner in a minor position, but such an individual remains a com-
missioner until his or her normal replacement, voluntary retirement, or compulsory re-
tirement by a member government. If the European Parliament were to achieve more
complete control over the Commission as the equivalent of its own government, it would
have to be able to dismiss individual commissioners, rather than resort to the draconian
treaty provision for dismissing the Commission as a whole. Given the delicate balance
that exists between national interests and the role of the Commission, this would be a dif-
cult reform for many governments to accept. Such a change, however, is almost in-
evitable if governance as understood in European democracies is to be fully achieved
within the EU.
Policymaking
Policymaking in the European Union involves processes by which EU institutions decide
which proposals to accept as authoritative and therefore which proposed laws they should
attempt to implement. A decision at the community level, more than at a national level,
involves strategic choices in addition to the usual questions concerning the desirability
and feasibility of a given policy. Leaders of EU institutions must decide not only what
they want to do substantively but also how fast and how far they can push member govern-
ments and citizens of member countries. Some dedicated Europeanists are willing to push
very hard and very far, but they risk creating manifest opposition to economic and politi-
cal union and the European Union more generally. If the EU and its integration can be
compared to a bicycle that remains upright only so long as it is going forward, then cre-
ating manifest (and needless) opposition is dangerous.
3
Feasibility is used too facilely as a
constraint on policymaking at the national level, but it becomes a crucial consideration at
this level.
4
The regulatory issues central to the Union generate sufcient controversy, but
in general not as much as scal issues, in which the winners and losers are more visible.
In accordance with the initial formulation of decision making in the Treaty of Rome,
the Commission prepared draft legislation and the Council of Ministers made the prin-
cipal decisions. For a few issues, the Commission could issue laws and engage in quasi-
legislative activities; this was closely analogous to secondary legislation by national bu-
reaucracies. In this arrangement, the European Parliament was largely excluded. It might
debate the merits of legislation, but it had little impact on nal decisions. The Single Eu-
rope Act changed the relative powers of institutions by introducing a cooperation proce-
dure, the second reading described above, which accords Parliament powers of co-deci-
sion with the Council over a substantial range of policy issues. In addition to the formal
changes brought about through this procedure, there is now substantially more consulta-
tion and indirect contact between the Parliament and the other institutions.
5
With these
changes in the decision-making process, the European Parliament became for the rst
time a signicant legislative body. This is important for reasons other than simply consti-
tuting an increase in the relative institutional power of the European Parliament. The
most important secondary feature of enhanced powers for the Parliament is that, like the
Commission, it appears to have a more European perspective than does the Council of
the European Union. This perspective is demonstrated in the workings of unofcial com-
ponents of the Parliament as well as the ofcial support of the Parliament for federalist so-
lutions to European political relations such as those contained in the Treaty on European
Union, which (as previously noted) accords Parliament even greater authority in joint de-
cision making with the Council. As Parliament assumes an enhanced role in European
legislation in years ahead, it appears that the rider on the bicycle may have to pedal very
fast to keep up with the changes in the political system.
In fairness, it would be easy to exaggerate the importance of the cooperation and
co-decision procedures established by the Single European Act and the Treaty on Euro-
pean Union. The ultimate powers of decision making remain in the Council as long as it
can achieve unanimity. The Parliament has to date rejected outright several common po-
sitions from the Council. For one on occupational health, there was no chance of una-
nimity, and a compromise emerged. On others, the Council achieved unanimity.
6
This
pattern of rulemaking makes the interactions between these institutions somewhat analo-
gous to the separation of powers in the United States, except that the executive has the
right to overturn the veto and therefore to make the nal decision, rather than vice versa.
Further, the unanimity rule is a much tougher standardeven if the Council has worked
with such a rule when not technically requiredthan is the two-thirds requirement for
Congress to overturn a presidential veto.
As important as the Council and parliamentary levels of decision making are for the
EU, the impetus for most European rulemaking occurs at a lower level. The impetus typi-
cally comes from the Commission and its component units. In addition to broad legislative
statements, rulemaking in the European Union comes in three forms. The simplestand
most compellingrules are called regulations, which must be put into effect automatically
by national governments. Such rules are directly binding on national governments and
other actors (including corporations and individuals) and pass into national law without ad-
ditional action. Regulations may be made by a simplied written procedure rather than by
the more complex oral procedure required for most rulemaking.
A second level of rules made through this process is directives. The goals expressed in
a directive are also binding, but the actual content remains open to some variation and
interpretation by the member nations. Unlike regulations, national governments can de-
cide how they put a directive into effect, and this gives them the opportunity for delay,
bargaining with the Commission, and bargaining with interests within their own borders.
To become effective, directives must be incorporated in some manner into national law.
As a result, directives provide substantial latitude to national governments to impose their
own priorities.
Finally, the Union also issues decisions, which are very specic and apply only to the
individuals or governments to which they are addressed. They are, however, binding on
the target of the action.
Although the Council has preponderant authority in making EU decisions, the
Commission is not without some direct and indirect powers of its own. For administra-
tive matters, it can make binding declarations and issues several thousand rules of its own
each year. As the experience with secondary legislation at the national level indicates, ad-
ministrative discretion can include a wide variety of issues with signicant policy conse-
quences. At least twice, for example, the Commission has had to decide on the amount of
price supports in the common agricultural program because the Council was deadlocked.
7
In addition, the Commission decides what cases should be submitted to the European
Court of Justice and can, in essence, use the Court (if successful) to make rules on its own
behalf. Finally, simply by announcing its opinion on an issue, the Commission (and espe-
cially its president) has been able at times to gain compliance without resort to formal
rulemaking. Some of that power may be a function of the personal inuence of the Com-
mission president rather than a function of his ofce, but in the short run the Commis-
sion does have this kind of informal inuence.
The Role of Implementation
A realistic assessment of rulemaking in the European Union must necessarily take into ac-
count the substantial powers exercised by national bureaucracies in the implementation
of EU regulations, directives, and decisions. What does it mean, for example, that a govern-
ment must automatically enforce the regulations made by the Commission and Council?
Numerous studies of national policymaking indicate that a purely legalistic conception of
the performance of administrative systems in implementation is at best self-delusory on
the part of politicians.
8
In fact, a great deal of interpretation and even redenition of pol-
icy occurs during implementation. Unless that inuence of administration on policy in-
tentions is understood adequately, analysts risk making errors in assigning responsibility
for policy failures or even policy successes.
9
Implementation in the European Union is no less subject to the impact of imple-
menting agents. The process within the EU is analogous to implementation of policies in
a federal regime such as Germany, in which policies are made centrally and implemented
by subnational governments. Thus, even if policy emanates from Brussels, the national
governments are by no means impotent.
10
They have the opportunity to bargain over pol-
icy and its meaning with their counterparts in Brussels and can then attempt to interpret
policy in their own terms. The existing evidence on implementation of EU directives and
regulations is that there is still substantial room for national action and that such actions
can substantially alter the meaning of regulations in practice.
11
These ndings further reinforce multilevel interlocking interpretations of the EU,
with winning and losing the game being dened differently at different levels and at dif-
ferent stages of the rulemaking process. Losing at the policymaking stage in Brussels may
not be so important if there is a second round at the implementation stage, at which time
the national government, through its bureaucracy, has an opportunity to determine what
will actually happen in the policy area in that country.
The Budgetary Process
The budgetary process is a crucial process in any political system, even one emphasizing
primarily laws and regulations. The question of who gets what remains a central political
issue, and the budgetary process is where that question is answered most explicitly. The
obverse question of who pays what is equally important, especially when it has national-
level as well as individual-level answers. For example, countries that have efcient agricul-
tural sectors (the United Kingdom, for one) have expressed reservations about subsidizing
less efcient agriculture elsewhere. We need to understand, therefore, where the money to
run the European Union comes from, where it goes, and who makes the decisions about
these ows of funds. The adequacy of the funding arrangements for any movement to-
ward greater integration, especially greater political integration, should also be under-
stood as a way of understanding the likelihood of greater integration.
The Revenue Process
Where does the money come from? Compared to most international organizations, the
European Union is in an extremely advantageous position in raising money. It has four
designated revenue sources, three of which it can claim as its own (see table ,.:). There-
fore, the EU generally does not have to beg member countries for funds. In contrast to
the United Nations, the EU is reasonably sure of receiving its rightful revenues. On the
other hand, the revenues the European Union does receive are still conceptualized some-
what in national termswho is contributing how much. As a result, arguments about
scal equity and fairness revolve more around national considerations than around socio-
economic class, progressivity, or even the horizontal neutrality of the revenue structure.
The EU does not have a mechanism for taxing citizens directly; the tax revenues it enjoys
are indirectly collected for it by national governments. Consequently, the national gov-
ernments continue to play an obvious and signicant role in the revenue process.
12
The EUs rst two revenue sources are comparable to national government taxes on
goods and services. One is a common levy on industrial imports from outside the EU.
This is derived from virtually the same revenue process as national governments tariff
collections on imports except that national customs agents hand the money directly over
to the EU. The other is a common levy applied to all relevant agricultural products im-
ported from outside the Union, which is collected in much the same way as the common
industrial tariff.
The EUs third source of revenue is tied to the nationally assessed value-added tax
(VAT), which is an excise or sales tax paid by consumers at the time of purchase on incre-
mental increases in the value of goods during their production. The EU is entitled to :.
percent of the base used for calculating the VAT in each country. The member states are
largely free to make their own regulations establishing that base and to extract their VAT
in their own manner; hence, the tax rates vary from country to country, although harmo-
nization in this area has begun. Thus, the revenue to the EU is not a at :. percent of na-
tional VAT but rather :. percent of the arithmetic base that each country uses to calcu-
late the national VAT obligations of businesses and services.
The European Unions fourth revenue source, recently added and still controversial,
grew out of a Community nancial crisis during the mid-:,cs that was resolved in the
form of the Brussels agreements of :,. The Brussels agreements established a negoti-
ated level of resource availability for the European Community based on a percentage of
the combined gross national products (GNP) of the member countries.
13
If revenues
from the three sources just described do not provide sufcient resources to meet this
GNP ceiling in a given year, then special levies can be imposed on the member countries.
In :,,, for example, a decit of ,., billion ECUs was covered by a levy of approximately
one-tenth of one percent of each members GNP. European Council members agreed in
:,,: to increase the levy in incremental steps from :.:: percent of GNP to :.:; percent by
:,,;.
This fourth source of revenue has strengthened the nancial basis of the Union, but
it also raises doubts about the EUs nancial future. The new source of funds permits re-
sources to keep up with expenditure demands. Furthermore, the agreement acknowledges
that the European Union must have sufcient money to implement its programs and
that, to some extent, expenditure commitments will determine the size of the annual EU
budget. Moreover, this source of additional funds is exible and can be used to meet the
nancial needs of the Union without regard to revenues generated by the volume of inter-
national trade or other uncontrollable economic aggregates. On the other hand, this ad-
ditional source of revenue represents a departure from the principle of EU scal indepen-
dence and places the European Union more at the mercy of the member countries.
14
This
move toward potentially greater dependence occurred at precisely the same time that the
Table 34.1 European Union Budget: Sources of Revenue, 19992000 (in millions of euros)
:))) :ooo
Type of revenue Amount % Amount %
Customs duties 13,016.8 15.3 12,300.0 14.0
Agricultural duties (including sugar and
isoglucose levies) 2,390.9 2.8 2,264.9 2.6
Own resources collection costs 1,540.8 1,456.5
VAT own resources 31,212.2 36.8 32,544.6 37.0
GNP-based own resources 37,010.7 43.6 43,0580.8 48.96
Balance of VAT and GNP own resources
from previous years 447.5 .5
Budget balance from previous year 3,022.2 3.6
Other revenue 877.6 .1 674.1 .8
Total 86,437.1 89,387.9
bourg, 2000), 358.
European Community was seeking a more independent role through the adoption of the
Single Europe Act.
Revenue policy in the EU is an administratively driven and virtually automatic
process even more than are equivalent processes within single countries. Two of the four
revenue sources function automatically and depend more on trade and implementation
by national tax collectors than on decisions made in Brussels. The third source of revenue
(the percentage of the VAT base) is also beyond the control of EU policymakers as it de-
pends upon the tax systems of the member countries. Admittedly, national representa-
tives must decide through meetings of the European Council or the Council of Ministers
what the EU percentage of the national tax base will be; but once those decisions are
made, the process becomes automatic and wholly dependent on economic activity. Like-
wise, after the initial agreement on the fourth source of revenue (including the provision
that it could be levied on national governments), the process itself appears largely statisti-
cal; the real decisions concerning whether member states will use their nancial obliga-
tions to the EU to exert leverage over the Union devolve onto the national governments.
Although the collection and remittance of the EUs revenues from these four sources are
nearly automatic, government ofcials are fully aware of the magnitude and costs of their
countries contributions to the Union. Hence, revenue questions remain important is-
sues, both for the European Union and the member states.
Expenditures
The EU budgetary process is now largely driven by expenditure commitments. The bud-
getary agreements of the :,cs established a ceiling, linked to the total GNP of the mem-
ber states, above which expenditures should not rise; beneath that ceiling, expenditure
commitments determine how much money will pass through the budget.
15
The Euro-
pean Union now spends money for a wide variety of purposes. The EUs expenditures,
unlike those of other international organizations, often have a direct impact on citizens of
the member countries. Expenditures on the common agricultural policy (CAP) ac-
counted for o., percent of the :ccc budget (down from ,, percent at the beginning of
the :,,cs). In descending order, other key expenditures include funds for regional eco-
nomic development (structural operations); internal policies (research and technological
development, transport, education, culture, employment, industry, environment, energy,
the internal market, the labor market, the harmonization of social policies, and trans-
European networks); external affairs (such as aid to countries in the Mediterranean, the
Middle East, and Africa); and preaccession assistance to countries in Central and Eastern
Europe (see table ,.:).
Like that of national governments, a great deal of EU spending is mandatory and
largely uncontrollable. Agricultural expenditures are obligatory under the Treaty of Rome
and the agreements arising out of it, so any Union budget will contain forecasts of expen-
ditures in this area rather than imposing ceilings on the amount that can legally be spent.
In :,, the Council issued a decree that the rate of increase on agricultural spending
should not exceed the rate of increase in its own source revenues. That was an admirable
guideline, but in practice it is useful primarily for determining how much excess spending
has occurred. Subsequent changes in agricultural policies, such as a reduction in levels of
support for cereals after :oc million tons of production, have introduced some degree of
control over agricultural expenditures. Recent Commission decisions have further tended
to reduce agricultural expenditures. Agriculture is forecast to be a declining component of
EU expenditures in future years, and even greater overall budgetary control may be ob-
tainable.
Although there is a substantial uncontrollable element of expenditures determined
by the treaty and other agreements, the process for determining EU expenditures is broadly
similar to revenue processes on the national level. The European Parliament has a greater
role in expenditures than it does with respect to revenues and can, as it did in both :,;,
and :,, reject the budget presented by the Commission. Moreover, the Parliament can
affect the amount and purpose of expenditures that do not result directly from treaty pro-
visions (which are called noncompulsory expenditures). Perhaps most important is the
dual fact that the overall level of expenditures has not kept pace with ceilings established
in the Brussels agreements and that, unlike most legislatures in national democratic sys-
tems, the European Parliament has some exibility with which it can agree to nance pol-
icy initiatives. Such decisions will not occur without politics, however, as the poorer
members states (notably Spain, Portugal, and Greece) press for full use of the GNP ceil-
ings to fund development programs for themselves. In contrast, the more afuent coun-
tries urge nancial restraint and advocate the expansion of high-tech research and develop-
ment projects that are likely to benet their own citizens. Furthermore, the increased
need to nance economic development in Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath
of communisms demise has placed substantial additional strains on the Union budget.
Assessment
The budget has been one means through which central governments in newly formed
federations have expanded their inuence and power over their component units. The ev-
idence to date about the success of European institutions in using the budget for similar
Table 34.2 European Union Expenditures, 2000 (in millions of euros)
Type of expenditure Amount Percentage
Agriculture 40,993.9 46.3
Structural operations 32,678.0 36.9
Internal policies 6,027.1 6.8
External policies 4,805.1 5.4
Administration 4,703.7 5.3
Reserves 906.0 1.0
Preaccession aid to applicant nations 3,166.7 3.6
Total 88,473.3 105.3
bourg, 2000), 34447.
Note: Percentage column does not sum to 100 due to rounding.
purposes is mixed. On the one hand, the European budget remains a relatively small
component: approximately , percent of total public expenditures in the fteen member
nations. Even with GNP ceilings to provide greater latitude for European spending, the
EU operates with greater budget constraint than does any of its members. If for no other
reason, the EU is forbidden by Article :o (ex :,,) of the Treaty of Rome from running a
decit.
16
Finally, most Community spending has been on a single programagricul-
tureand that program has become highly controversial in some of the member coun-
tries as well as for many individual Europeans. Thus, the EU has gained somewhat less
public support (with the major exception of farmers and agricultural interest groups)
through public expenditures than its adherents might have hoped.
On the other hand, the budgetary base of the European Union has expanded. The
GNP ceiling has provided substantial latitude for decision makers to utilize expanded rev-
enues to undertake new policy initiatives. In addition, the European Parliament is be-
coming a more central actor in setting expenditure priorities and promoting nonmanda-
tory expenditure programs such as research and development, regional development, and
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Spain
France
Ireland
Italy
,.,
:.c
:,.,
:.,
:.o
;.o
:;.c
:,.c
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Austria
Portugal
Finland
Sweden
United Kingdom
.:
o.:
:.,
:,.
:.,
:.,
:.,
Contributions of Own Resources by EU Member States as a Percentage of the Budget
Source: Ofcial Journal of the European Communities, Court of AuditorsAnnual Report Concerning the Finan-
cial Year :))), Estimated and Actual Resources in :,,,, by Member State, vol. , (: December :,,,): :,
table :.:. Available at www.eca.eu.int/EN/reports_opinions.htm.
aid to Central and Eastern Europe. Now that these programs are in place, it will be dif-
cult for the European Union to withdraw from such activities, and public expenditures
are therefore likely to increase. Furthermore, some of the most effective instruments for
integration are regulatory in nature and may not require great nancial resources to im-
plement. The Unions institutions now have a stronger nancial base and a stronger bud-
getary process and thus appear to have the capacity to achieve continued increases in
supranational policymaking activity.
Common Foreign and Security Policy
In addition to their primary preoccupation with domestic economic and social issues, Eu-
ropean Union leaders have also begun the arduous process of establishing a common for-
eign and security policy. This has become a compelling necessity as the EU increasingly
emerges as a political entity in international politics. The quest for consensus among its
members on foreign policy and regional security represents a more difcult challenge
than even the thorniest economic and institutional issues in that foreign policy has tradi-
tionally been the reserve of national governments.
European politicians and EU ofcials are fully cognizant of the European Unions de-
pendence on the international economy, which underscores the necessity to link eco-
nomic and foreign policy concerns. Moreover, the dramatic political and economic
changes in Central and Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War, and wars in the Balkans
have accelerated the movement toward a common foreign policy. The reactions of the EU
and its leaders to these extraordinary events have brought the European Union closer to a
common policy toward foreign events, including such matters as economic assistance to
the postcommunist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and peacekeeping efforts in
Southeastern Europe. Nonetheless, the special problems of forming a common foreign
policy within the EU should be understood separately from other policy areas.
The member governments established a preliminary framework for forming a com-
mon foreign policy when they launched a consultative procedure known as European Po-
litical Cooperation (EPC) in :,o, and agreed to convene regular meetings of the Euro-
pean Council, beginning in :,;. This framework for foreign policy consultations was
partially institutionalized in the form of a Political Committee, which served common
administrative purposes, and a Group of Correspondents in the member countries, which
monitored EPC activities. The linkage between the European Community and EPC was
deepened when the European Council adopted the Solemn Declaration on European
Union in Stuttgart in June :,,, which bound the member states to intensied consul-
tations with a view to permitting timely joint action on all major foreign policies.
17
The
relationship between the Community and EPC became more formalized through the
Single Europe Act, with its requirements for consultation and policy consistency between
the two organizations.
Economic globalization and increased international political uidity in the wake of
the collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe intensied pressures
for greater economic and foreign policy coordination among EU members. The need for
the European Union to serve as a unitary actor in international affairs will be true regard-
less of whether its partners in economic and political negotiations are nation-states such
as the United States and Japan or regional blocs such as EFTA. Forging closer economic
ties with European nations that are not currently members of the Union has substantial
political implications in addition to the economic ones over which the EU already has
competence. Indeed, the European Council and commissioners have already targeted the
eventual admission of a number of Central European statesincluding Poland, Hungary,
Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the Baltic republics, and the Slovak Republicas one of
the Unions principal goals during the rst decade of the twenty-rst century. In short,
the attainment of a single European market and the attainment of economic and mone-
tary union among a majority of the EUs members are necessarily matched by continuing
efforts to forge a common European foreign policy. Tentative steps in that direction be-
gan with an attempt by Community members to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the
Gulf crisis in January :,,: and gathered momentum later in the year when the Commu-
nitys foreign ministers sought with mixed results to mediate a cease-re among warring
nationalist factions in the Yugoslav Civil War.
The Treaty on European Union created a comprehensive legal basis for a common
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Spain
France
Ireland
Italy
:.,
:.c
::.
,.
o.o
:;.o
:o.,
::.,
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Austria
Portugal
Finland
Sweden
United Kingdom
c.:
:.,
:.o
;.o
,.:
:.:
:.,
Disbursements Made in Each EU Member State as a Percentage of the Budget
Source: Ofcial Journal of the European Communities, Court of AuditorsAnnual Report Concerning the Finan-
cial Year :))), Payments Made in :,,,, in Each Member State, vol. , (: December :,,,): ,, diagram VI.
Available at www.eca.eu.int/EN/reports_opinions.htm.
foreign and security policy. Afrming a collective commitment to safeguarding the com-
mon values, fundamental interests and independence of the European Union and
strengthening the security of the Union and its Member States in all ways, the member
countries agreed to establish joint cooperative procedures for gradually implementing . . .
joint action in the areas in which the Member States have interests in common. They
pledged that a joint Council (made up of the foreign ministers) shall dene a common
position on foreign and security policy whenever it deems it necessary and that Mem-
ber States shall ensure that their national policies conform to the common position. The
European Council will be responsible for dening general guidelines for determining
whether a matter should be of joint action.
18
Detailed decisions concerning policy im-
plementation are to be made by qualied majority voting.
Provisions governing a common foreign and security policy (CFSP) were elaborated
in the Treaty of Amsterdam, in which the member states afrmed their resolve to make
. . . (CFSP) more effective and to equip the Union better for its role in international pol-
itics. This reform seems particularly urgent after the disintegration of former Yugoslavia.
The tragic course of events there made it clear that the Union needed to be able to act to
avert disaster and not merely react after the event. The Yugoslav crisis also threw into re-
lief the weakness of uncoordinated Member State reactions.
19
Article :: of the Amster-
dam treaty spells out the following objectives of CFSP:
to safeguard the common values, fundamental interests, independence and
integrity of the Union in conformity with the principles of the United Nations
Charter;
to strengthen the security of the Union in all ways;
to preserve peace and strengthen international security, in accordance with the
principles of the United Nations Charter, as well as the principles of the
Helsinki Final Act and the objectives of the Paris Charter, including those on
external borders;
to promote international cooperation;
to develop and consolidate democracy and the rule of law, and respect for
human rights and fundamental freedoms.
The Treaty of Amsterdam empowers the European Council to dene the principles
of and general guidelines for the common foreign and security policy, including for mat-
ters with defence implications.
20
These include decisions on common strategies, joint ac-
tions, common positions, and steps to strengthen systematic cooperation between Mem-
ber States in the conduct of policy.
21
Specic functions of a future EU military force will
include peacekeeping, crisis management, humanitarian, and rescue operations. The ro-
tating presidency of the Union is assigned formal authority to represent the Union in all
matters pertaining to CFSP and shall be responsible for the implementation of decisions
taken under this Title; in that capacity it shall in principle express the position of the
Union in international organisations and international conferences. To assist the presi-
dency and the Council in these important tasks, the Treaty of Amsterdam authorized the
transformation of the secretary-general of the Council into the ofce of High Representa-
tive for the common foreign and security policy.
22
Members of the European Council ap-
pointed Javier Solana Madariaga, a Spaniard who had served until then as secretary-gen-
eral of NATO, as the EUs rst High Representative at a summit meeting in Cologne in
June :,,,.
The formation and implementation of a common foreign and security policy are
subject to complex rules codied in the Treaty of Amsterdam. Article : of the treaty au-
thorizes the Council to adopt joint actions that address specic situations where oper-
ational action by the Union is deemed to be required. [Joint actions] shall lay down their
objectives, scope, the means to be made available to the Union, if necessary their dura-
tion, and the conditions for their implementation. The same article afrms that member
states are committed to support joint actions in the positions they adopt and in the con-
duct of their activity. In addition, article :, empowers the Council to adopt common
positions on foreign policy issues of a nonoperational nature. Such positions will consti-
tute a joint approach to a particular matter of a geographical or thematic nature. Mem-
ber States shall ensure that their national policies conform to the common positions.
Different rules govern operational and nonoperational policies. Council decisions on
military and defense issues are subject to the unanimity principle, although Article :, of
the Treaty of Amsterdam qualies this requirement as follows: Abstentions by members
present in person or represented shall not prevent the adoption of such decisions. In the
case of an abstention, a member state shall not be obliged to apply the decision, but shall
accept that the decision commits the Union. In a spirit of mutual solidarity, the Member
State concerned shall refrain from any action likely to conict with or impede Union ac-
tion based on that decision.
23
If more than a third of the member states abstain, how-
ever, no decision is reached.
Nonmilitary decisions concerning joint actions and common positions, in contrast,
are based on qualied majority voting in the Council. The adoption of such measures re-
quires at least sixty-two afrmative votes cast by a minimum of ten member states. Mem-
ber states retain the right of an implicit veto in such decisions, however. If one of them
declares it intends to oppose a decision for important and stated reasons of national pol-
icy, no vote is taken. Instead, the Council may, acting by a qualied majority, request
that the matter be referred to the European Council for decision by unanimity.
24
Successive Council agreements and new treaty provisions have afrmed the au-
tonomous capacity of the Union to undertake joint measures in security and defense.
Tony Blair acted in :,,, to resolve an earlier dispute among member states about whether
military aspects of CFSP should be subordinated to NATO or the Western European
Union (WEU) by advocating the institutional integration of WEU and the EU.
25
The
European Council afrmed the merger of both organizations at a summit in Berlin in
March :,,,, declaring that EU armed forces would be subordinate to the WEU in peace-
time but to NATO in the event of war. The Treaty of Nice subsequently provided an in-
stitutional basis for future military action by authorizing the creation of a political and se-
curity committee, a military committee, and a military staff within the EU to address
potential European crises in close consultation with NATO. As France declared at the
conclusion of the Nice summit in December :ccc: Consultations and cooperation be-
tween the two organizations will be developed in matters of security, defence and crisis
management of common interest in order to make possible the most appropriate military
response to a given crisis and ensure effective crisis management, while fully respecting
the decision-making autonomy of NATO and the EU.
26
The military ambition of the
EU is to deploy, by mid-decade, a force of oc,ccc soldiers to deal with situations compa-
rable to the conicts in the former Yugoslavia during the late :,,cs.
Notes
:. Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Institutional Affairs (the Dooge Report) (Brussels: The European Com-
mission, :,,).
:. Article :: (ex :,), Treaty on Political Union, :,. Italics added for emphasis.
,. Michael Emerson, :,,: and After: The Bicycle Theory Rides Again, Political Quarterly ,, (:,):
:,,,.
. Giandomenico Majone, The Feasibility of Social Policy, Policy Sciences o (:,;,): ,o,.
,. John Fitzmaurice, An Analysis of the European Communitys Co-operation Procedures, Journal of Com-
mon Market Studies :o (:,): ,,cc.
o. Richard Corbett, Testing the New Procedures: The European Parliaments First Experiences with Its New
Single Act Powers, Journal of Common Market Studies :; (June :,,): ,o.
;. Alan Swinbank, The Common Agricultural Policy and the Politics of European Decision Making, Jour-
nal of Common Market Studies :; (:,,): ,c,::.
. The classic study is Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, :,;,).
,. For discussions of these contrasting outcomes, see William S. Pierce, Bureaucratic Failures (New York: Hu-
manities Press, :,:); Nelson Polsby, Political Innovation in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, :,); and John Schwartz, Americas Hidden Policy Successes (New York: Norton, :,,).
:c. Warner Feld and John Wildgen, National Administrative Elites and European Integration: Saboteurs at
Work? Journal of Common Market Studies :, (:,;,): :o,.
::. Heinrich Siedentopf and Jacques Ziller, Making European Policies Work: The Implementation of Community
Legislation in the Community States (London: Sage, :,;,).
::. Citizens are not totally unaware that some portion of their taxes helps fund the European Community,
but the process remains less visible than direct EU taxation would be.
:,. The percentage of GNP available to the EC was to increase gradually from :.:, percent in :, to :.: per-
cent in :,,:. The original Commission target had been :. percent.
:. When, however, member countries have withheld revenues collected for the EC (as Britain did in :,,),
the European Court has ruled that they were, in essence, ultra vires and required them to pay interest.
:,. Michael Shackleton, The Budget of the European Community (London: Pinter, :,,c).
:o. There are, however, a variety of borrowing arrangements nanced by the Community, although these ac-
tivities are off-budget and are not gured as a part of the ofcial Community budget.
:;. Federal Republic of Germany, European Political Co-operation (EPC), ,th ed. (Bonn: Press and Informa-
tion Ofce, :,), ;,;o.
:. Articles ::, ::, :, (ex J.:, J.:, J.,), Provisions on a Common Foreign and Security Policy, Treaty on Euro-
pean Union, ::,:.
:,. EUROPA Home Page, The Amsterdam Treaty: A Comprehensive Guide (http://europa.eu.int/).
:c. Treaty of Amsterdam, Article :,. Italics added for emphasis.
::. Treaty of Amsterdam, Article ::.
::. Treaty of Amsterdam, Article :.
:,. These provisions are another instance of constructive abstention discussed in the preceding chapter.
:. Treaty of Amsterdam, Article :,.
:,. The Western European Union (WEU) was founded in :,,, as successor military alliance to the Brussels
Treaty Organization, established in :,. WEU serves as an institutional voice for European views on re-
gional security and coordinates EU defense policy. It currently has ten full members (Belgium, France,
Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom); six as-
sociate members (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland, and Turkey); and seven associ-
ate partners (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia). Denmark and the
four neutral members of the EU (Austria, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden) have observer status within the
organization.
:o. Presidency Report on the European Security and Defence Policy, Press Release, Brussels (:: December
:ccc, nr. :c,o/:/cc).
Chapter 35
What Is the Future of EU Politics?
AS THE ASSESSMENT of European institutions and political processes in preceding
chapters suggests, institutional analysis constitutes a useful means to explain changes that
have already occurred within the European Union and to anticipate future changes. Al-
though much of the day-to-day attainment of a single market might be explained
through functional and neofunctionalist logic,
1
the major transformations of the EU have
taken place as a result of political acts. Some of these have been individual acts of leader-
ship, such as political initiatives by former Commission Presidents Roy Jenkins and
Jacques Delors in relation to monetary and scal policy and advocating the Single Europe
Act and specic target dates for completing the internal market and attaining the third
stage of EMU. Individual actions, however, must be translated into an institutional frame-
work if they are to persist and produce the intended policy outcomes. These outcomes
can be explained and interpreted in different ways, each of which provides particular util-
ity for understanding highly complex problems of analysis. A useful approach is an expla-
nation that draws on both the new institutionalism advanced by some political scien-
tists and the old bureaucratic politics characteristic of the real world of politics.
2
An institutional analysis of the European Union must, rst of all, take into account
multiple interconnected games being played simultaneously within the EU. The idea of
a two-stage game or decision-making process, in which actors rst negotiate the best
possible terms for agreeing to pursue anothers preferences and then execute the con-
tracts, is much too simplistic to capture the complexity of motives and interactions oc-
curring within the EU.
3
Instead, one game is the national game, in which individual
nations attempt to extract as much from the European Union as possible while relin-
quishing as little as possible. Phrased differently, this is a game of coping with interdepen-
dence. A second game is played by the institutions themselves, with each seeking to gain
powers vis--vis other institutions. This game may be played for all the right reasons (e.g.,
the Commission believes that it is the protector of the Treaty of Rome while the Council
considers itself the protector of national interests), but it is a complex, multifaceted game
nonetheless. This second game is, of course, intimately linked with the rst.
Finally, there is a bureaucratic game that appears to be becoming an important sub-
text for everything else that is occurring within the EU. The twenty-three directorates-
general within the Commission appear to be developing their own organizational cultures
and approaches to policy. As in most governmental structures, the boundaries among dif-
ferent policy competences are not entirely clear, and the DGs may therefore compete for
policy space. Where, for example, is the boundary between research and development on
the one hand and the telecommunications industry or science policy on the other? Even
within a single DG, conicts may occur over policy denitions. For example, is voca-
tional education a concern of education policy or of labor-market policy? The compo-
nents of the European bureaucracy also appear to be developing their own working rela-
tionships with national governments, or at least with relevant components of national
governments. Likewise, individuals and organizations in the national bureaucracies are
promoting their own relationships and their own policy goals with organizations in Brus-
sels. At times, policies with little support within a nation (such as environmental protec-
tion in Britain) may have a great deal of support in Brussels. While these developments in
the EU may lead to the diminution of national dominance over policy, it also raises the
prospect that the European government may have to ght the government against sub-
government battle familiar at the national level.
4
It will be important to remember
throughout this discussion that all these games are occurring simultaneously and that
strategies adopted in one may have real consequences for outcomes in another.
5
The National Basis of EU Politics
It would be misleading to analyze institutional and policymaking changes in Europe
solely from the perspective of the European Union and its institutions. We must remain
aware of the role that the member states have played and will continue to play in the inte-
gration process. Furthermore, policy choices made by the member states are, to some ex-
tent, conditioned by events in their own international economic and political environ-
ments. Hence, it would also be incorrect to assess regional change without considering
what has been occurring outside Western Europe. The European Union is becoming a
major actor on the international stage, but it has yet to supplant fully the nation-states
that belong to it or to achieve its own capacity to steer the international political econ-
omy.
6
One of the most signicant developments for the EU, which is rooted in domestic
politics and policy management, has been a tendency for many regimes to minimize the
role performed by central governments in delivering government services and even policy-
making. At the least extreme level, this has involved decentralizing many policymaking
and implementation activities to subnational governments, even in states such as France
and Spain that historically have been highly centralized.
7
At a more extreme level, a num-
ber of governments have undertaken to supply public services through paragovernmental
or third party organizations.
8
At the most extreme level, many European governments
have privatized a number of public corporations and public services.
9
Such privatization
has been carried out by governments with traditions of tatist management of their
economies and societies as well as those with histories of laissez-faire policies toward the
economy.
The principal question that these changes have generated is whether the nation-state
remains of central importance. Numerous governments, and a particularly large number
of politicians, have opted for a governing style that permits the private sector to make an
increasing number of decisions that once would have been made by government. If govern-
ment is not the best way to make policy decisionsespecially about the economythen
does it perhaps not matter so much who constitutes the government? Hence, devaluing
the role of national governments may make the creation of a more powerful European
government of some sort more palatable to politicians and citizens alike.
It may be that governing in the twenty-rst century is not so much undesirable as it
is impossible or at least difcult. Interdependence has become a buzzword to describe on-
going changes in the international political economy, and it contains a considerable ele-
ment of truth. National governments, or even large blocs like the EU, are increasingly in-
capable of determining their own economic futures. As a consequence, being compelled
to take responsibility as a national government is often like being handed a poisoned
chalice; taking credit for the good times in the :,,cs, :,ocs, and :,;cs makes it difcult
not to be blamed for the economic slowdown of the :,cs and early :,,cs. Adopting a
more cooperative attitude toward Europe and permitting more economic decisions to be
made in Brussels is a means of avoiding blame for anything that goes wrong and perhaps
making a few things go right. Indeed, politics in this era has been described as blame
avoidance rather than credit claiming.
10
Federalism
We can begin a discussion of institutional politics in the European Union with the insti-
tutional option that most clearly addresses the issue of the national game. To many adher-
ents of European integration, the political situation of the EU appears ripe for a federal
solution. Federalists such as the Italian politician Altiero Spinelli are not content with
maintaining a regional system whose political foundations remain a number of indepen-
dent states. Instead, they advocate the transformation of the EU into a full political union
as a means to transcend nationalism and achieve a common European identity.
11
German
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer sketched a similar vision in a speech in August :ccc
when he declared: We are passing the phase of the Confederation and entering the pe-
riod of the constitutional process and federation. Either Europe will have a weak central
body and a confederation of independent states, and that will not work. Or we will move
ahead to a real European constitution and a new European central body.
12
To such ac-
tivists, a federal arrangement appears to be a natural mechanism for accommodating the
existing nation-states while still providing a superordinate government for the entire
aggregation.
If there is indeed to be a federal solution to the European political question, an im-
mediate question arises concerning what type of federalism is meant. For Anglo-Saxons,
the contractual and constitutional model of federalism appears to be the most logical an-
swer. According to this approach, the component governments, acting as independent
and autonomous units, initially agree to establish a new level of government and grant
certain specied powers to that new, superordinate entity. The granting of those powers is
never sufciently clear to prevent a need for future elaboration and interpretation, but
some attempt would be made to allocate powers and to form a binding and enduring
contract. Where such federal arrangements have been established, as in the United States
and Australia, political power has tended to gravitate toward the highest level of govern-
ment, in part because of the availability of nancial resources and in part because of
what is the future of eu politics? 527
spillover effects. These national outcomes are analogous to the same effects deemed im-
portant by functional and neofunctionalist theorists of supranational integration.
13
That
is, in most federal systems, it quickly becomes apparent that only the higher level of
government is capable of regulating the numerous interactions and externalities that re-
sult from the independent actions of individuals and subnational governments.
The Subsidiarity Principle
For many continental Europeans, federalism may have a very different connotation, one
based on the concept of subsidiarity in Roman Catholic social thought. This term rst
appeared in Pope Pius XIs Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno (:,,:) and means, ac-
cording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the principle that a central authority should
have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effec-
tively at a more immediate or local level.
14
In other words, all actions in social and polit-
ical life should be performed by the smallest possible unit of government. The subsidiar-
ity principle implies a more organic view of society and political life than does the more
mechanistic and legalistic approach of Anglo-Saxon federalism. A leading European ad-
vocate of subsidiarity was former Commission President Delors.
The subsidiarity principle is likely to serve as the basis for a European federation.
Commission documents repeatedly cite the term, and the Treaty on Political Union ex-
plicitly afrms that the Union shall respect the principle of subsidiarity.
15
As a logic of
federal structures and political processes, subsidiarity implies that a supranational EU
government would do as little as possible, leaving most functions to the national and per-
haps especially subnational governments. It may even imply that as many things as possi-
ble would be done by private and voluntary organizations rather than by any level of
government. This approach would appear to give the subnational governments an impor-
tant place in European government, even though the European Court has ruled that it is
the responsibility of national governments to make subnational governments conform to
European policy. The concept of subsidiarity also leaves a great deal of room for interpre-
tation, most obviously with respect to the lowest possible unit of government that
should perform a given function.
From the perspective of the national game being played in Europe, these alternative
visions of federalism have rather different implications. The Anglo-Saxon version would
place the nation-state in the central position in bargaining over the shape of a future po-
litical entity in Europe. In essence, the nation-states would bargain over how much of
their sovereignty they would be willing to grant to the European Union in exchange for
how much benet they would derive from the coordination of policies, reduced trade
barriers, and direct subsidies for some sectors (e.g., agriculture and less developed re-
gions). In the continental conception of federalism with its emphasis on subsidiarity, the
nation-states are important but are only one among many sets of institutions that have a
right to participate in the bargaining process. The subsidiarity approach, therefore, would
permit the EU to deal directly with subnational governments, interest groups, and citi-
zens without having to be overly concerned with the rights of nation-states. Of course,
the EU is already involved with relationships circumventing national governments, so the
acceptance of subsidiarity as the dening principle of federalism might only institutional-
ize and legitimize current practices.
Although federalism and other ideas about intergovernmental relations are usually
discussed in terms of the political relationships among the political units, we should also
note that these alternatives may have consequences for the other games being played
within the EU. In particular, the acceptance of the continental version of federalism might
encourage the development of picket fence federalism and intergovernmental relations
similar to established practices in the United States.
16
These patterns could develop under
other more formal models of federalism (as indeed they have), but they appear more
likely with the continental version. If a nation-state comparable to the federal system in
the United States has no special claims to bargaining on behalf of its constituent units, it
would be easy for a government in Brussels to seek out smaller units where policy can be
made and implemented. Those units could be political (e.g., local governments) or func-
tional (e.g., interest groups, businesses). In any case, policymaking would be likely to de-
velop along functional lines, with important linkages forged between Brussels and the
smaller units. This would, in turn, enhance the powers of the DGs within the Commis-
sion or any other bureaucratic structures that manage interactions with the public and
private entities that actually deliver services.
If the pattern of intergovernmental relations within the European Union assumes a
functional style in which the intermediate political institutions (in this case nations) can
be virtually bypassed, then most vertical constitutional models of federalism would ap-
pear to be inapplicable. In their place, something more like the policy community ap-
proach would seem to make greater sense for understanding policymaking relationships.
This suggests that any top-down conception of intergovernmental relations dominated
by the center and involving the equivalent of diplomatic relations between the levels of
government would not be an appropriate analytical approach. Instead, problems de-
manding consideration would appear to bubble up more than trickle down, and multi-
lateral negotiations involving all or several nation-states would be an appropriate means
of problem solving. Moreover, the shift in the general approach to European policymak-
ing from harmonization to mutual recognition means that there would be less need for
close coordination and control from the center. So long as the constituent units act as
they are expected (comparable to the practice of full faith and credit in the United
States), the center would have less need to impose Union rules and standards from above.
The European Polity
In a European Union requiring unanimity among the members on almost all issues, all
countries could expect to be heard and to have a substantial inuence over policies. They
could therefore also afford to bargain very hard for their national interests, with only
goodwill and the rather intangible commodity political inuence as the possible costs.
Such a political phase of European integration occurred from the late :,,cs through the
early :,;cs, which was a period of largely sustained afuence. Afuence meant that coun-
tries could extract substantial side payments if they conceded on a point that other
members of the Union (and perhaps most of all the Commission itself ) wanted to have
approved. After the adoption of the Single Europe Act in :,o, however, the advent of
qualied majority voting in most Council decisions initiated a different political dynamic
that may enable the Union to ameliorate some of the decision-making problems apparent
on the national level of decision making in some of the larger member countries. This dy-
namic appears similar to the politics of smaller European democracies that seek to accom-
modate a wide range of interests within potentially fragile political systems; Martin
Heisler and Robert Kvavik have referred to this pattern as the European polity.
17
The fundamental dynamic of the European polity is that the members must adopt
more constrained strategies to remain active and effective participants in the political
process. In this model of a political system, continuing to play the game is as important a
component of politics as winning or losing any single decision. Nation-states within the
EU almost certainly would never be excluded from participation in the same way that in-
terest groups might be in a single nation, but they can be isolated and excluded from the
informal stages of policymaking. Participation in bargaining and coalition formation have
become crucial now that unanimity is no longer required in Council decisions, and a
number of possible winning coalitions exist concerning any policy under deliberation. In
a policymaking setting such as this, nations may be willing to accommodate the interests
of others to ensure both their continued access to the early and often determinative stages
of negotiations and their right to be consulted throughout the policymaking process. Bar-
gaining too implacably for national interest under majority rule ultimately may produce
formal inclusion for a nation in less important decisions, but exclusion when it counts the
most. Unanimity is still required in some instances, especially in responding to amend-
ments by the European Parliament to common positions adopted by the Council, but the
changes in the rules are sufcient to produce some rethinking of the policymaking dy-
namics within Europe.
It could be argued that the events surrounding the European Council meeting in Mi-
lan in :,, constituted a rst step toward instituting a European polity system. During
the summit, which addressed proposals for European political union, Britain isolated it-
self by resisting a decision to convene an intergovernmental conference to deliberate ap-
propriate measures. Britains isolation was especially pronounced because of close political
cooperation between France and Germany in Community affairs.
18
In response, Prime
Minister Thatcher began to modify her more extreme stances and play a somewhat more
positive and conciliatory role. Similarly, Greece has also modied some of its reservations
about the completion of the internal market to minimize the risk of isolation. Such evi-
dence is far from conclusive, but it does point to the potential for an evolutionary new
political dynamic within the Union.
In particular, if the European polity model is appropriate for the EU, it would feed
back into at least one of the institutional decision-making processes discussed earlier by
making coalition formation appear a great deal more like coalition politics in a nation-
state. As Heisler and Kvavik argue, a central dynamic component of the European polity
model is that political actors have more to gain by being co-opted into the encompassing
system than by going it alone.
19
This utilitarian balance is almost always in favor of par-
ticipation in the decision-making process by interest groups within nations, and the same
would be true for national actors within the EU if membership were perceived to create
greater benets than the costs imposed. Thus, participation in the EU can be analyzed in
terms of the costs and benets of national involvement, with an increasing number of de-
cision-making situations becoming positive-sum games. Likewise, some of the pressures
in favor of economic and monetary union have come from widely publicized reports of
projected large-scale economic benets arising from full integration.
20
The country that
has questioned this positive balance most often is Britain, but events since the Milan
summit and the Labour Partys victory in the :,,; general election have converged to
yield a more positive British approach toward Community affairs. Finally, another com-
ponent of the dynamic of the European polity model is that actors, once they are involved
in joint decision making, must bear some responsibility for the actions taken by the polit-
ical unit. In other words, participation is traded for complicity in decisions. This com-
plicity means that national governments, to be credible, will have few opportunities of re-
turning home and blaming Brussels. They are now a part of Brussels even more than
perhaps in the past.
The European polity model appears to some extent contrary to the bureaucratic pol-
itics model described below. In particular, the European polity model depends more on
the individual nation-states deciding that the benets of participation in the system for
them outweigh the costs of membership. This requires them to make overt choices about
continued involvement in, and acceptance of, policy decisions made within the EU.
While the bureaucratic politics style of governing, and the regulatory policies associated
with it, seek to disguise decisions and obfuscate the values involved in choices, the Euro-
pean politics model is a more political model that emphasizes understanding on the part
of policymakers and their need to make a choice about participation and acquiescence. It
may be that policymaking in the EU oscillates between large-scale politics and small-scale
increments of regulation and that no single model is able to capture the totality of mo-
tives and processes involved in building Europe.
Bureaucratic Politics
A third, and very promising, approach to understanding policymaking dynamics within
the institutions of the European Union is bureaucratic politics. This approach is closely
linked with many ideas such as the picket-fence federalism mentioned above, but it con-
siders the linkages existing within a policy area from the perspective of the bureaucratic
organizations involved rather than from the perspective of the national or subnational
governments.
21
According to the politics of bureaucracy approach, the component units of a
government administrative apparatus are assumed to be quasi-autonomous actors pursuing
their own goals through the policymaking process. Many or most of those goals may be
held in common with other organizations in government, but some are conned to each
particular organization. All, or virtually all, of the organizations will assume that they are
indeed serving the public interest by promoting their more individualized goals. Further,
some organizations goals are purposive, being concerned with achieving policy goals (in-
cluding in this case greater integration within the EU), while other goals may be reexive,
having to do primarily with enhancing the power and prestige (or at a minimum survival)
of the organization itself.
22
In the case of reexive goals, it may be difcult to distinguish
the individual goals of key members from the collective goals of their organizations.
Bureaucratic politics may be occurring within the European Union on two levels at
once. The rst is on the level of the major institutions: the Council, the Commission, and
the European Parliament taken as a whole. The goals pursued by some of these institu-
tions may be attainable only if certain changes occur in the overall structure of the Euro-
pean Union. If the European Parliament is to achieve greater power, for instance, it may
be successful only if the EU itself obtains greater power vis--vis the national govern-
ments. Similarly, the Commission may perceive the Council as its natural rival for power
and authority in the sense that both are playing a zero-sum bureaucratic game in a com-
petitive quest for greater or lesser European integration. In short, if the bureaucratic poli-
tics model is to be applied to interorganizational interactions and change, then the ana-
lyst must be clear when purposive and reexive goals are being pursued (if the two types
can be separated) and what the principal actors are attempting to gain through their in-
teractions with other institutions.
The president of the Commission has also become a central player in EU decision
making and the process of institutional change. The presidents potential role as a politi-
cal catalyst became highly visible during Delorss tenure in ofce, but previous presidents
also played major roles in dening the nature and speed of progress toward European so-
lutions to policy problems.
23
From the perspective of bureaucratic politics, the question
arises whether the institutional goals of the presidency are compatible with specic policy
goals. By attempting to focus attention on himself, the power of the Commission, and
very broad goals of supranationalism, the president may be able to minimize potential na-
tional opposition to specic policy initiatives within the Council. Likewise, focusing on
the presidency may help reduce fragmentation within the Commission itself; Delors ap-
peared to have accepted this role at times to the exclusion of other members of the Com-
mission. For example, he issued some Commission papers virtually without prior consul-
tation with other commissioners, and he made some of the most important economic
policy issues his personal concern rather than that of the commissioner nominally in
charge of economic affairs.
The president of the Commission is far from the only actor in the game of bureau-
cratic politics. Another principal aspect of the game involves coalition formation over
specic issues and agendas. At this level, we move into the second level of bureaucratic
politics in the European Union: the politics of functional policy areas. In organizational
terms, each policy area is populated with its allotment of organizationsincluding DGs
and their commissioners, committees in the European Parliament, and representatives of
affected interests. As we discussed in chapter ,,, the formation of coalitions is crucial for
determining the nal shape of European policies. Given the decentralized structure of
policymaking in Europe, with multiple actors involved at the European stage and even
more involved at the national level, it should not be surprising if policies were the prod-
uct of loosely organized and exible policy communities. Once a coalition is formed
within a particular policy area, another coalition must be constructed across EU institu-
tions as well as with the relevant actors in national governments.
Several important features of the fragmentation of policymaking and politics in
Union affairs stand out. First, coalition formation and bargaining occur at several points
throughout the policy process. This process involves interest groups and functional min-
istries on the national level of politics, Europe-wide interest groups, and relevant Direc-
torates-General in Brussels. Extensive discussions occur within the Commission itself
concerning, rst, the allocation of a policy among relevant commissioners and DGs and,
second, policy coordination. Often, consultations are required with the advisory commit-
tees organized by the Commission for various policy areas as well. Then, at both the na-
tional and supranational levels, negotiations necessarily involve functional government
organizations (such as ministries) and other government institutions (such as the Com-
mission). Moreover, discussions can take place between the national government and the
EU at either the functional and/or general political level. Thus, EU policymaking is
highly interactive, with preliminary decisions, bargaining over policy ideas, and so forth,
constantly owing throughout the system. Such a fragmented arrangement for policy-
making provides multiple points of access and may make coherent policymaking difcult.
Whether the European or the national bureaucracy proves the dominant actor, the
policymaking process manifests characteristics of decentralization and outcomes bene-
cial to interest groups typical of bureaucratic politics. Institutionally, the actors involved
will strive to preserve their own powers, perhaps even in the face of a reduction in the ca-
pacity of the resulting arrangements to make good policy for the European Union as a
whole.
The fragmentation of policymaking may be further increased through the increased
powers of the European Parliament under the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty
of Amsterdam. First, the addition of co-decision provisions discussed in chapter ,: have
already transformed the Parliament into an actor that must be reckoned with in almost all
policy decisions. If nothing else, a parliamentary majority is theoretically able to form
blocking coalitions with other actors such as single nation-states in cases when unanimity
is required to override parliamentary wishes. This makes decision making more difcult
and simultaneously provides additional incentives for a national actor to pursue action
through bureaucratic channels (perhaps at home) rather than through more overtly
politicized European institutions. Of course, this option is not available for all issues, but
it may be for many; and a seemingly slower accretion of decisions may prove faster for a
member country in the long run than attempting more dramatic action through the
Council.
The Council retains, after consultation with Parliament, the nal powers of decision,
but the Commission has an increasing number of weapons at its disposal and apparently
increasing inuence. This is in part a function of the sheer volume of decisions associated
with both the single market and EMU. The Council is a well-articulated structure, and
with the assistance of its working groups it can monitor the activities of the Commission.
But the Council still cannot compete with the expertise available to the Commission and
its DGs. Moreover, the Commission sets the agenda for decisions, albeit after extensive
discussion with the relevant national and European actors. The linkages between the DGs
and various components of national governments tend to be functionally specic, so pro-
fessional and technical criteria often guide decisions more than national concerns that
may arise in the Council. Finally, the Commission can claim the moral high ground of
being the defenders of Europe and standing above national concerns.
The emphasis on bureaucratic politics and policymaking in the European Union also
has important implications for the character of future European policies. Decision mak-
ing in the Commission is a crucially important element of policymaking in the EU, and
its increasing importance made the transition to a single market during the early :,,cs
that much easier. In essence, a shift has occurred from the Councils earlier preoccupation
with large-scale issues such as budgetary disputes to greater attention to regulatory direc-
tives and indirect intervention by the European Union in national markets. Commission
regulations over competition policy as well as recent court cases involving a variety of top-
ics have supplanted the budget, at least for now, as the most visible actions emanating
from Brussels. As previously noted, regulatory policymaking has the advantage of obscur-
ing who wins and who loses in the policies; the outcomes are uncertain and widely vari-
able within individual countries. Issues of revenue collection and spending, however,
make redistributive issues readily apparent to national participants. Therefore, reliance on
bureaucratic decision making and regulative rulemaking should, everything else being
equal, make the transition to economic (though not necessarily monetary and political)
union less divisive.
Although less divisive, a pattern of bureaucratic rulemaking may not necessarily pro-
duce the best objective policy decisions for Europe or the Europeans. If the preceding
description of fragmented policymaking is accurate, policymaking in the EU is beginning
to bear a substantial resemblance to policymaking in the U.S. government. The tradi-
tional characterization of iron triangles in American government may have been re-
placed by big sloppy hexagons and a wider range of interests participating in decisions,
but the tendency to divide and subdivide policy domains persists.
24
In the European con-
text, this fragmentation is heightened by an ongoing shift from harmonization to mutual
recognition of policies and standards as the standard for measuring successful integration.
No longer will a common standard necessarily prevail if there can be agreement for each
member country to accept the laws and standards of the others. In addition, qualied
majority voting in the Council means that member countries have less incentive to pack-
age decisions together to produce agreement. As a result, an important control over policy
decisions may well be undermined. Finally, policymaking is further fragmented among
policy communities within both the EU itself and in the national policymaking systems.
As a result, policymaking may have become somewhat easier but relatively ineffective in
producing coherence and uniformity. The political question that immediately arises in-
volves appropriate tradeoffs between the value of making decisions that are simply Euro-
pean and the value of making the best possible decisions in the name of Europe.
Fritz Scharpf has characterized the problem of coherence in decision making in Eu-
rope in terms of a joint decision trap.
25
His argument is that policymaking in Germany
and other federal systems requires the need to obtain agreement between at least two lev-
els of government and therefore tends to produce suboptimal decisions. This problem is
exacerbated in the context of European policymaking when unanimity is required among
the constituent units before a decision can be reached. Scharpf argues further that this
pattern of joint decision making enables the constituent units to extract resources from
the center, resulting in a high level of cost relative to output in the system as a whole and
incoherent outputs, since policies are adopted to satisfy particular constituent units. Par-
tially offsetting such dangers in the European Union are several crucial features of central
policymaking, including the capacity of the Commission and its component units to
structure the decision-making agenda and the move to qualied majority voting in the
Council. Scharpf s analytic perspective, however, does raise interesting and important
questions about the institutional dynamics of European policymaking.
Finally, if we return to the games metaphor we used earlier, we can see a number of
games nested within the overall process of decision making. National games are played at
the highest level of EU politics by member countries seeking to gain as much as possible,
in both nancial and policy terms, and European institutions attempting to press their
common agendas against those of the individual nation-states. Games are simultaneously
played within each of the European institutions, with functional differentiation encour-
aging contests over the allocation of money and policymaking attention. Fragmentation
may result in policy patterns that are not well coordinated unless the Commission presi-
dent or the Commission as a whole can intervene. After decisions are made at the Euro-
pean level, political games continue in the form of interactions among EU institutions,
member states, and interest groups as various players develop strategies for policy imple-
mentation. In short, it makes sense to think of policymaking within Europe as highly dif-
ferentiated and functionally specic. The great decisions about Europe may be made at
the level of heads of government and foreign ministers, but much of what happens after a
European summit concludes depends on less glamorous bureaucratic interaction and bar-
gaining.
Pending Changes in the EU
Recent and pending political acts will inevitably affect the multitiered games that charac-
terize EU politics. The rst concerns the attainment of economic and monetary union,
including the introduction of a common currency among the states that make up Eu-
roland. EMU brought with it the creation of an important new power structure in the
form of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. The authority vested in the ECB to for-
mulate monetary policy, determine interest rates, and issue the euro as hard currency
means a signicant step toward further deepening of supranational institutions. Mem-
ber states retain an indirect capacity to inuence monetary policy through the member-
ship of the governors of their national banks on the ECBs Executive Board, but the legal
independence of the ECB signicantly enhances the EUs central authority over member
states as policy actors. Given the political dynamics associated with decisions affecting
EMU, the ECBs role is better understood in terms of new institutional analysis rather
than bureaucratic politics.
Moreover, EMU has introduced an unprecedented cleavage between ins and outs
within the Community. The twelve states belonging to EMU comprise an inner core of
members with a more privileged status in EU affairs than Britain, Denmark, and Sweden,
which have chosen (at least for now) to remain outside. This dualism not only yields
greater complexity in the interconnected games played by national and institutional ac-
tors in an increasingly differentiated Community but also dramatically affects domestic
policy agendas in the out nations, as competing actors debate the potential costs and
benets of future membership in EMU. Future referendums on this issue in Britain and
Sweden are likely to prove highly divisive and possibly detrimental to the EU.
Additional challenges to the EU are associated with the pending admission of new
states and requisite institutional changes to accommodate their membership in the Coun-
cil, the Commission, and the European Parliament. In response to democratic and eco-
nomic transitions in the former communist countries of Central and East Europe, the
EU embarked on an ambitious program of bilateral and multilateral economic assistance
to the region beginning as early as :,,. A series of Europe Agreements was concluded
with a number of Central European nations in the early :,,cs that established a policy
framework for increased economic cooperation and cultural exchange with the EU. These
efforts led to an afrmation by the European Council at a meeting in Copenhagen in
June :,,, that the associated countries in central and eastern Europe that so desire shall
become members of the European Union. Accession will take place as soon as an associ-
ated country is able to assume the obligations of membership by satisfying the economic
and political conditions required.
26
These conditions include the attainment of institu-
German euro notes and coins are readied for distribution prior to the : January :oo: date of issue of the new
currency in all EMU countries. (AP/Wide World Photos)
tions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protec-
tion of minorities; the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capac-
ity to cope with competitive pressures and forces within the Union; and the ability to
take on the obligation of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, eco-
nomic and monetary union.
27
Following extended negotiations between the Commis-
sion and Central European nations over terms of accession to the EU, the European
Council endorsed the prospective membership of ten Central European countries (plus
Cyprus and Malta in the Mediterranean) at a summit in Helsinki in February :ccc. They
include the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria,
and the three Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).
Various factors have delayed the admission of the applicant nations, among them the
inability of some of them to meet the Copenhagen criteria for membership and concern
among existing EU members about the economic costs to themselves of accession by less-
developed countries to the East. Nonetheless, the EU remains committed to expansion
if not as early as leaders in the applicant nations (notably Poland) would wish, then by
mid-decade or possibly several years beyond. This aspiration was the major motivation
for convening the intergovernmental conference on institutional reform that culminated
in the Treaty of Nice in December :ccc.
An expansion of the European Union from fteen members to potentially twenty-
seven has inevitable consequences for the composition of the European Commission as
well as the arithmetic of qualied majority voting in the Council. The larger member
states (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) conceded that they could not continue
to claim two commissioners apiece because a vastly expanded Commission would prove
institutionally unwieldy, but in compensation they demanded a reallocation of votes in
their favor in QMV. An agreement on the precise terms of such a reallocation eluded EU
member states in negotiations leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam and nearly caused fail-
ure on the eve of the European Council meeting in Nice in December :ccc. At issue was
French insistence on voting parity with Germany despite the latters much larger popula-
tion. In the end, German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder yielded to the French demand
declaring after a presummit meeting with French President Jacques Chirac that We have
agreed that we will agree.
28
The result was a package agreement to limit the number of commissioners to one
from each of the member states and to modify the distribution of weighted votes in an
expanded Community. As table ,,.: (p. ,,) indicates, the present number of votes under
QMV will increase from ; to ,, in the post-Nice era. The four largest member states
will each be allocated twenty-nine votes (in place of ten); Spain and Poland will have
twenty-seven votes apiece; and the remaining states will receive from fourteen to three,
depending on the size of their population. A future qualied majority will require ,,
votes (instead of o:), while the number of votes comprising a blocking minority will in-
crease from twenty-six to ninety-one.
Participants in the Nice summit agreed to equivalent adjustments in the membership
of the European Parliament. The total number of MEPs will increase from o:o at present
to ;,: to accommodate the new members. Within this total Germany will retain the
largest delegation with ,, MEPs, followed by France, Britain, and Italy (each with ;:,
constituting a decrease of 15 compared to the present EP). The other members will be al-
located a declining number of seats from ,c to ,, based on population (see table ,,.:).
The realization of these reforms depends, rst, on whether the member states actu-
ally ratify the Treaty of Nice through a combination of domestic legislation and national
referendums; and, second, on the successful conclusion of the accession process in a
timely fashion. The expansion of the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament, cou-
pled with modications in weighted voting in the Council, will inevitably make decision
Table 35.1 Treaty of Nice: Qualied Majority Voting
Votes Percentage of EU population
Country Current Post-Nice Current EU-:;
Germany 10 29 21.90 17.05
France 10 29 15.74 12.25
Britain 10 29 15.81 12.31
Italy 10 29 15.38 11.97
Spain 8 27 10.51 8.18
Poland 0 27 0.00 8.03
Romania 0 14 0.00 4.67
Netherlands 5 13 4.20 3.27
Greece 5 12 2.81 2.18
Czech Republic 0 12 0.00 2.09
Belgium 5 12 2.72 2.12
Hungary 0 12 0.00 2.09
Portugal 5 12 2.66 2.07
Sweden 4 10 2.36 1.83
Bulgaria 0 10 0.00 1.71
Austria 4 10 2.15 1.67
Slovakia 0 7 0.00 1.12
Denmark 3 7 1.41 1.10
Finland 3 7 1.37 1.07
Ireland 3 7 0.99 0.77
Lithuania 0 7 0.00 0.76
Latvia 0 4 0.00 0.50
Slovenia 0 4 0.00 0.41
Estonia 0 4 0.00 0.30
Cyprus 0 4 0.00 0.15
Luxembourg 2 4 0.11 0.08
Malta 0 3 0.00 0.07
Totals 87 345
QMV 62 255
Blocking Minority 26 91
Source: Delegation of the European Commission, Fact Sheet on the Nice Treaty: Qualied Majority
Voting and the Members of the European Parliament (Washington, D.C., December 2001).
making more cumbersome in the future. These changes, however, will not alter the fun-
damental nature of simultaneous forms of gamesmanship involving multiple national,
subnational, institutional, and group actors described above. At the same time, new pat-
terns of coalition bargaining and formation are likely to emerge as new member states
join the EU. One possibility is that the nations of Central Europe will coalesce as a bloc,
voting together on behalf of common regional interests such as agricultural and develop-
ment aid. Alternatively, they may deviate in their national orientations toward EU poli-
cies in support of policy positions favored by existing member states with which they
share strong historical, economic, and political afnities. A hypothetical example would
be an informal Baltic coalition made up of the three Scandinavian member states and
the three Baltic republics.
Table 35.2 Treaty of Nice: Number of Members of the European Parliament
Country Current EU-:;
Germany 99 99
France 87 72
Britain 87 72
Italy 87 72
Spain 64 50
Poland 0 50
Romania 0 33
Netherlands 31 25
Greece 25 22
Czech Republic 0 20
Belgium 25 22
Hungary 0 20
Portugal 25 22
Sweden 22 18
Bulgaria 0 17
Austria 21 17
Slovakia 0 13
Denmark 16 13
Finland 15 13
Ireland 15 12
Luthuania 0 12
Latvia 0 8
Slovenia 0 7
Estonia 0 6
Cyprus 0 6
Luxembourg 6 6
Malta 0 5
Totals 626 732
Source: Delegation of the European Commission, Fact Sheet on the Nice Treaty: Qual-
ied Majority Voting and the Members of the European Parliament (Washington,
D.C., December 2001).
Toward a Multispeed Europe
Three observations summarize our analysis of the European Union. The rst is that insti-
tutions matter. The formal institutions established by the Treaty of Rome, the Single Eu-
ropean Act, the Treaty on European Union, and other basic agreements, and the rules
governing the relationships of those institutions, have established the parameters of polit-
ical action within the EU. The complexity built into institutional relationships has been
increased by the structural elaboration that they all have undergone in response to the
pressure of increased workloads, the attainment of a single market and EMU, and the
most recent round of EU enlargement. These institutions play a crucial role in the con-
tinuing process of closer political and economic union among the member states. More
than theoretical concepts such as functionalism or neofunctionalism, institutional rela-
tionships within the European Union have dened the pace of integration and the char-
acter of the emerging European political and economic system. It is especially important
to understand that the institutions are not static structures that simply process external
policy demands but, instead, constitute a dynamic factor of change in their own right.
29
At the same time, European institutions are not the only things that matter. The
Council, Commission, and European Parliament only establish the parameters within
which individuals and groups function. Changes in the institutional rules of the game,
such as the transition from unanimity to qualied majority voting in most Council deci-
sions, matter to the extent that the actors permit them to matter. If preexisting patterns of
decision making persistas was the case with the Luxembourg compromise of :,oo
then formal changes in rulemaking will make very little difference. In particular, there is
no institutional basis for predicting the inuence of individual leaders in moving the
process of integration forward or retarding it. It appears that the use of qualied majority
voting has had the desired impact and perhaps an even greater impact than anticipated.
Furthermore, the complex patterns of consultation and bureaucratic involvement in policy-
making that have been created could not have been predicted adequately from formal in-
stitutional patterns. Institutions do matter, but individual policymakers and informal un-
derstandings among the inhabitants of the institutions matter as well.
Our concluding observation is that the integration movement will necessarily pro-
ceed at multiple speeds in the real world of European economic and political develop-
ment. Not all of the EU member countries met the convergence criteria when the Union
entered its third phase of economic and monetary union in :,,,, and some otherwise
qualied nations have chosen to remain outside EMU. Given the different degrees of
willingness among the member states to commit fully to the union agenda, a prominent
member of Germanys Christian Democratic Union issued a discussion paper in :,, that
envisages the emergence of an EU core of nations comprising Germany, France, and the
Benelux countries that will attain further integration at a faster pace than a second group
of nations (notably Britain, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries).
30
Former French
Prime Minister Edouard Balladur similarly advocated the creation of a multitier Europe
comprising an inner circle that is better structured, monetary as well as military, a sec-
ond circle made up of the weaker EU countries, and a third circle of other European
states which would have security and economic links with the EU.
31
President Chirac
expressed a similar view in an address to the German parliament in June :ccc when he
urged Germany . . . to join France in spearheading a core group of European Union
countries that would move faster than others toward political and economic union.
Those countries that want to proceed further with integration, on a voluntary basis and
in specic areas, must be allowed to do so without being held back by those who, with
every right, do not want to proceed as quickly.
32
The dynamic interplay among multiple institutional, individual, and national actors
will continue to characterize the European Union as member states seek to balance con-
trasting visions of an ever closer union with citizen concerns about its democratic
decit. Especially in a more fully integrated and expanded but multitiered Union, poli-
tics will remain a multiplayer game with uncertain outcomes.
33
Notes
:. For an analytical overview of functionalism, neofunctionalism, and other theoretical perspectives on inte-
gration, see Charles Pentland, International Theory and Economic Integration (New York: Free Press, :,;:).
:. Paul Taylor, The New Dynamics of EC Integration in the :,cs, in The European Community and the
Challenge of the Future, ed. Juliet Lodge (London: Frances Pinter, :,,); and Richard Corbett, The Inter-
governmental Conference and the Single Europe Act, in The Dynamics of European Union, ed. Roy Pryce
(London: Croom Helm, :,;).
,. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New
York: Free Press, :,,).
. George Tsebelis, Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics (Berkeley: University of California
Press, :,,c).
,. Other games may also be played simultaneously. The member countries themselves are not homogeneous
actors, and subnational components, both public and private, may be using the EU as an arena to advance
their own purposes. Firms, for instance, may believe that greater European control of environmental pol-
icy would mean a less restrictive regulatory environment than national standards. Likewise, interest
groups that have been relatively unsuccessful at home may nd the European arena more congenial for
promoting their policy objectives.
o. John Fitzmaurice, European Community Decisionmaking: The National Dimension, in Institutions
and Policies of the European Community, ed. J. Lodge (London: Frances Pinter, :,,). Some scholars argue
that the integration process has actually strengthened the nation-states. See Stanley Hoffman, Reections
on the National State in Western Europe Today, Journal of Common Market Studies :: (:,:): ::,;.
;. Michael Keating, Does Regional Government Work? The Experience of Italy, France and Spain, Gover-
nance : (:,): ::c.
. Christopher Hood and Gunnar Folke Schuppert, Delivering Public Services in Western Europe (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, :,;).
,. C. de Croisset, Denationalisations (Paris: Economica, :,o); and Cento Veljanovski, Selling the State (Lon-
don: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, :,;).
:c. R. Kent Weaver, The Politics of Blame Avoidance, Journal of Public Policy o (:,o): ,;:,.
::. See Michael Burgess, Federalism and European Union (London: Routledge, :,,).
::. Quoted in New York Times, :o August :ccc.
:,. Robert E. Riggs and I. Jostein Mykletun, Beyond Functionalism (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, :,;,).
:. Select Committee on the European Committees, House of Lords, Economic and Monetary Union and Polit-
ical Union, vol. I, Report (London: HMSO, :,,c), :. The Select Committees report notes that sub-
sidiarity has frequently been used in federal Member States, notably with reference to the relationship
between the Lnder and the federal government in Germany. Its rst application in an EC document oc-
curred in the preamble to the European Parliaments Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union in
:,, which states: Intending to entrust common institutions, in accordance with the principle of sub-
sidiarity, only those powers required to complete successfully the tasks they may carry out more satisfacto-
rily than the States acting independently. Ibid.
:,. Article :: (ex B), Treaty on Political Union, ,.
:o. See Neil S. Wright, Understanding Intergovernmental Relations, ,d ed. (Pacic Grove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole,
:,). Picket-fence federalism refers to the tendency of interactions to develop among experts and ad-
ministrators along functional lines (e.g., health, education) rather than between political actors such as
presidents and state governors.
:;. Martin O. Heisler with Robert B. Kvavik, Politics in Europe: Structures and Processes in Some Postindustrial
Democracies (New York: David McKay, :,;).
:. Haig Simonian, The Privileged Partnership: Franco-German Relations in the European Community, :))
:), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, :,,).
:,. Heisler with Kvavik, Politics in Europe.
:c. Paolo Cechini et al., The European Challenge :)):: The Benets of a Single Market (Aldershot: Wildwood
House for the European Commission, :,).
::. The bureaucratic politics approach has been used to analyze both international and domestic politics. Im-
portant examples include Graham Allison, The Essence of Decisions (Boston: Little, Brown, :,;:), and An-
thony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, :,o;).
::. Lawrence B. Mohr, The Concept of Organizational Goal, American Political Science Review o; (:,;,):
;c:.
:,. Guy de Bassompierre, Changing the Guard in Brussels: An Insiders View of the EC Presidency (New York:
Praeger, :,).
:. Charles O. Jones, The United States Congress (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, :,:).
:,. Fritz W. Scharpf, The Joint Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration,
Public Administration oo (:,): :,,;.
:o. European Commission, The European Councils: Conclusions of the Presidency, :))::)), (Luxembourg: Of-
ce for Ofcial Publications of the European Communities, :,,,).
:;. Ibid. For an overview analysis of the EUs preaccession relations with Central and Eastern Europe, see
Bernt Schiller, M. Donald Hancock, and John Logue, The International Context of Economic and Po-
litical Transitions, in Transitions to Capitalism and Democracy in Russia and Central Europe: Achievements,
Problems, Prospects, ed. M. Donald Hancock and John Logue (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger,
:ccc), ,:,:o.
:. Quoted in Desmond Dinan and Sophie Vanhoonacker, IGC :ccc Watch (Part ): Long Live the IGC,
ECSA Review : (winter :cc:): :, :c::.
:,. The Treaty of Nice was to be ratied by the end of :cc:.
,c. Schubles CDU discussion paper, September :,,.
,:. Balladurs proposal in Figaro interview of ,c August :,,.
,:. New York Times, : June :ccc.
,,. New York Times, :, May :ccc.
For Further Reading
ANDERSON, SVEIN S., AND KJELL A. ELIASSEN, eds. Making Policy in Europe, :d ed. London: Sage,
:cc:.
AVERY, GRAHAM, AND FRASER CAMERON. The Enlargement of the European Union. Shefeld, U.K.:
Shefeld Academic Press, :,,.
BACHE, IAN. The Politics of European Union Regional Policy: Multi-Level Governance or Flexible Gatekeeping?
Shefeld, U.K.: Shefeld Academic Press, :,,.
BALDWIN, RICHARD E. Towards an Integrated Europe. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, :,,.
BURGESS, MICHAEL. Federalism and European Union. London: Routledge, :,,.
CORBETT, RICHARD. The European Parliaments Role in Closer EU Integration. New York: St. Martins, :,,.
COWLES, MARIA GREEN, AND MICHAEL SMITH, eds. The State of the European Union, vol. ,. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, :ccc.
DINAN, DESMOND. Ever Closer Union? An Introduction to the European Community, :d ed. Boulder, Colo.:
Lynne Rienner, :,,,.
, ed. Encyclopedia of the European Union, updated ed. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, :ccc.
DECKMYN, VEERLE, AND IANTHOMSON, eds. Openness and Transparency in the European Union. Maas-
tricht, Netherlands: European Institute of Public Administration, :,,.
EL-AGRAA, A.M., ed. The Economics of the European Community, th ed. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf,
:,,.
HAAS, ERNST B. Beyond the Nation State: Functionalism and International Organization. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, :,o.
. The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, :),o:),;. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, :,,.
HEISENBERG, DOROTHEE. The Mark of the Bundesbank. Germanys Role in European Monetary Coopera-
tion. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, :,,,.
HENDERSON, KAREN, ed. Back to Europe: Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union. London:
UCL Press, :,,,.
HIX, SIMON. The Political System of the European Union. New York: St. Martins, :,,,.
IFESTOS, P. European Political Cooperation: Towards a Framework of Supranational Diplomacy. Aldershot: Ave-
bury, :,;.
JONES, ROBERT A. The Politics and Economics of the European Union: An Introductory Text. Cheltenham,
U.K., and Brookeld, Vt.: Edward Elgar, :,,o.
KAPTEYN, PAUL. The Stateless Market: The European Dilemma of Integration and Civilization. London and
New York: Routledge, :,,o.
KAY, A. The Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Oxon, U.K.: CABI Publishing, :,,.
KERR, ANTHONY J.C. The Common Market and How It Works, ,d ed. Oxford and New York: Pergamon, :,o.
LINDBERG, LEON, AND STUART SCHEINGOLD. Europes Would-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the Euro-
pean Community. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, :,;c.
LODGE, JULIET, ed. The European Community and the Challenge of the Future, :d ed. New York: St. Martins,
:,,,.
MCCORMICK, JOHN. The European Union: Politics and Policies, :d ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, :,,,.
MILWARD, ALAN S. The European Rescue of the Nation-State, :d ed. London and New York: Routledge, :ccc.
MORGAN, ROGER, AND CAROLINE BRAY. Partners and Rivals in Western Europe: Britain, France, and
Germany. Aldershot, England, and Brookeld, Vt.: Gower, :,o.
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:,,o.
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Appendix
Table A.1 National Election Outcomes: Percentage of Popular Support
France, :):); (National Assembly, First Ballot
UDF,
Year PCF Ecologists/Greens PS Other Centrists RPR FN Other
1962 21.9 12.4 21.6 33.7 10.3
1967 22.5 18.9 22.9 33.0 2.8
1968 20.0 16.5 20.8 38.0 4.6
1973 21.4 19.1 29.4 26.0 5.8
1978 20.6 2.0 22.8 26.1 22.8 0.3 9.7
1981 16.1 1.1 36.6 23.1 21.2 0.2 4.2
1986 9.7 1.2 31.3 18.8 26.8 9.8 4.5
1988 11.2 0.4 36.6 22.5 19.1 9.8 2.2
1993 9.2 7.6 20.3 24.1 20.4 12.4 6.0
1997 10.0 8.0 23.5 15.7 14.2 15.0 13.6
Note: Explanation of party abbreviations: PCF Communist Party of France; PS Socialist Party; UDF
Union for French Democracy (moderate liberals); RPR Rally for the Republic (Gaullists; moderate right);
FN National Front (radical right).
appendix 547
Federal Republic of Germany, :),))
Year Participation KPD/PDS Greens SPD FDP CDU/CSU Radical Right Other
1949 78.5 5.7 29.2 11.9 31.0 1.8 20.3
1953 86.0 2.3 28.8 9.5 45.2 1.1 13.1
1957 87.8 31.8 7.7 50.2 1.0 10.3
1961 87.7 36.2 12.8 45.3 0.8 5.7
1965 86.8 39.3 9.5 47.6 2.0 3.6
1969 86.7 0.6 42.7 5.8 46.1 4.3 0.5
1972 91.1 0.3 45.8 8.4 44.9 0.6 0.1
1976 90.7 0.4 42.6 7.9 48.6 0.3 0.2
1980 88.6 0.2 1.5 42.9 10.6 44.5 0.2 0.1
1983 89.1 5.6 38.2 7.0 48.8 0.5
1987 84.3 8.4 37.0 9.1 44.3 1.4
1990 77.8 2.4 5.1 33.5 11.0 43.8 2.1 0.2
1994 79.1 4.4 7.3 36.4 6.9 41.5 1.9 1.6
1998 82.2 5.1 6.7 40.8 6.2 35.1 3.0 3.0
Note: Explanation of party abbreviations: KPD/PDS: Communist Party of Germany/Party of Democratic
Socialism; SPD Social Democratic Party of Germany; FDP Free Democratic Party (moderate liberals);
CDU/CSU Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union; the radical right includes the NPD
(National Democratic Party of Germany) and the Republikaner (Republicans).
Italy, :),:oo:
PCI/ PSI/ MSI/
Year PRC Greens PDS PSU PSDI PRI DC/PPI PLI LN FI DN/AN Other
1948 31.0 7.1 2.5 48.5 3.8 2.0 5.1
1953 22.6 12.7 4.5 1.6 40.0 3.0 5.9 9.7
1958 22.7 14.2 4.5 1.4 42.4 3.5 4.8 6.5
1963 25.3 13.8 6.1 1.4 38.3 7.0 5.1 3.0
1968 26.9 14.5 2.0 39.1 5.8 4.5 7.2
1972 27.1 9.6 5.1 2.8 38.7 3.9 8.7 4.0
1976 34.4 9.6 3.4 3.1 38.7 1.3 6.1 3.3
1979 30.4 9.8 3.8 3.0 38.3 1.9 5.3 7.5
1983 29.9 11.4 4.1 5.1 32.9 2.9 6.8 6.9
1987 2.5 26.6 14.3 3.0 3.7 34.3 2.1 5.9 7.6
1992 5.6 2.8 16.1 13.4 2.7 4.4 29.7 2.8 8.7 5.4 8.2
1994 6.0 2.7 20.4 2.2 11.1 8.4 21.0 13.5 14.7
1996 Olive Tree Coalition Freedom Alliance
8.6 2.5 21.1 6.8
a
4.3
b
10.1 20.6 15.7 5.8
c
Olive Tree Coalition House of Freedoms
2001 38.69 42.52
Note: Explanation of party abbreviations: PRC Party of Communist Refoundation; PCI/PDS Italian Communist
Party/Democratic Party of the Left; PSI/PSU Italian Socialist Party/United Socialist Party; PSDI Italian Social
Democratic Party; PRI Italian Republican Party; DC/PPI Christian Democrats/Italian Popular Party; PLI
Italian Liberal Party; LN Northern League; FI Forza Italia! (Go Italy!); MSI/DN/AN Italian Socialist
Movement/National Right/National Alliance (neo-Fascist, but National Alliance professes to be ex-Fascist).
a
PPI/Prodi List.
b
Dini List.
c
Christian Democratic Center (CCD).
548 politics in europe
Sweden, :),,)
Year Type
a
VP MP SAP FP C M KDS NYD
b
1944 R 10.3 46.7 12.9 13.6 15.9
1946 C 11.2 44.4 15.6 13.6 14.9
1948 R 6.3 46.2 22.8 12.4 12.3
1950 C 4.9 48.6 21.7 12.3 12.3
1952 R 4.3 46.1 24.4 10.7 14.4
1954 C 4.8 47.4 21.7 10.3 15.7
1956 R 5.0 44.6 23.8 9.4 17.1
1958 R 3.4 46.2 18.2 12.7 19.5
1958 C 4.0 46.8 15.6 13.1 20.4
1960 R 4.5 47.8 17.5 13.6 16.5
1962 C 3.8 50.5 17.1 13.1 15.5
1964 R 5.2 47.3 17.0 13.2 13.7
1966 C 6.4 42.2 16.7 13.7 14.7
1968 R 3.0 50.1 14.3 15.7 12.9
1970 R 4.8 45.3 16.2 19.9 11.5
1973 R 5.3 43.6 9.4 25.1 14.3
appendix 549
United Kingdom, :),,:oo:
Year Participation Labour Liberals/SDP/Liberal Democrats Conservatives Other
1945 61.4 1.9 31.1 5.6
1950 83.6 46.1 9.1 43.4 1.4
1951 81.9 48.8 2.6 48.0 0.6
1959 78.7 43.8 5.9 49.4 0.9
1964 77.1 44.1 11.2 43.4 1.1
1966 75.8 42.9 7.5 41.9 1.7
1970 72.0 42.9 7.5 46.4 3.2
1974
Feb. 78.2 37.2 19.3 38.1 6.6
Oct. 72.8 39.3 18.3 35.8 5.5
1979 76.0 36.9 13.8 43.9 5.5
1983 71.8 27.6 25.4 42.4 4.6
1987 73.2 30.8 22.6 42.2 4.4
1992 77.7 34.4 17.9 41.9 5.7
1997 71.0 44.4 17.2 31.4 7.0
2001 59.4 42.2 18.8 32.7 5.4
Note: Explanation of party abbreviation: SDP Social Democratic Party. The Liberals and a majority of
Social Democrats merged in 1989 to form the Social Liberal Party.
Sweden, :),,) (continued)
Year Type
a
VP MP SAP FP C M KDS NYD
b
1976 R 4.8 42.7 11.1 24.1 15.6 1.4
1979 R 5.6 43.2 10.6 18.1 20.3 1.4
1982 R 5.6 45.6 5.9 15.5 23.6 1.9
1985 R 5.4 44.7 14.2 12.4 21.3
1988 R 5.7 5.5 43.9 12.0 11.9 17.9 2.9
1991 R 4.5 3.4 37.6 9.2 8.4 21.9 7.0 6.7
1994 R 6.2 4.1 45.3 7.2 7.7 22.4 4.1 1.2
1998 R 12.0 4.5 36.4 4.7 5.1 22.9 11.7
a
Type of election: R refers to Riksdag (parliamentary) elections; C refers to communal (county and municipal)
elections.
b
Explanation of party abbreviations: VP Left Party (Communists); MP Greens; SAP Social
Democratic Party; FP Peoples Party (Liberals); C Center; M Moderates (Conservatives); KDS
Christian Democrats; NYD New Democracy.
Table A.2 Distribution of Seats in National Legislatures
France, :):); (National Assembly)
Year PCF PS Radicals MRP Dem-Cen/UDF RPR Cons FN Other Total
1962 41 64 41 32 18 230 32 465
1967 72 118 7 52 191 7 470
1968 33 57 8 90 282 8 470
1973 73 89 15 75 178 15 11 473
1978 86 102 10 124 142 10 10 474
1981 43 268 10 59 80 10 14 474
1986 32 198 4 128 146 4 35 13 556
1988 24 260 8 130 123 8 1 9 555
1993 23 54 Greens 213 247 24 0 16 577
1997 38 241 7 108 134 14 1 34
a
577
a
Includes 21 diverse left-wingers, 12 Radical Socialists, and 1 nonpartisan.
Federal Republic of Germany, :),)) (Bundestag)
Year KPD/PDS Greens SPD FDP CDU/CSU Other Total
1949 15 131 52 139 65 402
1953 151 48 244 44 487
1957 169 41 270 17 497
1961 190 67 247 499
1965 202 49 245 496
1969 224 30 242 496
1972 230 41 225 496
1976 214 39 243 496
1980 228 54 237 497
1983 27 193 34 244 498
1987 42 186 46 223 497
1990 17 8 239 79 319 662
1994 30 49 252 47 294 672
1998 35 47 298 44 245 669
appendix 551
Italy, :),:oo: (Chamber of Deputies)
PCI/ PSI/ DC/ MSI/
Year PRC Greens PDS PSU PSDI PRI PPI PLI LN FI DN/AN Total
1948 183 33 9 305 19 6 574
1953 143 75 19 5 262 14 29 590
1958 140 84 22 6 273 17 24 596
1963 166 87 33 6 260 39 27 630
1968 177 91 9 266 31 24 630
1972 179 61 29 14 266 21 56 630
1976 228 58 15 14 262 5 35 630
1979 201 62 20 16 262 9 30 630
1983 198 73 23 29 225 16 42 630
1987 13 177 94 17 21 234 11 35 630
1992 35 16 107 92 16 27 206 17 55 34 630
1994 40 11 115 15 33 122 97 109 630
Others
1996 35 284
a
59 246
b
6 630
2001 11 184
a
368
b
a
Olive Tree Coalition (1997), Olive Tree (2001), consisting of the Democrats of the Left, the Greens, and various
centrist groups.
b
Freedom Alliance (1997), House of Freedoms (2001), consisting of Forza Italia!, the National Alliance, the
Northern League, and various center-right groups.
Sweden, :),,) (Riksdag)
Year VP MP SAP FP C MS KDS NYD Other Total
1944 15 115 26 35 39 230
1948 8 112 57 30 23 230
1952 5 110 58 26 31 230
1956 6 106 58 19 42 231
1958 5 111 38 32 45 231
1960 5 114 40 34 39 232
1964 8 113 42 33 32 5 233
1968 3 125 32 37 29 7 233
1970 17 163 58 71 41 350
1973 19 156 34 90 51 350
1976 17 152 39 86 55 349
1979 20 154 38 64 73 349
1982 20 166 21 56 86 349
1985 19 159 51 44
a
76 349
1988 21 20 156 44 42 66 349
1991 16 138 33 31 80 26 25 349
1994 22 18 162 26 27 80 14 349
1998 43 16 131 17 18 82 42 349
Note: Through 1968, the distribution of seats is shown for the former lower house (Second Chamber).
Elections from 1970 onward are to the unicameral Riksdag.
a
Includes one seat for the KDS.
United Kingdom, :),,:oo: (House of Commons)
Year Labour Liberals/SDP/Liberal Democrats Conservatives Other Total
1945 393 12 199 39 640
1950 315 9 298 3 625
1951 295 6 321 3 625
1955 277 6 344 3 630
1959 258 6 365 1 630
1964 317 9 304 630
1970 288 6 330 4 630
1974 (Feb.) 301 14 297 23 635
1974 (Oct.) 319 13 277 16 635
1979 269 11 339 16 635
1983 209 23 397 45 633
1987 229 22 375 24 650
1992 271 20 336 24 651
1977 419 46 165 29 659
2001 413 52 166 28 659
Table A.3 Postwar Executive Leadership
France, :),
Years Governing Party, Coalition President/Premier
President
195869 Gaullist De Gaulle
196974 Gaullist Pompidou
197481 Independent Republican Giscard dEstaing
198195 Socialist Mitterrand
1995 Gaullist Chirac
Parliament
195881 RPR UDF other centrists Debr, Pompidou, Couve de Murville,
Chabas-Delmas, Messmer, Chirac, Barre
198184 PS PCF Mauroy
198486 PS Fabius
198688 RPF UDF Chirac
198893 PS Rocard, Cresson, Brgovoy
199395 RPF UDF Balladur
199597 RPF UDF Jupp
1997 PS PCF Greens Jospin
appendix 553
Federal Republic of Germany, :),)
Years Governing Coalition Federal Chancellor
194966 CDU/CSU FDP smaller nonsocialist parties Adenauer, Erhard
196669 CDU/CSU SPD Kiesinger
196982 SPD FDP Brandt, Schmidt
198298 CDU/CSU FDP Kohl
1998 SPD Greens Schrder
Italy, :),
Years Governing Coalition Prime Minister
May 1948January 1950 DC PSDI PRI PLI DeGasperi
January 1950July 1951 DC PSDI PRI DeGasperi
July 1951July 1953 DC PRI DeGasperi
July 1953August 1953 DC DeGasperi
August 1953January 1954 DC Pella
January 1954February 1954 DC Fanfani
February 1954July 1955 DC PLI PSDI Scelba
July 1955May 1957 DC PSDI PLI Segni
May 1957July 1958 DC Zoli
July 1958February 1959 DC PSI Fanfani
February 1959March 1960 DC Segni
March 1960July 1960 DC Tambroni
July 1960February 1962 DC Fanfani
February 1962June 1963 DC PSDI PRI Fanfani
June 1963December 1963 DC Leone
December 1963June 1964 DC PSI PSDI PRI Moro
July 1964February 1966 DC PSI PSDI PRI Moro
February 1966June 1968 DC PSI PSDI PRI Moro
June 1968December 1968 DC Leone
December 1968August 1969 DC PSI PRI Rumor
August 1969February 1970 DC Rumor
March 1970August 1970 DC PSDI PSI PRI Rumor
August 1970February 1972 DC PSDI PSI PRI Colombo
February 1972June 1972 DC Andreotti
June 1972June 1973 DC PLI PSDI Andreotti
June 1973March 1974 DC PSDI PRI Rumor
March 1974June 1974 DC PSI PSDI Rumor
June 1974October 1974 DC PSI PSDI Rumor
November 1974January 1976 DC PRI Moro
February 1976July 1976 DC Moro
July 1976March 1978 DC Andreotti
March 1978January 1979 DC Andreotti
March 1979March 1979 DC PSDI PRI Andreotti
August 1979April 1980 DC PSDI PLI Cossiga
April 1980September 1980 DC PSI PRI Forlani
October 1980May 1981 DC PSI PSDI PRI Forlani
July 1981August 1982 PRI DC PSI PSDI PLI Spadolini
August 1982November 1982 PRI DC PSI PSDI PLI Spadolini
November 1982August 1983 DC PSI PSDI PLI Fanfani
August 1983March 1987 PSI DC PRI PSDI PLI Craxi
April 1987June 1987 DC (minority government) Fanfani
July 1987March 1988 DC PSI PSDI PRI PLI Goria
April 1988May 1989 DC PSI PSDI PRI PLI DeMita
July 1989March 1991 DC PSI PSDI PLI Andreotti
April 1991June 1992 DC PSI PSDI PLI Andreotti
appendix 555
Italy, :), (continued)
Years Governing Coalition Prime Minister
July 1992April 1993 PSI DC PSDI PLI Amato
April 1993April 1994 Nonpartisan technocrats Ciampi
April 1994January 1995 FI LN AN Berlusconi
January 1995March 1966 Nonpartisan technocrats Dini
March 1996April 2000 Olive Tree Coalition Prodi, dAlema
April 2000May 2001 Olive Tree Coalition Amato
May 2001 Freedom House Coalition Berlusconi
Sweden, :),,
Years Governing Party, Coalition Prime Minister
194451 SAP Hansson, Erlander
195157 SAP C Erlander
195776 SAP Erlander, Palme
197678 C FP M Flldin
197879 FP Ullsten
197981 C FP M Flldin
198182 C FP Flldin
198291 SAP Palme, Carlsson
199194 M C FP KDS Bildt
199498 SAP Carlsson, Persson
1998 SAP Persson
United Kingdom, :),,
Years Governing Party Prime Minister
194551 Labour Attlee
195164 Conservatives Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home
196470 Labour Wilson
197074 Conservatives Heath
197479 Labour Wilson, Callaghan
197992 Conservatives Thatcher, Major
199297 Conservatives Major
1997 Labour Blair
Table A.4 Per Capita Gross National Product (GNP), 197597 (in U.S. dollars)
France Germany Italy Sweden United Kingdom United States Canada
1975 6,530 7,260 4,020 9,100 4,260 8,070 7,710
1976 6,960 7,740 4,180 9,610 4,380 8,510 8,440
1977 7,620 8,300 4,430 10,140 4,630 9,130 8,750
1978 8,580 9,660 4,980 11,190 5,270 10,250 9,350
1979 10,490 12,110 6,380 13,280 6,780 11,690 10,140
1980 12,660 14,150 8,010 15,410 8,550 12,830 11,040
1981 12,750 13,550 8,220 15,530 9,560 13,720 11,850
1982 11,630 11,920 7,710 13,960 9,550 13,410 11,400
1983 10,070 10,780 7,140 12,020 9,760 13,800 11,700
1984 9,470 10,630 7,230 11,500 8,240 15,180 12,610
1985 9,420 10,560 7,480 11,550 8,180 16,270 13,250
1986 10,910 12,100 8,770 13,450 9,180 17,840 13,870
1987 13,900 15,400 11,340 16,960 11,320 19,810 15,470
1988 17,810 20,060 14,870 21,120 14,200 21,620 17,690
1989 18,740 21,250 16,050 22,700 15,330 22,040 18,970
1990 19,710 22,720 17,360 24,330 16,170 22,380 19,640
1991 20,490 20,660 18,810 25,660 16,580 22,600 19,990
1992 22,720 23,360 21,050 27,530 18,130 23,790 20,270
1993 22,490 23,560 19,840 24,740 18,060 24,740 19,970
1994 22,944 27,826 17,796 22,389 17,468 25,512 18,915
1995 26,445 29,542 18,984 26,096 18,799 26,438 21,031
1996 26,326 28,738 21,127 28,283 19,621 27,821 19,330
1997 23,789 25,470 19,913 25,746 21,740 29,326 20,064
Source: The World Bank, World Tables :)), (Baltimore, Md., and London: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1995). Data for 199497 are from annual Basic Statistics: International Comparisons, OECD Economic
Surveys (Paris: OECD), 19952000.
appendix 557
Table A.5 Growth of Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 19702001 (percentage change from previous years)
Average Average
:);o;) :)o) :))o :)): :)): :)), :)), :)), :)) :)); :)) :))) :ooo
a
:oo:
a
France 3.5 3.5 2.5 1.1 1.3 0.9 1.8 1.9 1.1 1.9 3.2 2.9 3.3 2.9
Germany 2.9 1.8 5.7 5.0 2.2 1.1 2.3 1.7 0.8 1.4 2.1 1.6 3.0 2.7
Italy 3.6 2.4 2.0 1.4 0.8 0.9 2.2 2.9 1.1 1.8 1.5 1.4 2.8 2.7
Sweden 2.0 2.1 1.6 1.1 1.6 2.9 4.1 3.7 1.1 2.0 3.0 3.8 4.0 3.2
U.K. 2.4 2.4 0.6 1.5 0.1 2.3 4.4 2.8 2.6 3.5 2.6 2.2 3.0 2.6
U.S. 3.5 2.8 1.8 0.5 3.1 2.7 4.0 2.7 3.6 4.4 4.4 4.2 5.2 3.5
Canada 4.9 3.0 0.3 1.9 0.9 2.3 4.7 2.8 1.5 4.4 3.3 4.5 4.8 3.4
EU 3.2 2.2 3.0 1.8 1.1 0.4 2.7 2.4 1.7 2.5 2.7 2.4 3.4 3.0
Euro area 3.6 2.4 1.4 0.8 2.3 2.2 1.4 2.3 2.8 2.5 3.5 3.1
Source: Adapted from Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Economic Outlook 68 (December 2000), 211.
a
Projected.
Table A.6 Consumer Prices, 197099 (percentage change from previous year)
Average
:);oo :): :): :), :), :), :) :); :) :)) :))o :)): :)): :)), :)), :)), :)) :)); :)) :)))
France 9.6 13.3 12.0 9.5 7.7 5.8 2.5 3.3 2.7 3.5 3.6 3.2 2.4 2.1 1.7 1.8 2.0 1.2 0.8 0.5
Germany 5.1 6.3 5.2 3.3 2.4 2.1 0.1 0.2 1.3 2.8 2.7 3.6 5.1 4.4 2.8 1.7 1.4 1.9 0.9 0.6
Italy 13.8 18.0 16.5 14.6 10.8 9.2 5.8 4.7 5.1 6.3 6.5 6.3 5.3 4.6 4.1 5.2 4.0 2.0 2.0 1.7
Sweden 9.2 12.1 8.6 8.9 8.0 7.4 4.2 4.2 6.1 6.6 10.4 9.7 2.6 4.7 2.4 2.9 0.8 0.9 0.4 0.3
U.K. 13.7 11.9 8.6 4.6 5.0 6.1 3.4 4.1 4.9 7.8 9.5 5.9 3.7 1.6 2.5 3.4 2.4 3.1 3.4 1.6
U.S. 7.8 10.3 6.1 3.2 4.3 3.5 1.9 3.7 4.1 4.8 5.4 4.2 3.0 3.0 2.6 2.8 2.9 2.3 1.6 2.2
Canada 8.0 12.4 10.8 5.9 4.3 4.0 4.2 4.3 4.0 5.0 4.8 5.6 1.5 1.9 0.2 2.2 1.6 1.6 1.0 1.7
EU 10.4 11.8 10.3 8.0 6.9 5.8 3.2 3.0 3.4 4.9 5.4 4.8 4.3 3.4 2.9 2.9 2.4 2.0 1.7 1.2
Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Economic Outlook 68 (December 2000), 226.
5
5
8
p
o
l
i
t
i
c
s

i
n

e
u
r
o
p
e
appendix 559
Table A.7 Average Unemployment Rates, 196099
:)o; :);, :);,;) :)o) :))o), :)),))
France 1.5 n.a. 4.5 9.0 10.6 11.8
Germany .8 .8 3.5 6.8 6.4 9.0
Italy 4.9 5.7 6.6 9.9 10.7 11.7
Sweden 1.6 2.2 1.9 2.5 6.6 7.2
United Kingdom 1.5 2.4 4.2 9.5 9.1 7.1
United States 5.0 4.6 6.7 7.2 6.4 4.9
OECD average 3.1 3.4 5.1 7.4 7.3 7.1
Source: OECD, Economic Outlook. Historical Statistics :)o:)) (Paris, 1991); OECD, Economic Outlook ,;
(June 1995); and OECD, Economic Outlook 68 (December 2000).
Table A.8 Annual Unemployment Rates, 198599 (commonly used denitions)
:), :) :); :) :)) :))o :)): :)): :)), :)), :)), :)) :)); :)) :)))
France 10.2 10.4 10.5 10.0 9.3 8.9 9.4 10.4 11.7 12.2 11.6 12.3 12.4 11.8 11.1
Germany 8.0 7.7 7.6 7.6 6.9 6.2 5.5 6.6 7.8 8.3 8.1 8.8 9.8 9.3 9.0
Italy 8.6 9.9 10.2 10.5 10.2 9.1 8.6 8.8 10.2 11.2 11.7 11.7 11.8 11.9 11.5
Sweden 1.0 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 1.1 2.5 4.5 4.7 4.2 4.7 5.2 3.9 2.7
U.K. 11.6 11.8 10.2 7.8 6.1 5.9 8.2 10.2 10.3 9.4 8.6 8.0 6.9 6.2 5.9
U.S. 7.2 7.0 6.2 5.5 5.3 5.6 6.8 7.5 6.9 6.1 5.6 5.4 4.9 4.5 4.2
Canada 10.5 9.6 8.8 7.8 7.5 8.1 10.3 11.2 11.4 10.3 9.4 9.6 9.1 8.3 7.6
E.U. 10.2 10.3 10.0 9.3 8.4 7.8 8.1 9.2 10.7 11.1 10.7 10.8 10.6 10.0 9.2
Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Economic Outlook 68 (December 2000): ,,;.
Table A.10 General Government Total Tax and Nontax Receipts as Percentage of Nominal GDP, 19862002
:) :); :) :)) :))o :)): :)): :)), :)), :)), :)) :)); :)) :))) :ooo
a
:oo:
a
:oo:
a
France 48.0 48.3 47.4 47.1 47.4 47.6 47.5 47.9 48.2 48.0 49.7 49.7 49.6 50.4 49.8 49.3 48.8
Germany 43.8 43.5 42.8 43.6 41.8 41.2 42.5 43.0 43.5 43.0 43.9 43.7 43.8 44.5 44.4 42.8 42.6
Italy 39.3 39.4 39.7 41.4 42.1 43.1 43.8 47.0 44.8 44.7 45.4 47.2 45.9 46.4 46.6 46.0 45.8
Sweden 57.1 58.7 58.2 60.2 59.8 56.9 56.2 55.5 54.0 54.2 56.8 56.6 58.1 57.9 57.3 56.4 56.5
U.K. 41.2 41.2 40.8 40.4 40.7 38.8 37.5 37.9 38.6 38.6 38.9 40.2 40.4 41.2 40.9 40.8
U.S. 28.9 29.6 29.3 29.5 29.3 29.2 28.9 29.2 29.4 29.8 30.2 30.5 31.8 31.0 31.6 31.6 31.5
Canada 37.6 37.9 38.4 38.6 40.1 40.8 41.0 40.3 39.9 40.0 40.5 41.0 41.2 40.9 40.3 39.5 38.9
OECD
Avg. 34.1 35.1 35.1 35.3 35.4 35.4 35.4 35.6 35.5 35.6 36.1 36.3 36.5 36.7 37.1 36.8 36.6
Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Economic Outlook 68 (December 2000): 237.
a
Projected.
Table A.9 Central Government Total Outlays as Percentage of Nominal GDP, 19862002
:) :); :) :)) :))o :)): :)): :)), :)), :)), :)) :)); :)) :))) :ooo
a
:oo:
a
:oo:
a
France 51.2 50.2 49.9 49.0 49.6 50.0 51.7 53.9 53.8 53.6 53.8 52.8 52.4 52.1 51.2 49.4 49.7
Germany 45.0 45.3 44.9 43.5 43.8 44.2 45.0 46.2 45.9 46.3 47.3 46.4 45.8 45.9 43.0 44.5 43.8
Italy 50.6 50.3 50.4 51.2 53.1 53.1 53.3 56.4 53.9 52.3 52.5 49.9 48.7 48.3 46.7 47.1 46.6
Sweden 58.3 54.6 54.8 55.1 55.8 58.0 63.6 67.5 64.9 62.1 60.2 58.6 56.2 56.0 53.9 53.1 52.7
U.K. .. 43.0 40.6 39.3 41.9 43.5 45.3 44.5 44.7 44.4 43.0 40.9 39.7 39.1 38.4 38.8 39.0
U.S. 34.2 33.9 32.9 32.8 33.6 34.2 34.8 34.1 33.1 32.9 32.4 31.4 30.5 30.0 29.3 29.0 28.8
Canada 56.4 54.5 52.4 50.8 50.8 51.8 51.9 53.3 51.3 50.3 50.3 48.8 48.2 47.9 46.7 45.8 45.2
OECD
Avg. 38.4 38.3 37.6 37.2 38.2 39.9 39.8 40.5 39.6 39.5 39.2 38.0 37.7 37.5 36.6 36.5 36.1
Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Economic Outlook 68 (December 2000): 237.
a
Projected.
appendix 561
Table A.11 Days Lost Through Strikes and Lockouts per 1,000 Employees, 19602000
:)o; :);, :);,o :): :))o))
France 315 288 312 150 77
Germany 25 70 76 130 11
Italy 1120 1975 1806 1040 159
Sweden 25 52 20 10 51
U.K. 230 925 1055 970 29
U.S. 850 1408 930 310 40
Canada 710 1715 1980 15 220
Sources: 196080: International Labor Organization data governing mining, manufacturing, construction, and
transportation from Great Britain, Department of Employment Gazette, as cited in Solomon Barkin, ed.,
Worker Militancy and Its Consequences: The Changing Climate of Western Industrial Relations, :d ed. (New York:
Praeger, 1983), 387. 198286: Data covering mining, quarrying, manufacturing, construction, transportation,
and communications, as cited in Great Britain, British Information Service, Survey of Current Affairs 18
(August 1988): 276. 199099: International Labour Organization data covering all industries and services, as
cited in Great Britain, National Statistics, Labour Market Trends 109 (April 2001): 196. Ernst B. Akyeampong,
A Statistical Portrait of the Trade Union Movement, in Statistics Canada, Perspectives 9 (winter 1997): 52.
Note: Swedish gures for 1971 cover only manufacturing and are therefore not directly comparable to other
gures.
Table A.12 Infant Mortality Rates, 196090s (per :,ccc live births)
:)o :), :);o :);, :)o :), :))o Latest Year
a
France 27.4 21.9 18.2 13.8 10.0 8.3 7.3 5.0
Germany 33.8 23.9 23.6 19.8 12.6 8.9 7.5 4.4
Italy 43.9 36.0 29.6 21.2 14.6 10.3 8.5 5.2
Russia 7.4
Sweden 16.6 13.3 11.0 8.6 6.9 6.8 6.0 4.0
U.K. 22.5 19.0 18.1 15.7 12.1 9.4 8.4 4.2
U.S. 26.0 24.7 20.0 16.1 12.6 10.6 9.1 4.5
Canada 27.3 23.6 18.8 14.3 10.4 7.9 6.8 6.1
Source: United Nations, United Nations Demographic Yearbooks (New York, 19782000).
a
Data for individual countries range from 1993 to 1998.
Table A.14 Student Enrollment Rates (1998)
Full-time and part-time students
As a percentage of the As a percentage of the As a percentage of the
population aged ,:, population aged :,:) population aged :o:)
France 99.9 87.8 19.1
Germany 97.5 88.3 21.7
Italy 99.1 69.8 16.8
Sweden 96.5 86.1 30.4
U.K. 98.9 69.5 18.1
U.S. 99.8 74.2 21.4
Canada 97.0 78.0 19.8
Source: OECD :ooo, 135.
Table A.13 Life Expectancy at Birth, 196090s
:)o, :);o;, :)o, Latest Year
a
Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female
France 67.6 74.5 68.6 76.2 70.5 78.7 74.2 82.0
Germany 67.2 72.9 67.6 73.7 70.4 77.2 73.3 79.7
Italy 67.4 72.6 39.2 75.2 71.2 78.0 74.6 81.0
Russia 58.3 71.7
Sweden 71.6 75.6 72.1 77.5 73.4 79.4 76.5 81.7
U.K. 67.9 73.8 69.0 75.2 70.7 76.9 74.7 79.6
U.S. 66.7 73.4 67.5 75.3 70.6 78.1 73.6 79.2
Canada 68.8 75.1 70.2 77.5 73.0 79.8 74.6 80.9
Source: United Nations, United Nations Demographic Yearbooks (New York, 19782000).
a
Data for individual countries range from 1992 to 1997.
Table A.15 Religious Adherents by Major Denominations, mid-2000 (in percentages of total
population)
Catholic Protestant Anglican Orthodox Other Christian Jews Muslims
France 82.3 1.5 0.0 1.1 0.0 1.0 7.1
Germany 34.9 37.0 0.0 0.8 1.6 0.1 4.4
Italy 97.2 0.8 0.0 0.2 1.4 0.1 1.2
Russia 1.0 1.1 0.0 51.7 5.4 0.7 7.6
Sweden 2.0 94.5 0.0 1.4 1.3 0.2 2.3
U.K. 9.6 8.6 44.7 0.6 4.5 0.5 2.0
U.S. 20.8 23.2 0.9 2.1 31.8 2.0 1.5
Canada 41.8 17.2 2.6 1.9 1.5 1.3 1.0
Source: David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative
Survey of Churches and Relgions in the Modern World, :d ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2001).
abortion issue: Germany, :,,,; Italy, :o,, ,:,
Act of Union (UK), :
Adenaur, Konrad, :;,, :,,,;, :co, ::,, ,cc, ,c;
Agrarian Party (Russia), ,, ,;
agriculture/agricultural interest groups:
EEC/EC/EU policies, ;c, :, ,:o:;; France,
, :; Germany, :;, :::,; Italy, :oc,
,:,:c; Russia, :c, o;; UK, ,,
Agriculture Council (EU), :
Akaev, Askar, :,
Algeria, ,,
Alliance for Jobs (Germany), ::o
All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion
(Russia), ::::
Amato, Giuliano, :,, :;,;o, ,c:, ,c,
Amnesty International, ,,oc
Andreotti, Giulio, :,
Andropov, Yuri, :c, :,
Anglo-Irish Agreement, ,
Anton, Thomas, ,o,, ,;o;;
Apprentice Education Bill (Germany), ::;
Argumenty i fakty (Russia), :
arrondissements (France), ::,:o
Association of Local Government Workers
(Sweden), ,;,
Association of University Teachers, UK (AUT),
,,oc
attitude interest groups. See interest groups
Austria, ,,,, ;c, ;:, ;;, , ,c:, ,co
Baden-Wrttemberg, :;;
Badinter, Robert, :,,
Badoglio, Marshal, :,o
Bagehot, Walter, :c
Balkan conict, :,, ,:,:
Balladur, Edouard, :c, :,,, :,o,;, :,, ,c
Bank of Italy, ,:
Barre, Raymond, :c,, :,:, :
Bashkortostan election, ,,
Bavaria, :;o;;, :,, :,o,;
Belarus, ,:,,, o:
Belgium, o,, ;,
Brgovoy, Pierre, :c
Berezovsky, Boris, :,, ,o, ::
Berlin, :;o, :;, :,o,;, :::
Berlinguer, Enrico, ,c,
Berlusconi, Silvio: coalition leadership, :,,, :oc,
:,; corruption charges, :,, ,::, ,:,; Freedom
House campaign, ,c:,; government policies,
,::, ,,;; judicial reform efforts, :o, ,:; party
formation, ,::; resignations, :,,, :;:, ,cc, ,:c
Bernadotte, Jean-Baptiste, ,,:
Bertinotti, Fausto, ,c,
Bicameral Commission (Italy), ,:
Bildt, Carl, ,;,, ,,:
Bismarck, Otto von, :oo,, ::
Blair, Tony: EU policies, ;;, ,,, ,co; executive
reorganization, ::; Irish agreement, ,; party
leadership, :, ;, ,; Treasury relationship, ;,;
and UKs image, ::
Blair government: constitutional reforms, ; EU
policies, :,; governing style, ::, ::, :,, :o, :; se-
crecy rules, ,,,; union relationships, ;
Blum, Leon, :::
Bolshevik revolution, c,
Bonaparte, Napoleon, ,,, :,
Bossi, Umberto, :,, :,,, ,:c, ,::, ,:
Brandenburg, :;, :,o
Brandt, Willy, :,;,, ::c, ,c;
Branting, Hjalmar, ,o
breakthrough politics, dened, ,;
Bremen, :;o, :,o
Brezhnev, Leonid, :o
Brostrm, Lennart, ,;o
Brown, Gordon, ;,
Brown, Lawrence D., ,;
Brussels agreements, ,:,
budget policymaking: EU, ,:c, ,::,; Italy, ,:,
,,:; United Kingdom, :;:, ;:;,. See also
taxes
Index
Note: EU = European Union; UK = United Kingdom.
Bulgaria, ,,;
Bundesrat, :,,,, :c::, ::;
Bundestag, :,:,,, :,, :c:, ,:
Burton, John, ,
business interest groups: EU, ,c,; France,
::,; Germany, ::;; Italy, ,::::; Russia,
::; Sweden, ,;o; UK, ,,,, oco:
by-elections (UK), o
cabinets, overviews: Germany, :,,,; Italy,
:;:;o, ,:;:, ,,c, ,:; Russia, :;:;
Sweden, ,,;, ,,, ,oco:; UK, :;:, :,:o. See
also prime minister roles; individual country pol-
icymaking, e.g. Sweden, policymaking history
cabinets ministriels (France), :,:,,
Callaghan, James, ,
campaign nancing (UK), ,,
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, UK (CND),
oc
Canada, military spending, ,,,
Carlsson, Ingvar, ,o, ,;,, ,,c, ,,:, ,,:,,, ,,,
Carl XVI Gustav (king of Sweden), ,o:o:
Catholic Action, :o, ,::, ,:,
Catholic Church. See religion
Center Party (Sweden), ,o;, ,;:, ,;:, ,;;;,, ,,
,,, ,,:
Central Ofce (UK), ,:
Central Organization of Salaried Employees,
Sweden (TCO), ,;, ,;,;o
Chaban-Delmas, Jacques, :c,, ::;
Chamber of Deputies (Italy), :;:, :;o;;, :;;,,
,::,
chancellor powers (Germany), :,:c:
Chechnya, :,:c, ::, ,,oc
Cheminade, Jacques, :,;
Chernomyrdin, Viktor, :;, :, ,,, :
Chevnement, Jean-Pierre, :,,
China-Russia relations, ,,,
Chirac, Jacques: cabinet staff expansion, :,,;
economic policies, :,; EU policies, ,cc,
,,;, ,c:; Giscard relationship, :c,;
Mitterand relationship, :,; Paris mayor-
ship, ::, :,,; party leadership, ::, :,:,:;
presidential campaigns, ::,,c, :,o,; on
presidential powers, :,o; prime ministers, :cc,
:c,
Christian Association of Italian Workers (ACLI),
,::, ,:,
Christian Democratic Center (Italy), :,,, ,c:, ,c;,
,c, ,:c, ,:o
Christian Democratic Party, Italy (DC): corrup-
tion scandals, :,;,, :,, :,, ,c;;
decline/dissolution, ,c;; economic/social
policies, :,:,,, :,o,;; history highlights,
:,;,, :;;,, :,:; interest group relation-
ships, ,:c::, ,:; regional devolution, :;
voter support patterns, :,,, :,,,;, :,, ,c;,
,:;:
Christian Democratic Union, Germany (CDU):
overview, :c,; Catholic Church relationship,
::, :o,o,; corruption scandals, :cc, :c;
European integration advocacy, ,,; history
highlights, :;,, :;, :,;, :,,,, ::,; voter sup-
port patterns, :;o;;, :;, :,,,, ::c, ::::o,
::
Christian Democratic Union, Sweden (KDS), ,o;,
,;,;, ,;,, ,,:
Christian Socialists (Italy), :,
Christian Social Union, Germany (CSU), :;;,
:co. See also Christian Democratic Union,
Germany (CDU)
Christian Social Union (CSU), :;;
Churchill, Winston, c,
Church of England, , ,,
Church of Scotland, ,
Ciampi, Carlo Azeglio, :,,,, :;:, :;o, :,,
,c, ,c,
City of London, ,,
civil service: EU, :, ;; France, ::::,, :,:,,,
:,; Italy, :::, ,,:,:; Sweden, ,o:o,,
,;o;;; UK, ,:,,, oo, ;:, :
Clarke, Kenneth, ,:
class structure: France, ,c,:; Germany, :,,;
UK, ;, ,:c, :::,, ,,,,. See also voting pat-
terns, socioeconomic characteristics
closure procedure (UK), o;
cohabitation government (France), :cc
Collective Agreements Act of :,: (Sweden), ,;,
collective responsibility (UK), ::,
Colombo, Emilio, :;
comits des sages (France), :,,
Commission of Inquiry (UK), ,
Committee of Permanent Representatives, EU
(COREPER), :, ,
Committee of Regions, EU (COR), ,o
committee systems: European Parliament, ,:,,;
France, :c,; Germany, :,:,,, :c:; Italy,
:;;;, ,:,; Russia, :,; Sweden, ,,,; UK,
:,,:, oo, ;;,
Common Market, o
Common-Program of the Left (France), ::;, ::
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), :;,
,:,,, o:
communes: France, ::,; Italy, :;
communist parties. See Communist Party, France
(PC); Communist Party, Italy (PCI);
Communist Party of the Russian Federation;
Left Party (Sweden); Party of Democratic
Socialism, Germany (PDS)
Communist Party, France (PC), :::::, ::,:;,
::, ::,, :,,,, :,;, ::
Communist Party, Italy (PCI): coalition partners,
:,;,, :;;,; constitution vote, :o,; devolu-
tion legislation, :,; Occhetto-led changes,
,c,; union relationships, ,:c; voter support
patterns, :,,, ::, :,,, :,o. See also
Democratic Party of the Left, Italy (PDS);
Party of Communist Refoundation, Italy
(PRC)
Communist Party, Italy (new PCI), ,c,
Communist Party of the Russian Federation,
,,,, ,o,;, ,c
Concerted Action (Germany), ::o
Conciliation Committee (EU), ,:
Concordat of :,:,, :o,, ,::, ,:,
Confederation of British Industries (CBI), ,,,
Confederation of Labor (France), :,
Conference of Presidents (Italy), :;;,
Conndustria (Italy), ,::::
Conservative Party (UK): overview, o, ,c,:;
candidate selection, ,,; and class structure,
,:c; economic policies, ;; history highlights,
:;; sponsorship issue, :o; union relationships,
,,,; voter support patterns, :;, ,, ,:, ,,,;.
See also Thatcher government
Constitutional Council (France), ::c, :,:, :oc
Constitutional Court (Italy), :o;
Constitutional Court (Russia), :,, ::, ::
constitutions: France, ,, ,,, :c::, :c, :c,,
::c, :oc; Germany, :;c, :;:, :,:,:,
:,,,, :,;; Italy, :,o,;, :o,, :;,;,
:;;, :;, :;; Russia, c;, :,, :c, ,:,
o, ,;,; Sweden, ,,:, ,,;,, ,o:o:;
UK,
consumption cleavage (UK), ,,
corruption: EU, ,c,, ,:c; France, ::;, :,c;
Germany, :cc, :c; Russia, :,, ;,
corruption (Italy): Berlusconi cabinet, ,::, ,:,;
Craxi cabinet, ,co; judiciary role, :,o;
pervasiveness, :,,, :o, :;:, :::, :,;,,
,:
Cossiga, Francesco, :oc, :;:, ,c,, ,c
Cossutta, Armando, :,,, ,c,
Council of Auditors (EU), ,o
Council of Finance Ministers (EU), :
Council of Ministers (EU), o,;c, ;:. See also
Council of the European Union
Council of State (France), ::
Council of the European Union, co, ,
,:,:, ,c:
courts. See judicial systems
Couve de Murville, Maurice, :c:,
Craxi, Bettino, :,, :,,, :;, :,;, :,, ,co
Cresson, Edith, :c, :,,
crime rates (France), ,
Crossman, Richard, ,:
currency: ECC accounting, ;:; EMU criteria,
;;,; EU issues, ;o;;; Germany, :
Cyprus, ,,;
Czech Republic, o:, ,:c, ,,;
DAlema, Massimo, :,,, ,c:, ,c,, ,:
Debr, Michel, ,,, :c:
decree laws (Italy), ,,c
decits. See spending levels
de Gaulle, Charles: Adenaur relationship, ,cc; EU
policies, :,, ;c, ;:; governing style, ,,, ::c,
:, :o:; provisional government leadership,
,,,o
Delano, Betrand, ::o:;
Delors, Jacques, :,o, ;,, ;, ,c;, ,c, ,:,
,,:
Democratic Alliance (Italy), :,, ,:o
Democratic Center (France), ::;, ::
democratic corporatist systems, dened, xvii
Democratic Party of the Left, Italy (PDS): coali-
tion partners, ,:o; corruption scandals, :,; his-
tory highlights, :,,, :,o, ,c,; voter support
patterns, :,,, :oc, :,o,, ,cc, ,c,, ,:
Democratic Union for the Republic, Italy (UDR),
:oc, ,c,, ,c
Democratic Unionist party (UK), ,
Democratic Union party (Italy), :,,
Dmocratie librale, France (DL), :,
democratization: Germany, :;;o, :;,;
Sweden, ,,c,:, ,,;, ,o; UK, ;. See also
Russia
Democrats for the Olive Tree (Italy), ,c,
Democrats of the Left, Italy (DS), :,:. See also
Democratic Party of the Left, Italy (PDS)
Denmark, ,,c, ;c, ;,, ;o, ;;, ,,, ,co
de Palacio, Loyola, ;
dpartements (France), :::, :::o
de Villiers, Philippe, :,;, :,
devolution movement (UK), :, ,o, o, ,
Dini, Lamberto, :,,, :;:, ,c, ,:::,
Di Pietro, Antonio, :,
divorce referendum (Italy), :o,, ,:,
Dooge Commission, ,::
Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, ::
Duma functions, :,, :c, :,,c, ,;,
Duncan Smith, Iain, ,:
East Germany: economic activity, ::,, ::,;
environmental problems, :,; history
overview, :o;, :;:, :;;o; judiciary, :c,; po-
litical culture, :,; population characteris-
tics, :;;;,, :c, ::, :,, :,o; post-
unification party system, ::,; property claim
issue, :,; unemployment levels, :,:, ::; uni-
fication challenges, :c:; union member-
ship, ::
cole Nationale dAdministration (France), :::,
::,, :,:,,
index 565
economic activity: EU countries compared,
o;o,; France, , :oco:; Italy, :oco,,
::,, ,,,,; Russia, c, c,::, o,c,
,; Sweden, ,, ,,, ,:,, ,o;, ,,, ,,:,
,,; UK, :, ,, ;, ,,,, ;c
economic activity, Germany: overview, :;o;,,
::; guest worker issue, :,; history
highlights, :;c, :;:, :;:, :;,;, :,; labor
programs, :,c,:; unication difculties, :,:,
::,
Economic and Monetary Union, EU (EMU),
,,,c, ;;;, ,,, ,,, ,co, ,,,,o
Economic and Social Committee, EU (ESC), ,o
Economic and Social Council (France), :,
education: France, ,, ,:,:, :::, ::o; Germany,
:c, :,, :o, :,;; Italy, :o,oo; Russia, ::;
Sweden, ,; UK, ::, ,,oc
Eichel, Hans, :,o
Einaudi, Luigi, :;:
elections. See electoral systems; individual country
party systems, e.g. France, party system; voting
patterns, socioeconomic characteristics
Electoral Assembly (Italy), :;:
electoral systems: European Parliament, ,,c;
France, ,,, :c;, ::o, ::,, :,,c; Germany,
:,:, :::, ::,::, :o;; Italy, :;o;;, :c,
,::;, ,:; Russia, :c::, ,:, ,,
,,,; Sweden, ,,:, ,,;,, ,;;; UK, :;, :o,
,o, ,:,,, :,. See also referendum
process; voting patterns, socioeconomic char-
acteristics
employment patterns. See unemployment levels
Engholm, Bjrn, :::
England, :. See also United Kingdom entries
Environmentalist Party (Sweden), ,o;, ,;c;:,
,,:
environmental problems, Germany, :;, :,
Erhard, Ludwig, :,;
Erlander, Tage, ,o
Estonia, c,, ,,;
tatist systems, dened, xvii
ethnic groups: France, ;, :o,; Germany, :;,,
:,; Italy, :,,; Russia, c,, ,,; Sweden, ,,;
UK, :,, ,o
European Assembly, ;c, ;:
European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (EBRD), ,,,o
European Central Bank (ECB), ;;, ,,, ,,,
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC),
o,;c, ;:
European Commission (EC): overview, c, ,,
o,; expansion challenges, ,,;,,; history
highlights, ;c, ;:, ;:; member admission ap-
provals, ,,,; Parliament relationship, ,:,:;
policymaking processes, ,c::, ,c,:,, ,,:,
,,,,
European Council, ;:, ;,;, ,c:
European Court of Human Rights, ,,
European Court of Justice, ,,, ;c, ,,,,
European Currency Unit (ECU), ;:
European Economic Area (EEA), ;:
European Economic Community (EEC), ,,,,
;c;,, ,c;. See also European Union entries
European Free Trade Association (EFTA), ,,,,
;c
European Monetary Institute (EMI), ;, ;;
European Monetary Systems (EMS), ;:, :
European Parliament (EP), ;:, ;,;, ,,,,
,c:, ,c,:,, ,:;, ,,;,,
European Peoples Party (EEP), ,c:
European Political Cooperation (EPC), ,:,
European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT),
,c,
European System of Central Banks (ESCB), ,,
European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC),
,c,
European Union (EU): countries compared,
o;o,; France relationship, :,, ;c, ;:, ;o,
,,; Germany relationship, o,, ,,,,
,,,cc; institutional predecessors, o,;,; in-
terest groups, ,c,; Italy relationship, ,,c,
o,; Maastricht agreement and revisions,
;;; membership expansion challenges, ;,
,,o,,; purpose, o;; Sweden relationship, ,,,
,,,,o, ,,, ;c, ;:, ;;, , ,co; UK rela-
tionship, :,:o, ,,, ;,, ;c, ;:, ;, ;;, ,,,
,co
European Union (EU), government structure:
overview, c; executive councils, c,; nan-
cial institutions, ,,,o; judiciary, ,,,,;
Parliament, ,,,
European Union (EU), policymaking processes:
overview, ,c,, ,:::,, ,c:; budgetary,
,::,; bureaucratic challenges, ,:,:o, ,,:,,;
EU institutions influences, ,c:; executive
accountability, ,c,::; implementation,
,:,:; individual influences, ,c;; national
governments role, ,,c:, ,:o,:; public
opinion role, ,c,;; security/foreign affairs,
,:,:,
Eurotom, ;c, ;:
Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), ;o, ;;
Expenditure Committee (UK), ;;,
Fabius, Laurent, :c,, :,:
Flldin, Thorbjn, ,;:, ,o
Fascist Party (Italy), :,,,o
Fatherland-All Russia (OVR), ,o, ,;, ,c
Federal Assembly (Russia), :,
Federal Constitutional Court (Germany), :c,,
:o;
federalism option, European Union, ,:;,c
Federal Labor Institute (Germany), ::, :,c,:
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany),
history overview, :o;, :;:;o, :o. See also
Germany
Federal Republic (unied Germany). See Germany
Federation Council (Russia), :c, :,
Federation for New Solidarity (France), :,;
Federation of Agricultural Consortiums (Italy),
,:,
Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left,
France (FGDS), ::o
Feldt, Kjell-Olof, ,,c
Fifth Republic of France, ,o. See also France entries
Fini, Gianfranco, :oc, :,,, ,:
Finland, ,,c, ,,,, ;c, ;:, ;;, , ,,
First Republic of France, ,:,,
Fischer, Joschka, :cc, ::, :,, ,:;
Foot, Michael, ,
foreign policy: EU, ,:,:,; France, :o:; Germany,
:;,, :;, :,;, :,, :c:, :,c; Russia, :c, ,,
,c,; Sweden, ,,,,
Formentini, Marco, ,:c
Forza Italia!: overview, ,:::,; Bicameral
Commission proposal, ,:; coalition partners,
:,,, ,:c; EU policy opposition, ,c; formation,
:,,, ,::; voter support patterns, ,c:, ,c:,, ,:,
,c
Fourth Republic of France, ,,o
Fraktion (Russia), :,:
France: ECC relations, ;:;:; history overview,
, ,, ,:,o; interest groups, ::o; military
spending, ,,,; political culture, ,o,;; political
effectiveness, :,;,; population characteristics,
;,:; reform needs, :,o. See also European
Union entries
France, government structure: administrative
units, ::::;, :,; executive powers, ,,:co;
history overview, ,:,; judiciary, :,oc,
:,; local, :::;, :;; parliamentary
bodies, :co::. See also France, policymaking
process
France, party system: ideological comparisons,
::,:,; local government, :c; :,ocs through
:,;cs, ::,:,; :,cs, ::,,,; :,,cs, :,,c;
voter support overview, :::,
France, policymaking process: civil service influ-
ence, :,:,,; implementation barriers,
:,,,,; interest group role, :o; parlia-
ments role, :c:c, :,,:; presidential
role, :,. See also France, government
structure
Free Democrats Party (Germany), :,, :c,o,
::::,, ::c, ::::o, :,:
Freedom House, evaluation of Russia, ,,,
oco:
Freedom House (Italy), ,c:,
Freedom Party (Austria), ,c:
Freedom Pole (Italy), :,,, ,cc, ,c:
Gaidar, Yegor, ,:, ,,
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, :,,,
Gasperi, Alcide De, ,c;
Gaullism/Gaullist parties (France), ::c::, ::,:;,
::, ::,,c, :,:,
Gazprom, :
GDP statistics. See spending levels
General Confederation of Cadres (France), :,
General Council (France), :::,
General Federation of Labor (France), :,
Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, ::::,
geography: EU countries compared, o;o,;
France, ;; Germany, :;,; Italy, :,,; Sweden,
,
German Democratic Republic (GDR). See East
Germany
German Industrial and Trade Chamber, ::;
German Republican Party, ::,
German Trade Union Federation, ::;:
Germany: ECC/EU, o,, ,,,, ,,,cc; his-
tory overview, :o;;o; interest groups, ::o:,;
military spending, ,,,; political culture, :;,,
:o,, ::,:o; population characteristics, ::,
:;oo; unication challenges, :,,,c. See also
European Union entries
Germany, government structure: overview, :,:; ex-
ecutive powers, :,:c:; history highlights, :o,,
:;c, :;:; judiciary, :c:; local, :;o, :,;; parlia-
mentary bodies, :,:,, ,:; semipublic institu-
tions, ::,:. See also Germany, policymaking
characteristics
Germany, party system: overview, :c,o; electoral
system impact, ::,::, ,:; history highlights,
:o,, :;c, :;,, :;; major parties compared,
:c,::; minor parties compared, ::::,; voter
support patterns, :;o;,, :c;, :c,, :::, :::,
::,, ::, ::,, ::::o
Germany, policymaking characteristics: overview,
:c::, ::;:; governments compared, :,:,,,
:,,;; implementation process, :,;; semipub-
lic institution inuences, ::,:; unication pe-
riod, :,,,. See also Germany, government
structure
Giscard dEstaing, Valry, ,,, ::;:, ::,,c, :,,
:, :,o
Good Friday agreement (UK), ,
Gorbachev, Mikhail, :;, :c::, :;, ,c
Gore, Al, ,,
government structures. See individual country gov-
ernment entries, e.g. France, government structure
Great Britain. See United Kingdom entries
Great Compromise (Sweden), ,,:
Greater London Council, ,
index 567
Greece, o;, o, ;c, ;,, ;;
Green Party: France, :,,,, :,;, :o; Germany,
:c, :;, :cc:c:, :c,o, ::,:, ::, ::o,
:,,,; Italy, :,,, :,:, :,, ,cc, ,c,, ,:o;
Sweden, ,o;, ,;c;:, ,,:; UK, :
Gromov, Boris, :
Gronchi, Giovanni, :;:
guest workers (Germany), :,
guillotine procedure (UK), o;
Gulf War, Russian response, ,:
Gusinsky, Vladimir, :
Gustaf V Adolf (king of Sweden), ,o:
Gustaf VI Adolf (king of Sweden), ,o:
Gustavus I Adolphus (king of Sweden), ,,c
Gustavus II Adolphus (king of Sweden), ,,c
Hague, William, ,c, ,:
Hallstein, Walter, ,c;
Hamburg, :;o, :,, :o
Hammarskjld, Dag, ,,
Hansson, Per Albin, ,o
health care systems: Germany, ::,,c; Sweden,
,,; UK, , ,,
Heckscher, Gunnar, ,;,
Heisler, Martin, ,,c
Hesse (German state), :;o
Higher Authority, ;c, ;:
Hindenburg, Paul von, :,,
history overviews: EU development, o,;,;
France, ,:,o; Germany, :o;;o; Italy,
:,oc, :o,; Russia, co::; Sweden, ,,,:;
UK, :,
Hitler, Adolf, :;c;,
Hix, Simon, ,
Honecker, Erich, :;, :;,
House of Commons (UK), ::, :;, :,:, oo,
o;o, ;,
House of Lords (UK), :;:, ooo
Hue, Robert, :,;
human rights, Russia, ,,o:
Human Rights Watch, oc
Hungary, o:, ,:c, ,,;
Hunters party (France), :,,
Iceland, ;c
immigrants/immigration: France, ;, ,c, :oc, :o,;
Germany, :;,, :c, :,; Sweden, ,,; UK,
:,
income levels: Germany, ::, ::, :,, :,;
Sweden, ,:; UK, :, ::
incompatibility rule (France), ::c::
Independent Republicans (France), ::;:
in sede deliberante/referente procedures (France),
:;;;, ,:,
Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, Italy (IRI),
:o:, ::, :,
Institute of Directors (UK), ,,
Instrument of Government (Sweden), ,,;,
interest groups: EU, ,c;; France, ::o, :,c,:;
Germany, ::o:,; Italy, ,::,, ,:;; Russia,
:,; Sweden, ,o:, ,;;;; UK, :o, ,;o:, ;c,
c:
intergovernmental conference, EU (IGC),
,cc,c:
Inter-Regional Electoral Association, Russia
(UNITY), ,,,o, ,;, ::
Intersind (Italy), ,::::
Ireland, :, ;c, ;,, ;o, ;;. See also United
Kingdom entries
Irish Free State, :
Irish Republican Army (IRA), ,, ,
Italian General Confederation of Agriculture,
,:,
Italian General Confederation of Labor (CGIL),
,:c::
Italian General Confederation of Workers Unions
(CISL), ,:c::
Italian Liberal Party (PLI), :,:, :,o,;, :,, ,c,,
,:o
Italian Renewal Party, :,,, ,c:, ,c
Italian Republican Party (PRI), :,, :,:, :,o,;,
:,, ,c,, ,:o
Italian Socialist Democratic Party (PSDI), :,:,
:,o,;, :,, ,c,
Italian Socialist Party (PSI), :,:, :,o, :,, ,c,o,
,:c, ,:, ,:
Italian Social Movement (MSI), :,,, ::, :,:, :,,,
:,o, :,,,cc, ,:,:
Italian Union of Labor (UIL), ,:c::
Italy: ECC/EU relationship, ,,c, o,; future
challenges, ,,,; history overview, :,oc; in-
terest groups, ,::,; military spending, ,,,; po-
litical culture, :ooo, ,,,,; population char-
acteristics, :,,,, :ocoo. See also European
Union entries
Italy, government structure: civil service, :::;
executive powers, :;c;,; historic, :,,, :,o,;;
judiciary, :;; local, :;,c; parliament
bodies, :;o:; public corporations, ::; re-
form proposals, ,c:. See also Italy, policy-
making process
Italy, party system: overview, :,:,,, ,c,:,
,,,,; cabinet representation, :;,, :;;,, ::;
communist party strength, :,,; electoral system
impact, ,:,:o; history highlights, :,,,o,
:,;,,, :o,o, :o;o; and parliament effec-
tiveness, :;,:; policymaking role, ,:o:;,
,,c; voter support patterns, :,,, :,,,c,,
,:;:
Italy, policymaking process: cabinet role, :;,; for-
mulation/passage of bills, ,:o,:; implementa-
tion barriers, ,,:,:; judicial role, :o;;
parliaments role, :;o, :;;;. See also Italy,
government structure
James I (king of England), :
Jenkins, Roy, ,c;
Jewish populations: France, ,c; Germany, :;:;:,
:; Italy, :,; Russia, c
Johansson, Maude, ,;:
Johansson, Olof, ,;:
joint decision trap, ,,,,
Jospin, Lionel, :cc:c:, :c, :::, :,o,;, :,,,
:c:, :,, :,,
judicial systems: EU and preceding institutions,
;c, ,,,,; France, :,oc, :,;
Germany, :c:; Italy, :,;, :;;
Russia, c, :c, ,, oc; Sweden, ,o;
UK, , ,,,o
Jupp, Alain, :c, :, :,,
Justitieombudsman, Sweden (JO), ,oo,
Karlsson, Bert, ,;
Kazakhstan, c,, ,,
Kerensky, Alexander, c
Khakamada, Irina, ,
Khasbulatov, Ruslan, ::,
Khodorkovsky, Mikhail, :
Khrushchev, Nikita, :c
Kickback City, :o, :,. See also corruption
(Italy)
Kiesinger, Kurt-George, :,;
Kinnock, Neil, ;, , ;
Kirienko, Sergei, :, ,
Kohl, Helmut, :;, :,:cc, :c, ::,, ::, :,,,
:,
Kosovo, Germanys role, :,
Kozyrev, Andrei, ,:
Krestianskaia gazeta, :
Kvavik, Robert, ,,c
labor unions. See unions
Labour Party (UK): overview, ::,, o,c; candi-
date selection, ,,; constitution-oriented legisla-
tion, ; economy-related challenges, ;;,, :;
ideological trends, :,, o,o; sponsorship is-
sue, :o, o:; union relationships, :o, ,, o:; voter
support patterns, ,, :;, ,, ,, ,,,;. See also
Blair government
Lafontaine, Oskar, :c:, :::::, :,,,o, :,
Laguiller, Arlette, :,;
Lakhova, Yekaterina, ,o
languages: Italy, :,; Russia, c,; Sweden, ,,;
UK,
Lateran Agreements of :,:,, :o,
Latvia, c,, ,,;
Law :/:,,: (Italy), :,,c
Law ::/:,,c (Italy), :,,c
League of German Industry, ::;
Lebed, Alexander, ::, :
Lecanuet, Jean, :::
Left Party (Sweden), ,o;, ,o,;c, ,;, ,,:
legislative process. See individual country
policymaking entries, e.g. Italy, policymaking
process
Leijonborg, Lars, ,;:
Leissner, Maria, ,;:
Lenin, c, c,, :,
Leone, Giovanni, :;:
Le Pen, Jean-Marie, :,:, :,:, :,;, :,,
letter writers (Russia), :
Liberal Democratic Party, Russia (LDPR), ,,,
,, ,;, ,c
Liberal Democrats (UK), :;:, ,, ,
Liberal Party (Italy), :,
Liberals (Sweden), ,,:, ,o;, ,;:;:, ,;;;,, ,,
,,, ,,:
Liechtenstein, ;c
Ligachev, Yegor, ,:
Lijphart, Arend, :;
Lithuania, ,,;
Livingstone, Ken, ,
Lloyd George, David, :;
lobbying activity. See interest groups
local government structures: France, :::;, :,,,
:;; Germany, :;o, :,;; Italy, :;,c, ,,:;
Sweden, ,o,o; UK, ,o,, o,;c,
Logue, John, ,,,
Lombard League, ,c,:c
Louis XVI (king of France), ,:
Lower Saxony, :;o
Lukashenko, Alexander, ,:, o:
Lundgren, Bo, ,;,
Luxembourg, o;, o,, ;,
Luxembourg compromise, ;:, ,
Luzkhov, Yuri, ,o
Lysenko, Nikolai, :,,c
Maastricht agreement. See Treaty on European
Union
Madariaga, Javier Solana, ,::
Major, John, ,, :,, ;, ;o, ;
Major government, ,, :o, ,, ,,, o, ;,
majoritarian parliamentary government, dened,
:;
Malta, ,,;
Marchais, Georges, ::,
Martinazzoli, Mino, ,c;
Mattei, Enrico, ::
Mauroy, Pierre, :c,
Mazzini, Giuseppe, :,,,
MecklenburgWest Pomerania, :;;,, :,o
MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France),
:
index 569
media (Russia), ::, ,, ,,, oc
mediator functions (France), ::
Mgret, Bruno, :,,
Meidner, Rudolf, ,;
Meidner proposal (Sweden), ,;,
Mein Kampf (Hitler), :;:
Merkle, Angela, :c
Messmer, Pierre, :c,
Metal Workers Union (Sweden), ,;,
military spending: countries compared, ,,,;
Russia, :,; Sweden, ,,,. See also foreign
policy
ministers. See cabinets, overviews
minority groups. See ethnic groups
mir (Russia), c
Mitterrand, Franois: campaigns, ::o, ::,, :,:, :,,,
:,o; economic policies, :,; EU policies, ;o,
,,; prime minister relationships, ,,:cc,
:c,, :,, :,o
Moderate Party (Sweden), ,o;, ,;:, ,;:;,,
,;;;,, ,, ,,, ,,:, ,,:
monarch functions (modern): Sweden, ,,:, ,,;,
,o:o:; UK, ;, :,, :,:c, ::, o,, o;
monarchy referendum (Italy), :,o
Mongol empire, co;
Monnet, Jean, ,c;
Moro, Aldo, ,c
Mouvement national rpublicain, France (MNR),
:,,
Mouvement Rpublicain Populaire, France (MRP),
::::,, :,;
Movement in Support of the Army, Military
Science, and the Defense Industry (Russia), ,;
Movement of Left Radicals, France (MRG), ::;,
:,,
Muslim populations (France), ,c
Mussolini, Benito, :,,,o
Napoleon, Louis, ,,
Napoleon I (Bonaparte), ,,, :,
National Alliance (Italy), :,,, :oc, :,, ,c:, ,c:,,
,c, ,:,:, ,:
National Assembly (France), :co::
National Association of German Employers, ::;
National Center of Independents and Peasants,
France (CNIP), ::c
National Confederation of Direct Cultivators
(Italy), ,:,
National Democratic Party, Germany (NPD), ::,,
:
National Executive Committee (NEC),
National Federation of Trade Unions, Sweden
(LOSW), ,o, ,;;,, ,;o, ,:, ,,, ,;, ,,,
,,o,;
National Front (France), :,:, :,:, :,, :,,, :,,
:,,
National Health Service (UK), , ,,
National Hydrocarburants Corporation, Italy
(ENI), :o:, ::, :,
nationalized industries. See public corporations
nationalizing politics, dened, ,;
National Labor Market Board, Sweden (AMS),
,,
National Peasants Alliance (Italy), ,:,
National Socialist German Workers Party,
:;c;,
National Union of Conservative and Unionist
Associations (UK), ,c,:
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), :o:,
:,, ,,,, ,:,:, ,:::,
Nazi Germany, ,c, :;c;,, :c,
Nemtsov, Boris, ,
Netherlands, o,, ;,, o
Network Party (Italy), :,, ,:o
neutrality stance (Sweden), ,,,,
New Democracy, Sweden (NYD), ,o;, ,;,, ,;,
,;,, ,,:, ,,:
New Labour. See Blair government; Labour Party
(UK)
Next Steps (UK), ,,
:,:: Committee (UK), ,:
Ninth Development Plan (France), :,,
Northern Ireland, :,, o, , ,, o. See also
United Kingdom entries
Northern League (Italy): overview, ,c,::; coali-
tion partners, :,,, :,,, ,c:,, ,::, ,:o; EU pol-
icy opposition, ,c; secessionist proposal,
,:,; voter support patterns, :,;, :,,, ,c:,
,c,, ,::, ,:
North RhineWestphalia, :;o
Norway, ,,c, ,,,, ,o,, ;c, ;:, ,co
nuclear-related issues: France, :,; Germany,
::,:, ::o; Russia, ,, ,c,:; Sweden,
,,o
Occhetto, Achille, :,o, ,c,
oligarchs, Russia, ::
Olive Tree Alliance (Italy), ,cc,c,, ,c, ,c,
ombudsman responsibilities: France, ::; Sweden,
,oo,
Operation Clean Hands, :,. See also corruption
(Italy)
Opposition principle (UK), ::,, :,
Orlando, Leoluca, :,
Our Home Is Russia (NDR), :;, ,,, ,,
Pact for Italy, :,,
Pact for National Renewal (Italy), ,c;
Paisley, Ian, ,
Palme, Olof, ,,:, ,o
parliamentary bodies, overviews: EU, ,,,;
France, :co::, :,,:; Germany, :,:,;
Italy, :,o,;, :;o:; Russia, :,c; Sweden,
,,;,,; UK, :;:,, :o,:. See also electoral sys-
tems; individual country policymaking entries, e.g.
United Kingdom, policymaking process
PAR (Programme Analysis and Review) (UK),
;,
Party of Communist Refoundation, Italy (PRC),
:,:, :,o,;, :,, ,cc, ,c,, ,c, ,c,, ,:o
Party of Democratic Socialism, Germany (PDS),
:;c, :;, :;,, :c,o, ::,
Party of Democratic Socialism, Italy (PDS), :,:,
:,o,;, ,c,, ,c,. See also Democratic Party of
the Left, Italy (PDS)
Party of European Socialists (PES), ,c:
Pasqua, Charles, :,
pension systems: Germany, ::,,c, :,; Sweden,
,,, ,, ,
Peoples Party (Sweden), ,,:, ,o;, ,;:;:, ,;;;,,
,, ,,, ,,:
Persson, Gran, ,o, ,,,, ,,;,
Pertini, Sandro, :;:
PESC (Public Expenditure Survey Committee)
(UK), ;,
Ptain, Philippe, ,
Plaid Cymru, o,
pluralist systems, dened, xvii
Poland, ::, o:, ,:c, ,,;
Pole of Good Government (Italy), :,,
Pole of Liberty (Italy), :,,, ,:c, ,:o
political cultures: France, ,o,;, :o,o;
Germany, :;,, :o,, ::,:o; Italy, :ooo;
Russia, :::,; Sweden, ,,:,,; UK, :o
political parties. See individual country party entries,
e.g. France, party system
polity model (EU), ,:,,:
pollution (Germany), :,
Pompidou, Georges, ,,, :c:,, :, ,,
Popular Party (Italy), :,,, :o,, :,,, ,c:, ,c;, ,c
population statistics: EU countries compared,
o;o; France, ;, ; Germany, :;o, :;;,
:;,c; Italy, :,,; Russia, c,, ::; Sweden,
,,; UK, :
Portugal, o;, o, ;c, ;,, ;;
Potanin, Vladimir, :
prefects: France, ::,:o, :,,; Italy, :;, :,
presidential powers: European Commission,
o;, ,,:; France, ,,:c:, :c,o, :,;
Germany, :,,,; Italy, :;c;:, ,:; Russia,
:;:;, :,, ,;,. See also individual country
policymaking entries, e.g. Germany, policymaking
characteristics
Primakov, Evgenii, :, ,o, ,:
prime minister roles: France, ,,, :cc, :c:o,
:,; Italy, :;c;:, :;:, :;,, :;,;o, ,:;
Russia, :,, :;:; Sweden, ,,;, ,,, ,oco:;
UK, :;:, :c:,, ,:. See also individual coun-
try policymaking entries, e.g. France, policy-
making process
privatization: France, ::,:; Germany, :; Italy,
:,; Russia, o,c; UK, ;, , ::,, ,,,,
,,. See also public corporations
Prodi, Romano, :,,, ,cc,c:, ,c, ,c,, ,,,c,
;, ,c, ,c
Prodi Commission, ;, ,:c
Progressive Alliance (Italy), :,, ,:o
proportional representation. See electoral systems
Protestant churches. See religion
Provisional Sinn Fein, ,
Prussian empire, :o;c, :,:
Public Accounts Committee (UK), ,:, ;,
public corporations: France, ::,:; Italy, :o:, :o,,
::, ,::::, ,:; Sweden, ,o; UK, :,
,,,, ;,c. See also privatization
Putin, Vladimir, :::,, :o:;, :, ,,, ,o
Putnam, Robert, o:
qualied majority voting (QVM), ;,, ,,
,, ,,;
Queens Speech, o,
question hours: EU, ,:c; Germany, :,:
Question Time (UK), ::, :,, ,:, oc
Radical-Socialist Party (France), ::::,, ::o, ::;,
::
Rally for France, :,
Rally of the French People (RPF), :::
Rasputin, c
Rassemblement pour la Rpublique, France (RPR),
::, ::,,c, :,:,
referendum process: EU initiatives, ,co; France,
:c:; Italy, :,;, ,,:; Sweden, ,,,; UK, o
Reformers Movement (France), ::;
regional government: France, :;; Italy, :;,c.
See also local government structures
reiss procedures (Italy), :o:
religion: France, ,,c, ::::,; Germany, :;o,
:c:, :c;, ::; Italy, :,,,, :o,o,, ,c;, ,c,
,:;, ,:::,; Russia, co, c, ,,; Sweden, ,,,
,,c; UK, ,, o, :,, ,, ,,
Republic of Ireland, :
residui passivi (Italy), ,,:
revenues. See budget policymaking; taxes
Rhineland-Palatinate, :;o
Riksdag functions (Sweden), ,,;,,
Risorgimento movement, :,,,, :o,
Rocard, Michel, :cc, :c,, :,:,,, :,,, :,,
:,,,o
Rokkan, Stein, ,o,
Romania, ,,;
Rose, Richard, ,;
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (UK), oc
index 571
Russia: future challenges, ,oo,; geography/cli-
mate, c,; history overview, ,,c, co::; in-
terest groups, :,; political culture, :::,;
population characteristics, co, ::
Russia, government structure: cabinet responsibili-
ties, :;:; Duma functions, :,, :c, :;,
:,c; history highlights, c;, c,, :o:;,
::,; presidential powers, :;:;, :,,
,;,; prime minister role, :;:
Russia, party system: overview, ,:,:, c:;
ideological comparisons, ,,;; voter support
patterns, ,:,, ,;c
Russia, policymaking history: overview, ,; eco-
nomic sector, o,c; foreign affairs, ,c,
Russias Choice, ,:, ,
Rustow, Dankwart, ,,:
Rutelli, Francesco, ,c:,
Saarland, :;o
Saltsjbaden Agreement (Sweden), ,;,
Santer, Jacques, ;
Santer Commission, ,c,, ,:c
Saragat, Guiseppe, :;:
Sardinia, Kingdom of, :,,,
Saxony-Anhalt, :;
Saxony, :;;, :,
Scalfaro, Oscar Luigi, :;:;:, ,::
Scharpf, Fritz, ,,,,
Scharping, Rudolf, :::::
Schuble, Wolfgang, :c
Schleswig-Holstein, :;o, :o
Schmidt, Helmut, :;:, :,
Schrder, Gerhard, :cc:c:, :::::, ::o, :,,,;,
:,, ,,;
Schumacher, Kurt, :c,
Schuman, Robert, ,c;
Scorporo procedure, ,:,
Scotland: committee system, , ,c; devolution
referendum, o;, ,; electoral system, ,; local
government, ,o; party support patterns, ,o, ,,
, ,,; population characteristics, :, ,. See also
Scottish National Party, :, ,o,
Scottish Parliament, ,c
Second Republic of France, ,,
Security and Liberty bill (France), :,,
security/foreign policy. See foreign policy
Segni, Antonio, :;:
Segni, Mario, :,,, ,c;
Segni Pact (Italy), :,,
Sguin, Philippe, :,:
Seleznev, Gennadii, ,o
Senate (France), :c;,, ::c::
Senate (Italy), :;:, :;o;;, :;;,, ,:,
Serbian conicts, :,, ,:,:
Shoigu, Sergei, ,o
Single European Act, ;,;, , ,:,:, ,co,
,::::
Sinn Fein, ,, ,
Slovak Republic, ,:c, ,,;
Slovenia, ,:c, ,,;
Smith, John, ,
Social Democratic Labour Party (UK), ,
Social Democratic Party, Germany (SPD):
overview, :c,, :c::; church relationships,
::; economic/social policies, :,, ::, :,:,:,
:,,,o, :;, :; European integration poli-
cies, ,,,cc; governing coalitions, :c;,
:,,,; history highlights, :o,, :;c, :;,, :,;,
:c,; Schrders leadership, :cc:c:; voter sup-
port patterns, :;o, :;;,, :c,, ::c, :::, ::c,
::::o
Social Democratic Workers Party, Sweden (SAP):
overview, ,,:, ,o;o, ,;,; economic policies,
,:,, ,;, ,,, ,,c, ,,:,,, ,,;,,; social
legislation tradition, ,,, ,:, ,,,, ,,c;
union relationships, ,;,, ,;o, ,,o,;; voter
support patterns, ,,,, ,o, ,;;, ,;, ,,, ,,c,:,
,,
social interest groups. See interest groups
Socialist Party, France (PS), :::::, ::,:;, ::,
::,,:, :,:,,, :,,,;, :,,,, ::
Socialist Party (Italy), :,;,, :o, :,
social security. See pension systems
social welfare systems: France, :oco:;
Germany, ::,:, :,; UK, , ::,, ,,. See also
Sweden
Sder, Karin, ,;:
Solemn Declaration on European Union, ,:,
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, :c
Spaak, Paul-Henri, ,c;
Spadolini, Giovanni, :,, :;, :,;, ,c,
Spain, ;c, ;,, ;;, ,,;
spending levels: countries compared, ,,,, ,; EU,
,:o:; Germany, :,,, ::,, :; Italy, :o:,
,,,,o; Russia, :,; Sweden, ,,,, ,o,o,
,,
Spinelli, Altiero, ,:;
Spiritual Heritage (Russia), ,;
sponsorship of MPs (UK), :o, o:
Stalin, Joseph, c,, :c, :,
Starodubtsev, Vasilii, ,o
Statutory Instruments Committee (UK), ,c,:
Stepashin, Sergei, :, ,,
Strauss, Franz Josef, ::,
strikes: countries compared, ,,; France, ,;, :,,
:,; Germany, ::; Sweden, ,;,, ,,; UK, ,
study commissions (France), :,,
subsidiarity principle, ,::,
Svensson, Alf, ,;
Sweden: ECC/EU issues, ,,,,o, ,,, ;c, ;:,
;;, , ,co; future challenges, ,,,,,; history
overview, ,,,:; interest groups, ,o:, ,;;;;
political culture, ,,:,,; population characteris-
tics, ,,
Sweden, government structure: administrative
agencies, ,o:o, ,;o;;; executive branch,
,oco:; history, ,,c,:; judiciary, ,o; local,
,o,o; ombudsman role, ,oo,; parlia-
mentary bodies, ,,;,,; public corporations,
,o
Sweden, party system, ,o;;
Sweden, policymaking history: economic inu-
ences, ,:,, ,o;, ,,, ,,:,:; nonsocialist
coalition periods, ,,, ,,:,:; Social
Democrat dominance, ,:,, ,,c,
,,:,,
Swedish Association of Employers (SAF), ,;, ,;o,
,,, ,
Swedish Federation of Industry (SIF), ,;o
Switzerland, ;c, ;:
Tambroni, Fernando, :;:
Tatarstan election, ,,
taxes: EU, ,::o; Germany, :c, :,, :,o, :,;,
:; Sweden, ,,,o, ,o, ,;, ,,c
Thatcher, Margaret, :, o, ,:, ;:, ;, :,
,
Thatcher government: civil service reforms, ,,;
economic policy, ,, :, ,,,, ,,, ;,, ;; govern-
ing style, ::, :o, ,; local authority controls,
,;,; union relationship, :
Third Reich, :;c;,
Third Republic of France, ,
Thuringia, :;, :,
Tibri, Jean, ::;
Tiuchev, Fedor, c,
Tories. See Conservative Party (UK)
Trades Union Congress (TUC), ,
Treasury (UK), ;:;,
Treaty of Amsterdam, ;;;, ,c:, ,::::
Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, ,cc
Treaty of Nice, ;, ,:::,, ,,;,
Treaty of Rome, ;c, ;:, ,c,:, ,,,, ,o,
,:o, ,:
Treaty on European Union: Central Bank re-
sponsibilities, ,,; Commission controls,
,:c::; Committee of Regions responsibilities,
,o; Council composition, :;
development/adoption, ;;;;
EU admission requirements, ,,,, ;,; foreign
policy, ,:c::; intergovernmental conference
functions, ,cc; Parliament responsibilities,
,:; political party recognition, ,c; referen-
dums on, ,co
Trimble, David,
Trusteeship Authority (Germany), :
trust of government. See political cultures
Tuleev, Aman-Geldy, ,o
Turkey, :,, ,,
Ukraine, c,, ,,
Ulster Unionists (UK), ,
unemployment levels: Germany, :;,;, ::, :,,
:,:, ::; Italy, :o:, ,,;, ,c; Sweden, ,:, ,o,
,,:, ,,,; UK, ,
unication of Germany: overview, :;,;o, :,,; fu-
ture challenges, :,,,; party responses com-
pared, :c, ::::,, ::, ::,; policymaking
processes, :,,,; union changes, ::. See also
Germany
Union Dmocratique pour las Rpublique, France
(UDR), ::,
Union for the New Majority, France (UNM),
::,,c
Union of Industrial and Employers
Confederations of Europe (UNICE), ,c,
Union of Right Forces, Russia (SPS), ,,,, ,;,
,c
Union pour la Dmocratic Franaise (UDF), ::,c,
:,:,, ::
Union pour la France (UPF), :,
unions: EU, ,c,; France, ,;, :,, :o, :,c,:;
Germany, ::o, ::;:, ::, ::,; Italy, :o:, ,:;,
,:c::, ,,;,; Russia, :, ,; Sweden, ,o,
,;;o, ,:, ,:,, ,;, ,,, ,,o,;; UK,
;, ,, ;,, ,,,, ,, c:
United Kingdom: countries compared, ::, o;
ECC/EU issues, :,:o, ,,, ;,, ;c, ;:, ;; fu-
ture challenges, ;; Gulf War, ,:; history
overview, :,; institutional stability, o; inter-
est groups, ,;o:, c:; Irish problem, :;
military spending, ,,,; policy tradition, ::,;
political culture, :. See also European Union
entries
United Kingdom, government structure: overview,
, :;:,; cabinet, :,:o; change trends, :,;
civil service, ,:,,; judiciary, , ,,,o; local,
,o,; monarch, :,:c; Parliament, , :o,:;
prime minister, :c:,; public corporations,
,,,; quasi-governmental sector, ,,; stability
tradition, o. See also United Kingdom, policy-
making process
United Kingdom, party system: overview, ::,,
::, ::,, ,;; election process, o, ,:,,;
major parties compared, o,:; nationalist-ori-
ented groups, :, ,o; voter support patterns, ,,
:, ,,,;
United Kingdom, policymaking process: overview,
,c,:, o,o, ;,;o; budgeting, ;:;;; civil ser-
vice inuence, ,,,, oo, ;:; monarchs role,
:,:c, o,, o;; stages in, o;c. See also United
Kingdom, government structure
United Nations, ,,
index 573
United States: EU banking activities, ,o;
EU comparisons, oo,; Gulf War, ,:;
income levels, ::; Russia compared, c,;
spending levels, ,,;, ,,,; Yeltsin relations,
,c,:
Unity (Russia), ,,,o, ,;, ,,, ::
urbanization: France, ,; Germany, ::;
Russia, ::
value-added tax (VAT), ,::,
Viktoria Ingrid Alice Desiree, Crown Princess
(Sweden), ,o:o:
Vogel, Bernhard, :,o
Voloshin, Alexander, :c
von Hindenburg, Paul, :,,
voting patterns, socioeconomic characteristics:
France, ::,, :,;,; Germany, ::,:; Italy,
,:;:; Russia, ,c; Sweden, ,o, ,;c, ,;:,
,;:, ,;, ,,:; UK, ,,,;. See also electoral sys-
tems; individual country party entries, e.g. France,
party system
Voynet, Dominique, :,;
Vyakhirev, Rem, :
Wachtmesiter, Ian, ,;
wage-earner fund proposal (Sweden), ,;,
wages. See income levels
Wales: committee system, , ,c; devolution refer-
endum, o;, ,; electoral system, ,; local gov-
ernment, ,o; party support patterns, o, , ,,;
population characteristics, :, ,. See also
Weimar Republic, :;c, :,:, :,,,, :c,, ::;
welfare state. See social welfare systems
Westerberg, Bengt, ,;:;:
Western European Union (WEU), ,::
West Germany, history overview, :o;, :;:;o,
:o. See also Germany
West Lothian Question, ,c, ,
Women of Russia, ,, ,o
Workers Force (France), :,
World War I, :o,, :,,
World War II, ,, :;c;,, :,o, ,,,, :c
Yabloko (Russia), ,,, ,,, ,;, c
Yakovlev, Vladimir, ,o
Yakunin, Gleb, :,,c
Yavlinsky, Grigorii, :;, :,, ,,, c
Yeltsin, Boris: characterized, :,:o; conicts with
parliament, :;:, :,, ,:; dismissals of gov-
ernment ofcials, :; economic policy, o;
elections, :;, ::; foreign policy activity,
,c,:, ,:,; letters from populace, :; oli-
garch support, :; resignation, ::::
Yeltsin, Tatyana, :
Zaslavskaya, Tatyana, ::
Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, ,c, ,,, ,;, ,,,,
c
Zyuganov, Gennadii, ::, :,, ,o

Politics in Europe An Introduction To The Politics of The United Kingdom France Germany Italy Sweden Russia and The European Union

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Politics in Europe An Introduction To The Politics of The United Kingdom France Germany Italy Sweden Russia and The European Union

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Politics in Europe

A Knock at Number Ten, The Economist, February :,,,.

1967 (1) 22.5 18.8

1973 (1) 21.5 21.2 13.1

1978 (1) 20.5 22.5 2.3

C) and rather warmer in summer (the average in July is :

C). St. Petersburg,

C; temperatures here are as low as

C in July) they are as

European United Left/Nordic Green Left :

European Parliamentary Election, June (number of deputies by party group)

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