Introduction: Conflict and Consensus in Parliament during the Economic Crisis

Abstract

Since the onset of the economic crisis, parties in parliament (especially those in opposition) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperate with the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by a weakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily reelected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? The present contribution introduces a collection of works exploring this dilemma in southern European countries, by examining the opposition behaviour in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain; and in the European Parliament.

From Electoral Epidemic to Government Epidemic: The Next Level of the Crisis in Southern Europe

“…The changes in voters' preferences, the increase in electoral volatility and the decline in electoral turnout; the spread of new and old forms of protest; the decay of mainstream parties and the appearance of powerful anti-establishment challengers; the growth of distrust in political institutions and the dwindling capacity of parties to channel and represent the positions of their voters are among the dimensions affected by the crisis and discussed in the literature (see, among others, Freire & Lisi 2016;Hernández & Kriesi 2016;Magalhães 2014;Moury & De Giorgi 2015;Torcal 2014). In fact, the impact of the crisis on South European democracies has been so great that we cannot but agree with the conclusion that the Great Recession has ended up affecting the quality of democracy at large: 'worsening of the economy mainly affects the rule of law, electoral accountability, participation, equality and responsiveness' (Morlino & Quaranta 2016, p. 626).…”

Political crisis and the Corona—‘State of Emergency’ in Kosovo

“…3 If we understand the rise of Corona in February/March as an extraordinary crisis, then interdisciplinary literature gives us examples on how political opponents can engage in short-term cooperation and mutual support (for example of governments by oppositions) in such periods of emergency in democracies, e.g. in the United States after the attacks on 11 September 2001 (Entman 2003 ; Owens 2009 ) or in the economic crisis after 2009 in European states (Moury and De Giorgi 2015 ). These phenomena could be defined as “antagonistic cooperation” between political adversaries to pursue common interests for a specific time in a clear institutional set-up (Best 2009 , p. 425).…”

Economic crisis and lawmaking. The impact of crisis on legislative agenda in Italy

“…Major economic crises are focal events that drive changes in various aspects of the political system. Scholars have extensively investigated the consequences of crises on public opinion and electoral behaviour (Lindvall, 2014;Singer, 2013), as well as on the conduct of elected representatives (Blumenau and Lauderdale, 2017;Moury and De Giorgi, 2015). However, crises affect other aspects of the functioning of national democratic institutions, not least the decision-making processes within those institutions (Morlino and Quaranta 2016).…”