Espanjan puoluelaitoksen murros vuoden 1982 parlamenttivaaleissa

Authors

• Kari Sulevo

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse the »specific» factors underlying the deep political change in Spanish political life caused by the 1982 general election. Such factors, especially typical of Spanish politics, are: the personification — »personalismo» — of party politics; the ideological similarity of the successful party (the PSOE), and the party formerly in power (the UCD); and the continuing general instability of the party structure. — As a background to the mobility of the Spanish party system the effect of the strategy followed in democratization and the level of general political knowledge is also analysed. All these factors are found to go towards explaining the big political change caused by the 1982 election. — The article also alludes to the other new West-European democracies, Greece and Portugal. These examples are similar in so far that the party systems of Greece and Portugal are also found to be very unstable.