Dawn

Dawn

Monday, April 29, 2019

Thoughts from Madrid, Spain: 29.4.19

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable. 
                  Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain
  • Well, perhaps the only surprise among the election results is that Vox didn't really get 'at least 10%' of the vote, coming in at 10.3. Though I guess one could argue that the collapse of the PP party's support was even greater than predicted. Here's The Local on why.
  • As for Vox, here's an interesting insight into their early funding. Can't say I understand it.
  • Overall, says El País here, Spain is no longer different. Google's translation below.
  • Talking of being surprised . . . I really shouldn't be when a group of 3 or 4 young women - in a different room of the bar/café - make so much noise I can't hear myself think. In this regard at least, Spain remains different.
  • BTW . . . Not having the vote despite paying taxes, in 18 years I hadn't had the occasion to go into a polling station until yesterday, when I came face-to-face with the Continental 'list' system, under which you vote not for an individual but for a party. At least in national elections. Yesterday, there were 12 parties to choose from in Madrid - including 2 communist parties and the The Party for a More Just World - and each of these had a list of 30-40 candidates, none of whom you actually vote for. As I understand it, this list is the same in every polling station around the country and the total votes cast nationally for each party then determine how many of the 30-40 get seats in parliament, going from the top down. But maybe I've got this wrong. If I haven't, someone needs to explain to me why the PSOE list, for example, only had 40 names on it, when they now have far more seats in parliament than that. Do they just not bother to include the also-rans on their list
The USA
  • As you'd expect from the Great Hypocrite: Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric — like virtually every position he takes — applies only to others, not himself. Buzzfeed News got government reports on special visas requested by Mar-a-Lago on the grounds that they couldn’t find anyone here to take those jobs. In fact, they rejected dozens of applicants and only hired a single American worker.  . . . this is par for the course for Trump, who rails against immigrants taking our jobs but then imports workers for jobs virtually anyone could do. Just like he rails against American companies making their products overseas while his own companies have virtually everything manufactured in other countries.
  • Yesterday, I listened - for a short while - to Vice-President Pence telling the NRA that 'socialism' had caused the death of millions and was a system which denied liberty to its citizens. Can the vice-president of the USA really be someone who, firstly, confuses socialism with both 'National Socialism' and communism and, secondly, is unaware that all European states are, to one degree or another, socialist? Or is he just an unscrupulous liar?
The Way of the World
  • It's been pointed out that the label 'populist' is only applied to far right parties. And that, if you take it to mean something like 'telling people what they want to hear', then it can equally be applied to far-left parties. But isn't. Seems a fair comment to me. Some of the Left really is loonily populist.
Spanish
  • Word of the Day: Guiri.
English
  • I'm reading a 19th century (not very) comic novel in which I am stumbling across dozens of words unknown to me. I'll produce a short list of the best in due course. For now, how about a poult of a chap and his docken ears?
Finally . . .
ARTICLE

Spain is not different: Eva Anduiza, professor of Political Science at the UAB.

The fragmentation and polarization of politics is affecting all democracies and in the face of the challenges it poses, it is necessary for citizens to be able to react and assume responsibilities

In a few years Spanish politics has changed radically. But in almost nothing Spain is different. Sunday's elections reflect some of the elements present in other countries around us. Fragmentation, asymmetric and affective polarization amplified by social networks, and threats to liberal democracy are some of these aspects that we can recognize in Spain as well as in other very different contexts.

Fragmentation reflects the degree of diversity of a society. It is also a product of the electoral system that is applied, which can help simplify the parliamentary representation of social heterogeneity. Throughout Europe, fragmentation has grown as a result of the emergence of new lines of conflict, and in the case of Spain especially because of the difficulty of the old parties to manage the economic crisis. From a system articulated around two major state-level parties, we have passed in 2015 to four, which will most likely become five starting on Sunday. On the one hand, the existence of many parties implies a broader and more varied menu of political options, which a priori is good in democratic terms, although it is not clear that this is especially attractive to voters. An excess of supply can generate l'embarras du choix and make it difficult to decide who to vote for. On the other hand, fragmentation hinders the appearance of single-colored parliamentary majorities and makes agreements between parties necessary to form a government. This, which is very common at regional and local levels, will be a novelty in the Government of Spain, which, should it occur, will bring us closer to the norm in Europe. The right faces for the first time this scenario of high fragmentation.

The consequences that this may have are still to be seen, which will surely be qualified by their clear predisposition to reach agreements, as shown by the recent government formation in Andalusia.
Along with fragmentation, polarization seems to be another feature of contemporary party systems. The parties, be they many or few, may be more or less distanced from each other and the variation in levels of polarization between countries is enormous. The feeling is that the ideological distance between parties has increased in recent decades, partly because of the irruption of these new challenging parties, and partly also because of the displacement of some traditional parties.

This can be paradoxical if we consider that the capacity of the governments to carry out the electoral programs with which they win the elections is encountering more and more difficulties. National sovereignty pales in the face of the control that financial markets can exert on the economy of a country, whose functioning no one seems to understand or be able to explain. The anger and mistrust in the institutions have become more acute and there is no lack of reasons. This limitation is more evident for policies traditionally considered to be left-wing, constrained in the EU by deficit ceilings and public debt. It is above all the right, unleashed in some countries, that moves towards increasingly harsh positions, generating a situation of asymmetric polarization.

With increasing frequency some parties deploy negative campaign strategies in which the main axis is not the proposal but the virulent criticism to the adversary. Although the consequences of these strategies are the object of academic discussion, it is possible to intuit how, in the heat of negative campaigns, polarization transcends ideological discussion and becomes especially emotional. The phenomenon is amplified by social networks through two mechanisms. On the one hand, networks are fed by negative emotions such as anger and anger, which are the mobilizing emotions that negative campaigns aim to generate. Messages with a negative emotional charge become more viral and are more influential than neutral messages or with positive emotions. In the operating logic of social networks there are incentives to use negative emotions directed at a guilty party. From here it is easy to move to the extension of negative feelings toward sympathizers of other parties (or members of other groups), that is, towards a greater affective polarization. On the other hand, there is experimental evidence that shows how exposure to superficial information that circulates in social networks generates excessive confidence in the degree and quality of one's knowledge. The networks teach us useful things about politics, but it seems that above all they make us believe that we know. This overestimation of our own political competence fosters arrogance and erodes the intellectual humility necessary to ensure tolerance and respect for those who have a different worldview.

Affective polarization leads to reject the legitimacy of the other within the system

Taken to its maximum expression, the affective polarization leads to reject the legitimacy of the other within the system. And from here we jump to the third element that we see in Spain as in other countries: the difficulty of democracies to manage situations in which the same democratic game is questioned. It is a commonplace to say that in a democracy the disagreement about political objectives must be compatible with the agreement regarding forms, procedures and some basic principles. In liberal democracy these procedures are the vote, but also the freedom of information, expression and protest, recognition of the legitimacy of the adversary, the possibility of reaching agreements with those who do not share the same political project, and respect for the rights of minorities. To deny these principles or to try to limit them is against the essence of liberal democracy.

Like polarization, these attacks are not exactly symmetrical either, and they are in different modalities. They come from those who take the part for the whole and consider their vision to be the only legitimate and acceptable one for the country and for democracy. They come especially from those who incite hatred, fear and contempt for others. And, unfortunately, they also originate when the plurality and the peaceful expression of the discrepancy are over-reactive and limited from the institutions.

On these threats it is difficult to count on a militant democracy to protect us, because then we would have an even more reduced democracy. Limiting freedom of expression is sliding down a slope that we do not know where it ends. The moral arguments that we can develop here about the virtues of democracy are necessary, but surely also insufficient. The exit, if it exists, possibly happens because each of us assume the part that corresponds to us when it comes to contain the damage in shared spaces for discussion, however difficult and hostile they may be. We need journalists and responsible politicians, who know how to limit the unacceptable and do not contribute to further eroding the rules of the game by getting clicks or votes. We need teachers and parents to convey the value of living in a democratic system that, despite being limited and vulnerable, against other alternatives is still the best we have at the moment. And we also need a citizenry capable of reacting to danger and taking responsibility in different situations ranging from WhatsApp chats to voting. The environment, unfortunately, is not particularly favorable, but precisely for that reason, it is more necessary.

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