Friends, do you know how the almost exemplary democratic system of the European socio-political space was formed?
Today, everyone knows that most of the countries of continental Europe belong to the “democratic camp” and promote the values of equality and freedom of choice of every full-fledged subject on the world political arena. But has Europe always been a “pillar” of democracy? How did Freedom House, one of the most famous projects in this regard, evaluate the manifestations and peculiarities of political regimes in the current absolutely “free” countries, and what were the dynamics of changes in the coverage of the results of the comparative analysis? How thorny is the path to a consolidated democracy and does it have a specific development scenario? How do different authors and other comparative projects, including the “Democracy Index” from “The Economist Intelligence Unit”, etc. describe and consider this problem? Let’s figure it out together!
Let’s start with Spain, because its case really attracts the attention of many political scientists, sociologists and historians. This state currently occupies the 22nd position in the “Democracy Index” rating from the organization “The Economist Intelligence Unit”, which includes it in the list of full-fledged democracies. Although in the second half of the last century, it was faced with the challenge of transitioning from a military dictatorship to democracy.
To confirm the existence of real democracy among the countries that we will consider in the series of posts “Europe was born from authoritarianism”, we will first of all refer to the indicators and comments of the project “Freedom in the world” from the organization “Freedom House” in recent years. Taking into account the published results in 2023 and the descriptive report for each of the criteria of this project for 2022, it is known that Spain received a total of 90 points out of a possible 100, which automatically gives it the status of a “free” country. Both political rights and civil liberties are quite highly rated in it – respectively, by 37/40 and 53/60 points.
The internal political mechanism of Spain is characterized by a high level of party competition, the rule of law prevails, and fair restrictive legislation has been put into effect, providing for measures of punishment for corruption and other offenses committed by political authors. However, the main challenge for the state is still separatist movements in Catalonia, which pose a number of threats to territorial integrity and constitutional stability, but still do not shake the democratic state of Spain. According to the mentioned project, the freedom of political choice of people from the dominance of external forces in relation to the political sphere or political forces that use non-political means was also assessed at 4 out of 4 possible points. The state also guarantees and provides support for freedom of speech, movement, social diversity, gender equality, etc.
An equally important factor is transparent and fair elections, which are based on citizens’ expression of will and contribute to the construction of a rationally structured system of political representation, in accordance with the preferences of the electorate. Thus, according to statistical data, the turnout of the electorate in the last parliamentary elections in Spain was 66.6%. This figure is lower than the percentage in 2019, where it was 71.8%.
Looking at the database on changes in the index of freedom by year, it can be stated that from 1973 to 1974 Spain had an indicator of “Not Free”, which classified this state as non-democratic. This assessment is obvious, since the 70s of the last century were characterized by milestones in the restructuring of Spain’s political regime.
In this context, let’s recall the authoritarian past of the country during the time of Francis Franco. His authoritarian regime, which scholars have dubbed “Frankism,” was established starting in 1939. During almost forty years of activity, the dictator concentrated and concentrated power in his hands, controlling all branches of power (if they can be divided at all), creating a system of instructions for ministers that existed de facto. Franco did not present a clear ideology or party program with the establishment of human rights and freedoms, but instead the political system was a projection of his personal views on the development of Spain.
Among the main characteristic features of the political regime of Franco’s time, the following can be distinguished:
● militarism as a priority vector in the recruitment of a powerful group from the ranks of the army;
● ultra-nationalism, which placed the interests of the Spanish above all state processes, in the context of which a universally accepted and mandatory symbolism was introduced to demonstrate loyalty to the status quo;
● a non-trivial feature of the regime was proactive Catholicism, which controlled political affairs, the education system and labor relations in Spain;
● in the end, political power was one-vector, no opposition was allowed to advance to the top of power. The only legal party that was closely inspected by the dictator was the FET de las JONS party – the Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx of Councils of the National Syndicalist Offensive, founded in 1937 as a merger of the fascist Falange España de las JONS with the monarchist neo-absolutist and ultra-Catholic Spanish Phalange of Traditionalists, which represented the movement Carlists (later renamed by the Francoists to “National Movement”). All other parties were considered illegal, persecuted and forced to conduct partisan activities.
The end of the Francoist regime came with the death of the dictator on November 20, 1975. On November 22 of the same year, Juan Carlos was proclaimed the monarch of Spain.
Probably, the first significant factor that testified to the glimmer of democratic foundations in Spain was the intention to diversify party associations. According to the results of the parliamentary elections on June 15, 1977, the UCD party (Union of the Democratic Center) took the leading position, the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) took second place, and the PCE (Communist Party of Spain) took third place. The AP (People’s Alliance) party, which took 4 seats in the parliament, was also represented in the election race. In this way, the main institutional requirement for the democratic progress of the state was implemented – a competitive and real struggle for power.
Already according to the results of a study from 1975, Spain was assessed as a “partly free” country, and the 80s of the last century made it possible to consolidate the state’s approach to “free” or democratic.
Aren’t there certain deviations in the level and development of democracy now, when according to most comparative indices (within various projects) Spain is among the countries with “consolidated democracy”?
The issue of the consolidation of democracy does not cease to be relevant, starting with the globalization of the trend of transition of political regimes to democratic ones in the 80s of the 20th century (these processes are still ongoing). Representatives of the scientific community were and will always be interested in the peculiarities and prospects of establishing democracy in its classical sense among the countries of the socialist camp, in particular.
However, it is worth understanding and remembering that no democracy, even a consolidated one, is immune from occasional anti-democratic phenomena and attitudes. Democracy can be fluid over time and rooted at the institutional level, but individual actions of actors from different spheres can be manifestations of an error towards increased control and even authoritarianism. Therefore, the government and the public, each at its own level, must make sufficient efforts to support democratic rights and freedoms.
For example, the above-mentioned “Freedom in the World” project from the “Freedom House” organization cites as an example such a case from the political life of Spain, which was shed light on very recently – in January 2021. Spain’s Platform for the Protection of Information Freedoms (PDLI) has criticized social media companies for implementing content moderation policies that allow the suspension or restriction of official political party accounts during election campaigns, saying such policies could unduly influence election results. This, by the way, is another example of the influence of the media on the free will of the people.
So, the history of the first state we considered – Spain – is a vivid example of the transition of a political regime from autocracy to democracy and proof that democracy in Europe in the form we know now did not always exist and was not established in states in a short period of time. The catalyst for the development of democratic foundations, including in Spain, was party pluralism and distancing from past ideological values. In addition, the structure of the political elite and approaches to its recruitment were changed.
