For European States: No Government, No Problem
Political fragmentation increases the role of professional civil servants. This leads to stability, but also makes voters unhappy.
Spain may get a government, but Catalonia isn’t getting an election.
Photographer: OSCAR DEL POZO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
This week, Spain may finally get a government based on the results of its April parliamentary election. If it doesn’t, there’s likely to be a fourth election in as many years. Spain joins the growing ranks of countries run for extended periods by technocrats rather than politicians, and it appears to be doing fine – like most of the others in this group.
Spain has been without an elected government since April 28; Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party, which won a plurality, has been holding coalition talks, primarily with the leftist party Podemos, which supports a nonbinding independence vote in Catalonia. Now that Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias has dropped his demands for a top cabinet post, an alliance looks likely, but the coalition still won’t have a majority in parliament. This will make it difficult for Sanchez to govern without the support of Catalan separatist parties, which caused his previous cabinet to collapse. In other words, even if Sanchez succeeds in forming a cabinet, it won’t have a mandate for any kind of sweeping policy changes, but mostly just for the day-to-day running of the country.