Ins Are Out, Outs Are In

By Frederick Painton

Left and right, voters are determined to remain fickle

Whether they are zigging to the left in Spain or zagging to the right in West Germany, the voters of Western Europe are not as unfathomable these days as such contradictory behavior might indicate. To a considerable degree, the national electorates share a mood of frustration that is a constant warning to incumbent governments of all political stripes. Impatient with stagnating economies and jittery over record unemployment. West European voters are showing they are hungry for new leadership. So far the majority is not ready to embrace radical solutions of either left or right. But the message from the grass roots is clear enough. West Europeans increasingly are demanding tangible results in the struggle for economic recovery.

The victory last week of Felipe Gonzalez, Spain's moderate Socialist leader, was not seen in European capitals as evidence of any continent-wide drift to the left. In the past five years, socialist governments have lost power in Great Britain, Luxembourg, Belgium and Norway, and this year alone, in West Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark. Rather, the election of the first Socialist Prime Minister in Spain since 1936 appeared to be part of a trend confined to Southern Europe, where voters have grown disillusioned with decades of ineffective center-right governments. France's President Franc,ois Mitterrand and Greece's Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou swept to power last year on a wave of popular enthusiasm for promises of change, and Felipe Gonzalez has now joined that socialist surge. Even in Italy, where centrist Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini still leads a shaky five-party coalition, the Socialists under Bettino Craxi have made steady gains in the polls and are poised to offer an alternative to the two major parties, the Christian Democrats and the Communists.

Professor Gianfranco Pasquino, of the University of Bologna, suggests an explanation for the trend: "To a very large extent the socialist parties in Southern Europe are new parties. The French from 1971, the Greeks from 1974 and the Spanish from 1976-77. As such, they are identified more with cultural freedom and social justice, with popular demands for improvements in education, in the environment." Pasquino believes too that the socialists in all three countries are perceived as more reliable defenders of jobs. "It is not so much that they have been able to claim they will create more jobs," says Pasquino, "but they can promise not to adopt policies that will lead to greater unemployment." Big expectations, however, can become a political liability, as Mitterrand has learned, as Papandreou is learning, and as Gonzalez may discover.

Under Mitterrand, the number of jobless has continued to grow. After an ill-advised attempt to spur the economy through consumer spending, the French Socialists turned to unpopular wage and price controls to stem inflation. As controls were lifted last week, subway, railroad and airline workers promptly began striking for higher wages. In Greece, Papandreou's more moderate brand of socialism has fared better. In nationwide municipal elections late last month, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) won control over more than half of the nation's 276 cities and nearly 6,000 smaller communities. But the election also revealed some dissatisfaction with the government. PASOK's percentage of the vote dropped by several points over its showing in last year's parliamentary elections.

In Northern Europe, where Social Democrats have dominated politics for almost as long as the center-right parties have in Southern Europe, voters have been seeking alternatives. A minority of environmentalists and others opposed to nuclear power and the deployment in Europe of U.S. medium-range nuclear weapons have drifted leftward. A greater number have moved to the right in protest against the ever increasing tax burden needed to maintain extensive welfare programs in stagnant economies. In September, Denmark got its first conservative Prime Minister in 81 years, Poul Schlueter, who immediately pushed through an austerity program. Belgium's Christian Democratic Prime Minister Wilfried Martens took office a year ago with the avowed aim of cutting back government spending. In a welter of political confusion, the Dutch are now moving toward a center-right coalition government that is committed to trimming the welfare state. A year ago, Norway formed a minority government under conservative colors, the first in 52 years.

What all these governments have in common, beyond their conservative fiscal policies, is a remarkable fragility. They are for the most part coalitions that lack a broad-based electoral mandate. It is as if the voters wanted to experiment with a new approach to economic problems but withheld the authority for any drastic solutions. In Sweden, the victory in September of Social Democratic Prime Minister Olof Palme ran counter to the trend in the rest of Northern Europe.

The most spectacular Social Democratic setback came in West Germany, where Helmut Schmidt was defeated by Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl in a parliamentary no-confidence vote after the Free Democrats, Schmidt's erstwhile coalition partners, switched to the conservative camp. Although Kohl came to power without a popular vote, the new Chancellor could receive a majority in the elections set for next March 6. Citing poor health, Schmidt announced last week that he would not run again for Chancellor, a move that increased Kohl's chances of confirmation in the job. (Late last week the Social Democrats chose Hans-Jochen Vogel to be their candidate for Chancellor.) Another reason undoubtedly was the realization that voter disenchantment with the Social Democrats over their handling of the economy spelled almost certain defeat in the elections.

Kohl's Christian Democrats are not the only beneficiaries of that disaffection with Social Democratic policies. The Greens, an alliance of leftists, environmentalists and pacifists, have grown from a noisy protest movement into a strong challenger to replace the Free Democrats as the third political force in the country. So far the Greens have refused to enter any coalition or share any responsibility for government. The result could be a series of minority governments-- in short, political instability. A senior Western diplomat in Bonn commented, "The general rule seems to be that whoever created the mess is now out, and whoever was out is now in. But the steps the newcomers will be forced to take in order to repair the economic damage are so draconian that they will be unpopular and voted out of office." Welcome to power, Felipe.

-- By Frederick Painton. Reported by Jordan Bonfante /Paris and Roland Flamini/Bonn, with other bureaus

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante, Roland Flamini

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