Democracy has circular voting behaviors. Democracy in Spain has responded to the same comings and goings in each democratic period. Since the nineteenth to the twenty-first century the electorate has always elected the same parties; when an elected party disappointed the electorate, then the other party won the next elections. In 1912 the prodigal of literature Benito Perez Galdos wrote in the national episode dedicated to Canovas del Castillo;
“The two parties, which have agreed to take turns in Power peacefully, are two herds of men who aspire only to graze in the Budget. They lack ideas, and no high purpose moves them; they will not improve in the least the living conditions of this unhappy, poor, and illiterate race. They will pass one after the other, leaving everything as it is today, and will take Spain to a state of consumption that will have to end in death. […] They will do nothing but pure bureaucracy, despotism, sterile work of recommendations, favors to the friends, legislate without any practical efficacy, and go ahead with the lanterns… ”
The text refers to the historical period of the Bourbon restoration when the alternation of the Liberal and Conservative party became the norm. When scandals and corruption cornered one party, then the electorate turned to vote the other party; when the new party disappointed again, the first was again elected. Despite being a text bounded in time and space, its content and its underlying electoral dynamics can be extrapolated to many other countries and periods. In the United States, the bipartisan system has worked by turning the democratic circle over two centuries; in England, more of the same has happened. It happened again in Spain after the death of General Franco; the bipartisan rotating system has ruled the country for four decades. Corruption and scandals mobilized a part of the electorate to expel from power a party; a few years later, another part of the voters was mobilized for precisely do the same with the other party. Democracy is an election that rotates in a circle over time.
The circle turns and turns through time and space. The conservative party has won the elections; the Liberal party goes to the opposition. — The ecclesiastical authorities have blessed the future conservative president; the outgoing liberal president declared himself openly atheist. — The president in power bets on free markets; the former defended state intervention. — The incoming party promises to fix the problems inherited from the other party with different policies; the outgoing match has not succeeded. Through the globe, the Conservative party and the Liberal party are changing their acronyms and terminologies in the hope that they will not be recognized. There are almost no acronyms or concepts without having been prostituted. Circular democracy cannot be restricted to a place and time; it is the essence of the nature of the representative democracy. Each legislative period shows us the same conflicts, the same frictions, the same poisoned inheritances of the previous governments, and will leave behind the same unresolved problems intended for circular democracy to continue turning.
The certainty that sooner or later the power would be held again aided a layer of little men to germinate. Their sole aspiration was to clamber in the party to obtain the power´s privileges. The Great Galdos wrote in a book on The First Republic;
“At the door of his office, I saw the sign that made him famous in those days and revealed in Don Nicolás both ingenuity and fortitude. The little paper, stuck with wafers, said mutatis mutandis: Here there are no destinations, no recommendations, no money, nothing. Talking to my friend about this hustle and bustle, he told me laughing: «Do not believe, Tito that is just made up of Republicans the habit of asking. They are rather the unemployed of the old parties, the detritus of politics, and the countless boring and famished mosquitoes that make official life impossible. I had to scare them away with that sulfur smell. Despite the little sign they come back, they buzz and itch. ”
Party men always seek shelter under power. In these days a change from bipartisanship to multi-party system is simulated in Spain, and in the end, it is the same party men who are behind. Party men pretend to be regionalists, nationalists, or Universalists; they change their speech as they find closed paths to clamber. In the end, it is the same blocks that last; Liberal and Conservative. Circular democracy has demonstrated its ability to rotate with two elements, with three, with eight. Circular democracy always sells the hope that the next party full of party men you will vote for will break the circular dynamic. Circular democracy promises that a statesman will appear who responds to the needs of the state and the population that elected him, leaving behind the corrupt party loyalties. Circular democracy ensures that the next president will do it, but perhaps will be the next, or the one who comes behind. Or maybe the following one. The hope turns along with democracy.
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