Western Europe: Ins Are Out, Outs Are In

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 González, 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 François 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 González 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 González may discover.