Originally published in Catalan in The Conversation on 9 November 2026.
Every citizen navigates politics with a compass of their own, shaped by values, interests and experiences. What happens when the party they normally vote for withdraws its candidates to favour another? In recent weeks, the map by which those compasses are guided has been redrawn.
On 16 October, the PSOE and the parties of the Frente Amplio (including IU, Sumar and Más Madrid), together with other political forces, agreed to contest the Senate elections in 43 provinces under the name Senado de Progreso (Senate of Progress). Ten days later, the PP and Vox announced their own pact, presented as a response to the alliance on the left. The following day, the PSC and the Comuns agreed to consolidate their candidacies in Girona, Tarragona and Lleida. Ahead of the elections on 29 November, the choices available to voters have already changed.
The political blocs are drifting apart even as the parties within them find reasons to come together. They negotiate, make concessions and share candidacies amid rhetoric that sharpens confrontation.
Cooperation has become one of the most visible expressions of competition for power.
Electoral rules explain part of the phenomenon. Mainland Spanish provinces elect four senators, and each voter can select up to three names: the candidacy with the most votes usually wins three seats, while the runner-up takes one. Pooling support can alter that distribution. In a study of twenty parliamentary democracies, Sona Nadenichek Golder found that ideological proximity, polarisation and certain electoral rules favour pre-electoral coalitions.
Social psychology adds a less intuitive consequence. According to a review of cooperation and conflict between groups by Carsten de Dreu and his colleagues, certain mechanisms that strengthen trust within a group can intensify confrontation with others. Cooperating with our own side can make us more organised adversaries. This mechanism differs from electoral calculation, but helps explain how internal cohesion can coexist with external confrontation.
Outside Spain, Serbia offers another perspective.
The point is to compare the mechanisms while recognising the differences between political systems: what enables cooperation to reach beyond one’s own political camp? Protests following the collapse of the canopy at Novi Sad railway station, which killed sixteen people, gave rise to a student movement drawing support from across the ideological spectrum in opposition to Aleksandar Vučić and his party, who had been in power for more than a decade. On 25 October, the Student List won 53.01% of the vote, according to the full count released by the electoral commission on 2 November. The seat projection gave it 140 of the 250 seats, according to the distribution published at the time. The opposition coalition Narodna Srbija had withdrawn its candidacy to support it.
Serbia’s political context, marked by competitive authoritarianism (a system in which elections are held on an uneven playing field), differs profoundly from Spain’s. There, too, a common adversary provided a reason to unite. The difference lies in the reach of that cooperation: the movement connected voters both for and against European integration. A study by Dušan Vučićević and Nikola Jović, published before the elections, identifies the movement’s non-partisan character, participatory organisation and demands for institutional integrity as factors behind this convergence. Voters with very different political compasses found the same north. Whether that convergence can withstand the demands of governing remains to be seen.
Why do some objectives cross political divides while others reinforce them? The ECOOPx framework, developed by the research centre G-LAB-2B to analyse cooperation in situations of crisis and conflict, offers two useful concepts: urgency, which prompts coordination when deadlines become decisive, and resonance, which captures how far shared concerns extend and whom they mobilise.
From this perspective, the Spanish pacts are driven above all by electoral urgency and seek to mobilise like-minded voters. In Serbia, the urgency emerged from an institutional crisis, while demands for justice and accountability resonated across ideological divides. Perhaps cooperation reaches further when it defends something that also matters to those who think differently. For it to endure, trust and the ability to manage disagreements must follow.
Alliances also change the information citizens need in order to vote. In Girona or Tarragona, a habitual PP voter will find that their party has withdrawn its Senate candidates to favour Vox. In those provinces and in Lleida, the Comuns have done the same in favour of the PSC, while the Socialists have pledged to facilitate the Catalan Parliament’s appointment of a senator nominated by the Comuns. In Valencia and Cádiz, two of the six provinces where Vox has withdrawn, the party has proposed candidates listed as ‘independents’ on PP ballots; some have held positions within Vox or worked for the party.
Overlapping pacts create an information fog for citizens
The party initials on the ballot are not enough to establish who put forward each candidate, what concessions were negotiated or who can be held accountable. The more complex the alliances, the greater the value of transparency. Their durability will be tested after 29 November, when the partners must resolve disagreements and honour their commitments.
The Senate’s three-fifths threshold encapsulates the paradox. This majority is required to nominate four of the twelve Constitutional Court judges, who decide, among other things, whether legislation complies with the Constitution. In a polarised Senate, parties have incentives to gather enough allies to reach that threshold or, at least, to exceed two-fifths and retain the ability to block appointments. Coordination between like-minded parties strengthens both positions, but if neither bloc reaches three-fifths on its own, it will have to seek support beyond its own ranks. Polarisation thus redistributes the incentives to cooperate: it strengthens them among those who already feel close to one another and makes agreements between adversaries harder.
Electoral pacts show that parties know how to cooperate in competition for power. The democratic challenge is to apply that capacity to solving shared problems and reaching agreements that serve citizens, even when this requires engaging with political opponents. Spain has been down this road before: in 1977, with democracy still being consolidated and the country in the midst of an economic crisis, the Moncloa Pacts brought the government and the main political parties together around objectives none could achieve alone. Every citizen retains their own compass and shares the same territory with those who follow a different bearing.
What would need to change for cooperating with those who think differently to become as attractive as cooperating against them?
Perhaps very little: for an adversary to cease being an enemy and once again become someone we can talk to. For an agreement to be judged by the problems it solves, rather than by whom it excludes. And for citizens to know what they are voting for. The rest is just seats.
