Introduction: Conflict and consensus in Parliament during the economic crisis

Since the onset of the economic crisis, parties in parliament (especially those in opposi-tion) have found themselves faced with a dilemma: choosing between the need to cooperatewith the government in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by aweakened government to stress their adversarial position so as to be more easily re-elected and possibly get into power. What have they decided to do? The present contri-bution introduces a collection of works exploring this dilemma in southern Europeancountries, by examining the opposition behaviour in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain;and in the European Parliament.