Democracy in Modern Spain 9780300161861

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Democracy in Modern Spain

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

Democracy in Modern Spain

Richard Gunther, jose Ramon Montero, and joan Botella

Yale University Press New Haven & London

Published with assistance &om the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, and United States Unmrsities. Copyright 2004 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 10? and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Gararnond and Stone Sans types by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gunther, Ric!Iard. Democracy in modern Spain I Richard Gunther, Jose Rani6n Montero and Joan Botella. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-30D-IOI52-X (alk. paper) 1. Democracy-Spain.

2. Spain-Politics and government-1975-

1. Montero, Jose R., 1948- II. Botella, Joan.

III. Title.

JN8w.G86 2004 320.946-dc22

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guiddines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

For juan Linz,

sine qua non

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix Abbreviations, xii Introduction, 1 2 Spanish Exceptionalism: The Absence of a Tradition of Democratic Stability, 21 3 Institutional Crystallization and Democratic

Consolidation, 79

4 A New Political Culture, 131 5 Elections and Parties: The Stabilization of Electoral

Behavior, 198 6 The Many Spains: From Authoritarian Centralism to the

Estado de las Autonomias, 280 7 Public Policy and Decision Making: From Dictatorship to

Democracy, 335

vii

viii

Contents

Notes, 399 References, 429

Index, 463

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to those persons whose intellectual contributions, generosity, friendship and professionalism were critical to the writing of this book, and to those institutions whose financial and material support was essential. Without doubt, the person who deserves first position on our list is Juan J. Linz, to whom this book is dedicated. Over the course of a brilliant and influential intellectual career, Professor Linz has demonstrated his deep commitment to students from around the world who came to his house in Hamden, Connecticut, seeking advice regarding their dissertations or other academic interests. In virtually every instance, these individuals (many of them total strangers) were treated to hours of stimulating intellectual exchange, often accompanied by meals provided by his wonderful wife, Rodo, and additional hours of discussion on a seemingly inexhaustible array of topics. We, too, benefited from these extraordinary experiences, culminating in friendships and collaborative academic activities spanning nearly three decades. These rich interactions contributed enormously to our understanding of democratic Spain and its predemocratic origins, which serve as the ix

x

Acknowledgments

central foci of this book. And it goes without saying that the massive volume of scholarly studies of Spain that Professor Linz has published over the course of his career served as the essential groundwork for our own studies of Spanish society and politics. In short, the debt of gratitude that we owe to Juan Linz is enormous. Many other persons and institutions also are most deserving of our grateful recognition. At Ohio State University, the Department ofPolitical Science (under the superb leadership of Paul Beck) and the Mershon Center have not only provided staff support for various aspects of this book project but have also been the sources of many small grants over the years that made possible more than two decades of research in Spain by Richard Gunther. And without the encouragement of Bradley Richardson, who suggested that we approach Yale University Press with a proposal for this book, we might not have embarked on such a massive undertaking. In Madrid, the Centro de £studios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales (CEACS) of the lnstituto Juan March has provided a stimulating and unique intellectual atmosphere within which many of our collaborative meetings took place, and the Departamento de Ciencia Politica y Relaciones lnternacionales of the Universidad Aut6noma de Madrid also contributed a rare combination of personal and material assistance. The CEACS made possible the completion of this project by making available the resources of the best social-science library in Spain; its director, Martha Peach, has been a constant source of congenial and invaluable support, as was its secretary general, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo. A distinguished academic product of the CEACS, Ignacio Molina, made a substantial contribution to this volume, particularly by updating the concluding chapter with an impressive analysis of public-policy processes and outputs in Spain since the mid-1990s. Alberto Sanz and Jaime Balaguer were extremely helpful in providing editorial assistance. And Magdalena Nebreda, and, above all, Jacqueline de la Fuente have mixed their invaluable collaboration on this project with kindness and efficiency. In Barcelona, the lnstitut de Ciencies Politiques i Socials generously supported this project under the leadership of lsidre Molas. The Comine Conjunto Hispano-Norteamericano para Asuntos Educativos y Culturales, the Program Between Spain's Ministry of Culture and United States Universities, and Ohio State University's Quincentenary Committee contributed valuable economic assistance, as did the Comisi6n lnterministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia and the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia. Among those to whom we owe intellectual debts of gratitude are Edward

Acknowledgments

Malefakis, Stanley Payne, Jose Maria Maravall, former prime minister Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Sofia Perez, Robert Fishman, Hans-Jlirgen Puhle, Montserat Baras, Cesar Colino, Josep Maria Colomer, Mariano Torcal, and Josep Maria Valles, who provided insightful comments on parts of various early drafts, and without whose excellent published scholarship this book would have been difficult if not impossible to write. Finally, at Yale University Press we would like to thank John Covell for his initial support for this project and John Kulka for helping to bring it to a successful conclusion. And we are deeply indebted to Otto Bohlmann for his superb editorial work on the manuscript.

xi

Abbreviations

AES AIC AIPF

ANY AP AR AuB BNG CAlC

cc CCAA

ccoo CC-UCD CD CDC CON CDS xii

Acuerdo Econ6mico y Social Agrupaciones Independientes de Canarias Agrupaci6n Independiente Popular de Formentera Acci6n Nacionalista Vasca Alianza Popular Acci6n Republicana Autodeterminaziorako Bilgunea Bloque Nacionalista Galego Candidatura Aragonesa Independiente de Centro Coalici6n Canaria Comunidades Aut6nomas Comisiones Obreras Centristes de Catalunya-Uni6n de Centro Democratico Coalici6n Democratica Convergencia Democratica de Catalunya Convergencia de Dem6cratas de Navarra Centro Democratico y Social

Abbreviations

CEDA CEOE CEPYME CG ChA

CIS CiU CNT CP DRY EA EDC EE EH ENE

ERA ERC EUiA ETA EV FN FNC GAL

HB HOAC IC IC-V IR IU IU-A JOC LAB

uc

LOAPA MLNV MUC ORGA

Confederaci6n Espafiola de Derechas Aut6nomas Confederaci6n Espafiola de Organizaciones Empresariales Confederaci6n Espafiola de la Pequeiia y Mediana Empresa Coalici6n Galega Chunta Aragonesista Centro de Investigaciones Sociol6gicas Convergencia i Uni6 Confederaci6n Nacional del Trabajo Coalici6n Popular Derecha Regional Valenciana Eusko Alkartasuna Esquerra Democratica de Catalunya Euskadiko Ezquerra Euskal Herritarrok Entesa dels Nacionalistes d'Esquerra Equipo de Rendimiento Auton6mico Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya Esquerra Unida i Alternativa Euskadi ta Askatasuna [Basque Homeland and Freedom] ElsVerds Fuerza Nueva Federaci6n Nacionalista Canaria Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberaci6n Herri Batasuna Hermandades Obreras de Acci6n Cat6lica lniciativa per Catalunya Iniciativa per Catalunya-Els Verds Izquierda Republicana Izquierda Unida Izquierda Unida-Alternativa Juventudes Obreras Cat6licas Langile Aberstzaleen Batzordeak Uiga Catalana Ley Organica para la Armonizaci6n del Proceso Auton6mico (Organic Law for the Harmonization of the Autonomy Process) Movimiento de Liberaci6n Nacional Vasco Mesa para la Unidad de los Comunistas Organizaci6n Republicana Galega Aut6noma

xlii

xiv

Abbreviations

PA PAR PAr PCE PDL PCEmr PCP£ PDC PDP PIL PNV POUM pp PR PRC PSA PSC PSC-R PSM PSOE PSP PSUC UCD UCDCC UDC UGT UM UN UPC UPL UPN URA

us uv

Partido Andalucista Partido Aragones Regionalista Partido Aragones Partido Comunista de Espana Partido Democratico Liberal Partido Comunista de Espana marxista-revolucionario Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de Espana Pacte Democratic per Catalunya Partido Dem6crata Popular Partido de lndependientes de Lanzarote Partido Nacionalista Vasco Partit Obrer d'Unificaci6 Marxista Partido Popular Partido Riojano Partido Regionalista de Cantabria Partido Socialista de Andaluda Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya Partit Socialista de Catalunya reagrupament Partido Socialista de Mallorca Partido Socialista Obrero Espaiiol Partido Socialista Popular Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya Uni6n de Centro Democratico Uni6 del Centre i la Democracia Cristiana de Catalunya Uni6 Democratica de Catalunya Uni6n General de Trabajadores Uni6 Mallorquina Union Nacional Uni6n del Pueblo Canario Uni6n del Pueblo Leones Uni6n del Pueblo Navarro Uni6n Renovadora Asturiana Unidad Socialista Uni6 Valenciana

Chapter 1 Introduction

Although the phrase "Spain is different" served mainly as an advertising slogan for Spanish tourism in the mid-1970s, it succinctly described the tendency of social scientists to regard Spain as an exceptional case. Indeed, up to the time of Francisco Franco's death in November 1975, political developments in Spain had followed a course vastly different from the great majority of political systems in Western Europe and industrialized societies in general. Even though by that time the Spanish economy had become the ninth largest in the world, and Spanish incomes and living standards had rapidly approached those in the rest ofWestern Europe, many aspects of Spanish society and politics set the nation apart from other industrialized countries. First and foremost among those manifestations of Spain's exceptionalism was its inability to establish and maintain a stable democratic regime. To be sure, in two previous periods elections had been regularly held and served as the principal mechanisms for recruiting governmental elites, but both of these two earlier experiences violated one or more of the central criteria for classifying a regime as a consoli-

2

Introduction

dated democracy. 1 Under the Restoration Monarchy (1875-1923), elections were regularly convened and, for much of this period, were conducted under conditions of universal male suffrage. However, the use by governing elites of a wide variety of manipulative techniques and the prearranged alternation in power by the two major parties systematically falsified the entire electoral process. Thus, the Restoration Monarchy should be regarded as a "limited democracy" (see Burton, Gunther, and Higley 1992, 5-6}. During the Second Republic (1931-36), the political regime did, indeed, fulfill all our criteria for defining a regime as democratic. But this regime was never consolidated. Its collapse in 1936 plunged Spain into a tragic civil war (1936-39), in the aftermath of which an authoritarian regime was established. This episode was only one final (albeit by far the most violent) manifestation of political instability that dated back to the end of the Napoleonic era: in little more than a century, Spain had six constitutions and underwent seven pronunciamientos (in 1820, 1843, 1854, 1868, 1874, 1923, and 1936), four monarchical abdications, two changes of monarchical dynasty, two dictatorships (one lasting nearly four decades), two republics, and four civil wars (1833-40, 1846-48, 1872-75, and 1936-39). Thus, Spain in the early 1970s stood in sharp contrast to the rest ofWestern Europe, except for neighboring Portugal. While democratic systems had been fully entrenched for decades nearly everywhere else, Spain lacked a tradition of stable democratic governance throughout its history. This lamentable political tradition led some observers to question whether Spain could ever establish a consolidated democratic system. While such doubts were most widespread (and credible) in the early to mid-197os, some observers have maintained a skeptical stance regarding the political culture's compatibility with democratic stability. In a book published in 1989-nearly a decade and a half after the death of Franco-Howard Wiarda wrote: "I remain uncertain how deeply the democratic ethos has been internalized within the Spanish and Portuguese political culture, whether democracy is viable there, how strongly it is wanted, and whether it will last .... [T]he democratic transitions in both these countries are still incomplete, democracy has not been fully consolidated and may not even now reach deeply into the society or its consciousness, and there are some powerful currents, attitudes, and institutions in Iberia that are not at all convinced that democracy is the best or only form of government." 2 Other observers have also attributed Spain's political instability and early twentieth-century propensity toward political violence to various features of its political culture. The nineteenth-century French psychologist Alfred Fouillee

Introduction

went so far as to claim that Spaniards are "semi-Mrican" and inherently violent and fanatical (cited in Caro Baroja 1970, 104). Francisco Franco argued that important features of the Spanish character were "anarchic spirit, negative critique, lack of solidarity among men, extremism and mutual hostility," and he used these alleged qualities as justification for his contention that they should be countered by strong authoritarian government (Linz 1970, 131). In its more elegant formulations, this cultural explanation of instability in Spain was presented as a clash between "the two Spains": one modernizing, urban, and innovative; the other traditional, conservative, and highly religious; but both equally cruel and intolerant. Certain aspects of Spain's political culture thus emerge as a second dimension of"Spanish exceptionalism." Indeed, such characterizations of"the Spanish national character" are widespread in both popular literature (e.g., Michener 1968; Hemingway 1954 and 1968) and serious scholarly analyses of Spanish history. The modal values and cultural traits of Spaniards were regarded by many as deviant from those of other Western European countries, and as attributes that explained or helped to explain the incapacity of Spain to sustain stable democratic regimes in the past, as well as its socioeconomic backwardness. Political instability in Spain has also been attributed to the existence of several deep social and political cleavages. In the early 1930s, no other Western European society was divided along so many politically relevant fault lines. Economic and social class divisions existed, as they did elsewhere; but the severity of economic inequality in the latifondio zones of the southern third of the country were without parallel in Western Europe, except for the south of Portugal. The religious cleavage in Spanish society was also deeper than in most neighboring countries. By the beginning of the twentieth-century, an increasingly reactionary and intolerant church was opposed by equally militant anticlerical forces in Spanish society. Alienation of religious sectors of Spanish society by the very founding of the Second Republic led supporters of the church to challenge the legitimacy of that democratic regime and contributed decisively to the outbreak of civil war. One deep cleavage present in few other West European countries was that separating the politically dominant {but economically lagging) center of the country from regions having distinct languages and cultures, which posed serious obstacles to national and political integration. Ever since its creation, Spain has been a multilingual, multicultural society. Closely associated with this cultural pluralism in Spain was a clash between two distinctly different models of the state: one favoring a centralized form of government, and the other insist-

3

4

Introduction

ing upon the maintenance of high levels of regional autonomy, which dated from the founding of the Spanish state in the fifteenth century. These conflicting preferences have, in fact, culminated in the outbreak of six civil wars in Spain. A fourth divisive cleavage involved attitudes toward the monarchy. Whereas the Crown serves as a unifYing national symbol in many Western European societies, during the one hundred and fifty years following the Napoleonic period the status of the Spanish monarchy was an object of intense controversy and conflict, contributing to three civil wars in the nineteenth century. In short, three sociopolitical cleavages (involving class, religion, and regionalism or nationalism) and one political cleavage (pertaining to the monarchy) divided and undermined Spain's previous democratic regime. No other Western European country had to confront so many deep divisions that often interacted with one another in complex and seemingly intractable ways. Further complicating this picture was an ideological polarization of the political system. Under the Second Republic, the political spectrum in Spain spanned the full range from anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, maximalist socialism, and communism to reactionary traditionalism, integral Spanish nationalism, and fascism. Thus, even though the political discourse of the time revolved around tensions and conflicts between "the two Spains," it is more accurate to speak of several Spains that were mutually antagonistic toward one another. Until the early 1970s, the backwardness of the Spanish economy could be regarded as another important feature distinguishing Spain from the rest of Western Europe. It is unequivocally true that until then Spain lagged far behind Northern European countries in terms of socioeconomic development, and that, in retrospect, it should be regarded as a late industrializer. But perceptions of economic backwardness are still apparent among those who continued to refer to Spain as part of Europe's "semiperiphery" as late as the mid-r98os (Arrighi r985). Certainly the most conspicuous way in which Spain differed from other Western industrialized societies in the early 1970s involved its political regime. The regime created by General Franco was unique in Western Europe, except for Portugal and Greece, both of which had an economy much less developed than that of Spain. In sharp contrast to the stable democracies that existed in neighboring countries, Spain was ruled by a reactionary, corporatist authoritarian regime whose characteristics were strikingly anachronistic. One additional and highly significant way in which the Spain of the early 1970s differed from other Western European countries was that its public poli-

Introduction

cies bore little resemblance to those of other industrialized societies. Despite the rapid modernization of the preceding decade, the state's provision of certain public services {such as education) was at third-world levels, and it was spending less on defense {as a share ofGDP) than any other European country except Luxembourg. At the same time, it was maintaining a large system of nationalized or subsidized industries. Accordingly, one paradox of Spanish political economy was that, although its large parastate sector and heavy protectionist and regulatory intervention made its economy state heavy, its paucity of tax revenues, its tiny state budget, and its inadequate provision of basic services made it a very weak state. Thus, at the time ofFranco's death in 1975 Spain could be regarded as different from other Western European countries in several important ways: unlike all of them except Portugal and {for a short time) Greece, it was governed by an anachronistic authoritarian regime; it completely lacked a tradition of stable, democratic governance; its political culture was alleged to be characterized by many unusual aspects seemingly antithetical to democracy; its economy lagged substantially behind the economies of the rest of Western Europe; and its social-welfare programs, political economy, and public policies were distinctive and included several paradoxical elements.

A CONSOLIDATED DEMOCRACY IN A MODERN SOCIETY

Spain is no longer so different that it does not fall well within the range of variation of other societies that are conventionally regarded as belonging to the industrialized, democratic West. Its political regime is fully democratic, according to all criteria normally applied to "procedural" conceptualizations of democracy, and it is consolidated. The political institutions and decision-making processes of its central government do not differ significantly from those of other West European democracies, and its public policies have, in a very short period of time, come to approximate those of other industrialized societies. The Spanish economy and social structure over the past four decades have evolved rapidly, if not dramatically. While Spain does lag a bit behind other members of the European Community in certain economic and social dimensions, it can by no means be regarded as belonging to a semiperiphery of Europe. Summarizing these developments, Victor Perez Diaz (1990, 17) has written: "By and large, the differences between Spain and Western Europe regarding economic life and culture seem today a matter of degree.... Democracy has

5

6

Introduction

become business as usual, an expected and accepted part of the everyday life of all Spaniards." Important aspects of Spain's political culture have also changed dramatically. What had been a deeply divided and polarized society under the Second Republic is characterized today by moderation and tolerance. The range of ideological options represented by Spain's political parties-which once spanned the full distance between anarchism and fascism-is now largely restricted to a coalition of former communists, disgruntled socialists, ecologists and singleissue groups, at one end of the national political spectrum, and a conservative party, at the other, both of which are fully democratic. In contrast with the extreme polarization characteristic of the Second Republic, both public opinion at the mass level and the behavior of political elites and institutions have consistently been moderate. At the national level (that is, except in Euskadi) there are no antisystem panies of the left or right. And even in the Basque Country the late 1980s witnessed significant progress toward the consolidation of democracy and the progressive marginalization of antisystem forces. Summarizing these changes, Linz (1990a, 663) writes: "We have passed from a weakly integrated society, divided by conflicts over class, religion, ideology and nationality-rooted in distinct conceptions of the state-to a more homogeneous society in which the majority of social actors avoid conflict, seek consensus, and tolerate a broad range of diversity, within a widely respected institutional framework that defines [democratic] rules of the game." This is not to say that contemporary Spanish society, politics, and culture have not exhibited certain characteristics that distinguish them from other Western European societies. As we shall see, cenain features of Spanish political culture are somewhat out of the ordinary. These include a very low level of organizational membership, often meaning that interests are poorly institutionalized and weakly articulated; an extremely low level of public interest in politics and involvement in political affairs; Spaniards read very little and depend heavily on television for information about politics; attitudinal suppon for capitalism, among both those on the left and those on the right has until recently been weak, while most Spaniards favor "statism" over individual initiatives in responding to social problems (that is, they heavily emphasize theresponsibility of the state for the welfare and happiness of citizens). More imponant, the behavior of Spain's political elites during the transition to democracy represented a sharp departure from the majoritarian, winnertake-all practices that characterize politics in most democracies. Indeed, "the Spanish model" of democratization is regarded as having been so successful

Introduction

that it has been closely examined (but infrequently emulated) by political elites of other countries undergoing regime transformation. The contrast between the rancorous verbal clashes and violence of the Second Republic and the amiable and mutually respectful "politics of consensus" that played such a central role in establishing and consolidating the present democratic regime is nothing short of dramatic. Indeed, the transition to democracy contributed to the founding of a new Spain. The success of this democratization process in multilingual, multicultural, and multinational Spain is even more impressive in light of the extreme levels of instability and violence that have marked the regime-transformation processes in comparably heterogeneous Eastern European countries following the collapse of communism. In contrast to the polarization of different national groups that occurred in Yugoslavia, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Czechoslovakia, and parts of Russia-where national identities have been defined in exclusionary, and therefore inherently conflictual, terms-regional nationalist identities have tended to be cast in terms of overlapping multiple identifications with both the region and the Spanish state. Public opinion has evolved progressively throughout the post-Franco era away from the diametrically opposed alternatives of continued centralism, on the one hand, and outright independence from Spain, on the other, toward a consensus in support of a regionally decentralized political system-the Estado de las autonomias. Indeed, it is important to note that Spain underwent not one but two political transitions in the 1970s: the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule was accompanied by a drastic restructuring of the state, in which considerable authority was devolved from the central government in Madrid to seventeen regional governments. The unevenly decentralized system that resulted (with some regions effectively having much greater autonomy than others) may be puzzling to those familiar with federal systems, but the Estado de las autonom!as has largely satisfied the aspirations of regional nationalists and former defenders of Spanish centralism alike. What is most impressive is that, with the exception of the Basque Country, this transformation was accomplished in the absence of the kind of instability and violence that beset processes of political change in Eastern Europe.

EXPLAINING POLITICAL CHANGE

One objective of this book is to analyze how and why a consolidated democracy was successfully established in Spain. How was it possible that fully modern,

7

8

Introduction

Western European systems of values and political preferences, political behavior of the masses and elites, legitimate democratic institutions, and patterns of public-policy processes and outputs so quickly replaced the lamentable "exceptionalisms" that characterized Spain in the past? And how could these changes have occurred so quickly and in the general absence of violent or destabilizing political conflict? Modernization

One obvious factor contributing to this development was the substantial socioeconomic modernization that occurred in the decade and a half preceding Franco's death. A substantial body of social-science research has documented the extent to which changes associated with economic development can exert a powerful influence on a society's culture and basic features of its population's political behavior. Important cultural and political changes have occurred in Spain at least in part as a result of the rapid socioeconomic change that began in the early 1960s. Powerful waves of migration have contributed to an extensive urbanization, to the progressive disappearance of parochial village subcultures, and to amelioration of the problems of extreme inequality in the latifundist regions of the south. Education, exposure to mass-communication media, and access to transportation networks have eliminated patron-client relationships from all but a few relatively isolated rural areas, freeing individuals for the kind of independent participation in politics that is demanded by our procedural definition of democracy. The expansion of the industrial and service sectors of the economy have substantially altered the occupational and class structure of society, and a technological revolution in the agricultural sector has greatly affected social stratification in rural areas. Increased productivity and wealth have further contributed to the emergence of a mass-consumption society, with living standards for the average Spaniard now well within the range of those in other Western industrialized societies. A profound secularization of society has occurred, substantially reducing the power of the church and helping to marginalize some once-divisive church-state issues. And "postmaterialist" values are beginning to emerge, especially among the young, as in other advanced industrial societies. The explanatory power of socioeconomic modernization, however, is quite limited. Socioeconomic development did indeed help erode the underpinnings of many of the traditional cultural precepts of Spanish society, and it has contributed to the emergence of core values and cultural traits associated with "modernity." These include the predominance of universalism over particular-

Introduction

ism; the decline of fatalism and a "subject orientation" in politics; consumerism; increased optimism and belief in control over one's own destiny; and so on. It has also directly contributed to the softening of class divisions-bringing about greater equality and raising overall standards of living for all social groups. It has not, however, culminated in the emergence of a new value consensus or the homogenization of society to a degree that might have eradicated the objective social bases for political conflict. In fact, in some ways social change has actually increased the diversity of Spanish society. Spain is much more pluralistic than in the past with regard to religious beliefs (or nonbeliefs). Economic change and substantial interregional and international migrations have led to much greater diversity in lifestyles. And the processes of modernization in Spain have failed to bring about a "melting-pot" response to the linguistic and cultural pluralism of Spain's population. Indeed, following the restoration of regional autonomy, the overall level oflinguistic diversity in the country has increased, mainly as a result of vigorous programs of "normalization," "recuperation," or development of regional languages adopted by several of the Autonomous Community governments. In short, modernization contributed to but did not fully determine the success of democratization and democratic consolidation. The Crystallization of Political and Social Relationships

An additional and very powerful explanatory factor is the manner in which relations among diverse social groups (economic, cultural, regional, and religious) were defined and institutionalized during the crucial period of crystallization that occurred at roughly the same time as the founding of the new democratic regime. It has often been pointed out that political relationships, values, and beliefs were in a highly inchoate state in the period following Franco's death. While the majority of Spaniards shared a vague predilection in favor of evolution toward Western European democracy, there was no consensus concerning the desired direction of change or the specific institutional forms that a post-Franco regime might take. Moreover, given continuing polarization of opinion concerning certain fundamental and traditionally divisive issues that would have to be confronted in the course of establishing a new regime, and the extent to which the conflicting stands on these issues were neatly reflected by divisions within the party system, it was far from certain that the process of political change would culminate in a legitimate and stable democratic regime. Thus, the channeling of these conflicting preferences and aspi-

9

10

Introduction

rations into an institutionalized arena that could satisfactorily regulate political conflict was a central task of the transition to democracy. What is too often overlooked as a fundamental characteristic of this period of high uncertainty is that the basic structure of secondary associations in Spanish civil society was also in a considerable state of flux. Trade unions were in a process of reorganization and institutionalization following their suppression and the uncertainties of clandestine existence under the Franquist regime. The church and its affiliated secondary organizations passed through a considerable period of crisis, decay, and even disintegration during the final years of the Franco regime, and they were groping to establish a new relationship with the state and Spanish society as a whole. Business organizations were in a total state of disarray: the Franquist regime's corporatist network was rapidly collapsing, and a new interest association, the Confederaci6n Espanola de Organizaciones Empresariales, would not come into existence until late in 1977. Thus, not only did uncertainty surround the roles and behavioral norms of secondary associations in post-Franco society; the very institutional forms that would structure civil society were also very much in doubt. In short, this was a period of both social and political reorganization and norm redefinition. Thus, one crucial aspect of the success of the democratization process was the way that groups redefined their objectives and established behavioral norms. In the case of Spain (but, unfortunately, not of others, such as Bosnia and many of the other states in the former Eastern bloc), groups adopted goals and behavioral norms that were conducive to the tolerance of diversity and the absence of destabilizing conflict with one another. It is important to note that groups did not move toward a consensus on values or interest. Diversity, not homogeneity, characterizes Spanish society today. But the behaviorally relevant aspects of how groups identified their goals and norms differed significantly from those of the Second Republic. What was established was not a substantive consensus-groups would continue to disagree with one another about their basic preferences-but, rather, a procedural consensus-they reached a basic understanding on how to interact with one another in a manner that was not perceived as threatening to the survival or the fundamental interests of other groups. The clearest example of this involves the restructuring of relations between the church and nonbelievers in Spanish society. For its part, the church abandoned its commitment to a "confessional state and the historic project of a Catholic conversion of the whole of Spain" (Perez Diaz 1991, 28). On the other side of the traditionally divisive religious cleavage, nonbelievers shifted from

Introduction

their historical anticlerical stand to one of indifference toward the church. The church and religious Spaniards were no less committed to their religious beliefs than in the past, and nonbelievers were no more likely to accept the dogmas of the church; in short, there was no substantive consensus on values related to church teachings. Instead, the two sides redefined their goals and established norms governing their interactions in such a manner as to be compatible with the existing diversity of beliefs and values, and to not threaten the other side fundamentally. Similarly, the role of the monarchy, as well as center-periphery relations in a multinational society, can be characterized as successfully regulated by procedural consensus. Widespread agreement (including within once-republican parties) now surrounds the political functions of the head of state, and King Juan Carlos I not only serves as an important source oflegitimacy and political unity but is also by far the most popular and widely respected person in the country. With regard to the geographical structuring of the state, the Estado de las autonomias has institutionalized the diversity among regions, granted autonomy to various levels of government to establish their own policies, and effectively laid to rest long-term struggles between centralizing and decentralizing tendencies that had culminated in five civil wars. The Spanish center abandoned the effort of the Franquist regime to force "national integration'' through the eradication of regional languages and cultures. In return, regional nationalists (with the exception of a minority of Basques) accepted an institutional arrangement that effectively laid to rest fears that they would demand the dismantling of the Spanish state. With regard to the economic cleavage, the Spanish story is not so surprising, since comparable transformations in labor relations and conflicts over economic policy occurred elsewhere in Western Europe. Nonetheless, the terms of the procedural consensus were similar to those mentioned earlier. The disappearance of anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, and Marxist maximalism contributed to predictable patterns ofbehavior in labor disputes and also narrowed the range of difference between the demands of labor and management. In return, acceptance of free trade unionism and collective bargaining by the right (with the state occasionally performing a neocorporatist tutelary role) represented a change from the repressive labor practices established initially by the Franquist regime. In short, the establishment of a consolidated democratic system was facilitated by long-term social and cultural changes that accompanied the modernization of Spain's economy. But in our view, socioeconomic change merely es-

11

12

Introduction

tablished the parameters within which political and social elites interacted in transforming the political system. This involved simultaneous efforts to create new political institutions and norms of behavior, as well as to institutionalize secondary associations and their patterns of interaction. The success of democratization in Spain was contingent on both a process of political "crafting" by elites (DiPalma 1990) and a "process of inventing liberal democratic traditions in civil society'' (Perez Diaz 1990, 4). "Leapfrogging" and "Freezing"

Two metaphors nicely capture important characteristics of the processes of change that took place during the crucial phase of institutionalization in the late 1970s and early 198os: "leapfrogging" and "freezing." The Franco regime had effectively suppressed political parties and imposed sharp constraints on the development of other secondary associations, particularly those with class or regional or nationalist bases. Politics at the mass level effectively disappeared. Its reemergence and institutionalization following four decades of"suspended animation" occurred in a society that was very different from that of the Second Republic, and, with few exceptions (such as the Basque and Catalan nationalist parties, which survived in exile, and skeletal, clandestine Socialist and Communist parties), took place in the absence of an organizational legacy inherited from that earlier period. This gave the regime's founding elites considerable freedom in crafting new political institutions and formulating partisan strategies. Given the inchoate state of secondary organizations and mass-level behavioral norms at the time, many aspects of Spanish society and culture were also especially malleable. Political elites in established democracies are faced with fewer degrees of freedom in developing their institution-building and electoral strategies. The institutional frameworks of the parties within which they work are relatively inflexible, and, as Lipset and Rokkan (1967) pointed out, even the parameters of their respective electoral clienteles have been largely defined by political events that transpired decades earlier. These earlier developments are "frozen" into institutional and behavioral legacies that constrain elite strategies and behavior. Most Northern European party systems, for example, were created during stages of economic development dominated by large and expanding industrial sectors, within which the gap in living standards between workers and the upper socioeconomic strata were pronounced and highly visible. Hence, class cleavages were frozen into patterns of voting behavior, and many parties organized themselves along class lines-with mass-based working-class parties

Introduction

forging strong, institutionalized links with trade unions. And in countries where religion became politicized during the crucial early stages of institutionalization, such as Italy during the early stages of the cold war, parties may establish close links with the church and its networks of allied secondary associations, and the electorate may be sharply divided along religious lines even after religion has faded as a salient object of political conflict. In contrast, Spanish democracy was reintroduced into a more modern society, within which a substantial plurality of workers were employed in the service sector, a mass-consumption economy had substantially improved living standards for the urban working classes, and television viewing was a daily habit for 90 percent of the population. Founding-party elites, not constrained by institutional legacies, were free to create institutions and pursue electoral strategies (especially "catch-all" strategies) that fit better with contemporary reality. Accordingly, parties emerged that had weak organizational bases, lacked strong ties with other secondary associations, and depended heavily on television as the principal vehicle for campaigning. In short, Spanish party builders were able to leapfrog over developmental stages that had characterized parties in established democracies in previous decades and to adopt party structures and electoral strategies that were more "modern" than those of their counterparts in established democracies. 3 Thus, paradoxically, we shall argue that several aspects of democratic politics in Spain more clearly reflect the "imprint of modernity" than does politics in most established democracies. This leapfrogging argument has even been applied to Spain's processes of socioeconomic change, the most rapid phases of which occurred in the 196os and early 1970s (following two decades of economic stagnation). Certain developmental stages that characterized processes of socioeconomic change in other Western European countries were weak or absent from the Spanish modernization process. As a Spanish sociologist described this phenomenon, "Spain, in some respects and with some regional differences, . . . [has passed] from the pre- to the post-industrial, without having exhausted ... the industrial stage. We have learned to consume without having fully understood how to produce. Spain has [belatedly but hastily] moved towards an industrial society of mass consumption, which other western countries achieved a long time ago" (Murillo 1988, 202). For example, Spain's development involved a transformation from a largely agricultural economy to a service-dominated economy without first having passed through a stage in which a plurality of workers were active in the industrial sector. 4 This socioeconomic context further broadened party elites' freedom to eschew the organizational models and electoral mobilization

13

14

Introduction

strategies with which their counterparts in established democracies were saddled. But this period of institutional malleability soon came to an end. With each institution-building decision, the founding political elites found themselves increasingly constrained. A "crystallization" of secondary organizations occurred which has served to "freeze" important characteristerics of the mid1970s into institutionalized patterns that will continue to affect Spanish attitudes and political behavior for decades to come. Certain characteristics of Spain's transition to democracy proved to have a surprisingly lasting impact on society and politics over the following decade and a hal£ Not all of these lasting imprints of the 1970s were anticipated, nor have they been unambiguously positive. The depolarization and mass-level demobilization that were essential components of"the politics of consensus," for example, may have contributed decisively to the establishment of a stable, consolidated democracy, as we shall argue, but they also contributed to the weak institutionalization of certain secondary organizations and low levels of interest and involvement in politics among the general public. In other words, some of those features of Spanish society and political culture that we regard as somewhat deviant from those of the average Western European country were in part products of certain features of Spain's transition to democracy. Given the continuing significance of many of these legacies from the crucial formative period of the 1970s and 1980s, we shall pay particular attention to the key decisions that went into the establishment of Spain's new democracy, as well as distinguishing characteristics ofsecondary associations and patterns of mass behavior that crystallized at that time.

THE CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME

We begin our explanation of the emergence of consolidated democratic government in modern Spain by examining the nature and origins of the obstacles to stable democracy in the past. Chapter 2 presents a brief analysis of the ways in which the partially democratic regime of the Restoration Monarchy fell short of qualifying as a democracy (as we shall define it), as well as of the sources of division, polarization, and instability that doomed the Second Republic, paving the way for nearly four decades of authoritarian rule under Generalisimo Francisco Franco. The principal social cleavages that have traditionally divided Spain (along religious, class, and regional or nationalist lines) will be traced back to their origins in the Reconquista-the seven-centuries-long process through which the Iberian Peninsula was re-Christianized and the

Introduction

Spanish and Portuguese states came into being. While deeply divisive social cleavages represented an important element of Spain by the mid-nineteenth century, so, too, did the country's much delayed socioeconomic development. Indeed, as we shall see, until the mid-twentieth century, Spain lagged far behind the other countries ofWestern and Central Europe by nearly all measures of modernity. In addition to these social-structure factors, the prospects for stable democratic governance were undermined by factors of a more purely political character. The status of the monarchy, as well as the structure of the state itself (centralized vs. decentralized), had sharply polarized Spaniards since the early nineteenth century. The political culture's lack of a democratic tradition also militated against the prospects for democratic stability. Even during the democratic Second Republic, parties of the left, right, and center lacked an unequivocal commitment to democracy. And political socialization throughout the four decades of franquismo suggested that the overwhelming majority of Spaniards would enter the last third of the twentieth century with antidemocratic, or at least nondemocratic, values. Taken together, these social-structural and cultural features represented significant obstacles to efforts to establish a stable democratic regime following the death of Franco in 1975. Instead, in 1978 a democratic constitution was fully endorsed by all political forces, except some Basque nationalists, and within another four years the system could be regarded as fully consolidated. As we stated earlier, the modernization of Spanish society that began to take off in 1960 contributed to this development in several ways. Chapter 2 concludes with an overview of this modernization process and its implications for post-Franco democratization. But it also points to the serious obstacles to successful democratic change that remained. Chapter 3 focuses on the transition to and consolidation of a new democratic regime, as well as the crystallization of other important institutions and behavioral patterns. As we shall argue, the exercise of skilled political leadership by key elites played crucial roles in the establishment and successful consolidation of democracy at the national level. These elites, however, were not acting in a social or political vacuum. Their path-dependent interactions were affected by important aspects of the rapidly evolving institutional framework of the transition period, as well as by the nature of their ties to their supporters and collaborators. Indeed, they remained elites only so long as they could command the support of their respective groups of followers. Although these masselite linkages, elite structures, and institutional frameworks were conducive to democratic consolidation at the national level, the outcome of this political

15

16

Introduction

process was not uniformly positive. The mass-level demobilization that served as a necessary counterpart to the success of elite-level bargaining in Madrid helped consolidate the new regime. But it also reinforced the low levels of citizen involvement in politics and the underorganization of civil society inherited from the Franco regime, contributing to the weakness of institutionalized pluralism under the new democracy. (These aspects of Spain's political culture will be examined in chapter 4.) The interparty bargaining and substantive concessions may have helped secure a broad-based consensus in support of the new regime, but it contributed to significant intraparty tensions and conflict, ultimately culminating in the complete destruction of democratic Spain's first governing party (which we shall discuss in Chapter 5). In the Basque Country, this process of political change was only partially successful. In part due to the fragmentation of the region's political elites, and especially the violent, confrontational strategy adopted by those advocating Basque national self-determination and independence from Spain, significant segments of the Basque population denied the legitimacy of the newly democratic Spanish state. Accordingly, political instability and fragmentation characterize politics in the region. As we shall argue, the same variables that explain the success of democratic consolidation in the rest of Spain account for its failure in Euskadi: a relatively low level of elite fragmentation and the inclusion of representatives of all politically significant groups in the bargaining process facilitated a successful outcome at the national level, whereas considerable fragmentation and exclusion of regional or national representatives from crucial early stages of the bargaining process characterized Euskadi; and mass-level demobilization, coupled with mass- and elite-level restraint, contributed to successful conflict resolution at the national level, while acts of political violence by ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) and Herri Batasuna's campaign of orchestrated street confrontations contributed to polarization and continuing instability in the Basque region. We shall argue that in both cases the elite interactions of the late 1970s led to the crystallization of behavioral norms and institutionalized patterns of political activity that have persisted to the present day, for better or for worse: instability, polarization, and sometimes violent political conflict were institutionalized in the Basque Country, while a stable, consolidated but largely non participatory democracy was established throughout the rest of Spain. The crucial agreements that led to the resolution or satisfactory regulation of the deep cleavages described in chapter 2 will be examined in chapter 3· A second purpose of chapter 3 will be to describe the nature of Spanish

Introduction

democracy. One might be tempted to conclude that because consensualism predominated at the national level during the transition to democracy the democratic regime to emerge from this process would also fall within the family of consensual (as compared with majoritarian) democracies defined by Arend Lijphart. Instead, as we shall see, the current regime has largely been characterized by majoritarian practices, both with regard to government formation (and the appointment of state administration officials) and public-policy formation. As chapters 3 and 7 will reveal, however, this is a mixed and restrained form of majoritarianism, which stands in sharp contrast with that in Great Britain and the United States. In chapter 4 we move from the institutional dimension of Spanish society and politics to the cultural level. Our conclusions, however, remain the same: the exceptionalism that was used so often to characterize Spanish political culture in the past is no longer (if it ever truly was) valid. While there may remain some ways in which the political attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior of Spaniards differ from those of citizens of other industrialized societies, these distinguishing traits are by no means sufficient to place Spain outside the mainstream of other Western European democracies. Our explanation of this development is similar to that concerning the country's successful democratization: socioeconomic modernization certainly contributed in a positive way to the transformation of the country's political culture (most importantly by establishing some of the cultural and behavioral prerequisites for democratic participation), but the behavior of key social and political elites during the formative period of the 1970s made a substantial contribution of its own. The nonpartisan stance taken by church officials, and the avoidance of explicit ties between parties and religious organizations, contributed to the secularization of Spanish politics. The moderation and mutual respect demonstrated by political leaders helped to reinforce the moderation of the Spanish electorate and may also have contributed to their general lack of passionate involvement in partisan political matters (if not their boredom and disaffection concerning politics in general). Conversely, in the Basque Country a dramatic polarization in mass-level attitudes followed the breakdown of constructive dialogue at the elite level and the eruption of political violence. One of the most striking findings in this exploration of Spanish political culture is that virtually no trace remains of the traditionalist-religious-corporatistantidemocratic-nationalist culture that the Franquist regime sought to inculcate in its citizens. Indeed, despite the recentness of this authoritarian era, and despite the appearance on the ballot during the first several democratic elec-

17

18

Introduction

tions of a number of extreme-right-wing political parties, Spain is unique among Western European democracies today in that its electorate gives virtually no support to parties of the extreme right. This sharp discontinuity between the formal socialization efforts of the former regime and the current democratic values of the overwhelming majority of Spaniards is striking. The only possible trace of the political outlook of franquismo can be seen in some lingering antiparty sentiments and in the general noninvolvement of Spaniards in the politics of their country. Chapter 5 will analyze electoral behavior, political parties, and the party system. The break from the past cannot be more clearly appreciated than by comparing the various features of partisan competition and institutions of the present democracy with those of the Second Republic. Whereas the party system of the 1930s was characterized by an extremely high level of fragmentation and government instability, Spain today is noted for its "two-plus" party system and its extremely long-lived governments. While the parties and political movements of the Second Republic spanned the most extreme ideological rangefrom fascism and ultranationalism, to anarchism and anarchosyndicalismand were conditional (at best) in their democratic convictions, today's parties (except in Euskadi) are overwhelmingly moderate and fully committed to democracy. While these developments are consistent with a "normalization" of politics, Spanish parties, party systems, and mass-level political behavior also revealed some unusual characteristics that depart from the models of parties that emerged in other Western European countries around the turn of the past century. Spanish parties lack the large mass-membership bases and institutionalized ties to other secondary associations that characterize political parties in many other Western European democracies. Levels of party identification on the part of Spanish citizens are also the lowest in Western Europe. & one might suspect, the weakness of institutionalized bases of support and stabilizing psychological ties to voters contributed to an extremely high level of electoral volatility in the 1982 election. Nonetheless, by the mid-r98os a process of electoral stabilization had set in, such that shifts in support from one election to the next have been below the European average, and even smaller than had been expected in advance of some recent elections. At the conclusion of chapter 5, we shall set forth an explanation of this process of party-system stabilization. Chapter 6 examines the Estado de las autonomias-the regionally decentralized structure of government that came into being over the course of the early 1980s. Rather than reflecting the uniformity and consistency of federal

Introduction

systems, Spain's "autonomy ala carte" process of decentralization has resulted in an uneven distribution of governmental powers across the seventeen Autonomous Communities that were established beginning in 1980. While theresult has been a profound decentralization of the state that has more or less adequately satisfied the regionalist and nationalist aspirations of those who had demanded a restructuring of the state, it has also culminated in considerable dissatisfaction at the confusion and occasional conflict that regularly arises over the distribution of governmental authority and the resources necessary to finance the activities ofboth central and regional government bodies. Again, this outcome reflects the crystallization of institutional relationships resulting from elite decisions made in the late 1970s and 1980s, and, more specifically, of the ad hoc, ad seriatim character of the decision-making process itsel£ Specifically, the Suarez government had no choice but to negotiate separately with Basque and Catalan nationalists immediately after ratification of the constitution as a means of responding to their demands for a prompt reversal of the centralist and Spanish-nationalist excesses of the Franco regime, and in order to incorporate them into the political process of founding a new regime. Suarez believed (correctly) that it would be impossible to establish a democratic system regarded as legitimate by all politically significant groups without addressing the pressing concerns of the Basques and Catalans, and without making them participants in the decision-making process. But by first establishing autonomous governments for Euskadi and Catalonia and then dealing one by one with Galicia, Andaluda, and the other regions, coherence and consistency was sacrificed. In addition, by dealing first with those regions that articulated the most extensive demands for self-government rights, invidious comparisons by elites in other regions led to an escalation of demands for autonomy in parts of Spain that previously lacked any tradition of regionalism or self government. This led to belated and disastrous efforts by UCD (Uni6n de Centro Democratico) governments to apply the brakes to the accelerating process of decentralization, which culminated, first, in a political backlash against the governing party, portrayed (unfairly, by the PSOE [Partido Socialista Obrero Espaiiol] opposition) as a defender ofFranquist centralism and, later, in a joint effort (with the PSOE) to impose a more or less standardized set of regional government principles, over the vigorous objection of the Basque and Catalan nationalist parties. The latter effort to enact a Ley Organica de Armonizaci6n del Proceso Auton6mico (LOAPA) nearly deconsolidated Spain's new democratic regime, since Basques and Catalans regarded it as a violation of the terms under which they had supported (or at least accepted) the constitution and

19

20

Introduction

their respective autonomy statutes. Fortunately, the most contentious portions of the LOAPA were invalidated by the Constitutional Court, thereby preserving the widespread consensus in support of the regime and its institutions. Unfortunately, the court's decision left unresolved the problems inherent in the uneven structure of the Estado de las autonomias. These will be examined in detail in chapter 6. In chapter 7 we turn our attention to the actual workings of the Spanish government-both under the Franco regime and in the current democracy-as well as the resulting public-policy outputs. We shall provide numerous examples of the extent to which the case of Spain was indeed exceptional in the nottoo-distant past, and of its rapid and substantial approximation of the standard Western European democratic model. Despite the rapid socioeconomic modernization the country had undergone during the 1960s and early 1970s, several of its public-policy outputs were at levels more typical of third-world countries than of the Western industrialized world. These policy outputs, it will be argued, were systematic products of key features of the Franco's authoritarian regime and its dominant "mentality." Indeed, not only were its policy outputs exceptional, so too were the decision-making processes that formulated those policies. With democratization, both the government's decision-making processes and its policy outputs have been dramatically transformed, and (in nearly every respect) in such a way as to move Spain in the direction of patterns characteristic of affiuent Western democratic societies. By the end of its process of convergence with Western European norms, Spain could no longer be regarded as an exceptional case. This does not mean, as we shall see, that it does not have certain distinguishing features; those characteristics, however, are now within the range of variation commonly associated with democratic regimes in advanced industrialized societies.

Chapter 2 Spanish Exceptionalism:

The Absence of a Tradition of Democratic Stability

Before the establishment of the current constitutional monarchy in 1978, Spain had never experienced a period of stable democratic governance. This was not for lack of trying. Indeed, serious liberalizing or democratizing initiatives were launched in Spain much earlier than in most other Western European countries. The constitution adopted by the Cortes of Cadiz in 1812, which included provisions for universal male suffrage, was without doubt the most liberal adopted by any European country up to that time. Similarly, the reintroduction of universal male suffrage in 1869 was a bold and innovative step that was not followed by most other European countries until after the First World War. And the constitution of 1931 was considered to be one of the most modern and progressive adopted by any democratic country. Nonetheless, until 1978 all efforts at establishing and consolidating democracy in Spain failed. An explanation of how and why a stable and consolidated democracy could be established in the late 1970s requires some understanding of the characteristics of Spanish society that were antithetical to stable democracy in the past, as well as familiarity with the processes 21

22

Spanish Exceptionalism

of political and social change that effectively removed some of the obstacles to democratic consolidation. Some of these adverse features can be traced back to the founding of the Spanish state itself. Thus, one purpose of this chapter is to explore the historical origins of the factors that prevented Spain from undergoing the same kind of political evolution that other Western European countries had completed by the early to mid-twentieth century. This chapter will also explore important social and economic changes that occurred prior to the death of Franco. While, as we argued in the introduction, much of the success of the most recent democratization process is attributable to the actions of the current regime's founding political and social elites, this elite crafting of democratic institutions was made possible by substantial changes in Spanish society that predated the death of Francisco Franco. Thus, these socioeconomic transformations will be examined as well. While Spain had never previously enjoyed a prolonged period of democratic stability, there were two important historical periods during which many democratic practices and institutions dominated Spanish political life . .fu we argued in the introduction, neither of these earlier regimes could be regarded as consolidated democracies, but they come sufficiently close to meeting our criteria to serve as theoretically relevant and useful laboratories for the exploration of obstacles that precluded democratic stability in the past, and therefore for identifYing those characteristics of Spanish society whose evolution is relevant to the successful democratization of the 1970s. These historical periods are the Restoration Monarchy of 1875-1923 and the Second Republic of 1931-36.

THE RESTORATION MONARCHY

The abdication of Isabel II following the pronunciamiento of the progressive General Juan Prim on September 18, 1868, initiated a period of unprecedented political instability (Lopez-Cordon 1976). Prim's recruitment of a liberal monarch, Amadeo of Savoy, to serve as Spain's head of state failed to attract sufficiently broad political support and provoked a new Carlist uprising. Accosted from a multiplicity of political sectors, and left without a protector following Prim's assassination, Amadeo abdicated after only two years on the throne, disgustedly proclaiming Spain to be ungovernable. His short-lived regime was followed by proclamation of the First Republic, which lasted just eleven months (February 11,1873, to January 3, 1874). During that short period, Spain had four different governments and experienced considerable mass-level instability as well, mostly related to the "frenzy of separatism" that resulted from the infelic-

Spanish Exceptionalism

itous coincidence of the Proudonist "Federalism" of Francisco Pi y Margall, on the one hand, and Carlist regionalism, on the other. 1 The 1874 coup by General Manuel Pavia put an end to this chaotic period and gave to the Conservative politician Antonio Canovas del Castillo an opportunity to forge a new regime. Avoiding the temptation to impose a one-sided new regime on the defeated progressive forces, Canovas exercised considerable restraint in establishing a new institutional order, and he succeeded in securing the cooperation of Liberals, most notably their leader Praxedes Mateo Sagasta. What resulted was a conservative regime that decidedly favored the propertied classes. But it also scrupulously established the rule oflaw (regarded by many as a welcome relief from the turmoil of the preceding period) through enactment of important and ultimately durable legal codes. It established relatively stable parliamentary and partisan institutions and rules of the game, and, by carefully co-opting potential Liberal opponents and ensuring respect for their civil and political rights, it was broadly accepted as legitimate by politically relevant sectors of the Spanish population for more than two decades (Burton, Gunther, and Higley 1992, 21-22; Carr 1966). As a result, the Restoration Monarchy "provided nearly fifty years [1875-1923] of relative political stability, a wide range of political freedom, the emergence of an organized and increasingly tolerated and recognized labor movement, a serious effort to return the armed forces to their proper task, efforts to curtail the most extreme clerical ambitions, and an important record oflegislation in all fields" (Linz 1981a, 371). The Restoration Monarchy, however, was not sufficiently democratic (Varela Ortega 1997). Initially, it imposed both high property qualifications and educational prerequisites on the right to vote (thereby abolishing the universal male suffrage that had been established in 1869), so substantially restricting the eligible electorate that it violated our definition of democracy. Indeed, Canovas was adamant in his rejection of universal suffrage: "Universal suffrage," he once stated, "means the dissolution of society.... It is the negation of the national will and the parliamentary regime" (cited in Herr 1971, 114). In 1890, a Liberal government under Sagasta reestablished universal male suffrage, but it only did so by accompanying the expansion of the suffrage with political practices designed to entrench the dominant Liberal and Conservative parties in power and effectively to deny free electoral choice to a substantial segment of the Spanish electorate. Canovas allowed Sagasta to come to power, and he agreed to pass into the parliamentary opposition through a specific agreement (the Pacto del Pardo) that succeeded in bringing about a peaceful transfer of power (a turno pacfjico).

23

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Spanish Exceptionalism

But the Conservative and Liberal parties also established practices that precluded fair representation of other parties in parliament, and enabled them to alternate in holding power-which they did over the nearly four decades that followed (Linz 1967; Martinez Cuadrado 1991). This turno padfico took place under the guise of parliamentary and pseudodemocratic procedures, but it was rooted in fraud, coercion, and other irregularities (colloquially referred to with the phrase "dar pucherazo") under the direction of the Ministerio de Ia Gobernaci6n (Interior). To be sure, elections conducted in urban areas were relatively competitive and free from excessive coercion or other intervention from above, and they come close to meeting the demanding criteria of our definition of democracy. But a multiplicity of techniques were employed to make the electoral process, in the aggregate, "a travesty of its ideal and a way to keep an organized group in power" (Herr 1971, n6). The net effect was that the outcomes of the twenty-six parliamentary elections that were held between 1869 and 1923 did not fairly represent the preferences of the Spanish population (Varela Ortega 2001a and 2omb; Cabrera 1998). Each election cycle, under these rules of the game, would be initiated by the dissolution of the Cortes and appointment by the king of a "provisional" government whose main function would be to manage the subsequent election in such a manner as to guarantee its victory (Martinez Cuadrado 1969). The head of this provisional government (who would usually emerge as the "elected" prime minister in the following Cortes) would immediately appoint a minister of the Interior who would, in turn, select new civil governors for each province. These individuals were responsible for developing and implementing strategies at the local level that would result in the election of the proper candidate. This involved a multiplicity of techniques (Yanini 1995). One such technique involved a kind of gerrymandering in which the electoral preferences of urban voters were overwhelmed by the more easily controllable votes of peasants from surrounding areas who were placed within the same constituency. A second technique was to ensure that there would be no opponent for the government's candidate. Following enactment of Antonio Maura's electoral law in 1907, a candidate not facing opposition was declared elected automatically. One study of electoral practices in Andaluda revealed that fewer than half of the region's rural constituencies featured competition among two or more candidates (Tusell 1978a, 12-14). Overall, Tusell (1970) estimates that between 14 percent (in the 1918 election) and 33 percent (in 1923) of electoral districts offered voters no choice among candidates. Coercion was also sometimes employed by the orchestrators of this system, as would-be opposi-

Spanish Exceptionalism

tion voters were intimidated by powerful local economic elites, government officials, and the Guardia Civil. But throughout most of the Restoration Monarchy (particularly in the earlier years of universal suffrage), coercion and intimidation were largely unnecessary, as rural voters complied voluntarily with the voting instructions of local notables, or caciques. Tusell's study of rural constituencies in Andaluda between 1903 and 1923 found that on only thirteen occasions (out of nearly one thousand contested seats) was someone other than the favored turno candidate elected (1978a, 14). Caciquismo is a form of patron-client relationship based upon reciprocal bonds between illiterate or poorly educated peasants and local notables (see Carr 1966, chapter 9, and Forner Muiioz 1997). To some degree, deference to a cacique is based upon respect for a prestigious local leader whose opinions are valued insofar as they are based upon greater information and familiarity with national political affairs, given the local notable's literacy and direct contacts with the world beyond the village (Lerner 1958). This relationship also often involves positive affective bonds between the patron and his clients (Legg 1975). But it is heavily based upon an exchange of services and obligations between individuals with greatly differing social positions and resources. Specifically, caciques would intercede on behalf of their peasant clients, and in exchange the peasants would pledge their electoral support to the cacique or his preferred candidate. As described by Varela (1977, 292), "What the caciques obtained, in exchange for their support for the designated candidates, was the possibility of exercising governmental authority and dispensing patronage within their districts. What the voters received, in exchange for their votes, were various kinds of benefits that this governmental influence allowed the caciques to distribute within their districts. Thus, the power of the caciques was based upon their ability to act as transmission belts between local interests and the state administration." This relationship was described in greater detail by Santiago Alvarez in an interview with one of us in 1979. He stated that in those few rural areas of Galicia where caciquismo survived into the current democratic era, these local notables still functioned as "the vehicle by which the citizen can resolve his problems. The citizen-who is worried about solving problems with the doctor or the school, or the problem of difficult or nonexistent communication, or the problem of an unjust accusation before the courts, or of delinquency in paying taxes or repaying a loan, etcetera-the citizen, the peasant in these scattered villages, has recourse to an intermediary. That intermediary is the cacique, who can intercede on his behalf, but in exchange for pledging his very conscience, and his vote."

25

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Spanish Exceptionalism

It is clear that caciquismo requires the existence of a sizable bloc of poorly educated or illiterate peasants. Lacking the ability to read, understand, and effectively respond to bureaucratic publications and proceedings, a peasant may find an educated and influential intermediary to be a useful ally. This is particularly true because, as anthropological studies of isolated rural villages have indicated, from the peasant's viewpoint, bureaucrats and judges speak an unintelligible language (Christian 1972, 173-74). Under these circumstances, the loss of political autonomy that inevitably accompanies the cacique's intervention is regarded as less important than the tangible gains that the client receives in return. This line of argument suggests that one important reason why Spain was incapable of sustaining a viable democratic regime in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that it was economically backward, with a sizable "unmobilized" and easily manipulable mass of rural voters. As Payne points out, "In no large country of the western world was political democracy introduced at so early a stage of civic development"; in establishing the Restoration Monarchy, "a small middle-class elite imposed a liberal parliamentary system in Spain before society was prepared to sustain it" (1970, 21-22). Indeed, as can be seen in table 2.1, Spain's socioeconomic development lagged far behind that of most other Western European countries until well into the twentieth century. In 1930, for example, only 10 percent of the economically active population of Britain was engaged in agriculture, while in Germany and France only 22 percent and 27 percent (respectively) of workers were to be found in the primary sector of the economy (Linz 1981a, 365). A clear manifestation of Spain's socioeconomic backwardness was the extraordinarily high level of illiteracy of its population that persisted into the twentieth century. Of those over ten years of age, in 1887 61 percent were illiterate, as were 56 percent in 1900 and 50 percent in 1910. This meant that at the turn of the past century, Spain was just ahead of Russia, Portugal, and the Balkans in terms of literacy and lagged far behind other Western European countries {Payne 1973, 498-99; Flaquer et al. 1990, 22). As late as 1930, more than onequarter of Spain's adult population was illiterate (Payne 1993, 86). Setting Spain in comparative perspective, Payne writes that "on the basis of civic culture, literacy rates, and economic development, it might be hypothesized that by 1930 Spain was at the level of England in the 1840s and 50s, or France in the 186os and 70s" (1970, 84). Insofar as literacy serves effectively as a prerequisite for free "unmediated" political participation, and insofar as illiteracy is conducive to the kinds of perversions of the electoral process we described, retarded socioe-

Spanish Exceptionalism

TABLE 2.1 The Structure of Spain's Economy, 1877-1950 (Percentage of Labor Force Economically Active in Each Sector)*

Year

Agriculture

Industry

Services

1877 1887 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950

66.1 65.3 66.3 66.0 57.2 45.5 50.5 47.6

14.4 17.3 16.0 15.8 22.0 26.5 22.2 26.5

19.5 17.4 17.7 18.2 20.8 28.0 27.3 25.9

*"Industry'' includes those in industry and construction; and "services" includes those active in transport and communication, commerce, and other services. Source: Nicolau 1989, 79·

conomic development can be considered a significant obstacle to the viability of democracy in Spain. Economic backwardness contributed to the absence of a democratic tradition in Spain for a second reason as well. It has often been argued that democracy requires the existence of a sizable middle class and a rich associationallife in civil society. 2 Except for Catalonia and the Basque country (where economic development was most advanced), Spain largely lacked a "bourgeois" middle class. The clases medias present in Spanish society were decidedly different from the entrepreneurial middle classes of the rest of Western Europe (Linz 1995). Consisting largely of civil servants, army officers, and professionals (mainly lawyers and medical doctors), their values and behavior differed substantially from those of the middle classes who are believed

to

have significantly con-

tributed to the emergence of stable democracies in other countries. As Linz indicates (1972, 37-38), Their position in society, with some exceptions in the upper levels of that stratum, alienated them from the style of life of an upper bourgeoisie of a European type. Their often modest means and insecurity of status and income created resentments against successful business classes. Many of them, due to their superior education, probably looked down upon successful artisans and shopkeepers that were swelling the emerging bourgeoisie, and made them feel ambivalent toward the bourgeois virtues associated with family capitalism. The need to reaffirm their social status against an uneducated peasantry and lower classes mush have contributed to a

27

28

Spanish Exceptionalism

heightened consciousness of their prestige based on achieved ascription. The advantages derived from particularism and diffuseness ... in a basically poor society compensated for other rewards, particularly a style oflife based on economic well-being. The confused exaltation of traditional values like sobriety, formal manners, rejection of manual work, and appearance of indifference to economic gains, etc., were congruent with their positions .... They were not against change, but further democratization and secularization were seen as threatening to their status privileges.

Accordingly, the clases medias gave considerable support to Miguel Primo de Rivera, whose coup in 1923 terminated the Restoration Monarchy and established the first of Spain's two twentieth-century dictatorships. Linz argues further that the retarded socioeconomic development of Spain contributed to the weak institutionalization of secondary associations in Spanish society: "In a largely agrarian and underdeveloped society, organized interest groups were less important than the personal and family links between the political class and large landowners, bankers, railroad magnates and many new industrialists. Their number and the concentration of wealth made organized interest groups less necessary than in other societies with a larger bourgeoisie" (1981a, 372; also see Linz 1972, 57). Thus, Spain's late economic development contributed to the absence of a tradition of stable democracy in several ways. Low levels of literacy impeded the political mobilization oflarge segments of Spanish society; the underdevelopment of a bourgeois middle class and the peculiar characteristics of the clases medias differentiated Spain from more "modern'' societies within which entrepreneurial middle classes functioned as forces for democratization (c£ Flaquer et al. 1990, 22; Tezanos 1990, n3); and a poorly developed civil society was incapable of promoting and channeling democratic participation and serving as a bulwark against authoritarian seizures of power. Paradoxically, the acceleration of economic development actually served to destabilize the Restoration Monarchy. Given its neutral status in the First World War, Spain was in a position to profit enormously from increased demands for manufactured goods from countries that had diverted much of their potentially productive efforts to the war. This contributed to an economic boom in both the Basque Country and Catalonia that stimulated increased migration from economically stagnant regions of Spain. Apart from the social dislocation that such population shifts invariably entail, the reinforcement of anarchist and anarchosyndicalist sentiments that resulted from this influx helped to fuel an extraordinarily high level of labor violence in Barcelona, especially between 1918 and 1921. (See Brenan 1990, 57-77; Payne 1970, 59-61; Payne

Spanish Exceptionalism

1973, 6o8-13; Bar 1981; and Gonzalez Calleja 1999). In addition, this surge of migration to Catalonia and, especially, to the Basque Country contributed to an intensification of regional nationalist sentiments, in part as a defensive response. By the war years and into the early 1920s, the political and social stability characteristic of the earlier decades of the Restoration Monarchy had come to an end. The "limited democracy" was brought down by a combination of social unrest, increased cynicism toward and alienation from the pseudodemocratic electoral process, policy stagnation, inattentiveness to working-class interests and demands, the absence of skilled political leadership comparable to that of Canovas, Sagasta, and Jose Canalejas (a highly effective prime minister, who was assassinated in 1912), the decay of the two dominant parties, and the ongoing crisis of the colonial wars in North Mrica {exacerbated by a polarizing national self-criticism in response to the humiliating military defeat of 1898). The pronunciamiento of Miguel Primo de Rivera in September 1923 initiated a seven-year interlude of nondemocratic, but generally benign, governance (see Ben Ami 1984, and Gonzalez Calbet 1987).

THE SECOND REPUBLIC

Alfonso XIII's dismissal of Primo de Rivera as head of government in January 1930, followed by the Icing's own abdication in April 1931, set the stage for the establishment of"Spain's First Democracy." 3 The Second Republic (1931-36) introduced universal suffrage, and elections were conducted without manipulation or fraud (except in some isolated rural areas and Galicia). In contrast with the docility of a large, politically unmobilized segment of Spanish society that persisted throughout the Restoration Monarchy, considerable political mobilization occurred, and participation in politics and secondary associations was extensive (Linz 1978). Electoral contestation provided voters with a full range of partisan options-unlike during the Restoration Monarchy, which had greatly restricted choice. Elections effectively determined which parties would be in a position to form a government, and real {indeed, excessive) turnover resulted; this stood in sharp contrast with the carefully orchestrated alternation in power between the two dominant parties of the turno. All major offices were open to electoral contestation or accountable to elected officials, and no groups held "reserve powers" that might effectively have invalidated the mandate of the voters. The Second Republic, however, was far from consolidated or stable. The

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Spanish Exceptionalism

regime exhibited every conceivable manifestation of instability, and it has been characterized as one of the best examples of extreme "polarized pluralism" (Sartori 1966 and 1976, 209-w). Given an electoral law that permitted an extreme fragmentation of the party system, it was virtually impossible to form a stable government. 4 More than twenty parties were present in each of the three legislatures (1931, 1933, and 1936); the largest party in each of the three Cortes never had more than 24 percent of the seats; 5 and in each of the three legislatures, at least eleven parties had ten or more seats (Linz 1967, 260). The "number of effective parties" in the parliament was 8.33 (following to the method of calculation of Laakso and Taagepera 1979). Accordingly, there was an extraordinarily high level of cabinet instability. Between April 1931 and July 1936 there were nineteen different governments under eight different prime ministers. This accorded the Second Republic the dubious honor of being the most unstable parliamentary regime in interwar Europe: its average "cabinet durability'' of !01 days exceeded the brevity of governments under the French Third Republic and the German Weimar Republic, commonly regarded as the historic paragons of government instability in the twentieth century (Linz 1978a, n1-12 and 172; Montero 1985). 6 During the twenty-five months of the 1931-35legislarure, there were thirteen government crises (Payne 1970, 174). The electoral system also drastically magnified pluralities of popular votes for each electoral coalition into huge majorities in its allocation of seats. In the 1936 election, for example, the Popular Front coalition received only 34·3 percent of the popular vote but controlled a substantial majority of the seats in the Cortes (263 out of 474, or 55 percent). This tendency of the electoral law to manufacture artificial majorities made it hypersensitive to slight shifts in public opinion from one election to the next, often leading to changes in parliamentary representation of landslide proportions. Parties of the left, for example, received 299 seats in the constituent Cortes, fell to one hundred in the 1933-35 Cortes, but then surged to 280 in the Popular Front election. These drastic pendular swings in the partisan composition of parliament produced abrupt reversals in certain crucial public policies. Accordingly, as the balance of power shifted from the anticlerical, center-left Cortes of 1931-33 to the proclerical, conservative governments of 1933-35 and then back to the anticlerical left in 1936, policy decisions pertaining to important and controversial policy areas were reversed. The Catalan regional government (the Generalitat), created in 1932, was suspended in 1934 but then reinstated in 1936. Implementation of the pro-public-education and anticlerical legislation passed from 1931 to 1933 was halted during the following biennium but was then accelerated in

Spanish Exceptionalism

1936.? And the land reform undertaken in 1932 and 1933 was stopped in its tracks by the succeeding government, but it was then revived and expanded in 1936. 8 These drastic policy reversals precluded sequential and incremental resolution of policy issues. They also contributed to widespread frustration at both the mass and elite levels. More seriously, by repeatedly raising and then dashing hopes and expectations, and by maintaining the salience of divisive issues on the political agenda, they contributed to a progressive polarization of Spanish politics (Linz 1978a). The progressive polarization of politics (by no means solely attributable to the aforementioned institutional mechanism) is one of the most important manifestations of the increasing instability of the Second Republic. The vote shares of extremist parties in the Second Republic increased by 15.4 percent, while electoral support for parties of the center left to center right declined by an equivalent amount (Montero et al. 1992, 15). Thus, with the passage of time the more moderate parties and elites were progressively displaced by more extremist political forces at both ends of the political spectrum, and the legitimacy of the regime was increasingly called into question. A more destructive form of instability during the Second Republic was political violence and the occasional collapse of civil order (Payne 1993, 321-70; Gonzalez Calleja 1989; and Julia 2000). Indeed, one minor outburst of political violence occurred within the first month following the abdication of the king, as dozens of churches, convents, and monasteries were destroyed by rioting and arson. Anarchosyndicalist violence occasionally broke out as well, although never of the magnitude of the 1918-21 period. The most serious breakdown of social and political order occurred in 1934. As part of a broader insurrection (which failed, and generated little violence in other parts of the country), workers in the mining districts of Asturias rose in revolt under the leadership of Francisco Largo Caballero and the maximalist wing of the Socialist trade union, the Uni6n General de Trabajadores (UGT) (D1az Nosty 1975). The suppression of this revolt (by troops under the command of General Francisco Franco) involved an extraordinary level of violence. Payne (1970, 156) states that "there had been nothing like the Asturian revolt in Spanish history, or in that of the rest ofWestern Europe since the Paris Commune." Estimates of the number of persons killed (including many workers executed without trial) range from twelve hundred (Payne 1970 and 1993) to more than three thousand (de la Souchere 1964, 160). In the south of Spain, too, there were significant manifestations of mass-level instability. Frustrated at the lack of progress in solving the long-standing problem of extreme inequality in the agrarian sector,

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tens of thousands of landless workers marched onto underutilized latifundist estates and squatted. In the first six months of 1936, 535,000 hectares were expropriated in this fashion. Many of these seizures were then legalized, retroactively, by the government (Payne 1973, 641). Finally, in the months preceding the outbreak of the civil war (in July 1936), political assassinations and other forms of partisan political violence became a disquieting feature of Spanish politics.9 Indeed, it was the murder of a prominent right-wing politician, Jose Calvo Sotelo, that touched off the civil war. Finally, the Second Republic was inherently unstable, insofar as the loyalty and obedience of its military were in doubt. To some extent, this was a product of the military's tradition of periodic intervention in politics through pronunciamientos designed to replace an incumbent government with one more to the rebellious officers' liking or, much more rarely (as in 1923), simply to seize power (Busquets 1982; Seco Serrano 1984). But the questionable loyalty of the Spanish army was deepened by additional developments in the years following 1898. The first was the humiliating defeat of Spain at the hands of the United States in the Spanish-American War. The embarrassing rout of Spanish forces stimulated a generation of soul-searching that, in the military context, increasingly led to the belief among many officers that divisive, unstable governance under self-serving politicians was at least partly to blame for Spain's weakness and humiliation. Many in the military came to regard "patriotism as the exclusive property of the military ... [and] the Army as the backbone of society"; the ultimate consequence of this change in self-perception was that the army "declared war on the State" (Martfnez Paricio 1990, 403 and 409). Second, conflicts between military forces and sectors of civil society contributed to military animosity toward some groups who would ultimately (in the civil war) emerge as mortal enemies (Payne 1967). The antimilitary and anticlerical rioting in Catalonia during the so-called Semana Trdgica (tragic week) in July 1909, in which more than one hundred persons were killed and property was extensively damaged, was one such polarizing event (Ullman 1972). The violent disorder in Barcelona of 1918-21 further exacerbated anti-Catalanist sentiments in the military and the belief that only an "iron surgeon" could put an end to terrorism, anarchism, separatism, and disorder (Martfnez Paricio 1990, 413-14). A much more serious conflict was the military suppression of the 1934 revolt in Asturias. The extent to which that bloody event divided the Spanish army from important sectors of civil society should not be underestimated. Finally, many military officers were alienated from the left and center-left governments as the result of military reforms introduced by the leading politi-

Spanish Exceptionalism

cal figure of the Second Republic, Manuel Azafia. While structural reforms and a paring down of the army's bloated officer corps were certainly in order, the manner in which these reforms were announced and carried out alienated important sectors of the Spanish military from the regime (Alpert 1982; Cardona 1983). The first military attack on the Second Republic was an attempted putsch by General Jose Sanjurjo (commander of the Guardia Civil) in 1932. This was followed by the Spanish Nationalist uprising proclaimed by General Francisco Franco on July 18, 1936, which doomed the Republic and plunged Spain into three years of civil war. There can be no doubt that the Second Republic, although it was fully democratic, was unconsolidated and unstable. As the product of polarization, alienation of important sectors of Spanish society from the regime, and escalating violence and disorder, it collapsed after just five years. Let us turn our attention to a brief survey of some of the factors that led to this collapse. This is not the place for a systematic analysis of the origins of instability under the Second Republic, but it is necessary at this point to list some of those factors that had theoretical and practical relevance for the redemocratization process of the 1970s. 10 One institutional feature of the Second Republic-its electoral law and the resulting fragmentation and polarization of the party system-has already been discussed and need not be further examined here. Instead, we shall limit our attention to two sets of variables that were important sources of instability: the elite-level political culture of the Second Republic, and the nature of the social cleavages that were reflected in political conflict throughout this period. Elite Political Culture: Polarization and Rancor

One of the sharpest contrasts between the politics of Spain today and that of the Second Republic involves the ideological stands, values, and behavioral norms of the two regimes' political elites. As we shall see later in this book, the range of ideological options reflected in the Spanish party system of today is relatively narrow. None of the major Spanish parties now espouses antisystem or semiloyal values or behaves in a manner that implicitly or explicitly challenges the legitimacy of the existing institutional order, and relations among rival partisan elites are marked by tolerance and mutual respect, even widespread amiability. The elite political culture of Spain in the 1930s was different in every way. During the Second Republic, revolutionary and antisystem parties and ide-

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Spanish Exceptionalism

ologies could be found on both the left and the right, and even the behavior of those in the middle could often be regarded as semiloyal (see Linz and Stepan 1978). One of the largest political families under the Second Republic was anarchism, joined in some regions with syndicalism. Anarchosyndicalism had its largest following in Catalonia and Aragon, while anarchism (given its millenarian nature) had a particular appeal to the dechristianized rural proletariat of the latifundist south. 11 Anarchism was also strong in Valencia and Murcia. The extreme commitment to individual freedom in anarchist thought led to a stand oriented toward destroying religion and the state-both of which were regarded as limiting freedom. The means to achieving this objective involved direct action. Anarchists totally eschewed representative political institutions and political parties as "merely another more sophisticated form of political and economic oppression" (Payne 1970, 18). The only valid tactic, as described by Gomez Llorente, was "progressive and recurrent agitation (including terrorism) until the day of the revolutionary explosion" (1976, 35- 36). Both Canovas and Canelejas were assassinated by anarchists. Anarchosyndicalists added to this general orientation a commitment to a militant trade union (the largest of which was the Confederaci6n Nacional del Trabajo-CNT-founded in 1911), which would keep up the workers' fighting spirit and strive to bring about a revolutionary general strike. Pragmatic bargaining was displaced by a rigid moralism and belief in the mystique of violence (see Brenan 1990, 131-202; and Payne 1970, 16-36). The anarchist and anarchosyndicalist political family was the largest on the Spanish left during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and labor relations in areas of CNT strength (such as Barcelona) were indeed quite violent. Estimates of CNT strength during the Second Republic (by which time anarchist terrorism had virtually ceased, while the CNT remained a revolutionary organization) range between one million and two million members. 12 A comparative latecomer was socialism (founded in 1878, eight years after the establishment of an anarchist movement), but by 1936 its organizational presence in the trade-union sector had caught up with the CNT. 13 Because anarchists (virtually by definition) do not elect candidates to the national parliament, the Socialist PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Espafiol) was the largest party of the left during the Second Republic (Contreras 1981; Julia 1997). It received an estimated 16 percent of the vote in 1936 (Linz, Montero, and Ruiz 2003), and it was represented in the 1936 Cortes by ninety-nine deputies. Socialism in most European countries was ambivalent concerning tactics and ultimate objectives during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and

Spanish Exceptionalism

the PSOE was no exception. The majority of its parliamentary leaders were relatively moderate and, by and large, behaved in a restrained fashion, particularly during the early years of the Second Republic. Nonetheless, they maintained a semiloyal stance vis-a-vis the Republic throughout its five years of existence. Even the more moderate members of the PSOE (such as Julian Besteiro) argued that they could not enter into a coalition government because of the bourgeois nature of the Republic. The party's formal ideological declaration (which included language written by Karl Marx himself [De Esteban and LOpez Guerra 1982, 120]) was a maximalist Socialist proclamation, and the party's allied trade union, the UGT, was led by a militant maximalist, the "Spanish Lenin," Francisco Largo Caballero. Largo not only maintained an extreme obrerista stance throughout the Second Republic (thereby provoking a debilitating internal struggle within the PSOE, which itself contributed to political instability and ultimate regime collapse) but also made no secret of his semiloyal orientation toward the regime (Julia 1977). As early as November 1931 he proclaimed that exclusion of the PSOE from power through the dissolution of parliament would lead the PSOE to adopt revolutionary methods and "proceed to civil war" (Robinson 1970, 83). But following the conservative victory in the 1933 elections, support for a more radical, if not revolutionary, stance increased within the party (see Payne 1993, 189-223). The UGT's role in the 1934Asturian revolt strengthened the perception of the party by its opponents as committed to democratic procedures only insofar as they were useful in attaining revolutionary objectives. The revolt also poisoned the political atmosphere during the final years of the Republic, and it was a decisive event that brought closer the outbreak of civil war. A conditional loyalty to the institutions of the Second Republic was also exhibited by the largest party of the right, the CEDA-Confederaci6n Espafiola de Derechas Aut6nomas (see Montero 1977). In several respects, this clerical party was different from contemporary Christian Democratic parties. First, the CEDA defended the interests of a church that advanced "a belligerent counterreformist Catholicism" (Perez Diaz 1991, 27), including political antiliberalism and moralistic fundamentalism. Second, in accord with the papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931), it was committed to the same kind of corporatism that was emerging in Italy and Austria. Third, not only was the CEDA not fully committed to the institutions of the Second Republic, but its leader, Jose Maria Gil Robles, proclaimed his hostility to the regime and its constitution immediately following inclusion into its text of articles regarded as anticlerical (see Vidarte 1976, 193). Finally, the rancorous tone

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Spanish Exceptionalism

of public statements by Gil Robles and other CEDA leaders may not have been unique within the context of the Second Republic, but the style of discourse of this political subculture further contributed to the violent demise of Spanish democracy. 14 Even the most important "centrist" political family during the Second Republic-left republicanism-had many traits that contributed to the collapse of the Second Republic (Espfn 1980). Its harsh anticlericalism, combined with an insensitivity to the wishes of its opponents and even the passive majority in the middle, contributed to the polarization of social life. Payne also argues that a central characteristic of political-elite norms and behavior was "insistence on ideological purity in the tradition of European radicalism; ... compromise and practical adjustment were adjudged a sellout of principle." The moralistic, ideological orientation of left republicanism is reflected in the attitudes of Manuel Azafia, who once wrote that "it will be necessary to restore doctrines in their purity and shield oneself against compromise. Intransigence will be symptomatic of integrity" (Payne 1970, 91). Added to this was Azafi.a's verbal style, described by Payne as "cold, sneering, sarcastic, sectarian and often brilliantly eloquent" (1970, 91), and a personality that was "aloof, acerbic and arrogant in the extreme" (1993, 66). 15 Indeed, the very rancorousness of relationships among the elites of the Second Republic car1 be regarded as a distinguishing feature of its elite political culture that, by itself, contributed to polarization. Linz points out that the emergence of this rancorousness represented an unfortunate and dramatic departure from elite interrelationships under the Restoration Monarchy, which were characterized by civility and even friendsliips that spanned the clerical-anticlerical cleavage in Spanish society: "It is diffitult to explain how this culture of civility ultimately broke down, how new reaciionary moods gained an upper hand.... Stable and self-confident ruling classes, respected institutions, elites with prestige, social strata enjoying deference, do not need to be aggressively hostile, emotionally defensive, destructive of new elements to be incorporated, and bitter against their peers" (Linz 1972, 68-69). In part, this discontinuity in behavioral norms may have resulted from the complete replacement of the Restoration Monarchy's political class. Following the decomposition of the party system of the Restoration, the great majority of the Second Republic's parties appeared suddenly on the political scene, and even those established earlier in the twentieth or nineteenth century were led by individuals who had no prior parliamentary or government experience (Linz, Gangas, and Jerez 2000).

Spanish Exceptionalism

The political elites surveyed above by no means reflect the full extent of the polarization that characterized the Second Republic's party system-they have been mentioned here simply because they were the four largest political forces under this regime. Spain in the 1930s also had a classically Stalinist Communist party which, although initially quite small, grew enormously in numbers and political influence as the civil war progressed. On the right were fascist and other antidemocratic extremist parties. And even the mainstream Catalan parties maintained a semiloyal stance toward the regime, and left-wing Catalan parties joined the October 1934 uprising. The elite-level political culture of the Second Republic emerges as a factor that contributed to the outbreak of civil war. Political elites serve as articulators of social and political conflict, and the manner in which they give expression to divergent or conflicting interests and demands has an important bearing on the capacity of representative institutions to regulate conflict satisfactorily, keeping it within established institutional channels. The manner in which conflicts were expressed by the elites of the Second Republic served to exacerbate these conflicts and preclude reaching compromise resolutions of the most divisive issues. The initial ideological polarization reflected in the party system was a contributing factor to this situation. In the context of Europe in the 1930s, viable political models and acceptable ideological tendencies ranged from Stalinist communism to fascism. Hence, conflicting positions were expressed in a manner that exaggerated their incompatibility and heightened the perceived (indeed, real) threat that one group posed to its rivals. The personal rancor among elites also served to drive them farther apart, a result perhaps of these individuals' complete inexperience with politics. Hence, the almost complete discontinuity between the parties and governing elites of the Second Republic and those of the Restoration Monarchy, as well as excessive turnover among Republican elites from one Cortes to the next, contributed to the predominance of behavioral norms that were completely dysfunctional from the standpoint of democratic conflict resolution. 16 The legitimacy of the Republic's institutional order was challenged from the very beginning from both the left and the right. Obviously, anarchists and anarchosyndicalists would have rejected any form of representative democracy, and they adopted behavioral norms that were incompatible with the requirements of a stable democracy. But the antisystem and semiloyal stands even of parties and elites that served in the government are among the most striking of the features of this regime that contributed to its demise.

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Spanish Exceptionalism

DIVISIVE SOCIAL CLEAVAGES

Conflict regulation and conflict resolution under the Second Republic were also impeded by the very depth and number of the political and social cleavages in Spanish society. As these social cleavages would persist in one form or another until the 1970s, they also had to be addressed in establishing a new democratic regime following the death of Franco. Thus, an understanding of the difficulties surrounding the construction of the current regime requires a brief discussion of the most important political and social divisions in Spanish society, as well as an overview of how they evolved during nearly four decades of Franquist authoritarianism. These cleavages include struggles over the basic form of the state, over the role of religion and the position of the church in Spanish society, between social classes in both rural and urban areas, and between monarchists and republicans. State Building in a Multilingual, Multicultural Society

As Linz has written, "Since the turn of the century regional nationalisms have questioned the existence of a Spanish nation and even a Spanish state. Spain therefore is a case of early state-building where the political, social and cultural integration of its territorial components-nation building-was not fully accomplished" (1973, 33). Differing preferences over the proper form of the state-largely pitting Castilian Spanish centralizing tendencies against Basque and Catalan nationalist preferences for a highly decentralized state with considerable autonomy-have given rise to considerable political conflict. Indeed, prior to the founding of the Second Republic, these conflicts culminated in five civil wars: 1640-52, 1701-14, 1833-40, 1846-48 and 1872-75. The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 can also be considered, in part, a clash between Spanish Nationalist centralizers and regional nationalists. While conflicts between center and periphery were typical of state-building processes throughout Western Europe, Spain is exceptional insofar as these conflicts remained unresolved until the final quarter of the twentieth century (and in the Basque country, they remain partially unresolved today). The linguistic and cultural diversity of the peoples of Spain contributed to the intensity and protracted nature of these clashes. As we shall argue, however, linguistic and cultural pluralism constitute only part of the explanation of this situation. In Galicia, for example, knowledge and use of the regional language

Spanish Exceptionalism

is more widespread than in any other region, yet the inhabitants of the region display relatively low levels of identification as a distinctive national group and little support for independence from Spain. Knowledge and use of the regional language is also quite widespread in Valencia, but that region is completely devoid of a regional-nationalist identity and separatist demands. 17 More important as a cause of conflict between the center and the periphery is a deep-rooted historical tradition that included high levels of autonomy from the Spanish government and widespread support for regional-nationalist aspirations. Since conflicting preferences over the structure of the state, as well as substantial differences regarding the fundamental nature of national identities in several of Spain's regions, have served as the basis of highly salient and occasionally divisive issues on the political agenda of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it is important to understand the origins of these varying regional cleavages. These can be traced back to the founding of the Spanish state itsel£ Spain was created as the ultimate outcome of the Reconquista-the reconquest oflberia from Islamic forces that had quickly seized control of most of the peninsula following their invasion in A.D. ?II (Lomax 1984). The Reconquista took more than seven centuries, and it was completed only in 1492 with the surrender of the Moorish Kingdom of Granada. Spain's linguistic and cultural diversity, as well as conflicts over the structure of the state, derive from the fact that this reconquest was undertaken by various groups, with different cultural traits and divergent preferences for how to structure a political system. Over the course of several centuries, southward military and migratory thrusts expelled the Moors and settled Christian populations with differing languages and cultural traditions. One such migration originated in Galicia {see map 2.1), within which was spoken, as early as Roman times, a regional derivative of Latin distinct from the languages emerging elsewhere in Iberia. Because Moorish settlement in this northwestern region was minimal, almost all of the region was quickly retaken by Asturian-Galician forces by 740. Over the following five hundred years, further southward incursions by people speaking the language of this region succeeded in creating the Kingdom of Portugal, Europe's first nation-state, whose population all spoke a single language, shared common cultural traits, and were subordinate to the same monarch. Galicia, however, remained part of Spain. Given its close ties with Asturias, LeOn, and the rest ofWestern Europe (resulting at least in part from the constant parade of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela) and its relative lack of contact with its southern frontier {later to become Portu-

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Spanish Exceptionalism

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